Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker*

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Classicolin, Sep 12, 2017.

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  1. David Campbell

    David Campbell Forum Resident

    Location:
    Luray, Virginia
    The end part is easily the best and is the only reason it's not Phantom Menace levels of mediocre. Again, my opinion.
    Whenever I see the crap spouted online that Star Wars is dead,I shake my head. Things ebb and flow with any franchise. If this franchise could survive the Holiday Special and Jar Jar, it'll survive anything.
    Well to be fair to Kasdan,he and Abrams were under a ridiculously tight deadline because Disney wanted TFA out by May 2015. Thankfully they and Kennedy were able to push it back to December,but they wanted a May 2016 launch. I think a big part of the reason we got Death Star 3 (aka Starkiller Base) was because they were pressed for time. Apparently there was an entire plotline dropped involving Leia sending an envoy to the Hosnian System to try and lobby some support from the New Republic and a plotline involving the resistance having their own superweapon and the ramifications of that,but both had to be dropped and why we basically ended up with the New Hope clone TFA turned out to be. They literally ran out of time.

    I feel a lot of the issues with this sequel trilogy could have easily been solved had they just stuck to George Lucas's three year gaps between films production wise,at least as far as the main saga.

    I personally thought SOLO was pretty darn good and that was pretty much all Kasdan and his son. It's a pity once again Disney botched the release and marketing to the point it was nearly guaranteed to at least underperform.
     
    Last edited: Sep 4, 2019
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  2. twicks

    twicks Forum Resident

    Location:
    Detroit
    Isn't the popular theory that Solo took the brunt of peoples' unhappiness with Last Jedi?
     
  3. David Campbell

    David Campbell Forum Resident

    Location:
    Luray, Virginia
    It's a possibility,but there's no way to prove it. It's a popular theory among the "fandom menace" ,but I take anything they say or claim with a grain of salt.

    I'd say it played a role in the failure of Solo, but I would say safely it wasn't THE reason.
     
  4. CraigBic

    CraigBic Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Zealand
    Supposedly he turned down directing the prequels as well, I think he holds the record for turning down Star Wars jobs... maybe he just never wanted to direct Star Wars. Though he did do the pre-vis for the Anakin v Obi-Wan sequence.
     
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  5. Luke The Drifter

    Luke The Drifter Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    Yoda dies. Ewoks die. Vader turns good and then dies.

    There are plenty of good guy deaths in ROTJ. Really, my only dislike of the film as an adult is the Ewoks being too cute.
     
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  6. Luke The Drifter

    Luke The Drifter Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    I think a bigger factor is fans not caring to see someone other than Harrison Ford play Han. That is why I never cared to see it.
     
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  7. twicks

    twicks Forum Resident

    Location:
    Detroit
    Yes. This is huge.
     
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  8. twicks

    twicks Forum Resident

    Location:
    Detroit
    I'm wracking my brain trying to think if I really dislike anything about it. Maybe the uncharacteristically bad matte shots in the Rebel hangar and when they're picking up the droids out of the sand with the magnet?
     
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  9. BeatleJWOL

    BeatleJWOL Senior Member

    That's just funny.

    That matte is something else though.

    [​IMG]
     
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  10. Peace N. Love

    Peace N. Love Forum Resident

    Hahaha. Yes. That was revisionism that occured a decade later. There's a certain mindset that believes that the darker and more edgy something is the better it must be. That worldview was very evident in the '90s culture, at least from my own observations; and therefore ROTJ with its cuteness and got a bad rap. But I remember watching the trilogy with friends in the mid-to-late '80s on many occasions (we were probably 19-21 at the time), because we all kind of rediscovered the movies as young adults and appreciated them on a different level. It was a fairly cynical crowd, but I don't really remember Jedi being anything other than a great conclusion to the trilogy, especially the Luke-Vader stuff. That's not to say we all loved the Ewoks and ran around singing the Ewok song all day, either, but it just seemed more like it was a movie we loved that maybe had a couple of things we weren't so crazy about.
     
  11. twicks

    twicks Forum Resident

    Location:
    Detroit
    Yub effin' Nub, my friend.
     
