Star Wars Episode VIII - The Last Jedi *spoilers from Post 2857*

OwaynOTT

OwaynOTT wrote: »

Let's put this all to bed once and for all.
I work in a library and do Lego Animation.
One of the kids left his workbook behind and open on a page where he has ranked all the Star Wars movies (even has included the animated movie).
Number 1: Empire Strikes Back
Number 2: The Last Jedi
Number 3: a new hope
Number 4: revenge of the sith


Phantom menace and attack of the clones are the bottom two.


He is 12, Disney are doing something right.

He also ranked the characters, it went to a four page list.

Out of curiosity, who were his top characters?
My own kids loved both sequel films.

I can say with certainty that the sequels have drawn in women who may not have been Star Wars nuts up to now.
The Adam Driver effect can’t be discounted.

salmocab

My 8 & 10 year old nephews have loved the last few movies.
I’ve enjoyed them too to be fair

Sad Professor

Deleted User wrote: »

Out of curiosity, who were his top characters?
My own kids loved both sequel films.

I can say with certainty that the sequels have drawn in women who may not have been Star Wars nuts up to now.
The Adam Driver effect can’t be discounted.

Reylo fangirls are a very big thing on Tumblr. Actually some of the best analysis of TLJ I've come across was on there. Though they get a lot of crap from feminists who hate the way TLJ explored the Rey/Kylo relationship.

OwaynOTT

Deleted User wrote: »

Out of curiosity, who were his top characters?
My own kids loved both sequel films.

I can say with certainty that the sequels have drawn in women who may not have been Star Wars nuts up to now.
The Adam Driver effect can’t be discounted.

Darth Vadar was number, can't recall any other rankings apart from padame decoy was near the bother on page 4.
I'll check them tomorrow if anyone is interested. This is probably a massive breach of GDPR.

flatty

Back on topic, the film is absolutely fcuking dreadful. I can't quite believe that with all the money and talent that Disney have to call on, they released that bilge.
The end.

nix

OwaynOTT wrote: »

Let's put this all to bed once and for all.
I work in a library and do Lego Animation.
One of the kids left his workbook behind and open on a page where he has ranked all the Star Wars movies (even has included the animated movie).
Number 1: Empire Strikes Back
Number 2: The Last Jedi
Number 3: a new hope
Number 4: revenge of the sith


Phantom menace and attack of the clones are the bottom two.


He is 12, Disney are doing something right.

He also ranked the characters, it went to a four page list.

Disney only made one of those movies, so no they ain't :P

tigger123

OwaynOTT wrote: »

Darth Vadar was number, can't recall any other rankings apart from padame decoy was near the bother on page 4.
I'll check them tomorrow if anyone is interested. This is probably a massive breach of GDPR.

I think GDPR was also Rian Johnson's idea.

Smertrius

george Lucas took him about 3 years to make each star wars movie , so having a stars wars movie every year from disney which only takes a year to make instead average 3 years would be dreadful

conorhal

Sad Professor wrote: »

Reylo fangirls are a very big thing on Tumblr. Actually some of the best analysis of TLJ I've come across was on there. Though they get a lot of crap from feminists who hate the way TLJ explored the Rey/Kylo relationship.

Tumblr... you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy on the internet....

conorhal

Well the numbers on TLJ DVD sales are out and they make grim reading, a 44% first week sales drop on TFA...



It could be argued that post view sales are a better measure of how a movie is received and it would seem that TLJ has left the audience cold.

Smertrius

these disney star wars movies only take a year to make , the original star wars movie by george lucas took 2-3 years to make, of course disney star wars movies are rubbish

Sad Professor

conorhal wrote: »

Well the numbers on TLJ DVD sales are out and they make grim reading, a 44% first week sales drop on TFA...



It could be argued that post view sales are a better measure of how a movie is received and it would seem that TLJ has left the audience cold.

So Blu-ray sales compared to TFA more or less mirrored the box office drop from TFA. Is that really surprising? Was anyone expecting it to do as well as TFA on Blu-ray when it hadn't done as well as TFA at the box office? How did it compare to Rogue One's Blu-ray sales?

