Lit A/V The Force Awakens and the EU [TAGGED spoilers.]

Trank says in his statement that he wants "to pursue some original creative opportunities", so he probably had his fill of the Hollywood system after Fantastic Four and doesn't want to play in anyone else's sandbox. Especially if the rumors of him throwing tantrums on set and the studio taking the picture from him to edit are true.

 

Trank being pals with the very unpredictable Max Landis, I figured this could be an issue... but just the whole flavor of it makes me feel crappy. There was a time when Hollywood worked with people like that, because they knew that was how you made a good movie.

I've read some of the comments about this, and seriously, I dunno why an audience member would get so sanctimonious about artists doing artisty things and be glad that the studio's clamping down on them. I'm not saying it's always better that way, but there's a low ceiling on products of compromise.

 

Franchise pictures are huge right now, where studios are making a lot of the major plot and story decisions but leaving the minutia of the films themselves to the directors, and not all directors are cut out for that sort of project. There are some directors who can pull off making their own film basically from scratch with the studio basically just distributing, and there are others who benefit from having studio oversight to keep them from over-indulging and making a bloated mess of a film. Most are somewhere in-between the extremes, but everyone has their own quirks.

Trank strikes me as a man committed to his own vision of a project and who doesn't necessarily thrive in the traditional Hollywood structure, a la Edgar Wright. But at least Trank bowed out before they'd even brought a writer on board for whatever film he was making. It's early enough in the process that they can get another visionary director in there and have them put together a good project. Kathleen Kennedy said at Celebration that they want the directors to have most of the say and impact on the individual films; my guess is Trank left because he wanted to, not because LFL kicked him out.

 

It's really not.

 

I get what you're saying as a general principle, but I'm not just making a "damn the suits" comment here; I don't see that harmless quality control structure as the source of what's happening. After seeing Age of Ultron, I'm fairly certain Disney-via-Marvel threw a lot of branding demands at Whedon this time around. He got off that ship, and it's not a particularly well-kept secret that he was hemmed in on this one. That's the puzzle piece in everything going down post-GotG.

I say that because James Gunn was clear about having a remarkable deal of control over the film---even more than a lot of indie projects he'd worked on, he said, where the ratio of budget-to-strings-attached was much better with Marvel than with independent funding. Now Marvel seems to be working counterintuitively to that, and instead of saying, "Hey, we were hands-off with James Gunn and look what he gave us!" they seem to me to be saying, "Oh, we really have something big going now, because even the movies we thought were small can be huge! Hey you, you need to be more like _______!" I mean, nothing else could explain the Edgar Wright issues on Ant-Man. It would have been an individualized, self-deprecating film, with only a slight different flavor from what Gunn was doing, but something spooked Marvel/Disney about his version of that; there's obviously a lot of his humor still in the script, but look at the mish-mash of tone they've exhibited with the advertising.

I dunno. I'm normally in Disney's corner, because they usually know that quality is the best source of profit... but there are small, good execs, and there are big bad execs. I think some things have happened, and maybe the big bad execs have turned their attention to what was once the domain of the good ones.

 

Hmm.

EDIT: Hmm retracted, it's just a parody of the Italian transit map. Strange choices though.

 

is that story group approved canon though

I mean is Jakku in the mid rim?

 

Oh, um, on the topic of Trank, I don't think it's necessarily about his creative choices, but rather his lifestyle ones.

And by that I mean they don't exactly jive with the behaviour of someone that Disney would want to be paying.

 

EDIT: Wrong thread.

 

Seems to be missing a fair major planets, including the capital. Though it is nice to see some planets like Hapes and Zeltros still in canon.

 

Kylo Ren has had it with people not accepting the logic of the Endor Holocaust theory, and is going to be the change he wants to see in the world.

 

So, you guys are saying the entire ST storyline is about Kylo destroying the mistakes of the OT?



And if he takes down the Gungans and the errors of the PT at the same time, all will be good in the world.

 

Zor, we're enemies now.

 

That BEGS for elaboration, you know...

 

There's rumors that he's using drugs. Some reports from the set of F4 claimed he would show up both late and high. He also, apparently, was indecisive, combative, and "isolated" on set.

The main source of contention seems to come from Simon Kinberg, though. He's the producer and writer of F4 and is set to produce the second SW Anthology film. Kinberg, apparently, took a lot of this info to LFL execs, specifically Kennedy, and they became very concerned, leading to Trank leaving the project.

 

Pretty much.

He allegedly demolished the house Fox rented for him during the shoot as well.

 

Sheesh. You'd think they'd have heard about this before they signed him up for the job.

 

First Oscar Isaac had his singing scene with Adam Driver, and now a dancing scene with Domnhall Gleeson...

 

Well, that can be blamed on small sample size. He's only directed one other movie, Chronicle, which was a very low-budget affair (cost only $12 million to make), which was basically no risk to the distributing studio. Both Fantastic Four and the second anthology film will likely cost more than ten times that, so the risk of having an unproven and unpredictable entity at the helm is much greater. The studios must have liked what Trank did stylistically and tonally, but he may not have been ready for the pressures and rigors of such a high-budget shoot, especially for a reboot of a major franchise. Thus, he bowed out of his next big project well before it got underway and before any trouble could start.

EDIT: This article goes into detail. Something that shocked me: FF got reshoots at the end of last month, and is supposed to come out in August. That's not a good thing. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/inside-a-star-wars-firing-792933

 

What's this May the 4th fuss all about? Is it because of phonetic similarity to the Force? Some are speculating about special treats from LFL.

What will it be:

1. New teaser to TFA
2. New SWR content/trailer
3. Anthology teaser
4. ???

 

More pics incoming tomorrow from Vanity Fair.

 

Man, Chewie's looking better than ever. I wonder what conditioner he uses.

 

May the Fourth be with you.

 

Well now go great expectations! Walk out the door! Turn around now! You're not welcome anymore!
Weren't you the ones who tried to hurt me with the PT? Do you think I'd crumble? Do you think I -- OMG IT'S CHEWIE!!!