Star Wars Episode IX, The Rise of Skywalker, available on home video

[jenius]

I think that was in the movie.

[no3Ljm]

3 hours ago, Knight26 said:

On the whole, the new trilogy is plagued my a ton of issues, including a lack of singular vision.  Say what you will about the prequels, but with George riding honcho on it he had a singular vision of what he wanted to see happen.  Whether that translated properly to screen, and whether it was a good vision is not the point, he kept it on track.  The New Trilogy is just a mess and I have little faith in JJA to fix it in the span of a movie.

With all the things I've read, I think they really need to bring back George as a consultant. Besides, since these new hotshot storytellers (who btw claims they're fans of it) couldn't give the franchise some proper justice let the old master handle it.  

1 hour ago, Chronocidal said:

Actually.. I just realized something about TFA that has bugged me for a while, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.  The entire movie depends on the incomprehensible coincidence that Han just happened to be floating around at the right time and place to yank the Falcon into his cargo bay.  That's like randomly stepping on a needle on a planet covered in haystacks, and it painfully reminds me of the opening scenes of Star Trek Nemesis, where the crew just happens to suddenly detect another copy of Data somewhere in space.  

If they had actually written him to be looking for the Falcon at the time, it would have at least made passable sense.  But no.. he was in the middle of transporting a bunch of tentacle monsters in search of a doujinshi.  

It's Disney, where all things complicated becomes very convenient. 

 

[jenius]

Googe did give them an outline and while they did their own thing to it, there's nothing to indicate they're that far off from his vision. For example, George drew the outline for isolated and crazy Luke.

[Dynaman]

What they are missing is somone to ride herd on the directors - this isn't the place for someone to do their own thing each movie, they have to learn to work within a very strict set of guidelines - like you have to do with TV shows that have a season arc.

[Thom]

There were a couple lines of dialogue about the Falcon not being a 'clean' ship. So, if it can be tracked (because it has a tracking device on it) then Han finding it is not that hard to reconcile.

[Chronocidal]

Ok, sure, but there's a not-insignificant difference between a ship that's "trackable," and one that blasts "I'M RIGHT HERE COME GET ME" on every available broadcast frequency whenever it's up and running.

Of all the weird things to think they messed up in the new movies, it's that somehow, they managed to make space feel tiny.*

*Yes, I know JJ isn't directly responsible, but it's the exact same issue that plagued the Star Trek reboot.  No concept of scale, every planet was within a quick 5-minute warp distance, and they made the entire universe feel like it was the size of a neighborhood block.  If Voyager ever gets ported to the Kelvinverse, they'll be home within a day.

Edited August 13, 2019 by Chronocidal

[Knight26]

14 hours ago, Dynaman said:

What they are missing is somone to ride herd on the directors - this isn't the place for someone to do their own thing each movie, they have to learn to work within a very strict set of guidelines - like you have to do with TV shows that have a season arc.

It's not so much riding herd on the directors, but the writers.  In a TV show they have a show runner, who acts as a lead writer and yes, does ride herd on the directors as well.  Take the Marvel'verse Kevin Feige could be called the show runner for that once they decided to make it a giant interconnected universe before handing that off to the Russo Brothers.  Star Wars always needed that, a boss who oversaw and approved everything, and while you can say that was Kathleen Kennedy's job, I think she was too far up the food chain for that.  She's running Lucasfilm but not really running the movies.  You need someone like Dave Filoni to take the helm of the movies and keep them on course.  This brings us back to the big issue with TLJ in that RJ wrote and directed and wanted his vision to come to life, not the vision of Lucasfilm, or even Disney.  He wanted to throw out all of the old, kill the past, and move on.  But in the process he created a giant mess that I have serious doubts that JJA's team of hacks can clean up.  Heck, even if JJA had stayed on to keep the story moving in the right direction that could have been better, at least it would have been consistent and moving along a story arc.

[Knight26]

10 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Ok, sure, but there's a not-insignificant difference between a ship that's "trackable," and one that blasts "I'M RIGHT HERE COME GET ME" on every available broadcast frequency whenever it's up and running.

Of all the weird things to think they messed up in the new movies, it's that somehow, they managed to make space feel tiny.*

*Yes, I know JJ isn't directly responsible, but it's the exact same issue that plagued the Star Trek reboot.  No concept of scale, every planet was within a quick 5-minute warp distance, and they made the entire universe feel like it was the size of a neighborhood block.  If Voyager ever gets ported to the Kelvinverse, they'll be home within a day.

Don't get me started on the issues with JJ-Trek

[ErikElvis]

I said it before and I’ll say it again.  I’ve always been a huge star wars fan but am hardly looking forward to this next movie. 

[derex3592]

33 minutes ago, ErikElvis said:

I said it before and I’ll say it again.  I’ve always been a huge star wars fan but am hardly looking forward to this next movie. 

#samehere.  BUT...it will make millions and people will go see it, whether it gets rave reviews OR no matter how much the  lamestream media talks it up because it's a trainwreck. 

[Dynaman]

6 minutes ago, derex3592 said:

#samehere.  BUT...it will make millions and people will go see it, whether it gets rave reviews OR no matter how much the  lamestream media talks it up because it's a trainwreck. 

That is still up in the air.  Was Solo a one off problem or does it hint at a systemic problem caused by how bad episode 8 was?  Is the low crowd size at Galaxy's Edge caused by the normal crowds at Disney and a price increase designed to bring crowds down (personally I don't buy that for a minute, crowd control is one thing but historically thin crowds when a major new attraction opens is not what Disney was expecting) or is it also something systemic brought on by episode 8?  It is not impossible for Episode 9 to under perform badly, not bomb as such but not be the runaway blockbuster Disney is hoping for.

[Knight26]

Thought I might dust this off, my thoughts no how a simple rewrite of Ep-8 could have saved it.
 

 

The Last Jedi Fixes

There is nothing quite like a good Shrimp burrito, when all the ingredients are there in just the right proportions and combinations it is a flavor explosion that cannot be beat.  But, when the cook doesn’t prepare it right, using days old fillings, or the tortilla that’s been sitting just a little too long you get just a taste of the greatness, but not the whole experience.  That was the taste left in my mouth by The Last Jedi.

I’m not saying it is a terrible movie, at it’s core it was good with great potential, but it was mixed with stale ingredients, the wrong spices and wrapped up with tired cliches.  The scenes involving the Jedi were great, though sometimes a bit odd, but those were the core of the story that kept it from being terrible, though even they could have been better.  It could have been saved though, one more story revision and it could have been near perfect.  Here’s how I would saved it.

The biggest issue with the movie is one of timing.  The movie takes place too soon after the last and over too short a period of time.  It is a common misconception that in Empire, Luke was only on Dagobah for a few days, however it is established in canon that he was there for months as the Millenium Falcon trudged its way up to light speed and back down again on its much slower accelerating reserve hyperdrive.  The movie just does not make that clear, something a single line of dialogue could have fixed:  “We’re almost out of supplies too Lando, that reserve hyperdrive takes weeks to get you into hyperspace.”

The problems with the timing are massive.  The last movie ended with the Galaxy in utter chaos, the Republic capital has been destroyed, billions dead and its fleet scattered, this is bad for our heroes.  The First Order isn’t much better off, their capital has been blown away as well, but as a smaller overall force, they would be able to rally faster.  So give them a few months, 3-6.  The Republic will still be in disarray, and skip the evacuation of Resistance base, instead start with the pursuit.

