Did something go wrong?

There's a vast difference between pandering and making for the audience.

It doesn't much matter if Hitchcock made movies to manipulate audiences as every movie manipulates audiences. That's what emotional responses are.

In tangent, what matters is focus: not the audience, the audience.

Both are valid.

So is pandering, for that matter.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I don't think Hitchcock ever worried about what plot developments the audience was placing bets on or thought were permissible/desirable for adding to their head canon and lore database.

There's a difference between making a movie suitable for an audience to understand what you're trying to do and making a movie you suppose the audience probably already thinks needs to be made.

 

The point isn't about that.

The point was that there's no wrong motive for making a movie. There's just whether someone liked it or not.

See, the amazing thing about movies isn't that there's any good ones. It's that there's any made at all. Seriously, come hang out at my job, look behind the curtain for a bit, and you'd also be floored that anyone accomplishes a movie of any kind.

Do you know how most studios intake a screenplay?
A writer writes it in FinalDraft. Screenwriting software that feels like it was made in 1995. It's the industry standard that everyone makes their software hook into.
But most writers don't trust anyone, they don't want anyone to monkey with their file without a record. So, they hand over a PDF.
Then the PDF gets handed to some poor sap who has to import the PDF into FinalDraft in studio ownership and correct any formatting errors that happened from the conversion.

And that's just the most basic of tasks. It only gets more ridiculous from there, and that's not even getting into high level corp studios. This is all standard studios.

I cannot convey to you how daunting of a da*n task making a movie is. And just because something is top tier level doesn't make it easier, or more valid to tie people to posts or not. It's really bloody hard. Half of my job is working out ways to unf**** the movie making process from how f***ed it has been made into over the past century. It's a god***n s***show.

Politics is less dysfunctional than Hollywood.

It really, truly, doesn't matter what the motive was. It's not going to make it better than or worse than whatever. There's no universal artistic morality.
There's this business thing wrapped around this art thing, and the two make weird bed fellows and try to get along without screwing up their kids. Most of the time, the kids come out a bit off. Once in a while, they accidentally make a great kid and have no idea how it happened.

And if any armchair producer/director thinks they've got the answers... well, be my guest. No one's holding them back. We'd all really love to see someone come in and sweep all of the rest of us up with homerun after homerun full of explanations on how to make the movie world a better place guaranteed.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

For the people that have saying that Johnson set out to deliberately subvert the fans expectations instead of "engaging", i.e. proceeding according to those expectations (by which they mean predictable outcomes).

 

And I'm saying that doesn't matter.

Folks started going down a tangent about which way of making movies was a valid approach.

Answer: all.

Fans can tear it up or cherish it, up to them. But it's all valid to make.

There's no wrong way to eat a Reese's.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I would say it doesn't matter too or not brought it up at all if it wasn't what some fans are literally demanding.

 

I don't see how you could put Clint Eastwood and George Lucas in the "we don't pay no stinkin' attention to what the audience wants" category. The film careers of both men were built on giving the audience more of what they wanted (Dirty Harry, Star Wars).

That kind of excuse-making is only heard after a highly anticipated film disappoints.

You weren't hearing any excuses after TESB came out. Same with TFA. Sure, as with anything popular, there is always going to be a few voices of criticism. But the audiences enthusiatically embraced both films. Hmmmm...so why didn't we get the 'you can't please everybody' line? Because both films were well-produced and gave the audiences more of what they wanted.

 

You repeatedly twist my words. Good day.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Author Hugh Howey explained, he doesn't write stories for the ANGRY VIEWER, he sits down to write stories that he would read or watch. Now, I know who the Filler episode aficionados are, they are called the angry televison viewer, the minority, that writers and creators don't care about, those that say nothing happened, its a filler episode. Which would amaze me... what do you mean nothing happened? What do you mean that its a filler episode? What did you expect: All out action and no substance??? there was character and story development, writers do not sit down to write a tv episode or a film for the ANGRY VIEWER, they are the minority, (about 10 people LMFAO) writers who sit down and write stories for the angry viewer, those tv episodes and films fail. Howey pointed out a popular TV show that I watched religiously (watching episodes several times over) where the first few season were great, but then the writers started to listen to the angry viewers/fans and the series ended in utter confusion. The ending of the series was lost to the core audience.

What does this have to do with the ST? Well, for me, the reason why I like TLJ so much is that the writer, RJ sat down to write a story he wanted to tell, and for me, Jar Jar Abrams came back in the next episode, to write a story for the Angry viewer. There are some redeeming parts to TROS but for me it was a loss and a hot mess. I enjoy all the Star Wars films, the memories waiting for the next episodes, going to the theater or watching an episode on Disney+ with my family and friends, excited for Star Wars whether it be a tv episode or film, they are not perfect films or tv episodes but very much beloved... I like each and every episode, as a fan I'm grateful for more Star Wars whether its at home, or in the theater... I haven't watched an episode that I would label FILLER... I'm not an angry viewer... but now I know who they are (the minority & the angry viewer) which will make my time here much more rewarding...

 

Not really. You've just kept telling me that "that's not the point" and "it doesn't matter". I'm trying to tell you I'd agree with you if others aren't insisting the opposite.

I've been arguing with someone else telling me directly that by not giving the fans (not the audience) the plot developments they can comfortably anticipate, the filmmakers aren't engaging with the audience. But you're charging me (?) with missing the point and that it doesn't matter.

Excuse me, but I'm engaging with someone for whom it clearly does matter and for them it is the point so there's absolutely no call for berating me about it and accusing me if twisting your words. You're clearly speaking at crossed purposes to the people, or person, you've chosen to aim your opinion about what ways you can or can't make movie.

But I'll tell you this. You CAN'T write tell a joke or a story you personally don't think it's valuable to hear, If you don't think it's funny or if it doesn't give you a catharsis you haven't already experienced, just on the off chance or trusting in calculations or predicting, statistically, that other people might like it regardless.

 

And yet Lucas quit film making because of the audience:
“You go to make a movie and all you do is get criticized, and people try to make decisions about what you’re going to do before you do it. You know, it’s not much fun. And you can’t experiment, you can’t do anything. You ‘have’ to do everything a certain way. I don’t like that, I never have.”

Since TESB, every SW sequel movie was disliked by by many, while many other really loved it.
A lot of people disliked the dark tone of TESB, other said Vader being Luke's makes no sense. And TFA got hate from the very first second when the first teaser trailer was released.

Star Wars. Star Wars never changes.

 

Yeah. If you're any good, you can't tell a joke you yourself don't find funny or worthwhile telling on the off chance that it will satisfy others. Some fans want their intelligence and familiarity with what Star Wars has done in the past to be acknowledged and stroked. But an artist, if they're any good, usually wants to induce a catharsis. Otherwise you're just serving cafeteria food.

That's not what engagement means. If Empire Strikes Back had "engaged" with the fans, as you seem to be using the word, the rebels don't suffer defeat, Han doesn't take Leia away from Luke, Luke doesn't lose his hand and Vader isn't Luke's father. All of those subverted many fans ideas of what a Star Wars film would provide them with and could comfortably predict they could see in an future Star Wars film (but they didn't have long to wait for ROTJ to put some of that right). Lucas has consistently acknowledged that this was the case but doesn't get accused of failing to engage with the audience.

If you are disagreeing with something or trying to come terms with it, you're still engaging with it. Engagement doesn't mean having your intelligence endorsed. If you stop engaging with something because it didn't go the way you predicted then that's your choice.

I think it ruined what some fans predicted the remainder of the ST would/should be, based on their own sense of franchise savviness.

The main criticism of TFA is that it is derivate and does things just because that's what a fab might anticipate. Funny that isn't it?

 

I will never forget the hate and vitriol that emerged on the internet in November 2014 when the 90 second TFA teaser trailer was released. I'm a huge fan of Star Wars and Star Trek mostly because they're set in a galaxy or universe where all types species and humans work together in harmony... I was in complete shock, and dismay at the reception of TFA trailer... I could not believe what I was reading on the internet... it will be a day long remembered in my book...

 

I saw that long before during the EU era in the 90s. People I saw into that stuff were highly opinionated and their arguments looked much the same we see here.

Back then I quipped that the EU turned a sci-fi fantasy into a sports game where the fans seemed to get enjoyment out of arguing whose side did what right or wrong, and what the owners, coaches, and players should have done instead.

I don't think I would have ever gotten into EU stuff since the universe of Star Wars means very little to me, but if it had I probably would have avoided it just by how people acted.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I really don't think this is a complicated question. It's become complicated in part by the culture wars phenomenon that @cawatrooper astutely mentioned. It's around the release of TLJ where politics started getting injected into issue by people who were monetizing it. This can clearly be seen on YouTube where after The Force Awakens there was a tremendous amount of fan content being generated. Eventually covering it genuinely wasn't profitable. There's too many content creators. One high profile channel ( I won't mention ) praised TLJ, but a few weeks later realized hate parade videos were the only untapped market left. There's a market for everything and for these huge IPs there are always going to be people who hate stuff. That only explains how silly entertainment discourse has been, what happened to the films?

There was huge anticipation for The Rise of Skywalker. The Google Trends data showed search results for the new film before its release higher than right before The Last Jedi. The Rise of Skywalker just didn't deliver. The audience scores reflected that. It's a testament to the hype of the film that it still cleared $1 billion.

