Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 The worst thing about the sequels for me is the lack of credible world building and incoherent, rehashed storytelling that make all 3 come across as bad fan fiction along with force powers which break the SW rules of reality and appear video gamey. I enjoyed most of the actors and character moments but the script is the real letdown that makes these films unwatchable. And lack of creativity in the production design in an effort to appear as close to the OT as possible. The legend EU stories post ROTJ did a much better job with credible world building and those aren’t particularly great at it either. As much as you guys don’t like Lucas’s storytelling , isn’t it a bit telling that a villain he introduced in ROTJ had to be reused as the main baddie in the sequels in the end cause these new movies can’t create anything iconic and original of their own to stand in comparison ? They even give old palpy some of the prequel dialogues in TROS lol which has become iconic now. I don’t think the sequels have anything memorable. Even Darth Maul is back in other shows, call me crazy but I don’t think we’re gonna get snoke spin-offs anytime soon… Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IlyaP Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 14 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said: The legend EU stories post ROTJ did a much better job with credible world building and those aren’t particularly great at it either. *twitches in Crystal Star memories* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JGP Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 Every now and then I wonder about the inside baseball about how haphazardly and figuratively crowdsourced the continuing trilogy was. Like, was Snope at one point the actual big bad, with Kylo meant to supplant in Sith tradition and become the big bad for the last film, or was that Johnson's addition that got snuffed because of pushback from fans? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JGP Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 4 minutes ago, IlyaP said: *twitches in Crystal Star memories* I don't even want to know. IlyaP 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 Bad batch leans pretty heavily on what came before. It isn't a great standalone, and most of its best beats are dealing with clone stuff or dealing with characters we see elsewhere. It's pretty mid honestly. IlyaP and Maia 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corvinus85 Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 1 hour ago, IlyaP said: Haven't seen Bad Batch yet - that's next on my list once some free time appears in my schedule. It is meant to just be a story to transition viewers from the Clone Wars to Rebellion era? Or does it stand alone in your view as its own independent story with themes, ideas, and concepts of its own that it's exploring? I would say BB is more about the transition period. It aims to answer questions like what happened to all the clones after the war. I like the characters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IlyaP Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 59 minutes ago, JGP said: I don't even want to know. I'm usually very forgiving of books. I know authors try their best. And have good intentions. I can't mind-bleach Crystal Star, and I WISH I COULD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IlyaP Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 21 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said: It aims to answer questions like what happened to all the clones after the war. ...Please don't bite my head off for asking, as I am legit curious: Did...we need to know the answer to that question? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IlyaP Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 42 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said: It's pretty mid honestly. Mid-honestly? So it...has a problem always telling the truth? Sorry, I'll see myself out. JGP 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IlyaP Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 1 hour ago, JGP said: Every now and then I wonder about the inside baseball about how haphazardly and figuratively crowdsourced the continuing trilogy was. It's an interesting film experiment: a studio decided to make a trilogy of films with no road map, and decided to see what kind of interesting results would emerge from giving three different writer/directors a chance to express their artistic voice in a shared sandbox. It is, intellectually, an intriguing mental experiment, I confess. I enjoyed imagining "what would Truffaut do if he were one of the directors? IMAGINE MARTIN SCORSESE DIRECTING A STAR WARS MOVIE!" and so on. Look, it's a cool intellectual exercise, and I'm an intellectual history grad, so I dig this sort of thing. So I can intellectually get behind the idea at play here. Clearly, however, it didn't work out, as really, the themes, ideas, structure, it was all over the place. And I've accepted that I'll never be able to reconcile anything that's taken place across these three movies because they're inherently at odds with one another, and a confusing mess as a result - a failed artistic experiment. But I respect the idea powering this artistic endeavour, as it's - to me - interesting. And one can make art that's interesting even when it's execution leaves something to be desired. And as I have learned from many artists - they never learn so much as they do from their mistakes. (And look kids, I'm a fan of ugly, tacky things. I like the Fast and Furious movies and have sunk over 40 hours of my life into Daikatana. DAIKATANA!