|
|
Post by Celebith on Mar 10, 2020 23:30:40 GMT -5
The script for Empire was continually changing, being rewritten even as shooting went on. Lawrence Kasdan has even admitted how "under-the-gun" they were by refashioning the script after Leigh Brackett's death while they were building monsters and stuff; Instead of bringing Palpatine back as the villain, they should have brought Leigh Bracket back to write it. Except for maybe Johnson, she's the best writer in the series. |
|
|
|
Post by sarapen on Mar 11, 2020 9:48:31 GMT -5
The DVD is out soon, right? I suspect approximately 5 months after that we'll reach a point where the creative team will tell us all that the TROS movie we all saw doesn't even exist. And all the horrible parts of it is all stuff we made up in our heads. And they'll just release a bunch of statements, and scripts and clips about other stuff and pretend that stuff was the movie instead. Disney will have JJ Abrams quietly killed and his presence will be digitally removed from promotional pictures and videos related to the movie. |
|
|
|
Post by Mr. Greene's October Surprise on Mar 11, 2020 19:19:59 GMT -5
The script for Empire was continually changing, being rewritten even as shooting went on. Lawrence Kasdan has even admitted how "under-the-gun" they were by refashioning the script after Leigh Brackett's death while they were building monsters and stuff; Instead of bringing Palpatine back as the villain, they should have brought Leigh Bracket back to write it. Except for maybe Johnson, she's the best writer in the series. ...I'm afraid I can't agree with you, there; you've forgotten Larry Kasdan. |
|
patbat
TI Forumite
OK です か
Posts: 2,396
|
Post by patbat on Mar 26, 2020 13:39:38 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by Powerthirteen on Mar 27, 2020 11:07:38 GMT -5
WHAT?  Now THAT's storytelling. |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 27, 2020 11:10:37 GMT -5
WHAT? Now THAT's storytelling. ^ Now THIS is podracing! |
|
|
|
Post by Desert Dweller on Mar 28, 2020 18:53:11 GMT -5
I am sad that this has a reason to exist, but very grateful to whoever made it because it made me laugh.
Hey, I have no trouble ignoring that the 4th Indiana Jones movie exists. Have legit often forgotten the real final season of Scrubs happened. I've never seen S5 of Arrested Development.
I'm fine with forgetting that this movie ever existed.
|
|
|
|
Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Apr 1, 2020 17:01:45 GMT -5
MAKE TRICLOPS CANON YOU COWARDS! Please note that Triclops (son of the Emperor with a third eye on the back of his head) is a different character from Trioculus (usurper / impostor with a third eye in the middle of his forehead). I think even as an eight-year-old, I recognized the Jedi Prince series was not worth my time, when there were more worthwhile things like Heir to the Empire to consume. I bring this up because worst character idea / piece of media in all of Star Wars is a really fucking high (or low?) bar to clear. Clicked the link to wookiepedia and…what?  WHAT? Yeah dude, Zorba the Hutt had a beard. |
|
|
|
Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Apr 2, 2020 8:53:46 GMT -5
Roy Batty's Pet Dove Looks more like he’s really into Pippi Longstocking and made himself a matching necklace pre-Disney EU Hutts were fucking WILD. Zorba growing out braids. Other Hutts cutting corners and employing Trump-like contractor paying practices on recreations of the Death Star. Make this canon again Disney, you COWARDS! |
|
|
|
Post by Hachiman on Apr 3, 2020 0:51:34 GMT -5
Roy Batty's Pet Dove Looks more like he’s really into Pippi Longstocking and made himself a matching necklace pre-Disney EU Hutts were fucking WILD. Zorba growing out braids. Other Hutts cutting corners and employing Trump-like contractor paying practices on recreations of the Death Star. Make this canon again Disney, you COWARDS! Reading Darksaber was not a waste of my time. I mean this sincerely. Its one of the few EU books that acknowledged how terribly the story was going and then capitalized on it. |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Apr 3, 2020 9:24:52 GMT -5
pre-Disney EU Hutts were fucking WILD. Zorba growing out braids. Other Hutts cutting corners and employing Trump-like contractor paying practices on recreations of the Death Star. Make this canon again Disney, you COWARDS! Reading Darksaber was not a waste of my time. I mean this sincerely. Its one of the few EU books that acknowledged how terribly the story was going and then capitalized on it. What about The Courtship of Eddie's Father Princess Leia? I know I read it, but genuinely can't remember if it was good or not. |