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  12. BeatleJWOL

    BeatleJWOL Senior Member

    Please note for your consideration:

    [​IMG]

    where did the Ewoks get human-sized clothing like that?

    why did they attempt to cook and eat our heroes?

    [​IMG]
     
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  13. davidarob

    davidarob Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland, OR USA
    I believe the result of wanting to save time & money in the shooting schedule by tearing down the partially-built Falcon set (from the eventually discarded sandstorm scene) before the hanger scene was scheduled to be filmed, or something close to that...I'm sure Lucas was still painfully aware of Empire's cost-overruns and was willing to do. anything to avoid that again. But even in '83 I thought the matte looked out of place, especially after seeing the full-build Falcon in the previous film
     
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  14. BeatleJWOL

    BeatleJWOL Senior Member

    You get the sense poor Billy Dee was about to walk into the wall at the very end of that shot :p
     
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  15. tomhayes

    tomhayes Senior Member

    Location:
    San Diego, Ca
    1)ROTJ was disappointing IN REAL TIME. How do i know? Because I ditched school and bought tickets to 2 showings that day in the morning - the 9:00am and the 12:00PM showing - and I returned my ticket for the 12:00PM and went home.

    2)I just re-watched TFA and TLJ and I enjoyed both quite a bit. Some nitpicks - but overall they hold up really well - much much better than the prequels.

    I just want tickets to go on sale for new one so I can reserve my seats and begin the countdown.

    (I liked Solo and Rogue One too.)
     
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  16. The Hermit

    The Hermit Wavin' that magick glowstick since 1976

    I thought Richard Marquand (R.I.P.) did a solid job on that film; his directing style is clearly different from both George's and Kersh's, but it was Marquand's idea for the film to open with Vader's arrival on the new Death Star, his idea to bring back Yoda, his idea for the Millennium Falcon to have a more prominent role in the climactic space battle, he decided on the design for Admiral Ackbar, and he was the one that pushed for Ian McDiarmid to be cast as the Emperor.

    George still held the creative reins of that film and it shows... but under those circumstances, Marquand did a decent job overall... God rest his soul.

    Spielberg was never Lucas' real choice for the role of director on Jedi; the bearded one had just finished E.T. and was about to start prepping the second Indiana Jones installment, so he literally couldn't have done the SW threequel even if he wanted to... he was never on the shortlist as I understand it.

    The urban myth that Lucas chose Richard Marquand 'cause he couldn't select an American DGA member is just that... a myth; he was ready to hire David Lynch (a DGA member) until the latter declined and went on to Dune instead... he chose Marquand because he liked his work, got on very well with him, and thought they shared the same vision... what's not so well-known is his runner-up candidate for that job was Lamont Johnson, who directed (among other things) some classic Twilight Zone episodes and the Jeff Bridges-starring 1973 NASCAR drama The Last American Hero, which Lucas had greatly enjoyed... Johnson was also a lifelong DGA member, so that myth of Lucas only being able to hire a foreigner is, again, a myth.
     
    Last edited: Sep 4, 2019
  17. David Campbell

    David Campbell Forum Resident

    Location:
    Luray, Virginia
    Good points I've never really thought about in great detail. I always thought it was funny they were going to eat Artoo as well!

    Also that pic of Carrie just reminds me what a beautiful woman she was in her prime.
     
  18. David Campbell

    David Campbell Forum Resident

    Location:
    Luray, Virginia
    It was a myth that Lucas himself indirectly fueled via the Lucasfilm authorized documentary "Empire of Dreams" that came with the initial DVD release of the original trilogy in 2004. In that film it's inferred that Lucas wanted Spielberg,but since Lucas was no longer in the DGA he couldn't hire him,and thus settled on Marquand. Just like the myth that Lucas wrote the OT as one big movie and merely just chopped it up into three films,I guess it makes for a better storyline.
     
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  19. David Campbell

    David Campbell Forum Resident

    Location:
    Luray, Virginia
    I'd say that is definitely a big reason. I remember even before TLJ was released there was very little interest in a SOLO movie without Harrison in it. Also,even if TLJ was widely loved and popular as TFA was,it was just way too soon to put out another Star Wars movie less than 6 months after the last. It confounds me to this day why Disney didn't just release Solo at Christmas. It isn't like the Mary Poppins sequel that came out then lit the world on fire. I can't help but think SOLO would have done more business with both time and Distance from TLJ and without the direct competition with Deadpool 2 and Avengers 3.

