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Post by Mighty Attack Tribble on Dec 27, 2020 20:30:41 GMT -5
Well, it had pretty major consequences. Had they not got caught the First Order wouldn't have known about the plan to use the escape boats to hide on Crait. So the million-to-one shot failed and got all but a handful of the Resistance killed. . I blame my shitty memory on that it's been a while since I've watched it. To be fair I did have to quickly check the scene where Rose, Finn and DJ get caught to confirm that was what happens as I haven't watched the movie since March.
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Post by A Platypus Rave on Dec 27, 2020 20:46:52 GMT -5
I liked TLJ for the most part but I do think there are a lot of problems with it. as I said Rose and Finn's entire subplot is ultimately meaningless and probably could have been cut from the movie and nothing really would have changed. (I did enjoy the idea of the million to one shot failing but... they could have had more consequences to it failing than it ultimately did.) Poe acts like a shit for most of it demanding to know things when... he's not like in charge of anything he's a pilot... one that was originally supposed to die but Abrams liked him too much... The no one is really the good guy in the war is... like a good message in general... but it doesn't really fit in Star Wars when being evil literally corrupts you physically and the bad guys are well who they are pretty blatantly based off of. It basically leaves itself mostly self contained and doesn't leave a hell of a lot of room to expand on directly... which works... if it wasn't the mid point of the trilogy... I have no idea where the ideas expressed in TLJ were headed, but I could see a really interesting deconstruction of the endless conflict between good / bad, rebels / Imperials, and Jedi / Sith. If they had gone that route, suddenly TFA being a rehash of ANH makes sense. It's just another iteration of the endless cycle that is inevitable if the status quo continues. I was fascinated by the idea that the Jedi "must end". Is that a way of disrupting the status quo, the binary, black and white view that the Star Wars galaxy had slipped into? Is Luke's disappearance because he saw that all he was doing was perpetuating this manufactured status quo of conflict? Is it up to the new generation of Kylo Ren and Rey to finally break the cycle? With each cycle comes greater and greater death and destruction. But alas, we'll never know. The decision makers panicked and gave the trilogy back to the unoriginal hack that is JJ Abrams. I mean the old Jedi order were pretty much the bad guys in the Prequels >_> Well not the BAD... Bad guys... but they were certainly not the good guy ideals the original trilogy made them sound like.
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Post by Mighty Attack Tribble on Dec 27, 2020 21:02:12 GMT -5
I mean the old Jedi order were pretty much the bad guys in the Prequels >_> Well not the BAD... Bad guys... but they were certainly not the good guy ideals the original trilogy made them sound like. The OT really romanticised the Jedi, but when that's all coming from Obi-Wan, a guy who never lost faith in the Order, it's not surprising. To paraphrase Mayfeld in The Mandalorian, Jedi, Sith... it's all the same to the average people, they're just caught in the crossfire.
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Post by Alexander The So-so on Dec 27, 2020 21:28:20 GMT -5
their problem with the Last Jedi especially was catering to a market that didn't really care for their product to begin with Yeah. I stand by my assessment TLJ is a damn good movie for the most part, but it's in a no-win situation as it wasn't likely to appeal to people not already invested in Star Wars, and wasn't likely to appease the fans clamouring for Luke Skywalker, ass-kicking Jedi Master and hero of the New Republic. Okay, see, you called what I said “cringeworthy,” but you see that last sentence of yours? That reductive “you just wanted Luke to be an ass-kicking Jedi Master” dismissal? That’s what I’m talking about, right there. That attitude. I’ve said it a kajillion Times: no, that’s not what this is about. It’s not because I “didn’t get what the movie I wanted.” It’s because the movie reeks of this exact condescending, reductive, fighting-a-strawman attitude. I have given my reasons multiple times. That the Luke characterization merely repeats the exact same “failure is the ultimate teacher” message we’ve already seen in ESB, except that the latter actually showed rather than told it. That the movie makes some bizarre statements to justify its claims to be a “deconstruction” (best example: when Luke tells Rey that the attitude of claiming to own the Force is vanity, something which no Jedi in universe ever claims, and reeks of being a strawman argument metatextually aimed at some caricature of fanboys). That the movie is basically tearing down Luke with the blatant intent of being a 2015 Royal Rumble-style ham-fisted coronation of Rey. I didn’t f***ing want or need “ass-kicking Luke Skywalker.” All I wanted was “Luke Skywalker with organic growth who hasn’t gotten a mysterious case of amnesia in which he’s forgotten that he’s already had all these same damn lessons years ago.” It’s this stubbornness, this utter refusal to listen to and correctly understand anything I or other critics of TLJ are saying rather than apply reductive dismissals, which is what I’m talking about.
