How would you change the new Star Wars trilogy

[Imaculata]

Kylo Ren ... is ... the villain. He killed Han, He killed Luke. He killed Snoke. He leads the First Order. There is a lot of stuff you can do with that.

He wasn't supposed to be the main villain, clearly. Having him being in the gray (The Force Awakens already set up his struggle between dark and light) is a vastly more interesting angle than just him being the villain.

They wouldn't be caught dead doing this; besides, everyone knows that Tarantino is going to do Star Trek.

Which is a gamble I didn't expect them to make, but I think everyone is eager to see what he'll do with it.

But bringing back the Emperor ... look, it's JJ Abrams. You saw The Force Awakens. Look me in the eye and tell me that he wouldn't bring him back no matter what happened in the other movies? Heck, if he had his druthers, he would have set it up so that the third movie would have featured a second Star Killer base.

I will look you in the eyes right now, and tell you that I honestly think that JJ intended for Snoke to be the main villain throughout all 3 movies. The insertion of the emperor into the plot, was a change made out of desperation. As for a 2nd Star Killer Base, that would be incredibly dumb, so yeah.. that checks out, I could totally see that happening. Heck, we could have still gotten the massive fleet of Star Destroyers anyway, or some really far fetched time travel plot (the default for hack Hollywood writers). But I don't believe the emperor was ever meant to be in the final movie.

Which of the edits would you like to talk about?

He might be referring to this:

How Star Wars was saved in the edit

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[ART!]

Yet, pretty much the entire community likes 'The Mandalorian'.

The Star Wars universe is vast with complex stores that have been told over thousands of years featuring hundreds of cultures. I suspect you don't really know "the star wars universe people know and love". There was probably more material to start from than was in the Marvel universe.

The Mandalorian has a simplicity to it that's very..."cozy" isn't quite the right word, but you don't have to worry about being overwhelmed or getting lost when watching it. It's connected to continuity, but it doesn't expect you to know much. It's very down-to-earth.

JJ's SW movies care almost too much about forward momentum, to the point that something Very Important is always happening. To some degree that's just the nature of movies vs tv series - for whatever reason, film-makers/studios think the movies "have to be" about something big, huge, earth-shattering, galaxy-threatening, and lose sight of the personal stories or even just the personal needs of people who want to enjoy themselves without being overwhelmed.

If you count novels, comics, and video games, you're right about the scope of the SW universe, but of course most people know nothing about all that.

But that just proves my point doesn't it? What is there in the Mandalorian that is actually new?
The Mandalorian also recycles old ideas from the original trilogy. You've got your Stormtroopers, Tie Fighters, Sand People, Jawa's, Mandalorians (obviously) and Baby Yoda. Heck, they even revisit Tatooine. That is the problem with Star Wars. You can't do something actually new, or it no longer resembles Star Wars. So they will keep recycling the same old ideas till we're all bored of it.

This kind of begs the question: is there something inherently appealing about the OT's approach to things, setting aside nostalgia and familiarity? Has SW been around so long that rusty ships, the sound of TIE fighters, beasts of burden on desert planets, et al have a warm familiarity to enough people to keep a franchise going? Is there something inherently attractive about enough of these SW tropes to keep a franchise based on those going?

You realize that there are like 20 different force using cults other than the Jedi and the Sith, right?

I think it's safe to say the vast majority of people ever likely to sit down and watch a Star Wars thing (let alone read a book or comic) are not aware of this.

If you could, would you hop in the time machine and give Disney a mulligan? Show them the final product and say, “this is the mark to beat”?

Or are you good with what we’ve got?

Clearly, we could come up with what-ifs until the sun dies, so no, I'm good with what we've got. If I had a time machine and a magic wand, I'd probably have Leia not be Luke's sister, and after ROTJ Luke would go searching for his sister, but I'm not assuming that would yield better results.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Ovinomancer]

But those two, combined, are a major hook in the final episode. Before, we've mainly seen the force as the province of bloodlines (either Skywalkers or midiclorians); this is where Kylo Ren, for example, gets his power.

Now, we are seeing something genuinely new. And that's the basis for the finale. And for the future. What happened with the force? Does force-ghost Luke explain this to Rey? Do we see her begin to train new Jedis at the end? And so on?

Huh? We saw lots of Jedi in the prequels with zero mention of bloodlines. I don't see where you get this.

And, sure, as I noted a future generation is neat, but it diesn't address at all the current issues and requires a time jump to explore -- something an action trilogy can ill afford.

The rest is just flavor, as I noted, and nothing on which to base a final volume of a trilogy. Sure, it would have been nice to have seen it explored, but the fact that you had to bith create a final confrontation and solve it leaves little room for such exploration. Although, no argument that JJ would be a poor chouce for such exploration even if Rain had handed him a solid hook.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Ovinomancer]

So, this is explicit in the original trilogy. Luke is the son of Darth Vader. Leia is Luke's sister (the other hope). Remember, "The Force is strong with my family."

In the new prequels, you get the whole, "midichlorians." What we know about them is the following:
1. Unevenly distributed. That's what makes some people more powerful with the force.
2. They are inherited. Not necessarily hereditary, but heritable.

