Honest, I don’t know how you could argue otherwise. It’s a multi-billion dollar amateur hour nightmare.
I should be clear right off the bat that I’m not saying you can’t like the films. There are a lot of little things in the films to like, there are some aspects of the productions that are quite nice. These do not make them good films. So, enjoy, love them, hug them, take them to bed, but don’t try and tell me that they’re masterpieces, works of genius, socially important, etc., because they’re not.
As a trilogy, as films, they suck.
Warning: There are spoilers throughout this essay. I’m not in the mood to hide anything, you have been warned.
It’s disappointing to say this, to reach this conclusion when all is said and done, and I’ve been pondering it for almost a year. Their failure was complete upon the release of The Rise of Skywalker. With that film it became crystal clear, unavoidably so, that Disney never, ever had a plan for its core trilogy. There’s evidence to suggest that no one was ever really in charge.
When you say “trilogy” you are saying to your potential audience that the three parts will tell a unifying story. Each part will have its own ups and down, its own set of arcs, but the three films form a cohesive whole. This is distinct from a “series” of films, such as the James Bond films, with each being its own animal, with Bond himself forming the only continuity.
For Disney, The Force Awakens was a decent launch (my original review is here). Sure, it was a soft reboot of A New Hope, but it introduced some new characters, sprinkled some random setups around, and ended on a wee bit of a cliffhanger. Not a great film, but certainly something you could build from.
Among the questions it raised: Why is Rey so godawful powerful with the force? Is the force why she’s so impossibly good at everything? How did Finn break his conditioning? Are there others who have also broken their Imperial conditioning? Who is Snoke and what in the galaxy far, far away does he want? Who, what, where, why, and how is the First Order? What happened to the New Republic? Why are they so clueless? How are they unable to protect themselves? What awful choices did they make that left them hapless, helpless, defenseless? What is The Resistance resisting? Who supports them? Why do they exist?
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
JJ Abrams is good at posing questions like this; he’s horrific at attempting to answer them. This was one of the reasons I was excited that Rian Johnson would handle The Last Jedi. Between the two, Johnson is the superior filmmaker. While Abrams makes flashy bits of stupid, Johnson makes lean and intelligent pieces.
Alas, Johnson had less than zero interest in continuity, absolutely no respect for established characters or universe, and apparently hated everything, characters and all, that TFA introduced. A million and more words have been written and spoken about how dreadful “Jake” Skywalker was in TLJ and while I agree with much of it, my complaints don’t even need to go there. I’m appalled at how TLJ treats the central cast of the new “trilogy,” or even the idea that this was supposed to be a trilogy.
Poe was introduced as “the best pilot of the Resistance.” TLJ turns him into a fool. He makes the right call at the beginning, sacrificing his bombers to take out a fleet killer, allowing the Resistance fleet to escape, and is punished for it. A new Admiral takes command and browbeats Poe for no reason whatsoever, which will eventually lead to Poe’s mutiny. Let me be clear: Holdo provokes mutiny better than Queeg ever did, and Queeg is the poster boy for captains who provoke mutiny (Bligh was an amateur).
Finn is reduced to comic sidekick, an ignorant and brain-dead meat puppet. He loses all sense of agency, all control over his own life and choices, and “learns” the stupidest “lessons” ever muttered. Not one iota of time is spent exploring his life as a slave-soldier of the First Order; not one whit of care is given for who he is or where he comes from. The most intriguing character in the Disney films is squandered, ruined, left in the gutter to die.
The film puts Leia in a coma so another woman can rise to power, and Admiral Holdo is simply dreadful. She is so actively stupid it makes my teeth hurt. She demonstrates no leadership skills whatsoever. Indeed, her every action paints her as a villain. Yet, in the end, she’s the hero, and isn’t it sweet how she tells Leia how much she likes Poe, the man she’s crapped on for the entire film.
And then there’s Rose, a character of such godawfulness she makes Holdo look like a saint. I read once that all of Rose’s actions can be explained if she were a spy for the First Order. She doesn’t let people escape because she needs them all in a single place for the First Order to capture or kill. She actively sabotages efforts to find a way to subvert the tracking device. She does everything possible to make sure to draw attention to their mission. She stops Finn from destroying the ground cannon. She utters the worse piece of dialogue in Star Wars history. That this was meant to be a serious character, not a caricature and not a spy, is unbelievable.
