#Damage to the coda movie#
#Damage to the coda series#

The movie is an incoherent mess that relentlessly undercuts the various points its trying to make. The problem with the 'lean in to TLJ' strategy is manyfold.įirst, and most importantly, TLJ fails on its own terms. There's a lot to be said about completion. Even folks who hate hate hate the Ewoks still like the OT as a series. So we're still stuck in 'angry fan mode'.

#Damage to the coda series#

I honestly think that the sheer volume of hate for the series (and for the second and third films in particular) is precisely because the series was never really 'finished' in any satisfying manner. But if there's one thing I can say it is that how a film in a series is viewed by fans at the time of release is often very different from how it is viewed when the series is complete, and is even more different than how it will be viewed years or decades later. There's simply no way to know how the entire ST might have been viewed (yes, even TLJ) if, instead of abandoning the plotlines and character development that was laid out, the final film in the series actually embraced them and did something useful with them. And it was a rousing success as a result.

It doubled down on Yoda's coolness as a wise Jedi master. It built on the romance between Han and Leia. It opened with an entire sequence involving Han's rescue. Yet, instead of ignoring all of this, Lucas had the third film embrace Luke's relationship with Vader (made it central to the conflict and ultimate defeat of the Emperor, in fact). Lots of people hated that the film basically had no 'win' for the good guys (other than merely escaping, but not all of them did). Some people hated that the 'mighty Jedi master' was a freaking muppet! Heck. They hated that Han and not Luke became the romantic interest for Leia. They hated that Han was frozen in Carbonite. They hated that Vader was revealed to be Luke's father. There were tons of fans wailing about the events in ESB back in the day. We could even argue that some of those fans might have been brought back into the fold *if* you wrote a third film that used those elements but paid them off in a way that made the 'bad stuff worth it in the end'.

The set of fans who hated it were going to continue hating it no matter what you do with the third film in the series. They recognized that they'd stabbed themselves and decided to just yank the knife back outExactly! They had a choice between 'coherent completion of a story that some fans hate already' to 'incoherent story that everyone will hate'. The damage was not reversible, and panicking to try and win back fans who were already gone cost them good will among the people they hadn't alienated. While I get why Lucasfilm must have felt the need to pivot and walk back the Last Jedi, they really would have been smarter if they'd just not.