Did Abrams and Disney Just Toss The Last Jedi And Rian Under The Bus?

[Revolutionary_Jack]

So saying you wished your part in a movie was slightly better is unprofessional now?

Harrison Ford who never failed to talk about how he found Star Wars silly is unprofessional.

Carrie Fisher and other actors complaining about the grueling production behind ROTJ and Richard Marquand's bad direction were also unprofessional.

Alec Guiness who saw Star Wars as silly is also unprofessional.

Gary Kurtz who talked smack about Lucas (when the latter never said a word against him) is also unprofessional.

Funny how things stop being unprofessional when it's opinions you agree with.

...And also you know those actors are white stars, whereas black actors aren't allowed to have the same concern about exposure, and being undermined and how that might affect his career concerns that other stars are allowed to.

J. J. Abrams however is being a d--k even if I kind of do agree with him.

Which is just a remake/redo of a better scene in ESB down to Yoda quoting the same lines.

Having read the Legends tie-ins, I am well aware of the Luke Skywalker those people wanted.

Well I haven't read the tie-in, so what do I care.

TLJ Luke was the superior version in terms of depth, story arc, character development, etc.

Until the finale where he gets a free pass and goes out as a hero despite everything leading up to it undoing all of that. In LOGAN, when Professor X undoes his life's work, the movie doesn't give him a beautiful death, even if his reasons for doing that are more tragic and genuinely not his fault than Luke.

Johnson dared to give us a Luke who failed and Mark Hamil his best performance of the character to date.

Johnson's Luke didn't fail...Johnson's Luke undid everything he did. That's more than just failure.

Luke Skywalker ended the OT redeeming his father, and disobeying Obi-Wan and Yoda's orders to kill him. For him to raise a lightsaber on his own nephew (something that Obi-Wan or Yoda would never, ever do) driving him to commit a mass genocide bigger than Darth Vader ever did, compromise and kill several of Luke's own students is a huge failure. He's directly responsible for undoing the victory of the Rebel Alliance of the ROTJ, he's responsible for the deaths of Lor Son Tekka, Holdo and others, the death of Han Solo. That's all on him.

I have problems with a movie taking that approach to a character who was intended to be light-hearted, optimistic and innocent. But if you are gonna commit, take it all the way, either have Luke do something substantial that attains a measure of redemption and then die...or have him die in disgrace and being discredited. But the way TLJ ends with some weird hologram stunt, and then that hologram stunt being a propaganda story celebrating the deeds of a great hero is just not palatable.

It's extreme s'what 'tis. The movie is trying to have things both ways, and it doesn't say anything. Luke Skywalker is a hypocrite who turned out to be a worse mentor and worse teacher than the Prequel-Era Jedi Order. That goes against the point of Lucas' vision of the Skywalker Saga, but fine but you can't then end the movie saying Luke Skywalker is a great hero after all. That's not how things work.

[Username taken]

Harrison Ford who never failed to talk about how he found Star Wars silly is unprofessional.

Carrie Fisher and other actors complaining about the grueling production behind ROTJ and Richard Marquand's bad direction were also unprofessional.

Alec Guiness who saw Star Wars as silly is also unprofessional.

Gary Kurtz who talked smack about Lucas (when the latter never said a word against him) is also unprofessional.

Funny how things stop being unprofessional when it's opinions you agree with.

...And also you know those actors are white stars, whereas black actors aren't allowed to have the same concern about exposure, and being undermined and how that might affect his career concerns that other stars are allowed to.

J. J. Abrams however is being a d--k even if I kind of do agree with him.



Which is just a remake/redo of a better scene in ESB down to Yoda quoting the same lines.



Well I haven't read the tie-in, so what do I care.



Until the finale where he gets a free pass and goes out as a hero despite everything leading up to it undoing all of that. In LOGAN, when Professor X undoes his life's work, the movie doesn't give him a beautiful death, even if his reasons for doing that are more tragic and genuinely not his fault than Luke.



Johnson's Luke didn't fail...Johnson's Luke undid everything he did. That's more than just failure.

