Star Wars: The Wrong Trousers

[Darryk]

2 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Hey if she had a hand in The Mandolorian Season 1 I’ll give her full credits for that one , but I just couldn’t finish Andor. 

 

1 hour ago, IlyaP said:

She's the producer of the damn thing.

I still believe that Mandalorian season 1 and Andor were great because Kathleen Kennedy didn't get involved as she thought they would fail. Now that Mandalorian is a success and Baby Yoda so popular, season 3 had her paw prints all over it.

Since Andor season 1 didn't get high viewership, hopefully she'll leave season 2 of Andor alone and it will end before she can get her claws into it.

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, Darryk said:

But...this is all stuff Luke should be doing. It's what he does in the books. But Kathleen Kennedy sent him to an island to die. I'll never get over it.

Correction: JJ Abrams and Mike Apted, the screenwriters, sent him there. 

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, Darryk said:

Since Andor season 1 didn't get high viewership, hopefully she'll leave season 2 of Andor alone and it will end before she can get her claws into it.

[Relic]

Blaming the shit show that is Disney's SW on all on one person is dumb. People have latched on to this woman's name and treat her as is she's the reason cancer exists. Stupid. She's just one of the people behind all of these poor decisions.

Edited July 12, 2023 by Relic

[IlyaP]

7 minutes ago, Relic said:

Blaming the shit show that is Disney's SW on all on one person is dumb. People have latched on to this woman's name and treat her as is she's the reason cancer exists. Stupid. She's just one of the people behind all of these poor decisions.

Correct. I can't say I like many of the post-Disney* period stories, but there are a staggering number of people involved in the creation of these things, beyond just the showrunners like Favreau, Filoni, Gilroy, etc., including dozens upon dozens of writers. And not everything's gonna land and be 100% amazing when humans get together to try and make a piece of art together. 

 

*Remember all those howls of "George Lucas destroyed my childhood!" after the prequels came out? I sure do. Clearly, some people are going to be nightmarishly difficult to please.

[Heartofice]

24 minutes ago, Relic said:

Blaming the shit show that is Disney's SW on all on one person is dumb. People have latched on to this woman's name and treat her as is she's the reason cancer exists. Stupid. She's just one of the people behind all of these poor decisions.

She’s literally in charge of the Star Wars franchise, all blame should ultimately fall at her door, that’s her job. 

[Corvinus85]

25 minutes ago, Relic said:

Blaming the shit show that is Disney's SW on all on one person is dumb. People have latched on to this woman's name and treat her as is she's the reason cancer exists. Stupid. She's just one of the people behind all of these poor decisions.

But we do tend to blame presidents when stuff goes bad. I suppose the buck stops with Disney's CEO and board of directors, but she is the president of LucasFilm.

I wouldn't necessarily want to blame her for Chuck Wending's Aftermath trilogy, but still, who picked that fraud?

[Heartofice]

16 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Correct. I can't say I like many of the post-Disney* period stories, but there are a staggering number of people involved in the creation of these things, beyond just the showrunners like Favreau, Filoni, Gilroy, etc., including dozens upon dozens of writers. And not everything's gonna land and be 100% amazing when humans get together to try and make a piece of art together. 

 

*Remember all those howls of "George Lucas destroyed my childhood!" after the prequels came out? I sure do. Clearly, some people are going to be nightmarishly difficult to please.

If it was just a series of one off poor creative decisions being the problem with many of the SW properties then maybe you could point at individual directors etc. But really it feels like a structure and process is not in place for Lucasfilm and Disney to create good quality output. So many of the same issues seem to be happening across multiple properties that I wouldn’t point the finger at someone like Favreau or even Filoni.

Kennedy has to take a large share of the blame, though it might be more apt to blame Disney as well as almost everything they touch at the moment turns to shit.

[Kalbear]

7 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

She’s literally in charge of the Star Wars franchise, all blame should ultimately fall at her door, that’s her job. 

That's fine. If that's the case she should also get credit for the successes. 

