Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker*

Prequel Trilogy - fall of Anakin Skywalker/rise of the Empire.

Original Trilogy - redemption of Anakin Skywalker (ultimately through his son)/defeat of the Empire.

It's like poetry, it rhymes .

What's the Sequel Trilogy about... other than making Disney money (not that there's anything wrong with that)...? That being said, if Jar Jar Abrams can tie the whole thing (both current trilogy and larger saga) together in a very satisfying thematic way with Episode IX, I'll be the first to give him credit, let me just state that right now.

I've often said it's a pity that it's not Disney making the prequels now... George Lucas' basic story outline (and hands-off role as creative consultant), plus the advanced state of current visual effects technology, plus really great outside screenwriters and directors handling that material without Uncle George messing it up with his 'interesting' ideas (a SW movie about space taxes, for example)... now that could have been quite something, alas...

 

Nope, she's Angela Channing grand-grand daughter.

 

Exactly, William Shatner is Kirk, without him there's no Chris Pine recast for us to compare to his younger self, just like Sean Connery & Roger Moore as James Bond 007, then Daniel Craig, Pierce Brosnan, Timothy Dalton and George Lazenby!

 

Hardly. I'd have said that about The Force Awakens, maybe, since it's largely just a reboot of A New Hope. But The Last Jedi - while it reflects The Empire Strikes Back in many of its plot points - is way more than a "cash suck". If they'd wanted to do a "cash suck", they'd have made some boring by-the-numbers action flick. Last Jedi is way darker - and way crazier - than your typical franchise flick.

Pretty much the same thing the original trilogy was about (and to some degree the prequels). Kid from the boondocks has the Force, kid learns to use the Force, kid makes new friends, new friends get into trouble, kid gets seduced by the Dark Side, etc.

 

I posted this over a year ago in the box office thread, but it bears repeating here. The studios are out to make money, which means large audiences. Larger than just the white, male, 40+ something American fanboys who constitute the core of the Star Wars fanbase (a fast dwindling demographic, especially in the global market).

Star Wars traditionally did OK in Europe and the newer installments have done poorly in Asia, but was never the monster overseas it was in North America, I think in part because it had a very white, male, Midwestern origin (Lucas was from the central California valley, which might as well be Missouri or Kansas). Luke was your prototypical exurban or suburban white American teenage boy who gets carried off on a great adventure. There's nothing wrong with that - Lucas was writing from his own experience, which is great, and it certainly resonated with me as a white suburban boy originally from a small western American town. I even grew up on the edge of Phoenix surrounded by agricultural land in the middle of a desert. He didn't have to do a lot of work for me to relate to the character - it just clicked. But in the intervening 40 years even America's demographics have changed dramatically, not to mention the increasing importance of the global market to Hollywood, and that kind of character shorthand no longer immediately connects with most of the young, global, urban, non-white audience these films rely on. Hence the push for characters who look and act very differently, with different backgrounds - ones the modern moviegoing demographic can relate to in the same kind of automatic way.

The market for a film with a protagonist like Luke Skywalker is rapidly drying up. In 1977, enormous swathes of the US population could easily relate to that character and his experience. Now? Not so much. I think going on half of all people under 25 in the US are non-white, and the majority of them are urban, not rural. They have more in common with people in Mexico City, Bangalore or Hong Kong than with people from Modesto. This seems to be causing a lot of consternation for a demographic that for decades was used to having so many lead characters in these sci-fi action films mirror them and their experiences; Hollywood is no longer catering to them as much as it used to. It's nothing personal and there's no agenda - they just aren't as commercially relevant anymore.

This is going to become a lot more pronounced as budgets continue to inflate on these cinematic roller coaster rides, China and India become increasingly important for earning back the massive investments, and foreign corporations begin to buy up Hollywood studios and tweak the output based on their own cultural shorthand.

For what it's worth, I'm not sure Star Wars can survive the transition to this new environment. I think its identity is so tied up in Lucas and his origins and that initial base of fans that - in spite of the saga's galaxy-spanning tableau - maybe it can't be successfully unwound from all that. I think with Marvel (and even DC) it's much easier to connect with audiences worldwide because their superhero characters always seem to be some kind of outsider or other archetype not quite as dependent on resonating best with white American teenage boys of a certain era and locale. The characters don't have the kind of wish fulfillment hook for a specific demographic that Luke Skywalker ended up representing. They have different hooks that translate better across borders and demographics.