In hindsight, TROS was rushed. Iger has admitted as much. JJ was editing the film as they filmed it. The entire trilogy was setting up for a confrontation between mother and son and the closest we got to that moment was when Kylo didn't fire on his mom's ship in TLJ. Carrie Fisher passing away wrecked the last film. She probably should have been recast, but that would have been super difficult. The route they took with Leia just didn't work. For me it among my least favorite Star Wars films. The cast is still great and there's some stuff I like, but it was an unsatisfying conclusion. Even the last scene is puzzling. Rey goes to Tatooine, a planet she's never visited, to bury Luke/Leia's lightsaber. Why? Luke never looked back. Leia didn't have a connection to Tatooine. The entire scene is to pull on nostalgia strings, but it's out of character and doesn't make sense in context to the trilogy.

I don't blame JJ. I'm not sure anyone could have made a better film in the time he took to make it. They needed more time to figure out how to finish the story. To me, that's the biggest lesson. Give up on trilogies where you're forced to end a story. A series a films after The Last Jedi would have been a better solution instead of trying to wrap everything up without a main character.

 

Ahem. Maryann Brandon was lead editor and Stefan Grube assisted. Abram's role was approval and suggestions.

And Maryann really deserves that credit because she changed the logistics of film editing on that movie quite radically.
She saw the problem and she was the one who developed the solution of getting an editing table on set and developing the network pipeline and workflow that would allow for that to even happen. If she hadn't been there, it would not have been done.

And the editing in that movie is incredibly well done. People can flaw it for any number of reasons they want, but at the extreme least, it's another case of Romancing the Stone where anything can be said about that movie in many ways, but no one can say its editing is bad because d***... that's just insanely good editing (in the case of Romancing the Stone... it's wildly out of place with how good it is).

There's two films in recent history that we're all looking at when it comes to rethinking editing: TROS and MISSING!.

Both are remarkable achievements.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

A definition of 'engaged' is showing great interest. Those takeaways from TESB you mentioned were VERY engaging. The decision to change the character of a beloved hero was not. In fact, it turned off many fans. Walking away from the franchise isn't engagement.

You make it sound like it was a battle between 'the enlightened' filmmakers and their fans and the masses of unwashed, narrow-minded unenlightened. Successful movie making is about exciting the audience with stunning developments for our beloved heroes (and new ones.) Its about pushing the franchise's popularity to new heights.

You can psychoanalyze to death about how the audience SHOULD have responded to it. But so what? They didn't like TLJ. In fact, it turned many of them off to Star Wars. (I don't believe that's what the filmmakers intended, do you?)

The Star Wars film franchise is STILL reeling from its poor reception.

 

Yes, I meant more of the JJ team and Maryann deserves the credit. Also, my comments about the ending of the film aren't about editing which I agree was great. It's the story choice of Rey going there at the end.

 

As one in the industry with a literal job title of both analyst and story lead at a studio... no.

The first problem with this whole sentence is that it asserts there's anything called successful movie making.
Here's what successful movie making actually is as a business: making deals and getting to do more work.

That's it.

Outside of that, there's no such thing as successful movie making.
And why are fans caring about that side of things anyway? Love the movie, hate the move. But trust me, unless you're on the backside, there's no possible way you have any clue what it takes to make a movie, or what any range of success should or shouldn't be qualified as. That analyst side of my job... part of my job is analyzing and aiding in production design that's not a clusterf*** like it always has been and always is.

It would be easier for you to talk about successful nuclear power plant construction than successful movie making given how fragmented, proprietary, and jacked the entire thing is. Whatever anyone outside the industry thinks they know about making movies, it's a single digit percent of what's actually happening.

Cheers,
Jayson

p.s.
If anyone's wondering why I suddenly popped back up, it's because I was under Disney NDA for a while when we were all over at Crafty Apes VFX, so I didn't really feel comfortable hanging around a fan forum chatting away on anything while I simultaneously had a proverbial gun at my head that could potentially see anything I said as breach of contract. Now that we're all over at a different studio that's not currently attached to working with Disney (at least yet), I'm more willing to pop in now and then... though, I'll probably still not be around much as I used to because... well... a bit busy.

 

On the one hand I have to agree this was quite an achievement, on the other hand I have to ask myself "was this truly necessary?". Why rush this process? Especially for this final movie of a trilogy.

But in the end we have to keep in mind the movie wasn't truly "edited on set". Scenes were roughly assembled to get an idea of a sequence. Something George Lucas also did with the PT. But the professional editing still took place in a quiet and dark editing room with no distraction.