The pursuit is 3-4 months on, the Resistance is haggard, down to just a few ships.  They have been unable to call for aid, unable to resupply, refuel, rearm, rest, think the episode 33 from the NuBSG.  Pilots and crews are all exhausted and the First Order is able to bring in its ships from throughout the galaxy to pursue them, each one coming with fresh crews as they track the Resistance through some unknown means.

In a desperate gambit, Poe leads a bomber force against a First Order dreadnaught, but not the stupid B-17s in space we got in the movie. Instead we get the new gen B-Wing (or its replacement) making torpedo runs with one final bomber, piloted by a good friend (or lover) of Poe making a suicide run into the soft spot of the ship.  But the bomber force is still devastated, giving Leia her excuse to demote Poe.

Meanwhile (3 months earlier)  Rey has her meeting with Luke, he still tosses the lightsaber and refuses to train her.  Cut to a montage of her waiting outside his hut for days on end before he finally opens the door to start “Training” her.  This plays homage to the old Kurosawa Samurai movies that also inspired Lucas.  Much of what happens from here on can remain relatively untouched, but maybe show a bit more training actually happening.

This takes us back to the Fleet battle.  Leia has been injured and the Admiral (in a proper military uniform, or keep Ackbar/the new general from Ep7 alive for Force sake) has taken over.  She/they reveals their plan (you know, respecting the intelligence of her troops instead of keeping them in the dark) that they are heading towards an old, disused base on the rim with a transmitter that can reach the remains of their allies and the scattered republic forces.  But, they only have so long they can wait to get there due to their dwindling supplies.  They need to lose their First Order pursuers and have only a few days to do so before they either run out of fuel or take their chances.  So, she order Poe and the newly revived Finn to find a way through the shields of the First Order flagship to destroy the tracker, sending them off on their sidequest.

Boom, we just deleted the second biggest issues with the movie, the Rose and Mutiny storylines.  Instead we get Poe and Finn off doing their buddy cop thing from Episode 7 more, developing and maybe rocking that friendship some more, no forced love story, no criminally bad fan service.

Now let me explain that Fan Service.  Rose is the worst kind of fan service, she is a fan replacement, a fan of the film in the film.  Her hero worship of Finn makes no sense in the timeframe of the movie as it stands, Finn would be little known at this point, especially amongst the lower level crew.  At most, they would have heard about the First Order defector who helped destroy Starkiller base, but not much else in a day or two.

You could also cut most of the slave/animal abuse angle.  Star Wars has always been for kids, yes.  But, the first two movies did so with minimal pandering, The Last Jedi pandered to the kid audience hard in those scenes, and it didn’t need to do so.

The character of DJ, a wasted performance, did not need to happen or turn traitor.  He could have been a legit ally, but what would have been better is this:  Have it be Captain Fasma instead.  We’ve never seen her face before this, so, while the audience might be in on her being coming betrayal, the characters would not.  Or have it be that he was working for her the whole time, and it was all a trap or setup to wear the Resistance fleet down, capturing Finn is just the icing on the cake.

The rest of the movie can play out largely the way it did, the hyperspace ram (most awesome scene in the movie) can still happen as a last ditch effort to get the Resistance planetside when the other plan fails, but keep the Admiral alive, an astromech could have piloted the ship at that point.  Rey can still show up when she does, the scenes with Snoke could be expanded, but would remain largely intact, as well as the fight between projected Luke and Kylo Ren, as it was the most Jedi thing ever for Luke to do.  But have Luke use Vader's lightsaber in the fight.  Imagine:  he ignites the red saber, Kylo demands it and tries to grab it.  Luke just looks at it, shakes his head and "concentrating" turns the blade to blue or green, enraging Kylo even more.

Even have there be minimal response to their call, but add one last thing, a rescue by the shattered republic.  Instead of only a few dozen people making it aboard the falcon, have it be a hundred or so crammed into a handful or dropships getting cover by a squadron of advanced X-Wings.  This gives us a bit more hope for the future, and maybe even a cameo by the real greatest pilot in Star Wars, Wedge Antilles, and even Lando.   Imagine:  Leia the other arrive at the Falcon with hundreds of survivors and start to lose hope because there is no way to fit them all on the Falcon.  A TIE swoops in only to explode and a T-75/80 X-Wing in Republic colors swoops by.  Everyone whoops in joy, cut into the cockpit, it's WEDGE MOTHER F'N ANTILLES "watch how a real pilot flies kid," clearly aimed at Poe and his Rogue Squadron holds off the 1st Order forces while numerous transports land to pick up the survivors.  On the lead transport the ramp descends and the suavest man in the galaxy, Lando, walks down to great his friends.  "Sorry it took me so long, had to pick out the right cape."  Leia, seen only from behind, then collapses in his arms (dealing with the loss of Carrie IRL) and they rush her aboard where she dies.

We then cut back to Luke on his rock, he disappears, but just as we are grieving the loss of Leia and Luke a hand, a right hand covered in skin, slaps onto the rock.  Have there be a faint shimmer, like a force ghost, but solid.

The movie could even close on the slave kid using the force, a clear sign that Jedi still exist and are being born.

Overall I think that covers the biggest story issues with the movie.  Does it address all the fan complaints, no, but it doesn’t need to.  The identity of Rey’s parents was fine, they didn’t need to be connected to the rest of the movies because it shows that anyone can be a Jedi and opens up the possibility for a huge number of Jedi in the future.  Snoke being a bit of a glass cannon was fine, though his identity should have been fleshed out, it showed that Kylo Ren was a real force to be reckoned with that he could fool his master in such a way.

As it stands, Episode 9 will have a very weak base to stand on after these last two films.  It has a lot of issues to address, the biggest of which is real life death of Carrie Fisher, something this movie should have fixed in reshoots.  I do not feel that the franchise stands on solid ground at the moment and with Abrams coming back to helm Episode 9, I do not have much hope.  Rogue One left me on a Star Wars high, Ep8, has dropped me back down, but I didn’t have my hopes high to begin with.

[Seto Kaiba]

13 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Of all the weird things to think they messed up in the new movies, it's that somehow, they managed to make space feel tiny.*

TBH, Star Wars always felt like it had this problem to me.

Almost every hyperspace jump in Star Wars seems to take less time than a regular commuter flight.  Except for that first jump from Tatooine to Alderaan where Obi-wan apparently had enough time to train Luke in the basic rudiments of the Force, the Millennium Falcon always seems like it gets where it's going in the space of just a few hours or less.  This speed of plot stardrive got even less subtle in the prequels where one-man Jedi starfighters were jumping all the way from the galactic core to the outer rim without so much as a potty break.  If you can travel a galactic radii in only a few hours, space feels tiny because technology has MADE it tiny.  The only other hyperspace jump that felt like it took a long time in the films was the one in Phantom Menace when the Queen's personal starship fled Naboo and flew to Tatooine.  

 

2 hours ago, Knight26 said:

*Yes, I know JJ isn't directly responsible, but it's the exact same issue that plagued the Star Trek reboot.  No concept of scale, every planet was within a quick 5-minute warp distance, and they made the entire universe feel like it was the size of a neighborhood block.  If Voyager ever gets ported to the Kelvinverse, they'll be home within a day.

