ST The Sanctuary - (Dissenters Unite! - Warning on page 232)

I think they will follow Warner Brothers example on doubling down on the DCEU. Remains to be seen in both cases how that works. The Star Wars brand name is not indestructable.

 

I've got to call that out. I prioritise the same things as you do and I enjoyed TLJ for the most part. Don't generalise.

Ehh, it's not exactly the same situation though. The DCEU has had had consistent financial and critical failure. SW has had one failure of fandom response. Hardly equivalent.

 

The DCEU is actually the opposite though. The hardcore DC fans I know seem to see Snyder (and his horrible video game visuals) as a God for some crazy reason and want the “Snyder cut” and just think the critics can’t appreciate his “visual genius” are that they are “unfair of Snyder” in general. It’s really the critics and general audience who don’t seem to be connecting to Suicide Squad and Batman vs Superman, etc to the extent they are Marvel or Star Wars and it’s actually the hard core DC fans that are organizing crowd efforts to prop up audience scores for the DC products on RT (which are unable to translate over to IMDB). It almost seems like the DC guys are listening too much to the hard core fans exclusively and hoping it will translate into growth of the brand among the general public and with film geeks and it hasn’t worked for them. My guess is that any time anyone even asks “Should we listen to the hard core fans more?” the response will be “Look at DC.”

 

That's how it all starts. Arrogance or disbelief that there may be something wrong within the system, and then trudge ahead with the plans. The problem is that ignoring the little problems tends to snowball into larger problems. The faults within TLJ were in TFA. But there were faults that the fans picked up early on (i.e. lack of world building, Rey potentially become a boring invincible hero, ST being about Kylo Ren as a sympathetic character), faults that have only grown worse.

It might not be felt right now, but it will be in the future. Especially if nothing is learned from the past (oh irony).

That is oversimplifying it. Man of Steel was a box office hit with mixed reviews. Executives ignored the problems with MOS and green lighted everything for Zach Snyder. Batman v Superman was profitable but the negative reaction plus lower than expected revenue had set executives into panic. Suicide Squad was also profitable but solidified the negative reputation of the DCEU. Wonder Woman was a box office and critical success, no question. Only Justice League suffered in both departments and that is due to an accumulation of everything that has come before.

If I were a betting man, I would say we are in Batman v Superman phase with Star Wars. That was the movie that drove away a lot of support for the DCEU despite having a lot of potential. Time will tell if Solo is either Wonder Woman... or Suicide Squad.

 

Does this mean Ezra or Ahsoka finally caught up with Luke and pulled him inside that world of bridges seen near the end of the last season of Star Wars Rebels?

If true why did they leave his clothes behind?

 

That's why I said remains to be seen. Such a process takes years. Box office success isn't a guarantee, not even for Star Wars.

 

You basically just confirmed what I said.

SW has had three films all of which have been a critical success, two box office successes, one box office low-end of success.

DCEU has had five films, one has been a critical success, four have been critical failures, two have been financial successes and three have been financial failures.

Hardly the same situation.

It's way too soon to make any comparison. I mean Marvel have had failures. You may as well draw a Marvel comparison.

 

Yeah Luke learned in ESB that visions are not always to be taken at face value and can often be not 100% accurate. It was actually mentioned multiple times in that film, and was proven to be true by the end.

Yet here, he apparently forgot all of that and just assumed that his vision MUST be totally and completely accurate, to the degree that he contemplated murdering a sleeping student? What?

 

I've seen lots of people counting unhatched chickens in declaring how everyone will come to see TLJ as this great masterpiece and detractor opinions totally will turn around, how of course RJ's trilogy will be a great success and yada yada. That 's the same thing of "way too early".

I have my speculation, others have theirs.

 

You are looking at surface level of impressions. Never the deeper aspects. The DCEU would have survived any critical thrashing provided that it has a steady fanbase that will watch whatever is DC onscreen. It's when that fanbase starts wavering that you notice a decline in reputation and approval. This is why I compared TLJ to Batman v Superman. I recall that Batman v Superman is when the fanbase really began to fracture. Where the vision of the director has become a controversy onto itself. And you also would have heard reports that TLJ has performed just under the expected box office numbers (even though it's still profitable and still a lot of money) as well as toy lines.