|
|
|
Post by Jimmy James on Apr 3, 2020 9:43:28 GMT -5
Reading Darksaber was not a waste of my time. I mean this sincerely. Its one of the few EU books that acknowledged how terribly the story was going and then capitalized on it. What about The Courtship of Eddie's Father Princess Leia? I know I read it, but genuinely can't remember if it was good or not. It had Force-witches riding Rancors, that was pretty boss. I would probably place it around the median of Star Wars books I read- below the Thrawn trilogy at the top, but maybe on par with or slightly above the Corellian trilogy or Black Fleet crisis? I could never put my finger on why Truce at Bakura was at the bottom, but it was. Splinter of the Mind's Eye is in some ways the weirdest now- the plot is not as strange as some in and of itself, but it came out 1978 before the rest of the original trilogy established the canonical Star Wars story. So there's no Han or Chewie, and instead Luke and Leia are weirdly into each other. Luke lops of Darth Vader's arm in their first lightsaber duel, a couple years before Empire. |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Apr 3, 2020 10:03:08 GMT -5
What about The Courtship of Eddie's Father Princess Leia? I know I read it, but genuinely can't remember if it was good or not. It had Force-witches riding Rancors, that was pretty boss. I would probably place it around the median of Star Wars books I read- below the Thrawn trilogy at the top, but maybe on par with or slightly above the Corellian trilogy or Black Fleet crisis? I could never put my finger on why Truce at Bakura was at the bottom, but it was. Splinter of the Mind's Eye is in some ways the weirdest now- the plot is not as strange as some in and of itself, but it came out 1978 before the rest of the original trilogy established the canonical Star Wars story. So there's no Han or Chewie, and instead Luke and Leia are weirdly into each other. Luke lops of Darth Vader's arm in their first lightsaber duel, a couple years before Empire. Yeah, Thrawn Trilogy is still at the top, save for the ridiculous "clone names have extra vowels added". I actually really enjoyed the NJO/Yuuzhan Vong series overall (some really crappy books balanced by some really good ones), but some of the things I liked the most (like Jacen finding balance in the Force through the Vong) were ruined later (NOPE, he was tricked by bad guys, Vergere was just a Sith, now he's a murdering asshole). |
|
|
|
Post by The Spice Weasel on Apr 3, 2020 14:53:15 GMT -5
It had Force-witches riding Rancors, that was pretty boss. I would probably place it around the median of Star Wars books I read- below the Thrawn trilogy at the top, but maybe on par with or slightly above the Corellian trilogy or Black Fleet crisis? I could never put my finger on why Truce at Bakura was at the bottom, but it was. Splinter of the Mind's Eye is in some ways the weirdest now- the plot is not as strange as some in and of itself, but it came out 1978 before the rest of the original trilogy established the canonical Star Wars story. So there's no Han or Chewie, and instead Luke and Leia are weirdly into each other. Luke lops of Darth Vader's arm in their first lightsaber duel, a couple years before Empire. Yeah, Thrawn Trilogy is still at the top, save for the ridiculous "clone names have extra vowels added". I actually really enjoyed the NJO/Yuuzhan Vong series overall (some really crappy books balanced by some really good ones), but some of the things I liked the most (like Jacen finding balance in the Force through the Vong) were ruined later (NOPE, he was tricked by bad guys, Vergere was just a Sith, now he's a murdering asshole). I've been meaning to re-read the Thrawn Trilogy to see if I still like it as much as I did in the 90s. I'd imagine after all of this even if it isn't as good as I remember it will still be way better than what we got. |
|
|
|
Post by Nudeviking on Apr 19, 2020 23:31:13 GMT -5
I finally saw Rise of Skywalker and I was disappointed by how not terrible it was after all y'all internet folks hyped it up as THE WORST THING EVER! It was frankly pretty middle of the road Star Wars shit. Not the best of the best but nowhere near as bad as some other junk was. I think some of the individual choices they made were kind of stupid (relegating Rose to a "Sorry guys I gotta do my homework," side character seemingly because dumbasses got angry about an Asian woman being a main character in the last movie being the main one) but as a movie it was mostly just a generic adventure movie with Star Wars shit overlaid on top of it and that's fine.
