How would you have done the Star Wars sequel trilogy?

[Enterprising]

The biggest problem with the sequel trilogy is that it was left too long to doing it. Should have done it in the 90s instead of the prequels. Now we’re over a real-life generation on, and with only 3 movies of space to tell stories, you have to cut a lot of corners in explaining what happened during the 30 years between Jedi and this new trilogy. You can only say so much in the opening crawl and can’t have too much in-movie exposition, or it’ll bore the “general audience”.

I’m nowhere as knowledgeable of Star Wars EU stuff as I am Star Trek. Beyond the movies it’s most of the computer games I’ve played as opposed to reading other books or whatnot. I’ve also not thought through of a lot of the major story details.

Essentially with it being 30 years on, I’d say it’s taken probably about that long for the New Republic to bring stability to all the inner-core systems and most of the outer-core systems. With a much smaller fleet than the Empire had to both restore and maintain order, on top of superweapons of fear not being in the mantra of the New Republic. Various crime lords/war loads had arisen, on top of factions of the Empire that splintered after the Emperor’s death, all competed for power in those systems, so the New Republic could only take them on a few at a time.

With things relatively “safe” now, the New Republic starts to form missions to chart new hyperspace lanes, in the hopes to discover planets with much needed resources to bring stability and prosperity to the outer rim systems, many of which have always been left behind in the past, be it a Republic or Empire in charge of galactic affairs. Three of these missions do not report back, our heroes old and new, must investigate them to ascertain why.

One will be a genuine victim to the dangers of charting new hyperspace lanes, another will have vanished without a trace leaving a mystery, and the final one is found crash landed on a planet, with evidence to suggest it was shot down with weaponry of an unknown origin.

Later on, a fleet of the Imperial Remnant led by one Grand Admiral Thrawn, unleashes itself on an unsuspecting galaxy. They lack the typical raw firepower of an Imperial fleet, and neither do they follow the Tarkin doctrine, instead depending more on speed, surprise and brilliant tactics from their leader. It’s also a good chance to see some Chiss vessels along with Victory, Interdictor and Bellator class Star Destroyers. Our heroes assume this is what shot down their scout mission, to maintain the secrecy of the build-up. The New Republic throws everything it has to counter the Remnant fleet, it will turn out later they assumed incorrectly, the Vong shot-down the scout to hide THEIR fleet build up, and invade while the only two forces that could possibly counter them, are slugging it out in a fight. For the final act of the trilogy, the New Republic and Remnant put their differences aside and join forces to beat back the Vong, ending in a peace treaty between the two after the dust settles.

I don’t have much more than that, but I think it gives enough to both offer something different and the same at the one time. Also plenty of ways Han can sacrifice himself, Leia can retire after all her years of public service, Luke can see his days out at the new Jedi Academy on Yavin, the Falcon can go out on a blaze of glory, and we leave the door open to move on with our new heros who are mostly the kids of the previous ones.

[Wargriffin]

I think if I had a Do over on the ST

No world Killing Weapons... The First Order isn't about Destruction but Domination


The Main FU Application of the ST isn't a Weapon but a Technique, Force Domination taking the Mind Trick / Battle Meditation to its darkest and logical extreme complete subversion of Free Will. Why blow up a planet of Rebels when you can just turn everybody into your ally.

Snoke is an Imperial Cult Experiment who has taken control of the Imperial Remnant of the outer galaxy, Making them the First Order, Snoke keeps control by using the Knights of Ren, Purge Troopers and Cipher Agents. Snoke maintains his rank by saying he is Palpy's child 'True from a certain point of View' and keeps the highest ranked members of the moff council under his direct control.


The main gist is Snoke needs Three force artifacts to create the proper apparatus to focus his power so he can hit the Galaxy all at once. The main limitations of his Force Domination is He has to break the persons will and it is physically taxing on his body which isn't in good shape to begin with.

