Star Wars: Disney Era

[stewiek2]

On 05/01/2024 at 10:52, stuart_75 said:

Star Wars nerd here. Big fan of the original trilogy, not so much the new stuff (except Rouge One, Andor, bits of Mandolorian).

So I've "acquired" the 4k77 version of A New Hope and oh my its something to behold. The original theatrical release from 1977 without any special edition nonsense, no extra CGI, no extra Jabba the Hutt scene, exactly how it looked back in 1977, cleaned up from an original 35mm print. These guys have spent a lot of time and money on this labour of love and I have to give them some major kudos.

If you want to read up on all the work that's gone into making this possible have a look at https://www.thestarwarstrilogy.com/project-4k77/

The 4K80 Empire needs more cleaning up, but teh 4K83 ROTJ is incredible quality.

[Tegis]

I didn't know the existence of Macklunkey

 

It's so bad I could cry

[villa4europe]

him shooting first still makes zero sense, like literally none, he missed from half a yard away, they cant sell the head movement in any convincing fashion let alone have the time or space to see it properly and if you could see it properly you'd only see the god awful dummy

sometimes it really feels like lucas struck gold through blind luck

[Chindie]

He basically did get lucky.

If you look at Star Wars as a franchise, it's his idea obviously, but the more he touches the worse it gets. He came up with a good idea, taking bits of cheap pulp action and sci fi movies from the 40s and 50s, together with a bit of WW2 war movie and Japanese samurai stuff, and a bit of Western, and mixing it up with good special effects and production design, but even the first movie is supposedly famously saved by the editing his then wife did. After that he drops back into a producer role, until the prequels where he gets free reign to do whatever he wants and it's a disaster. And throughout he tinkers with the films for some reason and invariably makes them worse each time. Then he sells the thing for obscene money and Disney won't even listen to his ideas for sequels as his ideas are terrible.

[sne]

If we ever end up building that theme park we were promised, this is the person we should have oversee it.

Edited May 19 by sne

[CVByrne]

On 03/05/2024 at 17:17, Chindie said:

He basically did get lucky.

If you look at Star Wars as a franchise, it's his idea obviously, but the more he touches the worse it gets. He came up with a good idea, taking bits of cheap pulp action and sci fi movies from the 40s and 50s, together with a bit of WW2 war movie and Japanese samurai stuff, and a bit of Western, and mixing it up with good special effects and production design, but even the first movie is supposedly famously saved by the editing his then wife did. After that he drops back into a producer role, until the prequels where he gets free reign to do whatever he wants and it's a disaster. And throughout he tinkers with the films for some reason and invariably makes them worse each time. Then he sells the thing for obscene money and Disney won't even listen to his ideas for sequels as his ideas are terrible.

Everything Disney did with Star Wars was far far worse than the Prequel trilogy. 

[Chindie]

16 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

Everything Disney did with Star Wars was far far worse than the Prequel trilogy. 

No it isn't. 

I'm not a huge fan of the sequel trilogy, but it's better than the prequels, which are appallingly bad follies on multiple fronts, and it's generally accepted that some of the best Star Wars content has come under Disney's watch.

[TreeVillan]

39 minutes ago, Chindie said:

No it isn't. 

I'm not a huge fan of the sequel trilogy, but it's better than the prequels, which are appallingly bad follies on multiple fronts, and it's generally accepted that some of the best Star Wars content has come under Disney's watch.

Throw enough shit...

[stuart_75]

17 hours ago, sne said:

If we ever end up building that theme park we were promised, this is the person we should have oversee it.

Wow, a 4 hour hotel review, that takes some doing. Deffo deserves a like/thumbs up.

[CVByrne]

1 hour ago, Chindie said:

No it isn't. 

I'm not a huge fan of the sequel trilogy, but it's better than the prequels, which are appallingly bad follies on multiple fronts, and it's generally accepted that some of the best Star Wars content has come under Disney's watch.

The Sequel trilogy probably one of the worst things ever put on screen. Beyond bad and so bad it transcends the franchise. It's the pillar for how to completely destroy something and drive fans away. 

