I just watched a clip with Woody Harrelson playing holochess with Chewbacca on the Falcon. They literally animated the exact same footage that they used in ANH and TFA for the move on the chess board where the one piece body slams the other one. Are they THAT creatively bankrupt?
Having not seen Solo yet, I can't comment on that... But TFA specifically and deliberately reversed the confrontation in ANH. The monster that got slammed originally takes out its opponent in VII. As for repetition in chess animations... Ever play BattleChess, back in the day? I lived for some of the rarer interactions, but got soooooooo tired of several of the more frequent ones that 1) weren't all that amusing to begin with, and 2) dragged on way too long.
Part of their problem is that they seem too concerned about making Star Wars relevant by adding in themes that are concerned with today's culture rather than making timeless stories that will resonate for generations.
By setting the stories up with themes like that they, by definition, date themselves so that those ideas may not have the same impact ten years from now that they do today.
Disagree. As Star Wars ('77) drew a lot from protests against American involvement in VietNam, from the fascism that had recently dominated Europe and threatened to spread, the military-industrial complex Eisenhower had warned America against, and the still-rising (perceived) threat of Communist/Soviet anti-individuality, George was immersed in that growing up, so it was the background noise he channelled through his "homage to Flash Gordon". In very rough, awkward form, it's there from the first notes and story treatments. By slapping the veneer of the fantastical setting and classical storytelling themes over top of that, it removes it from being dated by referencing anything specifically Terrestrial.
The Prequels fell flat not because of the themes or social commentary, but for simple storytelling reasons. It's the same thing with Tolkien. He wrote history textbooks, basically. Peter and Fran and Phillipa went through the Hobbit, LotR (and its appendices), the Silmarillion, and just about every other source of Middle-Earth lore out there, and wrangled out a script that incorporated the people and places and events, but with an actual eye to narrative (even if I wish to this day they'd done it as four movies -- there's more than enough after the War of the Ring, from the coda and appendices of LotR). I like pointing to their somewhat-famous flowchart taking the chapters from Two Towers and Return of the King, and moving things around so you see what's actually happening simultaneously across two books.
Social commentary totally has a place in Star Wars. What matters more is how it's ultimately woven into a story.
Here's what the fans ACTUALLY want:
A fun story with characters we can relate to going on an adventure in space and illustrating themes that anyone, in any time can relate to.
Themes like, friendship and loyalty are part of what makes a person a hero. Or doing the right thing is more important than being popular. Things like that resonate far more powerfully than, never meet your heroes because they are sure to disappoint. There is enough cynicism in the world. Star Wars was supposed to be fun and uplifting and doesn't have to use the same characters/ plots all the time to tell positive themes like the ones I listed.
There's room for darker notes, like Han's starting cynical pragmatism, or the loss handed to Our Heroes in Empire. It doesn't actually work if it's all escapism. What matters most is just telling it right.
Putting cayman's original post behind a spoiler tag, not for spoilers, but for size. It's what josh is replying to, so I want it here for context...
That's a separate problem entirely. People who put their own requirements on Star Wars as far as which characters they want to see and which supplementary material should be included isn't what I'm talking about... and you can't fix those sorts of problems.But it's true.
Some people love the EU novels. Other than the Thrawn Trilogy, I think they're almost entirely trash. And I've read most of them (yes, I'm weak). If a SW movie felt like an EU novel, I'd feel like I was sitting through Comic Book Guy's fanfic. I'd want to die.
Other people are really into video games, and are very invested in those characters. I'm not. I think video games are dorky and boring.
Having said that, I love a lot of Star Wars comics (in my brain, they're NOT dorky. No, I can't explain myself). I would have loved a Dark Empire storyline, if the SE had been done earlier. I would also love Exar-Kun/Ulic-Kel-Droma movies. I imagine that some other fans would find that cheesy in the extreme.
I refuse to watch the SE. For some, the PT does not exist.
Then there's the bulk of ticket buyers who have no idea what the hell I've been talking about, because they're just regular folks who go to the movies and aren't invested the way super fans are. Those are the butts Disney needs in the seat. They pay the bills. But neither can Disney utterly write off fandom, because it's huge (and annoyingly, hysterically, shrill).
There is no pleasing everyone. If it was simple, they'd have done it.
What I'm saying is create something new utilizing the themes of a traditional hero's journey and place it in the Star Wars universe. You're not undoing the arcs of previous characters. You're doing something new with a new set of relatable characters. And you're still following the themes that appeal to mass amounts of people. You could do that over and over again and people will continue to go see it.
The reason the hero's journey and the archetypes that are embedded in it resonate with us so deeply is because it is a timeless story. All you have to do is change names, conflicts, and settings.
The problem actually kinda is the ancillary material. I was talking about this with David Michelini (one of the writers on the old Marvel comic series). I was asking him about the basic premise of one of the better-known story elements from that series' run -- Leia meeting Fenn Shysa on Mandalore. Those two issues were scripted in late '82 and hit the racks in February and March of '83. I.e., not too long before RotJ opened, and a couple years after Empire. The premise of the half-dozen issues around then was Leia going off one direction and Lando taking Chewie and the Falcon another, both trying to find where Boba Fett had taken Han. That made no sense to me -- we saw at the end of Empire everyone knew Fett was taking Han to Jabba and they were all going to meet on Tatooine.