No two comparisons are exactly the same, but there are similarity to keep track of. Both Man of Steel and TFA has noticeable flaws that the fanbase debated upon, but TFA manages to hold its fanbase a lot better. Prior to TLJ, there were high optimism and hype from the Star Wars fanbase, helped by two Star Wars films and a TV show. After TLJ, that optimism is gone. And now, we're back to the old days of how the new Star Wars sucked and the old films were better.

 

Wait I've never said that? I agree that making predictions of the like is silly. What's your point?

 

There has been one film people are divided over. It's far more comparable to Man of Steel than BvS if you must draw the comparison. I don't believe fans are so shallow they would just abandon everything because of one film - a string of them, sure.

 

Conventional wisdom is that SW is perhaps the only truly bulletproof franchise that exists, since even the prequels made money. Which is why Disney feel confident enough to release these movies every year.

 

It's a combination of Man of Steel and BvS. Man of Steel featured a controversial Superman, but many people held out from truly attacking the Son of Krypton under the notion that Zach Snyder will address and fix the issues in the sequel, thus vindicating MOS. And you know what happens next. Additionally, BvS also featured a very controversial Batman and Lex Luthor along with said controversial Superman. The three punches plus the failure of address MOS broke many fans' hopes that they jumped ship.

Retroactively, there were a lot of problems with TFA that fans who hated TLJ now realized were there. They were overlooked under the assumption that it will be fixed and addressed. For some, TFA has become unwatchable thanks to TLJ.

Their overconfidence is their weakness if they believe. There was a time where Pixar was the undisputed king of critical and box office success, and that it was impossible for them to make a bad movie.

If anything has taught me in the past 20 years or so, it's that nothing is impossible.

 

I don't think MoS can be compared to TFA. Not to mention the franchises are so different. SW isn't wholly dependent upon the previous films since it's not a continuous storyline after IX. Someone might hate TLJ but like RJ's new trilogy, or vis versa. It's a completely different situation.

 

Retroactively, TFA feels a lot worse now that I have the answers in TLJ. The issues I had with TFA have been magnified and staring me in the face. I had held off from the truly ranting the real problems I had with TFA on the grounds that maybe it will all work out in TLJ. And I've said before that whatever happens in TLJ will affect my views on TFA as TLJ is the keystone of TFA. And if TLJ doesn't work, then TFA doesn't work as well. The same thing happened with Man of Steel. How could I defend MOS Superman when I know that it was poorly addressed in BvS?

And for the record, DCEU is neither really dependent on previous films nor is it truly a continuous story.

Wonder Woman can attest that. And it was a huge success with critics and money-spending audiences despite BvS thanks to its standalone nature.

 

Not sure if this is the place to bring this up, but i know a lot of people are critical of why Holdo didn't tell Poe her plan. I think it's pretty clear from the film that she think's he's a trigger happy idiot and doesn't trust his judgment (even if she likes his spirit). He disobeyed orders and got the bombing fleet destroyed. She obviously misjudged his capacity for insubordination and mutiny. Why is this a problem? If this isn't the thread please let me know where to post (didn't seem like it should warrant it's own new thread).

 

Ultimately what matters is all the factors together: TFA, RO and TLJ were far better received than the latter DCEU movies (with the exception). To draw a comparison simply over exaggerates the negative reception of one film an then impose it upon the entire franchise. A far better comparison is the Marvel films around the time of AoU.

 

That still doesn`t explain why she didn`t tell him that yes, they had a plan and weren`t just doing nothing. What did she think he was gonna do with that information? Instead, she apparently it more important to come across as aristrocratically superior and sneer at him but with no indication that she had any plans for their survival. Just "listen do me, just because."

A good leader would actually make sure that people they consider loose canons don`t fly off the handle.

And unless she considered him a secret mole of the FO and a traitor to the Rebellion, what was the military reason for not telling him the plan? Did she think he would immediately intentionally broadcast it to his good friend Hux to ensure the rebels being wiped out? Because that would be the reason you keep stuff like that to yourself.

By later having the entire plan revealed to Poe and him being totally fine with it, it proved that he wouldn`t have an objection to the plan itself. He objected to thinking they had no plan beyond "keep flying through space till we run out of fuel".

