Broom Kid

Star Wars was never a “niche” genre. It’s not a genre unto itself (despite various people’s attempts to make it as such) either. And if you see a similarity between superheroes and fantasy-based mythologies, it’s because they both draw from the same ideas. Jedi are, more or less, superheroes.

In 1977, what Lucas was doing with Star Wars was visually unlike anything ever tried within the sci-fi/fantasy genres, and it was also considered to be FAST. Very, very fast. It seems slow now, but in 1977 the editing and pacing of that movie was considered breakneck. You’re arguing it has to look and feel like it did in 1977 and that’s death. It’s got to speak to the kids who are watching the movies in the time period they’re coming out, so they can grab onto it without having to read a bunch of wikipedia entries or watch a bunch of YouTube videos to find a hook or an “in” for the movies.

If it shares the same visual language with other movies they like, and then uses that shared language to introduce new ideas on top of that, then it works! Part of the reason The Force Awakens made as much money as it did is BECAUSE it moved like an Abrams film while looking like a Star Wars movie, for lack of a better term. All the iconography people recognized for 40 years was being lit, shot, framed, and edited in a way they’d never seen it before, and that was EXCITING. It wasn’t JUST nostalgia at play. The filmmaking DID matter.

There’s no real reason to handcuff directors and cinematographers who have more -and better- tools, to styles developed 40 years ago. Or even 30 years ago. It just doesn’t make sense. Star Wars can’t be hermetically sealed off like that, it’s going to suffocate that way. And it’s not like other films and filmmakers are going to sit around and decline using those tools to tell their own stories. People are going to go to the theaters not to hear new stories, because most stories have almost NOTHING new to them. But they will go to see new ways of telling them. Star Wars needs to be part of that. If that means whip pans, crazy camera moves, speed ramping… so be it. So long as the tool is right for the story element being executed, to quote a certain Chancellor: DEW IT.

I just disagree with the idea that you HAVE to behave like that in response to some guy you’ve never met and don’t know, and I choose, personally, not to justify being mean-spirited and angry for all this time at the guy, and I definitely don’t agree with the justifications I’m seeing for indulging that behavior and essentially victim-blaming. I know that’s a phrase that is sort of loaded and might even seem unfair, but “he brought it on himself” and “he basically made us do this” is the vocabulary victim blamers tend to use.

I don’t think he ever declared himself a genius, btw, but even if he did, if YOU choose to take that personally (I don’t even understand why you would, he’s not talking about YOU) that’s on you, and I think you should take responsibility for your decision to do so. It’s not his fault you’re taking that personally, it’s yours. You’re making a choice to do that. You’re not helpless.

Anyway - hoping for the isolated scores.

I think searching for ANY “formula” is probably a bad idea, at least any “formula” beyond “find good collaborators, listen to what they’re saying, team up with skilled craftsmen, and synthesize those talents.”

But that’s more or less the “formula” for any movie that ends up being good, really. And I think that’s maybe the greatest lesson this film (and this trilogy, and this era of ownership) can teach us: Star Wars isn’t anywhere near as precious as everyone thought it was, and treating it as such is just going to stunt it’s potential and make it stale and disappointing. There really isn’t anything special about it, not in the way there used to be. There’s no behind-the-scenes magic that other movies aren’t able to call upon in order to execute their respective visions.

That preciousness about Star Wars is obviously starting to hold it back, and that fear of “breaking” it is, ironically, what’s breaking it. It’s an entire studio playing not to lose instead of just trying to make good movies.

It’s not going to be “one director” that gets this right, and I don’t know that we should even WANT a singular figurehead in control. Even when we had that we didn’t like it, and it’s not like it made for better movies, either.

I disagree - I think there’s a ton of amazing directors out there who could make great Star Wars movies. But nobody’s going to make a perfect movie, and there’s not a magical “perfect” director for Star Wars.

Hell, George Lucas created the series and 3 of its poorest-quality movies are his.

There’s nothing about Star Wars so special that simply asking a strong, capable, and interesting director to play in that sandbox isn’t all you really need to do. There’s always going to be pluses and minuses, things that the individual directors bring to a picture that will turn some viewers off BECAUSE of how individual that voice is. I’m willing to make that trade every time, because that individual voice is probably what’s going to make a movie more special than it otherwise would have been.

It’s hard to argue for Star Wars to adhere to what makes it unique while simultaneously arguing for a one-size-fits-everything approach to the material. People can’t even agree on what “Star Wars” is, there’s no way that agreement is going to embody the shape of a single director.

