- cross-posted to:
- movies@lemm.ee
- movies@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- movies@lemm.ee
- movies@lemmy.world
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Yes
Disney is bad at an awful lot of things. Why would they be good at Star Wars, of all things?
Yes yes they are. Don’t need to look past the sequel trilogy films. Which are essentially:
A happy days reunion special.
Running from set piece to set piece with a mess of a plot
Fuck it let’s just bring Palptine back to make it look like we had some grand plan.
You’re not wrong but I really like Mando.
First season was pure gold, but everything afterward has been a slow decline. I would rather argue in favor of Andor. That show was way better than anything since episode VI.
You wanna bet money on the slow decline of Andor?
They’re only doing two seasons, so the slow decline would have to be over the course of about ten episodes.
Yes. As far as I’m concerned, with notable exceptions of stuff like Andor (this is AMAZING), the real Star Wars story is the pre-Disney EU, which was, contrary to popular refrain, fairly consistent once they got the “keeper of the Holocron” to make sure the stories were relatively cohesive and didn’t contradict one-another.
A bunch of the authors even worked to retcon-remove the Dark Empire storyline with the reborn Emperor in their various series by referring to that as “mere rumors” and whatnot.
That’s not to say the entire EU was marvelous. But I read the vast majority of it - overall it entirely eclipses what Disney has been doing in terms of quality and depth. Not to mention…Disney, with their tabula rasa, still have stories contradicting one another and introducing inconsistencies…
For me, Disney’s Episodes 7-9 never happened. I consume and recognize anything that doesn’t materially contradict the prior EU - I’m O.K. with smoothing over, explaining away, and massaging stuff to make it work. But “Kylo Ren” is a dollar store knock-off of Darth Caedus.
Episodes 7-9 were, from a creative standpoint, we’re imo made with pure contempt. Watching that shit felt like there were MBAs in the writers room reminding people that on brand strength alone these movies were guaranteed to make a profit so all their nerdy ideas were pointless. And they were right. Those movies sleepwalked into being highly profitable. The creative damage it did to the franchise is nerd shit for nerds, and MBAs are winners and they won.
It’s not even worth going over their failings. They’re so creatively bankrupt that they’re not even worth any critical analysis (not that that hasn’t been done to death).
I’m just sad that the Sword of the Jedi is never going to be finished.
Seeing Disney just repeating all EU mistakes (superweapon after superweapon, Palpatine clones, inconsistencies) is just rubbing salt in the wound.
My working theory always was: Star Wars is better without lightsabers The more lightsabering and force using there is it gets worse.
They seem like normal movie execs. They don’t understand what works or doesn’t work then they make weird conclusions that they will use as blanket decisions for everything else they do. Then they get confused why everyone isn’t throwing all of their money at them.
Their content is fine. It’s just not great and it certainly never reaches they hype the brand thinks it deserves.
For this I look to my wife. She is someone who did not grow up with Star Wars so she has no bias or expectations. She also doesn’t keep track of lore and “universes”. I mean, unless we binge watch, she’ll literally forget who main characters are. For her she either likes or dislikes a show on its own merits. Most Disney releases she has outright hated. Unexpectedly, she enjoyed " the one with the red sand" (The Last Jedi). My theory is that she had no hangups with all the lore breaks and such. Expectedly, she loves “baby Yoda”, even if she can’t remember anything else about the show (honestly, neither can I). I have not shown her Rouge One yet as I am waiting for Andor Season 2 before we binge it all.
The article lands on “not actually all that bad, especially from a business perspective, but could be much better,” which is kind of unsatisfying, but I did like the opening analogy to the Falcon: “The garbage will do.”
One thing they absolutely have to do is get better acting and production values that match the sequels, or at least Mando S1. The Volume should only be used when the scene makes sense for it, so either spaces that are themselves enclosed, or where the actors’ blocking reasonably makes sense. Kenobi was particularly egregious with this, especially the airspeeders sequence. Everything is just so slow and small and anything that can’t be done in VFX is crowded into a very tight space. When the Acolyte tried to build bigger sets… I dunno… something came off wrong, like they contracted the whole thing out to the Disney teams that make the public spaces in Galaxy’s edge, which like all theme parks trade a certain amount authentic screen presence for durability. I doubt the sets are that durable, making it all the worse when they look how they do. BOBF’s infamous scooter chase had some other issues, but what locked it in as a blunder was the cheap visuals that screamed, “We can’t afford enough set to zoom through it at more than jogging speed!” Somebody needed to tell Robert Rodriguez that this isn’t Spy Kids. Andor had a large but not unlimited budget, but the key is (barely greebled AK-47’s aside) that they used it wisely and got bang for their bucks; they made choices that fit the story into the budget (they actually made two TIE fighters feel terrifying), and it ended up looking just right for the most part.
Then the acting. All 5 Disney movies did okay with this, and the sheer watchability of the performances an one area where I think they ALL outshone all three PT movies. Star Wars has never been known for “realistic” dialogue, but the OT sold it by having actors with movie star charisma, veteran chops, and a decade of “new Hollywood” naturalistic sensibilities. Then you had a collaborative process that took better takes and excised material that couldn’t be made to work. The ST was less organic, but similarly collaborative and while almost cloyingly modern and quippy at times, you don’t get the sense that the actors are struggling with the material. I don’t want to lean in too hard on overly simplistic narratives here, but the amount of control that Lucas had in the prequels undoubtedly led to an under-emphasis on the parts of filmmaking he finds less interesting, and too much reliance on newfound abilities to “fix it in post.” He somehow got awful performances from Natalie Portman and Samuel L. Jackson, and even fairly uneven ones from Ewan McGregor.
The shows, however, have mostly skewed to the worse side of things. Not quite so stilted as the PT, but there is a serious lack of charisma and humanity emanating from them, and it just makes things less fun, and when your dialogue mostly exists to deliver exposition, it leaves us more willing to nitpick details. Andor has a grimmer tone, but there is charisma there. The performances were compelling and I had to watch. You cannot and should not make all Star Wars like Andor, but you could make it all as well-conceived as Andor.
The shows, however, have mostly skewed to the worse side of things. Not quite so stilted as the PT, but there is a serious lack of charisma and humanity emanating from them, and it just makes things less fun, and when your dialogue mostly exists to deliver exposition, it leaves us more willing to nitpick details. Andor has a grimmer tone, but there is charisma there. The performances were compelling and I had to watch. You cannot and should not make all Star Wars like Andor, but you could make it all as well-conceived as Andor.
I recently watched a video that went deeply into exactly that criticism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL4IfoQzSSE
The gist is that most of the current content forgets to focus on making characters feel human, and that’s because they’re so relentlessly focused on forcing exposition that needs to get the plot from point A to point B that they forget to focus on the organic way that a character might interact with and react to a situation. Every character turns into a cardboard cutout because they’re archetypes designed to fill a role in a plotline, as opposed to living, breathing individuals with their own priorities, intentions, and often times inner turmoil. Andor and Rogue One are the only two projects that allowed characters to be flawed and emotional, and therefore authentic and relatable. And that’s why we care so much more about those stories, because we can feel what the character is going through. The rest is just hitting us on the head with exposition so that we can follow along, as if we’re all thumb-sucking idiots who can’t think for ourselves.
For the most part, yes. Someone needs to make a Star Wars in the spirit of the first Pirates. With everyone double crossing each other except the Jedi
That was Solo. Everyone double crossing each other doesn’t necessarily make a good movie.
Solo was decent enough, but Christ it would have been better if they hadn’t thought the fan-service in the prologue to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade should be stretched out into an entire god-damned movie. I was also only “whelmed” by the scenes on Mimban and I don’t quite get the online begging for an entire movie of nighttime mud-blasting. Like, just watch a couple war movies, y’all.
Eh, hard pass that was not Solo. Solo was a walk around old characters going “look at this! Yep! Thats how that happened!” The heist was cool, but it was not in the same spirit at all.
Yes, but it wouldn’t be possible without fans that are willing to eat this drivel up.
I think you can have in-depth Star Wars feeling/knowledge. If you start out without even a hint of a coherent plan like they did, you will fail.