Jar-Jar Abrams did, at least, build a half-assed excuse for this into the Star Trek reboot movies by establishing that the unnaturally advanced tech was reverse-engineered from late 24th century tech... so their warp drives feel faster because they literally are faster than their Prime universe contemporaries (by more than double).

[Bolt]

@Knight26 i like your premise better than how TLJ played out. Too bad these so called fans who are making Star Wars F'd it up. Honestly, both JJ & RJ are gonna have the haters cloud raining on them for the rest of their lives. Now they will know how Lucas felt. Or they can keep lying to themselves and look in the mirror while saying they pulled it off just fine and the fans don't get it..

As far as Solo and the Disney ride. The movie could have been a lot better. And the average Disney fan is probably getting SW fatigue.

[Knight26]

17 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

TBH, Star Wars always felt like it had this problem to me.

Almost every hyperspace jump in Star Wars seems to take less time than a regular commuter flight.  Except for that first jump from Tatooine to Alderaan where Obi-wan apparently had enough time to train Luke in the basic rudiments of the Force, the Millennium Falcon always seems like it gets where it's going in the space of just a few hours or less.  This speed of plot stardrive got even less subtle in the prequels where one-man Jedi starfighters were jumping all the way from the galactic core to the outer rim without so much as a potty break.  If you can travel a galactic radii in only a few hours, space feels tiny because technology has MADE it tiny.  The only other hyperspace jump that felt like it took a long time in the films was the one in Phantom Menace when the Queen's personal starship fled Naboo and flew to Tatooine.  

 

Jar-Jar Abrams did, at least, build a half-assed excuse for this into the Star Trek reboot movies by establishing that the unnaturally advanced tech was reverse-engineered from late 24th century tech... so their warp drives feel faster because they literally are faster than their Prime universe contemporaries (by more than double).

That got me thinking about how Hyperspace Jumps are shown in SW. 

In the OT, most on screen jumps seem to take place over several hours, with exception of Sullust to Endor, which makes sense as Sullust was the staging are for the Endor attack.

In the PT, I would again say that most, not all,  jumps take several hours.  Pilots carry relief bags in modern fighters so why wouldn't Jedi?  Also Jedi could meditate and sleep while enroute to places.

In the ST, We have a definite scale issue.  EP-7 keeps to the hours or less jump time for the most part.  Ep-8 due to the timescale issues already in place, yes hours or less, in some cases the jumps feel like they last for minutes.

Overall, I'd say most SW hyperspace jumps are hours to days in duration depending on distance travelled.  The on-screen evidence typically goes along with this;  characters having training, multiple convos, eating, changing clothes, sleeping.  That would still keep it in the realm of human endurance for pilots on solo-jumps, but they would likely launch attacks from staging points/carriers in nearby systems.


By Contrast:  Prime Trek has always established that Warp is limited and takes a great deal of time to get anywhere, with hard limits on how fast you can go with normal warp.  JJA and his writing crew didn't like that so, they cheated and made pretty much everywhere in the Alpha Quadrant reachable within a few hours or less.  They are more concerned with speed of plot then the actual writing, speed of plot is easy, keeping to set speeds and standards is harder.  ST:B might have tried to correct some of this, but given the limited warp travel seen in it, one long jump at the beginning, it is hard to tell.  But then Pegg is a better writer and would do better to keep it within established canon.
 

[Chronocidal]

43 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Jar-Jar Abrams did, at least, build a half-assed excuse for this into the Star Trek reboot movies by establishing that the unnaturally advanced tech was reverse-engineered from late 24th century tech... so their warp drives feel faster because they literally are faster than their Prime universe contemporaries (by more than double).

I'd say even half an ass is being too generous there.  I don't want to dig too deep into the Trek technobabbleverse, but unless they managed to throw a quantum slipstream drive into the JJ-Prise, nothing in that movie was going to work the way it did.  I know they kind of threw temporal contamination to the wind there, but that would require Spock single-handedly advancing TOS-era technology to post-Voyager levels (meaning the tech future Janeway hijacked to bring Voyager home early).

Even aside from the tech levels though... no amount of 'splaining is going to excuse the fact that Spock watched his homeworld dissolve into a black hole with his naked eyes, from a moon in orbit of that same planet.

Star Wars as a rule has pretty much always operated at the speed of the plot, and hyperdrive was always kind of assumed to be much faster than the actual speed of light, but until TFA, I don't think we never saw a hyperspace jump without a scene cut.  I don't recall if we saw that in the prequels, since I haven't watched them in a while, but the use of scene transitions at the start and end of hyperspace jumps (or even just long travel periods like in ESB) did a nice job of leaving you with a very vague sense of how long travel was actually taking.  It just worked well cinematically, even if it didn't hold up under intense scrutiny.

Rey jumping the Falcon at the end of TFA blew that out of the water, and made the entire "we don't know where Luke is" plot feel even more meaningless than it already did.  Seriously.. if we make the Evel Knievel-esque leap of logic that somehow that piece of space was missing from every available starmap known to everyone in the galaxy, did it never occur to anyone to look in that big empty space??  A little subtlety with the map discussions would have gone a long way to making it look not-ridiculous, but they had to go 500 lb gorilla-fisted with the visuals.

Of all the comparisons to make, AotC already did that plot, and managed to not make it look stupid, when Obi Wan went looking for Kamino, and found it was deleted from the Jedi Temple databanks.  When the prequels did something better and more sensibly than your movie, you need to look deep inside yourself and figure out where you went wrong.  

Edited August 13, 2019 by Chronocidal

[Dynaman]

> no amount of 'splaining is going to excuse the fact that Spock watched his homeworld dissolve into a black hole with his naked eyes, from a moon in orbit of that same planet.

 

I always thought that was a different solar system - which brings up a whole nother can of worms...

[Bolt]

It was within the same system. Im not sure it was a moon of Vulcan. Maybe Yoda knows

Edited August 13, 2019 by Bolt

[Thom]

1 hour ago, Chronocidal said:

Even aside from the tech levels though... no amount of 'splaining is going to excuse the fact that Spock watched his homeworld dissolve into a black hole with his naked eyes, from a moon in orbit of that same planet.

...snip

Wasn't this scene in TFA..? Oh, right, JJ was behind both scenes... I liked TFA and thought it was a good jumping off point for the trilogy, but yes, JJ doesn't seem to have much of a range of imagination. A quick fix for that would be to have the planetary destruction scenes on a view screen instead - or to try to not reuse the same plot device from movie to movie.

A big problem with TLJ was that it was a sequel that appeared to have no prequel. TFA was leading down a different path than TLJ was taken down.

16 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Ok, sure, but there's a not-insignificant difference between a ship that's "trackable," and one that blasts "I'M RIGHT HERE COME GET ME" on every available broadcast frequency whenever it's up and running.

Of all the weird things to think they messed up in the new movies, it's that somehow, they managed to make space feel tiny.*

*Yes, I know JJ isn't directly responsible, but it's the exact same issue that plagued the Star Trek reboot.  No concept of scale, every planet was within a quick 5-minute warp distance, and they made the entire universe feel like it was the size of a neighborhood block.  If Voyager ever gets ported to the Kelvinverse, they'll be home within a day.

I can imagine that Han was always looking for the Falcon, even when doing a cargo run. And if there is anybody capable of finding the Falcon (when she's in flight) then that's him.

