Star Wars sequel trilogy.

[batguy]

Ok, first, I disagree that the women were flawless and the men were flawed.

Leia was not "flawless" at all, for starters. It's implied (although we never see it and they never directly address it in the films) that Leia was kind of absent from parenting Ben, and/or that she pushed him into being a Jedi when he really either wasn't ready or didn't want to. She was focused on her political career, which apparently didn't last because now she's running an insurgent group. And as a mother, she absolutely failed because her son is a wannabe fascist tyrant and a murderer -- including his own father, and her marriage fell apart. In TLJ...she's mostly unconscious. She reprimands a few guys, cries about her brother (I think?) and that's about it. In TROS, as I recall she was barely in it (because Carrie had died), but she and Han kind of redeem Ben. Other than that, she trains Rey some, goes thru some training herself in some flashback and...dies. That's not flawless. If anything, I'd say that's "barely in it." By contrast, the male characters got a lot of screen time. Han dominates TFA before he gets shanked by his kid. Luke is an enormous part of TLJ. And by TROS, none of them are really around, except for the aforementioned bits with Han and Leia (maybe Luke was in it, but other than a voice at the end, I don't remember. There's a lot about that movie that's hazy for me and I've only seen it once).

So, who's left? Well, let's see. There's Rose, who's in one movie and gets sidelined in the next one. In the one movie, she, likewise, is not depicted as flawless. She's right along there with Finn and Poe, leading the way on their failure of a plan to somehow break the encryption of the hyperdrive tracking, making just as many bad decisions as those other two do. The one (1) moment where she shows a modicum of being "better" than Finn is when she prevents him from suiciding into the big cannon because she believes there's another way to beat the First Order. Again, not flawless.

And that leaves us with Rey. Now, Rey is THE central figure for the trilogy. She is the OT Luke of this trilogy. And like Luke, she's good at a lot of stuff. She can fly super well. So could Luke. She's got amazing aim. Luke had that, too. She can apparently pick up and wield a lightsabre almost perfectly with zero to minimal training. Just like Luke. And she becomes a Jedi after some indeterminate amount of time thanks to the power of time compression in films. Again, just like Luke. Now, they do some stuff in the film that lampshades her abilities in ways they didn't do with Luke. Her familiarity with the Falcon, for example, and her "No idea!" response when Finn asks how she can do this is a great example. It's finally explained in TROS as being, I guess, because "ShE's A pAlPaTiNe" or whatever, but I always found that to be a weakass explanation in a film full of weakass "put a bow on it" moments. But really, most of the problems people have with Rey come from, I think, JJ's love of "mysteries." In TFA, he seeded a bunch of these, as we've discussed to death here. But one of them is "Why is Rey so powerful?!"

TLJ, to it's credit I think, responded with "Oh for f--IT DOESN'T MATTER WHY. What matters is what she chooses to do with that power." The "why" of it is all about satisfying the audience's desire for explanations, and has zip to do with the character and what makes her tick or her growth. That's not to say that the answer can't be made to be relevant to the character's growth (example: the explanation for Luke's power being that he's Anakin's son, and more importantly that Anakin is Vader makes the explanation directly related to Luke's internal conflict about his destiny and what his parentage means for that). I far prefer the "Rey's a nobody. She's powerful for reasons we can't explain, and that's fine, because what matters isn't why she has the power, but what she does with it and what that says about her as a person." The rest is window dressing. I would also argue that Rey exhibits some major flaws in both TFA and TLJ (again, can't really remember TROS that clearly). She consistently tries to walk away from her position as the galaxy's future savior, rejecting the mantle of hero even though she has the power to help people. That, to me, is a HUGE flaw. And arguably one that Luke never exhibited. Luke was all in on being a hero and accomplishing his destiny. He might've made bad choices while doing it, but he never was like "Yo, this ain't for me, man. Can't you old guy heroes do it instead? Look, I even brought your old sword back for ya." Rey, however, does exactly that. She hard rejects the mantle of hero, and she casts about for answers as to her parentage because she doesn't want to have to make a choice for herself. If anything, I think TLJ leans hard into Rey's flaws, but they're flaws that are deeper and more about her character than "Oh, you had a dumbass idea that didn't work out."

TROS explains the whole Palpatine thing (poorly), and tries to do the "I....am your father" thing, but it doesn't really land because it's all happening at the 11th hour in the middle of a roller coaster ride, like you're trying to explain the plot of Tenet to someone while playing laser tag with them. That stuff all has less to do with wokeness and waaaaay more to do with plain ol' sloppy storytelling. Although I suppose "Rey might give into her rage and anger and go all darkside!" is something they try to highlight. It just doesn't really have any time to breathe or register with the audience because (1) it's undone in seconds after it happens, and (2) who cares we're on to the next thing anyway even if it had stuck around. NOTHING lasts in that movie because it's too busy barreling towards the end credits with no time to take a breath.

As for how it'd play if you gender-swapped the main roles? I think it'd play the same way: mostly a mess because of said sloppy storytelling and the lack of a plan going in other than "We're gonna do the OT, but bigger and with a younger cast." Beyond that, I don't think it'd matter. It certainly wouldn't matter to me. Because the dumb stuff that people do in the films, the flaws the exhibit, have nothing to do with whether they're men or women, and everything to do with the decisions they make. To some extent, they have to do with the trope they represent: e.g., the brash pilot whose crazy plan is so crazy it...just...might....work and saves the day. Except not this time, because said pilot was an idiot. Make Poe Dameron a woman and...it's the same story, and it doesn't matter that she's a woman. I mean, you can speculate how audiences would've reacted, but honestly, I don't think it would've made a difference overall.

For purposes of representation/inclusiveness, it's worth remembering that even with their flaws, these characters are all treated as unequivocal Heroes with a capital "H". Rey, Poe, Finn, and Rose may screw up in TLJ, but there's never any question that they're Heroes. And honestly, it's really ONLY in TLJ that anyone displays real flaws anyway. The two JJ entries are just too damn busy to spend time actually exploring character flaws, male or female. Character? Pfft. They ain't got time for character. They have moments they need to get to for the vibes.

