The Reason Why 'Star Wars' Trilogies Need To End
It’s time for the trilogies to end.
Star Wars so far has had three trilogies that make up the Skywalker Saga: originals, prequels, and sequels. Each tells a story in three whole movies. However, in the grand scheme of things, are trilogies necessarily the best format for how a Star Wars story should be told? Perhaps the trilogy format which is so well known in Star Wars does not do the storytelling justice. Does it amplify the best way to tell a story? Does it possess the best structure to get everything out? Is that enough time to tell a full story. In many aspects, the answer may simply be a straight up "No."
The History of the Trilogy
First and foremost, it is important to remember that George Lucas himself only made the original trilogy out of choice and not necessity. By the time George had finished The Empire Strikes Back, life had taken a bit of a turn for him, and not in a good way. There was a strain between him and his first wife Marcia Lucas. That and other reasons caused George to decide that he was going to wrap up the tale of Luke Skywalker earlier than he had planned. Originally, he was going to make Star Wars a nine-part Saga, and have the final story be Episode IX.
RELATED: The 10 Stories You Have Never Heard About George Lucas
Because of this decision, a few threads would need to get wrapped up because of this. First was the fate of the ultimate big bad, the Emperor, who was going to appear in Episode IX as the main baddie for Luke to face. The other was literally "the other" whom Yoda had spoken of at the end of The Empire Strikes Back.
The plot point of the sister was something that was a bit of a hassle. Originally, the idea was that the sister was going to be a character being trained as a Jedi on the other side of the galaxy. Of course, now George was going to be condensing that story plot into one. Hence why Leia being Luke’s sister comes out of the blue so quickly. Because of this, a lot of Return of the Jedi was back loaded with all the things they added: saving Han, defeating the Emperor, redeeming Vader, and Leia being Luke's sister.
It more or less worked, but many would look critically at Return of the Jedi and say that it feels the most rushed of the movies. But the choice was made, and thus we now had the original trilogy.
Structure
With both the prequels and sequels, many have argued that the story was too massive for just a trilogy. Many thought it should have been more movies, and in some cases an entire TV show was needed to tell important aspects of those arcs.
For example, in the prequels, the entire Clone Wars was told in the guise of a TV show and skipped over in the movies. Threads such as Mace killing Boba Fett’s father, Sifo-Dyas, all of that never came back in the films and instead were put in The Clone Wars or expanded material.
With the sequels, we have things like Finn’s stormtrooper uprising that never happened, Rose vs the elite, and all sorts of story plots that never really had time to be fleshed out and explored. Even Ben Solo's redemption is rather quick because of the lack of time for films, not to mention no buildup to Palpatine’s return within the film itself.
A trilogy can only fit so much, and no one these days is going to make a movie trilogy with each movie being four hours long.
Conclusion
So many plot points and character development could be expanded upon in film if there are enough films to tell it all in. One shouldn’t be beholden to any format while telling a story. They should just let the story unfold naturally as best as possible. Sometimes it doesn’t take a trilogy to tell a good story.
So maybe it’s time for the trilogy to end.
READ NEXT: Force Dyad Explained