Taika Waititi to Direct New ‘Star Wars’ Film

[JTN 2,036]

59 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

No! Not Spaceballs please. Spaceballs was already old fashioned, when it came out and had already then a terrible Holiday Special flair.

 

I recently watched it again. There is about a handful of good funny scenes. The rest is really painful to watch.

 

I was only joking. But honestly, as much as I love JOJO RABBIT, you couldn't expect a serious Star Wars film coming from Taika Waititi. 

 

42 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

I would pay a lot to see SPACEBALLS 2: THE SEARCH FOR MORE MONEY 

Well, chances are you already did pay money for it, it was called the sequel trilogy. 

[crumbs 14,318]

I'll bet good money a Taika Waititi Star Wars movie never sees the light of day, especially after Thor 4 (easily one of the most tone-deaf, haphazard films I've seen in years; a misfire of epic proportions).

 

Next Goal Wins did him no favours either, and I'm sure there's plenty of watercooler discussion around Hollywood about him at the moment.

 

There's shades of Lucasfilm hiring hot-shots Lord & Miller off their hit movie, except they're once bitten twice shy after the Solo debacle. As evidenced by Trevorrow's dismissal from Episode IX after the abysmal Book of Henry.

[mrbellamy 6,288]

I didn't mind Love and Thunder, really. 

 

[A. A. Ron 1,742]

I thought the serious parts worked pretty well, but the humor was often rather obnoxious.

[A24 4,345]

Is anyone here still impatiently waiting for more Star Wars movies?

[crocodile 8,018]

19 hours ago, mrbellamy said:

I didn't mind Love and Thunder, really. 

 

I don't either. 

 

Karol

[JTN 2,036]

2 hours ago, A24 said:

Is anyone here still impatiently waiting for more Star Wars movies?

I was in 1999 and in 2015. After TFA, everything not the OT Star Wars was dead to me.
 

Frankly Star Wars should be left alone. It’s been abused and bastardized by Disney to the point where it’s become a parody of itself. 

[Nick1Ø66 4,718]

On 16/11/2023 at 10:38 PM, Mr. Hooper said:

Personally, I don't want an idiosyncratic writer/director to give his "spin on Star Wars". Whatever sensibilities a director may bring, they should be reined back in service of the story, and not swerve too far from the mothership.

 

Star Wars shouldn't be treated as a vehicle for the latest indie darling to show off. If 'Empire' and 'Jedi' were made today, I doubt Irvin Kershner and Richard Marquand would've even been considered. They were sturdy, working directors, who didn't have the flash of a Waititi.

 

💯
 

So Waititi's taking the Rian Johnson approach to Star Wars. Make a film that deeply divides the fan community and further disillusions people about a dying franchise. Cool. Waititi already ruined Thor, why not take a crack at Star Wars?

 

"P*ss people off" is just the new "subvert expectations".  Like Rian Johnson's comments about his awful film, they're the words of an egoist who thinks his little vision is more important than making a movie people actually want to see. 

 

Star Wars should be about escapism and making people feel good, not p*ssing people off. It should exceed expectations, not subvert them. Subverting expectations is great for a movie like JoJo Rabbit, which I enjoyed, but not so much for Star Wars.

 

Doesn't matter anyway. Waititi's film will never be made. Nor will Johnson's, nor will Mangolds.

 

[Chen G. 3,950]

2 hours ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

nor will Mangolds.

 

Personally, that film seems like the biggest disaster waiting to happen. A film about the creation of the Jedi order, and discovering the Force? Sounds like another Rings of Power, in terms of demystifying the events of the deep past.

 

The fact that Mangold (less by fault of his own so much as the circumstances) just caused Lucasfilm's only other standing property (Indiana Jones, Willow having already underwhelmed people) to bomb, certainly doesn't help the chances of his film getting made.

[TolkienSS 407]

Star Wars has been killed, nobody but the Twitter crowd gives a fack anymore.

[Chen G. 3,950]

5 hours ago, TolkienSS said:

Star Wars has been killed,

 

In a way, the cloned (?), decrepit, hooked-on-life-support Emperor and Frankensteined Leia scenes (replete with CGI facial reconstruction) of Episode IX, and the AI-generated Darth Vader voice in Obi Wan are a nice, unwitting metaphor for what the series had become...

[Naïve Old Fart 9,551]

That's The Mouse for ya!

It takes something that was once good, and turns it into utter shit.

Let's see, now:

MCU? ✓

STAR WARS? ✓

INDIANA JONES? ✓

[Tallguy 3,401]

34 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

That's The Mouse for ya!

It takes something that was once good, and turns it into utter shit.