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Post by HMARK Center on Dec 27, 2020 21:28:39 GMT -5
Honestly I think my biggest problem with Last Jedi is Poe. I kind of have no idea why we're supposed to like this guy or why he's even a main character; he's kind of just a whiny piss-ant who never really learns anything nor accomplishes anything but the movie acts like he did. I liked TLJ for the most part but I do think there are a lot of problems with it. as I said Rose and Finn's entire subplot is ultimately meaningless and probably could have been cut from the movie and nothing really would have changed. (I did enjoy the idea of the million to one shot failing but... they could have had more consequences to it failing than it ultimately did.) Ding ding ding. The finale of TLJ really represents a nadir in the fight against imperials, it seems like the entire rebellion's dead except for the survivors in the Falcon... but you'd never know it based on how everybody's acting. That was part of what made me feel like the studio had a say in the ending, not wanting people to leave feeling defeated, when the entire point was "we tried to mimic the original heroes with million-in-one-shot plans, and were defeated." And yeah, there were no consequences for Poe being insubordinate, you didn't really feel the personal struggle Rey had gone through, etc., again it just felt like the third act dropped the entire narrative arc of the film and left us with nothing to build on, when the exciting part early in the movie was the feeling "yeah, let's build something new!" As for the Jedi...if the prequels showed anything, it's that the Jedi, as an order at the end of the Old Republic, pretty much sucked. They were too above it all, too focused on their own "purity" (e.g. the "no marriage" rules/taking students in as small children stuff), yet they were blind to a Sith lord right the hell in front of them until it was too late. Lucas wimped out on actually showing the Jedi as an old, outdated, dogmatic and rigid order because he needed them to be cool enough that he could sell merch for them; I've always thought that midichlorians could've been a storytelling tool to show how the Jedi had lost their way, had rejected "the living Force" that Yoda describes in Empire Strikes Back (Yoda could've been the character voicing the old ways and bemoaning what the order had become). Again, it's part of why I was so excited at first for jaded Luke in Last Jedi; he was calling out how so many of the rules that seemed to undergird Star Wars only served to create perpetual violence, and it was time to break it through new philosophies and methods...but nope! We end on Rebels vs. Imperials, Light vs. Dark, Jedi vs. Sith. Again. Again, I genuinely have no idea how that could be the message one takes from that part.
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Post by Alexander The So-so on Dec 27, 2020 21:36:33 GMT -5
Again, I genuinely have no idea how that could be the message one takes from that part. I already said: because it makes no sense in-universe, since it’s not something any Jedi character has seriously argued before. It’s a strawman argument which comes out of nowhere, and since it doesn’t make sense in universe, and given how often everything to justify this film’s plot falls back on metatextualism, I can only assume the intent was metatextual.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2020 21:45:07 GMT -5
Honestly I feel like Luke having just because jaded to the whole thing and cutting himself off from the galaxy at large is basically the only way to make his presence in Force Awakens make sense, because being the chosen one hero who decides to just dick around on some private island planet while war is going on with the Neo Nazis is pretty much an inherently selfish, detached move. Basically the only moves you had you could've made for Last Jedi are either he's long past caring or he's mindnumbingly stupid.