* But I can also wax lyrical about Thomas Pynchon and Alfred Noyes like the best of them.) At this point, in mind, I try to forget about the Sequel Trilogy's existence, because It Makes No Sense and is best left ignored and forgotten as a weird experiment that didn't pan out. (Now if we could just let David Keck, Jay Kristoff, and James A. Moore a chance to write some novels in the universe, to lift the quality of the books produced by the publishing division, that'd be grand...) *A wild, weird, uneven game, with some terrific art and design and one hell of an amazing soundtrack. JGP and Myrddin 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 18 minutes ago, IlyaP said: It's an interesting film experiment: a studio decided to make a trilogy of films with no road map, and decided to see what kind of interesting results would emerge from giving three different writer/directors a chance to express their artistic voice in a shared sandbox. It is, intellectually, an intriguing mental experiment, I confess. I enjoyed imagining "what would Truffaut do if he were one of the directors? IMAGINE MARTIN SCORSESE DIRECTING A STAR WARS MOVIE!" and so on. Look, it's a cool intellectual exercise, and I'm an intellectual history grad, so I dig this sort of thing. So I can intellectually get behind the idea at play here. Clearly, however, it didn't work out, as really, the themes, ideas, structure, it was all over the place. And I've accepted that I'll never be able to reconcile anything that's taken place across these three movies because they're inherently at odds with one another, and a confusing mess as a result - a failed artistic experiment. But I respect the idea powering this artistic endeavour, as it's - to me - interesting. And one can make art that's interesting even when it's execution leaves something to be desired. And as I have learned from many artists - they never learn so much as they do from their mistakes. (And look kids, I'm a fan of ugly, tacky things. I like the Fast and Furious movies and have sunk over 40 hours of my life into Daikatana. DAIKATANA!* But I can also wax lyrical about Thomas Pynchon and Alfred Noyes like the best of them.) At this point, in mind, I try to forget about the Sequel Trilogy's existence, because It Makes No Sense and is best left ignored and forgotten as a weird experiment that didn't pan out. (Now if we could just let David Keck, Jay Kristoff, and James A. Moore a chance to write some novels in the universe, to lift the quality of the books produced by the publishing division, that'd be grand...) *A wild, weird, uneven game, with some terrific art and design and one hell of an amazing soundtrack. They didn’t though , the company fired Michael Arndt, Colin Trevorrow, Lord and Miller when they strayed too far from the safe and familiar…I would’ve loved to see an actual story of rebuilding the new republic instead of devolving back into rebel vs empire , right down to the same old tie fighters,X wing and millennium falcon( how the hell does the first order finance all of this ??) …the smart thing would’ve been to set the new story 100-200 years in the future with brand new characters and stories but they didn’t have the balls and so we got a retirement home movie instead… Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
polishgenius Posted July 14 Author Share Posted July 14 (edited) 2 hours ago, IlyaP said: I'm a fan of ugly, tacky things. I like the Fast and Furious movies YOU TAKE THAT BACK! But anyway yeah the main problem with the ST isn't really that they filmed them one at a time with no plan- it's that they combined that inherently freestyle creative idea with the very uncreative, ideas-wise, Abrams. Especially when they went to him as the fallback plan after they didn't love what Johnson did. He was never gonna have the imaginination to fix it. Edited July 14 by polishgenius IlyaP 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heartofice Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 (edited) Yeah the only reason I think there is any revisionism of the PT is because in comparison to the ST it has some qualities that the ST lacks. Or at least that is the reason given by the PT defenders, personally I disagree with those claims. It’s said that the PT has an interesting political plotline and does world building better and Lucas manages to create a more fleshed out and interesting universe in the PT. My problem with that argument is that I actually hate everything that Lucas built in the PT, I find the universe he creates from TPM onwards to be absolutely silly and completely disconnected from the things I like about SW. I watched Clone Wars and it’s a good example of expanding on that universe and I hate it. It’s all suddenly quite fantastical, the planets now are things like Gungans in underwater palaces, huge crazy alien settings and things that feel more like fantasy than sci fi. The tone and setting of everything introduced