As to how fast he reached them though, that I got nothing but the same complaint you do. As was stated above, convenience was allowed to override good story telling.

[Chronocidal]

Hm... obviously can be taken with a few billion grains of salt.. but the similarities might run even deeper than I first thought.

Suddenly Threepio's red arm makes a lot of really annoying sense.

Does not surprise me in the slightest about the merchandise kerfuffle though.  

Edited August 13, 2019 by Chronocidal

[Thom]

Wow, imagine being so salty as to want to jilt the father of the franchise, and the whole reason they are getting any money based on it in the first place, simply because they want 100%. Even with Lucas' cut, they would still be making mad-money.  Instead, they now have a tottering franchise on the verge of just being 'okay...'

As to the younger cast, I think they had to be there anyway, not so much for story but for the audience. Like the characters, the originals were getting old and younger audiences identify more with their own age group, so having a new and younger cast seems only normal.

 

[Chronocidal]

The younger cast is just par for the course, yes.

What does stink of this actually having some merit is exactly how "25% different" all of the designs come off as looking, when you think of it from that direction.

The designs of the prequels were all unique, some more radically than others, but they still managed to show a design lineage by sharing features.  A hefty chunk of stuff in the sequels can't be called an original design so much as a stylistic tweak of something that already existed.. more a "this year's model" approach to classic designs.

[Mommar]

5 hours ago, Knight26 said:

Thought I might dust this off, my thoughts no how a simple rewrite of Ep-8 could have saved it.
 

 

The Last Jedi Fixes

There is nothing quite like a good Shrimp burrito, when all the ingredients are there in just the right proportions and combinations it is a flavor explosion that cannot be beat.  But, when the cook doesn’t prepare it right, using days old fillings, or the tortilla that’s been sitting just a little too long you get just a taste of the greatness, but not the whole experience.  That was the taste left in my mouth by The Last Jedi.

I’m not saying it is a terrible movie, at it’s core it was good with great potential, but it was mixed with stale ingredients, the wrong spices and wrapped up with tired cliches.  The scenes involving the Jedi were great, though sometimes a bit odd, but those were the core of the story that kept it from being terrible, though even they could have been better.  It could have been saved though, one more story revision and it could have been near perfect.  Here’s how I would saved it.

The biggest issue with the movie is one of timing.  The movie takes place too soon after the last and over too short a period of time.  It is a common misconception that in Empire, Luke was only on Dagobah for a few days, however it is established in canon that he was there for months as the Millenium Falcon trudged its way up to light speed and back down again on its much slower accelerating reserve hyperdrive.  The movie just does not make that clear, something a single line of dialogue could have fixed:  “We’re almost out of supplies too Lando, that reserve hyperdrive takes weeks to get you into hyperspace.”

The problems with the timing are massive.  The last movie ended with the Galaxy in utter chaos, the Republic capital has been destroyed, billions dead and its fleet scattered, this is bad for our heroes.  The First Order isn’t much better off, their capital has been blown away as well, but as a smaller overall force, they would be able to rally faster.  So give them a few months, 3-6.  The Republic will still be in disarray, and skip the evacuation of Resistance base, instead start with the pursuit.

The pursuit is 3-4 months on, the Resistance is haggard, down to just a few ships.  They have been unable to call for aid, unable to resupply, refuel, rearm, rest, think the episode 33 from the NuBSG.  Pilots and crews are all exhausted and the First Order is able to bring in its ships from throughout the galaxy to pursue them, each one coming with fresh crews as they track the Resistance through some unknown means.

In a desperate gambit, Poe leads a bomber force against a First Order dreadnaught, but not the stupid B-17s in space we got in the movie. Instead we get the new gen B-Wing (or its replacement) making torpedo runs with one final bomber, piloted by a good friend (or lover) of Poe making a suicide run into the soft spot of the ship.  But the bomber force is still devastated, giving Leia her excuse to demote Poe.

Meanwhile (3 months earlier)  Rey has her meeting with Luke, he still tosses the lightsaber and refuses to train her.  Cut to a montage of her waiting outside his hut for days on end before he finally opens the door to start “Training” her.  This plays homage to the old Kurosawa Samurai movies that also inspired Lucas.  Much of what happens from here on can remain relatively untouched, but maybe show a bit more training actually happening.

This takes us back to the Fleet battle.  Leia has been injured and the Admiral (in a proper military uniform, or keep Ackbar/the new general from Ep7 alive for Force sake) has taken over.  She/they reveals their plan (you know, respecting the intelligence of her troops instead of keeping them in the dark) that they are heading towards an old, disused base on the rim with a transmitter that can reach the remains of their allies and the scattered republic forces.  But, they only have so long they can wait to get there due to their dwindling supplies.  They need to lose their First Order pursuers and have only a few days to do so before they either run out of fuel or take their chances.  So, she order Poe and the newly revived Finn to find a way through the shields of the First Order flagship to destroy the tracker, sending them off on their sidequest.

Boom, we just deleted the second biggest issues with the movie, the Rose and Mutiny storylines.  Instead we get Poe and Finn off doing their buddy cop thing from Episode 7 more, developing and maybe rocking that friendship some more, no forced love story, no criminally bad fan service.

Now let me explain that Fan Service.  Rose is the worst kind of fan service, she is a fan replacement, a fan of the film in the film.  Her hero worship of Finn makes no sense in the timeframe of the movie as it stands, Finn would be little known at this point, especially amongst the lower level crew.  At most, they would have heard about the First Order defector who helped destroy Starkiller base, but not much else in a day or two.

You could also cut most of the slave/animal abuse angle.  Star Wars has always been for kids, yes.  But, the first two movies did so with minimal pandering, The Last Jedi pandered to the kid audience hard in those scenes, and it didn’t need to do so.

The character of DJ, a wasted performance, did not need to happen or turn traitor.  He could have been a legit ally, but what would have been better is this:  Have it be Captain Fasma instead.  We’ve never seen her face before this, so, while the audience might be in on her being coming betrayal, the characters would not.  Or have it be that he was working for her the whole time, and it was all a trap or setup to wear the Resistance fleet down, capturing Finn is just the icing on the cake.

The rest of the movie can play out largely the way it did, the hyperspace ram (most awesome scene in the movie) can still happen as a last ditch effort to get the Resistance planetside when the other plan fails, but keep the Admiral alive, an astromech could have piloted the ship at that point.  Rey can still show up when she does, the scenes with Snoke could be expanded, but would remain largely intact, as well as the fight between projected Luke and Kylo Ren, as it was the most Jedi thing ever for Luke to do.  But have Luke use Vader's lightsaber in the fight.  Imagine:  he ignites the red saber, Kylo demands it and tries to grab it.  Luke just looks at it, shakes his head and "concentrating" turns the blade to blue or green, enraging Kylo even more.

Even have there be minimal response to their call, but add one last thing, a rescue by the shattered republic.  Instead of only a few dozen people making it aboard the falcon, have it be a hundred or so crammed into a handful or dropships getting cover by a squadron of advanced X-Wings.  This gives us a bit more hope for the future, and maybe even a cameo by the real greatest pilot in Star Wars, Wedge Antilles, and even Lando.   Imagine:  Leia the other arrive at the Falcon with hundreds of survivors and start to lose hope because there is no way to fit them all on the Falcon.  A TIE swoops in only to explode and a T-75/80 X-Wing in Republic colors swoops by.  Everyone whoops in joy, cut into the cockpit, it's WEDGE MOTHER F'N ANTILLES "watch how a real pilot flies kid," clearly aimed at Poe and his Rogue Squadron holds off the 1st Order forces while numerous transports land to pick up the survivors.  On the lead transport the ramp descends and the suavest man in the galaxy, Lando, walks down to great his friends.  "Sorry it took me so long, had to pick out the right cape."  Leia, seen only from behind, then collapses in his arms (dealing with the loss of Carrie IRL) and they rush her aboard where she dies.