Luke and his two oldest students have vanished in search of the Artifacts

Ben succumbed to the Darkside but instead of slaughtering the academy, a majority of them have be placed in Carbonite so Snoke can slowly dominate them increasing the ranks of his Force users in his Crimson Guard


Ben and Ren 'Who would be alluded too in 7 but wouldn't show up till 8' are the Classic Saberist

The knights follow the same naming scheme as Kylo Ren, basically Name - Ren
Witch- Ren : A Nightsister uses a Light Whip, the main force user outside of Ben Ren and one other
Gunner - Ren : forgoes saber combat. uses only guns, Is the tracker of the group is a Bothan
Berserker -Ren : A massive Knight uses a Light Axe, is a Wookiee
Amazon Ren: Uses a Saber pike and energy shield
Kage Ren : uses the Shoto tonfas ' think Maris Brood'
Wolf Ren : forgoes saber combat, focuses on using the force to increase their already strong hand to hand abilities A Shistavanen
Psycho -Ren: has his arms bound like a straight jacket, uss the force to control four sabers and throws pretty much everything at you. Luke outright tells Rey not to fight this one.
Later would be revealed to be a Taung and has the Darksaber on him when he frees himself from his self imposed restraints.

'Pilot' Ren : This Ren generally just stays on the ship but is an impressive pilot. essentially the Ship is their Saber.

Ren himself : is apparently immune to Snoke's powers, infact Force powers don't work on him at all, his work just fine of you though. Is very much like Krayt wanting to take aspects of the Jedi and Sith and make something New, Is the main source of Ben's fall but its less Ben is tempted... but more like he agrees with Ren's thinking

Ren and Snoke do not like each other, Snoke is an Authoritarian and Ren is a straight up Anarchist


_____


Rey's arc is about finding her own identity.

Rey: Why me... why would I awaken now.

Luke:... cause you're needed

Rey: But i'm nobody.

Luke: The Force seems to disagree, Thats why its reached out to you, It knows you can be so much more.



Finn's arc is about saving himself and then saving those still in the darkness
Finn wouldn't just instantly jump at killing his fellow stormtroopers in fact he goes out of his way to try and talk sense into them, Tackling one to the ground and tell him him to tell him where his from only to end up stunning the guy. The fight with TRAITOR would end with Finn outsmarting him getting to stun himself.

Traitor then become the running gag between him and kylo.

Kylo calls him a Traitor in 7

Finn gets him back in 8... As one traitor to another


Poe I feel is almost redundant, He is this weird hybrid of Han and Wedge, yet he is suppsoe to be Leia's most potent Agent.

[Admiral X]

I kind of feel like going back to this again, because I have a mix of ideas in my head from different sources, and I'm kind of curious what people think of them.

In truth, I'd kind of like to go back to the prequels and rework them, but I'm going to stick to the sequels for now.

Plot:

It would theoretically be possible to do something along the lines of the Thrawn trilogy, which could include Thrawn himself leading an Imperial remnant based somewhat on the Empire of the Hand. I guess it kind of depends on whether one wants this remnant to be closer to what the Empire was, which would include a dark force user and thus include a C'baoth-like figure, or not. Also depends on whether one would want to set things up for the Yuuzhan Vong or not. The rest of the plot would kind of depend on how the characters end up being, but I would use this trilogy as something of a passing of the torch. The only things that are for certain are the timing, due to the actors' ages, that Luke would not be in exile (I might even include Mara Jade and children), and that Han would still die by the end of the first movie because I know Harrison Ford would never agree to be in it otherwise.

There would be no "Resistance" - it would be the New Republic, largely as depicted in the EU books.

Characters:
I'll use the same names as the actual sequels just because.

Rey
There are actually a couple of concepts I've seen that I kind of like for this character. One is that she's the daughter of Han and Leia, and that she took a lot after her dad. She's not Force sensitive, and so she kind of got neglected because her force-sensitive sibling(s) got all the attention. So she ended up rather ironically taking on the rogue-like personality through rebelling against her parents and uncle. So she's more of an anti-hero, and so at the time the movies take place, her parents are kind of trying to make up for it by helping her out financially (or at least trying to), and trying to build a relationship with her. Unfortunately, there's now drama with Ben, because he is either falling to the dark side, or has already done so and disappeared. Rey could then end up getting involved through trying to locate him and bring him back.

