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Author Topic: Star Wars 9 : The Rise of Skywalker  (Read 189213 times)
Abagadro
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Reply #770 on: May 06, 2020, 02:46:31 PM

I will bet a thousand dollars that within the next two years we will see a "Waititi parts ways with Disney/Lucasfilm over creative differences."

Although maybe between this and Favreau maybe the MCU people will just eat the Lucasfilm people which would be just fine.

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

-H.L. Mencken
Trippy
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Reply #771 on: May 06, 2020, 02:56:28 PM

Yeah, you aren't going to win that one.

He's already working on Thor: Love and Thunder for 2022. Star Wars (and Akira presumably) will come after that.
jgsugden
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Reply #772 on: May 06, 2020, 04:28:37 PM

If they get frustrated with each other, they'll just not do a next film.  I doubt they'll announce a parting of ways.

2020 will be the year I gave up all hope.
Abagadro
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Reply #773 on: May 06, 2020, 04:40:05 PM

I just meant on that movie, not the entire Disney entity. Lucasfilm is fairly compartmentalized from what I can tell.

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

-H.L. Mencken
Trippy
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Reply #774 on: May 06, 2020, 04:41:11 PM

If they get frustrated with each other, they'll just not do a next film.  I doubt they'll announce a parting of ways.
Disney has fired many directors from Star Wars-related projects including some mid-shoot (see: Solo).
jgsugden
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Reply #775 on: May 06, 2020, 04:44:40 PM

...
Disney has fired many directors from Star Wars-related projects including some mid-shoot (see: Solo).
And this is a different situation. 

Waititi is very respected at the moment.  Firing him would be like breaking up with the town sweetheart.  It would not matter if that person were a %@#! in reality - you'd get the blame and if the resulting film did not end up being a smash, you'd get fired.

2020 will be the year I gave up all hope.
Trippy
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Reply #776 on: May 06, 2020, 04:50:28 PM

It's still way too risky especially in our new COVID-19 era to risk that much money on a movie with somebody you aren't getting along with. I mean they'll still publicly make up some nice excuse like Waititi needed a break for personal reasons or some such but they would bring in somebody else to finish it.
Velorath
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Reply #777 on: May 06, 2020, 04:56:27 PM

They let Waititi direct the finale to The Mandalorian which to date is still the only big draw original series on Disney+. That show is also the only near universally loved SW product to come out since Disney picked up the franchise. They know what they're getting with him, and he's proven himself with the franchise. I don't see them ditching him.
Goumindong
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Reply #778 on: May 06, 2020, 05:01:17 PM

...
Disney has fired many directors from Star Wars-related projects including some mid-shoot (see: Solo).
And this is a different situation. 

Waititi is very respected at the moment.  Firing him would be like breaking up with the town sweetheart.  It would not matter if that person were a %@#! in reality - you'd get the blame and if the resulting film did not end up being a smash, you'd get fired.

Lord and Miller had just done Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, 21 Jump Street, The Lego Movie, and 22 Jump street. All of which were critical and financial successes. They were kind of in a similar place to Waititi is right now.

My favorite part of the movie is still that you needed an ancient sith dagger to match up with the profile of a 30 year old death star wreck.

In order to find something hidden in, quite literally, the first place anyone would look.
Trippy
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Reply #779 on: May 06, 2020, 05:02:39 PM

They let Waititi direct the finale to The Mandalorian which to date is still the only big draw original series on Disney+. That show is also the only near universally loved SW product to come out since Disney picked up the franchise. They know what they're getting with him, and he's proven himself with the franchise. I don't see them ditching him.
Yeah I'm not agreeing with Abagadro, even ignoring his timing issue. I'm just saying that if something were to go wrong with Waititi as director Disney would still replace him rather than let him finish it -- there's way too much money at risk for them to just write off an entire mainline Star Wars movie like that.
Riggswolfe
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Reply #780 on: May 06, 2020, 06:50:43 PM


Lord and Miller had just done Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, 21 Jump Street, The Lego Movie, and 22 Jump street. All of which were critical and financial successes. They were kind of in a similar place to Waititi is right now.



I'd argue it's apples and oranges. Waititi is definitely a rising star. Thor Ragnarok single handedly reinvented one of the least popular of the original Avengers so he's worked for another Disney branch and proved he can make tons of money for them. In addition, I'd be shocked if the Disney head honchos didn't quietly tell Kennedy "Let him do what he wants, he'll make us fistfuls of cash and get good critical reviews. " Lord and Miller had a couple of successes but not the same....nerd cred? That Waititi has. In my opinion at least.

I personally am very curious to see what he comes up with. He's a director who has yet to make a movie I didn't like.

Abrams is one of a couple of people where I simply don't understand why franchise holders go to him and to the cloud of frequent collaborators he works with.


I'd argue that Trek 2009 and Force Awakens are both good movies in their franchises. Both have some issues. "Look, we can see the explosion on another planet from the surface of this planet!" and travel times that are more or less. "Pull the lever! We're at the destination!" but both are fun movies and enjoyable. In particular, the time travel in 2009 Trek was a bold move since it let them tell new stories with different actors and not worry about previous continuity. And they didn't reverse it.

Now...Into Darkness and Rise of Skywalker...well...

Maybe don't let him do more than one movie in your franchise? Though I'd still argue Rise of Skywalker has some fun bits and 90% of its problems boil down to "shit, we have to quickly do the setup the middle movie should have done so we can get to the finale." Oh...and the instant travel stuff got even worse.

"We live in a country, where John Lennon takes six bullets in the chest, Yoko Ono was standing right next to him and not one fucking bullet! Explain that to me! Explain that to me, God! Explain it to me, God!" - Denis Leary summing up my feelings about the nature of the universe.
MahrinSkel
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Reply #781 on: May 06, 2020, 07:23:20 PM

Waititi played Hitler as an imaginary friend in a movie he directed without really pissing off anyone but actual Hitler fanboys. If he can walk that tightrope, Star Wars nerds are cake.

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Cyrrex
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Reply #782 on: May 07, 2020, 03:26:34 AM

I expect you will all change your tune when you find out the place holder title of this movie is going to be something like "Exogol - Building a Fleet in the Crazy Resource Rich Unknown Regions and also How They Cloned Everyone to Staff the Ships Without Anyone Knowing"

"...maybe if you cleaned the piss out of the sunny d bottles under your desks and returned em, you could upgrade you vid cards, fucken lusers.." - Grunk
Khaldun
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Reply #783 on: May 07, 2020, 05:39:39 AM

I think the judgments they made in the past to fire people, except firing Josh Trank, have likely been second-guessed quite a bit since they did it, Lord and Miller particularly. It's not as if getting a reliable, dull journeyman director turned the movie in a smash box office success. I think also the judgments they've made about who to hire are likely being looked at skeptically (Trevorrow, the GOT guys, even Abrams and Johnson, and of course Trank). Kennedy's contract with Lucasfilm is up next year--I wouldn't be too surprised if Disney makes a move then.
jgsugden
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Reply #784 on: May 07, 2020, 05:59:18 AM

...
Lord and Miller had just done Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, 21 Jump Street, The Lego Movie, and 22 Jump street. All of which were critical and financial successes. They were kind of in a similar place to Waititi is right now.
...
Thor Ragnarock: $854 Million Box office. 93% Rotten Tomatoes.

CWACoM: $243 Box Office.  86% Rotten Tomatoes.
21 Jump St: $201 Box Office.  84% Rotten Tomatoes.
Lego Movie:  $468 Box Office.  96% Rotten Tomatoes.
22 Jump St: $331.3 Box Office.  84% Rotten Tomatoes.

Lego movie was excellent and makes a decent point.  The other three weaken your case.  A lot.  They were so-so films at best.

2020 will be the year I gave up all hope.
IainC
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Reply #785 on: May 07, 2020, 06:22:46 AM

Abrams is a guy who thinks he can reinvent things by drilling down hard on precisely one aspect of the original IP, and then making the rest up as he feels like. In Nu trek, it was 'Kirk is a mavericky maverick who mavicks like, ALL the time.' In Star Wars it's 'Hey look at all these characters you really like. Well, here's one! And look! There's another!'

But Abrams isn't solely responsible for the terribleness of the sequels, a lot of people have their names buried in that particular turd.

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Riggswolfe
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Reply #786 on: May 07, 2020, 06:36:36 AM

Abrams is a guy who thinks he can reinvent things by drilling down hard on precisely one aspect of the original IP, and then making the rest up as he feels like. In Nu trek, it was 'Kirk is a mavericky maverick who mavicks like, ALL the time.' In Star Wars it's 'Hey look at all these characters you really like. Well, here's one! And look! There's another!'

But Abrams isn't solely responsible for the terribleness of the sequels, a lot of people have their names buried in that particular turd.

In Star Trek there was a narrative reason for it and one thing their 3 released movies do is chart Kirk's growth from maverick cadet to seasoned Captain. Into Darkness was a mostly bad movie but one thing it did right was show how Kirk learned that jumping without leaping gets people killed. As for Star Wars....there was exactly zero chance the OT actors weren't going to be involved unless they just refused to take part. That's not on him. Like every single fan was like "I want to see Luke, Leah and Han again!!!" When the Force Awakens trailer was shown at whichever Con it was, the biggest cheer, by far, was when Han walked on the screen.

"We live in a country, where John Lennon takes six bullets in the chest, Yoko Ono was standing right next to him and not one fucking bullet! Explain that to me! Explain that to me, God! Explain it to me, God!" - Denis Leary summing up my feelings about the nature of the universe.
jgsugden
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Reply #787 on: May 07, 2020, 07:17:18 AM

These movies should have been the close of their stories, not a cameo opportunity for them while they tried to make new characters popular.  The Prequels: The Rise of Vader.  The Original Trilogy: The Era of Vader.  The Final Trilogy should have been the Legacy of Vader as seen through the eyes of his kids. 

Yes, you'd introduce a next generation of Jedi as you progressed through the trilogy to use in future films - money has to be printed - but they would not be the focus of Episode VII.  The focus would be Luke, Leia and the legacy of Vader.


2020 will be the year I gave up all hope.
Threash
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Reply #788 on: May 07, 2020, 08:48:41 AM

No, the biggest mistake was trying to shoehorn the desiccated corpses of the original cast into this stories. Their story was done, there was nothing else to tell that would make the geriatric adventures of Han and Leia appealing. Take the world Lucas built and tell new stories in it, that's the best thing you can do.

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jgsugden
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Reply #789 on: May 07, 2020, 10:11:29 AM

I obviously agree you can tell great new stories with brand new characters.  See Mandalorian, The.

However, this was the close of the trilogy of trilogies.  It needed to be something that tied to the prior entries in the series by definition - otherwise, it wasn't Episode VII. 

Assuming that you're trying to continue the story as a starting premise - It needs to remain the story of the Skywalkers, and specifically, it needed to be tied to the legacy of Vader.

2020 will be the year I gave up all hope.
Threash
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Reply #790 on: May 07, 2020, 12:00:17 PM

I obviously agree you can tell great new stories with brand new characters.  See Mandalorian, The.

However, this was the close of the trilogy of trilogies.  It needed to be something that tied to the prior entries in the series by definition - otherwise, it wasn't Episode VII. 

Assuming that you're trying to continue the story as a starting premise - It needs to remain the story of the Skywalkers, and specifically, it needed to be tied to the legacy of Vader.

That's my point, it didn't need to do any of this. Your reasoning is "they had to include the original characters because its the ending of the story of the original characters", and that was exactly the problem.

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Abagadro
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Reply #791 on: May 07, 2020, 12:25:44 PM

I obviously agree you can tell great new stories with brand new characters.  See Mandalorian, The.

However, this was the close of the trilogy of trilogies.  It needed to be something that tied to the prior entries in the series by definition - otherwise, it wasn't Episode VII. 

Assuming that you're trying to continue the story as a starting premise - It needs to remain the story of the Skywalkers, and specifically, it needed to be tied to the legacy of Vader.

I think that would have worked 15 years ago.  Like, if they had come out in a typical schedule of every two years after Revenge it would have been interesting. As it was, they were too old and too bored (or too dead) to really make it work.

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

-H.L. Mencken
Khaldun
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Reply #792 on: May 07, 2020, 02:17:42 PM

There were a zillion plans for sequels that could have worked even with the old cast.

One obvious thought would have been for them to pass the torch in the first of a trilogy: give them all Viking funerals except for the droids. We keep talking about the Skywalkers as the heart of the series, but Obi-Wan and Yoda and Palpatine and even Dooku/Maul get a fair amount of time in the prequels; Han Solo isn't entangled with the Skywalkers at first and Lando never is, etc.--there are other characters and some bigger narrative canvases unfolding. So if they'd made a plan, they could very well have foregrounded some aspects of TLJ in the first film: introduce a handful of light-side Force wielders for Luke to guide, including him saying that maybe they need something new rather than just a recreated Jedi Order--and have him essentially leave them to figure it out. Have Han bring a couple of gangsters or eccentrics into the mix, have Leia bring a few inspiring political leaders.

Give them a challenge to make a really new order--a galactic league rather than a republic, a kind of mutual-aid network. Have shadowy dark-side wielders and underworld figures try to subvert or pervert what they're doing (if they wanted to make something that resonates with the zeitgeist now rather than an 'evil Empire'). Have the Rey figure--the head light-sider--that one mistake the Jedi made was being dumb about conspiracies and dumb about politics. I dunno. There's some shit that I'm sure could have worked and could have felt like a real culmination, any number of five or six basic templates.

It's not what they did, and they failed to do it from the first second of TFA. The only thing TFA did right was cast some appealing actors and create some potentially appealing characters. In narrative terms or world-building terms, it did zippo.
jgsugden
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Reply #793 on: May 07, 2020, 03:17:24 PM

The notion that you can't make a movie about conflict with older casts is a bit short sighted.  There have been a good number of outstanding movies featuring actors far older than the original SW cast in recent years. 

2020 will be the year I gave up all hope.
Abagadro
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Reply #794 on: May 07, 2020, 03:18:53 PM

Those actors tend to give a shit.

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

-H.L. Mencken
Velorath
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Reply #795 on: May 07, 2020, 03:19:21 PM

The notion that you can't make a movie about conflict with older casts is a bit short sighted.  There have been a good number of outstanding movies featuring actors far older than the original SW cast in recent years. 

Those movies also generally star better actors and don't tend to have mass appeal to younger audiences.
Riggswolfe
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Reply #796 on: May 07, 2020, 03:22:23 PM

Those actors tend to give a shit.

You can say lots of things about Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher but they both gave a shit. Ford, well, I'm not sure Ford has cared about a movie this century.

"We live in a country, where John Lennon takes six bullets in the chest, Yoko Ono was standing right next to him and not one fucking bullet! Explain that to me! Explain that to me, God! Explain it to me, God!" - Denis Leary summing up my feelings about the nature of the universe.
jgsugden
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Reply #797 on: May 07, 2020, 03:25:20 PM

I'd say Ford, Hamill and Fisher all cared a lot.  Ford is just very neurotic, Hamill may have cared *too much*, but been too accommodating, and Fisher never was given her due in SW.

