10 Simple Fixes That Would Have Saved The Star Wars Sequels
They came so close, but landed so, so, far away...
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00:00The Star Wars sequels are some of the most divisive things in the entire film industry.
00:04Whether you hate them or love them though, for what it's worth, I really do like them.
00:08I think we can all agree that they didn't quite live up to their potential.
00:12There are great elements in there, but a few things just didn't quite hit the mark.
00:16So with that in mind, I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com and these are 10 simple fixes
00:20that would have saved the Star Wars sequels.
00:23Number 10. Have a plan from the beginning.
00:25Now, I'm usually critical of planning too far in advance.
00:30The beauty of filmmaking is collaboration and course correction in my opinion,
00:35as you often don't know what works until an audience actually sees it and responds.
00:40Some of the greatest media ever, from Breaking Bad to the Dark Knight trilogy,
00:45had no grand plan from the beginning.
00:47And neither did the original Star Wars trilogy, incidentally.
00:51So much of those movies were just made up on the fly, from huge twists to wholesale characters,
00:57and people loved it.
00:58But if there's another side to this coin, it's a series that signifies what it's like
01:02when there's no plan in place, and worse, when the creatives aren't on the same page.
01:07And sadly, it's the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
01:10Things might have shaken out better had we gotten three distinct filmmakers continuing the story
01:16and putting their own spin on things.
01:17But to have J.J. Abrams start the series, then have Rian Johnson put his own take on it,
01:23only to then go back to J.J., makes for a total incoherent mess.
01:28And worse, it led to retcons that attempted to hobble together some kind of sense for a unified vision,
01:34but which only made everything worse and resulted in so much of the story looking like a weird detour.
01:40The Rise of Skywalker retcons The Last Jedi, which retcons in turn The Force Awakens,
01:44and while not every beat should have been planned from the start,
01:48there should have at least been a general road map that was subject to change.
01:55One of the major complaints of The Rise of Skywalker is that good old Emperor Sheev Palpatine
02:00returned in the franchise's last movie with no better explanation than poor Dameron's exasperating
02:06somehow, Palpatine has returned.
02:09Like, yeah, thanks for clearing that one up, J.J.
02:12While the Star Wars story team has since cleared up details of Palpatine's resurrection in other media,
02:17audiences shouldn't have to read books to enjoy a series which predominantly exists as a movie franchise.
02:24The Emperor's shadow has always hung over Star Wars and his return wasn't a bad idea in and of itself,
02:30but Sheev would have been better utilised in a more minor role,
02:33maybe taking the form of a pre-recorded hologram as present in Colin Trevorrow's rejected Episode IX script.
02:39The most exciting thing to come out of The Last Jedi was Kylo Ren's status as the new leader of the First Order,
02:45and unfortunately, Palpatine's resurrection meant that we never got to see Supreme Leader Ren
02:50unleash his wrath.
02:52This decision led to Kylo following more or less the same story arc as Vader in the original trilogy,
02:57ensuring The Rise of Skywalker became such a carbon copy of Return of the Jedi
03:02as The Force Awakens was of a new hope.
03:04So to make this surprise appearance less disorientating,
03:08Disney really should have teased Palpatine's return at the end of Episode VIII,
03:12and no, his brief mention by Luke doesn't count.
03:15At the very least, Palpatine's return could have been revealed on screen
03:18rather than being casually mentioned in the worst opening crawl of the entire franchise.
03:23Yes, even worse than the taxation of trade routes is in dispute.
03:28Number 8. Make Kylo Ren's motivations clear.
03:31Kylo Ren is the most interesting character of the sequel trilogy hands down.
03:35A fully-fledged realization of what Anakin could have been in the prequel trilogy
03:39in the hands of a better writer than George Lucas.
03:42Throughout the trilogy, Kylo struggles with the light side of the Force in a clear inversion
03:46of the temptation towards the dark side that our protagonists felt in the first six movies.
03:51While Kylo is unsure about his place in the wider Star Wars mythos,
03:54the one thing that is clear is that he resents Snoke, who is holding him back from his true purpose.
04:00And unfortunately, audiences never get to see what this true purpose is.
04:04Kylo establishes that he wants to let the past die,
04:07but he never indicates what he will replace it with.
04:11He asks Rey to take his hand, but he never tells her to what end.
04:14In The Force Awakens, the genocidal murderer formerly known as Ben Solo promised his
04:19grandfather's molten helmet that he would finish what you started.
04:23But we were never told what that meant.
04:26A redeemed Ben certainly helps Rey bring down the Emperor once and for all in the most minor way,
04:31but this can't be what he meant. Kylo didn't know the Emperor was even alive until Episode 9.
04:37Maybe he wanted to kill the remaining Jedi, but why?
04:40He resented the Sith as much as he did the Jedi in the first place.
04:44So while perhaps Kylo felt that Luke's Jedi Order was repeating the same mistakes it had
04:48during the prequels, it's up in the air.
