ST Master Filmmaking Team announced! JJ now writing the script

Forget about Jar Jar. His time ended in the PT.
If J. J. wants to do something right, I have three suggestions.
First, make strong, credible Han Solo story that does not deviate from the main storyline. No Jabba paying nonsense.
Second, make Chewbacca doing something for himself. In the OT, three movies, three times a prisoner. Repetitive. Give him more personality.
Third, keep equal focus on main characters. OT started with Luke, Leia and Han, ended with just Luke and Han. Female characters are important too.

 

So if LFL listens to fans, we end up with Snakes on a Plane or other such crud. As opposed to the crud we got, you mean? Either way, we're left with a film with a badly-written, illogical, nonsensical plot, shoddily-animated digital characters, and Samuel L. Jackson just going through the motions in it somewhere. If those are my options, I'm better off going on complaining.

Which consumers do you listen to? How about ALL of them? You imply that LFL needs to choose between serious and fun. In the most basic sense of a general tone for the film, perhaps, but once that's decided, are you really going to tell me that there can't be seriousness and fun all in the same Star Wars movie, with both done right and in the proper proportions to each other? If so, then I must have just imagined seeing The Empire Strikes Back, a film that did it PERFECTLY. Because, by your logic, that can't happen.

And no, Abrams should NOT make the ST into the PT 2.0, because regardless of what it made at the time, if there's one thing Disney/LFL is being made to face, it's that conditions have changed. The faction that had issue with the prequels has clearly carried, and WON, the argument, and for good and valid reasons, and the studio is clearly basing its actions on this knowledge; if that's not the case, then why are the people involved in this film doing everything in their power to distance themselves from the prequels? Why are they taking great pains, with practically every word or gesture, to state that they're going to be doing things differently this time out? That humungous amount of cash you mention obviously doesn't matter now; if that was really enough, they'd proudly praise the PT and not be tapdancing around its existence in this way. But no decent company rests on its laurels like that, particularly when those laurels are rotten. It must also understand that a business needs to not antagonize and alienate its consumer base, and that a product that makes money but leaves the consumer dissatisfied just builds up bad will against the company - a bad will that we've been seeing all over the place ever since, and which LFL now has to fight an uphill battle to surmount.

It's simply good business logic; a product has to make money, but it also has to be ACCEPTED. The PT wasn't. It met the fate of a myriad other products: people bought it only to discover they didn't like it. It's had nearly a decade to gain some form of general acceptance from people outside of our fan base, and it hasn't done that. It hasn't been able to shake the perception it earned. If it had, people would have gone to see TPM-3D in droves, and in truth it didn't even perform well enough to risk the embarrassment of releasing the other two in 3D to a similar indifferent reaction. And despite the best efforts of some people to defend it, it will never gain that acceptance now; Disney has already written it off.

Sometimes, there IS value in beating a dead horse, if the horse breeder learns from the experience never to try to sell you such a weak specimen again. We're now asking a new breeder, who has just replaced the old one at the same horse farm, to avoid such errors, and the visual aid of seeing what we did to the last horse is meant to be a tool of instruction: "If you try to sell us a horse that is in no way better than an old weak nag like the corpse of Mr. McGlue here, we'll put it down just as decisively." And in the long run, it's very healthy for Abrams to know that.

 

I hope Chewie isn't made the babysitter for the Solo kids. This was the case in the EU and it was pretty lame. Chewie should have his own family and his own job now. He's not Han's slave, he is his pal.

 

Wrong actually, a lot of little kids don't even know the OT. To them SW is the PT era. If you want to coast on nostalgia and cater to the 30 something hipster neckbeard crowd by all means write off the PT. My nieces and nephews only care about Ahsoka, Anakin, Obi Wan and the clones. They only know Vader and Han from Angry Birds. Also I don't really see that the guy who brought us "John Harrison" necessarily has his finger on the pulse of fandom.

 

Lots of people liked Jar Jar, so there would definitely be an large audience for bringing him back in some capacity.

 

Isn't he like a million years old by now?

 

You're right, they don't. The problem is, the guys who brought us (I should rather say inflicted on us) John Harrison are named Orci, Kurtzmann and Lindelof, not Abrams, Kennedy, Arndt or Kasdan. Abrams directed what was written, and it's to his credit to he managed to pull some actual emotion from that piece-of-crap script with the help of a damned good cast, but it's those three hacks who deserve your venom, not the director who was frankly better than the material he was working with. So no, I don't trust the people who brought me Star Trek Into Darkness too much, but I'm quite prepared to give one of the people who brought me The Empire Strikes Back the benefit of the doubt. And if that's who Abrams is excited to be working with, it tells me he understands fans just fine.

 

It's not really about how many people liked him or not, it's about what purpose can he serve in the story.
While I do understand what you're saying, I'll, for example's sake, go into the extreme - if we based what characters should come back when purely on audience likeability polls, we'd have dozens of movies with same characters over and over.

I am trying to leave my personal views aside, but I honestly don't think of anything that 90% of existing characters (OT or PT) can contribute to the overall story of the ST that cannot be accomplished by some other means. I love Wedge and it'd be awesome to have a cameo, but I won't even notice if he's not in it. I'm a fan of Boba Fett, but there is a very limited list of things he can plausibly add to the story 30 years after ROTJ. And so on and so on.

 

I don't know what the story is, so I don't know what his purpose could possibly be.

