Mike86

I mean it would have been a really simplified and convenient answer, but I’d have even accepted that Maz was working at Bespin or something at the time and happened to find the lightsaber. Just some sort of explanation would have been better than she just has it.

Mabuse

Bro, do you even Star Wars?

You see the hand fall. Luke grabs that antenna thing and then there’s a shot looking down and you see the hand fall.

brayzie

Rey: Where did you get this?
Maz: Before I was a bartender/smuggler, I used to work at Cloud City's droid repair center. And one day, during the citiy's evacuation I found a severed hand still griping a lightsaber. I knew I had to take it and keep it safe. Maybe one day the owner of the hand would return for it. Or maybe a young girl like yourself would need it.

I think JJ giving it some mystique by saying, "That's a story for another day" is much more in line with the fantasy/fairy tale-like structure of Star Wars. If it hadn't been for all the other bullshit "mystery boxes," like that was the only one, I would have fun imagining on my own how Luke's lightsaber got all the way to Maz Kanata's tavern. Maybe different people over the years have had it in their possession, like a non-evil Loc-Nar.

Just to be clear, I think JJ Abrams is a talented guy and creates fun stories. He "gets" fans for the most part where Lucas couldn't see the forest for the trees by the time of the PT.

Mike86

I don’t know. It’s still bothersome to me. It’s honestly one of those instances where I’d either prefer it be explained or just omitted if there wasn’t going to be an explanation.

It wasn’t that integral to the story. Kylo wanted it at first (mainly in The Force Awakens) because of his obsession with Vader, but aside from that it didn’t matter much, and wound up buried in the sand only for Rey to end up making a new one.

TGM

If I have to read a comic, play a video game and read a book to explain plot holes that allows a movie to make sense then that movie was a fucking pathetic failure.

brayzie

Now that you mention it, it did seem more integral to the story to me. Luke's lightsaber was calling to her, and that "mystery box" was meant to hint at the possibility that she was Luke's daughter or maybe Obi-Wans. Why else would there be some connection to it? But there was just a connection because she was Force sensitive and the inanimate object was Force sensitive too and it wanted to let her know that she'll need it to fight Kylo later on.

Then the lightsaber gets broke in two in TLJ. Great, that's gone. But it gets repaired once again to use, just to get buried in the sand, like you said, just so we could get a fan service-lite moment of a yellow lightsaber. Blue, green, purple, yellow, and red. Now we just need orange, black, violet, indigo, and white.

​​​​​​And damn, JJ's stupid mystery box ruined Rey's identity. He didn't even know who the hell she was going to be when writing the story and was hoping that it'd get figured out somewhere down the line. Rian Johnson actually did something good with it...and JJ undoes that by pulling off a ROTJ George Lucas. I still forget sometimes that Rey is supposed to be Palpatine's daughter.

I'm beating a dead horse but oh well.

Lucas playing it by ear for his first trilogy is understandable. He didn't know ANH would be a hit so he compacted his overall epic into a 90-minute film. After that he needed to figure out how continue a story that was essentially already finished on-screen.

But Disney knew they were going to make a new trilogy and had way more resources and money than Lucas did back in 1980. I just don't understand how hard it is to coordinate a general plan for a story this big.

johnnysd

I think people just need to accept the fact that all 3 of the sequels are complete shite and would have all been forgotten now if they did not have the Star Wars name associated with them. Arguing of the minutiae of 3 not very good movies is sort of useless

Mike86

Oh, I’ve accepted the films are shit. Doesn’t stop me from talking about them.

To me the Skywalker Saga is Episodes I-VI. I like the Disney films that aren’t the sequels, but the Sequel Trilogy is hot garbage.

OldBoy

What’s wrong with them truthfully? So what if they told basically the same story as the OT with new characters. They kept it simple, light, fun, heartfelt, and fan based and was a hell of a lot more entertaining than POS prequels. They kept old, added new and it all came together in sometimes unexpected ways. No, they’ll never be the OT, but a heck of a lot better than any other Sci-fi action movies we get, which we really don’t except for these and Star Treks. I thoroughly enjoyed them all and did like them better than any other non-nonuple SW movie.

Mabuse

The Force Awakens is very good, and a lot of fun. And it’s ending pointed to great things ahead. I was left feeling Star Wars is in good hands. The second one did not deliver and the third one had to stretch to compensate.

But TFA is good, it’s just a shame it doesn’t have very good follow ups to support it.

Josh-da-man

Something falls; though it's ambiguous as to what it is.

