Remake The Last Jedi

Critically, it depends whom you ask.

Financially? It got certified Platinum and sold 1.2 million copies in the US alone. Those figures were compiled in 2013 so I'd be curious to find out the tally today.

 

Moulin Rogue One? It'd be FAABB-ulouss!

 

This would be more akin to Blade Runner or Heaven’s Gate (or Superman II the Donner version) where films were recut, altered or added to years later. A remake would literally be like th band re-r cording an album such as Squeeze did with their Spot The Difference album and, in that case, they just re-recorded the hits.

 

How do we know that Abrams wasn’t involved to a degree with this film? He when they planned out the three films to follow the original trilogy, I’m sure that he was involved (along with Larry Kasdan)at providing a broad story arc. I doubt they are making this up (unlike Lucas) as they go along especially Italy in today’s market.

 

I liked the Lee Hulk movie but I can understand why some people didn't like it (in a way I think it was like the TV show where they toned down The Hulk [in the TV series the reduction in the strength level of The Hulk was intentional]). I liked that they got into the psychology of Banner and that his transformation into The Hulk was not just due to being exposed to gamma radiation but was the end result of a life-long process that was activated by the gamma radiation.

It seems like reboots and remakes are going to be the general way things are going to be in the movies when it comes to superheroes and established franchises. That's why I think eventually a reboot of Star Wars might be likely. For me, as a DC Comics reader, I'm used to reboots/massive-continuity-changing events having gone through at least six of them since 1985. Thus, a complete and total reboot of Star Wars would almost be par for the course for me and something that I would not be surprised by in a few years.

 

What if those Storm Troopers found the droids they were looking for?

 

I've always considered Superman Returns a very rare example in cinema history of a known director being given the opportunity to produce what is effectively a love letter of sorts to Richard Donner's original vision for the series, and it's not even the only case of this happening within the same franchise. Bryan Singer was so upset at the reception to "Returns" that he scrapped a sequel that had been in the planning stages and didn't even bother to record a commentary track for his earlier movie when this appeared on home video, though he did at least approve the inclusion of an alternate opening sequence that was only cut from the theatrical version after a reported $10m had already been spent completing this! If anything good came of this film, I'd like to think it was Marlon Brando's estate being paid so his likeness could be used to help create Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut, even though I'm no longer as impressed with the end result - I still believe there's a further official edit waiting to be made that serves as a less biased compromise, preferably featuring the best of the footage shot by Donner and later under Richard Lester.

I was thankfully unaware of this until long after the fact, but it turns out that WB somehow allowed the production and release (complete with red carpet premiere in London!) of a low budget fan movie* on 11.11.2011 by the name of Superman: Requiem. From what I've read about this, its script was penned in a week, the budget was approximately $20k, and the end product is exactly what you'd expect. For someone like Bryan Singer to struggle, there was absolutely no chance of some fan to do better on a shoestring. Not even Zack Snyder, David S. Goyer and some limited input from Christopher Nolan could rescue Superman. Certain pockets of the fan community might not like this, but Star Wars is another classic from the same era that needs leaving alone. By this point, you'd either have to simply homage what's already there or drastically move away from the source material. You just can't win against such a long-established and diverse fanbase, and maybe it's just best not to try...

*Watch at your own risk: Superman: Requiem (2011) - IMDb

 

The Lee Hulk movie was the only one I saw. I'm also a DC person and have only seen a handful of the Marvel movies. But, I think I mentioned before that I got out of comics a couple decades ago, but only admitted it to myself about four years ago. My buying now is strictly limited to completing my Atomic Age collections of Airboy and Flash Gordon.

 

The force is with me. Plus I usually only see movies at our local second run theater (or buy them on video). TLJ never came to town, and the fan hatred put me off buying it on Blu-Ray.

 

All I know is seldom have I seen such a disparate opinion from critics, who praised it, to the public, who thought it stank like ton ton entrails.

 

I’m with the critics.

The public generally liked it. It has been well documented that the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes was driven down by disgruntled “fans” using fake accounts and bots. A more accurate reflection of the audience’s reaction to the film is the CinemaScore rating. Fans are asked about the film when they leave the theater. The score can’t be driven down by fake accounts and bots. The film received an A on CinemaScore. So you have, as you stated, an unprecedented disparity between the critics and the audience on Rotten Tomatoes, with the critics giving it a 91% rating. It has a Metacritic rating of 85%. Google users give it 7.3 out of 10. Audiences polled by CinemaScore give the film an A.

But maybe you shouldn’t listen to any of these people. Just watch the film, and judge for yourself.