(2) is why they had the whole "immaculate conception" idea in Phantom Menace.

But yeah, bloodlines definitely existed in the prequels as well.

If nothing else, The Last Jedi fixed this prior to Abrams messing it up again.



On that we are in agreement. Maybe you're right, maybe I am, but with Abrams directing we will never know.

I think I wasn't clear. My statement wasn't that there wasn't any bloodlines, but that there exist many force sensitives not attached to a bloodline. All of the Jedi in the PT, for instance, or, even more ckearly, Luke's other students that either were killed by Kylo or joined him as the Knights of Ren. It seems odd these others would be bloodline dependent, especially after the Emperorer's highly effective Purge.

So, having more potential Force users is interesting, but not new.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

To the OP:

Firstly, I've enjoyed the movies, so there's not a lot structurally I'd change. That said, while it's my favorite film of the sequels, TLJ is also the weak link as far as the trilogy goes. This is primarily because it doesn't significantly alter the story overall. Plucky, short-on-resources heroes against overwhelming war machine is pretty much the start and end of the film, just with fewer resources and more pluck at the end. It needs a game change moment, like Vader/Luke in ESB or even the introduction of the clones in AotC so that the overall story can progress in a different way. (Vader's revelation in ESB changed the story from defeat the Empire to save Vader and defeat the Empire, for example.)

As such, I'd alter one scene in TLJ and add one at the end (trimming Canto Bight (not deleting, trimming) a tad to get the time).

The scene is the confrontation in front of Snoke. Instead of a killing strike on Snoke, I'd make it a mortal wound. Snoke, badly wounded and incapable of defending himself, calls on his guards to protect him while a few of the guard begin to drag him to safety. This changes the nature of the fight from generic guards of dead guy on heroes where exhaustion of hitpoints is the goal to a fight through guards to prevent Snoke from escaping -- a goal shared by both Rey and Ren but for different reasons. This also gives the opportunity to reshoot that fight scene, which is pretty weak overall (there's a number of missed beats where the stunt guys have to 'juggle' to cover).

The end of the scene is all guards dead but Snoke managing to escape. This leads back into the confrontation between Rey and Ren for the lightsaber as Ren makes the appeal to Rey to join him in hunting down Snoke and taking over the First Order to rule and Rey rejecting that.

Then, at the end of the movie, I'd have a scene where Snoke arrives on Exogal and beseeches Palpatine for help. Palpatine is entombed in a huge medical contraption that's obviously siphoning power from the very planet itself (dark side force source). Palpatine reveals that his plan has finally come to fruition with Snoke preparing Ren and that Snoke has no further use. At which point Palpatine siphons the life out of Snoke which allows him to partially emerge from his tomb as the lich. End scene on his laughter echoes out into a vast area where ships are being built.

In the Rise, I'd add a few changes -- the way that Hux goes out is a waste. I'd have him save the trio and then tell them about the zombie ships (crewed by Sith automatons, hence they're lack of initiative) and declare that Ren humiliated him and then replaced him as the leader of the 1st Order -- a slight he will avenge. Skip the blaster to the leg -- Hux was clearly more cunning than that -- and just have him caught during the escape so he can hurl invective in the face of his replacement before being executed. This is a better end to this character.

This seems really a pretty clever little twist. It still wouldn't be my favorite possible Star Wars continuation, but it seems something that could really be done with a few reshoots and post. You really pointed out the one more objective flaw of TLJ (stuff like "Jake Sykwalker" and what else is always also personal preference) - the situation at the end of TLJ is the same at the beginning, just with some little number tweaks.
By the way, ESB didn't just bring the whole Vader is Luke's father thing in - it also put in a very concrete "next step" for the characters - we need to find a way to save Han. "We need to free X" sounds like a good thing.

But I think Rise needs more changes, too, then, because Kylo Ren's role as in a "flux" state as not the leader he presumable wanted to become, and a potential subordinate to Palpatine really needs more fleshing out. But maybe that just can't be done in the alloted run time, and still tell the rest of the story.

I think Rise could actually benefit from keeping Rey the "nobody" Kylo claims she is. It is the variable that Palpatine did not plan for - The Force Awakened, and it created Rey (and maybe Finn). Rey will avert Ren's total corruption to the Dark Side and Palpatine's will, and Finn might turn the Storm Troopers around - a Reverse Order 66, maybe his latent force abilities allow him to disrupt their mental conditioning, just as he overcame his own. (So, both Rey and Finn end up as being force avatars for freedom.)

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Kylo Ren does not really work as the main villain. Not because he doesn't do horrible things like killing Han. But Vader killed Obi Wan and helped blow up a planet, too. Still he was the guy that was supposedly redeemed at the end of Episode VI.

Kylo Ren doesn't work so great as villain because he is constantly described as conflicted, and we actually see some of it, his weird ambition. In The Last Jedi, we even learn what situation put him over to the Dark Side and Snoke - Luke almost killed him. He has far too much back story and complexity to be the villain in a Star Wars movie. He lacks the clear ambition and lust for power, he is searching for something, and he doesn't even quite know yet what it is.
He isn't a Thanos that knows exactly what he wants to do, or a Palpatine that has already forseen his victory and knows what he needs to do to accomplish it.