Broom Kid

The whole thing is ridiculous and weird and fear-based, honestly. It begins with the silly assumption that the consumer base is so reactionary and easily upset that the presence of black-bars will cause a significant number of viewers to balk and refuse to watch the programming. Which, so far as I know, has never been tested, and is completely untrue. Its only real precedent comes from when the decision was made in the early days of home video to bypass presenting movies in their original theatrical ratio for the sake of filling the screen on a tv, as not only were tvs square-shaped, but were significantly smaller, and were watched in most living rooms at a semi-fair distance. Which is again, not the case today, as even the cheap TVs are typically minimum 42" and the small screens, such as phones and tablets, are being watched much closer up, effectively replicaing the FOV you’d get at a theater.

And that’s not even getting into the fact most viewers are far more sophisticated about aspect ratios and why the black bars are there than they were in the '80s and 90s.

Basically - programmers and decisionmakers at most networks just assume their audiences are easily-upset rubes and babies unable to sit through the tiny acclimation period it takes to stop paying attention to the black bars - and they think the best way to solve the problem of their presumed-to-be-idiot audience is to placate the lowest common denominator at the expense of the movie and its creators. So instead of those “rubes” being reminded that if they’re honestly THAT upset about black bars they can hit the zoom button that comes for free on every remote of every TV sold in the last 10+ years, the solution is to chop up the movie before it’s presented. Because that’s how they’ve always done it, thanks to circumstances that basically don’t exist anymore, paired with circumstances that likely never existed back then, either.

There’s basically zero reason why every movie isn’t simply presented as it was intended to be seen by its director, as the default, and then the consumer can decide how they want to butcher it on their own if they’re that concerned about “not getting all the TV they paid for.”

ThiefCobbler4ever said:

Incidentally George is back at Lucasfilm.

Pretty sure this isn’t true outside of angry YouTube grifters wanting it to be that way. Where are you hearing this?

I’d put odds on the 16x9 blu-ray/digital cuts.

yotsuya said:

I hate to keep harping on this point, but I have studied a bit of Hollywood history and nearly every movie goes through rewrites.

But I never said “movies don’t go through rewrites.” I said “comparing the process on The Rise of Skywalker to the process on the original Star Wars is a bad comparison.” And then I tried to support that claim by pointing out just how differently not only the process was, but the end results of those processes were. That claim doesn’t rely on the idea that movies don’t get rewritten, or that things don’t change between drafts. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. I’m saying HOW it happened with THOSE TWO MOVIES is a bad comparison to make.

If you think anything any Star Wars movie has done script wise is unusual, you haven’t studied enough of the process.

This is also not true, sorry.

NFBisms said:

some of you all really missed out on your emo high school romances and it shows

pretty much every romance is emo!

The ones that aren’t are just like… that’s just a roommate, isn’t it?

And on top of that, considering how Driver chose to play Ben for the short period he had - Ben would have been pretty fun to bounce off Poe and Finn, too. Finn especially, I think.

Plus you then get around the need to change Poe into “Han Zero Sugar” as a character, because the snippy smart-ass dangerous hero role is now being filled by repentant Ben, and you don’t have to hard-yank the steering wheel on Poe over towards that end of the character spectrum.

The more I think about it (and your explanation really helps) the more I sort of wish that had been an option ANYONE had pitched or considered. The idea of the subversion in TROS being “how about we just turn Kylo IMMEDIATELY. Let’s just do it”

But to get back to the big Reylo discush - I just don’t feel like she wants to be with him AT ALL. She kind of wanted to in TLJ maybe, but mostly because they can use him, not because she LIKES him. I get the sense HE wants to legit seduce her (he moves on her at her weakest/most vulnerable, definitely, in that hut), and I believe he’s into that idea, but I don’t really get the sense it’s a thing she’s into. She’s maybe willing to USE that to bring him to her side, but like Luke says “This isn’t going to go the way you think,” and it doesn’t.

