Boggles my mind how it would be hard to fit Luke Skywalker into the first movie of the final Skywalker trilogy.
I think it makes perfect sense for two reasons.
1. It's only the "Skywalker Saga" because of marketing. I don't remember when it started being bandied about, but I seem to recall that when Rogue One was announced, the folks at LFL said that this wasn't going to be a "Saga" movie, it was a "Star Wars Story." The theory being that watching it didn't require having watched the previous films or something (which we know was nonsense, but, hey, marketing, what ya gonna do?). Still, they were differentiating "Saga" from "Stories" at that point. That
may have been when they also started talking about the films as the "Skywalker saga" but I can't remember. Still, it's only ever been a marketing term. Before that, it was the "Star Wars saga." And before that it was just, you know, "Star Wars movies." All of which is a long way to say "It's not really the Skywalker Saga, so don't get hung up on the marketing jargon."
2. Even assuming it's the marketed Skywalker Saga, narratively speaking, it doesn't make a ton of sense to have Luke take front and center, nor does it make sense from a filmmaking perspective. Mark Hamill is in his 70s. And, let's be honest, he's not in the kind of shape that, say, Sly Stallone is, who can still kinda sorta convey that he's an action hero. Mark Hamill isn't that guy (and doesn't need to be, frankly). So, having Luke run around and kick ass would be visually jarring and probably not especially convincing. I mean, let's not forget that Carrie Fisher
died while these new movies were being made. These folks ain't spring chickens. Narratively, it also doesn't make sense to have your main character get overshadowed by Luke. What the hell do you need the main character for if Luke's just gonna save the day? And if he's not saving the day, then, oh, well, I guess he's #notmyluke or whatever. That's, at least, how a bunch of fans would have reacted, undoubtedly.
The bottom line is that the movies the fans say they wanted to see...will never be made. That ship sailed around 1995 or so, the last point where it would've made sense to center the stories around Luke, Han, Leia, and Chewie as the main characters. And frankly, if the mid-90s EU novels are any guide to go by, I'm damn glad they didn't get made because they would've been the same myopic reiterations of the stories we've already seen. Fans say they want X, but I gotta be honest with you, from listening to fans for years I think fans actually have no idea what they really want. They say they want X but they'd rip X to shreds if it was made, or at least feel like "But....but not like that exactly..."
Exactly right. But it's the ultimate outcome, the "20/20 hindsight" results that many of us here take issue with. I've said it before...these modern SW films are NOT made for us RPFers. In many ways, they are targeted at the middle of the road and non SW public. Trying to get the broadest appeal, hence the broadest $$$$ base, across all demographics.
Absolutely true. The RPF is like the hardest of the hardest of the hardcore fans. We know crap here that the vast, vast majority of the population has NO IDEA about. I was on Reddit the other day and people were talking about how the stormtrooper laser rifles (actual terminology used -- not "E-11 blasters") were made from British submachineguns from around WWII. And this was treated as some kind of mindblowing revelation (even if it was technically wrong, because the Sterling didn't really see major service until the early '50s). These people would never notice the difference between the windshield wiper blades with notches and rivets from ESB vs. the straight wiper blades from ANH, let alone the glass eye vs. 2nd red button differences.
Friends of mine, who are themselves pretty serious fans, do not notice the differences between editions of the films beyond the "Han shot first" thing. Like, the rocks they put in front of R2D2 or the changing colors of the lightsabres or the different sound edits like the "magnum" blasters in one sound edit and the more "pew pew" blasters of another. They don't recognize or really care about any of it. And to them, modernizing the films and making the F/X look more consistent with the PT-era F/X? That was fine for them. Mind you, they love Star Wars, but they love
their experience of Star Wars, which is a far less engaged experience than mine or than anyone else's here. They want an entertaining film set in a familiar universe, with maybe a few recognizable characters. That's it.
We obsess over these issues BECAUSE the original trilogy was so solid and its own sustained narrative. We are different than 95% of people who enjoy the SW universe... like the difference between someone who enjoys a good beer with the game, versus someone who has a climate controlled wine cellar in their basement. I'm not trying to be elitist here (and I am sure I probably sound like I am) but many of us here enjoy and experience SW on a MUCH deeper level of scrutiny than your average Disney+ or movie going fan.
This is exactly it. And even within that 5% of fandom where this crew exists, there's
still differences of opinion. I've thoroughly enjoyed the various Disney+ series. I also tend to binge them, which I think helps smooth out (and smooth over) the uneven aspects because I spend less time poring over the individual bits of an episode, and consider the story as a larger whole. I've also gotten to a point where I don't go in with expectations at all. I'm just here for the ride, man. If it's entertaining, cool. I'm in. There were some bits of Kenobi that I thought were a bit off, given some of the ANH dialogue, but on the whole, I enjoyed it and I think they mostly made it fit. I don't get the hate that was levied against Reva. I don't get the hate for the Book of Boba Fett, other than it wasn't non-stop Boba ass kickin'. But I was ok with that. I didn't love the vespa gang, though. I'll say that. But also, because I binged it, for my experience, they were barely in it, so who cares? They're kinda blah, yeah, but whatever.
So, when creative decisions are made to story that don't "click" with our level of involvement, we feel personally offended by the decision, whether it be KK, JJ, Lucas, Favreau, Filoni or Rian.
P.S. Does anyone remember the episode of Friends sitcom, when Jon Favreau played rich guy Pete Becker? Chandler asked Pete if he had one of the "Don Post" life-sized stormtrooper statues. When Pete said that he actually has TWO of them, Chandler asked if he and Joey could come over, put on the suits and play SW?
I don't remember that, but that also well illustrates the level of engagement. People here would scoff at wearing Don Post armor, because they know better. And if they actually said the words "Don Post," I guarantee you that 99.999% of the Friends audience was like "Who's Don Post? Is that some kind of in-joke?"
Not saying I necessarily agree or disagree, but this is what Michael Arndt had to say.
"Early on I tried to write versions of the story where [Rey] is at home, her home is destroyed, and then she goes on the road and meets Luke. And then she goes and kicks the bad guy’s ass. It just never worked and I struggled with this. This was back in 2012. It just felt like every time Luke came in and entered the movie, he just took it over. Suddenly you didn’t care about your main character anymore because, ‘Oh f–k, Luke Skywalker’s here. I want to see what he’s going to do."
Yeah, see, this makes sense to me. I can see how it would easily happen, anyway. Luke shows up and instantly pulls focus because
It's Luke Skywalker!!! And then anything where he's in it but isn't ass-kickin' Luke is going to piss off the fans because they wanted Heir to the Empire and we're 30 years too late for that.
From what's been reported, George Lucas' treatment for the sequel trilogy would have focused on Leia, as the first two trilogies followed Luke and Anakin. This was the treatment before Disney tossed it.
Which is another reason why we maybe shouldn't be pining for that Lucas-penned version, either. Lucas was...not infallible. I love the guy and a lot of what he did, but he makes mistakes and he enjoys things differently from me, and he wrote baby Anakin saying "Yipee!" and such. Like, the guy is not perfect, ok? He makes mistakes. Sometimes he even makes mistakes by thinking he made a mistake and trying to correct the mistake he thinks he made, when he didn't originally make a mistake at all!
Centering the new trilogy around Leia would've also been a mistake because, well, Carrie Fisher was
old and died during production. Frankly, from the day the sequel trilogy was announced, I was very much against the idea of bringing back the OT heroes
at all. You ask me, they should've set the story far in the future, long after the OT heroes have become one with the Force or whatever, maybe in the era of their great, great grandchildren. Bringing the OT heroes was a marketing ploy and all it did was make the storytelling a hell of a lot harder.
It was marketed as the Star Wars Saga, then later The Complete Saga. The Skywalker Saga started getting added on, with the announcement of The Rise of Skywalker, and probably also to help differentiate other Lucasfilm produced projects. Particularly if there is another film series. Back then, the then to be 6 films was the only Lucasfilm produced Star Wars content. There was no need to have a distinction.
You know Luke's absence is a pretty big thing in TFA. And they kinda set him to be big hero that's going to save the day. But he ends up being kinda of a red herring. As it turns out it's Leia, the other Skywalker, that trains Rey and reaches Ben. Not Luke. And that was intentional. They wanted to try and make good on that "there is another." Did they? Eh, they did the best they could considering the tragic circumstances.
Yeah, again, this is marketing jargon. It's not worth getting wrapped around the axle here.
As for Leia saving the day through training and such, that might've been interesting, but again...Carrie died. So we never really got to see that.