We then cut back to Luke on his rock, he disappears, but just as we are grieving the loss of Leia and Luke a hand, a right hand covered in skin, slaps onto the rock.  Have there be a faint shimmer, like a force ghost, but solid.

The movie could even close on the slave kid using the force, a clear sign that Jedi still exist and are being born.

Overall I think that covers the biggest story issues with the movie.  Does it address all the fan complaints, no, but it doesn’t need to.  The identity of Rey’s parents was fine, they didn’t need to be connected to the rest of the movies because it shows that anyone can be a Jedi and opens up the possibility for a huge number of Jedi in the future.  Snoke being a bit of a glass cannon was fine, though his identity should have been fleshed out, it showed that Kylo Ren was a real force to be reckoned with that he could fool his master in such a way.

As it stands, Episode 9 will have a very weak base to stand on after these last two films.  It has a lot of issues to address, the biggest of which is real life death of Carrie Fisher, something this movie should have fixed in reshoots.  I do not feel that the franchise stands on solid ground at the moment and with Abrams coming back to helm Episode 9, I do not have much hope.  Rogue One left me on a Star Wars high, Ep8, has dropped me back down, but I didn’t have my hopes high to begin with.

Could have been three words.  Re-write episode 7.

[pengbuzz]

A fix for this entire thing (prequels and sequels), leaving only the original trilogy:

Everything except ANH, ESB and ROtJ turn out to be a fever induced dream Luke was having while in the Bacta tank at Hoth station, after the Wampa attack. You could end The Rise of Skywalker with Luke waking up suddenly in the tank, and the medical droid signalling to pull him out.

Just cast Sebastian Stan as Luke, take 5-10 minutes to film it, and the entire SW universe is set back to rights. Easy -Peasy.

[Bolt]

That would be great! And an awesome joke on everyone 

As far as the YouTube link @Chronocidal posted, some of THAT rumor is sticking to the wall , as far as I'm concerned..

Edited August 14, 2019 by Bolt

[Seto Kaiba]

12 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

A fix for this entire thing (prequels and sequels), leaving only the original trilogy:

Everything except ANH, ESB and ROtJ turn out to be a fever induced dream Luke was having while in the Bacta tank at Hoth station, after the Wampa attack. You could end The Rise of Skywalker with Luke waking up suddenly in the tank, and the medical droid signalling to pull him out.

Just cast Sebastian Stan as Luke, take 5-10 minutes to film it, and the entire SW universe is set back to rights. Easy -Peasy.

Wasn't that the joke that was doing the rounds when Star Wars VIII's title was revealed?

That the whole story arc would be The Force Awakens The Last Jedi From His Nap?

[kalvasflam]

I think the overriding problem with Star Wars is its audience, or to be more precise, what the director and writer thinks his audience is like.  Society in 1977 is far different than it is in 2017.   So, the writer and then the director does their work according to what they think will drive that core audience.  Primarily who they want the audience to be and what they think society will accept that will drive more revenue in the future of the franchise.  

Han's "I know" moment in ESB if it was done today would totally be unacceptable and viewed as chauvinism of the worst kind.  No one would've batted an eye at Jar Jar in 1977, in 1999, Jar Jar was considered a racial caricature by the audience, while Lucas must've thought it was cute, and the technical marvels involved in doing such a CGI creature.  Fast forward to TLJ, we end up with social justice as a noticeable part of the movie because it's now part of the progressive culture. 

And by the way, the people who writes and directs this stuff, sees the reaction from the past, and then gauges on how to change to script appropriately to satisfy what they think is the target audience.  The problem is, catering to the young invariably piss off the older fans.  When the younger generation don't take to the interpretation of the film, the whole thing becomes a steaming pile garbage.

They should've probably left Lucas at the helm I think.  It would've worked better, Lucas would've been at least some what consistent, even if he had to retcon Ep 1 to 6 all over again.

[Knight26]

7 minutes ago, kalvasflam said:

I think the overriding problem with Star Wars is its audience, or to be more precise, what the director and writer thinks his audience is like.  Society in 1977 is far different than it is in 2017.   So, the writer and then the director does their work according to what they think will drive that core audience.  Primarily who they want the audience to be and what they think society will accept that will drive more revenue in the future of the franchise.  

Han's "I know" moment in ESB if it was done today would totally be unacceptable and viewed as chauvinism of the worst kind.  No one would've batted an eye at Jar Jar in 1977, in 1999, Jar Jar was considered a racial caricature by the audience, while Lucas must've thought it was cute, and the technical marvels involved in doing such a CGI creature.  Fast forward to TLJ, we end up with social justice as a noticeable part of the movie because it's now part of the progressive culture. 

And by the way, the people who writes and directs this stuff, sees the reaction from the past, and then gauges on how to change to script appropriately to satisfy what they think is the target audience.  The problem is, catering to the young invariably piss off the older fans.  When the younger generation don't take to the interpretation of the film, the whole thing becomes a steaming pile garbage.

They should've probably left Lucas at the helm I think.  It would've worked better, Lucas would've been at least some what consistent, even if he had to retcon Ep 1 to 6 all over again.

I think you are on the right track here.  What made the OT timeless was that it was just that, timeless.  While it harkened back to the classic era movies and WW2 Nazi-ism there wasn't anything about it that screamed 70s/80s (other than hair and effects).

The PT came out at the end of our last bout with Outrage Culture, hence the backlash against Jar Jar and Neimodians being racist caricatures.  But, look at it this way, it was harkening back to even earlier cinema and pre-WW2 aesthetic.

The problem with the New Trilogy is that they are pandering to the Outrage Cultural group and losing the rest of the audience.  I had no issue with a female Jedi lead when it was first announced, but when they Mary Sued her, yes I had issues with how she was written.  Black Storm Trooper, who might also be a Jedi, seriously, only OC people had issue.

Unlike, say Marvel, who has a great pulse on the fans, the makes or the SW-NT have no idea what the fans want.  What movie did we react best to?  Rogue One.  And why?  Because it was Star Wars, no BS modern politics, a diverse cast of interesting characters and a coherent story.

Had the makers of the NT wanted to make a more modern Star Wars then their take on the First Order is all wrong.  The FO in the NT is Empire Lite, a bunch of wannabes and Neo-Nazis.  Make them the Terrorists this time, backed by some mysterious benefactor (Snoke and others) that are wreaking havok through the Galaxy.  But they pull off a successful 9-11 in that they destroy all those worlds and plunge the galaxy into chaos.  We never get the real impact of what the FO did in Ep7.  We never see the Galaxy in chaos after all that destruction.