Luke Skywalker ended the OT redeeming his father, and disobeying Obi-Wan and Yoda's orders to kill him. For him to raise a lightsaber on his own nephew (something that Obi-Wan or Yoda would never, ever do) driving him to commit a mass genocide bigger than Darth Vader ever did, compromise and kill several of Luke's own students is a huge failure. He's directly responsible for undoing the victory of the Rebel Alliance of the ROTJ, he's responsible for the deaths of Lor Son Tekka, Holdo and others, the death of Han Solo. That's all on him.

I have problems with a movie taking that approach to a character who was intended to be light-hearted, optimistic and innocent. But if you are gonna commit, take it all the way, either have Luke do something substantial that attains a measure of redemption and then die...or have him die in disgrace and being discredited. But the way TLJ ends with some weird hologram stunt, and then that hologram stunt being a propaganda story celebrating the deeds of a great hero is just not palatable.

It's extreme s'what 'tis. The movie is trying to have things both ways, and it doesn't say anything. Luke Skywalker is a hypocrite who turned out to be a worse mentor and worse teacher than the Prequel-Era Jedi Order. That goes against the point of Lucas' vision of the Skywalker Saga, but fine but you can't then end the movie saying Luke Skywalker is a great hero after all. That's not how things work.

Agreed with everything here.

And if the leaks are true (after the premiere) it does seem that Abrams and co are literally walking back a lot of stuff that happened in TLJ. Not retconning but walking back.

This isn’t surprising though because Rian Johnson pretty much closed a lot of character threads in TLJ.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

This isn’t surprising though because Rian Johnson pretty much closed a lot of character threads in TLJ.

Rian Johnson approached TLJ to essentially do his sequel trilogy in one movie, rather than serving a larger franchise narrative. Irving Kershner when he made TESB approached that movie as an episode serving Lucas' vision rather than his own story...he has repeatedly said that SW is Lucas' and has approved and backed the Special Editions for that reason.

In his defense, that seems to have been what Disney wanted of the ST. They wanted an annualized Star Wars. But then SOLO tanked and they walk back and they realize that Star Wars can't be that way. Trevorrow got fired, Carrie Fisher unfortunately died, and JJ Abrams had to be brought back. I also think JJ Abrams is somewhat to blame. He didn't have a set story in mind when he did TFA, he followed his "mystery box" approach and then Rian Johnson had to deal with it.

What happened with the Sequel Trilogy is identical to the problems Lucas faced when he made ROTJ.
-- Mark Hamill had recently had a car accident and that terrified Lucas about the possibility that any of his cast could die leaving him unable to finish the story and give closure to the characters.
-- Harrison Ford wanted to bail out of kids movies and had to be cajoled to come back and do the third movie.
-- Directors Lucas wanted to make his movie kept saying no, or insist that he direct it, with few people seeming to get his vision or do what he wanted.

These are the same problems the ST has.

[Username taken]

Rian Johnson approached TLJ to essentially do his sequel trilogy in one movie, rather than serving a larger franchise narrative. Irving Kershner when he made TESB approached that movie as an episode serving Lucas' vision rather than his own story...he has repeatedly said that SW is Lucas' and has approved and backed the Special Editions for that reason.

In his defense, that seems to have been what Disney wanted of the ST. They wanted an annualized Star Wars. But then SOLO tanked and they walk back and they realize that Star Wars can't be that way. Trevorrow got fired, Carrie Fisher unfortunately died, and JJ Abrams had to be brought back. I also think JJ Abrams is somewhat to blame. He didn't have a set story in mind when he did TFA, he followed his "mystery box" approach and then Rian Johnson had to deal with it.

What happened with the Sequel Trilogy is identical to the problems Lucas faced when he made ROTJ.
-- Mark Hamill had recently had a car accident and that terrified Lucas about the possibility that any of his cast could die leaving him unable to finish the story and give closure to the characters.
-- Harrison Ford wanted to bail out of kids movies and had to be cajoled to come back and do the third movie.
-- Directors Lucas wanted to make his movie kept saying no, or insist that he direct it, with few people seeming to get his vision or do what he wanted.

These are the same problems the ST has.

Yeah.

But a large part of the directors problem with the OT was the directors guild. Lucas needed someone not in the guild because he wasnt a member and had issues with the "establishment" at the time (the OT were pretty much developed like independent films).

Not to mention that Ford is a bit of an odd one because he insists on doing Indiana Jones into his 80s which is very similar to Star Wars in tone (outside of the bursts of graphic violence). At least he ultimately got his wish but I personally would have loved to see the original trio together again but we didn't and will never ever get that again.

