ST The Development Of The Sequel Trilogy

Thanks. I’ll check out the videos later.

It may have been in the Ciment book on Kubrick in which I believe Renoir is quoted as saying that a filmmaker remakes the same film for his career. I hope I haven’t botched the quote or source.

Certainly the 007 series are remakes after Dr. No and differently Goldfinger—the best being what we saw on the 50th anniversary.

Interesting.

Is this perhaps partly why the PT didn’t feel like SW for so many? CGI being another possible reason since as you point out TPM’s structure isn’t as original. And maybe no Big 3.

 

Well to me it was the characters.
The OT had characters that were easy to like and care about and they were overall fun.
The PT? The "Funny" character did not go down all that well with audiences and was quite disliked.
I found many of the other characters dull, stiff, overly serious and stoic.

And take the big battles, in TPM you have droids vs gungans, only one of whom we know. And one that some likely would have preferred to have been killed.
AotC, again droids and now vs clones.
The battles are a bit impersonal, it features nameless droids vs clones, who are all the same or gungans, most of whom we don't know.
Now this might have been intended, that the battles were designed to feature disposable fodder and not really mattering as the bad guy wins at the end.
To me, it made me less invested.

Bye.
Blackboard Monitor

 

I love the PT. But one problem I had was that we didn’t have that many characters with moral dilemmas, especially of life and death, right and wrong. So droids and clones being the main ones killing and being killed didn’t have as much a dramatic impact. Do we agree on that.

Perhaps it’s part of the dehumanization process. Perhaps it’s Lucas focusing on the moral dilemmas and emotions of the main characters, especially in the 3rd Act known as ROTS, and the rest is backdrop and action.

That said, in 6 seasons of TCW, we get the humanization of the Clones GL promised and many moral dilemmas. But that’s because he had a foundation; TV is more character driven; he had 6 seasons.

 

That just isn't enough for me. It has to be the characters in the stories and situations and the entire blend of the overall context. They have to work in context and be interesting in them and work there.

As point out many times Jar Jar actually was pretty well received by the general audience.

As also point out by today's standards Luke, Leia and Han would be very "unlikeable" because they don't instantly get along as BFF's from the first second they see each other (or moments later).

Various PT characters are "dull", "stiff" etc because they are supposed to be as they are Jedi, politicians and the like. Now how anyone doesn't find Qui-Gon anything but awesome that is another matter.

 

J. W. Rinzler: “There was no chance that [The Making of Star Wars: The Force Awakens] book was going to be published. I knew when I started writing it that it would be cancelled... there were a lot of things that were known to the public that I think Disney and Kathleen Kennedy just didn't want to rehash. This is just speculation on my part, but even stuff like changing the date of the release, that Brad Bird was approached first, that Harrison Ford was almost killed… they were not comfortable with the book rehashing those issues.” “[Mark Vaz's version of the book] was pretty much designed and close to being ready to go before they decided that they wanted me to rewrite and add to it. I was asked to take what he wrote and add a beginning and an end. I pulled the manuscript apart and did what I did with the other making-of books and made it chronological.” “It’s a simple answer [of why I worked on it]: because they were paying me. I was going freelance and I needed the money.” “I was involved with the hiring of the writer for that [Rogue One 'Making of' book][Josh Kushins]. But I think that the new regime of Disney and Lucasfilm is not interested in serious non-fiction books. I was trying for years to do a book on the art of Indiana Jones, because there's about 50 tons of stuff in the archives still but they're not interested in looking into the past at all.” (January 7, 2019)

 

Gah, that's really disappointing. Rogue One, especially, could do with a big tell-all book.

 

I don't find any of the PT characters "dull." The only character I'd describe as "stiff" is Mace Windu, but that's part of what makes his character work.

