A/V Obi-Wan TV show happened, Ewan McGregor returned

I'm not "bashing" or supporting anyone. 21 and 22 Jump street are 2 of my favorite films of all time. I like them more than any sensible person should. But the general consensus going around, from quite a few sources, is that the film being made was turning into a monstrosity. It wasn't just a minor issue or one little disagreement.

But no I wasn't there and don't have first hand experience of it, but with these kinds of things you can get a decent feel about what happened when it's repeated by a number of sources.

 

Man. I was watching Rogue One, and I remember thinking "This feels exactly like A New Hope."

 

Meh.
I choose to believe it's one source being reported by many news outlets multiple times. The source being one of the "major hitter" actor or actress. They reported the source remains "anonymous".... It's not a war zone. It's not international diplomacy with sensitive info.

 

Oh god no. I don't want every character to be a stand up comedian, the villains underdeveloped, lasers in the sky, unmemorable cinematography/music, heavy reliance on you having to watch a dozen movies/read a dozen books etc.

 

You realize that this is what's happening right now in Star Wars, right?
You only get the full picture if you see the movie, get the novelization, read the junior reader books, and play the game.
After Del Rey took over, and starting with the NJO, It started. Disney only made it worse.
Bantam books are the only ones that you can pick up read without getting lost if you never read all the rest.

 

This isn't even close to true.

 

From my point of view the Jedi are evil.
uh
I mean From my point of view it is true!

 

Yeah I don't agree with any of that Darth_Mu. You can get the best out of Star Wars without having to read novelisations or play games.

Though I don't think the MCU is much different. Of course it helps to have seen the other films, but it's not like you have to read tie-in comics or any other form of media to understand the films.

 

Oh... you're that kind of person.
Pizza rolls amirite?

 

I mean... if you read my post, you'll see that that isn't what I was referring to at all by "The MCU's model."

Accounts seem to suggest that DC's struggles are/were due to the lack of a Kevin Feige type figure, giving filmmakers freedom yet coordinating everything and maintaining an overarching vision. Does LFL have a Feige? Does Kathleen Kennedy count? I dunno. It's really too early to tell, what with only one Anthology film in the bag, and my pessimism is for sure based more on worrying than anything else (maybe the Han Solo film will be good? I'm not holding my breath but am fully aware that I might be proven wrong, and like of course I'm gonna go see it).

I thought it was pretty clear that I meant every SW film going forward from here on, but if not here's clarification. Especially with a new one literally every year (or every six months? The Young Han Solo movie is scheduled for next summer). My worry is LFL churning out a bunch of annual films that look and feel way too much like each other, and that they're being way too strict about what a SW film should be. The old EU experimented with horror novels, military sci-fi, a heist book, dark Stover stuff, light-hearted Allston stuff... I know that the processes of writing a book and making a movie are apples and oranges, but I'd still love to have an Obi-Wan Spaghetti Western that's absolutely unlike anything we've seen from a SW film before.

I dunno man. It's also been reported that the guy playing Han was so bad that he needed an acting coach, and that Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm weren't giving any support to Lord and Miller from Day 1, getting mad at things as trivial as the way they folded their socks (seriously). It doesn't seem like LFL gave them much of a chance.

 

I think that Marvel movies are all pretty much the same (with the odd exception like Winter Soldier) and basically following the same story beats and lines and basically churning out a Mcdonalds style movie verse. I would argue that Disney are trying to follow the same formula with Starwars. So where I disagree with you Jeff is in hyping up the Marvel movie verse. In Jmo it's not all that and Marvel were just smart enough to make the Bland stuff not out right bad per say and to throw the odd good movie in there with the bland stuff so people come back for more hoping for that good movie while wading through the dross and blandness.

It's why stuff like A Young Han Solo movie are being made even though no one asked for it. It's why they turned to JJ in the first place to basically redo ANH. The problem is Starwars is a saga or was before Disney got there hands on it and turning it into that type of movie verse, just doesn't work at least not long term. Disney are going the same bland repackaged stuff. Say what you will about Lucas but at least he wasn't afraid to try something new, even if it didn't always work.

 

I fear there's plenty of truth to this. Rogue One was originally a lot more gritty and more of a genuine war-movie initially until the Studio basically said "nu-uh" and made it more classic Star Wars-y. It's too early to tell anything about the long term plans in this regard but hopefully we do see some more variation in Star Wars than we have seen in the MCU. If Kenobi can be like the Logan of Star Wars that would be awesome.

 

I'm preeeetty sure that was a figure of speech. But knowing EU fans, I guess we'll have "Lord and Miller's socks" as some canon item soon, with people complaining that we haven't got a picture yet. Sorely missing from the Rogue One visual dictionary.

It does mean, though, that they were working in very different ways. LFL probably hired them based on their pitch and on previous end products, not knowing how their actual production process would look like.

In addition, not being pro-LFL (or pro-Miller/Lord, for that matter), the acting coach story apparently had some context; LFL wanted to get their preferred portrayal of Han by forcing Lord/Miller to use Ehrenfeld the way the acting coach was suggesting, thus taking Ehrenfeld's direction out of their hands and rather directing his performance by surrogate (the coach). I think I read that Ehrenfeld was totally on board with tricking the directors into accepting the "right" performance.

