ST Chris Terrio to Co-write Episode IX

Maybe Terrio will give us a massive dark side monster!

 

You make jokes, but I'm all for Kylo Ren seeking a giant, nightmarish dark side monster instead of another disgusting creature scene like with Luke and the space walrus or Finn and the alien warthog.

 

Good point. We've seen creatures so far but they haven't done much more than chirp, cry, snort, and squirt blue milk.

 

Eh, in fairness we got the Rathtars, but they were pretty much a callback to the Trash Compactor creature, the Mynock and space slug as well as the Rancor.

A monster that'd be a ripoff of Spider-Man's Symbiote nemesis seems to be right up these peoples' alley and they technically own Marvel too.

 

I'm surprised that this actually was brought up. 13:08 - onward:

 

I enjoyed Argo enough to give Terrio a pass on co-writing Batman v. Superman. He's known for doing extensive preparation for his screenplays, including a heavy focus
on lore and world building. For BvS, he researched "everything from ideas about American power to the structure of revenge tragedies to the huge canon of DC Comics to Amazon mythology." https://screenrant.com/star-wars-episode-9-chris-terrio-bvs-writer/2/

I think he could be a good fit for JJ, as he could provide a thematically dense screenplay, and JJ could translate that for a broad audience.

Terrio also has experience writing the third movie in a trilogy. Although this is perhaps stating the obvious, he said in an interview: "the middle film tends to be the darkest one. I do think Man of Steel through Justice League, it is one saga really. . . . I felt compellted to go back and try to lift us and myself into a different tonal place because I think when you write a darker film, sometimes you want to redeem it all a bit."

 

The thing about screenwriters is if you're in Hollywood long enough, you're gonna be associated with movies that turn out to be real stinkers and unfortunately it follows you around. I mean you look at Akiva Goldsman who has been writer/director for over 2 decades now and been involved in tons of movies and TV shows and he's won an Oscar but yet whenever his name gets brought up on a blog, the blogger is quick to point out his involvement in Batman and Robin. A movie that happened over 20 years ago.

In Terrio's case, he doesn't have a long enough resume to accurately gauge how he's gonna approach Episode IX. But knowing Abrams, he will have the most influence over what ends up as the final draft.

 

I don't know if I'm that generous. I mean, if Aaron Sorkin wrote something as bad as BvS, I'd be skeptical about his next project.

 

I enjoyed and a lot Argo too. It really is one of the movies I've loved most in the last years.
I still hold my breath every time I see it.
But the main accomplishment of the movie, to me, is how the hystorical context is described.
How the audience is provided of all the information needed to understand what was going on
at that time, without the movie - or the characters and the conversations between them - to be
pedantic. That is not easy at all.

But I don't know why Terrio was chosen.
Because when it comes to BvsS, and that interview - @Gemlake - that is what scares me.
I hope he'll dig into the SW lore.
Which is already full of all the "mithology" needed... to end the Skywalker Saga.

What I want, it's a movie to close that tale.
Something that may put it all together.
Then, do whatever you want finding inspiration wherever it may please you...
but please, before, give us a sense of closure.

 

I very much would want to hear that boardroom discussion.

 

Looking back at it all, I'm finding the SW verse, (the Legends portion of it anyway), to be comparable to a lesser Marvel/DC multiverse. Perhaps they're trying to give SW that sort of feel since Terrio was part of the DC verse.

 

For those still holding Terrio's DC work against him:

As I've said elsewhere, Terrio has also written a fantastic, unproduced drama called THE ENDS OF THE EARTH in addition to Argo.

 

TBH I think JJ bought in the perfect person to balance him out from what I can tell of Terrio's prior experience (despite the quality of some of those works). Terrio's writing tends to be more grounded in reality, and while that may seem like a weird fit for Star Wars, I think him and JJ could learn something from each other, and bring together a story that feels much more focused and interlocked.

