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Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker (among other things, wink wink) SPOILERS


Kalbear

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To most audience members (including me) they could use 400 years ago as a setting for literally anything they want, whether that is original content or something from the old EU. Most people who will see these films won’t care that in the comics/EU material this one time this thing as actually supposed to happen 40,000 years ago, not 400. The important part of that idea is that it is sufficiently long before the Skywalker saga to (hopefully) avoid any stupid references to the skywalker saga

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5 hours ago, Kalbear said:

The flip side to that is Kennedy also spearheaded the mandalorian, which is largely lauded as awesome and is a major factor in selling disney+, which they care about a great deal. Her involvement in that seems to be oddly overlooked. 

Now that I'm aware of her I see that Kathy has been a player forever in hollywood with her name slapped together with Speilberg as the producers of ET, etc.   So she's a pro's pro, and she's deeply familiar with the Star Wars universe, and as such she WAS the correct hire to captain this ship, as far as these things can be predicted.  It should have been a great marriage.    So.........what IS her deal?    What happened?

The best I can come up with is she's too good of a team player.   When Star Wars needed a Feige.  An individual to shape this world and determine its heading, to keep things coherent from movie to movie so Star Wars wouldn't bleed its magic dry but rather remain a strong brand to inspire our own future by example.    Was her crime that she accepted Iger's lack of vision when he told them to, ~ "Play it safe and not take any chances, and don't mess with the formula or tweak things"?   "Tweaking the force went badly for Lucas.   Just serve up a nice warm bowl of nothing so we can earn back the $3 billion.  Let the future stagnate onscreen so we can feast off of the star wars brand."  And she said Okay, when it was probably her job to tell Disney, "No.  That's the wrong move.   We need to be as bold as the future Lucas gave us, we need to pick a direction and develop this world in keeping with the distinctiveness we inherited.  We owe it to all the hungry fans to give them something worthy to chew on.   We owe them greatness, and we need to sharply define it, not turn out vague formless retreads in the interest of safety.   When the inspiration is allowed to stagnate, that way leads to depression.  Reaching for the stars isn't / shouldn't be safe.  I'll get you your earnings, but I'm going to earn them, thank you very much.  So I'm going to resend you George's notes, along with some new ideas of my own on where we'll be taking this thing.  And may the force be with you as you reconsider our work orders."

 

And then she apparently entertained each of the guest writers' ideas a bit too much, letting them take the ship this way and that instead of having everyone understand upon taking the job that there was going to be oversight and review of their ideas to ensure a united vision threaded the story together and kept the course true.

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I just saw Knives Out (written and directed by Rian Johnson of course) which was so good it weirdly made me feel better about the whole of the SW sequel trilogy.

Between, that and the Mandalorian, which I’ve been enjoying this week, the nerd rage over RoS has barely raised my blood pressure.

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6 hours ago, Raja said:

Lol.

What a scintillating response! As you're obviously a fan-troll, I suppose there's no need to continue this conversation.

Again, there are some lows in the Marvel universe. But the franchise overseer made sure to sow seeds and idea arcs that would climax across multiple movies, even 20 movies, while the sequel trilogy cannot remain consistent from movie to movie, each one reactionary to that which came before. 

To say nothing of the pretty easily defended argument that each of the sequel films are, in themselves, mediocre to outright bad. Even TLJ, which has the highest highs, also has around 30-40% of its runtime completely wasted or poorly executed. 

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Just now, kuenjato said:

What a scintillating response! As you're obviously a fan-troll, I suppose there's no need to continue this conversation.

Again, there are some lows in the Marvel universe. But the franchise overseer made sure to sow seeds and idea arcs that would climax across multiple movies, even 20 movies, while the sequel trilogy cannot remain consistent from movie to movie, becoming reactionary.

To say nothing of the pretty easily defended argument that each of the sequel films are, in themselves, mediocre to outright bad. Even TLJ, which has the highest highs, also has around 30-40% of its runtime completely wasted or poorly executed. 

No, he didn't. I've posted about this a billion times, go look up how phase 1 and 2 were run.

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47 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Anecdotal, but kids seem to really love this one. Kind of reminds me of how much I loved RotJ as a kid, then soured in it, but now like it again. Ewoks fuck you up.

My 9 year old likes Rise of Skywalker best of the series. Of course, she hasn't watched any of the other films in at least two years, and she's nine. Rey is the coolest thing ever. Consistency between this film and the others are the least of her concerns.

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5 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

No, he didn't. I've posted about this a billion times, go look up how phase 1 and 2 were run.

I watched all of the films across a month before Avengers: Infinity War, and there is a consistency even in the first two phases; across the entire 20+ film serial, there is a consistency (in terms of narrative coherence) that is unmatched in cinema long-form serials to this point. Not to say the films are perfect, or there weren't mistakes, but there is pretty much inarguably a consistent long-term story arc envisioned and slowly dolled out across multiple films, even if confined to the end-credit blips. 

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56 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

I loved The Phantom Menace as a kid.

Really?  I didn't think you were younger than me.  Weird.  I already liked you better when I thought you were older.

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4 hours ago, DMC said:

Kennedy should have been fired after TLJ.  Not because of the quality of the film, but because it was clear she was a poor manager of the franchise.  She's the Jason Garrett of movie executives at this point.  Or (and this is a really big or), all this is really Disney's own doing, which is entirely possible.  But fuck if I know, don't care that much.  Someone should be fired though.

I think people forget how much relative bad will the prequels had generated and how skeptical everyone was about star wars having anything good come out again was. TFA had precisely one goal - to show that Disney could do star wars better than the prequels. And in that they succeeded massively. That's likely a reason they didnt have a concrete plan going into TFA - because they didnt have full confidence that star wars was going to work in that way. 

I agree that not having that hurt them tremendously, but the notion that they ran this incredible property into the ground when fuck all save shitty eu books and a couple of okay cartoons were all that was around before them is revisionist history. 

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14 minutes ago, kuenjato said:

I watched all of the films across a month before Avengers: Infinity War, and there is a consistency even in the first two phases; across the entire 20+ film serial, there is a consistency (in terms of narrative coherence) that is unmatched in cinema long-form serials to this point. Not to say the films are perfect, or there weren't mistakes, but there is pretty much inarguably a consistent long-term story arc envisioned and slowly dolled out across multiple films, even if confined to the end-credit blips. 

The issue is that said consistency was not particularly planned by anyone, certainly not across phases. Remember that vision sequence in age of ultron for thor? Nothing came of it. Thanos saying he'd have to do it himself....and then using the ebon guys to do everything. Thanos giving away a fucking infinity stone as the plotline for avengers! 

What they did do a good job of is referencing prior movies and respecting the characters and stories that had come before, but that was way less to do with planning and more to do with construction. And it is very much the case that IW and endgame are very well constructed and plotted, but the real beauty is none of the other movies are remotely important to have seen first or at all.

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5 hours ago, DMC said:

Kennedy should have been fired after TLJ.  Not because of the quality of the film, but because it was clear she was a poor manager of the franchise. 

I dunno - this doesn't really make that much sense to me. What was the 'poor management' at that point in your mind?

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Just now, Raja said:

I dunno - this doesn't really make that much sense to me. What was the 'poor management' at that point in your mind?

Yeah, the absurdly high critical acclaim doesnt seem to me to be "oh right we fucked up". I could see this sports radio hot take after Solo, or maybe after trevorrow got fired, but after tlj?

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11 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

 Solo, or maybe after trevorrow got fired

Solo defo had some strange behind the scenes stuff going on, but I honestly lose no sleep over not seeing Trevorrow direct a star wars movie. Safety not guaranteed was decent - but every thing else that man has done has been mediocre at best and terrible in some cases, like Book of Henry - if people haven't seen the trailer for book of henry, I urge every one to do so,  because it is amazingly bad.

 

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2 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I think people forget how much relative bad will the prequels had generated and how skeptical everyone was about star wars having anything good come out again was. TFA had precisely one goal - to show that Disney could do star wars better than the prequels. And in that they succeeded massively. That's likely a reason they didnt have a concrete plan going into TFA - because they didnt have full confidence that star wars was going to work in that way. 

This literally sounds like a person that's about to be fired.  And I'm sorry, if TFA's only goal was to show Disney it could do better than the prequels, then that's on everybody.  You should be aiming higher.  And they were, and they succeeded.  But, and as a caveat I'm no expert, both Solo and TROS appeared to have underperformed.  Anyway, after spending four billion dollars, they didn't have a "concrete plan" because they didn't have "full confidence" in the property? 

I was not alive for the original trilogy.  I was a bit older than the targeted demo, but not too much, with the prequel trilogy.  And even that young, it gravely disappointed me.  But I still watched it.  I really don't think there was any doubt Star Wars was always going to make a lot of money as long as it was remotely competent.  And I distinctly do not remember such "bad will" the prequels apparently generated, nor the skepticism.  In fact, my memory is the exact opposite.  Everybody was clamoring for TFA before they knew anything about it.  Why?  Because it's the most valuable property on earth.  Give me a break with this woe is star wars bs.

16 minutes ago, Raja said:

I dunno - this doesn't really make that much sense to me. What was the 'poor management' at that point in your mind?

Three consecutive movies that went from point A to point 76 to west point.

19 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I could see this sports radio hot take after Solo, or maybe after trevorrow got fired, but after tlj?

I literally said it, on this site, after TLJ.  The disorganization was clear.  And, to clarify, Trevorrow got fired before TLJ's release.

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50 minutes ago, kuenjato said:

I watched all of the films across a month before Avengers: Infinity War, and there is a consistency even in the first two phases; across the entire 20+ film serial, there is a consistency (in terms of narrative coherence) that is unmatched in cinema long-form serials to this point. Not to say the films are perfect, or there weren't mistakes, but there is pretty much inarguably a consistent long-term story arc envisioned and slowly dolled out across multiple films, even if confined to the end-credit blips. 

Except there isn't, as Kal notes above. The only plan for Phase 1 was "oh god please let avengers make a profit if we even get there" and most of the stuff plotted out in phase 2 is thrown out or retconned once Perlmuter was taken off the job. They don't even mention infinity stones til Thor 2. Sure, it all lined up nicely, but not because of some super over arching plan.

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31 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

The issue is that said consistency was not particularly planned by anyone, certainly not across phases. Remember that vision sequence in age of ultron for thor? Nothing came of it. Thanos saying he'd have to do it himself....and then using the ebon guys to do everything. Thanos giving away a fucking infinity stone as the plotline for avengers! 

What they did do a good job of is referencing prior movies and respecting the characters and stories that had come before, but that was way less to do with planning and more to do with construction. And it is very much the case that IW and endgame are very well constructed and plotted, but the real beauty is none of the other movies are remotely important to have seen first or at all.

Yeah the Marvel continuity is actually pretty spotty. But it is the best example of franchise continuity I can think of, especially given the scope. Way better than the X-Men movies, the DCEU, or Star Wars. 

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