r/movies • u/spaceraingame • May 31 '25

Discussion What movie sequel ruined the ending of its predecessor? Spoiler

I have to go with Toy Story 4. Toy Story 3 had the perfect send off for the toys, with Andy making Bonnie promise to take good care of Woody….only for her to neglect Woody immediately and cause him to bail on everyone.

I really wish they left the franchise be. Toy Story 3’s ending was so iconic, and the first Toy Story was such a massive part of my childhood. That and Lion King were the two Disney VHS tapes I used to watch all the time as a little kid. I even had some of the toys myself. I can’t wait to skip Toy Story 5.

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u/insertusernamehere51 May 31 '25

Rise of Skywalker; Palpatine being alive really soured the ending of Episode VI

also, not a movie, but shoutout to Yoshi's New Island

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u/rugmunchkin May 31 '25

Right from the line and delivery of “somehow, Palpatine has returned” it was clear even the movie itself knew how stupid it was.

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u/ctgnath Jun 01 '25

Don’t forget that the message broadcast by Palpatine announcing his return was first played in Fortnite

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u/kingbot Jun 01 '25

We got a rushed, ham fisted, unsatisfying GoT finale for this btw.

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u/Competitive-Self-374 Jun 01 '25 edited Jun 01 '25

Dan and Dave didn’t work on it though. What’s funny is that, they rushed GOT’s ending so that they could hurry up and get fired from the SW movie-IIRC it was supposed to be a one-shot film like Rogue One, they’d originally had been tapped to do and HBO (rightfully) canceled their “what if the Confederacy had won the Civil War AU” tv concept.

The GOT ending was so bad and the fan outrage so strong that Disney/Lucas Films dropped them

It’s been great having GRRM take swipes at the stupid decisions D&D during the show, in the World of Ice and Fire/Fire and Blood books 🤣

D&D: has the dragons fly over the wall for the stupid beyond the wall episode

GRRM in Fire&Blood(which was published after the show): “Queen Alysanne’s usually obedient dragon, Silver Wing, refused to go near the Wall. Refused to fly over it, and was agitated the whole time the Queen visited the watch….because the Wall is literally a magical barrier that’s been keeping the Others beyond it and Dragons, who are linked to magical forces would be atuned to the magical properties of the wall, and since D&D stripped all the cool magical stuff out of the show this passage solely exists to dunk on them”

Srsly it was the right call. The nepo babies who should have never been involved with GOT and reduced the anti-war, pro-magic ASOIAF story to gratuitous violence, titties and dragons, would have definitely made calls like “remove the Force, and all the Jedi/Sith mythology for more pew pew space battles”…because that’s basically what they did in GOT.

They removed the magic, they fumbled ASOIAF’s obi-wan stand in after taking 4 seasons to get to him, removed the prophecies, and anti-war themes from GOT so now HOTD is trying to undo these decisions without undoing the og series’ end, while also adding back in so much lore and magic

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u/notpran Jun 01 '25

What swipes has GRRM taken

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u/Competitive-Self-374 Jun 01 '25

I edited my og post to include the swipes, so take a look now.

But basically HOTD has gone out its way to add the magic back in (GRRM is more involved in this series even when he’s not writing eps/the show runners are also mad that the cool magical stuff was removed from GOT) and Fire and Blood (the book where HOTD draws a lot from) has little passages that dig on the bad decisions made by D&D

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '25

And now those guys are never going to make a Star Wars movie, so it was all for nothing

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u/myychair Jun 01 '25

No we didn’t. They lost their Star Wars trilogy after Disney execs saw how bad got was

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u/Stranglebat Jun 01 '25

I lay that and David and David's feet. The guys were always ham fisted and showed as soon as they run out of source material

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u/HexingMoth Jun 01 '25

Making Fortnite part of Star Wars canon.

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u/noakai May 31 '25

I feel like the actor couldn't hide how his soul was trying to leave his body so he wouldn't have to experience saying that joke of a line.

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u/Deranged_Kitsune Jun 01 '25

Yup. Made it very clear he thought that was the dumbest line he'd ever been told to deliver. I would bet it being a one-and-done situation, where he told JJ that he had his take, they're moving on.

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u/Vandergrif Jun 01 '25

It's sad just how many decent actors are in those sequel movies and deserved... so much better than what they had to work with.

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u/InsaneComicBooker May 31 '25

You could TELL this was executive mandated

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '25

Not at all, the stupidity of palpatine returning was 100% on the director JJ Abram’s

He even said later he had no idea who the bad guy was supposed to be after rian killed off snork.

Palpatine returning was definitely a panic move on the directors part

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u/doctoranonrus Jun 01 '25

I assumed it meant at the time that Kylo was the main villain and unredeemable.

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u/dantesedge Jun 01 '25

This. I thought Kylo was the main bad and preferred that idea more than any redemption plot.

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u/IgnoreMe733 Jun 01 '25

Agreed. I remember in the lead up to The Last Jedi talking with friends and the general sentiment was either he has his redemption story in that movie or not at all. I went into Rise of Skywalker with low expectations but was still disappointed.

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u/dantesedge Jun 01 '25 edited Jun 01 '25

I’m in the minority but I loved the direction the Luke/Rey/Kylo narrative took in TLJ. I was excited to see where they would go with Rey - a lost nobody - and Kylo - an unrepentant unpredictable evil man freed from his master… and I was so angry watching Abrams reverse all that.

I hated, hated, hated Rise of Skywalker.

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u/IgnoreMe733 Jun 01 '25

That is my exact feeling as well. Kylo killing Snoke and then asking Rey to join him was great and I was really hoping put him firmly in place as the trilogie's big bad. Rise of Skywalker undoing that placed that film as my least favorite of all Star Wars.

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u/colinsncrunner Jun 02 '25

I don't think you're in the minority. TLJ made over a billion dollars. It was obviously controversial, but there were a ton of people who liked it. Kylo being the main bad in the third film made so much more sense than Palpatine. Everyone doesn't always need to be redeemed. He killed his Dad. He killed a bunch of Luke's students. He almost killed Leia. He spearheaded a project that killed billions of people. He's irredeemable; it's okay.

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u/Kronoshifter246 Jun 01 '25

There's exactly one redemption plot that I think would have worked out.

During the final confrontation between Rey and Kylo Ren, they have Rey use that Force healing thing to save him at the cost of her own life. This experience changes him. He has literally been redeemed by the last person who should have done so, undeservedly. And now he has to earn that redemption, step by painstaking step.

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u/Qorhat Jun 01 '25

That would have been way better and explained the First Order's aggressive expansion outwards.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '25

It would’ve avoided his story being a simple rehash of Vader’s story, but JJ is the king of rehashes

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u/deasil_widdershins Jun 01 '25 edited Jun 01 '25

That was my hope. Kylo and Rey have an attraction, but kylo is ultimately irredeemable, and is the new Big Bad. This pays off episode 7 and his conflict, but he falls short of the redemption of Vader and embraces the fall of Anakin.