Alternatively, I like the idea of basing her more on what we actually got, except that I'd give her a mentor figure, who taught her all the technical information, how to fight and stand up for herself (perhaps the relationship started out of sympathy following Rey getting beaten up at a young age). The key difference here is that she's really good with unarmed combat, but not so good with weapons, which is okay with her, because for as horrible as others have been to her, she has a strong sense against killing others. This is mainly to set her up as being essentially the opposite of how Luke was during the OT, which is to say that where he struggled to move objects and tended to rely on his blaster and lightsaber, she would be able to move things pretty easily. This would actually have made itself known fairly early on, and neither she nor her mentor would know what to make of it, so it would be more of an annoyance for them, and something to hide, as the locals would be superstitious. Anyway, at some point, the mentor ends up being taken, and this ends up being Rey's call to adventure as she tries to get them back. Through this journey, she comes to meet one of the main OT characters.

Finn
There are a couple different ideas with this character that I like about, too. One is a bit closer too what he was in the ST, the main differences being that he, like most of the other stormtroopers, was conscripted from one of the planets under the control of the Imperial remnant, rather than the idea of him being idea of him having been kidnapped as a child and all that. He'd also be more sympathetic to the other conscripts, with his hatred being more reserved for the officers and NCOs like Phasma. So the guy who dies in the beginning would be like his bestie or maybe even his brother, which is what forces his decision to leave, with Poe's capture being his opportunity to get out of there. I think I'd keep him being initially reluctant to defecting to the NR, but coming around to the idea of it out of his sympathy for the various conscripts serving the IR, with his arc working toward causing a rebellion within the Imperial ranks.

Alternatively, it might have been interesting to have him be an ace fighter pilot who has become disillusioned with the Empire and wants out. Him freeing Poe would actually be out of sympathy on his part, though, again, he isn't looking to join the NR at first, he's just letting Poe go before trying to make a life for himself in a quiet part of the galaxy, but getting talked into actually actively fighting against the IR. The idea of him as a fighter jock is somewhat appealing because of the dynamic it could create with Poe, as well as giving him a higher position as an officer, who could help more with more information to help foil the IR fleet through decoding, coming up with counter tactics, infiltration, etc. He could still have something of a foil in Phasma, though in this version she would be a higher ranking officer (and we'd actually get to see what she looks like).

Poe
Poe was pretty good as he was, IMO, so I would have kept him largely the same.

That's about all I have right now. Thoughts?

[Winter]

Remove Rey: I'm going to be honest here I think Rey is one of the biggest Millstones around the Trilogy's neck. In order to make her seem as perfect and as amazing as possible EVERYONE around her HAS to be dummed down so she looks good by comparison.

Poe, called the best pilot in TFA is repeatedly compared to Rey in an unfavorable light with Chewie apparently saying how much better things would be if Rey was the one piloting the Falcon. Finn spends most of the Trilogy chasing after Rey on the grounds that she was nice to him after she finished beating him up and Luke has to lose his faith in the Jedi in order to make Rey indirectly convincing him to return all the more powerful.

It doesn't help that she has no real narrative importance to the plot beyond "Is a fan of the Original Trilogy". So she's sees Luke, Han and Leia as her heroes and gets to meet her heroes. Neat. She finds out she's Force Sensitive and is a fan of the Jedi. Cool. She finds out her parents are nobodies. Fine. She learns she's actually the grand daughter of Palpatine. Contradicts the whole you come from nothing bit but whatever.

None of this matters. None of this means anything. Her meeting her heroes, being Force sensitive, learning her parents are drunks and that she's a Palpatine is just surface level stuff that has no impact on her character throughout the Trilogy. I've said it before and I'll say it again, she's the same person she was at the end of the Trilogy that she was at the start. Her character arc means nothing because she doesn't have an arc.

And if a character is causing this much trouble to your story that every writer just keeps reusing the whole Mysterious Backstory Angle with NO alterations because they don't know what to actually do with her. Then the character has a problem and should probably be written out.

Make Finn The Main Character: I've made a number of comparisons between TDST & She-Ra and the Princesses of Power and looking it over it really made me realize just how much potential Finn had as a character as he and Adora are pretty much the same basic concept.

Former minion of Evil Empire turns against said Empire for moral reasons and learns that they have magical powers. The only difference is Adora is a fully realized character who undergoes a journey that changes her from without and within while Finn only really changes in that he becomes slightly less comedic by the end of the Trilogy. That's his arc he's not quite as pathetic as he was when we first met him.

Adora turn from the Horde is also less rushed then Finn's. Adora had the entire pilot to learn the truth about the Princess Alliance and see the Horde for what it was while Finn had a 2 minute scene before just deciding to defect and needed only Rey to be captured to join the Rebellion.

So, I think that Finn should be the main character of the Trilogy though I personally would recast Finn with someone else for reasons I will get to soon and instead have Finn become Kira (Lucas' original name for his version of Rey). Not sure who I would cast her with but I'm open to suggestion.

Draw More from Legends: The Mandalorian and many other shows, novels, comics and games tend to draw from the original EU as much as possible and honestly I don't see why that can't be the case here.

For example have the other two members of the Trio be Ben Skywalker and Jaina Solo (with the latter being played by Daisy Ridley, no reason to waste a perfectly good actor). Kira is the main character but Ben and Jaina but it would be interesting as it's something we haven't really seen in a film. A former Storm Trooper who learns they're Force Sensitive and befriends two Jedi who are the children of the Original Trio.

Also, you could have cameos from other Legend characters like Kyle Katarn, played by John Boyega (because seriously Boyega is Perfect for the Role of Kyle WHY HAS NO ONE NOTICED THIS?!?!) along with other mentions of many of elements from Legends in order to show how we got to this point. This would be hard as Legends became rather Dense in lore but a skilled writer, like those working on the Clone Wars and The Mandalorian, shows that it is possible to use the elements people enjoyed from Legends and make it easy to follow what is going on in the story at hand.

Get Ride of Kylo Ren and the First Order: I honest think that the First Order was a TERRIBLE idea that should have been scrapped for reasons that have been so beaten into the ground you'd need a Excavator to get it out.

I'm not against the idea of a Empire like group playing the role of main antagonist but I think it was VERY poorly executed. Yes, it's Star Wars and somethings are just expected but the First Order was to much like what we've seen already with NOTHING to make them unique as an antagonist.

The Imperial Remnant was, as the name implies, the Remnants of the Empire but Thrawn, Pellaeon and C'baoth helped to give it more of a unique identity. The Separatist are led by a collection of greedy businessman who are just pawns for Palpatine to use and then discarded when of no further use and the Sith Empire from KOTOR have an entire Sith army and were different origin and look that helped them stand out from TOT's Empire.

But the Storm Troopers from the First Order and just Storm Troopers, Snoke is just another version of Palpatine and Kylo is just another Darth Vader Clone. Nothing makes them unique except that they all REALLY suck at their jobs.

I would honestly make this Version of the Empire more like the Horde from She-Ra. On the surface they seem to be no better then the OG Empire but we learn that this empire is more complex then that. The main villain is someone who was friends with Kira and, maybe like Catra, is in love with her but due to the way s/he was raised believes that they HAVE to remain in the Empire and sees Kira leaving as a personal betrayal.

And finally, one last change I would make is, again like She-Ra, have a new threat come in to take over the role of the main villain. However, I would go with something more like Sephiroth (former great hero who turns on the world he swore to protect now seeks to destroy it in order to become a God). I would have this built in throughout the story where this hero, a Jedi obviously, starts out as an ally but towards the end of the second chapter turns on the heroes.

And finally a Change I would make to this Sequel Trilogy is...

Don't Have it be a Trilogy: I know that sounds insane but honestly there's no reason to restricted yourself to just three films. The Prequel Trilogy locked itself in when Lucas named The Empire Strikes Back Episode V and decided to make a Trilogy of Trilogies so that had no choice but to be a Trilogy.

But the Sequel to the Original Trilogy had no such rule. Given the nature of the story I'm proposing I think I would need at LEAST 4 films to fully flesh it out. The Storm Trooper who becomes a Jedi, the Jedi that becomes a villain, the Empire that is more then what it seems and the fact that in the end the Republic and Empire may need to become allies in order to fight this threat? I think that's to much for even 3 films as I think having the Jedi hero turn on the heroes would be better suited for the second film and then have the conflict between the heroes and the Empire be the focus on Film 3 and then resolve everything in film 4.

