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Star Wars is better than everything


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6 hours ago, crumbs said:

you have to be utterly incompetent if you can't write a half-decent, logical screenplay in the space of a year (especially for a franchise that has literally decades of established lore already behind it).

 

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On 9/3/2020 at 8:25 PM, Arpy said:

It would've been better if Rose sacrificed herself and POE saved Finn from an unnecessary sacrifice, continuing on with their relationship established in TFA. As Rose heads towards the canon, she holds the pendant.

 

Paige, Holdo, Luke, and Rose?  

Too many sacrifices in one movie. 

 

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23 minutes ago, Demodex said:

Too many sacrifices in one movie. 

 

There's nothing wrong with a large body count in storytelling.

 

Wagner basically made a career off of "then everyone died, the end."

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We don't get good tragedies anymore.

 

Luke in The Last Jedi comes close, though. I still really like that aspect of the movie, and that's no faint praise because its really the heart of the movie.

 

Unfortunately, it does falter quite considerably in other aspects.

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52 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

We don't get good tragedies anymore.

 

Luke in The Last Jedi comes close, though. I still really like that aspect of the movie, and that's no faint praise because its really the heart of the movie.

 

Unfortunately, it does falter quite considerably in other aspects.

 

I agree. Cantankerous, disillusioned Luke made perfect sense to me, and although I'm a little iffy on the execution of his death, I think the entire sequence with his apparition on Crait is fantastic. Probably the best embodiment of the Jedi's highest ideals in the films. "A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack."

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3 hours ago, Demodex said:

 

Paige, Holdo, Luke, and Rose?  

Too many sacrifices in one movie.

What's one more sacrifice going to hurt?

Was Paige really a sacrifice? I thought she was already screwed before she bombed the dreadnought?

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3 hours ago, Datameister said:

 

I agree. Cantankerous, disillusioned Luke made perfect sense to me, and although I'm a little iffy on the execution of his death, I think the entire sequence with his apparition on Crait is fantastic. Probably the best embodiment of the Jedi's highest ideals in the films. "A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack."


Which is why I hesitate to call it “tragedy” because, as you said, Luke’s death is heroic. It’s not tragedy, per se; it’s martyrdom. Although it could be argued that, had Luke agreed to leave the island earlier, this death (heroic though it may be) would have been avoidable. It’s just on the edge of being tragedy, outright.

 

Like I said, we barely get any good tragedies anymore.

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It might've been a tragedy had Rey convinced Luke earlier and he was bent on stopping Ren and Snoke, only to expend his life force and die saving the Resistance. At that point it would've been clear and perhaps an acknowledgment from Luke, that their new hope was Rey, and his death a symbolic passing of the torch to Rey. Luke would pass the Lightsaber back to Rey, recognizing that she would need it in the fight to come.

 

So many possibilities for this kind of development, and honestly, I love the Hermit/exiled Luke, it's just that the film didn't devote enough time or give enough focus to that particular plot to make any lasting impact. If I had rewritten TLJ, I would have Finn accompany Rey to the island and both of our heroes could've confronted Luke. 

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3 hours ago, Arpy said:

It might've been a tragedy had Rey convinced Luke earlier and he was bent on stopping Ren and Snoke, only to expend his life force and die saving the Resistance.

 

Still not tragedy. You're describing martyrdom. There's a difference.

 

Tragedy is when the character dies for doing something wrong. Oedipus Rex doesn't get a heroic, redemptive death.

 

Like I said, we rarely get good tragedy anymore.

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At the beginning there was toying with like an Obi-Wan connection. There were like different versions, and then it really went to that she was no one. Then it came to Episode IX and J.J. pitched me the film and was like, “Oh yeah, Palpatine’s granddaughter.” I was like, “Awesome!” Then two weeks later he was like, “Oh, we’re not sure.” So it kept changing. Even as we were filming I wasn’t sure what the answer was going to be.

 

So basically, when they made TFA they had zero idea where it was going. Exactly like they always said. Got it.

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19 minutes ago, blondheim said:

Like the sibling reveal was planned or something.

 

If you ask Lucas, it totally was. Of course it wasn't, but its Lucas who is responsible for fostering this idea that Star Wars "has a plan." Indeed, upon annoucing the sale to Disney, the first thing Lucas said was that he "wrote treatments for 7, 8 and 9" which was of course completely false.

 

So the fan outrage is, to my mind, to do with conditioning and false expectations SET BY GEORGE LUCAS.

