Odd one out: 'The Last Jedi' is so ill-fitting, you could leave it out and miss almost nothing
I've been thinking a lot about how The Rise of Skywalker (TRoS) is basically just a sequel to The Force Awakens (TFA). Whatever you think about the three sequel films (collectively and individually), there is no denying that The Last Jedi (TLJ) is the odd one out. All that's really of any relevance is that Kylo references the fact that he supposedly "never lied" when he told Rey her parents were nobodies, that Snoke is now gone, and that Luke is dead (and, as a Force ghost, mentions that he was wrong in TLJ). That's it. Those are the only things in TLJ that have any bearing on TRoS at all.
As a matter of fact, if you cut just a few minutes out of TRoS (the text scroll, the opening sequence with Kylo finding Palpatine, and the bit where Luke says he was wrong), then you can basically just replace TLJ with an almost entirely different story, retaining only the facts (established by TFA and TRoS) that Rey has found Luke, that Luke has to die by the film's end, that there's a psychic link between Rey and Kylo, and that Palpatine is behind the First Order.
So I've been thinking: what could that alt-TLJ look like? I don't like TFA and TRoS, either, but if you edited the hasty opening sequence out of TRoS and re-introduced Palpatine at the previous film's climax, that would be an improvement. Moreover, you could have a middle film that fits in with the other two a lot better, and which doesn't misrepresent Luke's character in a horrible way. It's still going to be mediocre, simply due to being constrained by the OTL set-up for the sequels, but it might make everything a bit more cohesive. Here's my hastily-written stab at imagining an alt-TLJ that actually fits into the trilogy:
— The story starts a year after TFA.
— The First Order has been mostly beaten back, with their Starkiller plan foiled.
— Kylo has been brought to the secret First Order capital in the Unknown Regions, Exegol, where Snoke (still a hologram) is completing his training and assures him that the destruction of the Starkiller is merely a setback.
— Rey has arrived on Luke's planet of exile. He's not a cynic. He has been training Rey for a year by now. She is amazingly talented, but she has little patience. She reminds Luke very much of Ben Solo, and he's worried about that.
— Trying to get Rey to see the bigger picture, Luke explains his motivations. His reason for remaining in exile is that the Force has been growing more powerful. (Luke implies the Force is in a sense alive, and has a will of its own.) This can be used by both Luke and Snoke, and it's why new powers (like Rey's unprecedented innate ability, as well as the Force bond) suddenly exist.
— Luke is concealing himself from Snoke, who is engaged in dubious Force experiments and wants to use the "awakening" of the Force solely to his own advantage. Snoke wants to either eliminate Luke or to somehow absorb Luke's powers.
— Snoke already corrupted Ben Solo, and had him slaughter a bunch of Luke's other students. The remaining students joined him, and became the Knights of Ren. Luke implies that Ben Solo may be in some sort of fugue state at times, having been warped by evil from an early age. "He wasn't himself when he slaughtered his fellow students— it was like someone else acting through him."
—As Rey and Kylo discover the Force bond exists, Rey attempts to redeem Ben Solo, but Snoke finds out and compels Kylo to lure Rey to them. He tells Kylo that "the girl has an important part to play in all this."
— This is where Kylo tells Rey that her parents were nobodies etc.
— Rey has more negativity and aggression, and is less of a 'perfect' character. Her OP-ness has been established, so the best we can do there is devise an in-universe explanation (the "awakening" of the Force). Her main character default is her innate tendency to choose short-cuts. What worked for her on the Falcon ("I just bypassed it!") is now revealed as a deep character flaw.
— She eventually heads to the Unknown Regions, lured by Kylo. He brings her before Snoke, who is revealed to have been a 'Wizard of Oz' type of figure. His huge hologram is fake, and projected by magi-tech machinery connected to a Sith Holocron. There is no real, physical Snoke. That figure is just a decoy, and it's actually the "ghost" of Palpatine (contained in the Holocron), using "Snoke" as a mouthpiece, that runs the First Order.
— Luke has come after Rey to help her, against his better judgement (to stay hidden). It's all a trap to capture Luke, who dies to save Rey. Palpatine's Sith attendants somehow use their machinery to ensure Luke's death will power a physical resurrection of Palpatine.
— Meanwhile, the others (Finn, Poe, Rose) have adventures in fighting the First Order, commanded by an actually competent Hux (who is, however, shown to be venomously jealous of the fact that Kylo was invited to Exegol while he wasn't... thus setting up his "spy" arc).
— Finn gets to actually complete his arc, inspiring other stormtroopers to resist the First Order. Just when the First Order had rebuilt some of its power base, they're defeated again. Hux is humiliated.
