Star Wars editor Marcia Lucas also has some opinions on the Star Wars sequel trilogy
Marcia Lucas, who many claim is the reason the original Star Wars is even watchable, thinks Disney just doesn’t get it
Aux News Marcia Lucas
For more than 40 years, Star Wars aficionados have regularly cited Marcia Lucas, George Lucas’ editor on American Graffiti and Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope, as the savior of Star Wars. The Oscar-winner (she won for Star Wars, btw) also edited Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and was supervising editor on Taxi Driver, which all but cements her place as one of the architects of modern Hollywood cinema. She’s the one who came up with the idea that Obi-Wan Kenobi should die in A New Hope and the trench run. As Mark Hamill said back in 2005, “You can see the huge difference in the films [George Lucas] does now and the films that he did when he was married.” So when Marcia Lucas has something to say about Star Wars, ears should perk up because she knows how to make this shit work.
And, boy, does she have some opinions about what J.J. Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy have done with Star Wars. In a newly-published book by former Lucasfilm executive editor J.W. Rinzler on Howard Kazanjian, who produced The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi, Marcia Lucas gave Abrams and Kennedy the verbal force choke. She says in Howard Kazanjian: A Producer’s Life:
I like Kathleen. I always liked her. She was full of beans. She was really smart and really bright. Really wonderful woman. And I liked her husband, Frank. I liked them a lot. Now that she’s running Lucasfilm and making movies, it seems to me that Kathy Kennedy and J.J. Abrams don’t have a clue about Star Wars. They don’t get it. And J.J. Abrams is writing these stories — when I saw that movie where they kill Han Solo, I was furious. I was furious when they killed Han Solo. Absolutely, positively there was no rhyme or reason to it. I thought, You don’t get the Jedi story. You don’t get the magic of Star Wars. You’re getting rid of Han Solo?
For the woman who suggested taking out old Ben Kenobi, she really has a problem with characters getting iced. In a big get for the anti-Last Jedi crowd, she’s not a big fan of Luke dying or Rey’s inherent force mastery. “They have Luke disintegrate,” she said. “They killed Han Solo. They killed Luke Skywalker. And they don’t have Princess Leia anymore. And they’re spitting out movies every year. And they think it’s important to appeal to a woman’s audience, so now their main character is this female, who’s supposed to have Jedi powers, but we don’t know how she got Jedi powers, or who she is. It sucks. The storylines are terrible. Just terrible. Awful.”
“You can quote me—‘J.J. Abrams, Kathy Kennedy — talk to me.’”
Lucas quit the business after she and George divorced. In Peter Biskind’s book on New Hollywood, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, she didn’t have such warm memories about working with her ex-husband:
I felt we were partners, partners in the ranch, partners in our home, and we did these films together. I wasn’t a fifty percent partner, but I felt I had something to bring to the table. I was the more emotional person who came from the heart, and George was the more intellectual and visual, and I thought that provided a nice balance. But George would never acknowledge that to me. I think he resented my criticisms, felt that all I ever did was put him down. In his mind, I always stayed the stupid Valley girl. He never felt I had any talent, he never felt I was very smart and he never gave me much credit. When we were finishing Jedi, George told me he thought I was a pretty good editor. In the sixteen years of our being together I think that was the only time he complimented me.
Since the divorce, though, her impact has largely been diminished. As Michael Kaminski writes in his book The Secret History Of Star Wars, she has become “the forgotten Lucas.” “[She] is mentioned only occasionally in passing, a background element, and not a single word of hers is quoted,” Kaminski writes. “She is a silent extra, absent from any photographs and only indirectly acknowledged, her contributions downplayed.”
Marcia Lucas, everybody. To paraphrase her: J.J. Abrams, Kathy Kennedy—talk to Marcia Lucas.
[via IndieWire]
387 Comments
Something I’d like to get people’s opinions on: who do you think deserves the most credit for making Star Wars a success?
Chewbacca!
What a Wookiee!
Chewie, is that you?
I’m too lazy too look for the quote, but when people try to say that Marcia was the secret brains behind Star Wars, she says that ultimately, the characters, the stories, the names, came out of George’s head (and maybe Kurosawa, but that’s another story).
The original movie? You can make a strong case for Marcia. Particularly if the lore that she single-handedly invented the third act is true, and I have no reason to think it’s not.
Making Star Wars into Star Wars-as-we-know-it? I’m gonna lay most of the credit at the feet of Kenner Toys, Marvel, and every other merchandising partner. During the long waits between films, tie-in merch kept the flame going and made Star Wars into a lifestyle.
Keeping the interest alive between the films is something they really fell down with during the early prequel era – Hasbro kept putting out increasingly minor Episode I characters while the books of the time kept dwelling on the pre-Phantom Menace period while absolutely steadfastly avoiding doing anything to show events after Episode I (As per Lucasfilm mandate).Thankfully post-Clones, we got Clone Wars which was great. Unfortunately the 2001-2004 era action figures are generally (and rightfully) regarded as absolute crap compared with many of the other lines put out both before and after.
I said it before and I’ll say it again. Nobody gave a shit about the prequel merchandising. There was nothing there to like, no iconic characters, vehicles or setpieces. Everybody gave a shit about the original trilogy from the Millennium Falcon down to Hammerhead. Lots of icons, lots of things to want to own. Nobody wanted a Watto action figure. Everybody wanted a Tuskan Raider action figure. Nobody wanted a podracer. Everybody wanted a landspeeder. This had as much to do with the relative lack of impact of the prequels as it did selling toys.
I’d argue they certainly did give a shit about them – when they launched in 1999. Remember the midnight launches and the huge crowds buying the shit up like crazy?I’d also argue they did produce at least one iconic character – Darth Maul.Certainly among those people who were my age that I knew, the clamouring for Star Wars action figures was absolutely insane in 1999. The most sought after, unsurprisingly, were Darth Maul, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan (oh and that Mace Windu preview figure which was quite rare).But you are right in saying that, beyond that, there was few other characters/vehicles etc that were merchandised well which probably explains why the line face issues into late 2000-early 2002 when they were stuck with no new product to sell beyond some of those weird concept ones which turned up in the Power of the Jedi line.Possibly gun shy after going all-in on Star Wars in 99 and being stuck with the unpopular figures, retailers in my country at least, had very little of the new line Hasbro put out between 2002 and 2004.The rush on figures was quite high for Revenge as well in 2005. I remember a lot of the popular ones (Obi-Wan, Ani, Darth Vader) got snapped up very quickly from the displays.
