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[Star Wars] so you didn't send the fish Jedi immediately because...?

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  • ObiFettObiFett Use the Force As You WishRegistered User regular
    Richy wrote: »
    I think it's worth pointing out that Abrams only signed on for one film. Similarly, Johnson only signed on for one film.

    They actually did have a Feige-like presence across all of the new Star Wars films - Kathleen Kennedy. I find it really interesting that she seems to completely escape any criticism across multiple iterations of these threads even though the, "They should've had a Kevin Feige!" argument gets leveled seemingly every 10 pages, while Abrams & Johnson each get batted back-and-forth in some kind of blame-game ping pong match.

    I don't know about these threads, but she gets heavily criticized around the web. And she does deserve a lot of the blame - the decision to not have a coherent trilogy arc and instead let each director do whatever the fuck they want is hers, the decision to fire Trevorrow and bring back Abrahms is hers, the decision not to alter TLJ following the death of Fisher and instead have Episode 9 fake her presence is hers.

    As far as I know she wasn't micromanaging. Meaning the reason TRoS is shit aren't her fault, they're Abrahms. And since those are what people in this thread talk and argue about, there's little reason to bring Kennedy into the discussion.

    Seemingly not managing at all is what makes the lack of consistency in the ST her fault. She shouldn't be let off the hook just because she didn't do anything. In fact, she should be taking more responsibility because this expressly happened as a result of her not doing her job.

  • Inquisitor77Inquisitor77 2 x Penny Arcade Fight Club Champion A fixed point in space and timeRegistered User regular
    Richy wrote: »
    I think it's worth pointing out that Abrams only signed on for one film. Similarly, Johnson only signed on for one film.

    They actually did have a Feige-like presence across all of the new Star Wars films - Kathleen Kennedy. I find it really interesting that she seems to completely escape any criticism across multiple iterations of these threads even though the, "They should've had a Kevin Feige!" argument gets leveled seemingly every 10 pages, while Abrams & Johnson each get batted back-and-forth in some kind of blame-game ping pong match.

    I don't know about these threads, but she gets heavily criticized around the web. And she does deserve a lot of the blame - the decision to not have a coherent trilogy arc and instead let each director do whatever the fuck they want is hers, the decision to fire Trevorrow and bring back Abrahms is hers, the decision not to alter TLJ following the death of Fisher and instead have Episode 9 fake her presence is hers.

    As far as I know she wasn't micromanaging. Meaning the reason TRoS is shit aren't her fault, they're Abrahms. And since those are what people in this thread talk and argue about, there's little reason to bring Kennedy into the discussion.

    I think there's a pretty broad swath of area between micromanaging and not managing at all. Also, it begs the question of why you have a position, with the corresponding authority and financial compensation, if you are able to abdicate responsibility entirely and let the blame fall on the people you empowered to do the job. At the very least, you put them in that job in the first place, so your supposed "only" decision was ultimately the wrong one.

    Someone at her level or higher had the authority to set different timelines as well - meaning the endless march towards "1 movie every 2 years" could have been stretched a bit for the latter two movies in order to spend more time improving the quality of the final products. And there's the whole mess where people were constantly being shuffled around, along with the final decision to bring J.J. back, which again brings up the question of management and their decision-making.

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    In the end, you can complain she didn't plan things out enough but that doesn't actually matter that much. Because you don't need to plan shit out. The OT wasn't planned out and mostly worked out fine. And the ways in which it fails are not really the fault of a lack of planning.

    The truth is a ton of stuff is written/created instalment by instalment. And it works. But the key is you have to follow the basic rule of improv: "Yes, and" and not "No". You have to take what's already been done and build on it. You have to actually try to make the whole thing coherent when you add the next entry.

    That's why JJ and the rest of the people responsible for TROS should get the majority of the blame. Because they didn't have to fuck up the last instalment. They could have built on what TFA and TLJ set up. Fucking Colin Trevorrow seemed to understand this just fine. Regardless of the actual quality of his script, it built on what had come before.

    The people who made TROS didn't have to fuck it up. A lack of an overarching plan doesn't force them to fuck it up. They did that all on their own.

  • jothkijothki Registered User regular
    Nosf wrote: »
    Oh well, at least with Finn and Poe, it's a better romance flick than Twilight.

    The real question is, is AotC a better romance flick than Twilight?