— This, however, is when Palpatine returns and outright announces his return to the Galaxy. This has a reason: there are Sith sleeper agents all over the place, and Palpatine now launches a long-prepared plan to destroy or hijack the Republic's military assets.
— Kylo, realising he has been deceived, seems to consider going with Rey as she escapes from Exegol, but then gets basically mind-controlled by Palpatine. (His culpability has now been explicitly limited, making his poorly-explained redemption in the next film more credible.) Rey flees alone.
— Rey returns to Resistance HQ, where Leia awaits her. The others also arrive. Luke's Force ghost appears and asks Leia to forgive him from his absence. It's revealed that Leia has had Jedi training, but that she doubts her own abilities. Luke assures his twin that she can complete Rey's training.
— As the film closes, Poe, Finn and Chewie go off on "six month deep-cover mission" to find out what Palpatine is actually up to and how long they have before he strikes.
— A final scene on Exegol sees Palpatine, in his pitiful machine-supported form, assuring an almost zombie-like Kylo that everything is proceeding according to plan. We find a large number of secret Sith loyalists, all having come out of the woodwork, arriving on Exegol. Kylo numbly asks what these people will do for them. Palpatine laughs. "My long years in exile have not been idle, boy!" Then we cut to massive hangar doors opening, and the Sith fleet rising from underground docking bays. "They will man a fleet that can suborn the galaxy."
After this, TRoS then simply opens with Poe, Finn and Chewie meeting their informant and escaping back to Resistance HQ, which is followed by the scene of Rey training as a Jedi. The opening sequence with Kylo finding Palpatine should just be cut. Later in the film, Luke's line that he was wrong about his earlier opinions should also be cut, since here, he never had those opinions. The rest of TRoS can just remain as it is. (The film's opening scroll will obviously be different, too, basically setting the scene and informing us that six months have passed since alt-TLJ.) With that, we've got a fairly cohesive trilogy. A lot of it still doesn't make sense, but Ben's redemption is more convincing (Kylo Ren really is another personality, shaped by Palpatine), the insane new powers are explained away a bit, Palpatine's re-introduction isn't rushed, Snoke isn't killed off in a laughable way, and Hux remains a somewhat credible villain.
And there you go. Obviously, my outline is really rough, and almost exclusively focused on the things that ought to be explained. The B-plot (Finn, Poe, etc.) barely gets explored in my bullet-points. Still, I think this all goes to show just how out of tune TLJ really was. People can argue at length about the artistic merits (and demerits) of the various creative minds involved in the sequel trilogy, but there's no denying that Rian Johnson was the one who didn't play well with others. His film is so far out of sync that you can basically replace it wholesale, and it has almost no effect on the overall trilogy.
As a matter of fact, if you cut just a few minutes out of TRoS (the text scroll, the opening sequence with Kylo finding Palpatine, and the bit where Luke says he was wrong), then you can basically just replace TLJ with an almost entirely different story, retaining only the facts (established by TFA and TRoS) that Rey has found Luke, that Luke has to die by the film's end, that there's a psychic link between Rey and Kylo, and that Palpatine is behind the First Order.
So I've been thinking: what could that alt-TLJ look like? I don't like TFA and TRoS, either, but if you edited the hasty opening sequence out of TRoS and re-introduced Palpatine at the previous film's climax, that would be an improvement. Moreover, you could have a middle film that fits in with the other two a lot better, and which doesn't misrepresent Luke's character in a horrible way. It's still going to be mediocre, simply due to being constrained by the OTL set-up for the sequels, but it might make everything a bit more cohesive. Here's my hastily-written stab at imagining an alt-TLJ that actually fits into the trilogy:
— The story starts a year after TFA.
— The First Order has been mostly beaten back, with their Starkiller plan foiled.
— Kylo has been brought to the secret First Order capital in the Unknown Regions, Exegol, where Snoke (still a hologram) is completing his training and assures him that the destruction of the Starkiller is merely a setback.
— Rey has arrived on Luke's planet of exile. He's not a cynic. He has been training Rey for a year by now. She is amazingly talented, but she has little patience. She reminds Luke very much of Ben Solo, and he's worried about that.
— Trying to get Rey to see the bigger picture, Luke explains his motivations. His reason for remaining in exile is that the Force has been growing more powerful. (Luke implies the Force is in a sense alive, and has a will of its own.) This can be used by both Luke and Snoke, and it's why new powers (like Rey's unprecedented innate ability, as well as the Force bond) suddenly exist.
— Luke is concealing himself from Snoke, who is engaged in dubious Force experiments and wants to use the "awakening" of the Force solely to his own advantage. Snoke wants to either eliminate Luke or to somehow absorb Luke's powers.
