Pre-Trailer Summary: Episode IX

At the Star Wars Celebration convention, JJ Abrams and his team released the teaser trailer for the next installment of the main Star Wars saga.  The title for episode IX has been revealed to be "The Rise of Skywalker".

So, where was I before the trailer?  My relationship with Star Wars was troubled.  I thrive on new beginnings and the potential for greatness.  I grew up watching the Original Trilogy in theaters.  In 1977 I was seven years old and I went to see it with my uncle and cousins.  I've seen all of the Star Wars movies in the theater ever since.

The original movie was something completely different from all the other science fiction of the time, unlike Star Trek, which was older and clunkier to me.  Lost in Space and Space 1999 were cartoon-like in my eyes (like Little House on the prairie set in space) and Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers, which I watched in their entirety, were fun to my childhood self, but they lacked both depth and realism; they were hyper stylized worlds, actually contained on about 3 sets, and represented noting that I felt I could fit into.  

When I saw Star Wars for the first time, it immediately connected with me, and that connection only grew over the following years.  When Phantom Menace came out, not only did I see the very first screening of the midnight showing, waiting all day in line, but I attended the first Trilogy marathon's that preceded it.

I enjoyed the Phantom Menace, and still do, though I thought that Jar Jar was overdone.  As Attack of the Clones and the Revenge of the Sith were released, I found them increasingly boring.  The decline and fall of Anakin was essentially uninteresting to me and the romance of Anakin and Padme was awkward.  But fundamentally, the second and third of the prequel trilogies were basically tragedies with a downward trajectory, the decline of the Jedi, the decline of the Republic, the fall of the Chosen One, the decline of Ben Kenobi and Yoda and Mace Windu, the decline of peace and justice in the galaxy.  I'm not just talking about low points in the trilogy, but the entire arc of the prequels was downward into tragedy.  And rather than feeling bad, feeling the loss of it, I just felt increasingly indifferent.

The more insidious problem with the prequel trilogy was how it abandoned the essential story elements of the originals, the mystic knighthood, the mysterious power pervading the world, the struggle between good and evil, all set in an environment of a high-tech science fiction action adventure.   Instead, the prequels were about procedural processes in the Senate and trade negotiations and the political manipulations of the Emperor

When I saw The Force Awakens, I was pleased to see that they had returned to what I considered the older style of storytelling.  Yes, many things were derivative of the A New Hope, but Abrams went out of his way to craft elements connecting his movie back to the Original Trilogy.  There were some major missteps, such as the role and fate of Han Solo, but I felt a promise of greater things to come, that I had not felt since...

The Last Jedi was an abomination.  Not only was every directorial and narrative decision wrong, but each was a betrayal not only of the spirit of the Original Series but also of the Abrams movie that preceded it.  Every question that Abrams raised, Johnson answered in the wrong way, seemingly out of spite.  My best approach to TLJ is to simply ignore that it ever existed.  Nothing happened in that film that advanced the plot of the trilogy in any way... to the point that the Sequel Trilogy no longer has any actual plot arc. Many of the characters took steps backward in their developmental arcs, retracing old ground and becoming less heroic in the process, which, no doubt, was Rian's intention.

I was obvious to me that whole segments of the film, including Canto Bight and Captain Phasma, were meaningless and could disappear without changing anything, but as I looked more closely at each scene and each element, I began to realize that none of them advanced the overall narrative from where we left it at the end of The Force Awakens. 

At the end of TFA, the Resistance had defeated Starkiller Base, but the location of their own hidden base was revealed and they have to flee from The First Order.  Rey is seeking out training in the ways of the Force.  She has found Luke. Poe is a skilled but reckless pilot who is maturing as a leader of the Resistance.  Fin is a troubled soldier who recoils from the horror of battle but willing to risk his own life for the sake of a greater cause.

At the end of TLJ, the location of their base is revealed and Resistance has to flee from The First Order.  Rey is seeking out training in the ways of the Force.  She has found the Sacred Texts. Poe is a skilled but reckless pilot who is maturing as a leader of the Resistance.  Fin is a troubled soldier who recoils from the horror of battle but willing to risk his own life for the sake of a greater cause.