Honestly, I don't get the debate here. "JJ Abrahms is a piss-poor movie director" explains all the problems about TRoS, and is supported by all the other crappy movies in his filmography, and does not require a massive corporate alt-right-appeasement conspiracy.
Disney corporate doesn't care about the alt-right, or the right, or the left, or feminists, or misogynists, or anything beyond profits. The idea that they threw away the profitability of one of their biggest franchises, at the same times as they're building entire theme parks and cruise ships around it, in order to make a few internet trolls happy, is one that needs a lot of evidence to back up. I'm talking signed and authenticated memos by Bob Iger saying "screw money, I want to make r/redpill happy here" levels of evidence.
Disney cares very much about appealing to the broadest swath of people imaginable so they can make all the money.
Right. And making a movie for alt-right internet trolls at the exclusion of everyone else runs counter to that goal.
Correct. Obviously so. To us. To old white business men making decisions about art it makes perfect sense. They are scared of and confused by the modern sociopolitical landscape. They are clueless when it comes to the internet and social media. Remember when they fired Gun because some alt right troll found some old jokes of his that were actually offensive but did not represent his current views at all? Remember when they reversed course because the rest of the internet called that out?
Honestly, I don't get the debate here. "JJ Abrahms is a piss-poor movie director" explains all the problems about TRoS, and is supported by all the other crappy movies in his filmography, and does not require a massive corporate alt-right-appeasement conspiracy.
Disney corporate doesn't care about the alt-right, or the right, or the left, or feminists, or misogynists, or anything beyond profits. The idea that they threw away the profitability of one of their biggest franchises, at the same times as they're building entire theme parks and cruise ships around it, in order to make a few internet trolls happy, is one that needs a lot of evidence to back up. I'm talking signed and authenticated memos by Bob Iger saying "screw money, I want to make r/redpill happy here" levels of evidence.
Disney cares very much about appealing to the broadest swath of people imaginable so they can make all the money.
Right. And making a movie for alt-right internet trolls at the exclusion of everyone else runs counter to that goal.
But that's not what you do or what people are even accusing Disney of doing. A product designed to appease reactionary elements shaves off all it's potentially controversial edges. So things like no gay stuff, no race mixing, etc. The other consideration is stemming negative press, because that cvreates negative impressions of the film and maybe then people don't go out and see it. If your last film inspires a massive rapid backlash among vocal communities and that tanks one of your review scores, you might try to appease those groups via addressing their complaints so that they don't do the same to the next film.
That's more like what people are accusing Disney of doing. Squeaky wheel gets the grease and all that.
Right. A vocal reactionary community that objects to homosexuality and race mixing and protested with online-review-bombing. Otherwise known as "the alt-right".
Firstly, that's not just the alt-right. There's many more groups that object to this or that thing we're talking about.
But anyway, you said "making a movie for alt-right internet trolls at the exclusion of everyone". And you don't make it to the exclusion of everyone else. You take out the parts the complainers whinged about and hopefully stop them from being mad while also keeping the people who were ok with the last film. There's no exclusion here.
If I was an asian women I'd feel excluded. If I were in a mixed race relationship (particularly black+white) I'd feel excluded.
+4
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ShivahnUnaware of her barrel shifter privilegeWestern coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderatormod
Honestly, I don't get the debate here. "JJ Abrahms is a piss-poor movie director" explains all the problems about TRoS, and is supported by all the other crappy movies in his filmography, and does not require a massive corporate alt-right-appeasement conspiracy.
Disney corporate doesn't care about the alt-right, or the right, or the left, or feminists, or misogynists, or anything beyond profits. The idea that they threw away the profitability of one of their biggest franchises, at the same times as they're building entire theme parks and cruise ships around it, in order to make a few internet trolls happy, is one that needs a lot of evidence to back up. I'm talking signed and authenticated memos by Bob Iger saying "screw money, I want to make r/redpill happy here" levels of evidence.
Disney cares very much about appealing to the broadest swath of people imaginable so they can make all the money.
Right. And making a movie for alt-right internet trolls at the exclusion of everyone else runs counter to that goal.
But that's not what you do or what people are even accusing Disney of doing. A product designed to appease reactionary elements shaves off all it's potentially controversial edges. So things like no gay stuff, no race mixing, etc. The other consideration is stemming negative press, because that cvreates negative impressions of the film and maybe then people don't go out and see it. If your last film inspires a massive rapid backlash among vocal communities and that tanks one of your review scores, you might try to appease those groups via addressing their complaints so that they don't do the same to the next film.
That's more like what people are accusing Disney of doing. Squeaky wheel gets the grease and all that.
Right. A vocal reactionary community that objects to homosexuality and race mixing and protested with online-review-bombing. Otherwise known as "the alt-right".
Firstly, that's not just the alt-right. There's many more groups that object to this or that thing we're talking about.
But anyway, you said "making a movie for alt-right internet trolls at the exclusion of everyone". And you don't make it to the exclusion of everyone else. You take out the parts the complainers whinged about and hopefully stop them from being mad while also keeping the people who were ok with the last film. There's no exclusion here.
If I was an asian women I'd feel excluded. If I were in a mixed race relationship (particularly black+white) I'd feel excluded.
It was extremely weird and unpleasant, how obvious that felt to me. I was never a fan of Finn and Rey. I don't think every female main character should end up with someone, and I think that an interracial intersex familial friendship is actually really cool and fresh. And I would've been fine with that and I think most people would've felt less weird if they just didn't bring Finn's awkward "we're dying I have something to tell you" in and certainly if they got rid of the conspicuously black person that he ended up with.
But her addition makes his race suddenly feel extremely important in a way it wasn't before and I Did Not Like It.
Honestly, I don't get the debate here. "JJ Abrahms is a piss-poor movie director" explains all the problems about TRoS, and is supported by all the other crappy movies in his filmography, and does not require a massive corporate alt-right-appeasement conspiracy.
Disney corporate doesn't care about the alt-right, or the right, or the left, or feminists, or misogynists, or anything beyond profits. The idea that they threw away the profitability of one of their biggest franchises, at the same times as they're building entire theme parks and cruise ships around it, in order to make a few internet trolls happy, is one that needs a lot of evidence to back up. I'm talking signed and authenticated memos by Bob Iger saying "screw money, I want to make r/redpill happy here" levels of evidence.
Disney cares very much about appealing to the broadest swath of people imaginable so they can make all the money.
Right. And making a movie for alt-right internet trolls at the exclusion of everyone else runs counter to that goal.
But that's not what you do or what people are even accusing Disney of doing. A product designed to appease reactionary elements shaves off all it's potentially controversial edges. So things like no gay stuff, no race mixing, etc. The other consideration is stemming negative press, because that cvreates negative impressions of the film and maybe then people don't go out and see it. If your last film inspires a massive rapid backlash among vocal communities and that tanks one of your review scores, you might try to appease those groups via addressing their complaints so that they don't do the same to the next film.
That's more like what people are accusing Disney of doing. Squeaky wheel gets the grease and all that.
Right. A vocal reactionary community that objects to homosexuality and race mixing and protested with online-review-bombing. Otherwise known as "the alt-right".
Firstly, that's not just the alt-right. There's many more groups that object to this or that thing we're talking about.
But anyway, you said "making a movie for alt-right internet trolls at the exclusion of everyone". And you don't make it to the exclusion of everyone else. You take out the parts the complainers whinged about and hopefully stop them from being mad while also keeping the people who were ok with the last film. There's no exclusion here.
These people's beliefs are inherently exclusionary. It's how they define themselves. You can't appease them without excluding someone - the very fact that they are being appeased makes their victims feel excluded. And in this case we're literally talking about a minority character being excluded from the story.
Honestly, I don't get the debate here. "JJ Abrahms is a piss-poor movie director" explains all the problems about TRoS, and is supported by all the other crappy movies in his filmography, and does not require a massive corporate alt-right-appeasement conspiracy.
Disney corporate doesn't care about the alt-right, or the right, or the left, or feminists, or misogynists, or anything beyond profits. The idea that they threw away the profitability of one of their biggest franchises, at the same times as they're building entire theme parks and cruise ships around it, in order to make a few internet trolls happy, is one that needs a lot of evidence to back up. I'm talking signed and authenticated memos by Bob Iger saying "screw money, I want to make r/redpill happy here" levels of evidence.
Disney cares very much about appealing to the broadest swath of people imaginable so they can make all the money.
Right. And making a movie for alt-right internet trolls at the exclusion of everyone else runs counter to that goal.
But that's not what you do or what people are even accusing Disney of doing. A product designed to appease reactionary elements shaves off all it's potentially controversial edges. So things like no gay stuff, no race mixing, etc. The other consideration is stemming negative press, because that cvreates negative impressions of the film and maybe then people don't go out and see it. If your last film inspires a massive rapid backlash among vocal communities and that tanks one of your review scores, you might try to appease those groups via addressing their complaints so that they don't do the same to the next film.
