Rogue One reshoot?

As a fan of the EU who derived great pleasure from it for many years(especially those years in between each trilogy), I find the behavior of that particular group of fans both reprehensible and disheartening. Canon or not, the legacy of the EU should be celebrated by Star Wars fans for keeping the Star Wars torch burning for years, whether it be through novels, comics or video games. Were there some poor stories? Sure(although we've already had some less than stellar ones in the new canon). However we still got some amazing stories and great characters in books like Heir to the Empire and games like Knights of the Old Republic.

It irritates me that petulant man children have become the face of the EU. Hopefully Mr Filoni can actually honor some of the great stories and characters in the upcoming season of Rebels.

As for the reshoots, I'm definitely not concerned just yet. People are far too eager to jump to negative conclusions. Could there be issues? Of course, but I'm not going to bother worrying about it until I see the finished film this December.

 

This. I loved the EU as much as anybody: I read the Thrown Trilogy when I was ten. The games I played the most when I was a kid were all Star Wars games: I cut my video game teeth on games like Podracer and Rogue Squadron. Knights of the Old Republic was my introduction to RPGs, Battlefront 2 was one of my most-played games of all times, I bonded with my little sister over hours of playing the Lego Star Wars games.

Was I sad to see it invalidated by Disney and Lucasfilm? Absolutely. But I also understood why they found it necessary: to give them a fresh start, an ability to craft a Star Wars universe that was fully cohesive. I loved the EU, but even I know that it was equal parts mutually contradictory material and everybody meeting everybody else. It was sprawling mess of a universe that was impossible to keep on top of, and much of it held together with duct tape.

But here's the thing: it was never truly canon to begin with. George ignored the EU for the most part- in his eyes, it was mostly either monetized fan fiction, or a resource for ideas that he would crib from others and change to suit his purposes- Coruscant was named by Timothy Zahn in the Thrawn Trilogy, but I don't remember him ever describing it as an ecumenopolis like Lucas portrays it- heck, there were even mountains on Coruscant! Lucas used what he liked, changed what he wanted to, and ignored everything else. Did you know that for the Darth Maul video game, he wanted Darth Talon included because he thought she "looked cool"? When asked how that could happen, he shrugged his shoulders and basically told the writers that it was their problem to figure out, just that he wanted it to happen. The game's writers were scrambling to try and figure out a solution: did she time travel, did Maul get put in suspended animation for over a century?

I miss parts of the EU. I don't miss other parts of it. I am comforted that new creators are pulling things into the new canon, and I hope that the new canon can do those characters and events justice. But those stories are still being told: you can pick up old EU novels at the book store, you just need to understand that this is no longer what happened. If you enjoy your Legends stuff, that's great. If you never touched the Legends stuff, that's fine. If you like the new EU stuff, wonderful. But if you don't like the new EU stuff, please don't try to ruin the experience for everybody else. That's what children do, and you ought to be more mature than that.

 

I also find it disheartening and irritating that this subset of vocal fans have cast such a bad light on the EU. I have some friends that were immersed in the EU and were supremely disappointed when Disney moved it to "Legends" status. I empathized with their disappointment. When instances of bullying and harassment appeared online, one of my EU friends texted me to say "Just wanted to let you know that these fans don't represent me or the majority of fans of the EU. I'm disgusted with their behavior!"

As much as I respect passion, there is a line that is crossed when passion turns into fan entitlement. Bullying and harassment definitely LEAPS over the line and is reprehensible. Disagreement is fine. Disagreement that turns into bullying is not. Sadly, this exists in all fandoms. Just look at what happened recently with the writer of the new Captain America comic. The new revelation resulted in him and Marvel creatives receiving death threats. When James Gunn, director of GOTG, vol 2 expressed his opinion of the comic, a person replied that Gunn was a Nazi and that his cat should be thrown in the woodchipper. Social media has made this type of harrassment (and/or) fan entitlement all too common and alarming.

We are of the same mindset.

 

I hate Twitter. Of course, I don't have much social media participation to begin with- my Facebook page is pretty much only used to plan meetups with friends from college and stuff- but even I notice how nasty Twitter can be. It has ruined political discourse: friends I used to have on both sides of the aisle, whom I could have friendly disagreements with, turned into bitter Inquisitors in the span of weeks, and their level of discourse degenerated into name-calling, invective, and calling for the "purging of traitors from our movement."

 

Count me in this group because these new films are an abomination.