04:51The introduction of Palpatine in Episode 9 and consequent re-establishment of Kylo
04:55as a minor henchman baddie means that fans will never find out,
04:59nor will they see Ren's vision for a balanced order come to life.
05:02Kylo Ren's conflicting motivations might make him more compelling of a character,
05:07but the fact that audiences are never told what he wanted is indicative of poor character design
05:12and lack of a fully-fledged blueprint for the trilogy.
05:18The Force Awakens introduced a ton of cool concepts and character designs
05:23neglected in future sequel films.
05:25Captain Phasma and the Knights of Ren are the two most obvious examples of underused ideas,
05:30with their distinctive visual appearances and comparative lack of screen time
05:34indicating that they were only ever created to shift action figures.
05:38However, Maz Kanata was the most underused of the bunch.
05:41Introduced in The Force Awakens, Maz hints that she is a Force user,
05:45despite never aligning herself to the Jedi or the Sith,
05:48making her the first neutral Force-sensitive character in the Skywalker saga.
05:52Unfortunately for Maz, whose Force scenes were cut from Episode 7's theatrical release,
05:57she was relegated to a minor contract-fulfilling cameo in The Last Jedi,
06:01and returned as nothing more than a minor supporting character in Episode 9.
06:05So not only do audiences never find out about Kitana's relationship to the original trilogy's
06:09rebellion, or just how she got her hands on Luke Skywalker's lightsaber,
06:13who Maz was reduced to the most overtly fanservice moment of the entire sequel trilogy.
06:19That being handing Chewbacca the medal he never received at the end of A New Hope.
06:27One of the most emotive shots of The Force Awakens is Starkiller Base's destruction of
06:31several planets that we learn, in a passing throwaway line, to be the Hosnian system.
06:36This line is easy to miss, so fans would be forgiven for thinking that the only planet
06:40that we see being destroyed up close was Coruscant, capital of the Republic in the original trilogy.
06:46After all, the telltale signs are there. Monumental skyscrapers as far as the eye can see,
06:51senators looking startled from a balcony, the fact that this planet was given particular
06:55emphasis as opposed to the anonymized destruction of the others in the system,
06:59it all just kind of added up. But it turns out that the planet was not the same one
07:03that we had formed an attachment to in Episodes 1 through 3, but rather a new,
07:08almost identical location that we'd never heard of before. Coruscant's destruction would have
07:13elicited more of an emotional reaction from the audience, as fans would watch a pivotal
07:18planet which had survived the Empire suddenly crumble under a new regime before their very eyes.
07:23The destruction of Coruscant would have helped cement the themes of letting the past die
07:28that the entire sequel trilogy worked towards.
07:35Not only did the sequel trilogy fail to acknowledge the original Skywalker's pre-Darth Vader persona,
07:41seriously, there's no way Kylo Ren would've been unaware of his grandfather's redemption,
07:45it also gave Anakin's disembodied Force Ghost the worst line in the film.
07:50The first six movies in the Skywalker saga were all about Anakin,
07:54so it makes absolutely no sense that he didn't make a significant appearance in the sequel trilogy.
07:59Return of the Jedi established that Anakin could appear as a Force Ghost,
08:03so his absence in the sequel movies is startling, especially when you'd think
08:07that he'd probably want to put a few things right after all the damage he caused.
08:12Surely, he would've seen that Luke's Jedi Order was repeating the mistakes that the Jedi made
08:16in the prequel trilogy, and warned him to change his ways.
08:20Episode 9 made clear that Force users need to open themselves up to communication to Force Ghosts,
08:26but you'd think that Kylo Ren would've longed to speak to the grandfather that he idolized,
08:31and listening to his lessons about why following the dark side of the Force
08:34might not be the best decision that someone can make.
08:37Concept art for The Force Awakens showcased an Anakin Skywalker Force Ghost as well
08:41that was still corrupt with the dark side of the Force that was half human and half machine.
08:47And this would've been super sick.
08:494. Change Anakin's Force Ghost Line
08:53Okay, so yeah, this one's a double whammy.
08:55Despite being a comparatively minor change,
08:57this would've had the biggest implications not just for the sequel trilogy,
09:01but for the Skywalker saga as a whole.
09:03Amongst the voices of disembodied Jedi at the end of The Rise of Skywalker,
09:07Hayden Christensen's Anakin Skywalker can be heard saying,
09:10bring balance to the Force, as I did.
09:13This line was clearly included by the filmmakers to easily explain away any argument
09:17about Anakin's role in the first six movies being undermined,
09:21effectively telling fans that the so-called Chosen One did bring balance to the Force,
09:25whatever that means, but the Force simply fell out of balance again
09:29less than 30 years after his death.
09:32It's short enough to be disregarded, but this throwaway line only serves to highlight
09:36just how meaningless Anakin's sacrifice was at the end of Return of the Jedi.
09:40The idea that the Force had been balanced so soon before needing balancing again
09:44raises questions of its own.