Let's see, now:

MCU? ✓

 

 

Are you saying that The Avengers through Endgame never reached the soaring heights of Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2 (!), Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger? Mostly great films to be sure, but nearly nobody is calling anything in there except maybe Iron Man as the pinnacle of the MCU.

 

37 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

STAR WARS? ✓

 

The only thing that I'm putting on the pre-Disney pedestal is going to be Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. i.e. Two of my favorite films of all time. But I certainly think there have been better Disney Star Wars than Return of the Jedi and WAY better than whatever Lucas did from 1983 to 2005. And you can take Rebels, Andor, and Rogue One out of my cold, dead, hands.

 

39 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

INDIANA JONES? ✓

 

You've got me on that one. But before that there was one great Indy movie, one really good one, one that I can probably kind of appreciate now but didn't like at the time, and one that is still far worse that Disney's Indy.

[Chen G. 3,950]

2 minutes ago, Tallguy said:

but nearly nobody is calling anything in there except maybe Iron Man as the pinnacle of the MCU.

 

My favourites of the Marvel oeuvre are Iron Man and The Avengers. The more Marvel because aware that they were really making comedies, the less funny they became to me (e.g. Guardians of the Galaxy).

 

1 minute ago, Tallguy said:

The only thing that I'm putting on the pre-Disney pedestal is going to be Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back.

 

This is me here. The original never "clicked" with me. Probably inevitable for someone who's never seen it before their mid-20s... I'm also not huge on Indiana Jones - I guess swashbucklers aren't really my thing - except for The Last Crusade.

[Mr. Hooper 1,794]

25 minutes ago, Tallguy said:

and one that is still far worse that Disney's Indy.

Shaking my head here. I'm one of those who found a new appreciation for Crystal Skull after seeing the ponderous borefest that was Dial. I'll take Skull's giddy, go-for-broke action and humour over whatever Dial was struggling and limping its way to be.

 

Like others, I tried latching onto the flashback opening sequence as something worthy of the mantle, but on second viewing even that fell apart. There was nothing else in Dial that required a second viewing for me, so I left the theatre (I'd bought a second ticket in advance).

 

"Nuke the fridge" became a meme, but as ridiculous as the conceit was, it's a great scene directed by a master, that I could watch again and again...and I'll take lower-tier Spielberg over Mangold's best efforts any day.

 

Seriously, was there any moment in Dial that when you left the theatre made you think: "Wow, I gotta see that again!" But somehow it gets praised for its blandness and for removing the bad taste of the "over the top" Crystal Skull.

[Tallguy 3,401]

6 minutes ago, Mr. Hooper said:

Shaking my head here. I'm one of those who found a new appreciation for Crystal Skull after seeing the ponderous borefest that was Dial. I'll take Skull's giddy, go-for-broke action and humour over whatever Dial was struggling and limping its way to be.

 

I never felt giddy watching Skull. Not to say that I felt all that giddy watching Dial either. You're never going to get me to appreciate Skull. But you might get me to hate Dial a bit more.

 

6 minutes ago, Mr. Hooper said:

Seriously, was there any moment in Dial that when you left the theatre made you think: "Wow, I gotta see that again!" But somehow it gets praised for its blandness and for removing the bad taste of the "over the top" Crystal Skull.

 

I think Skull and Hook are the only two Spielberg movies (I suppose I might include Tintin but that's such a different critter) where I'm not even enjoying watching a SPIELBERG movie. The narrative doesn't even get the chance to enter into it. (Disclosure: I have not seen Munich, Warhorse, Lincoln, or The Post.)

 

And I'm the sort of person who think Always is just a spectacularly gorgeous film!

 

I'm not saying that I'm in hurry to watch Dial again, but for some reason it didn't feel like the gut punch that Skull did. Maybe Dial is only OK (kinda) because Skull made me completely give up.

[A. A. Ron 1,742]

1 hour ago, Chen G. said:

The original [Star Wars] never "clicked" with me.

Fair enough.

 

1 hour ago, Chen G. said:

Probably inevitable for someone who's never seen it before their mid-20s...

Now this is just a baffling assumption to make. Do you really think it was only or even mostly just children who made Star Wars 77 the highest grossing movie ever made up to that point?

 

7 hours ago, JTW said:

After TFA, everything not the OT Star Wars was dead to me.

What’s amazing to me is that all 3 of the sequels and also Solo have gotten this exact reaction from different former fans. The people who gave up after TFA probably weren’t upset about the same things as the people who gave up after TLJ or TROS, but somehow Disney returned… and managed to piss each of us off in unique ways.