She is horrible. She’s a dreadful character, written dreadfully, performed dreadfully, producing dreadful results. I hate her so much. (Can you tell?)
(As a quick parenthetical: None of this has to do with anyone being a woman, or even with the performances of the actors involved. It has everything to do with how they were written and treated. Wherever they sit on the gender spectrum is irrelevant. If you fail to recognize this, the problem is with you.)
I harp on all of this because this is where you see the trilogy dying. Expectations weren’t subverted, new expectations were put in their place. Characters weren’t developed, they were rewritten. The story didn’t evolve, a new one was dropped in. Johnson said never mind to anything set up or established by Abrams or any of the previous films and replaced everything with his own setups and desires.
To hammer the point home: Johnson didn’t expand on anything that came before TLJ, he ignored it and did his own thing. He got the results he wanted and never mind whether it worked in the established universe or not, or even whether it make a lick of sense. Not only was this destructive of the Star Wars universe, but it was also lethal to any thought that Disney was crafting a new trilogy.
Despite all that, I had a notion that maybe something could be resurrected (see my original comments here). Ignoring the destruction wrought, maybe a third film could do something with the notion of Rey being spontaneously super-powerful with the force. Maybe there was something to the idea that anyone might be a force user, like Rey and broom-kid. How does a Resistance come back after being so utterly devastated, reduced to only a handful of individuals? And will they figure out that they have a spy (Rose) in their midst?
Alas, nope. Here’s where it goes from destructive to ugly.
Abrams did not care at all for anything Johnson did. The result was that The Rise of Skywalker attempted to erase TLJ. As MauLer pointed out in his unbridled rage, you can watch TFA and TRoS and just ignore TLJ; all you need do is imagine that Luke and Snoke die from heart attacks in the interval between the two films.
More than what Johnson did with TLJ, what Abrams did with TRoS tells you there never was a plan for this trilogy. Johnson, with arrogance and carelessness, “subverted” all the expectations set up by TFA. In return, Abrams pretended TLJ didn’t happen.
So, sure, tell me they had even a rough outline for this “trilogy.”
Watching adults behave like children isn’t pleasant, especially when it involves a multi-billion dollar property. The lack of respect they showed for the characters clearly derived from the lack of respect they had for each other.
In my review of TRoS (here), I pinned the blame on Kathleen Kennedy and that’s where most belongs. Certainly, Disney corporate jumped in and made matters worse, but that only emphasizes the lack of a plan.
It’s the producer’s job to keep these egos in check, to make sure they adhere to a common goal. The original trilogy is a great example of this. Star Wars, before it became A New Hope, was a standalone film which successfully had enough hooks to support sequels. The magic happened with The Empire Strikes Back, which opened up that galaxy far, far away. Each step, culminating with Return of the Jedi, built on what came before. None of that is true with the Disney SW “trilogy.”
The result is that the Star Wars universe is better off pretending these films never happened. I’m beginning to suspect that Disney corporate, as well as Lucasfilm itself, believes this. Look at the tidal wave of future SW shows they are going to spit out. Do any of them happen during or after this trilogy? Look at the list and the answer is obvious.
The Mandalorian? Happens in the years immediately following the collapse of the Empire at the end of Return of the Jedi and decades before The Force Awakens.
Andor? All about Diego Luna’s character from Rogue One, which means it’s set in the time before that film, and between The Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope.
Obi-Wan Kenobi? Speaks for itself, clearly in the same time period as Andor.
Ahsoka? Set during the same time as The Mandalorian, bringing an animated Clone Wars character to life.
Rangers of the New Republic? Again, living in the same time as The Mandalorian. So maybe we will get to see why the New Republic was so suicidal.
The Bad Batch? An animated series taking place after the conclusion of the Clone Wars, so before A New Hope.
The Acolyte? Takes place during the High Republic, and therefore predates The Phantom Menace.
Lando? All about Lando Calrissian and probably set in the time before A New Hope, same as the film Solo.
If I’m generous, maybe the shows set in parallel with The Mandalorian will bridge the gap between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens (something the sequel trilogy should have done). I am less than hopeful. Again, it seems to me as though Disney and Lucasfilm are treating their core trilogy as toxic, a thing to be avoided, and instead focusing like a laser on nostalgia and everything that came before.
Which returns me to my original point: The Disney Star Wars trilogy of films suck, and even Disney knows it.
Comments