But then they made the serious error of hiring Rian Johnson AND giving him free rein with the direction of the movie.
Rian Johnson already stated himself, he likes making divisive films. He also stated he doens`t like Star Wars...
So he proceeded to ignore the plans that they had, and just do whatever he wanted.
1. He ignored several planned story arcs and just shoved things. 2. He ignored past movies and create a lot of non-sense. 3. He ignored the Extended Universe but in a bad way, Extended Universe books had a look of technical information and whatnot that circulated back into canon, with movies and canon TV series using that information, RJ just ignored that information.
I fully expected Lucasfilm to just give up and not even attempt to make Film 9, that is how bad Film 8 fucked up the plans... But seemly they made an honest attempt to save the franchise in Film 9 by making it fanservice on top of fanservice and hope fans forget all the continuity errors and non-sense the plot became riddled with in Star Wars 8...
Ep 8 had some really interesting character arcs, but also made some basic errors. As a movie, I think that it’s the strongest of the three sequels. Given a lack of plot points to really hang off, Johnson seems to have done something interesting, but left even fewer plot points to hang off than Abrams left him. Let’s be clear: if Lucasfilm had disagreed with his direction, they would have taken him off the project.
Ep 9 was more fan service (who can we throw into this scene?) with an even more inexplicable plot hook (if the Emperor was coming back in any way, there should have been hints of that in Ep 7).
I do not understand the fascination with J J Abrams. He claims to be a fan of various media, but IMO he is the shallowest type of fan out there, appreciating only certain aesthetics without looking any deeper. His Star Trek films are the absolute worst of all the Star Trek films, even worse than Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Why are they the worst? Because they have become Generic Action Films with a Star Trek veneer. (This is more or less my complaint with Picard.) I dread the idea of seeing J J Abrams touch any more science fiction properties because he just doesn’t get them and turns them into Michael Bay films (but with lens flares instead of explosions).
Amusing juxtaposition in critical reception:
Article about his mystery box thing before Rise: https://www.success.com/jj-abrams-and-the-unopened-mystery-b...
Article about his mystery box thing after Rise: https://screenrant.com/star-wars-rise-skywalker-abrams-myste...
He proved he was great at nailing the aesthetic even if so many other qualities of the franchise like writing and plot take a back seat.
That's basically his Star Wars movies in a nutshell too: he absolutely nails the aesthetic 100% and everything else suffers. I think that's why they feel so much like fan service rather than standalone efforts because of that uncanny valley effect where they feel so much like old Star Wars movies and don't have great ideas but to ape old Star Wars plots, but still aren't "Old Star Wars". A lot of what was new in the films added greatly to the aesthetic of the franchise and pushed that, at least, in new directions.
Honestly, I think "the Emperor has returned somehow" is pure 100% Star Wars aesthetic, too. Weird cloning nonsense: very Star Wars. Evil villains returning at surprise hours after being silently behind the curtain for movies: very Star Wars. Absolutely the writing could have done better of foreshadowing that than by doing it in Fortnite of all places (!), but it's still very Star Wars to just "oh, here's the Emperor now". The new trilogy "rhymes" with the original trilogy: Snoke like Vader is clearly a Lieutenant of someone else (and turning out to be a broken clone of the Emperor, very Star Wars) and then Vader/Snoke are revealed to be less important and we fight the Emperor directly. The only missing is the "I am your father" bit for Snoke, but we all know how corny Rian Johnson thought that was, despite being the exact sort of soap opera (well, pulp serial) plotting that made Star Wars what it was/is.
To my mind, letting Abrams double-down on swerving back to his plot in episode 9 was their biggest management sin when it comes to creating a coherent plot arc. If they'd carried on with what 8 was setting up we'd have had ["nostalgia" => "twist" => "resolution"], and instead we were left with ["nostalgia" => "twist" => "ignore that! more nostalgia"]. The former could have worked out and won over those who disliked the Last Jedi twists, the latter just flopped unsatisfyingly. (A second-movie twist was always in the cards, given general fan sentiment about Empire.)
Disclaimer: I personally liked episode 8 the most of that trilogy, and it's the only one I'd bother to go rewatch. It has the best direction by far, along with the most striking visuals of the lot and most of the quotable lines. That said, I think my take on this holds up regardless of which side of the Last Jedi divide you fall on. :D
And to be fair, I liked Episode 8. Flawed, stupid casino planet bit, the ending was silly. But Star Wars isn't known for its plot and logical consistency anyway; the series is 99% retcons and fan theories. What's important is the atmosphere and the characters, and what the meagre plot means for those characters. And there was actually some genuine effort being made.
Abrams was an Executive Producer on Ep 8 still and was supposedly in the room for all of the plot development. He personally could have avoided most of that swerve had he been paying attention. Admittedly, he thought at the time it was Trevorrow's problem because Disney didn't fire Trevorrow from Ep 9 until the "last minute", but there's a lot of interesting questions left about what Abrams even thought the "resolution" could possibly be even with Trevorrow at the helm. He was still an Executive Producer in a role that should have been preparing for the trilogy as a whole to succeed.
It takes a village to make a movie and all that, and I'm not personally blaming Abrams, though it sounds like it, I think Disney management should have been more involved too. The whole Trevorrow thing reeks of Disney management failure and bad contract planning. (Between that and the shenanigans with Lord/Miller over Solo…)
I think Abrams made the best movie for Ep 9 that he could have given the time, budget, and resources he had to meet a "set in stone" holiday release date. I think he did the best he could with what Johnson left him, and honestly I don't think anyone could have resolved Johnson's plot twists well and still have felt like Star Wars. He had good ideas in absentia, but they weren't "Star Wars".
(Admittedly, I thought Ep 8 was the entire wrong genre for Star Wars: it was a Vietnam War movie in a franchise built around World War 2 metaphors/aesthetics. I also had a big issue with the "Three Billboards problem" of Poe in Ep 8. In my eyes he's unreedemably the villain of the film, and the character is entirely broken beyond repair in Ep 8. But also, admittedly, I haven't liked any of Rian Johnson's films that I've watched [inc. Knives Out; and I especially hated Looper].)
Ah, but Star Wars has always been a Vietnam metaphor filtered through WW2 aesthetics. Specifically, with the Rebels being the Viet Cong -- they're a small group using asymmetric warfare tactics against a vast military machine that's exerting cultural hegemony over even the territory it doesn't control. Lucas has actually been pretty explicit about this being his intention in interviews.