[JTN 2,036]

 

2 minutes ago, A. A. Ron said:

What’s amazing to me is that all 3 of the sequels and also Solo have gotten this exact reaction from different former fans.

And also Rogue One. To me it was like watching a fan fiction video game. It's probably better than Solo and the "sequels", but compared to George Lucas' original Star Wars films it's awful. IMHO.

[Chen G. 3,950]

Just now, JTW said:

ut compared to George Lucas' original Star Wars films it's awful. IMHO.

 

Attack of the Clones would like a word with you...

[Naïve Old Fart 9,551]

1 hour ago, Tallguy said:

Are you saying that The Avengers through Endgame never reached the soaring heights of Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2 (!), Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger? Mostly great films to be sure, but nearly nobody is calling anything in there except maybe Iron Man as the pinnacle of the MCU.

 

Not at all. I'm suggesting that just about everything since ENDGAME has been superfluous, and money-grabbing.

Personally speaking, the acme of the MCU is WINTER SOLDIER.

 

 

43 minutes ago, Tallguy said:

And I'm the sort of person who think Always is just a spectacularly gorgeous film!

 

That's because it is. I just wish that the script was a little more substantial.

[JTN 2,036]

13 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

 

Attack of the Clones would like a word with you...

ATTACK OF THE CLONES is a masterpiece compared to R1. The Coruscant-Chase sequence alone is worth the price of admission. I remember seeing it in the theater in 2002 and I was in awe of that scene. It's a DEEPLY flawed and sometimes utterly ridiculous film, but a quintessential STAR WARS film nonetheless. I will always rank it higher than anything Disney have done. 

[Fargo 297]

6 minutes ago, JTW said:

ATTACK OF THE CLONES is a masterpiece compared to R1. 

[Mr. Hooper 1,794]

1 hour ago, Tallguy said:

Not to say that I felt all that giddy watching Dial either. You're never going to get me to appreciate Skull. But you might get me to hate Dial a bit more.

I'm working on it. 
 

I don't think many people left the theatre feeling giddy. From my experience and those of others I read, people were dead quiet when Dial ended, and filed out quietly—like passing a casket at a wake.

 

One of the beefs people have about Skull is the aliens thing—excuse me, "interdimensional beings, in point of fact." For them, it was "a bridge too far."

 

It's funny, because the "power of God" melting faces and exploding heads is complete hokum, but they can't deal with the probable existence of extraterrestrials...

 

"But Indy should only deal with mystic stuff." Yeah, I hear you, and apparently Spielberg wasn't sold on the aliens either, but gave in to Lucas.

 

But I can appreciate that Lucas wanted to tread new ground by moving Indy into the 1950s... The Nazis were out and the Russians were in. Nuclear annihilation was on people's minds and so was a fascination for space exploration, UFOs, and Area 51. Alien and giant insect creature features were popular at the movies. So he threw all that in.

 

I don't remember raising an eyebrow or bristling at the notion of Indy chasing aliens. It was good, escapist fun, of the kind you might've seen at the matinee in 1957, which was Lucas' intention I think. And I thought it was a fun twist that the interdimensional beings were themselves archeologists, collecting artifacts from earth.

[A. A. Ron 1,742]

54 minutes ago, JTW said:

 

And also Rogue One. To me it was like watching a fan fiction video game. It's probably better than Solo and the "sequels", but compared to George Lucas' original Star Wars films it's awful. IMHO.

Oh I’m no huge fan of Rogue One. I think both film and score have good bits while feeling too much like a “rough draft” for lack of a better term. Also there are way too many cameos for my taste and damn near all of them feel shoehorned in. I’m just saying that I’ve never heard anyone say “Ever since Rogue One, I knew I was done with Star Wars,” but I have heard people express some variation of that sentiment for all 4 of the other films.

[Chen G. 3,950]

7 minutes ago, A. A. Ron said:

Also there are way too many cameos for my taste and damn near all of which feel shoehorned in.

 

I agree.

 

I think, if you're going to stitch your film so closely into the original Star Wars, you can't do that with a film that, in visuals, style and sentiment feels so far removed from that film.

 

Certainly, from a "prequel" standpoint I think its wrong to show the Death Star so much, and not just because it stretches credulity (in Star Wars, we're obviously meant to believe this is the first the Death Star had been used. In Rogue One, its used a good two or three times) but mostly because, after a while, the Death Star stops being an "event"...

[JTN 2,036]

5 minutes ago, A. A. Ron said:

Also there are way too many cameos for my taste and damn near all of them feel shoehorned in.

