Lit MACLUNKY -- The Lit Forum Maclunky Thread, v3

@Senpezeco

Strangely i am putting my money on the Aftermath Trilogy, only because of just how much that Post Endor-Jakku era has been fleshed out over the last few years and how much they've been sticking with what was set up.

If Aphra ever gets a series you know she's gonna be one of them.

Gonna put my money on ANY of the Vader comics in terms of comic re-reads. As for books...Maybe Lost Stars?


I guess another thing to think about too as well is, what Legends books are gonna still be remembered when those kids of the Disney Era start to grow up and what stories from Legends would be still be talked about on Lit Forum. Or just in general.

 

Sorry for the DP but I just have too.

 

That's possible. My read isn't just from online forums, but it's admittedly far from complete.

I think what I'm going for here is, at the end of the PT era, all that was present for fans to engage with was the PT, and the EU which in the form of books/comics is always a niche concern. At the end of the ST, there are a lot of other choices, and The Mandalorian itself is a phenomenon. Given the increasing connectivity and the other oncoming series, it feels to me -- totally anecdotally! -- that there's more engagement with that show's world, and cross-media characters of the type that didn't exist in the PT era, than the continuation of the ST threads. That waters down the ST legacy in ways that the PT didn't have to worry about. And legacy-wise, TROS may be better liked than I think, but few would argue that it's a triumph... whereas the PT benefits from going out on what most people see as its high note.

To me, the dilution of ST enthusiasm in favor of other media is seen in how Ahsoka's appearance in The Mandalorian has gone over. That connectivity and hunger for more from the "side characters" exists on a broader level than it did after ROTS when the films were the true main game in town, to the point where it's worth putting big production money and name actors behind them -- it's a whole different cultural level than "hey here's a version of Quinlan Vos in TCW" and Disney/LFL knows it. Does that mean that the ST characters won't rise to prominence again eventually? Not at all, they might. But I do think "Saga fatigue" vs. enthusiasm for what's happening in TV, animation and, yes, games, is a thing, including for that 12-year-old demographic.

 

Family means... killing you when captured before you can talk

 

Except there is evidence - the box office take and the CinemaScore. Half a billion in domestic earnings and another half billion internationally is not indicative of a movie people the majority of people hated or even found to be "meh." And much hay is made of TROS's B+ as the lowest CinemaScore ever!!!!! except... turns out that's not exactly a bad score. So you do have some evidence in your corner. It should never be assumed that opinions that fly around online are indicative in any way of opinions of the overall fandom in the real world.

You also note correctly that a large segment of the target audience of this trilogy was kids - something that's been true about live-action Star Wars since the OT, and a reality adult fans like us continue to forget on a pretty regular basis.

 

Because I'm Gamiel:

Do anybody know when the undercut hairstyle begun to be associated with Vikings?

 

I think it's important to note that the only other Star Wars movie to NOT get an A was The Clone Wars movie.

So by the audience's standards, and even the audiences who took in the prequels, it was not up to the usual par.

 

Even though I'm not Gamiel... it's time for the Romanovs to end.

 

Did someone mention the Jedi Prince?

I was looking for something in there yesterday and stumbled on this gem:

..."in gratitude", huh? Riiight

(Seriously though: interpreting everything Artoo says as a stream of invectives that would make a pirate blush has improved my enjoyment of Star Wars by a lot.)

 

I think the bigger problem for RoS is it was too successfully marketed and executed as The End. Where do you go after The End? To other stories. You can't do more stories of the remaining characters because of The End, remember?

Yet even in the area where there should have been significant investment, the TLJ-RoS gap year, there was remarkably little. Doesn't make sense to me but we got what we got.

 

Well that's the beauty of marketing...Star Wars lies

 

It's not really much of a sustainable method.

 

I mean one thing i can see as part of a generational shift is that people will see the Skywalker Saga as a bit of a blip compared to all these other stories that are building up on one another.

I know a lot of folk would argue TCW is now the center of Star Wars

 

The marketing for TROS was so ridiculous. "It's the end of the 9-film Skywalker Saga," they say. Then they have interviews with all the cast and crew, doing their best acting talking about the Skywalker Saga, as if we've just been calling it the Skywalker Saga the whole time, as if they hadn't been told to talk about "The Skywalker Saga" 30 seconds before the camera started rolling and it isn't really the first time they'd ever heard of the concept. Kathleen Kennedy talking about the Skywalker Saga like the noble, hardworking CEO, really confident in the marketing department that no one will notice and everyone will pick up on this and start using the term. Everyone just speaking the company line.

The sad thing is? It worked on a lot of people. Fans and journalists alike are going around calling it the Skywalker Saga now. Eventually everyone will forget we used to just call it Star Wars.

 

It's definitely a reduction too far for my liking. Then again I disliked it when Lucas set the 6 films as purely Anakin's story.

 

Star Wars: A Franchise whose meaning changes with every decade

Maybe when Ep 10 comes out they'll say it's the start of a New Saga.

