ST It's all about the OT

There was an era where Star Wars stuff was coming out frequently, in games and books and such, and it was never an issue or hurt the franchise for me, because they were each doing their own original things and trying to coherently build to the universe (Kyle Katarn's story, KotOR/Revan's Story, the better arcs of the Clone Wars, the framing of Ahsoka, the newer Thrawn book, the Ahsoka book showing the day to day life of somebody like her after the Jedi Purge, etc).

Release density or moving away from the OT has never hurt Star Wars for me, so long as it was being done with attempts to do proper coherent worldbuilding with what came before, understanding the universe and its themes, with fun characters who have strong stories.

The new movies started half right, with fun characters, but they're just strip-mining the original trilogy for scenes and dialogue to recreate in an incoherent mess, while adding in a whole bunch of stupid like insta-fleet-killing-hyperspace-button on every ship which for some reason was never used until then, even in that very movie when there were several times it would have been perfect, and wasn't even the plan until then despite that she was going to sacrifice herself. Then there's stuff which could be interesting (Rey's OP abilities, Snoke) which instead seem to just get treated as irrelevant, they just want crazier and bigger stuff on screen with no explanation or care for how it fits together as a coherent storyline which the audience can actually understand and build a growing model of in their head.

All in all, I don't think the problem is moving away from the OT, it's about bad unoriginal writing which doesn't fit together coherently with what came before or itself. I'm sure they can coast for a bit on the franchise's past legwork in building an audience, but just like Spider-Man 3 killed a franchise, or X-Men 3 required a whole time travel plot to forget, I think that the unoriginality of TLJ has revealed something which I think can actually exhaust the pre-built goodwill (the biggest ever ticket sales drop in the second weekeend is indicative of this, topping a list of the likes of Spider-Man 3, Twilight, and Suicide Squad, even if they all made money - there's a reason that all these movies have ended up on a list together, and what happened to their franchises after). That's only 3 moves in (2 movies into this trilogy) and when it was relying on the OT more than ever, copying scenes and dialogue from ESB and ROTJ in this latest movie, yet jamming them all together without any of the coherency or worldbuilding or originality, hell even throwing puppet Yoda in there, and without even paying attention to the unique plot threads in the movie before in this trilogy, all just dropped in various gags from the magic visions lightsaber over the shoulder, to Finn stumbling around for a moment in healing plastic, etc - let alone the longer stuff like Luke's only character traits being not killing darkside family members even when pushed to the extreme and not running away.

(I think the MCU is also in serious danger of fracturing this way too, after the tightness of the Shield agency holding it together as a coherent world in Phase 1, rather than a place of random coincidence, it's beginning to descend into a whole bunch of stupid which doesn't fit together, like the Sorcerer society in Dr Strange not having any explanation for where they were. For now, both series can coast on the better times which came before, but I'm suddenly feeling wary of both of them. Netflix's Defenders already half-killed 4 shows in my eyes too by not having them tie together coherently or interestingly, just relying on random luck and nothingness to bring these 4 characters together when there was already so many damn connections and possible explanations which would have been actually satisfying and enhanced the past events on top of everything which was already built).

 

I was watching mrs doubt fire earlier this week, so instead I will reply the way Harvey Fierstein's uncle frank did when asked by Robin Williams if he could do Joan Collins--- "I don't think I have the strength."

 

Marvel is kicking butt because it has nearly 60 years of stories it can tell about a legion of characters. There is less risk of regurgitation when half the appeal is seeing an adaptation of something that was already a success in one medium.

Of course Star Wars had that too, at least 20 years of stories, but they were wiped clean and don't matter anymore. Not the smartest move IMO but I guess they are in this position because they care more about making "artistic statements" than making films that fans will enjoy.

 

This should be printed and placed on the desks of every lucasfilm executive. The fact that Jyn freaking Erso has more name recognition than Snoke is mind boggling.

People can talk all they want about going in new directions, building new characters, letting the past die, but this is pretty damning and at a minimum shows that Disney has way more work to do to not only make their new characters more likeable but even recognizable at a minimum.

 

Well, they don't have to worry about Snoke being recognizable anymore. RJ took care of that problem. Plus, do remember that "bad" characters may get negged in polls like this because people don't have favorable views of bad guys/gals.

 

Fair point. I see Vader at 49%.

Yes perhaps RJ took care of that problem, but what a waste of a great villain and backstory. You can't honestly tell me having him end up being Plageuis wouldn't have been a fantastic way to tie it all together.

On the other hand I'm not entirely convinced he's dead either, FWIW.