|
|
|
|
Post by Hachiman on Apr 20, 2020 2:35:28 GMT -5
I finally did a rewatch on streaming and am still mixed on it. Honestly though, I am mixed on the whole new trilogy, which I would actually put BEHIND the prequels. There is just so much that they could have cut from this movie. And there is so much that bothers me about this movie the more I think about it compared to some of the other films in the series.
|
|
|
|
Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Apr 23, 2020 16:38:48 GMT -5
I finally did a rewatch on streaming and am still mixed on it. Honestly though, I am mixed on the whole new trilogy, which I would actually put BEHIND the prequels. There is just so much that they could have cut from this movie. And there is so much that bothers me about this movie the more I think about it compared to some of the other films in the series. I don't know if they are a worse watch than the prequels, but certainly much more wasted potential. The prequels were always going to have a big degree of difficulty in terms of telling an interesting story, when everybody knows how it has to end. Rogue One did it I guess, but they also accomplished that by making the all the characters a cast of doomed nobodies. Can't exactly do that when you're telling the origin story of Darth Vader over 3 movies. But the Disney sequels....they could have done ANYTHING with it! Even working within the nostalgia-is-money constraints that Disney was surely forcing, there were just so many places you could have gone with it instead of what they produced. And the saddest part of it is that from a distance it sure seems like the only reason it did turn out that way was that instead of waiting a year to come with an actual outline of a plan for a new trilogy, they rushed it because there was money to make for the investors RIGHT NOW, dammit. |
|
|
|
Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Apr 23, 2020 16:44:56 GMT -5
I finally did a rewatch on streaming and am still mixed on it. Honestly though, I am mixed on the whole new trilogy, which I would actually put BEHIND the prequels. There is just so much that they could have cut from this movie. And there is so much that bothers me about this movie the more I think about it compared to some of the other films in the series. I don't know if they are a worse watch than the prequels, but certainly much more wasted potential. The prequels were always going to have a big degree of difficulty in terms of telling an interesting story, when everybody knows how it has to end. Rogue One did it I guess, but they also accomplished that by making the all the characters a cast of doomed nobodies. Can't exactly do that when you're telling the origin story of Darth Vader over 3 movies.But the Disney sequels....they could have done ANYTHING with it! Even working within the nostalgia-is-money constraints that Disney was surely forcing, there were just so many places you could have gone with it instead of what they produced. And the saddest part of it is that from a distance it sure seems like the only reason it did turn out that way was that instead of waiting a year to come with an actual outline of a plan for a new trilogy, they rushed it because there was money to make for the investors RIGHT NOW, dammit. What if in the prequels...it had turned out that Vader had lied about being Anakin Skywalker the whole time? |
|
|
|
Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Apr 23, 2020 16:59:14 GMT -5
I don't know if they are a worse watch than the prequels, but certainly much more wasted potential. The prequels were always going to have a big degree of difficulty in terms of telling an interesting story, when everybody knows how it has to end. Rogue One did it I guess, but they also accomplished that by making the all the characters a cast of doomed nobodies. Can't exactly do that when you're telling the origin story of Darth Vader over 3 movies.But the Disney sequels....they could have done ANYTHING with it! Even working within the nostalgia-is-money constraints that Disney was surely forcing, there were just so many places you could have gone with it instead of what they produced. And the saddest part of it is that from a distance it sure seems like the only reason it did turn out that way was that instead of waiting a year to come with an actual outline of a plan for a new trilogy, they rushed it because there was money to make for the investors RIGHT NOW, dammit. What if in the prequels...it had turned out that Vader had lied about being Anakin Skywalker the whole time? I guess it would have been interesting to see if we could have sped up the rise of the Angry Nerd Industrial Complex by a decade, sure |