According to both the script and the novelization, a piece of the antenna breaks off at some point:

A lot of people would probably assume it's meant to be his hand, though the idea that his hand and lightsabre would fall out a second of two after he did, even though his hand was severed at least a minute or two before he let himself fall, seems a little sketchy even by Star Wars standards. We also saw no evidence that his hand was tumbling through the ventilation shaft with him, or waiting for him on the vent when he stopped on it.

clckworang

I finally watched this movie a couple of weeks ago. The first time I saw The Force Awakens, I thought it was generally well made, but I was very vocal about not liking how much it copied the originals. But I was going to give the trilogy the benefit of the doubt. I'll admit that I enjoyed it more on second viewing.

Then came the second movie. I don't think I hated it as much as some, but there were a lot of things that really bothered me (Leia getting saved from outside the space ship, all the force ghost stuff, Luke's turn). However, I did like that it surprised me a couple of times. The third one surprised me as well: at just how bad it is. I'll admit I had to watch it over two days because it put me to sleep the first time. It was just a mess. Poor Carrie Fisher. Those scenes looked as forced as they obviously were. The emperor reveal was dumb but not as dumb as that last line. It just felt like a big step back from the idea of empowerment and her parents' sacrifice. Her parents abandoned her in an attempt to save her. I thought it would be more appropriate to retake the Palpatine name and change its meaning. Everything ended up feeling so inconsequential. And you knew Kylo wasn't going to make it. My immediate thought was there was no way his character could ever be redeemed. Perfect, we'll just make him disappear, but not before we do something for the shippers

I'm fully behind the idea of these sequels being cast aside and pretending they didn't happen. The only shitty things about that are you've lost another of the original cast members to death and another one is probably out from indifference, not to mention any surviving actors would also be a lot older. I just never dreamed Disney would run the film franchise into the ground like it did. All that being said, Mandalorian has given me my most interest in anything Star Wars in a long time. To me, there's a lot of fan service on that show, too, but it's done in a far more effective way.

brayzie

What's wrong with them is that they told the same story as the old movies from 30 years ago but with new, diet versions of the old characters. I can just watch the old ones.

More entertaining than the PT is an insanely low standard. The ST was done well enough as far as "fun" goes but honestly, they're not films I'd watch again.

I'm trying to think in what ways was it unexpected.
TFA...it was just like ANH and extremely predictable. We all knew that Han was going to die, and we all knew there was going to be a mandatory lightsaber battle.
TLJ...Luke giving up and not wanting to do shit was unexpected, but it quickly became a retread of Yoda and Luke's relationship in ESB. Cranky old Jedi Master reluctant to train impulsive young Force user who has the potential to turn to the dark side. Luke's reveal as a quitter felt cheap and more a cheap attempt to SUBVERT EXPECTATIONS.
TROS...they could have pulled through at the last minute and justified the existence of a new trilogy but they didn't. I suppose it was unexpected that they didn't bother to provide a good reason to bring back Palpatine and just hand waved Snoke as being one of many clones (why would there need to be more than one Snoke???).

brayzie

Some people are saying that the new trilogy, in particular TLJ, put new twists on everything, but not by much. Instead the old guard being right, it was shown that it was the younger generation who had the right solutions to effect change. But for the most part it was the same ol' same ol'.
They had the perfect opportunity to push against the younger generation’s belief that their actions won't have permanent consequences, by having Rey cut down Kylo Ren in the middle of the movie and have him NOT get redeemed for his heinous crimes.

The Mandalorian is very derivative of other franchises, but at least it's not copying its own. I also really enjoyed the TV show.

fujishig

Star Wars is just too big of a franchise for the core movies to do anything really radical. We knew the good guys would win in the end. We knew Rey would survive and carry on the Jedi legacy. We knew that the ending wasn't going to be a colossal downer. We knew that Rey wouldn't turn to the darkside (because none of the other protagonists were established enough to carry the "good" side, let alone the fact that it would've been a bigger scandal to kids than the death of Optimus Prime). You can't really have a theme of "the young don't know what they're doing" in a movie that's targeted to the young (as far as toys and whatnot).

What you can do is lean into the history and then try to do something a little novel without changing the major beats, but we saw that doesn't really go well with the fans either. There was a way to make this more of a fan-pleasing trilogy but none of that was tied to actually being original.

mcnabb

You have every right to enjoy them for what they are, but 'they told basically the same story as the OT with new character' is everything that is wrong with blockbuster movies these days. They used to milk these franchises with sequel after sequel, and now it's just reboot and than sequel after sequel. But the present day Blockbuster make millions (sometimes billions) of dollars, so who can argue with the Studios as people accept them and keep going?