 

I saw the Last Jedi in the theater & had just two problems with it. I did not like the Leia space sequence. I thought it was silly, honestly. I also felt the film was a little long.

I recently watched it again on blu ray. I came away with the exact same response.

Not the best of the Star Wars films, but not the worst by a long ways.

I'm still a little unclear as to what the problem with this film is. The humor? The original (4-6) trilogy had plenty of humor. The diverse casting? Really? Don't like Asians, African Americans and women in your Star Wars? I hope I am misunderstanding because that is just horrible. Don't like the direction Luke's character took? Don't see the problem. He is a character who has lived a life. And he redeemed himself in the end by being stronger and smarter.

I think they did a good job with a tough assignment - the middle film of a trilogy. Interesting to see where they go next.

 

Hyperbole. It might not be the story the way they wanted it to be but the acting and writing is still and contrived in the prequels.

 

I agree with your assessment.

 

J.J. Abrams is listed (along with 15 others) as an executive producer on Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi, so we can assume he attended a few meetings, read some scripts, and provided some advice (if not much more).

 

Can you speak in any detail to the level of scrutiny that the script for an average blockbuster is subjected to and how that might differ with a Star Wars project? I get the sense that many people feel there was no coordination at all-- or very little, at best-- between the Episode VII and VIII creative teams, and that there's no real overarching blueprint leading towards IX, but I find that rather hard to believe.

 

I dunno. I'm too busy with the crap in my tiny world to peak into what's going on 6 miles north of me at Disney. I do know that everything at Disney (including Marvel, Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Muppets) is often very secretive. I once glanced through a Disney security manual for producers, and it was a notebook over 100 pages long. As far as the screenwriting process goes, I think that's one of those normal development things where ideas get pitched, maybe 2 ideas out of 10 are greenlit as scripts, then a certain number of those scripts are actually made. And then in some cases, the scripts are rewritten, sometimes extensively.

I think there's a lot of fan "interpolation" as to what really goes on over at Lucasfilm, and I would bet the real-world situation is a lot more down-to-earth and understandable than you would think. I also think they're mostly very smart people, and if you look at the Lucasfilm website, there are quite a few execs involved with coordinating different productions (TV and film):

Leadership | Lucasfilm.ltd website

Also, if you look at the credits for the last few Star Wars films, there are quite a few producers credited that I would bet were involved in "roundtable" discussions on story development and rewrites. I've often pointed to a sequence from the Making of Pirates of the Caribbean 2 that actually shows a dozen Disney executives in suits talking about how the film is overbudget and the script would have to be shortened, and I think this kind of process goes on for every major studio project these days (with few exceptions). Every studio has "a room full of guys in suits" who want to kibbutz about the creative process, and part of it is involved with time and money issues, part of it concerns how they're going to market the films, part of it is logistics (like who is available and where it's going to be done), and part of it is technological (how is it going to be shot and finished). Some of these people really love films and contribute great ideas; some no doubt are trying to chase what they believe the audience wants, but that goes far beyond just the fan audience. I'd bet they have a solid day's discussion just on how the film will play in China.

I think, again, the fans are out of control in assuming that they and only they understand what future direction the Lucasfilm characters and stories should go. My observation is that this is the kind of pressure that eventually led George Lucas himself to say "to hell with this" and step down, simply because of the constant criticism and second-guessing. When even a guy with $10 billion and 50 years experience can't take the pressure, you begin to realize how nutty this world is.

BTW, as far as an "overarching blueprint," I'm not convinced Lucas had one, either. I had a 3-hour lunch with SF author Alan Dean Foster back in the 1980s, and he revealed to me then (I think the statute of limitations has expired) that he read early outlines of all 9 Star Wars films and most were just a couple of hand-scrawled paragraphs on legal paper. So Lucas only had the barebones of some ideas for a bigger story... and that only happened starting in 1980. He never knew what was going to happen back in 1974-1975 when the first film was written. I'd again point to The Secret History of Star Wars as providing what I think is the most accurate idea of what went on: basically that Lucas was making it all up as he went along. As it is, it's amazing the films came together as well as they did, because he was kind of "inventing" the railroad track as the train was roaring up the hill.

 

@Vidiot, I appreciate your time and insight.

 

If I had to guess, I would say the sequel trilogy has so far had more planning than any of the Lucas Star Wars films ever did, and yet the malcontents would have you believe George Lucas had every single nuance of the OT and the prequels mapped out in his head all the way back in the mid 70s and Disney era Lucasfilm is writing these via throwing darts at a dart board.