Again, this isn't about what the Rage Industrial Complex wants you to think it's about. The fact that Rey is a woman is not why she's poorly written (to the extent that she is). She's poorly written because JJ's films don't really do characters, and Rian Johnson only has one film to do character development for an entire trilogy, all piggybacking off of JJ's "mYsTeRiEs" that never mattered anyway, and then being undercut by the subsequent film.

If you want to be charitable, JJ's style is a big part of the problem, and the tonal and stylistic whiplash of VII to VIII and back to IX are another huge part of it. If it was all just a big rollercoaster ride, people might care less, but sticking VIII in there serves as a massive contrast to the other two films and only further demonstrates how "We're not really doing characters" seems to be the approach to the rest of the trilogy.

Did I lay it on a little thick when I declared that the female characters were 'flawless'? Yeah.

But I was keeping my argument short. IMO the basic criticism still stands. The ST erred on the side of making the female characters more competent/capable/correct, to the point of hurting the realism. And they consistently used the male characters for the flaws/mistakes/failings that were necessary to hang a story together.


As for Leia, I'd argue that they needed Ben to be a disaster and most of Leia's failings were inherently driven by that. They gave her some imperfections out of necessity but they didn't exactly showcase or dwell on it. You have to mentally back-engineer half of that stuff based on the story rather than seeing it on the screen.

We can debate the story-purposes of the failings that were piled onto Luke & Han. But there's no debating that they did pile tons of failings onto them. To the point that Harrison actually found the character interesting enough to play him one more time. To the point that Mark had to mentally rationalize that he was playing an alternate version of the character. I don't think Carrie Fisher was contending with such a shifted character.



As for Rey vs Luke, we're just gonna have to disagree. Luke didn't immediately know how to use a lightsaber without training. He waved that saber around for a couple minutes in ANH against no adversaries - that's it. The feat with the training droid was so minor that Han hand-waved it: "I call it luck." It was a minor card trick with no real effect on the storyline. During ANH Luke's only amazing abilities were the piloting/shooting skills that were clearly explained by his backstory on Tatooine.

Even on Dagobah he was mostly shown failing to do stuff. He slowly made any progress. Luke wasn't shown using the lightsaber very skillfully until YEARS later and after a long training session with Yoda. The first time he went up against Vader he got completely owned and lost his hand. He failed to save his friends, he almost died, and he lost crucial training time with Yoda (that he never got back). He generally failed at everything for most of ESB.

Then after more months/years had gone by, Luke showed up a Jabba's place. Aaaaand . . . he failed to Jedi-mind-trick Jabba, then he almost got killed by the Rancor, and he barely sprang his friends, getting shot in the hand in the process.

Luke did pretty well on Endor. But then he turned himself in to Vader on the assumption that Vader wouldn't turn him over to the Emperor. Wrong. Then Luke tries to control his anger and keep Vader from knowing about Leia. BZZZZT! He failed at all that, and he lashed out in anger against Vader. Then he got blasted half to death by Palpatine. He only survived because Vader stepped in and saved him.

Rey just doesn't have this kind of struggle & failure rate. It's not comparable.



As for the gender-swapping idea? Yes, the ST would still have been a disaster that way.

But my point is: The ST would not have gotten made that way.

The ST's gender-slant was pronounced enough that it would have been recognized as a problem if it had not been pointing in Disney's preferred direction.

My emphasis on: "recognized AS A PROBLEM."

 

[Captain Dunsel]

Did we really need yet another thread on the creative disaster that was the sequel trilogy??

I think this topic has been pretty thoroughly discussed and subjected to scholarly debate—in multiple threads prior to this one.

 

[Solo4114]

Did I lay it on a little thick when I declared that the female characters were 'flawless'? Yeah.

But I was keeping my argument short. IMO the basic criticism still stands. The ST erred on the side of making the female characters more competent/capable/correct, to the point of hurting the realism. And they consistently used the male characters for the flaws/mistakes/failings that were necessary to hang a story together.

Again, I think this is more a question of focus in the films. The male characters were -- apart from Rey, and Rose in the 2nd one -- pretty much the focus of the story. When you get down to it, Leia is barely in the film. For the OT characters, Han is the main focus in TFA, and Luke is the main focus in TLJ (partially out of necessity, because Han's dead). But even in TFA, I didn't get a sense that the film was focused on Han's imperfections, so much as it was on Han's position within the story.

Put another way, I think they made a narrative decision to split the OT characters up and have them be "off the board" or somehow unavailable to save the day in the ST. To do that, they created the whole "Ben goes bad, and it destroys the OT family" conceit. Everything springs from that. (I mean, unless you start getting into the novels, which I haven't done, won't do, and find irritating when a film can only stand if you read the extra material that's outside the film.)

I think if the films had spent more time with Leia, we'd probably have seen that, yeah, she's as screwed up as the other two. But Leia wasn't the focus for TFA/TLJ, and Carrie died too soon in the making of TROS to pay any of that out.

As for Leia, I'd argue that they needed Ben to be a disaster and most of Leia's failings were inherently driven by that. They gave her some imperfections out of necessity but they didn't exactly showcase or dwell on it. You have to mentally back-engineer half of that stuff based on the story rather than seeing it on the screen.

I mean, hell, you have to mentally back-engineer tons of stuff about the films to really draw a thruline from the OT to the ST. There's gobs of information missing in the films themselves, and the films don't ever really address them except obliquely. It's one of my biggest criticisms about the ST. This is not to say I think they should've dwelled on setting the stage for everything and spending 40 minutes doing exposition, but they could've made introducing that info to the audience (i.e., how'd we get from Yub Yub to here) more natural. When I saw TFA the first time, I had trouble figuring out who the "Resistance" was in relation to the "Republic." Of course, then it didn't matter...

We can debate the story-purposes of the failings that were piled onto Luke & Han. But there's no debating that they did pile tons of failings onto them. To the point that Harrison actually found the character interesting enough to play him one more time. To the point that Mark had to mentally rationalize that he was playing an alternate version of the character. I don't think Carrie Fisher was contending with such a shifted character.

Right, I agree here. But I think that's less a function of some underlying design to elevate the female characters, and more to do with who has the focus of the films. That plus the "how'd we get here" story and the initial decision to massively sideline the OT characters for narrative purposes.

