Mocata

Except it is true. He moved out of collaboration and into hiring yes men. Particularly after getting rid of the people that wanted to change the ending of ROTJ to be darker. He didn’t get anyone brave enough to direct himself, and I agree he didn’t want to do it, but his ideas weren’t challenged in the same way. You think Ron Howard wants to be in a position like Richard Marquand but with even less freedom? Just think about the famous ‘I love you’ line and how it was changed on the day by people that put character first. Where were those people on the day they shot the midochlorians line? Gone.

KOTCS was a disaster because Spielberg’s passion was dead at that point and he didn’t challenge any of the bad ideas like the ones that were cut from The Last Crusade. If it was still the '80s they might have even made a plot about aliens work, but artists change. People having high expectations isn’t the problem; it’s the fact that their expectations were dashed in such a massive way that they could never have predicted.

In my experience it was all very hit and miss, and gets ‘good’ in the season two finale, and then after in season three when Thrawn arrives. I’m still not convinced that the conclusion with certain animals and certain portals worked for me, but it has its moments.

If only George had relinquished control and given directorial duties to others like with the OT it might have worked out better. But by that stage he believed his own legend so having another film like ESB with the likes of Kurtz and Kersh having creative input was impossible.

Channel72 said:

Star Wars was pretty much irrevocably damaged in 1999.

This is true. But people have short term memories when it comes to being fed the latest pop culture thing, so that is why we’re now facing the current state of things.

A lot of valid points being made here. For a long time now the business model for a lot of movie studios has been the constant drip feed of “content”. We used to get movies every 2-3 years and now they want 2-3 movies every year. It nearly went this way with Star Wars and the ‘stories’ spin-offs. Until it didn’t. Meanwhile the format transition into TV became a thing with the Disney monolith. So as a result you’re left with a bunch of studio suits who think they if interest wanes, even for just a second, their money will stop coming in.

But how to keep interest going? Well you can just keep announcing projects. Keep up the brand hype, keep those customer endorphins flowing. Don’t touch that dial, we have this and then this and this! Problem is behind the scenes a major studio isn’t a place artists and unsuspecting people dreaming of working on Star Wars can actually function… so you’ve got a crash now with dozens of things being announced and dozens of people finding out what life is like behind the curtain. Just look at Solo, and before that Ant-Man. The people I feel bad for are the ones that can’t actually afford to quit when the job sucks, like the visual effects animators.

Michael Corleone as a template is an interesting idea. But I think they should’ve gone down the City of God route, in which Lil Dice (or in this case Lil Ani) gets picked on as the runt until it turns out he loves killing.

Does anyone think that making Vader a tragic figure was a big mistake? I feel like beyond the lack of camaraderie between Anakin and Obiwan, they should have shown him liking power, or liking throwing people around. It would fit more with his attitude in SW towards the likes of Admiral Motti for example. It would be more believable, and any idea of regret or sadness could be much more subtle.

It’s … Return of the Jedi? It mean on here ROTJ works for me but I can’t say that out loud. To be honest I sometimes just forget there’s another Jedi title even as someone that doesn’t mind that movie. Like I forget what the 3rd one was even called at all occasionally.

Oh I enjoyed it in a similar way, but I’m worried that they’re just stretching out the character stuff so thinly at this stage. I’m amazed they didn’t get stuck on Mandalor for a week or something. Or that they’ve shown so much of science man but nothing of Gideon. It’s jumping between breadcrumbs and total filler more than S2 for some reason.

I liked it too, but it feels like that episode style is being used too often.

By all accounts a more appreciated writer but I can’t see them staying the course any more than all the others.

This all seems very unlikely, but let’s not dig ourselves into a hole talking about personal matters eh.

True.

One man’s chef’s kiss is another’s epic cringe

I’m starting this series now after being done with Rebels last week. It was kinda meh even if I did enjoy Thrawn. After S1 E4 I think Crosshair is the best character but maybe I’m just a sadist.