I dunno, a lot of people wanted Darth Maul, Grievous, Mace Windu, and Destroyer Droid figures. Sadly those were like the only things really worth it.
Oh and the Pod Racing N64/Arcade game. That was solid.
“Nobody wanted a podracer.”Being an actual child at the time of the prequels, I gotta disagree with you here. Everybody my age wanted a podracer toy, podracing was huge and the N64 game was iconic.
There are some of us who grew up with the prequels and actually liked them, despite their flaws and enjoyed the merchandise.
Except we know she didn’t single handily invent the third act. Most of the footage from the third act was already shot when she gave her input. What she suggested was the Trench Run attack needed to be happening while the Death Star was about to attack the Rebel base.
The Trench-Run attack was already written- she improved what was there. Which is what a good editor should be doing.To say she invented the third acts makes it sound like they threw out the third act they had and went with a new third act based on her ideas, when her idea was building upon what was already shot and mainly required some additional audio to be recorded and some insert shots.
Marcia Lucas absolutely deserves a ton of credit for improving the first film, both by suggesting what material to cut and how to improve what they had shot. But at the same time there does seem to be this push to make her THE person that made Star Wars what it was, which I feel diminishes the work everyone put in to make those films. (John Williams music is a huge part of making Star Wars work, alonside ILM special effects, Ben Burt’s sound design, the entire cast’s performances, George Lucas’ ideas and stories and so many other people.)
The toys are the only reason Boba Fett became a thing.
Actually, that was George. He was the driving force behind the merchandise, since that’s where the majority of his income came from.
The guy who played R2D2, duh.
I wasn’t had a drink with Kenny Baker in a bar at comic-con Chicago. He was a nice guy.
Was he a little drunk?
“Most” credit is pretty subjective, but I’d say George Lucas is the primary source, but the success comes from his inspiration being tempered by others. The prequel trilogy is a great example of his brilliance run amok, and the sequel trilogy a great example of his absence. OT is still the best with a good balance of George’s uniqueness held back from absurdity by his wife and others.
Kitt Fisto, obviously
Fisto, you say?
But he doesn’t just fist!
You are thinking of his cousin Kit Butt-stuff
Please tell me that the kid in the blue vest is named Twink.
Ralph McQuarrie. I think his designs, more than anything, are what have made it so enduring. If you took Star Wars and replaced all his amazing designs with more generic SF designs I don’t think it would have had the impact that it did.
Pam Grier! Know your Black Female History Folks!
Everyone knows the secret mastermind was Jar-Jar Binks.
Lady Luck, which is the main difference between Star Wars and 95% of movies.
Han Solo’s vest.
The guys who did all the special effects, especially the model work and the lightsaber effects.
Ben Burtt.
Kenner.
y’know? Jokes aside… maybe!
George Lucas
While not the most important, Star Wars doesn’t reach anywhere near the heights it did without John Williams. His soundtracks STILL add at least a star (out of 5) for me in Star Wars properties.
Max Rebo.
ALL. OF. YOU! THE FANS! Give yourself a round of applause!
Well, it’s kind of a chicken/egg situation. The boring answer that ignores the premise of this question, that one person deserves more credit than someone else: Film is collaborative, and at the end of the day, what most people love about Star Wars probably doesn’t belong just to George or Marcia. Hell, you have to talk about Gary Kurtz, Ralph McQuarrie, Ben Burtt, John Williams, and a bunch of other people if you’re gonna talk about why Star Wars rules so hard.The simplified answer, which adheres to the premise of the question: George Lucas. In the end, Star Wars is his. He is undoubtedly saved by Marcia, and editing can do a lot of things, but you can’t polish a turd and expect anything other than shit. Marcia couldn’t find the great movie if George Lucas hadn’t made one to find.
John Williams. The music makes that movie
Frank Herbert
John Williams
Everything I’ve read, this article included, points to it being very much a group effort.
The millions of saps who gave their money to see it!
People look at the prequels and wonder how the hell George Lucas made the original Star Wars, but I don’t think the answer is that complex. Lucas was the mastermind behind Star Wars, but because film is a collaborative medium lots of people helped. And if you fall out of practice with something, like writing and directing, it’s not easy to get those skills back.The problem with the idea that there was a mastermind behind Lucas is that he also directed two other superb films, American Graffiti and THX. The vast majority of directors won’t ever have a run like that. So if he was always a hack, then it’s just a weird coincidence that he directed three great films on a row, establishing two popular film genres early in his career.
Yeah, he kicked himself upstairs in his mid-30s, basically right in the middle of his creative prime, on the heels of best director and original screenplay nominations for American Graffiti and Star Wars. The decision seemed to be inspired, at least in part, by a fit of pique toward the DGA and WGA.Then he tried to pick it up again in his mid-50s. And to be sure, he did a lot of uncredited writing and directing on the final two movies of the OT, and with his work on the special editions, he probably didn’t consider himself someone who’d been, effectively retired from directing or screenwriting for decades. It’s not quite Evander Holyfield stepping back into the ring at age 58, but it’s close.However, it really didn’t help that when he last officially directed a movie, he’d been a thirtysomething surrounded by talented peers—including Marcia—who weren’t awed or cowed by his achievements and could criticize him with impunity, while by the time of the Prequels he was an elder statesman who’d never been fond of criticism and didn’t invite it.
A New Hope was famously a movie saved by editing.When they filmed the original final act, the attack on the Death Star didn’t take place by Yavin and the Rebel Base. The Rebels just flew off an attacked. Which meant there was no real stakes for failure, as they could flee and launch a new attack. Which is why none of the Rebels are evacuating or reacting to the Death Star about to blow them up.
By editing in lines and new filler shots (with none of the original actors) they added the deadline and impending attack, which created the necessary tension.Walking out of a film after an exciting climax makes you happy. Walking out after a disappointing end to a great movie leaves you with mixed feelings.
You, the viewer.
Late 70’s/early 80’s era nerds.
1977
The fans, especially those of us who were stupid enough to buy ALL OF THE NOVELS back in the ‘90s, showing that the interest was still there no matter how shitty the stories got.
I was only dumb enough to read 3 of the novels before I swore off the EU forever.
Gotta throw Lawrence Kasdan’s name into that ring. The OG Star Wars was a great self-contained adventure (sorry) story, but Kasdan’s the one who brought real depth to the SW universe with Empire. No way Return of the Jedi has the same emotional resonance either if Lucas was left to his own devices with the Ewoks, etc.
There’s no one person, becuase there are so many parts of the original trilogy that are done so amazingly well that they whole becomes so much more than the sum of the parts. Things like the art direction, set design, sound design, soundtrack, and special effects are each outstanding achievements on their own. Lucas came up with the ideas but the writing was polished by a lot of his friends, Marcia did an outstanding job with the editing, etc. If you HAD to give credit to one person I would say George Lucas, for overseeing this epic collaboration and getting all the moving parts to come together into something truly special.
The answer cannot be anybody but George Lucas but it’s important not to forget that one of the things he did was to reunite such a talented team. The movies don’t work without Marcia, they certainly don’t work without John Williams’ ridiculously amazing score, and then there’s Ralph McQuarrie’s designs to consider. He assembled an all-star team.
The fans that bought the tickets.
Brian DePalma without him we would have never gotten the famous text crawl
Kenner.
This is the right answer
Ralph McQuarrie.
The Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Lawrence Kasdan
George Lucas.As to who might be a distant second, maybe production illustrator Ralph McQuarrie.
I vote Kasdan.
My general view is that George Lucas is a phenomenal world-builder, but a shitty storyteller. His ideas are exquisite, but what he does with them is pants, and descends into spectacle over substance.
Star Wars soars best when good storytellers use his world as a framework for small, intimate stories. And that’s what Empire was, at heart – a story of three intimate relationships with the backdrop of interstellar conflict. For me, Kasdan rescued Star Wars from being what it could’ve been, i.e. a whole series of ROS’s.
ROS = Revenge of the Sith or The Rise of Skywalker?
You don’t get the magic of Star Wars.Marcia bringing the truth. For all of the criticisms of the criticisms, that’s it in a fucking nutshell.
I think she’s off-base here. Star Wars’ whole deal is adherence to Campbellian monomyth, which is famously unkind to mentor figures, and Han was the mentor in TFA. I know it’s a move some folks weren’t happy about, apparently her included, but I don’t think it’s out of step with the rest of Star Wars at all.
Who was he a mentor to in TFA? Rey? For like two minutes?
Not a hard thing to do when he was one of a handful of people to be nice to her and give her life advice. Rey had Star Wars desert-bound protagonist syndrome but didn’t even have parents to find dead like Anakin and Luke did.
You could argue that her psychometry when touching Luke’s lightsaber in TFA did more to teach her about the force than Luke did in TLJ (cause she just sorta wandered off to save a guy who didn’t want/need to be saved after a… week or so? Nothing about TLJ’s actual timeline really made much sense unless Luke’s planet was in some sort of super-slow time bubble with the best Force wifi).
Structurally speaking, yes, he was Rey’s mentor. As for the brevity, that’s hardly something we can lay at JJ’s feet. Luke knew Obi-Wan for all of an afternoon, and Yoda for two days.
That it’s adherence to Campbellian Monomyth is itself a myth. Carlos Casteneda and other authors were just as influential (according to the class I took on him at USC Film ages ago), so I think Marica is on the $$ on this one.
Didn’t Harrison Ford famously stipulate that he’d only appear in the sequels if they killed him off? So it’s kinda hard to lay that particular decision at the feet of Abrams.Although, Ford then appeared in Rise of Skywalker too, so maybe that whole story was a bunch of superstitious mumbo jumbo.
Ford wanted to be killed off at the end of Empire! Well, they could have killed him off after an onscreen reunion with Leia and Luke. Also, I think money has serious sway when it comes to hanging around in a certain role.
Only reason Han Solo’s death wasn’t in Return of the Jedi was merchandising, too.
Mel understood the magic of Star WarsI remember Ebert giving shit to Space Balls for being a spoof of a movie series that was 4 years old and done now. The fact was Mel saw the marketing juggernaut Star Wars had become and would continue to be.
George Lucas himself loved Spaceballs. Ironically, his one condition was for Spaceballs not to have any merchandising. Oh well. At least I don’t have to worry about anyone seeing me playing with my dolls again.
Them planes don’t pay for themselves you know.
The lesson is: never listen to Harrison Ford on story decisions.
I think Ford only appeared in Rise of Skywalker as a favor after Carrie Fisher died. There needed to be a parental scene with Ben, and I’d bet anything Leia was originally supposed to appear to him, either in person or as a Force ghost. If the movie had gone as planned, I don’t think there’s any chance Ford’s in it. All in all, I think it was a classy move for him in tribute to Fisher.
Ford: I will never play Han Solo again.Disney: How about we give you a wheelbarrow full of cash for a one-minute scene we can film in your garage?Ford: Keep talking.
Nah
What really IS the magic of Star Wars though? 2.5 movies? As far as the quality to crap ratio of any IP… isn’t Star Wars’ pretty low? Heck, there’s more quality per minute in, like, Lost or Game of Thrones than there is in Star Wars. Both of thoses shows shit the bed after dozens of hours of A+ storytelling, and no one wants to rewatch them or expand on them at all. Yet out of 11 theatrical Star Wars releases, how many of those movies would be categorized as “magical”?If anything, I think JJ Abrams gets the “magic” or Star Wars TOO much. He tried to recapture the magic instead of, you know, telling a cohesive story spread across three movies.