We can debate the wisdom of sidelining them (I think there's merit to it, but I get why it frustrates other fans), but I do think that once you accept that not only is Luke not part of Leia's Resistance, but also has completely withdrawn and become absent altogether, it becomes harder to find other reasons than "huge personal failure" to keep him out of the game. Otherwise, he's saying "What!? The Empire's back?! Well, let's get to it!" and grabbing his sabre and off we go. Instead, they made a conscious decision to really wreck the OT characters in order to sideline them, springing from the "Ben goes bad" decision, and, well...here we are.

As for Rey vs Luke, we're just gonna have to disagree. Luke didn't immediately know how to use a lightsaber without training. He waved that saber around for a couple minutes in ANH against no adversaries - that's it. The feat with the training droid was so minor that Han hand-waved it: "I call it luck." It was a minor card trick with no real effect on the storyline. During ANH Luke's only amazing abilities were the piloting/shooting skills that were clearly explained by his backstory on Tatooine.

Luke's piloting wasn't explained strictly by growing up on Tatooine. Biggs grew up with him and he couldn't do it. That was Luke's connection to the Force. I think the films have always been pretty clear on that. You're right that Luke has a training sequence with the sabre where he's getting shot, but you go from that to his unexplained ability to yank the sabre to him in ESB (no training for that) plus his training montage for an indeterminate amount of time with Yoda and now he's capable of at least standing up to Vader (even if Vader's toying with him), going to "Well, your dad said stuff that made you sad, but you put on a black outfit and now you're magically a better Jedi" in ROTJ with no training at all in between.

The films have always played fast and loose with character competence. The thing with Rey, I think, has much more to do with JJ's desire to inject "mystery" into "Why's she so good?!" to gin up audience engagement/speculation than it has to do with "Well we have to make her better because she's a girl." And I still don't think she's all that much better. I just think JJ lampshades that she's good in ways the OT didn't because he's doing JJ things.

Even on Dagobah he was mostly shown failing to do stuff. He slowly made any progress. Luke wasn't shown using the lightsaber very skillfully until YEARS later and after a long training session with Yoda. The first time he went up against Vader he got completely owned and lost his hand. He failed to save his friends, he almost died, and he lost crucial training time with Yoda (that he never got back). He generally failed at everything for most of ESB.

Then after more months/years had gone by, Luke showed up a Jabba's place. Aaaaand . . . he failed to Jedi-mind-trick Jabba, then he almost got killed by the Rancor, and he barely sprang his friends, getting shot in the hand in the process.

Luke did pretty well on Endor. But then he turned himself in to Vader on the assumption that Vader wouldn't turn him over to the Emperor. Wrong. Then Luke tries to control his anger and keep Vader from knowing about Leia. BZZZZT! He failed at all that, and he lashed out in anger against Vader. Then he got blasted half to death by Palpatine. He only survived because Vader stepped in and saved him.

Rey just doesn't have this kind of struggle & failure rate. It's not comparable.

I see what you're saying, but I think you can apply the same to Rey, even. I mean, yeah, she duels Kylo Ren, but it's after he's taken a bowcaster bolt to the gut -- which we've already seen is capable of literally blowing an enemy like 30 feet backwards, and while he's dealing with the emotional turmoil of having shanked his dad.

Rey's failures kinda depend on which film you look at. In TFA, she manages to get herself captured while running away from her "destiny" at Maz's castle. Beyond that, when I actually started thinking about it, there's less that Rey actively does or tries to accomplish, and thus less for her to fail at. Like, in Starkiller base, she doesn't really have a goal other than to escape. She succeeds at that, but only because Finn and Han showed up in the Falcon. She fails to save Han, though (although she also didn't have that as an explicit goal). Her only other goals seem to be "run away from the bad people chasing me," "return the droid," and she vacillates on "return to Jakku" (which she fails to do, but I'm not really gonna count that one). Put simply, in TFA, Rey is far less active and far more reactive. In TLJ, Rey's "goal" is to recruit Luke to come save the day, and she fails at that. She doesn't exactly train to become a Jedi, either. I'd say, though, that her major failings are more...internal, and her major successes are likewise internal. For external successes, she tries to go save Ben, and fails quite miserably. She does manage to rescue what's left of the Resistance, but ultimately it's Luke who really saves the day there by buying Rey time to get the Resistance out. TROS is such a mess that I can't really remember it but I do very clearly remember Rey killing Chewbacca by accident (just kidding! There are no consequences in these films.). Ok, so at least she thinks she killed Chewie. But boy, that's a huge failure there. She loses control of her power, kills a friend (she thinks) and almost goes evil.

But again, I think all of this stuff boils down to two things:

1. Storytelling style: JJ's style is frenetic, helter-skelter, roller-coaster storytelling where you almost never have a moment to breathe or think, and where we just don't really bother with a ton of grounded character development. I can't overstate how much I think this actually hurts the films and creates a lot of the issues people have. Stuff just happens in ways that aren't earned. And that's true for all of the characters.

2. No clear plan. IF they'd had a coherent plan from start to finish, even just as bullet points, some kind of "story bible" they could touch back to repeatedly when writers were in a corner, I think a lot of this stuff would've been...at least improved, if not solved altogether. They just didn't have a coherent vision, though, and as a result you have this wildly uneven, tonally discordant "trilogy" that misserves all the characters and the story overall.

But the thing I come back to is that I don't think any of this was a conscious decision to elevate women and make men look bad. That would require a level of intent that I just don't see there. I see sloppiness, I see building the railroad line while the train is barreling along the tracks, I see "Let's do the OT but bigger and for a new audience in China," but I don't see "And then we're gonna make the men look like dummies and the women look perfect."

I think all of the problems with the characters would exist if you gender-swapped them. If it had been Leia who ran off to Ach-to, if Rey had been a dude, if Finn and Poe had been women, and you change literally nothing else, it's all the same problems. Because those problems are, ultimately, about stuff beyond the cultural politics issues. They're about story structure and narrative cohesion and actually caring about creating characters as opposed to moments and vibes.

