General Star Wars News

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Post by GORDON »

It'll be free on Plex soon, I'm sure. Then you can get the joke.
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Vince
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Post by Vince »

I have an idea for fixing the franchise, but it won't happen.

First, ditch Abrams. He is a really good director as far as blocking scenes and getting good performances, but his story crafting isn't good. Also, I don't think he has the fanboy level required for this. I know he's a huge Star Wars fan, but they need someone who eats, shits and bleeds this stuff without letting their ego get in the way. If Abrams would stay on with no final say on the screenplay and script, then that'd be fine but I don't think he would allow to be that hemmed in. So let him go.

Ditch both Ep VII and VIII. You can reintroduce these new characters in their own "A Star Wars Story" after you've road-mapped the new final trilogy if there's a large outcry for them. The Star Wars saga as told through episodes I-VI has been the Skywalker saga. The last two movies have pushed that aside. Episodes VII-IX should be about the finishing of their saga.

Hire a Kevin Feige type that is steeped in the Star Wars EU (now known as Star War Legends) to produce. Also the writers and director should be as well. Disney killed the EU, but I think resurrecting some of the best story lines from it would go a long way with the uberfans. And let's face it, those are the guys that are willing to go see these movies in the theater five times or more. Full disclosure that I've never read any of the books from the EU, but I know a lot of the fans absolutely loved some of the story lines. Some are a mess from my understanding, so they can reintroduce stories that work into canon this way.

Recast Luke, Leia and Han. They just did it in Solo, and I haven't really heard anyone say that the problem with that movie was that it didn't have Harrison Ford. Tell the next chapter in their story without jumping ahead 25 years where the audience is left wondering how the political landscape looks exactly the same as it did when you left them 25 years ago.

Begin the new Ep VII with the last 5-10 minutes of Return reshot with the new actors. This will establish the new actors in the old roles for the audience. Jump immediately into the scene of Vader throwing Palpatine over the rail and run through the end of the original movie, editing as needed for time. Then pan up from the celebrations to the star field above and fade the music and begin the crawl for the new Ep VII.
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Post by Leisher »

Vince wrote: First, ditch Abrams.
I agree with what you say about him, but we're well past that point. Ep9 is too far along to stop it now.
Vince wrote: Ditch both Ep VII and VIII.
That can't happen. First, they made them, so they have to count. You're asking a giant corporation to publicly say "we fucked up", and that's not happening. Second, they would get blasted by liberals and the MSM for giving in to racism and bigotry. Why? Because a lot of the shills for the Kathleen Kennedy crowd have tried to paint the picture that TLJ was hated because of misogyny and racism, not because it was bad storytelling. Disney is NOT going to put themselves through that.
Vince wrote: Hire a Kevin Feige type that is steeped in the Star Wars EU (now known as Star War Legends) to produce.
His name is Dave Filoni. He's the guy that all the insiders are saying should take over.
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Post by Vince »

Leisher wrote: That can't happen. First, they made them, so they have to count. You're asking a giant corporation to publicly say "we fucked up", and that's not happening. Second, they would get blasted by liberals and the MSM for giving in to racism and bigotry. Why? Because a lot of the shills for the Kathleen Kennedy crowd have tried to paint the picture that TLJ was hated because of misogyny and racism, not because it was bad storytelling. Disney is NOT going to put themselves through that.
I know it won't happen, I just think this would be a way to fix it. As bad as some of the decisions of George Lucas, ironic that looks like it took Disney to actually kill the franchise. I think it's beyond fixing at this point.
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Post by Leisher »

Ep9 should start with Rey waking up in a cold sweat. She should leave her hut and the audience will see she's back on that island training with Luke. He says to her "Did you have a vision?"
Rey - "Yes, I saw the fate of the rebellion, you, Snoke, Leia...but none of it made any sense."
Luke - "This island is a link to the force and causes visions. You simply saw one possibility."

