The Rolling Stone conducted an interview with Kathleen Kennedy.
https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-features/lucasfilm-president-kathleen-kennedy-interview-rise-skywalker-future-star-wars-912393/

Personally I was upset (in unreasonable fan mode) about a couple things. At one point she complains about not having source material. And all I can do is scream in my head "BECUASE YOU THREW IT ALL IN THE TRASH!" But I realize that may have all been the Mouses's call and not hers.

And of course I still seriously dislike her for 'loving' what Rian Johnson did to Episode XIII.

What are your thoughts? And where the hell is my Bobba Fett movie?

It's on Disney+. And she is president of Lucasfilm and could always choose to bring back parts of that thrown away EU material instead of tarnishing the parts she left intact with the new fiction.

If her comment was in reference to Episodes 7, 8 and 9, then she's right. There is no established material to write from. They are not adaptations.

If she's talking SW as a whole, then she's nuts and has just proven beyond any doubt that she should not be running the creative side of Lucasfilm.

I've been saying for awhile they need to replace her with Filoni. Filoni's the guy behind clone wars, rebels, and the mandalorian.. generally SW he's involved in is SW at it's best because he tends to use the old material and build on it while not being restricted by it.

"Lack of source material"...? Okay, at first I was content to say I did not like the direction things were going under her, but now I am convinced she's just stupid.

That's like pissing your pants while camping in the forest because you couldn't find a bathroom.

Like all things Disney, this interview is so thoroughly sanitized that it tells us precisely nothing: “all is well, everything is wonderful.” Except it’s obviously not.

even a major media outlet is suggesting she might be done.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-wars-uncertainty-extends-kathleen-kennedys-disney-future-1256357

the hollywood reporter isn't some right wing vlog with an axe to grind. it's a long running legit news paper, as I understand it. so yeah IMHO unless episode 9 does really well, and is widely praised as a worthy finalle to the saga, Kennndy's goose is cooked. Disney spent BILLIONS on the SW IP. they want to be able to capitalize on it.

the article is absolutely right that Kennedy isn't a visionary, and thats what SW needs. not some....... beurcrat

BrianDavion wrote:
the hollywood reporter isn't some right wing vlog with an axe to grind. it's a long running legit news paper, as I understand it. so yeah IMHO unless episode 9 does really well, and is widely praised as a worthy finalle to the saga, Kennndy's goose is cooked. Disney spent BILLIONS on the SW IP. they want to be able to capitalize on it.

A lot of those "right wing Vloggers" were spot on about a bunch of things, but the moment they started being critical- other publications and personalities immediately leapt at them with bogus accusations and poisoned the well. I'm one of the first to say "take the rage merchants with a grain of salt", but many of them were levying honest criticism and if you go and look at their material regarding Star Wars from about 2014-2015, they were extremely excited and thrilled about Star Wars and the new saga.

And the merch sales are terrible. According to my buddy that works at a collectables store, and who is a huge figure collector- the Star Wars stuff from the movies just isn't selling. And a lot of it is... really terribly executed. Seriously, why make action figures in 5 different scales? Sure, GI Joe did this... kinda. Rarely were they marketing all of the same line of characters at the same time in multiple scales (usually 2 at most, 12" collectables and the smaller guys). Transformers... well, they kinda get a pass because they were always different scales. Any idiot in touch with collectors and children could have told you that you find a scale and stick to it, because that's what kids play with and that's what collectors want.

Yo but I saw them Legos yesterday and I ain't gonna lie, I'm tempted.

BrianDavion wrote:
the article is absolutely right that Kennedy isn't a visionary, and thats what SW needs. not some....... beurcrat

I heard- and don't quote this as gospel, or something I truly 100% take to heart... but apparently the 'creative process' was less people getting together with an artistic vision and more people sitting down with data and graphs saying "this is what people want, based on internet stuff, here's some sales trends, let's make it do this" and.... that's not always effective, and it lacks soul. I don't know if this was true, or partially true... but the new movies seem to lack that creative spark and soul that was present even in the prequels.

Also, someone needs to tell me how to best go about painting X-Wing models.

I’ll say this, I appreciate that KK is calling me one of the “custodians of this story” rather than a “manbaby.”

But that’s probably because she’s lightyears’ more commercially saavy than poor Rian.

 Manchu wrote:
I’ll say this, I appreciate that KK is calling me one of the “custodians of this story” rather than a “manbaby.”

But that’s probably because she’s lightyears’ more commercially saavy than poor Rian.

I get that there's a toxic portion of literally any fanbase, ever. But at a certain point, you have to know how to ignore idiots.

When the creatives and professionals in entertainment get combative with the fanbase, normal people just avoid it. The way they make these things seem is that if you don't like it, you're the enemy of one group and if you do like it you're the enemy of the other. It's just a bunch of poop-slinging and most people would rather just avoid it all and go watch something else, rather than be caught in the middle of that childishness.

Also, the only person I've seen that acted like Rian was Uwe Boll, and I'm sure I'm not the only person that noticed. And I imagine some drew correlations there as well...

Has anyone seen Rian and Uwe at the same place and the same time?


*Puts on conspiracy theory hat*

It's interesting that having to make new material for a story is remarked upon as some sort of hardship and not business as usual. I mean, I know remakes are thr popular, safe thing in the committee room but to actually complain about not being able to copy/paste story elements when that's your job?

Cray cray

If she's not gak-canned shortly after December's release of the last film, she'll definitely be "reassigned" or moved, or the studio will adopt a new posture, or some business-speak for removing her.

The latest rumours are:

1) Everything Star Wars related is on hold and being reviewed for further consideration (according to the big man himself)
2) Rian has been back pedaling on his further involvement with Star Wars (and the rumours of his trilogy have evaporated)
3) D&D from Games of Thrones have been let go of their Star Wars commitments, though they hopped over to Netflix and are claiming it's simply a schedule clash...sure...
4) KK has been critiqued more and more about her personnel issues, which basically boil down to: "do we have the same politics and will you do everything I say?"
5) The rumours are that Star Wars is risky business for established actors/writers/directors right now - with endless people being fired/remove, etc. Apparently the House of Mouse is actually getting negative responses when seeking established and accomplished acting talent (though there is likely no shortage of young up and comers eager to prove themselves).

The list of actors, directors, writers who've been sacked mid-Star Wars project over the past five years is staggering. It's a literal blood bath.

Disney knows that the final saga film will still be a billion dollar product (or at the very least 850 million - 1.2 billion if I had to guess), but beyond that? The good will has been spent. It's fething gone. The nostalgic fans were lost after the last film, the remnants who are willing to just finish the saga films for closure will soon follow. Star Wars hasn't built a new fan base to replace them. It's still an easy meal ticket in my opinion, but the plans were probably for immense profit, and for the first time in a long time that's being called into question.

Perhaps TV series in the vein of Mandalorian are the safer bet. The budget, despite being massive for a TV show, is probably less than a major film - and being episodic it may be possible to steer a show mid-season, chasing audience response?

You know, when I grew up hunting in the woods... I learned that when you see a lot of animals moving away from an area... there's probably something really nasty there.

Star Wars is starting to look like that spot in the woods that gets quiet.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
the hollywood reporter isn't some right wing vlog with an axe to grind. it's a long running legit news paper, as I understand it. so yeah IMHO unless episode 9 does really well, and is widely praised as a worthy finalle to the saga, Kennndy's goose is cooked. Disney spent BILLIONS on the SW IP. they want to be able to capitalize on it.

And the merch sales are terrible. According to my buddy that works at a collectables store, and who is a huge figure collector- the Star Wars stuff from the movies just isn't selling. And a lot of it is... really terribly executed. Seriously, why make action figures in 5 different scales? Sure, GI Joe did this... kinda. Rarely were they marketing all of the same line of characters at the same time in multiple scales (usually 2 at most, 12" collectables and the smaller guys). Transformers... well, they kinda get a pass because they were always different scales. Any idiot in touch with collectors and children could have told you that you find a scale and stick to it, because that's what kids play with and that's what collectors want.

Yo but I saw them Legos yesterday and I ain't gonna lie, I'm tempted.

As far as the collectibles go I think the answer is obvious. A casual fan will buy a ticket and watch the movie. A hardcore fan watches the movie, buys all the merchandise, gets their kids stuff and all sorts of things including making a den of geekdom on said franchise. Disney screwed over their hardcore fans. The fact their merchandise isn't selling is that simple. Unfortunately you have to please a bit of both types of fans. Hardcore fans tend to be annoying and hate change but they are loyal and will buy your most over-priced garbage because they love the franchise. Casual fans have no loyalty and sorta float away at the whims of a breeze.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
As far as the collectibles go I think the answer is obvious. A casual fan will buy a ticket and watch the movie. A hardcore fan watches the movie, buys all the merchandise, gets their kids stuff and all sorts of things including making a den of geekdom on said franchise. Disney screwed over their hardcore fans. The fact their merchandise isn't selling is that simple. Unfortunately you have to please a bit of both types of fans. Hardcore fans tend to be annoying and hate change but they are loyal and will buy your most over-priced garbage because they love the franchise. Casual fans have no loyalty and sorta float away at the whims of a breeze.

I've seen Star Wars fans hurl obscene amounts of money at collectables. Stuff that doesn't even make sense, sometimes. You burn them, and there goes your merch. I don't even think kids actually buy action figures any more. They're for grown dudes, they just put them in the toy department as a test- if we really want it, and we're sure about it- we will walk through Wal-Mart with an actual figure in the cart. That's how you know it's not an impulse buy, you gotta work for it and take those ego bruises.

I would think someone who grew up in the woods would have a more resilient ego then that!

I hide my action figures under boxes of tampons.

The Black Series The Mandalorian figure was pretty much impossible to find the moment it came out and was initially in toy aisles but collector/resellers scooped them up with a quickness and now to get it you generally have to be lucky or pay extra online. There was one in a different box at Target and goes for much much more and was also a toy aisle item; there are still adults stalking the toy aisles; fear them.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I hide my action figures under boxes of tampons.

Now there’s someone with a bruise-proof ego!

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I hide my action figures under boxes of tampons.

The tampons should go underneath to protect the cardstock from potential water damage.

 Ahtman wrote:
The Black Series The Mandalorian figure was pretty much impossible to find the moment it came out and was initially in toy aisles but collector/resellers scooped them up with a quickness and now to get it you generally have to be lucky or pay extra online. There was one in a different box at Target and goes for much much more and was also a toy aisle item; there are still adults stalking the toy aisles; fear them.

Spoiler:

I think that says something, rather then produce large eneugh amounts so kids can get them, often the msot desired toys are produced in artifcally low amounts. Disney seems to be not putting out the RIGHT Tiys... case in point, the complete LACK of Rey's when TFA came out.

 warboss wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I hide my action figures under boxes of tampons.

The tampons should go underneath to protect the cardstock from potential water damage.

Why? That card stock is going straight into the recycle bin.

 Ahtman wrote:
The Black Series The Mandalorian figure was pretty much impossible to find the moment it came out and was initially in toy aisles but collector/resellers scooped them up with a quickness and now to get it you generally have to be lucky or pay extra online. There was one in a different box at Target and goes for much much more and was also a toy aisle item; there are still adults stalking the toy aisles; fear them.

On the bright side, if you want a Rose Tico or a Supreme Leader Snoke toy, most stores still have boxes of them.

BrianDavion wrote:
... case in point, the complete LACK of Rey's when TFA came out.

The #Where'sRey thing was kind of a media beatup. The fact that you can still find Force Awaken's Rey's in stores is telling of this.

Afraid Hasbro need to carry the can somewhat.

TFA figures were rubbish. Same articulation as the originals, cack paint jobs, too few accessories. And all for the same price as previous, far nicer figures. Oh, but they also threw in some ‘construct a gun’ bits.

And figures with good articulation and details etc? Oh that’s not Black Series. That’ll be £5 extra, Mr Allan.

Was also a sod to find them in the U.K. unless you lived in a city.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
"Lack of source material"...? Okay, at first I was content to say I did not like the direction things were going under her, but now I am convinced she's just stupid.

What she means, as HBMC said, is that they didn't have ready made story which they could adapt, like Marvel did with Infinity Gauntlet storyline. They did have Lucas' own concept for third trilogy but apparently it wasn't too great. And I think few people would have been excited about adapting old post-RotJ Star Wars EU storylines for big screens.
Of course, cynic would point out that they then decided to use OT as a source material...

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Afraid Hasbro need to carry the can somewhat.

TFA figures were rubbish. Same articulation as the originals, cack paint jobs, too few accessories. And all for the same price as previous, far nicer figures. Oh, but they also threw in some ‘construct a gun’ bits.

And figures with good articulation and details etc? Oh that’s not Black Series. That’ll be £5 extra, Mr Allan.

Was also a sod to find them in the U.K. unless you lived in a city.

