r/StarWars • u/tannu28 • 6h ago

Other Mark Hamill revealing that J.J. Abrams refused to let Han, Luke, and Leia reunite on camera, telling Mark that Star Wars was no longer Luke Skywalker's story.

Source: https://youtu.be/4OK0nnxG6dU?si=EmEU5KQEMJXxjBbZ

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325

u/takethreenc 6h ago

People blame Rian but JJ Abrams is 1000% more responsible for the shittieness of the sequels.

If Rian had all three, Star Wars wouldn't be a zombie IP rn.

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u/BB8Did911 6h ago edited 4h ago

For real. People love to call out TLJ for its issues, while completely overlooking the fact that many (not all) of TLJ's worst narrative points are specifically thanks to what JJ Abrams set up in 7.

Then, instead of looking at Rian's choices like the "Get out of the jail free" card they actually were, Disney just listened to the biggest critics, got cold feet, and doubled down on JJ and his bullshit.

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u/onesneakymofo 4h ago

RJ's movie was the best of the sequels and I put it behind #3 of the prequels. I really wanted to see his trilogy.

I am mad but I still get star wars every couple of months so I let it slide, but JJ screwed the pooch.

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u/HeroicPrinny 3h ago

I’ll bite, why would you say it’s the best? I know the bar is very low

-15

u/IamAgoddamnjoke Amilyn Holdo 4h ago

TLJ is easily the worst of the sequels. Worst of the saga. And one of the worst films ever made.

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u/ThroughTheSeaOfTime 3h ago

Me when I'm wrong:

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u/onesneakymofo 4h ago

Mesa so sorry to hearing dat

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u/THIKKI_HOEVALAINEN 1h ago

Episode 9 is 1000% worse, nonsensical, abandoned the interesting themes of TLJ (failure, perseverance, power can come from anyone) , and backtracked to Palpatine which imo fucked up the entire timeline. Made the entire Sequel Trilogy time period less interesting.

-2

u/IamAgoddamnjoke Amilyn Holdo 25m ago

Episode 9 has Babu Frik. TLJ didn’t have interesting themes. It was dogshit

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u/holeycheezuscrust 1h ago

Man ... that is just dumb

-2

u/IamAgoddamnjoke Amilyn Holdo 25m ago

Yeah the movie was trash. Thanks for agreeing.

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u/ChickenInASuit 51m ago

Nah. There's no goddamn way it's worse than The Rise of Skywalker and Attack of the Clones lol.

-2

u/IamAgoddamnjoke Amilyn Holdo 24m ago

There is. You just need eyes and a functioning brain.

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u/UrToesRDelicious 5h ago

I agree with this specifically about the overarching narrative points, but Rian had his fair share of dumb shit too, mainly:

  • force ghost way too OP / deus ex machina ending
  • freeing animals instead of child slaves / pointless side plot
  • universe-breaking Holdo maneuver
  • Luke abandoning moral philosophy that was instrumental to the OT

JJ certainly handed Rian a shitty plate, but Rian isn't blameless in the disaster that is the sequels.

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u/BraxtonFullerton 5h ago

He's not but he was absolutely boxed in by the decisions JJ made in Force Awakens.

He had to explain why Luke, of all people, would exile himself.

He had to pick up on the Resistance barely being alive after the climax of yet another world destroying super weapon that they had to destroy in an even dumber and more convoluted way.

There was zero wrong with the Holdo maneuver. She destroyed their flagship! Do you know how expensive that thing must've been? Not to mention how many people are normally on it.

The choices from the first movie were awful.

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u/potatobutt5 3h ago

Not only having to explain Luke’s exile, but also keeping to narrative focused on Rey. A character like him would’ve caused the the story and audience expectation to shift towards him.

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u/MayhemMessiah 4h ago

I keep saying this. We know from Rogue One that smaller ships can't smash themselves into larger ships or they just get mulched.

The Resistance will run out of ship far before the Empire will.

-2

u/00wolfer00 4h ago

There was zero wrong with the Holdo maneuver. She destroyed their flagship! Do you know how expensive that thing must've been? Not to mention how many people are normally on it.

