But... he didn't. For one, Lucas hired other writers for the other two films. For another, ESB was written without the final film really being taken into consideration. It's not like they wrote ESB and ROTJ together. ESB was written, filmed, released, and then they started work on the final film. I mean, it's known that "Leia is Luke's sister" isn't something they thought of until writing ROTJ.

It's really not, IMO. It's a painfully obvious and know story arc. The thing to make a prequel interesting isn't to just get to the known end point, but to provide surprising character and story twists, to show what the audience doesn't already know. Lucas was just checking off the bullet points of the vague outline everyone already knew.

So you'd rather have a crappy, but consistent, trilogy than a good, but inconsistent trilogy?

Having a single writer or writing team for all 3 films may have made this trilogy a bit more consistent, but there's no guarantee that would've made it any better. Think of if JJ Abrams had stuck around for a second film... and it sucked. People would be shouting about how Disney was stupid for sticking with JJ, how they should've taken a risk with a different director who could've brought some new ideas to the table, etc...

Personally, I'm fine with this inconsistent, but so far very good, sequel trilogy, and would watch these two films over any of the 3 prequels. Consistency isn't all it's cracked up to be.

I meant 'developing' the story in terms of writing. Yes, Kasdan wrote ESB and ROTJ, but Lucas developed the story he wanted to tell. He was the one who developed Vader being Luke's father, he was the one who developed Vader being redeemed. Kasdan wanted to kill one of the heroes in ROTJ, and Lucas told him that nobody good was dying. TFA was developed by JJ, TLJ was developed by RJ, and now Episode 9 is being developed by JJ.

As for the OT, Lucas didn't know if there would be a Trilogy before filming ESB because he was financing it. Kirshner said when he was hired, "Lucas told me if this movie fails, then there are no more movies." That is why I say it's amazing the OT works as a Trilogy when they were obviously making it up on the fly because they never really knew how many films they would end up with.

I disagree as there are a lot of twists in the PT that weren't expected (some good, some bad). The first was that Anakin was a good kid when he was discovered as most fans thought he was the 'bad kid on the block' to begin with because they figured that is who Darth Vader is. While TPM has it's flaws, the big storyline to come out of it is that Anakin is really a good kid from the beginning.

The Stormtroopers (Clones) are another twist in that nobody knew they were on the Republic's side (when watching the OT movies) and would turn on them when Empire took over. Nobody saw that The Emperor was a straight up politican who got democratically elected like Hitler (his arc is loosely based on the German Dictator.) The PT isn't a straight up bullet point Trilogy in terms of story, but again it's the execution that is the problem.

That's a good question, and I won't be able to answer that til after we all see Episode 9. Right now I like the characters, real locations, and acting in the ST, but I prefer the PT storyline. Story is the most important to me as that is what will make a movie still interesting 10-15 years from now (That is why most blockbusters these days don't age well because they are thin on story and characters). If the ST story ends up unsatisfying, then it will end up like the PT as a big what if.....

I can see both sides of the coin. As far as storytelling the prequels are better films, but as far as the filmmaking techniques as well as acting the sequels are better. Both are flawed for the opposite reasons. The prequels suffer from poor direction, over-reliance on CG, and subpar acting. The sequels (mainly The Last Jedi) suffers from having too many cooks in the kitchen and not telling a really strong story but rather seems concerned with flipping Star Wars on its head for the sake of the director wanting to put his stamp on the franchise. I’m hoping Episode IX is better and I don’t think it’s entirely fair to judge the Sequel Trilogy just yet as there is one film left in it and I did at least like the first entry quite a bit.

Don't try and attribute motivations to someone that you know nothing about. Rian Johnson has given very clear reasoning for all of his storytelling reasons, and none of them were to "put his stamp" on the series.

Again, I think the people complaining about the "different directors" are only doing so because they didn't like this one particular director's story. If another director had made a film they liked, even if it was still somewhat inconsistent, they'd be fine with having different directors. And if it had been the same director, but they didn't like the film, many would be arguing that Lucasfilm should've gone with a different director.

