TV Discussion Dave Filoni and George's Vision does this really hold up ?

One thing I noticed is that Dave Filoni likes to say everything is line with Lucas vision. Yet that feels false.

Filoni is into repetitive video game plots and a reliance on nostalgia. George is the opposite of both those things. Whether you like them or not, he likes to do things different. The PT was different to the OT and his ST treatments were remarkably different, (stuff about the Whills) to the Disney ST. Which he was unhappy it was to much like the OT.

We know Lucas wanted Ahsoka killed off in TCW and Filoni refuses to kill off any of his favourite characters no matter how contradictory or a detriment to the story it is.
None of that feels like Lucas vision at all.

Anyway what with the Bad Batch which I personally found boring (I stopped watching by the Bracca episodes) and he's getting his own Action figure (something George never did or would do) has the oh it's part of George's vision excuse finally stopped working ?

 

I don't see what Hasbro making a Trapper Wolf figure has to do with Filoni or Lucas' creative vision. Isn't there a "George Lucas in Stormtrooper Disguise" figure?

Quotes of Dave talking about George's vision would be useful, to understand the context.

 

Stormtrooper in Disguise? That's for actors in movies (Daniel Craig) but not Toys then it's ita just a Stormtrooper. Besides Was anyone really wanting there Trapper action figure ?

There's loads of quotes. But for Bad Bad in particular, From Wiki just click on the development colum
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Bad_Batch

 

Hopefully the image shows up

Spoiler: Image

Under the development section, the sources link to this quote:

I would say that this quote is accurate. Bad Batch is definitely in the same vein as TCW.

 

Early in production, until he changed his mind and agreed with Filoni, because she had become a compelling character, and her leaving the Jedi would make for a compelling story, and her story should continue, because it has a lot of potential. Her surviving the Clone Wars was approved and greenlit by Lucas, all the way up to the Siege of Mandalore, which was discussed and developed with Lucas, before Disney buyout. I think Lucas is more than OK with that, showing up on TCW S7 panels and on set of Ahsoka's Mandalorian episode.

His entire family got action figures.

I don't think Filoni specifically asked to make an action figure out of him. If you watched his interviews and his panels, he is a very humble person, and he hates when people praise him.

Yeah, I think The Bad Batch is pretty boring. But Lucas created those characters, which many don't find all that compelling - they are very one dimensional and cliché. It feels like one of those ideas Lucas should have been challenged on. And then again, Jennifer Corbett(SW: Resistance) is the head writer, and Brad Rau(SW: Rebels, SW: Resistance) is the supervising director. Filoni has writing credits only for the very first episode, which coincidentally is the best in the series thus far.

 

Filoni did say Ahsoka's fate depended on 2 factors:

1) Finding a compelling story that would get GL's approval so her story could continue. It was initially intended that she would have rejoined the Jedi Order after clearing her name at the end of season 5 but Filoni proposed an alternative that would make it easier for her to survive TCW than if she stayed in the Jedi Order as Anakin's apprentice like the vision of her future self warned on Mortis.

2) The fans. Also the main reason why he showed what happened to Ahsoka during her confrontation with Vader in S4 despite telling us that her story in Rebels was done a few months earlier.

When he talks about "George's vision", I think he's more talking about what he learned from working with him on TCW, on how to create SW stories. To keep in mind who is the main target audience, to make it hopeful for the next generation coming of age. He even repeated it to Favreau when he visited the set. His stories are more linear than Lucas, true, and he likes to sprinkle characters and themes from his previous works like we saw in Rebels and the Mandalorian. He IS very over-protective of Ahsoka, so much that whenever there is a story about her, you can be sure he WILL be involved in it compared to other characters like Hera who appeared in other stories in other media, and he said as much in interviews.

 

George changes his mind on a lot of things. If he was really dead set on Ahsoka dying she would have. He was obviously swayed on this matter.

 

George's vision destroyed millions of childhoods with the prequels if you go by the online reactions back then and there were loud demands for him to hand the franchise off to others. He does that and then people bring up his "vision" when they don't like something. Star Wars fans have a pretty bad case of Grass Is Greener Syndrome.

 

I haven't the faintest clue what a "vision" is. It sounds "vague and unconvincing". That's showmanship.

The stories told are the actual substance. Neither Filoni nor Lucas are consistently brilliant. That's ok - they are human.

Good story-tellers know when they've written a subpar story. Rather than maintaining the "everything is awesome" mantra, it'd be great if there was more honesty and less back-slapping. But that's the industry I guess.

 

Do they?

There may be occasions where a story-teller ends up not liking his own work and is saying that out loud. That doesn't mean that there is some sort of definite knowledge about whether a story is good or not. You not liking a story - or even a majority of people for that matter - doesn't actually mean that the story is bad or that the writer "knows" that it is bad. Therefore him not saying that it is bad doesn't make him dishonest. There isn't some sort of magical ability to recognize a good story, and a lot simply comes down to taste. There are plenty of cases where the artists thought he delivered a good work even when many people disagreed with that. Just like there are plenty of world-famous pieces of art that the artists didn't think much of.

 

That's a fine point. A good story speaks to people in different ways.

Judgement of a good story? Maybe authors aren't the best judge because they only know what they know. Maybe readers/viewers are not the best judge because they also have their own individual tastes.

Like I say, I think we need to accept that there is a good likelihood that SW story-tellers won't consistently make good stories, precisely because of our changing tastes, their changing tastes, and their fallibility in writing well. And that's ok.

My post was just suggesting leniency in terms of that judgement and therefore more honesty (from the writers).

Maybe I should have said, instead, that a good story-teller knows the limits of their appeal. If they "just" create a meaningful, well-told story for the time - "good job!" - and if they don't - "move along".

In a weekly serial, the showmanship of "vision" can just be dropped, IMHO (thinking of the OG post).

 

Look there's George's vision/sensibility on more marco-level character thoughts/arcs, which I feel like Filoni has followed well. Lucas has not had direct input on stories since The Clone Wars CGI. However, I think Filoni has done a great job at following George's style as an homage with new elements.

As for Bad Batch, the problem with that show is the lack of the Force/mysticism that pervades the property. It's also not important to the overall universe either.

 

George's vision is....whatever he was thinking at the time.

 

No artist can completely embody the vision of a another artist while creating new stuff. Now that he's retired, we will never truly get another George Lucas Star Wars story.

That said, some people have a better understanding of the philosophy and themes of Star Wars than others and it shows in their work. Personally, I would put Dave Filoni pretty highly on the scale of getting it. Among the Star Wars stories that have been told by people other than George Lucas, Filoni's stories are among the ones that feel the most authentic.