This is probably also another reason why the Prequels weren't particularly warmly received, although they were still quite the white sausagefest (plus Senator girlfriend...and a Muppet). There really wasn't a protagonist you could latch onto in the first place, and none of the characters really resonated apart from Obi-Wan, who we already knew so we could relate (it helped that Ewan McGregor was crazy charming). I mean, how relatable is a "queen" who dresses up in twenty different ridiculous costumes or whatever over the course of a film? Or a Senator for that matter? Although Padme was certainly more relatable than the creepy Anakin Skywalker (and she got some of the films' more insightful lines)...

Compare and contrast to the original trilogy, which had three relatable and entertaining lead characters (I won't go into Obi-Wan, other than to say he would have been a pretty generic sage if they hadn't scored Alec Guinness). We've already talked about the shorthand that made Luke so immediately appealing to US audiences then. Han Solo was your '70s antihero archetype and in lesser hands might have been merely annoying, but they lucked out when they cast Harrison Ford who - like McGregor a generation later - could work wonders even with perhaps questionable material. Leia was probably the most shocking character for '77 - a trash-talking take-charge woman who didn't take crap from anyone, even a 7 foot tall walking carpet - and was the exact opposite of the "damsel in distress" stereotype you would have expected. (Remember, she was drawn from the original concept for the film's lead character, who was to be a woman rescuing a precious prince - at some point, Lucas must have decided that would be a bridge too far for the audiences of '77.) Carrie Fisher might not have put in an Oscar-worthy performance in that first film (she got better - fast - by the time of Empire), but she certainly projected the kind of attitude required to flip what would have been a tired trope completely on its head. If there's a problem with the latest batch of films, I think it's the lack of her kind of invert-a-stereotype character. The films are missing a certain vitality as a result.

Anyhow, I wish Disney good luck in trying to reshape Star Wars into something relevant to contemporary audiences - I think it's a tall order which they haven't quite succeeded at, mostly because they've probably stuck too close to the original template. And I would really like for my fellow aging white American males to stop making asses of themselves by acting like petulant spoiled brats. The whole entertainment artifice is no longer going to exclusively cater to your every desire for wish fulfilment. Get over it and learn to do what everybody else did for a century at the movies - learn to appreciate and be entertained by other viewpoints and experiences. Your mommie doesn't have to cut your steak into itty bitty pieces for her precious little man - you can figure out how to carve it up just like every other functioning adult does, or you can sit there and starve. Your choice.

 

Thank you for placing everything in perspective. Star Wars may not be the end all be all in terms of multimedia as it was in it's day,but things and times change. Star Wars is still healthy and strong. We will pass on one day,but Star Wars will still be here in some form.

You really have to look at these three trilogies as three separate generational stories with only a few overlapping characters,and thus view them as individual stories and view each on their own terms.

 

Or just stop watching them. Which is likely going to happen after this last installment. I have enjoyed all of them, and likely this last one, but I’m probably out after this one. I’m 58 and just not into all the superhero stuff, etc. so instead of complaining, I’ll likely stop watching them. But you’re right, they can’t just cater to those of us that fondly remember watching the first one in the theatre back in the 70’s. Time to turn it over to a new generation and make it relevant to them if we aren’t buying enough tickets to support the old story lines. But as you say, I wish them luck. I would be surprised to see it survive to three more films if they start over. That is a very difficult task and it might be much easier to stop pretending it’s Star Wars and just put the resources into a truly new slate of films. Leave Star Wars alone. Retire the theme.

And by the way, even if I don’t agree with every word, I agree with the overall points made...excellent, thought provoking post.

 

Very well thought out post. I agree with most of your points.

 

I would go a step further and say the films reflected the viewpoint of Hollywood in the late 1970s and 1980s. There weren't a lot of women or minority heroes in a lot of films during that period. Lucas did listen to the critics from the first Star Wars, and went out of his way to add Billy Dee Williams, Jimmy Smits, and quite a few other people of color to the cast. I don't think you can blame a writer/director from his time for writing what he knew... which is a white-bread kid who grew up in Modesto. But Lucas is not a racist or bigoted man at all: I worked at ILM for a period of time, and that was by far had among the most diverse staffs I've ever seen. Great people, too.

It's fair to say that Disney today is keenly aware of this criticism of the films, and I think that's a primary reason why the hero of the current trilogy is a young woman, and she's surrounded by a very diverse cast. So they're making an effort. Me personally, I don't give a crap as long as I believe the characters as people and the story is entertaining.