Yeah, this is a big part of it. The action figures are just crap next to the range that was out there in the RotS to Clone Wars years. Less detail, less articulation, and barely any resemblance to the actors. Sure, as someone who grew up on those toys there's probably a little bit of rose-tinting going on, and there were certainly some stinkers back then, but by and large they had it down to a fine art at the end. A vast range extending to things like Jedi or Clone commanders that had a single scene, tons of articulation and props, superb detail and build quality... I'd honestly love to have a few of the new characters to stick up on the shelf beside my old ones, but not at twice the price for half the quality. Much the same thing as the difference between the original and frankly amazing run of LotR figures and the later, worse, more expensive Hobbit ones.

If I had to guess at why, I think it's basically because they decided that kids who were actually going to, y'know, play with these toys and derive some joy from them as my generation did were not worth it as a market, to sell to them you're competing with far more (especially in the world of video games) than you were fifteen years ago. So instead they pitch to the collector's market, and that in turn means higher prices and lower quality; No point in props or joints when they're never going to come out of the packaging, and collectors will pay whatever price you put on it, either because their soul enjoyment of the toy is simply owning the product or because they'll double their money in a few years easily.

It's not just the action figures either. The Lego kits cost twice what they used to, the toy blasters and sabers are flimsy and cheaply made compared to the ones as had as a kid (which survived many a ham-fisted back garden showdown, bet the new ones wouldn't stand up nearly as well to that kind of thing and come with health and safety warnings against duelling younger brothers for hours at a time ).

Of course. it's not just that. The toy industry itself is in trouble, as the collapse of Toys'R'Us attests to, but I think this might be something of a vicious cycle. Kids are perceived to be less into toys, so toys are made worse, so kids like them less, repeat until the industry is in the state it's currently in. But I do think Hasbro have only got their own lack od effort to blame for SW toys failing as badly as they supposedly have. Of course, there's more to SW merch than toys, and more to the toy industry than SW, but I do think this is all linked.

The collapse of Toys'R'Us was due to predatory asset-stripping filthbags.

And the fact that collectors aren't buying the newer toys either suggests either they do care about the quality afterall, or else there really is a lack of enthusiasm for the new films among much of the "hardcore" fanbase.

Example?



Poe Dameron figure from the TFA selection. This is not a bootleg. This is not pre-production. This is the finished article. One they flogged for £12 a pop. Look at that solid yellow visor. The awkward stance. It's just a terrible figure.

Contrast and compare to say.....close approximation? Pilot Luke from 'Original Trilogy Collection'



Colossal difference in quality. And if memory serves, the latter was cheaper than the former.

Now, they did improve somewhat with TLJ. Here's my favourite from that line, Resistance Gunner Paige.



Same articulation as (Tinky Winky, Dipsy, La La) Poe, which was disappointing. But, the detailing is far closer to Luke.

Separate helmet and rebreather are a really nice addition. I just wish they'd given her a holster for her blaster.

This one was £14, if memory serves. And one of the few TLJ I bought - mostly because I couldn't find them, and when I did, the price put me off.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 warboss wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I hide my action figures under boxes of tampons.

The tampons should go underneath to protect the cardstock from potential water damage.

Why? That card stock is going straight into the recycle bin.

Unless you buy two of each and keep one NIB, you're dead to me.

Backfire wrote:
What she means, as HBMC said, is that they didn't have ready made story which they could adapt, like Marvel did with Infinity Gauntlet storyline. They did have Lucas' own concept for third trilogy but apparently it wasn't too great. And I think few people would have been excited about adapting old post-RotJ Star Wars EU storylines for big screens.
Of course, cynic would point out that they then decided to use OT as a source material...

Yeah, had they not unilaterally jettisoned the EU stuff, they could have used Zahn's material, for example. Especially since, you know, they partly did anyway in other places. If they really felt that some elements could have been done better or differently, they could have just modified them rather than throwing out a ready-made, already popular series. Instead, they actually chose to go whole-cloth with their own thing. Then lament how they had a lack of source material? Only in their mind was that the case...

Not to mention the whole "I'm creative director for this franchise, but making stuff up is hard. Even though that's technically, y'know, my job."
She basically just admitted to being incompetent at her job.

So I haven't seen the interview, but when she says "not enough material" does it seem like she probably means "not enough material as we are limited by fan expectation to keep pumping out nostalgia because when we tried something new (TLJ) many people hated it"?

Just a theory

-

Bran Dawri wrote:
Not to mention the whole "I'm creative director for this franchise, but making stuff up is hard. Even though that's technically, y'know, my job."
She basically just admitted to being incompetent at her job.

Is the creative director's job actually making stuff up, or is that the job of the art and writing staff? I know she said "that's technically her job" but I'm not sure that's really accurate. I think at best they do the broad strokes but it's more of a management position, wrangling the other teams along with advertising and merchandising and so on.

I'm not certain, of course.

Hi.

I'm a fraud and scam investigator. My job is really quite difficult.

Therefore, I'm incompetent?

There are reasonable interpretations of her quote but they all tend to at least fall flat and/or are tone deaf. She's technically correct (the best kind of correct!) in that they didn't have a novel for Episode 9 as a follow up from TLJ to borrow from... but that was the result of years of her leadership. They had a sequel trilogy treatment from George Lucas that she (along with Alan Horn and Bob Iger) decided not to use. They also had decades both figuratively (in universe) and literally (in real life) of plot post ROTJ that they could have adapted but they instead chose to abandon it. I never expected them to base the inevitable sequel trilogy whole cloth on EU fiction but I did hope that they would instead incorporate/adapt/update parts of it for the modern era. I never expected the one two punch of abandoning the EU in one fell swoop and then releasing the worst two movies (TFA and TLJ) the IP had ever seen IMO.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Bran Dawri wrote:
Not to mention the whole "I'm creative director for this franchise, but making stuff up is hard. Even though that's technically, y'know, my job."
She basically just admitted to being incompetent at her job.

Well, in her "defense", making it up isn't technically her job. Hiring and overseeing the people making stuff up and ensuring that their end product is a financial (and to a lesser extent critical) success is her job. As for the incompetent part, we'll see in one month. November of 2019 has actually been the first positive month for me at least with regards to Star Wars with the release of the Mandalorian and the Fallen Order game both getting good receptions from die hard fan critics but we'll have to see if that is a fluke or if things are indeed actually getting better.

 Galef wrote:
So I haven't seen the interview, but when she says "not enough material" does it seem like she probably means "not enough material as we are limited by fan expectation to keep pumping out nostalgia because when we tried something new (TLJ) many people hated it"?

Just a theory

-

Well, maybe. But, still, lets look at what the question was:

Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow was slated to write and direct Episode IX before you brought J.J. Abrams back in. Is this final entry in the trilogy a particularly hard nut to crack?

Every one of these movies is a particularly hard nut to crack. There’s no source material. We don’t have comic books. We don’t have 800-page novels. We don’t have anything other than passionate storytellers who get together and talk about what the next iteration might be.

Here's the thing, they already chose to go down that road by trying, with TFA, to do something whole-cloth. There was no 800 page novels for a trilogy? Well, no, because you (that is Disney), jettisoned all the novels for some reason or other. And yeah, I get that the whole choice to move all the EU to "Star Wars Legends" thing was likely not her decision. But, she is representing Disney and the Star Wars brand, so unfortunately for her, she is going to have to bear the consequences of all the decisions made on the part of the whole, as reflected on the whole.

So, Disney put it all on hard-mode, when they could have just adapted Zahn's Thrawn trilogy, for example. That was their choice and they are likely bearing, for good reason, the consequences of that choice. I guess I'm just mean and don't feel bad at all that they made a poor choice and now face the consequences of it?

I honestly think, maybe, that they were just drunk off MCU's success and figured, "we don't need the stupid EU stuff, we can do it better ourselves!" I mean, a lot of the EU stuff was stupid and poorly written, but some of it had merit, actually had a good Star Wars "feel" that likely would have worked better than what they actually ended up putting out.

Oh imagine the whining if they adapted the Thrawn trilogy.

#notmythrawn

#should'vecastXnotY

#whyThrawnIwantedRogueSquadron

etc etc etc etc etc.

Clean slate does away with that - much as JJ Abrams created an alternate Star Trek timeline, doing away with concerns about canonical minutiae.

Also, let's be clear about this. They couldn't have adapted the Thrawn trilogy. Mark Hamil is not in his 30's anymore. At best they could have adapted the way later EU books that followed adult Solo kids.

Rogue squadron maybe could have been adapted if they just never showed anyone from the OT because again, those actors all old now and can't really do the events during and immediately following it anymore.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Oh imagine the whining if they adapted the Thrawn trilogy.

#notmythrawn

#should'vecastXnotY

#whyThrawnIwantedRogueSquadron

etc etc etc etc etc.

Clean slate does away with that - much as JJ Abrams created an alternate Star Trek timeline, doing away with concerns about canonical minutiae.

Yeah I agree with that. In general I think wiping the slate clean is the right approach, but there's nothing wrong with using the EU for inspiration

-

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Hi.

I'm a fraud and scam investigator. My job is really quite difficult.

Therefore, I'm incompetent?

Interviewer: "I'm here with Mad Doc!. So tell me Mad Doc, would you say [particular part of your job] is especially difficult?"

Mad Doc: "Every part of my job is especially difficult because I don't have a procedure handbook I can follow to make my important decisions for me."


Fin.

At the least, they could have incorporated broad strokes of the background to make the universe feel alive and connected to the Ot. Instead we have films with nebulous organizations with inconsistent scale fighting for undefined stakes. Nothing about the new films feels like it takes place in a bigger galaxy or developed in a sensible way from ROTJ.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Oh imagine the whining if they adapted the Thrawn trilogy.

#notmythrawn

#should'vecastXnotY

#whyThrawnIwantedRogueSquadron

etc etc etc etc etc.

Clean slate does away with that - much as JJ Abrams created an alternate Star Trek timeline, doing away with concerns about canonical minutiae.

Ok Kathleen Kennedy.

 warboss wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 warboss wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I hide my action figures under boxes of tampons.

The tampons should go underneath to protect the cardstock from potential water damage.

Why? That card stock is going straight into the recycle bin.

Unless you buy two of each and keep one NIB, you're dead to me.

I’ve got some bad news for you....


Actually, I’m in it for the micromachines...which they don’t make any more for some reason. Yet they make a whole dollar store wall’s worth of crappy, redundant action figure variants.

It probably doesn’t help that the kids who lived Star Wars 5 years ago have no interest in seeing Episode 9. They’d rather watch Bey Blades than Star Wars, and that’s a show with less action and lower stakes than Days of Our Lives.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
At the least, they could have incorporated broad strokes of the background to make the universe feel alive and connected to the Ot. Instead we have films with nebulous organizations with inconsistent scale fighting for undefined stakes. Nothing about the new films feels like it takes place in a bigger galaxy or developed in a sensible way from ROTJ.

Yeah, this. I mean, I wasn't clear enough in my terminology. By "adapted" I didn't really mean adapt the book direct to film. I more meant, reinterpret the Thrawn trilogy as presently makeable films.

Yeah, some people will complain that it isn't exact. Whatever, some people will complain no matter what you do or don't do. But, at least having source material puts everyone on roughly the same teleological aim with the trilogy. Gives the whole thing a unified structure and vision. Would it be perfect? Of course not. But this clean slate, let people just make Star Wars whatever they want, with whatever details they want, does not, demonstrably, lead to a cohesive set of movies as far as I could tell.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:


I’ve got some bad news for you....


Actually, I’m in it for the micromachines...which they don’t make any more for some reason. Yet they make a whole dollar store wall’s worth of crappy, redundant action figure variants.

It probably doesn’t help that the kids who lived Star Wars 5 years ago have no interest in seeing Episode 9. They’d rather watch Bey Blades than Star Wars, and that’s a show with less action and lower stakes than Days of Our Lives.

I won't criticize; the last Star Wars toys I bought (if you don't count tabletop gaming related items like X-wing and the old WOTC prepainted miniatures) were the transformers. And I opened them all (and took them apart to use in my old Star Wars RPG campaign!). The soap reference I got.. had to google Bey Blades though. Not a boomer but I feel like one right now.

Ok, so, Thrawn Trilogy ala 2015...

A long time ago in a galaxy far,
far away. . . .

STAR WARS
Episode VII
Heir To The Empire



It is a time of peace.
The former heroes of the Rebel Alliance
have restored freedom to the Galaxy
and created a NEW REPUBLIC.

Chancellor Leia Organa has heard rumours of a
new leader amongst the REMNANTS of the evil
Galactic Empire. She has secretly
sent her brother Luke Skywalker,
husband Han Solo; and her twin children
Jacen and Jaina to investigate the threat of the
sinister Grand Admiral THRAWN.

If Thrawn and his dark allies plans succeed,
the fragile peace in the galaxy dearly won
could be destroyed forever.


So, keeping in mind I'm not a Hollywood script writer, nor Timothy Zahn and am just random nerd on the internet... It definitely seems like there's stuff there that you can almost directly adapt, even if it is 30 years After Return of the Jedi, rather than 5.