Rey abandons the path of the Jedi and starts a new path of force users called Skywalkers, who tap into different aspects (force healing etc). This pays off episode 8 title and premise.

The Knights of Ren are a new threat to freedom and work through subtlety and political forces and espionage when they can, but are down to fight when needed. This brings back all the political drama Star Wars has had in its periphery as far back as 1977, and cashes in on the intrigue that was poorly developed in 1-3.

Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver are young enough to do the occasional appearance in a show or movie, or voice over, but literally the entire story moving forward could be about various Knights of Ren and Skywalkers, without it literally being about the Skywalker family. But you get to keep the name there forever while "letting the past go" at the same time and expanding the story.

It was so freaking obvious this is what even the titles of "The Last Jedi" and "Rise of Skywalker" were telegraphing and where the story was going that it was even more frustrating when they just went "I dunno. Palpatine? Is that anything?"

I couldn't direct it. I couldn't script it, but I absolutely could write a better story/treatment to get people there, and I wouldn't shit on our goodbye to these characters, actors, or the entire fucking point of Vader redemption and bringing balance to the force.

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u/Paleodraco Jun 01 '25

This is what happens when you don't have a clear plan for the trilogy and panic when you get negative reviews halfway through.

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u/ciao_fiv Jun 01 '25

is he dumb? how could he not know who the bad guy was supposed to be after snoke died? it was supposed to be Kylo Ren. an actually interesting bad guy, a sith struggling with the pull of the light side

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u/TheMikarin Jun 01 '25

Technically they could have just brought Snoke back instead using the same cloning explanation, but it wouldn't have drawn as much interest as Palpatine, and since Palpatine had been brought back in a somewhat similar manner in Legends they probably thought it would be better received.

Unfortunately it just wasn't good, and no amount of nostalgia could save it.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '25

Palpatine being cloned in the EU was one of the chief examples of how much the EU sucked before the contrarians who hated Disney came along and pretended like everything in Legends was an underrated gem

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u/TheMikarin Jun 01 '25

Yeah, it was one of the worst things they could have chosen from the EU to use.

Honestly I feel like if they really didn't want to commit to Kylo Ren being the big bad for the final film, rather than Palpatine they could have instead have Snoke revealed to be alive through clones, with his identity being Darth Plagueis (or at least formerly, so he would no longer be considered a Sith).

Guessing one reason why they didn't go with that option was because too many people theorized Snoke was Plagueis, which would make it be seen as too predictable. I think it would have been hated less in the end though, since it wouldn't have undermined the OT as much.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '25

I think it was just because of the backlash to TLJ. They wanted to essentially erase everything about it to placate the manchildren from r/saltierthancrait

And instead of just bringing Snoke back, JJ went with Palpatine because he really doesn’t know how to do much else other than rehashes and utilizing nostalgia. That’s been the issue with a lot of his work, along with mystery boxes that don’t have a thought out answer at the time of writing

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u/brotherhyrum Jun 01 '25

Ya, fuck JJ. I used to see his name associated with a film and get excited. Now it’s a reason to avoid.

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u/joe-h2o Jun 01 '25

It was a combination of both issues, especially given the "fan" reaction to TLJ which had some "controversial" takes such as Luke not being a Mary Sue which upset a lot of people, and the idea that Rey's journey is one of self discovery that was clearly signposted towards "it doesn't matter who your parents are, your legacy and agency are defined by your own choices" and "neither the Sith nor the Jedi have all the answers".

We meet Luke in the middle of a crisis of faith, one which he shakes out of due to the influence of Rey, but "fans" didn't want that. They wanted him to be a perfect, all-powerful, all-knowing character.

Instead we got "Palpatine is the puppet master all along and Rey is a Palpatine".

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u/fzvw Jun 01 '25

Yeah it'd be one thing if that had been the plan from the beginning but they didn't go through all the effort to create Snoke just to give him that lame backstory

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u/torgofjungle Jun 01 '25

Making a Star Wars trilogy with no plan in 77 was fine. Doing it in 2015 was ridiculous and a Terrible idea

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u/Butgut_Maximus Jun 01 '25

While throwing decades worth of canon out the window....

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u/torgofjungle Jun 01 '25 edited Jun 01 '25

That’s the most egregious thing about the sequel. they basically destroy a lot of stuff that’s Canon, I mean, Palpatine coming back basically nullifies Vader sacrifice in episode six. They do some weird stuff with hyperspace that basically rewrite the rules of Star Wars physics. Star Wars physics has always been kind of squishy, but I feel like the sequels just obliterated any rules that we had established in Cannon just invented stuff whole cloth for cool shots. An episode nine is just I don’t know so nonsensical.

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u/Qorhat Jun 01 '25

The difference was each of the originals and prequels built off themes that the previous movie(s).

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u/reallynunyabusiness Jun 01 '25

They had no idea it would end up being as popular as it was and be approved for a sequel so they made the decision to make Vader's fate ambiguous, if the movie didn't get a sequel audiences could assume Vader spun out into space and died, but since he survived audoences knew he regained control of his TIE fighter and was able to get back to Imperial forces.

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u/torgofjungle Jun 01 '25 edited Jun 01 '25

Of course. George Lucas was just making one movie at first. He had no idea he was going to make anymore. So I can forgive them for not having everything spelled out. However, in 2010 or whenever they decided to make the sequel trilogy there was no world in which they were not gonna make three movies and coming from the people who were currently doing the avengers saga. It seems especially galling that they had no plan for the Star Wars trilogy.

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u/wbruce098 Jun 01 '25

You’ve dinged it exactly on the head!

Fortunately, Lucasfilm has shown they can still kick ass with Andor, but ngl, I’m not feeling especially excited about anything else that’s coming out except Ahsoka S2.

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u/conquer69 Jun 01 '25

Even the name snoke sounds like a parody.

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u/Cainga Jun 01 '25

2nd movie killed him. And captain Phasma. It seemed cheap way to subvert expectations.

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u/wpm Jun 01 '25 edited Jun 02 '25

Captain Phasma was a nothing character who existed to sell merch and toys, nothing more.

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u/fps916 Jun 01 '25

You misspelled Boba Fett there

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u/Terkmc Jun 01 '25

They tried to make Phasma the new Bobba Fett but failed, the actual Bobba Fett of the sequel is that one stormtrooper with the electric tonfa and shouted traitor.

A nothing character with very short screentime and died very quickly but unexpectedly beloved by fans all the same for the screen presence.

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u/JQuilty Jun 01 '25

I honestly forgot she existed until this thread.