The proper way to establish the storyline they were going for would have been for Holdo to present her plan, Poe to disagree with it and say "this won`t work, here is my plan with the codebreaker, that has more chance of success". Holdo says no and since she is in charge, her plan gets implemented. Poe mutinees and you go from there.

A critical but important change IMO. As the movie did it, I thought Holdo was such a terrible leader, a mutiny against her was entirely justified.

That`s true. Which corporation ever said: "We don`t want you and your dirty money".

I`m sure all the kids also will go on their own dime and time to the new parks and everything.

Or they hated TLJ so much, they`ll think "gee, after what that guy did to Star Wars, I`m not gonna stick around for more punishment".

Just because his trilogy wouldn`t have old beloved characters doesn`t mean it would be appealing. If I look at three new characters he more or less created, we have Rose, Holdo and DJ.

Apart from the stupid preaching about social commentary from Rose on Canto Bight, I liked her as a character. I wanted Holdo dead and DJ was a non-entity to me who brought in faux-depth with his nihilistic blathering. Other than that, he completely turned me against Rey. I`m not into Kylo either. So from this movie, I can only deduce RJ won`t write characters that really do it for me.

In fact, I think right now he CAN`T write characters that really work for me. Otherwise, it should have been close to impossible to take one of my most beloved movie characters and make me hate them in a movie. I excuse a lot for my fave characters so breaking through barriers and barriers of fondness within really a matter of just a few scenes? Kinda miraculous.

 

I guess we'll have to wait until Solo and IX to see the true impact of TLJ on the audience. Celebration 2019 will be interesting to observe too.

 

Well you can't cater for short sighted people. I don't decide I'll never watch someone's films again because they make one I didn't like.

 

Talking about ridiculously small odds…

Back when Rey’s parentage was a hot topic, there were many trying to come up with theories on why she was left at Jakku, both related and random believers. People naturally wanted to know what was the missing link with this Force user who was coincidentally an exact match to Kylo Ren, and coincidentally lived near the Falcon, and coincidentally was in the same planet as Lor San Tekka who had the map to Luke, and coincidentally found Anakin’s lightsaber and was coincidentally called by it, and coincidentally knew how to perform a mind trick, and coincidentally Maz told her belonging was with Luke. Guess there is no link then! It’s all just a bunch of lazy writing and an incredible amount of coincidences!

 

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It seems to me what they’re doing though. The Anthology films are like the classic rock (now playing grunge and 90s era Beastie Boys oddly enough) radio stations. The ST is today’s hits radio stations (which borrow a lot from yesterday’s hits but put new musical spins on it).

The record labels are looking for the next hit singers and bands that appeal to the younger demos first because they’re the ones who, on a larger scale, ask their parents to buy them all of the stuff and who go through big phases where their bedrooms are full of different posters and toys and all of the merch. That’s when people are most impressionable too so they have to try and hook the next gen because we all won’t be around forever.

Us older crowds are still valuable to but it’s hard to be everything to both so it seems to me like they’re focusing the ST on the people who aren’t already into Star Wars first and us second and hoping we will enjoy it and that the Antholgy films are more for us first and for people who are new to the brand second.

It’s only my opinion but that’s what it feels like to me overall. I think they hope that in each case the group that’s prioritized slightly less still has fun and that there are enough people who weren’t the top priority who still have fun (tons of people 30 and up read the popular distopian YA content of the past decade that was aimed at teens for an example and prior to that Potter was a hit with adults too) and I’m sure they hope that the reviews are good for both and that each is their own success but to me there does seem to be a different prioritization at the top between anthology and ST. The ST is aimed more at hooking the kinds of people who maybe saw the PT in theatres and didn’t get the hype and never made it to the OT and anyone younger than that, and anyone who perhaps felt excluded from Star Wars because they didn’t see themselves in the characters as much. The Anthology films feel more focused on the wish fulfillment goals of the older fans and seeing origins they were interested in or seeing Vader in his prime and stuff like that with a grittier tone that’s more mature.

 

You know the stock answer by now ..
"the Force made it happen" followed by "to restore the balance with Kylo and Snoke". :\

Yeah. JJ and his mystery boxes.