While we're on the subject though, I never had the slightest clue how on earth the political landscape of these movies is actually supposed to work. So there's the Rebellion and the First Order, but there's also some New Republic that people mention occasionally that doesn't seem to actually exist?
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Post by Mighty Attack Tribble on Dec 27, 2020 22:13:34 GMT -5
Yeah. I stand by my assessment TLJ is a damn good movie for the most part, but it's in a no-win situation as it wasn't likely to appeal to people not already invested in Star Wars, and wasn't likely to appease the fans clamouring for Luke Skywalker, ass-kicking Jedi Master and hero of the New Republic. Okay, see, you called what I said “cringeworthy,” but you see that last sentence of yours? That reductive “you just wanted Luke to be an ass-kicking Jedi Master” dismissal? That’s what I’m talking about, right there. That hostile attitude. I’ve said it a kajillion Times: no, that’s not what this is about. It’s not because I “didn’t get what the movie I wanted.” It’s because the movie reeks of this exact condescending, reductive, fighting-a-strawman attitude. I have given my reasons multiple times. That the Luke characterization merely repeats the exact same “failure is the ultimate teacher” message we’ve already seen in ESB, except that the latter actually showed rather than told it. That the movie makes some bizarre statements to justify its claims to be a “deconstruction” (best example: when Luke tells Rey that the attitude of claiming to own the Force is vanity, something which no Jedi in universe ever claims, and reeks of being a strawman argument metatextually aimed at some caricature of fanboys). That the movie is basically tearing down Luke with the blatant intent of being a 2015 Royal Rumble-style ham-fisted coronation of Rey. I didn’t f***ing want or need “ass-kicking Luke Skywalker.” All I wanted was “Luke Skywalker with organic growth who hasn’t gotten a mysterious case of amnesia in which he’s forgotten that he’s already had all these same damn lessons years ago.” It’s this stubbornness, this utter refusal to listen to and correctly understand anything I or other critics of TLJ are saying rather than apply reductive dismissals, which is what I’m talking about. Fair criticisms, all. Hell, I agree with most of them. None of them were in your original post, and had they been they'd still have been undermined by the self-pitying "I can't be a fan any more because LucasFilm doesn't want me to be" attitude. Where did I say you wanted "ass-kicking Luke" and nothing more? For every person who has some logical, well-thought out criticisms of TLJ there's hundreds who were pissed off purely because we got more Rey and no "ass-kicking Luke", and will tell you long and loud about how much they wanted it and that anything else is character assassination and a personal attack on them and their childhoods. People who crow that they're no longer welcomed by the people who make Star Wars, as if it's some kind of private party and they've had their invitation rescinded. That is what is cringeworthy. One can be a hard critic of something without including such theatrics. And at the end of the day, it's a f***ing movie. There's 10 others, plus hundreds of episodes of TV. I dislike or outright loathe three of the movies, and don't care one way or another about half of the TV shows, but that doesn't diminish my enjoyment of what I do like, and doesn't stop me from giving newer material a chance.
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Post by carp (SPC, Itoh Respect Army) on Dec 27, 2020 22:19:50 GMT -5
OK, whatever else you have to say about The Last Jedi? Rise of Skywalker has to be acknowledged as worse. Rise of Skywalker was easily the worst big-budget, studio movie I've watched in years. It was just shockingly bad. There was stuff in it I'd be embarrassed to see in a student film. Having one of the main plot points happen offscreen and only revealed in a text crawl... it's so lazy and bush-league, I can't really believe it happened. And how could people not feel their intelligence being insulted, there? They completely dropped the pretense that Snoke and Palpatine weren't exactly the same thing, when they brought in a new Palpatine to play the Snoke role.
