There will be spoilers here probably but I wanted to separate this from the Rise of Skywalker threads.
Bear in mind I don’t consume any of the tie-in comics or media so let’s keep it to just a hypothetical reworking of the last 3 movies without reliance on the outside media forms.
Someone already pitched the perfect movie.
Let’s set limitations like “not unlimited CG budgets” and “no easy use of dead actors onscreen”
The Last Jedi:
Make one of the ships an Interdictor class Star Destroyer. They are cannon again, and would solve a lot of the issues vis a vis the pursuit without introducing a never before mentioned fuel limitation.
I’m not sure it’s possible, without recutting the films massively, because there are just too many story beats in the films which are solely there because they ape something from an earlier film. That being said, I would have enjoyed something along the lines of:
The Force Awakens
The Last Jedi
Rise of Skywalker
This probably doesn’t make any sense, actually, but then the story is so nonsensical in its details that its not really easily fixable.
Or heck, “follow up ROTJ b with a story that doesn’t have any original cast”
Idk man, I thought it made enough sense.
Here is my take
Movie 1:
Movie 2
Movie 3
If I had my druthers it would still be a story of young Jedi and Sith, but Luke would have established the new Jedi Order and be struggling to avoid the mistakes of the Old Republic. I would cast Mark Hamill and either have him play older or write that he’d extended his lifespan to give the new Jedi time to proliferate.
I’d probably bring McDarmid back as a Sith force ghost if that’s a thing, influencing the new generation, but the main non-force-using evil groups would have a new approach, trying to learn from previous empires/evil armies but superseding them.
No Han. No Leia unless she extended her lifespan via the Force. Maybe Chewy since Wookiees live a long time. Lots of new scoundrels, scavengers and pilots, like Finn, Poe and Moz, but even scrappier. Weirder droids and furry creatures.
Mentioned elsewhere but instead of a trilogy, a series of connected movies like the MCU universe, culminating in Palpatine.
Just so I’m clear here: did we assume prior to TLJ that there were no fuel considerations?
What precisely is that “we” doing there?
On a plane so brief:
I have no problem with fuel as a concept, however given that logistics such as that have never meant anything in the series before, it was a poor choice given that other means to the same ends already exist and have been used before.
That nothing else uses them marks the central conflict incongruous.
And note, I actually like the movie.
This doesn’t follow. That fuel has never been introduced as a factor previously wouldn’t negate its existence entirely. I’ve never seen anyone in the Star Wars movies use the bathroom either, but I assume they do so. If some hypothetical future movie involves Rey scrambling to find a toilet, should I consider that cheating?
She’s a Jedi. She’s just uses the force to make it disappear. At least that’s what JK Rowling tells me.
Is it a core component of the plot, or just a comedic bit? Because yeah, if Rey spent a whole movie fumbling for a toilet and the search for a bathroom was the pivot of the story, I’d wonder why this suddenly became a thing in the Star Wars universe.
We’re talking about a detail that literally drives the movie. That’s the same movie that handwaves people escaping the chase by just leaving and coming back willy-nilly because their ship is “too small” to notice.
You can call that handwaving, but it’s not as if the Empire never bothered with dealing with smaller ships escaping them before, as in when they declined to fire on the escape pod with R2-D2 and C-3PO in it back in the first movie.
But OK sure, if we want to find stuff that doesn’t work for us in the movies, here’s something that’s always bothered me: how is it that Luke, a fairly pivotal soldier in a rebellious uprising, can just traipse off to Dagobah to meet up with Yoda, against orders (remember R2 tries to talk him out of it), conduct training with Yoda for who knows how long, engage in a personal attack on Darth Vader, then come slouching back for his prosthetic hand, and there are no repercussions?
I’ll tell you why: because there are essentially no rules in Star Wars. Stuff happens because the plot needed it to for their to even be a movie. The rebellion, the Empire, the jedi, the sith, they’re just background to the main characters and their personal drama. If a thing will add to the drama, it becomes important. If it does not, it fades until needed again. I don’t even hold that against Star Wars, you could say the same thing about lots of stories, legends and fables and myths, which Star Wars was written to be. I just don’t get all this twisting ourselves in knots when something doesn’t fit neatly into some pattern that never really existed.
I would immediately cut:
Snoke. Stupid name. Limp dick villain.
Death-Star tech of any kind. Put a fork in it. It’s done.
Knights of Ren. Dumb and useless.
The Emperor. He is DEAD DEAD.
I would try to systemically ctrl+Z undo all rehashed/recycled concepts. For instance, resetting Rey on a totally different and new planet instead of the shameless Tatooine carbon copy that is Jakku.
Alternatively I would prefer to set it 100+ years in the future or past to avoid overlapping characters altogether.
So what is your decision as to what happens to both sides after the end of ROTJ?
Mostly likely a role reversal instead of a complete reset.