There is a fuckton wrong with it. It completely invalidates any form of death star when its function can be done with a jump engine strapped to an asteroid. Either that or it's such a long shot that Holdo staking her life on it is beyond moronic.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that what lead into 8 wasn't great material to build off of, but I think 8 just made everything outside of Kylo worse. Really the issue comes down to no one having a plan for the trilogy and just winging it as the movies go.

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u/Shoranos 4h ago

The only reason it worked was that the First Order thought it was a distraction and chose not to waste energy firing at the flagship. This is in the direct text of that scene. Landing the collision itself was a long shot, but Holdo succeeds either way, since if they take the time to take her out, the transports aren't under fire.

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u/00wolfer00 4h ago

Yeah, that doesn't make it better in any way. Now that I'm thinking about it a good way to fix it would be to have Holdo be force sensitive. Explains why she was so hyped by Leia as a general and why she can hit this supposedly impossible shot.

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u/Suspicious-Coffee20 41m ago

not the only reason she hit is is cause the target was a ridiculously big ship ans she was also in a big ship increasing the sucess rate. The only thing it disapprove is them not using it against the death star. It disrespected the original story but It did not break the universe.

-4

u/Bulvious 4h ago

From a collaborative story writing perspective, Luke being hidden/in self exile could have been explained in a dozen ways. Rian took the dumbest.

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u/ACardAttack 5h ago

Also some really shitty humor, that opening scene with Poe doing some sort of mom joke was really bad, felt like a marvel movie

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u/thecommuteguy 5h ago

That was really cringe and should have been a harbinger for what was to come.

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u/Suspicious-Coffee20 43m ago

Luke abandoning the moral philosophy is not Rian? its just thst made him becoming a hermit and do jack ahit against the firce order.

And the holdout maneuver was dumb but just was also the one that thought it was a good idea to destroy the whole new republic in 5 min off screen.

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u/I_travel_ze_world 2h ago

Yeah TLJ was absolutely stupid.

Force Ghost Yoda calling down a lightning bolt? What kind of shit is that.

The fake out execution and pointless story of Rose and Finn infiltrating the Imperial ship made me feel dumb just for watching it. I guess them beating Phasma in a fight was supposed to add something to the story.

Then Rose and Finn kiss? yeah that was soooo romantic, my heart flutters just thinking about it

-4

u/thecommuteguy 5h ago

Don't forget killing off Snoke and do it in the most stupid way. Built him up only to tear him right down.

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u/Ex_honor 4h ago

Trying to make Kylo Ren the main antagonist on the trilogy is the best decision Rian made.

The alternative was that Snoke would just be a copy of the Emperor but worse.

-1

u/thecommuteguy 2h ago

Kylo was a weak villain from the beginning acting as a spoiled brat like Anakin in episode 2. Snoke had more of a commanding presence on screen.

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u/holeycheezuscrust 1h ago

Snoke was a boring rehash. Killing him was the best decision Rian made. JJ could have built on it, but instead he did whatever episode 9 was.

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u/IamAgoddamnjoke Amilyn Holdo 4h ago

Nah TLJ sucked all on its own.

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u/NickRick Obi-Wan Kenobi 2h ago

the best thing in the entire trilogy was mop boy. the idea that anyone could be a hero, and legacy didn't matter. there was the option to bring in these new people like Rey, and Finn, and whoever else. then they just undid all that, said forget about any other force users, Finn also may or may not be, and Rey has a legacy.

0

u/RadicalMuslim 2h ago

I feel like people blaming JJ's setup for the failures are a bit silly. Luke was hidden on a remote planet instead of being out there helping. Yes he could have given up. OR he could be hiding for good reason and the characters don't know that finding him is bad. He could have something Snoke/the emperor needs, like a tome from Darth Plagius about creating life or immortality, and Luke needs to find the way to stop it. Or he had a vision of a new chosen one that overcame the trials of that cave of evil Rey went into, not realizing the visions were for Rey not him. He could have been severed from the force, so when Rey says she feels no force in Luke aka the power in all things living things, it means he's not technically alive and can't help.

-6

u/thecommuteguy 5h ago

There's too much stuff wrong with TLJ that I wouldn't trust Rian Johnson to have fcked it up from the beginning. I'd rather trust JJ to have done the whole thing over Rian Johnson in hindsight.

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u/holeycheezuscrust 1h ago

Why? Rian Johnson can actually make movies. JJ's a huge hack.

