Opinion: Why The Foundations Of The ‘Star Wars’ Sequels Were Never Going To Be The Basis For A Strong Story
When Star Wars: The Force Awakens came out, many people loved it. They felt it was a return to Star Wars. They lauded the characters, the action, and the promise the story offered. However, much of this praise was unthinking and arguably came from The Force Awakens being familiar – a sense of security for those the prequels had disenfranchised.
Looking back, just how good was The Force Awakens? Did it hit the high mark many claimed back then? Was it a clever but cheap facsimile that time and clinical examination have exposed as a shoddy forgery?
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A good story needs solid foundations. You might only get a glimpse at the world-building, but it exists to give the universe consistency. From these foundations, you erect the framework of the story. The characters and events exist within this framework.
The Force Awakens was never about building its foundation. Instead, the brain-mistrust behind it had a different idea. The Force Awakens felt that by mimicking A New Hope, they'd have the launching pad for the new trilogy. Unfortunately, although they echoed many of the same beats, they struck them without knowing how or why they'd worked.
In A New Hope, the Empire was in power. We don't know how they got there, how they function (outside of their tyranny), or anything about the person in charge (the Emperor). A New Hope could do this because we had no other frame of reference. The story itself offers the premise that there were baddies and a small band of goodies trying to fight them. That was all we needed to know to function.
The Force Awakens did the same with the First Order. We had a powerful opposing force with an extensive fleet, lots of troops, and they've built Starkiller base. They have a powerful Force user in charge, and he has an apprentice. The goodies, inexplicably, are once again a rag-tag group. The problem is we now have a frame of reference in Return of the Jedi (and the original trilogy).
The Empire fell, and the Emperor perished. He had no apprentices outside of Vader. So how was the First Order born? What was the Republic doing as the First Order was reorganizing and building? How could the First Order get so strong? If Luke was the only person they fear, why would he leave, given his departure empowered them further?
You'd think that after Return of the Jedi, what was left of the Empire would be in disarray. The Rebels would be going around confiscating shipyards and armories as they established the New Republic. But, first, they would pursue any resistance and try to quell it. Then, just as in the real world, the victor would impose sanctions on the defeated. The positions from the original trilogy should be reversed: the New Republic would in power, with what's left of the Empire a motley bunch trying to overthrow them. Instead, we got a continuation of the events and circumstances from the original trilogy. How could this possibly happen? It made the events of the original trilogy redundant.
The Force Awakens gave us some answers, but they were trite. We were expected to accept that while the First Order built the Starkiller base, nobody in the New Republic knew anything about it. In the original trilogy, the Rebels were able to steal plans for both Death Stars, knew the Emperor would visit the second Death Star, and were able to coordinate attacks on each. Once they became a big governing body did their intelligence network become non-existent? Could you imagine that happening in today's world? Could you possibly imagine some terrorist cell building a doomsday weapon while amassing soldiers and armories without alerting any intelligence agencies or government? (Some might point to 9/11 as a parallel, but that was a single terrorist act. The First Order was building a galactic-wide force.) The novelization of The Force Awakens talked about the New Republic growing complacent, oblivious to Leia's concerns. Really? After twenty or so years of tyranny, the New Republic just put their feet up and relaxed? It was all okay, even though you have this substantial antagonistic fleet still flying around out there?
We also learned that the Stormtroopers core now comprised of kids taken from their families and trained to be Stormtroopers. Think about the logistics of this. The Stormtroopers were a considerable force. How many kids did the First Order abduct to create a large enough army that they would be a threat to the New Republic? Did the families say nothing when they were losing kids? Did the Republic not investigate this? You have to wonder where these kids were being stationed and trained, and how the First Order had the resources to implement a program, given that training has to span years (if not over a decade). General Hux mentioned bringing in a clone army. I'm unsure how abducting kids, housing them, and training them over years and years is more cost-effective than cloning soldiers already committed to the cause.
At some point during all this, Snoke was able to seduce Ben Solo, who somehow destroyed Luke Skywalker's Jedi academy. Now, this was no small thing. Snoke just screwed over the three biggest heroes from the original trilogy: Han Solo and Leia Organa by taking their son, and Luke Skywalker by corrupting his student.
Yet, none of this raised any red flags. None of this incited the New Republic to attempt to crush the First Order before it could rise to any prominence? None of this did anything but play out unnoticed in the background to have these two majestic opposing forces come the story's opening? The New Republic, whose entire mandate was to bring peace and order to the galaxy, did nothing?
Compare that to the prequels. Palpatine had to connive and maneuver to gain enough power to seize control of the Senate and then had to crush democracy and eliminate the Jedi before he could even give birth to the Empire. You see Palpatine grow from just another senator to Supreme Chancellor to Emperor. There was scale there. There was an arc. And, most importantly, there was context.
That did not exist in The Force Awakens. Some might dismiss it – It's just a story! Get over it! When you sit down to watch any movie, that movie tries to create a suspension of disbelief. You invest in whatever happens in the universe, no matter how fantastical, because you believe it could exist. However, these queries repeatedly puncture that suspension of disbelief, and the shaky foundations mean more issues will continue to arise.
When George Lucas wrote and directed A New Hope, he had ideas about what had come before – how developed these were is anybody's guess. Nothing that happened in the prequels undermined the premise of the original trilogy. Yes, there were contradictions and tenuous linkages, but no clash of circumstances. Therefore, we did not sit there wondering how A New Hope's galaxy could have been born out of Revenge of the Sith's climax.
As it stands, the prequels establish the Empire. The original trilogy sees its fall.
And the sequels?
The Force Awakens suggested that the fallen Empire was reborn as the First Order. I would accept this if the story were attempting a commentary that spoke to the cyclical nature of war – the endless battle between good and evil. But The Force Awakens did not try something so profound (although The Last Jedi did so frivolously and laughably). I could accept this if some thought were put into how this could feasibly happen, but as it had been demonstrated, it was hard to imagine any of this could have occurred without intervention. It played like what I call a "Page One Premise." We were asked to accept these ideas as they exist from page one. That's it. Don't think any more about it, despite the six movies that came before it, the defining events of the original trilogy, the time in between the originals and the sequels, and whether any of this could have occurred.
We were handed a premise, but no thought had gone into how it could possibly come to be. Indeed, director J.J. Abrams planted mysteries that were to explored later like discovering Snoke's origins, and finding out why Ben Solo turned or who Rey was. However, these did not explain the physical manifestation of the First Order and how they accomplished all this without drawing the fire of the New Republic.
The story between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens would be an interesting one: how Snoke emerged from unifying the remnants of the Empire, turning Ben Solo, overseeing the construction of the Starkiller Base, then rebuilding the Empire's fleet and forces, and why the New Republic did so little about it. It would not be hard to write that story. Leia and Han were leaders in the New Republic and were growing increasingly concerned at intelligence reports stating a mysterious figure is unifying the remnants of the Empire. They sent an agent, Poe, to investigate. He befriended a Stormtrooper deserter, Fin. Luke was training the next generation of Jedi when Ben turned on him and fled. Luke's other apprentice, Rey, took it upon herself to seek out Ben and redeem him.
How much more attractive does this sound? We treat the legacy characters respectfully while also introducing the next generation of characters to continue carrying the story. There is a mystery they try to investigate around Snoke and Ben, and we can invest in these characters as they take a new journey into that galaxy far, far away.
Instead, we get a terrible imitation that, at best, can only mimic and which crumbles upon examination.
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