THREAD FOR THOSE WHO HATED THE MOVIE

I agree with the part about dropping China and just moving on. If the Chinese decide they like Star Wars, so be it. I don't think this is really the sort of franchise you need to watch EVERY installment in order to get it. Sure, it helps, but these stories aren't all that difficult to follow. If they wanna get into them, cool. If not, oh well. A good example is the MCU. I enjoy the films, but I've not seen all what, 20 of them? Personally, I avoid the Guardians of the Galaxy. It just isn't my thing. But I was still able to follow and enjoy Infinity War. So I'm not sure that, because China came to the game late, they are never going to be able to follow along. I do think it is all about taste, and there are definitely films the Chinese like that I totally think are garbage. I mean, Transformers? Yuck. LMAO

 

Both the question, and the answer Iger gave, were about Star Wars movies. He didn't mention The Mandalorian or Cassian because those are not movies.

Q: Many believe Disney should pump the breaks and not put out a Star Wars movie each year.

A: I made the timing decision, and as I look back, I think the mistake that I made — I take the blame — was a little too much, too fast. You can expect some slowdown, but that doesn't mean we're not going to make films. J.J. [Abrams] is busy making [Episode] IX. We have creative entities, including [Game of Thrones creators David] Benioff and [D.B.] Weiss, who are developing sagas of their own, which we haven't been specific about. And we are just at the point where we're going to start making decisions about what comes next after J.J.'s. But I think we're going to be a little bit more careful about volume and timing. And the buck stops here on that.

 

I stand corrected about the tv content.

 

To follow up on my own post, this morning we have gotten the closest thing to confirmation that Hart is indeed a goner. So it seems it was more than just a broken link on the webpage.

She is now considered a "Creative Consultant" at LFL. When someone goes from Senior VP at a major company to "consultant" it means one of two things:

1) She has retired, but is staying on as a part time consultant to keep busy and help out. My dad did something like that. However, that is clearly not the case here, so we are left with....

2) "Acts as a Consultant" is corporatespeak for "she was fired but we can't actually say she was fired so we are giving her a lot of money to keep her mouth shut and pretend everything is cool."

This is wonderful news for fans of Star Wars.

 

Come on, now..... she's in her 40's, not her 60's. You really think she decided to up and call it a career? Plus she took a role at some other creative direction company.

 

I'm not in the hate camp circles. What unforgivable crime has Kiri Hart committed?

 

Let's try to keep the discussion regarding Kiri Hart in its appropriate thread and keep this one on-topic.

 

See how this movie has divided us? It's heartbreaking save Star Wars JJ!

 

--- Double Post Merged, Feb 8, 2019 ---

I didn't know there was a thread, so yes I will bring all further commentary and responses over there. My answers to the above questions have been reposted over in that thread.

 

Hello, I have history with Han Solo since 1983 and I don´t care where he came from. Same my other old fanboys friends. Non of us went to see it. I agree with others that quality is the main reason why these movies are not as successful as they should. Quality of the story. But a lot of fans, old and new ones, doesn´t care about origin of some characters, they will say We saw the origin, it started in the cantina, on Kamino, it diminish the character´s mistery or whatever...On the other hand, the strong voice for another Obi-Wan adventure has to do with the actor, with his performance in the PT, because it´s the same actor (big part of rejecting Solo was its cast...)...

--- Double Post Merged, Feb 15, 2019, Original Post Date: Feb 15, 2019 ---

Personally I believe it´s simpler that that - they just don´t want to waste time with bad writting stories

 

It very well could be that. I think, after having given this a lot of thought, that Disney/LFL did themselves no favors when they a. nuked the old EU, b. decided to immediately tackle a "saga" film and c. release, in between "saga" films the one-of Star Wars Story films. By nuking the EU, they pissed off a hard core group of fans. Not exactly the way to win friends and trust.

