Lets talk all things Star Wars

[Psab keel]

You're welcome.

 

[HeartBlade]

TFA also benefited from being an anti-prequel. Lovable old Han & Chewie & the Falcon were back. The dialogue & acting were prioritized as much as in a normal non-SW movie (unlike the prequels). The production design of everything (costumes, gadgets, sets, ships, planet terrains, etc) was intentionally OT-looking. They built tons of practical sets and didn't let anything have a CGI look (I'd argue they did it more than necessary. It really is a gorgeous-looking movie).

TFA had underlying problems, but on the surface it was a 2-hour apology for the prequels. It doesn't surprise me at all that it sold $2b.

TFA was just a great hype vehicle for the start of a new trilogy. By itself, its an ok movie that essentially recreates ANH.

Introduction of bad guy in black who is shown to be powerful.
Orphan on desert planet longing for adventure but struggling with poverty and boring work.
Call to adventure and leaving desert planet on the Falcon
Female character captured on planet-killer that is used to show the bad guys mean business
Loss of a beloved older mentor
Showdown between the main character and big bad where the main character wins by believing in the force

It hits all the beats of ANH to the point where its basically a remake with some slight edits to avoid plagiarism accusations lol. In addition to knowing this will be a trilogy (its Star Wars and made by Disney), there were also some good mystery boxes dropped throughout the story which Abrams is admittedly very good at making (he cant make answers but he makes damn good questions).

There are some issues that spring up in TFA that dont make sense, namely why Finn is so happy to blow up his own comrades during his escape, why Finn is treated so badly/seems kind of incompetent for a stormtrooper (is the janitor for Starkiller base, gets wrecked by the stun baton guy despite having a lightsaber, implied to be picked on by phasma), why Rey is able to mind trick the stormtrooper to drop his gun, why youngling killer 3000 called out to Rey and the voices. However, these can be handwaved as will be answered in the future entries.

With that, it made sense why TFA was successful. It just takes a very big hit when you realize these answers after the later two come out, kind of like rewatching Leia kiss Luke twice after the siblings reveal in RotJ.

 

[Solo4114]

There's no such thing as a "good mystery box," in my opinion.

 

[CB2001]

There's no such thing as a "good mystery box," in my opinion.

i agree. The Mystery Box concept he came up with is a cheap and unoriginal as the Mystery Box product he based it on.

 

[blewis17]

There's no such thing as a "good mystery box," in my opinion.

IMO there's no such thing as a "good" mystery box, without a "good" payoff.

And that's JJ's problem.

 

[pengbuzz]

That Man in the Desert is basically what I was thinking with the Eddie Murphy joke. When you are out there with nothing, just getting something seems like a big deal.

I know I had high hopes for Star Trek 2009. I still have a bunch of the crew shirts from a cereal promotion. I don't think I heard Abrams talking about how he didn't like Star Trek and preferred Star Wars at that point. Which is amazing to me that you would even take the job for a series that you don't like. The trailer for Star Trek was epic. Probably because of the music. I even saved it.

But the Enterprise being constructed on Earth was the big warning sign. I thought the the time error would be fixed by the end of the movie. I didn't think they would make Spock stupid or emotionally compromised. Especially since he's experienced time travel before and this time actually has a time travel ship! And don't get me started on the fact that Abrams had the nerve to put the Alias TV show into the Star Trek universe with the Red Matter.

I thought The Force Awakens would be good too. Somewhere around halfway in, I knew it wasn't. Both George Lucas and even James Cameron had very to the point feelings about that movie.

in the original TOS (if memory serves), the components of the Enterprise were built on Earth, but final assembly was done in space at the San Francisco Navy Yards. JJtrek screwed that one up.

 

[Astyanax]

in the original TOS (if memory serves), the components of the Enterprise were built on Earth, but final assembly was done in space at the San Francisco Navy Yards. JJtrek screwed that one up.

