I think it’s strange they treated the anthologies as “safe films” while “experimenting” with the saga films.
Personally, I don’t think they were envisioned that way, and I think ultimately the reasoning is probably that saga films are sure bets, while spin-offs are somewhat risky propositions to begin with, so they have to be careful not to limit too much the appeal of the latter.
Lucasfilm limited Gareth Edwards because they didn’t like his direction. And yet most fans applaud RO’s darker side and wanted more.
We don’t have the full picture, but I haven’t read anything that would suggest that “limiting Edwards because they didn’t like his direction” is true. That’s merely fan speculation.
Lucasfilm fires Lord and Miller for being too wacky. While I see their reasoning, after watching Spiderverse and LEGO Movie 2 I firmly believe these two are geniuses. Everything they touch sounds horrible and ends up perfect. What we got instead was a mediocre very safe movie- which is a shame.
Again, no full picture. While that reason is probably true, we need to remember that A) Lord/Miller did not direct either Spider-Verse or Lego Movie 2, and B) that a lot about what we got in Solo would have been the same even if they had indeed brought it to the finish line.
Both Rogue One and Solo have had extensive reshoots. The Last Jedi… all Kennedy kept saying was how much she likes working with Rian, how good his script and story is, how they are going to give him an entire trilogy before the movie has even been received.
To say they were confident is an understatement… there is a clear difference between the productions of these movies.
I never said there wasn’t a difference. In fact I cut out that part of your post because it was irrelevant to what I was talking about (which is simply that your assessment of the RO/Solo situations are off).
In my mind, the more accurate comparison to Rogue One is TFA. Both started production with scripts that weren’t fully there yet (because they needed to hit a release date), and both continued to be rewritten after production and thus needed extensive reshoots (RO moreso, of course). Biggest difference being that JJ and Kasdan did the rewriting on TFA with JJ directing, while on RO Tony Gilroy was brought in for the rewrite and then directed the reshoots with Edwards.
Solo is a different situation because apparently the problem wasn’t the script (in LFL’s mind), it was that Lord/Miller weren’t following it closely enough.
With TLJ, Rian had a lot of time to get the script right before production, so filming went much more smoothly, with only incredibly minor reshoots necessary (i.e. the usual way it’s supposed to work).
The “uncharacteristically giving full control” is just the wrong way of looking at it. JJ had “full control” on TFA. Edwards had “full control” before they realized they were in a rough spot. Lord and Miller had “full control” before LFL realized their direction was not what they wanted.