My take is that she hasn't been great largely because she has been hands off and she has let people do their own things. That is nice sometimes - as with Andor - but has otherwise led to a somewhat muddled mess of arcs and plots. That combined with a number of poor judgments in creative direction (with trank, trevorrow, Lord and Miller) has resulted in a general decline. 

But that process also resulted in Andor (and rogue one) so she should get credit for that.

[IlyaP]

4 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Kennedy has to take a large share of the blame, though it might be more apt to blame Disney as well as almost everything they touch at the moment turns to shit.

I would like it a great deal, very much, extremely very much, in fact, if more people took this slightly higher road: it's not one person, and like you said, it'd be more apt to blame Disney. 

But by the same token, I've had Vonda N. McIntyre's The Crystal Star inflicted upon me, and after that, @Heartofice, *everything* is better and one can only go up. (May you never know this pain of mine!)

[IlyaP]

2 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

My take is that she hasn't been great largely because she has been hands off and she has let people do their own things. That is nice sometimes - as with Andor - but has otherwise led to a somewhat muddled mess of arcs and plots. That combined with a number of poor judgments in creative direction (with trank, trevorrow, Lord and Miller) has resulted in a general decline. 

Discussing this with my bestie, we've arrived at the conclusion that there's also just too much. Too. Frelling. Much. Shows, movies, books, games. More than ever before - even more than the EU (which had some real stinkers, but some real diamonds too - lookin' at you Matt Stover!).

There's simply too much, and we're not sure much of it was needed, because much of it doesn't have anything interesting to say or offer beyond just Stuff For Stuff's Sake. Which, speaking for myself, is not exactly compelling if that's all there is to it.

[Heartofice]

7 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

That's fine. If that's the case she should also get credit for the successes. 

My take is that she hasn't been great largely because she has been hands off and she has let people do their own things. That is nice sometimes - as with Andor - but has otherwise led to a somewhat muddled mess of arcs and plots. That combined with a number of poor judgments in creative direction (with trank, trevorrow, Lord and Miller) has resulted in a general decline. 

But that process also resulted in Andor (and rogue one) so she should get credit for that.

Yes she should get credit for successes too, but the issue is the ratio isn’t great in her favour. Something like Andor seems to have somehow escaped all the traps in the Disney/Lucasfilm dungeon of crappiness and made something good. There isn’t a lot of creative success coming from her time.
 

I do think it’s Disney that is the real problem  here as the issues across so many properties are so familiar (rushed, poorly thought out stories, cramming too much in, bad CGI, badly written characters, poor pacing etc) so much that it even affects Pixar. 
 

Kennedy does get a lot of shit thrown her way, but she is the head of SW, she’s the public face of the franchise. It only makes sense she gets the blame. 

[IlyaP]

A new feature on Ahsoka just hit the 'net. (Clearly a lot of fans are excited by Rosario Dawson's casting; loving the joy on display here - it put a smile on my face, which I needed today.)

 

[Spockydog]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

She’s literally in charge of the Star Wars franchise, all blame should ultimately fall at her door, that’s her job. 

If she's the one that allowed The Force Awakens to begin shooting in the absence of an outline for the remaining two pictures, she should be tarred and fucking feathered. 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

Can I ask you guys why exactly you all enjoyed rogue one ? The characters are bland and unlikeable and the story is already known with nothing new, not to to mention the blatant fan service and depressing tone….only the visuals were good in it. That’s probably why I couldn’t get into Andor cause I don’t care about that character.
 

The Force Awakens , Solo and Mandalorian season 1  are the only things I somewhat enjoyed in the new Star Wars ,and even they are largely a rehash of things we’ve seen before (except Mando)I really hope they adapt Kotor someday, we really need to get away from the entire rebels vs empire timeline, I’m so tired of the same old x wings, tie fighters, stormtroopers, villains etc…  of rehashing the same timeline/setting and characters. At least Lucas had an actual imagination and gave us new stuff with each movie/series…

that’s why I can’t get excited for the new shows cause it’s the same characters and settings yet again….can’t they do a timejump 200 years later or hundreds of years into the past and give us a brand new original story ? Or just adapt the old dark horse comics… 

Even the production design has been lazy in the new movies with no new weapons ,ship designs , memorable creatures, set pieces, planets etc. Just some terrible, canon breaking , video gamey, overpowered force powers. 

Sigh…I miss the days when we got just 3 brand new movies every 15 years… 

Edited July 12, 2023 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[Corvinus85]

26 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Can I ask you guys why exactly you all enjoyed rogue one ? The characters are bland and unlikeable and the story is already known with nothing new, not to to mention the blatant fan service and depressing tone….only the visuals were good in it. That’s probably why I couldn’t get into Andor cause I don’t care about that character.
 

The Force Awakens , Solo and Mandalorian season 1  are the only things I somewhat enjoyed in the new Star Wars ,and even they are largely a rehash of things we’ve seen before (except Mando)I really hope they adapt Kotor someday, we really need to get away from the entire rebels vs empire timeline, I’m so tired of the same old x wings, tie fighters, stormtroopers, villains etc…  of rehashing the same timeline/setting and characters. At least Lucas had an actual imagination and gave us new stuff with each movie/series…

that’s why I can’t get excited for the new shows cause it’s the same characters and settings yet again….can’t they do a timejump 200 years later or hundreds of years into the past and give us a brand new original story ? Or just adapt the old dark horse comics… 

Even the production design has been lazy in the new movies with no new weapons ,ship designs , memorable creatures, set pieces, planets etc. Just some terrible, canon breaking , video gamey, overpowered force powers. 

Sigh…I miss the days when we got just 3 brand new movies every 15 years… 

I liked Rogue One because it really put the "Wars" in Star Wars. It felt like a war movie in this universe. Sure the characters weren't much developed, but the plot was interesting, and it was interesting to see a darker aspect of the Rebel Alliance. And while I certainly didn't care about Cassian Andor by the end of the movie and wasn't excited for an idea of a show about him, I loved what they did with Andor. The character is now well written, and the show featured numerous side characters that were well written, too. Andor has done the best job out of all of Star Wars showing a world that is lived in, full of regular people with dreams and aspirations. I was hooked from the first episode when the head of the corporate security gave the little speech to his zealous agent about reporting the murder to the Empire. The show managed to capture well how the Empire was able to spread its influence over much of the galaxy.

So I would say Andor has definitely tried something new, and succeeded. And it just received an Emmy nomination for best drama series.

[sifth]

2 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Correction: JJ Abrams and Mike Apted, the screenwriters, sent him there. 

I mean she's the head of the company. Therefore she would have to approve their scripts. Just how she rejected Damon Lindelof's script, about an elderly Rey. To say she had no involvement on what happened to Luke, would be insane. Also Colin Trevorrow has come out and mentioned many times, that KK was insisting that Luke be dead, by the time episode IX starts.

[JGP]

20 minutes ago, sifth said:

To say she had no involvement on what happened to Luke, would be insane. Also Colin Trevorrow has come out and mentioned many times, that KK was insisting that Luke be dead, by the time episode IX starts.

Even if a bit cowardly, if that's true she displayed at least an initial, keen instinct.

Hamill, Fisher, and Ford were all still alive [rip Carrie] so recasting was a potential minefield. As was doing anything really, SW nerds can be something else when their goat is up. Been a while since I shared space with as many people that needed slaps as when I was playing SWTOR.

Edited July 12, 2023 by JGP

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

Have the bi-monthly sequel trilogy flame wars started again?!?

5 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Correct. I can't say I like many of the post-Disney* period stories, but there are a staggering number of people involved in the creation of these things, beyond just the showrunners like Favreau, Filoni, Gilroy, etc., including dozens upon dozens of writers. And not everything's gonna land and be 100% amazing when humans get together to try and make a piece of art together. 

 

*Remember all those howls of "George Lucas destroyed my childhood!" after the prequels came out? I sure do. Clearly, some people are going to be nightmarishly difficult to please.

the best take comes from this interview clip from the Jacobin.

That said, I’m really looking forward to Rebel Moon. 

[Week]

Ashoka looks awesome. I'm hyped.

I can't even begin to put words around how pathetic the Kathleen Kennedy vitriol is. Folks need to get some new hobbies. Cringe.

Edited July 12, 2023 by Week