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*OFFICIAL* Ron Howard Thread

Discussion in 'Solo' started by Old Biff from the Future, Feb 7, 2016.

  1. nightangel

    nightangel Rebel Official

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    yeah and Marvel treats its fanbase in a respectful way and not only for a money grab.:rolleyes::(:oops::eek:
     
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  2. Jayson

    Jayson Resident Lucasian

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    I like how folks just gloss right over that there's a business going on, and that Marvel isn't some sparkling no-fault-every-hit-is-a-wonder machine.

    What short memories folks have.
    Marvel went through decades of challenges to figure itself out...decades.

    Let's start with Howard the Duck, which Lucas had share involvement in.
    Let's move up from there to more recent times: Elektra, Daredevil, Ghost Rider...how about Punisher.

    Marvel is not without stain, and no business is.
    The thing that got everything on track wasn't Marvel; it was Disney.
    Marvel's great choice was in recognizing that Disney was the right place to go to handle their IP correctly, but even after they moved over to Disney, it's not like there's a 19 film winning streak going on; they had their Hulk issue early on, and even after they got going they had their low skirting hiccup with Captain America's First Avenger.

    If you count how long Marvel's been actively pumping out films and trying to figure itself out, it's been a very long time and most of that time has been dominantly a list of failures.

    The walk away story of the current Marvel success is two things:
    Firstly,
    Disney knows what it's doing, and part of that is that they have probably one of the longest and deepest running histories with foundering and struggling of any major brand. Marvel only really had issues with films; Disney had issues with...everything for a good two and half to three decades before they righted their ship and figured out how to move forward again.​

    Secondly,
    and this is the more important Marvel, and Disney, lesson:
    Failure teaches. Don't quit. Keep trying.

    Also, ACCEPT failures. Allow them to happen and move on.

    One thing that people seem to miss is that both Disney and Marvel tolerate failures far more than pretty much ANYONE in the film industry.
    Everyone seems to really love to talk about Iger and head chopping, but the reality is that's just gossip town and while Disney isn't going to be tickled with failures, and neither is Marvel, they both are very accepting that failures WILL HAPPEN if you're trying to be innovative in business, and that the only way to get that innovation is to be open enough to a point where, by nature, a failure will eventually happen.​

    Above all...IT IS ART PEOPLE!

    Jesus...
    How about we get on to talking ABOUT the art and not the business?
    This is a Ron Howard thread and it's derailed into being a 'Star Wars business manager's suck by comparison to Marvel's' topic...AGAIN.

    Cool. Got it. Kennedy sucks, Marvel's a godsend that can do nothing worse than Star Wars and is spanking Star Wars around the world, yada yada...

    Great; how about getting to talking about Ron Howard and what you think of the film that is in front of your face as a piece of ART?

    We just spent months slamming over the business end of TLJ until it was a dust bowl of a conversation....is that ALL that anyone has to talk about with Star Wars now? Business?

    [​IMG]

    Cheers,
    Jayson
     
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  3. Lock_S_Foils

    Lock_S_Foils Red Leader

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    Holy Cow!! Hear Hear!! ^^^ What he said!!!!!
     
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  4. Darth Wardawg

    Darth Wardawg Force Sensitive

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    Amen Jayson! Great point about the fact that people act as if everything Marvel touches turns to gold. Or as if every film they make has the success of Infinity War and Black Panther. Hardly the case. Both of those did far better box office than Logan (Yes I know its not MCU), BUT I'd say Logan is a far far far better film. One of my all time favorite films to be honest.

    To get back on track, I think Ron Howard did an amazing job. The film is fun and lets face it, he should get a ton of credit for that. I'd actually love to see him team up with LFL again and get to do a Star Wars film from start to finish. Even if he only had been responsible for the cut of the film it would be impressive. But when you consider that he reshot what, 80% of the film and did it in 90 days, give or take? Outstanding.
     
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  5. Jayson

    Jayson Resident Lucasian

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    Yeah, Ron Howard is a very forgettable director by a lot of people because he just doesn't chase attention at all.
    He's very quiet and happy to just go about making movies.

    He's a powerhouse of a director though, with essentially his entire life being in Hollywood.
    Come to think of it, I'm having a hard time thinking of any other highly successful child actor who remained in the business, and flipped into directing successfully.

    Is Howard the only one?
    I honestly can't think of anyone else...

    But I think lots of folks forget that this guy directed Splash, Apollo 13, Backdraft, Cacoon, A Beautiful Mind, and let's not forget, Willow.