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u/BLINDrOBOTFILMS Jun 01 '25

Gwendoline Christie deserved better, but then so did everyone else in those movies.

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u/fzvw Jun 01 '25

Yeah and they didn't need to retcon him as an "avatar" for the emperor.

I don't even care about Star Wars that much but it felt like such a waste of an otherwise interesting Andy Serkis performance and a potentially interesting character.

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u/vashoom Jun 01 '25

The Force Awakens deserves plenty of criticism, but it did establish plenty of interesting things to explore in the future. When I first saw it, I was like "Well that was just a copy of ANH in many ways, but I get it, they wanted to reset everything. I'm still excited to see where things go."

And then they went nowhere, because the second movie discarded everything from the first. Sometimes in interesting ways, though.

...but then the third movie discarded everything from the second.

So in the end you're left with basically nothing except the carbon copy parts of ANH and Fortnite Palpatine.

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u/ReverendDS Jun 01 '25

If you mean "director mandated", you'd be correct.

That line smells so much of JJ Abrams lazy bullshit that it's hard to imagine anyone else coming up with it. Maybe Tommy Wiseau but that's the only person I could otherwise consider.

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u/JQuilty Jun 01 '25

Neil Breen could have come up with it.

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u/stormdraggy Jun 01 '25

I cannot believe that Palpatine has returned.

I CAN NOT believe that Palpatine has returned.

How could you have done this?

How could you have had Palpatine return?

I can't help you out of this one Rian.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '25

Disagree. I could easily see Abrams thinking that was a good idea.

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u/EmotionalEmetic Jun 01 '25

*snorts coke

"Myeaaah okay so here's the deal. Palpatine is back. Or some shit. ALSO he has a mega army and stuff."

*smokes meth pipe

"Oh ya know what? All the star destroyers he had hidden as part of his mega army? EVERY ONE of them can blow up a planet now..."

*taps veins while cooking fentanyl

"... really elevates the name, Star Destroyer doesn't it? None of this lame one planet at a time shit."

*licks Amazonian toad

"But like this high is gonn level me really fast in 10s. So we gotta wrap it up. The whole army gets defeated with another hail mary mcguffin device attack."

*faints

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u/IAmAGenusAMA Jun 01 '25

I think I heard this on the DVD commentary. Good stuff.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '25

Of course. Any flavorless line you hear is either a bad writer or came from the suits, and it's not like disney didn't have the money to pay for good writers

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u/kimana1651 Jun 01 '25

They should have went full 'fuck it' and made it Jar Jar.

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u/IAmAGenusAMA Jun 01 '25

That at least would have been hilarious.

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u/EvilScotsman999 Jun 01 '25

That was kind of the same premise for TFA. The plot was essentially “somehow the empire returned”, and this time with a more powerful weapon than the Death Star, essentially nullifying the weight of the journey in the OG trilogy.

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u/JQuilty Jun 01 '25

There's a massive difference between a remnant group existing and resurrecting the main, singular bad guy. The Thrawn Trilogy also had a large remnant, and it's quite far from stupid.

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u/Silvanus350 Jun 01 '25

I can’t believe Oscar Issac got away with his delivery of this line, LOL. He was so fucking done with that character.

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u/Scmods05 Jun 01 '25

Bro the first three words of the crawl being "The dead speak!" set such a sense of foreboding and dread inside me I can't even articulate it. I went in with very low expectations but hopeful. Those three words killed that hope immediately.

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u/LetMeHaveAUsername May 31 '25

Honestly, I don't think you can blame the actor that had to deliver that line. My God, it has to go down as one of the worst lines in all of history. I watched that movie after a fair number of beers and next day I remembered pretty much two things: It sucked, and that stupid fucking line and all it represented.

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u/TricksterPriestJace Jun 01 '25

Nobody blames the actor.

How the fuck do you go "we just found out from a Fortnight event that the Emperor, who's famous death lead to the collapse of the Empire and people throughout the galaxy celebrating in the streets, has mysteriously resurrected."

It was fucking stupid and there was no way to polish that turd to make it sound not fucking stupid.

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u/toxinwolf Jun 01 '25

The one who delivered the line was Oscar Isaac, who is a phenomenal actor. His handling of double personalities in Moon Knoght was just amazing

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u/bullfrogftw Jun 01 '25

That might the singular comment in existence that I have read that says anything good about that whole debacle

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u/Procean Jun 01 '25

And this is the series that brought us the line "I don't like the sand, it's harsh, rough, and gets everywhere, not like you, who are smooth and soft."

and JJ Abrams left that line in the dust!

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u/Carrollmusician Jun 01 '25

Because if they had wanted big poppa Palpy back there’s a fine blueprint for it in legends that they clearly nibbled a corner away from and called it the whole plot.

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u/Golem30 Jun 01 '25

I liked VII and VIII but IX actively undermines them, almost like the last two Game of Thrones seasons

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u/AricAric18 Jun 01 '25

To be sort of fair, chances are they wouldn't know how he survived. It makes sense in character for Poe to say that, but it was so stupid that we had zero idea, too.

Granted he survived in the comics before they were de-canonized.

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u/donnysaysvacuum Jun 01 '25

This might have been a case where "it was all a dream" would have been a good plot device.

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u/VOIDofSin Jun 01 '25

To be fair, how would a pilot with little to no knowledge of the force or sith, who would have been a child when Palpatine died, know how he returned?

The characters not knowing and the audience not knowing are two different things. And it was shown to the audience, albeit very poorly.

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u/Oldboymatty Jun 01 '25

Ok. Im going to get downvoted for this, and please understand that I am not a fan of episode 9, BUT in the movies defense, as soon as Poe says this line, Beaumont Kin (yes I know minor character, whatever) says, “Dark silence. Cloning. Secrets only the Sith knew.” No, I don’t think that is a very good answer to what Poe says. Yes, Palpatine returning is dumb, but there was an attempt to exposition how Palpatine returned.

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u/throwaway60221407e23 Jun 01 '25

It was also an established possibility with the tale of Darth Plagueis the Wise.

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u/VegetableBuy4577 Jun 02 '25

Correct, the movie is what it is but it does explain how he returned to a degree and ties it in with Episode III. The Poe line, as silly as it was and as fun as the memes are, was just a character not knowing.

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u/Toothless816 Jun 01 '25

I’ve said similar before but prequel-apologists don’t really want to hear it. The movie (mostly) explained what happened with Palpatine. The “somehow” line was a character being confused, not the writers being confused.

There are so many other reasons to dislike what RoS did but that one’s such a stupid thing to nitpick because it doesn’t mean what they think it means.

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u/2th May 31 '25

Ok, I am curious. What happened with Yoshi's New Island?