 

[batguy]

I don't have time to answer all that right now but I'm gonna hit on this part:

But the thing I come back to is that I don't think any of this was a conscious decision to elevate women and make men look bad. That would require a level of intent that I just don't see there. I see sloppiness, I see building the railroad line while the train is barreling along the tracks, I see "Let's do the OT but bigger and for a new audience in China," but I don't see "And then we're gonna make the men look like dummies and the women look perfect."

I think all of the problems with the characters would exist if you gender-swapped them. If it had been Leia who ran off to Ach-to, if Rey had been a dude, if Finn and Poe had been women, and you change literally nothing else, it's all the same problems. Because those problems are, ultimately, about stuff beyond the cultural politics issues. They're about story structure and narrative cohesion and actually caring about creating characters as opposed to moments and vibes.

I don't think there was a conscious decision to make the male characters in the ST look bad.

I do think there was a series of individual decisions when they were dealing with female characters, where they made those characters a bit too good at everything.

And when you are busy piling too much merit/goodness on some characters . . . then all the plot-necessary human fallibilities have to be handled by other characters. Who is left over? The male characters. Especially the legacy ones.


This kind of gender slant isn't big. It doesn't live up to the Youtube conspiracy theories of culture-wide Woke brainwashing. But it's enough to produce the ST that we got.


And I do think it hurt the appeal of the ST movies with audiences. You can't do that kind of stuff and not alienate a portion. If all the (insert race/ethnicity here) characters were piled-on with flaws, then it's going to lose some popularity with that crowd in real life.

In this case it was the portion that the franchise is mainly geared towards. SW is a boy-oriented franchise more than a girl-oriented one. They have made efforts to be more inclusive and dial that back over the years (and that's fine within reason IMO) but it only goes so far. Some of the male-leaning appeal is inherent to SW (as we know it). Girls like Disney princess movies. Boys like movies about high-tech space vehicles & future wars.

SW is never going to come near an equal 50/50 appeal. Even if it was do-able, they would have to alter it so much that viewers would come away saying "it didn't feel like SW anymore". (And nobody, including KK and JJA, wants to change it that much. They are too corporate-risk-averse for that. They didn't pay $4B for the franchise just to turn around and render it unrecognizeable.)

 

[Astyanax]

Have to agree with batguy here. It may not be intentional, but it's a pattern in Lucasfilm. In just the last few years:

• Luke became a failed Jedi Master who walked out on the galaxy
  
  
• Han became a failed husband and deadbeat father, who even let his ship slip away.
  
  
• Leia became a failed politician when her attempts at governing were written as corrupt, and then wiped out.
  
  
• Boba Fett became a lazy, failed crime lord who was soft on his underlings.
  
  
• Obi-Wan became a depressed loser, abandoning his lightsaber and giving up on life until he was schooled by a child (female is irrelevant).
  
  
• Indiana Jones gave up and started watching paint peel, and got schooled by a kid youngster (female is irrelevant).
  
  
• Willow became a failed sorcerer who had a falling out with his children, also schooled by kids.
  
  
• Not Lucasfilm, but similar thread: Jean-Luc Picard became a miserable, lonely, dying retiree who gave up on Starfleet, and when he went back to the stars he was weak and apologetic throughout (until his S3 "apology retcon").

These are our childhood heroes, systematically taken down, one by one! It may not be intentional, but it sure looks like it! "Let the past die, kill it if you have to" seems to be the approach here!

There are two ways to elevate a new character in writing:

1. They earn it by being flawed, making mistakes, suffering consequences, and growing from the experience.
   
   
2. Everyone else around them is reduced in capability and/or competence, thus leaving them to float to the top.

The latter method is the quick and lazy way. It's not about gender, it's about lazy handling of a lead character. But in some cases can have the side effect of making a gender feel slighted.

I agree with the point above that Leia was pooped-on too. This isn't genderism we're seeing, I think it might be ageism!

 

[Wakeem]

I think some of the character stuff mentioned is what I think I posted about in that things in movies you hate topic. Namely, that in these reboots and really late sequels, they make the original hero characters old, jaded, and do stupid things to pass on the story to the next generation. The original hero characters almost always end up dying. The first time I noticed and realized it was in the Star Trek Generations movie. With Kirk and the extremely stupid Nexus plot device.

 

[Astyanax]

I think some of the character stuff mentioned is what I think I posted about in that things in movies you hate topic. Namely, that in these reboots and really late sequels, they make the original hero characters old, jaded, and do stupid things to pass on the story to the next generation. The original hero characters almost always end up dying. The first time I noticed and realized it was in the Star Trek Generations movie. With Kirk and the extremely stupid Nexus plot device.

Great example. Downplay, denigrate, or destroy the legacy so that the new generation doesn't have to work too hard.

Now, I am not upset about Luke dying, or Han dying, or Leia dying. But to elevate Rey, they were all made to be "disappointments" of some kind or another before they died, and mostly unable to redeem themselves. Under those circumstances, the new blood just needs to fight a little and they come up looking great by comparison.

 

[CopperRevan]

Great example. Downplay, denigrate, or destroy the legacy so that the new generation doesn't have to work too hard.

Now, I am not upset about Luke dying, or Han dying, or Leia dying. But to elevate Rey, they were all made to be "disappointments" of some kind or another before they died, and mostly unable to redeem themselves. Under those circumstances, the new blood just needs to fight a little and they come up looking great by comparison.

Because children always think they are smarter than their parents. They go to school, get told they are brilliant and they can achieve anything if they just put their mind to it. Of course they come home and everything is just there, handed to them on a silver platter and they think they rule the roost until one day, out in the real world, they have to experience the reality and hardships of life...then they come running home to Mommy and Daddy, you know, the parents who they thought they were smarter than and are welcomed with a huge slice of Humble pie and you know what? It was for the better if they learn their lesson that Mommy and Daddy weren't so stupid after all.

Just compare the fact that every one of the OT heroes matured by the end of ROTJ...especially Luke. That's what happens when you go through adversity and tragedy. Yet, the ST paints Luke as an immature whinestein who has given up on life and paints Rey as "The adult in the room" as she pushes the old Jedi Master down and hovers over him with lightsaber ignited...talk about arrogance at its peak. I absolutely was disgusted by their direspect and treatment of the Legacy characters.