    I think the only person who could have done what he did is Howard.
    I don't think anyone else knows how to shoot anything that fast - not even Spielberg or Abrams. They have grand visions, but Abrams shoots a LOT and Spielberg takes a long time because he's very careful and picky.
    Howard still has the memory of what shooting was like on studio lots of Andry Griffith...I mean, while he was working on that show for 8 years, he also worked on over 20 additional projects and shows (to include Dennis the Menace) at the same time.

    He basically grew up cramming in massive amounts of work in a little amount of time, and also learned the old shooting methods where everything was shot at lightning speed schedules (the 60's lot were not friendly to being "artsy" with your time).

    Not only that, he brings the brightest sunshine and the most Buddha-like calm to a set, so that radically lowered the panic of the crew.

    I think Ron Howard is simply amazing, but just not noticed because he doesn't really do provocative, and he's very, very low key.
    He's the kind of person who writes a well articulated physical letter if he's upset; he doesn't social media post about it.

    I wasn't sure what I thought about Ron Howard in a Star Wars film, because honestly, I never know what Ron Howard is going to do - he's very blended into the subject matter and its motif; he doesn't have a pronounced self-style that splatters all over everything.
    He's kind of like the antithesis of Tim Burton.

    But now that I see it, I just love where he went with it because he picked up on the Western and heist style motifs and let that govern the styling.
    I mentioned it elsewhere, but I'll say it again as well, he also - when I reflected - actually makes perfect sense and I kind of wish they had picked him from the beginning, because not only is he a good director with a highly flexible pallet, but he also grew up working in Hollywood during the heyday of the Western shows and films and Spaghetti Western films. He knows what a Western really is first-hand. He worked on the same lot as many of them (the famous Paramount back lot), and worked on quite a few Westerns as an actor.

    When I think of it that way...he was an amazingly perfect choice!

    Cheers,
    Jayson
     
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  6. Addi Ras

    Addi Ras MASTER TEA MAKER
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    Great post but you forgot to mention Rush (a personal favourite) & the Beatles documentary Eight Days Week.
     
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  7. Jayson

    Jayson Resident Lucasian

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    I smell a fellow biopic and documentary lover!
    [​IMG]

    Cheers,
    Jayson
     
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  8. Snazel

    Snazel Force Sensitive

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    I think this film would have been even worse without Ron Howard and blaming him for this debacle of a film seems a bit obtuse.

    Ron's solution was to trim the film, make it move fast and hard so that you are distracted from the fact the script is lousy and Han Solo is this passive figure just floating along the breeze of the narrative like a dandelion seed.

    In other words, Ron took a clunky, awful script and trimmed it down so that's it's mostly action and one-liners with a lot of throwaway characters that die almost instantly.

    He deserves some praise I think, despite the fact the end product is a dud and the biggest flop in Star Wars history.

    I also think this proves Star Wars is mostly about character rather than exposition. A lesson I hope the brand learns sooner rather than later.
     
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  9. Jayson

    Jayson Resident Lucasian

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    Yeah, I can't agree with where you're coming from here.
    I LOVED this film, and if this is the only time I get this treatment for Star Wars, screw it; at least I got it.
    I'm going again this weekend, but I'm almost 100% certain that Solo is my favorite Star Wars film ever.

    I love this style of film. I get bored and impatient with long character development arcs that fill every emotional point in, and I'm absolutely tired of the 3-act drama on steroids where we have our protagonist introduced and they're inpet, then they get sucked into a dark hole where everything in the film crumbles around them - they feel terrible, their relationships are terrible, their success looks bleak and unlikely, and we go along through a depression until a frustrated end occurs where we see our protagonist finally pull up and stop suffering, but only by a margin of a chance do they succeed; often at great sacrifice.

    Cool. Boring. If I want to experience those emotions of people sucking and a general sense of frustration and ineptitude, I can easily just flip on just about anything on the CW channel and get that - that's pretty much their jam.

    I grew up loving film; studied it. If it weren't for a few odd curve balls in my life, I would have went into the industry.
    What drew me to film was excitement, thrill, and adventure.

    I didn't need a giant character arc for Jaws, nor for Indiana Jones. A New Hope hardly has any real deep character examinations in it at all - that was one of the big pulls for it back in the day, actually, because at that moment in time things sucked pretty bad, and people were not feeling super awesome all the time, and films reflected that with lots of dark and deep character examination shows that were not archetypal characters thrust into high adventures where the obstacles weren't character issues, but instead, external threats and obstacles and resulted in a finale where the film celebrated a good romping victory.
    That was a bygone era of films a couple of decades prior, but not current in the late 70's (well, unless you look at the ultra cheesy B films which comprised most of scifi at the time; a genre no one took seriously yet - most of those were not great adventures though...just kind of a screen away from a stage play).

    So when Star Wars came out, it was exactly opposite of the deep character driven stories.
    The characters weren't what drove A New Hope; they were sucked into it and driven to evolve through it.

    I mean; Luke's Aunt and Uncle die a horrid death and we get a whopping 30 seconds of that effect upon his psyche and then; boom. We're off to find a pilot and join the Jedi. Han has the most amount of character growth in the entire film, and it's from "I'm out for me" to "I'm here for you" and he does this over a very short amount of scenes that hardly dig into his character psyche, but instead is examined through pithy dialogue near one-liners scattered about here and there.

    I mean...this is A New Hope's idea of a deep moment that ultimately moves Han:

    LUKE
    So... you got your reward and you're
    just leaving then?

    HAN
    That's right, yeah! I got some old
    debts I've got to pay off with this
    stuff. Even if I didn't, you don't
    think I'd be fool enough to stick
    around here, do you? Why don't you
    come with us? You're pretty good in
    a fight. I could use you.

    LUKE
    (getting angry)
    Come on! Why don't you take a look
    around? You know what's about to
    happen, what they're up against.
    They could use a good pilot like
    you. You're turning your back on
    them.

    HAN
    What good's a reward if you ain't
    around to use it? Besides, attacking
    that battle station ain't my idea of
    courage. It's more like suicide.

    LUKE
    All right. Well, take care of
    yourself, Han. I guess that's what
    you're best at, isn't it?

    Luke goes off and Han hesitates, then calls to him.

    HAN
    Hey, Luke... may the Force be with
    you!​

    That's about as deeply motivated as flipping a light switch from off to on.
    We go from an argument to Luke just stopping cold with "All right. Well, take care of yourself, Han."

    Oh...um...OK. I guess we're..um...we're done...?
    Yep, we're done.

    Now; that all said, everyone has a different taste, and it's actually totally OK that you prefer the deeper diving into character films driven by a character study to fuel the arcs. Luckily, that's very "in" at the moment; lots of current writers love to talk about how the external movement of the story should reflect the internal struggles of the character, right now.

    I'm just happy that Solo ISN'T one of those. That instead it's a film that hauls arse, packed with action and adventure, and yanks our character through an external set of events which are not driven from an internal struggle of the protagonist, and instead using lighting and setting to reflect the internal narrative effect of the external conditions upon the character.
    I like that our protagonist is receiving and reacting to the external world, which runs entirely independent and is superficial to our character, rather than the external world receiving and reacting to the character and intimately tied to our character's well being and development.

    Thank goodness. I needed a breath of fresh air.

    Again, this is a matter of taste, and I'm not saying that you are wrong.
    I am saying, however, that I entirely disagree.

    Cheers,
    Jayson
     
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  10. Snazel

    Snazel Force Sensitive

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    So you liked this garbage film, therefore any comment that Ron Howard isn't the problem with it rubs you the wrong way?

    Your taste is your taste, you should never change that, but my goodness the box office is dwindling and Marvel is kicking Star Wars' butt. How are they doing that? By using a strategy that drives the narrative FORWARD rather than just filling in the blanks left behind by an aging IP.

    These films won't work, the box office is evidence of that. We need to get on board with that reality or the brand itself is going to delude itself, this is the kind of sub-par product the market wants, even though the market is clearly telling us that they do not.
     
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  11. Jayson

    Jayson Resident Lucasian

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    No, Ron Howard was awesome, and the film was something that I loved watching, and I cannot agree with your taste. I would have hated what you were saying that you wanted for a Solo film.

    Taste is taste.
    [​IMG]
    Cheers,
    Jayson
     
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  12. Shadowblade

    Shadowblade Clone Commander

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    Hm, had a look at Ron Howards Twitter.

    He is getting a lot of love from fans...genuinly rainbows and sunshine. The SW fans seem like a positive factor in his case.

    Think he must have done quite the job to get that praise from fans, too bad things out of his control made the film flop.
     
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  13. Jayson

    Jayson Resident Lucasian

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    Luckily there are quite a few great films that are flops, so while it sucks, he's in great company.

    Plus...it's Ron Howard!
    He's been in the business since 1959; almost 60 years.
    I think he'll be fine. lol.

    Cheers,
    Jayson
     
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  14. Shadowblade

    Shadowblade Clone Commander

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    Yeah, he doesn't have anything to prove. It will still be a personal record for him in regards to box office.
     
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