What are the odds that Rian Johnson's trilogy gets cancelled?

I can't say whether Disney will stand by Rian Johnson, but there is no way I will be seeing any of his SW movies in the future. He has pretty much ruined my expectations for Episode 9 as it's the first SW Saga movie I'm not hyped about (I loved TFA, so JJ has a shot at turning this disaster around). Heck, as bad as the PT was, Lucas still left the carrot dangling that got me hyped for the next movie. I am a big fan of Ron Howard so I'll atleast give Han Solo a shot. If Luke Skywalker is A New Hope, then Rian Johnson killed any hope for me.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 10, 2018, Original Post Date: Jan 10, 2018 ---

Please stop with the 'impossible to please fans' nonsense. I loved TFA and liked R1, so I was easy tp please since Disney brought Lucasfilm. I figured I would enjoy TLJ just as much as those 2 films, and was shocked when I didn't like it. It has nothing to do with pleasing the fans, it has to do with making a good movie.

 

Did you really just call George Lucas a crap filmmaker? That is one of the most profoundly ignorant things I have read on this site in a while. The man elevated film making to new heights.

 

I agree as if he thinks George Lucas is a crap filmmaker, then how is he a SW fan? Does he just like the Disney SW stuff and doesn't like any of the OT? the PT?

 

Nope. A disappointing star wars movie still makes more than just about everything else out there. Plus he's got a clean slate for this to work from. Nobody can say (they probably will anyway) he mishandled existing characters or a previous directors setup because he's starting fresh. I just don't see them canceling something that's gonna make a huge profit because TLJ was light among star wars standards.

 

TLJ really was great, from Casablanca to Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon , the film is riddled with homages. I think it would be a huge mistake to bail on such a talented filmmaker.

 

I assume he meant director, although Lucas did direct the film that started it all.

 

I believe the answer to this lies not with the general attitude of the hardcore fandom, but whether TLJ is both considered well received by the general public AND meets Disney's expectations in regards to box office. It is difficult to maintain perspective when you are an extremely passionate SW fan, however we constitute a relatively minor amount of moviegoers when all things are considered. The regular guy/girl on the street are the ones who are being targeted with this new generation of films and the box office numbers will reflect that accordingly.

 

We can only guess what he was talking about, but it was nonsense. Just because a part of his resume isn't up to par (The PT) he still directed Star Wars, American Grafitti, and THX, so he was a renegade director of the 70's along with Spielberg, Coppola, Depalma and Scorcese. Lucas changed course in his career compared to those guys as he became more of a businessman with Lucasfilm rather then just a director. Coppola once said that Star Wars essentially took from us a great director in Lucas, because his career and goals were different after that movie.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 10, 2018, Original Post Date: Jan 10, 2018 ---

I agree with you on this, as Disney is trying to go for more of a 'general' movie goer and that is why SW will eventually turn into just another blockbuster to a new generation and won't have the same type of passionate fanbase. Now that is not a bad business model as Comic Book Franchises, Action Franchises, all do big business every summer, but those movies are forgettable in the long run. Jurassic World, The Avengers, Wonder Woman are all popular movies that made big money, but will they stand next to Jaws, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark 20 years from now? The Studios have learned that they can put out movies that are good enough to please the fans, as greatness is a rarity in the summer blockbuster anymore.

 

I trully hope Rian gets to make the trilogy, I loved TLJ, I've seen it three times, and each time my love for it grows.

I'd really like to know the true impact, hardcore fans that disliked the movie will have, not only in the future trilogy but also in TLJ in the most foreseeable future. I know there is a HUGE star wars fan base, but I don't know the true extent of people who hated it to really make a dent, (and no, I don't believe in RT ratings or any other that can be manipuleted imo) A small crowd is still big enough to make a huge noise, specially in this day and age, most people nowadays can go online and cry like little sobs about anything... I'm not saying it's the case, there might be way more upset fans than I realize. What I know is that everybody I know that saw the movie liked it, some pointed out somethings that they did not like, and some others didn't, but nobody said to me: "hey, that's not how a jedi behaves!!" and I mean casual moviegoers. Trully I don't know if the fan base that disliked the movie is enough to make such a big blockbuster to crash and burn.

 

I think the backlash from a part of the fanbase has made a dent as this is TFA and TLJ box office of the same period of time:

TFA: 815 million
TLJ: 574 million

Then if you look at how much the opening weekend is their gross, TLJ relies much more on the opening gross so something happened to some of the repeat business from fans after that:

TFA: 247 million opening weekend (30% of the total gross)
TLJ: 220 million opening weekend (40% of the total gross)

Now I am not saying that TLJ is a bomb or Disney is going out of business, I'm talking box office numbers in the context of a SW movie. TLJ is now 241 million dollars behind TFA at this point, so that is almost 30% of it gross. That is not a small band of whiny internet fanboys, that is a large chunk of money as this was the return of Luke Skywalker after 34 years! Many will argue that ESB and AOTC were down compared to ANH and TPM, but this was the return of Luke Skywalker, so there has to be some type of backlash that is bigger then whiny internet fanboys.

 

Nothing against what you have said, but I trully don't know if the drop in those numbers is because of the fan base that disliked the movie, I'm not saying it isn't... but there might be other explanations for it.

 

I think this is perfect and I agree 100% with it.