I did say a single line or something to the effect of "he hasn't shown up at Jabba's palace -- he must be laying low to try to throw us off his track" would have fudged things nicely. But the main gist of the conversation was how the game companies and comic publishers and the novel authors and such are all basically scrambling to keep new product coming out on the regular -- no matter what half-baked schlock sometimes has to get shoved out the door to meet deadlines. What's worse is knowing none of it ultimately matters, as you can't contradict what's on the screen, you can't make drastic changes to the characters without permission from LFL, and so, more often than not, it'd end up being a lot of easily-dismissable filler...
...Except when they're able to play in a sufficiently-removed time period. That's why the KOTOR era holds such appeal for so many. The remove of three to four thousand years from the films was a wonderful place to explore those themes newly and have it still be Star Wars. There's a lot of character growth and evolution of the setting therein.
But now we have the "Sequel Trilogy". As others have pointed out, a lot of us are coming at it with the same granular expectations all of the EU gave us about the OT characters, forgetting most of them didn't even have names, let alone complex biographies, prior to the late '80s/early '90s -- years after the films had come out and George wasn't going to be making any more Star Wars. A lot of us gradually forgot we didn't always know every little nuance. This hasn't really been helped by the trend started with the Prequels of cross-sections books and visual dictionaries accompanying each release so we get all our ancillary data right then, rather than having to wait -- but it's still not in the actual film/series.
The problems have arisen more recently when it comes to determining what's relevant or vital to the story, what's ancillary, and where the focus should be. This started in '95 or so when George started working on the Special Editions, and it's persisted and morphed and grown since. To preserve the story integrity, the Prequels should have focused on Obi-Wan, with Anakin a supporting character, and Anakin's fall taking place off-screen and reading between the lines. For the Sequels... Either they needed to wait for Favreau and Filoni to fill in the thirty years between RotJ and TFA, so the audience knows at least roughly what's been going on, or TFA needed to do a better job of narratively following on to RotJ. I and several others have a pretty well-honed text slug of what's transpired between the Battle of Endor and the Battle of the Starkiller, to help those who don't read everything -- but we shouldn't have to. The themes and characters and events should be universal and comprehensible out of the gate, with the relationships, or lack of, obvious.
it is simple to make a Star Wars film that would be loved by such a wide and broad swath across the movie-going public. KK hasn't done it because she has her own agenda, and she hires filmmakers based on their willingness to promote her agenda--instead of based on their SWIQs.
Put together a team of high-SWIQ filmmakers, and we'd get a great Star Wars movie that the LARGE majority of fans (new and old) would love--a film with just the right balance of creative new story lines, homages to the OT, and modern sensibilities that are natural and fitting, not forced.
As long as the filmmakers value SJW-ism more than SWIQ, we're gonna get more of these tripe movies, which are Star Wars in name only.
I couldn't disagree more. It's not about socially-conscious casting. It's about story-blindness. George had it because he was too close to the ideas in his head. JJ has it because of his beloved Mystery Box. Kathleen has it, Rian has it... All due to what they bring to the table. It isn't necessarily a bad thing, in and of itself. It just needs some awareness drawn to in on their part, and checks put in place to honor the story over the autopilot of any one creative factor. There were a lot of good elements in TFA, and in Rogue One, and in TLJ -- and in the Prequels and Holiday Special, for that matter. They just need someone, or several someones, over the years, who are both strong storytellers and strong personalities (as Marcia and Irvin and Gary were to George) to both know how to work with and, when needed, overrule their bosses.
Having a "high SWIQ" is no guarantee of quality, either, at the other end of that scale. As above, I could argue Tolkien had an incredibly high MEIQ, but he wasn't very good at translating that into good narrative. But then, a lot of historical events aren't nice enough to so order themselves, and that's what he drew from. See also, the fifteen endings of LotR. *heh* It's not when the Ring is destroyed, it's not when Aragorn is crowned, it's not when he parts company with the Hobbits on the border of the Shire, it's not after the Scouring, it's not when Frodo decides to go with Bilbo and Gandalf into the West... Ultimately, it's in the Appendices. After Aragorn has died, when Legolas fells one of the last mallorn trees to build a small ship, collect Gimli, stop off at the Grey Havens to pick up the widower Samwise, and set sail to the West, the last of the Fellowship heading over-sea.
I remember the first two seasons of the Battlestar Galactica reboot, and the handful of jaw-dropping scenes it had, due to an intense story with well-built characters that you were emotionally invested in.
Gotta disagree with you there. I had to force myself to finish out that show. None of the characters were likable. There was no one I was rooting for, except maybe a couple of the Cylons. And Ron Moore is a good writer, but, like George, needs to be held in check. He's a "PvP witer" -- he feels the story conflict should come from the characters interacting. I prefer "PvE writing", where the characters work together to overcome an external threat. And I'll never forgive him for demoting Miles O'Brien because he can't tell the difference between a Starfleet officer's job (Transporter Chief) and his rank (something like Chief Petty Officer). Never mind those Chief Engineers and Chief Medical Officers, no. Transporter Chief Lieutenant Miles Edward O'Brien had to be a gruff old enlisted man. *sigh* Can STIQ and BSGIQ be things, also...?
Last edited: