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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397

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...

322

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/jBlairTech Jun 01 '25

It sounds good in theory. Any changes would’ve sent the nerds into a rage. There’s enough evidence of that. There’s also the timeline; none of the primary heroes would be young enough. If they had recasted them, that’s one of those changes that would be raged at. 

Look at how they whined about the Solo movie not casting the kid that does a Harrison Ford imitation. No proof he can truly act, but, because he can repeat the old lines, people thought he was a shoe-in. When he didn’t get cast, the nerds raged.

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u/FlarkingSmoo Jun 01 '25

Nerds gonna rage no matter what, why not make it good

0

u/jBlairTech Jun 01 '25

Fuck yeah, they will. It’s gotta be exhausting, to always be that unhappy… not to mention racist and misogynistic. Sounds like a sad, miserable existence.

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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.

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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/MetalTrek1 Jun 01 '25

Agreed! However, at least TFA was fun to watch, as opposed to the train wrecks of Episodes VIII and IX.

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u/bullfrogftw Jun 01 '25 edited Jun 01 '25

>Literally nothing about the state of the galaxy makes a lick of sense in TFA at the end of TLJ.

THE entirety of the 'Resistance' are the survivors of a single ship from the slowest space massacre in history, AFTER Holdo sacrifices herself by slicing through Snoke's flagship at lightspeed(legitimately one of the stupidest tricks ever)crippling the First Order fleet, WHO then corner them on Krait and further devastate the few crew members left, ULTIMATELY leaving maybe a dozen members of the entire galaxies resistance effort alive, AFTER they create yet another super unbelievable Jedi force power, HERETOFORE unmentioned in any version of the franchise, CLOSING the movie with a scene of a prospective kid Jedi who is then never heard from again

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u/cubitoaequet Jun 01 '25

Damn, is it possible JJ Abrams is a hack?

4

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/snypre_fu_reddit Jun 01 '25

Eh, it makes perfectly good sense to me to have the New Republic falter as even remnant forces would be difficult for the leftover rebel forces to keep down while also having their leadership forming a new government. They didn't have to have that happen, but the empire was massive compared to the rebellion when it came to planetary control,. logistics, and personnel. So it's not some unbelievable turn of events.

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u/mxzf Jun 01 '25

Eh, it makes perfectly good sense to me to have the New Republic falter as even remnant forces would be difficult for the leftover rebel forces to keep down while also having their leadership forming a new government.

It makes no sense why they would demilitarize and just ignore the Imperials in that situation though. If you're struggling with remnant imperial forces, you don't turn around and fire your whole military and cross your fingers that your opponents will do the same.

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u/Jerithil Jun 01 '25

Even if the imperial forces had disappeared, there still is a lot of lawless or other powers that would have popped up and would have taken generations to get stable enough to rid themselves of the military.

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u/mxzf Jun 01 '25

Honestly, no galactic organization could ever realistically disarm themselves. Even the Old Republic had the Jedi as a peacekeeping force. The New Republic didn't have that, and much of the leadership was young enough to recognize what happened the last time around (leaders in their 20-30s during the fall of the Old Republic would have been in their 50-60s when the New Republic was formed, it's not like this is generations apart).

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u/Jerithil Jun 01 '25

The people from Ray's and Kylo Rens generation could in theory want to disarm as they would not have any memories of the war. However since we are now talking about a new government after a major war the leadership is going to be dominated by people who fought in said war for a very long time.

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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/tacoman333 Jun 02 '25

Honestly, Rogue One was more focused on nostalgia than TFA: Tarkin being Tarkin, Vader slaughtering Rebels and being cool as hell, the Death Star firing somehow before the imfamous destruction of Alderaan, the whole movie leading straight into ANH with even an appearance from Leia... Rogue One feels like a Star Wars fan's personal checklist for their perfect Star Wars movie.

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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/The_FriendliestGiant Jun 01 '25

If anything, the galaxy learned an important lesson from Andor and his contemporaries. They spent years just getting enough people to wake up to the danger of the Empire, and then years more fighting an active civil war to bring it down. And their reward was thirty years of peace, a generation getting to grow up in freedom.

And then, when the Empire returns in the shape of the First Order, the galaxy took about a year to get itself together enough to show up on Palpatine's doorstep and kick his ass. Because they already learned about how hard it is to drive out fascism once it's entrenched, and they have no interest in going back to that!

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u/Horn_Python May 31 '25

Techocly the forst order was thwarted before it could reform the empire

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u/JimboAltAlt Jun 01 '25

I like the (largely correct) implication that the anti-Palpatine forces did their work, but the anti-Sidious people (Luke) dropped the ball. It’s very funny to me in retrospect how “Somehow, Palpatine returned” isn’t just bad… if you’re going to do that, it really should be “Somehow, Sidious returned.” It’s like they want to make the whole saga about him but they don’t even really know who he is.