The reason Lucasfilm/Disney deserve some flak for the ST was going into it:

1. Without a clearly laid out plan beyond replacing the original characters with theirs essentially. There could have been more elegant way of doing this. Luke showing some cynicism in old age was fair but Johnson went a bit far is showing how much he failed.

2. Not establishing a clear framework for the entire series characters arcs. Like you have a trio of characters that are now the main heroes, what are the hooks and how will they develop. Most of the development of the ST has been reserved exclusively for Rey at the expense of Poe and Finn.

Honestly, I enjoyed Force Awakens and The Last Jedi as individual movies but my problems lie with them in the context of the larger mythology and how they treat what they came before.

[Username taken]

So a few early Twitter reactions just confirmed what I thought would happen, TROS basically feels like an apology for TLJ and more like a sequel to TFA.

Sighs

[Kintor]

So a few early Twitter reactions just confirmed what I thought would happen, TROS basically feels like an apology for TLJ and more like a sequel to TFA.

Sighs

There really should have been a greater degree of editorial oversight (for lack of a better term) before production began on the Disney trilogy. Which I thought was the whole point of the Star Wars story group but they just let each director do their own thing to the detriment of the whole. Now at last it seems Disney will see the consequences of their greed and negligence.

[Username taken]

There really should have been a greater degree of editorial oversight (for lack of a better term) before production began on the Disney trilogy. Which I thought was the whole point of the Star Wars story group but they just let each director do their own thing to the detriment of the whole. Now at last it seems Disney will see the consequences of their greed and negligence.

Yep.

I was stunned to hear there was no laid out plan for the trilogy.

Although early reactions are positive theres a lot of "mixed" reactions. I guess it's because of course correction.

[MASTER-OF-SUPRISE]

Having read the Legends tie-ins, I am well aware of the Luke Skywalker those people wanted. TLJ Luke was the superior version in terms of depth, story arc, character development, etc. Johnson dared to give us a Luke who failed and Mark Hamil his best performance of the character to date.

I disagree entirely TLJ Luke is not that interesting IMO. While Legends Luke got ridiculous when it came to plot armor. Personality wise he was pretty human. TLJ Luke isn't that complicated he's just a jerk.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Not to mention that Ford is a bit of an odd one because he insists on doing Indiana Jones into his 80s which is very similar to Star Wars in tone (outside of the bursts of graphic violence).

Ford is very old school. To him Indiana Jones is about him playing an action movie star like in the good old Hollywood days i.e. Gary Cooper and so on. It also has him in a real world setting so that he can buy more than Star Wars.

There really should have been a greater degree of editorial oversight (for lack of a better term) before production began on the Disney trilogy. Which I thought was the whole point of the Star Wars story group but they just let each director do their own thing to the detriment of the whole. Now at last it seems Disney will see the consequences of their greed and negligence.

The idea behind the ST is to make it like the OT...i.e. make it as it goes along. I guess it's part of the backlash to the prequels, which had complete scripts pre-written down and everything before The Phantom Menace was produced. I mean I think the prequels are great and everything, but even if I hated them, I wouldn't think the problems were that they had pre-written down plans as opposed to maybe not being written well...and even then they are written well. A screenplay is more than dialogues. It's plot, character beats, dramatic stuff. In all that stuff, Lucas is a very good writer.

But the thing is the OT did have one guy making the improvisation...Lucas. I mean when Lucas came up with the "I am your father" thing when he wrote the story for ESB, the first thing he did was screen ANH again and look back at the scene where Obi-Wan tells Luke the story of Anakin. He noticed Alec Guinness pausing before telling Luke about Anakin and realized that it totally fit that Obi-Wan was lying to Luke then. It's a sense of a creator putting together something he had subconsciously been laying tracks for all along. Not that he didn't have missteps like the Luke and Leia sister thing which is clumsy and to be honest, the one thing TLJ did that made sense was give a sense of Luke and Leia being brother and sister. I wish we had more of that.

