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 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.