Why The Force Is Strong With The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy

First of all, I have a shocking confession to make: I am not a Star Wars fan first and foremost. I remain a Trekkie at core, although other franchises have found their spots in my heart including Star Wars. I acknowledge the role that Star Wars played in Star Trek's revival: given the success of Star Wars, Paramount retooled what would have been a Star Trek Phase II TV series into The Motion Picture. The sets, uniforms, etc. were all intended for the TV series. From there the Star Trek franchise was able to get the attention and respect it deserved. Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas were actually good friends and enjoyed each others' work, so we as fans have made too big a deal out of the supposed rivalry. I haven't by any means devoured every piece of output related to Star Wars but I haven't found much I didn't like.

I'm going to catch some heat for this from a certain segment of Star Wars fans, but I actually like the sequel trilogy! For the first time we see that Star Wars is about war, and all that implies. Mark Hamill's portrayal of an older Luke Skywalker, burdened with a severe case of PTSD from all the death and destruction he's caused that he feels acutely through the Force was a rare dose of realism in filmmaking in general.  That, and the cynicism he expresses for having wasted his life fighting for the New Republic, only for it to fail so spectacularly once it gained power that the people of the galaxy wanted Empire 2.0 within a generation. He's got to be thinking, what was it all for? On top of that, he's so traumatized by his experiences that he almost kills his own nephew over a nightmare. A nightmare which, if Luke had retained any insight, might have represented Ben's being tempted by the Dark Side the way Luke was at the tree on Dagobah. You'd think Yoda might have done him a solid at that point and sent his Force ghost to remind Luke.  Then again Yoda consistently dropping the ball was the main reason Palpatine seized power in the first place, so this is on-brand. Luke effectively creates Kylo Ren, and he knows it. Even Luke's self-exile on a planet almost completely covered by water (after having grown up on a planet covered by desert) represents a complete break with his past.

The completion of the story arc of the Big Three from the original trilogy was satisfying and made sense (although sadly in the case of Carrie Fisher had to be written in during filming). Han Solo being betrayed by his own son provided additional drama (in addition to giving Harrison Ford a way out of the franchise as he neared retirement). Luke Skywalker confronts his nephew in the most epic use of the Force seen in the franchise--establishing him as not only a Jedi Master but possibly the most powerful Force user ever to live in his final moments of life. He gives the Resistance one last chance to redeem itself. Even Princess Leia's 'Mary Poppins' scene after the Rebel flagship was hit made sense: consider the scene when the Millennium Falcon hides inside the asteroid in The Empire Strikes Back, wherein Han, Leia, and Chewie walk around outside the ship with only oxygen masks--it would have made sense to send C-3PO out instead and tell him what to do to make repairs. And Leia is shown to need immediate medical care afterward and remains incapacitated for the rest of the movie. No quick dunk in the bacta tank for her! For all that the scene itself stretched the imagination (as though Star Wars doesn't already stretch the imagination!) it did show that even Force users aren't immune to everything.

And talking about C-3PO, he gets a chance to show himself to be more than a whiny coward in the final movie, where he is willing to have the droid equivalent of a lobotomy in order to retrieve from his memory information the Resistance needs to defeat the Sith. Thankfully R2-D2 had been saving backup copies of him, but Threepio was unaware of this, which provided extra drama.

All this being said...

I do have a couple of major issues with the sequel trilogy. The first was Rey. Yes, I know all the complaints by the trolls who have nothing better to do with their lives than hate on movies they haven't even seen yet. But I waited until after actually seeing the film (I know, right?) to render judgment.

The character of Rey herself wasn't the problem. I get why Disney wanted to include a young female protagonist: that's their stock in trade. And had she been written better I would have had absolutely no complaints. 

The problem is that Rey isn't even aware of her Force ability at the beginning of the movie, but by the end is almost at Luke's level at Return of the Jedi! This despite Luke having had training (briefly) from Obi-Wan and for substantially longer with Yoda, having been in multiple battles with the Empire including a duel with Darth Vader himself, and generally having more life experience. We see Rey having learned lightsaber dueling almost overnight by fighting exactly one Sith Lord and not even *meeting* a true Jedi face-to-face until the end of her first movie. I suppose you could argue that surviving on that craphole of a planet where she grew up gave her some inherent fighting skill that was aided by her latent Force ability (like Luke’s and Anakin’s piloting skills were). That much makes sense.

But it seems to me that using a lightsaber requires significantly more training than just beating on someone with a metal rod (or even using a regular sword) due to the risk of self-injury. Otherwise everyone would be using them beyond gutting a tauntaun (Han Solo) or as a desperation measure because no other weapon is available (Finn). At least they showed Luke training Leia in a flashback scene (and Leia had known about her Force ability for much longer than Rey) so she makes more sense too. They could have at least given Rey an 80s-style training montage in Episode VII (perhaps from Kylo Ren himself, given their dyad relationship--which could have been foreshadowed much better than it was). Or better yet, they could have displayed Rey's force ability by having it enhance an already-existing skill (like with Luke and Anakin's piloting skill in their first movies) and only bring in the lightsaber later (perhaps that same 80s training montage with Luke in the next movie, or with a time skip between movies to imply she'd been working on her skills).

And about Finn: he's easily the most horribly underused character in all of Star Wars! They had their diversity right there and didn’t take advantage of it, which itself actually smacks of tokenism since he’s the only Black guy in the sequels until Lando turns up again. Finn gets no further characterization than 'former Stormtrooper' and maybe a romantic interest later on, so it almost seems as though the central character in the trailers that were shown before Episode VII was plugged in as an afterthought. Which is too bad: Finn had great chemistry with Han Solo. This makes sense in that they're both former Imperials who were raised in institutionalized environments, and both left because they were asked to cross a line they weren't willing to cross. And Han sees in Finn a lot of himself as a younger man. Had Harrison Ford not wanted out of Star Wars so he could finally retire, I could have seen Finn becoming his apprentice/adopted son and eventually taking over the Millennium Falcon--setting up a new series of adventures with younger heroes for a new generation.

All told, I thought the sequels were very well-done. The prequels got their level of hate too: I remember fans excoriating Jake Lloyd for (gasp!) being an eight-year-old boy playing an eight-year-old boy! Star Wars isn't exactly Shakespeare even at its best, but what were they expecting from the kid? He never acted again because of the negative reactions. And Ahmed Best got too much crap for reading the lines that were put in front of him. The only reason why I don't consider Jar-Jar Binks a racial parody is because the other Gungans were played straight and actually acted like they had brains--Jar-Jar was the outlier among them. We need to keep in mind that Gen-Xers like myself make the mistake of expecting the Star Wars we saw as kids in elementary and middle school. And the original trilogy was made with Boomers wanting to recall their childhood watching Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials in mind. We saw them through the eyes of children the children we were, not as the notoriously more cynical and critical adults we've become. The prequels were made for Millennial kids; the sequels with Gen-Z and later in mind. Different audiences, different tastes. 

As long as viewers keep this in mind, then all of Star Wars is eminently watchable (that is, other than the horribly outdated CGI in Episode II that had ventured too far into the Uncanny Valley of the Shadow of Death even at the time. Yes, Clone Wars was made with the same technology but people expected it to look like an animated show!)