If I Liked the Sequels, This is What I'd Say

ahem. hm. here we go.

oh, come on! they're not that bad!

and, please, at the time?

this same fan base was trashing the Prequels and George Lucas himself left and right

that's WHY Kathleen Kennedy veered so far away from him and his proofs

the loudest fans were the complainers

so they made a movie for the complainers

but then the fans who had been there the whole time

became the complainers

because you spat on their childhood

who do you think you're making movies for?

you think any of us outgrew loving Star Wars?

have you seen us?

how did you think that you could capture a new audience

that hated everything else you did

without joining them in hating everything that had come before?

whoops.

hm. ahem.

excuse me.

no, you know, i think it's really dope that Palpatine came back in IX

because, like,

it turns out that it's always the same Evil

Over and Over again

until, one of your very own,

Rey Palpatine,

turns her back on you too.

because you were Wrong.

and even your children know it.

Zombie Palpatine literally says "i am all of the sith" in that over-the-top but fucking awesome and i dont care what you say, fucking awesome final battle,

he's being completely literal.

he's, what, the salvaged spirit of Darth Sidious that survived even after his body perished from his fall in Return of the Jedi? that he's basically Voldemort before he gets fully resurrected in Goblet of Fire?

like, i don't hate that. i wish it had been introduced at the end of the Last Jedi, at least, but then again i wish that Rian Johnson had not been hired for that movie or if he had then he at least had to expand upon JJ's story and leave openings for Colin Trevorrow, but noooooo he made a visually stunning 2-hour long jab at star wars and what it means and what it doesn't mean, and left his mess for someone else to figure out.

if you love that, then good for you. but you're probably a bit of an asshole.

and who isn't?

but that is what is happening right now within the Star Wars fandom.

if you haven't been up to date

"The Fans" versus "Lucasfilm"

has always been

"we are the ones who have followed this franchise our entire lives, this has meant something to us since childhood, this was formative in my understanding of the world, and now i want to share it with someone new, perhaps a child of my own"

and you took that responsibility

and you just shat on it.

it's what you did,

whether you admit it or not.

you just have to decide if you care or not.

but here's why i care.

since 1977

Luke Skywalker

has been a hero

for young boys and girls all over the world

as well as his twin sister

Leia Organa

and her scruffy nerfherder boyfriend

Han Solo

and his big hairy buddy Chewbacca

and then the Prequels came out

and they were...a lot

and not necessarily......good?

like you wanted them to be?

but, then again,

fuck it!

you're invited to use your imagination

and go along for the ride.

and the story that George Lucas presents to us

is a really valuable set of blueprints

on how to become a Jedi Knight.

you're a farm boy. you're nobody.

but then turns out,

you're no nobody.

you're a Somebody.

because your Dad was a Jedi Knight

and a fine pilot

and a good friend

to the town hermit, Ben Kenobi??

whose name is actually Obi-Wan....

and then your home is destroyed

your aunt and uncle burned alive

everything you had, up in flames

and so you have no other choice, really

than to join this now

to leave your old life behind

to Let Go

because it's much easier to let go when there's nothing left to hold on to

Anakin had no Father.

Luke never knew his Father, just that he was a navigator on a spice freighter.

And then he finds out that his dad was a Hero.

and then he finds out that his dad is a Villain.

and he chooses to save his father anyway.

do you see how that overlaps and contrasts with Rey?

there is a very good myth in the Sequel Trilogy, it's the way they went about telling it that failed.

Rey never knew her Parents.

she wants to believe that they were Heroes.

but then she comes to accept that they were Nobody

but that even though she will never know them,

that she can still be a Hero.

but then

she finds out that her GRANDfather

is the most villainous Villain to ever villain

and she chooses to stand against him.

she doesn't reach out to him with Love

she doesn't try to change him

she stands against him

and everything he represents

because she has chosen the path of the Jedi

she has chosen to Help People.

not Control them.

and Ben Solo / Kylo Ren?

repeating the mistakes of both his Grandfather and his Uncle?

succumbing to the Dark?

deciding that his Evils have outweighed his Good, and that now there is no other choice than to continue down the path he has started on?

He killed his Father.

He could not kill his Mother.

But he also did not believe that she could ever Forgive him.

And yet she did.

she used the last of her life energy to project a Force Vision of her Husband, the Father of their Son, to tell Ben Solo that he was forgiven.

maybe not by anyone else.

but by his Mom.

and there is nothing more powerful than that, if you ask me.

Rose Tico has the line that sums up all of Star Wars:

"Thats how we win. Not by fighting what we hate. Saving what we love."

But that stellar line does not save the half-assed C Plot of The Last Jedi, sending Finn and her to a casino planet that is a blatant representation of the 1%, saving a bunch of human-faced track horses and inspiring some kids to stay hopeful in their slave labor.

the love triangle between Finn, Poe and Rey could have been so good.

Poe loves Finn. Finn loves Rey. Rey just wants to live her life, dude.

Finn's journey was supposed to be that he learns to separate Love from Romance.

Finn does not know Rey, he is just in love with the Idea of her.

He never learns that on his journey. Not fully.

Instead he gets paired up with another ex-Stormtrooper, who happens to be the only other Black protagonist, aside from Lando as a Legacy character. he is effectively told to be more like the people like him. not a good look.

Poe Dameron's whole backstory as a vagrant? sure, interesting. but save it for the Disney+ series, don't jam it into Episode IX.

wait wait wait, no no.

so COOL that they added that new element to his character, right!

and the cool lady in the helmet, with the little puppet engineer guy?

formulaicly, should be golden.

but you can't tell new stories without doing justice to the old.

Luke coming back as a Force ghost, grabbing the lightsaber, lifting the X-Wing. Sure! He was the most powerful Jedi to date. He built on all of the Old knowledge. He got lost along the way, but Rey taught him to believe in himself again. To trust the unknown again.

I don't know.

Maybe the Sequel Trilogy will have more appeal a decade or two out, just like the Prequels.

But where the Prequels were disliked for their melodrama, there was still a cohesive story behind it.

the Sequels are disliked because of how fractured and scotch-taped together the films are.

Jon and Friends have a lot of work to do.