[desensitized43]

38 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

The Sequel trilogy probably one of the worst things ever put on screen. Beyond bad and so bad it transcends the franchise. It's the pillar for how to completely destroy something and drive fans away. 

It amazes me we still see people defending the sequel trilogy. It's a complete abortion of a set of films. The main problem being that it lacks any kind of clear leadership or control over where it was going. The first one was derivative but passable. The second just isn't a Star Wars film and makes the major mistake of shitting all over the lore and legacy characters by trying to be too different. The third spends so much trying to fix what the second one got wrong that it just ends in total mess, is terribly paced and has a final act that's just laughably bad.

[CVByrne]

6 minutes ago, desensitized43 said:

It amazes me we still see people defending the sequel trilogy. It's a complete abortion of a set of films. The main problem being that it lacks any kind of clear leadership or control over where it was going. The first one was derivative but passable. The second just isn't a Star Wars film and makes the major mistake of shitting all over the lore and legacy characters by trying to be too different. The third spends so much trying to fix what the second one got wrong that it just ends in total mess, is terribly paced and has a final act that's just laughably bad.

The desire to make the main protagonist a Mary Sue as part of the whole thing. First time she pick up a light saber she defeats the antagonist. What is the point of that? No heros journey. Just terrible writing 

[desensitized43]

5 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

The desire to make the main protagonist a Mary Sue as part of the whole thing. First time she pick up a light saber she defeats the antagonist. What is the point of that? No heros journey. Just terrible writing 

It was terrible writing for sure but I think the main issue I have with it is the lack of a time jump between each film. The original trilogy had significant time jumps between A New Hope and Empire and Empire and Jedi. What happens during these time jumps is mostly explained during the opening crawl to each film, but what goes unwritten is that essentially Luke spends this time in training becoming progressively more powerful (and wise) in each film by learning from mistakes he's made along the way that ultimately cost him his hand, a lot of people their lives and caused Han to be encased in space concrete.

By neglecting that you essentially have a main character who immediately emerges pretty much fully formed in terms of power and decision-making. That's annoying to people because it feels confusing, unearned and they're left scratching around for a reason why - so you fill that vacuum of logic with the whole "Mary Sue" argument. It must be because Kathleen Kennedy wants a powerful female character but doesn't want to do any real work to get her there. Did they do it because they wanted a powerful woman who got powerful by making no mistakes and hence having no real "learning" on the way to getting there? I don't know, it's possible that it was the case, but when you start down the "Mary Sue" road you inevitably  get pushback claiming you just hate strong women.

I've always found it best to just ignore the fact she's a woman and focus on the characters arc just being pretty terrible. Why can they do advanced stuff immediately? Why do they not require any training? Do they ever make a decision that doesn't work out? Do they ever grow or diminish as a character or did they emerge into the world like this?

 

[Chindie]

I won my bet with how quick the problem would be some variation on 'woke', with an extra bit chucked on Mary Sue.

[sne]

New trilogy was pretty much like that fold, draw, fold and exchange game. First movie was kinda OK-ish as it was a carbon copy of A New Hope. Then the new guy made something that didn't fit in at all and sharted on the stuff set up in the first movie. And the third one was just a silly mess.

[Chindie]

The sequel trilogy isn't good, by any means, you could fill pages on why, but besides the last one (which is just a mess of rancid arse water) they're well made movies with generally good performances and solid plots (if in the case of the second one, a plot that doesn't fit what anyone expected or anyone really wanted, or fits the series terribly well, or works as a vehicle for what it wants to say). The prequels, meanwhile, are genuinely bad on multiple levels - plots and scripts that barely read like a human wrote them, absolutely atrocious acting, bad cinematography, bad CG, bad filming choices everywhere (multiple 'big spectacle action scenes' that are like watching some hundreds and thousands dropped on a table) - the only thing you can rescue from them is some of the art design was good, some of the music is very good and a couple of scenes are solid. The best of the prequels, RotS, is at best an alright movie, and even to say that you've got to overlook some total stinking clunkers in it's very being.

Theres nothing about the sequels that is that bad. Except maybe RoS. For all that FA is just a rote retread of ANH with some new paint, nostalgia porn and mystery boxes, that TLJ is a weird grudge of a movie that resents it's predecessor to the extent it chucks it's plot in the bin, and RoS is a car crash, they aren't genuinely, irredeemably terrible. The prequels, in the main, are. They gave us one of the worst characters in any medium, Binks, have catastrophically bad writing that actively creates plot holes retrospectively because the writer is too stupid to plot them better, and give us a romance across 3 movies that is less convincing than the love affair between a table and a carpet.

[Panto_Villan]

3 hours ago, Chindie said:

The sequel trilogy isn't good, by any means, you could fill pages on why, but besides the last one (which is just a mess of rancid arse water) they're well made movies with generally good performances and solid plots (if in the case of the second one, a plot that doesn't fit what anyone expected or anyone really wanted, or fits the series terribly well, or works as a vehicle for what it wants to say). The prequels, meanwhile, are genuinely bad on multiple levels - plots and scripts that barely read like a human wrote them, absolutely atrocious acting, bad cinematography, bad CG, bad filming choices everywhere (multiple 'big spectacle action scenes' that are like watching some hundreds and thousands dropped on a table) - the only thing you can rescue from them is some of the art design was good, some of the music is very good and a couple of scenes are solid. The best of the prequels, RotS, is at best an alright movie, and even to say that you've got to overlook some total stinking clunkers in it's very being.

Theres nothing about the sequels that is that bad. Except maybe RoS. For all that FA is just a rote retread of ANH with some new paint, nostalgia porn and mystery boxes, that TLJ is a weird grudge of a movie that resents it's predecessor to the extent it chucks it's plot in the bin, and RoS is a car crash, they aren't genuinely, irredeemably terrible. The prequels, in the main, are. They gave us one of the worst characters in any medium, Binks, have catastrophically bad writing that actively creates plot holes retrospectively because the writer is too stupid to plot them better, and give us a romance across 3 movies that is less convincing than the love affair between a table and a carpet.

That's true if you view them as individual films, but the prequels tell a single coherent narrative, albeit badly, and that does ultimately make them more than the sum of their parts. I do actually think the high level plot beats of the trilogy could maybe have been made into decent enough films had Lucas been subject to more typical levels of studio oversight and they'd got some decent scriptwriters involved. Whereas it absolutely baffles me that Disney were unable to write a coherent three-part story for their new films, especially when GOT and the MCU were so popular at the time and showing the power of good creative direction. Writers can't be *that* expensive.

But other than that I have to agree. I'll probably sit my kids down in front of some Star Wars in a few years, and I imagine they'll think the new trilogy films are pretty cool. I'll only try the prequels if they need a nap.

[villa4europe]

Yeah the obvious problem with the sequels is that it's a trilogy that bizarrely was written as 3 films rather than 1 and then broken up, they're an incoherent mess with an absolute joke of a 3rd film

There's more good in the prequels imo

There's also far more good surrounding the prequels, which is part of what makes them so disappointing, the clone wars cartoons and books were excellent, even characters like GG are good characters completely butchered in the film 

That said rogue one is maybe the 2nd or 3rd best SW film so to say Disney are doing SW wrong isn't quite true, Andor is right up there as best SW content too, unfortunately though they've spent too long with no show runner (something they've fixed) so even something like the mandalorian which was ok (but only ok, it's not as good as people make out) was the same as the films it felt like incoherent writing that they made up as they went along 

[Chindie]

11 minutes ago, Panto_Villan said:

That's true if you view them as individual films, but the prequels tell a single coherent narrative, albeit badly, and that does ultimately make them more than the sum of their parts. I do actually think the high level plot beats of the trilogy could maybe have been made into decent enough films had Lucas been subject to more typical levels of studio oversight and they'd got some decent scriptwriters involved. Whereas it absolutely baffles me that Disney were unable to write a coherent three-part story for their new films, especially when GOT and the MCU were so popular at the time and showing the power of good creative direction. Writers can't be *that* expensive.