Sad Professor

Smertrius wrote: »

these disney star wars movies only take a year to make , the original star wars movie by george lucas took 2-3 years to make, of course disney star wars movies are rubbish

They don't wait until the previous film is released to start making the next one. TLJ was in pre-production while TFA was shooting. The script was finished by the time TFA was released and they started shooting a few months later.

johnny_ultimate

Smertrius wrote: »

these disney star wars movies only take a year to make , the original star wars movie by george lucas took 2-3 years to make, of course disney star wars movies are rubbish

This is nonsense, and I say that as someone strongly opposed to annual Star Wars installments. The films take far longer than a year to make: different teams are working simultaneously with different release dates in mind. Pre-production work on Episode IX was well under way before VIII was released, as was the case with VIII and VII. Even with the new director being brought in and disrupting the process, there’s still a two year window to make the film between releases.

These films take at least two years to make, probably closer to three all things pre-production considered.

conorhal

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

This is nonsense, and I say that as someone strongly opposed to annual Star Wars installments. The films take far longer than a year to make: different teams are working simultaneously with different release dates in mind. Pre-production work on Episode IX was well under way before VIII was released, as was the case with VIII and VII. Even with the new director being brought in and disrupting the process, there’s still a two year window to make the film between releases.

These films take at least two years to make, probably closer to three all things pre-production considered.

In which case you'd think in that they would have a cast iron story arc and plan in place for a schedule like that, rather then simultaneously developing films with no coherent vision like a game of Chinese whispers.
And people wonder why the movies are garbage and everybody in charge of them needs to be fired.

Sad Professor

conorhal wrote: »

In which case you'd think in that they would have a cast iron story arc and plan in place rather then simultaneously developing films with no coherent vision like a game of Chinese whispers.
And people wonder why the movies are garbage.

There's no such thing as an "cast iron story arc and plan". That's not how writing works. Not in films, not in tv shows, not in book series.

Lucas had a plan for the OT. We know he did because Kurtz etc have spoken about it. Nearly all of it got thrown out once he started writing Empire because he realised it sucked. Should he have stuck to that plan and made a worse film?

conorhal

Sad Professor wrote: »

There's no such thing as an "cast iron story arc and plan". That's not how writing works. Not in films, not in tv shows, not in book series.

Lucas had a plan for the OT. We know he did because Kurtz etc have spoken about it. Nearly all of it got thrown out once he started writing Empire because he realised it sucked. Should he have stuck to that plan and made a worse film?

What a load of bollox. If you PLAN a trilogy, then PLAN a trilogy.

Lucas had no plan for a trilogy. That's hagiography. He had a sprawling, unfocused script that he honed into an effective three act screenplay with a lot of fat that he cut and reckoned he could expand upon. There was never a plan for a trilogy.

Of you look at A New Hope it's structured to stand alone as a story and Lucas had no idea if it would be anything more then that.
If your STARTING point is to tell your story as a guaranteed three acts over three films, then 'that's not how writing works' is a load of BS. That's exactly how writing works, because writing is storytelling and starting to tell a story with no idea where it's going is like telling a joke you don't have a punchline for.

Smertrius

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

This is nonsense, and I say that as someone strongly opposed to annual Star Wars installments. The films take far longer than a year to make: different teams are working simultaneously with different release dates in mind. Pre-production work on Episode IX was well under way before VIII was released, as was the case with VIII and VII. Even with the new director being brought in and disrupting the process, there’s still a two year window to make the film between releases.

These films take at least two years to make, probably closer to three all things pre-production considered.

star wars a new hope episode 4 took started in 1971 which equal 6 years to make

Sad Professor

conorhal wrote: »

What a load of bollox. If you PLAN a trilogy, then PLAN a trilogy.

Lucas had no plan for a trilogy. That's hagiography. He had a sprawling, unfocused script that he honed into an effective three act screenplay with a lot of fat that he cut and reckoned he could expand upon. There was never a plan for a trilogy.

Of you look at A New Hope it's structured to stand alone as a story and Lucas had no idea if it would be anything more then that.
If your STARTING point is to tell your story as a guaranteed three acts over three films, then 'that's not how writing works' is a load of BS. That's exactly how writing works.

