Paul Tassi of Forbes makes a very good point in stating that The Last Jedi didn’t need to be made, and it’s so simple that it might as well be effective as the Snap from Infinity War. I know it’s not too soon for that but it might still sting for those of us that were holding out by stating that they liked TLJ for one reason or another. As a Star Wars fan I’ll never be likely to say anything below ‘I liked it’ to a Star Wars movie unless it becomes something truly vile, but TLJ was a movie that could have used a lot of touch-ups to make it better. What J.J. Abrams did however was so effortless that it had the ability to link The Force Awakens and the Rise of Skywalker with very few alterations to either movie. In essence if you took out Snoke and inserted Palpatine there’s one fix, and then if you cut out the whole Rose/Finn part in the casino, which didn’t really bear much on the movie itself, then you’ve got an almost direct line from the first to third movie of the trilogy. Some people might already be frothing at the mouth after reading this since they either believed that TLJ was great and can’t stand any criticism of it, or are wondering just where my head’s at for daring to say that TLJ did indeed have some redeeming qualities.
The truth is that bringing two different directors for a trilogy shouldn’t bring up the issue of continuity between movies, especially in a popular franchise like Star Wars. Without bashing too much on Rian Johnson, his ‘vision’ deterred from what some would call the ‘cookie-cutter’ image that Star Wars has been for so long and what people want to see, and produced something that was far below the mark, not above it. The fact that he wanted to do something different is great, but taking one of the greatest heroes in a franchise, someone that people have looked up to throughout his run, and making him into a crazy old hermit that doesn’t want anything to do with the coming battle wasn’t the best idea in the world. Making Leia a Jedi was a great idea, though his execution was a bit ‘meh’ since he didn’t develop her Force sensitivity as much as was needed to fully explain that whole floating in space routine. In short, Rian Johnson attempted to improve on something and slipped, stumbled, and tripped but still somehow made money for the franchise, so he’s been forgiven in a big way and lauded by some. Abrams however took things a bit further and fixed a lot of what Johnson had done and what had angered the fans, and people STILL weren’t pleased. Thankfully Abrams managed to end the saga on a high note and created a lasting impression that things aren’t fully done yet, but might kick off eventually down the road.
There have been trilogies that didn’t work in the past, such as Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, the X-Men, and even the Ocean’s trilogy with Clooney and Pitt. Tres Dean of Looper has more on this if you’re interested. For one reason or another one movie didn’t really fit into the group in these cases, or none of them fit with each other in the opinion of the fans. In Star Wars though, the original trilogy and even the prequels had a sense of continuity that was carried forward in a big way that helped them become one solid unit, a saga that turned into an epic and had a definite direction. This time around though Abrams and Johnson didn’t really see eye to eye apparently since TLJ really didn’t fit into the whole trilogy largely because it felt somehow out of whack with the other two. Unfortunately this is what can happen when two very different directors are placed on the same project and their ideas begin to clash. Abrams set a very safe but likable course with TFA, which Johnson attempted to subvert with TLJ. When this happened it was necessary for Abrams to come back and fix the story with ROS in a way that almost made TLJ completely irrelevant. Seriously, taking just a couple of tweaks and a few different turns down one story line or another would create less of a gap between the first and third movies and we could possibly relegate the second one to a different universe just as George Lucas and Disney did to the EU.
Would it be right to do so? No, probably not since Johnson was attempting something new. Even if it fell flat it made money so claiming that it was horrible and doesn’t deserve to be part of the canon wouldn’t be right since it’s already there and people have, like it or not, accepted it even if there was a petition to get it cast out. Yeah, it’s true, people actually tried to petition The Last Jedi out of existence. Joseph Falcone of We Got This Covered can give you more on this.
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