And from there a real SW story could be told.
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Leisher wrote: Ep9 should start with Rey waking up in a cold sweat. She should leave her hut and the audience will see she's back on that island training with Luke. He says to her "Did you have a vision?"
Rey - "Yes, I saw the fate of the rebellion, you, Snoke, Leia...but none of it made any sense."
Luke - "This island is a link to the force and causes visions. You simply saw one possibility."

And from there a real SW story could be told.
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Post by Vince »

Leisher wrote: Ep9 should start with Rey waking up in a cold sweat. She should leave her hut and the audience will see she's back on that island training with Luke. He says to her "Did you have a vision?"
Rey - "Yes, I saw the fate of the rebellion, you, Snoke, Leia...but none of it made any sense."
Luke - "This island is a link to the force and causes visions. You simply saw one possibility."

And from there a real SW story could be told.
It'll still be the end for the franchise. Rey can leave her hut and find Luke and Bobby Ewing alive and in the shower together. It will go from a bad turn for the series to a colossal joke.

My suspicion is that Disney will either slash budgeting and accept that the Star Wars property is just not going to be the ongoing money machine that it used to be, or they'll shelve the movie making side of the property for 5-10 years and attempt to reboot the entire thing.
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Post by Leisher »

Vince wrote: It'll still be the end for the franchise. Rey can leave her hut and find Luke and Bobby Ewing alive and in the shower together. It will go from a bad turn for the series to a colossal joke.
I 100% disagree. Fans want TLJ gone. They want it out of canon. Disney doesn't want to do that for reasons stated. This keeps it in canon, but gives the fans, who have left the franchise in droves, proof that their voice matters.

Hell, rumors are beginning to suggest that Disney is rethinking Rian Johnson's new trilogy because they know the core audience hates his guts and won't go see it.
Vince wrote: My suspicion is that Disney will either slash budgeting and accept that the Star Wars property is just not going to be the ongoing money machine that it used to be, or they'll shelve the movie making side of the property for 5-10 years and attempt to reboot the entire thing.
I can assure you this is not going to happen. You don't spend $8 billion buying a franchise and another billion making movies, books, toys, and theme parks just to shelve it or cut its budget so much that it completely loses all audiences.

That CAN be a good thing. Bob Iger knows they've fucked SW up so far and knows they have to fix things. Whether or not they actually do is a different story. Either way, this horse is going to get beat to death and back again.
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Post by Vince »

Don't misunderstand. I'm not suggesting that Disney will come out and scrap Ep IX and stop making movies. I'm suggesting that if IX doesn't make a profit and get good reviews from the fan base, then they'll probably stop making the live action films for a time. Or maybe one more after IX to see if it's just the stink of that trilogy. I really don't expect them to slash the budgets for the films because that isn't Disney's style, and also they can't build the merchandising and theme parks around a second tier property. But I can see them shifting focus to something more along the lines of the animated Clone Wars. Work on something that isn't going to damage the money making power of the toys and theme park.

There are a good number of fans that passionately want TLJ gone, but the reality is that it can't just be erased. With the fever dream/vision scenario, Disney is telling ALL the audience that they'd wasted their time and money with that last movie. No one is going to be particularly "happy" about that. Maybe less unhappy than with TLJ left for many, but the audience that wasn't particularly unhappy with TLJ has no reason to invest any more into the SW universe.

I don't think there's any saving this. They've lost a big chunk of audience no matter where they go with this.
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Post by Leisher »