A plan is not a whole script or even a synopsis. It's is a rough outline of where the story is going and what sort of themes etc they want to explore. It is never set in stone. And just because a writer has a plan doesn't mean it's a good plan or that it will even work when developed into a full script.

ANH was structured as if it were an episode that came somewhere in the middle of a serial, hence all the world building and hanging threads. Lucas definitely had a ideas for sequels, which he developed into a 9 movie plan after the success of ANH. He chucked most of it once he started writing the script for TESB. Even his plan for ROTJ got mostly thrown out once he started writing.

I'll never understand this obsession with "plans". What if they developed a really in-depth plan for a trilogy, scene-by-scene summaries, etc, and it was terrible? Would audiences be okay with bad movies provided they stuck to some "cast iron" plan that the writers promise will pay off? Of course not.

Sad Professor

Smertrius wrote: »

star wars a new hope episode 4 took started in 1971 which equal 6 years to make

What's your point?

uncleoswald

Sad Professor wrote: »

Lucas had a plan for the OT. We know he did because Kurtz etc have spoken about it. Nearly all of it got thrown out once he started writing Empire because he realised it sucked. Should he have stuck to that plan and made a worse film?

But they got to see the finished product, had time to see what worked on screen and what resonated before fully committing to the next film's script. These new films are well into pre-production by the time the previous films come out.

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Pre-production work on Episode IX was well under way before VIII was released, as was the case with VIII and VII. Even with the new director being brought in and disrupting the process, there’s still a two year window to make the film between releases.

These films take at least two years to make, probably closer to three all things pre-production considered.

This is the root of many of my issues, a lack of joined-up-thinking and a time frame that doesn't leave much room for course correcting. J.J's next installment can't really be anything other then a hastily put together, by-the-numbers, safety-first wrap up.

Either the entire trilogy should have been planned before a single movie was made, a luxury that pretty much no other franchise can afford. Or there should have been longer gaps between each release, but the Disney conveyor belt must keep rolling and we are stuck with the worst of both worlds.

conorhal wrote: »

Well the numbers on TLJ DVD sales are out and they make grim reading, a 44% first week sales drop on TFA...

It could be argued that post view sales are a better measure of how a movie is received and it would seem that TLJ has left the audience cold.

My worry would be that Disney learn the wrong lessons and bend over backwards to try to please fans with a safety first approach.

Sad Professor

uncleoswald wrote: »

But they got to see the finished product, had time to see what worked on screen and what resonated before fully committing to the next film's script. These new films are well into pre-production by the time the previous films come out.

Yeah but that's not the main reason Lucas threw out those plans. He did it because they weren't working on the page or because he came up with better ideas, e.g. Vader being Luke's father. As I said, most of the planning was done after ANH came out. It still didn't stop him changing things. It's not like he saw Hamill and Fisher on-screen and thought "forget the love triangle, these two seem like brother and sister to me". :pac:

In any case, Johnson got to see dailies of TFA and had several months of script tweaks after its release before going into production. The only thing he might have gained from extra time was to integrate fan theories into the film. Make Rey a Skywalker, etc, which I think it's for the best didn't happen.

Sad Professor

Sad Professor wrote: »

So Blu-ray sales compared to TFA more or less mirrored the box office drop from TFA. Is that really surprising? Was anyone expecting it to do as well as TFA on Blu-ray when it hadn't done as well as TFA at the box office? How did it compare to Rogue One's Blu-ray sales?

To answer my own question, TLJ just about outsold Rogue One on DVD/Blu-ray. According to the-numbers.com, in the first 3 weeks of US video sales, RO sold 1,862k compared to TLJ's 1,940k. As a saga film, TLJ probably should have done better, but it's not like Disney emphasised this in their marketing. It'll be interesting to see if they sell Episode 9 as "the saga ends" given that we all know that it won't.

uncleoswald

Sad Professor wrote: »

Yeah but that's not the main reason Lucas threw out those plans. He did it because they weren't working on the page or because he came up with better ideas, e.g. Vader being Luke's father. As I said, most of the planning was done after ANH came out. It still didn't stop him changing things. It's not like he saw Hamill and Fisher on-screen and thought "forget the love triangle, these two seem like brother and sister to me". :pac:

In any case, Johnson got to see dailies of TFA and had several months of script tweaks after its release before going into production. The only thing he might have gained from extra time was to integrate fan theories into the film. Make Rey a Skywalker, etc, which I think it's for the best didn't happen.

