"It turns out that control c’ing and v’ing the plot from the previous trilogy isn’t the most subtle way to expand the saga. " -- Elias D, 10th grade
When the Mandalorian aired in 2019, it portrayed the reemergence of the Mandalorian gunslinger culture, more specifically, a bounty-hunter-turned-dad shifting from his neutrality to fight the Imperial Remnants spread out across the outer rim. It also became the first of many other Disney+ Star Wars series, both live action and animated, each intended to bridge the gaps between each trilogy.
This brings us to the latest of these shows, the immensely well-executed Disney+ show Andor. In Andor, we get a grounded, gritty, average-citizen view of the Star Wars universe with gunfights and multilevel corruption taking the place of space wizard showdowns and superweapons. The characters are dynamic as opposed to some of the more static hero/villain characters established in other star wars media. We zoom out of the large scale to see the story of a single settlement coping with the arrival of the Empire, mixed in with juxtaposing narratives of a young grifter trying to escape his mistakes through accidental heroism, and a low level deputy-type blindly following his naivete to defend his overlords. The show balances action with internal politics (from the joint perspective of Luthen and Mon Mothma vs ISB supervisor Meero) to really develop both sides of the conflict: the slowly emerging rebellion and all-powerful Empire. Ultimately, a diverse set of perspectives are shown and the producers manage to fit an entire story into just one intriguing season.
However, even with the undeniable artistry of these off-shoot projects, they can’t redeem the main plotlines of the new sequel trilogy that they help set up – the 7th, 8th and 9th movies remain fraught with lazy story writing, unrealistic plot tools, underdeveloped characters, fan service, and self-plagiarism.
For instance, in the Rise of Skywalker, C3PO is programmed not to utter the ancient sith language, vital for translating a message, so the crew have to do a goonies-style treasure hunt which piles onto the runtime. C3PO was built and programmed by a toddler, so this obstacle has no reason to exist in the franchise other than to clumsily further the plot.
But the egregious plot-crimes of Lucasfilm don’t stop there.
Picture this: A poor person from a sand planet finds a droid who has information important to a radical terrorist group. Said sand peasant joins up with some people who initially do not want to join the rebellion. Meanwhile, a black helmeted former Jedi (space wizard) of Skywalker lineage and his more logical British counterpart who he doesn’t get along with build a giant spherical space laser to eliminate political rivals. The heroes infiltrate the laser. An old man very important in the previous trilogy is killed by the masked man while the protagonists watch helplessly. Then, people in Alphabet soup spaceships blow up the space laser and save the day. The walking throw rug creature doesn't get a medal.
Did you like that summary? It applies to both A New Hope and The Force Awakens, almost exact replicas of each other. It turns out that control c’ing and v’ing the plot from the previous trilogy isn’t the most subtle way to expand the saga.
While the CGI and dialogue writing have improved from the robotic monologues of the prequels, the faulty fundamentals driving the plot overshadow all the merits of the new trilogy. Several characters, namely Finn, Rose, and Poe Dameron, had promising starts as protagonists, but their characters were ultimately used for throwaway jokes and comedic relief. By the time Rey emerged as the main character, she remained extremely static, just an altruist with little discernible superobjective, who goes through little character development and by the end of the trilogy, we still don’t really know who she is.
As for another example of lazy writing in the new sequels, we come to Palpatine’s unjustified resurrection. The plotline of Palpatine's return has now been “foreshadowed” after the fact in the mandalorian and the Bad Batch through evidence of the Empire’s cloning experiments. Had his reincarnation been introduced this way in film, perhaps it could’ve gone better. However, Palpatine was mainly reintroduced to hype the final movie in the series.The resolution of the saga ends up heavily involving a convoluted romance nobody asked for, and overall, the whole trilogy is jarringly connected together, with few common themes. The plot of the sequels have just reached a point where they cannot be justified as the shows are attempting to do.
Essentially, the Star Wars universe doesn’t know what it wants to be anymore, and with the impermanence of character death, there are few stakes, especially since all of the new content aims to bridge the gaps between trilogies, playing with our expectations even though we know where the galaxy ultimately goes.
But what could have been? A little known fact is that George Lucas, the creator of the Star Wars franchise, had episode 7, 8 and 9 sequels planned before Lucasfilm was sold and the creative direction given to new owner Kathleen Kennedy. Had George Lucas produced his intended sequel trilogy, we would've seen much better writing and character development. Vader’s grandchildren starred as the main feature, with Darth Maul and Darth Talon filling the power vacuum left by the Empire, and Luke’s restart of the Jedi Order coming to fruition. The planned Maul arc is arguably much more plausible and intriguing, since the final seasons of the Clone Wars as well as Solo showed the progression of his takeover of the criminal underworld, which would have eventually put him into his position of power in the theoretical George Lucas trilogy. Maul’s primary allies would have been the Imperial Remnant, as they appeared in the Mandalorian, who would’ve served as a far more interesting adversary (because of the variety of independent factions formed post Galactic Civil War) than the First Order, who were essentially the sequels’ copy+paste of the Galactic Empire. Furthermore, in these theoretical sequels, Luke’s character wouldn’t have been needlessly thrown away and killed off after all his years of character development, which makes much more sense than his resigned mentality in the sequels.
Overall, the universe would have been explored through a much more scientific lens, fully developing the concept of Midichlorians and microbiological force beings instead of just groundlessly introducing new abilities and events as the real sequels did. At the end of the day, we’ll never see these scrapped sequels, so Star Wars fans will have to make their peace with the canon, and enjoy the current shows regardless of how they factor into the entire universe.
This brings us to the latest of these shows, the immensely well-executed Disney+ show Andor. In Andor, we get a grounded, gritty, average-citizen view of the Star Wars universe with gunfights and multilevel corruption taking the place of space wizard showdowns and superweapons. The characters are dynamic as opposed to some of the more static hero/villain characters established in other star wars media. We zoom out of the large scale to see the story of a single settlement coping with the arrival of the Empire, mixed in with juxtaposing narratives of a young grifter trying to escape his mistakes through accidental heroism, and a low level deputy-type blindly following his naivete to defend his overlords. The show balances action with internal politics (from the joint perspective of Luthen and Mon Mothma vs ISB supervisor Meero) to really develop both sides of the conflict: the slowly emerging rebellion and all-powerful Empire. Ultimately, a diverse set of perspectives are shown and the producers manage to fit an entire story into just one intriguing season.
However, even with the undeniable artistry of these off-shoot projects, they can’t redeem the main plotlines of the new sequel trilogy that they help set up – the 7th, 8th and 9th movies remain fraught with lazy story writing, unrealistic plot tools, underdeveloped characters, fan service, and self-plagiarism.
For instance, in the Rise of Skywalker, C3PO is programmed not to utter the ancient sith language, vital for translating a message, so the crew have to do a goonies-style treasure hunt which piles onto the runtime. C3PO was built and programmed by a toddler, so this obstacle has no reason to exist in the franchise other than to clumsily further the plot.
But the egregious plot-crimes of Lucasfilm don’t stop there.
Picture this: A poor person from a sand planet finds a droid who has information important to a radical terrorist group. Said sand peasant joins up with some people who initially do not want to join the rebellion. Meanwhile, a black helmeted former Jedi (space wizard) of Skywalker lineage and his more logical British counterpart who he doesn’t get along with build a giant spherical space laser to eliminate political rivals. The heroes infiltrate the laser. An old man very important in the previous trilogy is killed by the masked man while the protagonists watch helplessly. Then, people in Alphabet soup spaceships blow up the space laser and save the day. The walking throw rug creature doesn't get a medal.
Did you like that summary? It applies to both A New Hope and The Force Awakens, almost exact replicas of each other. It turns out that control c’ing and v’ing the plot from the previous trilogy isn’t the most subtle way to expand the saga.
While the CGI and dialogue writing have improved from the robotic monologues of the prequels, the faulty fundamentals driving the plot overshadow all the merits of the new trilogy. Several characters, namely Finn, Rose, and Poe Dameron, had promising starts as protagonists, but their characters were ultimately used for throwaway jokes and comedic relief. By the time Rey emerged as the main character, she remained extremely static, just an altruist with little discernible superobjective, who goes through little character development and by the end of the trilogy, we still don’t really know who she is.
As for another example of lazy writing in the new sequels, we come to Palpatine’s unjustified resurrection. The plotline of Palpatine's return has now been “foreshadowed” after the fact in the mandalorian and the Bad Batch through evidence of the Empire’s cloning experiments. Had his reincarnation been introduced this way in film, perhaps it could’ve gone better. However, Palpatine was mainly reintroduced to hype the final movie in the series.The resolution of the saga ends up heavily involving a convoluted romance nobody asked for, and overall, the whole trilogy is jarringly connected together, with few common themes. The plot of the sequels have just reached a point where they cannot be justified as the shows are attempting to do.
Essentially, the Star Wars universe doesn’t know what it wants to be anymore, and with the impermanence of character death, there are few stakes, especially since all of the new content aims to bridge the gaps between trilogies, playing with our expectations even though we know where the galaxy ultimately goes.
But what could have been? A little known fact is that George Lucas, the creator of the Star Wars franchise, had episode 7, 8 and 9 sequels planned before Lucasfilm was sold and the creative direction given to new owner Kathleen Kennedy. Had George Lucas produced his intended sequel trilogy, we would've seen much better writing and character development. Vader’s grandchildren starred as the main feature, with Darth Maul and Darth Talon filling the power vacuum left by the Empire, and Luke’s restart of the Jedi Order coming to fruition. The planned Maul arc is arguably much more plausible and intriguing, since the final seasons of the Clone Wars as well as Solo showed the progression of his takeover of the criminal underworld, which would have eventually put him into his position of power in the theoretical George Lucas trilogy. Maul’s primary allies would have been the Imperial Remnant, as they appeared in the Mandalorian, who would’ve served as a far more interesting adversary (because of the variety of independent factions formed post Galactic Civil War) than the First Order, who were essentially the sequels’ copy+paste of the Galactic Empire. Furthermore, in these theoretical sequels, Luke’s character wouldn’t have been needlessly thrown away and killed off after all his years of character development, which makes much more sense than his resigned mentality in the sequels.
Overall, the universe would have been explored through a much more scientific lens, fully developing the concept of Midichlorians and microbiological force beings instead of just groundlessly introducing new abilities and events as the real sequels did. At the end of the day, we’ll never see these scrapped sequels, so Star Wars fans will have to make their peace with the canon, and enjoy the current shows regardless of how they factor into the entire universe.