JCC Embrace The FU - Formerly the STAR WARS IS BAD thread

Hm, I've got mixed feelings, because while I agree that characters within a film should be taking potential ramifications seriously (unless it's an outright farcical comedy), I don't actually think Star Wars takes itself all that seriously (Frankly on a purely beat by beat basis if Star Wars was self-serious it'd be a rather depressing slog with a feel good ending rather than a pulpy throwback romp) and by Return of the Jedi it definitely doesn't. Large swaths of Endor in particular are played for laughs.

But let's go back to your original comment

Now admittedly my response was very flippant, but Han shows up in the first movie as a cocky wise-ass only in it for the money, and never really stops taking joke potshots. I don't see why him wise-cracking his way through a standard adventure story should be objectionable on its face.

 

At the beginning of RotJ, we're laughing at a band of goofballs tripping their way through a rescue of Han Solo where the characters make self-deprecating jokes about their own incompetence and Han kills a feared villain from the previous installment by way of a Mr. Magoo pratfall. In his first movie he answers a hostile military radio with the line "everything's fine, we're all fine here now, how are you?". And his ship is always falling apart in almost slapstick fashion. His interactions with Chewie in TESB are right out of Mat & Pat.

 

The humour of Han originally was his sarcastic carefree personality. He wasn't a joker, he was a space pirate/cowboy who didn't give a ****
Plus he did originally just straight up murder people in cold blood & seemed not to think twice about it.

Han is not a nice person in ANH, until the end. So it makes sense he'd be even less of a nice person in the time before ANH

If Lord & Miller wanted the Han movie to be some zany space comedy about a young guy in his beat-up ship winking at the camera & doing in-jokes, they chose the wrong character.

 

And not to put too fine a point on it, but throughout the series his primary occupation was as a drug dealer. Even when his one-time significant other was the head of government.

 

I don't think reframing the OT as comedy is the point here. It sounds like Lord and Miller were making a movie that would be decidedly different in tone to all other Star Wars movies. I guess that is a capital crime in anally retentive Hollywood, but I would welcome it.
It would probably send the continuity buffs into a stupor but I'd only consider that a bonus.

 

Because not giving a **** about continuity really helped the PT.

 

Richie, take a deep breath... you've become the comic book guy.

 

I think he is saying having some boundary breaking might be fresh and actually expand the SW universe, not bind it into a tighter and tighter continuity crushing creativity and encouraging recycling.

edit:
At some point, Lucasfilm will have to start allowing these filmmakers to create new characters and stories or the spinoffs will get stale fast.

Hopefully the third stand alone is something new.

 

I thought being different and expansive was the point of the spin-offs, not being confined to the formula and style of the saga films.

Rogue One is noticeably different to the other SW movies, but it still looks & feels like a SW movie and fits in nicely as a companion between two trilogies.

Same with Rebels.

Good SW material, be it books or TV or games, needs to fit in with what defines star wars as a franchise.

If a new Star Trek series disregarded the ideals & purpose that Roddenberry laid out when he created it, is it still Star Trek?
Slapping a name on it doesn't simply make it so.

 

I'm not talking about turning Star Wars into My Dinner With Andre. I'm talking about new characters that take place in the same galaxy. Supposedly the age of the SW galaxy is roughly 30k years(if we go by Kenobi's thousand generations), yet we are endlessly mining the same 60 years over and over for the films.
Give it to new directors and let them make different budgeted films and at different scales. Not every SW film needs to be a massively big budgeted monster.
And giving Lord and Miller a smaller budget and perhaps allowing them to work with a new character might have allowed them the freedom to create something fresh and new.

Young Han is just…I remain very skeptical.

edit: changed A to My for Malle's film.

 

Your post is nice, but a fantasy.

 

I know.

I assume you are talking about the new films and characters not skepticism about the Han movie. That is not a fantasy.

 

Drug smuggler.

 

It's a strictly B2B facet of the illegal drug operation thank you very much.

 

Does the tone even matter? It'll probably suck regardless.

 

Nobody in this thread deserves Star Wars.

 

I agree. That sort of punishment is only befitting culinary terrorists of the kind who would put pineapple on pizza.

 

want to turn everything into a Zaz amphitheater thread? Block everybody!

 

Star Wars doesn't deserve anyone in this thread, but you know...

I say to my wife. "Our marriage is like my relationship to Star Wars. I've become old and bloated and haven't had an original thought in decades, and yet you remain a devoted fan." My wife says "I'm going out. Don't wait up."

 

Interesting article on where Warner Bros is going, and a warning to Hollywood
(Han Solo movie mentioned)

http://movieweb.com/warner-bros-movies-no-auteur-directors/

Too much playing it safe. Too much fear of studios losing control.
Sounds like another American Zoetrope is needed.

 

Are you the man to deliver it?

 

Plenty of film-makers out there who could.

Edgar Wright maybe.

He recently talked about leaving Ant-Man:

"The most diplomatic answer is I wanted to make a Marvel movie but I don't think they really wanted to make an Edgar Wright movie. It was a really heartbreaking decision, to have to walk away from it after working on it for so long.
I was the writer-director on it and then they wanted to do a draft without me, and having written all my other movies, that's a tough thing to move forward. It's like, if I do one of these movies, I would like to be the writer-director. Suddenly becoming a director for hire on it, you're sort of less emotionally invested and you start to wonder why you're there, really"

I wonder if Lord & Miller will have a similar answer one day. Although they weren't the writers in this case.

 

I too am sad that we will never get a Han Solo movie that feels like that innovative comedic masterpiece called Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.

 

If we have to have a "Young Han Solo" movie, it should at least be in the vein of Traffic, or perhaps New Jack City. If they want something different in tone, how about a hard look at how awful Solo actually is, and the cost the whole Galaxy pays for his chosen pursuits.