A place for complete-off-topic conversations that have nothing to do with Star Trek. The rules still apply here, stay civil.
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By Boffo97 (Dave Hines)
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#554823
So, according to this article, one big reason why the Star Wars sequel trilogy failed was that there was never a grand plan for where these characters and the story was supposed to go. The idea was that J. J. Abrams was to direct Episode VII, Rian Johnson Episode VIII and Colin Trevorrow Episode IX, with each director deciding for themselves where the story would go with what they were handed.

So Johnson, by the deal that was set up was entirely within his rights to say "Rey's parents? Turn out they don't matter. Snoke? Doesn't matter. Ship tease between Rey and Finn? Doesn't matter." etc.

When Trevorrow left the project, Abrams was brought back in, and basically tried to doesn't matter Johnson's doesn't mattering and force things back to his vision.

All of this leads me to this: Fine, have each director do their own thing but how do you even start something as huge as sequels to the original trilogy without at least a basic plan of who these characters are and where you want them to go?
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#554830
Tyberius_Deangelo wrote: Tue Jun 01, 2021 2:55 pm Disney owns Marvel and told a pretty good line of stories (what, 17 films?) that led up to Endgame. But they could not organize three Star Wars movies to tell a decent story? Massive failure from the top of Disney down.
Different departments, basically.

Can't remember where this was pointed out to me, but if you go look up the 2018 Disney financials (i.e. "in the Before Times"), Disney "Studio Entertainment" (the movie people) made than half the revenue of Parks and Resorts *or* Media Networks. (Media made $24.5B, Parks/Resorts made $20.3B, Entertainment made just under $10B.)

Disney isn't a movie company - they're a theme park company and broadcaster that makes their own productions as feedstock. Which explains that for all the nerd-rage about "big changes at Disney because of Star Wars" nothing really happened - everyone still stomped into the theme parks to buy fancy lightsabers, and that's where the money is.
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By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
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#554866
I'm going to Devil's Advocately defend their decision to do this trilogy with no plan. It was obviously was a completely disastrous failure in implementation, but I can kinda see how they arrived at the decision to do the sequel trilogy this way.

Basically, they're trying to make a new Star Wars trilogy. What's the essential ingredient of all Star Wars trilogies?

That's right: George Lucas making everything up as he goes along, then lying his face off and saying he had a plan the whole time.

The results of this creative process can be quite lovely, especially when George Lucas's powerful creative and directorial vision is harnessed and channeled by someone with authority over him. My (limited) understanding is that A New Hope is as much Marcia Lucas's film as George's, and that The Empire Strikes Back is as much Lawrence Kasdan's as George's.

So you let really creative, talented artists into this playground of George Lucas's mind, you see what they come up with, and then you pass it off to the next guy to riff on it some more. Star Wars is poetry, sure... but really great Star Wars is scat.

This creative churn can really augment the original plan, even if the original plan is pretty good. We see that happening in the evolution of the original Star Wars trilogy, we see it in the way DS9 had a vague plan but kept incorporating new elements into it as the writers discovered them, we see it in how (CONTROVERSIAL TAKE) Babylon 5's rigidity kept it from achieving its full potential, and I've seen it myself in making my own show -- various other writers for my show have contributed ideas that have led to drastic improvements to the original series arc. (Abrams gets all this exactly right in that interview.)

So I'm thinking that Disney was thinking, "We're not going to rely on one static brain to deliver one trilogy with a single unified vision like LOTR or the prequels or the rigid destination of the Marvelverse; we're going to embrace Star Wars's happy-go-lucky attitude, make like the Original Trilogy, and improvise!"

It could have been amazing.

It wasn't.

Four reasons I think it failed:

1. They didn't have George Lucas. Sure, Marcia Lucas saved ANH in the editing bay. Sure, Larry Kasdan saved Empire by being great. But George Lucas was also essential -- he did have a (vague) central vision and forced his co-creatives back to it. This moderate tension created balance in the force -- the movies couldn't go too far into Lucas's weird proclivities OR go too far off the rails from external pressure. Get rid of Lucas, though, and there's no core of continuity through the full trilogy. (On the other hand, get rid of the outside perspective, get rid of the people who can say "no" to Lucas, and Lucas ends up running everything. That's how you get the prequels. Disney's plan here could be seen as an overreaction against how the prequels got made.)

2. They hired JJ Abrams to establish the future universe. Abrams is good at characters, good at teasing, horrible at worldbuilding, and his plotting is mostly rapid-fire spaghetti with jokes. His Star Wars was a mess. A fun mess, but not a universe that was easy to build onward from.

3. Johnson was apparently given zero ground rules, and nobody bothered to confirm that he actually wanted to make a movie building on Abrams' movie, and was thus allowed to reject the heart of The Force Awakens. As anyone who watches improv comedy knows, you can't do good improv by trying to override a bad audience prompt or a weird direction your fellow performer takes it -- you have to follow it and try to build on it, maybe gently draw it back in a more amenable direction. Johnson didn't. He tried to raze TFA and build his own thing instead.

3a. Instead of hiring a third director to try to build on the other two movies and draw them together into a healthy conclusion, they re-hired Abrams, who spitefully razed Johnson right back, so all three movies in this trilogy are at war with each other. That's not improv, it's just ugly.