 

[janglesworthy]

If you like an ending to a 9 part movie where in reality the bad guy wins, then the ST is perfect. At the end of the day the Skywalkers are extinct and PapaPalpatine's blood line lives on. Palps blood line destroyed the galaxy and saved it, the end.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

Did we really need yet another thread on the creative disaster that was the sequel trilogy??

View attachment 1778389

I think this topic has been pretty thoroughly discussed and subjected to scholarly debate—in multiple threads prior to this one.

Hey I don't want to pay for therapy and this is free so...

 

[Joek3rr]

As for Rey vs Luke, we're just gonna have to disagree. Luke didn't immediately know how to use a lightsaber without training. He waved that saber around for a couple minutes in ANH against no adversaries - that's it. The feat with the training droid was so minor that Han hand-waved it: "I call it luck." It was a minor card trick with no real effect on the storyline. During ANH Luke's only amazing abilities were the piloting/shooting skills that were clearly explained by his backstory on Tatooine.

Rey doesn't really know how to use a lightsaber either. She spends most of that first duel running away. And when she does stand and fight she only wins because she's uses her staff skills + the Force magical control your actions, + an unstable Kylo. Heck Snoke chews him out for the loss. Saying the only reason Rey won is because his was emotionally unstable. Her other duels are different. She barely holds her own against the Praetorians. And she is on the retreat from Kylo the entire Episode IX duel. Kylo would have easily won had his mother not intervened.

Even on Dagobah he was mostly shown failing to do stuff. He slowly made any progress. Luke wasn't shown using the lightsaber very skillfully until YEARS later and after a long training session with Yoda. The first time he went up against Vader he got completely owned and lost his hand. He failed to save his friends, he almost died, and he lost crucial training time with Yoda (that he never got back). He generally failed at everything for most of ESB.

Then after more months/years had gone by, Luke showed up a Jabba's place.

There's approximately a year between Luke's loss to Vader on Cloud City and rematch on the DS2. And per George Lucas, at the time, he was writing ESB. Jedi Masters don't teach the lightsaber. So Luke technically wasn't supposed to have received any lightsaber training from Yoda. (Though EU sources would change that as I recall.)

Aaaaand . . . he failed to Jedi-mind-trick Jabba, then he almost got killed by the Rancor, and he barely sprang his friends, getting shot in the hand in the process.

Because Jabba is immune to them. He's not weak minded. Just like Qui-Gon couldn't mind trick Watto. It isn't the lack of ability on Luke's part.

Then he got blasted half to death by Palpatine. He only survived because Vader stepped in and saved him.

Luke threw away his lightsaber and refused to fight. Nothing to do with the amount of training or skill with a lightsaber.

 

[batguy]

Rey doesn't really know how to use a lightsaber either. She spends most of that first duel running away. And when she does stand and fight she only wins because she's uses her staff skills + the Force magical control your actions, + an unstable Kylo. Heck Snoke chews him out for the loss. Saying the only reason Rey won is because his was emotionally unstable. Her other duels are different. She barely holds her own against the Praetorians. And she is on the retreat from Kylo the entire Episode IX duel. Kylo would have easily won had his mother not intervened.

Valid points. Rey didn't whup Kylo at full strength.

There's approximately a year between Luke's loss to Vader on Cloud City and rematch on the DS2. And per George Lucas, at the time, he was writing ESB. Jedi Masters don't teach the lightsaber. So Luke technically wasn't supposed to have received any lightsaber training from Yoda. (Though EU sources would change that as I recall.)

Lightsaber training doesn't have to come from a Jedi. No doubt it helps, but it's mainly a variant of swordfighting. Luke could have improved a lot just by practicing at home in his garage with Youtube tutorials.

My basic point is that Luke didn't pick up a saber and know how to wield it well. And by the time he was better in the movies, the circumstances made that improvement seem plausible.

Never mind the ESB-to-ROTJ gap, look at the time between ANH-to-ESB (which was at least a year or two). Luke probably didn't spend all that free time doing Mad Libs. I think you could make an argument that Luke should have already been BETTER than he was in the Wampa cave. He could barely get that lightsaber to budge until he was panicking.

Because Jabba is immune to them. He's not weak minded. Just like Qui-Gon couldn't mind trick Watto. It isn't the lack of ability on Luke's part.

Fair enough. But it's another situation that Luke seemed to have judged wrong. And it ended up landing him in a pit with a Rancor.

I don't see Qui-Gon waltzing into Jabba's place and relying on the mind-trick so heavily. It doesn't cost anything to try it (Watto) but Luke went in there pretty dependent on it to avoid a battle.

Shooting/fighting your way out of a gangster's Yacht party isn't a plan. It's what you do when the plan fails.

Luke threw away his lightsaber and refused to fight. Nothing to do with the amount of training or skill with a lightsaber.

Yes, and maybe that wasn't the wisest plan, all things considered.

It's goofy enough to take the pacifism approach against Vader. He did it against Palpatine.

 

[Halliwax]

Nailed it:

Love snarky jay

 

[batguy]

Again, I think this is more a question of focus in the films. The male characters were -- apart from Rey, and Rose in the 2nd one -- pretty much the focus of the story. When you get down to it, Leia is barely in the film. For the OT characters, Han is the main focus in TFA, and Luke is the main focus in TLJ (partially out of necessity, because Han's dead). But even in TFA, I didn't get a sense that the film was focused on Han's imperfections, so much as it was on Han's position within the story.

Put another way, I think they made a narrative decision to split the OT characters up and have them be "off the board" or somehow unavailable to save the day in the ST. To do that, they created the whole "Ben goes bad, and it destroys the OT family" conceit. Everything springs from that. (I mean, unless you start getting into the novels, which I haven't done, won't do, and find irritating when a film can only stand if you read the extra material that's outside the film.)

I think if the films had spent more time with Leia, we'd probably have seen that, yeah, she's as screwed up as the other two. But Leia wasn't the focus for TFA/TLJ, and Carrie died too soon in the making of TROS to pay any of that out.

Agreed for the most part.

I have my doubts that Leia would have ever been made as screwed-up as Han & Luke were. But she probably would have been more flawed than what we saw if the ST had progressed with some creative consistency and Carrie had not died.