Secondly, tackling the "saga" films was always going to be dangerous, especially if you are perceived (rightly or wrongly) to be overwriting or "undoing" the ST. Massive no no right there. Then by releasing a Saga film followed by a story film... they ensured confusion. So you get people excited about characters only to jump to a completely different part of the time line and tell a totally DIFFERENT story? This is the sort of thing the Chinese, who aren't familiar with this, will look at and possibly say "Screw that."

 

It's just a shame they used that boundless creative freedom to essentially tell the same story again with almost nothing in the way of deviation, creativity, or in-universe progression.

I was never averse to them scrapping the EU. My issue is that they didn't use that opportunity to make something better or more creative.

I also believe that the issue isn't just that they rushed things. Like, @Darth Wardawg, I believe the other major issue is that Disney/LFL banked hard on the prospect of re-selling the OT to a foreign market where Star Wars was never popular.

And the Chinese ended up turning their nose to the new films faster than anyone else. Ironic.

Some of us have harbored resentment for this trilogy precisely because of what J.J brought, years before TLJ was ever even released.

So you'll have to forgive me if I'm hard-pressed to have faith in him saving anything.

 

At this point I don't think LFL has any choice but to push forward and finish this trilogy. How it's regarded, now or down the line isn't even of prime importance anymore. They need to finish it and then move to different projects that hopefully unite the fandom again. I have little to no hope that IX will, the emotion around TLJ and the whole of the ST is too turbulent to do that, but they still have to make that movie. It's a strange scenario, one I would have never anticipated.

I echo the sentiments here that say I could accept scrapping the EU, but only if they took the time to build something more cohesive in its place. Right now, my impression is that it's just as jumbled and suffers from the same issues the EU suffered. That's disappointing.

When I first heard Disney bought SW, I thought one of two options. They go into the Vong series since the age of the OT characters roughly matched (I wasn't a huge fan of that idea, but it did make some logical sense). Or they did a modified (heavily modified) version of the Thrawn trilogy. Thrawn shows up 30 years after RotJ for the first time, the Solo kids are older and padawans, mix in some other of the better parts of the EU.

As much as I had hoped for that, when they threw out the EU, I was initially disappointed for about a day, then I got fully on board and trusted in Disney to build up the world and avoid the mistakes made by the EU. That was my consolation, that it would no longer have those issues, that they'd have a Feige like overseer to make sure things fit, if not perfectly, at least well enough to not be obviously problematic for a long time. I trusted in GL, Iger, KK and all the rest to make it happen. I feel if they didn't outright fail, they certainly missed the mark that I expected them to hit to make it acceptable. I think it's still salvageable, but I think they're now working uphill.

I don't think it'll be any of the ST characters who will unite the fans anymore. There's just too much conflict associated with all of them. I think what will unite the fans is most likely to be what the GoT guys do with their series. It could be the Mandalorian, though I'm not sure if it will reach enough behind the Disney pay wall.

I don't hate the ST characters, and I do think that there could definitely be some good to great stories told about them, I just don't think they'll be the healing characters to mend the divide, by no fault of the actors whatsoever.

 

Star Wars: The Subverted Knock-off

Ram Bergman, producer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi: "Rian [Johnson] wrote the script and people really loved it. That was as simple as I can say. When Rian was hired, JJ [Abrams] was essentially just a month into filming, so there were not any guidelines for us - we just had the script that JJ was filming and dailies of what they were doing. Then at some point in the writing process, we basically told the studio where it's going to go and everybody seemed to be on board. It was the month after JJ finished filming the movie when we delivered the script, and Kathy [Kennedy] and the studio loved it. The first draft is probably 90% of the movie that we ended up shooting a year later." "There were some things [in Star Wars: The Last Jedi] where you say, 'Oh ****, they're never going to let us do this!' but they totally did, and I think everybody realised that it's probably what it needed. And everybody was like, 'Don't be safe.' To the credit of Kathy, and Bob Iger and Alan Horn and all those guys, they never tried to push us towards the safe. Whatever we pitched, whatever Rian said he wanted to do, they completely supported, and I think they understood why it needed to be that way. So definitely, Rian had the vision, bit you have to give credit to the people on top; they had the vision to actually say yes, we need to shake it up a bit." "I think when you watch the movie, you think this is not where I thought it was going to go. That's the beauty of it. I cannot get into the details, but the script that Rian wrote was really taking it in a direction you never really expected, and which kind of made it exciting for everyone who was involved in the movie. But of course in the beginning it was hard for Mark [Hamill], especially coming from Episode VII, which also was a bit hard for him." (SFX Magazine Winter 2017 issue)

I didn't make this but shrank its resolution and file size; it doesn't even cover everything

All that copying while failing to understand the underlying logic of what made those movies and scenes work in the first place. Like Rey showing up in the Falcon woo-hooing it up on Crait like Han Solo's unexpected conversion offscreen after leaving the Rebellion and returning at the end of ANH. There's always been rhyming in Star Wars, but this is too close for comfort. Whatever new Johnson brought to the table was generally no good.

The truth is Rogue One and Solo (saw it on Netflix recently) were the bolder, more ambitious films that TLJ gets bad credit for, despite whatever issues those other movies have.

 

That is just another way of saying we "subverted your expectations" so that means it's good. The pic shows what I have always though, they just remade empire with a bit of Jedi and just did the opposite at times.

But all that is my opinion, what I do hate is when we see things like the above quote attributed to Bergamn, what you think might be needed is not "the" thing that is needed. There is millions of ways you could take a movie and a lot of them are original for Star Wars.

 

This completely sums it up for me. They put stuff from Empire and Jedi in at random positions, then added space horses.

 

I apologize for not seeing this reply sooner. I think there is NO DOUBT they were going to be, and are in, a damned if you do type situation. And I think there were some great stories in the old EU and some less than great.

That's why I think what they should have done is at least have two time lines (which, in a way they do). I would have put TCW in the Disney timeline and had the old micro series Clone Wars in the "Legends" timeline. I'd then continue to put out material in both.

And I think going with Rogue One first could be risky. But I think it is a solid film and one many fans could, and did, enjoy. Somewhere else I put forward a plan that was more thought out. Going with say Luke's new Jedi Order first and second, to build up where we are at (think Ironman I and II followed by Avengers) and then go with VII. Have two more films followed by VIII. In that scenario I also suggested doing Rogue One, Solo and other "Story" films for release on Disney streaming.

But I think you hit the nail on the head, and it's something I've complained about for a while now. Iger and Disney should have allowed the films to grow naturally, not come up with some magical date and demand the first film come out at that point. The rushing of things is the major issue.

I will say this: As pissed off as I am about TLJ (and some of the other stuff) there is some stuff I have enjoyed. I LOVED Rebels. Absolutely loved it. I can't wait for the final season of TCW and The Mandalorian. I'm cautiously optimistic about IX and I hope it is fantastic.

--- Double Post Merged, Feb 19, 2019, Original Post Date: Feb 19, 2019 ---

Totally agree! And it is sad, as I like what Johnson did with Looper (never saw Brick but my wife loved it). I think he just messed things up, and what is surprising is that at one point I said TLJ feels like the first draft of a script. Well, Bergman confirms that in the quotes you provided. As opposed to Lucas' draft of A New Hope, which he ended up rewriting and revising numerous times to get it right.

To be clear: I don't mind the going in a direction I didn't expect. What I have a problem with is things like the Canto Bight thing (love the idea of a casino planet), Rose Tico's character, Rey whooping it up like nothing happened, etc. I really would have expected someone in the Story Group like a Pablo Hidalgo, to have spoken up and said this doesn't mesh with what has come before.

As for Solo I really like that film. I personally think both Solo and Rogue One are far better Star Wars films.