Re: Kathleen Kennedy to step down from Lucasfilm?
Wowsers, there's a lot going on in here, and much of it seems to be stemming from the same place as in the TLJ and Solo threads, and the reaction to that, and the rejection of that reaction by the "discussion"-starters. Some things:
• I agree Star Wars movies could be better. I've been saying this since about 1986, and have since expanded it back to include the first two.
• I do
not think any one Star Wars movie is 100% awful, with zero redeeming factors.
• I agree imprecise language causes many kneejerk reactions and hurt feelings -- but I also see the problem inherent in trying for more precision in phrasing. I see it well. That's why my mini-essay posts. I'm trying to be as clear as possible in the thoughts I'm conveying. I don't like using broad brushes except in the most general terms. About all I can say about
all Star Wars fans is that we all come from this planet. I won't even argue all Star Wars fans are human, as I've seen dogs and cats and birds responding favorably to it. But in the current climate precise language is clunky, and I can understand why sweeping statements get made.
• As soon as they changed directors and authorized the reshoots, Lucasfilm and Disney knew Solo would have a
much harder time turning a profit or breaking even. If anyone at those companies paying attention to how The Last Jedi did in its theatrical release and to how Infinity War and Deadpool 2 were doing thought Solo was going to shatter box-office records, I think their professional competence ought to be re-evaluated. Solo is not an unexpected dud, even if it seems to have performed even worse than projected.
• An internet source, quoting another internet source, quoting another internet source one has to pay a decent chunk to be able to read and that no one else seems to have done, that source also using a lot of qualifiers like "might" and "should" without citing internal information sources, is ultimately the opposite of information. This is a non-story. Yes, Kennedy might leave Lucasfilm. She also might stay. She also might opt for the slingbacks instead of the pumps. By phrasing one of the mathematically-possible courses of action she can theoretically take as the headline is disengenuous, leading, and, IMO, gossip and rumor-mongering at its worst.
(Okay, I take that back. Gossip and rumor-mongering at its worst was when a bunch of reporters showed up to where they were told they were going to get a scoop, no scoop was forthcoming, so rather than return home empty-handed, they jointly came up with a story that an ambassadorial mission was preparing to leave for China, and, when word of this got back to China, the government scrambled to get everything just so, demanding more from their regional governors, who demanded more from the peasantry, who resented it and rose up in what we now call the Boxer Rebellion, and overthrew the Chinese Emperor. All because some less-than-ethical reporters wanted their paychecks.)
A couple specific reactions...
I think that is the biggest complaint / concern people have for the franchise. Our perceptions and view of life is radically different than it is when we're adults. Everything changes. Good / great movies CAN have the ability to make us feel like kids again. They can make us forget about a world ready and willing to beat us to our knees and keep us there permanently. That's what SW means to all of us.
Just tell a great story and make us feel like kids again...
This is why I go to all the Marvel movies. Even the worst among them have me pretty solidly engaged, and the best of them definitely re-ignite that child-like sense of being in the presence of something amazing.
I want it on the *small* screen (technically, the distance of the TV from my couch, with the size of the TV, makes it bigger than a theater screen) JUST so I can actually SEE the movie.
I'm hoping it'll be brightened up in the transfer.
It's not the film stock or disc coding. Both theaters I've seen it at so far have had no projection issues. It's a matter of technical stuff on the venue end.
I find this interesting, when people want to see "regular people" in the fantastical kind of stuff. Why? Regular people is the reason why this stuff is created, cause real people are everywhere. There are a TON of movies that feature just "regular people", why see that in the fantasy? To me thats boring, but hey, each their own I guess. I dont get why people play as humans in video games either, when there are a ton of other options but oh well. *shrug*
To me, if you take away the "superpowered space monks" you have Star Trek, or any other type of sci fi.
Not really. "Hard s/f" is heavily based in socio-political commentary. Star Trek made it palatable to the masses by putting the space-adventure veneer on it. Note NBC rejecting Gene's first pilot as "too cerebral". Only by having Kirk get in a fistfight and get his uniform ripped every episode was it "action-y" enough for the network.
Star Wars is space-opera. Opera deals with larger themes, while hard-s/f gets down to specific and often confrontational nuggets. Star Wars (the first film) was as big a hit as it was in part because of the industry-creating visual effects, in part because George rejected the current zeitgeist of 1) using space-y, electronic music for his space film, and 2) breaking step with the contemporary crop of grim, downbeat social-commentary and dark-comedy films... Which is the other part -- I would argue the major part -- of why it was such a huge hit. We were just a couple years past Viet Nam and Watergate, there was economic downturn, unemployment, inflation, political and social dissatisfaction, gas shortages, troubles in the Middle East, and movies like the Dirty Harry series, All the President's Men, Logan's Run, Marathon Man, A Bridge Too Far, Close Encounters of the Third Kind... Even comedies like Freaky Friday, Silent Movie, Murder By Death, or Annie Hall... But an escapist fairy tale was what everyone found they
needed.
Star Wars is the Arthur legend in space. Luke's appeal was that he's an Everyman who discovers he's the inheritor of this great legacy. There's a lot of wish-fulfillment there. It wasn't so much that we liked the characters as we wanted to
be them. Poke around the galaxy in the
Millennium Falcon, rescue your friends from disaster, try not to cut your own arm off with your lightsaber, fly one of those sweet-looking fighters and shoot up the baddies... We (broad we) wanted to be the small-town nobody who becomes a hero. (Never mind that his family had to die to help make this happen...)
But the rest of the narrative of the OT was that, while he was in fact the inheritor of the space-wizard-monk legacy, and made it possible by blowing up the first
Death Star, it was his friends whose lives he'd saved who carried the fight forward and won at the end. Luke turned himself in and had his little Manchurian Candidate session with Palpatine, while the non-powered people were breaking into the shield generator, getting caught, fighting back, bringing down the shield, taking out one of the Empire's Command Ships, and ultimately destroying
this even
bigger space station, with Palpatine and Vader on it. Luke's involvement at the end was personal/spiritual, saving his dad from Darkness, and he barely escaped. But he sure didn't save the day there. That was the Rebellion, full of ordinary people.
Star Wars is (or, at least, should be) about Fighting the Good Fight, through whatever mechanic. The OT can be distilled down to: Hero discovers he's Space Wizard, uses fledgling Space Wizard abilities to stop Evil Bad Guys from killing his friends so they can continue the fight and ultimately triumph while he goes on Personal Journey. Not saying there's no place for Force-users in Star Wars, but they should contribute to the plot and story, without the story being
about them. Yeah, in each of the cycles so far, the central character, the Hero, has been a Force-user, but their concerns and growth are fairly universal concerns and growth, just within a somewhat-Force-tinted context. Some of you know I consider Cassian -- and not Jyn -- to be the central character in Rogue One, and he is, to me, a good example of a
non-Force-using Hero, while the Force is still
present in the story.
Don't need to (and shouldn't) excise the Force from Star Wars, but the main character doesn't need to be a Force-user, and the story shouldn't be all about the millennia-long doctrinal differences between Jedi and Sith. There are
other concerns and factors affecting the galactic populace.
Not remotely hard to do. From:
http://www.indiewire.com/2018/02/jj-abrams-star-wars-last-jedi-women-1201929593/
“The filmmaker shared that, in recent meetings targeted around employing crews and filmmakers for projects, he and McGrath have asked their agency CAA for lists of potential collaborators “that represent the makeup of the country” and “that immediately changed the conversation.”
In other words, he's looking for specifically non-white actors and actresses. He's casting based on skin color, not talent.
Ouf. That was a painful article to slog through. Not well-written, and definitely pushing an agenda. I had to read his specific statements in there and parse them from what the writer was deriving from them. Because "crews and filmmakers" tend to be the people
behind the camera. CAA, though, is a talent-representing agency, so I was trying to disentangle two apparently unconnected things. He
seems to be saying he and his wife, as part of pursuing social equity in this industry, are seeking hiring partners who break out of the traditionally hetero-white-male-dominated talent agencies and labor unions and open it up for people who don't necessarily fit that demographic.
It is a massive leap to equate that to "hiring for [sex/color/race/orientation] first and talent second".
To a very large degree, at least in my experience, you get people, particularly on the political left, who like to call anyone who disagrees with their position names. Nazis. Trolls. Misogynists. You name it. Instead of actually responding to what is being said and thinking about it intellectually, they are just reacting like children. I'm not saying there aren't bad people on both sides, but only one side seems to be screeching and calling names as a means to avoid having an intellectual conversation.
Whereas my experience tends to be the opposite. I try to have a rational discussion about the things I thought worked and the things I thought could have been done better, and have to slog past multiple posts about how Rose is the worst character ever, worse than Jar-Jar, because apparently a socially-awkward tech in a socially-awkward-tech costume is objectively the worst thing ever. I liked Rose and had zero problems with her in any of the three theatrical and two home viewings of TLJ I've had so far. The only part of the film with Rose, for me, that fell flat was the free-the-horse-things bit, but that was due to the bit, not to her.
When someone can say "my problem is not with this character, but with these story beats", and other people register that and engage on that level, reasoned discourse happens. But I've been seeing a lot of reason bouncing off of entrenched positions. I haven't kept a solid count, but my general awareness through these threads is that the people who liked the last couple films, flaws and all, are comfortable in their skins, while the people who
didn't like them are often shrill, usually dismissive, and too frequently insulting and obnoxious, apparently in an attempt to belittle anyone who liked them, and thus that perspective. The like-dislike camps
definitely don't follow lib/con lines, at all. I can't say much more without getting too into real-world politics, but I have seen more conservative "sneer speech" than liberal in these discussions. Not saying it's not there. Just massively overshadowed.