And even outside the story and the character...visually the ST is just bland. It literally makes zero sense why the Galaxy looks like the rundown mess it is during the OT despite some twenty odd years in-between. I mean in the twenty-odd years between the prequels and the OT, Palpatine managed to ugly up everything, so it just seems that Palps was a lot more committed to his evil enterprise than the Rebel Alliance were to things. There was no thought behind any of that in terms of aesthetics, which just says that the ST is just a cover of the OT without any real deep engagement.

It should have ideally had a look distinct from the OT as the PT had to it.

[Kintor]

The idea behind the ST is to make it like the OT...i.e. make it as it goes along. I guess it's part of the backlash to the prequels, which had complete scripts pre-written down and everything before The Phantom Menace was produced. I mean I think the prequels are great and everything, but even if I hated them, I wouldn't think the problems were that they had pre-written down plans as opposed to maybe not being written well...and even then they are written well. A screenplay is more than dialogues. It's plot, character beats, dramatic stuff. In all that stuff, Lucas is a very good writer.

But the thing is the OT did have one guy making the improvisation...Lucas. I mean when Lucas came up with the "I am your father" thing when he wrote the story for ESB, the first thing he did was screen ANH again and look back at the scene where Obi-Wan tells Luke the story of Anakin. He noticed Alec Guinness pausing before telling Luke about Anakin and realized that it totally fit that Obi-Wan was lying to Luke then. It's a sense of a creator putting together something he had subconsciously been laying tracks for all along. Not that he didn't have missteps like the Luke and Leia sister thing which is clumsy and to be honest, the one thing TLJ did that made sense was give a sense of Luke and Leia being brother and sister. I wish we had more of that.

And even outside the story and the character...visually the ST is just bland. It literally makes zero sense why the Galaxy looks like the rundown mess it is during the OT despite some twenty odd years in-between. I mean in the twenty-odd years between the prequels and the OT, Palpatine managed to ugly up everything, so it just seems that Palps was a lot more committed to his evil enterprise than the Rebel Alliance were to things. There was no thought behind any of that in terms of aesthetics, which just says that the ST is just a cover of the OT without any real deep engagement.

It should have ideally had a look distinct from the OT as the PT had to it.

It’s the lack of world building more than anything else which degrades the sequels compared to those that Lucas created. Star Wars is more than just the limited adventure following a specific cast of characters; it’s a vast never ending galaxy with always more stories to tell just around the next corner if only you’d care to look. At least that’s the way it always felt until Disney took over. I mean, even now at the end of this trilogy I honestly have no idea about the true state of the galaxy and how things have changed since the Battle of Endor.

So, the Republic capital worlds got blown-up in TFA? That’s neat I suppose. A pity we never got to see these worlds until thirty seconds before doomsday. Although, with the way that everything looks even more run down then the OT I can only assume that the Republic did a terrible job of maintaining law and order. I guess then that the heroes of the Rebel Alliance accomplished nothing when they defeated the Empire, because that’s what it certainly looks like from where I’m standing.

More to the point, who the hell are the First Order? Where are they getting their resources from? Is it like a Starforge situation from KOTOR? Or do they still control a sizable chunk of the galaxy like the EU Imperial Remnant? Not that I care much. Between these iPhone Stormtroopers and the knuckle-dragging AT-ATs the First Order is a joke. Their technology is both derivative of the Empire and yet somehow not in the slightest bit intimidating.

I think that we’ve reached a point where there is just nothing in the sequels to build upon for next time, if there is even going to be a next time. There aren’t any stories just around the corner waiting to be told because Disney never bothered to finish that corner. It’s all an empty facade that can’t support its own weight. Star Wars inspired the imaginations of generations. The Disney sequels won’t be remembered beyond next summer’s box office.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

It’s all an empty facade that can’t support its own weight. Star Wars inspired the imaginations of generations. The Disney sequels won’t be remembered beyond next summer’s box office.

As per Bob Iger, Lucas complained privately about the lack of innovation in these movies.

Think about it, every Star Wars movie was a leap over everything before. The OT created an entire new sound design and invented modern visual effects as we know it. The PT innovated on CGI and how to work that with practical effects (which it used way more than the OT did), the first CGI mo-cap character with Jar-Jar (laying tracks for the Na'vi and Andy Serkis' career), and digital film-making.

Whereas the ST largely looks and plays just like the OT did and it borrows ideas and concepts from other blockbusters of its time rather than innovating. I mean Canto Bight was compared by many to Harry Potter.