We have no idea why he changed scripts. He was on set and maybe just saw the chemistry between Fisher and Ford. Maybe he saw how the audience reacted to Vader and decided to find a way to make him more central to the story.

Sure Abrams and Johnson get to see dailies but so much can change in the editing room, A New Hope, perhaps more than any other movie, is a testament to that.

It'll be interesting to see if they sell Episode 9 as "the saga ends" given that we all know that it won't.

They should, if the original plan was stuck to, be marketing it as and end to the "Skywalker Saga" and then use that as a jumping off point to go from there. But Johnson kind of already did that with the last one. They might still to do it seeing as J.J. will probably try and pick up those pieces and wrap it up somehow with ghost Luke but I can't see it coming across as anything other than hollow, particularly now Fisher has passed.

I liken these Star Wars films to a TV show without a showrunner. Perhaps if someone had said during TLJ's production, "Look, this is a great end to Luke's character and the old Jedi order and is a great jumping off point for future movies, but lets make it the end of the third movie and build towards that moment over two films." But the current production process doesn't allow that sort of planned out thinking.

conorhal

Sad Professor wrote: »

A plan is not a whole script or even a synopsis. It's is a rough outline of where the story is going and what sort of themes etc they want to explore. It is never set in stone. And just because a writer has a plan doesn't mean it's a good plan or that it will even work when developed into a full script.

ANH was structured as if it were an episode that came somewhere in the middle of a serial, hence all the world building and hanging threads. Lucas definitely had a ideas for sequels, which he developed into a 9 movie plan after the success of ANH. He chucked most of it once he started writing the script for TESB. Even his plan for ROTJ got mostly thrown out once he started writing.

I'll never understand this obsession with "plans". What if they developed a really in-depth plan for a trilogy, scene-by-scene summaries, etc, and it was terrible? Would audiences be okay with bad movies provided they stuck to some "cast iron" plan that the writers promise will pay off? Of course not.

Eh, 'because a writer has a plan doesn't mean it's as good plan', true, that's what you call a bad writer, perhaps Lucasfilm should have considered a writer with a good plan? Why would you hire a writer with a bad plan for the series?
A writer has to have a story to tell, plan or not. Clearly there was no story to tell. Please, tell me what kind of writer writes without a story to tell? For all his faults, Lucas had a story to tell. It could have been a good story or a bad story, turns out it was a good story. It's pretty clear however that Lucasfilm, Abrams and Johnson didn't.
They had a brief to fulfill.
Abrams in a lazy jobsworth manner and Johnson in an egotistical self destructive one.

Smertrius

Sad Professor wrote: »

What's your point?

geogre lucas put more thought production time and effort into his film then disney

Sad Professor

uncleoswald wrote: »

They should, if the original plan was stuck to, be marketing it as and end to the "Skywalker Saga" and then use that as a jumping off point to go from there. But Johnson kind of already did that with the last one. They might still to do it seeing as J.J. will probably try and pick up those pieces and wrap it up somehow with ghost Luke but I can't see it coming across as anything other than hollow, particularly now Fisher has passed.

I liken these Star Wars films to a TV show without a showrunner. Perhaps if someone had said during TLJ's production, "Look, this is a great end to Luke's character and the old Jedi order and is a great jumping off point for future movies, but lets make it the end of the third movie and build towards that moment over two films." But the current production process doesn't allow that sort of planned out thinking.

What you describing wasn't a problem of planning, it was a creative choice made by Abrams in TFA. Had they made it all about the OT character then I guess they could have made Luke the main protagonist and built up to his death in the final film, but this trilogy is about the next generation. Rey, Finn and Kylo (who is a Skywalker). That means the mentor figures and baton-passers had to get out of the way, preferably sooner rather than later. What if Obi-wan had survived until ROTJ? Or if Yoda had been the all powerful lightsaber-wielding Jedi master from the prequels? In addition to creating all sort of story problems (why didn't they go kill Vader and the Emperor themselves), it would have really messed up Luke's journey in the OT. Those characters needed to die so he would be forced to face Vader and the Emperor alone.