She says “I would have taken BEN’S hand” but that’s the biggest problem with the “romance” in TROS - before the kiss, that’s really the only sign she even likes him, much less wants to be with him. She says it out loud but she doesn’t show it, and she only says it after having actually killed him and then healed him - and the way she heals him is kind of a dig, too, haha.

I love that bit too, and I think it’s really cool - but I don’t feel that there’s a lot of evidence that SHE wants Kylo. I can see Kylo being like “hell yes,” but I don’t think it’s coming back the other way.

But then again - if they flip him at the end of the 1st act, her falling for him FOR REAL suddenly becomes a lot more possible, too.

You know what I really like about that post? The idea that Kylo renounces the dark side early. WAY early. In fact, I think all my tentative feelings with his redemption get drastically minimized if it’s not presented as a big movie (and saga) ending reward, but if it’s an end-of-first-act thing in response to something really horrible and awful that Hux & the Knights of Ren do. At which point the big fight between Kylo and Rey is almost 100% one-sided where he’s just trying not to die while explaining that he wants to atone. And then… we start the 2nd act.

The character dynamics of THAT movie are drastically different (and kind of exciting) more-so than the sort of “we know he’s going to turn good by the end here” vibe that TROS and DOTF both had. The idea that the rest of the trio HAVE to interact with him now would be really, really interesting to see play out.

I also think Finn/Rey made more sense than Rey/Kylo (I don’t see a lot of romance on Rey’s part towards Kylo. I see some going the other direction, but she never really seems too into the idea on her part in either TFA or TLJ) but again, I think the best possible romantic pairing in the sequel trilogy was Finn/Poe. The only thing really going for Rey/Finn however is the stray hints at it in TFA that didn’t really get picked up on in TLJ - although the hug when Finn and Rey reunite definitely has more going for it on an emotional level than Rose kissing Finn. But then again - Poe introducing himself to Rey basically signals that Finn/Rey is out of the question going forward if they stick with Trevorrow, and it’s only possible in TROS if JJ remembers what he was kind of trying to do in TFA with those two… and he apparently didn’t.

The biggest problem with any Rey pairing is that there’s not really enough work put into any of the movies to suggest she even needs the romantic aspect to be addressed, much less addressed the way it was in TROS. And even in that movie - it only happens very, very late in the movie (she spends most of TROS exceedingly angry with Kylo, tries to kill him twice before ACTUALLY KILLING HIM but healing him before he can die), and that romance is taken off the board by his death almost immediately afterwards anyway.

The Rey/Poe romance was definitely staying, IIRC he specifically asked Rian to write the “I’m Poe/I’m Rey” scene at the end of The Last Jedi to accomodate it.

That’s not half the movie that you just described, though! Most of the general shape of the film, the plotting, was pretty similar. There were a lot of detail-level tweaks along the way but I don’t think a lot of what Abrams/Kasdan came up with during their phone calls changed too drastically once they started hammering out the script. For example, the Force-vision was different - but it was still a Force-vision that essentially covered the same ground. The saber IIRC, WAS effectively the map to Skywalker. A lot of what did get changed was streamlining and cutting, not necessarily inventing new things to replace old ideas wholesale.

They were working really fast, and didn’t have a lot of time to drastically change the shape of the plot once they laid it down. Almost all the beats are exactly the same, and it’s almost all the same people hitting those beats. It’s just a matter of shaving stuff down and compressing what’s left. The biggest addition was probably Poe still living. The biggest subtraction was probably the Sledgehammer stuff.

It’s not very much like what happened with “The Star Wars” on the way to “Star Wars” where only the vaguest shape stayed in place and almost EVERYTHING got rearranged on the way to the finish line. Arcs, relationships, plots, basic concepts…

I think Trevorrow had probably changed as much of the structure and shape of Duel of the Fates as he was going to change with that later draft we kind of know about, which is probably why he got axed, because that was as far as he could take the idea and have it remain coherent. And then it seems like the next step was him agreeing to maybe polish whatever Jack Thorne turned in when he was hired, and then him looking at Thorne’s draft and going “yeeeesh.”