As an Original Trilogy die-hard, nothing would please me more that Rogue One and the ST's total and complete failure.

Now, as far as these reshoots go, Disney is merely rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Let me reiterate that the only way to correct the problem is blow the entire thing up then rebuild from the ground up.

 

It's not about being vindictive, it's about love. Star Wars was a great film series at one time and Disney had the opportunity to get things back to where they used to be. But they chose to lower the bar even further than Lucas did with the PT.

Now the GFFA is no different than some Brian Singer X-Men film. Or Michael Bay's Transformers. It's honestly embarrassing the depths to which the new films have fallen too. Like Harrison Ford being replaced with some younger actor who looks nothing like him and now where supposed to accept him as Han Solo, one of the most iconic and irreplaceable characters in film history?

Disney is literally tinkering with Star Wars DNA, which any real fan should find very troubling. It's not selfish to want this series to come to an end, what's selfish is those who want new films at any cost.

 

Peter Sciretta of Film.com posted this article today, "Why Movie Reshoots Aren’t Necessarily a Bad Sign" and , in my opinion, he offers a balanced take on why movie reshoots aren't necessarily negative (using concrete examples from films including TFA).

*nods* I know what you mean and share your concerns. As a techie, I'm fairly immersed in social media and have noticed a worsening of discourse in general. As a society, we've forgotten how to have civil disagreements without descending into name-calling and social media has exacerbated this problem. It's a disheartening situation all around.

That is your opinion and you're certainly welcome to have it. Your definition of love is not one I share, but hey, to each his or her own.

The "real" fan is argument one I often find troubling. I don't think there such a thing as a "real" fan. If a kid was introduced to Star Wars franchise via The Force Awakens and is now enthusiastic for all things Star Wars - he or she is not a "real" fan? A friend of mine who was previously uninterested in Star Wars, but is now interested in the franchise because of Star Wars Rebels. She is not a "real" fan? Point being, it's all a matter of perspective.

 

http://www.ew.com/article/2016/06/03/rogue-one-reshoots

Probably the best report I've read.

 

Agreed. Breznican seems to have touched upon the major fan concerns. This may provide worried fans some reassurance.

Thanks for sharing the link to the article.

 

There will always be a group of fans that will see things through a "Disney is screwing things up" lens and no matter how much investigating journalists do, their minds are already set. Personally, I'm glad that officials stay calm and confident. From the article, it appears that there are logistics and scheduling involved in the summer reshoot (aka the inner workings) and little reason for panic.

I found this comment in the article particularly worth noting.

Bingo. Fan enthusiasm can indeed be a double edge sword and there is high level of scrutiny due to the Internet and social media. Gossip has exploded. It's the nature of the times we live in and filmmakers are learning how to deal with this.

 

A real fan is someone who maintains the position that the Original Trilogy is authentic Star Wars. And that everything else; the EU, the PT, the ST, are all derivatives that don't carry the same weight, and therefore should never be regarded as equal to the source material.

It's like an artist who made a painting, then somebody else copies it, then another person makes their own adaptation of the copy. Then as the process repeats, and we move further ahead in time, the new paintings have little in common with the original artists vision.

This is where we are with Star Wars today, if A New Hope was Tatooine, we've drifted all the way to what was Alderann. However, this doesn't stop people from erroneously claiming that we're still on Tatooine and defending this notion tooth and nail.

 

Thank you for the clarification. You certainly have an interesting perspective. While I don't share your mindset, I do appreciate you taking the time to provide an explanation.

 

So according to the last paragraph in the article we should expect a major trailer that will knock our socks off at Celebration time in mid July.

Ambitious.......most ambitious.


Can't wait!

 

Do you work for Disney?

If the sources are correct, a whopping 40% of Rogue One will be reshot, because it was "too dark" (a bad thing obviously, since TESB was the darkest Star Wars film yet by most accounts, was the most awesome) and that Disney wants to set a lighter tone for the kiddies (recall, Lucas did this exact same with with TPM, which was universally panned as the worst Star Wars film ever made).

Why should we as fans be enthusiastic about seeing a trailer from a watered down version of a film that might be awesome as is?

 

...it's not 40%, it's to add "mainly cockpit talking" according to EW and these shots were planned for the very beginning just like every single movie has...the last movie I produced had pick up shots although they weren't for as long as 4 weeks like for this one...I mean, yeah a lighter tone could easily be added but it's def not 40% also another reason for it being that long is because all of the actors they need have moved on so that time span is to allow the actors to fit this into their schedules.