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Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

Necrothatcher posted:

It's kinda weird that the Star Wars producers come down super hard on some directors messing with the formula while also not giving a poo poo about working out the basic plot of their big trilogy.

It's almost like they're totally incompetent.

I'm pretty sure this is what they did with the MCU too. Endgame really felt like they threw it together in an afternoon after Infinity War.

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Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

Onmi posted:

It's a pun turned into a 'Holiday' to promote a brand, to make people more obsessive. They want all those people to Consume Product... but they also want all the people who'll defend them to the death. And so, Rise of Skywalker is a movie built by everyone with a suit, to produce "The Perfect Film to Unite" Not to create interesting or good art... but to appease everyone.

The funny thing is that's probably the worst way to maintain those kinds of fanatical fans because A: you can't and shouldn't expect to catch lightning in a bottle twice, and B: you end up with a product that's forgettable and easily knocked out memory. People aren't going to be lining up to buy merchandise from a movie that was 'alright' when they have nostalgia to compete with or the new shiny thing like the freakish horny genitalia-free cat people.

Ironically, this is something Disney used to understand. They didn't do sequels or try to make movies into sequential franchises until maybe the 90s, at least of their animated tentpoles, and even when they did make sequels and spinoffs they were low-key things, TV cartoon and direct-to-video dos that filled up time on the Disney Channel and are easily ignored if you don't like them, since most of the original stories are perfectly self-contained. Rereleases and remasters kept old stuff in the public eye, and things like the Disney Princess as a brand lineup let you milk the characters and iconography while obviously not even trying to have a real story. They are exercises in branding, not writing, and sidestep fan expectations by being in formats that aren't expected to require real effort to be good.

I'm sure there's books and books of arguments about why the original Star Wars movies kicked off like they did and are held in such high esteem- I do recall the first movie was expected to be a flop while the sci-fi tentpole of the year was Damnation Alley. (Huh, that's where Star Fox got the name of the tank from) But I think one of the key elements was that for the most part it did its own thing rather than adhere to the current expectations of what a movie should be, but that involved using different influences than people expected; a pulp inspired sci-fi movie might not be too crazy in the 70s, but also mixing cowboy and samurai movie elements (and of course the overall plot being a riff on The Hidden Fortress) but the core thing, I think, is it was built around a specific kind of grand adventure narrative that can sustain near endless sequels while also having definite start and end points to each chapter. (see also Indiana Jones, which also used pulp adventure ideas and an episodic format shamelessly, and suffered from becoming too self-aware)

Anyway, point is, two different formulas outlined above, each can work, as long as you stick to them and recognise your limitations. What both have in common is reliance on iconic characters, props and scenes that can be instantly recognised out of context and merchandised to hell and back. (see also superheroes) But things start going to poo poo when you forget about what made the formula work; the new trilogy basically suffers the same pitfalls all the Expanded Universe stuff did that's fixated on 'Being Star Wars' at the expense of literally everything else, with new ideas barely given any room to breathe while retreading characters and moments that just come off as literal fanfiction complete with Original Character Do Not Steal. A bit like what I've heard with Frozen 2; an incoherent story not helped by the writers' answer to its problems is apparently to have the characters verbally explain everything they're doing (but not why, because it still makes no sense) and probably no real idea what to do with them after the first movie's pretty clear cut arc of redemption and reconciliation. They didn't need to make Frozen 2, and to properly milk the franchise (because we know that's all Disney wants to do) they probably shouldn't have, but sequels and cinematic universes worked for the MCU so now literally everything needs to do them.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:

pouring one out for the manchildren who are going to have to pretend to like this turd to Own the SJWs

And also the other way around

Maybe Disney's onto something if they've got two groups of people pretending to like the same thing specifically to spite each other

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

Mr Luxury Yacht posted:

Speaking of the Knights of Ren what the gently caress was the point of them?

