From one day to the next, we suddenly had more Star Wars content on the horizon. I was out of the country and missed a lot of the hype for the
build up to this film, but I was very excited to finally see it. Immediately there was so much to love, so lets start there. New characters, new droids,
old characters, and old droids! Much of what I loved as a child was back again and in stunning 4K! The old excitement from the Original Trilogy was
there and the same feeling of the Force was back! It felt like the aspects we were missing during the Prequel Trilogy were alive and in full force
(pun intended). A more straight forward plot and better acting really sold the return to Star Wars that many were looking for. Unfortunately the issues
were already brewing under the surface. Many complained that it was a pretty blatant redo of Star Wars A New Hope. And they were right. A young hero on a
desert planet finds a droid harboring critical information, the hero meets a mentor who takes them aboard the Millenium Falcon to join the rebel/resistance force
against the powerful facist government, they encounter the evil dark side user who hates and then kills the hero's mentor, the hero proves their potential with
the Force and destoys the government's planet destoying weapon.. Yup, blow for blow it was almost the same movie. Not to mention the dreaded Mary Sue issue!
There were a lot of reasons to complain, but the real issues were not yet evident at the time.
Let's dive into that top-down failing that I mentioned. Full creative control of this movie was given to JJ Abrams to direct and even write much of it. And I agree
that many of the great parts of this movie were thanks to his influence. The big problem is that JJ Abrams is not a fan of the Prequel Trilogy and only wanted to write
a continuation of the Original Trilogy. I'm sorry.. What? You mean you are beginning the sequel to 6 films, and you think, hey, let's just throw out films I-III, and
keep going with the middle three. That is an immediate recipe for disaster. No wonder we basically got a soft reboot of episode IV. And here we see the failing from
the top. The executives and producers who purchased Lucasfilm with the intent to create more movies just said, all we need are the rights and a popular director and we'll
basically be printing money. They didn't stop to plan how these films would build off of the first 6 movies, so they just handed that responsibility to someone who
didn't even like half of the movies! Not to mention all of the rich and intruiging plots of the fan written books that they could have used as a basis for their
movies, but GEORGE LUCAS HIMSELF GAVE THEM AN OUTLINE FOR HOW TO FINISH HIS STORY!!... They took his outline, bundled it up with all the other Legend creations from fans
and THREW IT ALL OUT THE WINDOW, CUZ JJ DIDN'T LIKE THE PREQUELS!! (deep breaths..) Sorry, admittedly the prequels do have some major issues, but the story was
solid and DIDN'T DESERVE TO BE DISREGARDED! Okay, okay, I'm fine now.. haha.. phew..
Clearly the foundation for the Sequel Trilogy was rocky at best, however the fans still had hope that Disney would hear their complaints and make episodes VIII and IX
in a way that would round out and finish the story of this beloved trilogy of trilogies. And with that hope we looked forward to episode VIII.