Everyone agreed Rogue One would be about X-Wing pilots, so there goes your guaranteed Western.

I've only seen two of his movies and can't remember a lot except for Billy Elliot being kind of nice. Emotional. So maybe a Kenobi flick would be about an emotional brit? Throw a kid into the original pitch he's got to work from, and both Elliot and Extremely Loud make sense since he's apparently getting performances out of child actors. So, they'll possibly attempt a SW movie without a lot of action and then coldfeetedly add a lot of action in reshoots with a gun for hire, so right now Daldry is a plausible choice.

And for what it's worth, based on Monsters, I'd tapped Edwards for an emotional character study, not for "front and center huge CGI monster" or for "actionpacked gritty war movie". Godzilla immediately rubbed audiences the wrong way by having a shot at a character story with huge CGI monsters in the background, possibly because a blockbuster doesn't give enough fodder for character work and you'd always pump more action into it (who knows, reshoots trying to make it into a more traditional CGI fest and painting the characters in broader strokes sounds plausible). And the "war photographer just passing through" approach might have worked wonders for a Rogue One movie that didn't need to go into classic action adventure territory at the same time.

But in the end, why would you pigeonhole a director into very narrow categories of setting, story or artistic approach as if they can only ever churn out one kind of specialized product? Okay, Tarantino can only do violent revenge movies. I'd imagine that getting a Western right just by analyzing shots from old Ford and Leone movies is much easier than adapting to the huge CGI machine that comes with regular blockbusters these days. Which probably isn't all that hard, either, if you just storyboard everything, work on rough animations and then let people add their sparks and lense flares and baysplosions. And anyway, do we have dedicated, highly specialized Western directors anymore (except for maybe Tarantino)?

 

lol reading that, it was like you had a whole conversation without yourself rather than the other poster. In awnser to your western question at the end, we do have Kevin Costner. Saw the Hatfields and McCoys on Netflix recently and that was pretty good.

 

So your pick for current dedicated, highly specialized Western directors is Costner who hasn't directed a movie since 2003 and... Fred Olen Ray?

Cool convo! Gladly not doing this without myself anymore.

 

Who is your choice ?

 

James Mangold is the answer to the Western director. But really that doesn't matter one bit. William Wyler had two shots at making a Western and aced it both times.

The real answer to this film is to simply remake Sanjuro, make it darkly comic, and involve Joel Edgerton a lot.

 

I'd still like to know Grey1 director choice though. It's easy to mock but you need something to replace it

 

The "no one asked for it" criticism never doesn't sound ridiculous. The only Star Wars movies that ought to be made are the ones fans are "asking for"? Thank goodness that attitude wasn't prevalent in 1977.

 

Personally I think Kristian Levring did a good job with The Salvation. The actor was Mads Mikkelsen (You know him as the voice of Thrawn)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2720680/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_10

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristian_Levring

 

This is quite interesting. I'm just going to wait and see how it turns out. I really want this to be good. It might not. No hype for me. Also...

Spoiler

 

Actually Mads plays Galen Erso. Lars Mikkelsen is the voice of Thrawn.

 

Yeah, Mangold's the obvious fancasting on this one. Or whatever you fan- for a director.

You'll note I haven't said that Daldry can't do it -- just that there's no particular reason we've seen to think he's the right fit. He's a theater guy with no experience anywhere even remotely close to this arena. I'm not saying pigeonhole people, but people usually give you some indications. Edwards didn't make a big blockbuster monster movie with Monsters -- but he did make an intelligent, relatively sensitive character-focused sci-fi/monster movie with excellent use of visual effects on a minimal budget. In short, he showed that he had an eye, had some smarts as a director, he knew how to handle action, and he had experience and passion for genre film. So that got him further opportunities to make bigger genre movies, because he'd already shown he had the right kind of talent even if he hadn't made exactly that kind of movie before. But what has Daldry done to even remotely demonstrate the qualifications to make a Star Wars movie?

Like, would you hire Tom Hooper to make a kung fu movie? Would you hire Chad Stahelski to make a chamber drama? Would you hire Guy Ritchie to adapt Death of a Salesman? Maybe it would work, sure, but what would make you think they're the right fit? It's not like Daldry is some young, hungry guy who's made indies and can convince LFL he can handle something bigger. He's an old theater guy whose movie experience is entirely in stagey Oscar-baiting prestige dramas. What makes him suddenly a genre guy? I'm not saying it won't work. I'm saying it's a weird choice. Like hiring Matthew Stover to write a romance novel, or Vin Diesel to play Winston Churchill. There's range, and then there's range.

 

There's nothing in Kershner's filmography prior to Empire to show that he could do it.

Except, ya know, the themes

Half the battle in making something visually exciting is the DOP, and considering Daldry's gone for Seamus McGarvey, Chris Menges, Roger Deakins, and Adriano Goldman, then this is not so bad

The reason so many of his films are inert is the duuuullll scripts he's filmed (except Billy Elliot which is great and The Crown which is the best TV thing ever)

I've said this elsewhere but I'd be delighted if Daldry brought his Crown buddy Peter Morgan along for the ride

 

alrighty then