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Backfire wrote:
I sometimes wish they made a Star Wars movie which doesn't take place in some damn desert. But I suppose the galaxy has seen so many environmental disasters that most of the habitable planets have been desertificated. Makes sense I guess.

Solo?

It's got a beach

Figures they'd finally put the Knights of Ren in a movie already and it's at the point I no longer care.

Confirmation - Knights of the Old Republic to be basis for a trilogy.

They have a new screenwriter(Laeta Kalogridis) writing the first installment, so this isn't the Benioff & Weiss trilogy. It's also, interestingly, nothing to do with Rian Johnson so far as the news mentions, so assuming they stick with the "every other year" thing starting in 2022, and these plus the B&W trilogy constitute the six movies Iger confirmed were in development back when Disney's slate for the next few years came out, it's possible the future might be looking up a bit for Star Wars, with them going back to a fan-favourite era and either dumping Johnson or at least relegating him to some producer-level behind the scenes stuff.

We can but hope.

I'd have more faith in a KotR movie series if they got Drew Karpyshyn to write it honestly. All other things aside, that guy can spin a good yarn, and he's already shown an ability to do it across multiple mediums.

Certaintly, it would be better than the person whose consistency as a writer is best described by noting she co-wrote Terminator Genisys and Shutter Island...

They'll certainly have more of a free hand with this than sequel stuff.

Me, I'm not at all familiar with that era, as I never owned the right console to play them on. But I am aware they're held in almost universal high regard.

That may be a double edged sword. Ditching the old EU was the same. Whilst it cut out a lot of absolute Guff, they have brought back some of the favourites, albeit somewhat rejigged (Thrawn is superb in Rebels).

Wonder if there'll be similar surgery on this?

Apparently this is the woman adapting the Old Republic films.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0436164/

Yeah, that's I'm saying.

There's some good successful work there. Alita is a recent scifi fit, and Shutter Island I think is a very good film (just a very niche one) and Altered Carbon was great.

But then there's one of the worst Terminator movies ever, Alexander and the giant mixed bag that film was, two failed TV series, and the mess that was Pathfinder.

Night Watch could honestly go in either category, but for me what made Night Watch passable was the camera work and acting that was too good for a mediocre film, so...

She seems to have been heavily involved with "Birds of Prey".




Hence my... reservations...

That seems like a perfectly fine resume for a Star Wars spinoff film.

 gorgon wrote:
That seems like a perfectly fine resume for a Star Wars spinoff film.

Yup. How many writers are there in Hollywood without a mixed bag of quality? Even greats like the Coen brothers have some not great stuff in their filmography.

 gorgon wrote:
That seems like a perfectly fine resume for a Star Wars spinoff film.

A trilogy is a spin off film now?

Whatever. The important part is that it's 'pew-pew' material. She's got some solid genre stuff on the resume, and as Malus notes the nature of the work means that most screenwriters end up with a mixed bag of work anyway.

Besides, the combined powers of Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick and Francis Ford Coppolla couldn't make a SW film that would make *everybody* happy these days. I can't wait for more calls of 'ruined childhoods' from some corner of the fanbase.

The sequel trilogy feels pointless because the bad guys are just a copy of the Galactic Empire in the original trilogy.

The Old Republic’s bad guys are the Sith Empire who are just like the Galactic Empire in the original trilogy but with more Darth (insert evil sounding name) characters.

It’ll take a lot to win me round at this point.

Do we need Star Wars to be deep, dark, suberting expectations - none of which the original did/was.

Would people not enjoy a fun adventure series? Other films work just fine like this......

Also the Lego Star Wars films work better than the recent live avtion films in all respects

 MonkeyBallistic wrote:
The sequel trilogy feels pointless because the bad guys are just a copy of the Galactic Empire in the original trilogy.

The Old Republic’s bad guys are the Sith Empire who are just like the Galactic Empire in the original trilogy but with more Darth (insert evil sounding name) characters.

It’ll take a lot to win me round at this point.

KotOR, not TOR. I agree they went too far aesthetically in terms of similarity with the OT for the MMO, but the original games can't really be accused of that.

I'm personally hoping that this new trilogy is a straight-up adaptation of the first game(you can map the story pretty well onto the OT template, down to the big twist in the second movie, plus it seems like the writer they've hired is reasonably good at adaptations), and the Benioff & Weiss trilogy dives into the *really* wonko Tales of the Jedi stuff with the original philosophical split of the Jedi order's precursor, or the subsequent stuff about the original Sith species & the Great Hyperspace War. Or if they want to do something "dark & subversive", do the Star Wars version of Infinity War with Thanos as the protagonist and adapt the Darth Bane novels.

I hope they stay far, far away from TOR, because the only really unique part of that setup from a non-superfan perspective(ie, most of the folk who watch the movies) is the whole Zakuul arc which...is not good.

 Yodhrin wrote:
I hope they stay far, far away from TOR, because the only really unique part of that setup from a non-superfan perspective(ie, most of the folk who watch the movies) is the whole Zakuul arc which...is not good.

I think the overarching plot of TOR is god awful and properly derided by fans.

At the same time though, one of the great tragedies (or boons, depending on how you look at it) is that the class storylines were mostly pretty good. To this day the Sith Warrior, Imperial Agent, and Sith Inquisitor storylines are applauded as some of the best Star Wars stories to ever make it into a video game (to the point I'd say it's worth playing ToR just to play those three character classes to 50 and then drop the game entirely when you finish), and all three would actually make stellar moives in the right hands. Parts of the Smuggler, Trooper, and Bounty Hunter storylines too. I could see the Great Hunt arc being a good popcorn flick if nothing else. Sadly, everything having to do with the actual Jedi in TOR is either horrifically bad, or too tied into the awful main plot to be any good.

 gorgon wrote:

Besides, the combined powers of Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick and Francis Ford Coppolla couldn't make a SW film that would make *everybody* happy these days. I can't wait for more calls of 'ruined childhoods' from some corner of the fanbase.

Woody Allen and ruined childhoods kind of go hand in hand.

 gorgon wrote:
Whatever. The important part is that it's 'pew-pew' material. She's got some solid genre stuff on the resume, and as Malus notes the nature of the work means that most screenwriters end up with a mixed bag of work anyway.

Besides, the combined powers of Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick and Francis Ford Coppolla couldn't make a SW film that would make *everybody* happy these days. I can't wait for more calls of 'ruined childhoods' from some corner of the fanbase.

This kind of thing is just nonsense though. That there will always be some non-zero number of people who don't like a given iteration of a thing doesn't mean you can't make that thing more appealing to more people than an existing iteration, nor does the presence of a tiny minority of unreasonable people negate entirely reasonable criticisms.

Besides which, the reason why those people couldn't make a Star Wars film that would make "everybody" happy is they're not suited to directing that style of film, any more than Johnson was. Any more than Tarantino likely is to direct a Star Trek film. Hire the right kind of director(and writers), ones who grasp they're making a space-fantasy action adventure and not some pretentious film festival piece, and you'll get Star Wars movies that make almost everybody happy.

I am not particularly big on 'lets try to please (almost) everyone' line of moviemaking. TFA was like that, and while it was an okay movie, it is not particularly memorable. Rewatches of that movie are just kind of boring. They took no risks and stuck with the formula ANH estabilished and as a result it feels more like a re-enactment where you go through the motions of the old movie than a new movie of its own.

TLJ, for all its faults, has more rewatch value because while I know that some parts of the movie suck, it also has scenes which rock, so I can patiently wait through the suck parts. TFA is just kinda 'meh' all around, it's emotionally quite flat movie.

I never got the feeling from TLJ that Johnson was trying to swerve me, or subvert my expectations. Only thing which genuinely surprised me was offing Snoke. But Snoke was not built much in TFA. In TLJ Johnson's job was to either make him interesting, or get rid of him. If he wasn't able to do the first, then second one was the right choice. Only issue with this was that they would have needed someone more villanous to step in right away to lead First Order. Somewhat ambiguous Kylo Ren is clearly not that person. They should have estabilished Hux as more effective or evil, or whipped out Knights of Ren. Or say, bring in Grand Admiral Thrawn! Now that could have been quite awesome.

Problem with TLJ was that they rushed it out. Script was clearly draft-level in many places and many of the fanbases annoyances come from scenes or dialogue which could have been great if executed better, but come off as clumsy and unrefined. Existence of clear placeholder names is surefire sign of this. For example: "We need some kind of codebreaker. -Hey! I know a guy! He's called the Codebreaker!" I mean, seriously?? Nobody had time to flesh THAT angle up even a little bit? I have seen Power Rangers episodes more subtle.

I do agree. I honestly can’t decide whether I like TLJ or not, I keep changing my mind, but it was a far more interesting movie than TFA. It’s almost impossible to hate TFA because it was so utterly bland. TLJ took risks and some paid off while others fell flat.

Backfire wrote:
I never got the feeling from TLJ that Johnson was trying to swerve me, or subvert my expectations. Only thing which genuinely surprised me was offing Snoke. But Snoke was not built much in TFA. In TLJ Johnson's job was to either make him interesting, or get rid of him. If he wasn't able to do the first, then second one was the right choice. Only issue with this was that they would have needed someone more villanous to step in right away to lead First Order. Somewhat ambiguous Kylo Ren is clearly not that person. They should have estabilished Hux as more effective or evil, or whipped out Knights of Ren. Or say, bring in Grand Admiral Thrawn! Now that could have been quite awesome.

This is probably the only nice thing I'm ever going to say about The Last Jedi, but putting someone in charge of an evil galactic empire who is clearly not ready for the job but still too powerful and feared to easily be overthrown himself is actually interesting as far as ideas go.

 MonkeyBallistic wrote:
I do agree. I honestly can’t decide whether I like TLJ or not, I keep changing my mind, but it was a far more interesting movie than TFA. It’s almost impossible to hate TFA because it was so utterly bland. TLJ took risks and some paid off while others fell flat.