Luke's piloting wasn't explained strictly by growing up on Tatooine. Biggs grew up with him and he couldn't do it. That was Luke's connection to the Force. I think the films have always been pretty clear on that. You're right that Luke has a training sequence with the sabre where he's getting shot, but you go from that to his unexplained ability to yank the sabre to him in ESB (no training for that) plus his training montage for an indeterminate amount of time with Yoda and now he's capable of at least standing up to Vader (even if Vader's toying with him), going to "Well, your dad said stuff that made you sad, but you put on a black outfit and now you're magically a better Jedi" in ROTJ with no training at all in between.

Yes, Luke did have innate Force-sensitivity helping him at Yavin. But my point is that it wasn't the only thing he had going for him. His Force abilities were in their infancy but he was a local hotshot pilot on a rural planet (with a big thriving pod racing scene, we found out later).

Like in my other comment, I'd argue that Luke being able to yank the saber in ESB was totally plausible. How many years betweeen Yavin and Hoth? No doubt Luke had been trying to learn about the Force and praticing his moves. It probably didn't take much investigating about Jedis for him to start hearing about their legendary abilities like moving objects.

And I'm sure Luke spent hours with the lightsaber trying to get better too. The broad concepts of swordfighting would not have been unique to Jedis. Any gradeschool teacher knows what happens when a few boys get ahold of some sticks at recess.

The films have always played fast and loose with character competence. The thing with Rey, I think, has much more to do with JJ's desire to inject "mystery" into "Why's she so good?!" to gin up audience engagement/speculation than it has to do with "Well we have to make her better because she's a girl." And I still don't think she's all that much better. I just think JJ lampshades that she's good in ways the OT didn't because he's doing JJ things.

JJA's motives don't to have to be quite the same as KK's. Rey was the product of corporate filmmaking. I'm just pointing out the bottom line.

I don't think JJA or KK consciously set out to make Rey better "BECAUSE SHE'S A GIRL!!!" But in the last decade Disney/LFL has a pretty consistent habit of putting more competence & virtues into the female characters than the male ones.

That South Park episode didn't come out of nowhere. And IMO the topic had enough critical mass that Trey & Matt could have done it years earlier. I'm not surprised that they addressed it, I'm surprised that they waited so long.

I see what you're saying, but I think you can apply the same to Rey, even. I mean, yeah, she duels Kylo Ren, but it's after he's taken a bowcaster bolt to the gut -- which we've already seen is capable of literally blowing an enemy like 30 feet backwards, and while he's dealing with the emotional turmoil of having shanked his dad.

Rey's failures kinda depend on which film you look at. In TFA, she manages to get herself captured while running away from her "destiny" at Maz's castle. Beyond that, when I actually started thinking about it, there's less that Rey actively does or tries to accomplish, and thus less for her to fail at. Like, in Starkiller base, she doesn't really have a goal other than to escape. She succeeds at that, but only because Finn and Han showed up in the Falcon. She fails to save Han, though (although she also didn't have that as an explicit goal). Her only other goals seem to be "run away from the bad people chasing me," "return the droid," and she vacillates on "return to Jakku" (which she fails to do, but I'm not really gonna count that one). Put simply, in TFA, Rey is far less active and far more reactive. In TLJ, Rey's "goal" is to recruit Luke to come save the day, and she fails at that. She doesn't exactly train to become a Jedi, either. I'd say, though, that her major failings are more...internal, and her major successes are likewise internal. For external successes, she tries to go save Ben, and fails quite miserably. She does manage to rescue what's left of the Resistance, but ultimately it's Luke who really saves the day there by buying Rey time to get the Resistance out. TROS is such a mess that I can't really remember it but I do very clearly remember Rey killing Chewbacca by accident (just kidding! There are no consequences in these films.). Ok, so at least she thinks she killed Chewie. But boy, that's a huge failure there. She loses control of her power, kills a friend (she thinks) and almost goes evil.

But again, I think all of this stuff boils down to two things:

1. Storytelling style: JJ's style is frenetic, helter-skelter, roller-coaster storytelling where you almost never have a moment to breathe or think, and where we just don't really bother with a ton of grounded character development. I can't overstate how much I think this actually hurts the films and creates a lot of the issues people have. Stuff just happens in ways that aren't earned. And that's true for all of the characters.

2. No clear plan. IF they'd had a coherent plan from start to finish, even just as bullet points, some kind of "story bible" they could touch back to repeatedly when writers were in a corner, I think a lot of this stuff would've been...at least improved, if not solved altogether. They just didn't have a coherent vision, though, and as a result you have this wildly uneven, tonally discordant "trilogy" that misserves all the characters and the story overall.

I've heard it called "passive-active syndrome". It's a writing issue where the main chararacter is always responding to stuff thrown at them. They are doing what you want a protagonist to do, or what you expect their character to do, but it's not really interesting because they are so reactive and predictable. It's Indiana Jones running from a giant rolling boulder. (The boulder showing up was surprising. His reaction to it was not.)

It's why Steven Seagal can diffuse a bomb and save a busload of kids from an evil mobster and yet it fails to make you interested in the movie or his character. Umm, of course he did all that. Isn't that what a decent person would do in his shoes? He's a good-guy badass who can destroy anybody and do anything, right? What he did was noble but it's not interesting from a character POV.

It's like watching Superman doing random good deeds for 2 hours. You approve, but you aren't interested.

In the OT, Luke is constantly making decisions/actions that are distinctly his and they move the story forward. Rescuing Leia from execution in ANH. Taking out the AT-ATs with tow cables on Hoth. Entering the cave on Dagobah. Rushing off to save Han & Leia at Bespin. Confronting Vader against all sound judgment. Strutting into Jabba's palace alone in ROTJ. Making C-3PO elevate in the Ewok village. Turning himself in to the Imperials on Endor. Refusing to fight in the throne room. Betting on the good in Vader.


In the ST you could predict most of Rey's behavior with "What would Steven Seagal do?"

She might not be winning the fights as easily as Seagal does. But the point is, she would have made all the same choices. Run. Fight. Get angry. Save somebody. Etc.

 

[cboath]

I get tired of the Kylo lost because he wasn't at full strength so that explains it. No, no it doesn;t.

