Star Wars: Episode IX

[Jazzfox]

I'm sadly one of the camp who just feel like the movie fell flat on a lot of faces when it came to execution, but seeing that video clip of behind the scenes does make me wonder what could have been if only they'd stuck the landing somewhere

I'm a lot happier that shows like the Mandalorian stand up and proudly show that episode IX doesn't mean this has to be the end of ways Star Wars can still light up imaginations and be its classic awesome self

I'm planning on doing a marathon of the movies, trying to decide an order here now with everything added to it, this sound about right?

Rogue One > New Hope > Empire > Phantom Menace > Clones > Revenge > Jedi > 7, 8, 9


Going by the whole order to only hit prequels after the empire reveal, but, feel like Rogue One belongs at the start with just HOW it attaches to New Hope, any thoughts on that one?

[Xav]

Originally Posted by Sumac

TFA was not bad.
It was bland and creatively bankrupt, but it was not a horrible movie, which tried to offend its own fanbase or rewrite previous movie out of existence.

Well it did kill off Han and made everything that happened in the original trilogy irrelevant.

[Sumac]

Originally Posted by Xav

Well it did kill off Han and made everything that happened in the original trilogy irrelevant.

That's what I've meant with "creatively bankrupt".
But purely technically and when it comes to pacing it is not a bad movie.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Sumac

That's what I've meant with "creatively bankrupt".
But purely technically and when it comes to pacing it is not a bad movie.

True. We can still watch 7 and have grand hopes, Han dead or not. Like, OK, this is bad, but we have 2 movies to fix or explain this.

[Voltron]

Man, you are optimistic. After the prequel trilogy's crapfest, I was terrified they weren't going to pull out of this nose dive.

And they largely didn't. The Last Jedi basically wasn't a movie. For all the backtracking The Force Awakens did, TLJ went above and beyond to outdo it.

When The Rise of Skywalker came out, I wasn't even going to see it. I ended up getting a free ticket. ROS did a lot of work to make up for TLJ, but there's only so much you can do in 2 hours to fix years of crap.

Not to beat a dead horse, but using franchises (or movies in general) to package political messages really gets in the way of storytelling. On top of that, catering to foreign markets destroys any remaining hope of getting a decent film made at all.

[Andrew NDB]

Prequels had warts but felt like equal parts spectacle and... Star Wars. But foremost, felt like Star Wars. Should there have been a million CGI designers on every facet? No. But the story made sense from episodes I through III and it made a good handshake with IV. Maybe I wouldn't have made the same choices... but it worked between trilogies. The same can't be said of whatever came out over the last few years.

[Voltron]

Revenge of the Sith was fun. That felt like Star Wars to me. The first one did at times, but lost it in a lot of places. Especially with Jar Jar and young Anakin. The second movie was just. . .meh.

Have you ever seen the Mr. Plinkett reviews? He makes a lot of good (but gross) points, but I find myself agreeing with a lot of what he said.

[Andrew NDB]

The Plinkett reviews are legendary. I would say I don't agree with anywhere near the levels of hatred for the prequels they have... but they are must see for sure.

[Leo656]

Prequels had decent story (took too long to get out of first gear, though) with terrible acting and mediocre special effects.

Sequels had good-to-great acting and effects but terrible, TERRIBLE writing.

Frankly... I'm with Andrew. I, II and III just fit much better alongside the original trilogy whereas the new ones just don't, puppet Yoda or no. That right there actually shows just how far off the mark their thinking was when designing this new series; they felt like things such as "We actually made a Yoda puppet!" were make-or-break things, and that we'd be so enthralled by that sort of thing, or just getting to see the original actors again regardless of how they'd be used, that we'd forgive or ignore the f*cking terrible writing.

To be clear, the Prequels (and the original movies, if we're being completely honest) had some atrocious dialog and more than a bit of "Will of the Force" coincidence, but that's not the same type of "bad writing" that the new movies are guilty of. I through VI tell one long story, albeit amateurishly at times. Not only are the movies in the "Sequel Trilogy" incongruous to each other, but they're just chock full of "But this doesn't make any SENSE" bits. I haven't seen ROS, but in reading about it in detail it's f*cking laughable, an obvious cut-and-paste job, and TLJ was just... good LORD.

I personally can forgive the sins of the Prequels far easier than I can the newer films. These people, in all their wisdom and experience and sophistication, were supposed to know better. But for me, in getting the feeling that the thing was going to go off the rails, it all goes back to that damn Yoda puppet. Right when I saw that, I'm like, "I kinda feel like these people have the complete wrong priorities for this project." And turns out, I was right. They put all their attention into the wrong things and it cost them dearly.

Those Rey figures are still collecting dust at my local Walmart as of last week, by the way. It's not Daisy Ridley's fault, and I do feel bad for her as I think she could have done great in a much better-written Star Wars series, but Disney really screwed the pooch on it. If she's having a hard time dealing with the fallout, well... call the Boss Lady, lady, don't yell at ME about it.