 

If the characters are really good, funny, interesting or engaging then a very simple story works.
Ideally you should have both but more often than not, a film can survive dodgy story over dodgy characters. At least to me.
The characters are the ones I follow, they are the ones that hopefully get me engaged and want to see what happens next.
If I do not give a **** about them then it is very hard for the story to grab me.

Well my experience differs.
And I didn't hate him but I also never laughed at any of his antics.
Mostly I kept trying to understand what he was saying.

You have a very strange definition of likable if you think "Must become best buddies instantly."
I have lots of films were the main characters are not friends right away but are still likable.
Han and Luke did not get on very well at first but both were very likable.
Leia and Han did not get along that well in much of ESB but both characters were still likable.
RDJ in the Iron Man and Marvel films acts quite rude to a lot of people and yet he is likable.
He has problems yes but I still cared.

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I found Qui-Gon little more than ok in TPM. Liam Neeson is a fine actor but often I find that he works better in supporting roles than lead ones.
I liked him better in Batman Begins or Kingdom of Heaven than TPM.
He does not do a bad job but he is too reserved much of the time.
The scenes I liked best are some of the ones with Shmi Skywalker.
Those had some warmth, the time he put his had on her shoulder to comfort her, that was nice.
I've read somewhere that this was improvised by the actors but I've not been able to confirm this.

As for the rest, playing a Jedi or a politician is no excuse to sound so stiff and wooden that you could be mistaken for an Ent. And plenty of actors are able to play such roles and still give them life and energy.
Take Dame Judi Dench for ex, she has played royalty plenty of times. And while being reserved she also shows energy and vitality behind the calm surface.
Or take Leonard Nimoy or Mark Leonard, Spock and Sarek, two characters that supposedly relied on logic and suppressed their emotions. Yet both were able to show that they still had them even if they did not wear them on their sleeves.
While some other less great actors playing Vulcans only made them seem totally lifeless.

Take Alec Guinness, in ANH he was calm but he was also warm and had some charm and likability. And he had emotions. When he told Luke about his fathers fate, he looked pained and uncomfortable. When talking about his old friend he smiled to himself.

In found no characters in TPM "Interesting". The one I liked best was Shmi Skywalker and her scenes with Qui-Gon actually had some warmth and made me care a little.
The rest, pretty meh.
In AotC, Dooku had potential but that was wasted. Anakin was not dull, he was grating and irritating.
Obi-Wan worked the best as now Ewan had something to do as opposed to TPM where he was sidelined a lot of the time.
In RotS, Obi-Wan still works. Ian plays a good villain, if a bit hammy in RotS. So he works.

To brings this back to the ST, TFA worked mostly because I cared about the characters and I was invested.
The story needed work as did the world building.
TLJ was far less good as now some of the characters are wasted, made to look dumb or change in ways that make no sense.
Plus the story is now in far more need of work and the set ups from TFA are ignored or totally contradicted.
So the ST started better than the PT to me but the second film made more of a mess.

Bye.
Blackboard Monitor

 

One of the great characters in the saga and of movie wise-men in general is only that?

Ok then.

Yet look at The Godfather. Completely reprehensible characters I'd gladly see get gunned down at the start of the movie. Couldn't care less for them. So it isn't about them as characters but depends on the story they are in.

No other reason to watch those creeps.

Yet as seen in TFA Poe utterly bizarrely and with no sense is friends with "Finn" in 2 seconds. Rey not that different. Completely derailing the story and characters of all real interest because if the movie places no importance on the story or situations presented why should the audience?

Stormtrooper? Whatever buddy!

I find them full of life and energy no problem. Exemplified by Mace and Padme.

I can't think of any major one that wasn't supposed to be something that wasn't.

TFA didn't work though. It fell apart because there was far too much focus selling the movie's story through the engagement of the characters as opposed to working on the story, situations, galaxy, design and everything else that makes up a Star Wars movie as seen 6 times over.

When you thrown out the rules and just do what "feels" right as opposed to what actually works and makes sense then this is what happens.