I will say this, though: Filoni isn’t the answer, and probably never will be.

“All the anger and bitterness could have been easily avoided”

Definitely, but on the other hand, it’s not his fault people are being like that. People are in control of their own behaviors and reactions, and people don’t HAVE to be assholes about it. And their asshole behavior isn’t justified at all. I just don’t agree with “He brought it on himself” or “he deserves it.” Very few people deserve to be treated so poorly, and people shouldn’t really want to act that way - especially not to someone none of us even know or have ever met, and especially not over something as ultimately small-stakes as a movie.

You can want these things released in a pretty big way, without taking it that personally.

Slavicuss said:

The 2006 disc release was bonus material and hardly an acceptable way in which to view the unaltered versions.

I know what they were. And I know how useful they became on the way to this place becoming THIS PLACE and doing all the great things it did.

But what I was responding to was the notion that Lucas is at open war with his fans and that’s why he’s withholding the original cuts from us. It’s a take that looks at Star Wars in terms of an absentee, abusive father mistreating his children, and that’s kind of an unhealthy, presumptive, and unrealistic take on it. It also doesn’t line up with what we know about what came out and when it did. Not releasing the OT can’t be “punishment” for disliking the Prequels when the decision to vault the OT happened years before the Prequels even started production.

His reasons are weird and complicated, like he is. He’s a weird, introverted guy who isn’t easy to predict - it’s part of the reason he ended up being the success he is. So to ascribe very simplistic (and often sort of solipsistic, i.e. “he’s doing this TO ME! PERSONALLY!”) motives to him seems questionable. It’s the same as people who love to suggest the Special Editions only exist as a middle finger to Marcia Lucas. That’s sort of tasteless, honestly, to get that soap opera about the man’s personal life to that level as a means to express bitterness about not being able to buy a movie you’ve already bought 30 times.

It sucks we can’t just go to the store and buy a version of Star Wars that looks like it did when we watched it 30,000 times on VHS growing up. I absolutely agree with every historical, logic-grounded argument people at this site have lodged, made popular, and embedded in the public consciousness for the last 15 or so years, and I think a lot of other people agree with those arguments too. But this weird sort of neverending anger and bitterness towards Lucas also sucks.

Disney’s already learned the lesson they’re moving forward with:

Star Wars is a television property now. It’s essentially Star Trek. It lives on TV, you watch it on TV, and every now and again they try a movie and you go to the theater and you hope they didn’t botch it too much and then you put it on your shelf next to the rest of your collectibles and you go back to watching the TV shows (and every now and again the movies you’ve already seen).

Honestly, you could make the argument that aside from Rise of Skywalker, the quality of their output is mostly very good so far as the general audience is concerned. This is the first property that’s garnered a Prequel-level score, with prequel-esque word of mouth. (And even in the prequel-era, the word-of-mouth was hard to put a finger on because it SOUNDED like everyone hated them, but the numbers looked like people were having a good time).

edit: OW = Opening Weekend. DOM = Domestic. WW = Worldwide. WOM = Word of mouth.

Also, looking at the day-to-day drops and the projection adjustments even on the day of, arguments that this is primarily a reflection on The Last Jedi don’t hold too much weight. The two years of constant arguing and toxicity probably did have an effect on people wanting to even mess with this thing on opening weekend, absolutely. But the way this thing declined day-to-day starting with Thursday night says this movie is doing what it’s doing because of its quality.

We’ll know more in a couple days when we get a chance to see how high the Christmas Day bounce goes.

$175.5 dom, 373.5 worldwide.

if WOM continues to solidify as mixed-to-negative (and it’s probably going to, if that happened with The Last Jedi despite better reviews and higher box-office, I can’t imagine it won’t happen here) there is probably no way it crosses $1 bil.

This has made less than Incredbles 2’s OW, and is making less worldwide than Batman v. Superman did in its opening weekend.

“Own the originals last time” was 1995. The prequels wouldn’t come out for another 4 years.

He went back on that anyway 10 years later.

Projections for today are putting it around $48-50 mil. If it has a typical Saturday-to-Sunday drop, we’re now in $180-185mil range for the OW.

With that opening (especially if it’s closer to 180) we’re looking at an increased possibility it misses a billion worldwide.