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Indeed I don’t really blame TFA for anything; I have quibbles, but I think it was overall damned near perfect, even inspired. It really did leave the door open for the story to grow in various directions which could have been satisfactory. I think they honestly looked at the way the OT was unplanned as a strength; as if George Lucas himself was along for the ride, in for some surprises, riffing off collaborators, having some spontaneous fun, and not taking it all too seriously. In other words, recreating that “it’s just a schlock serial” feel he originally wanted.

 

So what makes the ST unsatisfactory is not so much that it was unplanned. In my view, it is the unfortunate tendency of TLJ to “rebut” ideas from TFA, and of TRoS to in turn “rebut” ideas from TLJ. Many viewers perceive a creative tug-of-war. That could have been prevented any number of ways.

 

That’s why to me that moment at the end of TFA at the edge of the cliff with Rey and Luke is the end, it’s where my headcanon officially cuts off. Because, for better or for worse, that open end is the best end; it’s the feeling that anything can happen, anything can be true. It’s Schrödinger Sequel Trilogy!

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14 minutes ago, Pellaeon said:

Indeed I don’t really blame TFA for anything; I have quibbles, but I think it was overall damned near perfect, even inspired. It really did leave the door open for the story to grow in various directions which could have been satisfactory. I think they honestly looked at the way the OT was unplanned as a strength; as if George Lucas himself was along for the ride, in for some surprises, riffing off collaborators, having some spontaneous fun, and not taking it all too seriously. In other words, recreating that “it’s just a schlock serial” feel he originally wanted.

 

So what makes the ST unsatisfactory is not so much that it was unplanned. In my view, it is the unfortunate tendency of TLJ to “rebut” ideas from TFA, and of TRoS to in turn “rebut” ideas from TLJ. Many viewers perceive a creative tug-of-war. That could have been prevented any number of ways.

 

That’s why to me that moment at the end of TFA at the edge of the cliff with Rey and Luke is the end, it’s where my headcanon officially cuts off. Because, for better or for worse, that open end is the best end; it’s the feeling that anything can happen, anything can be true. It’s Schrödinger Sequel Trilogy!


The seams are more visible in the ST because it didn’t have a single creative voice overseeing the whole thing. It needed someone to act as basically a show runner. I guess what Marvel does but less generic cookie cutter factory would be the way to go. 
 

I think Lucasfilm need someone to head the story direction for the whole company. Someone involved in all the projects but actually knows and loves Star Wars. Kennedy is a business person not a creative. Someone like Filoni would be ideal.

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33 minutes ago, mstrox said:

Chen, it's my understanding that Lucas did write treatments, but that Disney used next to nothing from them.

 

Lucas wrote three treatments, of which at least one was for Episode VII, one for Solo and one for an unknown third concept for a film. We know some of the contents of Episode VII from the period Lucas worked on it. We know NOTHING of Lucas' Episodes VIII and IX, and that's because they probably never existed. He just said they did.

 

Lucas is a big <offensive but coincidentally anatomically-correct phrase removed here> liar.

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1 hour ago, Bilbo said:


The seams are more visible in the ST because it didn’t have a single creative voice overseeing the whole thing. It needed someone to act as basically a show runner. I guess what Marvel does but less generic cookie cutter factory would be the way to go. 
 

I think Lucasfilm need someone to head the story direction for the whole company. Someone involved in all the projects but actually knows and loves Star Wars. Kennedy is a business person not a creative. Someone like Filoni would be ideal.

 

Well said. A strong showrunner is exactly what they needed. I don't mind the idea of letting different directors lend their own creative voices to the proceedings, but there needed to be someone guiding the trilogy as a whole, even if things weren't perfectly planned out from the start. Instead, we got that tug-of-war effect @Pellaeon mentioned. Each film pulls in a different direction, and while I really like elements of all three directions, together their vector sum is a virtual standstill.

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2 hours ago, mstrox said:

I'd like to see a source for that!

 

According to Kathleen Kennedy:

 

Quote

George Lucas never wrote a script for 7, 8 or 9, and the ideas that I think you're referencing are ideas that he had other possible movies. They were small summaries that represented some thoughts and ideas.

 

and:

 

Quote

he had actually written up a few different ideas.