Agreed. And they also ruined Darth Vader, who should only appear as a fully fleshed-out character in A New Hope. In ANH (and in the entire OT, for that matter) Vader doesn't move or fight like he does in R1. Why did they change it? Because they wanted to show to the video game generation what a badass Vader is. But if you watch the films "chronologically", you see a Vader fighting post-prequel-era-style in R1, then you jump to ANH and you see a "slow", old school Vader who looks and fights completely differently. But they didn't care because "it looked cool", and that's exactly what the kids said when they saw it. 

It's one of Disney's biggest problems: style over substance. 

[1977 1,743]

3 hours ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

That's The Mouse for ya!

It takes something that was once good, and turns it into utter shit.

Let's see, now:

MCU? ✓

STAR WARS? ✓

INDIANA JONES? ✓

 

Don't forget those awful live action revisions of their animated classics.

 

And Willow.

[A. A. Ron 1,742]

16 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

Certainly, from a "prequel" standpoint I think its wrong to show the Death Star so much, and not just because it stretches credulity (in Star Wars, we're obviously meant to believe this is the first the Death Star had been used.

When Lucasfilm inevitably releases yet another cut of “A New Hope,” they should touch up the scene where Tarkin says he wants to test out his new battle station and have the laser technicians just roll their eyes while muttering about how they’ve fired it twice and already know what it can do.

[1977 1,743]

42 minutes ago, Mr. Hooper said:

From my experience and those of others I read, people were dead quiet when Dial ended, and filed out quietly—like passing a casket at a wake.

 

[Chen G. 3,950]

3 minutes ago, A. A. Ron said:

When Lucasfilm inevitably releases yet another cut of A New Hope, they should touch up the scene where Tarkin says he wants to test out his new battle station and have the laser technicians just roll eyes while muttering about how they’ve fired it twice and already know what it can do.

 

To be fair, Star Wars always had crap continuity. I mean, in Attack of the Clones, C3PO lives with Owen, and clearly had been for years. I know he doesn't have the gold plating and there are clearly other Droids of this make, but it still makes it a little jaded when Owen doesn't "recognise" him in the original. 

[A. A. Ron 1,742]

Well obviously he's just racist against droids. They all look the same to him.

 

47 minutes ago, Mr. Hooper said:

From my experience and those of others I read, people were dead quiet when Dial ended, and filed out quietly—like passing a casket at a wake.

 

And then they all took to the internet and began passing a casket of whine!

[GerateWohl 4,371]

4 hours ago, Chen G. said:

In a way, the cloned (?), decrepit, hooked-on-life-support Emperor and Frankensteined Leia scenes of Episode IX, and the AI-generated Darth Vader voice in Obi Wan are a nice, unwitting metaphor for what the series had become...

Or like they said in the Honest Trailer for Ashoka at the scene with the zombie stormtroopers "and they found the perfect metaphor for Disney Star Wars". 

[Mr. Hooper 1,794]

1 hour ago, JTW said:

Vader doesn't move or fight like he does in R1. Why did they change it? (...) But they didn't care because "it looked cool", and that's exactly what the kids said when they saw it.

Count me as one of the 41-year-old kids who thought it looked cool when I first saw it. lol

 

Sure it looked out of character for the usually calm and cool Vader, but who's to say he never went full berserker in combat situations such as this? Anger after all is a Sith's ally, and he sure seemed pissed here!

[Chen G. 3,950]

5 minutes ago, Mr. Hooper said:

Sure it looked out of character for the usually calm and cool Vader,

 

That's the Vader of The Empire Strikes Back, though. The Vader of Star Wars is much more the barking sergeant type: "COMMANDER, TEAR THIS SHIP APART UNTIL YOU'VE FOUND THOSE PLANS, AND BRING ME THE PASSENGERS, I WANT THEM ALIVE!"

[Mr. Hooper 1,794]

33 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

 

That's the Vader of The Empire Strikes Back, though. The Vader of Star Wars is much more the barking sergeant type: "COMMANDER, TEAR THIS SHIP APART UNTIL YOU'VE FOUND THOSE PLANS, AND BRING ME THE PASSENGERS, I WANT THEM ALIVE!"

Vader was finding his groove. All of Star Wars was. This was all made up on the fly, right? 

[Chen G. 3,950]

Well, yeah. That's my point. 

 

Also, in Star Wars Vader is a Baritone. In The Empire Strikes Back, Vader is a Bass...

[Edmilson 7,468]

1 hour ago, Chen G. said:

Also, in Star Wars Vader is a Baritone. In The Empire Strikes Back, Vader is a Bass...

[Chen G. 3,950]

More like, the Vader of Star Wars:

 

 

The Vader of The Empire Strikes Back:

 

[Tallguy 3,401]

3 hours ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

Not at all. I'm suggesting that just about everything since ENDGAME has been superfluous, and money-grabbing.