On the one hand, gotta disagree about that first paragraph, particularly the idea that no one wants more Game of Thrones, given that there’s a large segment of the commentariat that will yell “Finish the damn books!” any time GRRM’s name comes up. Being sick of Benioff & Weiss is not the same thing as being sick of GoT.On the other hand, agree heartily on Abrams’ problem not being the magic of Star Wars. What really works in TFA (and what little works of RoS) comes down to Abrams setting up and returning to these close, intense relationships like the ones in the OT, where you really believe the main characters care about each other, even when they’re bickering (sometimes, particularly when they’re bickering). That’s the living soul of the movies that the prequels in particular missed, where because Lucas can’t direct actors and because he determined that the Jedi had to be unemotional and attachment-free, there weren’t any believable friendships between the characters.
Right, I meant GoT as a television entity, not the books.And one might also kind of argue that one of the people who doesn’t see to get the “magic” of Star Wars the most is… George Lucas. If he truly got it, he wouldn’t have devoted all that time to redoing all the effects of the original trilogy. That’s not what people loved about it.
He also probably wouldn’t have had Obi-Wan go to a space diner.
But that’s true of Disney in general. They take the myths and fairy tales of the world and turn them into middle class merchandise.
As someone who actually really likes, maybe loves, the Luke/Kylo/Rey storyline from The Last Jedi and cringed a bit at pandering to the female audience bit I agree with her meta-criticism — modern Star Wars often feels clinical rather than emotional.
I think Star Wars is destined to be despised in any iteration with anyone at the helm no matter who they “talk to”…just the nature of the fan base at this point. Unless it’s Feloni or Taika…talk to them more.
*looks at the clock counting down the years until we can discuss the sequel trilogy without weapons in hand*
*reads this*
*sighs and gets out the long stick to hit the reset button*
Lucas quit the business after she and George divorced. According to the always correct Wikipedia, Marcia’s divorce settlement was 50 MILLLLION DOLLARS. I’d quit too.
Is the “$50 million for sleeping with George Lucas and listening to his bullshit about Whills” offer still on the table? Asking for a friend.
She fucked the guy who was building the library at Skywalker Ranch while married to George. Dude was heartbroken. The divorce came just as they had adopted a baby girl, too. Her contributions to Star Wars are also way overstated and just serve as proxy to shit on Lucas. She sucks outside of being a good editor.
Woman in loveless marriage finds comfort in the researcher of one of her greatest contributions to culture and thus one of the only other people at the time who could possibly recognize and appreciate them? Gee, nothing potentially understandable or human in that.
Hot take: if your first response to the idea of a woman having her contributions overshadowed and diminished by men is to not only rebut it sans evidence but imply she should rather be partially defined by the “fact” that she’s a cruel jezebel… maybe don’t.
How about this? Lifetime marriages are torture, especially for creatives, because there’s no way in hell a couple will grow in lockstep. For people who purposefully grow, as part of their life essence, marriage can be a prison. For people who just want to cuddle up on a Friday and have beers with friends, marriage is great.
Man in loveless marriage finds his wife fucking the carpenter he hired to build his library. Gee, nothing potentially shitty about that. I guess when women cheat it’s eMpoWerINg.Hot take: No woman’s contributions is being overshadowed or diminished. She was a very good film editor, and one of three editors who worked on SW to get it done in time for release, not because it was a “mess.” She had one good idea related to other first film, yes—she and countless others whom Lucas also went to for feedback. If you want to make this a weird “feminism” thing, the brilliant Gloria Katz should be getting the praise for saving SW’s dialogue.
George? is that you? You seem bitter
Yeah it’s me, and I’m tired of Star Wars fans.
We all are George. But you sold that shit to the Mouse, we are gonna get Star Wars movies and shows for the next hundred years. At least the Mandalorian is entertaining and that Star Wars anime thing looks fun.
No woman’s contributions are being diminished says the person that just posted that Marcia Lucas’s contributions to Star Wars are way overstated
I don’t think you know what diminished means.I say the same shit when Gary Kurtz’s “contributions” are brought up. Guess I’m also a misandrist.
Everybody’s lives are messy. We were talking about her cinematic contributions, or at worst, joking that a person made wealthy by a huge divorce settlement would have no reason to work again. You provided no argument that her contributions were lesser except to say you thought so. What you DID bring in “evidence” was her personal life, and angrily presumed no fault for a failed marriage lay in a man consumed by his work, famously incapable of being collaborated with and was thus collaborated AROUND (ask any actor in the films about that), and was so emotionally stunted and callous to human interaction that as a director he made Natalie Portman look like a bad actor. Exactly what are we supposed to take away from your angry, unprovoked, yet bizarrely focused subject change, especially when its of a piece of A LOT of men’s attacks on women?
He had every right to be heartbroken, assuming the best of him. Assuming the best of her, she had every right to be heartbroken enough to do what she did. Relationships end far before folks ask for divorces, and not everyone realizes it at the same time, and this is sad, but utterly normal. Everyone arguing with you is merely curious WTF that has to with ANYTHING anyone was talking about, and from the dismissive, contemptuous, and (most importantly) utterly textbook way you’ve made that argument, we have every right to assume… less than the best of you. At best, the words you’ve chosen do not reflect well on who you actually are as you think.
If they do, however, well, no one here is particularly offended by your preemptive strike on the motivations of anyone talking about the accomplishments of a lady you don’t like. Just tired by the commonness of it.
If it’s any consolation, George, you do still have all that money. Like, just a ridiculous amount of money.
Marcia took half, George funneled his money into his film companies, tech, and workers’ benefits, and later sold SW for billions and gave most of it away to charity. George Lucas: famous for being the kind of person to think being cheated on by his wife and left to care for a newly adopted infant daughter by himself was worth fame and fortune.
Wait you want to call him a saint for investing in his own companies? That he profits from? LOLOLOLOL. And she didn’t “take” half anymore than George took half. The marital assets were divided equitably by the court. That’s just how divorce works, no matter what the MRAs say.
Wait you want to call him a saintlolwut
Marcia took half, George funneled his money into his film companies, tech, and workers’ benefits …This. It’s right in the comment I replied to. George funneling his money into companies he profits from does not make him “good” and Marcia receiving half of the marital assets in the exact same way that George received half the marital assets does not make her “bad.” It’s not “taking,” that’s just how divorce works. And they shared custody of their daughter.
What a weird argument you’re having with yourself.
If the stories are true, if she hadn’t stitched Star Wars into an actual movie, then nothing that followed would have been possible. Have you seen the “George’s cut” footage? It’s dire. Like, unwatchable bad.
Stop with this canard. All movies are a mess until they’re edited. There was no real George’s cut. There was a cut by the original editor, an Englishman (John Jympson iirc), who made a shitty cut because it was too traditional. George was one of the new wave of film school guys and the editor was an old school British guy. The editor did not vibe with the kineticism that George intended when he shot it. Most of the British crew on SW was very conservative stylistically and didn’t really respect what George was trying to do (this would of course change once the first movie established things). When George arrived to see the cut he freaked, tried to fix it, but realized he had to start from scratch because that wasn’t helping. Knowing starting from scratch meant it wouldn’t make the release day, he called on his wife and trusted friends to take over. Richard Chew, Marcia Lucas, and Paul Hirsch tackled different parts of the film under George’s watch. The Jympson cut (and George’s attempt to fix it) was not “dire, unwatchable, bad.” But it definitely wasn’t working. He was a good editor, but not fit for SW, especially before anyone but George could envision the SW house style. Marcia in particular edited the final battle to mimic the rhythms of the WW2 aerial footage that George compiled as an early animatic.So no, the stories the internet sewing circle that shots on Lucas aren’t true. The stories as told by the people who were there, are.
^^ See this? Brining up a woman’s actions to dismiss her contributions?
This is misogyny 101, if anyone wanted an example.
^^ See this? Bringing up a person’s shitty actions in a marriage when divorce was brought up by not the reasons as to why?This is showing receipts 101, if anyone wanted an example.
You definitely don’t have a problem with women or anything
Shitting on the Marcia Lucas myth means I hate all women, wild.
Repeating stale old MRA arguments around divorce may indicate that you have issues with women, yes. Or maybe it’s just Martha that you have a weird hate boner for. In which case, maybe don’t regurgitate old MRA arguments. This is some grand old trolling you’re doing here. And here’s the thing. Marcia Lucas may well be a shitty person. George Lucas may well be a shitty person. Or maybe they’re both great! Or one or the other! But you’re coming in super super hot in this thread defending all things Lucas and condemning all things Marcia. I’m just saying that the fact that the court split things equitably in the divorce and shared custody of their daughter really isn’t evidence either way, despite your insisting that it is. Neither is George investing in his own companies because that’s just capitalism.
This is some grand old trolling you’re doing here.Nice projection. I’m probably going to get sucked into a vortex of stupid by feeding you but… What MRA argument did I make? My tangent summarizing where George’s wealth went was in direct reply to a comment about his wealth being a consolation prize, and was never designed to be “evidence” of anything, much less how I’m supposedly mad at divorce laws now(?). It was made in a specific context. Bizarrely, you seem to have cherrypicked some of the sentences (even a single word!) from it and spun entire epic sagas out of them. Are you okay? Btw Marcia decided to go AWOL with the parenting.
The MRA tangent was the implication that equitably splitting marital assets and sharing custody of their daughter somehow made George the victim of evil Marcia.
The MRA tangent was the implication that equitably splitting marital assets and sharing custody of their daughter somehow made George the victim of evil Marcia.Yeah no. You’re trying to gaslight me, which is an MRA tactic.
I described it pretty accurately. You came guns blazing into a thread whose OP merely noted that they, too, might quit the biz with 50 mil to insinuate with a hate boner for Marcia Lucas that can be seen from the moon. part of you supposed evidence was the totally normal situation of equitable distribution of marital assets and shared custody. If you want to hate her for cheating, although honestly there’s only your unsupported assumption on that one. But fine, you think she cheated, go ahead and dislike her. But divorces involve splitting the assets and coparenting, which is exactly what they did.
George fucked the woman who was building the library at Skywalker Ranch while married to Marcia. She was heartbroken. The divorce came just as they had adopted a baby girl, too. He left her to raise the kid alone. George’s contributions to Star Wars are also way overstated and just serve as proxy to shit on Marcia. He sucks outside of being a good conceptualist.
*Fixed so people can hate the shitty person in this scenario without being a miSOgYnISt
No one was left to raise a child alone. Two divorced people shared custody of their daughter. Marcia and George both contributed to Star Wars. One spouse treated on the other, which sucks and is a bad thing to do, but is a common story in these situations and doesn’t make on person or the other evil. See how easy it is to accurate, even-handed, and not sexist?
George was left to raise a child alone, literally. Marcia abandoned her daughter, having nothing to do with her shortly after the divorce. Marcia was not Amanda’s mom growing up. I don’t know why you’re having trouble understanding this simple fact. George created, personally developed, and closely guided others’ development of Star Wars (except for the EU which largely sucked). Marcia and hundreds of others contributed bits and pieces, which is cool and how things work. Marcia cheated on George, which sucks and is a bad thing to do.See how easy it is to be accurate, lucid, and not a right-wing caricature of an “SJW”?
Nonsense, every source says she co-parented Amanda with George. I don’t know why you’re having trouble with this simple fact. That George and Marcia contributed to Star Wars and helped with its success and that cheating is a bad thing to do is exactly what I said before so it’s great to see you making progress.
“Nonsense, every source says she co-parented Amanda with George.” lol she did not raise Amanda. Legal shared custody =/= actually being around.“George and Marcia contributed to Star Wars”lol George literally created it. Marcia’s contributions were not any more special than the hundreds of others George solicited from his peers and employees. “part of you supposed evidence”Stop using MRA-style gaslighting, it’s weird.“although honestly there’s only your unsupported assumption on that one.” “you think she cheated…”lol it’s in JW Rinzler’s Making of Return of the Jedi book
It’s OK for the court to divide marital assets equitably. Doesn’t make either party a good or bad person. It’s OK to share custody and co-parent. Nobody got abandoned with 2yo Amanda, she was raised by both her parents. George was just fine. he had a lot of money and had plenty of help as he did his 1/2 of the parenting.
Committing one misogyny by shitting on the myth of Marcia Lucas isn’t enough for me, I must commit a misogyny against the legacy of another important female contributor to Star Wars. This time it’s Suzy Rice.https://www.themarysue.com/star-wars-logo-creator-fascism/What a dummy and a shitbag.