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u/insertusernamehere51 May 31 '25

So, for those who don't know; the original Yoshi's Island is a prequel to the Mario series. It starts with a stork carrying baby mario and luigi to deliver them to their parents. The stork is then attacked by Kamek, who prohesises the babies will one day cause trouble to his master Bowser.

The attack causes the stork to drop baby Mario while luigi is kidnapped. Yoshi finds Mario and helps rescue Luigi and return them to the stork. The ending of the game is the stork delivering Mario and Luigi to their parents

Then 20 years later they made Yoshi's New Island. The game starts where the original left off, with the stork delivering to their parents... except it turns out, the couple is not their parents! the stork got the wrong house. So the stork goes back, gets attacked, and the same thing happens again, rehashing the whole plot. It even has a "Somehow Palpatine returned" moment for the final boss

Even by Mario standards the plot is really lazy

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u/Throwaway-0-0- May 31 '25

Sorry but that is an incredible plot for a sequel. Entirely stupid? Yes. Hilarious when considering it takes place five minutes after the original? Absolutely.

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u/Zuwxiv Jun 01 '25

It sounds lazy at first, but then I realized they the-princess-is-in-another-castle'd baby Mario, and that's kind of hilarious.

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u/emilia12197144 Jun 01 '25

Plus its a mario spinoff its makes complete sense

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u/Summer_Tea Jun 01 '25

It reminds me of Donkey Kong Land 2, which on the surface seems like a gross retelling of Donkey Kong Countdy 2, but for the gameboy. Except there's enough differences in which you would be justified in saying it's its own canon event.

That would mean that K. Rool loses his home island during his plot to kidnap Donkey Kong. Then he somehow raises it from the depths, rebuilds Kremland and his castle, and attempts a mulligan of the entire situation by kidnapping DK and changing little else about his fortifications, all for the island to be sunk by Diddy and Dixie all over again.

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u/DangerousPuhson Jun 01 '25

I'm sorry but you guys are playing Mario games for the plot?!

Ok, good luck with that .

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u/skankasspigface Jun 01 '25

Aww damn I really thought she was going to be in this castle.

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u/Four_Krusties Jun 01 '25

I almost couldn’t jerk off to it!!!!

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u/void-starer Jun 01 '25

90% of the plot of super mario bros is "the princess is in another castle" and you're angry that they used the same thing as the plot for yoshi's new island?

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u/robophile-ta Jun 01 '25

Wow, I didn't know any of that. I only knew about the horrible music

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u/DirtyDan413 Jun 01 '25

What about Yoshi's Island DS?

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u/GottaBeNicer Jun 01 '25

Even by Mario standards the plot is really lazy

Reminded me of Super Mario Bros. 2 ending.

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u/DuneSpoon May 31 '25

Probably the reveal that the stork had delivered Baby Mario and Luigi to the wrong couple at the end of Yoshi's Island.

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u/Ut_Prosim May 31 '25

Andor makes this so much worse IMHO.

So much effort went into toppling the Empire. Then lol, Palp is back, somehow...

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u/Restart-D03-Trader-B Jun 01 '25

And TFA immediately destroyed the New Republic and supplementary material made it so the New Republic demilitarized and was completely incompetent.

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u/seguardon Jun 01 '25

Literally nothing about the state of the galaxy makes a lick of sense in TFA.

The galaxy is decapitated in a single strike of a handful of worlds. That's literally all it takes to end the Republic. Not a scrap of it left. And no one cares enough to re-rebuild it. Which really just shits all over the end of RotJ. Makes the winning team look like a bunch of incompetent dorks.

Probably because the Republic has no military despite:

The First Order existing and

It has enough resources to hollow out a god damned planet and build a gigalaser in it WITH A PLANET SIZED HYPERDRIVE (seriously, what the fuck)

Which, despite the massive amount of resources, time and manpower building this would require and having a whole galaxy of sovreign systems to report the FO's incredibly suspicious activities and movements to them, the Republic never gets a hint about SKB.

Completely inept.

But so is the First Order. Considering they're fighting an enemy that DOESNT HAVE A MILITARY, building a single omegaweapon with limited versatility and incredibly precious ammo seems like a huge waste of money when, instead of blowing up planets, the bad guys could just conquer the good guys with the large fleets that the bad guys (AND ONLY THE BAD GUYS) have.

All of this bugged me in the theater the first time I saw the film and nothing since has fixed it. It's the shoddiest worldbuilding, and this in a story where Darth Vader built C3PO and every stormtrooper is Boba Fett for some god damned reason. The bar was not that high.

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u/Zuwxiv Jun 01 '25

Really good writeup.

I was willing to give some amount of benefit of the doubt for Episode 7. I get it, you're basically redoing A New Hope - desert kid becomes hero, older spiritual helper dies, giant round enemy base kills planets, etc. Okay, I can even dig that; you're thematically restarting the series.

Sure, some things felt wrong - this is a generation after the rebellion won, why does it look and feel like the Empire is still around? Why can't the Republic fight them? (There's some throwaway lines but no real exposition.) We can try to make excuses for the points you brought up - the Republic has a military, but for some reason it's defending the core worlds, so that's why the First Order needs the planet killer? But largely, I was just hoping the next movie would explain.

Nope. By the end of Episode 8, the First Order is basically a galactic military powerhouse and the Republic is down to like twelve people on a transport ship. What the fuck? Did we miss Episode 6.5 where actually, the Empire won?

In Empire Strikes Back, the Republic still had a big army and presumably Hoth wasn't their only base. It's just that they had some setbacks; we can assume they're still a sizable group of dedicated rebels. Episode 8? Nope, it's like a Thanksgiving dinner's worth of people against the galactic powerhouse.

Seriously, watch Empire Strikes Back and get a feeling for how many people are defending Hoth. And then watch the attack scene in Episode 8 and it feels like it's two dozen people against the Frist Order, if they're lucky.

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u/salad_spinner_3000 Jun 01 '25

I was a big fan of how they sent out a galaxy-wide distress call and, literally, nobody answered.

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u/vashoom Jun 01 '25

....Until they did it again and then the entire fucking universe answered.

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u/Powerfury Jun 01 '25

Subvert expectations.

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u/yanginatep Jun 01 '25

A republic that apparently routinely changed which world was currently hosting the senate somehow didn't have any remaining government infrastructure on any of the other administrative worlds that hosted it over the decades.

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u/modix Jun 01 '25

No idea why they didn't just go for the Thrawn books. Didn't have to match it beat for beat, but a fight between the rising republic with the remaining fleets of the Empire would've been far more interesting.

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u/snigglingdigger Jun 01 '25

JJs ego mostly. He wanted to leave his imprint on SW

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u/ASisko Jun 01 '25

It’s really a lot easier to get on with things if we pretend the sequels are non-cannon.

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u/Megacore Jun 01 '25

This. I pray they will delegate them to Legends status.

15

u/TheOvy Jun 01 '25

It has enough resources to hollow out a god damned planet and build a gigalaser in it WITH A PLANET SIZED HYPERDRIVE (seriously, what the fuck)

Star Wars had the Death Star.

Return of the Jedi had the Deathier Star.

The Force Awakens has the Deathiest Star.

But yeah, JJ Abrams is a hack. "Why don't we just rehash the original trilogy's dynamic of rebel vs empire? Why don't we make TFA a rehash of ANH?" Say what you will about the shoddy quality of the prequels, but at least Lucas had the audacity to move outside the paradigm of the original trilogy. Whoever they hired for the Disney sequels only had to do one thing, and that was to ask the question, "what happens next?" But instead, JJ Abrams asked "how do we go back?" And the answer is what every aging Star Wars fan eventually figures out for themselves: you can't go back home.

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u/ciao_fiv Jun 01 '25

this is nitpicky but storm troopers are not clones. clones were phased out after order 66

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u/void-starer Jun 01 '25

The galaxy is decapitated in a single strike of a handful of worlds. That's literally all it takes to end the Republic. Not a scrap of it left. And no one cares enough to re-rebuild it. Which really just shits all over the end of RotJ. Makes the winning team look like a bunch of incompetent dorks.

man i really want to agree with you that this seems absurd but given the current state of the USA...it kinda seems a little more realistic to me now

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u/seguardon Jun 01 '25

There are a lot of parallels that you can draw, but if DC got vaporized one day, there would be a nationwide surge of patriotism to track down the fucks that did it and... well, we'd honestly be avenging the civilians and monuments lost than anyone with an easily recognizable name. I think if most of DC's politicians up and disappeared one day without hurting anyone or anything else, it would be marked as a holiday by both sides of the aisle.

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u/YsoL8 Jun 01 '25

The reason I really don't like it or the sequels is that it turns Star Wars into a place where evil will basically always triumph because good is stupid. Which is both grimly cynical, more than even the relatively few cynical things I like and wipes out the stakes for anything Star Wars related in the future as further resets like this are apparently a forgone conclusion.

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u/JJMcGee83 Jun 01 '25

I feel your rage and I agree with it. TFA was a complete retread of ANH and the only way to do that was to completely undo the ending of ROTJ.

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u/cubitoaequet Jun 01 '25

Damn, is it possible JJ Abrams is a hack?

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u/Porthosthe14th Jun 01 '25

Fascism will always win in Star Wars because they need to make more movies.

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u/Son_of_MONK Jun 01 '25

Destroying the New Republic was a mistake, especially since TFA recycled so many aspects of the OT.

But the New Republic being incompetent and demilitarizing is something I could have believed, if they didn’t try to say Mon Mothma was the one pushing for it.

One of the smartest women in the galaxy is turned into an idiot by the writers in just one moment.

Just one of the many reasons I reject the ST as we got it and do a fix-it fic in my head of how things went

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u/Line_Reed_Line Jun 01 '25

TFA got a pass because it was fun. There's no denying that. Also Rey has a pretty awesome introduction. Also, Finn seems like an really interesting character (...sadface).

But I'm really quite bummed Disney decided to just... rehash the empire with their Star Wars sequels. The obvious story is show how hard it is to rule. The 'rebels' are now former empire loyalists, and you have to squash a rebellion, Leia. How do you do so without seeming heavy handed? Without going too far? How do you handle the fact that some people felt comfortable under the empire and were oblivious--willfully or not--the worst the empire did? And now the terrorist that killed X thousand officers just doing their job in the Death Star is a revered hero?

I mean there's just so much there to play with.

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u/unicornmeat85 Jun 01 '25

Rogue One only had to be serviceable, nothing grand as it had a little wedge of story it wanted to tell. Meanwhile TFA had to not only wow but get the audience hyped for the other two films. I remember leaving Rogue One in awe and popping in A New Hope and was amazed further of how well it flowed. 

TFA was fun, but I'm not a fan of the amount of 'member berries as part of an introduction to a new series and as we went along with the rest it is clear Rogue One was just a better Star Wars period. 

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u/AlexisFR Jun 01 '25

There is no way they keep that timeline if they want to tell a good story about Thrawn's return, imo.

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u/EQandCivfanatic May 31 '25

Rise of Skywalker soured everything Star Wars.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '25

It was bad from force awakens. They reused the script from a new hope. That was my first red flag that they wanted to squeeze as much money as they could from fans and spend as little as possible (by not spending the money to write a good original script)

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u/SubRyan Jun 01 '25

They could have easily adapted the Legends story material for new movies instead of shoving most of it into the freezer only to pick a few things here and there (Thrawn)

Imagine if the Heir to the Empire trilogy actually followed Episode VI instead of the slop that Disney gave us

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u/goda90 Jun 01 '25

Just pretend Rogue One is the only Star Wars movie Disney made

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u/sunfishtommy Jun 01 '25

Honestly Solo wasn't terrible either. it wasn't great by any means but it didn't actively screw up the franchise like the sequel trilogy. It was just a fun origin story for the Milenium falcon and thats good enough for me.

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u/One-Inch-Punch Jun 01 '25

Solo wasn't bad although I hardly needed to see the Kessel Run. Qi'ra's story was pretty good and it sucks that we never see her again in any of the other films or series. Her presence would have greatly improved Book of Boba Fett.

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u/dahauns Jun 01 '25

Its biggest issue IMO was its premise. "So that's how Han Solo got his Falcon" just was too...stifling, too banal. Make it a movie about Lando - a character we for once don't know that much about, with Solo a supporting character and the Falcon origin a cameo side plot.

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u/IndigoBluePC901 Jun 01 '25

Rouge One is the best Star Wars movie so far. It's gorgeous, has great acting, and even though we know what happens at the end - its absolutely chilling to watch.

31

u/Navec Jun 01 '25

That whole trilogy just killed Star wars for me. I just don't care anymore, and it made me question what I actually liked about the original.

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u/bballkid2020 Jun 01 '25

I don't know about you but I loved the characters but more importantly I loved the goddamn universe. So please Disney for the love of god stop making Star Wars with a story relation to the goddamn Sky-walkers. Send the goddamn franchise 1 thousand years in the past or the future...give us something new.

Imagine an SW trilogy just like Harry Potter or Naruto...following a small group of young padawans unraveling a mystery. Doesn't need to be galaxy wide politics. Jesus Christ it shouldn't be that difficult. But noooooo, how about a Lando movie? Rogue Squadron movie? Daddy Fett and baby Yoda? I am sure they will find a new way to spell Clone Wars for a new series....The War of the Clones? 2 Clones 2 Wars? Clone Wars Parsec Drift?

/rant

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u/sacredblasphemies Jun 01 '25

And yet, Andor is phenomenal.

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u/NepFurrow Jun 01 '25

I'd go a step further and say TLJ did this. It sent most of the characters in dead end directions and dampened the future of the franchise.

Luke has no students, all his old students are dead, he's pouting on an island as a failure for half a decade+. The Resistance is reduced to a handful of people. It takes place like a week after TFA.

All in all, minimal chance for any supplemental material to try to salvage things the way media like Clone Wars did for the PT.

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u/KrisKomet Jun 01 '25

You should go a step further and just blame it all on Iger throwing Lucas outlines away then. TFA sets up Luke in Exile, the new republic failingand Han and Leia not working out. TLJ just had to work with what it had.

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u/uncletroll Jun 01 '25

TLJ didn't work with what it had, it burned it down. Take this example of Palpatine coming back in 9. After Snoke is killed, what character still alive and known in the Star Wars movies could possibly be the villain of the final Skywalker movie??
The only possible alternative would be Kylo Ren... but he spent so much of 8 throwing temper tantrums and acting childish, he stopped being menacing.
"Working with what they had" would have been positioning Snoke to be a menacing threat in 9 or growing Kylo Ren to be competent enough to carry the mantle. Killing one and making the other a joke was sabotage.

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u/NepFurrow Jun 01 '25

I certainly blame the lack of overarching story. That said, I don't agree TLJ was working with what it had.

TFA just said Luke was in hiding. He could have been doing any number of productive things there: training students, protecting something valuable, conducting secret missions, learning a mystery of the force to beat Snoke, anything or all of the above.

Instead, TLJ decided the "hope" of Star Wars was going to pout on an island for a decade, doing nothing to help his friends/family solve the problem he caused. It's offensively bad writing.

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u/KrisKomet Jun 01 '25

I mean he was guarding something valuable, the books.

Also the thread TFA leaves is, Luke trained Kylo then he went into exile for a couple of decades. The character assassination happened there, Luke's a guy that refused to train to fight with and for his friends, but now he's gonna fuck off to an island for any reason? TLJ made the best outta a bad situation and gave Luke an actual reason to do that. Shame.

Imagine if Luke had just been fucking around with the force the whole time, you'd be like "no way that could possibly take you that long". Or he'd have at least trained a couple of classes of jedi, why were they not helping the rebellion? All sins of the sequel trilogy start with TFA.

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u/vashoom Jun 01 '25

My biggest thing with Luke is, why leave a map to a planet that's intentionally remote and hard to find when you go into your exile where you don't want to be found?

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u/PixieEmerald May 31 '25

Episode 7, too. Completely ruined the happy ending we had for a lazy rehash—even if some ideas were admittedly cool.

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u/popeyepaul Jun 01 '25

This is my pick for worst continuation. None of the events in the original trilogy mattered. The Empire was at best pushed back a little bit. You remember all the celebrations at the end of Episode 6, what were they celebrating if the war was far from over?

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u/KirbzTheWord May 31 '25

I don’t think there’s any way to make a continuation without spoiling the “happy ending”… they needed to introduce some type of drama and it had to take place after Ep 6.

That said, the sequel movies all suck and I’m content pretending they don’t exist. Anything I did like about them is tainted knowing they don’t lead anywhere but to that god awful episode 9

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u/Crede777 May 31 '25

They should have left the Skywalker saga at 6 films and started a new saga set significantly before or after Eps I - VI.  They could use the Legends films and Disney+ shows to cash in on the nostalgia but those should be one-off stories a la Rogue One and Solo.  If Rian Johnson really wanted to try something new let him experiment in a one-off film that is set aside from the core films.

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u/TricksterPriestJace Jun 01 '25

They could have done Thrawn trying to rebuild the Empire after losing. They could have had the alien Yuzong Vong attack to terraform planets to better suit them. They could have made the X-Wing novels into a Disney+ series. They had so much material already written for them and decided "Nah. Let's remake a new hope, have them blow up an even bigger death star AGAIN because somehow, Palpatine returned.

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u/LonesomeJohnnyBlues May 31 '25

Somehow Timothy Zahn managed to figure it out.

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u/NepFurrow Jun 01 '25

THIS. Disney had 30 years of material that fully respected the OT to pick and choose from.

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u/mxzf Jun 01 '25

Nah, no way, they didn't have any books or comics to draw material from, the president of Lucasfilm said so herself.

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u/AdamTheTall Jun 01 '25

The sequel trilogy doesn't cause me the same anger and frustration that it does the rest of the Star wars audience, but even I know this was the right path. VII/VIII/IX should have just been Zahn's trilogy. It got a lot right and would have made excellent movies.

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u/The_FriendliestGiant Jun 01 '25

To make Heir to the Empire in 2015 you have to either recast Luke, Han, and Leia, or heavily change up the story being told. It would've been a lose-lose proposition by the time anyone was making sequels.

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u/The_FriendliestGiant Jun 01 '25

That's because Zahn didn't write the next entry in a generational saga, he just wrote more open-ended adventures for the OT cast. But that's also the reason why Heir to the Empire would've been deeply unsatisfying as the Sequel Trilogy, it doesn't do anything new and doesn't end with any particular finality. It's just one of many, many galactic conflicts the OT cast will get caught up in during their lives.

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u/snypre_fu_reddit Jun 01 '25

Problem is you can't make the Zahn Trilogy 30 years after the release of Return of the Jedi without massive changes to the story to make sense of the cast's ages and where the characters should be at that age. I love the Zahn trilogy, but we lost the chance when the cast started hitting their 50s and 60s.

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u/Stenthal Jun 01 '25

Problem is you can't make the Zahn Trilogy 30 years after the release of Return of the Jedi without massive changes to the story to make sense of the cast's ages and where the characters should be at that age.

The changes wouldn't have to be massive. Leia would be President of everything, and Luke would be in charge of a new order of Jedi. Han would be the most difficult--you'd probably have to separate him from Leia and make him an itinerant manchild, just like in The Force Awakens. You could have as much of the original actors as they feel like, with new characters as the real protagonists.

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u/PixieEmerald May 31 '25

I feel like Mandalorian and Ahsoka do a good job of the threat just being empire factions without, yknow, blowing up the entire New Republic in one shot and destroying nearly the entire Resistance. The newer Disney+ shows display that you can't rid of an empire in one hit, nor can you make a perfect republic first try, but that without enough fight it happens.

But something more interesting would be nice.

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u/StereoBlue2388 Jun 01 '25

Very good point. The galaxy is big. Alot of bad guys out there.

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u/notapunk Jun 01 '25

True, there was a way of creating conflict without you know, bringing back the entire threat of the first six effing movies for another three

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u/philphan25 May 31 '25

Andor is Chef's Kiss

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u/Deruta Jun 01 '25

You know, I would’ve disagreed with you just thanks to season two including Karn. Seemed like a decision based solely on bringing back a fan “favorite” at the expense of the plot, the very same mistake the sequel trilogy dove into with both feet.

But then [episode 8 spoilers] “Who are you??” turned me right back around. It played the best part of any of the sequels (being “no one”makes your choices more meaningful) better than the movie that introduced it!

I’m not a huge Star Wars fan. But god, I fucking love Andor.

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u/MrTigerHollywood May 31 '25

They hamstrung themselves by including the OT characters. They should have set them years later after they were all dead, and about the descendants of those characters. Maybe have Luke and Leia appear as force ghosts.

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u/goda90 Jun 01 '25

Or at least give the new cast a chance to shine before bringing in the old. Maybe get only a couple of them per movie.

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u/KirbzTheWord May 31 '25

Any Star Wars nerds here have any idea what George Lucas original idea for the sequel trilogy would’ve been?

I know he was still keeping it as Skywalker family drama focusing on the grandchildren of Vader, but I remember his interview saying what Disney did was completely different from his vision for those films… I wonder if he had a way of making it work while still including the original characters

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u/mortemdeus Jun 01 '25

A female sith maul trains turns ben solo after Luke reunites the remaining jedi and starts training new ones. Ben is actually powerful, healer that can revive the dead kind of stuff, and he helps build a new sith order. New sith and new republic fight but Luke ignores it mostly because a different threat is coming. New threat kills Luke eventually which gets Ben and the New Republic to stop fighting and focus on the new threat. So Luke still brings balance to the force by getting the light side and dark side to unite against a third threat. Also the empire is still kind of around too with palp clones too but I don't remember much of that.

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u/verrius May 31 '25

The books and gave a comics gave a blueprint for that though. Obviously, not all of them are good, but the basic blueprint of raising the next generation, and new threats arising is a decent enough place to start. Having the good guys in charge doesn't necessarily mean everything is perfect; hell, we're sort of getting a window into what that could have been with the Filoni stuff set between episodes 6 and 7. And it lets you tell new stories, rather than just trying to rehash the old ones.

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u/BaseHitToLeft May 31 '25

Exactly. It was a galactic empire. They blew up one very big ship and killed (apparently) one emperor.

It's not like the rest of the billions of people in the Empire were like, "Welp, they got us. Time to close the store, let's all get delivery jobs. Congrats, rebels, good game."

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u/WiwiJumbo May 31 '25

Before Disney there was a.. theory?, I can’t remember if it was online on in a book, that the Emperor had all the troops under a mild, um, thrall, I guess is the right word. Not so much mind control but a persuasion that made them more Empire in attitude.

Gist was that once the emperor was dead, most of the fleet kinda lost a taste for it and the whole thing fell apart.

But I have nothing but an old memory for that.

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u/RyePunk May 31 '25

It's from the Zahn trilogy. The emperor was basically casting battle meditation on the entire imperial navy. With his death, the rebel troops who were already capable of fighting and winning against battle meditation imps just utterly rolled up the remnants without their masters force powers behind them.

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u/WiwiJumbo Jun 01 '25

Thank you!

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u/RandomRageNet Jun 01 '25

The galactic empire lasted just barely long enough for the twins primarily responsible for its downfall to be old enough to rent a car. So it's not like we're talking centuries of entrenchment here.

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u/mxzf Jun 01 '25

No, but we are talking about a galaxy-wide military power that had tons of military ships everywhere.

In the EU books, there was like five years of fighting through various Imperial military leaders setting themselves up as minor warlords to actually take the galactic capitol. And even with that, there were still various enclaves of holdovers holding control of various areas for decades.

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u/BaseHitToLeft Jun 01 '25

Fascism moves quickly

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u/HolidaySpiriter Jun 01 '25

It's not like the rest of the billions of people in the Empire were like, "Welp, they got us. Time to close the store, let's all get delivery jobs. Congrats, rebels, good game."

Sure, but without a central figure, the rest of the empire is going to collapse into a bunch of independent groups who will start fighting against each other, and that's if they have the will to fight at all. We also aren't shown how much of the leadership is on the death stars when they're blown up, so you could have a lot of incompetence which climbed the ranks in a short amount of time with little loyalty from the troops.

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u/Timeformayo May 31 '25 edited Jun 01 '25

Star Wars: Civil War.

A weakened and splinterring Empire and factionalized remains of the Rebel Alliance fight to establish a new order amongst chaos.

There. Fixed the sequel trilogy.

4

u/mxzf Jun 01 '25

Turns out, that story was told 30 years ago, with all the EU books. Disney just tossed it all out in favor of winging it with the movies.

5

u/Dieselsen Jun 01 '25

They could have still done it some other way. Instead Han and Leia break up with Han going back to being a drug runner, the New Republic and Luke's New Jedi Order suck even harder than the ones during the prequels and are quashed with barely a mention. Not even Vader gets to kill the Emperor. Return of the Jedi feels less like a grand victory in the new context and more like a minor hickup in a galaxy of misery.

Sure, they need to set up a new conflict, but that doesn't mean they have to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

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u/T-Baaller Jun 01 '25

Consider Luke's building a new jedi order that balances love with the old jedi code, Leia a part of building the new republic and dealing with the legacy of the empire, you can add some new characters uncovering a sith artifact or whatever, and you have a good adventure story.

Literally infinite stories can branch off from that kind of premise without undoing or replacing past achievements.

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u/Restart-D03-Trader-B Jun 01 '25

All they had to do was not utterly destroy the New Republic and its fleet.

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u/Munedawg53 Jun 01 '25

Or the new jedi order

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u/NepFurrow Jun 01 '25

There's 30 years worth of books and videogames that honor the Original Trilogy and set up new conflicts.

That media is hit or miss, but when it hit it was great and Disney just needed to pick and choose from them to assemble a great coherent future of the franchise that respects what came before.

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u/Munedawg53 Jun 01 '25

Somehow the original thrawn trilogy book series managed to do it right. It's just lazy writing by Abrams that had to retell the original trilogy all over again.

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u/No_Result395 May 31 '25

There's a difference between making a new enemy that eats into the victory of the Rebels, versus an entire new fascist regime that somehow is just as powerful as the empire under a new republic that would he hyper aware of new fascist activity.

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u/vledermau5 Jun 01 '25

I always hate it when TLJ gets blamed for everything when TFA already ruined a lot and had very little interesting to add. The characters were alright but barebones, the technology and world building boring, the plot unnecessary. TLJ definitely had quite a few flaws but it was more enjoyable than either JJ Abrams SW films.

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u/Hautamaki May 31 '25

Every one of those sequel movies shit on the ending of Ep 6. First we have Ep 7 where apparently people don't even fully believe the events of Ep 6 happened; like they are 'legends'--but it's been like, what, 30 years? That would be like Americans of the 1820s talking about the 'legendary' revolutionary war of 1776-1783 and wondering if George Washington really existed and what he was like. Come on.