Luke doesn't face Vader in ANH. Gets wiped out in TESB and finally faces Vader but victory physically isn't really victory at all. In TFA Rey faces Ren right away and defeats him making all future meetings about how can the bad guy overcome the good guy?

How exactly anyone thought that this was a good way to start a trilogy is startling. Ren with decades of training is easily defeated by Rey with no training in their first meeting of Lightsabers.

You'd think at the very, very least they'd say "Ok she barely survives, loses her arm then the planet splits them asunder."

So at least there is somewhere to go for future movies if nothing else. That was all thrown out to "feel good" about Rey and sell the character over everything else including decades of storytelling previously established by Lucas himself and in Star Wars overall.

 

I feel like the villain in Toy Story 2. Or, the heavy. And both the character and the actor, Wayne Knight, whom I like a lot, are both heavy. I have to work—on a Saturday! After I’ll get off maybe I can rejoin this interesting discussion.
I have loved all 10 theatrical releases—still haven’t seen Solo yet. So, I’m in agreement with some who liked the PT, but not the ST. But even when we disagree on the PT or ST, I find the points made interesting.

I have time on the train for one comment. I’m watching the 100. Midway 1st season. I’ll have to rewatch before moving on. I’m not sure if people are becoming BFFs instantaneously or quickly. Poe and Finn do seem to, but is this normal now? It’s an interesting observation.

 

It is my opinion of the character.
If you think he is awesome then good for you, have a party.
I don't. To me he is nowhere near any list of my favorite or most memorable characters.
Obi-Wan played by Alec Guinness in ANH has him beat by quite a bit.

You rather missed part of my argument.
I said this "If the characters are really good, funny, interesting or engaging then a very simple story works."
So a character can be interesting and also be very unpleasant.

Some characters I just find awful and don't want to watch them, Joffrey in GoT is an example of that.
Tywin Lannister from the same show is also quite an evil person and does terrible things. But he was a character that I wanted to watch. He was interesting and engaging while Joffrey was someone that I wanted to die as quickly as possible.

Or take "Downfall", most of the characters are awful, terrible people that do horrible things. Some so much so that a few scenes are hard to watch. But I was still engaged, I was interested.
There it was good acting, good direction, gripping story and characters that while terrible were still interesting to see.
It is not a film I watch to have a good time or something to relax with. But I have watched it several times and it is still very good.

Anyway, my point is this, if the characters don't work in any way, then a film has to work really hard to keep me interested.
If the characters work and I am invested, then the film has an easier job.
It can still make a mess of things, TLJ is an example and ideally the story should be great as well.

To sum up, why I liked and still liked ANH is not because the story is deep or complex. The story is pretty simple but that does not make it bad. And it is told very well and the characters were engaging.
So why I was very interested in the sequel was firstly because I wanted to see more of the characters.
More story was not unimportant to be sure but not as important much as the characters.

You have missed quite a lot of things.
Finn is presented as someone that have been trained to fight but seemingly with little actual experience of real battle. He sweats bullets, breathes hard and looks like he is about to pass out or throw up.
Then he disobeys orders and Phasma later questions him.
So he knows that what he did will likely be found out and it would almost certainly be very unpleasant.
So he wants to flee and in desperation he seizes on Poe.

Poe is at first taken aback but realizes he has a chance to escape. But he also notices that Finn is very nervous and close to panic. So he does the sensible thing, he tries some disarming humor, he asks Finn's name and he tries to calm him down.
Because Poe knows that if Finn looses it and flips out, he will likely get killed or recaptured.

Ex in a TNG episode called "The Enemy" Geordi is caught by a Romulan on a dangerous planet and both are getting weaker. Geordi tries to use humor to build some rapport with his captor and get him to see that they need to get away and to do that, they have to work together. And he succeeds.
And the Romulan is grateful enough to say that Geordi did save his life later on.