  • Atlas in ChainsAtlas in Chains Registered User regular
    The OT had 3 years between each release. The ST had 2 years between each release. The OT and ST do not have the same level of planning.

  • Inquisitor77Inquisitor77 2 x Penny Arcade Fight Club Champion A fixed point in space and timeRegistered User regular
    Again, if that's the case then why was she paid so much money and given the title if she was just going to abdicate responsibility?

    The idea that you can have someone in management whose sole responsibility is "empowering the people below them" and then subsequently not getting any blame when the shit hits the fan is an example of parasitic, unaccountable leadership. It begs the question of why the position exists if it is allowed to operate in such a manner. She got paid a ton of money to shepherd these films. And they have very clearly failed in some very significant ways - and not just the main sequel trilogy.

    This isn't a case of either/or. There is very clearly plenty of blame to go around. Saying Kennedy messed up doesn't mean that Abrams didn't. I think it's fair to say that she has plenty of responsibility for the end results, even if others ultimately had more direct day-to-day control.

  • Local H JayLocal H Jay Registered User regular
    They had more space between movies because CGI didn't exist yet. I'm not saying it didn't improve the movies, the effects were well worth it. But the issue with the ST probably can't be distilled into one decision or one person fucking up. It was a long series of fuckups that produced the movies. People love to point fingers but literally everyone involved is equally responsible, from Kennedey, to Lucas, to all the directors, writers and powers that be.

    I do think the ST movies, atleast the first two, had engaging characters and some neat setpieces. But more transparently than ever, it showed that Star Wars is just a merch machine that is trying to spit out as much as it can to soak up as much in return as possible. And I'm saying this as someone who liked the ST.

    I think it's fair to say it was a bad idea to rush into making it so quickly, in terms of time when Lucasfilm was bought to getting TFA together. The pacing of TFA almost reflects that, this insane rush to get from area to area, when you just wanna marinate in the fact that Han and Leia are back on screen...

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    Again, if that's the case then why was she paid so much money and given the title if she was just going to abdicate responsibility?

    The idea that you can have someone in management whose sole responsibility is "empowering the people below them" and then subsequently not getting any blame when the shit hits the fan is an example of parasitic, unaccountable leadership. It begs the question of why the position exists if it is allowed to operate in such a manner. She got paid a ton of money to shepherd these films. And they have very clearly failed in some very significant ways - and not just the main sequel trilogy.

    This isn't a case of either/or. There is very clearly plenty of blame to go around. Saying Kennedy messed up doesn't mean that Abrams didn't. I think it's fair to say that she has plenty of responsibility for the end results, even if others ultimately had more direct day-to-day control.

    It doesn't matter how much she got paid. Who gives a fuck?

    In the end, a lack of someone else making a plan is not an excuse for making a bad movie. Someone having an overarcing plan all set up for you to work off of is not a prerequisite for making a good final instalment in the trilogy. They could have made a good Ep 9 regardless of how little any of this was planned out.

    But they didn't.

  • AegeriAegeri Tiny wee bacteriums Plateau of LengRegistered User regular
    I don't think we can blame Lucas this time. Lucas actually wrote a full treatment for the sequel trilogy of movies, which followed the kids of Luke, Leia, Han and so on. It also had a lot of bizarre shit about the Ancient Order of the Whills and apparently, was going to follow the idea that Midichlorians are somehow manipulating the force for their own ends or something. Either way, an entire trilogy about midichlorians would have been god awful, so I'm very glad the entire thing was thrown in the bin.

    The Roleplayer's Guild: My blog for roleplaying games, advice and adventuring.
  • SimpsoniaSimpsonia Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »

    The truth is a ton of stuff is written/created instalment by instalment. And it works. But the key is you have to follow the basic rule of improv: "Yes, and" and not "No".

    No, the truth is it works sometimes. And a lot of time times it fails spectacularly, even for properties that started off very bright (see: Lost, Heroes, The Matrix act 2 and 3, True Blood, Game of Thrones, the last act of Battlestar Galactica, Dexter, et al. Just because the realities of television writing force installment writing, doesn't mean for what was one of the most expensive media franchise sales in history should have been treated the same way. Oh, and the company that bought it had a similar interconnected franchise that was fully mapped out and had just finished its fifth movie to great reception with immediate plans for another six more mapped out movies.