I could go back to the 90's when Mike Tyson was in his prime, he could be shot and have the flu, but the only way i'm taking him down is if i can sneak up behind him and hit him with a sledge hammer before he knows i'm there. I go up face to face, i'm toast.

Adrenaline will give you willpower and strength, it doesn't give you knowledge and talent. Kylo knew what he was doing and knew how to use the force and a lightsaber. Hell, Finn had tons more training than Rey and got whipped in a few seconds. Blaster training or not, he was schooled in combat as a trooper.

What's on screen is she just magically knew what to do and how to do it. Hours from learning the force was even real, she yanks a saber from what? 100 feet away from a fully trained Kylo, then proceeds to kick his butt. That doesn't happen. As noted, several months, after Luke had some tiny level of training, he could barely pull a saber from 5ft away.

She then starts training with Luke, what? 24-48 hours after learning the force is real and can handle everything he throws at her seemingly first time. Not a single 'i don't understand' or 'what do you mean' in regards to actual training. It's what? less than a week til she's on the giant ship with kylo in front of snoke, and she doesn't beat kylo, but is his complete equal in that time frame and can handle multiple royal guards at once with no real issues.

To be honest, watching it,. it didn't really bother me. But when you go back and look at it, it just does not ring true in any way. Not even when we learn in pt 3 she's palps grand daughter. Being his grand daughter doesn't mean she has his power or skill level at all, especially day 1 or 7, which is what we are supposed to be believe. ANH to ROTJ was what? 5ish years? TFA to the end of TLJ was a few days - she progressed further in a few days than Luke in 5 years. Just, no. Palps doesn't help that argument either as Anakin was supposed the strongest ever and Luke was his son, not his grandson, so that should give him better odds of having that power than Rey having Palps.

If you want to (as a filmmaker) say the force took over and gave her the ability, fine. But you have to show that clearly. They didn't. So, they can't use that as an excuse.

 

[Astyanax]

Never mind the ESB-to-ROTJ gap, look at the time between ANH-to-ESB (which was at least a year or two). Luke probably didn't spend all that free time doing Mad Libs. I think you could make an argument that Luke should have already been BETTER than he was in the Wampa cave. He could barely get that lightsaber to budge until he was panicking.

It's actually three years between ANH and ESB, and always has been in the old and new canon. The newer comics fill in a lot of that gap, and although most of us (including myself) do not hold those in our head-canon, Disney does, and there's lots of Luke's Force exploration in those. So when Luke says in Yoda's hut: "But I've learned so much," he's not talking about the 15 minutes he had under Obi-Wan.

 

[HeartBlade]

No effing way will they make a movie about Rey actually teaching. That's not cinematic. Nor is it an easy topic of for a weak writer to write.

There would be a token few minutes of Rey teaching (and that will mainly just be her doing things WAY better than the students do). Then an emergency will happen and she will be called off to do something heroic. Because she's still the best at everything and must be the one who saves the day, especially in her own movie.

"Yeah. Teaching is boring and being a master means you are the best at everything, nothing to do with paving a way and making a better next generation. Screw the others. Rey is the only jedi we need." - Kathleen Kennedy probably

As for Kennedy, I have no doubt she wants this Rey movie to happen and hopes it will salvage the rep of the ST. It won't, but I'm sure she thinks it can and expects it to. She's been in charge of LFL for a decade and it's been the same patterns repeating: Doubling-down on her ideas and ignoring signs of trouble until the plane crashes into the mountain.

I am honestly baffled how she is still in charge. Although I think the recent Filoni promotion has negated it, I do think Lucasfilm as a whole is already dead.

Lucasfilm only really had 2 big IPs: Star Wars and Indiana Jones. While both were damaged under Lucas (PT and Crystal Skull); they were still loved enough that people would still buy Star Wars video games and are still begging for an Indy video game even though it would basically be Uncharted. Only two franchises but both major blockbusters.

Kennedy has effectively destroyed both. Star Wars is regulated to tv now with mixed results. You can easily read comments on how lightsabers have been nerfed where stabbing is "just a flesh wound" and comments on how Disney destroyed Star Wars is mainstream.

As much as I love the series, Indiana Jones was honestly already dead. Ford is Indy and he was already pushing it with Crystal Skull which is one of the reasons why it flopped imo. Still had issues like the introduction of sci-fi and Mutt but with a younger Ford doing the stunts (which would remove Mutt) with a story to get back together with Marion would have worked as a story ender (even though Last Crusade already did). While fans were fearful that Indy would be replaced by Shaw, it kind of had to happen for the franchise to continue.

 

[HeartBlade]

I dont want to join the bashing ST/Rey and character progression because that has been discussed ad nauseum in other threads and there isnt new stuff to add in but I do think there is a "women are better" slant at Disney. Its either in the writing room, the corporate culture, or leadership but all of their products are pushing this slant.

The reason I say this is because of Disney's latest failed product: Wish.

Wish is Disney's latest musical animated film but in addition to a film, its also a celebration of Disney's animated history with the film also containing references to past famous Disney plotlines (wishing on a star, the magic of wishes, even some references to the seven dwarves). Its also just a travesty of a film plagued with bad writing and a "woman good" theme which is why I bring it up. But rather than rehash the movie, the pitch meeting is funnier.

The movie itself has also been lambasted by critics for poor storytelling so this isnt a case of just "internet critics" being mad. The villain motivation doesnt make sense, would make more sense for a Queen than King to be a villain given Disney's film history (but I guess we cant have women be evil anymore), and the ending recreates the very problem the protagonist was trying to address. But its ok because the new ruler is a woman now.

I do think Disney has always been more for girls than boys given the emphasis on Disney Princesses and fairy tales with female protagonists but even then, the stories were competent with the emphasis being on characters rather than gender. Recent Disney products now almost blatantly emphasize women as superior and perfect compared to their sausage wielding counterparts in all of their franchises (MCU, Star Wars, Willow, Disney animation) where female characters are just better and its too mainstream in their products to just chalk up to bad writing imo. Disney does have bad writers but you should then also see badly written male protagonists that are near invincible and flawless defeating the villain. We dont see that, hence why I do think there is also a woman are better slant in Disney.

 

[VanPersie]

Did we really need yet another thread on the creative disaster that was the sequel trilogy??