Have Daisy play Jaina, Adam play Jacen. Throw in Oscar Isaacs as Poe Dameron and a potential love interest for Jaina. Lets have, say, Famke Janssen (Other actresses are available) as Mara Jade - she's only 13 years younger than Mark Hamill. Hell, even have Benicio Del Toro as Talon Karrde.

You don't need to word for word adapt the book - That's just a strawman argument but you could very easily have the general events pretty darn close, and even improve the rubbish stuff in the book.

Thrawn wants to recreate the Empire, he has Dark Allies (ooh, mystery, spooky, EXCITING) - so that gives you Joruus C'Baoth. Maybe flip some things in there, drop the clone things but have Joruus influencing Jacen, so you've got your Force Awakens-esque Daisy V Adam duel.

It's not an impossible thing and claiming it is, or that it isn't there in the first place, feels a little disingenuous.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:



Actually, I’m in it for the micromachines...which they don’t make any more for some reason. Yet they make a whole dollar store wall’s worth of crappy, redundant action figure variants.

If they made new micro machines figures (like the pack of Storm Troopers, Imperial Officers, Rebel Troopers, etc), they could shut-up and take my money!

 Compel wrote:
So, keeping in mind I'm not a Hollywood script writer, nor Timothy Zahn and am just random nerd on the internet... It definitely seems like there's stuff there that you can almost directly adapt, even if it is 30 years After Return of the Jedi, rather than 5.

Yeah, I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head. In fact, I think most of the major plot points from TFA or TLJ can even be incorporated into the Thrawn story with little trouble.

And, if they are dead set on more nostalgia calls, you can work that in too. I think keeping Joruus in gives the "big" fans a payoff for knowing about the Clone Wars, even if it's a ret-conned version of Clone Wars. If they feel they need the Emperor to return, well, make him working through Joruus to get at/to/with Thrawn.

What made Zahn's trilogy pretty great wasn't that it got every detail perfect, or that the story was perfect. It was just a solidly good Star Wars "feel" to it all. And, outside the nostalgia calls, that is what these latest movies really lacked, in my opinion. What Kennedy seems to fail to realize, for what reason I don't know, I don't know her, is that "writing original things is hard" is obvious and trivially true. We know, that's why we know it made no sense to jettison all the EU stuff wholesale and then ask Abrams or Johnson to essentially pull something from their rear ends.

Here's the thing, neither Abrams and Johnson are golden geese and the contents of their posteriors are not so valuable. It, seemingly, was pure hubris on Disney's part that they thought they could fashion "good" Star Wars content whole-cloth. Only for Kennedy to realize, years later, that's hard. Of course it is, but Disney seemingly thought it wasn't by virtue of dumping all the EU right off the bat. "We needlessly took the hardest road possible and it didn't work out, woe is us, people have unrealistic expectations!"

Nope, not buying it. Disney failed of their own accord, it's not anyone's fault for expecting them to make something worthwhile when demonstrably worthwhile content was literally in their hands before they tossed it for "reasons."

 Scrabb wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Oh imagine the whining if they adapted the Thrawn trilogy.

#notmythrawn

#should'vecastXnotY

#whyThrawnIwantedRogueSquadron

etc etc etc etc etc.

Clean slate does away with that - much as JJ Abrams created an alternate Star Trek timeline, doing away with concerns about canonical minutiae.

Ok Kathleen Kennedy.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Why isn’t my comedy reaction gif working!

A pox upon technology.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Scrabb wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Hi.

I'm a fraud and scam investigator. My job is really quite difficult.

Therefore, I'm incompetent?

Interviewer: "I'm here with Mad Doc!. So tell me Mad Doc, would you say [particular part of your job] is especially difficult?"

Mad Doc: "Every part of my job is especially difficult because I don't have a procedure handbook I can follow to make my important decisions for me."


Fin.

Actually, I don’t.

There are rules and regulations, but my scope is inquisitorial. And I can make a finding based on what’s ‘fair and reasonable’ rather than strictly regs.

So quite a bit of free form

 Compel wrote:
Ok, so, Thrawn Trilogy ala 2015...

A long time ago in a galaxy far,
far away. . . .

STAR WARS
Episode VII
Heir To The Empire



It is a time of peace.
The former heroes of the Rebel Alliance
have restored freedom to the Galaxy
and created a NEW REPUBLIC.

Chancellor Leia Organa has heard rumours of a
new leader amongst the REMNANTS of the evil
Galactic Empire. She has secretly
sent her brother Luke Skywalker,
husband Han Solo; and her twin children
Jacen and Jaina to investigate the threat of the
sinister Grand Admiral THRAWN.

If Thrawn and his dark allies plans succeed,
the fragile peace in the galaxy dearly won
could be destroyed forever.


So, keeping in mind I'm not a Hollywood script writer, nor Timothy Zahn and am just random nerd on the internet... It definitely seems like there's stuff there that you can almost directly adapt, even if it is 30 years After Return of the Jedi, rather than 5.

Have Daisy play Jaina, Adam play Jacen. Throw in Oscar Isaacs as Poe Dameron and a potential love interest for Jaina. Lets have, say, Famke Janssen (Other actresses are available) as Mara Jade - she's only 13 years younger than Mark Hamill. Hell, even have Benicio Del Toro as Talon Karrde.

You don't need to word for word adapt the book - That's just a strawman argument but you could very easily have the general events pretty darn close, and even improve the rubbish stuff in the book.

Thrawn wants to recreate the Empire, he has Dark Allies (ooh, mystery, spooky, EXCITING) - so that gives you Joruus C'Baoth. Maybe flip some things in there, drop the clone things but have Joruus influencing Jacen, so you've got your Force Awakens-esque Daisy V Adam duel.

It's not an impossible thing and claiming it is, or that it isn't there in the first place, feels a little disingenuous.

I didn’t see a single thing within this post that I didn’t like. Can they go back, re-do 7-9 with this in mind? I’m sure the fans will eat it up! I would...

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Why isn’t my comedy reaction gif working!

A pox upon technology.

It's cool, I'll just imagine the best one there.

 Scrabb wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Hi.

I'm a fraud and scam investigator. My job is really quite difficult.

Therefore, I'm incompetent?

Interviewer: "I'm here with Mad Doc!. So tell me Mad Doc, would you say [particular part of your job] is especially difficult?"

Mad Doc: "Every part of my job is especially difficult because I don't have a procedure handbook I can follow to make my important decisions for me."


Fin.

Actually, I don’t.

There are rules and regulations, but my scope is inquisitorial. And I can make a finding based on what’s ‘fair and reasonable’ rather than strictly regs.

So quite a bit of free form

Super jelly.

You'd be more like KK if you'd bought a library of suggestion manuals and then thrown them all away. And then brought up how hard life was without them.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Oh imagine the whining if they adapted the Thrawn trilogy.

#notmythrawn

#should'vecastXnotY

#whyThrawnIwantedRogueSquadron

etc etc etc etc etc.

Clean slate does away with that - much as JJ Abrams created an alternate Star Trek timeline, doing away with concerns about canonical minutiae.

Except JJ and his alternate time line in Trek had sweet feth all to do with canon or artistic vision it was basicly money, he found out that the merchandising rights for trek were a real rats nest and that if he based his movies in the real trek storyline he and his company would be looking at 15% however if he stuck it in a completely unrelated movie and just used the names he got 70% and the rest is history. As an aside that is allegedly why C3PO has a randomly painted red arm in TFA it let him cut some poor schmuck out of there cut and increased his.

People were pretty thrilled by Thrawn showing up in Rebels.. Honestly so long as it's decent people would've enjoyed it. That's all people really want at this point something entertaining at least.

Star Trek merchandizing has been a real crap show since JJ got involved. And for a story that wasn’t very good to start with and rapidly became worse in the sequel. But don’t get me started on JJ.....

 Alpharius wrote:
I would think someone who grew up in the woods would have a more resilient ego then that!

I'm just gonna pretend you are implying he was raised by wolves or something similar. I will consider this his IRL backstory now because it's interesting and funny. Kind of reminds me of a tale told in the movie 'Big Fish'.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0319061/

 warboss wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 warboss wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I hide my action figures under boxes of tampons.

The tampons should go underneath to protect the cardstock from potential water damage.

Why? That card stock is going straight into the recycle bin.

Unless you buy two of each and keep one NIB, you're dead to me.

How would you feel knowing that I have Botcon toys limited to less than 2,000 in existence that the package is well and truly gone?




In my mind, they should have bounced Next Generation level forward and not tried to spam the "Aww, OT" button.

 Compel wrote:
Ok, so, Thrawn Trilogy ala 2015...

Spoiler:

A long time ago in a galaxy far,
far away. . . .

STAR WARS
Episode VII
Heir To The Empire



It is a time of peace.
The former heroes of the Rebel Alliance
have restored freedom to the Galaxy
and created a NEW REPUBLIC.

Chancellor Leia Organa has heard rumours of a
new leader amongst the REMNANTS of the evil
Galactic Empire. She has secretly
sent her brother Luke Skywalker,
husband Han Solo; and her twin children
Jacen and Jaina to investigate the threat of the
sinister Grand Admiral THRAWN.

If Thrawn and his dark allies plans succeed,
the fragile peace in the galaxy dearly won
could be destroyed forever.

So, keeping in mind I'm not a Hollywood script writer, nor Timothy Zahn and am just random nerd on the internet... It definitely seems like there's stuff there that you can almost directly adapt, even if it is 30 years After Return of the Jedi, rather than 5.

Have Daisy play Jaina, Adam play Jacen. Throw in Oscar Isaacs as Poe Dameron and a potential love interest for Jaina. Lets have, say, Famke Janssen (Other actresses are available) as Mara Jade - she's only 13 years younger than Mark Hamill. Hell, even have Benicio Del Toro as Talon Karrde.

You don't need to word for word adapt the book - That's just a strawman argument but you could very easily have the general events pretty darn close, and even improve the rubbish stuff in the book.

Thrawn wants to recreate the Empire, he has Dark Allies (ooh, mystery, spooky, EXCITING) - so that gives you Joruus C'Baoth. Maybe flip some things in there, drop the clone things but have Joruus influencing Jacen, so you've got your Force Awakens-esque Daisy V Adam duel.

It's not an impossible thing and claiming it is, or that it isn't there in the first place, feels a little disingenuous.

I applaud the effort, but my kneejerk reaction to that premise is big fat 'meh'. Right away we have the protagonist issue - in the original Thrawn Trilogy, it was original cast and Mara Jade. But we can't use them here as centerpiece characters because it's 20+ years later. We want new blood, and that means removing Luke and Mara from center stage - and what's the point of doing Thrawn Trilogy then? I suppose you could use Thrawn as villain, with Noghri as henchmen and Pellaeon as mediocre but loyal sidekick - and I agree that would have been more compelling lineup than Snoke and First Order - but that's maximum extent of it, pretty much. Much of the plot of Thrawn trilogy is way too cerebral for movie audiences, it works as a book but would fall flat and be confusing in movie format. Luke clone thing would be weird without Luke and Mara storyline.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

I'm just gonna pretend you are implying he was raised by wolves or something similar. I will consider this his IRL backstory now because it's interesting and funny.

Not wolves.

Turkeys. I was raised by turkeys.

Now get back before I fluff up, I'm warning you gobblegobblegobblesummabishgobblegobble.

 Easy E wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:



Actually, I’m in it for the micromachines...which they don’t make any more for some reason. Yet they make a whole dollar store wall’s worth of crappy, redundant action figure variants.

If they made new micro machines figures (like the pack of Storm Troopers, Imperial Officers, Rebel Troopers, etc), they could shut-up and take my money!

I saw some SW micromachines in the airport toy store at Schiphol earlier today. I think there were some at Lisbon airport as well. Not sure if they were new ones though.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
Turkeys. I was raised by turkeys.

Do you become unnaturally afraid and skittish around Thanksgiving/Christmas?

Apart from not having anything to draw upon( clearly they've borrowed a few things from the EU era, so that is not the case ) I'm okay with Kathleen( although Michael would probably rant otherwise ) at the helm. Has it been smooth sailing? Course not, but so far the good has far outweighed the bad.

Personally, so long as we get stuff like Rebels, Rogue One and Solo I'm okay with the new trilogy. Force Awakens was creatively disappointing, but - for me - Last Jedi made up for it, but even then could have been better. Not expecting much from Rise of Skywalker, but deep down...I think someone at LucasFilm has listened to my internet moaning over the past 20 years and put B-Wings in it....just for me. Gawd bless'em!

Now...I wouldn't mind The Mandalorian series on DVD at some point.

IMO Disney trilogy suffers from lack of overall vision, and I guess this could be blamed on Kennedy, at least partly. When he was filming original trilogy, George did not have everything meticulously planned ahead and lots of the now iconic stuff was made up as they went along, but he had overall story arc in mind. By contrast with Disney Trilogy it looks like there are 3 different people writing it in different directions.