 

We know Lucas worked on VII with/for Disney early on: We know some of what he outlined for VII, which is honestly not far off of The Force Awakens. We know he worked on developing a Han Solo origin story. Between those, we're left with a third unknown concept, and according to Kennedy, neither of the three is a proper treatment. Bog Iger, too, refers to them as "outlines." For all we know, they could have been a couple of sentences each.

 

George Lucas didn't even bother writing three full treatments ahead of the prequel trilogy which (a) he intended to direct himself and (b) had a prefigured end-point as a result of being prequels. That he should chose to write three treatments for a trilogy he would proceed to have nothing to do with and which has no prefigured end-point is ludicrous.

 

Indeed, while we do know of Lucas' Episode VII, we do not know anything about his supposed treatments of VIII or IX. The only one suggesting that such treatments even exist is...George Lucas, who's a notoriously unreliable narrator.  I call bollocks.

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A lot of people really dislike TLJ. People on this site, sheesh, you may not agree, but get over your feigned disbelief by now.

 

Finn is clearly the romantic lead in TFA, opposite Rey. It is TLJ that sidelines him into a Pippin role, and VERY awkwardly pairs him off with Rose. (Remember the kiss? God!) I’m not sure how TRoS could have repaired that, without making the whole movie about Rey’s romantic options, which would obviously have been a terrible choice. At least Finn is moved closer to the center into something like a Sam Gamgee role. Still, it is BS compared to what he was in TFA.

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Many think like you, and many defend it like Boyega, on the grounds that it’s a relative salvage job. I’m not going to die on either hill, I just CAN’T get my head around why you just CAN’T get your head around both points of view. ;)

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On 9/9/2020 at 8:18 PM, Chen G. said:

 

Lucas wrote three treatments, of which at least one was for Episode VII, one for Solo and one for an unknown third concept for a film. We know some of the contents of Episode VII from the period Lucas worked on it. We know NOTHING of Lucas' Episodes VIII and IX, and that's because they probably never existed. He just said they did.

 

Lucas is a big <offensive but coincidentally anatomically-correct phrase removed here> liar.

 

So we know nothing about Lucas' VIII and IX, yet you claim they never existed, and that makes him a liar. 

Steep theory. 

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Lucas has been established as a terribly unreliable narrator on just about any subject to do with his work.

 

He claimed to have written all six Star Wars episodes all at once (supposedly, out of one huge script he had to subdivide) - he didn't.

 

He claims Star Wars was always intended to be Episode VI - it wasn't. Indeed, he went so far as to publish a doctored version of the script to "prove" this point!

 

For decades now, he claims his next film is to be some small, experimental movie - it wasn't.

 

He said Jabba was always intended to be an alien creature - he wasn't.

 

He told Spielberg he wrote three Indy films for him to direct - he hadn't. Indeed, he claims to have first written Raiders (and Willow) in 1973 and yet one doesn't really get that impression from reading the story conferences.

 

Recently, he claimed he never intended to use extant music for Star Wars, even though Williams said that was the case back in 1977, so I'm choosing to believe Williams.

 

So excuse me if I'm going with Kathleen Kennedy's version on this one.

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I wouldn't go so far as to call him a "liar". It's comes across more that he has some sort of low-functioning ADHD or something and just can't remember anything correctly. So his mind "tricks" him into thinking what he's saying is the truth. Idk...

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He made a doctored version of the Star Wars script. It carries a different date, a different title (Episode IV: A New Hope) and different contents, being basically a transcript of the finished film plus deleted scenes, with Jabba reimagined as an alien.

 

That's beyond even lying: its outright forgery, and it ought to have been a conscious decision.

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12 hours ago, Pellaeon said:

Many think like you, and many defend it like Boyega, on the grounds that it’s a relative salvage job. I’m not going to die on either hill, I just CAN’T get my head around why you just CAN’T get your head around both points of view. ;)

 

It's not so much about what you or I think about the movies, but you can't leave Boyega's 'boy' JJ alone if you want to talk about the poor handling of his character and by extension the racism he talks about – to me it seems that he solely blames Johnson for it and I think that's unacceptable. 

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I think Boyega's just fonder of Abrams, which makes sense. It was Abrams who cast him, AND he's done two films with Abrams as opposed to one with Johnson.

 

How a film turns out isn't indicative of the atmosphere on the set. Honestly, from what I've seen it seems everyone had a blast on JJ's set.

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On 9/5/2020 at 11:02 PM, Datameister said:

 

I agree. Cantankerous, disillusioned Luke made perfect sense to me, and although I'm a little iffy on the execution of his death, I think the entire sequence with his apparition on Crait is fantastic. Probably the best embodiment of the Jedi's highest ideals in the films. "A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack."

For me it didn't. George Lucas spend 3 prequel films to describe the development of Anakin from an optimistic idealistic boy to a jedi killing servant of darkness. But Lukes forst appearance in 8 is so different from the Luke in the original trilogy that it is like you would replace episode 3 of the prequels with Rogue One and explain the current condition of Darth Vader in a few flashbacks what happened between then and the end of episode 2 to Anakin.

I mean, you can tell a story like this, but it is not the way story telling in the Skywalker saga used to work.

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5 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

Lukes forst appearance in 8 is so different from the Luke in the original trilogy that it is like you would replace episode 3 of the prequels with Rogue One and explain the current condition of Darth Vader in a few flashbacks what happened between then and the end of episode 2 to Anakin.

 

In general, the sequel trilogy is the only Star Wars trilogy whose narrative hinges upon events that happened before the first film (but after the previous trilogy) to which we flashback a couple of times.

 

Other than two brief flashforwards in Revenge of the Sith, the original six films have been entirely linear, so this is a departure in terms of narratology.

 

I don't see this as a problem, though. Its just like how the camerawork in Star Wars (with the possible exception of Kershner's film) was always rather ho-hum, and in comes JJ Abrams and suddenly we're treated to these long takes and swirling camera moves. When you take a franchise to the 21 century, with 21 century filmmakers, its narrative and cinematic language are bound to evolve. Lucas' style is rather primitive in comparison.

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29 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

I think Boyega's just fonder of Abrams, which makes sense. It was Abrams who cast him, AND he's done two films with Abrams as opposed to one with Johnson.

 

How a film turns out isn't indicative of the atmosphere on the set. Honestly, from what I've seen it seems everyone had a blast on JJ's set.

 

Yeah it's clear that many just love JJ as a person. Which I totally understand from what I've seen from him – Williams also is enamoured with him even which makes little sense if you think about how Abrams handled his scores.

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4 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

For me it didn't. George Lucas spend 3 prequel films to describe the development of Anakin from an optimistic idealistic boy to a jedi killing servant of darkness. But Lukes forst appearance in 8 is so different from the Luke in the original trilogy that it is like you would replace episode 3 of the prequels with Rogue One and explain the current condition of Darth Vader in a few flashbacks what happened between then and the end of episode 2 to Anakin.

I mean, you can tell a story like this, but it is not the way story telling in the Skywalker saga used to work.

 

In addition to the excellent points made by @Chen G., I would point out that Luke was trained by two Jedi whose response to a Padawan's betrayal was self-imposed exile. This is hardly a new pattern in the saga, and Luke always had a whiny, sullen streak anyway.

 

 

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16 minutes ago, Holko said:

it was Abrams who showed Luke like that and he was the one who wrote "he just walked away from it all"

 

Very true.

 

I have no idea what people were expecting out of this other than what we got.

 

I mean, the Luke contemplating killing Kylo bit definitely took it further, but I liked that.

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https://open.spotify.com/album/7DHmBVHm70nEgeba2hEU3f

 

This just popped up. Is it worth its own thread at all?

 

 

On 9/9/2020 at 3:24 PM, Datameister said:

 

Well said. A strong showrunner is exactly what they needed. I don't mind the idea of letting different directors lend their own creative voices to the proceedings, but there needed to be someone guiding the trilogy as a whole, even if things weren't perfectly planned out from the start. Instead, we got that tug-of-war effect @Pellaeon mentioned. Each film pulls in a different direction, and while I really like elements of all three directions, together their vector sum is a virtual standstill.

 

 

That was presumably what Lucas was going to be. We know he was in meetings early on. He was involved. He even approved art for Luke on an island with a young girl. What we don't know if what happened in between when they gave Lucas the boot, before he gave that crazy Charlie Rose interview.

 

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13 minutes ago, SilverTrumpet said:

That was presumably what Lucas was going to be. We know he was in meetings early on. He was involved. He even approved art for Luke on an island with a young girl.

 

I don't think Lucas intended to be involved beyond Episode VII except in an advisory position. He just helped get that one off of the ground. Kathleen Kennedy was already in charge at this point.

 

Remember that originally Kira (later Rey) found Luke somewhere halfway through the movie: not in VIII. There's no evidence that Lucas did any work for a storyline to VIII or IX.

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