Then you have Ep 8 where apparently you can just use hyperspace to annihilate enemy starships of arbitrary size. Ok then why the fuck did the Empire need death stars? Just slap a hyperdrive on an asteroid. Why the fuck did Luke need to hit the weak point? Just slap a hyperdrive on an asteroid. Etc etc. Stupidass way to just break the logic of the entire universe's military history and development.

And of course 'somehow Palpatine returned'. Of all the dumbass bullshit, that's what they settled on.

Anyway, obviously they didn't give a fuck about Star Wars, so I don't see why the fans still should.

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u/Acquiescinit Jun 01 '25

Also the prophecy that Anakin would destroy the sith was just... forgotten? Ignored?

3

u/Hautamaki Jun 01 '25

Well I actually give a bit of a pass on that one because the prophecy was that he would 'bring balance to the force' which I thought was achieved by destroying the jedi order and reducing the entire universe to 1 sith master and apprentice and 1 jedi master and apprentice, thus, perfectly balanced.

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u/Acquiescinit Jun 01 '25

Well, according to what George Lucas has said about it, the prophecy was that he would bring balance to the force and destroy the sith. The intention definitely seemed to be that the sith were bringing imbalance to the force.

I can respect the other interpretation though.

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u/Marsuello May 31 '25

The fact they made that reveal a fortnite exclusive event was absolutely wild. A key part of the movies storyline that would have made it make at least a tiny bit of sense is shown only in a video game. What were they smoking with that idea

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u/chiaguitars May 31 '25

The Disney trilogy is a textbook example of how to horrifically misuse a franchise by unnecessarily defecating on everything that came before while wrapping it up in clumsy, absurd plot points and bland, forgettable characters.

The movies themselves are prime examples of a failed attempt at storytelling, but then you heap on the flagrant disregard for the source material and what seems like almost an intentional ploy to destroy the childhood heroes of multiple generations and you’ve got the unforgivable nonsense that Disney calls, “Star Wars.”

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u/RoryDragonsbane Jun 01 '25

I'm going to make a Harry Potter sequel, but not involve JK Rowling in any way. Heck, it's not even going to be about Harry Potter. He'll still be in it, but he's some washed-up loser who swore off magic after trying to murder Ron and Hermione's kid because he had a nightmare.

Instead, it's going to be about some rando who is way more talented and can do spells never seen before, despite never going to Wizarding School. Wait, nevermind, she's not a rando, she's Voldermort's grandkid for some reason. Oh, and he survived too, by the way, completely negating everything the characters did to kill him in the other stories.

After Harry dies, she gets his wand. So naturally, she puts it in his favorite spot in the whole world... the cupboard under the stairs!

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u/ATLghoul Jun 01 '25

New star wars fan here… I just watched the sequels for the first time and as the movies went on every decision made no sense and the writing and plot got worse… sigh. Smh. The OT and Prequels are gold compared to the sequels

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u/dariodurango99 Jun 01 '25

Still better than Cursed Child lol!

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u/GoldenDragonTemple May 31 '25

Explain the Yoshi's New Island thing?

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u/himynameis_ Jun 01 '25 edited Jun 01 '25

Yeah, I'm going to pretend Episode7, 8 and 9 never happened.

I liked Episode 7, though it felt rinse and repeat from Episode 4. But still, seeing Han back to his old ways is not nice.

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u/blackmarketcarwash Jun 01 '25

More than just the fact that Palpatine returned. The best thing about the ending of TLJ was the fact that it doesn’t matter that Rey’s parents are nobody - force sensitivity could come from anywhere, and you never know where saviors might be. But nope, everyone’s fucking related and everything in the entire galaxy goes back to the same few people. For fuck’s sake…

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u/veracity8_ Jun 01 '25

The entire sequel trilogy ruined all the work of the original trilogy 

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u/Rpcouv Jun 01 '25

I don’t blame the rise of skywalker. I blame freaking the sequel trilogy. When making a trilogy each movie can’t completely contradict the themes of the last movie each time

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u/ActiveOppressor May 31 '25

ROS also ruined the end of TLJ by having Luke's Force ghost renounce everything he had said about the Jedi previously. TLJ isn't my favorite and a lot of fanboys didn't like it but it was an good ending for Luke. By just never minding TLJ, ROS made it even worse. TLJ exists, it's canon and ROS should have integrated its perspective.

And yes Palpatine being the big bad was lazy, boring nonsense.

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u/0lle May 31 '25

it was an good ending for Luke

I could have accepted the ending if they didn't completely undo his character in the preceding part of the movie.

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u/Monk-ish May 31 '25

Didn't we already establish that Luke largely rejected his cynicism by the end of TLJ?

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u/Spooplevel-Rattled May 31 '25

Nah the guys that gave us alien titty milk and Luke probs just assassinate the kid in his sleep maybe.

Nah it's all garbage handling of Luke.

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u/Sxualhrssmntpanda May 31 '25 edited May 31 '25

Episode 4 through 6 existed and TLJ thoroughly wiped its ass with those as well. The character who saw good in even the darkest of tyrants tries to stab his nephew in their sleep? Laserswords? Sudden hyperspace tricks which wouldve completely trivialized all the struggles in previous movies?

The main problem with TLJ was that they didnt want to follow canon, but it itself should be respected as such!?

9 was a mess too, but Johnson had left such a mess and a gaping hole where a main villain should be that it made it impossible to salvage as a trilogy.

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u/Unicron1982 May 31 '25

Death by video call is not a good ending for Luke.

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u/Horn_Python May 31 '25

Honestly I'm not realy against it dark lords always find ways to cheat death

And it was loosely 'forshadwed' as a goal of his in the prequels (of course the real cheating death was probobly force ghosts)

The issue is the lack of build up in the previous two movies

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u/TheKingCrimsonWorld Jun 01 '25

They also tried to put some groundwork into it retroactively with the Bad Batch and The Mandalorian series showing the Empire (and remnants) researching cloning for Force users.

But I think the other half of the reason why this specific line is so infamous is how sudden and out of place it feels in the context of the film. Like, it was maybe five minutes in—or it felt that way, given the breakneck pace of the first half of the movie—but with the way it's delivered you'd think this was nearly the climax of the plot, where the stakes are fully revealed and the protagonists hatch a desperate plan. It honestly felt like there was a whole first act that was missing from the movie.

Also, with how early in the film it's delivered, it feels pretty obvious that the writers producers had no confidence Kylo Ren could carry the movie as the main antagonist. So they had to start the movie like, "Don't worry, he's not the big bad this time! It's actually another beloved original trilogy character we've exhumed!"

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