Again though, it's a false choice. You don't need to "take risks" or "subvert expectations"(and whether that's what you got from it or not Backfire, that's what the guy set out to do) in order to avoid making a bland, boring retread. People keep associating quality of execution with willingness to deviate from the established norms of a franchise, and that's nonsense.

 Yodhrin wrote:

 MonkeyBallistic wrote:
I do agree. I honestly can’t decide whether I like TLJ or not, I keep changing my mind, but it was a far more interesting movie than TFA. It’s almost impossible to hate TFA because it was so utterly bland. TLJ took risks and some paid off while others fell flat.

Again though, it's a false choice. You don't need to "take risks" or "subvert expectations"(and whether that's what you got from it or not Backfire, that's what the guy set out to do) in order to avoid making a bland, boring retread. People keep associating quality of execution with willingness to deviate from the established norms of a franchise, and that's nonsense.

Mate, I couldn’t agree more. I don’t think TLJ is a better film for taking risks or “subverting expectations”, just a more interesting film. It’s certainly one of the most visually striking Star Wars films, but has a terrible plot and ropey characterisation. I just find a movie with some amazing aspects and some utterly awful parts to be more interesting as a piece of cinema than something which is uniformly, blandly ok.

And just to be absolutely clear, when I say interesting, I don’t mean good or even enjoyable. By interesting, I mean worthy of discussion, even if all there is to discuss for some people is, why was it so bad? I’m certainly not associating quality of execution with anything at all.

 MonkeyBallistic wrote:
I do agree. I honestly can’t decide whether I like TLJ or not, I keep changing my mind, but it was a far more interesting movie than TFA. It’s almost impossible to hate TFA because it was so utterly bland..

Trust me; it's possible.

Just as important as the type of director is the competence of the director. A director who could build tension, develop characters, and set up a story with earned payoffs could have made a TFA-like Star Wars movie that wasn't garbage.

I think we can all agree that TFA could have been better.

For me the most fascinating thing about Star Wars is that, now we are at a point where the number of bad and mediocre Star Wars films outnumber the good ones, why are so many people still invested in it? For me, I definitely like the idea of Star Wars far more than the reality of Star Wars. I honestly think (though I may just be speaking for myself here) that it’s because the original trilogy still holds up as one of the greatest examples of production design in the history of cinema.

 LordofHats wrote:
Yeah, that's I'm saying.

There's some good successful work there. Alita is a recent scifi fit, and Shutter Island I think is a very good film (just a very niche one) and Altered Carbon was great.

But then there's one of the worst Terminator movies ever, Alexander and the giant mixed bag that film was, two failed TV series, and the mess that was Pathfinder.

Night Watch could honestly go in either category, but for me what made Night Watch passable was the camera work and acting that was too good for a mediocre film, so...

While not a massive sample size by any means her best work was all adaptations of existing novels/stories like Altered Carbon, Battle Angel and Nightswatch. So given the large amount of source material available for the Kotor period I feel comfortable in being at least a little excited.

I personally preferred the Altered Carbon show to the books and I liked the books quite a bit, she never made any changes just for the sake of change mostly stuff that just would not have moved from book to show easily. Also she made the main character less of a douche because in the books he sales past anti hero straight into massive bell end territory quite often to the point there’s a couple of times we’re you stop caring if he actually survives.

I have to disagree about Altered Carbon/change for the sake of it, they straight up gutted the implicit anticapitalist element of the books by completely rewriting Quellcrist's motivation and philosophy, plus combining with the Envoys, and in the process made the them seem either illogical ideologues, or just plain dumb.

I mean, they specifically establish that the scarcity of the immortality tech is artificial, so Quellcrist & Co were either too stupid to draw the obvious conclusion(if the problem is the rich holding on to the tech in order to perpetuate their power and relative privilege, overthrow them and nationalise it), or they did draw the obvious conclusion but believe that rampant inequality and superwealth are fine so long as the wealthy also die in the end, or that restoring the "natural order" is more important than bringing down a corrupt and unjust social regime.

The little detour into trying to wield the tech as a cudgel to drive home a "sex work is inherently misogynist violence" message was also clumsy and ill-judged.

Still, the first KotOR game doesn't delve into such weighty themes, so you'd hope her work on Alita will be more representative of how this will turn out.

Would much rather they just get Episode 9 out the door and make another Story-movie, like the Obi-Wan film they mentioned before.

It would be nice if Ewan McGregor got a fair crack of the whip under a more engaged director, which wasn't the case with the prequels. They are good films but the actors - some of them Academy Award winners - looked mostly bored and uninterested beyond the initial excitement of being in a Star Wars movie. For example, compare Natalie Portman's performance in Leon(1994) to Phantom Menace(1999) - five years younger and a big difference.

Not sure we really need a second Solo movie, but I'd definitely go see it if it were made! Solo was fantastic in 4DX and I actually felt like part of the Falcon's crew in the kessel run scene. Definitely one of the better SW movies.

For what is on the horizon, I'm just glad The Mandalorian is a thing and starts this year. Dave Filoni is all the reassurance I need.

wait is this going to be about Darth Revan?