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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.