This last decade has felt like a bit of a golden age to me with so many great movies being made.If I take into account just how much the general quality of television series has also improved then the reason my shelves are collapsing under the weight of Blurays and DVDs is pretty clear.
The movies and series we are getting are generally improving.
As a keen follower of film production since I became a reader of Cinefex back in the 80's it seems to be the case that that most of the major film studios have finally twigged that the best people to creatively influence what goes to directly into the films they fund are actually people who are fans of the genre. People who primarily understand,enjoy and want to make those kind of movies that were as compelling to them as they are to the paying BO public.
In alot of cases those people would say their landmark films are most often the original trilogy of SW films, or "Alien" or "Bladerunner". Same as us.
With SW Its got to have been very difficult to know where to pitch the tone and era of these standalone films. The original movie is nearly forty years old so what made those films such a huge hit with the first generations of SW fans may not be true of everyone born after they were originally released. Its like Coca cola. Messing with a product that has huge popularity and brand recognition is a highly dangerous thing.Get it badly wrong ie New Coke and it can cause untold damage. Leave it totally alone and unchanged and the line gradually risks stagnation.
So "Rogue One" kind of represents another kind of experiment for LF and Disney.
If it is very well recieved then its highly likely that more of the next set of standalones will be written in that time period because it will have struck the truest and strongest cord again with the fandom. If they get heavily critisized for just playing it safe again by redoing all the same old stuff, ie Stormtroopers, Death Star, Darth Vader , deserts planets ................. I can hear it all now.
If it does middling box office then perhaps they'll think about trying other kinds of stories with newer characters and time periods . To be honest they can do that later anyway as the mythology for Episodes 7,8 and 9 evolves. But its a definite brand test. To see if the tone of that first SW film four decades ago can be replicated and even improved upon so successfully that it passes that crucially taste test with the fans so that we'll just go mad for it again.
I personally think alot of SW fans will enjoy a movie that CAN stand by itself, rather than have to wait a couple of years for the next one to unfold. Lucasfilm and Disney also know that TFA for all its strengths also had a few problems that were mostly forgiven by a public desparate for any reasonably good SW movie, but due to the speed and pressure that they were under to get it out there that it could also have been much better. But it did its job, people liked alot of it if not all of it and for a new generation many of the new characters were well liked and hits .
Given all that I have seen in trailers, clips and so forth I think "Rogue One" is going to be a huge hit. I also think that Lucasfilm can "relax" enough after Xmas to start to think where they can go with alot of the standalone stories.
Like others here I'm not certain about the Han Solo film because their choice of Han seems debatable , given the couple of films I've now seen him in. But I can think of dozens of other types of stories they could set in the SW universe with other characters that could be just as compelling .
And just as importantly I think there are dozens of writers, directors, artists, actors ,film makers etc who are just as keen as we are to recapture the magic of the original "A New Hope" in their own SW movies and put it on screen under the carefully guidance and watchful eye of Lucasfilm.
Lets be honest It was simply too big a task for one man to manage and I am grateful to George Lucas for having stepped aside and let it evolve under the care and stewardship of newish blood.
Keep rolling them out , one new SW film a year is an unbelievable oasis of luxury to the deserts we were left with years ago.
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i fully agree. disney now rushes to pump out these films, not really caring on the story just to sell more product.
this is my fear from star wars. with pumping out a film each year... i sure hope they dont screw this up the way they have gone with marvel
You think they screwed up MARVEL???????????!!!!!!!!!!!
Sir ,you have remarkably high standards that the gods alone can only satisfy.