Or take one example: the Chewie fakeout death. I want to point at the screen and be like "You just can't do that." You can't just have the only ship explode, and then cut to people somewhere else who verbally explain "Oh, there was another ship you never saw and Chewie was on that." YOU JUST CANT DO THAT. You have to establish the other ship first (even if the audience then forgets about it). If you want it to be a big twist, then DONT f***ING REVEAL IT IN THE NEXT SCENE. You just... you can't DO that. These are professional filmmakers; how could they screw something like this up? (christ also remember when c3po did a big sacrifice but then whoops no it didn't matter, he's fine, there are no stakes, never mind)
HOLY SHIT I FORGOT remember how they take Rose away and just invent some black lady to be Finn's love interest because race mixing is bad? And then she has a scene with Lando but it's so mishandled it's completely unclear if he's her father or if he's hitting on her, because they seriously just assumed we would think she's his daughter because they're both black and no other reason?
Uh, I was going to defend The Last Jedi and then I kept remembering horrible parts of Rise of Skywalker, sorry.
Anyway, here's the thing I think I have to add to the discussion about TLJ, though: It seems like lots of Star Wars fans cannot tell the difference between "This is questioning the things that have been established in previous Star Wars media" and "This is a malicious, deliberate insult to fans of previous Star Wars media." Like, people are literally saying they felt unwelcome watching Star Wars after TLJ, or it was mean-spirited, and that makes no sense.
Yo, George Lucas came up with a really stupid good/evil system for his silly fantasy movie, and he didn't really think about it very much, and it doesn't even come close to standing up to scrutiny. So, Rey can't kill Palpatine, even though we've seen her kill dozens of people already, because something something dark side, even though it was clearly established killing him is the only way to save many others? And so of course the solution is for her to... just f***ing KILL HIM ANYWAY oh ok then This is not any better than in Return of the Jedi, when Luke faces exactly the same dilemma (because it's the same movie), except his problem is fixed when someone else gets their hands dirty and kills Palpatine for him. (Wait, so killing Palpatine to save everyone on Endor would be bad for Luke.... but killing Palpatine to save Luke is REDEMPTIVE for Vader? What?)
Abrams absolutely had no interest in any of that, he just wanted to remake the original trilogy to lovingly set up some big twist only he knew about and the audience would go whaooaaaahh and that's it. (I strongly suspect he intended Snoke to be Luke in disguise; he wouldn't be able to resist the symmetry of having the previous trilogy's hero be the big bad of the new trilogy again.) I'm a JJ Abrams apologist... I loved LOST. But Johnson was actually trying to comment on stuff worth commenting on, both textually and meta.
(ps the action set-pieces were better in TLJ than in either of the other two movies of the sequel trilogy, too)
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Post by "Cane Dewey" Johnson on Dec 27, 2020 22:27:53 GMT -5
I didn’t f***ing want or need “ass-kicking Luke Skywalker.” All I wanted was “Luke Skywalker with organic growth who hasn’t gotten a mysterious case of amnesia in which he’s forgotten that he’s already had all these same damn lessons years ago.” To this point, aren't people sometimes slow to learn a lesson? Or, given that people, circumstances, and contexts change, don't people learn the same lesson at different points in their lives? Not all organic growth is a straight line; sometimes it's jagged and uneven, while other times it's a circle, and occassionally it stops dead in its tracks because most things don't grow in perpetuity. Considering these points, I don't see the problem of Luke re-learning a lesson in the context of The Last Jedi as a movie. Compare this to how video games go about characters growing by levelling up, in which a new skill or power can never be lost or forgotten. That works fine for video games, and perhaps for anyone who wasn't hot about The Last Jedi, because they were presented with a version Luke Skywalker who is still learning the lessons of The Empire Strikes Back, that would be frustrating. To me, however, this complaint doesn't seem within the spirit of Star Wars, especially when we have a character like Yoda teach Luke about the Force by saying things like "you must un-learn what you have learned." I'm okay with the idea that Luke doesn't stop un-learning things, and maybe, as is the case with The Last Jedi, he has to re-learn that he has to un-learn, and he needs to go through this lesson again because events, circumstances, and choices he makes led him down the path where he finds himself in that film. Luke's often been about his own personal bullshit at the expense of the immediate world around him anyway--forgoing tending to the moisture farm in ANH, abandoning the fleeing Rebellion at the start of TESB, skipping on his Jedi training to help his friends at the end of TESB, cutting and running from the plan to destroy the shield generator so he can have a talk with his dad in ROTJ. TLJ shows the logical continuation of that thought process, which seems linear and organic to the character as he was presented in the previous movies. So the fact that this became an issue for so many is more than a bit confusing to me. If anything, Luke always being so short-sighted plays directly into the tragedy of TLJ, now that I think about it, but his character trait becomes a flaw when it finally takes a tragic turn when he causes and is responsible for all the things he was trying to prevent. YMMV?
