The Future of Star Wars?
- Thread starter doctorDWwho
- Start date
cboath
Master Member
It seems as if people WANT to bash disney.
The smart thing to do, if you buy a successful company (like Marvel or LFL) is to let them do their thing. They were making money to the point of you buying them for a reason. I've not seen/heard of any undue influence on Marvel. Yet it seems people assume its there and on SW as well. Which, again, I don't see. I think Disney probably gave them a directive of so many flicks a year - but TFA alone will damn near get them their investment back. Over 2B at the box offce (i know they don't get it all), probably close to that in DVD/BR/ sales, plus whatever they pulled in in licensing. It may not be 4, but it's close enough that they'll be rolling profits by IX if not sooner.
I don't think they're stupid. If a standalone or trilogy suffers, they're likely to take a step back.
But, again, there's no evidence of them forcing squat really, or putting out less than great content. But people still seem to think it's a foregone conclusion. I thought I read something last week that said the powers that be for the story department were supposed to get together after the first of the year to map out the story long term (post IX). So they seem confident of things at this point.
The smart thing to do, if you buy a successful company (like Marvel or LFL) is to let them do their thing. They were making money to the point of you buying them for a reason. I've not seen/heard of any undue influence on Marvel. Yet it seems people assume its there and on SW as well. Which, again, I don't see. I think Disney probably gave them a directive of so many flicks a year - but TFA alone will damn near get them their investment back. Over 2B at the box offce (i know they don't get it all), probably close to that in DVD/BR/ sales, plus whatever they pulled in in licensing. It may not be 4, but it's close enough that they'll be rolling profits by IX if not sooner.
I don't think they're stupid. If a standalone or trilogy suffers, they're likely to take a step back.
But, again, there's no evidence of them forcing squat really, or putting out less than great content. But people still seem to think it's a foregone conclusion. I thought I read something last week that said the powers that be for the story department were supposed to get together after the first of the year to map out the story long term (post IX). So they seem confident of things at this point.
Imagine going 500 years back, origins of the whole Jedi order, myths and legends, Jedi Knights of the Round Table, old testament stuff.
Dial back the tech, maybe show the very first light saber ever made and learning how to use them?
I think there are fantastic creative possibilities like that.
Dial back the tech, maybe show the very first light saber ever made and learning how to use them?
I think there are fantastic creative possibilities like that.
I really don't want to get "Star Wars Fatigue" like I have with the Marvel cinematic universe. IMO, there aren't really high (or interesting) stakes for the main characters that I want so badly to care about, because there can't be: they have to come back for the next 4 films that have been announced. I dunno. I love Star Wars, but I don't want it to die a slow, painful death in the years to come.
SB
SB
JLeezy23
Sr Member
They should toy with several ideas, maybe like that fanmade Stormtrooper scene, remember that a few months ago? Show a Regular Joe getting training at a military base, learning how to fly a TIE Fighter, another guy learning AT-AT piloting, some team of engineers planning Starkiller Base in the background. A Rogue One type film, from The Empire's side. Just to try it, of course. If it fails then that's not the road to follow.
Or Coruscant Mercs, crime drama film set Pre- Clone Wars. New characters, familiar planet, but new city setting. Set in the SWU, but nothing we've seen before. There are plenty of lives to follow besides Jedi, Sith, Rebels and Empire. They should try a lot of new stuff that way we dont get the feel of "here we go again" and we can get "omg what can we expect next". So many possibilities for the next few decades, I hope Disney sees how many different paths they can take.
Or Coruscant Mercs, crime drama film set Pre- Clone Wars. New characters, familiar planet, but new city setting. Set in the SWU, but nothing we've seen before. There are plenty of lives to follow besides Jedi, Sith, Rebels and Empire. They should try a lot of new stuff that way we dont get the feel of "here we go again" and we can get "omg what can we expect next". So many possibilities for the next few decades, I hope Disney sees how many different paths they can take.
doctorDWwho
Sr Member
You know what show I want to see? A show about the clones after order 66. Live action of course, so it's taken seriously.