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    edited June 2020
    Simpsonia wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »

    The truth is a ton of stuff is written/created instalment by instalment. And it works. But the key is you have to follow the basic rule of improv: "Yes, and" and not "No".

    No, the truth is it works sometimes. And a lot of time times it fails spectacularly, even for properties that started off very bright (see: Lost, Heroes, The Matrix act 2 and 3, True Blood, Game of Thrones, the last act of Battlestar Galactica, Dexter, et al. Just because the realities of television writing force installment writing, doesn't mean for what was one of the most expensive media franchise sales in history should have been treated the same way. Oh, and the company that bought it had a similar interconnected franchise that was fully mapped out and had just finished its fifth movie to great reception with immediate plans for another six more mapped out movies.

    I never said it always worked, so I've no idea what you are going on about here. But it does work. It's been done plenty of times before. A plan is not required to make it work.

    And imo a key is that you have to try and build off of what's come before. You have to actually try and make it all work. That attitude is necessary but not sufficient. You can fuck up making your thing in all sorts of other ways too after all. The PT after all seemed to mostly have a plan, I guess. And they fucking sucked.

    Battlestar Galactica is actually a great example of this kind of problem. The biggest issues with BSG in the end were that RDM just could not maintain the discipline to pick an idea and stick with it and instead went off and pulled shit out of his ass constantly and so the whole house of cards eventually falls apart when you realise there's no answers to the questions raised.

    For an alternative example, Babylon 5 is a show that feels like it all fits together in the end even though a ton of it (way more then most fans of the show suspect) was written on the fly. But JMS tried really hard to make most of the pieces fit together and so it feels complete and cohesive.

    shryke on
  • Commander ZoomCommander Zoom Registered User regular
    They had more space between movies because CGI didn't exist yet. I'm not saying it didn't improve the movies, the effects were well worth it. But the issue with the ST probably can't be distilled into one decision or one person fucking up. It was a long series of fuckups that produced the movies. People love to point fingers but literally everyone involved is equally responsible, from Kennedey, to Lucas, to all the directors, writers and powers that be.

    I do think the ST movies, atleast the first two, had engaging characters and some neat setpieces. But more transparently than ever, it showed that Star Wars is just a merch machine that is trying to spit out as much as it can to soak up as much in return as possible. And I'm saying this as someone who liked the ST.

    I think it's fair to say it was a bad idea to rush into making it so quickly, in terms of time when Lucasfilm was bought to getting TFA together. The pacing of TFA almost reflects that, this insane rush to get from area to area, when you just wanna marinate in the fact that Han and Leia are back on screen...

    And then ROS just turns that up past 11 to plaid, because there's so much stuff, so much spectacle, so much questionable fan service that JJ wants to cram into two(plus) hours, because this is IT, this is the END, and it's alllllll gotta go in there.

  • The WolfmanThe Wolfman Registered User regular
    If your original "plan" is to have 3 different writers/directors (now obviously two, but still) make your trilogy, then you need some plan. You don't need to have an entire bible printed out, but you need some bare minimum glue binding the whole thing. One person making shit up as they go along is one thing. 3/2 people doing so, and you get... well this.

    Here's a wild and wacky analogy/example. There's a cooking channel on Youtube called Sortedfood. One of the shticks they do is a "Pass it on" relay challenge, where 5 cooks (2 professional chefs and 3 "normals") take turns making one dish, and they don't get to communicate at all, just build off what the last guy left behind. If you've got 15 minutes to kill:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3XQm0dYADc

    "The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    Not really an apt analogy though. Because the person making the next film knows what the person before them has done.

  • AegeriAegeri Tiny wee bacteriums Plateau of LengRegistered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    Not really an apt analogy though. Because the person making the next film knows what the person before them has done.

    Yeah by all accounts Johnson was just writing the second movie with almost no communication about what TFA was about.

    The Roleplayer's Guild: My blog for roleplaying games, advice and adventuring.
  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Aegeri wrote: »
    It's also the beginning of his complete erasure as an important and central main character, which Rise of Skywalker completes, he's instantly introduced as a buffoon with a comedy element attached to it and then as the audience surrogate for "Guy who hasn't got a clue how the galaxy works" as he's berated by Rose Tico.

