ST Luke Skywalker/Mark Hamill Discussion Thread [SEE WARNING ON PAGE 134]

@PendragonM Are you saying that the writing of the third part of a trilogy can’t be made very difficult if the second part is created by someone who ignores the roadmap set up by the first part? Or that no matter how RJ may have derailed his original plan, JJ should have made 9 based off of where he thought RJ was going with TLJ (wherever that was - I was never able to figure that out, personally)?

 

I’m saying JJ reaped what he sowed. I have no sympathy for him. Most of the bad decisions he had to “fix” were direct results of what he set up. He decided to leave Rey’s parentage a secret, he reran Empire vs Rebels, so he’s stuck with his own bad take. Or if it really was Disney that insisted, then he went along with it. No one held him at gunpoint to make these movies.

 

I suppose this is a step up from blaming the actors for the story / character decisions, which is what we had last week.

Next week: The ST plot being rubbish is the fault of the catering staff. And the cleaner.

 

Who on earth blamed the actors? People have been blaming the writers and producers consistently. The debate has only been about who deserves the bulk of them blame amongst them (the writers and producers).

 

I can't possibly say.

 

That was rhetorical. Bottom line - almost nobody to such an extent it isn’t worth complaining about. Critics have by overwhelming majority been blaming the people that deserve it. Not the actors, not the cook.

 

I’m sorry, who else is to blame other than the director/co-writer of two of the three movies?

 

I do blame the people who greenlit and allowed it to happen also. Namely Kennedy and Iger.

 

The folk who have the final say and ultimate control over a movie and has the power to make demands and change things without the director’s/writer’s agreement.

 

I'm not disagreeing they come in for the blame. I'm just asking why I should let the director/co-writer off the hook and blame the actors or the caterer. I also don't believe for a minute that the guy they were courting to come to their studio and make upwards of $500 mil a year has the same degree of non control as the office administrative assistant.

 

Not sure if anyone is claiming that RoS would have been a Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius had JJ/CT had complete control.

I also don’t think JJ’s contract would have given him more power over the finished product than LFL or Disney. Especially Disney. I don’t think anyone seriously believes that any one person in Hollywood has nearly the power that Disney has.

 

Blame? More like praise! Thank! For many people who like but didn’t love Lucas’ last trilogy the ST was a mixture not only of the OT but also the aspects of the PT they enjoyed most while also having a completely unique onto itself relationship dynamic between Rey & Ben as the grandchildren of Darth Sidious and Darth Vader, and support characters in Finn and Poe so interesting and charismatic that they instantly joined the heavyweights of the saga. The OT4 drama was powerful for many of us and went places that either felt plausible or fascinating or both. Palpatine’s end was bigger and got into more Sith lore, adding new layers to his actions in the past, and we got to see Luke train Leia and both helped Rey who will now take it upon herself
to undo her grandfather’s legacy on the galaxy one step at a time.

 

He was also the one who decided to have NO new jedi order in the film that followed RETURN OF THE JEDI; to have Han killed; to exclude Luke from his film except for a cameo; to have the only new legacy character become a Vader wannabe; and to regress everything back to the time of ANH and redo the OT with inferior characters. Then in TROS, he put the final nails into the OT coffin by bringing back Palpatine; making Rey a Palpatine; and canonizing Reylo. I will never forgive RJ for all of the disrespect he showed to the character of Luke Skywalker and for killing him after destroying him, but I will never forgive JJ for allowing him to do it because of his awful setup and leaving Luke out of his film, and for making George Lucas’ wonderful OT story now null and void and unnecessary.

 

Are we sure it was JJ's decision to rerun Empire Vs Rebels 2.0?

I have a feeling that was a Disney edict that the new films have stormtroopers and X-ings and Leia's group as the scrappy rebels, just like the OT, and so JJ tried working within that rigid framework enforced by the "story group," because Disney did not want to risk different things like the PT did. But that's just a guess. And we will never know because Rinzler wasn't allowed to do a MAKING OF TFA book and was made to sign a NDA :/

But yes, JJ not wrapping up Rey's past 100% in the first film really stalled her character growth in a way that caused problems narratively later and built undue expectations from audiences as well.

Of course, in the end I'll always believe it would have been better if Rey was a long lost student of Luke's who was taken or lost as a child during an attack by Kylo and/or Snoke (that ties all the main characters together!), and she was like his adopted daughter, an orphan he found and cared for like his own child—Orphan Luke raising another orphan and being a good father—and the First Order be more like hidden terrorists striking randomly, assassinating people, and trying to turn the galaxy against Luke and the Jedi as the "Son of Vader"...but that's just me.

