Saga Joss Whedon handling Star Wars in the future

Great call on the Wachowski siblings. They more than anyone else strike me as the modern heir to Lucas as far as crafting big effect action films that borrow heavily while somehow still standing as unique and iconic in their own right. They have the eye for visuals, the ability to craft sprawling and one on one action scenes, seem more than capable of a Star Wars tone that's serious without being too serious, as well as action film dialogue that can be appropriately hokey without ever dipping too far into snappy jokiness, sentimentality, or over-explanatory talkiness.

 

I think it would be best if Joss Whedon and other guys like him create or stick to their own creations.

 

Bring back Firefly!!!

 

Too late now.

 

Not for a Sith...

 

Wellll....never thought I'd say this, but after seeing Avengers Whedon could totally handle a Star Wars film. He's got his maniacally evil villains and hero archetypes down pat.

 

Especially one like TPM.

 

I imagine they'd have the same opinion. Tackling comic book heroes & Star Trek are different, as they've already been repeatedly re-imagined by different people over decades. Batman no longer 'belongs' to Bob Kane, nor does Superman to Siegel & Schuster, Star Trek to Gene Roddenberry etc.

Star Wars is still helmed by GL, however. That will change one day, but don't hold your breath. TCW is sort of the first step (being far more successful than the animated spinoffs of the First Era), but it'll be a while before there's a full-blown reboot or remake of the Saga proper, unless GL actually decides he wants to announce that he's handing the franchise on to someone else. Virtually everything he's said suggests that he has no intention of doing that.

Any significant new SW projects in the near future (live-action TV or feature film) will be tangential or virtually unrelated to the six-episode SW Saga, and GL will still keep whatever they might be well & truly under his thumb if he's around.
The Live Action TV Series currently sitting in limbo (but already scripted somewhat) is set in between ROTS & ANH, probably dealing with the underworld of the galaxy. Any separate full-blown features will most likely be set 1000 years-plus earlier than the PT.
Suits me just fine.

 

The Avengers was a lot of fun to watch, but any SW film (even TPM and AOTC) has a lot more "meat" in it that would just leave something like The Avengers feeling comparatively hollow at some point down the road. SW is more than just villians and hero archetypes.

 

Ehh, that's more of a function of the script then the director, IMO. Plus, you know, ANH. Not alot of plot-meat there; it practically lives by its archetypes.

Edit-He hasn't done anything particularly weighty in awhile, but the fourth Alien film's script was Whedon; the ending was a tank, but the rest of the film was hardly lightweight or silly.

 

That's a good point about director vs. script, but I still think ANH has more meat to it than The Avengers.

 

That's your uncle talking.

 

Look, I can take you as far as Anchorhead. You can get a transport there to Mos Eisley or wherever you're going.

 

I don't know about that. But I feel that ESB, AOTC and ROTS have just as much meat to them than THE AVENGERS.

 

Whedon here?

 

TESB and ROTS only have as much meat to them as The Avengers? "I don't know about that."

 

An interesting combo is emerging here (not that it is a new idea but...) :Lucas working on the script with someone like Whedon allowed to tweak and direct. Because I think, after years of debate, a lot of PT haters have come to admit that the same story better directed and tightened and made tonally more coherent might actually have worked for them. Whedon, or someone like him, could have probably brought that to the films.

 

Keep Whedon away from Star Wars..

 

I said that I feel that ESB, AOTC and ROTS have as much meat to them as THE AVENGERS.

The problem I have with this argument is that I found myself too impressed with the PT to demand that a Joss Whedon or someone like him needed to work with Lucas. I've been familiar with Whedon's work since the 90s. And as talented as he is, he is not perfect. There is a good deal in his work that I have found questionable, just like in the works of other writer/producers like him and Lucas.

 

Whedon is by no means a perfect fit and is hardly a guarantee to make things more widely accepted. I only meant some comments seemed like they were starting to see that there might be certain strengths and weaknesses to consider in GL the writer/director and how someone, perhaps even a relatively unknown director who is, however, an "actor's" director might have tweaked and questioned and raised the level of performance and story to something less people, even if they are the minority now, had a problem with, including the vocal critics. But of course if you start with the sense that the PT is impressive, of course you wouldn't see any need for such a change.

But this idea that he may not be the best director for his own work is one that has been going around before, nothing new, only that in this discussion maybe we're not even really saying "Lucas can't do anything right", we're once again saying, "Maybe he just needs to hand a portion of control over to someone else and see what happens after he has basically written his script". I know some people are pretty happy with TCW and he's not the cook in that kitchen from what I understand.

 

Given the fact that the most financially succesful and critically acclaimed Star Wars movie (ANH) was written and directed by Lucas himself makes it hard to believe.

You know, I understand where that particular opinion comes from. But frankly, I feel it's just people trying to find a reason and retionalize why they don't like the prequels and people tend to blame persons. I just don't think that logic works.
If Lucas is the problem, how could you like the OT (and especially ANH)? You couldn't like it.
So I think we have to realize that the problem doesn't lie with the the person who made specific Star Wars movies, but with the movies themselves.

I love the prequels, you obviously don't. But I can't believe someone would think he disliked them because of Lucas' directorial or writing style in general. You didn't like the direction he was going for these movies, but that wouldn't have changed much if someone else directed it for him (he did hire co-writers.) If you didn't like Lucas' films per se, you couldn't have become a fan.

 

Well, I didn't say that it wasn't possible for Lucas to do good work. To generalize however, and claim ANH was really all Lucas is probably misleading given the evidence out there. Yes he is writer/director, but from anecdotal evidence he also seemed to have a lot more input back in the day and perhaps just constraints that forced him to accept other people's input (not enough time, money or energy and control to say no or spend time altering things). So my ability to like ANH but not the PT so much may, though it is hard to prove, have everything to do with Lucas and his type of abilities as writer/director.

Secondly, I do not think the PT would have been miraculously made better by another director. It is only a possibility. Because given what we do get on screen, my inability to connect with it does come down to mostly his decisions conveyed through the writing, directing and all other choices presented on screen. I get that part of it is me, I would never deny this, but there are some things that are so obvious to me as issues I will forever speculate on what it might have been if.... So the only other option for me to speculate on, other than Lucas himself doing things differently, would be that perhaps he needed challengers to his autonomy and one-man-show efforts. But of course, there was no obvious route to success. I remember hearing someone once talking about "flops" and saying, well, you know, no one sets out to make a flop. Even Battlefield Earth was expected to be a big hit as it was being made. So all the best intentions don't equal success (or necessarily please everyone to the greatest degree) and therefore I fully acknowledge that he probably did have all the best intentions as he saw them anyway.

I also believe Lucas only hired a co-writer on one PT film, no?

 

If you're going to say that about George Lucas, you might as well say the same about Joss Whedon. He has not always handled his creations well. For me, "SERENITY" and "DOLLHOUSE" are perfect examples. Sometimes, he mishandled both "BUFFY" and "ANGEL". But unlike others, I have not demanded that he bring someone else on board to handle a portion of control over his work. I can certainly say the same about the creators behind "LOST" and Gene Roddenberry's original control over "STAR TREK".

Or . . . just allow the creators of these sagas handle their own work. They're not perfect and they were bound to make mistakes.