For example, lets take the main villain aspect. In OT, it was the Emperor. In first movie, he is mentioned but not shown. In second movie, he appears a scary dude via hologram. In third movie we finally see him in all his evilness. I do not know if Lucas intended that from the beginning (novelization of New Hope implies that Emperor is sort of front for bureaucracy) but it is really quite brilliant way to build up a villain and make him a big deal.

In Disney Trilogy we are quickly introduced to who seems to be main villain, Snoke. We don't learn anything about him except that he is 'Leader' of the First Order and apparently knows Dark Side of the Force. Lack of detail led people to speculate about some sort of mystery or connection to previous lore, like mysterious Darth Plagueis, or he was reborn Emperor or somesuch (although Snoke was not a Sith). But in reality there was no such connection, writers had just been lazy and left him poorly defined. So in second movie, RJ does the right thing and offs this useless schmuck. But this creates an enormous problem for the saga which is now without a main villain. Now, trailers for the final part tease about return of Palpatine in some form. Maybe he had some sort of backup plan, or this was his master plan all along?? (See Dark Empire). But we have not had any kind of hint or foreboding about that. No mysterious artifacts, no Force visions, no dreams, no nothing. So how they are going to resolve this dilemma - or are they? No idea, I haven't read any rumours and spoilers and not planning to. But it's not something which is going to be easy to resolve.

All I can say is thank goodness the Story Group has been disbanded. Kathleen hired people with no experience making movies and expected them to take on one of the world's largest franchises.

Bold experiment. Her interview betrays some of her decisions early on, when she says she had no source material she meant the company was breaking with everything that came before. It's perplexing.

Backfire wrote:
IMO Disney trilogy suffers from lack of overall vision, and I guess this could be blamed on Kennedy, at least partly. When he was filming original trilogy, George did not have everything meticulously planned ahead and lots of the now iconic stuff was made up as they went along, but he had overall story arc in mind. By contrast with Disney Trilogy it looks like there are 3 different people writing it in different directions.

For example, lets take the main villain aspect. In OT, it was the Emperor. In first movie, he is mentioned but not shown. In second movie, he appears a scary dude via hologram. In third movie we finally see him in all his evilness. I do not know if Lucas intended that from the beginning (novelization of New Hope implies that Emperor is sort of front for bureaucracy) but it is really quite brilliant way to build up a villain and make him a big deal.

In Disney Trilogy we are quickly introduced to who seems to be main villain, Snoke. We don't learn anything about him except that he is 'Leader' of the First Order and apparently knows Dark Side of the Force. Lack of detail led people to speculate about some sort of mystery or connection to previous lore, like mysterious Darth Plagueis, or he was reborn Emperor or somesuch (although Snoke was not a Sith). But in reality there was no such connection, writers had just been lazy and left him poorly defined. So in second movie, RJ does the right thing and offs this useless schmuck. But this creates an enormous problem for the saga which is now without a main villain. Now, trailers for the final part tease about return of Palpatine in some form. Maybe he had some sort of backup plan, or this was his master plan all along?? (See Dark Empire). But we have not had any kind of hint or foreboding about that. No mysterious artifacts, no Force visions, no dreams, no nothing. So how they are going to resolve this dilemma - or are they? No idea, I haven't read any rumours and spoilers and not planning to. But it's not something which is going to be easy to resolve.

Oh its going to be easy to resolve, it just isn't going to be satisfying. 'Rise' is going to have radically fast forward, shift direction, introduce New (Old) Threat, get the Hero and Sidekicks and mini-Villain and Henchlings pointed in the same direction, establish...whatever the plot actually is, run around looking for MacGuffins and then wrap everything up. Or fail to do any of that. But it has to do it all immediately in the course of a single film because they basically wasted time and effort NOT establishing the state of the universe and what the First Order means beyond evil Nazi villains who do evil villainy.


They could have spent the first two films world building- mysterious storm troopers chasing the balldroid and Rey, Kylo splintering off from Luke's teaching and forming his merry band (of completely unused Knights), and have the two groups intersecting at various points while sinister forces build in the background of a new republic. Kept some of the story beats about rejection and abandonment, but do it in a sane way without Super Duper Super Weapons and evil cosplayers with unlimited resources, and a Resistance that works with the established government to resist people that everyone knows about but mysteriously the (absent, off screen) authorities don't believe in because reasons.

I really wish I could disagree with that but... Basically yeah.

It's a tall ask for Rise

I'm more irked by the moves making references to things and... that's it.

Look, you're in the third movie. It's a bit too late to try and shove in the answers to questions you raised in the first movie.

Knights of Ren? C-3PO's red arm? Who the hell is Snoke?

Look, trying to answer all of that in the 3rd movie is going to be a cluster feth. It's going to seem shoved in, and then tossed aside as if it were nothing- like Rey's family. That's unsatisfying.

Oh, and don't tell me "well you need to read the books"....

I go to a movie to watch a movie and get a story. I'm not investing in 5 books, a video game, and 2 audio dramas just to get a single story.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
Turkeys. I was raised by turkeys.

Do you become unnaturally afraid and skittish around Thanksgiving/Christmas?

Well, all I'll say is that I've tried to tell my brothers and sisters to watch their eating habits, but I'm the bad guy when I tell them they're getting fat. Not my fault if they end up with Stove Top shoved up their ass.

I think a lot of the unanswered questions of the new trilogy just aren't going to be answered.

Either cut for time if they're JJ's questions or discarded out of spite (in retaliation) if they're Ryan's questions. Not that there are many of the latter to discard.

Episode 9 will have a running time similar to The Last Jedi, which could have been put to better use.

Snoke is highly likely to have been a clone/puppet of the Emperor, Rey and Kylo incarnations of the Mortis siblings, C3PO will take control of the Falcon and crash it into a super star destroyer bridge( or something spectacular ) and Anakin will bring balance to Rey and Kylo in some fancy-dandy way. Finn will discover his family and Poe will take over from Leia.

...but then...BB-8 will interface with the all powerful skynet and reach out to all the droids in the galaxy and in a stunning assault size galactic control with an overwhelming droid army. Voltan will hide behind a cloud and shout "READY MY HAWKMEN!" and Lister starts the second big bang. Bender will seize the opportunity presented by all this chaos and cry out "6502!" - sorry - "42!". The super cool-as-**** Knights of Ren will disappear to start their own band and give DragonForce a damn good thrashing....


Ah, sod it - we'll just have to wait until the film is in cinemas to find out. So the only question worth asking at this time is who is going to see it?

Nope. If it gets a reasonable reception from the "disliked TLJ but aren't rabid about it, and also recognise that TFA is pretty derivative and a bit of a missed opportunity" crowd, I'll watch it on home media.

If it's as mediocre or outright terribad as many suspect it will be, I'll probably pirate it one day when I'm drunk and extremely bored.

Thing is, now The Mandalorian exists, I don't even feel like I'm missing out. I'm looking forward to more Clone Wars again, and anticipating the Cassian/K2 show. Maybe even a Fallen Order sequel, so long as EA don't EA. The Sequels are a write off, but there are still people at Lucasfilm who get what Star Wars is and can be, so as long as the senior numpties get out of their road and let them keep doing their thing I can put the Sequels in the same box as the worse of the Prequels and just not care about them any more - because they're no longer all there is to look forward to.

Also, for the topic's sake;

I agree that it's really asinine for anyone from Disney to say they didn't have source material. It's also so deeply stupid a thing to say I question the intelligence of whoever came up with that line, be in Kennedy or some PR rep somewhere.

You know my post about the toys?

I kinda take bits of it back. As this bad boy was released the other day in the 6" line.



Got one on order, should be with me by the weekend. Price tag is a shame (£27.99) as it means I'm unlikely to bother completing that line. But hey ho.

Across the pond that Black Series Heavy Infantry Mandolorian is a little cheaper (roughly £23) and as far as I can tell all pre-orders are sold out. The only other one I know of at the moment from the series right now is the Mandolorian himself and he was picked clean when he came out a few weeks ago by resellers and collectors quite quickly.

Reckon I might get the Mando next month. Possibly Jan.

Just wish they put half as much effort into the standard line as they do the Black Series.

While I do agree that there is tons of "source material" to draw inspiration from, I do think that KKs comment is being taken WAY out of context here.
It looks like she means "there's no source material of the continued adventures of Rey and Kylo", NOT that's there is no source material for SW at all. And she's right, as unlike Marvel that has decades of existing material about the character in those movies, the sequel trilogy is all new characters that have never been established prior to TFA

I'm not trying to defend KK by any means, but come on guys, let's be a bit more fair.

-

How does that follow? She had source material before creating those characters, and she ignored it. She could have planned their arcs or adapted existing character arcs into their stories, and she didn’t. You say we should give her a break for ignoring source material because she had already ignored source material? Your post doesn’t add any new perspective.

 Galef wrote:
While I do agree that there is tons of "source material" to draw inspiration from, I do think that KKs comment is being taken WAY out of context here.
It looks like she means "there's no source material of the continued adventures of Rey and Kylo", NOT that's there is no source material for SW at all. And she's right, as unlike Marvel that has decades of existing material about the character in those movies, the sequel trilogy is all new characters that have never been established prior to TFA

I'm not trying to defend KK by any means, but come on guys, let's be a bit more fair.

-

We are being fair.

When people stop pretending this wasn't dumb (or deflecting to cool toy action figures) this thread will die. Before then we will continue assert that, yes KK made a really bad pitch about how hard her job is.

I have spoken.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
How does that follow? She had source material before creating those characters, and she ignored it. She could have planned their arcs or adapted existing character arcs into their stories, and she didn’t. You say we should give her a break for ignoring source material because she had already ignored source material? Your post doesn’t add any new perspective.

Agreed, there is so much good stuff they could have used when starting the Sequel trilogy.
But I thought the question she answered had to do with EpIX, not the sequel trilogy as a whole.
Maybe I'm wrong, but my point is that all these "bUt sHe HaD LoAds of mAtErIal!!!" memes don't make any sense if you look at the context of the conversation.
She wasn't saying STAR WARS didn't have source material (jettisoned or not), but rather the story they were telling is not BASED on existing source Material.

Does the Thrawn Trilogy have Rey in it? Does The New Jedi Order feature Ben Solo turning to the Dark Side? No, and that's the point. These are new stories that have no existing source material

I don't much care for Kathleen Kennedy either way, but it bother me when people react in such a negative way to something taken out of context.

-

If I wanted the New Jedi Order, Thrawn Trilogy, etc--I'd reread my books.

Going to be blunt here, but people seem to be conflating "existing material" with "source material". The EU was huge and there was conflicting stuff. I can't blame them for ditching it and going elsewhere. From the way the EU was set up, there had to have been clones of Luke, Leia, and Han because it seemed like every damn week they were halfway across the galaxy from where they started in yet another massive crisis that would destroy everything.

The only missed opportunity was the Last(and Only) Flight of Dinner Squadron.

Transposition is a thing, which unfortunately torpedoes the whole argument.

Just because Rey doesn't feature in the Thrawn trilogy it doesn't immediately remove every single plot thread and character arc from the melting pot. I mean, pretty much the entirety of the MCU is based on existing material, but little of it is a total 1:1 recreation.

 Kanluwen wrote:
If I wanted the New Jedi Order, Thrawn Trilogy, etc--I'd reread my books.

Going to be blunt here, but people seem to be conflating "existing material" with "source material". The EU was huge and there was conflicting stuff. I can't blame them for ditching it and going elsewhere.

I don't blame them either but it didn't have to be a baby and bathwater situation either as they could have adapted portions of it instead of taking it whole cloth. It's utter stupidity though to complain after the fact that they don't have anything to start with when they chose to chuck it all away first.

And it’s not. At all.

Thrawn has been worked back in, and successfully so. He’s a standout in Rebels, and the novels are pretty ace.

I didn’t read much beyond that other than the ‘Tales From’, so I was spared the Yuuzhan Vong twaddle and mind vomit.

We’ve also seen ship designs and that brought back in. So it’s very much not throwing out baby with the bath water.

And as I said earlier, if they had straight up adapted, the Sad Little Edgelords would just be complaining about how a given film, scene, casting, line delivery, specific stitching upon a tunic wasn’t exactly their head canon and therefore worse than their bum falling off. Because Sad Little Edgelords are all about the negativity (I am not equating anyone in this thread with said Sad Little Edgelords)

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
And it’s not. At all.

Thrawn has been worked back in, and successfully so. He’s a standout in Rebels, and the novels are pretty ace.

I didn’t read much beyond that other than the ‘Tales From’, so I was spared the Yuuzhan Vong twaddle and mind vomit.

We’ve also seen ship designs and that brought back in. So it’s very much not throwing out baby with the bath water.

And as I said earlier, if they had straight up adapted, the Sad Little Edgelords would just be complaining about how a given film, scene, casting, line delivery, specific stitching upon a tunic wasn’t exactly their head canon and therefore worse than their bum falling off. Because Sad Little Edgelords are all about the negativity (I am not equating anyone in this thread with said Sad Little Edgelords)

But you are constructing a very nice straw-bat to beat your invented Capitalised Fictional Designated Slagging Group with.

People have said, repeatedly, that they needn't "straight up" adapt anything. They could have, and if they'd done it properly(ie, accurately and with a genuine desire to capture the original in the new medium) there'd be very few CFDSGs, but they didn't have to, they could have picked any number of plots or characters and filed the serial numbers off in exactly the way they did with Thrawn, or even less specifically, and it would have taken a lot of the pressure she's complaining about off of them.

They chose not to, so to complain now about the consequences of that choice is a bit rich.

Nothing wrong with the Vong in theory. A bio based group immune to the Force (Tyranids, anyone?). The story may have gone to ass, even though I enjoyed it as a teen. But the concept was fine and could have been used. And no, BEN Solo doesn’t go evil, but JACEN Solo does. So why not? They changed the first name but kept the fall for Han and Leia’s son.

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
And it’s not. At all.

Thrawn has been worked back in, and successfully so. He’s a standout in Rebels, and the novels are pretty ace.

I didn’t read much beyond that other than the ‘Tales From’, so I was spared the Yuuzhan Vong twaddle and mind vomit.

We’ve also seen ship designs and that brought back in. So it’s very much not throwing out baby with the bath water.

And as I said earlier, if they had straight up adapted, the Sad Little Edgelords would just be complaining about how a given film, scene, casting, line delivery, specific stitching upon a tunic wasn’t exactly their head canon and therefore worse than their bum falling off. Because Sad Little Edgelords are all about the negativity (I am not equating anyone in this thread with said Sad Little Edgelords)

But you are constructing a very nice straw-bat to beat your invented Capitalised Fictional Designated Slagging Group with.

People have said, repeatedly, that they needn't "straight up" adapt anything. They could have, and if they'd done it properly(ie, accurately and with a genuine desire to capture the original in the new medium) there'd be very few CFDSGs, but they didn't have to, they could have picked any number of plots or characters and filed the serial numbers off in exactly the way they did with Thrawn, or even less specifically, and it would have taken a lot of the pressure she's complaining about off of them.

They chose not to, so to complain now about the consequences of that choice is a bit rich.

Your own caveat betrays your point, and assists mine,

‘Ie accurately’.

What is accurate to you, might be insulting to A.N.Other.

And in that, totally fair enough. Books in particular are precious to many people, because the inner monologue and character portrayal is kinda core to the reading experience. The writers words, our voice.

But for Sad Little Edgelords (again, nobody in this thread for the hard of understanding) have....well.....shall we say inherently mutable opinions. When the sad acts decide to get upset, they’ll find something they can pretend justifies it. Even when you look back over their commentary and find quite impressive contradictions in their stance.

So. Again. Had Disney adapted say, the Thrawn trilogy? Self same Sad Little Edgelords would’ve pissed, moaned and whined about it - BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT THEY DO.

Look at Star Trek Discovery. There are many entirely valid criticisms (why not build the rest of the cast to Burnham levels?). Yet. The Sad Little Edgelords? OMG ST STOP FORCING DIVERSITY ON ME. It’s like they have absolutely bugger all concept of why Star Trek is so highly regarded.

You do see the difference. Yes?

I think Kylo is the only part of the new trilogy that still holds my interest. The films would even be better in my eyes if they focused on him more, cause he's the only character at this point who has an interesting (if tragic and angsty) story arc.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

But for Sad Little Edgelords...

Just stop. Seriously. There is absolutely no need for this sort of labelling. It adds nothing positive to the discussion, and smacks of trolling for reaction, regardless of your caveat.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Your own caveat betrays your point, and assists mine,

‘Ie accurately’.

What is accurate to you, might be insulting to A.N.Other.

Well, no. Accuracy requires an objective standard of measurement to even exist, so by definition if something is open to interpretation it cannot be a factor in whether or not an adaptation is accurate or otherwise.

Look at Star Trek Discovery. There are many entirely valid criticisms (why not build the rest of the cast to Burnham levels?). Yet. The Sad Little Edgelords? OMG ST STOP FORCING DIVERSITY ON ME. It’s like they have absolutely bugger all concept of why Star Trek is so highly regarded.

You do see the difference. Yes?

What I see is another reason not to take your "Sad Little Edgelords" concept very seriously, because the vast, vast, vast majority of "diversity" related complaints I've seen regarding STD were regarding the way it was being presented, not that it was present. Hell one of the most common complaints about STD diversity used exactly your point as its basis: Trek has always been diverse, and those fans were annoyed at the way STD and Burnham in particular were being presented as something special and new, as it seemed like an attempt to minimise the show's own history to make STD look better to the Wokesumer demographic. The second most common complaint regarding diversity I noticed surrounding STD was the way that "entirely valid criticisms" of the show didn't seem to exist according to some show fans and media cheerleaders, rather the only possible reason someone could dislike STD was they're a badwrongcishetwhitemale who hated women/minorities/gay folk/everything good and true and pure in this world. In my own admittedly anecdotal experience, I've seen significantly more people being accused of some dark underlying motivation for their complaints about the show's tone/aesthetic/plot/characters/writing/whatever than I have people seriously and genuinely upset that a Star Trek show would have a diverse cast.

 Galef wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
How does that follow? She had source material before creating those characters, and she ignored it. She could have planned their arcs or adapted existing character arcs into their stories, and she didn’t. You say we should give her a break for ignoring source material because she had already ignored source material? Your post doesn’t add any new perspective.

Agreed, there is so much good stuff they could have used when starting the Sequel trilogy.
But I thought the question she answered had to do with EpIX, not the sequel trilogy as a whole.
Maybe I'm wrong, but my point is that all these "bUt sHe HaD LoAds of mAtErIal!!!" memes don't make any sense if you look at the context of the conversation.
She wasn't saying STAR WARS didn't have source material (jettisoned or not), but rather the story they were telling is not BASED on existing source Material.

Does the Thrawn Trilogy have Rey in it? Does The New Jedi Order feature Ben Solo turning to the Dark Side? No, and that's the point. These are new stories that have no existing source material

I don't much care for Kathleen Kennedy either way, but it bother me when people react in such a negative way to something taken out of context.

-

My point is that she already said no to the boat and the helicopter, if I may make a metaphor out of a very old joke, and now she’s complaining that she’s drowning. She can’t limit her statement to just the context of episode nine without reference to episodes seven and eight any more than someone who spent two hours aiming for the iceberg can say they never had any good options in the last five minutes.

 Yodhrin wrote:
What I see is another reason not to take your "Sad Little Edgelords" concept very seriously, because the vast, vast, vast majority of "diversity" related complaints I've seen regarding STD were regarding the way it was being presented, not that it was present. Hell one of the most common complaints about STD diversity used exactly your point as its basis: Trek has always been diverse, and those fans were annoyed at the way STD and Burnham in particular were being presented as something special and new, as it seemed like an attempt to minimise the show's own history to make STD look better to the Wokesumer demographic. The second most common complaint regarding diversity I noticed surrounding STD was the way that "entirely valid criticisms" of the show didn't seem to exist according to some show fans and media cheerleaders, rather the only possible reason someone could dislike STD was they're a badwrongcishetwhitemale who hated women/minorities/gay folk/everything good and true and pure in this world. In my own admittedly anecdotal experience, I've seen significantly more people being accused of some dark underlying motivation for their complaints about the show's tone/aesthetic/plot/characters/writing/whatever than I have people seriously and genuinely upset that a Star Trek show would have a diverse cast.

Agreed. The response to critcism of a *TV SHOW* (whether valid or not) is too often at best a reflexive criticism (or more often insult) of the person making the comment instead of actually addressing or god forbid refuting the points made. And, yes, the namecalling supposedly of people outside of this thread is a hypocritical example of that regardless of any half hearted disclaimers attached.

 Galef wrote:
...there is so much good stuff they could have used when starting the Sequel trilogy.
But I thought the question she answered had to do with EpIX, not the sequel trilogy as a whole.

That is absolutely the question she was asked. But she answered by saying the whole trilogy was especially difficult because of the lack of reference material. So:

1. She took a question where you could have had a point and took it away.
2. If she meant what she said she had to be talking about beat for beat story lines. Because the OT is littered throughout the ST.
3. Episode Nine will feature Lando Calrissian and Emperor Palpatine. There's some existing material right there. Good thing they had a villain on hand from the source material.

Soooo she did did draw from existing source material (OT) for ep nine, she did complain about making a ST in its entirety, and she is objectively wrong. I mean, in TLJ they replaced the rebel foot soldiers in trenches protecting the base from imperial walkers on a snow planet with resistance foot soldiers in trenches protecting the base from First Order walkers on a salt planet that looks like a snow planet.

Maybe I'm wrong, but my point is that all these "bUt sHe HaD LoAds of mAtErIal!!!" memes don't make any sense if you look at the context of the conversation.
She wasn't saying STAR WARS didn't have source material (jettisoned or not), but rather the story they were telling is not BASED on existing source Material.

Does the Thrawn Trilogy have Rey in it? Does The New Jedi Order feature Ben Solo turning to the Dark Side? No, and that's the point. These are new stories that have no existing source material

I don't much care for Kathleen Kennedy either way, but it bother me when people react in such a negative way to something taken out of context.

Based on your confusion about the context of the question and her answer I think her detractors have thought about it just as much as you have. Yes, the ST has introduced new characters. No, that doesn't make KK's complaints about how difficult it is to do her job understandable.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

But for Sad Little Edgelords (again, nobody in this thread for the hard of understanding) have....well.....shall we say inherently mutable opinions. When the sad acts decide to get upset, they’ll find something they can pretend justifies it. Even when you look back over their commentary and find quite impressive contradictions in their stance.

So. Again. Had Disney adapted say, the Thrawn trilogy? Self same Sad Little Edgelords would’ve pissed, moaned and whined about it - BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT THEY DO.

Look at Star Trek Discovery. There are many entirely valid criticisms (why not build the rest of the cast to Burnham levels?). Yet. The Sad Little Edgelords? OMG ST STOP FORCING DIVERSITY ON ME. It’s like they have absolutely bugger all concept of why Star Trek is so highly regarded.

You do see the difference. Yes?

People liked Thrawn in rebels.


I don't think you could have picked a worse example to try to prove your point.

I always felt her "my job is difficult because" statement to be baffling.

I mean, MOST movies are made without a ton of source material.. that's the NORM! And it's not like she's paid much attention to the source material out there (TFA and TLJ largely did their own thing) so I don't feel a ton of sympathy for this.

After The Last Skywalker has gone through theaters, I would not be surprised if the public in general underwent a massive burst of Star Wars fatigue. Solo I think was the beginning, and while the final movie of the trilogy will undoubtedly sell well, I think that Disney will find that many people are now exhausted by the franchise. Not to say that it still won't be quite popular and that stuff like Rise of the Resistance will be well-loved, especially by kids. But movies and merch? I have a sense that there's gonna be a big downswing in interest.

Overall, "there was a lack of source material" being the excuse for making a movie is still disgusting- even if the EU didn't exist at all.

It just goes to show you what happens when Hollywood's creative process has gone bankrupt, so their go-to default method is "find popular comic/book/old movie/old show/video game/urban legend and then movie that thing". Not being able to function outside this paradigm is laziness.

Having no source material shouldn't be an excuse. It should be a golden opportunity. The borders to work within just got much, much wider.

After declaring Star Wars' EU to be non-canon, we were left with just a scant few guidelines of the Star Wars Universe setting- that's not so much a detriment, but rather a sandbox to play in with more to work with. That is a recipe for success and creativity tied to something well-known and established, that should be the last place a creative person fails. It's like being given a D&D Campaign setting, but you can't DM it unless you're following a campaign module and forbidding players to deviate from the module. I expect that from an Amatuer, not someone who is taking control of the most popular science fiction franchise in the world.

But, apparently some people get led to a tree with a rope and a tire- and when you come back to see if they've made a swing... they've hung themselves and set the tire on fire, just to make it more chaotic.

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
After The Last Skywalker has gone through theaters, I would not be surprised if the public in general underwent a massive burst of Star Wars fatigue. Solo I think was the beginning,...

No it wasn't. Solo was simply proof that even Star Wars movies need proper marketing.

And it wasn't the movie started us down the dark path. That was the one befoer Solo.

SW.com has put out two videos on their YT channel recently. They're all retrospective looks/new movie previews that have a bunch of behind the scenes stuff from the first three movies and some stuff from the sequel trilogy.

And almost 0% from the prequels.

Disney really hates them prequels.

 insaniak wrote:

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
After The Last Skywalker has gone through theaters, I would not be surprised if the public in general underwent a massive burst of Star Wars fatigue. Solo I think was the beginning,...

No it wasn't. Solo was simply proof that even Star Wars movies need proper marketing.

Well yes and no. I know this from working in the media industry in London, but Arnie talks about it in his autobiography as well. The studios have a collection of metrics that they use to predict the success of a film, if in the crucial days before the marketing goes into full swing the metrics aren't giving them the right answer, they can pull or minimise the marketing and save the money.

Nothing in what you just said actually contradicts my point, though. Whether or not marketing would do enough to pay for itself, the film still needs adequate marketing to do well.

Solo wasn't a bad film. It suffered from the divided reaction to TLJ, a negative perception even before it was released based on the production shenanigans associated with it, and then a bad release slot with very little advertising. While not the best Star Wars film ever, by any means, it was good enough that I think it could have done significantly better with marketing, but was always going to need a LOT of effort to counteract the handicap it started with.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

And almost 0% from the prequels.

Disney really hates them prequels.

A LOT of people hated the prequels. I don't know how old you were, but I remember being stoked for them... and then the Phantom Menace happened, and I was rather confused but tried to convince myself it'd probably get better. And then Attack of the Clones happened, and I realized it wasn't going to improve. And then I found Revenge of the Sith on a pre-owned DVD and had nothing better to do, and just kind of confirmed it was all pretty bad. Which, of course... is exactly what has happened with me regarding the more recent movies.

Gungans were awful. At least Ewoks had the 'cute' thing, and from a marketing perspective that can put asses in seats and sell merch. Gungans were fugly, stupid, and obnoxious and I'm pretty sure that if the Empire genocided them, there wasn't a whole lot of protesting in earnest.

Lucas seemed to forget that practical effects are capable of being awesome, and the CGI was just overwhelming to the point where it felt like you were watching a Pixar movie with live-action people moving around sometimes. We get it, Lucasfilm can do cool stuff that... looks really odd and out of place, but expensive.

Anakin was LOATHED, and I'm pretty sure that actor is in a padded cell in an asylum somewhere, using his own excrement to write his manifesto on the walls as he babbles incoherently to himself and screams at random intervals. He probably re-enacts those awful lightsaber flourishes until the orderlies restrain him. The internet hated that guy into obscurity, Rose Tico had it easy.

Anakin was just an awful execution- he had no natural chemistry at all with anyone, it was like he was secretly being abused by the other cast behind the scenes and had to force himself to communicate- and it always came out as deadpan and half-hearted, and the only other emotion he seemed capable of showing was "10 year old that got grounded for a week" when he cried and whinged and whined. Even his 'rage' seemed more like it suited a small child, and it blatantly soiled the image of the Badass Darth Vader that actually used to be scary and intimidating. Well, soiled until Rogue One's finale... and then you could go and watch the Prequels again and just feel this uncomfortable confusion. Maybe Palpatine gave him bionic testicles or something. I mean, FFS- the animated Clone Wars series had a more respectable Anakin with backbone.

There were a few gems with the Prequels, but not many. The Clone Wars was pretty fun (both the animated and CGI versions). Some of the comics were rather good. A few character designs were also solid, and we got Republic Commando. There was also a lot of enthusiasm because of the Knights of the Old Republic and Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy games, and the Star Wars D20 RPG and Miniatures games were a big thing, too. Overall, the general attitude back then was "I hate the Prequels but there's still some Star Wars out there for me that I can enjoy". Until the Mandalorian came out, we couldn't really say that. And still, I think we'll be able to all have a piece of Star Wars we still love.

Anyone who thinks this raging fandom for Star Wars now is a new thing... wasn't paying attention back them. The prequels were really bad, and I think what makes some people seem angrier about the new movies is that we had high hopes- and it really started to seem like it was going to pay off, and then things got stupid. This isn't new, it's just got a few different buzzwords, some overblown nontroversies, and a bit more hype involved.

And perhaps, a little break is in order. Maybe get some creative and passionate minds together and make a Star Wars saga that has us arguing about who the cooler villain/hero/ship is, rather than the other nonsense- and where we're more stoked to go online and look for spoilers than bicker at one another.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

Anyone who thinks this raging fandom for Star Wars now is a new thing... wasn't paying attention back them. The prequels were really bad, and I think what makes some people seem angrier about the new movies is that we had high hopes- and it really started to seem like it was going to pay off, and then things got stupid. This isn't new, it's just got a few different buzzwords, some overblown nontroversies, and a bit more hype involved.

I do sometimes wonder if the prequels being a big disappointment actually did a lot to create the edgy, cynical, hyper-critical internet """fan""" culture we're saddled with these days.

And perhaps, a little break is in order. Maybe get some creative and passionate minds together and make a Star Wars saga that has us arguing about who the cooler villain/hero/ship is, rather than the other nonsense- and where we're more stoked to go online and look for spoilers than bicker at one another.

I don't think that'll happen, regardless of the quality of the movies. There's a very loud segment of the fanbase that just enjoys being angry, and will latch onto any excuse to be angry, not resting until everyone has stopped liking what they don't like.

Yes, the Prequels certainly could have been better but the constant backlash was far more objectionable. Today it's worse with more channels opened up on youtube by creepy dudes with an obsession for stalking Kathleen Kennedy, Rian Johnson & co and making them suffer for making films to amuse the masses.

Of course Binks was an awkward character, but I'd much rather hang out with him, having beers, than the - sadly real - pathetic idiots who would not give it a rest and shut up about how awful he was.

It actually gets to the point where you feel like saying "Jar-Jar? Ah, mate - hes my favourite character! Fancy watching Phantom Menace?" just to wind them up.

I can relate. Posts like yours are the reason I started bothering to type out criticism. Really cathartic.

I think it was the 129th "If Rey is a mary sue than so is Luke" did it for me.

The funny part is I recall reading that the bloke who played Jar Jar blamed the media for the reaction to his character, not fans.

It's almost as if the kind of people that are routinely held up as being representative of the critical element of fandom are actually a vanishingly tiny minority who're not actually representative at all, and some of the folk involved in franchise media can grasp that...

Funny bit is I have fairly positive views on anything outside the current trilogy. I liked rogue one more than I thought I would. I never saw solo but it sounds ok or decent. I like the idea of the mandalorian if they don't mess it up though I don't watch tv or anything like Netflix. I've said it before but I think nobody knows how to handle Jedi anymore. The last Jedi was really the only awful movie which ruined the trilogy. The force awakens was basically everything recycled and Mary sue Rey. Oddly I feel like Rey wasn't as obnoxious in the last Jedi. They honestly just didn't have her learn anything or do anything except sorta set something up with Kylo.

I don't know why girls being Mary sue is good these days. I figured everybody has to have flaws, be able to learn from mistakes and grow and also not come off as smug unless it's a flaw the character must later fix or it's played off for humor. Of course media loves to make it all about activism now. I honestly think it'd be nice if the media just ya know talked about the movie and what's going on in the set.

 Galef wrote:
While I do agree that there is tons of "source material" to draw inspiration from, I do think that KKs comment is being taken WAY out of context here.
It looks like she means "there's no source material of the continued adventures of Rey and Kylo", NOT that's there is no source material for SW at all. And she's right, as unlike Marvel that has decades of existing material about the character in those movies, the sequel trilogy is all new characters that have never been established prior to TFA

I'm not trying to defend KK by any means, but come on guys, let's be a bit more fair.

-

Except.. It's the trilogy, Luke and them didn't exactly have tons of books for source materials to pull from since it was literally just being written by Lucas and the people working on the movie.

It just makes it sound worse when you put it like that.

 Galef wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
How does that follow? She had source material before creating those characters, and she ignored it. She could have planned their arcs or adapted existing character arcs into their stories, and she didn’t. You say we should give her a break for ignoring source material because she had already ignored source material? Your post doesn’t add any new perspective.

Agreed, there is so much good stuff they could have used when starting the Sequel trilogy.
-

Really there is not that much in old EU which would be useful for todays Star Wars script writers. At best, as I explained, they could have brought out character like Thrawn and use him in different setting (which is indeed what they have been doing outside the new trilogy), or then some very individual good ideas which sometimes appeared in the stories, but picking them out is substantial effort in itself. Many of the EU stories were basically recycled OT tropes. Or then they were plain bad. For example, aforementioned 'Dark Empire' - it had nice art, but storyline-wise, it was garbage, and it brought no interesting characters. I would not go watch it in big screen.

Having said that, I don't see much use complaining "oh the writing is so hard when we don't have ready made story hook". I would be excited for such an opportunity for clean state story using existing background! Even at the risk that the fans think that my approach sucks.

The EU was like a testing ground for ideas, characters and arcs to see which ones resonated with the fans and which failed. The MCU didn't lift directly from the comics, but did look at which stories resonated with the fans and took what worked from multiple iterations of each character to get a final product that had, in essence, already been tested and approved by the audience.

At the very least, they could have used the background state of the galaxy from the novels as a sort of armature for the new series' background,p; having a written background that doesn't get foreground attention in the movies would help ground the characters and add depth to the setting. Making up Hosnian Prime just to blow it up because ... power? It makes the movie feel small and unsculpted.

I don't think the background of the new trilogy is a problem as such...I think it is just fine actually. Problem is that they don't ever refer to it, thus making the galaxy feel small, as you say.

They could have also referred to at least some EU stuff there. Like Han saying "Oh well, we survived Thrawn, how bad could these guys be?" or Luke having holo-pic of Mara in his hut. Stuff like that to reward the fans and add depth to the universe. At present, DT movies feel detached.

 Yodhrin wrote:
The funny part is I recall reading that the bloke who played Jar Jar blamed the media for the reaction to his character, not fans.

I mean, he should have blamed his employer as well. But the media doesn't help. You can trawl through any comments thread and find a few psychos, the new Clickbait + Outrage Fetish media just loves to go and drag those up as proof of some looming evil force of basement-dwelling terrorists.

 Yodhrin wrote:
It's almost as if the kind of people that are routinely held up as being representative of the critical element of fandom are actually a vanishingly tiny minority who're not actually representative at all, and some of the folk involved in franchise media can grasp that...

Every village has an idiot. And he is always loud, hard to miss, and he's more than willing to be the first to welcome you.

The biggest problem is, there's a lot of poisoning the well. There's a lot of VERY valid critique out there, and it gets passed off as being some malicious neckbeard bigotry by the usual suspects out there.

I mean, I'm so sick of hearing that these fans hate women. Because after so many Star Wars side media with female fan favorites... if these guys hate women, it was a habit they picked up immediately after The Force Awakens. And I've listened to their scathing reviews, and Rey isn't the only problem with the movies they've spoken on.

For me, it's right now the trailer for the next movie- the clip with the... tracked motorcycles... that can keep up with hover-vehicles for some reason. And the catapulting rocket troopers into the sky.

"tHeY cAn FlY nOw?!?"

Wow, such a totally new and groundbreaking addition to the conflict. Here's a spoiler for you: They also have guns, missiles, and body armor. Just in case you haven't paid attention to literally anything that's been around in this particular universe of yours for tens of thousands of years.

I didn't even see the last trailer for Rise of Skywalker. I just don't think they can really salvage this trilogy after TLJ. It was that bad. I feel like I shouldn't re-iterate what was bad because we've heard it a million times by now but if I get flak for it I will say what it is.

I never got the supposed neckbeard bigotry. It's not bigotry it's called being a hardcore fan. Yes it's obnoxious sometimes but these people buy all the gear from the franchise and probably even have the star wars Christmas special and every other abortion, obscurity or rare thing star wars had. Depending on the person it can be an obsession and just as there are people that hate a franchise regardless or hate change in a franchise regardless there are those that will love something a franchise regardless of what they do and consider it the 2nd coming of Jesus Christ. Being a big fan of Warhammer Fantasy Battles I get it when the series pops out a turd or the whole franchise is destroyed (thank god WHFB is coming back and I thank total war and vermintide for that). Yes there is fan elitism sometimes. There's also people that see us as nerds for enjoying what we love. Both groups can be a pain to be around. All that said being an obsessed or hardcore fan doesn't make you sexist. Perhaps you would be obnoxious to be around but not sexist.

This is just "the thing" for the past few years though.

If a consumer critiques your product, you can do one of two things:

1) Politely accept their criticism, and respond like an adult. Maybe look into critique to learn for future endeavors, or step back and better critique your own piece. Take feedback into account and make use of it.

or...

2) Call the person a racist/bigot/sexist/elitist, etc.

Because number two is easy. You're not required to respond, debate, or consider criticism if you just vilify the person saying it. You're allowed to insist that your product (which you made...FOR consumers) is great and they are simply hateful because they didn't appreciate the kind gift that you've bestowed upon them. Then in your biased media article, where you're kissing up to the production companies so you can get invited to early screenings and industry parties, you use words like "Troll", or "Man Baby", or "Misogynist" when you report on said criticism. We live in a world where 'adult' journalists (and I use that term sparingly) actually use internet hyperbole like 'Troll' in communications.

You see the same thing on forums, including Dakka. Instead of discussing and debating a topic, you immediately see the same words; troll, hater, etc. etc. Basically words that are used to vilify someone because you're too lazy to effectively debate or prove your point. Someone who disagrees with you is never a coherent adult with a differing opinion; they're a "hater!". As long as they're this bizarre sub-human race of people who aren't allowed to have a different opinion you can maintain your stance on your high horse. This is 2019.

I love the lengths people go to defend the underbelly of nerdom when it rear's it head.

There's a difference between a movie not being up to par (or far below par like the prequels mentioned earlier) and the sort of open masturbatory glee of "when the movie bombs the company will wake up to the objective fact females can't be in films and will make mens only movies for men!"

It's not even an exaggeration, we saw exactly that here on Dakka when Capt. Marvel was announced. It was declared, as if the assertion made it fact, that would be the case.

But hey if we just keep saying we were always at war with Eurasia that will make it so. Same with there being no political motivation whatsoever to modern SW hate. Just keep saying it and swallowing those redpills.

 ScarletRose wrote:
I love the lengths people go to defend the underbelly of nerdom when it rear's it head.

I can understand how you feel, it's my reaction when someone decides that instead of doing the intellectual exercise and examining the argument, they just dictate what another human being's intent was and try to poison the well. It really can be bothersome, especially when you can almost smell the dishonesty from their statements.

 ScarletRose wrote:
There's a difference between a movie not being up to par (or far below par like the prequels mentioned earlier) and the sort of open masturbatory glee of "when the movie bombs the company will wake up to the objective fact females can't be in films and will make mens only movies for men!"

I don't think this was said, but if it was- I believe it may be time for you to learn what an internet troll is. You see, sometimes they say absurd things just to get a rise out of people- and those things can be exaggerations.

 ScarletRose wrote:
It's not even an exaggeration, we saw exactly that here on Dakka when Capt. Marvel was announced. It was declared, as if the assertion made it fact, that would be the case.

I'm sure someone was banned over this, otherwise you'd be providing some sort of evidence for it.

 ScarletRose wrote:
But hey if we just keep saying we were always at war with Eurasia that will make it so. Same with there being no political motivation whatsoever to modern SW hate. Just keep saying it and swallowing those redpills.

Wow, weird that the two extremes default to "It's a political agenda conspiracy".

Maybe, and just maybe-

...the movies were unpopular for a lot of reasons that a lot of different people can understand. Personally, I'd love for one of these people asserting that the hate of Star Wars is "bEcAuSe ThEy HaTe WoMeN!" to go and meet two of the Star Wars fans I know, that hate the movies. It's been a while since I've seen a lady punch a skinny geek.

Going back to 1977, SW fans never had a problem with tough female heroes and leaders.

 Manchu wrote:
Going back to 1977, SW fans never had a problem with tough female heroes and leaders.

Nuh-uh, evilbadwrongcishetwhitemale neckbeard nerds have *always* hated women. They were just pretending to like Leia, Ripley, Sarah Connor, Kira etc etc for all those years, because the only possible reason for someone to criticise a modern film wot has women in it is they hate women. Yup. Must be that.


Look ScarletRose, nobody is denying there are scumbags out there. We're just denying they're even remotely relevant numerically. In fact, I'll argue flat out that the only reason they have any real power at all - if they can be said to have any - is down to their supposed opponents constantly building them up into a boogeyman because they're incapable of handling the idea that other people might not like the thing they like, or as a convenient way to deflect valid criticism and deflect from behind the scenes drama.

Remember the whole "Manbabies are trying to start a boycott of Star Wars because it has a black Stormtrooper!!!!1" stuff that was circulating after the TFA trailers? That was like, two morons making tweets and a handful of other morons retweeting their support, and the hashtag was taken over pretty much immediately by people telling them to sit the feth down and/or taking the piss. But it was still spread around as if it actually meant something, as if it was actually relevant. Because racist nerds trying to boycott a film is a lot sexier and click-worthy than "a couple of idiots said something dumb on twitter", and because some folk just love the idea that they're part of some enlightened and special group of "real fans" who're proper decent people, not like those awful neckbeards...

I liked Rey in the first sequel film.

I didn't hate TLJ because it had Rey in it. I hated TLJ for what it did to Rey... and every other character.

 Yodhrin wrote:

Nuh-uh, evilbadwrongcishetwhitemale neckbeard nerds have *always* hated women. They were just pretending to like Leia, Ripley, Sarah Connor, Kira etc etc for all those years, because the only possible reason for someone to criticise a modern film wot has women in it is they hate women. Yup. Must be that.

 Manchu wrote:
Going back to 1977, SW fans never had a problem with tough female heroes and leaders.

Funny how all these Star Wars fans hated women...

Except you know, all of those other women that were in Star Wars fiction beforehand. I can bang out a list.

And it oddly wasn't until after the movies were released that they hated women. But also hated a lot of other things about the movie.

It's almost like this "they hate women" thing is a lie, made up by people who need a convenient dismissal of criticism.

 Yodhrin wrote:
Look ScarletRose, nobody is denying there are scumbags out there. We're just denying they're even remotely relevant numerically. In fact, I'll argue flat out that the only reason they have any real power at all - if they can be said to have any - is down to their supposed opponents constantly building them up into a boogeyman because they're incapable of handling the idea that other people might not like the thing they like, or as a convenient way to deflect valid criticism and deflect from behind the scenes drama.

Whaaaaat? No, man. They obviously just manifested out of the aether in 2015, fully-grown woman haters with internet access.

Because really, that's less believable than "suddenly all of these fans that were stoked about the new movies just decided to hate women out of nowhere".

 Yodhrin wrote:
Remember the whole "Manbabies are trying to start a boycott of Star Wars because it has a black Stormtrooper!!!!1" stuff that was circulating after the TFA trailers? That was like, two morons making tweets and a handful of other morons retweeting their support, and the hashtag was taken over pretty much immediately by people telling them to sit the feth down and/or taking the piss. But it was still spread around as if it actually meant something, as if it was actually relevant. Because racist nerds trying to boycott a film is a lot sexier and click-worthy than "a couple of idiots said something dumb on twitter", and because some folk just love the idea that they're part of some enlightened and special group of "real fans" who're proper decent people, not like those awful neckbeards...

I've listened to some of the harshest critics of the movies, and absolutely none of them have expressed a hate for women. Maybe a hate for Rey's character, a hate for how Phasma was handled, a hate for how Finn was reduced to cheap comic relief and ineptitude, and an overall hate for the way that RJ has spoken of the fans... but I think it's a show of intellectual bankruptcy/dishonesty to say that means "they hate women". It's a cop-out, it's lazy, and it's blatantly transparent to anyone who has any brain activity whatsoever.

And hey, you know what's funny? Getting combative with the fans never works out. And while a lot of people won't claim this is a metric to measure by, I disagree.

The Mandalorian figures are flying off the shelves and they just came off the trucks. You can't move Rey and Rose off the pegs for $3.00 a toy.

Those 'better people' obviously didn't spend like the dirty nasty neckbeards did, because even when the prequels were out and hated- guys were buying up the figures religiously. Don't really see much of that now, do we?

I'm still confused about whether not liking Rose's character makes me racist or a misogynist...

 Azreal13 wrote:
I'm still confused about whether not liking Rose's character makes me racist or a misogynist...

Shame she wasn't lesbian. Then you could be hit with homophobia at the same time so as to unlock the trifecta achievement.

Fingers crossed for developments in ROS then!

The sad bit is the characters introduced in TLJ were actually worse than those introduced in TFA. The only thing they probably did right in TLJ is make Rey less of a mary sue to an extent. I did kind of wish they left the new characters on a planet somewhere and let TFA characters do their thing with the original series characters.

Rose saving Finn and preventing a heroic sacrifice should've wiped out the rest of the resistance in one go. That is how bad Rose's character is at that point. She is the Jar Jar binks of the current trilogy. I still feel bad for phasma. She is kind of the Boba Fett (the movie version) for the new trilogy. Boba Fett while looking cool didn't really do much in the original trilogy and I stand by that. I do feel bad for how they handled Finn. They also sort of crapped on Poe in TLJ. What bugs me is they recycled the romance between Han and Leia in Empire strikes back between him and Holdo and then immediately killed her off so we didn't get a chance to know more about Holdo or even care.

TLJ also let me down in several areas. The movie also feels all over the place. Luke throws away the lightsaber Rey gives him like it's a piece of trash. Rey wants to be trained and yet gets no training at all during any part of the movie. Rose comes off like a fan girl and a bit annoying but isn't awful till she prevents Finn's heroic sacrifice. The force projection leading to Luke's force death was dumb. It was almost cool until Luke force died. The Casino Planet Sub-plot sucked and ended up being pretty much worthless and a waste of our time. Not to mention in the original movie Lando's character had to betray Han because he was at gunpoint and they automatically rebelled when things went bad whereas the new guy they met in the jail cell in TLJ had no real attachment to the characters and only took them in to sell them out. Holdo's sacrifice also adds issues into space battles but i'd be willing to overlook some of that since it was an interesting idea that ends up making issues.

 Just Tony wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
I'm still confused about whether not liking Rose's character makes me racist or a misogynist...

Shame she wasn't lesbian. Then you could be hit with homophobia at the same time so as to unlock the trifecta achievement.

They could still make a character trans I suppose for some reason. I think Trans people are fine btw as well as gay people but replacing every character with girls and at times making them gay in every movie you make gets really obnoxious esp. when it's advertised like it's the greatest achievement in mankind's history. Just let the character do its job like supposedly the 3rd romance option in the updated Catherine game.

I think Captain Phasma is the Boba Fett of the new trilogy. A cool looking character with lots of potential used for comedic relief before meeting an early untimely end. At least Darth Maul got to shine for an hour or two before getting punked unlike Phasma.

 warboss wrote:
I think Captain Phasma is the Boba Fett of the new trilogy. A cool looking character with lots of potential used for comedic relief before meeting an early untimely end. At least Darth Maul got to shine for an hour or two before getting punked unlike Phasma.

indeed, I think the 'look look we got the big lass from Thrones in different shiny armour' seemed to be the main pushing point, Phasma might have some story in other materials but in the new movies she's just another dangerously inept mini-boss that makes you wonder how the FO came to power (and whilst we are on about folks failing, everybody (bar Rey cos reasons) fails on a scale I'm starting to think Rian was trying to slide his take on Dune past us)

Maybe everyone assumed since she was big she’d be a good fighter, like how tall kids are pushed towards basketball. Maybe she is just gifted at logistics, but the only opening for a promotion was detachment leader.

Janitorial logistic special forces get the special shiny armor?

I think you may have subverted expectations more than Rian Johnson with that!

I’m sure her troops were very excited to give her armor that made her stand out (and draw all the blaster fire).

Maybe it's made out of beskar. According to the Mandalorian, it's really shiny.

She must have sold out a lot of to get that much. (I assume that’s how you get beskar based on spoilers I’ve read. I’m not getting D+ until they put up the Ewok movies.)


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It might also explain her reputation. “She has 233 confirmed kills!” (Turns out they’re all [see spoiler]).

You'll cave as soon as they put up the Christmas Special. I can smell the Bea Arthur fans a mile away.


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Or... perhaps as head of Janitorial and Logistics Special Forces, she coordinated the recycling of the only other equally shiny object in canon... a Naboo spacecraft... and recycled the metal for her armor. Bringing order to the galaxy includes separating your waste.

It could be both. Janitorial and logistics experience would make her uniquely qualified to cross index shipments of condensed milk and Reese’s Pieces Powder with instances of stopped up diaper incinerator units. And then.... Boom! She earns another gauntlet of beskar recycled Naboonian garbage scow (nobody tell her!).


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And I do love Bea Arthur. If you threw a party and invited everyone she knew, you would see the biggest gift would be from me, and the card attached would say, “Return my calls, Bea!”

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I’m sure her troops were very excited to give her armor that made her stand out (and draw all the blaster fire).

I think it's a worse idea to have her in the middle of a bunch of troops with non-reflective armor. Can you imagine if her enemies shot her to reflect and kill all her stormtrooper buddies? I definitely wouldn't want to stand too near her.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

And I do love Bea Arthur. If you threw a party and invited everyone she knew, you would see the biggest gift would be from me, and the card attached would say, “Return my calls, Bea!”

That would be a helluva trick. But I suppose if the Emperor's corpse can be shamelessly trotted out again in 2019 then it would be sexist of me to deny the same indignity for a Golden Girl...

The sad thing is I get your reference warboss . Remember when robot chicken combined golden girls and sex in the city. Man that was a silly skit.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
It could be both. Janitorial and logistics experience would make her uniquely qualified to cross index shipments of condensed milk and Reese’s Pieces Powder with instances of stopped up diaper incinerator units. And then.... Boom! She earns another gauntlet of beskar recycled Naboonian garbage scow (nobody tell her!).


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And I do love Bea Arthur. If you threw a party and invited everyone she knew, you would see the biggest gift would be from me, and the card attached would say, “Return my calls, Bea!”

You want your mind blown? Look up pictures of her in the Marine Corps during WW2.

 warboss wrote:
Maybe it's made out of beskar. According to the Mandalorian, it's really shiny.

Nah, it's made out of the shiny metal the naboo cruisers and yachts were made out of. That sort of conspicuous "we have resources and we don't care" usage.

I forgot the exact story, but it’s made out of a specific Naboo cruiser related to Palpatine/Amadala/Someone important that she got for being super awesome iirc.

