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They came so close, but landed so, so, far away...
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00:00The Star Wars sequels are some of the most divisive things in the entire film industry.
00:04Whether you hate them or love them though, for what it's worth, I really do like them.
00:08I think we can all agree that they didn't quite live up to their potential.
00:12There are great elements in there, but a few things just didn't quite hit the mark.
00:17So with that in mind, I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com and these are 10 simple fixes that would have saved the Star Wars sequels.
00:23Number 10, have a plan from the beginning.
00:25Now, I'm usually critical of planning too far in advance.
00:30The beauty of filmmaking is collaboration and course correction in my opinion,
00:35as you often don't know what works until an audience actually sees it and responds.
00:40Some of the greatest media ever, from Breaking Bad to the Dark Knight trilogy,
00:45had no grand plan from the beginning.
00:47And neither did the original Star Wars trilogy incidentally.
00:51So much of those movies were just made up on the fly, from huge twists to wholesale characters and people loved it.
00:58But if there's another side to this coin, it's a series that signifies what it's like when there's no plan in place
01:04and worse, when the creatives aren't on the same page and sadly, it's the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
01:11Things might have shaken out better had we gotten three distinct filmmakers continuing the story
01:16and putting their own spin on things.
01:18But to have J.J. Abrams start the series, then have Rian Johnson put his own take on it,
01:23only to then go back to J.J. makes for a total incoherent mess.
01:28And worse, it led to retcons that attempted to hobble together some kind of sense for a unified vision,
01:34but which only made everything worse and resulted in so much of the story looking like a weird detour.
01:39The Rise of Skywalker retcons The Last Jedi, which retcons in turn The Force Awakens,
01:45and while not every beat should have been planned from the start,
01:48there should have at least been a general roadmap that was subject to change.
01:52Number 9, tease the Emperor at the end of Episode 8.
01:55One of the major complaints of The Rise of Skywalker is that good old Emperor Sheev Palpatine
02:00returned in the franchise's last movie with no better explanation
02:04than poor Dameron's exasperating, somehow, Palpatine has returned.
02:09Like, yeah, thanks for clearing that one up, J.J.
02:12While the Star Wars story team has since cleared up details of Palpatine's resurrection in other media,
02:18audiences shouldn't have to read books to enjoy a series which predominantly exists as a movie franchise.
02:24The Emperor's Shadow has always hung over Star Wars,
02:27and his return wasn't a bad idea in and of itself,
02:30but Sheev would have been better utilized in a more minor role,
02:33maybe taking the form of a pre-recorded hologram as present in Colin Trevorrow's rejected Episode 9 script.
02:40The most exciting thing to come out of The Last Jedi was Kylo Ren's status as the new leader of the First Order,
02:45and unfortunately, Palpatine's resurrection meant that we never got to see Supreme Leader Ren unleash his wrath.
02:52This decision led to Kylo following more or less the same story arc as Vader in the original trilogy,
02:58ensuring the Rise of Skywalker became such a carbon copy of Return of the Jedi
03:02as The Force Awakens was of A New Hope.
03:05So, to make this surprise appearance less disorientating,
03:08Disney really should have teased Palpatine's return at the end of Episode 8,
03:12and no, his brief mention by Luke doesn't count.
03:15At the very least, Palpatine's return could have been revealed on screen,
03:18rather than being casually mentioned in the worst opening crawl of the entire franchise.
03:23Yes, even worse than the taxation of trade routes is in dispute.
03:28Number 8, make Kylo Ren's motivations clear.
03:31Kylo Ren is the most interesting character of the sequel trilogy hands down,
03:35a fully-fledged realization of what Anakin could have been in the prequel trilogies.
03:39While Kylo isn't sure about his place in the wider Star Wars mythos,
03:42the one thing that is clear is that he resents Snoke,
03:45who is holding him back from his true purpose.
03:47And, unfortunately, audiences never get to see what this true purpose is.
03:53Kylo establishes that he wants to let the past die,
03:56but he never indicates what he will replace it with.
03:59He asks Rey to take his hand, but he never tells her to what end.
04:03In The Force Awakens, the genocidal murderer, formerly known as Ben Solo,
04:07promised his grandfather's molten helmet that he would finish what you started,
04:12but we were never told what that meant.
04:14A redeemed Ben certainly helps Rey bring down the Emperor once and for all in the most minor way,
04:19but this can't be what he meant.
04:21Kylo didn't know the Emperor was even alive until Episode 9.
04:25Maybe he wanted to kill the remaining Jedi, but why?
04:28He resented the Sith as much as he did the Jedi in the first place.
04:32So, if perhaps Kylo felt that Luke's Jedi Order was repeating the same mistakes it had during the prequels,
04:37it's up in the air.
04:39The introduction of Palpatine in Episode 9 and consequent re-establishment of Kylo as a minor henchman baddie
04:45means that fans will never find out,
04:47nor will they see Ren's vision for a balanced order come to life.
