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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025

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I do like the idea of exploring your interpretation of the Force, but I also like interpretations just the opposite of yours, even if they draw as heavily on the prequel as on the original trilogy.

So that's what I'd do: interpretationS, plural.

Much of the genius of early Star Wars was that it hinted at a much larger universe than it had time to show on screen. Lucas started unnecessarily spoiling this pretty quickly ("I am your father", okay, but "sister" too? How small is this "galaxy", anyway?), and after everyone had time to reflect in between trilogies and then continue the spoilage anyway, it just became more clear that those hints of grand scope were only a lucky accident (C3-PO and Chewbacca had to get memberberry parts too? seriously?) ... but we could try to recapture some of that scope, on purpose, by establishing a universe that's at least ideologically large. Show more places where Han's "hokey religion" attitude was just common sense, because there were only ever ten thousand Jedi among millions of planets. Show more of the core Sith point of view that makes it so dangerously tempting. Show the various contradictory lies that the Sith spread until they took on lives and followings of their own. Show which Jedi beliefs might only be true "from a certain point of view" and at least leave room for a little doubt with the rest.

On the other hand, TFA actually loved hinting at mysteries, which was wasted when that prep work just got thrown out by TLJ, leaving little more than a paint-by-numbers rework of ANH behind. The prequel trilogy did more hinting at grand scope (if only by accident, in between the spoilage), but it got buried by wooden dialogue and cartoonish set pieces. It's easy to pick out one thing at a time that we could have done better, but I'm sure I'd have done a dozen different things worse as a directory.

Now, as a producer, if the whole sequel trilogy had been mine to make, the major changes would have been easy: insist on having three scripts in advance (even if the second and third might be heavily changed later), insist on either more closure for the first two movies' endings or giving all three movies to the same director or both, and don't let that director be either a "mystery box!" guy or a "subvert expectations!" guy.

Oh, and I would absolutely excise the schtick where they have to practically retcon the rebels' huge victory to try to make them the Loveable Underdog again, but that's another obvious big-picture improvement that could be very easy to screw up entirely when we get down into all the critical little details.