    Rose Tico is the audience surrogate. We're 7 films deep by this point we know how the universe works.
    There is no possible way to read any scene in TFA as setting up any kind of romance, while this is clearly established in The Last Jedi (along with the ridiculous idea of redeeming Kylo Ren).

    TLJ shut both of those ideas down pretty hard. So the idea that RoS "still went through with them" doesn't make sense to me as you've constructed it.

    wbBv3fj.png
  • Atlas in ChainsAtlas in Chains Registered User regular
    Rose is in no way the audience surrogate character.

  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Who do you think the Audience Surrogate of ANH is?

    wbBv3fj.png
  • Commander ZoomCommander Zoom Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Who do you think the Audience Surrogate of ANH is?

    Luke Skywalker, 100% no question.

  • The WolfmanThe Wolfman Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    Not really an apt analogy though. Because the person making the next film knows what the person before them has done.

    I'd really suggest watching the video if you got the time. Because the person up next absolutely knows what the last one has done. They've just no idea what the intent was.

    Chef 1: I'll lay this out, hopefully they'll get exactly what to do with it.
    Chef 2: What the hell is this and what am I supposed to do with it?!

    There was one video where one person laid out some batter but never got to fully use. Next chef comes in and hilariously has no idea it was even batter to begin with.

    This one was especially great, because halfway through, Chef #3 just says "Fuck whatever is going on here. I'm making a cloud egg!".

    "The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Who do you think the Audience Surrogate of ANH is?

    Luke Skywalker, 100% no question.

    Its Han Solo...

    wbBv3fj.png
  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    Not really an apt analogy though. Because the person making the next film knows what the person before them has done.

    I'd really suggest watching the video if you got the time. Because the person up next absolutely knows what the last one has done. They've just no idea what the intent was.

    Chef 1: I'll lay this out, hopefully they'll get exactly what to do with it.
    Chef 2: What the hell is this and what am I supposed to do with it?!

    There was one video where one person laid out some batter but never got to fully use. Next chef comes in and hilariously has no idea it was even batter to begin with.

    This one was especially great, because halfway through, Chef #3 just says "Fuck whatever is going on here. I'm making a cloud egg!".

    Unfortunately the analogy is more like each chef makes a course for a meal knowing what the prior course was. The chef isn’t going to be like “the fuck is a Cobb salad?!” Unless they’re incompetent

    wbBv3fj.png
  • Inquisitor77Inquisitor77 2 x Penny Arcade Fight Club Champion A fixed point in space and timeRegistered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    Again, if that's the case then why was she paid so much money and given the title if she was just going to abdicate responsibility?

    The idea that you can have someone in management whose sole responsibility is "empowering the people below them" and then subsequently not getting any blame when the shit hits the fan is an example of parasitic, unaccountable leadership. It begs the question of why the position exists if it is allowed to operate in such a manner. She got paid a ton of money to shepherd these films. And they have very clearly failed in some very significant ways - and not just the main sequel trilogy.

    This isn't a case of either/or. There is very clearly plenty of blame to go around. Saying Kennedy messed up doesn't mean that Abrams didn't. I think it's fair to say that she has plenty of responsibility for the end results, even if others ultimately had more direct day-to-day control.

    It doesn't matter how much she got paid. Who gives a fuck?

    In the end, a lack of someone else making a plan is not an excuse for making a bad movie. Someone having an overarcing plan all set up for you to work off of is not a prerequisite for making a good final instalment in the trilogy. They could have made a good Ep 9 regardless of how little any of this was planned out.

    But they didn't.

    You know what I find interesting is that nowhere have I ever argued that "lack of a plan" was the problem.

  • Atlas in ChainsAtlas in Chains Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Who do you think the Audience Surrogate of ANH is?

    Luke Skywalker, 100% no question.

    Its Han Solo...

    I don't think you know what an audience surrogate is. When Obi Wan is explaining the Force, he's speaking to us, the audience, through Luke, the surrogate. When Luke is describing Tatooine and the Empire, he's talking to us, through Threepio. The audience surrogate is the one asking the questions. It's not Han.

  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    edited June 2020
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Who do you think the Audience Surrogate of ANH is?

    Luke Skywalker, 100% no question.

    Its Han Solo...

    I don't think you know what an audience surrogate is. When Obi Wan is explaining the Force, he's speaking to us, the audience, through Luke, the surrogate. When Luke is describing Tatooine and the Empire, he's talking to us, through Threepio. The audience surrogate is the one asking the questions. It's not Han.

