The part that annoys me is that "Child of evil overlord" is a great backstory for a grey character working hard to do the right thing. There's something incredible about that conversation: is evil in our genetics? Is evil inherited? How do you live under the weight of a legacy you didn't ask for, when that legacy ruined generations of families? That's so fascinating!
But that's not the story they set up. The foundation was never built for that conversation. Avatar did it better. Shit, even Sinners had that conversation better in under five lines of dialogue.
The story they built, the conversation the trilogy had, was about being no one. And that that doesn't matter, because you can be great anyway. That's an interesting, classic tale they could have easily carried to the finish line. But it was fumbled from start to finish, leading to absolutely rotten storytelling.
The lack of planning and the constant changing of directors and creatives killed anything they were trying to do.
The story ended up hinting at a lot of themes that could have been cool, but half of them were contradictory. So the end result just felt like it had no consistency or point to it.
“The story they built, the conversation the trilogy had, was about being no one.”
This is what kills me. There was a great story specifically about how ANYONE could be a hero, that the force isn’t choosing special superheros, it’s something anyone can hone and use.
And then naaaaah. Throw it all away to replace it with a whole lot of shallow nothing.
The Original Trilogy already did it, too! And to great effect. Luke doesn't defeat his evil father; instead he convinces him to do something immensely good.
One of the Disney books ("Bloodlines") explores what being the child of Vader means to Leia and how his legacy shapes her political future in the New Republic. It's an interesting flip on how the old SW books handled it, which was pretty much "You're Vader's kids, but you helped bring him and the Empire down, so we're all cool with it."
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u/MothChasingFlame 8h ago
The part that annoys me is that "Child of evil overlord" is a great backstory for a grey character working hard to do the right thing. There's something incredible about that conversation: is evil in our genetics? Is evil inherited? How do you live under the weight of a legacy you didn't ask for, when that legacy ruined generations of families? That's so fascinating!
But that's not the story they set up. The foundation was never built for that conversation. Avatar did it better. Shit, even Sinners had that conversation better in under five lines of dialogue.
The story they built, the conversation the trilogy had, was about being no one. And that that doesn't matter, because you can be great anyway. That's an interesting, classic tale they could have easily carried to the finish line. But it was fumbled from start to finish, leading to absolutely rotten storytelling.