Also StarKiller Base was just plain stupid.  IT would have made far better sense to have it be some kind of Eclipse type Star Destroyer that was a mobile ship capable of busting a planet.  And to drive home the terror angle, not to blow up a world, but to crack it open, shatter the crust and expose the mantle, people die screaming in panic and fire and that all gets transmitted as they hit the next world, and the next.  That really brings it into the modern world.  But again, OC would be against that as being too much of a 9-11 allegory and anti-muslim.  But the rest of the movie could have been left, largely, unchanged, though do some things to tone down the Mary-Sue.  Star Wars, the new trilogy especially, could really do with some inner voice stuff going on to explain things, especially how Rey grasped using the Force so quickly.  I could go into that more, but only if people ask.

[Seto Kaiba]

11 minutes ago, kalvasflam said:

I think the overriding problem with Star Wars is its audience, or to be more precise, what the director and writer thinks his audience is like.

I'm inclined to disagree in part... because Star Wars always had problems making its concepts into something someone would actually want.

George Lucas's original scripts for Star Wars were a pile of hot garbage so unworkable that Harrison Ford told him "George, you can write this sh*t, but you sure can't say it".  The thing that made Star Wars's original trilogy into a classic was that George Lucas was surrounded (forcibly) by a group of talented individuals who were there to hold his leash and restrain his creative excesses to ensure that what made it into the script and onto the screen was something someone besides George Lucas would find palatable.

After Lucas and his minders turned out three hit films and the property lapsed into a period where no new development occurred for over a decade, people kind of forgot that our boy George succeeded because his creative output was being aggressively filtered.  He was given a free rein, and the godawful mess that aggressive filtering had kept the audience insulated from started to leak out all over Star Wars.  We got Phantom Menace and the racist caricatures infesting it, the memetically awful child Anakin, famously wooden acting on the parts of multiple actors, and a pair of sequels with the worst love story this side of Twilight.  

From where I stand, the problem is Star Wars fans.  Not just the fandom in general, but the promoted fanboys working on Star Wars as well.  Nobody outside of Star Wars's die-hard fanbase gave a damn that Disney got rid of the Expanded Universe, but for that (admittedly large) demographic it was a thrown gauntlet and a lot of them went into TFA determined to hate it regardless of its quality or lack thereof.  The people working on the films, who grew up with Star Wars, are developing the kind of stories THEY want to tell... which is, yes, in "bad fanfiction" territory.  There are some good ideas among the heavily derivative dross, but they're unpolished and the Disney corporation is sanitizing it all to ensure that there's nothing in there which might deeply offend general audiences because Disney is all about family-friendliness.  Just like the Star Wars Expanded Universe, they tripped themselves up by making a direct sequel to Return of the Jedi that included an obligatory Happy Ending Override because, damn it all, Star Wars fans don't give a tinker's damn about a story which doesn't involve Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia. 

The group that's being pandered to - the pandering that's making Star Wars such a mess - is the Star Wars fanbase.  They tried to make The Force Awakens appeal to Star Wars fans who were determined to hate any future sequel for not following the old EU by putting in all kinds of familiar plot beats and references, and fans hated it for being derivative.  They panicked, and tried to appeal to the Star Wars fandom by doing something radically different and subverting expectations... but the fans hated THAT just as much.  The irony is that they tried twice to pander to Star Wars fans with really obvious fanfiction-y stories (Rogue One and Solo), and managed a perfect 50/50 split between "love" and "loathe" based on how much it shook up the sacred cow that is pre-existing Star Wars lore.

 

42 minutes ago, kalvasflam said:

Fast forward to TLJ, we end up with social justice as a noticeable part of the movie because it's now part of the progressive culture. 

It's always been like that.  Popular fiction in general has ALWAYS been like that.  This is not new.

(Seriously, go back and look at the stuff you watched as a kid.  They weren't making even a token effort to hide it... to the extent that it was extremely common for characters to stop and address the audience directly about whatever Aesop the show was about that week.)

 

30 minutes ago, Knight26 said:

The problem with the New Trilogy is that they are pandering to the Outrage Cultural group and losing the rest of the audience.

Yet general audiences seem to be pretty OK with the new trilogy... the ones getting outraged, and the ones whose outrage Disney is pandering to, are the Star Wars fans. 

It'd be nice if Disney didn't make identity politics such a big part of its marketing for the first one, but that's not really the underlying problem.

 

30 minutes ago, Knight26 said:

Unlike, say Marvel, who has a great pulse on the fans, the makes or the SW-NT have no idea what the fans want.  What movie did we react best to?  Rogue One.  And why?  Because it was Star Wars, no BS modern politics, a diverse cast of interesting characters and a coherent story.

... I'd question how good Marvel's read of its fans is, given their track record on the small screen.

The politics is still there in Rogue One... Star Wars fans just overlooked it, as they did in the original trilogy, because the quality of the writing was better and because it tied into the parts of Star Wars the fans are so devoted to the memory of without actually impacting anything.

[Mog]

22 hours ago, Dynaman said:

That is still up in the air.  Was Solo a one off problem or does it hint at a systemic problem caused by how bad episode 8 was?  Is the low crowd size at Galaxy's Edge caused by the normal crowds at Disney and a price increase designed to bring crowds down (personally I don't buy that for a minute, crowd control is one thing but historically thin crowds when a major new attraction opens is not what Disney was expecting) or is it also something systemic brought on by episode 8?  It is not impossible for Episode 9 to under perform badly, not bomb as such but not be the runaway blockbuster Disney is hoping for.

I’ve said this before, but as soon as I heard First Order for Galaxy’s Edge, I was out.

Don’t really care for the Sequel Trilogy and neither do my kids.  Add Disneyland’s ridiculously overpriced tickets, and yeah, it becomes an easy pass.

I like Hondo Onaka (sp?) and the Falcon.  But the limitations and practicalities of being a multi-person ride kinda ruin the idea of running the Falcon.

I’d love to pilot the Falcon, but in a big-ass open sandbox environment, complete with the freedom the fly any which way I choose.

It ain’t enough to press a button that shoots the Falcon’s guns, I wanna be in that rotating gunner seat, spinning around, looking for, and gunning down strafing TIE’s.

The ride will probably pale in comparison to those fantasies.  It’s just part of the  practicalities of being a high-volume theme park ride.

[kalvasflam]

Seto, 

I tend to think Rogue One was overlooked because the focus was more on the action, and the "familiar settings."  It was certainly not the in your face style of work done in TLJ where literally they started incorporate all different types of themes that overshadowed the story, you could cut out half the movie, and the story would still flow.  There is a right balance between subtlety and screaming crap in your face.   Added to the fact that TLJ's focus on story and action was just so bad, it makes the movie not worth it.  The Luke moment was so disappointing, the action so contrived and outside the norms set by other Star Wars movie, it made people question why the rebels just didn't build a bunch of cheap blockade runners run by droids and suicide them against star destroyers via hyperdrive and won the war that way.  The problem was always there, but TLJ screamed it out loud in your face.  TFA had some of the same problems with plot and consistency, but at least, there, you could see them trying to stick to lore in some respect.

Disney and RJ tried to appeal to a wider audience beyond the base, and then they went to make the movie relateable to the masses, but they completely forgot that we go to the movies to escape from the day to day outrage culture and the barrage of crap we see in the news.  If I want a story about inequality, racism, and female empowerment, I can turn on CNN, or surf the web, or watch a bunch of other films, I don't need to pay Sideshow Bob a fee for that. 

But in the end, it is still all about the audience, and what the writers and directors think about the perception of the audience.  We'll see if the last one does anything to make right the steaming pile of crap called TLJ.  As the old dude said, time to set things right.  