I think it’s safe to say that we weren’t getting too many more changes for DOTF beyond what that later draft was. It would have had some cosmetic detailing and shifts here and there, but I think you’d have gotten (if they’d let him) something pretty recognizable to the story as we’ve read it in that first draft.

But I’d say stacking DOTF up against the drafts for really any of the other SW films isn’t unreasonable.

But we’re not stacking this movie against any of the other ones. My whole point was that the direct comparison to Star Wars (1974) isn’t a good one.

Yes, movies change across drafts. Not arguing that. But the degree to which they change (and specifically, the degree to which STAR WARS changed from 73-77) isn’t as easy to reliably measure from movie to movie, and especially not considering the different circumstances in context surrounding the productions of those specific movies.

It’s not ever going to be 1:1 - but you’ll get closer using better examples.

I sincerely doubt the final product of TFA was about 70% the same as the first draft.

I think it was pretty close. I also think there weren’t that many drafts, either. I think it might have been something like 2 1/2, haha.

That’s about 1 1/2 more than Attack of the Clones got

But the process is the same whether you take years or months.

This isn’t true at all. The process isn’t the same from movie to movie often, much less across multiple decades in an industry that has changed a lot.

The process now is not the same as it was in the '70s. If Star Wars was made then the way ALL blockbusters are made now, we wouldn’t have gotten to draft 4, because when Ladd greenlit it, he’d have greenlit it with a release date locked and everything would have been set to that clock. Star Wars didn’t have a clock put on it until much, much later in the development process. The clock still almost drove Lucas insane, but he got a lot of time to develop that script that is damn near impossible to get now.

It’s a different machine creators are working in. Or rather, the engine and the gears move differently than they did when Lucas was around. Lucas is partially the reason that machine now operates the way it does, thanks to his efforts in the early 00s. Comparing the script development of Star Wars in 74 to Trevorrow’s efforts in 2017 is a comparison that isn’t worth much because not only are the creatives in question pretty wildly different, but the process is also pretty wildly different now, too.

True. I do just kinda wish that the attempt was successful at something more meaningful than meme-making.

But then again, such is the way the prequels were rehabbed, so who knows how this will play in 10 years.

They GOTTA be getting close to a press release detailing what’s on this thing - and what’s on the rest of the 4K set, too.

One of the bigger disappointments about The Rise Of Skywalker is precisely how badly they botched making that point, when it was absolutely key that they did so. The exact question, the very notion that bloodline is THAT important, when legacy can (and should) be and mean more than simply blood and familial connections - the first two movies laid a lot of road to arrive at a destination where that entire question is answered definitively. The legacy of the Skywalker family SHOULD BE, by the end of Rise of Skywalker, that the family name doesn’t need to be tied to blood in order to have meaning and power. That by the end of their saga, the ultimate lesson they’ve passed on is one that is inclusive, hopeful, and meaningful. You can be what they were, and that name can apply to you, because it’s no longer just the name of a family, but the name of a philosophy, or an outlook on life, and living.

Rise of Skywalker didn’t get anywhere NEAR that, and while I don’t believe that sequels can retroactively ruin the movies they follow, that the quality and status of that preceding film is what it is, and that work stands on its own FOR what it is, no matter what - I do think that Rise of Skywalker dropping that ball as hard as it did makes the road the preceding two movies laid down a lot less stable. It puts a lot of potholes in the sequel trilogy, basically.

Smaller disappointment: Lando got the Falcon back and there was no real moment of significance attached to it. I think there was barely a reaction shot, in fact?

I don’t think it’s fair to compare the first and second drafts of Star Wars in 1974/1975 to the first and second drafts of Star Wars in 2015/2016. Not only because there was a lot more freedom and time for Lucas to work with back then, but because the way movies were made and the pipeline productions were put through is vastly different.