Honestly, for this set, the OOT isn’t even my biggest hope, partially because I’ve had years and years of accepting the fact it’s not a priority at Lucasfilm or Disney.

I’m hoping for isolated scores. Especially since The Last Jedi’s isolated score seemed to be a pretty big success, and was actually NEWS for a day or two. It seems weird that a feature that was - if not standard - commonplace in the DVD era is now newsworthy, but still. If The Last Jedi can get one, I’m hoping they’ve decided this Skywalker Saga set will include isolated scores. I’d prefer they be on disc, but if it’s the same sort of “online extra” thing, I’m fine with that too. However we get them, I want them.

Neverar just won post of the year.

“Ow.”

IIRC, The camera isn’t even shaking during the TIE Fighter attack in Star Wars. The shot was locked down due to the way the gunner shots were set up. They’re moving the frame around in post to simulate the camera shaking, aren’t they?

That’s definitely not “shaky cam”

“Shaky cam” is basically what happens when people who don’t have the vocabulary for an established film technique create a term, and that term gets popularized through common usage. “Shaky Cam” was what people who didn’t previously know what handheld photography was called came up with to describe what they were watching. The internet made that sort of adoption of terminology a lot faster than it used to be. Sometimes that speed basically renders words and terms more or less meaningless. Sort of like how “Reboot” essentially replaced “Remake” and is now used almost interchangeably with “sequel.” Or, in the world of videogames, how the term “cinematics” became “cut-scenes” despite the fact “cut-scenes” basically doesn’t make any sense as a term.

Anyway, physically grabbing the camera and shaking it to simulate environmental vibrations isn’t really “shaky cam.” “Shaky Cam” is just handheld photography. It’s “shaky” because the frame is unstable. That’s it.

It’s even funnier when you see the shots as they appear in the movie.

He’s yanking the hell out of the mag on the camera and in the film it registers as a slight vibration on the edge of the frame. But it definitely gives the impression that the camera is sitting on a platform that has a giant beam of energy shooting out the bottom of it, so it ultimately worked.

I bet the closest we get to deleted scenes in any usable fashion will actually be the Art Of book.

Once he decides he’s going to be Ben he absolutely starts peppering parts of his performance with subtle nods to Harrison Ford, that’s a great call.

Imagine being Adam Driver, knowing that back in your trailer you have the scripts to “Marriage Story” and “The Report” just sitting there, waiting to be memorized and performed, and that’s the day you have to do a scene where “You’re a Palpatine” has to come out of your mouth.

Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but Kylo Ren’s last words are “Ow.”

I think a large part of being a Star Wars fan for a large section of its fandom is in the exercise that goes along with classifying, quantifying, and for lack of a better word, TRADITIONALIZING what Star Wars is and can be. Whether that’s a conscious decision or not, it’s what a ton of people have been doing for a very long time, and I think this (kind of odd) discussion about the directorial style of JJ Abrams and “Star Wars” is interesting, in that it seeks to nail down an almost immovable visual vocabulary for Star Wars - without recognizing that the primary reason Star Wars’ approach to classic mythology resonated to young people was partially because Lucas’ visual style hadn’t ever been applied to the myth like that.

Star Wars worked in the first place because that’s not how you were supposed to shoot fantasy and myth. It wasn’t supposed to look, move, or sound like that. And it’s because it didn’t that young people were more easily able to key into the universal (and ancient) themes and meanings in its mythology.

I think part of why The Force Awakens worked so well for a lot of people is because it freshened up Star Wars’ visual language on a larger scale than it had been over the 30 years prior. And that language was always evolving and changing anyway. Empire doesn’t look like Star Wars very much at all, and it certainly doesn’t move the same way. And Jedi has its own visual language.

A lot of the “rules” about what Star Wars is and how it can look like literally don’t exist anywhere but in our heads, codified and quantified through group discussions among people who don’t have any actual control over what Star Wars is or what it looks like. Snap-zooms (and hand-held photography!) didn’t exist in Star Wars until Attack of the Clones. Slow motion didn’t exist in Star Wars until Empire Strikes Back. Dream Sequences didn’t exist until Revenge of the Sith.

If the myth (whatever shape it might take) is to survive with modern audiences, the visual language of its telling needs to shift accordingly. Star Wars itself taught us this. To argue that Star Wars itself can’t continue along that path because it’s not “Star Wars” once you do that is self-defeating.

You have to let this thing grow otherwise it becomes stale. And if that means hand-held photography and whip-pans, so be it. Just use them well, is all.