 

Precisely the reason why I can't proceed under the assumption that the ST is just going to be the adventures of the OT characters in their older years - though a lot of the things I read on this forum tell me that a hell of a lot of people here seem to be hoping that that's going to be the case. In the end, beyond Luke, C-3PO and R2-D2, I'm going in assuming that every other OT character can be deemed unnecessary and might not be in the film; until I'm told they've been signed, I won't even take Carrie Fisher's and Harrison Ford's participation as a given. If any of them DO appear, that's gravy, but I have no intention of being disappointed by having unrealistic expectations that people really have no right to have.

 

The problem is that your argument is deeply flawed... first off you state that it's all about "BUSINESS" and then you're suggesting that a professional filmmaker, responsible for millions of $$$'s of Disney/Lucasfilm budget/investment should base their decisions on a bunch of whining witless numpties? Have a look at the data... the prequels were hugely popular and made millions. Why would Disney/Lucasfilm just want to flush that down the toilet? However, yes - they are a business and are not so stupid that they would want to alienate the middle aged bald blokes, which is undoubtedly part of the audience demographic... and if they create a film that's more engaging, all the better. But I wouldn't presume the ST is some physical manifestation of the hatred of the prequels (as if)... The ST would not even be a viable proposition without the success of the prequels...

 

The flaw, I'm afraid, lies not in my argument, but in your basic assumptions about things. It lies in the fact that you hold the consumer in contempt.

Too strong a phrase? Hard to say that when you deride consumers as "a bunch of whining witless numpties" and "middle-aged bald blokes" who should only be ignored, and thus dismissed. Those numpties, those blokes, are your CUSTOMERS. Your very task as a producer is to please your customers, and as a business, you want all the customers you can get, all the time, every time. This attitude that says they mean nothing in the equation flies in the face of the most basic concepts about business.

Business is a relationship, an understanding between the producer and the consumer. If the producer offers good product, the consumer will buy it. But the consumer will always maintain the higher position in the relationship, because he/she has the power to destroy the producer at a stroke if he/she decides the aforementioned product ISN'T good. If the consumer is displeased, the relationship is damaged, and it is universally understood that the blame falls to the producer for producing bad product, not the consumer for judging the product bad. And if one consumer is displeased, he makes his displeasure known to ten others (or, in the Internet age, potentially thousands), all of whom spread the bad word about as well, like a virus. That kind of bad word of mouth can kill your business in the long term, and the fact that LFL ended up having to be bought out at all, by Disney or anyone else, proves that.

You ask me to look at data relating to events of ten years ago, but the reason the producers, in this case Disney/LFL, are acting the way they're acting is they don't CARE about the data of ten years ago; they care about NOW and TOMORROW. The data of the past becomes irrelevant to present and future business concerns almost immediately, because the conditions under which business can function is in constant flux. The business environment is tougher now; there's less casual spending money to go around, and far more sources of entertainment. In such conditions, and fully aware that LFL did indeed alienate a highly valued, and now absolutely essential, component of their consumer base, they're devising a large-scale and long-range plan that places no importance on the successes of the past. And if they want this plan to work, yes, they'd damn well better listen to the numpties and blokes whom you look down your nose upon; they have always meant, and can still mean, the crucial difference between Star Wars living and dying.

 

Pfluegermeister did you just suggest that Lucas sold his company because the prequels were a failure?

If Disney wants the ST to be successful, they only have to do what both Disney and Star Wars have always been best at... bring in the kids.

If they care about tomorrow as you suggest, they will be targeting the audience of tomorrow... i.e. today's children.

 

I think you're miscalculating. The PT fallout crosses a much wider demographic than you're suggesting. With one exception, every friend, peer, and casual acquaintance that I've conversed about Star Wars with - all of us in our late teens/early twenties, and with splendid heads of hair - hold the OT up to be classic cinema and the PT to be comparatively inferior. Lacking the Star Wars spirit, at least. I'm hopeful for the sequel trilogy, but most of my peers aren't, based on the perceived poor quality of the PT.

 

That is what we would call a biased sample.

 

I think that's the point, though. To me Jar Jar is a commentary on a generation that never grew up, refuses to grow up and finds no reason to do so. Adults that buy toys and write on movie forums. Those who rant about trivialities, instead of engaging in real problems that are difficult to acknowledge, hard to confront, but worth solving. Unlike Lucas' generation. The audience doesn't like it because it spits in their face, so to speak.

FWIW - I hope that it's obvious that I am one of these adults.

 

Sorry, I can't really get behind the idea that it's some sort of deeper, layered statement about anything.
It's just something that seemed like a good idea to the creators at the time and was quickly dropped when it got mostly negative feedback. If they were going for any sort of lasting, deeper statement, his role wouldn't go down to almost zero in the other two movies.
It's just a crappy idea that didn't work out.

 

Right, it's STAR WARS!

 

I guess I give Lucas a little more credit. I will say that I know Lucas does nothing, nothing without a purpose or a reason. Jar Jar's purpose may be in parts conscious and unconscious reflections of one's feelings. Any meaning you give Jar Jar comes from your own thoughts and experiences, too. In other times and places, people may love it. And the fact that you think it's a crappy idea is certainly not a universal truth, right? Others adore Jar Jar. I'm not a fan because he makes me feel inadequate.

 

I give him a lot of credit for a lot of things, but everyone makes mistakes. This, in my view, is one of those mistakes.

 

We have to see a Yuzzum in Episode 7. That is all.

 

Well that's rather presumptuous considering Jar Jar has very important roles in furthering the saga story. First he represents Qui-Gon's weaknesses and interests in pet projects (Anakin) and he is single handedly responsible for causing the vote that allows the militarization of the Republic and, by association, the implementation of Order 66 in Episode III. I wouldn't say that's a limited role or so 'quickly dropped'. He appears in TCW, correct?

EDIT: A Chorus of Disapproval: Excuse me...didn't see this until after.