|
|
|
Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Apr 23, 2020 17:07:02 GMT -5
What if in the prequels...it had turned out that Vader had lied about being Anakin Skywalker the whole time? I guess it would have been interesting to see if we could have sped up the rise of the Angry Nerd Industrial Complex by a decade, sure What if the movies had been really good though, Owl? |
|
|
|
Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Apr 23, 2020 17:18:20 GMT -5
I guess it would have been interesting to see if we could have sped up the rise of the Angry Nerd Industrial Complex by a decade, sure What if the movies had been really good though, Owl? Being good doesn't matter as much as being what I wanted when I was 12 |
|
|
|
Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Apr 23, 2020 17:28:00 GMT -5
What if the movies had been really good though, Owl? Being good doesn't matter as much as being what I wanted when I was 12 Which was for the Episode II Diner Guy to become one of the main characters in Star Wars? |
|
|
|
Post by nowimnothing on Apr 23, 2020 17:52:11 GMT -5
All I want to know is, do we blame Disney or can we continue to blame Lucas? Since he sold it to the only people who could screw it up worse than he had.
He is probably sitting on a pile of money like Scrooge McDuck stroking a Monkey's paw.
|
|
|
|
Post by Hachiman on Apr 23, 2020 19:17:11 GMT -5
All I want to know is, do we blame Disney or can we continue to blame Lucas? Since he sold it to the only people who could screw it up worse than he had. See, I don't know about that second sentence. I mean, I remember when Disney bought Marvel and fanboys were whining, "Oh, great. Now we'll have Mickey Mouse as an Avenger on some alternate Earth and we're going to get a bunch of new cute characters to sell toys." But the MCU movies have been mostly good. We haven't seen any brand-new Disneyfied characters. And those few Marvel characters that aren't in sole custody of Marvel like X-Men or Spiderman get fretted over since "Marvel knows what they are doing better than the license holders." I had this same line of thinking when Disney bought Star Wars, but I ended up being totally wrong. The Marvel predictions from years ago now turned out to be exactly right for Star Wars. Marvel is still going great, while Star Wars turned out to be a mixed bag. I think that there's definitely corporate meddling as every movie or show seems made to sell more toys with increasingly extraneous characters and you have a theme park and Jedi Mickey. Disney as a corporate entity is definitely a factor, but looking at Marvel, it seems like the real issue is the people that they put in charge. Every movie sounds like it was a nightmare to make. And it sucks that they don't want to retool this strategy and instead are pumping the brakes on doing anything new for the time being. So, I started off saying we can't blame Disney, but now I think we can albeit for different reasons since they have shown they are very capable of making a quality franchise when they care. |
|
|
|
Post by Nudeviking on Apr 23, 2020 19:53:25 GMT -5
All I want to know is, do we blame Disney or can we continue to blame Lucas? Since he sold it to the only people who could screw it up worse than he had. See, I don't know about that second sentence. I mean, I remember when Disney bought Marvel and fanboys were whining, "Oh, great. Now we'll have Mickey Mouse as an Avenger on some alternate Earth and we're going to get a bunch of new cute characters to sell toys." But the MCU movies have been mostly good. We haven't seen any brand-new Disneyfied characters. And those few Marvel characters that aren't in sole custody of Marvel like X-Men or Spiderman get fretted over since "Marvel knows what they are doing better than the license holders." I had this same line of thinking when Disney bought Star Wars, but I ended up being totally wrong. The Marvel predictions from years ago now turned out to be exactly right for Star Wars. Marvel is still going great, while Star Wars turned out to be a mixed bag. I think that there's definitely corporate meddling as every movie or show seems made to sell more toys with increasingly extraneous characters and you have a theme park and Jedi Mickey. Disney as a corporate entity is definitely a factor, but looking at Marvel, it seems like the real issue is the people that they put in charge. Every movie sounds like it was a nightmare to make. And it sucks that they don't want to retool this strategy and instead are pumping the brakes on doing anything new for the time being. So, I started off saying we can't blame Disney, but now I think we can albeit for different reasons since they have shown they are very capable of making a quality franchise when they care. They're also capable of making quality Star Wars franchise stuff. Outside of the new movies which are probably a C- overall if we're averaging everything together, the Mandalorian was great as was the cartoon show for children, Rebels. |
