Sequel Trilogy

The Star Wars Disney Sequel Trilogy is the main point of contention fans have with new Star Wars and its wokeness. They want to see nothing less than the erasure, or decanonization, of the ST if they are to return as full fans to the franchise. It was helmed by notorious SJW Kathleen Kennedy, and supported by JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson.

## Basic Overview

The first movie in the Sequel Trilogy, The Force Awakens, directed by JJ Abrams was an overall exciting movie and opened up many possibilities that needed to be followed up on, but was otherwise a clone of A New Hope. The following movie, a separate one set before A New Hope called Rogue One, was also released to favorable reviews.

However, that all took a turn for the worse when the next movie in the Sequel Trilogy was released: The Last Jedi, directed by Rian Johnson. This deconstruction of the Star Wars franchise, attempting to be "subversive" failed miserably and left fans reeling from all the damage it caused to the franchise on all fronts: both in terms of canon, storylines, and messages/themes. That being said, the movie was not completely poorly done if the fact it is a part of Star Wars was ignored.

The same could not be said for the final movie in the sequel trilogy, The Last Skywalker, directed by JJ Abrams again. This movie was terrible in any way you looked at it: from a storytelling perspective (it contained way too many plot holes and was all over the place with no cohesive story) and from a fan perspective. And none of the storylines from A Force Awakens were really tied up or even followed up on, which led many fans to conclude the Sequel Trilogy had no plans, and was not planned out from the beginning. Indeed, this has been confirmed many times during interviews with those involved in the production, even JJ Abrams himself. The lack of a plan lead to a fight sort of between Abrams and Rian where they would go out and try to contradict each other by retconning something the other director had in their movie, which lead to so many plot holes and the destruction of the Star Wars franchise.

## The Force Awakens

In The Force Awakens, we are introduced to a story strongly reminiscent of A New Hope (only with upped stakes since the Death Star could only destroy a planet, the Starkiller Base can destroy a whole star system!) As any introduction to a trilogy should, it leaves many questions to be answered, which means the goodness of this movie depends on how well the other movies follow up on these leads. They don't, so this movie is not that good on its own in that sense. It also introduces a new enemy in the form of the First Order, which appears to be a clone of the Empire (complete with an emperor-Vader structure in Snoke-Kylo Ren) but no explanation is given for their origin or why everything is repeating again.

Also in this movie, we are introduced to Finn, a character who has an extremely strong potential due to being a former Stormtrooper, potentially giving audiences a new perspective and allowing for strong character arcs. That is, if that isn't all abandoned in the following movies to have him do petty pointless tasks and follow Rey around all the time! Also, it would help if his face on the posters wasn't so shrunk down, but Disney sometimes has to go against its own Diversity hypocrisy if they want Chinese audiences! (For the same reason they cut out a shot of two women kissing in the third movie by the way)

Oh, and Wonder Rey, the Bestest Ever is introduced. She already shows signs of being a Mary Sue by being able to pilot the Millennium Falcon and holding out against the highly trained Kylo Ren in a lightsaber battle, without any sort of formal training herself. And we can't forget they kill off Han Solo in this movie- guess we won't get to see Han, Leia, and Luke all in one place one last time!

## The Last Jedi

The Last Jedi was a movie meant to be a deconstruction of Star Wars but in fact ruined, perhaps irreversibly, the franchise. It tried to constantly subvert expectations, but Rian didn't know that constantly subverting expectations didn't necessarily mean that the film was good. First, it does not follow up on any leads introduced in The Force Awakens except for Rey's parentage, where it is revealed her parents are nobodies. While this could be construed as encouraging as it shows you can be a hero no matter where you start, it means things make less sense considering her super Mary Sue powers (if she was born to a nobody where did they come from), and of course the fact we don't see any natural hero progression to begin with due to her Mary Sue nature so that whole message is moot.