2020 will be the year I gave up all hope.
Threash
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Reply #798 on: May 07, 2020, 04:02:26 PM

It doesn't matter how much they cared, their story was done. Anything they did would just be shitting on what they did before.

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jgsugden
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Reply #799 on: May 07, 2020, 05:14:32 PM

If you think there was no wa to tell a good story with those characters and actors over the past 5 years, you lack imagination, or are just a major league ageist.

2020 will be the year I gave up all hope.
Threash
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Reply #800 on: May 07, 2020, 05:30:06 PM

There was no POINT in telling a story about those characters. It's the same thing all the Terminator and Alien movies try to do, just shoe horn the old ass actors we liked in the original movies just for the fuck of it.

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Velorath
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Reply #801 on: May 07, 2020, 05:40:06 PM

If you think there was no wa to tell a good story with those characters and actors over the past 5 years, you lack imagination, or are just a major league ageist.

You're right, a trilogy staring a cast of actual senior citizens would have packed in all the kids, to say nothing about the fact that had they gone that route it would have been even worse for them when Fisher died.

But as I've said before, this trilogy isn't the conclusion of the Skywalker Saga, and this isn't a trilogy of trilogies. The OT tells a complete story. Even the prequel trilogy is unnecessary but at least you could somewhat justify it by saying that in total, the two trilogies tell the rise, fall, and eventual redemption of Anakin Skywalker and there were hints of it baked into the OT. The overarching villain is defeated, the characters have all completed their arcs, Return of the Jedi acts as a solid conclusion. There's no cliffhangers, it doesn't set up or even hit at another threat on the horizon, there are no story hooks designed to lead into another trilogy, it just wraps up the story. Even Lucas' eventual plans to do episodes VII, VIII, and IX didn't seem to explicitly have much if anything to do with the original cast.

The Skywalker Saga stuff is Disney marketing because they shelled out good money for this franchise but it's not like they fucked up the conclusion to some epic story. They fucked up the tacked on story they were trying to use to launch their vision of a new SW movie every year.
Khaldun
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Reply #802 on: May 07, 2020, 05:48:37 PM

I said this way upthread, but yes, if you say, "It wasn't actually over when the Really Big Star Destroyer crashed into Death Star 2 and they burnt Darth Vader's corpse while a bunch of murderous teddy bears made plans for galaxy-wide consumption of the flesh of other humanoids", you just committed to doing something different. You just said, "Ah, wait, you know, you don't win outright the day you throw the Foozle down the shaft".

The EU writers/editors both got that and didn't get it. They oscillated like nutcases between "Emperor Palpatine is back because he made clones of himself and watch out here comes Luuke" and "Let's tell a much messier story of warlords and criminals and difficult efforts to get new institutions up and running" and "look out here comes another Death Star only this one can destroy SUNS" and "whoa Luke found himself a hot evil Jedi babymama let's see what happens next" and "ah wow look at the next gen, they're good AND they're bad and they're goodbad" and "LOOK OUT BDSM FORCE-RESISTANT MOFOS FROM ANOTHER GALAXY". Like, they sometimes knew they had to move on and sometimes they didn't, partly because Lucas and the company kept stepping in.

But really, if you're going to say, "There's another story after 'we won'", you're already committed to a very particular narrative road.
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Reply #803 on: May 07, 2020, 07:41:30 PM

The problem with this movie being about "Skywalkers" was that the only constant in all the movies has been R2-D2. He's been a witness to it all, so it really should have centered around this droid who somehow manipulates two factions into a galactic civil war that destroys whole star systems worth of planets.

 why so serious?

Sir T
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Reply #804 on: May 07, 2020, 08:33:23 PM

Hate to mention it, but they have deforested entire countries making books with stories with those characters, and a computer game or 2. Hell some of them were even in the "thrilling" story of Star Wars Battlefront 2.

And, occasionally, they managed to tell a good story by sheer accident.

Hic sunt dracones.
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