I am one of those people who thinks that Marcia Lucas is as essential to the original trilogy as George, but the killing of Han Solo is obvious; Harrison Ford wanted him dead. It was either kill Han Solo or no Han Solo.I also think that the Han Solo stuff (including his death) was the best part in 7 and the only good part in 9.As for the Rey having force powers and not knowing why, Luke was the same (we found out at the end of Empire Strikes Back where as we find out at early in Rise of Skywalker). The story was much better when there wasn’t a reason why and Rey wasn’t special, just a vessel for the Force to balance itself out (I’d also argue that even though it’s maybe the most famous twist of all time, the reveal that Darth is Luke’s father was a net negative for both Star Wars, as it completely sold out the farm boy from nowhere narrative of a New Hope, and blockbuster films as a whole where every character has to have some special, by birth, right to being a hero.)
The story was much better when there wasn’t a reason why and Rey wasn’t special, just a vessel for the Force to balance itself out (I’d also argue that even though it’s maybe the most famous twist of all time, the reveal that Darth is Luke’s father was a net negative for both Star Wars, as it completely sold out the farm boy from nowhere narrative of a New Hope, and blockbuster films as a whole where every character has to have some special, by birth, right to being a hero.)That’s something I liked about TLJ, that it harkened back to the idea that the Force was available to those who were open to it (and maybe having a sith lord as a dad couldn’t hurt). I’d argue about the net negative of the soap opera twist with Darth being Luke’s dad, only because the genetics torch only really got cemented with ROS. In The Clone Wars TV show they have a whole thing about the Jedi Knights going out to find force-sensitive children, and they’re clearly not children of known Jedi Knights (who shouldn’t be fucking in the first place!) or Sith Lords, but just kids who have an affinity for the Force (or midichlorians). I know that last bit somewhat contradicts what I was saying earlier about the Force being available to anyone, but even with midichlorians, it wasn’t implied (at least as I inferred it) that having a high midichlorian count had anything to do with genetics, and was more of an anomaly.
Don’t forget the ‘Green/Corellian Jedi’. They did the whole marriage thing in the EU and had family lines of strong Jedi.
I agree that its obvious that not every force sensative person should necessarily be a child of a Jedi, but Rey was not an ordinary Jedi (and neither was Luke and neither was Kylo). If you’re going to make Rey a “chosen one” there should be some reason for it, especially if you’re going to make a big mystery of it in the first movie and get people guessing. The answer they ultimately came to was not very satisfying, but I also think making her be a “nobody” is also an anticlimax.
If you’re going to make Rey a “chosen one” there should be some reason for it,Not only is this not true, it’s bad thematic writing in most cases.
I disagree!
“Jedi Knights (who shouldn’t be fucking in the first place!)“Yeah that was one of the big reasons why the Clone Wars Jedi were absolutely horrible.
This. I always hated this idea that you had to be a “mutant” of some sort to use the force. At no point in the OT was this even hinted at. The Force was an energy field that permeated the universe, and anyone who opened themselves up to it could use it. But it also didn’t seem to give you superhuman, superhero powers either. It was basically meditation. You’d open yourself up, free yourself from time, space, and emotion, and have clarity and focus… and some telekinetic powers, I suppose. It was eastern mysticism. I sorta hate what happened to the concept in the prequels.
I liked in the TLJ that Rey was a nobody. Not connected to the Skywalkers or the Kenobi’s or the Palpatines or the Yodas, just someone who had the Force.but then the toxic parts of the fandom “won” and so we get her as a Palpatine.
What bothers me more than the family connection is just how repetitive the new trilogy feels. TFA is basically a soft remake of the original movie, and then the last one borrows the family connection as leverage for trying to win the hero over to the dark side and a theoretically less powerful villain turning on the Emperor. The Last Jedi is both loved and hated for being the only movie that actively tries to be something different, and even that cribs the dying mentor/force ghost bit from Kenobi.
All the best Star Wars stuff since the ‘90s has been free from the shackles of being the official next chapter.
TFA was definitely more of the same. TLJ though… had some good ideas but essentially made Rey/Finn/Rose/Poe the biggest idiots in the galaxy who just managed to screw up their way to a sorta victory that got 90% of their allies killed. I honestly think most of TLJ should’ve been a side story along the lines of the Solo and Rogue One only focused entirely on Finn, Poe, Rose and the Resistance with Phasma and Hux as the main villains.
That would leave room for the Rey, Kylo, Luke, Leia and Snoke force shenanigans to receive actual development in ‘TLJ’. With a chance to actually develop Snoke as a character considering he was supposed to be non-Sith dark side researcher Palpatine wasn’t even aware of until sometime during the construction of the second Death Star (and then RoS just made him a pickled Sith Alchemy puppet or something).That way it could all come together in a RoS that could’ve still had the Palpatine reveal, but actually established her having a good onscreen relationship with Luke and Leia rather than the curmudgeonly antagonistic relationship with Luke and the ‘we hugged once because Han died’ relationship she had with Leia.
I have no problem with Rey being crazy strong (and she still had nothing on Jedi from the animated Clone Wars series, The Old Republic series or even Force Unleashed) but even the Dyad could’ve used some actual development. I mean, they had the chance to establish that Snoke had found a way to achieve the pinnacle of the Bane’s(?) Rule of Two establishment. Both Rey and Kylo were people who had a lot of power in the force, barely any training, and the ability to use both sides without getting fully corrupted and it just went nowhere. That scene in TLJ where Luke is totally freaked out by Rey embracing the dark side and not resisting or being affected by it at all could’ve had some actual meaning. Likewise, Ben Solo’s attempt to use only the dark side causing him pain should’ve been able to tie right into that. Even in TFA, he had to hurt himself to get stronger with the dark side while Rey can use it casually and seemed to only have some problems with the light side. I dunno, it just seemed like Johnson and Abrams were on two totally different wavelengths for the first two films (with Johnson apparently more interested in an anti-war profiteering message than portraying any competent characters on screen) and then Abrams tried to shove two 2 1/2 hour movies worth of story into one under 3 hour movie in a half-assed manner.