View attachment 1778389

I think this topic has been pretty thoroughly discussed and subjected to scholarly debate—in multiple threads prior to this one.

How else are we supposed to see the same repetitive points, made by the same people, if we don't have the exact same threads every single year?....

 

[Solo4114]

Have to agree with batguy here. It may not be intentional, but it's a pattern in Lucasfilm. In just the last few years:

• Luke became a failed Jedi Master who walked out on the galaxy
  
  
• Han became a failed husband and deadbeat father, who even let his ship slip away.
  
  
• Leia became a failed politician when her attempts at governing were written as corrupt, and then wiped out.
  
  
• Boba Fett became a lazy, failed crime lord who was soft on his underlings.
  
  
• Obi-Wan became a depressed loser, abandoning his lightsaber and giving up on life until he was schooled by a child (female is irrelevant).
  
  
• Indiana Jones gave up and started watching paint peel, and got schooled by a kid youngster (female is irrelevant).
  
  
• Willow became a failed sorcerer who had a falling out with his children, also schooled by kids.
  
  
• Not Lucasfilm, but similar thread: Jean-Luc Picard became a miserable, lonely, dying retiree who gave up on Starfleet, and when he went back to the stars he was weak and apologetic throughout (until his S3 "apology retcon").

These are our childhood heroes, systematically taken down, one by one! It may not be intentional, but it sure looks like it! "Let the past die, kill it if you have to" seems to be the approach here!

What else do you notice about each of these things?

Right. They're all attempts to go back to the well long after the original hero has won the day. More importantly, I'd argue, they're a refusal by studios (and audiences, to some extent) to move on from the past and do something new.

Each of these projects is an attempt to extend the lifespan of an already-long-in-the-tooth franchise with already-long-in-the-tooth characters (and in some instances, actors) who are quite simply past their fighting prime, as it were.

Whenever you take a dip in this pool, you invite the very high likelihood that your favorite characters will be diminished. Why? Because without that, there's nowhere to go dramatically. The other option is "And then the oldsters came and kicked ass."

With the Star Wars sequel trilogy, once they announced the old actors would be in it, I was pretty much expecting exactly what I got. It wasn't gonna be the old crew high-fiving the young crew and then kicking ass back to back with them. It was going to be "The Empire in some form is back, the old victory is rendered hollow or only temporary, and the old characters are now shadows of their former selves in their glory years."

Put simply: you can't go home again. Audiences either don't realize this or refuse to accept it, but it's the truth. Studios seem to accept it in some sense, but still feel the need to inflict it on audiences that -- apparently -- can't accept it. And the end result is "Why are my old heroes old and decrepit and lame now? Why couldn't they make them cool?" Because if you do that, you either have a self-indulgent stupid movie where nothing happens other than geriatric heroes whipping ass unstopped, or you have some passing attempt to inject a modicum of difficulty for them that ends up ringing hollow. If you're gonna have a torch-passing film, there has to be a reason to pass the torch, and if the old folks are perfectly capable or able to solve the problem themselves, then there's no actual reason.

Now, I'll absolutely agree that the ST could've handled things better. It is a massive tonal shift to go from Yub Yub/Celebrate the Love to "LUKE SKYWALKER IS MISSING!! THE FIRST ORDER REIGNS SUPREME!!" and whatnot. But really, if you were gonna include the oldsters...what'd you expect?

With Boba Fett, the dude was eaten by the Sarlacc. Either he crawls out and it's non-stop asskicking for the next several boring hours, or you actually have some character growth and a reason to bother having the show at all in the first place.

With Obi-Wan, same story. I mean, what else were people expecting? What the hell is he supposed to be doing for the 6-8 hour run-time of the series? Just sitting, stoically watching Luke and saying "Some day...some day you'll be ready" and then...what? Mopping up stormtroopers with ease? There's nowhere for the character to go when you do that. That's a boring show and story.

With Indiana Jones, no, I'm sorry, but nobody can reasonably have expected anything different from a sad Indy. The character is supposed to be in his 70s, and is literally a living relic of another time. The actor is in his 80s! He is not an action hero anymore no matter how well-preserved Harrison Ford is. So, what's he supposed to be doing? Where's that character supposed to go? Why are we telling a story about him now?

Willow and Picard I can't speak to. I haven't seen any Picard, and I watched, I think, maybe the first one or two episodes of Willow before I said "I'll come back to this later," and then it D+ was like "Willow? You mean the charming 1988 fantasy action film? Because we don't know what TV show you're talking about..."

There are two ways to elevate a new character in writing:

1. They earn it by being flawed, making mistakes, suffering consequences, and growing from the experience.
   
   
2. Everyone else around them is reduced in capability and/or competence, thus leaving them to float to the top.

The latter method is the quick and lazy way. It's not about gender, it's about lazy handling of a lead character. But in some cases can have the side effect of making a gender feel slighted.

I agree with the point above that Leia was pooped-on too. This isn't genderism we're seeing, I think it might be ageism!

I do agree that this isn't about gender. I also think the "coincidence" of women being competent has a lot more to do with the fact that women are simply being cast as the central character/lead of these stories. The conscious decision there is, at most, "Let's make this stuff accessible to little girls, too." That's about it, I'd guess. It's not "Make the men look stupid" or even "Make the women look hyper competent." It's "Make the hero/central figure be a hero, and have it be a woman." I think it only really stands out because we're all so used to just defaulting to dudes being the heroes.

But what a lot of your list of diminished old school heroes is really about is an inability to see beyond the past and do something different. The Star Wars sequels could've been set three generations after the deaths (by natural causes, at ripe old ages, surrounded by happy families and a thriving Republic and Jedi Order) of the OT heroes, with them maybe appearing as holovids or holocron content, and otherwise relying entirely on new characters in a new story. But no, we had to go dredge up the old characters, set the story some 30-ish years after the last one, and with the old characters in the films a lot.

Well...be careful what you wish for, I guess.

Personally, I think as long as Hollywood and audiences alike suffer from this creative myopia of not being able to see beyond what's come before, this is exactly what's gonna happen. Old heroes will be revisited and diminished (because that's how you create drama, and also how time and age work), and we'll all be made to feel a little uncomfortable in our own mortality.