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Post by Mighty Attack Tribble on Dec 27, 2020 22:42:27 GMT -5
If anything, Luke always being so short-sighted plays directly into the tragedy of TLJ, now that I think about it, but his character trait becomes a flaw when it finally takes a tragic turn when he causes and is responsible for all the things he was trying to prevent. Indeed. A big part of the arc Luke has in the movie is realising his hubris wasn't limited to his failure as Ben's teacher, but also in exiling himself from both the galaxy and the Force. It's not a perfect story by any means, but it does lean heavily on notes Lucas had for his version of the sequels. If "George's vision" is considered the unrealised canon, Luke always exiles himself in shame and bitterness, so further exploring his innate character flaws from the OT instead of creating new ones is really the only way to go.
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BorneAgain
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Post by BorneAgain on Dec 27, 2020 23:08:10 GMT -5
Something that plays into some of this is timing. A more morally flawed Luke might have gone down a bit better with an audience 10, maybe even 15 years after Return of the Jedi.
But after 3 plus decades of no appearance by Luke outside Legends canon, him finally appearing as the bitter hermit was likely always going to land with a thud for a lot of people. It was an interesting angle that simply wouldn't appeal to many, especially when Han's death in TFA made Skywalker's status an even harder pill to swallow.
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Post by Cela on Dec 27, 2020 23:19:56 GMT -5
Honestly, after the lazy retread of Ep 4 that was the Force Awakens, and the mean spirited retread of Empire that was Last Jedi, Rise of Skywalker was the only one I got any enjoyment out of. Yes, it was utter crap, but it at least was 63% a new story, and I enjoyed how it immediately retconned everything Last Jedi did with extreme prejudice.
To recap, I rank the entire sequel trilogy below the prequel trilogy, which is amazingly confusing to me, but Rise was the only one I would want to watch again if it was randomly on tv.
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Post by YAKMAN is ICHIBAN on Dec 27, 2020 23:51:05 GMT -5
Honestly, after the lazy retread of Ep 4 that was the Force Awakens, and the mean spirited retread of Empire that was Last Jedi, Rise of Skywalker was the only one I got any enjoyment out of. Yes, it was utter crap, but it at least was 63% a new story, and I enjoyed how it immediately retconned everything Last Jedi did with extreme prejudice. To recap, I rank the entire sequel trilogy below the prequel trilogy, which is amazingly confusing to me, but Rise was the only one I would want to watch again if it was randomly on tv. That isn’t fair to TLJ.... TLJ is also a retread of chunks of Return of the Jedi too
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Post by Hurbster on Dec 27, 2020 23:59:03 GMT -5
Rise of Skywalker is bad, but kinda enjoyably bad after whatever the hell TLJ was meant to be. Needed another 2 films to repair that shit.