One thing I never got was the Rey as a Mary Sue argument a lot of the more questionable new trilogy detractors use though. She basically ran on the same Star Wars protagonist rules both Luke and Anakin ran on in the films and the numerous other protagonists ran on in the EU games/novels. Considering she had a severe case of force psychometry the first time she touched a lightsaber, you’d think there would be way more lee-way given. Particularly when you consider that the whole reason it wasn’t fully embraced by the Jedi was that it shared experiences and emotions that could cause Jedi to fall to the dark side.
The idea that Johnson’s overt politics are out of step with Star Wars as a whole is…interesting, to put it charitably. From its inception, and most obviously when it comes to the Ewoks, the original trilogy was commentary on Vietnam. The Empire’s designs were based in Nazi iconography. In my opinion, Johnson was truer to the spirit of what Star Wars is, while Abrams was truer to what people think Star Wars is.
I also disagree with you about the need to further include development for either Snoke or Palpatine. The real dramatic juice was between Rey and Kylo. I think Johnson was wise to remove the one character who stood in the way of them being direct opponents. I think Abrams was not for adding back in a third party instead of letting the naturally electric conflict between Rey and Kylo power the film.
I’m not saying his politics are out of place. I’m saying he put more effort into developing them than just about anything else. Finn and Rose’s entire story arc was primarily focused on it. It was so blatant that the story outright skipped their actual mission in order to for Benicio Del Toro’s character to not only instantly replace the guy they were actually looking for, but also double down on the politics with his ‘betrayal’.
The biggest problem I have with TLJ is that Rey/Finn/Poe/Rose are portrayed as total idiots who only get by because of plot armor and luck. Finn and Rose instantly failed their mission because of a refusal to park legally. Rey just wandered off after a few days of training (getting grumped at by a old Luke that just gave up entirely), to save a guy who she was specifically trying to kill in the previous movie and also instantly failed her mission. Rey and Kylo’s extremely odd link where rain drops could cross dimensions was brushed off as Snoke trolling them both the same way he trolled Hux.
The worst part? Del Toro’s character, despite being in the movie for maybe 10 minutes total, somehow ends up with more on-screen development and personality than both Phasma and Snoke. We actually get his motivation (money!) and he actually tries to impart life lessons on Finn and Rose (the people with money don’t care about who rules the galaxy, don’t trust blindly, everyone’s in it for themselves). Leia and Huldo, characters who could actually have imparted lessons or at least hope towards the Rebellion, were either neutralized until the plot needed them or totally stonewalling the viewpoint characters just to turn out to be kind in a single conversation later.
I mean, I love the cinematography of TLJ, particularly how Huldo’s
sacrifice seemed like a scene you’d see in 80’s space opera anime like
Captain Harlock or Macross. The white/red ground of the last planet was also really well done. If anything, I think Johnson’s biggest
mistake was spending more time
trying to subvert the tropes inherent to Star Wars than making sure his
characters acted like human beings more than plot devices. Particularly when the last 5 minutes of the film would return to the tropes like the film didn’t spend most of its runtime going against the grain.
Abrams definitely dropped the ball with RoS but at that point, he was left with a gutted rebellion, no Han Solo, Luke or Leia, and main characters that included a half-trained Sith wannabe, a wannabe Jedi who skipped out after a week or so of training, an ace pilot who only seems good at getting his non-protagonist allies killed, Chewbacca the Wookie wingman, and nostalgia. He dove head first into the nostalgia like he was trying hard to prove South Park was right about him. I think he also wasn’t originally meant to be the director of that film in the first place. Either way, he’s not exactly the guy you go to for ending anything. He’s only good at getting things started.
I definitely think Snoke, Phasma, and even Hux could’ve been given more to do though. Phasma in particularly wound up as the Boba Fett of the new trilogy, complete with a dubious falling death that she could totally survive given how she canonically was stated to survive the end of the first film.
I think it’s fair to say the mechanics of the missions didn’t interest Johnson nearly as much as the philosophical question: does Star Wars matter? Poe’s flailing, Finn’s harebrained mission, Rey’s faith in Kylo…they all mirror exploits from the OT, except things don’t go as well for them as it did for the heroes they idolize. Degree by degree, Johnson patiently builds the case that Star Wars doesn’t matter.
And then, in glorious fashion, he repudiates himself.
Finn, having seen the slave children on Canto Bight, realizes what he’s fighting for and embraces the rebel cause. Poe learns, at a heavy price, how to lead. And Rey, despite being let down by someone she believed in, manages to convince a broken and disillusioned Luke to open his heart again and be the hero he didn’t believe he could be anymore. And all of it mythologized in the form of that boy playing with a broom as he looks to the stars.
I respect the POV that the movie could have been more mechanically sound. But in my opinion, all that nuts-and-bolts stuff is just irrelevant window dressing around what really matters: those big, sexy themes. Rian Johnson spent two and a half hours interrogating whether or not Star Wars matters. And I think the thing all his detractors always miss is that he ultimately concludes that it does, so very much.
Well said!
I can’t be objective about The Last Jedi. I think it’s a Black Panther-level achievement of an individualistic filmmaker managing to make something deeply personal on the canvas of a giant Hollywood blockbuster.
While respect your opinion, I have to disagree. To me, nothing shown on screen hits the growth you’re mentioning the characters had with the possible exception of Finn. Poe didn’t actually have a chance to learn how to lead considering he was stonewalled by Huldo and then knocked out by Leia. He essentially got away with disobeying orders twice, getting all of the Resistance’s offensive forces killed and mutinying. Rey scared the hell out of Luke before leaving and honestly must’ve teleported across the galaxy at least twice in TLJ to make the timeline of events work. Finn and Rose end up doing things entirely unrelated to what they’re supposed to be doing but still get caught up in the end events while also managing to get countless Resistance forces killed. Snoke turns out to be a dark side troll who narrates his own death as it happens. Phasma turns out to be Boba Fett 2.0, and BB-8 ends up being the deadliest person in the film. Nothing that happens matters because the villains never actually got a chance to do anything other than talk and everything is left the same way it was at the end of TFA.