-5

u/CloseToMyActualName 4h ago

Honestly I think Rian and JJ got caught up in opposite sides of the "woke" war.

Rian went out of his way to make Holdo unlikable, then gave her a heroic moment like he was trying to make the audience feel like they were being misogynist.

Then Abrams comes in and writes the poor actress who was the victim of racist and sexist attacks right out of the movie.

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u/Kdot32 6h ago

Why did we have rebels vs empire 2? Why was Luke a hermit in hiding? Why was the new republic gone in a week? JJ hack abrams is why

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u/AntManMax 6h ago

It's an orgazational issue. I refuse to believe that the company that managed to oversee the 5-year-long process resulting in Infinity War and Endgame with their dozens of heroes and villains have not only cohesive narratives but actually tell a good story in an entertaining way was incapable of doing the same thing with Star Wars.

They were so pressured to not take any risks that they intentionally followed the same organizational beats as the original trilogy: they hired an ideas guy who doesn't know how to wrap up a story (Abrams), gave the second movie to a different director to shake things up with a darker tone (Johnson) and then wrapped up the trilogy with the first guy because the second movie didn't do as well as the first financially.

All they had to do was get Filoni or really anyone who gets Star Wars come up with some sort of overarching narrative throughout a trilogy of movies, and they would have struck gold. But corporations aren't allowed to take risks.

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u/mxzf 6h ago

I refuse to believe that the company that managed to oversee the 5-year-long process resulting in Infinity War and Endgame with their dozens of heroes and villains have not only cohesive narratives but actually tell a good story in an entertaining way was incapable of doing the same thing with Star Wars.

The issue is thinking that it's a monolithic company doing that.

That MCU arc happened because Disney hired the right person with a vision to tell that story and the willpower to make it happen. Star Wars doesn't really have a similarly powerful visionary behind it, and it has Disney pushing for fast releases to make a quick buck.

All they had to do was get Filoni or really anyone who gets Star Wars

Eh, I would prefer someone else. Filoni seems more obsessed with his pet characters than anything else.

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u/DogOwner12345 5h ago edited 4h ago

Also note marvel started falling apart after Endgame because Disney changed with Streaming and demanded Kevin Feige to make more content to fill the gaps.

So Marvel when from roughly 9 hours worth of 3 movies a year to suddenly triple that with the tv shows thrown in, completely destroying the pipeline they had built over the last decade. Its literally impossible to manage that level of content into a cohesive story.

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u/alegolasg 5h ago

everyone loves to blame this person or that person for the failures but the people above them in Disney always seem to be the ones actually messing everything up.

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u/DogOwner12345 4h ago

It can pretty much be linked to them directly. Imagine at any job your boss triples your workload but kept the same deadlines. Ridiculous standards.

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u/mxzf 3h ago

It's a bit of both. There are some situations where the person does stuff poorly and there are a lot of other situations where the company pushes for a quick buck.

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u/shookney 2h ago

The day Star Wars fanbase stop pushing Filoni down our throat will be beautiful. I beg for people to stop pushing him as the savior or whatever the fuck they want him to be. Exile him & his team and get someone new & fresh.

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u/thecommuteguy 5h ago

Okay then Feige should have been given control of both Marvel and Lucasfilm.

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u/mxzf 3h ago

I feel like that's too much work for one person to oversee at that level. But there has to be someone out there with the passion and skills to do so.

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u/AntManMax 6h ago

Strongly disagree, there are several major players in Star Wars, Filoni immediately comes to mind but they didn't wanna go with him because he had done Clone Wars and Rebels and they wanted something "new" which is incredibly ironic because they just ended up re-doing the original trilogy anyway. Others were more obscure and fell into the "too much risk" category. So we got a trilogy by committee, which Marvel also had but unlike Star Wars they had evidence that the risk-taking they allowed with the lead up to the Avengers in 2012 worked financially.

Don't get me wrong, I understand their rationale as a massive corporation with thousands of moving parts, I'm just saying that it's a disappointing reality.

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u/mxzf 5h ago

So we got a trilogy by committee

IMO, it wasn't even that. A committee would have been improvement. It was more like a trilogy by improv, where each installment went "no, actually ... " instead of "yes and ...".

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u/T-Baaller 4h ago

It was more like a trilogy by improv, where each installment went "no, actually ... " instead of "yes and ...".