So I do wonder what the next generation will call "The Saga" or will the Saga be divided between Ep 1-9 "The Skywalker Saga" and Ep 10- (Whatever) the "Insert name here" Saga

 

Maybe I'm misremembering but I'm sure people were using "Skywalker Saga" as fan term before even the Disney buyout. And personally, it doesn't bother me as a name at all. I can't think of a better name to specifically refer to Episode I-IX when wanting to distinguish them from the rest of the franchise. I know people who also get mad that the first Star Wars film isn't just called "Star Wars" any more, but times change and you need a way to distinguish stories from one another.

I wonder if we'll see something similar with people's feelings towards the MCU. They did the same thing in marketing Avengers: Endgame as The End, despite us knowing that there were several films coming afterwards. Will the public's enthusiasm wane now that they've had their ultimate "it's all been building to this" grand finale? Time will tell I guess ...

And now for something completely different:

 

Oh Endgame's certainly an end but not The End as it were.

 

@Jedi Comedian

The strange thing is regarding the MCU...MCU has now a weird thing going on with it because of (Sadly) Covid


People were always talking about MCU "Burnout" and all that and whether or not how serious of a thing that was becoming will now be never known because of Covid

Think about it 2020...NO SINGLE MARVEL THING....Ever...Like, not a single Marvel movie or T.V show (Maybe Agents of Shield but I'm not sure)

But now...Without any Marvel Movies...and people yearning for stuff in general....I think we might be in a place where you can release even a meh Marvel film and people might love it just because we haven't seen a Marvel film all year.

In a weird way...Covid might have staved off MCU burnout since we had a year break period.

Not saying anything to be positive about COVID mind you...But just a interesting thought.

 

@Jedi Ben obviously you and I can agree to disagree, but I definitely felt like the Endgame marketing was as The End-y as TRoS's. You had the trailers with the different characters reciting Nick Fury's "there was an idea ..." speech from The Avengers, the black and white (and red) shots of Iron Man, Captain America and Thor from their first movies, and the focus on lines about seeing it through "to the end". Co-director Joe Russo said in a press conference "We get to finish off one of the grandest experiments in movie history" (emphasis mine). The Blu-ray press release referred to it as "the climactic conclusion to an unprecedented, 11-year cinematic journey in which the Avengers take one final stand against Thanos" ... It was definitely sold as "this is the culmination of all 22 movies we have released", and even Spider-Man: Far from Home was referred to as an "epilogue". I've never seen a more definitive The End story in a franchise that was planning to keep going, and I have a modern Doctor Who avatar.

@Jid123Sheeve I agree that Covid may actually have helped Marvel in the long run. A break even of just a year allows people to miss the MCU rather than it running out of steam. We've seen this with Star Wars - the highest grossing films after the first have been the ones that came after a long break. But I think it will still be interesting to see if the MCU love stays as high as it was, or if there'll be a low key "man, the MCU lost its way after the Infinity Saga" backlash.

 

I see the point JC, can agree in terms of the main characters of Cap and Tony, it was certainly set as the end of the line for them and was.

I see the difference as being that Phase 4 had already been announced, whereas there is no Ep X, so a continuation was known.

If anything, the lose of Bosemann is the biggest problem for MCU Phase 4. Plus I'm not sure this syncing up of film and TV will work, with much of the content only on Disney+.

 

I mean that's the point they want you the buy Disney +

A lot of things moving forward is gonna be in service of Disney + and building that streaming service.


@Jedi Comedian

And Doctor Who had a few moments in NuWho that were going for "The End" moments.

Journeys End

The End to Time

Time of the Doctor

;p

 

Yeah, which is why I think it could backfire - it's a crude transparent tactic.

That and Disney+ is so much weaker than Netflix and Amazon on the tech side. I boot those two up on PS4 - they boot up fast, Disney+ ~? Noticeably slower and this is with recently upgraded internet.

As to Doc Who, next you two are going to tell me that 13 regenerations only rule was totally locked in, right?

 

B+ is not exactly a precipitous drop from the A / A- realm the previous films lived in. It's a slightly lower score than the other films in the trilogy, but hardly indicative of widespread dislike or rejection.

Regarding TROS as "The End," product marketing is a poor predictor for where story will end up two, five, or ten years down the road. From Friday the 13th to Star Trek, I'd be hard-pressed to think of a franchise where an installment was marketed as "The End" and then actually was, in fact, The End. If there's demand for more stories there will be more stories - no one at Disney or Lucasfilm is going to look back at TROS's marketing and say, "sorry fans, we told you it was The End and we meant it, now stop waving your money at us because it's definitely not happening." And frankly, I'm not all that convinced anyone really buys the tactic anymore, given how often the end turns out to be, well, not the end.

Regarding "The Skywalker Saga," a lot of that was definitely hype for TROS but I think some of that was also about making sure it was understood that TROS wasn't the end of Star Wars or even the end of Star Wars films - just the "Episodes." That's how I understood it, anyway.

 

It's kind of weird, as I just get the sense that Disney seems to think everyone already knows what there is and how it links up. But if they want Disney+ to be this big success, they can't assume that - they need to help the audience find the stuff.

Then again, I'm sceptical as to how much of the audience will transfer from the mainline films to other SW material.