Like or hate the Star Wars prequel trilogy, at least it’s coherent. That’s not something that can be said about the sequel trilogy, and the reason for it is easy to spot: too many different visions. When the sequel trilogy was announced the plan was for a different director (Abrams, Johnson, and Trevorrow) to take one of the three movies and make it as they saw fit, with no directive other than turning in a product that made sense as a follow-up to the previous movie.
For a studio that was heavily rumored to have intervened in Gareth Edwards’ Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, that felt like the right call. Let every director realize their vision, to its fullest extent. The problem is that it seems there was never a plan for all those visions to be leading up to something or to at least make sense in the context of each other. Instead, it was a case of too much liberty and no real plan.
This is where the prequels comparison comes so handy. For years, the prequel trilogy has been panned, with many critics and fans considering it underwhelming and confusing. But no matter how anyone thinks or feels about it, there’s no way to argue against the obvious: the prequel trilogy was George Lucas’ vision, and everything that happened in it was planned from the beginning.
The more maligned parts of the prequel trilogy, like Midi-chlorians or Jar Jar Binks, still made sense within the context of the entire story, and never felt like ideas that were just abandoned in the middle of developing them. The same cannot be said about a fragmented and confusing sequel trilogy, where The Force Awakens seemed to be leading up to something, The Last Jedi pivoted away from that, and then The Rise of Skywalker attempted to go back to some of the original themes, while also trying to “fix” some of the perceived issues with The Last Jedi.
Characters are all over the place in the sequel trilogy, and so are storylines. Palpatine as the big bad? There was absolutely nothing leading up to that, despite Abrams's attempts at a retcon. Rey as a Palpatine? That directly contradicts the theme of The Last Jedi, a movie all about how anyone can be a Jedi, no matter where they come from.
In fact, the only storyline that seems to actually continue from The Last Jedi into The Rise of Skywalker is Rey and Kylo’s connection, except The Rise of Skywalker tries to have its cake and eat it too, making it both romantic and somehow not, in an attempt to please everyone that, of course, ended up pleasing no one. This sticks out even more as there’s also some banter between Rey and Poe that could be described as resembling Han and Leia’s, and that pesky little secret that Finn keeps trying to tell Rey the entire movie, and that everyone interpreted as a love confession.
This all could have been prevented not just by having one director for all three movies, but at least by having an overarching plan of where the trilogy was going, with story beats that every director was supposed to follow. There would have still been freedom to make every movie different, but fans wouldn’t have been left feeling like the story just didn’t make sense and the characters didn’t either.
The lack of a coherent plan and the drawbacks to that becomes even more apparent when considering the leaked script for Colin Trevorrow's episode 9, originally titled Duel of the Fates. Trevorrow’s script is as different from what ended up being The Rise of Skywalker as night and day, and a much better way to tie up the loose ends of The Last Jedi than the movie audiences ended up seeing.
In Duel of the Fates, Palpatine wasn’t the big bad, and the final showdown wasn’t between him and Rey/Kylo, but between Rey and Kylo, as it always seemed the story was leading towards. Rey is also not related to the fallen Emperor at all, and Kylo, despite many chances to do so, doesn’t get redemption.
This probably would have angered some fans, but it makes sense considering how many chances Kylo had in both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, and how many times he made the choice to continue on the dark path he was on. To add insult to injury, Luke’s Force Ghost was much more present in Duel of the Fates, and he got to haunt Kylo!
In the end, fans didn’t get that, probably because The Rise of Skywalkerwas more a correction to the perceived issues of The Last Jedi than a continuation of the story, and that’s where an overall plan would have come in handy. Rian Johnson’s story never goes so far off-script Disney feels the need to spend an entire movie fixing the storyline, and maybe fans get a much better story. Or, at least, they get a story like the Star Wars prequels, one that some might love and some might hate, but that follows one clear vision.