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Post #1322608

Author
Broom Kid
Parent topic
The Mandalorian - a general discussion thread - * SPOILERS *
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1322608/action/topic#1322608
Date created
29-Jan-2020, 1:24 PM

I think people are more or less substituting all the same things they used to say about George Lucas (before he inevitably disappointed them in one way or another because they were too busy buying into every last myth about his creative process) onto Filoni now. He’s not really a visionary - a huge percentage of his Clone Wars successes are essentially “which really old movie these kids haven’t seen shall we loosely adapt this month.” It’s not so much “clever homage” as it is strip-mining classic film. Which - again, you can argue “that’s what Lucas did” because we all know the story about The Hidden Fortress, etc… but that plays into my larger point that Filoni gets a lot of rope simply because he “does things” the way Lucas “did things” as if the mere fact that Lucas did them makes them good.

The fact he gets credited for all of “The Clone Wars” despite the fact he had a ton of help in the form of other directors, writers, contributors, animators, voice actors, etc… it’s the same mistakes everyone made with Lucas, just mapped onto a different “visionary.”

It’s not that I dislike him. Like I said, he’s probably better just being “The Story Group” than he is being a hands-on creative. But I don’t think he’s as necessary as people tend to make him out to be, and I think he’s got big problems as a storyteller that get papered over because of that Lucas connection, and the familiarity and habitual nature of just repurposing old forum arguments ABOUT Lucas, and just copy/replacing with Filoni’s name.

The lowest parts of the Mandalorian are all his. And to be fair - many of the lowest parts of The Clone Wars are ALSO all his. I don’t think the “leap” to live-action has very much to do with it at all, because those low points have a lot in common across both mediums. And the things he’s been good at are things other people are also good at, and some people (Favreau, Waititi, Chow, Famuyiwa) are already better at. He’s not as necessary to Lucasfilm’s success as people like to frame it. He’s been part of very good things. I don’t think he’s the answer. He’s PART of AN answer. But I think Star Wars’ future is best served not by consistently asking “What would George Do” and looking to Filoni for not much more reason than “he’s the next best thing to George.”