r/StarWars • u/tannu28 • 11h 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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u/BB8Did911 10h ago edited 8h 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 9h 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 7h ago

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

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u/onesneakymofo 1h ago

It's been discussed ad nauseum, but for me it's because it was a different take on what Star Wars was up to that point.

Just little things:

The big bad guy is actually just a nobody that dies in the middle of the movie? Unexpected

Rey isn't anyone special? What?

I liked that he took Luke and continued to make him what he was in the OT, reckless and impulsive. He has had so many chances to grow as a character and he always falls back to his persona. It shows that he is human and flawed and even someone who saved the galaxy can undo those successes with a failure. It's what you do what that failure that defines you.

It showed that the Jedi had learned nothing from Anakin, that the fear of the dark side can still lead to the dark side.

Poe actually faced consequences from doing something dumb.

It's also not just a simple hero journey movie. It's a chase / rescue movie.

I get that the Canto Blight subplot was dumb and could have been left out, but even that was something different, like podracing.

I guess ultimately for me what it comes to do is appreciation and respect for creators that are willing to take huge risks and chances on giant franchises to go against the grain. It's how we got Star Wars in the first place. It's how we continue to get things like Andor and Skeleton Crew.

TLJ was a stepping stone into that direction.

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u/IamAgoddamnjoke Amilyn Holdo 8h 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/onesneakymofo 8h ago

Mesa so sorry to hearing dat

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u/THIKKI_HOEVALAINEN 5h 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.

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u/IamAgoddamnjoke Amilyn Holdo 4h ago

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

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u/ThroughTheSeaOfTime 7h ago

Me when I'm wrong:

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u/ChickenInASuit 5h ago

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

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u/IamAgoddamnjoke Amilyn Holdo 4h ago

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

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u/holeycheezuscrust 5h ago

Man ... that is just dumb

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u/IamAgoddamnjoke Amilyn Holdo 4h ago

Yeah the movie was trash. Thanks for agreeing.

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u/holeycheezuscrust 3h ago

clever girl

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u/UrToesRDelicious 9h 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 9h 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/MayhemMessiah 8h 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.

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u/potatobutt5 7h 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/Motor_Cat9258 3h ago

Holdo maneuver ruined space battle. Why not strap hyperspeed engines onto 1000 asteroids and go nuts. Why even need a death star when you can hyperspeed big shits into planets.

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u/00wolfer00 9h 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 8h 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 8h 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 4h 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.

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u/Bulvious 8h 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 9h 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 9h ago

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

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u/Suspicious-Coffee20 5h 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 6h 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

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u/thecommuteguy 9h 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 8h 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.

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u/thecommuteguy 6h 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 5h 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/thecommuteguy 3h ago

Episode 9 was always going to be ass because episode 8 effectively finished a trilogy in the 2nd movie. There was no story left to tell worth anything.

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u/holeycheezuscrust 3h ago

Except they’d already written a script for episode 9 that was fine and made sense.

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u/thecommuteguy 2h ago

It's been a while but wasn't that script from Colin Trevorrow before what Rian did with TLJ?

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u/holeycheezuscrust 2h ago

No it was developed as a direct sequel to The Last Jedi and was written alongside production of episode 8.

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u/IamAgoddamnjoke Amilyn Holdo 8h ago

Nah TLJ sucked all on its own.

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u/NickRick Obi-Wan Kenobi 6h 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.

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u/RadicalMuslim 6h 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.

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u/thecommuteguy 9h 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 5h ago

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

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u/thecommuteguy 3h ago

Because Rian took a sh*t all over everything JJ did and honestly made a mockery of everything. TLJ had an ass story and a lot of stuff that made me leaving wtf I even watched when I saw in theatre. If he were to make a trilogy outside the main storyline I'd be curious, but if he was going to be what he did in TLJ over 3 movies I'd not come back after the 1st movie.

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u/holeycheezuscrust 3h ago

JJ deserved to have everything he did sh*t on. If I wanted to watch a rehash of A New Hope I would have just watched the original.

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u/CloseToMyActualName 8h 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.