— Snoke already corrupted Ben Solo, and had him slaughter a bunch of Luke's other students. The remaining students joined him, and became the Knights of Ren. Luke implies that Ben Solo may be in some sort of fugue state at times, having been warped by evil from an early age. "He wasn't himself when he slaughtered his fellow students— it was like someone else acting through him."
—As Rey and Kylo discover the Force bond exists, Rey attempts to redeem Ben Solo, but Snoke finds out and compels Kylo to lure Rey to them. He tells Kylo that "the girl has an important part to play in all this."
— This is where Kylo tells Rey that her parents were nobodies etc.
— Rey has more negativity and aggression, and is less of a 'perfect' character. Her OP-ness has been established, so the best we can do there is devise an in-universe explanation (the "awakening" of the Force). Her main character default is her innate tendency to choose short-cuts. What worked for her on the Falcon ("I just bypassed it!") is now revealed as a deep character flaw.
— She eventually heads to the Unknown Regions, lured by Kylo. He brings her before Snoke, who is revealed to have been a 'Wizard of Oz' type of figure. His huge hologram is fake, and projected by magi-tech machinery connected to a Sith Holocron. There is no real, physical Snoke. That figure is just a decoy, and it's actually the "ghost" of Palpatine (contained in the Holocron), using "Snoke" as a mouthpiece, that runs the First Order.
— Luke has come after Rey to help her, against his better judgement (to stay hidden). It's all a trap to capture Luke, who dies to save Rey. Palpatine's Sith attendants somehow use their machinery to ensure Luke's death will power a physical resurrection of Palpatine.
— Meanwhile, the others (Finn, Poe, Rose) have adventures in fighting the First Order, commanded by an actually competent Hux (who is, however, shown to be venomously jealous of the fact that Kylo was invited to Exegol while he wasn't... thus setting up his "spy" arc).
— Finn gets to actually complete his arc, inspiring other stormtroopers to resist the First Order. Just when the First Order had rebuilt some of its power base, they're defeated again. Hux is humiliated.
— This, however, is when Palpatine returns and outright announces his return to the Galaxy. This has a reason: there are Sith sleeper agents all over the place, and Palpatine now launches a long-prepared plan to destroy or hijack the Republic's military assets.
— Kylo, realising he has been deceived, seems to consider going with Rey as she escapes from Exegol, but then gets basically mind-controlled by Palpatine. (His culpability has now been explicitly limited, making his poorly-explained redemption in the next film more credible.) Rey flees alone.
— Rey returns to Resistance HQ, where Leia awaits her. The others also arrive. Luke's Force ghost appears and asks Leia to forgive him from his absence. It's revealed that Leia has had Jedi training, but that she doubts her own abilities. Luke assures his twin that she can complete Rey's training.
— As the film closes, Poe, Finn and Chewie go off on "six month deep-cover mission" to find out what Palpatine is actually up to and how long they have before he strikes.
— A final scene on Exegol sees Palpatine, in his pitiful machine-supported form, assuring an almost zombie-like Kylo that everything is proceeding according to plan. We find a large number of secret Sith loyalists, all having come out of the woodwork, arriving on Exegol. Kylo numbly asks what these people will do for them. Palpatine laughs. "My long years in exile have not been idle, boy!" Then we cut to massive hangar doors opening, and the Sith fleet rising from underground docking bays. "They will man a fleet that can suborn the galaxy."
After this, TRoS then simply opens with Poe, Finn and Chewie meeting their informant and escaping back to Resistance HQ, which is followed by the scene of Rey training as a Jedi. The opening sequence with Kylo finding Palpatine should just be cut. Later in the film, Luke's line that he was wrong about his earlier opinions should also be cut, since here, he never had those opinions. The rest of TRoS can just remain as it is. (The film's opening scroll will obviously be different, too, basically setting the scene and informing us that six months have passed since alt-TLJ.) With that, we've got a fairly cohesive trilogy. A lot of it still doesn't make sense, but Ben's redemption is more convincing (Kylo Ren really is another personality, shaped by Palpatine), the insane new powers are explained away a bit, Palpatine's re-introduction isn't rushed, Snoke isn't killed off in a laughable way, and Hux remains a somewhat credible villain.
And there you go. Obviously, my outline is really rough, and almost exclusively focused on the things that ought to be explained. The B-plot (Finn, Poe, etc.) barely gets explored in my bullet-points. Still, I think this all goes to show just how out of tune TLJ really was. People can argue at length about the artistic merits (and demerits) of the various creative minds involved in the sequel trilogy, but there's no denying that Rian Johnson was the one who didn't play well with others. His film is so far out of sync that you can basically replace it wholesale, and it has almost no effect on the overall trilogy.
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