 

[Kanedas Bike]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I'm inclined to disagree in part... because Star Wars always had problems making its concepts into something someone would actually want.

George Lucas's original scripts for Star Wars were a pile of hot garbage so unworkable that Harrison Ford told him "George, you can write this sh*t, but you sure can't say it".  The thing that made Star Wars's original trilogy into a classic was that George Lucas was surrounded (forcibly) by a group of talented individuals who were there to hold his leash and restrain his creative excesses to ensure that what made it into the script and onto the screen was something someone besides George Lucas would find palatable.

After Lucas and his minders turned out three hit films and the property lapsed into a period where no new development occurred for over a decade, people kind of forgot that our boy George succeeded because his creative output was being aggressively filtered.  He was given a free rein, and the godawful mess that aggressive filtering had kept the audience insulated from started to leak out all over Star Wars.  We got Phantom Menace and the racist caricatures infesting it, the memetically awful child Anakin, famously wooden acting on the parts of multiple actors, and a pair of sequels with the worst love story this side of Twilight.  

From where I stand, the problem is Star Wars fans.  Not just the fandom in general, but the promoted fanboys working on Star Wars as well.  Nobody outside of Star Wars's die-hard fanbase gave a damn that Disney got rid of the Expanded Universe, but for that (admittedly large) demographic it was a thrown gauntlet and a lot of them went into TFA determined to hate it regardless of its quality or lack thereof.  The people working on the films, who grew up with Star Wars, are developing the kind of stories THEY want to tell... which is, yes, in "bad fanfiction" territory.  There are some good ideas among the heavily derivative dross, but they're unpolished and the Disney corporation is sanitizing it all to ensure that there's nothing in there which might deeply offend general audiences because Disney is all about family-friendliness.  Just like the Star Wars Expanded Universe, they tripped themselves up by making a direct sequel to Return of the Jedi that included an obligatory Happy Ending Override because, damn it all, Star Wars fans don't give a tinker's damn about a story which doesn't involve Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia. 

The group that's being pandered to - the pandering that's making Star Wars such a mess - is the Star Wars fanbase.  They tried to make The Force Awakens appeal to Star Wars fans who were determined to hate any future sequel for not following the old EU by putting in all kinds of familiar plot beats and references, and fans hated it for being derivative.  They panicked, and tried to appeal to the Star Wars fandom by doing something radically different and subverting expectations... but the fans hated THAT just as much.  The irony is that they tried twice to pander to Star Wars fans with really obvious fanfiction-y stories (Rogue One and Solo), and managed a perfect 50/50 split between "love" and "loathe" based on how much it shook up the sacred cow that is pre-existing Star Wars lore.

 

It's always been like that.  Popular fiction in general has ALWAYS been like that.  This is not new.

(Seriously, go back and look at the stuff you watched as a kid.  They weren't making even a token effort to hide it... to the extent that it was extremely common for characters to stop and address the audience directly about whatever Aesop the show was about that week.)

 

Yet general audiences seem to be pretty OK with the new trilogy... the ones getting outraged, and the ones whose outrage Disney is pandering to, are the Star Wars fans. 

It'd be nice if Disney didn't make identity politics such a big part of its marketing for the first one, but that's not really the underlying problem.

 

... I'd question how good Marvel's read of its fans is, given their track record on the small screen.

The politics is still there in Rogue One... Star Wars fans just overlooked it, as they did in the original trilogy, because the quality of the writing was better and because it tied into the parts of Star Wars the fans are so devoted to the memory of without actually impacting anything.

 

4 hours ago, kalvasflam said:

Seto, 

I tend to think Rogue One was overlooked because the focus was more on the action, and the "familiar settings."  It was certainly not the in your face style of work done in TLJ where literally they started incorporate all different types of themes that overshadowed the story, you could cut out half the movie, and the story would still flow.  There is a right balance between subtlety and screaming crap in your face.   Added to the fact that TLJ's focus on story and action was just so bad, it makes the movie not worth it.  The Luke moment was so disappointing, the action so contrived and outside the norms set by other Star Wars movie, it made people question why the rebels just didn't build a bunch of cheap blockade runners run by droids and suicide them against star destroyers via hyperdrive and won the war that way.  The problem was always there, but TLJ screamed it out loud in your face.  TFA had some of the same problems with plot and consistency, but at least, there, you could see them trying to stick to lore in some respect.

Disney and RJ tried to appeal to a wider audience beyond the base, and then they went to make the movie relateable to the masses, but they completely forgot that we go to the movies to escape from the day to day outrage culture and the barrage of crap we see in the news.  If I want a story about inequality, racism, and female empowerment, I can turn on CNN, or surf the web, or watch a bunch of other films, I don't need to pay Sideshow Bob a fee for that. 

But in the end, it is still all about the audience, and what the writers and directors think about the perception of the audience.  We'll see if the last one does anything to make right the steaming pile of crap called TLJ.  As the old dude said, time to set things right.  

 

Nothing really to add to the conversation other than to say that you both bring up really outstanding points. As an extremely casual fan I really did (still do) have a hard time understanding or agreeing with so much of the hate being leveled at the sequel trilogy (outside of some of the bad/odd writing choices in TLJ).

Not trying to pander or anything like that, but it's nice to see people take the time to articulate their opinions that are respectful of different perspectives or thoughts on the subject. 

Honestly I just want to go see a good Star Wars movie, I enjoyed TFA, TLJ had a couple of good moments and I'd love for this trilogy to close out on a high-note.  

-b.

[Smacky]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

After Lucas and his minders turned out three hit films and the property lapsed into a period where no new development occurred for over a decade, people kind of forgot that our boy George succeeded because his creative output was being aggressively filtered.  He was given a free rein, and the godawful mess that aggressive filtering had kept the audience insulated from started to leak out all over Star Wars.  We got Phantom Menace and the racist caricatures infesting it, the memetically awful child Anakin, famously wooden acting on the parts of multiple actors, and a pair of sequels with the worst love story this side of Twilight.  

Racist caricatures in The Phantom Menace?  I’m guessing you’re talking about the Gungans or maybe the trade federation?  I have no idea but I don’t see George Lucas as a racist.  You can literally find a form of racism in any movie you watch, if you’re looking hard enough to find it.  To be honest, I don’t know how anybody walks into a movie trying to find out all the social injustices that are portrayed in a movie unless it’s something very blatant and intended.  Our society is shifting in a way that soon everything will be offensive to one person or another and movies still just plain suck. 

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

From where I stand, the problem is Star Wars fans.  Not just the fandom in general, but the promoted fanboys working on Star Wars as well.  Nobody outside of Star Wars's die-hard fanbase gave a damn that Disney got rid of the Expanded Universe, but for that (admittedly large) demographic it was a thrown gauntlet and a lot of them went into TFA determined to hate it regardless of its quality or lack thereof.  The people working on the films, who grew up with Star Wars, are developing the kind of stories THEY want to tell... which is, yes, in "bad fanfiction" territory.  There are some good ideas among the heavily derivative dross, but they're unpolished and the Disney corporation is sanitizing it all to ensure that there's nothing in there which might deeply offend general audiences because Disney is all about family-friendliness.  Just like the Star Wars Expanded Universe, they tripped themselves up by making a direct sequel to Return of the Jedi that included an obligatory Happy Ending Override because, damn it all, Star Wars fans don't give a tinker's damn about a story which doesn't involve Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia. 