That's more like what people are accusing Disney of doing. Squeaky wheel gets the grease and all that.
Right. A vocal reactionary community that objects to homosexuality and race mixing and protested with online-review-bombing. Otherwise known as "the alt-right".
Firstly, that's not just the alt-right. There's many more groups that object to this or that thing we're talking about.
But anyway, you said "making a movie for alt-right internet trolls at the exclusion of everyone". And you don't make it to the exclusion of everyone else. You take out the parts the complainers whinged about and hopefully stop them from being mad while also keeping the people who were ok with the last film. There's no exclusion here.
Firstly, they're just different flavours of alt-right. I'm not drawing a line on whether or not this or that group of hateful racist homophobic white conservatives technically fit the finer details of the definition of alt-right. If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, I'm fine with calling it a duck.
Secondly, by taking out the homosexuality and reducing it to a blink-and-you'll-miss-it background kiss between nameless extras, they remove a part complainers whinged about by excluding homosexuals and non-homophobic heterosexuals. By taking out the visible-minority-woman character, they remove a part complainers whinged about by excluding minority women and fans of that character. By taking out race-mixing, they remove a part complainers whinged about by excluding non-racists. It's not hard to understand how pleasing the alt-right crowd necessarily requires excluding everyone else. Hell, the entire ideology is based on exclusion of everyone else.
Except it doesn't necessarily exclude those people. As we've seen from decades upon decades of film. Just look at the OT. ANH is definitely lacking in the LGBTQ department. Heck, I don't even think ANH has any visible non-white people in it. It never hurt their appeal. These things are not one or the other. You appease the complainers and get both is the idea they go with.
And even if you disagree with that in this day and age, that's certainly how a lot of people in the high-end of the movie industry think. "Race mixing and gayness scare a bunch of people we want to sell things to. Ergo, we cut them out and go back to the default and so we don't get people complaining at us."
Also the alt-right is a specific thing. It does not hold exclusive rights to, say, disliking homosexuality.
Talking about Indiana Jones in the movie thread and it only occurred to me that Chewie's fake-out death in RoS is very similar, and it being JJ Abrams likely lifted from, Marion Ravenwood's fake-out death in Raiders of the Lost Ark ("My kidnapped ally has been carried on to that escaping vehicle! I shall stop it. Oh no! I blew it up!!"). The difference being that in Raiders they absolutely sell it - Indy gets shit-faced with a Nazi-sympathising monkey in a local dive, has a tense conversation with Belloq then gets back to work. We only discover Marion is alive at the same time Indy does after another what, 10 or 15 minutes of screen time?
Honestly, I don't get the debate here. "JJ Abrahms is a piss-poor movie director" explains all the problems about TRoS, and is supported by all the other crappy movies in his filmography, and does not require a massive corporate alt-right-appeasement conspiracy.
Disney corporate doesn't care about the alt-right, or the right, or the left, or feminists, or misogynists, or anything beyond profits. The idea that they threw away the profitability of one of their biggest franchises, at the same times as they're building entire theme parks and cruise ships around it, in order to make a few internet trolls happy, is one that needs a lot of evidence to back up. I'm talking signed and authenticated memos by Bob Iger saying "screw money, I want to make r/redpill happy here" levels of evidence.
Disney cares very much about appealing to the broadest swath of people imaginable so they can make all the money.
Right. And making a movie for alt-right internet trolls at the exclusion of everyone else runs counter to that goal.
But that's not what you do or what people are even accusing Disney of doing. A product designed to appease reactionary elements shaves off all it's potentially controversial edges. So things like no gay stuff, no race mixing, etc. The other consideration is stemming negative press, because that cvreates negative impressions of the film and maybe then people don't go out and see it. If your last film inspires a massive rapid backlash among vocal communities and that tanks one of your review scores, you might try to appease those groups via addressing their complaints so that they don't do the same to the next film.
That's more like what people are accusing Disney of doing. Squeaky wheel gets the grease and all that.
Right. A vocal reactionary community that objects to homosexuality and race mixing and protested with online-review-bombing. Otherwise known as "the alt-right".
Firstly, that's not just the alt-right. There's many more groups that object to this or that thing we're talking about.
But anyway, you said "making a movie for alt-right internet trolls at the exclusion of everyone". And you don't make it to the exclusion of everyone else. You take out the parts the complainers whinged about and hopefully stop them from being mad while also keeping the people who were ok with the last film. There's no exclusion here.
Firstly, they're just different flavours of alt-right. I'm not drawing a line on whether or not this or that group of hateful racist homophobic white conservatives technically fit the finer details of the definition of alt-right. If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, I'm fine with calling it a duck.
Secondly, by taking out the homosexuality and reducing it to a blink-and-you'll-miss-it background kiss between nameless extras, they remove a part complainers whinged about by excluding homosexuals and non-homophobic heterosexuals. By taking out the visible-minority-woman character, they remove a part complainers whinged about by excluding minority women and fans of that character. By taking out race-mixing, they remove a part complainers whinged about by excluding non-racists. It's not hard to understand how pleasing the alt-right crowd necessarily requires excluding everyone else. Hell, the entire ideology is based on exclusion of everyone else.
Except it doesn't necessarily exclude those people. As we've seen from decades upon decades of film. Just look at the OT. ANH is definitely lacking in the LGBTQ department. Heck, I don't even think ANH has any visible non-white people in it. It never hurt their appeal. These things are not one or the other. You appease the complainers and get both is the idea they go with.
And even if you disagree with that in this day and age, that's certainly how a lot of people in the high-end of the movie industry think. "Race mixing and gayness scare a bunch of people we want to sell things to. Ergo, we cut them out and go back to the default and so we don't get people complaining at us."
Also the alt-right is a specific thing. It does not hold exclusive rights to, say, disliking homosexuality.
It does necessarily exclude those things when they were in the prior story. Not every story needs to have those elements but when a story had those elements and they are removed it is so exclusionary.
This is kind of like the British Anti-Semetism we just talked about. Complaining about things Israel does is not anti-Semitic. But if you single out Israel for no reason it in instances it should not have come up makes it so. TFA and TLJ definitely had those elements. Finn pining after Rey and Poe and Finn playing the relationship as gay were not missable in the first two films(the latter of those got a good amount of press even!). The clear reversal on this point, whether they thought it would or not, is exclusionary.
Honestly, I don't get the debate here. "JJ Abrahms is a piss-poor movie director" explains all the problems about TRoS, and is supported by all the other crappy movies in his filmography, and does not require a massive corporate alt-right-appeasement conspiracy.
Disney corporate doesn't care about the alt-right, or the right, or the left, or feminists, or misogynists, or anything beyond profits. The idea that they threw away the profitability of one of their biggest franchises, at the same times as they're building entire theme parks and cruise ships around it, in order to make a few internet trolls happy, is one that needs a lot of evidence to back up. I'm talking signed and authenticated memos by Bob Iger saying "screw money, I want to make r/redpill happy here" levels of evidence.
Disney cares very much about appealing to the broadest swath of people imaginable so they can make all the money.
Right. And making a movie for alt-right internet trolls at the exclusion of everyone else runs counter to that goal.
But that's not what you do or what people are even accusing Disney of doing. A product designed to appease reactionary elements shaves off all it's potentially controversial edges. So things like no gay stuff, no race mixing, etc. The other consideration is stemming negative press, because that cvreates negative impressions of the film and maybe then people don't go out and see it. If your last film inspires a massive rapid backlash among vocal communities and that tanks one of your review scores, you might try to appease those groups via addressing their complaints so that they don't do the same to the next film.
That's more like what people are accusing Disney of doing. Squeaky wheel gets the grease and all that.
Right. A vocal reactionary community that objects to homosexuality and race mixing and protested with online-review-bombing. Otherwise known as "the alt-right".
Firstly, that's not just the alt-right. There's many more groups that object to this or that thing we're talking about.
But anyway, you said "making a movie for alt-right internet trolls at the exclusion of everyone". And you don't make it to the exclusion of everyone else. You take out the parts the complainers whinged about and hopefully stop them from being mad while also keeping the people who were ok with the last film. There's no exclusion here.
Firstly, they're just different flavours of alt-right. I'm not drawing a line on whether or not this or that group of hateful racist homophobic white conservatives technically fit the finer details of the definition of alt-right. If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, I'm fine with calling it a duck.
Secondly, by taking out the homosexuality and reducing it to a blink-and-you'll-miss-it background kiss between nameless extras, they remove a part complainers whinged about by excluding homosexuals and non-homophobic heterosexuals. By taking out the visible-minority-woman character, they remove a part complainers whinged about by excluding minority women and fans of that character. By taking out race-mixing, they remove a part complainers whinged about by excluding non-racists. It's not hard to understand how pleasing the alt-right crowd necessarily requires excluding everyone else. Hell, the entire ideology is based on exclusion of everyone else.