As I've said before, I occasionally had little side questions about STAR WARS and JEDI back in 2004, and Lucas would grin and say, "well, remember everybody in the movie is an alien -- they're not human." We didn't get into whether they had normal bodily functions, sex, and so on, but your guess is as good as mine. It is a credit to Lucas that he worked in a racial reference even in the very first film, when the Star Wars Cantina bar refuses to let C3P0 enter because "we don't serve their kind here." Bear in mind that Lucas has been married to a black woman for the past 6 years.

 

Well said. That section of the fanbase really sours it for me.

Oh, so Luke was gonna come back, kick butt, maybe kill his evil nephew & save the day again? Give me a break...

 

Yeah, but the PT/OT were both very much companion pieces and prominently a story of two generations of the Skywalker family caught up in the unfolding galactic civil war... whilst Luke and Leia are both featured prominently in the current trilogy, it's clearly not about the Skywalker family to any real degree; it's seems more like the end of the Jedi and passage into a new era (with maybe Skywalker as their new collective name).

An interesting post for sure... but one dangerously close to calling all current SW detractors racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic man-babies... there may be a minority of that type in the overall discourse, but it appears to me much of the criticism is rooted in 1) the perception (whether accurate or not; people don't like to be preached at in movies) of a political agenda being forcefully pushed down their throats - and an almighty tsunami of a backlash waiting in the wings for the MCU in the near future, mark my words - and 2) that the new movies simply aren't that great to be honest; entertaining, well-made, sumptuous productions they may be, but they don't have any soul to them in the way that the OT had, nor the (potentially) compelling narrative that the PT had... they have no sense of myth or mystique, no seeming understanding of what made the OT especially so resonant, and no seeming willingness to really step outside the box of the OT iconography and let these films stand on their own, both narratively and aesthetically.

Just my own humble, fallible, and entirely subjective opinion, of course...

 

When Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney I said it's going to become Kentucky Friend Star Wars. I was right.

I'm another person who tries not to complain too much. Disney answers to their stockholders. It's the way of things.

I didn't leave Star Wars. Star Wars left me.

 

There are many people that disagree with you and I am one of them. I want them to end the Skywalker line as soon as they can.

Star Wars has created a whole massive world with so much to explore and to just keep focusing on one family really makes the SW world so small.

Lets not forget that the first film was not really a Skywalker story in any wider sense that that was Luke's name, and it was written and made without Darth Vader being his father or Leia his story. Those things were retroactively added later. He was just a farm kid with no connections, and that worked brilliantly.

Indeed, until the end, Empire is pretty much the same. It's a fantastic adventure film not reliant in any way (until the very end) in a 'family' story.

The Godfather is very different as it starts from minute 1 as a family story. The original trilogy only becomes a family story just under 2/3 through.

I can also watch other SW stuff, like Rebels or the Clone Wars, or the Madolorian I expect, and enjoy it for a SW story. I have never been watching any of that stuff and thought to myself 'you know what this needs, a Skywalker'.

I just hope they don't make Rey a Skywalker as that would be terrible.

Lets expand the universe by having stories about other people and places. There is so much to explore there.

 

Was with you all the way until this. I think us aging American whites can get onboard with "other viewpoints and experiences" just fine when they're done well. Look at the love for Studio Ghibli films, the Sigourney Weaver-led Alien films, Black Panther, etc. These new Star Wars films just Aren't. That. Good.

 

SW was always a family story from it's earliest drafts; it's original title was The Adventures of Luke Starkiller, and right up from development to the second draft of Empire in early 1978, it featured some variation of Luke's quest to become a Jedi and avenge his father's death at the hands of Darth Vader... the fact that those two latter characters became one during Empire's development is neither here nor there; Lucas always had that father-son dynamic from the outset... correct me if I'm wrong...

And even if it didn't, that's how it ended up and what gave the OT - and by extension the PT - that emotional resonance... something sorely lacking in the current trilogy, in my humble opinion... oh, the new characters are likeable, but resonant? Meh.

 

I completely agree with your first paragraph here, that being said...

Again Chris Pine is based upon William Shatner as James T. Kirk except on steroids, see Star Trek: The Original Series where Kirk was willing to die WEEKLY to save his ship and crew!

 

I think his point is not that Pine is a better character than Shatner's Kirk, but just better acted, which he is. Especially when comparing Pine's Kirk in Star Trek Beyond (where he's matured into the guy we saw on the Kirk we saw in the old series for the most part) and Shatner's TV Kirk. I actually think Shatner was much better in the movies as an actor. His acting in the Nick Meyer directed movies was actually very nuanced.