    The audience surrogate is the lens through which we see the movie. Luke, the farmboy dork, is not that character. Han, the guy who looks, speaks, and acts like every other 70s hero is. He says “its OK to be skeptical about this stuff, see I live here and I am also skeptical and also hella fucking cool”.

    Though it makes sense to forget this since few of us are ~61 or older

    Edit: To explain the "audience surrogate" is not the "main character" but rather a character which has a background and outlook on the world similar to the audience. Finn is... definitely not that character. We aren't coming into this movie with no clue how the world works. None of us were raised as child soldiers and just coming into the world without understanding anything about it. This is the 7th movie. We know what the force is and how it operates, we are a cog in the machine doing what we can rather than a big damn hero. We find disillusionment when our hero's milkshake duck themselves.... We are no longer the cool kids that have to be convinced to come along on an adventure. We are nerds, we are Rose Tico.

    Goumindong on
    wbBv3fj.png
  • AegeriAegeri Tiny wee bacteriums Plateau of LengRegistered User regular
    edited June 2020
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Aegeri wrote: »
    It's also the beginning of his complete erasure as an important and central main character, which Rise of Skywalker completes, he's instantly introduced as a buffoon with a comedy element attached to it and then as the audience surrogate for "Guy who hasn't got a clue how the galaxy works" as he's berated by Rose Tico.

    Rose Tico is the audience surrogate. We're 7 films deep by this point we know how the universe works.

    I firmly disagree with that in every way. Finn is clearly been de-main-protagonisted to being clueless guy that needs someone else to tell him what’s going on.

    We get to the point in Rise where things he has to say are so unimportant, they are completely discarded. But his slide into irrelevance begins in The Last Jedi.
    There is no possible way to read any scene in TFA as setting up any kind of romance, while this is clearly established in The Last Jedi (along with the ridiculous idea of redeeming Kylo Ren).

    TLJ shut both of those ideas down pretty hard. So the idea that RoS "still went through with them" doesn't make sense to me as you've constructed it.

    No it doesn’t!!!! TLJ actually sets it up because Rian Johnson was asked to by Colin Trevorrow to do so, as it was a part of his script for Episode IX! It does the opposite - opening up the romance and his possible redemption plot.

    Aegeri on
    The Roleplayer's Guild: My blog for roleplaying games, advice and adventuring.
  • Commander ZoomCommander Zoom Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Who do you think the Audience Surrogate of ANH is?

    Luke Skywalker, 100% no question.

    Its Han Solo...

    I don't think you know what an audience surrogate is. When Obi Wan is explaining the Force, he's speaking to us, the audience, through Luke, the surrogate. When Luke is describing Tatooine and the Empire, he's talking to us, through Threepio. The audience surrogate is the one asking the questions. It's not Han.

    The audience surrogate is the lens through which we see the movie. Luke, the farmboy dork, is not that character. Han, the guy who looks, speaks, and acts like every other 70s hero is. He says “its OK to be skeptical about this stuff, see I live here and I am also skeptical and also hella fucking cool”.

    Though it makes sense to forget this since few of us are ~61 or older

    Edit: To explain the "audience surrogate" is not the "main character" but rather a character which has a background and outlook on the world similar to the audience. Finn is... definitely not that character. We aren't coming into this movie with no clue how the world works. None of us were raised as child soldiers and just coming into the world without understanding anything about it. This is the 7th movie. We know what the force is and how it operates, we are a cog in the machine doing what we can rather than a big damn hero. We find disillusionment when our hero's milkshake duck themselves.... We are no longer the cool kids that have to be convinced to come along on an adventure. We are nerds, we are Rose Tico.

    Dude. I was 7 in '77, I was right in the damn crosshairs for that movie, I was all into Luke Skywalker, and you are being a tremendous goose.

  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    What scene in particular makes you think that there is a possibility of a romance subplot in RoS by the end of TFA? Is it the scene where Snoke skeeves on Rey and then after dispatching Snoke and his guards Kylo skeeves on Rey and gets rejected hella hard? Or maybe the one where Luke Skywalker tells you that you Kylo Ren is definitely not able to be saved, Leia says her son is gone, and then, after failing to turn him back to the light there is a big old fight about how evil he is and Luke Skywalker is all "nah you can't be saved"?