Except it doesn't necessarily exclude those people. As we've seen from decades upon decades of film. Just look at the OT. ANH is definitely lacking in the LGBTQ department. Heck, I don't even think ANH has any visible non-white people in it. It never hurt their appeal. These things are not one or the other. You appease the complainers and get both is the idea they go with.
And even if you disagree with that in this day and age, that's certainly how a lot of people in the high-end of the movie industry think. "Race mixing and gayness scare a bunch of people we want to sell things to. Ergo, we cut them out and go back to the default and so we don't get people complaining at us."
Also the alt-right is a specific thing. It does not hold exclusive rights to, say, disliking homosexuality.
I don't understand the point you're trying to make. So the Disney execs are themselves bigots, not just appeasing them? And some of the bigots in the audience don't technically belong to the alt right ideology? What difference does any of that make? Movies with inadequate diversity do exclude people. Representation means a lot to people in minority groups. No the OT is not diverse enough, especially ANH, but that's a movie from the 70s and so tackling that issue is a different sort of discussion. Right now we're talking about filmmakers from the present day choosing to make their movie less diverse because they perceive diversity as being unwanted controvery.
Honestly, I don't get the debate here. "JJ Abrahms is a piss-poor movie director" explains all the problems about TRoS, and is supported by all the other crappy movies in his filmography, and does not require a massive corporate alt-right-appeasement conspiracy.
Disney corporate doesn't care about the alt-right, or the right, or the left, or feminists, or misogynists, or anything beyond profits. The idea that they threw away the profitability of one of their biggest franchises, at the same times as they're building entire theme parks and cruise ships around it, in order to make a few internet trolls happy, is one that needs a lot of evidence to back up. I'm talking signed and authenticated memos by Bob Iger saying "screw money, I want to make r/redpill happy here" levels of evidence.
Disney cares very much about appealing to the broadest swath of people imaginable so they can make all the money.
Right. And making a movie for alt-right internet trolls at the exclusion of everyone else runs counter to that goal.
But that's not what you do or what people are even accusing Disney of doing. A product designed to appease reactionary elements shaves off all it's potentially controversial edges. So things like no gay stuff, no race mixing, etc. The other consideration is stemming negative press, because that cvreates negative impressions of the film and maybe then people don't go out and see it. If your last film inspires a massive rapid backlash among vocal communities and that tanks one of your review scores, you might try to appease those groups via addressing their complaints so that they don't do the same to the next film.
That's more like what people are accusing Disney of doing. Squeaky wheel gets the grease and all that.
Right. A vocal reactionary community that objects to homosexuality and race mixing and protested with online-review-bombing. Otherwise known as "the alt-right".
Firstly, that's not just the alt-right. There's many more groups that object to this or that thing we're talking about.
But anyway, you said "making a movie for alt-right internet trolls at the exclusion of everyone". And you don't make it to the exclusion of everyone else. You take out the parts the complainers whinged about and hopefully stop them from being mad while also keeping the people who were ok with the last film. There's no exclusion here.
Firstly, they're just different flavours of alt-right. I'm not drawing a line on whether or not this or that group of hateful racist homophobic white conservatives technically fit the finer details of the definition of alt-right. If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, I'm fine with calling it a duck.
Secondly, by taking out the homosexuality and reducing it to a blink-and-you'll-miss-it background kiss between nameless extras, they remove a part complainers whinged about by excluding homosexuals and non-homophobic heterosexuals. By taking out the visible-minority-woman character, they remove a part complainers whinged about by excluding minority women and fans of that character. By taking out race-mixing, they remove a part complainers whinged about by excluding non-racists. It's not hard to understand how pleasing the alt-right crowd necessarily requires excluding everyone else. Hell, the entire ideology is based on exclusion of everyone else.
Except it doesn't necessarily exclude those people. As we've seen from decades upon decades of film. Just look at the OT. ANH is definitely lacking in the LGBTQ department. Heck, I don't even think ANH has any visible non-white people in it. It never hurt their appeal. These things are not one or the other. You appease the complainers and get both is the idea they go with.
And even if you disagree with that in this day and age, that's certainly how a lot of people in the high-end of the movie industry think. "Race mixing and gayness scare a bunch of people we want to sell things to. Ergo, we cut them out and go back to the default and so we don't get people complaining at us."
Also the alt-right is a specific thing. It does not hold exclusive rights to, say, disliking homosexuality.
I don't understand the point you're trying to make. So the Disney execs are themselves bigots, not just appeasing them? And some of the bigots in the audience don't technically belong to the alt right ideology? What difference does any of that make? Movies with inadequate diversity do exclude people. Representation means a lot to people in minority groups. No the OT is not diverse enough, especially ANH, but that's a movie from the 70s and so tackling that issue is a different sort of discussion. Right now we're talking about filmmakers from the present day choosing to make their movie less diverse because they perceive diversity as being unwanted controvery.
Richy's argument, at the top of this quote tree, was that there was no way Disney could have decided to (very obviously and ham-handedly) decided to appease complainers because that wouldn't make them money. And this is just completely wrong because mass appeal is generally viewed as hewing to the "default" in society. You appease the complainers, go with what is considered "safe" and that's how you make the most money appealing to the most people.
That's the kind of thinking you can easily see being behind several of the decisions made in TROS. Ditch the implied miscegenation, ditch even the slightest hint of homosexuality, ditch the character the internet hated so much it chased her off the internet, ditch the things people screamed about in endless youtube videos that seem to have absolutely tanked the RT user score of your last film, etc, etc. All those things might offend someone. Play it safe.
There is nothing incompatible about this kind of decision making and your motive being to make all the money. Especially, I would bet, if you are the kind of person up at the top of the production hierarchy for a property like this.
We continued a but further with tros (baby makes watching movies complicated) Observations:
It's kinda funny how kylo takes about 10 times as much time to fly over a stretch of desert than it takes for anyone in this movie to fly from one planet to another.
And then he does nothing, just gets his ship exploded by Rey.
The most defining feature of the Knights of Ren so far is that they roll coal (in space).
How did Rey know and instantly identify Lando?
The extension of the force connection between Rey and kylo is actually a fun thing.
Who the fuck thought that making c3po, the proto-jarjar, central to the plot and give him scenes that are supposed to be emotional and dramatic, while sidelining r2d2, was a good idea.
I remember seeing an article that was like "move over baby Yoda, here's Babu Frik" and I was like "What? Who paid for this? Who even cared about Babu Frik?"
Honestly, I don't get the debate here. "JJ Abrahms is a piss-poor movie director" explains all the problems about TRoS, and is supported by all the other crappy movies in his filmography, and does not require a massive corporate alt-right-appeasement conspiracy.
Disney corporate doesn't care about the alt-right, or the right, or the left, or feminists, or misogynists, or anything beyond profits. The idea that they threw away the profitability of one of their biggest franchises, at the same times as they're building entire theme parks and cruise ships around it, in order to make a few internet trolls happy, is one that needs a lot of evidence to back up. I'm talking signed and authenticated memos by Bob Iger saying "screw money, I want to make r/redpill happy here" levels of evidence.
Don't sell Rian Johnson short, he's pretty shit too. "Stuff happens in this movie because the plot requires it! He noticed the blood on her shoe and knew it wasn't something you'd see on a nurse's shoe! Time travel works however the current scene demands it!".
Those movies suck because they clearly didn't have a story written for all three beforehand, made it up as they went and let the directors actively fucking sabotage each other. Someone needs to write these things beforehand. Bring in your directors - here is the story, do the thing. If they don't like it? Fuck off, we're Star Wars / Disney, go do something else because we have people lined up around the block to get in on this.
He was fine. I saw him getting hyped before watching and I kinda expected him to be more... something. Also definitely not better than baby yoda, but he got a lot more screen time so maybe it's unfair to compare.
Still not finished with the movie so maybe there is more of him?
Don't sell Rian Johnson short, he's pretty shit too. "Stuff happens in this movie because the plot requires it! He noticed the blood on her shoe and knew it wasn't something you'd see on a nurse's shoe! Time travel works however the current scene demands it!".
Those movies suck because they clearly didn't have a story written for all three beforehand, made it up as they went and let the directors actively fucking sabotage each other. Someone needs to write these things beforehand. Bring in your directors - here is the story, do the thing. If they don't like it? Fuck off, we're Star Wars / Disney, go do something else because we have people lined up around the block to get in on this.
Are you seriously like... complaining about probably the most common detective trope in the world...
I also don't know what the first one refers to but its its TLJ then like... given its Star Wars and what the force is i do not understand the comment.