[Andrew NDB]

I think some more relevant threads have been purged to which this might have been more relevant. In any case...

Screenwriter David Koepp says that the core problem is that "Lucasfilm fans are difficult to please."

https://www.darkhorizons.com/koepp-l...ult-to-please/

[Leo656]

Huh. I just noticed that. Weird.

Anyway... he's not altogether wrong. I didn't get into Star Wars "properly" until the re-releases in the late-90s, and didn't get "heavy" until Episode I came out, and it didn't take me very long at all to realize that nobody hates Star Wars more than Star Wars "fans" do. A big, huge, giant reason why I don't embrace any "fandom" despite being a seriously passionate fan of many things. I just cannot stand "fan culture", I don't like cult/mob mentality, and I generally think obsessives are just the goddamn worst kind of people, regardless what they're a fan of. "Fans" ruin everything, and Star Wars helped teach me that, although many things since then have reinforced it.

Like, I'm glad that other people like the things I like. I just generally want nothing to do with those people. If that makes any sense.

That said... well, for starters, this guy's resume is quite a mixed bag in itself. But aside from that... the SW Sequels just weren't well-written at all. You can't say that about even the Prequels. Maybe they were over-written and over-stuffed but there was very little "WTF?" in the writing outside of Midichlorians, and they're barely mentioned at all. Ep. 7 wasn't badly written, although I get why it wasn't the movie people wanted. But once you accept that "They tell YOU the story and not the other way around", IF you can accept that, and just take it for what it is, then it's fine. Killing Han off before he had a scene with Luke was a giant misfire, and even Abrams apologized for it, I think, or at least admitted after the fact somewhere that it was a shortsighted decision, but most of the movie is Just Fine if you can accept how hard they hit that Remix Shuffle button.

Ep. 8 felt like... it was like the New 52 version of Star Wars. As in, it felt like it was written by someone who hated the original property and was solely interested in writing something that would cater directly to him and other people who didn't like/didn't care about Star Wars. And it apparently succeeded in that, but ONLY that, and that's questionable because as you've mentioned elsewhere, Andrew, Ep. 8 essentially killed the franchise, or at least put it on life support. It'll NEVER be as big as it was before, though, not even close. And that's entirely Ep. 8's fault.

I haven't seen Ep. 9 yet - and I honestly don't know when I ever will - but I have read the story multiple times and it is frankly quite horrible. I'm sure it plays better in motion with all the shiny "pew pew" and the soundtrack and whatnot, but on paper, the whole thing is a disaster, objectively. BUT, that's only because they had to cram two movies into one: The "We're sorry for the last movie" movie, and the "So here's what we really wanted to show you" movie. Their initial idea of having each chapter of the trilogy be overseen by different people, and furthermore not even having them collaborate in any way, and further furthermore going out of their way to obstruct even the possibility of any communication/collaboration, was just the absolute dirt-worst idea ever. "We're putting a book together, and This Guy is gonna write Chapters 1-5. Then This Other Guy is gonna write Chapters 6-10, and Yet Another Guy is gonna write Chapters 11-15 to complete it. OH, and it's all one story, with the same characters, but you're not allowed to read anybody else's work and you can't talk about it!" Maybe a fun workshop exercise at a writer's retreat or a high school class, or something, but holy SH*T, how could anyone think that would ever turn out well? I know people who work in Hollywood all smoke crack, but they must've been on the good sh*t THAT day.

And it's so weird and crazy how some people love to tout how Ep. 8 shook things up by "breaking all the rules" of Star Wars, like that's a good thing. The fact is, Star Wars is for nerds and nerds f*cking love rules. That's why they play those tabletop games with all those cards and 40-sided dice and gigantic f*cking guide books that have 87 Rule Revisions. That's why they build massive comic book collections and argue about conflicting canon. Nerds LOVE "rules"; imagination is a wondrous thing and all, but if you remove the predetermined laws and boundaries of any fictional universe, well, then you're no better than a small child banging their action figures together. "Raaaah, and now Batman comes in to save Luke Skywalker, gyaaah! Pew pew pew!" And that's essentially what Ep. 8 was. Not much "Star Wars", but a lot of "I want to make people who hate Star Wars, like Star Wars." And just like New 52, they pleased SOME of those people and absolutely nobody else. They openly did not care if any existing fans of the brand liked it - just like New 52 - and that's questionable as hell.

So... yeah, "hard to please" fans? Sure, no argument. Fans are all The Worst, Star Wars fans worse than most. But that doesn't excuse the fact that when it came to constructing the Sequel Trilogy, they just... they did NOTHING right, aside from casting Daisy Ridley and re-signing some of the original actors. Literally Every Single Other Thing they did was wrong, and anyone could have seen it coming for miles. I'm sure they were all warned, too; they just figured they knew better.
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I also fixed a two-month old typo in my previous post because damn it, I have standards.

[Sumac]

Well, this guy is a retard and a bad writer to boot.