This DOTF draft would (and did) change from its initial draft to the one that ultimately caused Kennedy to get Jack Thorne to write something in a last ditch hope to get something Trevorrow could direct. But George Lucas isn’t JJ Abrams, and JJ Abrams isn’t Colin Trevorrow, and to really get an idea as to how different the story probably would have wound up, it’s not a good call to look at the now-legendary transformation Lucas had literal YEARS to make with Star Wars. You should probably look more at productions like Star Trek Into Darkness or Jurassic World. Or The Force Awakens, honestly. I don’t know if we know exactly how different that first draft looked compared to what the shooting script looked like, but I get the sense they were about 70% the same, roughly.

The simple fact that time was short and a release date was locked before the script was even finished makes comparing the two developments almost impossible. There’s only so much you CAN change from your first draft when you’ve got about 18mo to make the movie. Lucas’ first draft changed on the way to the fourth because he had something like 2 years to develop it before he even started pre-production, and he had a ton of friends pitching ideas over the course of those two years. There’s a level of patience, collaboration, and studio freedom that basically doesn’t have a parallel here in 2020.

IIRC, nobody at any point says anything like “child and animal abuse is bad.”

The “speech” that Dom just excerpted (comprising probably about 3 total lines of dialog on the page) says “look closer” as the only direct reference to what’s happening. And then she tells the story of her own upbringing, via a completely different example of First Order oppression.

“this is the sort of place that enables the system that kidnapped you” is what she’s saying - without actually really saying that.

I think the idea that “This is a horrible place” and then you get there and it’s a literal vacation spot - it’s Fhloston Paradise, basically - is supposed to make you laugh a little. “Yeah. Super-horrible, Rose.”

For me, looking at whether the good guys or the bad guys are the main characters is the wrong way of looking at it.

I don’t understand how else to look at it if you’re going to discuss structure, theme, and narrative intent. That’s the bones of the story. The scaffolding. It’s the way you build a story so that the meaning comes through loud and clear. If this is a conversation about those sorts of things (and I was under the impression it absolutely was) then you HAVE to look at it that way, don’t you? What’s the alternative? Even fairy tales have to be created by someone who wants to figure out how best to effectively communicate the idea they want to get across. The ideas don’t just happen accidentally.

I’m not arguing for what’s easy. I think that’s sort of obvious simply due to how many words I’m devoting to how hard it is to tell these stories well, and how much thought you have to put into those sorts of decisions for them to work in ways that resonate this strongly. It’s not easy at all. I don’t think it SHOULD be easy. And that means you have to think about what you’re suggesting for your characters, and what those suggestions do for the messages they embody AS characters, and the ideas they exist to represent.

I’m going to disengage at this point, sorry. But again, thank you for spending the time and being fair and patient about it.

I’m saying Vader’s redemption story being retconned into the PRIMARY story of Star Wars by its creator, informed the notion that Kylo Ren had to be redeemed by the end of the sequel trilogy, because “That’s what Star Wars is.” Retroactively making the villains the main characters is an act that centers the villains in your storytelling as opposed to centering the heroes (which is why the OT is still the most resonant of the three trilogies - it’s the only one remains focused and centered on its hero). So if you’re going to center the villains, and adopt the storytelling ethos that the point of your narrative is to show how and why it’s important above all else that Star Wars represents “Love is so powerful it can save Space Nazis from themselves!” you need to be able to explain why Star Wars should be that, or further, why it needs to be that, and why avoiding that aspect is “antithetical” to the message of “Star Wars” overall.

Yes, you could apply the same sort of interrogation to other aspects of Star Wars, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong in doing that. It’s certainly not a condemnation of those other aspects, just like my interrogation of it here isn’t a condemnation of Kylo Ren’s redemption. But I also don’t think the redemption is all that well-justified as it stands, and there aren’t a lot of good ways TO justify it, in my view. But it’s certainly not impossible. It just takes the kind of work and forethought that a good interrogation would bring out. I don’t think it’s particularly fair to describe my poking at notions of what atonement means, and what it means for the characters embodying that idea in Star Wars, to Dante and Randal talking about contractors on the Death Star in a comedy movie, nor is it all that fair to tell me to “just go watch Star Trek instead.” If you’re going to argue for thoughtfulness in the creation of Star Wars on the part of its creators, these are exactly the sorts of questions you want them (and the audience) to be considering when they’re done watching.

My disagreeing with your more generous appraisal of Kylo’s quality as a character doesn’t mean I don’t understand where you’re coming from, or that you’re wrong for thinking that way. I just don’t agree with it that’s all. It’s not a personal flaw or anything. You liking the character more than I do (and I don’t even know if that’s honestly the case, I like Kylo Ren as a character a LOT, and I think he’s the best villain this series ever had) doesn’t mean you’re WRONG for doing so, and I’m going to show you the light or whatever. But I do think there are a lot of ways a potential story where Kylo lives and just gets to “atone” for his “misdeeds” (which is a pretty light euphemism for the atrocities he committed, really) could really resonate in some unseemly ways if not carefully looked at and considered.

My biggest problem with that is, again, the idea that you can “atone” for what you did wrong while hiding your identity. The first step of atonement is owning what you did fully, and you can’t really do that - at least not helpfully and honestly - if you’re pretending to be someone else, and asking other people to assist you in that fundamental deception.

I specifically said multiple times I see the potential, and even pitched my own version of such a story a few posts back.

I understand the desire and I get why you’d want to pursue the stories of Vader and Kylo into a better ending for both of them, I don’t think it’s wrong to do so and I agree there’s a TON of interesting avenues to go down

^ that’s me!

Heck, the post you just responded to has me saying “that’s not saying those stories have no place, or shouldn’t be told.”

Investigating why they’re being told isn’t the same as saying they don’t deserve to be.

Not really. I’m just asking for a solid justification for why a specific TYPE of story needs to be the DEFINING story type for Star Wars. Because that’s usually how the redemption story arcs are framed by those making arguments for them. So I’m asking why, of all the various sorts of stories that Star Wars can (and does) tell within its framework, that “villain redemption” be the one that ultimately defines the larger shape of “Star Wars.” What’s the justification for that ONE angle taking priority over the others?

that’s not saying those stories have no place, or shouldn’t be told. But it’s an interesting question to pose, I think. At the least, one that should be considered before going down that path too far.

I don’t even get where you think “don’t abuse animals” was even PART of the main message of that trip. I’m legitimately confused as to how you thought “don’t abuse animals” played any real part in the storytelling. There’s not really any emphasis on it. It’s incidental. Of course war profiteers at the giant casino are so self-centered that they’re not treating ANYONE who isn’t also rich with any respect. The KIDS being abused was more of a big deal than the Fathiers were.

This reads to me like people who got super upset with Luke drinking Sea Cow milk? Where the point of the scene was “look at him trying to show off and freak out Rey and show how much he doesn’t need society anymore” but all anyone could focus on was “titty milk” (as if there is animal milk that doesn’t feature “titties” producing it. People were really showing their asses with their bizarre fixation on “titties” in that scene). I don’t know: Canto Bight isn’t really about animal abuse at all. I can’t agree with the notion the “ham-fisted” writing was “pandering” to an anti-abuse narrative, because I honestly don’t think it’s even really IN there to any degree beyond “how do we make these amoral people look more amoral.”

Animal Abuse isn’t the point of anything on Canto Bight. It’s a symptom of a larger moral absence and malaise. The Child Abuse is a bigger point being made - and even that isn’t really the point of Canto Bight at all.

I also don’t think one of the major messages of Canto Bight is “don’t abuse animals.” Obviously, you shouldn’t abuse animals. You also shouldn’t be a war profiteer. Pretty sure that was the primary thematic function of the trip to Canto Bight. Finn loves the decadence of the city at first, and is provided an opportunity (in the form of DJ) to put his morals on pause (or abandon them altogether) in order to enjoy it in the future. DJ’s function isn’t to replicate Lando’s character, because Lando and DJ are basically nothing alike. Like Hello very smartly pointed out - DJ’s function is to be the devil to Rose’s angel on his shoulder. “Look kid - it’s all rigged. It’s all a racket. You can be a sucker if you want, but why not be smart and above it all, like me.”

I was honestly surprised that Phasma didn’t come back for Rise of Skywalker though. Abrams could have easily brought her back, he just… didn’t.

OutboundFlight said:

I don’t know. I think it’d be fairly easy to disguise yourself around the galaxy. Wear Mandalorian or Booush armor. In Kylo’s case, grow a beard and cut your hair. In Vader’s, no one knew what he looked like under the helmet. This would be helped with Luke/Rey claiming they are dead.

The problem with immediate death is it isn’t very interesting. Vader and Kylo never confront what they have done. Love should be used as the tipping point back over, but once on the light, it would have been nice to feel some remorse for their actions.

And I think all of this is well and good, but it’s also going back to that fundamental question of what “Star Wars is about” as if there’s a central unifying thesis behind all the storytelling decisions being made (I don’t think there really should be) as opposed to Star Wars being defined by its look and sound (which I think is the most unifying aspect, and probably should be)

All that to say: I understand the desire and I get why you’d want to pursue the stories of Vader and Kylo into a better ending for both of them, I don’t think it’s wrong to do so and I agree there’s a TON of interesting avenues to go down and I’d even love to see those ideas - I spitballed one of them myself upthread! But then you have to ask why Star Wars needs to be primarily a story about misunderstood genocidal dictators making good on their ruined lives. Why are THOSE figures now THE CENTRAL figures of Star Wars, and why is forgiving them and making their forgiveness the primary focus, the overall goal of this story?

What is it about Star Wars that makes Star Wars fans think the best use of time and energy from a storytelling POV is in pursuing rehabilitation narratives for literally THE WORST people? There are other ways to tell stories of forgiveness and love than to lean as hard as possible into a path where eventually the only acceptable end point is “You’ve only really told a successful story in this fictional universe if you’ve figured out a way to make Herrman Goering or Richard Spencer loveable again.”

But even allowing for that story to be THE primary story of Star Wars - I don’t think it’s “applying realism” to Star Wars to suggest that Kylo or Vader wandering the galaxy to try and atone is sort of a bad call, for multiple reasons.

1. It makes our heroes liars. Especially in a scenario where they just… let Vader or Kylo go and tell everyone else “Oh, he died.” That’s a HUGE betrayal of trust and responsibility on the part of our hero. “You told me he died” is a pretty big hurdle to have to clear, and even BROACHING the subject shifts the texture of the storytelling you’re working with. They tried to have Obi-Wan reckon with it in Jedi and it… didn’t really work. It’s maybe one of the biggest bits of bullshit IN that movie. Now imagine turning EVERY hero we have that’s in on this story INTO that, but on a larger, galaxy-wide scale. And even then, it’s not “I lied about him dying because I thought you’d have to kill him for the sake of the galaxy,” but “I lied to everyone about him dying because I want him to get as many karma points as he can before he kicks the bucket”

2. It sends a weird message, in that you can duck responsibility for being a genocidal maniac by simply growing a beard and fighting off farm raiders in the outer rim, or wearing a helmet for the rest of your life. But even that’s likely not going to stop word from spreading about who you REALLY are. And once that word is out - you’re basically on a countdown clock to assassination attempts. But the big contradiction here is that you can’t REALLY atone for what you’ve done while you’re in hiding and denying who you are. That’s not really atonement. You have to be you, and take responsibility for what you did. If you’re “atoning” under an alias and denying who you are (and making good people complicit in that deception) it’s kind of a bullshit “atonement.”

3. It again, tilts this storytelling towards enabling and making… not excuses, but ALLOWANCES for flat out EVIL behavior. Because there’s no way on these adventures that this bad guy turned good doesn’t get in fights and/or kill good guys who aren’t trying to hear about this atonement world tour. And then you have to step back and ask why THIS is your primary storytelling focus? What is it about Star Wars that has led you to the point where in order to craft a SUCCESSFUL story that embodies THE THEMES of Star Wars, you have to grapple with character choices like “how do I get Kylo Ren out of this jam where a farmer figures out who he is and tries to put a knife in his eye?”