I think we're supposed to swallow the notion that the Kelvin's prior encounter with the Narada set new events in motion. Apparently Starfleet no longer assembles starships in orbit...maybe for security reasons?

 

[batguy]

Mystery boxes work fine as long as the show is over and they never have to be followed through. They usually turn into problems as soon as somebody has to deliver the next episode.


The ending of BTTF#1 was a mystery box job. They did the first movie with no expectation of sequels. The fact that Jennifer was in the car with Marty & Doc (flying off to 2015) was a problem when they sat down to write the sequels.

They re-shot that BTTF#1 ending to open BTTF#2 with the new Jennifer actress. I've wondered why they didn't take the opportunity to retcon the first movie's ending and leave her out of the car. It would have killed two birds with one stone. No bringing Jennifer to 2015 + no problem that the original Jennifer actress was sitting out the sequels.

 

[Ron]

Brilliant.

 

[HeartBlade]

IMO there's no such thing as a "good" mystery box, without a "good" payoff.

And that's JJ's problem.

Agree with this. I think the concept of a "mystery box" in itself is fine (because its just a mystery). However, a good mystery box needs two components:

1) a good question
The question itself needs to be intriguing enough that the viewer gets invested in the mystery. I think a good modern one was "what is in the basement" in the manga series Attack on Titan. I do think Abrams is good at setting up these questions that get people interested in the first place and spark debate.

2) a good answer that significantly impacts the ongoing narrative
This is where JJ Abrams and Star Wars fumbles the ball. Partly because quite a few mystery boxes were made but also because the contents of those boxes were subpar and honestly meaningless to the overall narrative being told. For Attack on Titan, the reveal that a major villain was actually the protagonist's brother and that a world outside the world exists completely changes how the characters and readers understand the world of Attack on Titan and reshapes who the actual antagonists are; drastically changing the narrative.

I do think how Abrams views mystery boxes is to blame. He only sees the first part (a good question) to be important and the contents of the mystery box itself to be irrelevant because the "answer" will never meet the expectations set by the "mystery" as he mentions in his TED talk (and also why he never opened the mystery box as a child). The problem is, unless the mystery box itself is just a placeholder (ex. the briefcase in Pulp Fiction for something valuable), the contents or answer should be essential to the story or why bring attention to it in the first place?

Pulp Fiction's briefcase is not a mystery box. Its just there and although fans are interested in knowing what is in the case, the movie/story does not emphasize it because it is just a placeholder.

 

[batguy]

JJA's mystery boxes are like a guy selling a 1-bedroom home. He cuts a doorway hole in an outside wall, lists it up for sale as a 2-bedroom house, and tells buyers, "This is where you can build an awesome 2nd bedroom."

Umm, no, dude. That's not a 2-bedroom house. You're selling a 1-bedroom house with a big hole in the wall.

Rian Johnson's TLJ did basically the same thing. He smashed up the existing storyline without worrying about how the next guy would put it back together.

 

[JediMichael]

Just saw that today, January 17th, James Earl Jones turned 93.
So a big Happy Birthday to one of the most iconic voices Hollywood has ever seen...or herd...hurd....heard...heared...sounded....heared.
Help me Ben Burtt, you're my only hope.

 

[Solo4114]

IMO there's no such thing as a "good" mystery box, without a "good" payoff.

And that's JJ's problem.

Ah, but that's just it.

HeartBlade covers this well below.

Agree with this. I think the concept of a "mystery box" in itself is fine (because its just a mystery). However, a good mystery box needs two components:

1) a good question
The question itself needs to be intriguing enough that the viewer gets invested in the mystery. I think a good modern one was "what is in the basement" in the manga series Attack on Titan. I do think Abrams is good at setting up these questions that get people interested in the first place and spark debate.

