George Lucas’ Star Wars Movies Prove One Sequel Trilogy Criticism Wrong
The Star Wars sequels have been criticized for the apparent lack of an overall plan, but the history of the George Lucas Star Wars movies suggests that planning the story in advance is not always necessary for them to work. While Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ record-breaking box office performance indicated that Disney’s release strategy for the Star Wars sequels would be a guaranteed success, neither Star Wars: The Last Jedi norStar Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was as successful or as critically acclaimed. The Last Jedi flipped a lot of what The Force Awakens had set up, while The Rise of Skywalker retconned a lot from The Last Jedi, leading to the conclusion that the sequel trilogy had not been mapped out in advance.
In The Force Awakens, J.J. Abrams set up many mystery boxes for EpisodesVIII and IX to pick up. The biggest example was the mystery of who Rey’s parents were, but The Force Awakens also set up questions regarding who Supreme Leader Snoke was, how the First Order came to be, who were the Knights of Ren, and how exactly Luke Skywalker’s Jedi academy fell. While those mysteries created exciting possibilities for the sequels, they also generated a lot of expectations. The result was a very divisive The Last Jedi, a movie that proved many popular theories and speculations wrong.
Related: Lucas' Original Darth Vader Plan Would've Avoided Several Sith Twists
The story of the Star Wars sequels became more complicated with The Rise of Skywalker, as many important reveals from The Last Jedi were either reinterpreted or entirely contradicted. However, those inconsistencies among the three installments were a symptom of other problems with which the Star Wars sequels had to deal, such as a strict release window of two
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