Vince wrote: I'm suggesting that if IX doesn't make a profit and get good reviews from the fan base, then they'll probably stop making the live action films for a time.
There are two new trilogies in the works. One is from Rian Johnson and I could see that one getting scraped because they understand no core fans will go see it. The other is from a writing duo from Game of Thrones. I don't think that one will get scraped no matter what. GoT in space? I have to believe that even core fans might give that a shot, particularly if reviews are good.
Vince wrote: There are a good number of fans that passionately want TLJ gone, but the reality is that it can't just be erased. With the fever dream/vision scenario, Disney is telling ALL the audience that they'd wasted their time and money with that last movie. No one is going to be particularly "happy" about that. Maybe less unhappy than with TLJ left for many, but the audience that wasn't particularly unhappy with TLJ has no reason to invest any more into the SW universe.
Correct, but nobody is happy right now. What's really killing Disney is that the core audience is unhappy. Nobody is seeing the movies anymore. The merchandise isn't selling. Casual fans spend, but they don't carry franchises. End of the day, if they retcon ep8 any upset casual fans won't swear off the franchise. They might be upset, but who gives a shit? They'll get over it. The core fans HAVE sworn off the franchise. That's who Disney needs back. That's whose absence actually hurts.
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Leisher wrote: GoT in space? I have to believe that even core fans might give that a shot, particularly if reviews are good.
GoT in space?! I'M IN!

That being said... the eps written after they ran out of source material have been decidedly mediocre, so I'm not excited.
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Post by Vince »

Leisher wrote: Correct, but nobody is happy right now. What's really killing Disney is that the core audience is unhappy. Nobody is seeing the movies anymore. The merchandise isn't selling. Casual fans spend, but they don't carry franchises. End of the day, if they retcon ep8 any upset casual fans won't swear off the franchise. They might be upset, but who gives a shit? They'll get over it. The core fans HAVE sworn off the franchise. That's who Disney needs back. That's whose absence actually hurts.
A chunk of the core audience is unhappy. A good friend of mine is a bigger SW fan than me (read all the EU books) and he's been fine with the movies. I absolutely agree that the unhappy fans are much more passionately unhappy than the happy fans are happy. I'm hearing much more from them. I just don't think they can fix it.

I don't watch Westworld, but I've been reading about a lot of criticism of the show's second season. Apparently they're killing off human characters and bringing them back saying that they were actually robots all along and there's a general feeling of why watch the show when nothing matters? This will be interesting to see what happens.

I think of the Highlander movie. Surprise hit and a huge budget for the sequel, and then they shit the bed with that one. They tried to come back and just pretend that the second one never happened, but you can't really unsee it. And you can pretend like the producers did that it never happened, but you always carried some resentment for their wasting your time. That series never really recovered.
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Post by GORDON »

I was pretty forgiving of the choices they made with the events of Ep8.... I was going to play a "wait and see what they have planned with Ep9, to make this pay off..." but then Solo happened and I realize Disney has a major problem at the leadership levels. Made me lose all faith that Ep9 will fix anything.

They got cocky when Marvel kept breaking records. They figured they could do no wrong. They fucked up.
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Post by Vince »

JJ Abrams already said that a lot of the fans didn't like Ep8 because they are uncomfortable with strong women, so I'm sure he has the right formula to fix things.
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Post by GORDON »

Yeah, that's a retarded thing to say, for more than one reason.
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Vince wrote: JJ Abrams already said that a lot of the fans didn't like Ep8 because they are uncomfortable with strong women, so I'm sure he has the right formula to fix things.
I'm sure some people do. But I don't think the MAJORITY of the fans who hated it, hated it because of that.
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Post by GORDON »

And I'd bet a dollar that a measurable percentage of open misogynists... are astroturfing. I have a hard time believing so many people are straight-crazy when it comes to racism and sexism... they have to just be making the other side look bad, scoring points.

So yeah, Ep8's problems have very, very little to do with sexism. That's just the excuse the leadership uses to keep their jobs.
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Post by Vince »

Well, one of the long lasting rules of Disney is DON'T FUCK WITH THE MOUSE! Therefore any issue with the movie is not in any part the fault of Disney, its properties, or its hires. Therefore it is the fault of their customers.
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Post by GORDON »

Disney staged a big "secret" conference call with ranking people in the Star Wars division. Security guards were posted outside the doors at offices to prevent eavesdropping. Pixar and Marvel representatives were able to listen in on the call, but not speak on it. Apparently this was allowed to get feedback, I guess at a later point, about the Star Wars situation.