Honestly I expected child endangerment to be mentioned as part of the warrior’s path or something, like if you don’t suffocate inside a monster’s gut you can rank up to initiate level. They clearly spent a lot of money on creatures too which is very weird when they’re not story relevant in a serious way. Did the spider episode and the Krayt Dragon episode get a lot of views or something?

More dinosaur action, I mean it’s fine? It’s not challenging but it’s fine. I don’t care about the baby rescue at all. But again I feel like parts of this could have been a continuation of the ending last time around. Or that the previous Coruscant plot would have been 30 mins and the rest of the Mando stuff last week could have been part of this chapter? And the cult STILL look like idiots training out in the open with the killer animals? Why aren’t they under ground?

Yeah… actually yeah. They have to get the basics of character chemistry right in a romance plot, before they get into the subtle nuances of real people interacting with each other. What goes said and unsaid in a real human relationship? They’re not ready for that level of depth. The only part that’s convincingly romantic is what John Williams wrote on the sheet music.

K2 has a lot of dumb lines throughout. Donnie Yen is similar but gets less to do, instead of being a truly spiritual figure. Vader shows up and also has a bunch of dumb lines. He doesn’t need to be in the movie. Then there’s a whole ‘Rogue One’ call sign thing that somehow works. I mean if the Alliance was consistently ruthless they’d shoot down the crew to avoid a potential security breach, right? At this point it veers into the old dress up gag because it’s SW and I’m supposed to care they all die?

I dunno I just think that Andor works but it cuts all this stuff and replaces it with more focus on things that matter. The Clone Wars was the same… it came together when it stopped being about dumb PT characters and focused on random villains and soldiers. Anyway, it has a lot of time to gain traction since season two is a long way off. Time will tell.

Oh I agree. But to be honest I don’t think the political nature of Rogue One works in that context, where it’s still trying to be a fun action adventure story. The Alliance sending an assassin out or using bombers to kill a guy instead of rescuing him? That’s kinda sickening when it’s trying in some ways to still be a proper gee whizz Star Wars yarn. It’s not detached enough from the material where C-3PO is saying something funny or a bunch of muppets show up. And I wanted a proper heist movie and it’s only like fifty percent there. Andor works more for me because it goes like ninety percent into spy fiction territory.

I mean at this rate who hasn’t been fired from their job at LFL over creative differences.

I think we can agree that men and women communicate in different ways. Which isn’t really a suitable subject for a SW movie, never mind a movie so poorly written as AOTC.

regularjoe said:

David Lynch’s “Lost Highway” is a better example of how to handle the corruption of Anakin Skywalker by the dark side of the force than a mafia movie is.

In what way? Is the Mystery Man an analogue for the dark side?

The look and feel of Rogue One translated over to Andor, but this is surface level stuff. For it to work the kind of characterisation we have now would have be included in the movie. Beyond it not working as a prequel and having too many pointless fan service characters, the reason I don’t like Rogue One is the heroes are nothing but cardboard cut outs. Somewhere there are deleted scenes with Saw and child Jyn that maybe fix this? But it should have been the focus, two fold, with Jyn’s search for a father figure and the mystical Jedha stuff. So I care when she dies and when the planet dies.

However. This is my take, not the general consensus. I got the impression that most people love Rogue One. So it’s failure to find an audience is odd. Particularly when certain SW fans really want it all to be take so seriously. Which means the problem is probably the same fan service being missing. I guarantee people would watch if Darth Vader and Palpatine were shown. Which is my concern for Season 2 and where it could start to crumble.

Green lighting a rough first draft because they don’t need to try very hard feels like their entire MO since 2015.

So this guy was a mega genius and the dumbest idiot in the galaxy… and it took that long for them to reveal what everyone will have seen coming. Great stuff. Why was this not a five minute scene and why should we care about the troubled conscience of a tertiary character?

I thought the previous cliffhanger was leading to a good second half of THAT journey but no. I thought there would be some trouble with the magic water, or some delay, or … something. Instead it was an artificial ‘to be continued’ which suggests the episode ending and starting points are totally arbitrary, or have been played around with so that people aren’t bored.