SCOTT27
Lap Time Luminary
- Messages
- 21,430
It rewrites both the original trilogy and prequel trilogy.
- Messages
- 11,420
- Name
- Matt
No, but I don't blame the film for that. You could say that two generations of Skywalker have now seen out their story arc's, but honestly, the situation the writers find themselves in, 40 years after the originals, with no Carrie Fisher, no underlying plan, and a director that doesn't really respect the Canon that much...
... It couldn't be much else than what it is.
I disagree with Scott, it doesn't rewrite that much. We know the Emporer comes back, so there's that, but I don't see what else it rewrites.
More so than an end to the Skywalker Saga, the plot is a checklist of answers to questions that the random has been foaming at the mouth for since TFA. In doing so it opens a bunch more questions, but really, the off shoots from this story do not need to be Skywalker related.
I'm still wrestling with my verdict on this film, I totally get some of the criticism its receiving, but I can't help but like it.
If I had to rank it, its probably about 3rd or 4th... Maybe tied with RotS. That opinion will probably change on subsequent viewings.
Saw TROS at opening night last week. I’d say it’s a bloody mess but without the blood.. I remember being blown away when I first saw Empire at the age of 8 and became a fan but they’ve never been able to return to the magic of the first trilogy. Yes, I know I’ve grown older and that the movies are aimed at a younger demographic but it’s al about storytelling and TROS does not deliver. It has plot holes big enough to fit the Death Star..One movie that I did find entertaining was Le Mans ‘66 though (Ford vs Ferrari). This one actually kept my attention from the beginning until the end. With TROS I just wished it was over..
hoffmeister_fan
Kraftwagen König
- Messages
- 11,250
Despite all the negativity, I'll still probably go see TROS in theaters in a week or two when it's part of the $5 matinee. Though it feels more like out of an obligation now.
hoffmeister_fan
Kraftwagen König
- Messages
- 11,250
Finally got around to watching Star Wars ROS, and you know what? Despite the underlying reason for plot's progression, I found it to be good fun. Perhaps my expectations were low considering there was a sizable vocal subset of fans who were upset, but I wasn't too bothered. I actively tried going in without knowing anything about the movie but between the time it was released and last night, one is bound to hear some of the bigger-picture details.
7.3/10
7.3/10
hoffmeister_fan
Kraftwagen König
- Messages
- 11,250
Interesting in-depth article about TRoS and the going ons in terms of development.
I've purposely avoided any behind-the-scenes intrigue, leaked scripts, etc. as to know as little as possible about TRoS (or any movie that interests me, for that matter) until I actually see it. Don't know how much truth is in it, but I'll leave it here and let those more invested and knowledgeable in the franchise express their feelings.
telegraph.co.uk/films/0/rise-skywalker-backlash-disney-jj-abrams-gave-star-wars-unhappy/
I've purposely avoided any behind-the-scenes intrigue, leaked scripts, etc. as to know as little as possible about TRoS (or any movie that interests me, for that matter) until I actually see it. Don't know how much truth is in it, but I'll leave it here and let those more invested and knowledgeable in the franchise express their feelings.
telegraph.co.uk/films/0/rise-skywalker-backlash-disney-jj-abrams-gave-star-wars-unhappy/
- Messages
- 11,420
- Name
- Matt
I'm not going to subscribe to the Telegraph to read it, so I'll assume it's yet another example of someone using a lot words to reinforce a negative opinion of Disney Era Star Wars and fuel the kind of threatened bull-crap you see in that comments section. Don't get me wrong, Disney fumbled the Sequel Trilogy, but if you find yourself in a place that has to use the term Feminazi to explain why they don't like it, you've probably taken a wrong turn!
hoffmeister_fan
Kraftwagen König
- Messages
- 11,250
Sorry, didn't realize Telegraph has a paywall. I actually read it on Yahoo. I'll fight my worse instincts of being lazy and I'll post that link and copy-and-paste the article. I'll include a spoiler tag for those who haven't seen the movie(s).
What I read didn't really delve in anything misogynistic except for the infamous incident where "fans" were being needlessly cruel to Kelly Tran. Moreso it had to do with Disney compromising JJ's vision as well as having 3 groups (Abrams, Johnson and Trevorrow) trying to form a continuous arc for the trilogy. Also it touched on the main actors' dissatisfaction of how the story concluded.
Also if a mod wants to move this to another thread, be my guest.
The Rise of Skywalker backlash: how Disney and JJ Abrams gave Star Wars an unhappy ending
Ed Power
May 4, 2020, 6:02 AM EDT
There really is no such thing as life after Star Wars for actors catapulted to fame by George Lucas’s marvellous franchise. Perhaps that is why the cast of the widely-loathed final instalment in the new Disney Star Wars trilogy, The Rise of Skywalker, have been increasingly open about their negative feelings towards the movie. The film is a mess and its shadow hangs heavy on them.
Rise of Skywalker’s release last December was accompanied by less than enthusiastic rumblings from the stars – and rumours of a falling-out between director JJ Abrams and executives at Disney. Now, with the Jedi jamboree debuting on the Disney+ streaming service, those involved have become even more outspoken in their ambivalence towards the wonky blockbuster and the hyper-critical Star Wars fanbase.
Daisy Ridley, who played Rey, annoyingly perfect inheritor of the Luke Skywalker mantle, has admitted her frustration regarding the ill-will directed towards RoS. She didn’t go quite so far as hold her hands up and admit Abrams had made a disagreeable hodgepodge that retroactively ruined the original Lucas trilogy. Still, her unhappiness was unmistakable.
“This last film it was really tricky,” Ridley told the DragCast podcast in April. “January was not that nice. It was weird, I felt like all of this love that we’d sort of been shown the first time around, I was like, 'Where’s the love gone?'… Everyone’s entitled to not like something, but it feels like it’s changed slightly. But I think in general that’s because social media and what have you.”
Oscar Isaac, aka shop-soiled Han Solo Poe Dameron, was even blunter cornered on the red carpet at the Oscars. “Yeah, look, was there some crying in the shower? Yes.”
John Boyega, playing Storm Trooper with a heart of gold Fin, has spoken up too. He became somewhat notorious on social media following a January Instagram post directed towards a subsection of Star Wars fans. In it he aggressively body-popped over screenshots of negative tweets regarding his feelings towards devotees who had became massively invested in an imagined romance between Rey and Adam Driver’s whiny Darth Vader knockoff, Kylo Ren.
“Glad I got that out of my system,” Boyega wrote beneath the video – which saw him moonwalking over and high-kicking messages such as “you are literally the worst”.
“You obviously don’t know the difference between a fictional world and reality,” he added in another post, as “Reylo” fanatics continued to pile on. However, he later pushed back against the idea that he hated everything to do with Star Wars. He insisted that he took pride in his contribution to the franchise.
“Embarrassing?” he wrote on April 23. “LOL you wish. Very fulfilling, some disappointments but yet not that big of a deal. Everyone has moved on…..”
In all, Rise of Skywalker earned $1.074 billion on a budget of $275 million. That sounds like a lot, but it’s significantly down on the $1.3 billion brought in by 2017’s The Last Jedi and the $2 billion earned by The Force Awakens 2015, the two previous instalments in the new Disney trilogy.
With bad word of mouth about The Rise of Skywalker circulating among Star Wars fans even before its release, the cast’s lack of enthusiasm is unlikely to have contributed disproportionally to its underwhelming performance. No, it certainly can’t have helped. But it wasn’t the equivalent of a lightsaber through the heart.
Star Wars fans had been stung once already with Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi. This was essentially a Star Wars film made by and for people who don’t like Star Wars (and who think geeks are misogynist nerd-boys who need to be sternly lectured).
The Rise of Skywalker, if less hostile towards its own audience, nonetheless has massive flaws. The storyline is a huge soggy raging mess. It begins with the revelation that Emperor Palpatine is back and in a mood for mischief. But how? We’d seen him thrown to his death in Return of the Jedi. Was Darth Vader’s sacrifice – for it was he who did the flinging – for nothing?
In the months since the movie, Disney has moved quickly – perhaps desperately – to cover up the many plot holes. Published just last month, the official novelisation, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker – Expanded Edition by Rae Carson, reveals the new Palpatine was in fact merely a clone. That’s quite a massive detail and arguably changes the entire context of the film. Why wasn’t it touched upon by The Rise of Skywalker itself?
The answer is presumably because it was hastily cooked up by Disney after fans pointed out the lack of logic in bringing the Emperor back. Rey’s own father, Palpatine’s son, we also learn in the novel, was another failed clone – which is potentially why Palpatine had him erased. Oh and – sorry Kylo-Rey fanatics – that climactic kiss wasn’t romantic. Kylo was dying. A cursory snog was Rey’s way of consoling him as the end loomed.
There have also been renewed criticisms of Disney from those close to Abrams. In December, the director hinted at his dissatisfaction with The Last Jedi. The issue was that, having set up an elaborate story in The Force Awakens, Abrams had to watch Johnson rip it all to shreds.
Johnson’s film, for instance, insisted Rey was “no one” – when The Force Awakens had explicitly stated she at some level connected to the Jedi. And it downgraded Supreme Leader Snoke from a new Palpatine to an annoying and easily killed glove puppet. Last Jedi also brought back Mark Hamill only to have Luke Skywalker erotically lactate a braying green alien.
None of these were clever choices, as Team Abrams hinted. “It’s very strange to have the second film so consciously undo the storytelling of the first one. I’m sorry that’s what it felt like,” Mary Jo Markey, an editor who worked with Abrams on The Force Awakens, told the Light The Fuse podcast in April
The Rise of Skywalker, she continued, was trying to make the best of the hand it had been dealt. And she rejected suggestions that a miffed Abrams had sought to get his own back by erasing Johnson’s own plot points. “It took where the second film ended and just tried to tell a story. I didn’t feel like it was consciously trying to undo — it just didn’t feel that way to me.”
One thing we haven’t heard much about since The Rise of Skywalker exited multiplexes – remember multiplexes? – was a rumoured longer “JJ Cut” of the film. The speculation in December was that Abrams had handed in two hour 37 minute picture only for Disney to slash it behind his back to two hours 22 minutes.
Much as Rey trawled the galaxy looking for Luke, the “JJ Abrams V Disney” saga must be pieced together from multiple sources. These include leaks to message forums such as Reddit from supposedly well-placed insiders, comments by the director and his adjuncts, by Disney executives and from the increasingly loose-lipped Star Wars cast. We must also consider who is doing the leaking and why. In whose interest is to turn the Rise of Skywalker post-mortem into a cosmic game of spin and counter-spin?
One narrative fans are gravitating to is that Abrams was essentially hoodwinked by Disney into making a bad movie. Why would Disney want to make a bad Star Wars film? Because, goes the theory, of the five year, $250 million exclusivity deal signed between Abrams’s Bad Robot production company and Warner Brothers (Disney was also in talks with Bad Robot before ultimately dropping out).
Warner is proprietor of the stuttering DC Expanded Universe of superhero properties (including Batman Superman and Wonder Woman). The expectation is that Abrams will be asked to bring some of the reboot magic that he worked on Star Trek and Star Wars to DC. That would make him a natural foe of DC’s major superhero competitor Marvel. Which is owned by Disney. Sink JJ, sink the DCEU?
Such is the assertion made by a sensational post on Reddit from someone claiming to be in contact with sources “who worked closely on the production of the Rise of Skywalker”. If true – and that’s one humungous if – the leaks paint Disney in a damning light.
Among the allegations are that Abrams was promised full creative control when he agreed to return to Star Wars having The Force Awakens to its $2 billion gross. It is claimed that Disney interfered heavily during the making of that film. Among the dictums imposed from above was, for instance, an insistence on the inclusion of the Starkiller Base – a rip-off of the original Death Star that many Star Wars aficionados saw as fan-service taken too far.
This time it would be different, Disney and its Star Wars subsidiary Lucasfilm supposed told Abrams. They desperately needed him, having parted with the original director Colin Trevorrow for reasons that remain murky (see below).
Yet the moment he stepped on the set of the Rise of Skywalker, it was clear to Abrams that Disney would be setting the agenda. It was, for instance, Disney that pushed the Rey- Kylo romantic chemistry over Abrams’s objections, according to this version of events.
Just as sensationally it is asserted that Disney mercilessly overhauled the film after Abrams submitted his cut. He had initially suggested splitting the story-heavy Rise of Skywalker into two movies, as was done at the end of the Harry Potter saga. The bagginess was a result of the requirement to put the story begun in The Force Awakens back on track. It had been ruinously derailed by Johnson and the trolling, anti-Star Wars Last Jedi.
Disney shot the two-picture proposal down. Abrams next submitted a first cut of just over three hours. He was asked to trim it further. Disney demanded, too, that he put in extra scenes to help with merchandise sales. These included Stormtroopers with jet-packs and Poe Dameron’s toe-curling “they fly now?” quip. The line sounded like something reheated from an ancient Indiana Jones script. Abrams detested it.
He finally got Skywalker down to just over two and a half hours and handed the film in last November. Behind his back, the leak continues, Disney cut another 15 minutes. The first the director knew of it is when he saw the finished movie.
“There were… crucial and emotional scenes missing. The cut they released looked chopped and taped back together with weak scotch tape…JJ was devastated and blindsided by this. He’s been feeling down over the last six months because of some of the ridiculous demands,” said the insider.
“Disney had changed his movie’s story. While the scenes were shot, a lot of the changes were made in post-production and the audio was rerecorded and altered. My source said they’ve never seen anything like this happen before. He’s the director and he wasn’t in the know about what they were doing behind his back.”
Abrams had promised fans an ending that would “blow their minds”. This, it is now believed, referred to the rumoured appearance of a number of Jedi “Force Ghosts” during Rey’s final confrontation with the Emperor. They were to have included Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan and Hayden Christensen’s boyband version of Anakin Skywalker from the George Lucas prequel trilogy. The scene was even shot.
Disney, though, had high hopes for Rise of Skywalker in China. And it was wary of falling foul of Beijing’s “no ghost protocol”. China prohibits movies that “promote cults or superstition”. Disney had run aground on this regulation previously, with 2006’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest blocked from release because it featured zombie pirates. The concern was that a parade of Force Ghosts would similarly spook the authorities in China.
We’ll never have the entire the truth but there are no Force Ghosts All Star Team in Rise of Skywalker’s finale. And yet earlier on, we meet Luke’s Force Ghost. And Han Solo is resurrected after a fashion (seemingly as a product of Kylo’s imagination). And the film flopped in China anyway. So who knows if any of this is true. It – and all the other Reddit tittle-tattle – just be an internet fever dream.
However the bigger picture, according to this conspiracy theory, is that Abrams and Disney will soon be rivals. Thus Mouse HQ won’t lose any sleep should RoS put a Death Star-sized dent in Abrams’s reputation.
“WB wants Abrams for some DC projects,” wrote the Reddit poster. “My source said that this generation’s Star Wars is the MCU, and Marvel’s biggest threat is a well operational DC. They want to keep DC in the limbo that they’re in right now. Abrams jumpstarting that franchise with something like a successful, audience-pleasing Superman movie makes them nervous. Their goal is to make JJ look bad to potential investors/shareholders.”
The insider further insisted Disney has essentially been engaging in cyberwarfare against Abrams. Damaging leaks about the Rise of Skywalker – including the reveal of crucial plot points – had, it was claimed, originated at Disney. The goal was to get ahead of the mess and paint Abrams as the culprit.
“The leakers for TROS had an agenda and are tied to Disney directly,” the mole declared. “My source confessed that they have an agenda as well in that they struggle with ignoring what’s been happening to someone who they think doesn’t deserve it.”
Would Disney really hamstring the Rise of Skywalker in order to undermine Abrams and thus diminish his chances of putting together a serious rival to the MCU? That’s one impressive game of four-dimensional chess. Not surprisingly many Star Wars watchers aren’t buying it.
They point out that JJ Abrams is perfectly capable of ruining franchises on his own. His revamped Star Trek films are loathed by Trekkers. And the idea that he saved Mission: Impossible doesn’t hold up given that he directed just one entry in the franchise (which is really Tom Cruise’s baby).
And anyway, a “JJ Cut” of up to three hours wouldn’t paper over the huge flaws in Rise of Skywalker. In particular, the decision to bring back the Emperor which renders futile Darth Vader’s sacrifice in Return of the Jedi.
Rise of Skywalker may have been damned from the outset. Starting out, it had received the mother of all hospital passes from Johnson.The Last Jedi sabotaged many of the storylines set up by Force Awakens. Johnson killed off Supreme Leader Snoke, the mega-villain played by Andy Serkis, and revealed that the mystery of Rey’s parentage was no mystery at all. Her parents had simply sold her into slavery and moved on.
The situation was complicated further by the passing in 2016 of Carrie Fisher. Colin Trevorrow had already been hired to write and direct the third film, on the strength of Jurassic World. However, his early script had put Fisher’s Princess Leia at the heart of the story. After her death, it is rumoured, he struggled with the screenplay. The results were not to the satisfaction of Kathleen Kennedy, the veteran producer overseeing the new trilogy for Disney.
She let him go reluctantly, it is reported. Kennedy had already drawn flack for firing the original directors of Han Solo original tale Solo, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, and parachuting in safe pair of hands Ron Howard (Solo would go on to become the first Star Wars film to lose money). Still, in the end she felt she had no choice but show Trevorrow the door. Which is when Disney/Lucasfilm, presumably in panic, turned to Abrams.
Kennedy addressed the subject in December. She appeared to suggest Trevorrow and Disney had never been on the same page. Kennedy did not, however, speak to the rumour that Trevorrow had wanted Luke Skywalker alive in the final movie and had begged Rian Johnson to allow the character survive the Last Jedi.
“Colin was at a huge disadvantage not having been a part of Force Awakens and in part of those early conversations because we had a general sense of where the story was going,” she told io9. “Like any development process, it was only in the development that we’re looking at a first draft and realising that it was perhaps heading in a direction that many of us didn’t feel was really quite where we wanted it to go.
“We were on a schedule, as we often are with these movies, and had to make a tough decision as to whether or not we thought we could get there in the time or not. And as I said, Colin was at a disadvantage because he hadn’t been immersed in everything that we all had starting out with Episode VII.”
It was this same “schedule” that has been cited by members of the Abrams camp as a reason why Rise of Skywalker feels so cobbled together. His editor, Maryann Brandon, has been giving interviews in which she paints a picture of a hurried production. Disney, she implied, were constantly huffing down the neck the director and his team.
“I suggested I cut on the set…we had two tented rooms…so I just went wherever JJ was, usually 10 feet away from the camera, wherever the camera was,” Brandon said. “And I just mobile-y cut. And in between takes, [J.J.] could sit down with me and we could go over things.”
She did, though, reject the idea that the Rey-Kylo kiss was Disney’s idea. “I always said, 'The movie will tell us whether they should kiss or not. We will know by the time we get to the end of our process, if it should happen.' And I felt it should, and [Abrams] agreed with me, and other people who saw the film agreed.”
“I know it’s not for everybody,” she continued, referring to the kiss “I know there will be people who wish they hadn’t, but this is a film that was never going to please everyone, and I think that the reviews are kind of reflective of that. The things that certain people love, other people hated. And that’s the phenomenon of ‘Star Wars.’”
Then there is the controversy over the cursory screen time given to Rose Tico. The character’s prominence in Last Jedi brought out the worst in a subset of Star Wars fans and and actress Kelly Marie Tran became the target of a disgraceful social media hate campaign. With her having come through that it struck many as disrespectful that Abrams would give Rose just a handful of lines and have her in the picture for fewer than 90 seconds.
Her relegation was initially blamed on Fisher’s death. Chris Terrio, who co-wrote the script with Abrams, said Rose’s storyline was interwoven with that of Leia.
“As the process evolved, a few scenes we’d written with Rose and Leia turned out to not meet the standard of photorealism that we’d hoped for,” he explained.
“Those scenes, unfortunately, fell out of the film. The last thing we were doing was deliberately trying to sideline Rose. We adore the character, and we adore Kelly – so much so that we anchored her with our favourite person in this galaxy, General Leia.”
However, Terrio rowed back dramatically a few days later. Rose's screen time had been reduced at the script stage, before any footage or special effects were shot he said. His previous statement had referred to “a specific scene in which Leia’s emotional state in Episode 7 did not seem to match the scene we wrote for use in Episode 9, and so it was cut at the script stage”. Never had a clarification been less clarifying.
We may never know the truth. What is clear is that Rise of Skywalker is enormously rickety. The return of the Emperor feels shoe-horned in. And the big deafening denouement in which Rey kills him by turning his lightning back at him doesn’t stand up. She initially declines to cut Palpatine down. He urges her to do so so that, feeding on her rage, he can possess her and rule the galaxy. But apparently it’s fine for her to just burn him alive with his own Sith lightening a few minutes later.
And then there is the question of how the Emperor built and crewed thousands of Star Destroyers from his isolated hideout at the edge of the galaxy. Why, moreover, must his fleet deploy all at once – giving the Resistance an opportunity to catch them unawares?
We can also grumble about the terrible misuse of Domhnall Gleeson’s General Hux, lazily killed off after his inept plan to betray Kylo Ren is revealed. Following the waste of Gwendoline Christie’s Captain Phasma in the Last Jedi it is evidence that, as with Marvel, Star Wars now has a villain problem.
Oh and why did Rey fly to Tatooine – a planet to which she has no connection – at the end? The obvious answer is that so Star Wars could finish where it began, at the Skywalker homestead. Yet that is off-screen logic rather than something that arises naturally in the story.
There’s more. Why didn’t Rey’s Force sensitivity inform her Chewbacca wasn’t on the Resistance transporter she zapped? Doesn’t the “Force healing” she use on Kylo – he later returns the favour – break Jedi canon? What was stopping Obi-Wan Force healing Qui-Gon Jinn in the Phantom Menace? Or Luke Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi? As soon as you ask “why?” or “how” the entire movie falls to pieces.
One thing we do know is that Abrams shot considerably more footage than was used. Actor Dominic Monaghan, who bonded with Abrams over their love of Star Wars on the set of Lost, seemed to confirm the “JJ cut” was genuine in in December.
“Like a lot of Star Wars fans, I’m hoping there will be a director’s cut so we’ll get to see more and more of the stuff that was filmed,” Monaghan, who plays Resistance fighter Beaumont Kin, told The Hollywood Reporter. “I wasn’t there all the time, but even in the short time that I was there, there was so much stuff filmed that didn’t make it to the theatrical version.... Oh, man, there was so much stuff!”
That much of the film was hastily slashed was given further credence by Kelly Marie Tran. She recounted participating in an extended battle scene that vanished into a black hole.
“It was insane to be running across this platform — which I know you only see for a second in the movie — but we shot it so many times,” Tran said. “I remember having bruises on my knees the next day because we kept running, and then we would fall onto our knees and do some more shooting stuff. I don’t think that’s in the movie.”
But regardless of whether the Rise of Skywalker that reached cinemas is the one Abrams envisaged, it is obvious that many of the cast were unhappy with the finished product. Boyega is understood to be displeased that there was no resolution to the scenes in which he informed Rey he had to tell her something important. According to the leaks, this reveal was not a pledge of affection. It was that he, like her, was Force sensitive (an ability hinted at vaguely in the film).
And, as we’ve pointed out, Boyega has also gone where few actors attached to a major franchise would dare by publicly scorning on social media the unconvincing romance between Ren and Rey. This has brought a backlash from those fans who wanted to see Rey and Ren together, a group dubbed the “Twilight set” by mainstream Star Wars devotees. Yet they aren’t happy either, as Rey and Kylo got to exchange just one fleeting kiss before he died.
Also disgruntled is Isaac, who flatly ruled out ever appearing in Star Wars again. He was annoyed that the hoped for romance between Poe Dameron and Finn never came to pass (instead the Rise of Skywalker went out of its way to portray both as straight).
"It seemed like a natural progression, but sadly enough it's a time when people are too afraid, I think, of… I don't know what," he said of a potential relationship between Poe and Finn, adding, "But if they would've been boyfriends, that would have been fun."
He sounded thoroughly fed up. This makes him just one of many. A long time ago in a galaxy far far away Star Wars was the straightforward space opera everyone loved. As we gawp in horror upon the giant flaming wreckage that is the Rise of Skywalker how distant those glory days now feel.
Ed Power
May 4, 2020, 6:02 AM EDT
There really is no such thing as life after Star Wars for actors catapulted to fame by George Lucas’s marvellous franchise. Perhaps that is why the cast of the widely-loathed final instalment in the new Disney Star Wars trilogy, The Rise of Skywalker, have been increasingly open about their negative feelings towards the movie. The film is a mess and its shadow hangs heavy on them.
Rise of Skywalker’s release last December was accompanied by less than enthusiastic rumblings from the stars – and rumours of a falling-out between director JJ Abrams and executives at Disney. Now, with the Jedi jamboree debuting on the Disney+ streaming service, those involved have become even more outspoken in their ambivalence towards the wonky blockbuster and the hyper-critical Star Wars fanbase.
Daisy Ridley, who played Rey, annoyingly perfect inheritor of the Luke Skywalker mantle, has admitted her frustration regarding the ill-will directed towards RoS. She didn’t go quite so far as hold her hands up and admit Abrams had made a disagreeable hodgepodge that retroactively ruined the original Lucas trilogy. Still, her unhappiness was unmistakable.
“This last film it was really tricky,” Ridley told the DragCast podcast in April. “January was not that nice. It was weird, I felt like all of this love that we’d sort of been shown the first time around, I was like, 'Where’s the love gone?'… Everyone’s entitled to not like something, but it feels like it’s changed slightly. But I think in general that’s because social media and what have you.”
Oscar Isaac, aka shop-soiled Han Solo Poe Dameron, was even blunter cornered on the red carpet at the Oscars. “Yeah, look, was there some crying in the shower? Yes.”
John Boyega, playing Storm Trooper with a heart of gold Fin, has spoken up too. He became somewhat notorious on social media following a January Instagram post directed towards a subsection of Star Wars fans. In it he aggressively body-popped over screenshots of negative tweets regarding his feelings towards devotees who had became massively invested in an imagined romance between Rey and Adam Driver’s whiny Darth Vader knockoff, Kylo Ren.
“Glad I got that out of my system,” Boyega wrote beneath the video – which saw him moonwalking over and high-kicking messages such as “you are literally the worst”.
“You obviously don’t know the difference between a fictional world and reality,” he added in another post, as “Reylo” fanatics continued to pile on. However, he later pushed back against the idea that he hated everything to do with Star Wars. He insisted that he took pride in his contribution to the franchise.
“Embarrassing?” he wrote on April 23. “LOL you wish. Very fulfilling, some disappointments but yet not that big of a deal. Everyone has moved on…..”
In all, Rise of Skywalker earned $1.074 billion on a budget of $275 million. That sounds like a lot, but it’s significantly down on the $1.3 billion brought in by 2017’s The Last Jedi and the $2 billion earned by The Force Awakens 2015, the two previous instalments in the new Disney trilogy.
With bad word of mouth about The Rise of Skywalker circulating among Star Wars fans even before its release, the cast’s lack of enthusiasm is unlikely to have contributed disproportionally to its underwhelming performance. No, it certainly can’t have helped. But it wasn’t the equivalent of a lightsaber through the heart.
Star Wars fans had been stung once already with Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi. This was essentially a Star Wars film made by and for people who don’t like Star Wars (and who think geeks are misogynist nerd-boys who need to be sternly lectured).
The Rise of Skywalker, if less hostile towards its own audience, nonetheless has massive flaws. The storyline is a huge soggy raging mess. It begins with the revelation that Emperor Palpatine is back and in a mood for mischief. But how? We’d seen him thrown to his death in Return of the Jedi. Was Darth Vader’s sacrifice – for it was he who did the flinging – for nothing?
In the months since the movie, Disney has moved quickly – perhaps desperately – to cover up the many plot holes. Published just last month, the official novelisation, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker – Expanded Edition by Rae Carson, reveals the new Palpatine was in fact merely a clone. That’s quite a massive detail and arguably changes the entire context of the film. Why wasn’t it touched upon by The Rise of Skywalker itself?
The answer is presumably because it was hastily cooked up by Disney after fans pointed out the lack of logic in bringing the Emperor back. Rey’s own father, Palpatine’s son, we also learn in the novel, was another failed clone – which is potentially why Palpatine had him erased. Oh and – sorry Kylo-Rey fanatics – that climactic kiss wasn’t romantic. Kylo was dying. A cursory snog was Rey’s way of consoling him as the end loomed.
There have also been renewed criticisms of Disney from those close to Abrams. In December, the director hinted at his dissatisfaction with The Last Jedi. The issue was that, having set up an elaborate story in The Force Awakens, Abrams had to watch Johnson rip it all to shreds.
Johnson’s film, for instance, insisted Rey was “no one” – when The Force Awakens had explicitly stated she at some level connected to the Jedi. And it downgraded Supreme Leader Snoke from a new Palpatine to an annoying and easily killed glove puppet. Last Jedi also brought back Mark Hamill only to have Luke Skywalker erotically lactate a braying green alien.
None of these were clever choices, as Team Abrams hinted. “It’s very strange to have the second film so consciously undo the storytelling of the first one. I’m sorry that’s what it felt like,” Mary Jo Markey, an editor who worked with Abrams on The Force Awakens, told the Light The Fuse podcast in April
The Rise of Skywalker, she continued, was trying to make the best of the hand it had been dealt. And she rejected suggestions that a miffed Abrams had sought to get his own back by erasing Johnson’s own plot points. “It took where the second film ended and just tried to tell a story. I didn’t feel like it was consciously trying to undo — it just didn’t feel that way to me.”
One thing we haven’t heard much about since The Rise of Skywalker exited multiplexes – remember multiplexes? – was a rumoured longer “JJ Cut” of the film. The speculation in December was that Abrams had handed in two hour 37 minute picture only for Disney to slash it behind his back to two hours 22 minutes.
Much as Rey trawled the galaxy looking for Luke, the “JJ Abrams V Disney” saga must be pieced together from multiple sources. These include leaks to message forums such as Reddit from supposedly well-placed insiders, comments by the director and his adjuncts, by Disney executives and from the increasingly loose-lipped Star Wars cast. We must also consider who is doing the leaking and why. In whose interest is to turn the Rise of Skywalker post-mortem into a cosmic game of spin and counter-spin?
One narrative fans are gravitating to is that Abrams was essentially hoodwinked by Disney into making a bad movie. Why would Disney want to make a bad Star Wars film? Because, goes the theory, of the five year, $250 million exclusivity deal signed between Abrams’s Bad Robot production company and Warner Brothers (Disney was also in talks with Bad Robot before ultimately dropping out).
Warner is proprietor of the stuttering DC Expanded Universe of superhero properties (including Batman Superman and Wonder Woman). The expectation is that Abrams will be asked to bring some of the reboot magic that he worked on Star Trek and Star Wars to DC. That would make him a natural foe of DC’s major superhero competitor Marvel. Which is owned by Disney. Sink JJ, sink the DCEU?
Such is the assertion made by a sensational post on Reddit from someone claiming to be in contact with sources “who worked closely on the production of the Rise of Skywalker”. If true – and that’s one humungous if – the leaks paint Disney in a damning light.
Among the allegations are that Abrams was promised full creative control when he agreed to return to Star Wars having The Force Awakens to its $2 billion gross. It is claimed that Disney interfered heavily during the making of that film. Among the dictums imposed from above was, for instance, an insistence on the inclusion of the Starkiller Base – a rip-off of the original Death Star that many Star Wars aficionados saw as fan-service taken too far.
This time it would be different, Disney and its Star Wars subsidiary Lucasfilm supposed told Abrams. They desperately needed him, having parted with the original director Colin Trevorrow for reasons that remain murky (see below).
Yet the moment he stepped on the set of the Rise of Skywalker, it was clear to Abrams that Disney would be setting the agenda. It was, for instance, Disney that pushed the Rey- Kylo romantic chemistry over Abrams’s objections, according to this version of events.
Just as sensationally it is asserted that Disney mercilessly overhauled the film after Abrams submitted his cut. He had initially suggested splitting the story-heavy Rise of Skywalker into two movies, as was done at the end of the Harry Potter saga. The bagginess was a result of the requirement to put the story begun in The Force Awakens back on track. It had been ruinously derailed by Johnson and the trolling, anti-Star Wars Last Jedi.
Disney shot the two-picture proposal down. Abrams next submitted a first cut of just over three hours. He was asked to trim it further. Disney demanded, too, that he put in extra scenes to help with merchandise sales. These included Stormtroopers with jet-packs and Poe Dameron’s toe-curling “they fly now?” quip. The line sounded like something reheated from an ancient Indiana Jones script. Abrams detested it.
He finally got Skywalker down to just over two and a half hours and handed the film in last November. Behind his back, the leak continues, Disney cut another 15 minutes. The first the director knew of it is when he saw the finished movie.
“There were… crucial and emotional scenes missing. The cut they released looked chopped and taped back together with weak scotch tape…JJ was devastated and blindsided by this. He’s been feeling down over the last six months because of some of the ridiculous demands,” said the insider.
“Disney had changed his movie’s story. While the scenes were shot, a lot of the changes were made in post-production and the audio was rerecorded and altered. My source said they’ve never seen anything like this happen before. He’s the director and he wasn’t in the know about what they were doing behind his back.”
Abrams had promised fans an ending that would “blow their minds”. This, it is now believed, referred to the rumoured appearance of a number of Jedi “Force Ghosts” during Rey’s final confrontation with the Emperor. They were to have included Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan and Hayden Christensen’s boyband version of Anakin Skywalker from the George Lucas prequel trilogy. The scene was even shot.
Disney, though, had high hopes for Rise of Skywalker in China. And it was wary of falling foul of Beijing’s “no ghost protocol”. China prohibits movies that “promote cults or superstition”. Disney had run aground on this regulation previously, with 2006’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest blocked from release because it featured zombie pirates. The concern was that a parade of Force Ghosts would similarly spook the authorities in China.
We’ll never have the entire the truth but there are no Force Ghosts All Star Team in Rise of Skywalker’s finale. And yet earlier on, we meet Luke’s Force Ghost. And Han Solo is resurrected after a fashion (seemingly as a product of Kylo’s imagination). And the film flopped in China anyway. So who knows if any of this is true. It – and all the other Reddit tittle-tattle – just be an internet fever dream.
However the bigger picture, according to this conspiracy theory, is that Abrams and Disney will soon be rivals. Thus Mouse HQ won’t lose any sleep should RoS put a Death Star-sized dent in Abrams’s reputation.
“WB wants Abrams for some DC projects,” wrote the Reddit poster. “My source said that this generation’s Star Wars is the MCU, and Marvel’s biggest threat is a well operational DC. They want to keep DC in the limbo that they’re in right now. Abrams jumpstarting that franchise with something like a successful, audience-pleasing Superman movie makes them nervous. Their goal is to make JJ look bad to potential investors/shareholders.”
The insider further insisted Disney has essentially been engaging in cyberwarfare against Abrams. Damaging leaks about the Rise of Skywalker – including the reveal of crucial plot points – had, it was claimed, originated at Disney. The goal was to get ahead of the mess and paint Abrams as the culprit.
“The leakers for TROS had an agenda and are tied to Disney directly,” the mole declared. “My source confessed that they have an agenda as well in that they struggle with ignoring what’s been happening to someone who they think doesn’t deserve it.”
Would Disney really hamstring the Rise of Skywalker in order to undermine Abrams and thus diminish his chances of putting together a serious rival to the MCU? That’s one impressive game of four-dimensional chess. Not surprisingly many Star Wars watchers aren’t buying it.
They point out that JJ Abrams is perfectly capable of ruining franchises on his own. His revamped Star Trek films are loathed by Trekkers. And the idea that he saved Mission: Impossible doesn’t hold up given that he directed just one entry in the franchise (which is really Tom Cruise’s baby).
And anyway, a “JJ Cut” of up to three hours wouldn’t paper over the huge flaws in Rise of Skywalker. In particular, the decision to bring back the Emperor which renders futile Darth Vader’s sacrifice in Return of the Jedi.
Rise of Skywalker may have been damned from the outset. Starting out, it had received the mother of all hospital passes from Johnson.The Last Jedi sabotaged many of the storylines set up by Force Awakens. Johnson killed off Supreme Leader Snoke, the mega-villain played by Andy Serkis, and revealed that the mystery of Rey’s parentage was no mystery at all. Her parents had simply sold her into slavery and moved on.
The situation was complicated further by the passing in 2016 of Carrie Fisher. Colin Trevorrow had already been hired to write and direct the third film, on the strength of Jurassic World. However, his early script had put Fisher’s Princess Leia at the heart of the story. After her death, it is rumoured, he struggled with the screenplay. The results were not to the satisfaction of Kathleen Kennedy, the veteran producer overseeing the new trilogy for Disney.
She let him go reluctantly, it is reported. Kennedy had already drawn flack for firing the original directors of Han Solo original tale Solo, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, and parachuting in safe pair of hands Ron Howard (Solo would go on to become the first Star Wars film to lose money). Still, in the end she felt she had no choice but show Trevorrow the door. Which is when Disney/Lucasfilm, presumably in panic, turned to Abrams.
Kennedy addressed the subject in December. She appeared to suggest Trevorrow and Disney had never been on the same page. Kennedy did not, however, speak to the rumour that Trevorrow had wanted Luke Skywalker alive in the final movie and had begged Rian Johnson to allow the character survive the Last Jedi.
“Colin was at a huge disadvantage not having been a part of Force Awakens and in part of those early conversations because we had a general sense of where the story was going,” she told io9. “Like any development process, it was only in the development that we’re looking at a first draft and realising that it was perhaps heading in a direction that many of us didn’t feel was really quite where we wanted it to go.
“We were on a schedule, as we often are with these movies, and had to make a tough decision as to whether or not we thought we could get there in the time or not. And as I said, Colin was at a disadvantage because he hadn’t been immersed in everything that we all had starting out with Episode VII.”
It was this same “schedule” that has been cited by members of the Abrams camp as a reason why Rise of Skywalker feels so cobbled together. His editor, Maryann Brandon, has been giving interviews in which she paints a picture of a hurried production. Disney, she implied, were constantly huffing down the neck the director and his team.
“I suggested I cut on the set…we had two tented rooms…so I just went wherever JJ was, usually 10 feet away from the camera, wherever the camera was,” Brandon said. “And I just mobile-y cut. And in between takes, [J.J.] could sit down with me and we could go over things.”
She did, though, reject the idea that the Rey-Kylo kiss was Disney’s idea. “I always said, 'The movie will tell us whether they should kiss or not. We will know by the time we get to the end of our process, if it should happen.' And I felt it should, and [Abrams] agreed with me, and other people who saw the film agreed.”
“I know it’s not for everybody,” she continued, referring to the kiss “I know there will be people who wish they hadn’t, but this is a film that was never going to please everyone, and I think that the reviews are kind of reflective of that. The things that certain people love, other people hated. And that’s the phenomenon of ‘Star Wars.’”
Then there is the controversy over the cursory screen time given to Rose Tico. The character’s prominence in Last Jedi brought out the worst in a subset of Star Wars fans and and actress Kelly Marie Tran became the target of a disgraceful social media hate campaign. With her having come through that it struck many as disrespectful that Abrams would give Rose just a handful of lines and have her in the picture for fewer than 90 seconds.
Her relegation was initially blamed on Fisher’s death. Chris Terrio, who co-wrote the script with Abrams, said Rose’s storyline was interwoven with that of Leia.
“As the process evolved, a few scenes we’d written with Rose and Leia turned out to not meet the standard of photorealism that we’d hoped for,” he explained.
“Those scenes, unfortunately, fell out of the film. The last thing we were doing was deliberately trying to sideline Rose. We adore the character, and we adore Kelly – so much so that we anchored her with our favourite person in this galaxy, General Leia.”
However, Terrio rowed back dramatically a few days later. Rose's screen time had been reduced at the script stage, before any footage or special effects were shot he said. His previous statement had referred to “a specific scene in which Leia’s emotional state in Episode 7 did not seem to match the scene we wrote for use in Episode 9, and so it was cut at the script stage”. Never had a clarification been less clarifying.
We may never know the truth. What is clear is that Rise of Skywalker is enormously rickety. The return of the Emperor feels shoe-horned in. And the big deafening denouement in which Rey kills him by turning his lightning back at him doesn’t stand up. She initially declines to cut Palpatine down. He urges her to do so so that, feeding on her rage, he can possess her and rule the galaxy. But apparently it’s fine for her to just burn him alive with his own Sith lightening a few minutes later.
And then there is the question of how the Emperor built and crewed thousands of Star Destroyers from his isolated hideout at the edge of the galaxy. Why, moreover, must his fleet deploy all at once – giving the Resistance an opportunity to catch them unawares?
We can also grumble about the terrible misuse of Domhnall Gleeson’s General Hux, lazily killed off after his inept plan to betray Kylo Ren is revealed. Following the waste of Gwendoline Christie’s Captain Phasma in the Last Jedi it is evidence that, as with Marvel, Star Wars now has a villain problem.
Oh and why did Rey fly to Tatooine – a planet to which she has no connection – at the end? The obvious answer is that so Star Wars could finish where it began, at the Skywalker homestead. Yet that is off-screen logic rather than something that arises naturally in the story.
There’s more. Why didn’t Rey’s Force sensitivity inform her Chewbacca wasn’t on the Resistance transporter she zapped? Doesn’t the “Force healing” she use on Kylo – he later returns the favour – break Jedi canon? What was stopping Obi-Wan Force healing Qui-Gon Jinn in the Phantom Menace? Or Luke Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi? As soon as you ask “why?” or “how” the entire movie falls to pieces.
One thing we do know is that Abrams shot considerably more footage than was used. Actor Dominic Monaghan, who bonded with Abrams over their love of Star Wars on the set of Lost, seemed to confirm the “JJ cut” was genuine in in December.
“Like a lot of Star Wars fans, I’m hoping there will be a director’s cut so we’ll get to see more and more of the stuff that was filmed,” Monaghan, who plays Resistance fighter Beaumont Kin, told The Hollywood Reporter. “I wasn’t there all the time, but even in the short time that I was there, there was so much stuff filmed that didn’t make it to the theatrical version.... Oh, man, there was so much stuff!”
That much of the film was hastily slashed was given further credence by Kelly Marie Tran. She recounted participating in an extended battle scene that vanished into a black hole.
“It was insane to be running across this platform — which I know you only see for a second in the movie — but we shot it so many times,” Tran said. “I remember having bruises on my knees the next day because we kept running, and then we would fall onto our knees and do some more shooting stuff. I don’t think that’s in the movie.”
But regardless of whether the Rise of Skywalker that reached cinemas is the one Abrams envisaged, it is obvious that many of the cast were unhappy with the finished product. Boyega is understood to be displeased that there was no resolution to the scenes in which he informed Rey he had to tell her something important. According to the leaks, this reveal was not a pledge of affection. It was that he, like her, was Force sensitive (an ability hinted at vaguely in the film).
And, as we’ve pointed out, Boyega has also gone where few actors attached to a major franchise would dare by publicly scorning on social media the unconvincing romance between Ren and Rey. This has brought a backlash from those fans who wanted to see Rey and Ren together, a group dubbed the “Twilight set” by mainstream Star Wars devotees. Yet they aren’t happy either, as Rey and Kylo got to exchange just one fleeting kiss before he died.
Also disgruntled is Isaac, who flatly ruled out ever appearing in Star Wars again. He was annoyed that the hoped for romance between Poe Dameron and Finn never came to pass (instead the Rise of Skywalker went out of its way to portray both as straight).
"It seemed like a natural progression, but sadly enough it's a time when people are too afraid, I think, of… I don't know what," he said of a potential relationship between Poe and Finn, adding, "But if they would've been boyfriends, that would have been fun."
He sounded thoroughly fed up. This makes him just one of many. A long time ago in a galaxy far far away Star Wars was the straightforward space opera everyone loved. As we gawp in horror upon the giant flaming wreckage that is the Rise of Skywalker how distant those glory days now feel.
yahoo.com/lifestyle/rise-skywalker-backlash-disney-jj-100219703.html
- Messages
- 11,420
- Name
- Matt
Thanks for posting the full article... I may print it off and wipe my arse with it later on.
... no disrespect to you @hoffmeister_fan.
If there is anything going on between Abrams and Disney, it's not really of any concern to me as a Star Wars fan.
We got what we got, all we can do at this point is celebrate what we like and just accept the bits we didn't. Articles like this one above pretend to speak for all Star Wars fans, yet they simply don't.. the line "This was essentially a Star Wars film made by and for people who don’t like Star Wars" in reference to TLJ shows the truth of this article, it's an opinion piece, rather than a factual one... He can hate TLJ if he chooses, I'm fine with that, but don't tell other people how they feel about it, that's just wrong, and to set his stall out based on such actions makes me question the validity of anything else presented as fact, because the writers own agenda is clear.
- Messages
- 29,391
- Name
- Mark
I thought The Rise of Skywalker was a pretty good movie. Not great, but pretty good indeed. I'd give it a 7, maybe 8/10.
Sure, would've liked to see it expanded into parts 1 and 2, and prob would have made Disney a ton more money as well but nevertheless, the movie as it played was just fine IMHO.
I still thought the original trilogy had wrapped itself nicely but taking into context the expanded universe or approved canon (whatever they call it now), all of it makes sense.
the cloning and/or rebooting of Palpatine/Darth Sidious in a Sith temple, much like the survival of Darth Maul to just Maul with mechanical spider-like legs made out of junk at the beginning, to mechanical human-like droid legs in SW: The Clone Wars and then sleeker and more human-like legs at the end as seen in SW: Rebels during his quest to kill Obi-Wan.
Basically, I guess most people that criticized Rogue One, TLJ, and TRS was because perhaps they had not seen two "must-watch" pre-requisites to understanding some of the aspects of these movies? Namely, SW: The Clone Wars, and SW: Rebels.
There is so much context between these two series that as part of the canon were included in the main movie trilogies (VII, VIII, IX) and Rogue One.. Overall, I think having seen these series before watching the latest trilogy made for a much more enjoyable movie experience in the end.
Maybe we can gather all those posts referencing TRS, from the '2019 movie trailers' and the 'I saw __ movie' thread and bring them into their own dedicated thread..
hoffmeister_fan
Kraftwagen König
- Messages
- 11,250
Ditto, I enjoyed TRoS more than I was expecting considering the off-hand negativity I've heard before I saw it a few weeks ago. TLJ is my favorite of the Sequel Trilogy. And I thought AFA was also good, a little too much fan-service re-treading older tropes but nonetheless forgivable in my book. Rogue One is also very good. That scene at the end where
Darth Vader
The only issue I really had with with TRoS was
Palpatine's resurrection and how that formed the drive of the movie. Before I just felt it was a cheap ploy, but I quickly overlooked that aspect and was immersed in the movie. I was also able to come to terms with that after watching some Youtube vids explaining how cloning was a Sith "speciality" and transference of one's "being" had been done in past comics, especially from somebody's inanimate possessions. There was that bit where Vader had a helmet from former Sith and he was able to ressurect him and then eventually fight him.
When I stumbled upon this article, what I wondered about is or what I found fascinating is....
1) Was there always this much disconnect between movies even when George Lucas was shepherding the Original Trilogy and Prequel Trilogy, or was this a more recent issue under Disney's stewardship?
2) What would Trevorrow's movie been like had Carrie Fisher not passed away,
3) I am sure that camps in both Disney and Abrams' team would want to be portrayed in the best light so they'll do whatever they can to make themselves look better. So how much truth is in this article?
4) I want to see the Abrams' cut. Maybe it would delve into stuff like
Sith cloning, etc.
- Messages
- 11,420
- Name
- Matt
Lord Momin.. crops up in a few Comic story arcs.. bit weird... but Sith artifacts are now a feature. Momin's helmet first appears in an issue of the Lando comic, where he tries to steal one of Palpatines personal space-yachts, and there's a collection of such artifacts aboard. It culminates in the Vader comic.
Anyway... you didn't ask me, but here's my two hundred and thirty cents...
George had a 9 film story arc in his head. I was told this first hand when I was about 8 or 9 years old by David Prowse (Darth Vader), on asking him why "Star Wars", was Episode IV... this was prior to it's later rebranding as "A New Hope", I take this as fact.
The first six films unfolded in the following way; 1 film... it had to work on its own as a standalone, this was Episode IV. IIRC "Splinter of the Minds Eye" was written as a low budget sequel incase ANH flopped and there was no money... as it happens, it was a big success, so Lucas got to tell ESB and RotJ... those 2 films had to work together... despite SHOCKA, Harrison Ford not wanting to be part of it, and Mark Hamill not liking the direction George was taking Luke in (Hamill apparently wanted a Mohawk, piercings, leather etc...)
Once the Prequels came around, it was always going to be a trilogy so Lucas got to break it down as he wanted.. but essentially the pattern was...
1 film (Written and Directed by Lucas)
+2 films (Not directed by Lucas, but some input in the writing)
+3 films (Written and Directed by Lucas)
= 6 of the 9 films George notional having in mind.
Roll on George selling Lucasfilm, and he surrenders the right to simply +3 more films to complete the 9 film story. Instead, it's left to Abrams to finish the story, he leaves before TLJ and, with no overarching story, Rian Johnson writes and directs, then Abrams comes back to finish off. The key difference here for me, is that under George Lucas, the story was complete, they simply had to fill the roles as they went. Under Disney, they filled the roles, then let the story grow 'organically'. This was a gamble, and it didn't pay off, IMHO.
edit: Purely personal opinion, but I thought Rogue One and Solo were as good or better than the Sequel Trilogy.. part of the reason is that they were connective tissue for the original story, playing within Lucas's sandbox.. and not trying to do their own thing.
I've steered clear of that. It did not come to pass. Despite being a big fan of David Lynch, I don't waste any time wondering how ESB would have been had he actually directed it... They didn't use Trevorrows script and Fisher died, game over.
Maybe a little, maybe a lot. Just keep in mind that the person who wrote it believes that Disney ruined Star Wars and is presenting his 'facts' to support that case.
It's unlikely to happen. Sources as trustworthy as this article or more so (Greg Grunberg, JJ's best mate and cast member in TRoS) say it doesn't exist. The closest you'll get is to read the novelisation. This would have been underway during the making of the film, so the plot points conveyed would likely be in the books pages. It also gets to do a lot more with Leia, since it's not constrained by Fisher being alive (or not). The article posted makes out like the the TRoS novelisation tries to 'fix' the film... to a point, that's true, but ALL the novelisations contain such stuff... a book can tell you what people are thinking and feeling.. a film just shows you what they are saying.
Just to reiterate my stance on all this.. that article is tripe, whether it contains facts or not. I believe Disney did mess up by not letting the Story group lead the films plots, I think they messed up selecting both Abrams and Johnson as directors, and my other criticisms of the films lay with the creatives involved. I think that by treating the films as the top level canon, but leaving their story at the whim of other writers and directors greatly undermines the way they constructed the rest of the canon media (TV, Comics, Books and Games). The best Star Wars stuff these days isn't the films... but it's still under Disney...their mistake was giving so much power to people outside the Lucasfilm family, and that very much includes Abrams.
.. sorry if I sound like I'm ranting. I'm not a big fan of the sequel trilogy myself, but these articles, of which there are thousands, trot out the same lines all the time and all they're trying to do is trade toxicity for clicks.
hoffmeister_fan
Kraftwagen König
- Messages
- 11,250
Yup, that's him.
I am asking anybody and everybody. I was going to PM you more or less what I wrote, but then I saw Mark's post, so instead I decided to just reply to that.
Since GCF is the extent of my online social media presence, and this place has a bunch of well-read SW fans, I figure I post my queries here. I have no desire or patience in going into SW-specific message boards or reddits and then free-falling down that rabbit hole.
Wasn't aware of Ford's reluctance for continuing to portray Han Solo, but he does have a rep of being a bit surly towards more "fantastical" roles.
I just can't imagine Luke going full-punk.
I am not as well-versed with Brit papers as I thought I was. For instance, I know the Daily Mail is pure crap and The Guardian is reputable with their journalism. I thought the Telegraph is one of the better papers, but I just learned it is when compared to the Daily Mail but not by much. So there's some regret in posting that article at all.
We all have our passions, right? While I catch whiffs of discontent or whatever about a pop culture phenomenon, I no longer dig too deep, especially as I don't want to see any "spoilers" and either ruin my experience or influence my own opinion about it. Outside of watching a trailer, I try to go into a movie with as little info as possible.
Edit: BTW, if we further this discussion, let's either do it on PM or another thread. I don't want to further clutter this thread with my musings, etc.
- Messages
- 11,420
- Name
- Matt
I go pretty deep into Star Wars, there's two or three podcasts/YT channels that I enjoy watching/listening to... ForceCenter Podcast feed, and Star Wars Explained. My mantra for most things I enjoy, is celebrate what you like, and accept what you don't. So much material is out there that just dedicates its time to trash-talking Star Wars it's unreal, people just seem to want to revel in their own hate, but these two channels are pretty much inline with my views.
If you look for 'Databank brawl' on Spotify... it's a funny way to pass the time.
- Messages
- 11,420
- Name
- Matt
Which bits were terrible?
braaf
Stuttgart Specialist
- Messages
- 1,841
The first 10 minutes felt like I was watching a movie trailer and the writing was terrible.
Possible spoilers.
The first 10 minutes were like "Here's this dude who died but didn't and he has a fleet of planet destroying ships buried in the sand and he's looking for his grand daughter to take over from him".
So what were the first 2 movies for then. They were a waste of time. They could've used the first 2 movies to lay the foundation for the 3rd one instead of just shoving it down our throats.
The action sequences and fighting scenes are very good though and I did like the chemistry between Ray and Ben.
But then once again in typical Star Wars fashion for the umpteenth time some one has to take out some kind of vent or gizmo to disable, you get the picture.
I liked the movie but I felt it could've been much better.
Possible spoilers.
The first 10 minutes were like "Here's this dude who died but didn't and he has a fleet of planet destroying ships buried in the sand and he's looking for his grand daughter to take over from him".
So what were the first 2 movies for then. They were a waste of time. They could've used the first 2 movies to lay the foundation for the 3rd one instead of just shoving it down our throats.
The action sequences and fighting scenes are very good though and I did like the chemistry between Ray and Ben.
But then once again in typical Star Wars fashion for the umpteenth time some one has to take out some kind of vent or gizmo to disable, you get the picture.
I liked the movie but I felt it could've been much better.
- Messages
- 11,420
- Name
- Matt
I'd say that the idea is to provide an enjoyable journey that does what little character development was needed. It's debatable that it does that, but I can't help but feel there's strong parallels with the original trilogy in this respect (and many others), and it doesn't stop me enjoying RotJ, and it didn't really stop me liking TRoS either. A reveal that Snoke was Palpatines puppet could perhaps have been the best addition to TLJ to prep us for TRoS... Doing the reveal of Rey's parentage in TLJ (ala, "I am your father", from ESB), might have been a better use of time than the Canto Bight sequence, but keeping that big reveal until the third film has its advantages.
Maybe it's just because I find Adam Driver to be one of the Sequel Trilogies biggest wins, but if you take his arc as the backbone of the story it makes more sense of it as a 3 film story, IMHO at least.