Like who were they? Why did they have lovely axes and maces? Why did they even exist?

to sell toys, I presume, but I'm not sure they even have that many

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
I think the guy who does Chad Vader actually voices Darth Vader in a new-EU thing? Maybe the Phineas and Ferb crossover. Still the best thing to come out of Disney buying Star Wars.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

Dishwasher posted:

Nah, you're absolutely right. Rebels is loving great and is unfairly maligned, so totally bad example. G.I. Joe and other similar toy commercials are a much better example good sir. But the point stands: its a definite course correction corporate film to probably double down on what their investment is truly about after TLJ muddled things. Merchandise, toys, broad mass appeal, and digestibility.

Hey, there was that one GI Joe episode that took the piss out of cartoon moralising with Cobra TV and 'pro-social' messaging. (Especially since 'You have to be the same and agree with everyone to get along' being something a lot of shows unironically pushed at the time at the behest of parent groups)

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
The whole 'sequel picks up literally immediately where the last one left off' thing... reeaaally wasn't a good idea for Star Wars especially.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
Where's Peppy when you need him?

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

Gargamel Gibson posted:

What was the super important thing that Finn wanted to tell Rey?

I'm sure no one knows, least of all the director.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
The interesting thing I find about Rogue One is that the Death Star's weakness was built in, but not the exhaust port- that the reactor was unstable enough for an explosion to destroy the whole thing. The whole proton torpedo gambit was a wild desperate ploy when the intended idea was likely an infiltration and sabotage or (likely suicide) bombing of the reactor core to trigger the explosion. (Which, ironically, Luke, Han and Ben probably would have been able to do as they rescued Leia)

Also still really funny that Phineas and Ferb: Star Wars predicted so much about the Disney additions, complete with Doofenshmirtz basically being Krennic.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:

its incredible to me that like here are all these "stars" and yet ian mcdiarmid, who has been in *checks notes* literally nothing else at age 75, is the only worthwhile actor in the whole thing

the cackling, slithering palpatine moments nearly make up for the rest of the characters being whiny mannequins

A literal cartoon supervillain grandfathered in is the only way you get a character who's allowed to have a coherent personality

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
Even with the First Order they implied they conquered and looted unexplored regions of the galaxy with leftover Imperial hardware to build up their forces. Still, GI Joe literally puts in more effort to explain Cobra.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

Pollyanna posted:

I AM THE SPY!!!

Picturing this as the TF2 Spy

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

Pyrus Malus posted:

the one thing that confuses me is making a good action movie isn't hard because they literally have formulas for what works, so my hot take is the movie was intentionally bad because Disney wants to kill Star Wars - now that they've analyzed its success they can discard its bloated corpse to create their own space opera IP that is 100% geared towards merch sales, even more than the star war.

anyway quote me on this and let me know in like 6 years if I was right

You say that like Star Wars wasn't already 100% geared towards merch sales.

They're too cowardly to try new things and too dumb to get the old things right.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

Sinteres posted:

If the prequels didn't kill Star Wars, this isn't going to either. Yeah a lot of people feel like Star Wars isn't special anymore, but most of us are probably still going to watch the next movie anyway, just as tons of people with Marvel movie fatigue still watch Marvel movies. That said, I don't feel any particular emotional attachment to any of the new characters, and I doubt I'm alone in that, so losing the ability to throw OT characters into the trailers to make people wonder what they're up to presumably won't help (unless they get truly desperate and actually reboot the series). I just think there will always be tons and tons of people looking for any kind of 'this one's good, I swear' word of mouth to drag them back onboard, no matter how many bad movies come out before then.

Ah, like Sonic the Hedgehog.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

Pyrus Malus posted:

Star Wars was pulled from the mind of a man in the 70s, so inherently it's flawed as a merchandising tool. Ityool 2019 and beyond, in these days of marketing directors understanding perfectly how to squeeze out every last cent via recursive pavlovian conditioning inserted into every single form of media, a machine learning algorithm sometime in the future will create the perfect intellectual property that will doom humanity to a disney-dominated dystopian culture based entirely around maximizing profit for the mouse and his goons.

We can't even fathom what they have in store for us.

Do they, though

Pretty much every indication is in late capitalism every company is run by cocaine addled sociopaths who have no understanding of base humanity and are doing whatever random poo poo works with the numbers that marketing makes up, and routinely completely blindsided by something from out of left field that's allowed to be creative.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

Pyrus Malus posted:

Yeah okay, doomsday prediction aside this is a good and fair point. Both Star Wars and Marvel have these vague notions of childhood associated with them that is difficult to recreate with a new IP.

Y'all know they've got genetically modified disney scientists in a lab 24/7 trying to figure out how to do it though.

And they're going to loving suck at it. Thing is with the scientist analogy is that science requires taking risks and trying new things and stuff you don't already do to see what happens, which Disney is pathologically averse to on anywhere near the scale required to get useful data. Despite having far more than enough money to release B-sides and experimental poo poo that breaks the mould as well as their tried and true cash cows, late capitalism means everything needs to make all the money all the time and can't be allowed the possibility of failure, so it's over-managed to the point where it can't succeed.

Like the whole thing with the MCU is that they bought a huge trove of ideas and formulas that they hadn't already done to death, and didn't really bring anything new to them other than take advantage of things that had already been proven to work in comics- and it turns out if you don't do those things without being desperately ashamed of being a superhero movie you make the big bucks because it's fun trash designed to appeal to all ages.

Ghost Leviathan fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Dec 26, 2019

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
It's hard to tell what Disney's reactions to things are going to be, or even at all except in retrospect, so might be best to wait and see til at least when TROS leaves theatres.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

SUNKOS posted:

It's not just that, but ROS also being the final entry in a trilogy of trilogies only makes it harder. They should have had clear scripts for each movie solidified before they even began considering filming, and then lined up a single director for them all. The whole thing has been a mess that's clearly a result of Disney wanting to rush out as many movies as possible the moment that they got the license. Would have been interesting if Hamill/Ford/Fisher declined the films and Disney had to actually stop and think.

Reminds me of Endgame having such a 'thrown together hastily five minutes after Infinity War came out' feel. For all their big plans and yearly releases, they don't actually prepare to any reasonable standard.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
Most people are entirely unfamiliar with comics as actually written, and for good reason.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
I figure it's more that having a ready-made completely disposable army at their command solves a lot of the problems with pressure against the Republic going to war- after all, it's not like anyone that you care about is going to die when the army is all clones and anonymous orphans, right? Especially against an army of almost entirely droids. While he does control both sides, Palpatine's obvious preference is for the Republic to win, and immediately set about conquest with a veteran army, experienced officer cadre and a casus belli for annihilating anyone who even looks like a threat after the unprovoked assault by the Seperatists and all.

Also just realising the closest historical analogue to the Jedi are the Janissaries, especially as a powerful, uniquely skilled elite cadre of soldiers who became a threat to the ruling classes and were subsequently liquidated.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

That seems slightly sped up but still, wow.

It's like reading old comics and it's crazy just how much stuff actually happens in a single issue, while most modern cape comics are decompressed to the point of being nigh-unreadable.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
The fanart is out there somewhere.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
It's def been in Palpatine's rear end

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
It would be no less silly and a lot more awesome if he flat out had the Star Destroyers combine into a giant robot.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

YaketySass posted:

Leia should have spent the entire movie floating and vibrating to the rhythm of the Force

By that you mean incredibly high?

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

Boxman posted:

The sooner Star Wars fans achieve a Transformer Fan level of self-awareness, the better off we'll be I think.