    Cause i am getting a very different vibe from those scenes than you are

    wbBv3fj.png
  • AegeriAegeri Tiny wee bacteriums Plateau of LengRegistered User regular
    edited June 2020
    I am just telling you what the original director of Episode IX asked Johnson to do. It is absolutely the case that the scene where they were reaching out to one another is 100%, word of god, intended to be the start of their romance. This is confirmed in Rise where Rey shouts out something like “I wanted to take your hand, BENS HAND” or whatever.

    Aegeri on
    The Roleplayer's Guild: My blog for roleplaying games, advice and adventuring.
  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Scenes in Rise of Skywalker are not scenes in TLJ which establish that TLJ was opening the door...

    Unless you're saying that RJ didn't do that and this was him doing it? i don't know

    wbBv3fj.png
  • AegeriAegeri Tiny wee bacteriums Plateau of LengRegistered User regular
    edited June 2020
    No, Johnson absolutely did open the door on two things that were desired in Episode IX: A romance between Rey and Kylo Ren and B) Kylo having a redemption arc. That whole thing is a romance arc. Yes it sucks. Yes it’s atrocious. Yes it is there and the third movie does continue it.

    Again, he was asked to by Colin Trevorrow as that was going to be a big part of Episode IX in his script. Personally after TFA I have no idea why Abrams would go along with it, but he did.

    And that is 100% completely on Abrams.

    Aegeri on
    The Roleplayer's Guild: My blog for roleplaying games, advice and adventuring.
  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    But the arc is over at the end of TLJ. If its not is there like... a scene in the movie that shows that?

    Like... I get that treverow asked him to set him up but is there evidence it was actually done?

    wbBv3fj.png
  • CristovalCristoval Registered User regular
    The arc Trevorrow asked to set up and include was in regards to Rey and Poe, not Kylo Ren. He asked RJ to include a scene at the end where the two of them meet and that is in the movie ("Hi, Im Rey” ”I know"). They have sort of a will they won't they relationship in Duel of the Fates but Rey abandons it to go defeat Kylo alone.

  • AegeriAegeri Tiny wee bacteriums Plateau of LengRegistered User regular
    Cristoval wrote: »
    The arc Trevorrow asked to set up and include was in regards to Rey and Poe, not Kylo Ren. He asked RJ to include a scene at the end where the two of them meet and that is in the movie ("Hi, Im Rey” ”I know"). They have sort of a will they won't they relationship in Duel of the Fates but Rey abandons it to go defeat Kylo alone.
    Yes I have confused my people. It was Kennedy who wanted more Kylo/Rey and Trevorrow who wanted to set up Rey/Poe.

    God this was a mess.

    The Roleplayer's Guild: My blog for roleplaying games, advice and adventuring.
  • daveNYCdaveNYC Why universe hate Waspinator? Registered User regular
    I'm pretty much OK with throwing Kennedy under the bus for the situation with the Star Wars franchise. Disney has put out five movies so far, and most of them have had serious production problems. The two standalone movies had writer and director changes plus piles of re-shoots, and the main trilogy started with Abram's ANH knockoff and ended with Abram's whatever the hell he and the guy who wrote Man of Steel and Justice League were trying to do in RoS. In between you have what can be argued is a good movie (I didn't like it, but shit, at least it had original ideas and was actually trying to tell a story and shiz), but seriously, we're talking about the flagship product of what Disney is clearly hoping to be their flagship franchise (Marvel is good and all, but I get the vibe that the Disney guys are a little iffy at how relatively independent they are and want something that they have more control over). It's like Kennedy and the Disney higher ups thought that since Marvel is able to pop out two or three movies every year and can make bank on something where two of the characters are Tree and Rabbit, then they should be able to put out a movie a year with minimal thought or effort because it's freaking Star Wars, how hard can it be? But even the most bankable franchise in existence doesn't mean you can totally slack on things like story and characters.

    To crib from Spiderman, "With great paycheck comes great responsibility." Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that's the opposite of the way the world works.