TLJ did not sabotage TFA and i really do not understand why people think it did
+11
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Don't sell Rian Johnson short, he's pretty shit too. "Stuff happens in this movie because the plot requires it! He noticed the blood on her shoe and knew it wasn't something you'd see on a nurse's shoe! Time travel works however the current scene demands it!".
Those movies suck because they clearly didn't have a story written for all three beforehand, made it up as they went and let the directors actively fucking sabotage each other. Someone needs to write these things beforehand. Bring in your directors - here is the story, do the thing. If they don't like it? Fuck off, we're Star Wars / Disney, go do something else because we have people lined up around the block to get in on this.
Are you seriously like... complaining about probably the most common detective trope in the world...
I also don't know what the first one refers to but its its TLJ then like... given its Star Wars and what the force is i do not understand the comment.
TLJ did not sabotage TFA and i really do not understand why people think it did
At the time, I glossed over a lot of the issues with TLJ because of the interesting potential direction the last movie could have gone - which is why I liked it. I find them impossible to ignore in the context of the shit show that Rise of Skywalker was. I also can't ignore the major structural and story issues with the trilogy as a whole now that its complete.
Don't sell Rian Johnson short, he's pretty shit too. "Stuff happens in this movie because the plot requires it! He noticed the blood on her shoe and knew it wasn't something you'd see on a nurse's shoe! Time travel works however the current scene demands it!".
Those movies suck because they clearly didn't have a story written for all three beforehand, made it up as they went and let the directors actively fucking sabotage each other. Someone needs to write these things beforehand. Bring in your directors - here is the story, do the thing. If they don't like it? Fuck off, we're Star Wars / Disney, go do something else because we have people lined up around the block to get in on this.
Are you seriously like... complaining about probably the most common detective trope in the world...
I also don't know what the first one refers to but its its TLJ then like... given its Star Wars and what the force is i do not understand the comment.
TLJ did not sabotage TFA and i really do not understand why people think it did
Have you watched Rise of Skywalker? Because it's pretty clear from the disaster the three movies are (as a whole) that TFA was "supposed" to have certain plot threads carried on in JJ Abrams mind, which Johnson - however right I think he was - discarded and then JJ attempted to fix (badly) in the third movie.
Like we don't have to speculate anymore. We know what JJ wanted and was thinking. Rise of Skywalker shows us that. One of the core things I found laughable about an otherwise well written essay I linked earlier, was that Abrams had no interest in maintaining anything from the Last Jedi in Skywalker. At the same time, it's very clear that Johnson didn't care about the "mysteries" that JJ set up in awakens. Both movies after Awakens have dramatically antagonistic visions of what things should be, going massively opposite directions and to the detriment of the entire trilogy.
At the time, TLJ's unexpected story beats were more like plot twists than a direct contraction of TFA. That all felt within the bounds of how a cohesive story can be told. But then RoS came along and contradicted those decisions all over again, and in so doing it broke the illusion that this was anything but a spat between rival directors.
Don't sell Rian Johnson short, he's pretty shit too. "Stuff happens in this movie because the plot requires it! He noticed the blood on her shoe and knew it wasn't something you'd see on a nurse's shoe! Time travel works however the current scene demands it!".
Those movies suck because they clearly didn't have a story written for all three beforehand, made it up as they went and let the directors actively fucking sabotage each other. Someone needs to write these things beforehand. Bring in your directors - here is the story, do the thing. If they don't like it? Fuck off, we're Star Wars / Disney, go do something else because we have people lined up around the block to get in on this.
Are you seriously like... complaining about probably the most common detective trope in the world...
I also don't know what the first one refers to but its its TLJ then like... given its Star Wars and what the force is i do not understand the comment.
TLJ did not sabotage TFA and i really do not understand why people think it did
At the time, I glossed over a lot of the issues with TLJ because of the interesting potential direction the last movie could have gone - which is why I liked it. I find them impossible to ignore in the context of the shit show that Rise of Skywalker was. I also can't ignore the major structural and story issues with the trilogy as a whole now that its complete.
Don't sell Rian Johnson short, he's pretty shit too. "Stuff happens in this movie because the plot requires it! He noticed the blood on her shoe and knew it wasn't something you'd see on a nurse's shoe! Time travel works however the current scene demands it!".
Those movies suck because they clearly didn't have a story written for all three beforehand, made it up as they went and let the directors actively fucking sabotage each other. Someone needs to write these things beforehand. Bring in your directors - here is the story, do the thing. If they don't like it? Fuck off, we're Star Wars / Disney, go do something else because we have people lined up around the block to get in on this.
Are you seriously like... complaining about probably the most common detective trope in the world...
I also don't know what the first one refers to but its its TLJ then like... given its Star Wars and what the force is i do not understand the comment.
TLJ did not sabotage TFA and i really do not understand why people think it did
Have you watched Rise of Skywalker? Because it's pretty clear from the disaster the three movies are (as a whole) that TFA was "supposed" to have certain plot threads carried on in JJ Abrams mind, which Johnson - however right I think he was - discarded and then JJ attempted to fix (badly) in the third movie.
Like we don't have to speculate anymore. We know what JJ wanted and was thinking. Rise of Skywalker shows us that. One of the core things I found laughable about an otherwise well written essay I linked earlier, was that Abrams had no interest in maintaining anything from the Last Jedi in Skywalker. At the same time, it's very clear that Johnson didn't care about the "mysteries" that JJ set up in awakens. Both movies after Awakens have dramatically antagonistic visions of what things should be, going massively opposite directions and to the detriment of the entire trilogy.
I mean, maybe JJ had some idea of where he wanted it to go. But it's not at all clear any of that was communicated to Johnson. Or if anyone even really knew. And on top of all that, JJ was never supposed to be involved in any of the other movies. You talk here like JJ's ideas were set down somewhere to be followed and Johnson jumped in and changed shit. We pretty clearly know that's not accurate.
You can't sabotage a plan when there's no plan in the first place. TLJ builds off of what TFA sets up. It's not the only way to build off it, but it's a perfectly coherent way to do so. TROS on the other hand does not build off of what TLJ does.
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited June 2020
I agree there was absolutely no forethought, no planning and no communication in anything to do with the new Star Wars movies. My understanding of the previous director of Episode IX take is that it was quite different again, with an occupied Coruscant and a rebellion of former stormtroopers plus resistance fighters against the First Order led by Finn. It also had Hux killing himself with a lightsaber!
But there is considerable whiplash in tone, messaging and style between TFA -> TLJ -> RoS. We can almost cut TLJ out of the three movies and I'm not sure you would have any less incoherent and nonsensical a story. To be clear, I don't know if there was any genuine antagonism between the two directors, but the whiplash between the clearly different ideas is hugely detrimental to the sequel trilogy as a whole. It doesn't matter that I liked TLJ and defended it an awful lot, the fact is Rise of Skywalker brings it down with the rest of the entire trilogy. You can't watch a coherent story from Episode VII to Episode IX.
Characters are set back, which is where I disagree about Finn and the fact TLJ plus RoS really does him dirty. Finn is set back character progression wise to running away at the start of TLJ and is relegated to doing an utterly irrelevant side event that results in nothing important whatsoever. He recycles his plot arc from TFA and then by RoS he might as well not exist anymore - even if JJ thinks he brilliantly hinted at him being Force Sensitive in the movie (he didn't). He's a prominent main character in TFA and to see him sidelined, removed from posters and then eventually set to the point of being irrelevantly force pushed away from Rey in RoS was incredibly sad to see.
The flaws in TLJ stand out now that the movie is so tonally and structurally out of whack with VII and IX. While we both can't know if JJ set his ideas down to follow, I think it's pretty clear when you look at RoS that JJ thought he set things up easily to be followed by anyone else. He clearly expected who Rey's parents were to be a big deal. He clearly thought that whoever followed could do something interesting with Snoke. You can see how he thought these things could be used in RoS, which TLJ completely discarded - however much I liked that. The trilogy suffers as a whole, even if I think TLJ is still the movie I liked the most out of the three.
People keep beating the "how dare they start the trilogy without a coherent plan for it ahead of time" drum when our beloved OT was not made that way.
There is a core difference though - the original trilogy is written by one person. Yes, three different directors, but written by one person and their vision is dominant throughout all three movies. You can see where the chopping and changing as they went along affected it, like the kiss between Luke and Leia, but there is nothing anywhere near as structurally problematic as the sequel trilogy. Nothing.
It's been said many many times, but the original star wars was pretty much great by accident. Lots of the original script was left out because they just couldn't do it, George was rewriting things as they were shooting, etc. It was a series of compromises that made the film, plus the good editing on the movie helped it along immensely. People often say it was saved in the editing room.
