23 thoughts on “Star Wars”

  1. I don’t know how to save it, but I know how it could have thrived. The Marvel Universe has succeeded by making movies based on the original source material that fans enjoyed. Not everyone is a comic book fan, but those that are enjoyed the Marvel books because the stories were good. Those who didn’t read the books would still recognize a good story when made into a movie. So you service the original fans and attract new ones in a new medium.

    Star Wars, under Kathleen Kennedy, decided to throw out all the “canon” books written since the original trilogy. I suspect it was to save some money on royalties. Those books all had a dedicated fan base, and they provided tons of material for movies. The result is a blank slate. A blank could be good with a new story, and I think Stephen is on to something about “Project Greenlight”. I also agree a good caper movie would have done well.

    Instead, we got “The Last Jedi”, which just doesn’t work as a story in any universe. And followed up by Solo, a Star Wars story giving us the origin of an already well established character. Nobody wanted it.

    Disney bought a sure thing, and then took a risk by wanting to change it. If I were investors; I’d be pissed.

    1. I suspect it was to save some money on royalties.

      Most of the studios are smart enough that novels and other properties based on their films and TV shows are works for hire and the studio owns the copyright.

      I think the big problem, as Green pointed out, is that their is no guiding vision for where Star Wars is to go. I thought that TLJ was OK (the casino trip was irrelevant and should have been cut). Rogue One was pretty good. Haven’t seen Solo yet.

      1. The sequels did a pretty thorough job of killing off the heroes of the original trilogy even before they killed off the characters. Han, Leia, Luke failed at pretty much everything they tried after the original trilogy. Han and Leia failed as parents and as a couple. Leia failed as a political leader, the sequels show her failing as a military leader as well. Luke failed as a teacher, lost his principles and quit. Maybe that’s realistic, but it’s pretty depressing.

        1. I think it makes more sense once you realize that it’s a generational allegory where Han, Luke and Leia are the Boomers and the new characters are ‘all must have prizes’ Millennials.

        2. In the original trilogy it isn’t uncommon for the heroes to fumble and struggle. Especially Luke, who was the rookie of the key characters, and in some ways on a more difficult and less charted path. But they don’t give up and eventually succeed. Not giving up was part of their character. Luke losing his principles and giving up is a betrayal of that character.

  2. Start off by understanding: Prequels suck.
    No dramatic tension, you know who survives, and most importantly:
    The original story is the “better” story !!
    If the Prequel was the better story ‘9 times out of 10’ that would have been the story that would have been written first! All sequels have problems and Prequels are worse.

    1. Prequels do usually suck for the reasons given. I have to say though, Better Call Saul is very, very good.

    2. Prequels can be good. It’s all in the storytelling. The interesting question is how different the Star Wars prequels (and sequels) are from the original 9 movie plan that George Lucas had.

  3. There’s a lot of past Hugo and Nebula winners out there that’d turn a profit with a decent screenplay. But everyone wants home runs. I’d settle for a steady stream of singles and doubles. Even straight to SyFy Channel CGI of the month. Produced on the cheap in Eastern Europe with a slightly portly and graying Bruce Campbell.

    1. Disney is supposed to be starting a streaming channel soon. It might have been interesting if Disney had used the Han Solo picture to set up a series of short adventure films (75 minutes or so) for their streaming channel. Make a biggish studio movie to offset the costs of the sets, then crank out a Lando/Han/Chewie/etc adventure every few months.

      Maybe that’s what they had planned.

  4. This is what happens when a major story property falls into the hands of people who don’t get the story. Worse, the people in question don’t get reality either.

    1. TLJ wasn’t made by Star Wars fans.

      Everyone acted out of character and their were a lot of instances where the dialog was more like 80’s telephone crank calls rather than set in science fantasy.

  5. SJWs wreck everything they touch. And Disney is infested with them. Turning Star Wars from the car-wreck of the prequels into a train-wreck was inevitable once Disney got their hands on it.

    And releasing a new Star Wars movie every week has only made that worse: they’re no longer an event, they’re just another movie.

    1. Agreed. Not only is it just another movie but it’s a ho-hum, same old thing, boring movie.

      I do think Prequels can work but they have to have a storyline that is interesting regardless of the fact that you know the outcome (e.g. they get the Death Star Plans).

      It can be done. But it takes time and thought and talent.

      Just churning out one Rebels v Giant Galactic Empah movie after another is boring.

    2. But how could you tell TLJ story without the side plot about how horrible rich people are and the evils of horse racing?

      Sure you might be thinking Admiral Akbar deserved a better send off by why not just blow him up and replace him with some purple haired lady with no character development?

      TLJ was interesting in that even after a major victory against the First Order that wiped out nearly all their forces in the first movie, the “resistance” (liked them better when they were rebels) are now the ones that only have a few ships with zero support from the populace.

      1. I’ve avoided everything since the one where they killed off Han Solo a couple of years back. That movie alone was enough to convince me that the Empire were actually the good guys in the original trilogy, and Darth Vader was just misunderstood.

        I should really load up Tie Fighter on my PC and blast some rebel scum.

  6. Even though I very much liked Rogue One and I have to confess I haven’t seen Solo yet, I always expected that Disney would eventually mouse it up….

  7. Ron Howard’s “Apollo 13” is proof positive that you can make a terrific movie even though the entire audience knows how it will end, but I also believe his primary goal was to make a terrific movie. Yes, Disney wants to make terrific movies too, and they can (Incredibles, original Beauty and the Beast, Finding Nemo) but I think the merchandising angle they bake into all of their productions outweighed storyline considerations. Star Wars came with super merchandising hooks and a fairly weak storyline (A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back were strong, everything since stunk except Rogue One in my opinion). Heck, the shared merchandising strategy pretty much made a Disney and LucasFilm deal a match made in heaven.

    1. A few more good Disney movies: Tron, Miracle, Invincible. I thought John Carter was at least entertaining (if you put Mark Strong in just about anything it’s usually not going to come out too bad). But yeah, sadly they really are more miss than hit.

      1. Yes, I liked “John Carter,” too. Wasn’t happy of the liberties they took with the book “A Princess of Mars,” but on the whole it was entertaining. For what it’s worth, I watched it with a woman friend who knew nothing about ERB’s Mars novels and in fact is not an SF fan at all, and she enjoyed it, too. A big plus, the actress who played Dejah Thoris, the heroine, was very, very hot. Unfortunately she was overdressed compared to Dejah Thoris is the novels.

        1. There was kind of an amusing bit where the bad guy wanted Dejay Thoris to wear a revealing outfit. In the originals, Martians wore essentially no clothing (just harness to hang their weapons from)

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