|
|
|
Post by nowimnothing on Apr 23, 2020 20:45:45 GMT -5
See, I don't know about that second sentence. I mean, I remember when Disney bought Marvel and fanboys were whining, "Oh, great. Now we'll have Mickey Mouse as an Avenger on some alternate Earth and we're going to get a bunch of new cute characters to sell toys." But the MCU movies have been mostly good. We haven't seen any brand-new Disneyfied characters. And those few Marvel characters that aren't in sole custody of Marvel like X-Men or Spiderman get fretted over since "Marvel knows what they are doing better than the license holders." I had this same line of thinking when Disney bought Star Wars, but I ended up being totally wrong. The Marvel predictions from years ago now turned out to be exactly right for Star Wars. Marvel is still going great, while Star Wars turned out to be a mixed bag. I think that there's definitely corporate meddling as every movie or show seems made to sell more toys with increasingly extraneous characters and you have a theme park and Jedi Mickey. Disney as a corporate entity is definitely a factor, but looking at Marvel, it seems like the real issue is the people that they put in charge. Every movie sounds like it was a nightmare to make. And it sucks that they don't want to retool this strategy and instead are pumping the brakes on doing anything new for the time being. So, I started off saying we can't blame Disney, but now I think we can albeit for different reasons since they have shown they are very capable of making a quality franchise when they care. They're also capable of making quality Star Wars franchise stuff. Outside of the new movies which are probably a C- overall if we're averaging everything together, the Mandalorian was great as was the cartoon show for children, Rebels. Plus Rogue One and to a lesser extent, Solo. It seems like it really should not be hard to make a decent Star War. Definitely easier than getting the Marvel universe up and running. |
|
|
|
Post by Hachiman on Apr 23, 2020 21:06:53 GMT -5
See, I don't know about that second sentence. I mean, I remember when Disney bought Marvel and fanboys were whining, "Oh, great. Now we'll have Mickey Mouse as an Avenger on some alternate Earth and we're going to get a bunch of new cute characters to sell toys." But the MCU movies have been mostly good. We haven't seen any brand-new Disneyfied characters. And those few Marvel characters that aren't in sole custody of Marvel like X-Men or Spiderman get fretted over since "Marvel knows what they are doing better than the license holders." I had this same line of thinking when Disney bought Star Wars, but I ended up being totally wrong. The Marvel predictions from years ago now turned out to be exactly right for Star Wars. Marvel is still going great, while Star Wars turned out to be a mixed bag. I think that there's definitely corporate meddling as every movie or show seems made to sell more toys with increasingly extraneous characters and you have a theme park and Jedi Mickey. Disney as a corporate entity is definitely a factor, but looking at Marvel, it seems like the real issue is the people that they put in charge. Every movie sounds like it was a nightmare to make. And it sucks that they don't want to retool this strategy and instead are pumping the brakes on doing anything new for the time being. So, I started off saying we can't blame Disney, but now I think we can albeit for different reasons since they have shown they are very capable of making a quality franchise when they care. They're also capable of making quality Star Wars franchise stuff. Outside of the new movies which are probably a C- overall if we're averaging everything together, the Mandalorian was great as was the cartoon show for children, Rebels. This is true. The Mandalorian and the Rebels were really awesome, although I was sad to see Thrawn get pulled off the table. I mention this in the brand-spanking-new Lego thread, but one issue i have with Disney is that they seem utterly incapable of good designs for ships and characters. For all of Lucas' problems, his design team wasn't one of them. Even the Prequels had great ship and character designs. There's been very few moments since the Disney takeover where I went, "That's ship's cool!" or "That character is cool" except for the Mandalorian (generally awesome characters) and Rebels (The Grand Inquisitor and Thrawn were both awesome villains. The Grand Inquisitor and Maul both had awesome ships). Goddamnit, why couldn't they have been the villains in the new trilogy about mopping up the Imperial holdouts? |
|
|
|
Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Apr 24, 2020 9:28:05 GMT -5
All I want to know is, do we blame Disney or can we continue to blame Lucas? Since he sold it to the only people who could screw it up worse than he had. See, I don't know about that second sentence. I mean, I remember when Disney bought Marvel and fanboys were whining, "Oh, great. Now we'll have Mickey Mouse as an Avenger on some alternate Earth and we're going to get a bunch of new cute characters to sell toys." But the MCU movies have been mostly good. We haven't seen any brand-new Disneyfied characters. And those few Marvel characters that aren't in sole custody of Marvel like X-Men or Spiderman get fretted over since "Marvel knows what they are doing better than the license holders." I had this same line of thinking when Disney bought Star Wars, but I ended up being totally wrong. The Marvel predictions from years ago now turned out to be exactly right for Star Wars. Marvel is still going great, while Star Wars turned out to be a mixed bag. I think that there's definitely corporate meddling as every movie or show seems made to sell more toys with increasingly extraneous characters and you have a theme park and Jedi Mickey. Disney as a corporate entity is definitely a factor, but looking at Marvel, it seems like the real issue is the people that they put in charge. Every movie sounds like it was a nightmare to make. And it sucks that they don't want to retool this strategy and instead are pumping the brakes on doing anything new for the time being. So, I started off saying we can't blame Disney, but now I think we can albeit for different reasons since they have shown they are very capable of making a quality franchise when they care. I think it's worth keeping in mind that Star Wars has always been about selling toys and shit. There was never a time where it was this pure work of human creativity devoid of the taint of capitalism. Even in the original trilogy this is true; iirc Lucas negotiated a large share of merchandising profits for himself when he initially sold the script, which was extremely prescient of him as Star Wars kind of set the mold for how peoe would sell merchandise for popular genre entertainment. And in Episode VI, the Ewoks basically existed to sell toys, even though they sucked as characters, largely due to being racist as hell. I think the reason the new trilogy feels more like it's the product of a capitalist enterprise putting out whatever will make them the most money is that Disney is a massive corporation not beholden to the creative vision of one person. Lucas certainly used Star Wars to sell a lot of shit (a great deal of it made in sweatshops under hyperexploitative conditions), but the first two trilogies were ultimately his babies, so even when the prequels sucked it was because he didnt have a group of talented collaborators there to say no to bad ideas (which is how we got the original trilogy and not the adventures of Luke Starkiller or whatever). So the badness was the reflection of one guy's odd quirks, whereas in the new trilogy, there is a degree of quality control preventing the dialogue and casting from being total dogshit (indeed, Ridley, Boyega, Driver, et.al. Are all quite good), but everything else feels like it was a very calculated decision to evoke enough nostalgia, not be too much of a creative risk, etc., such that even though, the Knives Out Guy, say, was a genuinely good creative mind involved in the films, he and likely everyone involved were constrained by Disney's unwillingness to take chances, and need for the films to evoke sufficient nostalgia to put a lot of butts in seats. Also, as an aside, I would argue that the MCU also plays it safe a lot, and that most of their films are no better or more creative than the non Episode IX Disney Star Wars films. |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2020 9:58:49 GMT -5