Disney's head Bob Iger wants to fire Kathleen Kennedy, but there's a problem: No one they're willing to offer the job to is willing to take it. JJ Abrams (Randolph reports) was offered the job, but turned it down flat. "Several" were approached.

One person that's brought up as a possible replacement for Kennedy, Dave Filloni, isn't being considered for the job by Iger, I guess because he hasn't run anything big like a studio.

Randolph says (speculating, I think) that no one wants the job because the Lucasfilm team is divided between old-guard Star Wars people and Kennedy's handpicked loyalists.

I would speculate myself that, assuming this claim that no one wants the job is true, it's because the brand is broken, and people know that, and it's a no-win situation: Everyone seems to think that Star Wars is supposed to make money automatically. That's no longer true post-Solo, but people still think that, so any head of Lucasfilm is in a situation where the best they can do is meet expectations (make money), and the worst they can do is fail spectacularly.

There's no upside. Well, except a huge pile of money, but I imagine the people being approached are already getting huge piles of money from other ventures with more of an upside as far as their reputations.

So no big-name person would want to walk into that situation. Smaller names would take that chance, but apparently Disney hasn't gotten desperate enough to offer it to a smaller name. Yet.

Randolph says that Disney feels that Star Wars is too targeted to "older SJWs," instead of its traditional fan base of men, and this is also hurting Star Wars in its merchandise sales, as "older SJWs" don't really buy movie tickets and certainly don't spend a lot of money on Milennium Falcon playsets.

She also reports that all the Star Wars "anthology" movies are indeed on hold as Disney tries to figure this out, except maybe for one: The Obi-Wan movie, which Disney thinks it should have made instead of Star Wars. However, while this movie is not officially on hold, it's also not on the front-burner, either.

Lastly, while "Episode IX" is still on (it's already started filming), it's "too late for any major course corrections." Kathleen Kennedy has ceded all creative control to director J.J. Abrams, maybe to spare herself further blame, maybe because she wants to just sit this one out, or who knows, maybe because Disney wants the ball in someone else's hands.

One point she alludes to, which she made before: She thinks that Star Wars never appealed to Kathleen Kennedy. Kathleen Kennedy didn't like the franchise, because it was, indeed, a boys' adventure franchise.

Instead of making a boys' adventure franchise she didn't get and didn't like, she made it into something she could like: a girls' empowerment fantasy.

This kind of sums up the problem with Social Justice Warriors taking over male-skewing sections of pop culture: They just don't like it. They never did like it. Some of them even feel that these parts of pop culture encourage "toxic masculinity," and therefore are evil.

And therefore must be subverted and remade into something they never were before.

So you... put multimillion dollar companies into the hands of people who don't like the product those companies sell and in fact might even hate?

Well, good luck with that, I guess.
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Post by Leisher »

Vince wrote: A chunk of the core audience is unhappy.
Far more than a chunk. Go look at the box office numbers. TLJ had the largest 2nd weekend drop in SW history. It bombed in China. Solo bombed. TLJ DVDs and Blu-Rays aren't selling. Retailers are taking it in the shorts on merchandise.

The numbers don't lie. TLJ was a colossal disaster.
Vince wrote: I think of the Highlander movie. Surprise hit and a huge budget for the sequel, and then they shit the bed with that one. They tried to come back and just pretend that the second one never happened, but you can't really unsee it. And you can pretend like the producers did that it never happened, but you always carried some resentment for their wasting your time. That series never really recovered.
Highlander isn't SW. Ever see the FF or Captain America movies? Marvel seems to have recovered.
GORDON wrote: So yeah, Ep8's problems have very, very little to do with sexism. That's just the excuse the leadership uses to keep their jobs.
Exactly.
Vince wrote: Therefore any issue with the movie is not in any part the fault of Disney, its properties, or its hires. Therefore it is the fault of their customers.
I do wonder how much of the narrative in Hollywood for SW and other brands is: "WE cannot be wrong, thus the consumer must be wrong."
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