The point being that people hold up the OT as this golden standard but it was a complete fluke
People keep beating the "how dare they start the trilogy without a coherent plan for it ahead of time" drum when our beloved OT was not made that way.
Same reason we hold the PT to a standard it fails to meet - both endeavors were guaranteed trilogies with the backing of billions of dollars and it's a disservice to consumers to hold it to the same standard as a long shot sci fi flick from a relatively unknown director.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited June 2020
I don't have a disagreement with that, but it's still on point that the OT still only had one particular writer and vision behind it. Even if there was a great team who often went "No Lucas, that idea is stupid*" and that produced three amazing movies. We can see what happened when Lucas didn't have anyone to oppose or contradict him with the prequels, but even then the prequels are still more coherent than the sequel trilogy is. In terms of comparisons, the sequel trilogy is like if Lucas was allowed to do whatever the hell he wanted with the originals and there wasn't anyone there to say "no, that is just dumb". As far as I know, VII, VIII and IX directors could do literally anything they wanted with the movie and had complete creative freedom. That is not what happened with the OT.
*Not quite said that way of course.
Edit: At some point, I'm going to have to sit down and watch all the movies from I -> IX. I'm curious to see if my opinions on the prequels and episode VIII will have significantly changed now it is "complete".
People keep beating the "how dare they start the trilogy without a coherent plan for it ahead of time" drum when our beloved OT was not made that way.
There is a core difference though - the original trilogy is written by one person. Yes, three different directors, but written by one person and their vision is dominant throughout all three movies. You can see where the chopping and changing as they went along affected it, like the kiss between Luke and Leia, but there is nothing anywhere near as structurally problematic as the sequel trilogy. Nothing.
The screenplays of the OT films differed.
ANH: George Lucas
ESB: Leigh Brackett & Lawrence Kasdan
ROTJ: Lawrence Kasdan & George Lucas
George Lucas is credited with the story for each of the OT films, but he's also credited as the sole writer of all the prequel films. I don't think you can really argue that's a measure of what makes the plot of a trilogy good.
People keep beating the "how dare they start the trilogy without a coherent plan for it ahead of time" drum when our beloved OT was not made that way.
There is a core difference though - the original trilogy is written by one person. Yes, three different directors, but written by one person and their vision is dominant throughout all three movies. You can see where the chopping and changing as they went along affected it, like the kiss between Luke and Leia, but there is nothing anywhere near as structurally problematic as the sequel trilogy. Nothing.
The screenplays of the OT films differed.
ANH: George Lucas
ESB: Leigh Brackett & Lawrence Kasdan
ROTJ: Lawrence Kasdan & George Lucas
George Lucas is credited with the story for each of the OT films, but he's also credited as the sole writer of all the prequel films. I don't think you can really argue that's a measure of what makes the plot of a trilogy good.
That's not at all what I am arguing - what I am pointing out is even though the screenplay of ESB wasn't done directly by Lucas, it was still working off the story and ideas he created. It wasn't ANH George Lucas and then the second movie was written with absolutely no input, creative decisions or story from George in the second. Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan were not, in any way, allowed to just do anything they wanted creatively. They still had to work on that movie from the story that George wrote.
You seem to not be getting that while a lot of people had input into the original trilogy, for the better it should be said, it's not at all the same as the situation with Episode VIII and IX. Or even the prequels, where you can see how badly Lucas does when he doesn't have other people telling him no and opposing certain terrible ideas. This doesn't change that there was a narrative and story across all three movies that everyone worked from, created by George Lucas.
There was no such plan for the sequel trilogy. This is known, because each director of every movie was given the authorial intent to do with the plot and story what they wanted. You cannot possibly genuinely argue that's the same as what happened in creating the OT. It's completely disingenuous. George had written out the stories for all three original movies, which were followed and adapted by either himself or others into the original trilogy. There was no overarching story that JJ Abrams wrote that the following directors were to go off. They were allowed to stamp their mark on each movie as they wanted and had total creative freedom. Multiple interviews and statements about the new trilogy prove this.
No, see, you're still working from a flawed premise: That George Lucas had a plan for an overarching narrative for the OT from the very beginning. I know it's the common myth that's repeated nowadays but it has as much in common with reality as the official line from Disney on how their empire was created.
No, see, you're still working from a flawed premise: That George Lucas had a plan for an overarching narrative for the OT from the very beginning. I know it's the common myth that's repeated nowadays but it has as much in common with reality as the official line from Disney on how their empire was created.
That's incorrect again!
Here's what I wrote!
There is a core difference though - the original trilogy is written by one person. Yes, three different directors, but written by one person and their vision is dominant throughout all three movies. You can see where the chopping and changing as they went along affected it, like the kiss between Luke and Leia, but there is nothing anywhere near as structurally problematic as the sequel trilogy. Nothing.
George still wrote the bulk of the story and idea for the three original movies. Other people often adapted and IMO, arguably made it what it was as is the case with the other directors of Episode V and VI. It doesn't matter if he wrote it all at once. If he wrote it in bits and pieces. It does not matter if he wrote it while wearing a hat, petting a cat and going out to bat. It does. Not. Matter. The point is that you're still looking at three movies, where one person with creative input was involved across all of them but a lot of equally talented people were like "No, don't do that, it's dumb".
For example, nobody could stand up in Episode IX and go "Abrams, making Kylo Ren and Rey kiss in a romance is dumb".
I agree there was absolutely no forethought, no planning and no communication in anything to do with the new Star Wars movies. My understanding of the previous director of Episode IX take is that it was quite different again, with an occupied Coruscant and a rebellion of former stormtroopers plus resistance fighters against the First Order led by Finn. It also had Hux killing himself with a lightsaber!
But there is considerable whiplash in tone, messaging and style between TFA -> TLJ -> RoS. We can almost cut TLJ out of the three movies and I'm not sure you would have any less incoherent and nonsensical a story. To be clear, I don't know if there was any genuine antagonism between the two directors, but the whiplash between the clearly different ideas is hugely detrimental to the sequel trilogy as a whole. It doesn't matter that I liked TLJ and defended it an awful lot, the fact is Rise of Skywalker brings it down with the rest of the entire trilogy. You can't watch a coherent story from Episode VII to Episode IX.
Characters are set back, which is where I disagree about Finn and the fact TLJ plus RoS really does him dirty. Finn is set back character progression wise to running away at the start of TLJ and is relegated to doing an utterly irrelevant side event that results in nothing important whatsoever. He recycles his plot arc from TFA and then by RoS he might as well not exist anymore - even if JJ thinks he brilliantly hinted at him being Force Sensitive in the movie (he didn't). He's a prominent main character in TFA and to see him sidelined, removed from posters and then eventually set to the point of being irrelevantly force pushed away from Rey in RoS was incredibly sad to see.
The flaws in TLJ stand out now that the movie is so tonally and structurally out of whack with VII and IX. While we both can't know if JJ set his ideas down to follow, I think it's pretty clear when you look at RoS that JJ thought he set things up easily to be followed by anyone else. He clearly expected who Rey's parents were to be a big deal. He clearly thought that whoever followed could do something interesting with Snoke. You can see how he thought these things could be used in RoS, which TLJ completely discarded - however much I liked that. The trilogy suffers as a whole, even if I think TLJ is still the movie I liked the most out of the three.
There is no whiplash between TFA and TLJ though. TLJ builds naturally from where TFA ends. It in fact builds from it directly since the movie starts like a couple of hours later or something.
Finn, for example, is in fact more accurate to his actual TFA characterization then a lot of people's memory of that characterization. Finn in TFA is all about Rey. Saving Rey, getting Rey out. Her and Poe are basically the only real connections he has with people in his entire life ever and he's all about them. And so the first thing Finn does in TLJ is yell Rey's name and then go off to try and find her. His arc throughout the movie proceeds from there.
The idea that there was some sort of plan that TROS was working from that TLJ ignored is ludicrous because JJ wasn't even supposed to direct the damn film. And shit, if you believe the leaked Trevorrow script is real, the guy who was actually supposed to be doing the followup to TLJ wrote his film to build off what TLJ had done. It is in fact not till after TLJ was already finished and basically set in stone that Trevorrow was let go and JJ was brought back on. Any plans JJ had for Episode 9 were only even started after TLJ was already a completed and finished product. As far as any information I'm aware of, TROS did not even start getting written till after TLJ was done. JJ literally wasn't on the project till then.
The entire argument here just does not make any sense. It doesn't match the facts as far as we know them. It actually violates causality.
Johnson cannot ignore ideas that literally didn't exist till after he had basically already wrapped up production on his movie. The whiplast going on in the trilogy is entirely on the shoulders of TROS and specifically it seems JJ's version of the Ep 9 script (and not the original Trevorrow version assuming that's real).
People keep beating the "how dare they start the trilogy without a coherent plan for it ahead of time" drum when our beloved OT was not made that way.