Mendelson is terrible

“People didn’t reject TLJ because their emotional maturity wasn’t up to the task”

Some people obviously did though. The idea that NOBODY did that doesn’t make any sense. It’s an overstatement you’re making in response to an overstatement he’s making to arrive at one of his bigger points (which I find lucid and relevant). It’s not total nonsense to suggest people didn’t understand the Last Jedi, especially not in the face of two years of people very loudly not understanding it in front of as many people as possible.

There’s no point in attempting to reject observable reality simply because it doesn’t align with your personal viewpoint. You’re not the people he’s talking about, and that’s fine. You don’t need to then try and further argue that the people he’s talking about don’t, and have never, existed. They did, and they still do. You aren’t among their number, and don’t need to count yourself among them for your opinions to have validity.

I don’t take your arguments against the review as an attack at all, but I do think trying to erase the group of people he’s talking about doesn’t help anything.

Further - I don’t think there’s anything really sanctimonious about the tone of the review at all because he’s also describing how he understands, and sometimes indulges, in the headspace he’s also criticizing. He’s saying that he’s been there, and he still visits semi-frequently, but it’s because he knows of what he speaks that he’s able (and willing) to make the criticisms he’s making.

I posted what I think is my favorite review of this movie earlier, but its author tweeted something that is very relevant to the discussion.

https://twitter.com/mangiotto/status/1207423051404431360

"The thing about giving fans what they want is it holds a mirror up to the sad limits of a fan’s imagination. Not just for possible paths to evolve their objects of veneration, but for their own potential growth as human beings. “Look! Look! This is all you think you deserve.”

That’s an effective description of the creative impulse behind this movie. It really is.

(that review, again, if you missed it: https://www.filmfreakcentral.net/ffc/2019/12/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker.html)

A B+ CinemaScore for a giant blockbuster on its opening weekend isn’t great, no. Again, the scheduling might save it from a severe drop, but the comparison points I’m seeing used quite a bit aren’t great ones: Batman v. Superman, Justice League, and Venom.

Venom is a positive comparison, really. But the problem there is Venom broke out the way it did thanks to overseas numbers, and so far The Rise of Skywalker isn’t doing very well overseas, and won’t have the sort of domestic/international split that Venom had. Star Wars even at its MOST popular was always closer to a 50/50 split than most huge earners (which run between 40/60-30/70 in a lot of cases)

If this opens at 195 and has TLJ’s multiplier, it ends its run at $546 mil domestic. But that CinemaScore (and whatever media narrative might evolve between now and Christmas) makes a 2.8x run a little more of a question.

If it has a multiplier closer to Justice League’s, we’re looking at this movie just barely crossing $500 mil, and finishing under Rogue One domestically.

EDIT: 90mil Friday (including Thursday previews). If it matches either Last Jedi OR Force Awakens’ weekend arcs - this movie isn’t making $200 mil OW.

I think making “sense” of the movie is most easily done if you look at it from the POV that it’s still 2016. It’s a story that - again - isn’t really ABOUT anything, thematically, and isn’t really saying anything beyond “here is how our plot is closed out,” and the decisions made to close out that plot seem to be focused almost solely on answering every last fan-chewed “mystery” that was hashed out in the early months of 2016 before many of the principals started disengaging from the media entirely.

Seriously, it’s not so much getting mad at The Last Jedi, or going out of its way to retcon it. This movie is more or less pretending it didn’t happen, save for the Force Projecting. Everything else is basically a race to answer a checklist of the main questions (whether they were already addressed or not) posed by The Force Awakens as fans understood them in 2016:

“Who is Snoke and what is his backstory?”
“What is Rey’s parentage and how did she wind up there?”
“Why is Rey so strong in the force” (The “Mary Sue” complaint, basically)
“Do Rey and Kylo want to kiss?” (This became “Reylo” eventually)
“Is Finn Force sensitive?”
“Who are the Knights of Ren?”
“What was Luke doing for all that time?”

That’s literally all this film IS about. Answering those questions. But the answers to those questions don’t POINT anywhere thematic or even mythical. They’re just plot - pure plot - and that’s why this movie feels so empty, emotionally. And that emptiness is compounded by the fact the answers they arrived at (and then rushed through) depend on more or less ignoring a better film that answered some of these questions much more simply and effectively, and most importantly, THEMATICALLY.

I know!

It’s a pretty broken movie!