Star Wars: Entering an uncivilized era

[Lord Varys]

16 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

If there was an internet? Who knows? I think the comparisons to TLJ are a red herring. It could have been that or it could have been Avengers: Infinity War. 

TLJ isn't just bad, because it completely undermined its predecessor, the character of Luke Skywalker, and the established characters of TFA ... but also because badly rips off aspects of TESB and ROTJ.

You can do variation of those themes without literally mocking them or destroying the potential of a good sequel. The way the movie ends makes it all but impossible that the final movie is going to have a compelling or powerful villain nor a great and emptionally powerful final confrontation.

I mean - just take Rey as an example. In TFA she certainly is somebody with a hidden and important past, possibly linked in some way to the Skywalker-Solo clan (I imagine the plan may have been to make her Luke's secret daughter), then she is apparently nobody of note in TLJ, only be to reinvented as Palpatine's granddaughter in TROS.

That is just garbage from a storytelling POV. And Finn and Fetish Guy and even Poe Dameron suffer from the same problem. Han and Leia got no development at all, and Luke Skywalker is turned into a caricature of himself whose biggest feat/accomplishment is that he rediscovers that he is Luke Skywalker, after all, in the end. Guess what - the audience knew all the time that this was Luke Skywalker played by Mark Hamill. It is infinitely cheap to pointlessly destroy a character so that the audience can celebrate when they are themselves again.

Luke could have had issues and problems of his own, of course. Things to overcome. But it should have been other problems, problems worthy of the man Luke Skywalker should be 30 years after Endor.

But in part the entire silly premise of the ST it to be blamed for that - why the hell had they make the first movie about folks searching for a disappeared Luke. What was the point of that?

15 hours ago, Leofric said:

I agree that they need to step away from the period surrounding the rise and fall of Palpatine's Empire.   Anything that happens in the Andor story doesn't matter, we know how and when he died, we know the Empire was destroyed and the rebellion kinda won, only to have it's new government wiped out by the First Order who were in turn destroyed by a ragtag collection of fighters and old rebels.   So there is no Empire, no First Order, and little or no Republic or New Republic government left at the end of the Rise of Skywalker.

You still can make a good Rebellion show even if you know how things turn out for the big characters. For that, you need to come up with compelling characters and plotlines.

A continuation beyond the ST would suck on many levels. The Jedi and Sith are both gone (Rey doesn't seem to be a Jedi, nor is there a Jedi Order or the intention to rebuild it). Politics weren't a thing in that era, either, so it would be kind of ridiculous to see 'politicians' rebuild the Republic. The surviving main characters besides Rey are a pilot and an ex-stormtrooper whose future lives likey would not exactly be all that interesting.

Depicting the past could be very interesting, though. The history of the Republic and the Jedi span millennia, so there are lots of stories to be told there if people want to. I mean, you could follow early explorers of the galaxy, discovering hyperspace lanes (something that's partly done in the EU comics about the Daragon siblings).

One could also make shows about racism and colonialism in Star Wars, of how the Republic and the Jedi had darker eras, etc.

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

Knights of the Old Republic 1 was great but very Force Awakens in how it mirrored the original Star Wars structure (down to the space station superweapon, half-connected side-adventure on an opening planet and bits in the middle of the characters running around on different planets). It wasn't quite Rebels vs. Empire, but it was Good Guys vs. Bad Guys, with the Republic and Jedi on the back foot and the Sith Empire on the advance, not to mention the Shocking Twist. I think KotOR got away with things in 2003 that it would struggle to in 2022, when people are more sensitive to stories that echo or mirror earlier ones.

Design-wise KotOR was too much based on the contemporary movie stuff, unlike the Tales of the Jedi comics from the same era the games continued.

A general good vs. evil setting is something Star Wars certainly can have, although you can also broaden the scope there. I mean, the Sith vs. Jedi/Republic setting is more two political entitites or schools of thought against each other, whereas the classical Star Wars narrative from PT & OT is actually democracy destroyed and overthrown from within after which certain groups within the new fascist state band together to overthrow it.

The other setting can have outside threats and the like - although certain KotOR definitely focused on Jedi falling to the Dark Side. But it is still a big diversion from contemporary Star Wars. Which, so far, Disney hasn't tried to do.

And as I said above - Lucas has gone out of his way to tell very different kind of stories within the framework of TCW. You get pretty much everything within this setting of a galactic civil war.

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

Knights of the Old Republic 2 definitely went down the "revisionist Star Wars" approach with the shades of grey, the "neutral side" of the Force and much more complex characters.

And a very incomplete and weirdo ending, unfortunately.

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

I have SF magazines from the 1980s and it was a fairly mixed reception. Some called it the weakest of the trilogy and some the best, and a lot of people hated it for its downer tone, ambiguous ending and so on. There was also anger at the time it came out because they felt that Han had "stolen" Leia from Luke. Critical reviews were also over the place.

Oh, yes, I also didn't like the Han-Leia romance in TESB when first watching the movie, but you get over that when you learn a week later (when ROTJ is on television) that Luke and Leia are actually siblings.

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

I think it was the early 1990s VHS re-release of the trilogy, which was a very big deal at the time, and then the 1977 Special Edition re-releases which solidified Empire's status as the best of the OT. Before that the OG 1977 film was clearly regarded as better.

I honestly think ANH is effectively the worst of the OT movies. Most of the tension is gone after they escape the Death Star, and the movie is in general very slow and all that. But, of course, it was the first Star Wars movie ever and quite obviously a huge revolution in film-making at that time, so the people back there would have grown very much emotionally invested in that movie ... and what they thought Star Wars should be on the basis of that.

But in a sense TESB only works as the second part of a trilogy - as a movie on its own feet it doesn't really work. It has no proper ending and also no real beginning, either.

[Kalbear]

Yall asking for them to take risks and then when they do saying that it is emphatically 100% bad is precisely why they won't take those risks.

Yall chase the actors in star wars off the internet, harass everyone involved and only show the slightest happiness when you get a live action version of kid cartoon characters - and then you wonder why you don't get anything new? Disney is doing exactly what you say you want. 

[RumHam]

They took risks and were creative with that Anime collection! I never finished it.

I still want my Star Wars "What if..?" show.

I dunno I like The Mandalorian and am excited to learn more about what's up with Ahsoka. Her totally different voice is jarring but I will get used to it.

[Ran]

The anime thing was a success, didn't I just read they were doing another animated anthology? People loved it. 

 

[RumHam]

17 minutes ago, Ran said:

The anime thing was a success, didn't I just read they were doing another animated anthology? People loved it. 

 

Just not my thing, never got into anime. But yes it looks like season two is rumored to be coming later this year.

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

They took risks and were creative with that Anime collection! I never finished it.

Heh

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

 

I dunno I like The Mandalorian and am excited to learn more about what's up with Ahsoka. Her totally different voice is jarring but I will get used to it.

Sure - lots of people do like the mandalorian. It is simplistic, cool looking, has no characterization of note and barely expands anything. It's perfect for fans who want more of the same. 

[mormont]

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

They took risks and were creative with that Anime collection! I never finished it.

Do. It's excellent. I watch very little anime myself but that series was amazing.

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

I still want my Star Wars "What if..?" show.

The anime series pretty much is that, at times.

[Corvinus85]

I watched the first of those Visions episode and I didn't really like it. It was enough for me.

Saw that the showrunner for the Acolyte TV show did an interview where she hinted that the protagonist is a Dark Side user, which I don't think surprises anyone given the title. Since it takes place 100 years before TPM, I'm going to guess the titular character is Plaguies. Palpatine shouldn't have been born, while Plaguies, if they're going by the Legends stuff wasn't human, so maybe he can live longer.

 

[Myrddin]

Yoda will probably make at least some appearance for Acolyte. He was in his prime at 800 years old by then.

[Ran]

20 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

I watched the first of those Visions episode and I didn't really like it. It was enough for me.

I really feel it's like Love, Death, + Robots -- it's an anthology, each short animation is a different creative team and in a different style, etc. But if anime in all its stripes isn't to your taste, fair enough!

[Slurktan]

2 hours ago, KalVsWade said:

Yall asking for them to take risks and then when they do saying that it is emphatically 100% bad is precisely why they won't take those risks.

I liked that the last jedi took risks. They didn't work at all from a narrative perspective being part 8 in a 9 part series at all but that's fine. At least it tried. They took zero risks in TFA. Zero. They didn't like the fan outrage at last jedi and tried to undo it all with 9 which you be hard pressed to tell the difference between a Blu ray of that and a pile of shit. Solo is literally just a member berry from south park. Rogue one has issues but it tries as well and does so far more successfully than 8. 

What it speaks to is the biggest reason the ST failed and star wars is seen by many as  needing to have a break: zero planning. Whether that's Lucasfilm or Disney itself it's very clear they wanted to exploit the fan base as much as possible but didnt really care how they did so as long as they made the cash. They just thought they could keep doing it forever without people caring.

[Ran]

I do think the lack of planning was a huge mistake for the new series. There should have been a roadmap for that trilogy, and it's kind of shocking there wasn't. You may say, hey, A New Hope genuinely didn't have a roadmap for sequels, but maybe we should all consider the OT just plain lucky in having succeeded. Lucasfilm dropped the ball hard on this point.

[sifth]

18 minutes ago, Ran said:

I do think the lack of planning was a huge mistake for the new series. There should have been a roadmap for that trilogy, and it's kind of shocking there wasn't. You may say, hey, A New Hope genuinely didn't have a roadmap for sequels, but maybe we should all consider the OT just plain lucky in having succeeded. Lucasfilm dropped the ball hard on this point.

I get the feeling Disney was worried that the Star Wars IP cost them 4 billion dollars and they needed to rush a product out as quickly as possible, to make some money back, which is why The Force Awakens is basically a copy of A New Hope. They literally didn't give anyone the time and planning, needed to make a proper movie, let alone plan a trilogy.

[Maithanet]

And yet if the Star Wars IP is so valuable it's worth 4 billion dollars (and it was obvious almost immediately that 4 billion was a steal), then why didn't they invest the time and effort to do it right?  You only get one shot to make a sequel trilogy, why not pay a couple million dollars to get some good, experienced writers to work on it for another six months and plan out the entire trilogy?  This isn't hindsight, this is just basic due diligence.  Because Star Wars is worth a ton of money to Disney right now, but it would be worth a LOT more if the ST had been good.  Not even great, just "clearly better than the PT" would have been enough.  Because the fact that we can have a serious debate on whether the ST or the PT is more of a disaster is just embarrassing. 

And even if you go on the logic that Disney needed to rush out TFA, at least make sure that you have a good plan for the next two movies.  That alone wouldn't have solved all the problems, but TFA was easily the strongest of the three movies, and you could have built something decent. 

[felice]

4 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

But in part the entire silly premise of the ST it to be blamed for that - why the hell had they make the first movie about folks searching for a disappeared Luke. What was the point of that?

They needed a substitute for "Death Star Plans", and came up with "Map to Luke". They failed to come up with a reason such a map would exist in the first place, or a purpose for it to serve in the plot, but hey, it's only the linchpin of a four billion dollar franchise, no need to overthink it, right?

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

33 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

I liked that the last jedi took risks. They didn't work at all from a narrative perspective being part 8 in a 9 part series at all but that's fine. At least it tried. They took zero risks in TFA. Zero. They didn't like the fan outrage at last jedi and tried to undo it all with 9 which you be hard pressed to tell the difference between a Blu ray of that and a pile of shit. Solo is literally just a member berry from south park. Rogue one has issues but it tries as well and does so far more successfully than 8. 

What it speaks to is the biggest reason the ST failed and star wars is seen by many as  needing to have a break: zero planning. Whether that's Lucasfilm or Disney itself it's very clear they wanted to exploit the fan base as much as possible but didnt really care how they did so as long as they made the cash. They just thought they could keep doing it forever without people caring.

Strongly disagree (with some of this). With love; with love. 

There are risks and there are "risks". They had a plan and scrapped it. What was turfed was  way more interesting that what we ended up with. 

And I've seen fandoms get angry about some franchise IP that went bad or an adaptation a vocal minority of fans didn't like, but I have never seen creatives associated with that franchise post pictures of themselves sipping from "fanboy tears" mugs on social media or a director calling people "infantile" and "man baby".  Christ, what were they thinking? 

[Lord Varys]

3 hours ago, RumHam said:

Just not my thing, never got into anime. But yes it looks like season two is rumored to be coming later this year.

It is also basically a 'What if' or alternative timeline/whatever scenario. You can watch it or ignore it completely, it doesn't have anything to do with the other stories.

48 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

I liked that the last jedi took risks. They didn't work at all from a narrative perspective being part 8 in a 9 part series at all but that's fine. At least it tried. They took zero risks in TFA. Zero.

I'd say it was certainly 'a risk' to do a rehash of ANH and to decide that Mark Hamill would only show up for five seconds at the end. If I had been hired to write a treatment or script for a Star Wars movie continuing the OT something like that would have been the last idea to cross my mind.

47 minutes ago, Ran said:

I do think the lack of planning was a huge mistake for the new series. There should have been a roadmap for that trilogy, and it's kind of shocking there wasn't. You may say, hey, A New Hope genuinely didn't have a roadmap for sequels, but maybe we should all consider the OT just plain lucky in having succeeded. Lucasfilm dropped the ball hard on this point.

They should have at least known where the story would go - that Luke would become a Jedi and the Empire would, eventually, be overthrown was certainly already clear in ANH.

The problem with the ST is that the writer of the second movie did neither care for the characters (as) introduced by the first movie nor the blanks and mysteries (Rey's background, Finn & Rey, Luke's reason to go into hiding, Fetish Guy's mask thing, Evil Hologram dude, etc.).

TESB and ROTJ build on and continue the story of ANH. They take the story into new and perhaps unexpected directions, but they do not retcon or revamp or flat-out ignore what has been established earlier. Vader being Luke's father is a powerful twist ... the revelation that Rey is nobody of note and eventually Palpatine's granddaughter is just silly, as is the sudden death of Mr. Evil in the middle of the second movie when we still have no indication at all who that guy was.

That both Luke and Han have the hots for Leia and that makes a choice in TESB is something that's also already there in ANH. It doesn't come out of the left field - unlike the weirdo love interest nonsense we are getting in TLJ and TROS.

And so on.

35 minutes ago, sifth said:

I get the feeling Disney was worried that the Star Wars IP cost them 4 billion dollars and they needed to rush a product out as quickly as possible, to make some money back, which is why The Force Awakens is basically a copy of A New Hope. They literally didn't give anyone the time and planning, needed to make a proper movie, let alone plan a trilogy.

Thing is, if they had more or last just remade the OT it could have still been pretty decent. But TLJ pretty much ruined that.

But, honestly, there was so much Star Wars literature out that making a decent movie trilogy 30 years after ROTJ wouldn't have been that hard. If they couldn't come up with a good story, they could have always adapted something like the Thrawn trilogy or at least have taken crucial plot points from that or similarly popular Star Wars novels or video games.

That said, while Abrams pretty much ripped off Dark Empire for TROS the comic is still massively better than the movie, so perhaps it is hard to write good Star Wars movies.

23 minutes ago, felice said:

They needed a substitute for "Death Star Plans", and came up with "Map to Luke". They failed to come up with a reason such a map would exist in the first place, or a purpose for it to serve in the plot, but hey, it's only the linchpin of a four billion dollar franchise, no need to overthink it, right?

You only need 'a map to Luke' if Luke is gone. Having Mark Hamill and not using him for an entire movie was just silly.

And, of course, getting the same plot as ANH in TFA shows how, well, outdated that kind of plot is. Finding a McGuffin or getting it from A to B was never the best movie plot of all times ... but for that to work you actually have to be able to understand what it is about. Luke is just one guy, what the hell can he do all by himself that the others can't? The Death Star plans can help you destroy the thing.

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Strongly disagree (with some of this). With love; with love. 

There are risks and there are "risks". They had a plan and scrapped it. What was turfed was  way more interesting that what we ended up with. 

And I've seen fandoms get angry about some franchise IP that went bad or an adaptation a vocal minority of fans didn't like, but I have never seen creatives associated with that franchise post pictures of themselves sipping from "fanboy tears" mugs on social media or a director calling people "infantile" and "man baby".  Christ, what were they thinking? 

Most fandoms won't rip your arms off if you have a female lead or a black person as a star, or send death threats to actresses online for...ya know, I still don't know why. 

But Star Wars fans definitely do that! So fuck their entitled baby asses.

[Ran]

3 minutes ago, KalVsWade said:

Most fandoms won't rip your arms off if you have a female lead

Star Wars fandom won’t either. Rogue One  did very well with a female lead.

4 minutes ago, KalVsWade said:

or a black person as a star

Star Wars fandom seems pretty hyped at Rosario Dawson having her own Ahsoka show.

[sifth]

7 minutes ago, Ran said:

Star Wars fandom won’t either. Rogue One  did very well with a female lead.

Star Wars fandom seems pretty hyped at Rosario Dawson having her own Ahsoka show.

People also seem to love Giancarlo Esposito playing the main villain on The Mandalorian.