Well there's your problem right there.
If I thought that all the MCU films as well as Fox (X-Men, Deadpool, Fantastic Four, Daredevil movies, Punisher movies) and Sony (Spider-Man) were all coming from Marvel Studios I'd start to feel saturated, too. I'd also be worried about the variable quality of all those above properties.
As it stands, since 2008, I have only been going to see Marvel Studios films in the theater. The Fox and Sony films I avoid almost entirely. As a result I don't feel as bombarded and my senses aren't polluted by thoroughly awful interpretations.
If one thing modern Disney has proven over and over again is its discipline to give us films that have thorough preproduction and quality control. Even with their output I never felt that a film was a patch-job-merchandising grab. Disney/Marvel/Pixar is the ONLY studio I feel actually cares about the quality and originality of their output. You can't presume that they're just a studio machine (in the negative sense) because of their output. They have a tremendous amount of resources and manpower with multiple projects in development at any given time. If you ever hear the creative process that goes into a modern Disney/Pixar film you'll realize how thoroughly things are worked over and conceived and even completely overhauled if something doesn't work.
As you should be.
Of all movie studios modern Disney is the LEAST likely to dump a story in favor of effects or miscalculated attempts at fan-service. The best franchise films are made by fans. Marvel Studios are definite fans of their IP.
Do!
I think you may need to tack a couple zeros onto that. "For over a thousand generations the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic." Even if a generation is as long as it is here and now, we'd still be looking at over twenty thousand years just for the association between the Republic and the Jedi. No idea how much further the origins of the Jedi go back. The EU gave us one, but TFA seems to have overridden that. Seeing older lightsabers in Tales of the Jedi -- hand held emitters connected to big power packs on their belts? That was awesome. It was also only about three thousand years prior to the films. Even if we start from there -- when brave explorers were still blazing hyperspace routes at great personal risk -- there's over twenty thousand years of backstory that we know has to be there and we still have interstellar travel well established.
--Jonah
I'm quite happy with a movie a year and I'll grade each movie on its own merits. I think a lot of fans and collectors try to see Star Wars as this pinnacle of film and while it is great and fun it is also for non-super fans, kids etc. Feel free to not see a movie or to bash kid's star wars toys but try not to spoil it for the rest of us. 
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Man that is an insane amount of time. Perhaps Ol Ben was exaggerating a tad. Perhaps he meant 1000 years, yeah that's the ticket.
However far back it needs to be, I think there is a really huge potential there for great stories, really dig back. Which is really where
I thought the prequels should have been.
Axlotl
Master Member
As long as they make good movies, I'll watch them.
I enjoyed TFA, but in my opinion they made a few glaring missteps that will hinder the rest of the series (i.e.: making 2 of the main characters cartoons).
"Rogue One" looks like what I wanted to see more of as a kid: more hardware, less men in bathrobes twirling glow-sticks.
Speaking of hardware, who remembers this?
I enjoyed TFA, but in my opinion they made a few glaring missteps that will hinder the rest of the series (i.e.: making 2 of the main characters cartoons).
"Rogue One" looks like what I wanted to see more of as a kid: more hardware, less men in bathrobes twirling glow-sticks.
Speaking of hardware, who remembers this?
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One of the biggest failings of Episode I, I feel, was that it needed to be the first episode and establish the setting. What is the Republic? Who are the Jedi? In media res works for everything after that, but even if there's still substantial backstory, there needs to be an establishing starter episode. A good starting point, well along in galactic affairs, but a major incident leading to the state of things in the canon we have currently, would be the Second Great Jedi Schism, aka the Hundred-Year Darkness. Seven thousand years before the films. Exiled Jedi who were doing things the Order had issue with stumbled across the Sith, and over the next couple thousand years turned them into a imperialistic force to be reckoned with. The Great Hyperspace War, the Great Sith War, the Mandalorian Wars, everything from KOTOR and TOR, Darth Bane... all the foundational bricks for Palpatine and the events of the movies, begin with the Hundred-Year Darkness.