    Again,everyone wants to make Kathy Kennedy the scapegoat for the missteps of the Star Wars film under the Disney era, but I'd say Bob Iger shares more of that blame. It was Iger who pushed out TFA 6 months earlier than Kennedy and her team felt more comfortable with and pushed for the breakneck schedule of these sequels. It was Iger that pushed to keep SOLO in May 2018 rather than Christmas.
     
  20. BeatleJWOL

    BeatleJWOL Senior Member

    All true and yet only serves to bolster the "DISNEY BAD*" argument that some like to push.

    *in relation to Star Wars. I understand the company as a whole has, uh, issues.
     
  21. David Campbell

    David Campbell Forum Resident

    Location:
    Luray, Virginia
    Absolutely. I do find it interesting that "the fandom menace" have this never ending drum beat to fire Kathy Kennedy for all the " sins" of the current era,yet there is no similar movement to push Iger out of the way. I can only speculate why,and I think we all have a suspicion why that is,but thats a whole can of worms.
     
  22. twicks

    twicks Forum Resident

    Location:
    Detroit
    Nah, I think it's as simple as: Iger ultimately is responsible for a bunch of franchises and Kathy is only responsible for Star Wars.
     
  23. David Campbell

    David Campbell Forum Resident

    Location:
    Luray, Virginia
    Yeah,but it could be argued that the sequel trilogy's biggest perceived weekness,I.E. The lack of planning for the overall story arc and the lack of fine tuning the scripts , wouldn't be a problem if Iger let Kennedy and Abrams (and by extension,Rian Johnson) take more time out of the gate and let them get Episodes VII ,VIII and IX out at a reasonable time frame rather than trying to get the three sequels out in such rapid fire succession. That forced Kasdan and Abrams to rush a script for TFA,forced Rian Johnson to work off of a draft of the TFA screenplay for his movie which caused minor continuity headaches. This passing of the baton marathon film making can sometimes work,but for what was supposed to be the climatic trilogy of a series as big as this one,flying by the seat of your pants and hoping for the best probably wasn't the best approach.

    I've mostly enjoyed the films thus far,but even I can see where rushing this trilogy out has been a bad idea. There's a reason George Lucas had three year gaps between films during his era. There's no reason why the films couldn't have come out in 2016,2019 and 2022. It's true we would have lost Carrie after VII or during the making of VIII,but I personally think more prep time in between chapters would have helped iron out the wrinkles and we'd have three narratively stronger movies as a result.
     
    Last edited: Sep 4, 2019
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  24. greg_t

    greg_t Senior Member

    Location:
    St. Louis, MO
    I think this is a big factor, hard to see anyone else as Han. I also think the film had a lot of negative publicity. Firing directors, script rewrites, stories of having to do acting lessons for the leads, etc. Seems like there was always something negative surrounding the film. I personally feel the last jedi backlash is minor in the grand scheme. It also just didn't really look like a very interesting movie to me from the trailers.
     
  25. SRC

    SRC That sums up Squatter for me

    Location:
    New York, NY
    While it was not necessarily a truly great film, I loved the Solo movie. It had everything I wanted in a Star Wars movie, at least one that could be made today.

    It has been said that a lot of people stayed away from Solo because they disliked The Last Jedi, but the Solo movie was kind of the opposite of The Last Jedi (no offense to the latter film.) Solo was fun, the actors were as good as could be hoped for, it had spaceships and laser guns, it had droids, it had tons of nostalgic fan service moments without being stupid. It also wasn't total fluff, despite being a "prequel" type movie, it had some decently high stakes and a number of character deaths. I am not a hater of any of the films but Solo was the most fun I've had at a Star Wars film since 1983. People who pre-judged it might want to reconsider. No one can ever match Harrison Ford's 1970's charisma. But I thought the actor playing Solo did very well, he matched aspects of the character without doing a slavish imitation.
     
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