The thing is Transformers is regularly completely rebooted to sell toys to a new generation of children, which encourages a more easygoing and self-aware attitude amongst fans, while Star Wars has been absolutely reliant on the connection to the most terminal cases of nostalgia poisoning of an entire culture. And even then Geewunners are a thing

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
To add to the conversation that got directed here from GenChat: droids are absolutely coded as slaves, and the droid armies aren't an uprising- they're slave warriors, which have historical precedent. (Mamelukes)

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
As much as the prequels mostly mess things up thematically, I think Grievous is a good indicator that they could absolutely make Vader's body far more physically capable if they wanted to. Palpatine's whole thing is basically grooming Anakin and encouraging his worst traits until he has leverage over him. And it dovetails nicely with RotJ, where Palpatine wants to trade in for the young fresh model of Skywalker.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

Milkfred E. Moore posted:

Here. It's good poo poo.

We definitely need way more plots that can boil down to 'The Illuminati aren't actually very good at what they do.'

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
Vader spent like an hour talking about the decor and making horrible dad jokes

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
Most people thought Starkiller Base blew up Coruscant.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
IIRC the theory goes that they took all the exposition out of TFA because the whole point was to be comfort food and they were afraid talking about things might make people have PTSD flashbacks to the prequels

If only the Star Wars movies had an already existing and accepted way to get exposition about the state of the setting across right at the start of the movie...

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
Wouldn't that basically just be Star Trek 09?

...oooh, I know the logical hellworld next step: remake trilogy. Starting with the prequels.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
Rogue One actually made ANH make MORE sense- the Rebellion is down to a tiny handful of fighters on a small base because the Death Star legit made most of their allies poo poo their pants and pull out, and the ones that remained threw everything into a suicide attack to get the plans. Also makes the opening really funny with how blatantly Leia's lying to the Empire.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

The Little Death posted:

If you watch the Lindsay Ellis breakdown of the new Beauty and the Beast, you can tell that Disney execs are extremely online at this point. They are right in nerd culture, totally misinterpreting what they are seeing as representative of general audiences. what I'm saying is that this is redlettermedia's fault, it is 100% because of their stupid movies that idiot Disney execs thought that they needed to distance themselves from the prequel trilogy as much as they did. I'm not trying to give JJ too much credit, but I'm sure that his script writing started with a list of stipulations from Disney execs who don't actually understand how stories work, but wanted a bunch of do's and don'ts based on what they thought the market for Star wars was.

That would explain a lot. I've always said that listening to your fanbase is vital for understanding how your stuff is recieved, but for the love of god, don't believe everything they say. Most people don't know what they want and don't know how to articulate how they feel about things.

Also said before that it's not just exclusive to Star Wars or Disney to have what may be called an aggressively incoherent style of storytelling- omitting background information that puts everything into context because they're afraid it'll confuse audiences, despite the lack of context confusing them more, and then their answer to audience confusion is to overexplain everything that already happens on screen assuming the audience must be staring at their phones instead of watching it, rather than actually giving context for why the characters are doing things.

It gets even worse when the writers and execs also clearly don't know what they want or why, and the directors are actively at war with each other. You get the equivalent of people who 'cook' by getting bored halfway through the recipe and just throwing the ingredients they have around into a put and shaking it around for an arbitrary time, then getting confused and angry why people don't like their cooking.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

Blood Boils posted:

ST:intodarkness is perfectly coherent, which is different from saying it's good or bad

it's good

A movie with a coherent vision and tone is always more interesting to watch and to discuss than a chopped-up studio mess.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

YaketySass posted:

Bigger Luke is only a few cm taller than Luke, that one's Bigger Luke Prime.

Biggest Luke

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

Empire Strikes Back is misunderstood by fans but absolutely stands up to analysis.

Last Jedi is misunderstood by fans and just crumbles under cursory examination. That makes it the Return Of The Jedi of the ST.

(Rise of Skywalker is, curiously, the Solo: A Star Wars Story of the ST).

So is Rogue One the ESB of the sequels?

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Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
Bit funny for maybe the most derided Star Wars movie, Attack of the Clones produces all the most interesting EU stuff.

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