04:51Kylo Ren's conflicting motivations might make him more compelling of a character,
04:55but the fact that audiences are never told what he wanted is indicative of poor character design
05:00and lack of a fully-fledged blueprint for the trilogy.
05:03Number 7, Don't Waste Cool Supporting Characters
05:06The Force Awakens introduced a ton of cool concepts and character designs neglected in future sequel films.
05:13Captain Phasma and the Knights of Ren are the two most obvious examples of underused ideas,
05:18with their distinctive visual appearances and comparative lack of screen time
05:22indicating that they were only ever created to shift action figures.
05:26However, Maz Kanata was the most underused of the bunch.
05:29Introduced in The Force Awakens, Maz hints that she is a Force user,
05:33despite never aligning herself to the Jedi or the Sith,
05:36making her the first neutral Force-sensitive character in the Skywalker saga.
05:41Unfortunately for Maz, whose Force scenes were cut from Episode 7's theatrical release,
05:45she was relegated to a minor, contract-fulfilling cameo in The Last Jedi,
05:49and returned as nothing more than a minor supporting character in Episode 9.
05:52So, not only do audiences never find out about Kitana's relationship to the original trilogy's rebellion,
05:58or just how she got her hands on Luke Skywalker's lightsaber,
06:02poor Maz was reduced to the most overtly fanservice moment of the entire sequel trilogy.
06:07That being, handing Chewbacca the medal that he never received at the end of A New Hope.
06:12Number 6, Swap Hosnian Prime for Coruscant.
06:15One of the most emotive shots of The Force Awakens is Starkiller Base's destruction of several planets
06:20that we learn in a passing throwaway line to be the Hosnian system.
06:24This line is easy to miss, so fans would be forgiven for thinking that the only planet
06:29that we see being destroyed up close was Coruscant, capital of the Republic in the original trilogy.
06:34After all, the telltale signs are there.
06:36Monumental skyscrapers as far as the eye can see,
06:39senators looking startled from a balcony,
06:41the fact that this planet was given particular emphasis as opposed to the anonymized destruction
06:46of the others in the system, it all just kind of added up.
06:49But it turns out that the planet was not the same one that we had formed an attachment to
06:53in episodes 1 through 3, but rather a new, almost identical location that we'd never heard of before.
07:00Coruscant's destruction would have elicited more of an emotional reaction from the audience
07:04as fans would watch a pivotal planet which had survived the Empire
07:07suddenly crumble under a new regime before their very eyes.
07:12The destruction of Coruscant would have helped cement the themes of letting the past die
07:16that the entire sequel trilogy worked towards.
07:19Number 5, actually show us Anakin's force ghost instead of using a voice.
07:23Not only did the sequel trilogy fail to acknowledge the original Skywalker's pre-Darth Vader persona,
07:29I mean seriously there's no way that Kylo Ren would have been unaware of his grandfather's redemption,
07:34it also gave Anakin's disembodied force ghost the worst line in the film.
07:38The first 6 movies in the Skywalker saga were all about Anakin,
07:42so it makes absolutely no sense that he didn't make a significant appearance in the sequel trilogy.
07:47Return of the Jedi established that Anakin could appear as a force ghost,
07:51so his absence in the sequel movies is startling,
07:54especially when you'd think that he'd probably want to put a few things right after all the damage he caused.
08:00Surely he would have seen that Luke's Jedi Order was repeating the mistakes that the Jedi made in the prequel trilogy,
08:06and warned him to change his ways.
08:09Episode 9 made clear that force users need to open themselves up to communication to force ghosts,
08:14but you'd think that Kylo Ren would have longed to speak to the grandfather that he idolized,
08:19and listening to his lessons about why following the dark side of the force might not be the best decision that someone can make.
08:26Concept art for the force awakens showcased an Anakin Skywalker force ghost as well
08:30that was still corrupt with dark side of the force that was half human and half machine.
08:34And this would have been super sick.
08:38Number 4, change Anakin's force ghost line.
08:41Okay, so yeah, this one's a double whammy.
08:43Despite being a comparatively minor change,
08:45this would have had the biggest implications not just for the sequel trilogy,
08:49but for the Skywalker saga as a whole.
08:51Amongst the voices of disembodied Jedi at the end of The Rise of Skywalker,
08:55Hayden Christensen's Anakin Skywalker can be heard saying,
08:58bring balance to the force as I did.
09:01This line was clearly included by the filmmakers to easily explain away any argument about Anakin's role in the first six movies being undermined,
09:09effectively telling fans that the so-called chosen one did bring balance to the force,
09:14whatever that means,
09:15but the force simply fell out of balance again less than 30 years after his death.
09:20It's short enough to be disregarded,
09:22but this throwaway line only serves to highlight just how meaningless Anakin's sacrifice was at the end of Return of the Jedi.
09:28The idea that the force had been balanced so soon before needing balancing again raises questions of its own.