I mean it's a tough call for Disney to ask every director to basically "Be George Lucas" because if they were George Lucas they would not be working for Disney.

[ChrisIII]

I think Terrance Stamp (Valorum) & Ralph Marsh (Ric Olie) were very upset about TPM and George Lucas's direction after the release, although both were small roles. Liam Neeson and Ewan Mcgregor have also been critical of their time in the movies, although both returned under different directors (Liam for some voiceovers for Clone Wars, Ewan for TFA and the new miniseries). There were rumors about problems with Natalie on the ROTS set as well.


Both Lucas and McCallum were *slightly* apologetic during promotion of ROTS as well if I remember.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I think Terrance Stamp (Valorum) & Ralph Marsh (Ric Olie) were very upset about TPM

In the case of Stamp, it was because he *ahem* was quite insistent on a scene with Natalie Portman for reasons that are quite dubious.

Liam Neeson and Ewan Mcgregor have also been critical of their time in the movies, although both returned under different directors (Liam for some voiceovers for Clone Wars, Ewan for TFA and the new miniseries). There were rumors about problems with Natalie on the ROTS set as well.

From what I read, all three were generally positive about working with Lucas, and Lucas as a person. It might be issues with SW fandom and reactions and so on.

Ian McDiarmid has nothing but good things to say about Lucas, as does Ahmed Best.

...but anyway, if anyone says something against Lucas, nobody goes and calls them for being unprofessional because Lucas-bashing is somehow an article of faith among the loony brigade of the Star Wars who assume that Lucas is some idiot who failed upwards. But apparently anyone saying anything against Johnson even if it is lead John Boyega, is somehow unprofessional. That's not how it works.

[David Walton]

TFA doesn't do a great job explaining the politics of the post-ROTJ galaxy. The books try to fill it in a bit, and if memory serves, it's something along these lines: the New Republic doesn't have a large standing military, a policy that Leia disagrees with. That's why the 'Resistance' is kinda-sorta separate from the New Republic, though it's getting under the table support from people in the New Republic who agree with Leia about the threat the First Order poses. I think it's all kind of built around the idea that Abrams wanted there to be a 'rebellion' of some kind even though the New Republic is the dominant power when TFA begins. So you get the power within the power that realizes the First Order is a real threat, and sure enough, the guys who didn't believe them get annihilated when the capital is destroyed.

World-building problems aside, I really enjoy TFA, and I'm looking forward to seeing what Abrams accomplishes with ROS.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

TFA doesn't do a great job explaining the politics of the post-ROTJ galaxy.

Well it needed to.

For all that the OT gets grief for not having world building, the little that existed in those movies clarified the politics of the galaxy. Like we know that Cloud City is neutral and that it's Imperial Occupation that turns them over to the Rebel Alliance. Nothing clarifies how evil the Empire is then seeing pretty selfish and self-motivated dudes turn against Vader himself after he breaks laws and treaties proto-Trump style.

The PT got criticized for going excess over world-building so the ST in response went with no world-building. This is what happens when you give too much attention to a backlash. You make a reaction to that rather than something for the future.

The real problem is that without any sense of world-building there's no sense of real tragedy. Were Han and Leia truly s--ty parents? Did the Rebel Alliance really f--k things badly? Are the First Order jokes as the movie seems to present it or are they truly a modern advanced improvement on the Empire? The movies, both TFA and TLJ are really flippant in their treatment of it, so it means something. Kylo Ren is both a chump imitating Vader, but also someone who seems to have been more competent and capable than Vader? Snoke undermined the Rebel Alliance who undid Palpatine/Tarkin/Vader, but he's also a chump who gets bifurcated in a dumb humiliating manner by Kylo Ren, going further than Vader did.

So there's a sense that everything is half-baked and makes no sense.

The books try to fill it in a bit

The expanded universe doesn't count. It didn't for Lucas, it won't for the sequels. I mean how long before the current Disney-approved Expanded Universe becomes folded into Legends if years from now they bring back older versions of Rey, Finn, Poe and Ben Solo? Or you know they do animated interquels between the OT and the ST with say CGI De-Aged Mark Hamill leading the Jedi Academy, or cartoons showing the childhood of Kylo Ren? So that means all that stuff written about it will be discarded and tossed aside.