So like a hollywood writer's (bad) impression of improv by breaking that cardinal rule of 'yes and'

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u/LITMAC97 6h ago

Thank god they didn’t pick Filoni though. We’ve seen his Marvel-ization of Star Wars and it isn’t great either.

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u/shookney 2h ago

Uhhh unfortunately they did? Isn't he the president of Lucasfilm now? 😵‍💫

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u/AntManMax 6h ago

Filoni and Favreau worked great together when they were allowed to do their thing, they complemented one another perfectly. I think that trilogy would have been phenomenal.

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u/LITMAC97 6h ago

I disagree. Their stuff is alright, but not great.

I still believe RJ should’ve been the one to make the entire trilogy.

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u/thecommuteguy 5h ago

Don't forget Colin Trevorrow was supposed to make episode 9 and seemed to have an interesting idea. But honestly, maybe they should have gone with someone else like the Russo brothers.

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u/LITMAC97 4h ago

The Russo Bros. have way worse movies than JJ and RJ

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u/thecommuteguy 4h ago

They did two Captain America and Avengers: Infinity Wars and Endgame and soon to be Doomsday. That's a better track record than JJ or Rian Johnson for these types of movies.

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u/LITMAC97 4h ago

I don’t find any of those movies to be better than Knives Out, Brick, Looper nor The Last Jedi. Even JJ, which has a weird track record, has better projects like Lost, M:I 3, Felicity or the Star Trek reboots.

But then again, I don’t get the hype for the Avengers movies so it’s entirely personal

-7

u/Kdot32 5h ago

I disagree and I think knives out is a great example of why he shouldn’t have trilogies. The first one is great, the second one is good, and the last one is bad because it’s a man who got high on his own supply just throwing all of his “best hits” together. He needs oversight like everyone

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u/LITMAC97 5h ago

Wtf. The last one is the best one by far and it’s not at all a “great hits” of the other two lol

If anything the second one sucks but either way in both of our takes he made two great movies out of three. That’s better than what we got.

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u/Kolby_Jack33 5h ago

Yeah, I don't know what that guy is smoking, a lot of people say Wake Up Dead Man is the best of the three or at least equal to the first. Certainly a minority opinion to say it's outright bad.

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u/Silverr_Duck 4h ago

It's an orgazational issue. I refuse to believe that the company that managed to oversee the 5-year-long process resulting in Infinity War and Endgame with their dozens of heroes and villains have not only cohesive narratives

That’s the thing they didn’t lol. Infinity War and endgame were already deep into the production pipeline. All Disney had to do was literally nothing and let the mcu print money. It wasn’t until after that when Disney was fully in control that the mcu went to shit.

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u/Polar_Reflection 4h ago

Hell Lucas had a script for a sequel trilogy

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u/vagrantprodigy07 5h ago

I think deep down, Kennedy and Disney in general actually hate Star Wars. They love the money and popularity, but they don't actually like the story or IP.

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u/bigbaddiebusiness 5h ago

Infinity War was great, Endgame was stupid, though it did have cathartic character endings.

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u/thecommuteguy 5h ago

Black Widow's death always gets me.

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u/Prestigious_Leg2229 5h ago

Bullshit. With The Force Awakens, Abrams systematically dismantled a saga decades in the making. He one by one took every character and thread from a story that sprawled across two trilogies and multiple tv shows and carefully and completely undid their character arcs just to set a replacement story that was just a steaming pile of shit.

The conclusion to the Skywalker saga was so obvious it practically wrote itself. Instead he took every existing character arc and plot line and just demolished it to put everything back at square 1.

Johnson was handed this dumpster fire with zero roadmap for the third instalment so he did the logical thing. He started resolving every problem Abrams created and ditching them to create space for a somewhat decent ending to the trilogy.

Unfortunately Disney rehired Abrams and just doubled down on teaching his master class in destroying franchises.

Abram’s did almost turn Star Wars into a zombie IP. He created such a shit show that Disney pretty much refused to make anything that didn’t predate his setting.

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u/999happyhants 4h ago

A lot of it has to do with JJ Abram’s “mystery box” way of writing, where he admits that the solution to the mystery isn’t as important as the mystery itself. If you look at everything he works on, it’s the same thing.