 

I`d be curious to see what the response would be if they would make another trilogy where it was revealed pristine force goddess Rey fell flat on her face and accomplished nothing and there comes a surprise *brand name* out of the woodwork who gets it all handed to them.

 

Everyone at LF bears blame, well except the actors. This trilogy was flawed from the beginning conceptually ad they clearly had no real plane for where to take it. JJ did his mystery box thing, which allowed Rian to just throw it all out in favor of being controversial. And he left the story in such a mess that there was no real place to guy unless there was some retconning. And JJ and Terrio took some massive narrative shortcuts and lazy cop outs and had no real compelling story to tell. And KK bears ultimate responsibility since she let this all happen.

 

I'd expect the same response that happened when a reboot of Buffy was talked about two years ago - ie the same people who told us to shut up about the ST yelling about how wrong it is.

 

Pretty much.

 

I disagree with your statement about JJ Abrams in this instance. That amazingly good final moment in TFA which revealed the great Luke Skywalker should have been the perfect springboard from which to launch an epic story for him in The Last Jedi (which even has the coolest title of the three)

That ending and setup literally dripped with intrigue and promise. Why was Luke on this island? What is he looking for? Doesn't he know Kylo is out of control? What is so important that he would come here whilst the Galaxy burns?

For all the problems associated with this trilogy, Disney would have been damned either way. Too much of the OT trio, and they would have been accused of fan service, nostalgia-baiting, no forward thinking, trading off past glories at the expense of the new characters etc

Too little and that wouldn't have been satisfying either. Tricky one to pull off.

 

Given that Rogue One was able to reference the prequels quite a lot by Disney's standards and how JJ Abrams seems to snub the prequels even where their presence are justified (Mustafar, Coruscant), I say it's JJ Abrams' idea for OT redux.

He was the one talking about real desert and practical effects and AHN's mystery boxes and how OT made him feel and how the Force was better without midichlorians. And TFA concept arts featured TIE fighters that look distinctly diferrent from OT and were featured in TROS but for some reason, the inverted colored H-shaped models were chosen for TFA. And now that I think about it, Pablo Hidalgo was known to have despised the Starkiller Base because it broke so much of the laws of Star Wars physics that they had to make up new science babble to justify how it works. Both of these aspects were likely done on Abrams' input for nostalgia value, and independent of the Story Group's doctrine.

Therefore, we can assume that Abrams could have strong-armed for a much more original story that flows better as a continuation from ROTJ. He just choose not to. And thus, he choose to relegate Mark Hamill to the end of the story as a video game end reward.

 

It wasn't tricky at all really...move the timeline up a hundred years for the so-called "Skywalker" trilogy and remove the OT3 altogether from it (aside from the obligatory force ghost of Luke that is and a throw away line referencing the events). Then have one (or two) of the standalone movies function as a prequel of sorts for that trilogy and have the OT3 together in one of them.

Disney and LFL painted themselves into a corner from the jump. Everyone was eager for more Star Wars when it was announced more films were on the way -- it didn't need to take the form it is in now at all. They chose to try and maximize profits over originality within the brand. Which I will concede is their absolute right to do so. But it seems to me they didn't try very hard. They could absolutely have had their cake and ate it too in my opinion.

But to say they would've been damned either way I think is just armchair quarterbacking now that the trilogy/saga is complete.

Then again, I guess I'm armchair quarterbacking it as well!

 

So, make a new saga. Your not describing numbered episodes of this saga.

I think TROS failed to stick the landing, but suggesting that they just not make the movies and opt for creating a new timeline is a little wonky to me. Nobody would buy Star Wars to do that while Mark, Carrie and Harrison were still alive.

 

I kind of would have liked to see a literal payoff of "See you around, kid" and have Ben reuniting with Luke in the Force netherworld at the end of TROS.

 

Hence the standalone films with them that I mentioned in my post.

And anything with a storyline of the descendants or legacies of Luke, Han, and Leia, or of any characters that come previously in the series can still fit within numbered episodes going forward. Especially since the Skypatinewalkerpalp saga we've gotten is billed as "generational"...100 years up the road is still generational if dealing with the offspring or achievements of the previous trilogy characters.

And actually yes...I'm suggesting they didn't need to "just make movies" and opt for creating a forward looking timeline if the only gimmick to get butts in seats was the OT3. What difference did they make to the story - what little there is of the ST - anyway?

It's all conjecture and opinion now anyway on how Disney shoulda coulda woulda'd the ST. In fact, why'd I even log in?

 

Because they're handicapping themselves right away by assuming that they had to do what they did with the OT heroes just to prop up the new ones. Maybe some people would have been annoyed if you set it longer in the future and they were all dead and gone. But my guess is less so than with what they did do. They tried to have it both ways, and it ended up a mess.