I think you're over generalizing the fandom and I have to wholeheartedly disagree with what you're saying. 

I don't know where you get off saying fans went into TFA determined to hate it.  Yes, my friends and I were peeved when Disney trashed the EU, but we were still optimistic and looking forward to the new trilogy.  We enjoyed TFA, ranking it as the 4th best SW movie at the time, Rogue One has since surpassed it in our opinion.  I think with an 87% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, this is the general sentiment amongst die hard and casual fans alike.  Sure, TLJ was a piece of junk that I wish I could un-watch and erase from my memory, but most SW fans I know went into this new trilogy with an open mind. 

I'm not sure where you're getting bad fanfiction territory from either.  JJ Abrams basically stole ideas from multiple successful EU story lines and from the original trilogy and amalgamated them into TFA.  I always found JJ to be somewhat unoriginal (Star Trek Into Darkness The Return of Khan anyone?).  TLJ was written by Rian Johnson and that wasn’t so much as a SW story as it was someone trying to shove their political ideology down our throats.  He is also in my estimation nowhere near being a Star Wars fan. 

Not all EU storylines are centered around the 3 heroes.  Off the top of my head, there is the X-Wing series, the Boba Fett trilogy, the Old Republic series, etc…all good storylines where where the 3 heroes make cameo or no appearances at all. 

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The group that's being pandered to - the pandering that's making Star Wars such a mess - is the Star Wars fanbase.  They tried to make The Force Awakens appeal to Star Wars fans who were determined to hate any future sequel for not following the old EU by putting in all kinds of familiar plot beats and references, and fans hated it for being derivative.  They panicked, and tried to appeal to the Star Wars fandom by doing something radically different and subverting expectations... but the fans hated THAT just as much.  The irony is that they tried twice to pander to Star Wars fans with really obvious fanfiction-y stories (Rogue One and Solo), and managed a perfect 50/50 split between "love" and "loathe" based on how much it shook up the sacred cow that is pre-existing Star Wars lore.

Again, I don’t see any hate from fans for TFA, if you could please show me you’re getting this idea from.  JJ tried to make this movie appeal to the broad general audience which I think he succeeded in doing.  The movie earned over 2 billion at the box office and I don’t see a need to panic here as you stated and change direction for TLJ.  It is because Rian Johnson tried to pander to a specific audience, on top of making a trash movie, are Disney in panic mode and trying to right the ship with RoS.  Rogue one was in own rights a successful movie, generating over 1 billion at the box office with an 84% audience score.  Solo was an unfortunate casualty of the hate that was generated by TLJ. 

[Chronocidal]

24 minutes ago, Smacky said:

Again, I don’t see any hate from fans for TFA, if you could please show me you’re getting this idea from.  JJ tried to make this movie appeal to the broad general audience which I think he succeeded in doing.  The movie earned over 2 billion at the box office and I don’t see a need to panic here as you stated and change direction for TLJ.  It is because Rian Johnson tried to pander to a specific audience, on top of making a trash movie, are Disney in panic mode and trying to right the ship with RoS.  Rogue one was in own rights a successful movie, generating over 1 billion at the box office with an 84% audience score.  Solo was an unfortunate casualty of the hate that was generated by TLJ. 

I think at least some portion of the fanbase has developed a distaste for TFA retroactively, just from being associated with TLJ, or being associated with Disney's path with the franchise in general.  Personally I hate how they just eschewed all pretense of making a stand-alone story, and gave you the movie equivalent of DLC in the form of novels that tried to pave over the landscape full of plot holes.

At the core though, TFA is a paint-by-numbers photohop of the original trilogy, like a mashup of the individual movie posters that looks good at a distance.  If you get up close, you start to see the problems, like the shadows and lighting that come from different directions, or the random portion where people are wearing concept-art versions of clothing, or the bit where they edited out someone's mechanical limb to avoid spoiling it.  

Is it a decent movie?  Yeah, I'd say so, I enjoyed it.  It had some great character moments, and was overall fun to watch.  But for me personally, there were a lot of really ham-handed aspects that left me cringing from the get-go, and they're by and large storytelling issues.  It just wasn't a good story, because it was sloppily constructed on what I would consider to be a pile of really flimsy pretenses.  They couldn't decide on whether something should change, or just stay the same, and in the end it didn't really do anything but rehash a bunch of things we'd already seen before, in even less believable ways.

TLJ just took the smoking jalopy and Mythbustered it by strapping a hyperdrive to it before suicide jumping it into a smoking crater in the middle of the franchise.

Edited August 14, 2019 by Chronocidal

[Seto Kaiba]

4 minutes ago, Smacky said:

Racist caricatures in The Phantom Menace?  I’m guessing you’re talking about the Gungans or maybe the trade federation?  I have no idea but I don’t see George Lucas as a racist.

Both, actually... it's fairly blatant in both cases, though Jar-Jar's borderline minstrel show shenanigans really took the cake.  

I doubt it ever even occurred to George that they might be seen as offensive.  Previous generations had much lower standards for that kind of thing.  The things I've heard my own grandmother say... and she's only ten years George's senior.

 

4 minutes ago, Smacky said:

You can literally find a form of racism in any movie you watch, if you’re looking hard enough to find it.  To be honest, I don’t know how anybody walks into a movie trying to find out all the social injustices that are portrayed in a movie unless it’s something very blatant and intended.  Our society is shifting in a way that soon everything will be offensive to one person or another and movies still just plain suck. 

In all honesty, I disagree with your assessment... our society is gradually and collectively coming to the realization that there's no actual reason to continue to tolerate the racist and sexist bullsh*t that previous generations took for granted and enforced.  It's not about getting offended, it's about having some standards as a society that professes to believe that all men were created equal.

 

4 minutes ago, Smacky said:

I don't know where you get off saying fans went into TFA determined to hate it.  Yes, my friends and I were peeved when Disney trashed the EU, but we were still optimistic and looking forward to the new trilogy.

... the colossal amounts of Star Wars fan grumbling about almost every aspect of the film revealed beforehand, from Rey and Finn being "diversity" casting choices, to fans carping that it wasn't the Thrawn saga, down the line to people b*tching about how Phasma's armor didn't look like women's armor (read: "sexy").

You and your friends might not have, but a LOT of Star Wars fans did.  A lot more came to the party after the fact, as evidenced in pretty much every thread about the new trilogy on these forums. 

 

4 minutes ago, Smacky said:

I'm not sure where you're getting bad fanfiction territory from either.  JJ Abrams basically stole ideas from multiple successful EU story lines and from the original trilogy and amalgamated them into TFA.

A lot - and I mean A LOT - of the EU was exactly that... bad fanfiction.

Mind you, just blatantly knocking off existing plots is a staple of bad fanfiction writing too.

 

4 minutes ago, Smacky said:

He is also in my estimation nowhere near being a Star Wars fan. 

You're not exactly the arbiter of who is and who isn't a fan... which tends to render this objection invalid.

 

4 minutes ago, Smacky said:

Not all EU storylines are centered around the 3 heroes.  Off the top of my head, there is the X-Wing series, the Boba Fett trilogy, the Old Republic series, etc…all good storylines where where the 3 heroes make cameo or no appearances at all. 

But the majority of them ARE... a handful of exceptions doesn't make the general rule false and you know it.