The Changing Focus of Star Wars

Rewatching all nine movies during the quarantine, at one point I got to thinking about how the focus of the Star Wars story kept changing as they added more movies.

In the original movies released from 1977-1983 the main focus was on the story of Luke Skywalker as he undertook the hero's journey from the backwater of Tatooine to destroy the Death Star.  Then his training to become a Jedi and bring his father, Darth Vader, back from the dark side.  Of course you also had the other main characters in Han and Leia too but Luke's story was the primary one.

Then George Lucas made the prequels from 1999-2005 and the focus of the story changed from Luke's story to Anakin's story.  The whole saga became about his fall to the dark side and then his redemption thanks to Luke's faith in him.  Instead of the Luke Skywalker story it was the Darth Vader story.

And then Disney came along with their half-assed sequels from 2015-2019 and especially with the ill-named Rise of Skywalker, the focus of the series shifted again.  With the return of Emperor Palpatine and the revelation that Rey was his granddaughter, the focus of the saga really then became about Palpatine.

Chronologically, in the prequels Palpatine manipulates events to destroy the Jedi and take ultimate power.  In the original trilogy Palpatine's empire is destroyed by his trusted henchman Darth Vader via Luke Skywalker.  And then in the final trilogy, Palpatine works in the shadows to revive his empire only to be thwarted by his granddaughter and the grandson of Darth Vader.  While they marketed it as "The Skywalker Saga" it really should have been "The Palpatine Saga" since he was far more involved than Skywalkers in everything.  Nothing happens--perhaps not even Anakin's immaculate conception--without Palpatine's involvement.  He was the straw stirring the whole Star Wars drink.

So in terms of writing you can see how adding more parts to a series can change the overall meaning of that series.  That can especially be true when you have three trilogies made long periods apart and in the final case by different people.  It's probably happened in book series too, as new works retcon what the overall message was supposed to be.