Yes, that means this isn't a Trilogy of Trilogies but if that's what the narrative demands then maybe that's where the series should go.

And those are the changes I would make to TDST.

[Madner Kami]

Well, first and foremost, you either continue the story of the heroes where it was left off or you leave it behind, not this half-baked nonsense we got. That alone would solve a whole lot of problems with the Sequel-Triolgy. Once that is decided, the possible stories vary wildly.

[Captain Crimson]

Keep the EU under the Legends brand, find a decent showrunner who can be a visionary director for the ST (and even if you want PC cred, at least make sure they can tell a good story) with full creative freedom, one who is hopefully well versed on lore, and order all the executives and employees to make their social media accounts private. Too much drama from them lately.

[Nealithi]

Well, first and foremost, you either continue the story of the heroes where it was left off or you leave it behind, not this half-baked nonsense we got. That alone would solve a whole lot of problems with the Sequel-Triolgy. Once that is decided, the possible stories vary wildly.

This is rather the best examination I have seen.

My current thoughts on how would I do this? Take page from KOTOR. Set the next batch of films a few decades if not centuries from the original trilogy. The new Republic holds part of the galaxy, while the Empire persists in another. Luke and company are history now. Make new characters and stick with them. The setting is what ties it together. Fan service of ships and characters should be limited to fluff on a screen or art in places. IE no Millennium Falcon no Artoo or Threepio. If you must use a freighter like the falcon. Make a new version. Decide the badguy before you make the heroes. One bit of writing I have heard is the villain needs to be the most interesting character in a story. Vader and Palpatine knocked it out of the park. Don't clone them though. Make new ones. Many have said use Thrawn. I say use a Thrawn like character. An intelligent villain ups the stakes. And one with just a different point of view can be a fan favourite as well.

[Link8909]

Well, first and foremost, you either continue the story of the heroes where it was left off or you leave it behind, not this half-baked nonsense we got. That alone would solve a whole lot of problems with the Sequel-Triolgy. Once that is decided, the possible stories vary wildly.

This is rather the best examination I have seen.

My current thoughts on how would I do this? Take page from KOTOR. Set the next batch of films a few decades if not centuries from the original trilogy. The new Republic holds part of the galaxy, while the Empire persists in another. Luke and company are history now. Make new characters and stick with them. The setting is what ties it together. Fan service of ships and characters should be limited to fluff on a screen or art in places. IE no Millennium Falcon no Artoo or Threepio. If you must use a freighter like the falcon. Make a new version. Decide the badguy before you make the heroes. One bit of writing I have heard is the villain needs to be the most interesting character in a story. Vader and Palpatine knocked it out of the park. Don't clone them though. Make new ones. Many have said use Thrawn. I say use a Thrawn like character. An intelligent villain ups the stakes. And one with just a different point of view can be a fan favourite as well.

While I personally feel The Sequel Trilogy is okay and do have good elements to them, I do think that there was definitely mismanagement in how these films were executed that prevented them from being great, having different directors for each film just one of those examples.

One of the major issues with the new trilogy is that fact that it was made with the mentality of apologizing for The Prequel Trilogy, and so The Sequel Trilogy was made to be the most Star Wars films one could possibly make, and while there are new elements that don't make The Sequel Trilogy a carbon copy of the original, there's still clear aspects that deliberately invoke The Original Trilogy, The First Order, Snoke, the Resistance were pretty much The Empire, Palpatine, and the Rebels in all but name.

So I absolutely agree that they needed to get away from the time period of The Original Trilogy and be its own thing, they need a new enemy that wasn't a fascist regime or the Sith, or if they wanted to still have Storm Troopers, switch the roles and have a mighty New Republic with clean X-Wings and people in smart uniforms, with the heroes being vigilant against fascism from within, and have the remanence of the Empire a small army of disheveled troops and rugged ships and equipment that use gorilla warfare tactics.