Marcia Lucas Is Not A Big Fan of The Most Recent Star Wars Trilogy

[Herbert]

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"And J.J. Abrams is writing these stories — when I saw the movie where they kill Han Solo, I was furious... Absolutely, positively there was no rhyme or reason to it. I thought, You don't get the Jedi story. You don't get the magic of Star Wars. You're getting rid of Han Solo? And then at the end of this last one, they have Luke disintegrate. They killed Han Solo. They killed Luke Skywalker. And they don't have Princess Leia anymore. And they're spitting out movies every year."

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"And they think it's important to appeal to a woman's audience, so now their main character is this female, who's supposed to have Jedi powers, but we don't know how she got Jedi powers, or who she is. It sucks. The storylines are terrible. Terrible. Just awful."

Marcia Lucas is an academy award winning editor of the original trilogy and former wife of George Lucas the series creator, so these comments definitely hold some weight. I will admit that for me personally, Luke's death was pretty cool but Han's death didn't do anything. It seemed kind of unnecessary and it felt like a bit of manufactured drama.

Harrison Ford was one of the few actors that had an opportunity to bring some real charisma to his role.  The only thing his death does is to kind of make Kylo Ren's character irredeemable. Star Wars is a prime example of why directors shouldn't go into these big franchises and just kind of do their own thing. They really need to lay out a future roadmap for each character and flesh out their own personal backstories so the movie as a whole makes sense and has continuity.

Her arguments of the importance of having the big three is intriguing because while I agree that the relationships and interactions between Han Solo, Leia and Luke are critical to the success of the first trilogy. I disagree that we need them to be the main characters in the new movies as well. The problem with the Force Awakens is that it simply seemed like a cash in opportunity for Disney. They created all these new characters but never  really assigned them any real importance in the beginning. Is Rey the star? Is Finn the star? Is Poe the star? Is Kylo Ren the star? Or is Leia, Han and Luke the star? They didn't properly pass the torch in the first movie, probably because they really didn't have a true outline for where they were going with the new trilogy.

There were too many moving pieces that were just insignificant. Finn's character is a prime example. He was totally irrelevant. He was an intriguing character at first but then we realize he's not really good at anything you just kind of roll your eyes whenever he's own screen because you're tired of getting your hopes up. Poe is a cool character, a hot shot pilot, very capable but despite the amount of screen time he receives, he's obviously a secondary character more of a Mace Windu type that has a few really cool scenes but is not the leading guy. In truth it feels like they should have merged Finn and Po into one character. Kylo Ren is extremely emo and he is the bad guy that is nowhere near as cool or menacing as Vader. Leia and Han get some screen time; Han in particular but its very obvious that he's not the star, he's more like the grand daddy showing the young bucks what to do.

There was just a gigantic hole. Who is the lead? Rey is the one that fits the bill the most but Finn is the one dragging her around everywhere, which makes no sense whatsoever because the way Finn's character is written, he doesn't have a clue about what to do at almost any point in the movie. It seems the movie was focused on showing us Star Wars, then following a true narrative with characters leading the way. And I think that's what Marcia Lucas is getting at in her critique. It's about the characters, their journey and their relationship and interactions with each other as they try to conquer the evil empire. It's not simply about the Jedi vs Sith, cool powers and special effects. All that is just window dressing. You have to give the characters opportunities to shine and they just didn't. At least not in the way many fans wanted them to.

While I did enjoy having more Star Wars movies to watch, this new trilogy could have been so much more. The Mandalorian came along and showed what a good character driven narrative in the Star Wars universe looks like. Fans eat up every single episode and we almost never even see the lead character's face! That says a lot about the writing and how Disney should move going forward with the franchise.