Star Wars IX: The Rise of Skywalker

[TheSaint]

8 minutes ago, DDE said:

Rumour has it he's back and charting out Episodes X-XII.

Actually the intel I heard is that he was given his own trilogy to work with, which would be in a different part of the Star Wars universe, with completely different characters, in a completely different time frame. (In other words: You're a loose cannon, let's put you off in your own little sandbox where you can't do any more damage.) And now, after the Solo debacle (which was a complete catastrophe), Iger has gone on record as saying that Star Wars will be taking a hiatus after IX. I will bet you dollars to doughnuts that Johnson just won't stick around that long. (And I will bet you dollars to danishes that this will produce no tears from Iger and Kennedy.)

[Superfluous J]

4 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

after the Solo debacle (which was a complete catastrophe)

...in spite of being the 2nd best Disney Star Wars movie after Rogue One.

[TheSaint]

Just now, 5thHorseman said:

...in spite of being the 2nd best Disney Star Wars movie after Rogue One.

It can be the 2nd best movie ever made by anybody. But when your total worldwide box office is less than twice your budget, as far as the boardroom is concerned, it's a catastrophe.

[Superfluous J]

Just now, TheSaint said:

It can be the 2nd best movie ever made by anybody. But when your total worldwide box office is less than twice your budget, as far as the boardroom is concerned, it's a catastrophe.

Yeah I know. It just irks me that it's actually quite a fun popcorn flick, which is exactly what Star Wars is supposed to be, and everybody hated it without watching it because reasons.

[TheSaint]

4 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

Yeah I know. It just irks me that it's actually quite a fun popcorn flick, which is exactly what Star Wars is supposed to be, and everybody hated it without watching it because reasons.

I'm not disagreeing. I thought Solo was a great film, much more Star-Wars-y than TLJ. But, at the end of the day, Disney is a business. And the movie business is a fickle mistress. (To put a semi-famous quote in PG terms.) They're going to do what they think they need to do to make money.

For instance, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the hiatus Iger announced for Star Wars films lasts until Kathleen Kennedy's retirement. That would be her sentence for TLJ and Solo. She's under contract until 2021. That sounds about right.

Really, TBH, if I were Disney, I would wait a few years after IX and then start a whole new story. Wipe the slate clean. They will have (or should have) brought about some closure for everyone in the current story line. They've got thousands of years of back story to work with. They should go back and start a whole new story arc, go do Knights of the Old Republic or Origins of the Sith or something.

[StrandedonEarth]

Bear in mind that Disney doesn’t have to earn back the price tag for the SW franchise just from movies.  As well as the series that will air on the Disney streaming service, they are opening “Star Wars Land” sections in the two US Disney parks. It’s going to be crazy there for the next year or two

[TheSaint]

1 hour ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Bear in mind that Disney doesn’t have to earn back the price tag for the SW franchise just from movies.  As well as the series that will air on the Disney streaming service, they are opening “Star Wars Land” sections in the two US Disney parks. It’s going to be crazy there for the next year or two

Home video (streaming, DVD, etc.) almost always tracks very closely to box office. It is very rare that a film will do poorly in the theaters and then improve in the home market. But, yes, those do provide additional revenue streams.

As for the parks, they're already saturated. Most of the strategies I've seen around the parks these days have been in the vein of, "How do we keep people out of the parks?" (Raising ticket prices, increasing the number of secondary venues, etc.) I'm sure Imagineering isn't complaining about having Star Wars to play with, but they didn't need it. Same with Disney Cruse Line, if it comes up. They were wildly popular and insanely profitable in 2012, they needed Star Wars like they needed a hole in the head.

[StupidAndy]

heard the senate

 

instantly likes

[DDE]

7 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Bear in mind that Disney doesn’t have to earn back the price tag for the SW franchise just from movies.  As well as the series that will air on the Disney streaming service, they are opening “Star Wars Land” sections in the two US Disney parks. It’s going to be crazy there for the next year or two

Funny that you didn’t mention merch.

Word is, on that front it’s an unmitigated catastrophe.

9 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

...in spite of being the 2nd best Disney Star Wars movie after Rogue One.