It'd be a good setting to establish the galactic government, lay out the philosophies of the Jedi (in pointing out how the exiles' viewpoint differs), and be the first domino in a chain that leads all the way to Snoke and Kylo and events that are still unfolding now.
--Jonah
OH yeah, using cookie monster was brilliant!
"...kiss three bucks goodbye!"
Hard to believe movies tickets were a few bucks once.
Snikt
Sr Member
So you hated TFA, you dont like, football, and you dont like beer? Dude. What the hell DO you like? And isnt repugnant a bit much? I have heard the stories about the TFA thread, but I missed it. I can see how it went downhill though. Thats crazy.
If they adapt the Timothy Zahn books I will build a shrine to Disney.
I cant believe people have the audacity to not like TFA after the crap that George Lucas put out that was the prequels. Hell, even ROJ was a ploy to sell toys, and you guys are mad at Disney for trying to do that? As a fan of Marvel growing up, right now is the golden age of nerd cinema. Yeah, not all of it is perfect, but never, and I mean NEVER in a MILLION years did I think they would adapt an Avengers comic, let alone the infinity gauntlet storyline. Age of Ultron sucking? Of course it wasnt like Avengers, it was another team up movie, and after seeing what happened in the first one, how else could they make something to follow that up? It seems like people like to crap on stuff because thats the popular thing to do now a days. If you didnt like TFA, you dont like the OT. There. I said it.
Original Star Wars (I refuse to call it New Hope) was the best. 2 was ok, but it was largely a build up to 3 which would have been a lot better without the Ewoks. TFA was OK. Not great, but it didn't suck.
And even though the trailers make it look targeted more towards adults, I am really worried that Disney is going to put something similar to the ewoks in Rogue One.
Sent from my Motorola StarTAC
Repugnant because they raped the original characters because they were LAZY for drama's sake.
Made them all failures, failed leader, failed husband, failed parents, failed teachers, cowards that run away, failed rebellion,
Right up there with killing Newt and Hicks off if you ask me.
I have no comprehension whatsoever how people think that it was great.
Even the Williams score sucked.
Bridges burned for me on this trilogy. New characters uninteresting like poor fan film creations.
Nothing but a rebooquel of SW77 and wrap it in a nostalgia bow and I'm supposed to gush?
I was a wild-eyed kid in May 77, simply blown away, yes it started to unravel by ROTJ,
but it made it to the finish line. The films are part of my growing up, so grateful to have been
a kid when they came out.
Prequels came and went, they were weak sauce. I tried I really did.
GOTG delivered the feel like a kid again goods for me.
Can't wait for Vol 2. There I like something after all how 'bout that?
Solo4114
Master Member
Repugnant because they raped the original characters because they were LAZY for drama's sake.
Made them all failures, failed leader, failed husband, failed parents, failed teachers, cowards that run away, failed rebellion,
Right up there with killing Newt and Hicks off if you ask me.
I have no comprehension whatsoever how people think that it was great.
Even the Williams score sucked.
Bridges burned for me on this trilogy. New characters uninteresting like poor fan film creations.
Nothing but a rebooquel of SW77 and wrap it in a nostalgia bow and I'm supposed to gush?
I was a wild-eyed kid in May 77, simply blown away, yes it started to unravel by ROTJ,
but it made it to the finish line. The films are part of my growing up, so grateful to have been
a kid when they came out.
Prequels came and went, they were weak sauce. I tried I really did.
GOTG delivered the feel like a kid again goods for me.
Can't wait for Vol 2. There I like something after all how 'bout that?
So, here's the thing with the new trilogy.
The response you had was always the big risk, I felt, in setting the films in an era where the OT heroes would still be alive. Once they decided firmly that they'd be setting it in that era, I expected that (A) the OT heroes wouldn't have "lived happily ever after," and (B) that at least one of them would die in the course of Ep. VII. You can't build drama without (A) being true, and you just KNOW they'll go for the emotional gut punch with (B).