09:34Does the force periodically get thrown out of balance every few decades,
09:38needing a new chosen one to come around and set it straight again?
09:42Throughout the entire saga,
09:43we are never told really what balance to the force actually means,
09:46and this line does nothing to clarify this concept.
09:49Instead of telling Rhea to bring balance to the force as I did,
09:53Anakin's force ghost should have said something like,
09:55finish what I started and bring balance to the force.
09:58But probably snappier,
09:59I mean,
09:59I'm not a screenwriter.
10:00As well as maintaining the meaningfulness of Anakin's legacy,
10:03he weakened the Emperor so that Rhea could destroy him.
10:06This line would have recalled Kylo's promise to his grandfather that he would finish what he started.
10:11Number three,
10:12show off Vader's castle.
10:13Turns out that the anonymous looking red planet Kylo Ren made a very brief trip to at the start of the Rise of Skywalker
10:19was actually Mustafar of Revenge of the Sith fame.
10:22Not that you'd notice it if you hadn't read the film's visual dictionary.
10:25I mean,
10:26you would be forgiven for not realizing of course,
10:28as Mustafar looked nothing like it did in the last Skywalker saga appearance.
10:33Lava fields have been replaced by dark trees thrown against an ominous red mist,
10:37and there's none of these symbolic more machine than man metal structures,
10:41which helped make Obi-Wan and Anakin's final fight so visually compelling.
10:45This isn't the first time Disney's Star Wars has smuggled in this planet though,
10:49without actually acknowledging its existence.
10:51The planet last appeared in 2017's Rogue One,
10:54a movie which made a big deal of labeling the names of its planets on screen.
10:58The staggeringly short shot of Mustafar, however, didn't get the same treatment.
11:02Regardless though,
11:03it turns out that Kylo Ren was looking for a Sith wayfinder amongst the ruins of Vader's castle,
11:08which had somehow become a forest overrun by trees in the space of around 30 years.
11:14Seeing Vader's castle in all of its sinister glory would have not only made it obvious that this opening planet
11:18actually had a connection to the other movies in the franchise,
11:21but it also would have been a pretty cool backdrop to an action-packed scene.
11:24Number two, more exciting planets.
11:27See what you like about the prequels,
11:29but at least George Lucas' ill-fated second trilogy introduced interesting planets to the mix,
11:34rather than delivering the same mono-environment locations featured in the first three movies.
11:39And put simply, Anakin would have absolutely hated the sequel trilogy
11:44because it introduces not one, but two all-new sand planets.
11:49Compare the sequel trilogy's dull locations to vibrant planets like Naboo,
11:53which...
11:54...water kingdom,
11:58and Coruscant, a planet-sprawling metropolis with its buzzing criminal underworld,
12:02and even Kamino with its startling white clone factory and its dramatic seascape.
12:07Act 2 was pretty nice visually, but there still wasn't much there,
12:12and the most exciting planet introduced in the entire sequel trilogy was Canto Blight,
12:16which was wasted at best.
12:18Number one, a more original start to the trilogy.
12:21Being essentially a soft reboot after the disappointment that was the prequel trilogy,
12:25it was inevitable that Disney's punt at a trio of Skywalker stories would lean heavily
12:29on what made the original trilogy such a lovable cash cow in the first place.
12:33Namely, props and sets that imitated a lived-in world rather than shoddy CGI,
12:38character-centric stories,
12:40and a compelling mythos which left no room for midi-chlorians.
12:44But J.J. Abrams and crew might have taken their exercise in nostalgia a step too far.
12:49Rather than just imitating the filmmaking techniques and principles
12:52that cemented the 1977 Star Wars as a classic,
12:55they copied the whole story altogether.
12:57Of course, some things are different,
12:59but the similarities between The Force Awakens and A New Hope are too obvious to overlook.
13:04There's the old mentor figure, the evil military regime,
13:08the hero from a desert planet.
13:10The list stretches on and on for so long that it probably warrants its own article of its own.
13:15While The Force Awakens served as the perfect franchise reset after the sour taste of the prequels,
13:19in hindsight, a lot of its story decisions are just a little bit uninteresting.
13:23What's more, Episode 7's decision to retell the story of A New Hope
13:27only makes the original trilogy redundant.
13:30All of the Resistance's sacrifices are rendered null
13:32given that the galaxy reverted back to the exact same state they had founded in,
13:36which never got resolved really, did that?
13:39Look, we get that Star Wars is about, well, wars.
13:42But maybe this could have involved a different threat
13:45rather than a third galactic civil war.
13:48But hey, that's a conversation for the next three movies.
13:51So, that's our list.
13:53I want to know what you guys think down in the comments below.
13:54What do you think about the sequel trilogy
13:56and what changes would you have made?
13:58While you're down there as well,
13:59could you please give us a like, share, subscribe
14:00and head over to whatculture.com
14:02for more lists and news like this every single day.
14:05Even if you don't though, I've been Josh.
14:06Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you soon.
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