Only if you count TFA and TLJ to be not made by Disney. At which point it becomes a very weird comparison.

Plus the revenue plummeted by well over twice, and that’s compared with Rogue One. So either it’s as meh as “teh haters” say, or it’s suffering the consequences of TLJ (which thus was as horrible as “teh haters” say), or both.

Edited April 27, 2019 by DDE

[Superfluous J]

6 minutes ago, DDE said:

Only if you count TFA and TLJ to be not made by Disney. At which point it becomes a very weird comparison.

Actually I'd say other than Rogue One it's flat out the best Star Wars movie since Return of the Jedi, and maybe even Empire Strikes Back. But there's no non-clunky way to say that.

Edited April 27, 2019 by 5thHorseman

[DDE]

58 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

Actually I'd say other than Rogue One it's flat out the best Star Wars movie since Return of the Jedi, and maybe even Empire Strikes Back. But there's no non-clunky way to say that.

Uhm... no. Aside from the askew tone and serious editing errors - a consequence of radical cinematic surgery to reduce the comedy angle following the directors’ replacement, which didn’t remove the ridiculous convoluted nature of the triple/quadruple betrayal at the end, or the hilariously overt foreshadowing of future betrayal by the traitor - it’s suffering from three major things: (a) the main characters cannot be killed, but the movie tries to generate excitement by endangering them, (b) Han Solo isn’t allowed to do anything actually rogueish, although that probably dates to the Lucas’s infamous re-edit, which destroys any meaning behind his supposed arc, which is also supposed to be... the same arc he later goes through in ANB (props to Rogue One for at least trying to go for moral grayness before it got sanitized in its own radical reedit), (c) he has Rey’s problem of instant useful skills with zero explanation, and (d) if your lead actor needs an acting coach, you know you’ve got a problem.

Oh, and the Millennium Falcon is now an actual, sentient character - an immensely annoying and nonsensical one at that.

10 hours ago, TheSaint said:

Actually the intel I heard is that he was given his own trilogy to work with, which would be in a different part of the Star Wars universe, with completely different characters, in a completely different time frame. (In other words: You're a loose cannon, let's put you off in your own little sandbox where you can't do any more damage.)

Speaking of reedits: the degree to which Rogue One and Solo were both reshot and reedited due to steering too far from the SW baseline (into a war movie and a comedy, respectively) is an argument against your theory.

Unless Rian for some unimaginable reason has completely free reign of SW when other directors don’t.

Edited April 27, 2019 by DDE

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, DDE said:

Uhm... no. Aside from the askew tone and serious editing errors - a consequence of radical cinematic surgery to reduce the comedy angle following the directors’ replacement, which didn’t remove the ridiculous convoluted nature of the triple/quadruple betrayal at the end, or the hilariously overt foreshadowing of future betrayal by the traitor - it’s suffering from three major things: (a) the main characters cannot be killed, but the movie tries to generate excitement by endangering them, (b) Han Solo isn’t allowed to do anything actually rogueish, although that probably dates to the Lucas’s infamous re-edit, which destroys any meaning behind his supposed arc, which is also supposed to be... the same arc he later goes through in ANB (props to Rogue One for at least trying to go for moral grayness before it got sanitized in its own radical reedit), (c) he has Rey’s problem of instant useful skills with zero explanation, and (d) if your lead actor needs an acting coach, you know you’ve got a problem. 

I'm not nominating it for an academy award. I'm saying I liked it more than any of the prequel or sequel movies. I won't bother pointing out all the problems with them, as people have been doing that for years.

[GearsNSuch]

13 hours ago, KSK said:

those bombers

But gravity. In space.

(That still bothers me.)

 

Also, I noticed in the trailer that they used the slow-motion cam for action shots. Practically the only time they used that in the original trilogy was when Obi-Wan died, and even then it was just frame, frame, frame.

In other words, don't make my cheesy 1970s space opera into a cheesy 2019s action movie, bub. 

Edited April 27, 2019 by GearsNSuch

[DDE]

19 minutes ago, GearsNSuch said:

But gravity. In space.

(That still bothers me.)