There is a core difference though - the original trilogy is written by one person. Yes, three different directors, but written by one person and their vision is dominant throughout all three movies. You can see where the chopping and changing as they went along affected it, like the kiss between Luke and Leia, but there is nothing anywhere near as structurally problematic as the sequel trilogy. Nothing.
The screenplays of the OT films differed.
ANH: George Lucas
ESB: Leigh Brackett & Lawrence Kasdan
ROTJ: Lawrence Kasdan & George Lucas
George Lucas is credited with the story for each of the OT films, but he's also credited as the sole writer of all the prequel films. I don't think you can really argue that's a measure of what makes the plot of a trilogy good.
I would absolutely argue that sort of coherence is one measure of what makes a trilogy's plot good, among others. The prequels had a vastly more cohesive and consistent plot than the ST did. They were poorly written individually, but at least they never once contradicted themselves or got confused about what story they wanted to tell.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited June 2020
There is no whiplash between TFA and TLJ though. TLJ builds naturally from where TFA ends. It in fact builds from it directly since the movie starts like a couple of hours later or something.
I really can't agree with this anymore. I think, if I looked up my old posts, I might have argued the opposite before but in the context of the entire story I don't know if I can.
And shit, if you believe the leaked Trevorrow script is real, the guy who was actually supposed to be doing the followup to TLJ wrote his film to build off what TLJ had done.
I think I need to watch TLJ again, but you don't have to believe anything. It's confirmed to be real.
Again, we could have had Hux commit lightsaber Seppukku! Seriously!
No, see, you're still working from a flawed premise: That George Lucas had a plan for an overarching narrative for the OT from the very beginning. I know it's the common myth that's repeated nowadays but it has as much in common with reality as the official line from Disney on how their empire was created.
That's incorrect again!
Here's what I wrote!
There is a core difference though - the original trilogy is written by one person. Yes, three different directors, but written by one person and their vision is dominant throughout all three movies. You can see where the chopping and changing as they went along affected it, like the kiss between Luke and Leia, but there is nothing anywhere near as structurally problematic as the sequel trilogy. Nothing.
George still wrote the bulk of the story and idea for the three original movies. Other people often adapted and IMO, arguably made it what it was as is the case with the other directors of Episode V and VI. It doesn't matter if he wrote it all at once. If he wrote it in bits and pieces. It does not matter if he wrote it while wearing a hat, petting a cat and going out to bat. It does. Not. Matter. The point is that you're still looking at three movies, where one person with creative input was involved across all of them but a lot of equally talented people were like "No, don't do that, it's dumb".
For example, nobody could stand up in Episode IX and go "Abrams, making Kylo Ren and Rey kiss in a romance is dumb".
You seem to not be getting that while a lot of people had input into the original trilogy, for the better it should be said, it's not at all the same as the situation with Episode VIII and IX. Or even the prequels, where you can see how badly Lucas does when he doesn't have other people telling him no and opposing certain terrible ideas. This doesn't change that there was a narrative and story across all three movies that everyone worked from, created by George Lucas.
The implication there is clear. If you didn't mean it to be there, that's fine. But then... why should they have had the ST planned out from the start, if Lucas hadn't had it? And if it not being planned out from the start is indeed a mistake... why is it Rian Johnson's fault, and not JJ Abrams' fault?
No, see, you're still working from a flawed premise: That George Lucas had a plan for an overarching narrative for the OT from the very beginning. I know it's the common myth that's repeated nowadays but it has as much in common with reality as the official line from Disney on how their empire was created.
That's incorrect again!
Here's what I wrote!
There is a core difference though - the original trilogy is written by one person. Yes, three different directors, but written by one person and their vision is dominant throughout all three movies. You can see where the chopping and changing as they went along affected it, like the kiss between Luke and Leia, but there is nothing anywhere near as structurally problematic as the sequel trilogy. Nothing.
George still wrote the bulk of the story and idea for the three original movies. Other people often adapted and IMO, arguably made it what it was as is the case with the other directors of Episode V and VI. It doesn't matter if he wrote it all at once. If he wrote it in bits and pieces. It does not matter if he wrote it while wearing a hat, petting a cat and going out to bat. It does. Not. Matter. The point is that you're still looking at three movies, where one person with creative input was involved across all of them but a lot of equally talented people were like "No, don't do that, it's dumb".
For example, nobody could stand up in Episode IX and go "Abrams, making Kylo Ren and Rey kiss in a romance is dumb".
You seem to not be getting that while a lot of people had input into the original trilogy, for the better it should be said, it's not at all the same as the situation with Episode VIII and IX. Or even the prequels, where you can see how badly Lucas does when he doesn't have other people telling him no and opposing certain terrible ideas. This doesn't change that there was a narrative and story across all three movies that everyone worked from, created by George Lucas.
The implication there is clear. If you didn't mean it to be there, that's fine. But then... why should they have had the ST planned out from the start, if Lucas hadn't had it? And if it not being planned out from the start is indeed a mistake... why is it Rian Johnson's fault, and not JJ Abrams' fault?
No, there was no implication. One writer doesn't mean they did it all from the start. It just meant they had one person writing it. That's just a simple statement of fact. I'm not saying George is the main reason the OT was successful, because you only need to look at the immensely talented people around him who clearly said no to him on certain things, but it doesn't hurt to be going off one persons ideas - even if they are developing them as they go along.
How did not having all three movies for the Sequel Trilogy being planned out work out for them - or at the very least have just one creative writer/vision? Also I'm not blaming Johnson at all. This is a clear case of Disney royally screwing up and completely ruining any chance of the sequel trilogy having a chance of being coherent through gross mismanagement. If you told me I could have the second Star Wars movie and asked me to write it, I would have absolutely gone all in on the kind of deconstruction that Johnson did. The problem is where they then give it back to Abrams and he basically does the complete opposite of the second movie. Even when you look at Trevorrow's script, you can see major differences in tone and style - but at least I think Trevorrow's ideas would have worked better with the TLJ than what Rise of Skywalker ended up being
Edit: Also you seem to have not picked up on that I think Rise of Skywalker is easily the absolute worst Star Wars movie by a considerable margin. I absolutely do think Abrams is at fault for the disaster of a last movie, but he was only allowed to do that because of Disney not taking any control over what the trilogy was supposed to do story wise over three movies. My opinion is that Abrams should have followed the story of The Last Jedi, without trying to go back and make all his mysteries from the Force Awakens relevant after TLJ more or less binned them.
*snip* We can almost cut TLJ out of the three movies and I'm not sure you would have any less incoherent and nonsensical a story.*snap*
Sure you could, if you hate things like character development and giving them motives.
The point is that the trilogy itself is not particularly coherent, not a comment on the individual movie.
Yes.
I liked the Last Jedi and spent a lot of effort on defending it. I did so though, thinking that where it left off could be really great and have some fantastic things to say about Star Wars - particularly in the idea of ditching legacies and that anyone could be great. Ideas that Rise of Skywalker basically completely abandons in making Rey a Palpatine
Like we don't have to speculate anymore. We know what JJ wanted and was thinking. Rise of Skywalker shows us that. One of the core things I found laughable about an otherwise well written essay I linked earlier, was that Abrams had no interest in maintaining anything from the Last Jedi in Skywalker. At the same time, it's very clear that Johnson didn't care about the "mysteries" that JJ set up in awakens. Both movies after Awakens have dramatically antagonistic visions of what things should be, going massively opposite directions and to the detriment of the entire trilogy.
JJ might have had some idea of the solution to his mysteries (fat fucking chance, this is JJ we're talking about*) but to suggest that RJ discarded what was in TFA is beyond that claim. TLJ takes what TFA did and uses it.
There is a core difference though - the original trilogy is written by one person. Yes, three different directors, but written by one person and their vision is dominant throughout all three movies. You can see where the chopping and changing as they went along affected it, like the kiss between Luke and Leia, but there is nothing anywhere near as structurally problematic as the sequel trilogy. Nothing.
Like we don't have to speculate anymore. We know what JJ wanted and was thinking. Rise of Skywalker shows us that. One of the core things I found laughable about an otherwise well written essay I linked earlier, was that Abrams had no interest in maintaining anything from the Last Jedi in Skywalker. At the same time, it's very clear that Johnson didn't care about the "mysteries" that JJ set up in awakens. Both movies after Awakens have dramatically antagonistic visions of what things should be, going massively opposite directions and to the detriment of the entire trilogy.
JJ might have had some idea of the solution to his mysteries (fat fucking chance, this is JJ we're talking about*) but to suggest that RJ discarded what was in TFA is beyond that claim. TLJ takes what TFA did and uses it.