Personally speaking, the acme of the MCU is WINTER SOLDIER.

 

I'm saying that the Disney phase of the MCU until post Endgame has been wildly successful creatively and financially. And they had a pandemic to deal with. It's not the whole story but it's not nothing.

 

3 hours ago, Mr. Hooper said:

From my experience and those of others I read, people were dead quiet when Dial ended, and filed out quietly—like passing a casket at a wake.

 

Everyone I saw Dial with enjoyed it. Probably more than I did. And the audience liked it fine. But it was certainly no Raiders or Last Crusade.

 

3 hours ago, JTW said:

And they also ruined Darth Vader, who should only appear as a fully fleshed-out character in A New Hope. In ANH (and in the entire OT, for that matter) Vader doesn't move or fight like he does in R1. Why did they change it? Because they wanted to show to the video game generation what a badass Vader is. But if you watch the films "chronologically", you see a Vader fighting post-prequel-era-style in R1, then you jump to ANH and you see a "slow", old school Vader who looks and fights completely differently. But they didn't care because "it looked cool", and that's exactly what the kids said when they saw it. 

 

You get the same jump when you watch Star Wars and Empire. And it gets worse if you just watched the prequels.

 

Not that I want anyone to upgrade the Vader / Kenobi fight. It is what it is. (I don't want them to put REALLY FAT Palpatine into Empire either.)

[Stark 316]

I’d rather pretend Vader (and Kenobi) moved quickly in the original film than adjust everything leading up to it to match their janky movements.

[JTN 2,036]

2 hours ago, Mr. Hooper said:

but who's to say he never went full berserker in combat situations such as this?

George Lucas when he made the Star Wars Trilogy. But Disney has effed up SW so much that I don’t care anymore. If that’s what people want, fine by me. I’ll always have the OT.

33 minutes ago, Tallguy said:

You get the same jump when you watch Star Wars and Empire.

Vader moves and fights more ferociously in R1 than he does in Empire. 

[GerateWohl 4,371]

2 hours ago, Mr. Hooper said:

Count me as one of the 41-year-old kids who thought it looked cool when I first saw it. lol

 

Sure it looked out of character for the usually calm and cool Vader, but who's to say he never went full berserker in combat situations such as this? Anger after all is a Sith's ally, and he sure seemed pissed here!

Just have a look at the Darth Vader canon comics. There he is rather like the R1 Vader.

[JTN 2,036]

4 hours ago, Fargo said:

Why the hate for George Lucas’ Star Wars? R1 is a Disney fan fic film made from a sentence in ANH.  
If for nothing else, the score to AOTC is far superior to that of R1.
So yeah, Episode II is a masterpiece compared to R1. 

5 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

Just have a look at the Darth Vader canon comics. There he is rather like the R1 Vader.

Let’s stay with the films, shall we? Star Wars is George Lucas’s films, everything else is merchandising allowed by him to make a ton of free money without him having to do any work and feed the fans.

[Chen G. 3,950]

I actually think there's a value in seeing Vader REALLY tear through a bunch of rebels in Rogue One. For such an intimidating villain, Vader actually does very little, physically: he mostly fights other Jedi one-on-one (Ben, Luke).

[Bellosh 3,419]

Are you guys about to fill out a few pages of star wars theories?

 

Cause I'm all for it.  I need a new season to watch. Binged the better than everything and I need more. 🤤

[Mr. Hooper 1,794]

20 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

Vader actually does very little, physically: he mostly fights other Jedi one-on-one (Ben, Luke).

And in other combat situations, he shows up only after the troopers clear the way for him (on the blockade runner and Hoth).

 

What Rogue One did differently was have Vader lead the charge. He must've thought: "Fuck it. I'll deal with this."

[TolkienSS 407]

6 hours ago, Mr. Hooper said:

Shaking my head here. I'm one of those who found a new appreciation for Crystal Skull after seeing the ponderous borefest that was Dial. I'll take Skull's giddy, go-for-broke action and humour over whatever Dial was struggling and limping its way to be.

 

There are movies that are far worse looking than DoD, that are far worse sounding than DoD, that are far more boring than DoD, that have far worse writing, directing and pacing than DoD;

and yet, in context, as a concrete movie experience, I could only describe it as the worst film I've ever seen.

[Jurassic Shark 12,082]

You guys got issues. 

[Groovygoth666 670]

16 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

You guys got issues. 

You obviously haven't met a Star Wars fan before 😂

[Mr. Hooper 1,794]

When my Star Wars issues get to be too much, I retreat to the warm bosom of the original trilogy...