I guarantee JJ Abrams approved of the stuff Johnson did in TLJ. In fact I remember him saying he wished he had decided to direct VIII too because he was so in love with Johnson's script.

 

I think this whole "Remake The Last Jedi" thing is just a hoax, probably just a couple of guys trolling the internet to see what kind of reaction they'd get, lol. I wouldn't pay it too much attention.

I personally did not hate TLJ. I thought it was okay but not great. I had no problems with the casting, the new characters, the desire to get rid of the old and take SW in a totally different direction, etc.

However, TLJ just didn't enrapture me, delight me or hold my interest the way TFA did, or the way any of the OT did. In fact, I fell asleep about halfway while watching TLJ the first time, something that's never happened to me at my first viewing of any of the other SW movies, not even the prequels, which I loathe.

Also, some of the character arcs were not compelling enough, were kind of confusing, or did not move the plot along very well IMO. This video pretty much articulates what I mean:



Anyway, it is what it is. Not even the Beatles could hit it out of the ballpark with every album, right? In the same way we can't expect every SW movie to be as good or as magical as ANH/ESB/ROTJ. Hopefully Episode IX will end this current trilogy in a satisfying manner, and then all the complaining about TLJ will finally start to die down. Hopefully.

 

I suspect, more than anything else, it's the subtext Encuentro mentioned: “Let the past die; kill it if you have to.” In a metatextual sense, much of TLJ is devoted to making Star Wars vital again in a changing world, partly by consigning the original trilogy to the past. For Star Wars fans who've loved the original trilogy their entire lives, that can be a bitter pill...especially for the bulk of the fanbase that's white and male, already dealing with a world that's changing to no longer give them the advantages and privileges in life their fathers and grandfathers had. (And it is a very fine line for artists to manage, the difference between "White men aren't any more important than any other people," and "White men suck and are evil." Some artists are more ham fisted than others).

 

Perhaps. But Rian actually offers two opposing philosophies in the film-- "let the past die, kill it if you must" and "that's how we win-- not by killing what we hate but by saving what we love." The former is about challenging our expectations and beliefs about Star Wars, the latter is about reaffirming those expectations and beliefs. Throughout the movie, it seems like Rian is content to follow the former wherever it leads. Except that he doesn't. He makes a clear choice in the final stretch of the film, as articulated by Luke Skywalker in his standoff with Kylo Ren.

Kylo's dialogue is consistent with his personal philosophy of killing the past, whereas Luke's dialogue embodies that second philosophy. He doesn't kill the past in the form of Kylo Ren; instead, he saves what he loves-- Leia, the Rebellion, the Jedi Way itself. The past isn't dead, the past can't be killed, and no one's ever really gone. The Jedi-- and Star Wars itself-- will survive and thrive, even without him as a central character. For some reason, this reaffirmation doesn't seem to be landing with some people.

The idea, I think, is even conveyed by the musical score. A favorite moment of mine is when Finn and Rey reunite after she lifts the rocks out of the way using the Force. As they embrace and the movie cuts to a close-up of Luke, the music there briefly recalls the tail-end of the Order 66 sequence in ROTS, just before the moment where Bail Organa is confronted by Clone Troopers after the sacking of the Jedi Temple. Which is really cool if you think about it, because the story has kind of come full circle at that point-- the destruction of the temple on Coruscant and Luke proclaiming he is not the last Jedi, linked by a similar-sounding musical passage, a musical throughline cutting across the entire saga.

Overall, I find TLJ to be an optimistic movie, so I'm troubled by the fact that so many people seem to be pulling the opposite messaging from the film. I guess that's reflective of the times we live in?

 

All this hatred toward a freakin' movie is getting very exhausting. It's just hilarious that some clowns would even consider the idea of remaking this movie! I agree with the critics too. Sure, they had their issues with the film but the reactions from butthurt fanboys making outlandish statements that Disney are paying these guys to give positive reviews is sheer lunacy. I still maintain that I regard TLJ the best film since ESB. Every SW film has had their share of faults and to even consider the prequels better than TLJ is just nonsensical!

So sure, go ahead and remake TLJ if they can. Even if this does become a reality, I will look forward to the reactions - and I will not regard this "remake" as canon either! I support fan edits as long as they're justified, but pointless remakes just because the finished product didn't support your expectations?! There's more to life than a freakin' movie, jeez!

 

Well on that point Disney is no different than any other studio in terms of giving free perks to critics - https://www.quora.com/Are-movie-critics-bribed-by-movie-studios

More likely, critics are not necessarily fans. So they don't particularly care if a film makes sense in the context of what came before, so they'll call a director's choices "unexpected" rather than "tone deaf".