Sad Professor

conorhal wrote: »

Eh, 'because a writer has a plan doesn't mean it's as good plan', true, that's what you call a bad writer, perhaps Lucasfilm should have considered a writer with a good plan? Why would you hire a writer with a bad plan for the series?
A writer has to have a story to tell, plan or not. Clearly there was no story to tell. Please, tell me what kind of writer writes without a story to tell? For all his faults, Lucas had a story to tell. It could have been a good story or a bad story, turns out it was a good story. It's pretty clear however that Lucasfilm, Abrams and Johnson didn't.
They had a brief to fulfill.
Abrams in a lazy jobsworth manner and Johnson in an egotistical self destructive one.

You are wrong that there's "no story" in the new films. There is. Is it a bad story? Perhaps, that's your opinion and you're entitled to it.

However, my point was specifically in response to your claim that they should have had a "cast iron story arc and plan in place". As I said, that's not how writing works. Writers make plans, yes, preferably ones that seem viable, but plans change if/when they come up with better ideas. And that's a good thing because they don't know if a plan is going to work until they start writing the script. For this reason a plan is never "cast iron" nor should it be. If as you claim the new films suck, then yes it probably is in large part because of the writing but not because they didn't have a cast iron multi-film plan in place.

conorhal

Sad Professor wrote: »

You are wrong that there's "no story" in the new films. There is. Is it a bad story? Perhaps, that's your opinion and you're entitled to it.

What is the story?

I'm pretty sure the story is, we've reset the story so we can keep making movies. (Let the past die)
Where are we at the end of TLJ if not where we were at the start of Starwars? What's the progression?
The progression is, here are the new uninteresting characters we're going to continue to tell the same story with.

Sad Professor wrote: »

However, my point was specifically in response to your claim that they should have had a "cast iron story arc and plan in place". As I said, that's not how writing works. Writers make plans, yes, preferably ones that seem viable,

That's the essence of JJ Abrams Remit from Disney, give us a viable sketch of our Starwars MCU.

The problem however is that it wasn't viable, it was a bunch of 'myistry boxes' to kick off a Starwars MCU franchise like it was a TV series and not a trilogy,and because that's how you make money in movies these days.
I get the feeling that Disney never said 'tell a story', they said, 'give us a franchise'.
Abrams, of course, is the perfect corporate tool for the job, he's the 'Ray Kroc (founder of McDonalds) of movies. He builds franchises with the aim of extending franchises (Star-trek).
There is no story to a franchise, there's just it's expansion. Hence Solo etc.

I dare you to give me one example of anything Abrams has done with a third act that matches the first act.

Sad Professor wrote: »

but plans change if/when they come up with better ideas.

1. You're making a trilogy and set the plans in play. Please explain how they 'changed' between act one and two? Please do.

Sad Professor wrote: »

And that's a good thing because they don't know if a plan is going to work until they start writing the script. For this reason a plan is never "cast iron" nor should it be.

They knew the plan was working when TFA made two billion dollars. Explain why Johnson was allowed to throw that plan out the window?

Sad Professor wrote: »

If as you claim the new films suck, then yes it probably is in large part because of the writing but not because they didn't have a cast iron multi-film plan in place.

So Rian Johnson is a bad writer, agreed, But Why is TLJ a bad movie? I'd say it was because a bad writer had no Idea what to do with it.
Which brings us to episode 9. A movie in the hands of a director notable for poor third acts, dealing with the mystery boxes he tossed up in the air like confetti at a wedding (Lost anybody), which the middle act of the trilogy avoided or subverted and decided to tread water instead.

Well what a bad movie that's inevitably going to be.

DrWu

My issue with Johnson and TLJ is that he didn't go far enough. I'd put money on it that his original script had no canto bight but was more of a fury road/dredd story that followed the pursuit of the rebel fleet across the galaxy. Kennedy probably talked him out of this. Shame. I think that would have been fantastic (and really not a huge departure from A New Hope, a lot of which was set on a space station). Still, TLJ gets a broad thumbs up from me, bar a few quibbles.