See, I don't know about that second sentence. I mean, I remember when Disney bought Marvel and fanboys were whining, "Oh, great. Now we'll have Mickey Mouse as an Avenger on some alternate Earth and we're going to get a bunch of new cute characters to sell toys." But the MCU movies have been mostly good. We haven't seen any brand-new Disneyfied characters. And those few Marvel characters that aren't in sole custody of Marvel like X-Men or Spiderman get fretted over since "Marvel knows what they are doing better than the license holders." I had this same line of thinking when Disney bought Star Wars, but I ended up being totally wrong. The Marvel predictions from years ago now turned out to be exactly right for Star Wars. Marvel is still going great, while Star Wars turned out to be a mixed bag. I think that there's definitely corporate meddling as every movie or show seems made to sell more toys with increasingly extraneous characters and you have a theme park and Jedi Mickey. Disney as a corporate entity is definitely a factor, but looking at Marvel, it seems like the real issue is the people that they put in charge. Every movie sounds like it was a nightmare to make. And it sucks that they don't want to retool this strategy and instead are pumping the brakes on doing anything new for the time being. So, I started off saying we can't blame Disney, but now I think we can albeit for different reasons since they have shown they are very capable of making a quality franchise when they care. I think it's worth keeping in mind that Star Wars has always been about selling toys and shit. There was never a time where it was this pure work of human creativity devoid of the taint of capitalism. Even in the original trilogy this is true; iirc Lucas negotiated a large share of merchandising profits for himself when he initially sold the script, which was extremely prescient of him as Star Wars kind of set the mold for how peoe would sell merchandise for popular genre entertainment. And in Episode VI, the Ewoks basically existed to sell toys, even though they sucked as characters, largely due to being racist as hell. I think the reason the new trilogy feels more like it's the product of a capitalist enterprise putting out whatever will make them the most money is that Disney is a massive corporation not beholden to the creative vision of one person. Lucas certainly used Star Wars to sell a lot of shit (a great deal of it made in sweatshops under hyperexploitative conditions), but the first two trilogies were ultimately his babies, so even when the prequels sucked it was because he didnt have a group of talented collaborators there to say no to bad ideas (which is how we got the original trilogy and not the adventures of Luke Starkiller or whatever). So the badness was the reflection of one guy's odd quirks, whereas in the new trilogy, there is a degree of quality control preventing the dialogue and casting from being total dogshit (indeed, Ridley, Boyega, Driver, et.al. Are all quite good), but everything else feels like it was a very calculated decision to evoke enough nostalgia, not be too much of a creative risk, etc., such that even though, the Knives Out Guy, say, was a genuinely good creative mind involved in the films, he and likely everyone involved were constrained by Disney's unwillingness to take chances, and need for the films to evoke sufficient nostalgia to put a lot of butts in seats. Also, as an aside, I would argue that the MCU also plays it safe a lot, and that most of their films are no better or more creative than the non Episode IX Disney Star Wars films. I get the points you're making. But still - even the most mediocre of the Marvel movies (Thor 2, Iron Man 2) are still internally consistent AND fit in the overall continuity. If Infinity War had come out and opened with "Oh btw Thanos died and now Obadiah Stane is back somehow and was behind EVERYTHING THE ENTIRE TIME and now he has an entire solar system full of Iron Monger suits but with hulk-killing weapons so we have to go invade an upside-down Hydra Helicarrier on horseback to push the Off Switch" we would have hated it too. |
|
|
|
Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Apr 24, 2020 17:47:13 GMT -5
I think it's worth keeping in mind that Star Wars has always been about selling toys and shit. There was never a time where it was this pure work of human creativity devoid of the taint of capitalism. Even in the original trilogy this is true; iirc Lucas negotiated a large share of merchandising profits for himself when he initially sold the script, which was extremely prescient of him as Star Wars kind of set the mold for how peoe would sell merchandise for popular genre entertainment. And in Episode VI, the Ewoks basically existed to sell toys, even though they sucked as characters, largely due to being racist as hell. I think the reason the new trilogy feels more like it's the product of a capitalist enterprise putting out whatever will make them the most money is that Disney is a massive corporation not beholden to the creative vision of one person. Lucas certainly used Star Wars to sell a lot of shit (a great deal of it made in sweatshops under hyperexploitative conditions), but the first two trilogies were ultimately his babies, so even when the prequels sucked it was because he didnt have a group of talented collaborators there to say no to bad ideas (which is how we got the original trilogy and not the adventures of Luke Starkiller or whatever). So the badness was the reflection of one guy's odd quirks, whereas in the new trilogy, there is a degree of quality control preventing the dialogue and casting from being total dogshit (indeed, Ridley, Boyega, Driver, et.al. Are all quite good), but everything else feels like it was a very calculated decision to evoke enough nostalgia, not be too much of a creative risk, etc., such that even though, the Knives Out Guy, say, was a genuinely good creative mind involved in the films, he and likely everyone involved were constrained by Disney's unwillingness to take chances, and need for the films to evoke sufficient nostalgia to put a lot of butts in seats. Also, as an aside, I would argue that the MCU also plays it safe a lot, and that most of their films are no better or more creative than the non Episode IX Disney Star Wars films. I get the points you're making. But still - even the most mediocre of the Marvel movies (Thor 2, Iron Man 2) are still internally consistent AND fit in the overall continuity. If Infinity War had come out and opened with "Oh btw Thanos died and now Obadiah Stane is back somehow and was behind EVERYTHING THE ENTIRE TIME and now he has an entire solar system full of Iron Monger suits but with hulk-killing weapons so we have to go invade an upside-down Hydra Helicarrier on horseback to push the Off Switch" we would have hated it too. Yes, there was one very bad new Disney Star Wars that sucked and made ridiculous decisions about where it was going to go. They should have had someone plan out where the new trilogy was going from before Episode VII was released, JJ Abrams was underwhelming, and they clearly didn't take the time they should have on Episode IX, which led to them putting out a movie with a huge budget without sufficient time to make it good. I certainly didn't mean to imply that Episode IX wasn't bad; I think that only I and II are worse. But I also think there's this idea that Disney was going to ruin Star Wars and rob it of some artistic integrity as if the franchise had heretofore been free of the taint of capitalism, and I don't really buy that, because that ship sailed, at the latest, in 1983. Also, the end of MCU Phase III is basically the same shit as Episode IX only handled with competence. Both Infinity War/Endgame and RoS suffer from ratcheting up the stakes to utterly absurd levels. Thanos kills half the universe by snapping his fingers; that is as ridiculous as Palpatine's giant Star Destroyer fleet. Rey is the most Chosen One of all Chosen Ones; that is as ridiculous as billionaire Tony Stark becoming the greatest of all martyrs. I don't like the approach of either, but the fact that those MCU films are pretty decent (and have some solid emotional beats that land) is proof that the main problem with Star Wars that made the last film unredeemably bad wasn't bringing back the same old Big Bad or raising the stakes. I think that those things are inherently flawed ideas, but I also roll my eyes at the entire concept of Endgame as well. But they're both adventure movies, and I could have handled some ridiculousness in the new trilogy, so if RoS hadn't just been two hours of killing time looking for a McGuffin, and had developed its characters in emotionally satisfying ways instead of pandering to reactionaries who hate Rose and didn't like Episode VIII's portrayal of Luke, and they'd found a way to make the ridiculous bits work a little better (like I think if the giant fleet had been a sort of Potemkin village meant to really impress Kylo Ren when in reality the vast majority of the ships were either an illusion or just hollowed out models of Star Destroyers, that could have really worked), I probably would have quite enjoyed the film, even if it didn't live up to the emotional resonance of the original trilogy. |
|