 Yodhrin wrote:


"a couple of idiots said something dumb on twitter"

Isn't that basically twitter in a nutshell?

 warboss wrote:
I think Captain Phasma is the Boba Fett of the new trilogy. A cool looking character with lots of potential used for comedic relief before meeting an early untimely end. At least Darth Maul got to shine for an hour or two before getting punked unlike Phasma.

Of all the things to be cut from TLJ, I'm baffled they cut her confrontation with Finn.

 LunarSol wrote:

 warboss wrote:
I think Captain Phasma is the Boba Fett of the new trilogy. A cool looking character with lots of potential used for comedic relief before meeting an early untimely end. At least Darth Maul got to shine for an hour or two before getting punked unlike Phasma.

Of all the things to be cut from TLJ, I'm baffled they cut her confrontation with Finn.

I didn't know they cut a scene like that. Despite it being on Netflix for many months/years, the new trilogy are the only Star Wars films that I have zero interest in rewatching after the first viewing. I rewatched Rogue One though once but not Solo. Yeah, I consider them both to be wasted characters through no fault of the actors. Finn could have finally done something meaningful in sacrificing himself to save what was left of the resistance but he was tico'ed out of that at the last second.

The reason the scene was cut is because it was something your average viewer might have expected, and we all know what Johnson thinks about expectations...

Bran Dawri wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:


"a couple of idiots said something dumb on twitter"

Isn't that basically twitter in a nutshell?

YES! Sadly this is the case. I actually managed to hate people I once respected due to Twitter. Never meet your heroes I guess.

A lot are ok but all Twitter people have varying degrees of stupid opinions.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

Bran Dawri wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:


"a couple of idiots said something dumb on twitter"

Isn't that basically twitter in a nutshell?

YES! Sadly this is the case. I actually managed to hate people I once respected due to Twitter. Never meet your heroes I guess.

A lot are ok but all Twitter people have varying degrees of stupid opinions.

While that's all true, in this case my emphasis was on the number rather than the content. As you say, idiocy is practically twitter's brand, but even if it weren't and racist idiots were extremely rare on the platform, literally a couple of them trying to organise a boycott that turned into a joke almost immediately isn't newsworthy by any sane definition(save perhaps for the "turned to a joke" part), nor remotely representative of the fanbase of whatever it was they wanted to boycott, yet it was made into news(and the "turned to a joke" part was frequently a below-the-fold afterthought - news writers are well aware that statistically most people don't read more than half an article, so in practice anything that appears more than halfway down is something the author either didn't consider important, or wanted to minimise because it derails the narrative they're establishing in the first part of the story), and in many articles the implication was certainly that this was an example of "the Fandom Menace" and a wider "toxic" fan problem.

 SickSix wrote:
The Rolling Stone conducted an interview with Kathleen Kennedy.
https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-features/lucasfilm-president-kathleen-kennedy-interview-rise-skywalker-future-star-wars-912393/

Personally I was upset (in unreasonable fan mode) about a couple things. At one point she complains about not having source material. And all I can do is scream in my head "BECUASE YOU THREW IT ALL IN THE TRASH!" But I realize that may have all been the Mouses's call and not hers.

And of course I still seriously dislike her for 'loving' what Rian Johnson did to Episode XIII.

What are your thoughts? And where the hell is my Bobba Fett movie?

My Disclaimer:

I like Star Wars. The Phantom Menace is still, in my mind, they best of the entire film series and one of my top 5 all time favorite movies.
However, I am first, and always will be first a Star Trek fan. They're two different universes, and that's perfectly fine.

Now, onto my comment.

These new movies have been very confusing for me. The Force Awakens was, while not the worst movie in the franchise, a dull and uninspired film. I actually saw Rouge One first, and it turns out that was really good for me because I hated Rey with a passion. Rouge One tells me why I hate Rey. It's because Jen was, and is a superior female character to Rey in every possible aspect. Going the full route, I actually hate Kylo even more. In honesty both characters seem like cookie-cutter characters, designed to be "hip" or "cool" for the sake of being one or the other.

The Last Jedi was painful, and is one of the very few movies I've ever walked out of a theater on. I ended up reading the synopsis afterwords and to this day I've still never actually seen the last 50 minutes of the film.

Having seen the trailers for The Rise of Skywalker, I can say, I've no hope or interest. I'll give it a try, but honestly, I'm not expecting much from it.

It really puzzles me how they could create Rouge One and The Mandelorian, and then feth everything else up so painfully bad? It's almost like watching some of the GW traffic accidents we see with specific factions sometimes.

Throwing out all of the source material was dumb. The moment I heard they were going to do that was the moment I knew this wasn't going to work out too well. I mean we are talking about the same company that has produced all the Marvel train wrecks (Not a comic fan, and I can't get the hype of those movies. Iron Man 1 was a fantastic fill. Literally everything that came after was mediocre at best. YMMV I guess.)

Boba Fet is another sticking point with me. I just ask "Why?" The Mandelorian is doing that way better which a way more interesting character. Boba Fett was a villain who died in RToJ. Leave him dead.

I'd like to see something, anything related to the Old Republic, before the events of The Phantom Menace. Another couple of good movies in the vain of Rouge One would also be great. There is a short film on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6GUxb0kCCAYoutube that in my opinion should be a full length feature film, sadly I doubt it will ever happen.

I've never walked out on a film. I came close with Robert Redford's Horse Whisperer but I was on a date in a very cramped and uncomfortable theatre. About half way through the movie I would have put the animal down myself given the chance just to have the credits roll.

I can say one good thing about the new Star Wars movies:

Vehicles, trooper designs, weapons, and locales- all of those things are superior to everything we got in the Prequels.

I personally love the designs of the Flametroopers, the Knights of Ren, and the Discount Crimson Guard. Even Rey's attire is actually... pretty good, aesthetically speaking.

It just goes to show you that terrible writing can make the best designs into something awful and make it forgettable.


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 Azreal13 wrote:
The reason the scene was cut is because it was something your average viewer might have expected, and we all know what Johnson thinks about expectations...

A rumor out there is that these movies are made with multiple, very different cuts. Not just 'recording different scenes for the movies at different times', but actually having about 5 different possibilities for what could happen in a segment, recording all of them, and then whichever one the test audience likes the most gets spliced in.

It almost sounds smart, but then you realize it creates a very disjointed and almost emotionless story as an end product, where something doesn't quite feel right when you watch it but you can't put your finger on it.

That's the rumor, don't know if true. Sounds like something modern Hollywood would do.

I rather liked the asthetics in the prequels myself in addition to the universe. Maul and his lightsaber, the battle droids (the look, not the acting!), starfighters, the Naboo starship designs, the clones and their equipment, starships from the Republic to the Trade Federation, and the various non-human species of Jedi. I think they did a good job adapting the world to a time before the OT. YMMV but I rather enjoyed the earlier universe the asthetics and charactes set up even if I disliked or was ambivalent towards individual plot points and lines of dialog. I am admittedly including the EU (comics, RPGs, novels, games, etc) in that though as I was big into that as well. The asthetics are the only thing that I can praise in the sequel Disney trilogy though and even that is somewhat faint. U-wing (technically not sequel but still Disney), the slightly adapted X-wing, the new stormtroopers (including Phasma)... that's about it.

You guys are missing out. Walking out of a film and demanding one’s money back is one of life’s most smugtacular pleasures. I’ll never forget the time my entire family, each less discerning from the last, united with purpose, walked out of The Life Aquatic as one. Truly, an unshakeable bond was formed that day.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
You guys are missing out. Walking out of a film and demanding one’s money back is one of life’s most smugtacular pleasures. I’ll never forget the time my entire family, each less discerning from the last, united with purpose, walked out of The Life Aquatic as one. Truly, an unshakeable bond was formed that day.

I did this with Freddy Got Fingered. I didn't ask for my money back, though. I felt like being optimistic over any "comedy" involving Tom Green was actually pretty stupid, and I deserved the obnoxious stupidity of the movie and the loss of a few bucks.

I don't know what happened to Tom Green. I won't say I hope he died, but I will say that I hope that if he did die- it hurt a LOT.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
You guys are missing out. Walking out of a film and demanding one’s money back is one of life’s most smugtacular pleasures. I’ll never forget the time my entire family, each less discerning from the last, united with purpose, walked out of The Life Aquatic as one. Truly, an unshakeable bond was formed that day.

I didn't even ask for my money back. I just left.

@Togusa: I don't think I've ever walked out of a film but I left confused and unsatisfied. It's shocking that movie was so long and filled us in on so little. Nothing felt like it mattered. Finn's sacrifice which was ruined by Rose should have destroyed the Resistance. The material was just recycled garbage for most of it regardless of what Rian Johnson might say. The only really unique moments were with rey and kylo's arc but even then that was sort of like the hallucination force tree/cave. I find it sad that somehow KotOR 1 showed us a more interesting story than TLJ. I honestly didn't know it was possible for someone to make a movie worse than probably all of the prequels but here we are.

It's really sad you know. Rogue One was good (or at least in my opinion). The Mandalorian sounds good too. TLJ ruined the trilogy though. I never watched game of thrones but i'm wondering if the ending to Game of Thrones was worse or better than TLJ. After hearing how good GoT was i'm wondering if the let-down hurt much more.

@Yodhrin: Funny how whenever I do have the misfortune to check twitter again it's usually about the stupidest things I see people complain about. For instance I follow cosplayers and 1 of 2 things I've heard whined about are complaints about lighter toned people cosplaying characters with darker skin tones or adding make-up to make your skin darker. An argument started by a privileged white city girl because of course it is. The next issue was a german cosplayer telling people not to wear Nazi outfits even if they're cosplaying characters from games, anime or movies. Sadly I saw a fan not fully agree with said cosplayer and her cosplayer friend and he was hurled insults. I was so disgusted by this exchange that I unfollowed. Keep in mind i'm Jewish by blood (which is even more insulting a german girl tells me and others what to do) and if somebody wants to dress up as a character from Wolfenstein, Indiana Jones or that loli girl in that one anime (which I heard was actually WWI) then it is fine by me. I had the misfortune to live with a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi for 1-2 years so somebody play acting or assuming the role of a character is absolutely fine. Also if WWII games where you played axis or allies made Nazis then the early 2000's would've made so many neo-Nazis with how much WWII games were the hottest thing of the time. I was honestly more bored of the setting and how saturated the market was with WWII games.

Anyway I apologize for the off-topic rant but Twitter (and also the news) boils my piss.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
I can say one good thing about the new Star Wars movies:

Vehicles, trooper designs, weapons, and locales- all of those things are superior to everything we got in the Prequels.
.

I don't agree. The prequels had some amazing design work. The new ones have... slightly modified original trilogy stuff.
I remember seeing the X-wing game miniatures before I saw the TFA. The color swapped Ties just made me laugh, as its the only noticeable difference, black body and grey panels.

And the upcoming new stuff is just the old stuff but red. Yay.

Voss wrote:

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
I can say one good thing about the new Star Wars movies:

Vehicles, trooper designs, weapons, and locales- all of those things are superior to everything we got in the Prequels.
.

I don't agree. The prequels had some amazing design work. The new ones have... slightly modified original trilogy stuff.
I remember seeing the X-wing game miniatures before I saw the TFA. The color swapped Ties just made me laugh, as its the only noticeable difference, black body and grey panels.

And the upcoming new stuff is just the old stuff but red. Yay.

Agreed on some of the prequel designs, the Chrome bananas are a thing of beauty for example. Though the sequels are introducing some new stuff along with the rehashes, the res. bomber and TIE dagger for example, whether they are good or not is a different thing (I really dislike them... but the new A-Wing is lovely).

The newer variants of TIE fighter are sleek and nice. And I was a fan of the First Order attire. Well, everyone but Phasma. You'd think they'd be a bit more creative with the 'elite trooper' and do more than "make her chrome and give her a cape". FFS, contact the people who made SWTOR and ask for some Republic Trooper designs and go with that, you uninspired hucksters.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
The newer variants of TIE fighter are sleek and nice. And I was a fan of the First Order attire. Well, everyone but Phasma. You'd think they'd be a bit more creative with the 'elite trooper' and do more than "make her chrome and give her a cape". FFS, contact the people who made SWTOR and ask for some Republic Trooper designs and go with that, you uninspired hucksters.

still could have been worse the IoM makes you give up your helm if you want fancy armour and/or a cloak

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
You guys are missing out. Walking out of a film and demanding one’s money back is one of life’s most smugtacular pleasures. I’ll never forget the time my entire family, each less discerning from the last, united with purpose, walked out of The Life Aquatic as one. Truly, an unshakeable bond was formed that day.

I did this with Freddy Got Fingered. I didn't ask for my money back, though. I felt like being optimistic over any "comedy" involving Tom Green was actually pretty stupid, and I deserved the obnoxious stupidity of the movie and the loss of a few bucks.

I don't know what happened to Tom Green. I won't say I hope he died, but I will say that I hope that if he did die- it hurt a LOT.

The movie would have been better had it not been for the baby scene.