No self-respecting creator would say something like that after producing **** like The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker. It basically saying: "Why our fans don't eat any **** we labeled as Star Wars? How dare they demand quality and consistency with previous works?! They must be entitled rich white nazies who don't understand struggle of bla-bla-bla!!"

Western civilization is sick indeed.

[Leo656]

TO BE FAIR...

"Death Becomes Her" is pretty good, "Spider-Man" still has lots of charm, most people love "Jurassic Park" and I've heard that "The Shadow" was pretty good, although I still need to see that one.

Flip side being, he also wrote the Tom Cruise "Mummy" flick. But I guess you can't win 'em all.

At least he wasn't as nasty and dismissive about it as most other people involved with the Star Wars brand have been. Nothing about "toxic masculinity" or "systemic racism" or any of that. Good for him.

Just "There's a lot of fans, they have a lot of expectations, and that makes it a tough job." That's fair. He's not taking full responsibility but he's careful to avoid laying too much blame outright. And that's also fair. It's not like he actually "wrote" those Star Wars movies, at least not the same way he wrote some of the others he's credited with. Stuff like Star Wars doesn't have a "writer" in the traditional sense; what they have is a room full of people who just spitball ideas, and then they give it all to One Guy to put into A-B-C, Act I - Act II - Act III order. But the actual "stories" of the Sequel Trilogy were all done by a committee and then given to him to execute; it's not like any of the ideas were his.

He was essentially a typist or a stenographer, only given a "writer" credit due to union rules and such. Kind of unfair to put it all on this guy. He's merely trying to be diplomatic in the hopes that he'll one day get hired by Disney again. Can't fault him for that. ALL of the story decisions happened way above his pay grade, though, that much I can promise you.

[Xav]

Who the heck are you guys talking about? Because this David Koepp doesn't have a single Star Wars film credited to his name.

[oldmanwinters]

Here's another one of those "it's canon until we make a movie or episode that makes it not canon" announcements:
https://screenrant.com/star-wars-yod...m4bubgZxdeSt90

[Sumac]

It would be easier to not make a pile of garbage in the first place, then rewriting ****.
But Disney gonna Disney.

[sdp]

Rumors now that Disney is planning to retcon the sequel trilogy as a "what if" scenario with some time travel shenanigans introduced in rebels or something like that.

Sounds completely false and doubt it'll happen but as horrible as it sounds I'd actually like it. First it would mean Disney realized they ****ed up, second while a stupid idea that wouldn't fix things really at the very least it would diminish the sequel trilogy as "events that can happen" and it's a better alternative than what we currently have. Third, in a way it would mean that the previous clusterf-ck of EU is not entirely dead.

I don't see it happening but yes, I do want this retcon, thanks for playing with my feelings clickbait sites.

[Whatswiththeheadbands?]

Originally Posted by sdp

Rumors now that Disney is planning to retcon the sequel trilogy as a "what if" scenario with some time travel shenanigans introduced in rebels or something like that.

Sounds completely false and doubt it'll happen but as horrible as it sounds I'd actually like it. First it would mean Disney realized they ****ed up, second while a stupid idea that wouldn't fix things really at the very least it would diminish the sequel trilogy as "events that can happen" and it's a better alternative than what we currently have. Third, in a way it would mean that the previous clusterf-ck of EU is not entirely dead.

I don't see it happening but yes, I do want this retcon, thanks for playing with my feelings clickbait sites.

Doubt it. It made them lots of money, and that's what Di$ney cares about the most

[Leo656]

I seen it, but I doubt it. They already popped their wad. Carrie Fisher is dead. The other originals don't really want to come back. They can't revisit and do a "proper" Episode 7, 8 and 9 without the original series cast and they already f*cked that up. We'd only ever get to see "What Really Happened" as a comic book or novel or cartoon or something, and like Star Wars fans love to remind everyone, Only The Movies Count, everything else is fanfic.

So yeah, nah, just more wishful thinking. Should've gotten it right the first time. It should have been an easy nut to crack, but Disney could f*ck up a wet dream. They had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that can never be revisited and, true to form, they did the worst possible job with it.

Maaaaaybe it would've been plausible if Fisher hadn't offed herself like a dumbass. But that right there kills any chance.

[CyberCubed]

Originally Posted by sdp

Rumors now that Disney is planning to retcon the sequel trilogy as a "what if" scenario with some time travel shenanigans introduced in rebels or something like that.

Sounds completely false and doubt it'll happen but as horrible as it sounds I'd actually like it. First it would mean Disney realized they ****ed up, second while a stupid idea that wouldn't fix things really at the very least it would diminish the sequel trilogy as "events that can happen" and it's a better alternative than what we currently have. Third, in a way it would mean that the previous clusterf-ck of EU is not entirely dead.

I don't see it happening but yes, I do want this retcon, thanks for playing with my feelings clickbait sites.

There's no way this would happen, sounds like something angry Star Wars fans would make up on reddit/4chan