The Star Wars franchise has a level of iconography unlike any other film franchise, so the pressure to deliver satisfying sequels is sky high. And with J.J. Abrams returning to the property for Episode IX to complete the Skywalker Story, decades of films will finally reach their conclusion. The current trilogy also includes a changing of the guard, where Abrams' new trio of heroes take the mantle from Luke, Han, and Leia. The latter of which is being brought back through old footage for Episode IX, and will likely continue training Oscar Isaac's Poe Dameron to eventually lead The Resistance. Isaac recently teased what to expect from the scrappy group of rebels in the next film, saying:
(They) are guerrilla fighters, adhering closer to something like the Revolutionary War fighters or even the guerrillas in Cuba with Che and Fidel and all these guys living in the mountains, coming down to do some attacks, and going back and trying to hide from the 'empire' of the United States. It's that kind of ragged at this point.
Well, this doesn't look good. It looks like things haven't improved much for The Resistance since their near extinction in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. While we'll have to wait over a year to see how the group recovered from the battle on Crait, it seems that Leia's soldiers will be a small and scrappy crew when they continue fighting against The First Order.
Star Wars fans are used to seeing a small group of rebels overturn a space dictatorship, as that was the main conflict in the original trilogy. But The Resistance has far fewer resources than their predecessors, with much of the group's fleet destroyed during the events of The Last Jedi. The Galactic Cold War is much more bare bones, and it's unclear how the Light Side could possibly win against Kylo Ren and his forces.
In his same conversation with USA Today, Oscar Isaac went on to describe how Episode IX and the franchise as a whole is overall a war movie, and therefore it should take inspiration from real-life events. As he tells it,
You hear about stories with (George) Washington as a general, where lots of people died based on their orders, but that is part of leadership and that push-and-pull in the fight for figuring out what's the way to move forward. It is a war movie. I mean, above and beyond, it is a movie about warriors.
Did anyone else just get chills? It's crazy to believe that Episode IX will finish the narrative begun with 1977's A New Hope. Both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi were met with some backlash, so it's clear that the generations of Star Wars fans aren't necessarily easy to please.
All will be revealed when J.J. Abrams' untitled Episode IX arrives in theaters on December 20th, 2019. In the meantime, check out our 2018 release list to plan your next trip to the movies.
