Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Post-release)

Usagi Pilgrim said:

I think the fact that the SW EU was as successful as it was, is proof that a handful of characters isn't the 'be all, end all' of SW. KOTOR is a perfect example. Some folks just like that universe, & anything that's made in there will find an audience.

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KOTOR was the absolute best SW game. And I'll argue that with anyone... and dare them to start it and not finish it.

But even KOTOR, as a game, followed the rules, and put us in a world that was believable and exciting to think we could actually walk around and be there..

In KOTOR we had to learn..and study.. and practice... and our thoughts and feelings changed the game..and things that happened when we changed, made some sort of sense.

DarthLee said:

KOTOR was the absolute best SW game. And I'll argue that with anyone... and dare them to start it and not finish it.

But even KOTOR, as a game, followed the rules, and put us in a world that was believable and exciting to think we could actually walk around and be there..

In KOTOR we had to learn..and study.. and practice... and our thoughts and feelings changed the game..and things that happened when we changed, made some sort of sense.

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Absolutely agree DL, but my point was, there were familiar things from the OT, but nothing directly related, & it thrived.

I think the argument that if Disney strays away from what the OT was, it's doomed to fail, only can be a fear of an OT purist.

Usagi Pilgrim said:

Absolutely agree DL, but my point was, there were familiar things from the OT, but nothing directly related, & it thrived.

I think the argument that if Disney strays away from what the OT was, it's doomed to fail, only can be a fear of an OT purist.

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This might sound funny, but I was not an OT fan before I watched the OT. My point is, the movies they are making now, will not make a person of no SW knowledge or being a fan, after watching these 2, a fan. Not in the group, watching in the theater, that I was in.

I really don't know what the apocalyptic scenario some of you folks are imagining where Disney just stops making Star Wars movies.

They pushed through, as Bryan notes, the largest park expansion ever, for Disneyland. That's not just a menial task that represents some phantom cost for Disney. Aside from the sheer scale of the project and imaginering teams, they also had to work with the city of Anaheim to get the approvals. The same city they've been fighting with for a decade to build a new parking structure on the east side of the property. It's a serious investment of time, money, and manpower.

They're not just walking away from that.

DarthLee said:

This might sound funny, but I was not an OT fan before I watched the OT. My point is, the movies they are making now, will not make a person of no SW knowledge or being a fan, after watching these 2, a fan. Not in the group, watching in the theater, that I was in.

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Based on these two movies, I agree, as much as I like them, but everything that's come before still exists. I'm not of the mind that these films diminish anything that's come before, it's simply another chapter in a story from that universe.

For example, at the end of ANH, the Princess was safe, Solo had changed his ways, & Luke had taken his place as a hero of the Rebellion.

By contrast, the end of ESB, the Princess, along with the rest of the Rebellion was on the run, Han was a wall decoration, & 'our hero' had gotten his rear end handed to him, he'd lost his fighting hand along with the weapon that had called him to action. He'd failed every task his teacher had given him, & even quit in the middle of his training.

I'm saying, that seems to have discarded the happy ending ANH had given us, but it didn't ruin ANH. It's easy to say that now because we know it was the part two of a trilogy. So is TLJ, so why can't we give it the same consideration?

Usagi Pilgrim said:

So is TLJ, so why can't we give it the same consideration?

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Because for some of us, those heroes are dead, and we don't care about who's left, (except for the droids and Chewie but they don't really matter to the story anymore). The rest of what you say, I agree with. I just consider Disney as fan films.

Nothing can diminish what the OT or the PT have meant, and continue to mean to me. They're too precious to me to let that happen.

PantheraGem said:

Disney is too big to fail.

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Absolutely correct. But, if parts of that company begin to fail they will deal with it in the same way that countless corporations have done with diverse portfolios in the same situation and that will be to remove that part from their control.

Before people start jumping up and down at that statement, it has been made in context to the discussion that has been occurring over these last couple of pages. It is not a prediction, it is simply a possible outcome should things turn bad.

To be fair, I was being facetious. No one is too big to fail. No one.

Mr Webber said:

url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rNwighLs_Q[/url]

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Just wanted to bump this as it may have been lost in the frantic posting of late, its very relevant to the concerns held by so many.

DarthLee said:

Play-do was pretty big too

Anyone has to admit.. The SW franchise, that Disney acquired, has too much diversity... Adults who argue the validity of this new ST, will change the next generations minds.

I had a discussion with my oldest...he liked the movie...I then started pointing out different scenes, that I found was a problem.. he agreed... I told him, what I pointed out was half the movie.. He agreed that maybe it wasnt a good "Star Wars" movie,,

So I took that.. it didnt planted a seed, it didnt plant the, "I'm going to buy SW stuff and be sure to watch the next one".. like I did as a child, he just took it as another movie.

I cant see the SW saga surviving that.

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Not to get into deep stuff, but that in itself is a huge issue with my generation in general, being unable hold they're own opinions (I don't have first hand experience with other generations in this area, so it may not just be millenials). Some background, and I mean this in no arrogant way (I've honestly been embarrassed by it several times) but I am by far the biggest star wars fan of anyone I personally know. I was talking with my cousin and a group of friends about TLJ soon after it came out, all of whom loved it, and were calling it the best SW since ESB. I argued against that, derivative plot, Luke's character, yada yada yada. All the main points. People all denied that, my cousin especially saying the Luke murder contemplation was in character. A couple weeks later we're with some other people, this time ones who share views similar to mine. And just like that my cousins ideas about it change. He agreed with everything, including Luke, and contradicted everything he had "thought" about the movie a week or two before.

That's why the reactions to star wars movies are so weird. When it comes out people are saying it's the best one yet, and then four months later they're tearing it apart. It just has to be whatever the mob is doing at whatever point. It was like that with both TFA and RO.

PantheraGem said:

Disney is too big to fail.

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Disney is the clown from IT.

Not a good start in China.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/n...st-jedi-losing-opening-day-race-china-1071810

Lol, Mark Hamill keeping it real...

Nitz146 said:

Not a good start in China.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/n...st-jedi-losing-opening-day-race-china-1071810

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I wish Disney and Lucasfilm would really think about this.

That "Star Wars" is primarily a franchise in which a rag tag bunch of rebels (who believe in democracy )attack a huge dominating single party militaristic super power dictatorship (who don't).
Do you see why this may not play well in China? Anyone? Anyone at all.

(Then again too much power invested in one place is often blind to the consequences of its own faulty decision making process).

Usagi Pilgrim said:

By contrast, the end of ESB, the Princess, along with the rest of the Rebellion was on the run, Han was a wall decoration, & 'our hero' had gotten his rear end handed to him, he'd lost his fighting hand along with the weapon that had called him to action. He'd failed every task his teacher had given him, & even quit in the middle of his training.

I'm saying, that seems to have discarded the happy ending ANH had given us, but it didn't ruin ANH. It's easy to say that now because we know it was the part two of a trilogy. So is TLJ, so why can't we give it the same consideration?

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Because by the end ESB gave us something in exchange.
1. Vader's character is put in a completely different direction after the revelation. Plus cliffhanger: does he tell the truth?
2. Luke's beliefs are shaken to the core, we need to see how that resolves.
3. Why didn't Obi-wan tell the truth
4. Han is captured, how is he going to be rescued?

Note that neither of these have anything to do with the overall Empire vs Rebels war story. TLJ and ESB are the second acts of a three-piece act and while ESB did a good job in growing the characters and their personal stories and making plenty of room for the final act to play out TLJ restricted the playfield by resolving most of what TFA set up without developing anything new.

Usagi Pilgrim said:

Absolutely agree DL, but my point was, there were familiar things from the OT, but nothing directly related, & it thrived.

I think the argument that if Disney strays away from what the OT was, it's doomed to fail, only can be a fear of an OT purist.

Click to expand...

Usagi Pilgrim said:

I think the fact that the SW EU was as successful as it was, is proof that a handful of characters isn't the 'be all, end all' of SW. KOTOR is a perfect example. Some folks just like that universe, & anything that's made in there will find an audience.

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I'm quoting others again, but the issue is that "the Star Wars universe is limited and does not really have a rich world to play with". Stormtroopers of one or other sort, lightsabers, X-wings, TIE fighters, Walkers, etc all in the fight of absolute good vs absolute evil with destiny involved. Which is great for three movies but becomes creatively stale if you want to pump out a movie every year and every time they tried to do something different it didn't work out. I can't really imagine a Game of Thrones-esque politically charged, morally ambiguous Star Wars for example because it's just against what Star Wars is. KOTOR-esque world is the only way to semi-break this mould. At least that would get away from the conflict that has been raging on for what like 70 years now, with the Skywalkers, 3PO, Nien Numb, Ackbar, Palps have pretty much spent their entire life fighting one or other iteration of the same drawn-out galaxy-wide conflict.
I thought the majority of the EU was cheap rubbish pulp by really lame hire-an-author-for-a-day sci-fi writers but there was more place to go to, there's a new government, let's see how they stabilize it, internal struggles, rebelling systems against the New Republic etc.
Again this is why it would have been SO GREAT if Rey and Kylo teamed up, curtains down, let's see what they do in Ep9 and where can this grow.

PantheraGem said:

Because for some of us, those heroes are dead, and we don't care about who's left, (except for the droids and Chewie but they don't really matter to the story anymore). The rest of what you say, I agree with. I just consider Disney as fan films.

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This is the thing I agree in theory with the Disney-direction is that we DO need to move on from those characters. And we DO need to move on from the main conflict too. I liked TFA because of the new characters, that movie could have worked if they completely ignore the original three or if they are just talked about or mentioned. Execution however...
TLJ so loudly promotes that "it's not Luke's or Leia's story anymore, it's time to move on" yet spends most of the film getting Leia heavily involved in most things and putting Luke as a character and his redemption in the very centre of the story whereas TFA did a much better job of sticking with the new characters without putting that much emphasis on the old gang.