in from the PT onwards feels completely different to the grounded, realistic and lived in universe of the OT. Clearly that appeals to some people but I reckon if you ask the reason why a lot of people like Rogue One and Andor it’s because they reject almost all of the fantastical elements of the PT, the stuff you see in Clone Wars, and go back to a ground down, lived in universe that feels more relatable and less high fantasy. Sure the PT has some sort of underlying political plotline and does it better and more coherently than the ST, but even then it’s incredibly flimsy and doesn’t really engage you through the movies as the actual characters are so poorly laid out. I think it’s not so much that the politics is good and clever in the PT, it’s not, it’s just that Lucas at least tried, which JJ didn’t even bother with. So I genuinely think PT defenders are wrong when they claim the PT does these things well, I think actually the PT fucked up the SW universe almost irreparably, and something like Andor tried to go back and pretend it could erase that damage. Edited July 14 by Heartofice Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IlyaP Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 1 hour ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said: They didn’t though , the company fired Michael Arndt, Colin Trevorrow, Lord and Miller when they strayed too far from the safe and familiar Your information here is incorrect and thus leads to an unnuanced picture of a complex picture. Arndt left the project, famously due to not being able to work out to do beyond some core ideas that he had. And while yes, Lord and Miller were let got, with Trevorrow it was a mutual parting. And whether it was because he "strayed from the safe and familiar" is unverifiable conjecture. None of us were privy to what took place behind closed doors and in private spaces, leaving us only with hypotheses at best. And since we don't know, there's little merit in speculating on what will never be proven. Was the outcome of those decisions a narrative mess? Sure. But if you've listened to what Chris Terrio himself has said, they were rewriting on a daily basis. Beyond even a safe or familiar zone, they were making it up as they went along to clearly capture some kind of Star Warsian tone, be that the desert aesthetic, cute banter, pacey corridor shots, and saber duels. And again - these people are fan boys like you, alright? They love Star Wars and tried their best, so cut them some slack already, will ya? They tried, they didn't succeed, but not out of a lack of respect or love for all of it. No one who works on these movies is dispassionate about it. Everyone's there putting their best foot forward, trying to figure out how to make it work. And unfortunately, they didn't succeed, but that happens sometimes. It doesn't hurt to try and be kind to these people, instead of being incensed and aggressive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IlyaP Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 59 minutes ago, polishgenius said: YOU TAKE THAT BACK! *Puts on a very Chandler Bingesque manner* N...no? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IlyaP Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 48 minutes ago, Heartofice said: It’s said that the PT has an interesting political plotline and does world building better and Lucas manages to create a more fleshed out and interesting universe in the PT. I don't think it's wrong to say that there're some interesting political ideas in the prequel trilogy, but I can't say they were explored or handled as elegantly and with the kind of nuance I'd have liked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
polishgenius Posted July 14 Author Share Posted July 14 I love space fantasy. But also I do think the claim that it was the PT that turned Star Wars into one is a bit off. The first thing we see in the series isn't the literal standard fairytale opening line with one change by accident. It's a series about space wizards with magic swords, with Jawas and Jabbas and Yoda oh my. I do get what you're saying about the world getting more... well, basically bubblegum-coloured in the PT, but that's partly a function of the technology available to Lucas at the time, and partly because the Empire was supposed to be shit and repressive. It was never meant to be a realistic world and in fact realism was the stated opposite of Lucas' aim when he made the first one. 3 minutes ago, IlyaP said: *Puts on a very Chandler Bingesque manner* N...no? FF is a thing of wondrous fambly beauty. And wondrous fambly explosions. IlyaP 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IlyaP Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 And hey, remember when David Fincher was being courted to direct one of the prequels? Man, what a ride THAT would have been! Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IlyaP Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 5 minutes ago, polishgenius said: FF is a thing of wondrous fambly beauty. And wondrous fambly explosions. La familia! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 Didn’t Lucas try to get plenty of other directors initially but couldn’t because he wasn’t part of the Directors Guild and they blocked him ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts