17 hours ago, That Blasted Samophlange said:

Perhaps that was already done.. there are still the legends fiction being printed. Suurely the legends fiction can endorse that idea.

I love the sequels, despite any flaws, because by son has grown up with them they are his era.. ****, Star Wars is probably more his now than mine, and I love every part of that.

Very true, and a good point.


Personally I was onboard with the sequels until IX.

I loved VIII, but it got away from JJ's plans for the story too much, and instead of trying an original thought, they rode the nostalgia train all the way home. Which, is fine, the movie itself wasn't intolerable. IX had pacing issues but enough action to get me through. Ian's performance as Ole Papa Palps is really what stole the show for me. As much as I dislike the mass appeal story and nostalgia baiting, palps was fun to watch do his thing.


I just hope, whatever they do going forward, they plan ahead.

38 minutes ago, RyantheFett said:

Knowing how George Lucas was when it came to ANH and ESB I would bet money that somewhere in that contract he signed with Disney that said they could never release the original versions. A maclunkey clause if you will.

Maybe. But it's not like Disney couldn't afford to pay the penalty on that clause. Probably from the profits of releasing them even.
A big part of purchasing ALL the rights to a thing is the freedom to do whatever you want with the thing that has been purchased. Here, Disney "has" to worry about fan reaction at least a bit to avoid killing the cash cow. To be honest, probably part of the reason it hasn't happened yet is because the money and time spent cleaning up old footage for a re-release could be spent on post-production for another project. Although, that would be a good thing to release for the 50th anniversary in 2027.

1 hour ago, RyantheFett said:

Knowing how George Lucas was when it came to ANH and ESB I would bet money that somewhere in that contract he signed with Disney that said they could never release the original versions. A maclunkey clause if you will.

Probably. It’s made me lose a lot of respect for him as a person.

But if Disney decides there’s enough money to be made, they’ll figure out a way around it.

1 hour ago, Darth Sanguis said:

Very true, and a good point.


Personally I was onboard with the sequels until IX.

I loved VIII, but it got away from JJ's plans for the story too much, and instead of trying an original thought, they rode the nostalgia train all the way home. Which, is fine, the movie itself wasn't intolerable. IX had pacing issues but enough action to get me through. Ian's performance as Ole Papa Palps is really what stole the show for me. As much as I dislike the mass appeal story and nostalgia baiting, palps was fun to watch do his thing.


I just hope, whatever they do going forward, they plan ahead.

Yeah I wish (in hindsight which is 20/20) they had held off on making more movies until they really had a good creative team. It seems like they are only getting their **** together now with The Mandalorian. After watching the docu-series behind the scenes, Dave Filoni and John Favrau need to be in charge of the creative team for future movies. I think they really get George's influences and vision.

1 minute ago, KommanderKeldoth said:

Yeah I wish (in hindsight which is 20/20) they had held off on making more movies until they really had a good creative team. It seems like they are only getting their **** together now with The Mandalorian. After watching the docu-series behind the scenes, Dave Filoni and John Favrau need to be in charge of the creative ream for future movies. I think they really get George's influences and vision.

Agreed.

Dave has done wonders for this franchise. I think most if not all of my favorite characters and moment are from stuff he was directly involved with. John definitely has chops for this kinda thing too. I'm excited t see what he brings to the franchise.

1 hour ago, TauntaunScout said:

Probably. It’s made me lose a lot of respect for him as a person.

But if Disney decides there’s enough money to be made, they’ll figure out a way around it.

Yeah, I mean they are finding ways around Universal's contract with Marvel regarding theme parks east of the Mississippi.

55 minutes ago, KommanderKeldoth said:

Yeah I wish (in hindsight which is 20/20) they had held off on making more movies until they really had a good creative team. It seems like they are only getting their **** together now with The Mandalorian. After watching the docu-series behind the scenes, Dave Filoni and John Favrau need to be in charge of the creative team for future movies. I think they really get George's influences and vision.

Sometimes it's hard to tell what will be a "good" creative team until AFTER the movie is made unfortunately.
Honestly in my opinion those two should just be in charge of both Star Wars and Marvel. They don't just get George's vision, they get what version of George's vision the fans want to see., which is why the spiritualism of the force has been pushed in recent storylines rather than midichlorians.

26 minutes ago, Caimheul1313 said:

Sometimes it's hard to tell what will be a "good" creative team until AFTER the movie is made unfortunately.

Which is certainly true, but I really don't know who thought J. J. Abrams was the best pick to run Star Wars. What had he ever done to show that he would be better than, at best, mediocre?

23 minutes ago, Lochlan said:

Which is certainly true, but I really don't know who thought J. J. Abrams was the best pick to run Star Wars. What had he ever done to show that he would be better than, at best, mediocre?

He did Gone Fishin!