09:46Does the Force periodically get thrown out of balance every few decades,
09:50needing a new Chosen One to come around and set it straight again?
09:53Throughout the entire saga, we are never told really what balance to the Force actually means,
09:58and this line does nothing to clarify this concept.
10:01Instead of telling Rey to bring balance to the Force as I did,
10:04Anakin's Force ghost should have said something like,
10:07finish what I started, and bring balance to the Force.
10:10But probably snappier, I mean, I'm no screenwriter.
10:12As well as maintaining the meaningfulness of Anakin's legacy,
10:15he weakened the Emperor so that Rey could destroy him,
10:18this line would have recalled Kylo's promise to his grandfather
10:21that he would finish what he started.
10:23Number 3.
10:24Shore of Vader's Castle
10:25Turns out that the anonymous-looking red planet Kylo Ren made a very brief trip to
10:29at the start of The Rise of Skywalker,
10:31was actually Mustafar of Revenge of the Sith fame.
10:34Not that you'd notice it if you hadn't read the film's visual dictionary.
10:37I mean, you would be forgiven for not realising of course,
10:40as Mustafar looked nothing like it did in the last Skywalker saga appearance.
10:45Lava fields have been replaced by dark trees thrown against an ominous red mist,
10:49and there's none of these symbolic more-machine-than-man metal structures
10:52which helped make Obi-Wan and Anakin's final fight so visually compelling.
10:57This isn't the first time Disney's Star Wars has smuggled in this planet though,
11:00without actually acknowledging its existence.
11:03The planet last appeared in 2017's Rogue One,
11:06a movie which made a big deal of labelling the names of its planets on screen.
11:10The staggeringly short shot of Mustafar however, didn't get the same treatment.
11:14Regardless though, it turns out that Kylo Ren was looking for a Sith wayfinder
11:18amongst the ruins of Vader's Castle,
11:20which had somehow become a forest overrun by trees in the space of around 30 years.
11:25Seeing Vader's Castle in all of its sinister glory would have not only made it obvious
11:29that this opening planet actually had a connection to the other movies in the franchise,
11:33but it also would have been a pretty cool backdrop to an action-packed scene.
11:36Number two, more exciting planets.
11:39Say what you like about the prequels,
11:40but at least George Lucas' ill-fated second trilogy introduced interesting planets to the mix,
11:46rather than delivering the same mono-environmental locations featured in the first three movies.
11:51And put simply, Anakin would have absolutely hated the sequel trilogy,
11:56because it introduces not one, but two all-new sand planets.
12:01Compare the sequel trilogy's dull locations to vibrant planets like Naboo,
12:05which treated us to cities coexisting with a symbiotic underwater kingdom,
12:09and Coruscant, a planet-sprawling metropolis with its buzzing criminal underworld,
12:14and even Kamino, with its startling white clone factory and its dramatic seascape.
12:19Act 2 was pretty nice visually, but there still wasn't much there,
12:23and the most exciting planet introduced in the entire sequel trilogy was Kanto Blight,
12:28which was wasted at best.
12:30Number one, a more original start to the trilogy.
12:33Being essentially a soft reboot after the disappointment that was the prequel trilogy,
12:37it was inevitable that Disney's punt at a trio of Skywalker stories would lean heavily
12:41on what made the original trilogy such a lovable cash cow in the first place.
12:46Namely, props and sets that imitated a lived-in world rather than shoddy CGI,
12:50character-centric stories, and a compelling mythos which left no room for midichlorians.
12:55Butcher J. Abrams and crew might have taken their exercise in nostalgia a step too far.
13:01Rather than just imitating the filmmaking techniques and principles that cemented
13:04the 1977 Star Wars as a classic, they copied the whole story altogether.
13:09Of course, some things are different, but the similarities between The Force Awakens
13:14are too obvious to overlook.
13:16There's the old mentor figure, the evil military regime, the hero from a desert planet,
13:21the list stretches on and on for so long that it probably warrants its own article of its own.
13:26While The Force Awakens served as the perfect franchise reset after the sour taste of the
13:30prequels, in hindsight a lot of its story decisions are just a little bit uninteresting.
13:36What's more, Episode 7's decision to retell the story of a new hope
13:39only makes the original trilogy redundant.
13:42All of the resistance and sacrifices are rendered null,
13:44given that the galaxy reverted back to the exact same state they had founded in,
13:48which never got resolved really, did that?
13:51Look, we get that Star Wars is about, well, wars.
13:54But maybe this could have involved a different threat rather than a third galactic civil war.
14:00But hey, that's a conversation for the next three movies.
14:03So that's our list, I want to know what you guys think down in the comments below.
14:06What do you think about the sequel trilogy, and what changes would you have made?
14:10While you're down there as well could you please give us a like, share, subscribe,
14:12and head over to warculture.com for more lists and news like this every single day.
14:16Even if you don't though, I've been Josh, thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you soon.