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Post by xCompackx on Dec 28, 2020 0:18:55 GMT -5
Honestly I feel like Luke having just because jaded to the whole thing and cutting himself off from the galaxy at large is basically the only way to make his presence in Force Awakens make sense, because being the chosen one hero who decides to just dick around on some private island planet while war is going on with the Neo Nazis is pretty much an inherently selfish, detached move. Basically the only moves you had you could've made for Last Jedi are either he's long past caring or he's mindnumbingly stupid. While we're on the subject though, I never had the slightest clue how on earth the political landscape of these movies is actually supposed to work. So there's the Rebellion and the First Order, but there's also some New Republic that people mention occasionally that doesn't seem to actually exist? This is one of the issues I completely get regarding criticisms of the Sequel Trilogy. It's not very well explained in any of the movies (or the expanded media, frankly) how any of these factions relate to each other or even who the Resistance is supposed to be representing. Like, the First Order has all of these ships, all of these troops and arsenal, even a f***ing planet base, but how does all this shit work without someone backing it politically? Unless I missed something, Palpatine's whole plan was to install himself into power so everything he did transitioning into the Empire was legal. Who the f*** is backing the First Order and if nobody, why did nobody in actual power put a stop to it? Likewise, was the Resistance actually fighting for this "New Republic" or was it just a survival thing? I'm not even saying I'm a huge fan of politics being in Star Wars (it made sense for the prequels setting up Palpatine, but still), but if you're going to have this shit, define the players.
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Post by Lupin the Third on Dec 28, 2020 0:32:42 GMT -5
I feel the problem with the trilogy sequel, like A Platypus Rave said, is the fact that the sequel trilogy was written by two different people. Parts 1 and 3 were written by 1, and Part 2 was written by the other. Of course it's gonna be a trainwreck by a lot of people's standards. Shakespeare's plays would've sucked if he did Acts 1 and 3, and then let someone else do Act 2. Or the Rocky series if Stallone hadn't written Rocky I-VI (even if Rocky V is basically ignored). If you would've kept the same person for all three, the story would've made more sense, and probably would have been a better trilogy, whether it was JJ's story or Rian's story. Honestly, I enjoyed The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker. To me, they were fun popcorn flicks. I didn't mind The Last Jedi, but the whole plot on the Casino Planet just drug like hell. Dad and I tried watching it again on Christmas, as he never saw the Last Jedi. We had to finish it the next day, because it almost put us to sleep. We also watched Solo on Christmas, as neither of us had seen it. I watched about 30 minutes of it when housesitting for a friend, but I never got to finish it. That was a damn fun flick. We both thoroughly enjoyed it. I didn't see it in theaters because of all the mixed reviews it got by fans. I just need to stop listening to them and watch it myself. I think they just need to redo the sequel trilogy. Yes, I know, Carrie Fisher is dead, and there's no way in hell Harrison Ford is coming back to be Han. I say make it an animated trilogy, and use voice actors that would be close to Leia and Solo. And if the others don't want to voice their characters, find other VAs. Either do it like western style animation or anime. But make sure you have someone write the story beginning to end.
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Post by Mighty Attack Tribble on Dec 28, 2020 0:56:32 GMT -5
I think they just need to redo the sequel trilogy. Yes, I know, Carrie Fisher is dead, and there's no way in hell Harrison Ford is coming back to be Han. I say make it an animated trilogy, and use voice actors that would be close to Leia and Solo. And if the others don't want to voice their characters, find other VAs. Either do it like western style animation or anime. But make sure you have someone write the story beginning to end. Just based on the upcoming slate LucasFilm are just avoiding that era altogether. Everything looks to be set in the early years of the New Republic, the height of the Empire, or during the High Republic.
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Post by "Cane Dewey" Johnson on Dec 28, 2020 1:05:33 GMT -5
Disney should just remake all the SW movies at this point: that way, everybody is unhappy and nobody's favourite movies go unspoiled.
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Post by xCompackx on Dec 28, 2020 1:15:56 GMT -5
I think they just need to redo the sequel trilogy. Yes, I know, Carrie Fisher is dead, and there's no way in hell Harrison Ford is coming back to be Han. I say make it an animated trilogy, and use voice actors that would be close to Leia and Solo. And if the others don't want to voice their characters, find other VAs. Either do it like western style animation or anime. But make sure you have someone write the story beginning to end. Just based on the upcoming slate LucasFilm are just avoiding that era altogether. Everything looks to be set in the early years of the New Republic, the height of the Empire, or during the High Republic. Given there's still so much you could cover between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, there's plenty of potential without covering the Sequels. Hell, do an origin story on Phasma, still one of the horribly under-utilized characters who actually had potential.
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