2) a good answer that significantly impacts the ongoing narrative
This is where JJ Abrams and Star Wars fumbles the ball. Partly because quite a few mystery boxes were made but also because the contents of those boxes were subpar and honestly meaningless to the overall narrative being told. For Attack on Titan, the reveal that a major villain was actually the protagonist's brother and that a world outside the world exists completely changes how the characters and readers understand the world of Attack on Titan and reshapes who the actual antagonists are; drastically changing the narrative.

I do think how Abrams views mystery boxes is to blame. He only sees the first part (a good question) to be important and the contents of the mystery box itself to be irrelevant because the "answer" will never meet the expectations set by the "mystery" as he mentions in his TED talk (and also why he never opened the mystery box as a child). The problem is, unless the mystery box itself is just a placeholder (ex. the briefcase in Pulp Fiction for something valuable), the contents or answer should be essential to the story or why bring attention to it in the first place?

Pulp Fiction's briefcase is not a mystery box. Its just there and although fans are interested in knowing what is in the case, the movie/story does not emphasize it because it is just a placeholder.

Bingo.

JJ's problem is not that he crafts bad solutions to his mysteries.

It's that he doesn't care about the solution in the first place. The solution, for him, is entirely beside the point. The great thing about the mystery box (again, to him), is the sense of wonder and perpetual questioning and imagining and pondering of what could be in the box and how awesome that could be, to the point where opening the box is always anticlimactic. And that's why he's never opened his own mystery box. He doesn't want to. He just wants to endlessly speculate, because anything he can dream up will always be infinitely cooler than the plastic piece of junk that cost $0.35 to produce in Burma back in 1962.

This works ok for long-running TV shows where the goal is to keep people watching and speculating (right up until the finale or cancellation, anyway).

But from a storytelling perspective, it's a bunch of BS. It's not even storytelling. It offloads the actual storytelling to the audience. Think about all the speculation about Rey's past and her parentage and all that crap before TLJ came out. Think of the endless debates held right here on this board where people wondered if she was a Kenobi or a lost Skywalker or whatever. Think about the speculation of who Snoke could be and how he was so powerful and what was up with his funky head. Who's doing the storytelling there? JJ or you? Right! You are. Your story is the cool one that you've dreamed up. And when you find holes in that, you can dream up even more cool stuff. And that's the whole goal: you spinning your wheels endlessly wondering about all the cool explanations that might be.

That's not storytelling.

 

[Halliwax]

Ah, but that's just it.

HeartBlade covers this well below.

Bingo.

JJ's problem is not that he crafts bad solutions to his mysteries.

It's that he doesn't care about the solution in the first place. The solution, for him, is entirely beside the point. The great thing about the mystery box (again, to him), is the sense of wonder and perpetual questioning and imagining and pondering of what could be in the box and how awesome that could be, to the point where opening the box is always anticlimactic. And that's why he's never opened his own mystery box. He doesn't want to. He just wants to endlessly speculate, because anything he can dream up will always be infinitely cooler than the plastic piece of junk that cost $0.35 to produce in Burma back in 1962.

This works ok for long-running TV shows where the goal is to keep people watching and speculating (right up until the finale or cancellation, anyway).

But from a storytelling perspective, it's a bunch of BS. It's not even storytelling. It offloads the actual storytelling to the audience. Think about all the speculation about Rey's past and her parentage and all that crap before TLJ came out. Think of the endless debates held right here on this board where people wondered if she was a Kenobi or a lost Skywalker or whatever. Think about the speculation of who Snoke could be and how he was so powerful and what was up with his funky head. Who's doing the storytelling there? JJ or you? Right! You are. Your story is the cool one that you've dreamed up. And when you find holes in that, you can dream up even more cool stuff. And that's the whole goal: you spinning your wheels endlessly wondering about all the cool explanations that might be.

That's not storytelling.