I would disagree with you that I would rather watch the Prequels than the Sequel Trilogy these days. Yes, the Prequels has it's execution problems (which we all have discussed for 20 years), but atleast it had an interesting story that built on the OT, rather than the Sequel Trilogy that I still don't know why it exists in a storytelling sense, other than 3 more nostalgia movies that resemble the OT and give the story an arc/theme. That's essentially what Lucas meant in 2015 when Charlie Rose asked him about what he thought of The Force Awakens, "The studio wanted me to make a movie for the fans, I just wanted to tell a story." The Force Awakens is movie that is one big nostalgia trip for the fans, and as a result the Trilogy eventually fell like a house of cards (By the time Episode 9 rolled around) because it never really had a story, theme, or purpose.

Rob V

I would argue the logic of building a 3rd Death Star (instead of invading planets and taking over resources) as the single dumbest thing the STs produced. Once, ok, kind of a good idea. Second time... ehh, you tried that, remember how it ended? Not to mention the resources and time it took... Third time?? Fucking idiots. Do you not have a creative bone left in your body??

fujishig

Hey, at least we didn't mirror the OT exactly or we would've gotten a fourth. Instead we got super big star destroyers that can be destroyed by infantry on horseback and hacking it's own turret to fire on the bridge.

Also the third one actually seemed to work. I won't argue it was a good use of resources or even that they shouldn't just spend the money on good engineers that don't expose critical points of failure, but the First Order did seem to gain the upper hand after firing it, even after it was destroyed.

IBJoel

Counterpoint: The story and plot of Star Wars were never original (it's essentially a King Arthur derivative in the middle of WWII) and it was simply the filmmaking (smashing together elements of disparate genres and pioneering new effects) that actually made it unique.

mcnabb

That's a good point, as I always looked at Star Wars as more of a character study (or a family drama as Lucas would put it). So Return of the Jedi has Deathstar 2 (which isn't original), but the whole Vader/Redemption plot between The Emperor/Luke/Vader is the REAL story so that's what makes the movie original in that respect. The Throne Room is what you really care about in the last hour while the attack Death Star 2 is just window dressing.

The problem with The Sequel Trilogy is that it followed the same macro story as the Originals in that the Resistance was fighting the First Order, but also followed the same Micro story too. Rey is Luke, Kylo is Vader, Snoke is the Emperor, Luke is Yoda, etc, and we ended up with Rey Palpatine killing The Emperor (who comes back) while redeeming Ben Solo (It is Return of the Jedi 2.0). I will continue to say if Rey took Kylo's hand in The Last Jedi and they teamed up to run the galaxy (that opens up so many storytelling possibilities), then Episode 9 would have been different and more interesting as they never would have had to bring back The Emperor. But that's debate for another day......

fujishig

Again, though, too gigantic of a franchise, especially with toy sales on the line, for them to do it. It's just too massive for it's own good. Which means few risks and lots of nods to the past. If you got a Rey turn at the end of the second movie, heads would explode (the marketing execs would've spontaneously combusted first).

brayzie

Rey taking Kylo’s hand would have been the perfect cliffhanger for TLJ. I don’t know how you fit it in with Luke’s phantom fight, because that and his subsequent death was done very well and should probably be kept.

But like you said, the franchise is too big. The first female lead in a Star Wars series turns evil? Even if it’s only temporary? They’d get so much feminist backlash for that. Strangely enough, no backlash from anyone that they redeem Kylo Ren. Only that Rey falls for someone who’s an abuser.

fujishig

I think Kylo's redemption only works because he dies (similar to Vader's redemption) so you don't have to really deal with the backlash that this dude murdered a whole bunch of their friends and family.

Rob V

I'm not sure anybody bought the toys this time... i used to be an avid collector and had almost no interest in picking up anything this time around. My son couldn't care less about the ST toys but loves ROTJ Luke.

Michael Corvin

This is the way I've always viewed it. Luke/Vader is the centerpiece of the final act. The Rebel attack on the Endor base comes second. Lando making a run at Death Star II comes in a distant third and basically just serves as a reason to give the viewer a giant fucking explosion for the climax.

I'm not sure that's a valid indicator. I think Lucas is mostly to blame on this one. He just overshot with the PT merchandise, flooding the market with dozens upon dozens of everything. Second, pricing has gotten out of hand (which might be Disney). A single figure which is basically the same as they were 40 years ago is up to what, $7-$8 a piece? Who's gonna buy a bunch of these?