Jesus, don’t remind us.

Just delving into the ST again....

Bottom line is JJ set a path, a narrative, put in place certain things, established a lore....any decent-minded writer having to work off that would just follow the stream set in motion by the opening movie of a trilogy.

JJ cast Luke as a powerful entity, (that final shot all regal and glorious, as well as Han's talk about Luke and the Jedi to the new gang). Luke wasn't so much in hiding like a broken old man in TFA but protecting something important. He provided a top secret map to his whereabouts, which was what all the fuss of the opening of TFA was about...Snoke hell-bent on finding and killing Luke, sending his emissary Kylo to track down that map.

TFA cast Snoke as an equally powerful entity as Luke. But more, as a great ancient wise being who from a distance saw the entire rise and fall of Palpatine and the Empire. Snoke actually predates Palpatine as per the TFA dictionary and inside the TFA script (what he says to Kylo).

The trilogy was set up for a Snoke vs Luke power struggle with Ben/Kylo caught in the middle. That to me is the essence of what the ST was all about based on TFA.

Even despite JJ littering TFA with mystery boxes, a clear narrative and path was still established. If Rian hadn't done what he did we'd have a pretty solid ST instead of the shemozzle we got on account of JJ feeling the need to one-up RJ in return.

That's the gist of what I'm trying to say....Snoke predates Palpatine officially in TFA and the dictionary. And that trilogy of Aftermath books was also establishing the foundation for that concept to evolve and be fleshed out in the ST.

Rian derailed all that groundwork, but JJ didn't have to resort to bringing Palpatine back from the dead and making Snoke nothing more than a mere empty vessel that instead somehow now post-dates Palpatine. He could've still made the dead Snoke a clone of Snoke and carried on with that path.

TFA set up the post-ROTJ galaxy as a power struggle between Luke and Snoke, both of them majestic and regal, the caretakers of the source of light and dark itself. (Luke in glorious Jedi robes and Snoke in papal-like clothing and throne).

When Rian wrecked that, it set off a domino effect that wrecked all the other characters -- who Rey is, her powers, Finn's arc, Poes arc, Kylo's arc, Phasma and Hux's arcs, creating a banal Reylo ship, the whole Knights of Ren significance nipped in the bud. Tho JJ could've still avoided the Palpatine angle, he couldn't really take the mess of ep8 he inherited back to where he originally envisioned it.

That was a nice way of explaining your points. You could have just summed it all up with "The Last Jedi is shit" though.

See, that's one of the things that conflicts me about TLJ, the way Kylo tricks Snoke and kills him was an awesome scene, but narratively, it was way too soon and left the rest of the story in a lurch.

There's so many scenes like that, in isolation they're cool, but put all together and they just don't gel.
Like Luke staring down the First Order AT-ATs.

Did he set a clear path though? Even if you think TLJ was a bad move in going the opposite direction of what people expected for many plotlines, TRoS was clearly a mess that can't fully be explained by just having to reverse some of TLJ developments. "Somehow, Palpatine has returned," and all that. Like, if that was JJ's intent from the beginning, you'd think he'd be able to provide a far better resolution than what we got, instead of the haphazard mess that leaned heavily on memberberries instead of any original story or plotting.

Also, minor defense of TLJ, but in the original trilogy ESB threw a giant monkey wrench into the "stream set in motion by the opening movie." Most of the team is captured, and Han isn't rescued by the end. The clear villain is now directly tied to the main protagonist, who also repeatedly failed at his training, etc. Following the most obvious path is a way towards mediocrity.

Are we sure Luke left the map behind? It seems odd for him to break it up and scatter it about, instead of, say, just communicating directly to Leia, via either technology or the Force. Based on the dialogue, the map was fragments at least partially found in the Empire archives, pointing to the first Jedi Temple. I know a lot of people in TFA say "it's a map to Luke Skywalker!" but that's just conjecture, based on the knowledge Luke went looking for it, and the assumption that he found it.

From the script:
I don't think Luke would've placed a critical piece for locating him in the Empire archives.

Where in the actual film is any of this BS backed up?

JJ didn't set a path. That's why we have the mess we have. He's very good at capturing the feeling of nostalgia and that's probably the biggest reason why he was hired. As someone who was ok with TLJ, I would have preferred to just go down that path. Clearly the fans spooked Disney and we got that mess of a third film.

Don't get me wrong, TROS is the worst movie ever, an abomination. Just saying Rian derailed TFA and didn't allow JJ to course correct back to his original vision. There is a leaked treatment for ep8 by Kasdan and Abrams which shows there was a Snoke vs Luke kind of concept going on.

As for where in the script it says Snoke pre-dates Palpatine....

Snoke talks to Kylo and says how he saw the rise and fall of the empire, all the mistakes made by the emperor. And, like I said, the visual dictionary, (canon at the time) reiterated that and that he is an ancient being.

How would Rian have "not allowed" JJ to course correct? Rian didn't have control over the Ep 8 script. And if Palpatine can return from the dead "somehow," why couldn't Snoke? Hell, we basically got halfway there in the finished film, with the Snoke clones in vats.

Also, those "leaked" treatments are thought to be fake.

That's not in the film, like in any form. Snoke's dialogue is very limited in TFA, and nothing in there implies he's older than the Empire or Emperor.

I assume you mean Star Wars: The Force Awakens: The Visual Dictionary ?

According to the index, Supreme Leader Snoke is mentioned on pages 24, 25, 26, 40, and 68. Pages 24 & 25 don't even mention Snoke by name, just vague references to the Supreme Leader. Page 26 uses Snoke's name, but just to mention that Ren is his apprentice. Page 40 just mentions Snoke in passing, again as Supreme Leader. Page 68 mentions that Snoke "keeps his command center mobile." There's literally nothing in it about Snoke being ancient, older than the Empire, etc.

Even Jar Jar Binks thinks The Last Jedi and The Rise Of Skywalker are garbage.

TROS is only garbage because of TLJ.

The problem is that both TLJ and TROS each feel like they want to be a sequel to The Force Awakens. TLJ follows directly after TFA but completely changes the tone of the story and TROS feels like it’s doing it’s best to not acknowledge TLJ while still passively aggressively reversing the more egregious decisions of said movie.

In the end I still come down on the side of TROS mainly because we get the trio of heroes being heroes and they’re just so fun to watch.

TLJ is second only to Empire

Whatever reality that this is true in I don't want to live there.

Well, it's the same reality where Trump was president, so I'd live with the tradeoff.

I don't want to re-argue TLJ in terms of quality, but I will argue against factually incorrect stuff like what was present in xe.kilroy's recent posts. You can hate on TLJ all you want, but you can't hate it for things that literally do not exist.

Btw, I didn't say or mean to imply Rian himself didn't allow JJ to course correct etc...but that creatively, what Rian did, subverting TFAs implied paths and characters, in turn forced JJ to either comply or to course correct. JJ didn't have to resort to Palpatine, he could've made the Snoke that Kylo killed a clone of Snoke and persisted with the concept of Snoke being the ancient acolyte viewing everything from afar abd stepping in to nake a new run at a better more efficient Empire. But it was more than Snoke....TLJ ruined most of the TFA character arcs....Luke's Finn's, Rey's, Phasma, Hux. Kylo.

My stance is that JJ didn't have any pre-planned paths to actually "course correct." Keep in mind that JJ originally wasn't going to complete the trilogy, and all evidence is that he just made open-ended mysteries that he didn't actually have good answers for.

But honestly, what was the "character arc" for Phasma in TFA? Really, Phasma? The character whose only defining traits in TFA are "female" and "shiny armor"? The one who was dropped into a trash compactor and left for dead on a planet that shortly thereafter exploded? Phasma was a disappointment within TFA, and Rian should probably be commended for bringing that character back to at least die in an actual battle.

As for Luke, TLJ just built off of how TFA set him up, as someone who ran away to live alone on a remote planet as a hermit, with his friends and family literally having to track down old maps out of archives to find him. I think people were just so excited to see Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford on the screen again as these characters they don't realize how royally JJ messed them up, basically making them both people who fled from their obligations and family after a tragedy. I guess people are ok with Han's portrayal because he basically turns on a dime and goes back to helping the Resistance and trying to save his son the moment Leia shows up. I guess people wanted Luke to similarly turn on a dime and go right back to work, instead of exploring exactly what would cause a man to spend a decade or so as a hermit and drawing out his redemption. People just wanted 5 minutes of Luke acting grumpy like Yoda and then all in on training Rey. But we already had that, in ESB with Yoda, and I guess I didn't see the need to have the full OT repeated near verbatim, unlike JJ.

TFA is not without its flaws, minor and major. JJ is a bad writer too. TROS is the pits for example. TFA has some interesting ideas or branches that neither of the two properly or better explored...KoR for example, deeper dive into Finn as defecting stormtroopers the state of the galaxy post Rotj ex-empire in hiding/running, etc. Lazy to just plonk a substitute fully established new Empire with ridiculous SKB etc. JJ is the pits. But Rian isn't much better in TLJ. Granted RJ tried to be more esoteric, but he also spoiled his own work by littering it with slapstick and some other silly scenes and stretches of plot.

The main thing is that JJ didn't set a "clear path" that Rian actually deviated from or JJ had to "course correct" to. The evidence is that JJ just created bare sketches of characters with a handful of open-ended "mysteries" that some fans read WAY too much into, and got disappointed when Rian didn't go the way the fans expected. Nothing in TLJ actually contradicts what was set up in TFA, and some things like Luke being a grumpy hermit who doesn't want to come back, are pretty explicitly set up in TFA, but fans overlook that. It's clear from ROTS that JJ didn't have any grand plans to course correct back to anyway, and TRoS is actually worse in that it contradicts parts of TLJ and outright ignores logic and story consistency by bringing back Palpatine.

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...and half of the Star Wars stuff is either kiddie fare, video games, or vaporware.

I'm amazed that Disney hasn't cleaned the fucking house at Lucasfilm.

I'm not sure what the comparison is supposed to be? Like, the MCU graphic has over a row of stuff that's already been released, and nearly a whole row of "Untitled" projects likely years away. And yes, Lucasfilm isn't churning out movies and shows at the same rate, but that's by design, since they stated that was the explicit plan after Solo flopped.

Disney is still likely making billions off of Lucasfilm what with the merchandise, theme parks, Disney+ subscriptions, etc. Also, it's a bit disingenuous to compare just Star Wars to the MCU if talking about Lucasfilm, because Lucasfilm is also producing the Willow TV series, and a new Indiana Jones movie.

Finally, I wouldn't judge a studio just based on the quantity of content coming out; quality matters.

Which is which for Star Wars? Are some both, like a game and a show? That graphic isn't very clear. At least the MCU graphic, while not saying if something is a movie or a series, implies they're all equal parts of the story. I don't think a game is the same as a movie or series.

Star Wars Hunters, Jedi Survivor, KOTOR, Eclipse, and Ubisoft are games.

Summer Vacation and Young Jedi are kiddie fare.

Lando, Rogue Squadron, Rangers of the New Republic, Droid Story, and Kevin Feige are, so far, vaporware or stuck in development hell. (Could also add Taika Waititi and Rian Johnson Trilogy here, but they aren't on the list, and who knows what's going on there. Johnson's trilogy seems to have been shoved to the back burner after The Last Jedi, and they might be Colin Trevorrowing Waititi after seeing Love and Thunder?)

"Star Wars: Late 2023" is something I don't think I've heard of. Not sure what it is.

Everything else is Disney+, either scheduled or in active production.

Andor, Bad Batch, Tales of the Jedi, Mandalorian, and Visions are scheduled for release on Disney+. Ahsoka, Acolyte, and Skeleton Crew are Disney+ series in active production. (I think they're moving on Skeleton Crew, though I'm not sure what it is.)

No movies on the schedule or in active production.

That could be the Taika Waititi film, which was previously reported as coming late 2023.

https://geekculture.co/taika-waititi...-in-late-2023/

Also, summation of Skeleton Crew:
https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/ev...skeleton-crew/

Okay, yeah, I remember Skeleton Crew now. I recall "Amblin" description not doing much for me.

The Star Wars 2023 would seem to be the Taika Waititi project, as the logo used matches the one at Wookiepedia but I don't think there's any way it sees a release in 2023. Last I heard, Waititi was still working on the script.

And then there's this piece here that says Lucasfilm won't release or greenlight any Star Wars movies before 2024.

https://www.cbr.com/star-wars-boss-w...-films-report/

So, Skeleton Crew is to Star Wars as Prodigy is to Star Trek?

I enjoy Prodigy, especially is tie-in to deeper lore, maybe Star Wars can do the same.