There's nothing inherently bad about Lucasfilm hiring different writer/directors for the different episodes. Very few people were complaining about this plan before TLJ was released. Marvel does this all the time, with both individual hero movies, and The Avengers films, changing writers and directors over time. Was Thor: Ragnarok different from the previous 2 Thor films? You bet your ass it was. Was it bad, since it was all "inconsistent" ? Hell no, it rocked.

Great point... with you knowing Rian Johnson and all.

Correct. Didn't like the story or screenplay or new characters that Rian Johnson created for his movie. Direction was fine. A swing and a miss for me.

Actually, I won't blame Rian Johnson if I ultimately don't like the ST after Episode 9. My biggest gripe with the ST is that I just don't see some overall theme/arc that ties in with 1-6 (maybe JJ can accomplish that with Episode 9 so I could be wrong). JJ was the one who got the ball rolling and set everything up so Rian Johnson could only do so much in that respect.

The only reason ROTJ still works for me 35 years later is because the theme of the movie ties up nicely with ANH/ESB and now the PT (The Redemption of Vader). ROTJ is a flawed movie with great moments (Throne Room Scenes) and terrible moments (Pretty much the whole Ewok part), so the only reason I revisit that film is because it works in a big picture sense with the OT and PT. It's just not a good enough movie to pop in and watch as a standalone movie.

I'm hoping JJ can tie some big picture theme for the ST that jives nicely with the OT/PT. I'm hoping he can tie some theme regarding the light (Rey) with the dark (Kylo Ren) which would be a metaphor for Luke (light) and Vader (dark) regarding the PT/OT. If Episode 9 is just another 'standalone' movie that sort of ties with 7 and 8 because it has the same characters, then the Trilogy will fall like a house of cards for me, IMO.

So I'm not really Rian Johnson bashing as I actually blame JJ for the reason this Trilogy may fail because I honestly don't think he is capable of writing something that ambitious. He is a guy who has succeeded for a good part of career in taking over franchises and rebooting them. I hope I'm proven wrong in the end and he can tie everything together nicely like Lucas was able to do with the PT/OT, but I don't have much faith in him because of his track record.

Isn't Kennedy really the person who should take the blame? Didn't she set these directors in motion? First, if she gave them carte blanche, shame on her.... and if she did her due diligence and green-lit the project (whether fully fleshed out or make it up as you go), shame on her. The re-hashing of ANH that was TFA and the disjointed "let the past die" theme that was TLJ were not worthy of 200M+ dollar reboots 20 years after the last debacle of SW themed movies.

After watching it for the 2nd time, I really think it would have been better if Rey agreed to team up with Kylo Ren and they went towards a path of getting rid of the Empire and the Resistance.

That would have been an interesting arc and been the chance to really shake up the series for a fresh start, clear of the baggage of the PT and OT

That would have made even less sense story wise based on what happened in The Force Awakens than the shit we did get in The Last Jedi.

Revenge of the Sith came out in 2005, TFA in 2015. So it was only a 10 year gap between Star Wars films.

And whether or not you hated TFA, there's no arguing that $2 billion worldwide gross is a massive success. The $1.3 billion of TLJ and $1 billion of RO is nothing to sneeze at either. They're the three highest grossing Star Wars movies. It's not until Solo that there really was, financially, a misstep.
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/franch...d=starwars.htm

As for the quality of the films, that's totally subjective. I don't think she gave "carte blanche" to any of the directors, most obviously demonstrated by the reshoots of Rogue One and the firing of directors from two films. She wasn't dictating plot or character arcs either though, it seems more like she'd veto things.

It was a near impossible job given to her though. Disney wanted a new Star Wars trilogy out fast, with the first film coming out only 3 years after Disney bought Lucasfilm, and a movie a year after that. Lucasfilm does seem to have an eye out for quality, but it's not easy to hit the ground running and then just start churning out hit after hit. Even Marvel has stumbled a few times, both creatively and financially.