Bryancd said:

Its just like Leia walking past Cheiwe in TFA, sometimes the creative folks just plain miss something.

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As well as Artoo and Threepio at the base on Yavin IV when Admiral Raddus has already left, on the Profudity with Tantive IV docked in its hanger bay!
Well, it's just not good enough! Hundreds of people involved yet no one picked up on the GLARING errors. Proof that SWIQ is real and sadly lacking in the overall production of these movies.

Bryancd said:

They are building their largest park expansion ever to support Star Wars. They have plans for a live action tv show. They have major licensing plans, books, comics, other media. If the films don't land for everyone, anyone of of those will. It's genius and it's just started. Watch and see how huge this becomes.

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It may not be SW for us, but it will be for them.

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I hope that you are right Bryancd but Star Wars has a very specific problem that needs fixing desperately : Its currently got a very limited story universe. Compare it to Star Trek, which has been able to create hundreds of different scenarios by having a variety of enemies, planetary systems , alien cultures and technological challenges.
Star Wars doesn't have that currently.Its Jedi (lightside) verses Sith (darkside), First Order /Empire verses Resistance/ Rebellion. Unless they change this its always going to be stuck in repeat/reboot mode.
My only hope is that by the end of IX BOTH the First Order and the Resistance are both sufficently destroyed so that any chance of creating any single unifying galactic form of government is highly unlikely ever again.
In many ways that hyperspace collision in VIII works towards that. Any centralized form of control supported by superweapons and massed space armadas is just to easily destroyed by eitherside now.
So the tactics of starwarsfare are going to have to significantly change, almost like the introduction of the atom bomb at the end of WWII. Its all going to have to be more covert, other systems can form their own goverments and allegencies, buy their own defenses /forces from the arms manufacturers . Lets face it the cost of reforming either the Resistance or the First Order is going to be crippling without funding and what system wouldn't take the opportunity to say "Stuff you we can go it alone.Upset us and we will hyperpace obliterate you"
At the end of ROTJ I can remember hoping that anything we saw that came after it went along these lines,as we had in history with the Fall of the Roman Empire. I just hope Disney and Lucasfilm have got the guts to take it in that kind of direction.

CutThumb said:

At the end of ROTJ I can remember hoping that anything we saw that came after it went along these lines,as we had in history with the Fall of the Roman Empire. I just hope Disney and Lucasfilm have got the guts to take it in that kind of direction.

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If they've admitted that they don't even have an outline of where things have been headed thus far, then I don't see how they are going to have the foresight to come up with something in a totally new direction. They are 2/3 the way through this trilogy. If it keeps making them money to just fly by the seat of their pants, then why try something different now? Why do they even have the story group if Johnson is telling the truth about being free to do whatever he wanted anyway?

Well, there are cultural differences sure, but I don't think the democratic tendencies of the Rebels are the primary driver of why Star Wars is not huge in China. As the linked article points out, the OT was not really a thing in China, which in 1977, was still relatively closed off.

I would further argue that the above isn't informed by an accurate sense of how Chinese people feel about "democracy."

CutThumb said:

I hope that you are right Bryancd but Star Wars has a very specific problem that needs fixing desperately : Its currently got a very limited story universe. Compare it to Star Trek, which has been able to create hundreds of different scenarios by having a variety of enemies, planetary systems , alien cultures and technological challenges.
Star Wars doesn't have that currently.Its Jedi (lightside) verses Sith (darkside), First Order /Empire verses Resistance/ Rebellion. Unless they change this its always going to be stuck in repeat/reboot mode.
My only hope is that by the end of IX BOTH the First Order and the Resistance are both sufficently destroyed so that any chance of creating any single unifying galactic form of government is highly unlikely ever again.
In many ways that hyperspace collision in VIII works towards that. Any centralized form of control supported by superweapons and massed space armadas is just to easily destroyed by eitherside now.
So the tactics of starwarsfare are going to have to significantly change, almost like the introduction of the atom bomb at the end of WWII. Its all going to have to be more covert, other systems can form their own goverments and allegencies, buy their own defenses /forces from the arms manufacturers . Lets face it the cost of reforming either the Resistance or the First Order is going to be crippling without funding and what system wouldn't take the opportunity to say "Stuff you we can go it alone.Upset us and we will hyperpace obliterate you"
At the end of ROTJ I can remember hoping that anything we saw that came after it went along these lines,as we had in history with the Fall of the Roman Empire. I just hope Disney and Lucasfilm have got the guts to take it in that kind of direction.

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Which is exactly what they have retained Rian Johnson to create, an entirely new series of films devoid of the Saga story tropes. In evaluating the franchise value I see them diversifying the portfolio of films, leveraging the merchandising, Star Wars is the largest selling toy brand in the world, creating touch points for consumers at the theme parks and hotels and cruises, supporting their new streaming service with their film catalogue including Fox films and using a live action and continued animated showd to drive subscriber growth. I could go on but this is a glimpse at their long term strategy with Star Wars.