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chimericoncogene wrote: 2020-05-27 01:10pm Vendetta... the thing is, Star Wars movies are movies. There is only so much that can be conveyed on-screen. In a novel, you can talk about little things in the background, little tidbits of history... on screen, a lot of that gets lost too easily.

Darth Yan wrote: 2020-05-27 02:36pm Setting IS part of world building and Star Wars has THAT nailed down pat in the OT.

ray245 wrote: 2020-05-27 02:53pm

Darth Yan wrote: 2020-05-27 02:36pm Setting IS part of world building and Star Wars has THAT nailed down pat in the OT.

It did, but at the same time the setting had to be expanded if you are going to tell additional stories about the GFFA. Which was what the Sequels failed to do.

The sequels wished things could go back to being nice and simple like the OT, when it really shouldn't be doing so to begin with. I find the lack of world-building in the sequels to be akin to people who wished "let's go back to the good old days when things were simpler".

The Romulan Republic wrote: 2020-05-27 03:10pm And of course, there's HUGE overlap between people who pine for the "good old days" when everything was "simpler" and racists/misogynists/homophobes/xenophobes, because "the good old days" were fucking horrible, even compared to the present, for most people who weren't a rich straight Christian white man.

And no, this is not me saying every single person who disliked the ST is a bigot. But it shouldn't be surprising that the Alt. Reich/Trumpers were able to piggyback their hate campaign so effectively on the grievances of "traditionalist" fans pining for the "good old days".

ray245 wrote: 2020-05-27 03:53pm

The Romulan Republic wrote: 2020-05-27 03:10pm And of course, there's HUGE overlap between people who pine for the "good old days" when everything was "simpler" and racists/misogynists/homophobes/xenophobes, because "the good old days" were fucking horrible, even compared to the present, for most people who weren't a rich straight Christian white man.

And no, this is not me saying every single person who disliked the ST is a bigot. But it shouldn't be surprising that the Alt. Reich/Trumpers were able to piggyback their hate campaign so effectively on the grievances of "traditionalist" fans pining for the "good old days".

It's more about the pinning for a return to "your" childhood, a time when everyone loved Star Wars. This is why in general, filmmakers who were massive fans of an original movie trying to do a remake rarely works as well as it did. Peter Jackson King Kong for example, did not do all that well because it gave far too much reference to the old Kong movies.

The people Disney hired to salvage both Solo and Rogue 1 for instance, are all older directors who were not fans of the original movies, because they saw them as adults instead of watching it as a child. As someone working in the creative industry, nostalgia is more of a hindrance rather than a strength. It only works when your audience shares the similar worldview as you did, which is great if you are making a film for an American audience who grew up in the 70s and 80s with Star Wars.

chimericoncogene wrote: 2020-05-27 01:10pmDoes LOTR have better worldbuilding, beyond the silly mountain city and weird town in the middle of nowhere (I like spaceships, not dragons)?

The Romulan Republic wrote: 2020-05-27 04:01pm Its both, and the pining for the "good old days" and nostalgia can leave people susceptible to a much more toxic message.

But yeah, there's a reason why, when I hear that they've hired "a fan" to take over a series, I don't celebrate. I dread it. Because experience has taught me that "fans" usually come in with an agenda, axes to grind, and nostalgia blinders. They have decades of built-up preconceptions about how it "should" be, all the things they want to "fix", and I suspect that tends to make them less receptive to outside ideas, and more inclined to push their pet projects to the detriment of the whole. I saw it with Peter Jackson's films, I saw it with Moffat's run on Doctor Who, and I saw it with Abrams' Star Wars.

A few high quality exceptions notwithstanding, there's a reason why calling a piece of writing "fan fiction" is generally not a compliment. That its fan fiction with a multi-million dollar budget doesn't change that.

Edit: I admit I'm a hypocrite here, because I'm a fan and I'd totally take a job writing or directing a Star Wars film in the extremely unlikely event that I ever got the chance.

But I think, by and large, what matters is not whether someone's a fan- what's important is that someone is a professional, takes the job seriously, treats the people around them and the material with respect, and does their honest best to create a professional final product that functions as a whole. I don't care if a writer, director, or actor was a fan- I care that they're a professional (though having experience in the same genre and medium can be an asset, I think).

The Romulan Republic wrote: 2020-05-27 06:40pm I do think the goal here needs to be to expand the franchise, not cling to an ever-shrinking fanbase of "purists". For a franchise, a nation, a society... the moment you start looking back on a "golden age", and forever trying to recapture it, you've doomed yourself to decline and, if not corrected, eventual obsalescence and death.

Its like whenever I hear people talk about "the Greatest Generation" (the Depression/WWII generation), I don't hear it as a compliment. I don't see it as an honour. I hear it as saying "You raised a generation that is smaller than its parents, and built a society which has accepted that it can never be more than what it was."

And when I hear people say that we need to "Be faithful to the Original Trilogy" or whatever, I don't see that as honouring the OT. I hear "This story will never be allowed to be more than what it was, only less." That instead of inspiring new creators to experiment and innovate as it did, the OT has become a weight around the neck of the franchise, dragging it down and holding it back.

The Romulan Republic wrote: 2020-05-27 07:06pm Indeed. If you want to watch the OT, watch the OT. The movies are still there. If I go to see a sequel, I want a new story. Set in the same universe, certainly, compatible with that universe, but not just the same story, and not the same story with new names and a new coat of paint, and certainly not the same story except done shittier.

Although actually, literally remaking the OT shot for shot except with a more diverse cast would have been significantly better than what we got. Not terribly original, maybe, but it would have been a good story updated to the modern era. But what we got was the promise of a new story, in a new era, with new characters, except it turned out to be an updated OT with more plot holes, no thematic coherency or strong character arcs, and forgetting a lot of what made the OT good.

The original film wasn't great because it had a Death Star for the heroes to infiltrate and then blow up. It was great because it had a clear story built around engaging characters in an interesting and visually innovative setting. There was nothing innovative about Starkiller Base- it just derailed the plot that the first half of the film seemed to be about, and took the focus off those characters' journeys for a set-piece.

Empire Strikes Back wasn't great because Luke's father turned out to be a bad guy. It was great because it threw an unexpected twist at the characters that forced them in new and compelling directions (which the next film actually, and I cannot emphasize this too strongly, FOLLOWED THE FUCK UP ON). To his credit, Rian Johnson at least seems to have tried to do this, but by leaving it late in his film and only briefly touching on it, he was relying on the next film to follow it up which... yeah. Betting on JJ Abram's professionalism is clearly a losing bet.

Making Rey is a Palpatine at the last minute, then having her shrug it off and just say "I'm a Skywalker" is missing the point of what made that revelation work in ESB- especially because they'd already pushed the idea of her having a mysterious parentage in the first film, and Johnson had his twist in the second, and so by the time RoS rolled around, it wasn't even a surprise, more just "Yeah, she has an evil ancestor, because that's obligatory in a Star Wars protagonist now".

Return of the Jedi wasn't great because it had a Vader redemption plot. The Vader redemption plot worked because it made sense based on what happened in the previous films. Whereas I at least felt TLJ had pretty firmly shut the door on a Kylo redemption, or at least on Rey playing a role in it.

Abrams hit the same beats (erratically), but missed WHY they worked in the OT.

Gunhead wrote: 2020-05-11 08:39amWhich brings me to one final failure and it's more of an acknowledgement that it would have been far better to have a single director do all three films, even if that director had been Rian "Subverting expectations" Johnson.

Elfdart wrote: 2020-06-02 10:06pmeven his weird fixation on midgets.

Elfdart wrote: 2020-06-02 10:06pm

Gunhead wrote: 2020-05-11 08:39amWhich brings me to one final failure and it's more of an acknowledgement that it would have been far better to have a single director do all three films, even if that director had been Rian "Subverting expectations" Johnson.

I'd just as soon have Jerry Sandusky coach my nephew's Little League team.

The whole reset of the milieu is bad, but it's just a symptom of a much larger problem:

Star Wars is George Lucas, and without him, they've got nothing. The setting, the characters, the story are all distilled from Lucas' imagination, life experience, likes and dislikes, his worldview, his daddy issues and even his weird fixation on midgets. What did Abrams, Johnson, Edwards or Howard bring to the party?

Elfdart wrote: 2020-06-02 10:06pm
I'd just as soon have Jerry Sandusky coach my nephew's Little League team.

The whole reset of the milieu is bad, but it's just a symptom of a much larger problem:

Star Wars is George Lucas, and without him, they've got nothing. The setting, the characters, the story are all distilled from Lucas' imagination, life experience, likes and dislikes, his worldview, his daddy issues and even his weird fixation on midgets. What did Abrams, Johnson, Edwards or Howard bring to the party?

Eternal_Freedom wrote: 2020-06-03 05:09pm A thought has just occurred to me. Perhaps instead of having one director across all three films, they should have had one writer across all three films - a quick glance at Wikipedia tells me TFA was Kathleen Kennedy, Lawrence Kasdan and JJ Abrams, TLJ was just RIan Johnson and ROS was Terrio and Abrams.

Is it any wonder the ST wound up being a crapshoot when in addition to different directors, you had five different writers working on things.

It stems from something I've thought for a while now - we always like to talk about how xyz director did on such and such a film when they can only work with the script/story they have been given. You can take someone like, say, Spielberg or Cameron and give them a rubbish script/story and you'll still get a bad story, though one that's at least filmed well. Give a great script to a mediocre director and you'll get a good story at least.

Frankly I'd have been happy with Abrams or Johnson directing all three films if someone else had done the script - the fact that Kasdan was involved with TFA is surprising given how good a job he did working with Lucas on ESB and ROTJ.