I love that you think you can extrapolate whether anyone worked together based on widely known director announcements. Abrams was still a producer on The Last Jedi, which may have been an “in name only” thing, but there’s no reason to think they couldn’t have just talked about things, as fellow people who spent years making a Star Wars movie. Anyway, I didn’t mean that Johnson was literally feeding Abrams things he wanted for the third part that he wasn’t yet planning to direct, just that Abrams had an idea for what the deal with Rey’s parents was when he was making The Force Awakens, and though he left it to Johnson to decide for himself, it turned out that they came up with the same thing. This was first discussed in a Rolling Stone piece, and Daisy Ridley has also commented on being privy to the backstory during the first production and that the plan never changed.

Obviously not because Abrams was not originally going to direct the third SW film, Colin Trevorrow was. It was only after Trevorrow was let go, that Kennedy went back to Abrams for the third film. by then, The Last Jedi had already gone into production, so no, it is not possible that Johnson and Abrams worked together.

kwijino – thanks for nailing one of the key things about these new films which I felt but couldn’t describe. Second film really makes it almost obvious though…

The difference for me is that Lucas didn’t just create an “instant lifelong bond” out of nowhere. In the original trilogy, Luke, Leia, and Han go on many adventures together. They bicker and banter their way through them, interacting with each other constantly and saving each other’s lives. This new trilogy has created some interesting ideas for characters but they’re never doing anything together. Rey, Finn, and Poe are always on separate adventures and there’s no real bond between them. They care about each other for no reason other than the writer decided it to be so, which then makes it so that I don’t care about them. I don’t feel anything when the characters are in danger.

That’s just my experience with it. The new movies feel like fan fiction to me.

So you want a conversation? Cool! I can do that!

Going back to the early 70s, Science Fiction was Silent Running, 2001, Westworld.. all dystopian science fiction. George felt kids needed something lighter, that they needed, in his words, “moral stories”. He originally tried to remake Flash Gordon, but the Raymond estate wanted a huge amount of money.

So, he made up his own story. The Force was a mix of Methodism and Buddhism, and he wove in influences of Kurosawa and Joseph Campbell proudly. He wanted a story where the good guys win.

Admittedly, he recycled himself in Jedi, but at least each film, as he put it, takes you somewhere else you hadn’t seen before, and he was trying. The original six are the story of Anakin Skywalker from childhood to death, and quite an ambitious undertaking. The “tone poetry” was meant to show how, as Qui-Gon put it, “Your focus determines your reality.” Anakin’s story wasn’t different from Luke’s so much as his choices were. Anakin gave in to his fear, Luke didn’t, least not in the originals. That’s why I think there’s an actual story and meaning in the films.

Well, to me, the new ones have firmly established that the events of Jedi had no lasting healing effect for the galaxy and reset things to the status quo so they could sell more X-Wings and TIE Fighters. Disney SW films are mostly “make it up as you go along.” Establish a big closing scene in one movie, and turn it on it’s ear in the next.

George spent three films explaining how Palpatine got power and invested himself in the character. Snoke was built up to be someone important, and then pooof! Who is he? I’m guessing from the race of MacGuffins. JJ might explain him, but I figure it will ultimately be told in a comic book or a novel, and the average movie goer will have no idea of who he was or why he was.

So, geeky as all that is, is that a better answer? =)

That’s not what I’m saying. I actually have no opinion about which movies are meaningful or meaningless. I just find it interesting that you would call the new ones “fun but meaningless”. They’re all similar in content so how do some occur as meaningful and some meaningless?

They led to the 100 episode plus Emmy Award winning Clone Wars series, which deepened the story considerably and even used Jar Jar to good effect. Again, you can think they have no meaning. That’s fine.

But are you saying that the prequels were somehow more meaningful than the new ones? What constitutes meaningful vs meaningless?

Many of them were to me. The first one made and behind the scenes led to me working in the entertainment industry for two decades.

Your mileage can vary, just allow me the same.

Yeah, and the sequels have Luke, Leia and Kylo Ren, so what’s your problem? That’s 3 Skywalkers in the new trilogy.

Also it’s not true to say it was “always” supposed to be about the Skywalkers simply because in the beginning Lucas HAD NO master plan and just made things up as he went along!

“The new SW films are fun but meaningless” Are you saying the previous SW films were meaningful?

The family affair has loomed large over the sequel trilogy so far, particularly in Kylo Ren’s fraught relationships with his father, then his uncle, and of course the plan was for his mother to still be around and figure heavily into episode IX. But we also have Rey who is carrying on the legacy Han and Luke in more positive ways, and Poe and the rest of the Resistance are surely Leia’s legacy.

In my eyes the way Rey figures into the saga is more substantial than if we just learned she was a Skywalker or a Kenobi — family has got to be about more than blood. One of the best aspects of the ’77 original is the totally palpable, infectious sense of an instant lifelong bond formed by Luke, Han and Leia, and the lasting impact of Ben Kenobi, and I think Abrams totally captured that same feeling with Rey and Finn, Finn and Poe, Han in the mentor role… that’s the lifeblood of the saga to me. It was only as the original trilogy progressed that Lucas went and retroactively made everyone literally related… which is..fine, but that spirit of fate thrusting you together with someone with whom you’ll change the galaxy is just as vital, I think. With Ren representing all the significance ascribed to that bloodline over the previous two trilogies, I think we’ve got both modes of “family” set up in parallel with a very interesting dynamic.

Yeah, the new films are along the lines of a shared universe like Thieves’ World, where they can use each other’s characters within reason, and change things as they see fit. Kevin Smith noticed a bunch of “screw you Abrams” moments in the Last Jedi, and he’s not wrong. It means the new SW films are fun, but meaningless.