So please don’t take this as me being a punk or trying to troll you or counter your post of anything

But I am a fan of the mystery box for your exact reasons posted. I like imagining what could have been. And this has how it’s always been with me with many movies

Rotj is a classic example, we aren’t told in the movie Luke is going to bring the Jedi back and start his own academy, when the movie ends we all speculate

Does he bring the Jedi back? Looks like he quiet being a Jedi right in the emperors face.. now that the galaxy is rid of the sith there is no need for Jedi any more?

These were all questions I asked for years… and I have fun reimagining in drawings, action figure poses and models..

Mystery box never really bothered me..

 

[batguy]

Rotj is a classic example, we aren’t told in the movie Luke is going to bring the Jedi back and start his own academy, when the movie ends we all speculate

Does he bring the Jedi back? Looks like he quiet being a Jedi right in the emperors face.. now that the galaxy is rid of the sith there is no need for Jedi any more?

These were all questions I asked for years… and I have fun reimagining in drawings, action figure poses and models..

I wouldn't call that a mystery box. That's just continuing the adventures of the characters.

 

[Solo4114]

So please don’t take this as me being a punk or trying to troll you or counter your post of anything

But I am a fan of the mystery box for your exact reasons posted. I like imagining what could have been. And this has how it’s always been with me with many movies

Rotj is a classic example, we aren’t told in the movie Luke is going to bring the Jedi back and start his own academy, when the movie ends we all speculate

Does he bring the Jedi back? Looks like he quiet being a Jedi right in the emperors face.. now that the galaxy is rid of the sith there is no need for Jedi any more?

These were all questions I asked for years… and I have fun reimagining in drawings, action figure poses and models..

Mystery box never really bothered me..

I wouldn't call that a mystery box. That's just continuing the adventures of the characters.

Exactly.

You can tell a complete story and not tell exactly what happened afterwards. That's still storytelling.

"Mystery box" stories are those where there is no ending or where the ending is complete crap because the ending was never anything that interested the storyteller and/or was never planned in the first place.

But that's not storytelling.

It's often excused with lame responses like "It's the journey, not the destination," but imagine that we're driving somewhere, and I tell you it's Disney World. We go on this long, involved trip, we experience much along the way, but always with that notion of "Remember, we're headed to Disney World" in our minds. Then we get to the end of the drive and it's just some abandoned warehouse in a bad part of town. And I say "Here we are!" You say "WTF?! That's not Disney World!!" And I tell you "Well, it's the journey, not the destination. I never actually knew how to get to Disney World in the first place, but it didn't matter because the point was us thinking about Disney World. Maybe the real Disney World was the experiences we had along the way..."

That's Mystery Box storytelling. Introduce questions, add weird inconsistencies, throw out vague hints of interesting things, but never with any intention of fleshing them out -- you're leaving that to the audience to do -- except that, eventually, the audience demands an answer, so you throw one together and it's garbage because you never had one in mind in the first place. Maybe it even contradicts what you did before in the story. Doesn't matter. In Mystery Box storytelling, the point was the speculation about the answer, not the answer itself.

Which is why it sucks.

That, however, is a far cry from me telling you a story with a beginning, middle, and end, where I've planned out pretty much the whole thing (some edits along the way, of course), we get to the end, the whole thing mostly hangs together as a coherent tale, and then I just don't show you what becomes of the kingdom after the Princess and her dashing roguish companion saved it, nor their eventual nuptials. I don't need to do that. I've told you the whole story. I just haven't told you literally everything that happens in the characters' lives.

 

[Laspector]

For those of us that were around in '77, what was your very first introduction to Star Wars? I mean the very very first thing you ever saw of it? I remember I was in the 6th grade. Every week we got these things called Weekly Readers (anybody remember those?). One week we got one with this on the cover. I remember I had no idea what I was looking at, but WOW! it was cool!! Inside the article gave a little information on the movie. The only thing I really remember from the article was something about Mark Hamill biting a piece of foam rubber in some kind of trash compactor scene. I wish I had had the sense to save that Weekly Reader.