4. They also didn't give Abrams enough time.

4a. Also, Abrams is terrible at endings and everyone knows this, so what are you guys doing?!? (Answer: they were too cowardly to take a risk on, say, Lorde and Miller and too desperate to meet the deadline to wait for anyone else.)

There is a version of the sequel trilogy out there, floating somewhere in what Russell T. Davies calls The Maybe, which is both 100% improvised with no plan and the greatest set of Star Wars movies ever. But that was not the set of sequels we got, because even an unplanned trilogy needs an assertive consistent creative vision (like George Lucas, apparently unlike Kathleen Kennedy), it needs the ground rule that everyone needs to cooperate and build up not bicker and tear down, and it needs to not hire a terrible endings-man to write the ending. Improv is always a risk, but they set themselves up for failure in a big way here.
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#554871
BCSWowbagger wrote: Wed Jun 02, 2021 2:01 am (CONTROVERSIAL TAKE) Babylon 5's rigidity kept it from achieving its full potential
Yep, that is a controversial take. :)

Not saying that B5 is perfect (it's television, and by the very nature of episodic production you can't go back and fix the scene in S2E1 when you get to S3E10 and the actor who is supposed to recur ditches you for another role - for just a random example ;) ), but I think B5's singular "this is The Story" is it's strength, not the weakness. And the fact that it goes toe-to-toe with DS9 - a show with *twice* it's episode budget, and holds up well as a solid example of how to even do the whole "oh, you're supposed to watch these in ORDER?!?" arc television.

I don't think they had to have three shooting scripts written for the New Trilogy, but then they shouldn't have tried to make a Trilogy - just go Bond style and make standalone episodic films. But if you want to make a three-act story (and especially when you have Disney/Lucasfilm money behind you, so it's not like you're worried about not getting to film 'em all!), you should at least have an agreement on what the hand-offs are going to look like.
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By Boffo97 (Dave Hines)
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#554878
I agree that you didn't need an ironclad plan, but at the very least have broad strokes of the story in mind and go through the characters asking "Who's this person? What's their deal? Where are they at the beginning of the story? Where do we want them at the end of the story?" There would also be a check against Star Wars continuity for the developments as Johnson seemed to be going in a "Jedi should have never existed" direction but it's established that with no Jedi, all that's left are Sith.

Also I agree strongly with James' comparison of what should have happened with improv. You'll often see on a show like Whose Line Is It Anyway the actors obviously dislike some development in a scene but will roll with it for the sake of comedy rather than try to force it back to what they want.

Of course, another factor against them (especially for Episode XI) was Carrie Fisher's untimely death. If it were me, I'd reshoot some stuff (even at the cost of delaying the movie, which might not have been financially feasible to Disney accountants) so that the Luke-Kylo "fight" wasn't Luke's projection, but Leia's. (And hopefully we're past reasonable spoiler warning on that) It kills her, and that's the first thing Luke feels once he reopens himself to the Force. And in a better world, the first thing he HEARS is Palpatine laughing, and that's your end to The Last Jedi.

Then in TFR, Luke comes to the Resistance, and somewhere along the way, we get a duel between Kylo and Luke where Luke explains what happened was a momentary mistake, Kylo accuses him of lying, and Luke urges him to search his feelings. Palpatine attempts to betray Kylo, Luke saves him and completes his Redemption Equals Death moment to turn Ben and send him on his own Redemption Equals Death saga helping Rey.
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#554879
Boffo97 wrote: Wed Jun 02, 2021 1:35 pm There would also be a check against Star Wars continuity for the developments as Johnson seemed to be going in a "Jedi should have never existed" direction but it's established that with no Jedi, all that's left are Sith.
I suppose it depends on how closely you meld Sith/Jedi with Evil/Good. I liked the TLJ take that the problem was that you have two teams fighting and neither was actually *accomplishing* anything. (Which melds nicely with Prequel Jedi being kinda dicks.)
And in a better world, the first thing he HEARS is Palpatine laughing, and that's your end to The Last Jedi.
I'd punt Palpy, myself - but if we want that throughline, then you gotta punt Snope. (Again, since I like the "breaking the cycle" angle better, I was liking the take that the kids are becoming aware that they're just repeating the motions again, and then TFR becomes a "what happens when the two sides realize that this is all pointless because the rich buggers over there are playing us both"?)
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By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
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#554894
Boffo97 wrote: Wed Jun 02, 2021 1:35 pm I agree that you didn't need an ironclad plan, but at the very least have broad strokes of the story in mind and go through the characters asking "Who's this person? What's their deal? Where are they at the beginning of the story? Where do we want them at the end of the story?" There would also be a check against Star Wars continuity for the developments as Johnson seemed to be going in a "Jedi should have never existed" direction but it's established that with no Jedi, all that's left are Sith.
Ultimately, you're right, and obviously right; I just tried to make the best Devil's Advocate argument for Disney that I could.

It's all pretty darn sad, really. I would love to see Rey, Poe, and Finn get one more movie together, and just have it be an actual good movie, so they can ride off into the sunset on that.
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