2 hours ago, Lochlan said:

Which is certainly true, but I really don't know who thought J. J. Abrams was the best pick to run Star Wars. What had he ever done to show that he would be better than, at best, mediocre?

What had George Lucas done before A New Hope? What had Taika Waititi done to show he could handle a multi-million dollar production before Thor Ragnarok? What had Jon Favreau done that showed he could do a good job with Iron Man?

Sometimes gambles pay off, sometimes they don't.

Also there was a sci-fi film in 2009 J.J. Abrams directed called "Star Trek" that got a bunch of critical acclaim, money, and even won an Academy Award (admittedly for Makeup, but that still lets them put "Academy Award Winning" on the DVD/blu-rays). So he had a bunch of decent films as both writing and directing credits before Star Wars, many of which are classified as "sci-fi."

4 hours ago, Caimheul1313 said:

What had George Lucas done before A New Hope?

American Graffiti and THX-1138. And usually the less control Lucas has, the better the final SW film ends up being. In 1977 he rose above his own abilities. As some artists are fortunate enough to do. Bob Dylan is quick to point out that he’s “not good enough” to write the songs he’s written.

4 hours ago, Caimheul1313 said:

So he had a bunch of decent films as both writing and directing credits before Star Wars, many of which are classified as "sci-fi."

Star Wars may as well be considered it’s own genre though. My take on LOST is, Abrams is specifically DISqualified to handle SW.

9 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

American Graffiti and THX-1138. And usually the less control Lucas has, the better the final SW film ends up being. In 1977 he rose above his own abilities. As some artists are fortunate enough to do. Bob Dylan is quick to point out that he’s “not good enough” to write the songs he’s written.

Star Wars may as well be considered it’s own genre though. My take on LOST is, Abrams is specifically DISqualified to handle SW.

THX-1138, the only sci-fi film he had done, was a flop, and yet a studio gave him money to try "sci-fi" again rather than only back him for "coming of age" comedies. And I agree, you can't always tell how a film/song/TV Show/etc is going to turn out based on past performance. My point was J. J. Abrams had a commercial success of a "reboot/expansion" of a "sci-fi" film to his credit before Disney put him on the sequel trilogy.

I also agree with you regarding the quality of the film and amount of Lucas control.

I also agree that Star Wars is very much "science fantasy" a genre that isn't seen much anymore, and at this point given the amount of media about it, it could almost be considered its own genre. But film executives don't always see it that way, nor do they necessarily look at anything beyond the profits/awards/critic responses.

13 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

And usually the less control Lucas has, the better the final SW film ends up being.

3 hours ago, Caimheul1313 said:

I also agree with you regarding the quality of the film and amount of Lucas control.

Amen to that. It is pretty clear that Lucas is an ideas man and that someone should always be their to stop him when he gets out of line. I know that sounds harsh, but I also am in the camp that he hates 4 and 5 for how little control he had and that is the reason for all the changes.

13 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

My take on LOST is, Abrams is specifically DISqualified to handle SW.

3 hours ago, Caimheul1313 said:

My point was J. J. Abrams had a commercial success of a "reboot/expansion" of a "sci-fi" film to his credit before Disney put him on the sequel trilogy.

I would go with it was super safe and probably smart to put Abrams in charge of 7, BUT with his track record putting him in charge of 9 was easily the worse choice they could have made. His love of the stupid mystery box and him not caring for the answers should have been a huge warning sign................

Just now, RyantheFett said:

I would go with it was super safe and probably smart to put Abrams in charge of 7, BUT with his track record putting him in charge of 9 was easily the worse choice they could have made. His love of the stupid mystery box and him not caring for the answers should have been a huge warning sign................

I also think that changing directors and more importantly writers for every film (original plan was to have someone else direct each film, but given Abrams had done a decent job with 7 I can understand why he was put back in after 8 ) was not the best plan for well thought out cohesive story. If they had the same writer, with all three movies written before ANYTHING was started, then the the groundwork for twists and later plot developments in the last movie could have been laid down in the first two.

I will never understand how Han seeing planets exploding in the sky, is considered “doing a decent job”. Or characters with no motivation beyond good guys vs bad guys.

I mean it didn’t lose money but, that’s a pretty low bar. Something this anticipated is virtually guaranteed to make money.

Don’t get me wrong, even The Rise of Skywalker was better than the prequels. But that’s also a very low bar. Willow was way better than any of the sequels.

No matter how silly TROS seems to me, I can watch it. The CGI, weird racial tropes (accidental or not), and Hayden Christensen’s acting rendered the prequels completely unrewatchable to me.

53 minutes ago, TauntaunScout said:

I will never understand how Han seeing planets exploding in the sky, is considered “doing a decent job”. Or characters with no motivation beyond good guys vs bad guys.

I mean it didn’t lose money but, that’s a pretty low bar. Something this anticipated is virtually guaranteed to make money.

