Movie Thread

I finally watched Joker last night, I really enjoyed it. It was fun guessing what he was making up in his mind, what the truth/facts were despite official records, and just seeing how free he became once he quit pigeon-holing himself into pre defined classifications. Don’t get me wrong, this is a sad story about a sick person, but I think it was done in a very clever and fresh way. Phoenix did an incredible job, I could watch this film over and over again, but I do not want a sequel, there’s no need for one. As good as Phoenix did with the role, bringing that Joker to an DC ensemble film would be a mistake, that deep, very human character with all of those cartoonish players, as much as I loved Mamoa and Gadot in their portrayals of Aquaman and Wonder Woman, the group of them would be as good of an idea as gun and nuts. What a great film, can’t recommend Joker enough!

Every day that passes is one day closer to Kathleen Kennedy's contract with Disney coming to an end. Disney is gearing up to purge her and dissolve Rian Johnson's planned Star Wars trilogy where there are no light sabers or high technology at all and the Jedi are now a small group of dinosaur riding, spiritual warriors using steel swords and bows, I'm not making that up, that's where Johnson was headed with Star Wars. Apparently it was Kennedy's suggestion that the Jedi now ride dinosaurs for transportation.

Disney now seems poised to retcon the entire Skywalker saga as either an alternate timeline created using the Veil of the Force or outright say it never happened at all and putting it down under the Star Wars Legends brand. I guess this is what happens when Disney projected The Rise of Skywalker to make 4 billion dollars worldwide and it stumbled across the finish line just surpassing the 1 billion dollar mark.

With a year still left on her contract, Kathleen Kennedy has decided to go down swinging. She has had her creative control pulled from all Star Wars projects except for one which she is contractually allowed to have. This being the upcoming Leslye Headland Star Wars TV series. And much like Rian Johnson, Leslye Headland is someone who knows nothing about Star Wars or the Star Wars universe, but is going to do her own project and slap the Star Wars label on it. From the sounds of the feminist empowered synopsis of what is planned for the series, I see this going the way of Batwoman pretty quickly.

Yes to all of this. The star wars nostalgia seems to be very personal for every fan, and although I’m no fan of Disney (MONSTER!!!), I don’t envy their position trying to placate rabid marks. Committing to and telling the story well is important, and by changing things to keep the whiners happy (which no one anywhere will ever be capable of) they’ve managed to alienate some old fans and ensure that most millennials still don’t care about the franchise. I’m sticking to my keep nostalgic stuff on the golden shelf of my memory approach that I learned from video games, I’m indifferent to Star Wars and realize it will never be that magical thing it was in my baby Bakfu brain when I was a kid.

That said, I LOVED the Mandalorian and Rogue One! I could not figure out the hate for Rogue One, it felt more Star Warsy than any of the main card shit has for a long time! You want to get mad, point your anger at Solo, that was a turd in the punch bowl!

Committing to the story is crucial but it's also the second part of the journey.  They needed to initially have an ironclad creative vision for the trilogy that came from someone rather than catered to others.  (And that's also why the lack of one creative vision writing/directing all 3 movies made all of this so much worse.)

I totally get that Star Wars is as much commercial art as it is creative art. I know that trying to set the ratio of both of those elements in a Hollywood movie is going to skew toward commercial most of the time.   Commercial art is about appealing to others to a large degree and focus groups are nothing new in that regard.

But I think the problem here is just that. The creators of this trilogy seemed to want to cater to a specific audience or a specific set of values/ideals rather than tell a concrete story.  This came more into focus in Episode 8.  As Nth said, it did feel like Star Wars was being used as kind of a front in that effort. And that's a problem.

But it's even worse when they then saw those ideas were being criticized, and reacted in thinking the criticisms could lead to a total tanking in the box office for Episode 9. So they then did a 180 in many ways (especially with how and how much certain characters were used) and decided that they also had to cater to people who had a totally different set of values/ideals without completely abandoning the initial group. So we got a watered-down, story-by-committee, effort to end the series.  No one ends up that happy, some are even less happy than they were before.  

That wouldn't have happened if they had an initial story to tell, that they believed in, and they stuck to it. Sure, some wouldn't like it but that's all art.  If you're just trying to win others over, maybe pick a different job. I dunno.  Just the creative mishandling of this trilogy was a mess. And the fact that they are going to have to reboot/erase this is kind of insane when you think about it. An entire Star Wars trilogy movie series seen as a failure? It's shocking.  No one would have believed that a few years before Star Wars was bought. Even more shocking is how poorly it did compared to how awesome Marvel did with the Avengers arc. Why did that work and Star Wars didn't?  

I don't think creating a story for a group is a great way to tell a story. I think the story has to come from one person and people are free to enjoy it or criticize it to their hearts content.   And, like I said, I know Hollywood doesn't always follow those ideals, but that's a reason a lot of series totally bomb.  Maybe the first makes money but the second doesn't cause people see its watered down or compromised. The more you sell out your own ideas, the more you change them for the audience, the less of anything real remains.  You try to please everyone and there isn't enough in there to please anyone.  Once their story got criticized, changing it to suit another audience really hurt their final movie. I do think that those in charge of the wallet probably did pressure those in charge of the scripts to make sure Ep 9 didn't totally bomb. But whoever was in charge of the ultimate decisions, we had a weird progression of storytelling. I'd rather have seen an Episode 9 based off of Episode 8 (which I had issues with but also enjoyed) than an Episode 9 created to spite Episode 8. Of course, many say that Episode 8 was created to (at least indirectly) spite Episodes 1-6 and I understand that. 

It's an issue again with not having one creative vision to write and oversee the entire series. It's why I still think the biggest problem is that they had 2 directors that didn't work together enough over 3 movies and no one seemed to decide how Episode 9 ended from the start. Therefore they couldn't properly work backward which led to a lack of thematic, character, and plot continuity between movies. That is the biggest problem but it was compounded by caving into the fans halfway through.  But given that Episode 8 felt different than Episode 7, the caving in hadn't occurred just yet. The lack of continuity hurt. 

And that's not to say that George Lucas nailed his own structure and planning ahead in the past, especially in the "1-3" trilogy. I'm still annoyed at the utter lack of foreshadowing for why "higher ground" mattered as a limiting battle concept for demigod jedis given that it was Obi-Wan's finisher at the end of Episode 3. Sure, it was canonically "Annikan's pride" that caused his fall, but only if you buy that it was actually foolish for him to suddenly care that Obi-Wan being higher than him mattered despite all we've seen these guys do during fights.  Is it pride to somehow immediately believe your opponent that you suddenly can't win a fight against someone higher than you even though you can practically fly? The whole thing just fell apart to me cause there was no build-up.  I know everything can't be AJPW in the 90's but if you're gonna defeat a major enemy, at least give us a little hint that the tactic has some merit! Like you watch that Obi-Wan/Annikan scene again, and all the Dyad stuff with Palpatine in Episode 9 doesn't feel as plucked out of thin air.

In fact, I'd argue that the Star Wars TV series develop the Dyad enough that a keen-eyed person watching all of the Rei/Kylo scenes wouldn't be shocked that they had that type of relationship. Kind of odd Palps didn't realize it himself until later but he was too busy tweaking CPU logic for Snoke clones in Fire Pro: Force 😁

I should check some of these out. Recently watched a few Jackie Chan films on the Criterion Channel (Police Story 1 & 2 and the Young Master), all were amazing and I didn’t appreciate how incredibly charming and talented Jackie is.

I've had someone recommending "Into the Spider-Verse" to since it was in theaters a couple of years ago. I finally watched it and immediately regretted having not seen it sooner. It's pretty flipping amazing.