Secondly, none of the interesting plotlines about Finn are followed up on and instead he is made to be the butt of a few jokes. In addition, he is paired up with a woman named Rose Tico (in her only major appearance in the franchise given she gets completely sidelined in the next movie) on a pointless mission to this gambling planet. There, they release a whole bunch of captive animals but of course they have no plans for what happens to these animals after they leave the planet. And the whole thing was pointless since the mission fails, so it was almost as if it was put in there just for social commentary. At the end, Finn is just about to make a heroic sacrifice (would have saved him from becoming a pathetic Rey fan in the next movie if he died with at least some dignity left here) to stop a death star laser from blowing up the rebel base when Rose crashes into him. She claims they win by saving what they love, but her message is kind of undercut by the fact the laser is literally charging up in the background as she says this.

There is also a complete idiotic character named Admiral Holdo, who has affectionately been given the name Admiral Gender Studies by many in the PCW community. She has pink hair and dressed down Poe, a fighter pilot trying to take down the enemy. She is also at the center of the worst science mistake in Star Wars history- the Holdo Maneuver. At the end of the episode, she is able to take her ship into hyperspace and ram it into the enemy ship, not only destroying it but also completely destroying all of Star Wars lore. If she could do that, why can't you just fight wars by outfitting ships with droids and sending them off at targets at hyperspeed? Why couldn't they destroy the death star by ramming into it? And all questions like that. Sure made for a cool scene though!

The villains are not advanced very much in this movie either. Kylo and Rey are revealed to have some sort of special force dyad that enables them to remain connected, but that isn't too bad. However, Kylo constantly trying to get Rey to join him becomes a little tiresome- we already saw that before anyways when Vader tried to get Luke to join him, and there it was done so much better! Lastly, the villain of Snoke was completely worthless as they just kill him off without any rhyme, reason, or explanation.

However, none of that is the WORST thing about this movie. The WORST thing this movie does is to poor Luke Skywalker, turning him into Jake Skywalker. After the whole adventure in the previous movie to find Luke and get him to train Rey like Yoda trained Luke back in The Empire Strikes Back, Luke takes his lightsaber... and throws it AWAY! Then we see just how pathetic Luke has gotten- he is living a miserable life as a hermit on this island, and he is reduced to sucking green milk from a weird alien's breasts! At the end of the movie, he dies a pointless death, having done little except be "shown" by Rey given that he is a white male. Oh and by the way Rey can now lift a million tons of rocks at once with the Force if you were wondering. But the worst part of all was that the movie completely misunderstood and destroyed the main defining quality of Luke- his will to see the good in everyone, which led him to trying to redeem a man as evil and corrupt as Darth Vader. However, here he is seen to want to kill Kylo without a second thought when he senses even a little bit of Dark Side growing in him. What happened Luke, what happened?

Even today an installment that ruins a franchise is often referred to as "The Last Jedi" of that franchise.

## The Rise of Skywalker

The Rise of Skywalker, also known as the Ruse of Soywoker, is the final and most disasterous film in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. If I had to cover every plot hole and ridiculousness from the movie and that stupid fetch quest from Exegol to Ochi's dagger to the giant hunk of Death Star still around after the big explosion to the whole entire ending scene this document would be a million pages long.

So it is finally revealed who the main villain all along had been given that Snoke was killed off last episode unceremoniously. It turns out that it is... PALPATINE! And if you ask how, the answer is this: The dark side is a path to many abilities which some consider to be... UNNATURAL! That's it, that's all the explanation we get! And the impossibility of it all is not to mention the whole thing that having the emperor survive invalidates the ending to the original trilogy and waters it down completely. The ending of the OT is supposed to represent a restabilizing of the Force, a restoration to balance as achieved by the redemption of the "Chosen One" Anakin. Even out of universe, it is supposed to be a conclusive and happy ending best left undisturbed as it would tarnish the good Luke has done for the galaxy throughout his entire mission. But nope- the Force was not balanced, the emperor survived, and now the only one who can stop him is Wonder Rey- the Bestest Evar!

Oh and yeah, Rey is Palpatine's granddaughter. Ignoring the creepy implications of this, it totally retcons what was stated in the previous movie about her being born from nobodies. Her parents just WANTED to be nobodies to protect her apparently- Yeah right! Can't these movies make up their mind already! Of course, Rey manages to defeat Palpatine and she dies, but fortunately for her and Reylo fans, Kylo kisses her and magically brings her back to life. Of course. She then goes on to commit the heinous crime of stealing the last name Skywalker, and the trainwreck concludes.