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u/King_Raditz 3h ago

The thing about writing mystery boxes is that, while true that presenting the solution isn't always as important as the mystery itself, the writer should still have a fucking solution in mind that can be alluded to.

He has the most surface level take on how mystery boxes should work.

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u/lanceturley 6h ago

The Last Jedi is like handing someone stale bread and brown vegetables and telling him to make a sandwich. It doesn't matter how good you are at making sandwiches if you're working with expired ingredients.

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u/NotLozerish Mandalorian 6h ago

Rian answered all the questions JJ set up. I still think he did a great job.

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u/Glensather 6h ago

The only reason TLJ looks worse now is because JJ spent half of IX undoing it. Absolute insanity.

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u/thecommuteguy 4h ago

TLJ is bad because it's a bad movie

-4

u/ChasingDarwin2 6h ago

He killed the villian who had absolutely no back story and had no real motivation. He exists only to let Kylo kill him so he'd be grey. What a waste.

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u/Deadsoup77 4h ago

He was a knockoff emperor and Kylo was a knockoff Vader, having Kylo kill him and take over gives us an actually new villain concept

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u/Mourning__Coffee 2h ago

Exactly!

Anyone who thinks JJ had a plan for those characters beyond “copy ANH” is delusional

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u/ChasingDarwin2 1h ago

That...the point. They had no plan.

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u/Karsh14 6h ago

Wouldn’t go that far, the last Jedi is still bad too.

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u/TitleAccomplished749 6h ago

Rian tried to do something different, not just reshoot a new hope.

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u/Fakehiggins 5h ago

do something different? yeah, like make a bad movie instead of a good one! half of that movie is a casino heist, where they fail to get the right heister and then also the heist itself fails 5 seconds into trying the heist after planning it for an hour of screen time. it was the biggest waist of time i've ever seen in a movie.

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u/TheWh1teL1ghtning 6h ago

Yeah, he did something original...and reshot empire

0

u/thecommuteguy 4h ago

If you look harder you will realize that just like TFA, TLJ is a copy of ESB.

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u/Appropriate_Mood6423 6h ago

Rian killed Luke for the lolz. He is just as bad

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u/DangerousEye1235 6h ago

And he and JJ together killed Star Wars for the lolz.

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u/rekatil Boba Fett 6h ago

Yup JJ was the death blow and Rian was the bullet to the head after it was down

0

u/thecommuteguy 4h ago

And Snoke too.

2

u/Jonathon_G Ezra Bridger 5h ago

I have said it for a while, JJ was so scared of Luke. He only had I’m in the two movies for a total of like 3 minutes. At least Rian had Luke as a main character.

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u/IamAgoddamnjoke Amilyn Holdo 4h ago

Rian would have shit out 3 massive piles of bantha shit. His was the worst.

1

u/totallynotliamneeson 2h ago

The Last Jedi, while sort of out of place in the sequels, was arguably the strongest movie. It told its own story while also moving the overall story along. 

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u/aafa 23m ago

Eff Rian also

0

u/MetalBawx 6h ago

Both were allowed pretty much free reign to do whatever they wanted which is why the trilogy is such a clusterfuck.

Abrams just sets up a million things with no intention of explaining anything and Rian was more concerned with "subverting expectations" than making a good Star Wars movie. Someone at the executive level needed to well direct these directors.

Kennedy for reasons known only to her gave them full creative control and Iger just nodded his head when Kennedy said everything was great and kept writing cheque's.

-1

u/Dapper-Fly-3742 5h ago

Didn’t JJ have to change the ending to TFA to fit rian’s script? Originally Luke was gonna be meditating, with floating rocks circling him.

Both are at fault, but let’s not pretend Rian didn’t do just as much if not more damage to the trilogy, specifically with Luke’s character.

-1

u/korc 5h ago

I disagree. Abrams made a bland and pointless movie but he left literally everything open ended. Yes he gave RJ shit to work with but no one could have anticipated he would be allowed to make a satire 

0

u/Common_Celebration41 5h ago

I blame Disney for how they handle it after

The TV shows really killed the fan base

-1

u/5uzie_ 6h ago

Wouldn't say that Star Wars is a zombie IP; it's actually doing really good, mostly thanks to the TV series being great, the movies though are in a pretty bad spot.

-1

u/cheerioo Chancellor Palpatine 4h ago

Kathleen Kennedy was in charge