So, basically, once they said the OT characters would be back, I knew to expect the above. Having set my expectations at that level, I think Ep. VII served as a solid bridge between the two trilogies, in a far more effective way than, say, Ep. III served as a bridge between the PT and OT. But realistically, there was no way to preserve the "Happily ever after" vibe at the end of ROTJ and have the OT heroes appear in Ep. VII. So, you were left with a choice: ruin the old happy ending, or provide a touchstone for fans to link the old with the new? One may not agree with the end result of the choice, but I think it's understandable why Disney went with one option over another.
Consider the alternative:
Set Ep. VII (and subsequent films) some 200 years after ROTJ. The OT heroes saved the galaxy, set up a new, vibrant system, and passed on into legend and history. As have their children and their children's children. The new films deal with a galaxy that is still the same location and has some general similarities to the original films, but otherwise is much more like the Republic we saw at the start of Ep. I, than the Empire we saw at the start of Ep. IV. The film is populated with completely new characters. No Solos, Skywalkers, or Kenobis. No Chewbacca. No Yoda. No 3PO or R2D2. Literally no character from the original films or the prequels survives.
This move would have preserved the OT in amber, but would have been a MUCH riskier move for Disney from a financial perspective. It gets at the heart of the question "What is Star Wars to most people?" Is it JUST lightsabres and blasters and hyperspace and such? Or is it about the characters? A general setting? Something along those lines?
You can look at this another way. Consider the Gundam franchise, particularly its early beginnings. The original Gundam series, set in UC 0079, takes place, ends, and it appears that the bad guys have been defeated, albeit at the cost of many lives, good and bad and in between. The story fast-forwards some 16 years in the next series, to UC 0085, where we see that...things have gone badly. The heroes of the original story now live in isolation or joined a new resistance force fighting back against a now-corrupt version of the government they once sought to defend, although the story rests mostly on new characters (especially a fairly unlikable main character). And yet, Zeta Gundam is regarded as one of the best in the entire almost-40-year franchise.
I think if you wanted the OT to be preserved as it was, Ep. VII was always going to disappoint. If you accepted (as I ultimately did) that the OT would be...not destroyed, but merely rendered one part of a larger cycle, then the film could be evaluated on its own merits. That said, I think they played it extremely safe, in some cases too safe, and there were some choices in the making of the film that weren't so great. Still, I think it provided a good setup for moving forward, hopefully in a way that is not merely a rehash of the OT, and strikes out in very new directions. Of all the criticisms of Ep. VII, I think that's the biggest one: it's just too close to the story of Star Wars '77.
It's like Groundhog Day reading these comments.
Two concepts are competing here when people discuss SW in relation to Disney. TFA is the only film product we have so far so all comparisons are based on that. The success or failure of the entire franchise right now is predicated on your individual opinion of that film. But opinions aren't fact beyond how they apply to the individual. What is fact is what Dan @Solo4114 has presented above. That was the actual reasoning behind the product they created. You can argue they should have given you the EU story or whatever was in your personal head canon but TFA was a very deliberate choice whose financial success has paved the way for a robust schedule of future releases. Had this film been a failure the long term prospects for the franchise would be much more tenuous. IMO, the film it sounds like some of you would have preferred four very well have been that disaster.
You may not like he TFA but TFA effectively saved SW from an uncertain future.
Two concepts are competing here when people discuss SW in relation to Disney. TFA is the only film product we have so far so all comparisons are based on that. The success or failure of the entire franchise right now is predicated on your individual opinion of that film. But opinions aren't fact beyond how they apply to the individual. What is fact is what Dan @Solo4114 has presented above. That was the actual reasoning behind the product they created. You can argue they should have given you the EU story or whatever was in your personal head canon but TFA was a very deliberate choice whose financial success has paved the way for a robust schedule of future releases. Had this film been a failure the long term prospects for the franchise would be much more tenuous. IMO, the film it sounds like some of you would have preferred four very well have been that disaster.
You may not like he TFA but TFA effectively saved SW from an uncertain future.
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