 

He was.
TV Shatner is what gets the overacting jokes constantly, but in the six Star Trek films Shatner was a powerhouse. His reaction to

Spoiler

David's death

in The Search For Spock where he falls backwards and misses the chair? That was perfect.

 

That whole sequence was fantastic. What made it even better was how the other actors reacted to what Shatner was doing. Even James Doohan who wasn't one of Shatner's biggest fans as it turns out,seemed genuinely moved in the emotions of that moment . When you see the brief shots of the other cast members watching Kirk break down, you get the sense that they are in their heads going "whoa! Where did that come from? I didn't think Bill had that in him!". Apparently that whole thing was completely improvised in a single take and that is the one Nimoy used.

 

I'll bet you $5 that you can't stay away from The Rise of Skywalker and never watch it. (I suspect I'll win this bet.)

We're getting into a Star Trek area instead of Star Wars, but... George Takei has said many times in his appearances on the Howard Stern radio show that he thinks Shatner actually is a good actor. It's just that Takei feels that Shatner is a lousy human being and very selfish and egotistical when it comes to getting the spotlight on himself. My only dealings with Shatner were on the TV series Boston Legal, and he was a total pro, always knew his lines, always on time, and had a surprising amount of energy and enthusiasm for a man of his age.

 

I think they should give Shatner a cameo in the new Star Wars movie

 

I'm not blaming him, it's just an observation. He wrote what he knew, which is fine - better than fine, it's good. And it was a kind of shorthand a majority of the filmgoing American public could immediately relate to - which is important when you're scripting a story set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. So it was weird and alien...but it also wasn't.

Unfortunately, that shorthand ain't gonna resonate even with American audiences in 2019, let alone globally.

 

Every single studio answers to it's stockholders. Disney isn't the only one. Every one is a business whose purpose is to make a profit. Remeber the Fox board of diretors tried very hard to get the original star wars shut down as it was over schedule and budget.

The way I see it the new movies follow the same basic plot as the first beloved trilogy. A new hope introduces the characters and has basic setup, Empire was darker and went deeper into the development of the characters and advanced the story line, and Return Jedi wrapped it all up in a grand finale. The force awakens introduces new characters into the old characters story line. Last Jedi was darker and went deeper into the development of the characters and advanced the story line, and Rise Skywalker will wrap it all up. Same with the prequels really. Phantom Menace was charecter intro and basic setup, Clones moved things along and got us deeper into anakins and padme's charecters, and Sith wrapped it up with a grand finale.

 

Given who's doing the bulk of the complaining, I'd say that's about 90% of it.

I'd also love to know what political agenda is being throat rammed. In The Last Jedi, the woman-led Resistance hatches a clever plan to escape the First Order and summon help which goes completely to crap - nobody in the galaxy gives a crap about their Resistance. Also, a black guy and an Asian chick hatch a hair brained scheme to disable the First Order forces pursuing the Resistance...which nearly gets everybody in the Resistance killed. The Force-gifted young woman who was sent to fetch Luke Skywalker fails to do so, fails to kill Kylo Ren and barely escapes with her skin thanks only to an incident she had nothing to do with.

In the end, a few survivors escape - barely - when an old white guy kills himself while distracting the baddies for 5 minutes.

This is literally the least-woke plot in cinematic history.

That fact that a certain demographic is having a white hot emotional meltdown over this has absolutely nothing to do with the plot or with any political agenda. It has to do with mommy no longer cutting her little man's steak into confetti sized pieces.

 

Yes, please!

Exactly. Same family, same planets, same everything. The Prequels got kinda interesting when we saw new worlds and new societies, however briefly, like Kamino.

Yup. The only "family" element was that Darth Vader killed Luke's dad, and then the Empire offed his aunt and uncle.

The Force Awakens was a huge letdown in this regard as well. We start on a desert planet (again), end up at a smuggler's bar (again) and conclude with Death Star Mk. III. A whole galaxy and this is the best everybody can come up with, not only photocopying the plot but also many of the same elements and settings? Can we get something marginally original?

The Last Jedi was way superior in this regard. More original settings, very different set pieces, and it finally brought up the obvious - in a galaxy full of war, there are going to be a lot of war profiteers - helping to take the story out of the cartoon space Lucas slowly stranded it in starting with Return of the Ewoks and the prequels and shifting it back to something more like the original Star Wars and - especially - Empire.