From a studio's perspective, making 2 BILLION dollars at the box office off of a 300 million dollar investment is "doing a decent job." There is a difference between guaranteed to make money and making enough money to make the top 10 list of highest grossing films of all time after adjusting for inflation, let alone having a film earn more that the GDP of Belize.
There was not nearly the fan outcry about The Force Awakens as there was with The Last Jedi from what I could recall, which is another part of "doing a decent job."

Again. ANY director could have made this profitable.

Considering its potential, the sequels were a financial and artistic fizzle.

17 minutes ago, TauntaunScout said:

Again. ANY director could have made this profitable.

Considering its potential, the sequels were a financial and artistic fizzle.

I'm not arguing whether or not any director could have made it profitable, I'm arguing that other directors could have made it LESS profitable.
As far as some studios are concerned though, the combination of Abrams and Star Wars is what led to those profits, not just it being Star Wars. Kind of how directors that make a the most profit with solo superhero films often get tagged to direct to team up films.

1 hour ago, TauntaunScout said:

Don’t get me wrong, even The Rise of Skywalker was better than the prequels. But that’s also a very low bar. Willow was way better than any of the sequels.

No matter how silly TROS seems to me, I can watch it. The CGI, weird racial tropes (accidental or not), and Hayden Christensen’s acting rendered the prequels completely unrewatchable to me.

See that is one reason I find the sequels so hard to review fairly!! The prequels are some of the worse big budget movies you will ever find. Like for real AotC should be on MST3K for the romance alone. So for Disney has done a lot of mistakes with the franchise, but I can't help but still see it as a step up from what we were getting from Lucas (Mando being amazing for example). And I would like to think Disney have learned their lesson for any future movies........

17 minutes ago, Caimheul1313 said:

There was not nearly the fan outcry about The Force Awakens as there was with The Last Jedi from what I could recall, which is another part of "doing a decent job."

It feels a lot of the worse fan outcry from TLJ did start during TFA, it just took a while to blow up. The hatred for Rey was real from the start, but I would say YouTube hate click algorithm was not really a thing back then (could be wrong and just missed it for years). TLJ was very divisive to a lot of fans and the haters (for a lack of a better word) jumped on that to really blow everything up. Nowadays it feels like people make their living off of Star Wars hate (top 10 ways the sequels KILLED your childhood!!!! lol).

Which again makes the sequels once again so hard to review. I have a lot of problems with these movies (still enjoy them a lot) and would love to criticize them a lot more, but the hate around some aspects sort of feel dirty or to push an agenda.

The first two sequels in my opinion were carried by the acting of Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Kelly Marie Tran.

And yes @RyantheFett I think Disney is a big step up from what we saw 1984-2011. I think the sequels started off weakly, got really confusing in the middle, and took a nose dive at the end BUT it’s still an improvement!

Hmm. I think the main reasons I can't see things that way is the prequels were crappy films but their crappiness was isolated largely within themselves. They didn't really do anything to diminish the OT merely by their existence, and despite being really poorly executed there was enough of a story underneath all the idiocy that later material was able to at least salvage the era and clarify the characters and their journey a bit - Anakin's fall is conceptually interesting even if the execution wasn't.

By contrast the sequels are mostly superior purely from a filmmaking standpoint(although that's an extremely low bar to clear, let's not get carried away and start thinking JJ isn't a hack, he absolutely is a hack who can't handle pacing to save his life and views plot as an annoying chore he has to do in order to string his big setpiece scenes together - the fact those setpieces have enough whizz-bang spectacle to suck up ticket money from the casual "gimmie a bucket of popcorn and 90 minds of 'splosions and I'm happy" average cinemagoers doesn't change that, he's just marginally less of a hack than Lucas without his support staff and handlers), but they actively s*** on the OT with the way they choose to continue(or rather, conclude in misery and failure) the tales of the original cast, and the supplementary materials have been underwhelming and don't really have the scope to be anything else, because there wasn't really an intent buried under the jank in the same way there was with the prequels.

But by that token of "conceptually interesting even if the execution wasn't" pretty much any poor art can be justified.

@Yodhrin to get back to my original thread-derailment, the sins of the prequels are emphatically not contained unto themselves. They have crept into the OT. Bad CGI is now sprinkled throughout them. Hayden Christiansen is in ROTJ. Darth Vader screams "Noooooo!" now.

4 minutes ago, TauntaunScout said:

to get back to my original thread-derailment, the sins of the prequels are emphatically not contained unto themselves. They have crept into the OT. Bad CGI is now sprinkled throughout them. Hayden Christiansen is in ROTJ. Darth Vader screams "Noooooo!" now.