Marvel's financial "stumbles" were still very profitable, as they didn't have anywhere near the money sunk into them that Solo did.

Marvel's 5 lowest grossing films (Worldwide) are:

Incredible Hulk - $236.4 Mil on a $150 Mil budget
Captain America -370.6 Mil on a $140 Mil budget
Thor - 449.3 Mil on a $150 Mil budget
Ant-Man and the Wasp - 466.9 Mil (and counting) on a $162 Mil budget
Ant-Man - 519.3 Mil on a $130 Mil budget

Solo has made $392 Mil on a $275 Mil buget

Yeah, Solo is worse, particularly because the reshoots greatly inflated the cost, but I don't think it's bad enough that the person who brought in $4.3+ billion to Disney is going to lose her job over it.

Everyone knows that, you're not saying anything new. The difference is the OT was a surprise phenomenon so Lucas had to change things on the fly. But it still worked out really well in the end.

With the ST there is absolutely no excuse for the terrible job they did not planning anything out. There was no reason why they should have just winged it like they did. No reason they couldn't have laid out a basic plot map for the three movies. Lucasfilm and KK shouldn't have let JJ build those mystery boxes without any kind of payoff and they certainly shouldn't have let RJ throw everything from the previous movies out the nearest airlock.

And yeah we know the PT was all planned out from the beginning and didn't turn out that great. That has nothing to do with this trilogy and not an excuse for why they didn't plan anything out.

That's just stupid. You really think the only two choices are consistent but crappy or inconsistent but great? They're not dependent on each other. You can have a consistent narrative throughout a trilogy that is also great. And yes when you are talking about a trilogy of movies that each build upon the other consistency with the basic plot and character development is essential. Instead we're getting the mess we have where each director wants to do their own thing and each movie doesn't even feel like it's taking place in the same universe let alone the same story. That's why I blame KK and the Lucasfilm story development group or whatever they call themselves more than the individual directors. RJ has even said himself that he asked about continuing the story and they basically said do what you want.

This for sure. The directors were doing what they do and didn't have any direction. There should have been at least a basic plot laid out for this trilogy period.

She did give JJ and RJ free reign. JJ to let him create, ultimately empty, mystery boxes and RJ she let him throw everything out. Her strong hand with being willing to fire directors and make difficult decisions like that made me think that she had a perfect balance between making a consistent Star Wars product and letting director take their own risk and putting their mark on things. TLJ proved me wrong. The last part about Disney seems true though. Maybe they put too much pressure on them to put something out and instead should have given them the time to really develop this trilogy from the beginning to the end. They probably should have stretched out the release dates to 3 years between movies but then again I don't blame Disney for wanting to strike while it's hot.

From my recollection the only two mystery boxes RJ "threw out" were Snoke's backstory (which I didn't even ever consider a mystery anyone thought worth exploring until the online complaining started) and Rey's parentage, which wasn't thrown out, but answered in a way some fans didn't like.

No, but my point is that consistency and/or advanced planning doesn't automatically equal a good story, and that figuring it out along the way doesn't automatically mean it'll be a bad story. Pointing to a bad story for an example of consistency isn't a great example of proving that consistency makes for a better movie series.

The logic seems to be "this movie was bad, they didn't plan this trilogy ahead of time, so therefore the reason it's bad is because it wasn't planned out in advance, and thus if they had planned out in advance it would've been good." I think that's faulty logic. It's asserting causation where there's only correlation.

I didn't say she didn't give them a lot of freedom, I said she didn't give them carte blanche. There were limits, even if neither JJ nor RJ felt that they ran into them. Colin Trevorrow found that out.

"I didn't like this movie, therefore she's a terrible producer." Sound logic there.

Yep, yep, yep, yep, and yep.

I actually have no problem with Random Rey (only because there isn't a way to make her related to Luke or Han/Leia without making them look like deadbeats).

In saying that, JJ sort of suckered the fans into thinking she had Skywalker lineage having Anakin/Luke's saber call to her, playing Luke's music when she force grabbed the Lightsaber at the end of TFA. Even Maz says, "That was Luke's lightsaber and it was his father's lightsaber before him...." There was no reason to go to that extent in TFA with those scenes because it really made it look like she was another Skywalker/Solo.

So it's not really about what fans wanted that makes them mad, it was the obvious 'head fakes' that were thrown out there in TFA that really amounted to nothing. In a sense, the 'Random' Rey storyline could have been used right from the start without any ambiguity and I think it would have flowed much better in TLJ.

OK, so I never thought those scenes meant she was a Skywalker. I thought it was more about the "lineage" of the Force itself, talking to her through the things she and the audience most associate with the Force, i.e. lightsabers and Luke.

And I thought the "his father's lightsaber before him..." was just to help identify that specific lightsaber, i.e. the one Luke lost when his hand was cut off. It may be a remnant from when JJ was planning on showing specifically how that lightsaber got to Maz.

Also, the musical theme you mention isn't specifically Luke's. It's called "The Force Theme". It was primarily associated with Luke in the original trilogy, but it was also used in the prequels, in association with Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan, and Anakin.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Binary_Sunset

But maybe I was just in denial, because making her a Skywalker felt like the laziest, most contrived move possible.

No, it wouldn't have worked as well in TLJ if everyone, including her, already knew she was a nobody. Kylo Ren's reveal of her parentage had to be devastating, and tart of the devastation of the moment of the reveal was that she was holding out hope that knowing her parentage would help to tell her who she is, how she fits into all of this. It's supposed to make her extremely vulnerable, making the audience believe, at least for a second, that there's a chance she'll join Kylo. If it wasn't her lineage, that scene would need some other sort of devastating reveal in order to work.

Yeah, J.J. did kind of mislead us with Rey being a relative of some sorts to one of the legacy characters. I sort of wish he hadn’t done that. Truthfully though if Rey is indeed just someone random (I’m still not entirely convinced Kylo wasn’t just lying to her thinking it might be a weak spot to turn her) I don’t find that entirely satisfying. Her just being nobody is kind of a lazy way to just dismiss it. I already hear the rebuttal from Jay G. coming but it’s how I feel and think that aspect could have been handled better somehow.

You mean the rebuttal I posted before your post? You have good hearing.

No, it's not lazy, and it's not a dismissal. It's disappointing, but that was the point. It was supposed to be incredible disappointing to Rey, to the point of emotional devastation. And it's not a dismissal, but uses the reveal as a critical tipping point in the story. However, I think some fans got too emotionally invested in the "mystery" of it after TFA and are taking the disappointment of the reveal extremely personally.

A big question for those dissidents: How would any other answer change the character Rey to you? Why would it matter if she was a Skywalker? How would it change Rey in your eyes? Would she be a better person, just because of her lineage? Would she be more "deserving" of having Force powers in your eyes? Why can't a random "nobody" be the focus of the series?

That one is actually more on J.J. because either he should have had a more clear idea for the next director to work with or he shouldn’t have so blatantly misled us. I’d have been a lot more accepting of Rey as a random character not tied to anyone had the seeds not been planted. I do think Johnson was probably backed into a corner to figure out how she could be related to one of the established lineages and since there wasn’t an easy out that made logical sense just made the decision to have her be no one. As far as taking it personally, I think it’s natural for fans to dislike a deceptive storyline when so much of The Force Awakens centered on that aspect of Rey’s character. The answer we got is an answer sure but it also is very unsatisfying.

Yeah, if you think it was disappointing to the audience, think of Rey, who basically shackled herself to that planet waiting and waiting. I mean even after she escaped in TFA she wanted to go right back.

Obviously they're going to stay true to the original trilogy, have Kylo and her kiss, then reveal them to be twins or something.

Did he mislead you though? I mean, see my reply to mcnabb about this, but While JJ set it up as a "mystery," there's nothing in TFA that either explicitly or implicitly sets up the answer to be only one possibility.

And in some way, this argument sounds like "I didn't like the answer, so they shouldn't have set up the question."