    And I guess to continue to dog on the ST, a lot of it was all over the place. At the end of TFA, Kylo was basically done as someone who could be redeemed. He murdered his father, worse, he murdered Han Solo. Yeah, you can come back from that, maybe, but you'd have to spend a good chunk of the next two movies setting that up. Then you have TLJ, which very much was setting up some weird quasi-romance or attraction between Rey and Kylo, and then shut it down hard when they chose to go their separate ways. All good other than that weird attraction thing the movie was doing to setup that climactic scene. Then RoS and all of it's WTF-ness. Which I think is the problem with the lack of a plan for the ST. They [/i]knew[/i] that they were going to be making three movies, but it looks like they didn't even bother to sketch out character arcs for the mains. Finn for example has an arc in the first two movies, but they couldn't even commit to whether or not he was force sensitive. The Force Awakens -> Finn breaking his conditioning, that's kinda a big thing IMO, but then TLJ just ignores that completely and RoS has that stupid thing where Finn wants to tell Rey something but never does (WTF Abrams). Maybe some of this is on Abrams deciding that he was going to do whatever he wanted, characters be damned, or just the fact that Abrams things that character development is some sort of VFX that can be added in post, but TFA had Kylo clearly choosing Team Evil only to have TLJ try and make him sympathetic just enough to set up him choosing Team Evil a second time. Plus both movies squandered Gwendoline Christie as if the writer's bonuses depended on it. TLJ did a better job, but I really think she should have stuck around for the third movie and gone all Ahab on Finn. You could have had a nice bit where she is obsessed with catching the traitor and Finn steps up to use himself as bait in a decoy move that causes her to send in forces that otherwise would be guarding something or other important.

    Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
  • Doctor DetroitDoctor Detroit Registered User regular
    If anyone thought there was no chance at all of Ben Solo, Han and Leia’s only child, getting—at worst—a Vader-like redemption (turns back to the Light and dies right away), I would question if they ever saw a Star Wars before.

  • daveNYCdaveNYC Why universe hate Waspinator? Registered User regular
    If anyone thought there was no chance at all of Ben Solo, Han and Leia’s only child, getting—at worst—a Vader-like redemption (turns back to the Light and dies right away), I would question if they ever saw a Star Wars before.

    Good writing needs a bit more behind it than, "Because it's a Star Wars movie." RotJ made a point of showing Vader as conflicted, the last shot of him in ESB set that up, and even then he watched his only son get electrozapped for a good number of seconds before he made his choice. TFA had Han hold out his hand to Kylo and get killed for his efforts. TLJ spent a lot of screen time trying to make Kylo somewhat sympathetic only to have him reject Rey's offer of a different path. You give a character like that two chances to do the right thing and you need some damn good writing if you want him to pull of a heel-face turn. Instead what they got was some damn good acting by Ford and Driver that managed to carry the scene, but the whole thing of hearing Leia -> getting stabbed -> getting healed -> ghost dad talk that turns him around just wasn't good. It worked in the moment because Ford and Driver brought the A game, but writingwise, it was pretty weak.

    Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
  • CristovalCristoval Registered User regular
    Under Kathleen Kennedy we got a god tier Star Wars movie with The Last Jedi, an actually good nostalgia trip with Rogue One, and a fun space romp with Force Awakens, not to mention Mandalorian and the continuation of the Clone Wars series and Rebels. The only trip up was RoS and to a lesser extent Solo, but that was still pretty fun for what it was. I'm willing to cut her a bit of slack.

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    edited June 2020
    If anyone thought there was no chance at all of Ben Solo, Han and Leia’s only child, getting—at worst—a Vader-like redemption (turns back to the Light and dies right away), I would question if they ever saw a Star Wars before.

    There was obviously a chance of it because Kylo Ren is explicitly a wannabe Vader and so Vader's arc looms large over his entire character. And alo just the general trend toward nostalgia and fanservice and all that stuff. But in terms of the story, TLJ addresses the issue and shuts the door pretty damn firmly on the whole idea. The obviousness of the whole thing is why it does that. It's pretty clear Johnson and co knew this was a thing floating around that the story needed to address at some point and they decided to tackle it head-on and resolve it.

    And then TROS goes back to that well because, well, it's a badly written film that wants to either undo or ignore the previous entry in the trilogy.

    shryke on
  • NightslyrNightslyr Registered User regular
    Kylo's redemption arc is bad not just because it's unoriginal, but because it's uninteresting.

    Some people aren't actually secretly good deep down inside.
    Some people can't see the error of their ways (or even consider hurting and oppressing people to be an error to begin with).

This discussion has been closed.