Why did the Star Wars sequel movies feel so very bad? From poor planning, lousy character development, and ruining some of the fan favorites in Star Wars, there are several explanations. Every trilogy has its downfalls, but this one stood out in particular.

One of the major problems with this trilogy was that it just wasn’t planned all the way through. The first and best sequel, The Force Awakens, started with J.J. Abrams as the director. For the second sequel movie, The Last Jedi, they went with a different director, Rian Johnson, who completely changed course. Finally, they concluded with J.J. Abrams, who was responsible for tying a disconnected story together. This led to the fall of what could have been a great Star Wars trilogy.

Directors then casted aside a great character, Finn, who throughout the whole trilogy was hinted to be force-sensitive. In the first movie many people loved his character and were excited to see what would happen. In the later two movies he is more of a comic relief and not as important of a character in the sequel trilogy arc. The sequel trilogy then heavily plays on the relationship of Kylo Ren and Ben Solo, as well as Rey Palpatine and the Skywalker. Their relationship is the main focal point of the last two movies, especially in Rise of Skywalker.

In the sequels directors brought back many of the fan favorite characters like Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Leia Organa, Chewbacca, C-3PO, and R2-D2.  While this had great potential, some of these characters were ruined in the process. For example, Luke Skywalker was the fan favorite in the original trilogy and had a great character arc which was destroyed in The Last Jedi.  They betrayed the character they built up so well in the original trilogy and made him slightly unlikeable during the movie. It was the least they could do to give him a good send off. 

Even though these movies were not always well received, especially by me, they made a lot of money in the box office, so Disney is probably happy with how the sequels turned out for their pocket books. With the exception of the sequels, Disney has done an amazing job with Star Wars. They made a great animated series, gave a strong finale to the Clone Wars series,  produced two stand alone movies, and made a popular new live action series called the Mandalorian. While they didn’t live up to the legacy that George Lucas had made with the first two trilogies, let’s hope for my sake and sanity that the next trilogy is much better.