But other than that I have to agree. I'll probably sit my kids down in front of some Star Wars in a few years, and I imagine they'll think the new trilogy films are pretty cool. I'll only try the prequels if they need a nap.

I actually agree with the big concepts, ideas, headline plots of the prequels being good. The story that they tell is the one you'd pick to tell. It's just the execution is terrible. Lucas is a big ideas man, he can't write like a script writer, and the more you ask him to zoom in his ideas the worse it gets. George works when he can say 'let's do a rise of the Nazis allegory, and Vader origin', not when he decides he needs to explain what the Force is, or where C3PO came from, or why stormtroopers exist, or why Vader is evil, or... The big headline ideas are excellent, but you can't make that into a film, and everything else is **** awful. 

The sequel trilogy Disney absolutely **** up. They didn't even really need to look at things like their stablemate, Marvel, on how to do a big franchise spanning narrative, Star Wars wasn't trying to do the same thing, but they should have had some idea of how they intended the thing to go. Instead they get Abrams to do a soft reboot with god awful mystery box narrative, then let Johnson do whatever for the important middle movie, and his decision was 'your first film was shit', so he makes something that throws it in the bin and makes his own mess that is at least interesting, and then the finale is a hopeless rescue job by a hack that's worse than everything. Had they had some kind of guiding big picture narrative they might have got something better, but they didn't, and they paid for it.

[Panto_Villan]

1 minute ago, Chindie said:

I actually agree with the big concepts, ideas, headline plots of the prequels being good. The story that they tell is the one you'd pick to tell. It's just the execution is terrible. Lucas is a big ideas man, he can't write like a script writer, and the more you ask him to zoom in his ideas the worse it gets. George works when he can say 'let's do a rise of the Nazis allegory, and Vader origin', not when he decides he needs to explain what the Force is, or where C3PO came from, or why stormtroopers exist, or why Vader is evil, or... The big headline ideas are excellent, but you can't make that into a film, and everything else is **** awful. 

The sequel trilogy Disney absolutely **** up. They didn't even really need to look at things like their stablemate, Marvel, on how to do a big franchise spanning narrative, Star Wars wasn't trying to do the same thing, but they should have had some idea of how they intended the thing to go. Instead they get Abrams to do a soft reboot with god awful mystery box narrative, then let Johnson do whatever for the important middle movie, and his decision was 'your first film was shit', so he makes something that throws it in the bin and makes his own mess that is at least interesting, and then the finale is a hopeless rescue job by a hack that's worse than everything. Had they had some kind of guiding big picture narrative they might have got something better, but they didn't, and they paid for it.

Yup. Couldn't have put it better myself.

8 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

Yeah the obvious problem with the sequels is that it's a trilogy that bizarrely was written as 3 films rather than 1 and then broken up, they're an incoherent mess with an absolute joke of a 3rd film

There's more good in the prequels imo

There's also far more good surrounding the prequels, which is part of what makes them so disappointing, the clone wars cartoons and books were excellent, even characters like GG are good characters completely butchered in the film 

That said rogue one is maybe the 2nd or 3rd best SW film so to say Disney are doing SW wrong isn't quite true, Andor is right up there as best SW content too, unfortunately though they've spent too long with no show runner (something they've fixed) so even something like the mandalorian which was ok (but only ok, it's not as good as people make out) was the same as the films it felt like incoherent writing that they made up as they went along 

Rogue One is an interesting one - it's a decent enough film but I wouldn't have said it was particularly great. It's actually what I kinda assumed the baseline for Disney Star Wars films would be - beautiful, well acted, great action scenes, considerate of the source material, but too heavy on the fanservice and not a massively exciting plot. What you'd get if you threw an enormous amount of money at some really talented people but then didn't give them enough freedom to make something genuinely interesting. A solid 7.5/10.

Unfortunately that ended up being the pinnacle of the new films, mostly because it was the only recent film that felt like it was aimed at adults. However it did at least get Tony Gilroy back for Andor, which is hands down my favourite SW content since the original trilogy. Shame nobody watched it though.