The sins of George Lucas have spread far.......... The man really knew how to crap over everything and for what???? Why the NOOOOOOO?!? How did he think that would improve the movie besides make it a bad joke? The bad CGI adds nothing!!! Really need to find a book or doc that explains all of this.

19 minutes ago, Yodhrin said:

and despite being really poorly executed there was enough of a story underneath all the idiocy that later material was able to at least salvage the era and clarify the characters and their journey a bit - Anakin's fall is conceptually interesting even if the execution wasn't.

Funny enough that is the same reason I despise the prequels even more lol. So much wasted potential that had to be fixed with 6 seasons lol. And sure the sequels wasted a lot of good ideas by the end, but Disney still has not used up all of my patience like Lucas did............. yet. It was really hard to hate on ROS when I just finished Mando.

7 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

But by that token of "conceptually interesting even if the execution wasn't" pretty much any poor art can be justified.

@Yodhrin to get back to my original thread-derailment, the sins of the prequels are emphatically not contained unto themselves. They have crept into the OT. Bad CGI is now sprinkled throughout them. Hayden Christiansen is in ROTJ. Darth Vader screams "Noooooo!" now.

"Justified" is a very strong word, I was more thinking in the region of "excused".

And I think that's more a George issue than a prequel issue - the prequels were bad for many, many more reasons than just the before-it-was-ready CGI or Hayden Christiansen's impression of a plank of wood. Bad enough that they almost completely obscured the core ideas that had value, and couldn't even stretch to providing basic entertainment for long stretches of their runtime - that's something George was never able to do to the OT no matter how egregious his meddling got, because under all the Noooooooo's and macklunkeys, it's still the OT.

7 hours ago, RyantheFett said:

Funny enough that is the same reason I despise the prequels even more lol. So much wasted potential that had to be fixed with 6 seasons lol. And sure the sequels wasted a lot of good ideas by the end, but Disney still has not used up all of my patience like Lucas did............. yet. It was really hard to hate on ROS when I just finished Mando.

Thing is the people responsible for Mando don't appear to be the same people responsible for the Sequels, so that doesn't earn them as much goodwill as it otherwise would. That there remains enough talent and affection for the franchise at Lucasfilm to make good Star Wars isn't in doubt, to my mind, what is in doubt is to what extent they'll be allowed to do so. Mando also benefits from being set only a few years after RotJ, meaning it's still a couple of decades before the Sequels and largely retains the OT aesthetic. Regardless, my point is more than no matter how much good material they put out now in general terms, the Sequel era doesn't look salvageable to me in the same way the Prequel era was - they can write all the novels and make all the cartoons they like about Rey & the Resistance etc, but there's nothing of substance there to draw out and render in greater quality in the way there was with the fall of Anakin and the Jedi, and there's little time to insert additional material into within the Sequels themselves, 7 & 8 take place over a period of a couple of weeks, then there's a gap of what, a year, and 9 wraps everything up neatly with a shiny bow on top.

Begun the Cuteness Wars have ...

15 hours ago, Yodhrin said:

Hmm. I think the main reasons I can't see things that way is the prequels were crappy films but their crappiness was isolated largely within themselves. They didn't really do anything to diminish the OT merely by their existence, and despite being really poorly executed there was enough of a story underneath all the idiocy that later material was able to at least salvage the era and clarify the characters and their journey a bit - Anakin's fall is conceptually interesting even if the execution wasn't.

By contrast the sequels are mostly superior purely from a filmmaking standpoint(although that's an extremely low bar to clear, let's not get carried away and start thinking JJ isn't a hack, he absolutely is a hack who can't handle pacing to save his life and views plot as an annoying chore he has to do in order to string his big setpiece scenes together - the fact those setpieces have enough whizz-bang spectacle to suck up ticket money from the casual "gimmie a bucket of popcorn and 90 minds of 'splosions and I'm happy" average cinemagoers doesn't change that, he's just marginally less of a hack than Lucas without his support staff and handlers), but they actively s*** on the OT with the way they choose to continue(or rather, conclude in misery and failure) the tales of the original cast, and the supplementary materials have been underwhelming and don't really have the scope to be anything else, because there wasn't really an intent buried under the jank in the same way there was with the prequels.

I think you're on to something here. As bad as the PT is, it dosen't take away from the OT. I think what has really gotten the PT greater acceptance is the clone wars. Even though the movies were mediocre at best, the clone wars was able to go back and clean up a good deal of the mess they made. To this day when someone mentions the PT error my first thoughts are of the clone wars, not the PT itself.

I'll leave aside the views of the film making quality of the ST, but the fact that it retconned the parts of the EU that I really liked already baised me against it before the movies came out. Then I saw them and they teeated the OT cast exactly as you said. I would be quite happy if Disney decided to being the EU back and make the ST legends, but I don't see it happening. I agree that they'll most likely just ignore what they created and focus on other era's of star wars that are popular, aka making them money.