Alternate Sequels
My relationship with the sequels is a largely positive one. I enjoyed The Force Awakens in cinemas despite some plot holes to be (hopefully, at the time) wrapped up in the sequels. I now look upon The Last Jedi as the best of the sequels and one of my favourite films of the Skywalker Saga. Despite my enjoyment and emotional reaction to The Rise of Skywalker, in hindsight I feel like the less said about it, the better.
I feel like the multimedia around the sequels was pretty good, not great, but not horrendous. The difficulty within was that the authors didn’t seem to know exactly where the sequels were going and were a bit limited... but in hindsight as we all know, and JJ himself admitted, the sequels should have been planned better.
So with a bit of for mentioned hindsight, and a hint of creativity, I am lead to the following inane and thoroughly useless thought process:
What if things were a little bit different?
I think some of the issues with the sequels were around the hype. I'm not saying they don't have some fundamental flaws, but ultimately a big part was the anticipation.
Firstly, it had been over thirty years since Return of the Jedi came out, everyone who had seen it has at some point, whether through the toys, reading the books, or just talking to other fans, thought about what the next story in Skywalker Saga would look like to them.
Secondly, we had years and years of books detailing what happened in the galaxy; Grand Admiral Thrawn, The Yuuzhan Vong, Darth Caedus, The Lost Tribe of the Sith. These were all pretty decent stories and Disney thinking they could surpass, or even match them... might have been a big ask.
These two issues could only lead to disappointment on some level from Star Wars fans. I respect that, I had similar thoughts watching The Last Jedi for the first time, which lead me to my Star Wars mantra.
Accept, don't expect.
Last week my brother was watching The Force Awakens. I caught some bits a pieces, but there was a line of dialogue that struck me as a little cheesy, but my goodness if Harrison Ford isn’t one of the most genuine actors out there, his reaction made it work.
“Luke is a Jedi, you’re his father.”
I’m not normally one to dwell on what could have been, better to accept than expect, but a bell went off in my head when I heard this, and an elseworld event occurred in my brain that grew and grew until I did the only thing I could think of doing to quash such thoughts.
I wrote a new blog.
Initially my plan was to outline an original sequel trilogy idea, but I found that the more I wrote it, the more I liked it. As such, I have decided to keep that particular narrative to myself for possible regurgitation later as an original work.
Instead here is my pitch for The Sequel Trilogy is quite simple.
The Force Awakens should have been the conclusion, not the beginning.
With the opening of the Force Awakens, especially after the conclusion of Return of the Jedi, we are left with too many questions about how the galaxy got into the state that it did. Where did the First Order come from? why does the Resistance seem separate from The New Republic? Who is Snoke? to name a few...
As such, I believe the first film of the sequel trilogy, like The Phantom Menace, should have been about Ben Solo living in a galaxy at peace. A lingering threat emerges, and like The Rise of Kylo Ren, Ben is seduced by The Dark Side of the Force, Luke fails to stop him because he “is a Jedi”, Ben destroys the Jedi Temple, and allies himself with the emerging threat that is The First Order.
One of the things I loved most about the Sequel Trilogy was the unique way it handled Luke’s character. I will likely go more into this in future blog posts, as in writing this I would like to give a deeper analysis into the sequels and my thoughts on them.
But the conclusion I reached this time around (“Luke is a Jedi, you’re his father.”), was that instead of Luke Skywalker having disappeared and being searched for, it should have been Han Solo.
Han, abandoning his wife and family when Ben was shipped off to the Skywalker Academy did a number of Ben Solo. Han could have been overwhelmed by being a family man, misses his old life, whatever it was, it was the crux of Ben’s disillusionment with his own existence. His self worth wrapped up in what a distant father should have been to him.
I know half of those reading this are probably saying “how could you do that, Han is my favourite”, but half of us are in that state with Luke anyway.
So. The first film doesn’t have Han in it at all. The second, where Ben (now Kylo) and his First Order are wreaking havoc and hunting down Jedi escapees, also shows Rey (whichever form she takes), on the search for Han Solo at the behest of Leia and Luke, neither go with her because Leia is still a politician in the New Republic and Luke is trying to deal with the fallout of Ben’s wrath.
At the end of this film, or halfway through, Han is discovered and convinced that he should return. He had not realised that Kylo was his son, as the New Republic tried to keep it from the media, blah, blah, blah.
The final film finds the New Republic and The First Order coming head to head, Han confront his son after a scalding from Leia, maybe she says something simple, whimsical yet hard hitting like “Luke is a Jedi, you’re his father.”
The film ends with Ben turning from the Dark Side and assisting the New Republic in taking down The First Order.
Roll Credits.
I know I have neglected Rey, Finn, and Poe in this but, as I say, this was merely some post Force Awakens rewatch musings. Definitely some plot holes in there that I haven’t ironed out. But at the end of the day we have what we have and I think we can all do our best to take it with a grain of salt.
May the Force Be With You.