That Poe and Finn bond over their escape is not strange, shared hardship can create bonds.
Take Han and Luke, they grew closer because they were put in a situation where they had to fight to stay alive. Han saw that Luke was pretty good in a fight and Luke saw that Han was not some arrogant pilot with no heart.

In TPM, Padme as the queen was very stilted and robotic. Mace was also quite lifeless and dull in TPM. His character was not even given a name onscreen.
He has more fire in AotC and RotS when he gets to fight.

Jar Jar was supposed to be funny and yet I never laughed. Maul was supposed to be intimidating but I found him uninteresting. Dooku was supposed to be mysterious and yet him being the bad guy was very obvious from the start.
I found Anakin grating and irritating in AotC to the point that I wanted the character to go away.
Not what was intended.

TFA works well enough, it is TLJ that screwed things up by not following through on what was established or doing things that ran totally counter to it.

In the Last Airbender series, Aang fights and beats Zuko in the first season and yet after that Zuko remained a credible threat and challenging antagonist. Plus he was a very well developed character.
Sadly Kylo is nowhere near as good or interesting.

In Kylo's case, him loosing worked, he had been shot and the film showed him bleeding and him trying to keep going despite this.
In AotC Obi-Wan gets two cuts from Dooku and collapses on the floor. And in pain, he had considerable difficulty to use the Force.
The film also showed that he was very much out of balance and had lost focus and control.
Which fits with how the character had been established. He has great power but he also has a problem of keeping calm and when he looses control he makes mistakes.

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Loose an arm? Yeah like that would not be seen as ripping off other SW films.
Finn does not loose an arm, he is cut up and put into a coma.

Bye.
The Guarding Dark

 

Dudes. PT vs ST vs OT...

Not gonna fly.

 

In this interview, Driver appears to suggest the ending in Episode 9 has always been known, even from six years ago: https://www.comicbookmovie.com/sci-...-with-the-trilogy-ahead-of-episode-ix-a165774

"It’s been my second time doing something where it’s lasted six years. I think with Star Wars, it’s six years this year that I’ve known about it or been working on it. I had this experience once with Girls, where it was six or seven years from the moment we shot the pilot to the very last thing. Since I’ve been working, it’s what I’ve been used to, in a way, where you do your other things, and then you go back to see your friends. It’s always good to go back to those groups.

"With Star Wars, I had one piece of information of where it was all going, and that’s where it has been in my head for a long time, and things were building towards that."

 

My guess: The end of the Skywalkers

 

From a certain POV, the end of the Skywalkers.

Ben becomes the new Darth Vader. I believe this has always been the main goal of the ST.

 

If so, the nihilism runs strong with Lucasfilm.

The wisdom of such an act seems like self-inflicted ruination of the central concern in STAR WARS. TLJ already threatens such a demise, but is Lucasfilm really planning on leaving the Skywalkers in darkness? I cannot think of anything worse than TLJ but if they go there JJ will have succeeded.


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No, it’s pretty much the only thing that would make me interested in a Kenobi film. You can all burn me at the stake for heresy and blasphemy, now.

 

Yes. Very bad.

 

Kenobi vs Sand people lead by ashard Hett or Kenobi finds Vader and meets him before episode 4 is the only Kenobi movies would be interesting enough for me

 

The problem is the recent management of the franchise makes any potential Kenobi film unlikely in the near future which means everyone gets older. It’s seems like a no-brainer but they’re not exactly doing themselves any favors when they resolve story possibilities before their thoroughly explored for the max potential. What is the priority, live action, text, comics or animated television? For example, REBELS has light years on the lore in comparison to the live action films. I understand television provides a format for further exploration, but at the expense of the films?

Lucas ran a series between trilogies about an era he felt he couldn’t fully explore in the PT. Simultaneously producing both might be like spreading too thin butter on dry toast.

BESIDES, I WANT TO SEE LIVE ACTION KRAYT DRAGON!!!


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