There is a core difference though - the original trilogy is written by one person. Yes, three different directors, but written by one person and their vision is dominant throughout all three movies. You can see where the chopping and changing as they went along affected it, like the kiss between Luke and Leia, but there is nothing anywhere near as structurally problematic as the sequel trilogy. Nothing.
And here i thought that Lawrence Kasdan, Leigh Brakett, Michael Arndt, and George Lucas were all different people
Using your own links:
The Empire Strikes Back, also known as Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, is a 1980 American epic space opera film directed by Irvin Kershner and written by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan, based on a story by George Lucas.
Return of the Jedi (also known as Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi) is a 1983 American epic space opera film directed by Richard Marquand. The screenplay is by Lawrence Kasdan and George Lucas from a story by Lucas, who was also the executive producer.
It's almost like in every case this "George Lucas" fellow wrote the core story that all three movies followed in adapting and creating their screenplays. Either there are three George Lucas', or my point is still correct!
And no, I don't for a second think that Abrams had a defined plan about anything - but I do believe he was silly enough to believe it was an obvious roadmap for anyone to follow.
George Lucas isn't even credited with writing Empire Strikes Back. "based on a story". Please; i have watched enough movies and read enough books to know what that means.
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Correct. Obviously so. To us. To old white business men making decisions about art it makes perfect sense. They are scared of and confused by the modern sociopolitical landscape. They are clueless when it comes to the internet and social media. Remember when they fired Gun because some alt right troll found some old jokes of his that were actually offensive but did not represent his current views at all? Remember when they reversed course because the rest of the internet called that out?
If I was an asian women I'd feel excluded. If I were in a mixed race relationship (particularly black+white) I'd feel excluded.
It was extremely weird and unpleasant, how obvious that felt to me. I was never a fan of Finn and Rey. I don't think every female main character should end up with someone, and I think that an interracial intersex familial friendship is actually really cool and fresh. And I would've been fine with that and I think most people would've felt less weird if they just didn't bring Finn's awkward "we're dying I have something to tell you" in and certainly if they got rid of the conspicuously black person that he ended up with.
But her addition makes his race suddenly feel extremely important in a way it wasn't before and I Did Not Like It.
These people's beliefs are inherently exclusionary. It's how they define themselves. You can't appease them without excluding someone - the very fact that they are being appeased makes their victims feel excluded. And in this case we're literally talking about a minority character being excluded from the story.
Except it doesn't necessarily exclude those people. As we've seen from decades upon decades of film. Just look at the OT. ANH is definitely lacking in the LGBTQ department. Heck, I don't even think ANH has any visible non-white people in it. It never hurt their appeal. These things are not one or the other. You appease the complainers and get both is the idea they go with.
And even if you disagree with that in this day and age, that's certainly how a lot of people in the high-end of the movie industry think. "Race mixing and gayness scare a bunch of people we want to sell things to. Ergo, we cut them out and go back to the default and so we don't get people complaining at us."
Also the alt-right is a specific thing. It does not hold exclusive rights to, say, disliking homosexuality.
For as evil as he is in the first half of the movie, he could have been revealed as the mole and I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.
Christ, Raiders is a great movie.
It does necessarily exclude those things when they were in the prior story. Not every story needs to have those elements but when a story had those elements and they are removed it is so exclusionary.
This is kind of like the British Anti-Semetism we just talked about. Complaining about things Israel does is not anti-Semitic. But if you single out Israel for no reason it in instances it should not have come up makes it so. TFA and TLJ definitely had those elements. Finn pining after Rey and Poe and Finn playing the relationship as gay were not missable in the first two films(the latter of those got a good amount of press even!). The clear reversal on this point, whether they thought it would or not, is exclusionary.
I don't understand the point you're trying to make. So the Disney execs are themselves bigots, not just appeasing them? And some of the bigots in the audience don't technically belong to the alt right ideology? What difference does any of that make? Movies with inadequate diversity do exclude people. Representation means a lot to people in minority groups. No the OT is not diverse enough, especially ANH, but that's a movie from the 70s and so tackling that issue is a different sort of discussion. Right now we're talking about filmmakers from the present day choosing to make their movie less diverse because they perceive diversity as being unwanted controvery.
Richy's argument, at the top of this quote tree, was that there was no way Disney could have decided to (very obviously and ham-handedly) decided to appease complainers because that wouldn't make them money. And this is just completely wrong because mass appeal is generally viewed as hewing to the "default" in society. You appease the complainers, go with what is considered "safe" and that's how you make the most money appealing to the most people.
That's the kind of thinking you can easily see being behind several of the decisions made in TROS. Ditch the implied miscegenation, ditch even the slightest hint of homosexuality, ditch the character the internet hated so much it chased her off the internet, ditch the things people screamed about in endless youtube videos that seem to have absolutely tanked the RT user score of your last film, etc, etc. All those things might offend someone. Play it safe.
There is nothing incompatible about this kind of decision making and your motive being to make all the money. Especially, I would bet, if you are the kind of person up at the top of the production hierarchy for a property like this.
It's kinda funny how kylo takes about 10 times as much time to fly over a stretch of desert than it takes for anyone in this movie to fly from one planet to another.
And then he does nothing, just gets his ship exploded by Rey.
The most defining feature of the Knights of Ren so far is that they roll coal (in space).
How did Rey know and instantly identify Lando?
The extension of the force connection between Rey and kylo is actually a fun thing.
Who the fuck thought that making c3po, the proto-jarjar, central to the plot and give him scenes that are supposed to be emotional and dramatic, while sidelining r2d2, was a good idea.
Felicity has a cool outfit.
What did you think of Babu Frik?
Don't sell Rian Johnson short, he's pretty shit too. "Stuff happens in this movie because the plot requires it! He noticed the blood on her shoe and knew it wasn't something you'd see on a nurse's shoe! Time travel works however the current scene demands it!".
Those movies suck because they clearly didn't have a story written for all three beforehand, made it up as they went and let the directors actively fucking sabotage each other. Someone needs to write these things beforehand. Bring in your directors - here is the story, do the thing. If they don't like it? Fuck off, we're Star Wars / Disney, go do something else because we have people lined up around the block to get in on this.
He was fine. I saw him getting hyped before watching and I kinda expected him to be more... something. Also definitely not better than baby yoda, but he got a lot more screen time so maybe it's unfair to compare.
Still not finished with the movie so maybe there is more of him?
Are you seriously like... complaining about probably the most common detective trope in the world...
I also don't know what the first one refers to but its its TLJ then like... given its Star Wars and what the force is i do not understand the comment.
TLJ did not sabotage TFA and i really do not understand why people think it did
At the time, I glossed over a lot of the issues with TLJ because of the interesting potential direction the last movie could have gone - which is why I liked it. I find them impossible to ignore in the context of the shit show that Rise of Skywalker was. I also can't ignore the major structural and story issues with the trilogy as a whole now that its complete.
Have you watched Rise of Skywalker? Because it's pretty clear from the disaster the three movies are (as a whole) that TFA was "supposed" to have certain plot threads carried on in JJ Abrams mind, which Johnson - however right I think he was - discarded and then JJ attempted to fix (badly) in the third movie.
Like we don't have to speculate anymore. We know what JJ wanted and was thinking. Rise of Skywalker shows us that. One of the core things I found laughable about an otherwise well written essay I linked earlier, was that Abrams had no interest in maintaining anything from the Last Jedi in Skywalker. At the same time, it's very clear that Johnson didn't care about the "mysteries" that JJ set up in awakens. Both movies after Awakens have dramatically antagonistic visions of what things should be, going massively opposite directions and to the detriment of the entire trilogy.
I mean, maybe JJ had some idea of where he wanted it to go. But it's not at all clear any of that was communicated to Johnson. Or if anyone even really knew. And on top of all that, JJ was never supposed to be involved in any of the other movies. You talk here like JJ's ideas were set down somewhere to be followed and Johnson jumped in and changed shit. We pretty clearly know that's not accurate.
You can't sabotage a plan when there's no plan in the first place. TLJ builds off of what TFA sets up. It's not the only way to build off it, but it's a perfectly coherent way to do so. TROS on the other hand does not build off of what TLJ does.
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But there is considerable whiplash in tone, messaging and style between TFA -> TLJ -> RoS. We can almost cut TLJ out of the three movies and I'm not sure you would have any less incoherent and nonsensical a story. To be clear, I don't know if there was any genuine antagonism between the two directors, but the whiplash between the clearly different ideas is hugely detrimental to the sequel trilogy as a whole. It doesn't matter that I liked TLJ and defended it an awful lot, the fact is Rise of Skywalker brings it down with the rest of the entire trilogy. You can't watch a coherent story from Episode VII to Episode IX.