I would just add that, IMHO, everyone involved in the production of TLJ was already expecting the backlash from a part of the fanbase to happen.
I really doubt anyone was caught by surprise on this.
In fact, I think TFA was highly derivative of ANH exactly for that reason - they knew they would have to cause the backlash sooner or later and made a 1st movie with a deliberate intent to soften the fans a little bit with a lot of throwback nostalgia before the inevitable punch hit.

IMHO, it's extremely naive to think that anything that's happening with regards to fan reaction wasn't somehow already expected - damn if I was expecting it to happen at some point, I'm sure the actual professionals were more than prepared for it.

 

No doubt there are other factors, as it was never going to equal TFA box office. But my point is it was only 10% behind TFA's box office opening weekend, and now it is 30%, so that is repeat business it's missing. If it finished 30% behind TFA on opening weekend, and continued to finish 30% each week, then you can contribute it to a certain casual fan who saw TFA and was never going to see the sequels.

But I have seen it among my friends/co-workers as we are split among who liked it and who didn't like it. But I will say that among those who didn't like it, we all saw TFA multiple times (I saw it 4 times), NONE of us have gone back to see TLJ again. Now I'm not saying everyone hated this movie as I truly think the fanbase is split, as there are fans here who love the movie. But there are good chunk of base of fans who were so turned off by the movie that they never came back, and that atleast makes an argument why it's 241 million dollars behind TFA's gross at this point.

 

It goes both ways... I never ever wen't to the cinema before to watch a movie a second time... With TLJ I wen't three times...

 

I disagree, as fans like TFA and R1, so why would there be a backlash to TLJ if it were a good movie to them? Han Solo and Leia were essentially divorced in TFA and Luke was MIA, why wasn't there any backlash as that is the #1 movie of alltime? Fans loved TFA, despite the fact that our heroes were portrayed in a way that wasn't going to be all warm and fuzzy. The only backlash you ever get from movies, is if fans don't like it.

 

There wasn't a backlash for TFA because the answers to the questions were postponed rather than answered - which can be unsatisfactory to some. Sure TFA wasn't about the old heroes, but most fans got away with the feeling that this was coming for VIII. Also, that movie's strong familiarity to ANH obviously helped a lot.

But, IMO, frustration of a part of the fanbase was inevitable given the premises that (a) the new trilogy was always going to be about the new characters, and not Luke, Leia and Han, (b) Luke would have to die at some point, and (c) Luke couldn't be a perfect hero with unbeatable Jedi Master skills (because if he were there would be no way for the trilogy to be about the new characters).

Also, to be clear: I'm talking about backlash from a part of the fanbase. TLJ is not by any metric a failure - if TFA is the #1 movie of all time in the US, TLJ is the #6 which is impressive considering it came out just 2 years after TFA (remember: the vast majority of movie goers are not the kind of SW fan that reads and writes on these forums ).

And to finalize: TFA and R1 were movies that did a ton of fan service. While that's all fair, it's not sustainable. If LFL wants to move Star Wars forward, it had to start veering away from the same old SW formula. And my point, which is just my opinion, is that this was meticulously planned and the backlash was entirely expected.

It's obvious that TFA's box office is not something that would happen every year. And it'd be foolish to think that this TLJ backlash (which again comes from just a part of the fan base) will actually hurt/change plans of the franchise.

 

I disagree with this statement because the movies are staying with the same formula, as I don't know how you can't say that about TLJ? Just because they did a couple of head fakes on the fans (The Death of Snoke, Rey is no one, etc) doesn't make it original. The ST has the same macro story of First Order vs Resistance, which is the same macro story of the OT/PT with Empire vs Rebellion. You have Rey vs Kylo Ren, which is no different then Luke vs Vader, both trained by masters like Yoda/Kenobi and The Emperor, which they are now trained by Luke and Snoke.

If SW wants to grow, then stop marketing every movie towards the OT characters or stories! TFA was marketed with Han Solo, R1 was marketed with the Death Star, TLJ was market with Luke, and Solo movie is obviously Han Solo. This whole narrative that TLJ shook up the franchise so it could go in a new direction makes no sense because it was essentially a reshash of ESB, except it moved a few chess pieces in terms of characters arcs.

 

I'm not disagreeing with those numbers but it is impossible for TLJ to make TFA numbers. TLJ is followed after 2 SW movies while TFA was the first SW movie in 10 years. No future SW movie will be able to recapture that. I'm willing to bet 80% of TFA numbers was due to the 10 year gap and the excitement of a new SW movie that people didn't think was going to happen again. In 2017 (now 2018), the hype isn't nearly as big as it was in 2014/15.

 

Well, it's ok to have different opinions. I won't write a wall of text to try to explain it, but I really really disagree that TLJ is a rehash of ESB in any shape or form. I think the examples you mentioned on your first paragraph are small things that pretty much any action sci-fi movie will have in common - it's always about good guys vs. bad guys in the end of the day. This doesn't make these movies rehashes of each other - by that logic even Lord of the Rings is the same movie as Star Wars.

TFA draws on the OT a thousand times more than TLJ, IMO. The narrative structure of that movie is very similar to ANH. TLJ, on the other hand, might have a few rhymes with ESB here and there, but it's a significantly different film, starting by the way it ends and how it sets up the final movie.

 

The irony of these two statements within a few hours of each other is hilarious.