I lurked that forum a little bit. A strange echo chamber that place. It’s funny how different the common accepted opinion is in different corners of the internet.
I like 5 Star Wars films, the 5 with V in the titles/numbering. It’s like poetry, yada yada. I am certain I wouldn’t have liked Lucas’ ST any more than Disney’s attempts. He just wasn’t that good a film-maker to me, and was (understandably) too close to the series to let other people execute and build on his ideas. Sucks that Disney had no vision at all, but I also can’t blame them for binning whatever scraps Lucas left behind. Didn’t sound too good to me, and as nice as it might have been to develop Leia further, that ship had long sailed by the time Disney got the rights.
For the criticisms I have with Disney’s Star Wars, their movies have mostly looked great. Much better than the MCU films, which are somehow constantly drab despite the colourful things happening on screen.
The thing that will eternally irk me about the ST is that earlier scripts for Episode 9 had a little something to say. The trilogy would not have been perfect, but there was finality in its conclusion, and it made some steps forward. Rey challenged old Jedi ways and refused the notion that they had to wall themselves off from love, and repress their ‘darkness’. She found new strength and a new approach to balance. This addressed issues that arguably caused Anakin to fall, and the Jedi order to fail. It was a Colin Treverrow script, which blows my mind. ‘Duel of the Fates’ was not without its issues, but there was some actual thought there.
Nearly everything that changed for TROS was for the worse. There was a role for Rose. Finn actually played a part and fulfilled his arc in leading defecting troopers. An uprising on Coruscant, people turning evil’s weapons against them. A First Order HQ to target, complete with Chancellor Hux and a glimpse of the various crime lords that funded them. A final duel on Mortis, Luke getting a cool heroic moment. There’s a bunch of stuff I’d tweak, but even as it was in the 2016 draft I read, it was much, much better than what replaced it.
I would also like to see more evidence of RJ ‘screaming’ and his ‘tantrums’ because the above looks remarkably calm and playful in the face of the absolute bile we all know he received then and probably still receives.
The pic doesn’t provide proper context, nor even the start of that particular exchange. Almost as if it was selected specifically to make him look as bad as possible. And you’d only be shocked and disgusted by the ‘deek’ references if you were to assume he made them unprompted, which is obviously not the case. You don’t have to search through the tweets to know he’ll be playing with terms he was submerged in at the time.
An idea that’s been buzzing around my head:
I’m currently watching ROTJ (and loving it) and I genuinely think eliminating the lazy second Death Star is possible. Not by awkwardly cutting it out of frame, but by re-purposing it. Done in a few easy(ish) steps.
1.) Cut references to the station by name. Fairly straight foward, should be possible with a gental touch.
2.) Introduce the station in the opening crawl as the Empire’s armory. It’s where ships/weapons are built, troops are held etc. Say the rebellion are pushed to the brink but discover the location of this vital stronghold.
3.) Visual enhancements. Not essential, but would be a great touch. If you extended/accentuate the incomplete sections of the structure, you could do a lot to make it a unique location. It’s only partially visible in many shots so they wouldn’t need tweaking, and the wide shots are normally pretty static so they’d be easier to modify.
4.) Finally, tweak dialogue so that any references to the Death Star’s completion are in fact about an upcoming military upgrade. You could potentialy preserve the Rebel’s shock over the station’s firepower as simply something they didn’t expect to encounter.
I’ve gone mad with the potential of this idea, but maybe it’s actually rubbish. I dunno. I thought it’d be worth sharing though.