You're looking at the wrong place. There are (poor) excuses for the bombers.

However, turbolaser shots in the fleet chase scene(s) arc downwards.

[KSK]

2 hours ago, GearsNSuch said:

But gravity. In space.

(That still bothers me.) 

Yeah. The space battles in Star Wars always were governed by Rule of Cool rather than the laws of physics (I may be elitist but I get that much  ) but even allowing for that, the battles in Last Jedi were definitely it’s weakest part for me.

Edited April 27, 2019 by KSK

[TheSaint]

On 4/27/2019 at 1:12 AM, DDE said:

Speaking of reedits: the degree to which Rogue One and Solo were both reshot and reedited due to steering too far from the SW baseline (into a war movie and a comedy, respectively) is an argument against your theory.

Unless Rian for some unimaginable reason has completely free reign of SW when other directors don’t.

Not theory. Press release from Lucasfilm, dated before the release of TLJ:

Rian Johnson, Writer-Director of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, to Create All-New Star Wars Trilogy

"In shepherding this new trilogy, which is separate from the episodic Skywalker saga, Johnson will introduce new characters from a corner of the galaxy that Star Wars lore has never before explored."

Now, to be fair, we really haven't heard hide-nor-hair of this supposed trilogy since TLJ came out, so it may be completely shelved at this point. But it is the last official word we've heard about Johnson's ongoing involvement with Star Wars feature films.

[StrandedonEarth]

Random thought sparked by the titles of Eps 8&9:  So there will be no more Jedi. They will be replaced by the Order of Skywalkers

[TheSaint]

29 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Random thought sparked by the titles of Eps 8&9:  So there will be no more Jedi. They will be replaced by the Order of Skywalkers

I'm guessing so as well. If history is any indicator it will be some sort of "we're so clever" dual reference: they go back and figure out where Anakin came from (rose from), Rey reconciles/redeems Kylo, and together they form a new order and name it The Skywalkers in honor of, they have some big climatic battle where they deal a big blow to the New Order but don't really do away with it, and they all go on to Resist happily ever after. That's my guess. Like I said in my previous post, I think they need a new shtick.

[DDE]

9 hours ago, TheSaint said:

they have some big climatic battle where they deal a big blow to the New Order

Which will be silly, because Kylo is the person in charge and Hux has been degraded into comic relief.

9 hours ago, TheSaint said:

and they all go on to Resist happily ever after

That sounds like veering into a certain political hashtag

[TheSaint]

15 hours ago, DDE said:

Which will be silly, because Kylo is the person in charge and Hux has been degraded into comic relief.

I didn't say it wasn't. Most of the plotlines in TLJ were pretty silly, even the ones that were trying to be serious. I don't imagine that will change any time soon. It's a symptom of the fact that they keep trying to drag this whole paradigm on too long. They keep repeating themselves over and over again. Evil bad guys searching for the rebels and finding their secret bases. Chasing down the MacGuffins to find the hidden flaws to destroy the giant planet killers. Acolytes seeking out the hidden keepers of wisdom to learn the ways of the Force. So it only stands to reason that in the last episode of the trilogy, The Return Rise of the Skywalker Jedi, Luke-Rey will redeem Darth Kylo-Vader-Ren, even if it is only for his dying gasp, to strike a not-quite-fatal blow to the heart of the Evil New Galactic Order Empire. So many derivatives it's like I'm taking calculus again.

Quote

That sounds like veering into a certain political hashtag

Nope. Simply referring to the fact that the good guys in the Star Wars universe are now branding themselves as the Resistance rather than the Rebellion.

Edited April 30, 2019 by TheSaint
Lost my train of thought, apparently.

[DDE]

On 4/30/2019 at 6:33 PM, TheSaint said:

Simply referring to the fact that the good guys in the Star Wars universe are now branding themselves as the Resistance rather than the Rebellion.

Ironically, there are several Freudian slip-ups when they do call themselves the Rebellion again... and they haven’t been cut out or reshot.

Ah, if only there had been a full three movies where the paradigm was thoroughly flipped around, even with the hamfisted worldbuilding...

Edited May 1, 2019 by DDE