Characters are set back, which is where I disagree about Finn and the fact TLJ plus RoS really does him dirty. Finn is set back character progression wise to running away at the start of TLJ and is relegated to doing an utterly irrelevant side event that results in nothing important whatsoever. He recycles his plot arc from TFA and then by RoS he might as well not exist anymore - even if JJ thinks he brilliantly hinted at him being Force Sensitive in the movie (he didn't). He's a prominent main character in TFA and to see him sidelined, removed from posters and then eventually set to the point of being irrelevantly force pushed away from Rey in RoS was incredibly sad to see.
The flaws in TLJ stand out now that the movie is so tonally and structurally out of whack with VII and IX. While we both can't know if JJ set his ideas down to follow, I think it's pretty clear when you look at RoS that JJ thought he set things up easily to be followed by anyone else. He clearly expected who Rey's parents were to be a big deal. He clearly thought that whoever followed could do something interesting with Snoke. You can see how he thought these things could be used in RoS, which TLJ completely discarded - however much I liked that. The trilogy suffers as a whole, even if I think TLJ is still the movie I liked the most out of the three.
There is a core difference though - the original trilogy is written by one person. Yes, three different directors, but written by one person and their vision is dominant throughout all three movies. You can see where the chopping and changing as they went along affected it, like the kiss between Luke and Leia, but there is nothing anywhere near as structurally problematic as the sequel trilogy. Nothing.
The point being that people hold up the OT as this golden standard but it was a complete fluke
Same reason we hold the PT to a standard it fails to meet - both endeavors were guaranteed trilogies with the backing of billions of dollars and it's a disservice to consumers to hold it to the same standard as a long shot sci fi flick from a relatively unknown director.
Come Overwatch with meeeee
*Not quite said that way of course.
Edit: At some point, I'm going to have to sit down and watch all the movies from I -> IX. I'm curious to see if my opinions on the prequels and episode VIII will have significantly changed now it is "complete".
The screenplays of the OT films differed.
ANH: George Lucas
ESB: Leigh Brackett & Lawrence Kasdan
ROTJ: Lawrence Kasdan & George Lucas
George Lucas is credited with the story for each of the OT films, but he's also credited as the sole writer of all the prequel films. I don't think you can really argue that's a measure of what makes the plot of a trilogy good.
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That's not at all what I am arguing - what I am pointing out is even though the screenplay of ESB wasn't done directly by Lucas, it was still working off the story and ideas he created. It wasn't ANH George Lucas and then the second movie was written with absolutely no input, creative decisions or story from George in the second. Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan were not, in any way, allowed to just do anything they wanted creatively. They still had to work on that movie from the story that George wrote.
You seem to not be getting that while a lot of people had input into the original trilogy, for the better it should be said, it's not at all the same as the situation with Episode VIII and IX. Or even the prequels, where you can see how badly Lucas does when he doesn't have other people telling him no and opposing certain terrible ideas. This doesn't change that there was a narrative and story across all three movies that everyone worked from, created by George Lucas.
There was no such plan for the sequel trilogy. This is known, because each director of every movie was given the authorial intent to do with the plot and story what they wanted. You cannot possibly genuinely argue that's the same as what happened in creating the OT. It's completely disingenuous. George had written out the stories for all three original movies, which were followed and adapted by either himself or others into the original trilogy. There was no overarching story that JJ Abrams wrote that the following directors were to go off. They were allowed to stamp their mark on each movie as they wanted and had total creative freedom. Multiple interviews and statements about the new trilogy prove this.
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That's incorrect again!
Here's what I wrote!
George still wrote the bulk of the story and idea for the three original movies. Other people often adapted and IMO, arguably made it what it was as is the case with the other directors of Episode V and VI. It doesn't matter if he wrote it all at once. If he wrote it in bits and pieces. It does not matter if he wrote it while wearing a hat, petting a cat and going out to bat. It does. Not. Matter. The point is that you're still looking at three movies, where one person with creative input was involved across all of them but a lot of equally talented people were like "No, don't do that, it's dumb".
For example, nobody could stand up in Episode IX and go "Abrams, making Kylo Ren and Rey kiss in a romance is dumb".
There is no whiplash between TFA and TLJ though. TLJ builds naturally from where TFA ends. It in fact builds from it directly since the movie starts like a couple of hours later or something.
Finn, for example, is in fact more accurate to his actual TFA characterization then a lot of people's memory of that characterization. Finn in TFA is all about Rey. Saving Rey, getting Rey out. Her and Poe are basically the only real connections he has with people in his entire life ever and he's all about them. And so the first thing Finn does in TLJ is yell Rey's name and then go off to try and find her. His arc throughout the movie proceeds from there.
The idea that there was some sort of plan that TROS was working from that TLJ ignored is ludicrous because JJ wasn't even supposed to direct the damn film. And shit, if you believe the leaked Trevorrow script is real, the guy who was actually supposed to be doing the followup to TLJ wrote his film to build off what TLJ had done. It is in fact not till after TLJ was already finished and basically set in stone that Trevorrow was let go and JJ was brought back on. Any plans JJ had for Episode 9 were only even started after TLJ was already a completed and finished product. As far as any information I'm aware of, TROS did not even start getting written till after TLJ was done. JJ literally wasn't on the project till then.
The entire argument here just does not make any sense. It doesn't match the facts as far as we know them. It actually violates causality.
Johnson cannot ignore ideas that literally didn't exist till after he had basically already wrapped up production on his movie. The whiplast going on in the trilogy is entirely on the shoulders of TROS and specifically it seems JJ's version of the Ep 9 script (and not the original Trevorrow version assuming that's real).
I would absolutely argue that sort of coherence is one measure of what makes a trilogy's plot good, among others. The prequels had a vastly more cohesive and consistent plot than the ST did. They were poorly written individually, but at least they never once contradicted themselves or got confused about what story they wanted to tell.
I really can't agree with this anymore. I think, if I looked up my old posts, I might have argued the opposite before but in the context of the entire story I don't know if I can.
I think I need to watch TLJ again, but you don't have to believe anything. It's confirmed to be real.
Again, we could have had Hux commit lightsaber Seppukku! Seriously!
The implication there is clear. If you didn't mean it to be there, that's fine. But then... why should they have had the ST planned out from the start, if Lucas hadn't had it? And if it not being planned out from the start is indeed a mistake... why is it Rian Johnson's fault, and not JJ Abrams' fault?
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No, there was no implication. One writer doesn't mean they did it all from the start. It just meant they had one person writing it. That's just a simple statement of fact. I'm not saying George is the main reason the OT was successful, because you only need to look at the immensely talented people around him who clearly said no to him on certain things, but it doesn't hurt to be going off one persons ideas - even if they are developing them as they go along.
How did not having all three movies for the Sequel Trilogy being planned out work out for them - or at the very least have just one creative writer/vision? Also I'm not blaming Johnson at all. This is a clear case of Disney royally screwing up and completely ruining any chance of the sequel trilogy having a chance of being coherent through gross mismanagement. If you told me I could have the second Star Wars movie and asked me to write it, I would have absolutely gone all in on the kind of deconstruction that Johnson did. The problem is where they then give it back to Abrams and he basically does the complete opposite of the second movie. Even when you look at Trevorrow's script, you can see major differences in tone and style - but at least I think Trevorrow's ideas would have worked better with the TLJ than what Rise of Skywalker ended up being
Edit: Also you seem to have not picked up on that I think Rise of Skywalker is easily the absolute worst Star Wars movie by a considerable margin. I absolutely do think Abrams is at fault for the disaster of a last movie, but he was only allowed to do that because of Disney not taking any control over what the trilogy was supposed to do story wise over three movies. My opinion is that Abrams should have followed the story of The Last Jedi, without trying to go back and make all his mysteries from the Force Awakens relevant after TLJ more or less binned them.
Sure you could, if you hate things like character development and giving them motives.
The point is that the trilogy itself is not particularly coherent, not a comment on the individual movie.
Yes.
I liked the Last Jedi and spent a lot of effort on defending it. I did so though, thinking that where it left off could be really great and have some fantastic things to say about Star Wars - particularly in the idea of ditching legacies and that anyone could be great. Ideas that Rise of Skywalker basically completely abandons in making Rey a Palpatine
JJ might have had some idea of the solution to his mysteries (fat fucking chance, this is JJ we're talking about*) but to suggest that RJ discarded what was in TFA is beyond that claim. TLJ takes what TFA did and uses it.
Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi
And here i thought that Lawrence Kasdan, Leigh Brakett, Michael Arndt, and George Lucas were all different people
*Its also highly likely to be nonsense. If JJ had had a plan it would have been a lot more smooth a process to make things work.
Using your own links:
It's almost like in every case this "George Lucas" fellow wrote the core story that all three movies followed in adapting and creating their screenplays. Either there are three George Lucas', or my point is still correct!
And no, I don't for a second think that Abrams had a defined plan about anything - but I do believe he was silly enough to believe it was an obvious roadmap for anyone to follow.