 

I think BvS had a lot of issues but a lot of it had to do with Snyder's over-flourished wagnerian directing. The script suffered from a really bad "final showdown" that was as visually ugly as unspired. I didnt like Luthor's characterisation and the "Martha" thing is still a bit WTF but in the end the script is not that bad (i didnt say it was good). And since he co-wrote it we dont know what's his part in the script or his role in the story process.

I havent seen the other movies...did he write them on his own?

 

Well, I’ve always loved Batman since I was a kid. And I liked Superman a lot too. Before I had seen Star Wars in 1977, I had grown up on the George Reeve Superman and Adam West Batman. Then there was the Christopher Reeve Superman I and II and the Tim Burton Batman movies. Also the Batman Animated Series.

That said, the Nolan Batman trilogy is the greatest superhero series of all time. Incredible.

When I heard Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan were doing Superman, I was happy. But, C Nolan was the “godfather” of Man of Steel, as Mark Hughes notes below. I loved 300 and wondered how Snyder would handle MoS.

I understand how many people didn’t like the violence and civilian casualties (Marvel seems to get a free pass here), but I liked the movie.

Speaking of Marvel, they’ve been slaying it. I’ve see every MCU movie except IW, which I’ll watch this weekend.

DC, meanwhile...

Mark Hughes below gives good reasons why DCEU has struggled. He doesn’t lay the blame at Snyder’s feet. He qualifies by being up front that he likes Snyder’s DCEU films a lot, but I still find his reasoning sound. Basically, WB didn’t think Superman could be the tent pole for DCEU and they wanted Justice League and The Batman fast.

So, I checked out Collider Heroes, and except for Jon Schnepp on the theatrical release of BvS, the consensus seems to be far more positive on MoS and BvS. For both Hughes and Schnepp, BvS Ultimate Edition is a great film.

So, I returned to MoS, and more accustomed to a different interpretation of Zod, loved it.

I never saw BvS in the theaters and I’m glad I didn’t given Schnepp’s criticisms. I just saw BvS UE, the director’s cut, and thought it great. The script by Terrio was excellent with its themes and character development. But as Scott Mendelsohn, also at Forbes and who also loved BvS UE noted, you can’t have a 3-hour DCEU film, or an R-rated one. The film stands on its own, but shouldn’t be the tent pole for DCEU. Btw, he had called the theatrical release a “beautiful disaster.”

In sum, Terrio can’t be blamed. And I do think BvS Ultimate Edition was written very well.

For the Forbes articles by Hughes:

https://www.google.co.jp/amp/s/www....zack-snyders-impact-on-the-dceus-success/amp/

https://www.google.co.jp/amp/s/www....about-and-why-so-many-people-rejected-it/amp/

And by Mendelson:

https://www.google.co.jp/amp/s/www....-dawn-of-justice-is-a-beautiful-disaster/amp/

https://www.google.co.jp/amp/s/www....n-review-a-superior-cut-of-a-doomed-film/amp/

Apparently, he rewrote a lot of it. For Snyder, it was supposed to have been MoS 2 with a cameo by Wayne/Batman. WB got excited, was disappointed by the BO of MoS, and brought in Affleck, who brought in Terrio.

It was WB who cut 30 minutes from the director‘s cut and rearranged scenes. Read the top link by Hughes for more details.

And here’s Jon Schepp of Collider Heroes on the BvS Ultimate Edition. He thinks MoS is almost an masterpiece, liked the way too short and stylistically uneven JL, and liked BvS theatrical release even less the second time he saw it. But as for the UE, he’s ecstatic.

 

I love Argo. Let's hope this works.

 

I have to agree. Someone mentioned Akita Goldsman. Yes he wrote A Beautiful Mind but there was everything else too.

 

For fans of some of the subtext that Rian Johnson left unsaid in certain exchanges between characters and the intoxicating magic of those two hands coming together and those glances between Rey & Ben as they rise to face the guards... this mini review on screenwriting from Chris Terrio on the Oscar-nominated Call Me By Your Name is promising.