What was your first?

 

[Halliwax]

I wouldn't call that a mystery box. That's just continuing the adventures of the characters.

Exactly.

You can tell a complete story and not tell exactly what happened afterwards. That's still storytelling.

"Mystery box" stories are those where there is no ending or where the ending is complete crap because the ending was never anything that interested the storyteller and/or was never planned in the first place.

But that's not storytelling.

It's often excused with lame responses like "It's the journey, not the destination," but imagine that we're driving somewhere, and I tell you it's Disney World. We go on this long, involved trip, we experience much along the way, but always with that notion of "Remember, we're headed to Disney World" in our minds. Then we get to the end of the drive and it's just some abandoned warehouse in a bad part of town. And I say "Here we are!" You say "WTF?! That's not Disney World!!" And I tell you "Well, it's the journey, not the destination. I never actually knew how to get to Disney World in the first place, but it didn't matter because the point was us thinking about Disney World. Maybe the real Disney World was the experiences we had along the way..."

That's Mystery Box storytelling. Introduce questions, add weird inconsistencies, throw out vague hints of interesting things, but never with any intention of fleshing them out -- you're leaving that to the audience to do -- except that, eventually, the audience demands an answer, so you throw one together and it's garbage because you never had one in mind in the first place. Maybe it even contradicts what you did before in the story. Doesn't matter. In Mystery Box storytelling, the point was the speculation about the answer, not the answer itself.

Which is why it sucks.

That, however, is a far cry from me telling you a story with a beginning, middle, and end, where I've planned out pretty much the whole thing (some edits along the way, of course), we get to the end, the whole thing mostly hangs together as a coherent tale, and then I just don't show you what becomes of the kingdom after the Princess and her dashing roguish companion saved it, nor their eventual nuptials. I don't need to do that. I've told you the whole story. I just haven't told you literally everything that happens in the characters' lives.

Aaaahhh gotcha boys!

 

[blewis17]

For those of us that were around in '77, what was your very first introduction to Star Wars? I mean the very very first thing you ever saw of it? I remember I was in the 6th grade. Every week we got these things called Weekly Readers (anybody remember those?). One week we got one with this on the cover. I remember I had no idea what I was looking at, but WOW! it was cool!! Inside the article gave a little information on the movie. The only thing I really remember from the article was something about Mark Hamill biting a piece of foam rubber in some kind of trash compactor scene. I wish I had had the sense to save that Weekly Reader.

What was your first?

On a 1977 summer weekend as I was sitting on the living room couch, my dad asked me: "Do you like Star Trek?" As a 5 year old, I had seen a few reruns of the 1960s series on TV, so I was familiar with the show a little bit... I knew that it was outer space sci-fi. So I said "Yes" and he said he was going to take me to the theater (I believe he had seen it beforehand). I had no knowledge of "Star Wars" prior to this, no exposure in magazine or TV that I can recall.

It was amazing... I thought the stormtroopers were robots (and I think Vader as well). I saved the cardboard popcorn bucket and my soda straw, and tried to role them up together to make a light saber on my way home.

I think I saw the film 6 times that summer.

 

[CessnaDriver]

For those of us that were around in '77, what was your very first introduction to Star Wars? I mean the very very first thing you ever saw of it? I remember I was in the 6th grade. Every week we got these things called Weekly Readers (anybody remember those?). One week we got one with this on the cover. I remember I had no idea what I was looking at, but WOW! it was cool!! Inside the article gave a little information on the movie. The only thing I really remember from the article was something about Mark Hamill biting a piece of foam rubber in some kind of trash compactor scene. I wish I had had the sense to save that Weekly Reader.

What was your first?

TV ads.

Satellites attacking a flying saucer.
A golden robot rising up out of some liquid.
A roaring dog guy. Bigfoot??

At least that's how I remember it. I was 11 and already a hardcore sci fi nerd.