Chris Terrio on Call Me By Your Name
Written by James Ivory; Based on the Novel by Andre Aciman

I have a theory that a good screenplay gives us memorable dialogue; a great one, memorable silences. When a true master screenwriter comes along — and they’re about as rare as a Javan rhino — he captures life as it is, both in the words his characters say and in the ones they don’t. It takes a writer — even a master writer — a long time to figure out what to write; it takes longer to figure out what not write. Which is why the screenplay for “Call Me by Your Name” is the work of a lifetime. Written by James Ivory, who has been making films for more than 60 years, the script is a master class in restraint and precision.

In telling the story of Elio and Oliver, a teenager and graduate student falling in love, Ivory avoids all the prosaisms of the coming-of-age drama. He crafts his story (based on the novel by André Aciman) as a topography of intimacy, mapping the delights and cruelties and contradictions of two people falling in love — not in the way people fall in love in movies, but the way they do in life.

There are no operatic kisses in the rain here; no valentines are written in the sky; and no one hurries to the station to meet the train just in time. Instead, Ivory has crafted a story in which a sideward glance or a finger brushing up against another finger is a seismic event. The writer is not afraid to work in miniature in order to arrive at something vast in the end. A climactic scene in the script, in which a father speaks to his teenage son about his own regrets — encouraging his son to live fully, bravely, honestly — feel like words of deep and earned wisdom. They feel like the essence of Ivory’s screenplay — true, wise, perfect.

 

I think JJ has a good reason for working with him, and I generally trust JJ's instincts at this point (despite him not being even close to one of my favorite directors). TFA proved that he understands Star Wars pretty well, even if he sometimes goes a little vanilla with it. So, I wish Terrio well.

 

With the doubts about Terrio, having wrote BvS and co-wrote Justice League since his superior Argo, but what has JJ Abrams really done to credit any confidence? Abrams has helmed two poor Star Trek films, the awful Super 8 and TROS will only be his 6th directorial feature film. So may be Terrio isn't the weak link of the duo that's been given the privilege of deciding the direction of the final Star Wars film for the next 5 years.

 

@Django Fett

You might not those films but pretty much any JJ directed film as been well received. He knows how to make crowd pleasing films and that is what Disney is looking for right now.

As for Terrio, I am kinda mixed how he was brought in. Argo was great but Dawn of Justice and Justice League struggled to say the least. How much of that was Synder remains to be seen but perhaps Terrio and JJ will be a better match despite their differences in storytelling.

 

I've read somewhere that in modern big blockbusters, action scenes are mapped out in advance and a screenwriter's job is basically to bind them together with some dialogue.

 

Terrio had Snyder for one film and Whedon for another, I don't know how much and to what extent and I wouldn't use it to excuse him blame for those films. Abrams managed to get critics onside even if the Star Trek fanbase were hugely divided, where have I heard that before, by the unfaithful characterisation of legendary characters and films heavy on action. And that's not even mentioning the accusations of "whitewashing" with Into the Darkness.

 

always joked that JJ's Star Trek movies were SW movies in disguise and that betrayed the core point of Trek. Than he actually moves on to SW and what does he do? He rehashes ANH which in turn makes the OT storyline go backwards, he took both SW and Trek backwards. His worldbuilding in TFA was pretty poor, all he can do is spectacle movies which are crowd pleaser but not much else.

Terrio is a meh choice for writer. And it really does seem like Kasdan=Han Solo......

not sure they are a good mix.

 

Terrio being involved is probably the most interesting thing about IX to me. Like seriously, the guy who wrote BvS and Argo is getting to do Star Wars?! Sounds like a pretty amazing idea to me. The only thing I don't want is the camp to be toned down, since Terrio doesn't write like that usually and Star Wars dialogue is known for its camp.

That said, Batman v Superman is the best movie of the past 14 years so if this wasn't a sequel to TFA and TLJ (which I just don't care for) I would be extremely excited to see what Terrio can do with Star Wars.