There was a clear message the director was going for, but it came at the expense of character development, the overall plot, and what is normally considered good storytelling. What Johnson did is something you save for the franchise’ side stories, not something you put front and center as second part of a planned trilogy. While Abrams dropped the ball big time, Johnson’s the one that threw a bad pass. Even the leaked ‘script’ from before Abrams returned had serious pacing issues thanks to the third film having to essentially work from scratch again.
I saw TLJ and immediately recognized Johnson as going for “Wuthering Heights in Space” and it worked to the extent that there are still lots and lots of passionate Reylo fans out there. I’m not one of them because – dysfunction junction – but I got what he was going for. If he had been able to make the next movie, Finn wouldn’t have been nearly so screwed over either. I also saw Johnson’s love of old movies all over TLJ and that is certainly in line with the original trilogy. Lucas outright cribbed from all his favorite films.
The funny thing about The Last Jedi is, it’s not even THAT different itself. It cribs its main plot elements from Empire (the mentor plot you mentioned, the side characters going off on a separate adventure that ultimately fails while building their romantic plot), and follows that movie’s structure to a T (well, other than moving the Hoth fight to the end, and basically adopting the Luke/Vader/Emperor scene from Jedi). But Luke Skywalker was mean in it so the internet lost their shit and we got Rise of Skywalker, one of the worst movies in the entire “official” run.
Well, saying TLJ “cribs” the OT by using a Force ghost is a bit of a stretch, considering they’re used in rather different ways. It’s almost like saying, “it cribs the idea of a space battle from A New Hope!” Well, yeah, it’s just a thing that exists in the universe.
It’s more that a mentor sacrifices himself in battle against the big enemy but then becomes one so he can still smile beneficently at his protégé. Individually, all those elements are just tropes of the genre/parts of the universe, but it’s suspicious when they pop up in that exact configuration again, particularly given all the other ways the movies seem to be “homaging” the original trilogy. It wouldn’t be an issue if Kylo become one or whatever.
I disagree with the idea that Vader being Luke’s father is a net negative. Even in the original film Luke’s was established as having a connection to him through his father and Obi-Wan so it’s not like he was a farm boy from nowhere to begin with. I’d argue it’s the one of the few times the connection is done well. I agree most overdo it and now everybody has to be connected somehow but that’s not Star Wars’ fault, it’s just lazy writing.As for Han, though, agreed that Harrison only did it if Han was killed. But I’d argue it was a crappy, pointless death. It accomplished absolutely nothing. They could have had him die in a way that had more impact and resulted in something but instead it was just, “Stab, you’re dead.” Disappointing end to the character.
I don’t think his death was pointless at all. It:
-gave a personal dimension to Rey’s conflict with Kylo
-created emotional turmoil that helped fuel Kylo’s dramatic engine for the next two movies
-put the dramatic weight on the new characters so they couldn’t rely on the old favorites to handle everything
-showed how far he’d come since the start of the saga, willing to walk into almost certain death to gamble on love instead of just looking after himself
I get that there are fans who wanted the legacy characters to godmode their way through this trilogy (not saying you’re one of them). Han going Rambo on stormtroopers, Luke channeling his inner Zatoichi. But IMO, both of their ends worked on a thematic level, and as the culminations of their arcs.
Yeah, I didn’t want the legacy characters overpowering everything and was fine with shifting the focus to the new characters. I’ll admit that saying Han’s death was pointless was a bit much but to me it felt pointless because it just didn’t have much dramatic or emotional impact. It never felt like the story really put much effort into explaining why this was a big deal for Kylo outside of them just being father and son.Like you said, it gave a personal dimension to Rey’s conflict with Kylo and that’s part of the problem. We were shown why this was a big deal for Rey, the woman Han had known for a few hours/day, and not the actual father and son involved in the moment. They just relied on it being Han and his son to give it meaning but this was their first meeting. I don’t really know anything about their relationship, the kind of father Han was, why Kylo turned, etc…Then it largely felt ignored going forward. It’s mentioned in TLJ but Rey moves on to Luke as her next father figure and Kylo quickly shifts his focus to Rey and taking over the First Order. I don’t even think Leia mentions it. Sure, Han shows up in RoS but that felt more like they lost Carrie Fisher and needed someone for Kylo to emote off of. So it never felt like a driving force for Kylo since he’s only shown struggling with it in the moment and then later talks about how it didn’t make him feel stronger. He’s never really shown to be haunted by it, at least not in any substantial way I can recall.As for showing how far Han had come, we’d really already seen that in the OT in his interactions with Leia and his willingness to admit he loves her. TFA gives us a Han who abandoned his wife and started smuggling again. Sure it was out of guilt due to Kylo turning (although, again, never shown WHY he feels guilty or how/if he contributed) but that’s still kind of a pretty big backslide.Honestly I could probably go on but this is getting long and I’m not sure I’m articulate enough to go through all of it. In the end, though, I felt it was kind of pointless since it didn’t really feel like it amounted to much long term. But that’s just me. I’m sure others pulled more out of it than I did and that’s fine. It could also be my overall opinion of the ST is altering my memory of things a bit, too.
Agreed. Han’s death is one of the few things that works for me in the otherwise deeply shoddy TFA. And, yeah, the new trilogy should always have focused on the new characters with the legacy characters as mentors. And mentors die, it’s kind of the whole point.
Was it a pointless death? Being killed by his own son? It definitely wasn’t pointless for Kylo Ren, and I don’t think it was pointless for Han, either. I think he knew it was a possibility that Kylo would kill him, but he had to go out there anyway. Was it a little to tidily parallel to Vader/Obi-Wan? Of course. But I can’t even think of a more impactful way for Han to die. He sacrificed himself trying to save his son.
I don’t know, everybody responds differently and all that, but I was pretty skeptical about The Force Awakens going in, and Han’s death still hit hard. I think it was well-utilized in setting up Kylo Ren’s character, too, and differentiating him from Vader. Kylo’s not someone who was “seduced by the dark side,” he’s somebody who feels betrayed by the “good” guys he was always surrounded by, who actively wills himself to be evil because it’s the only place he thinks he can still fit. Killing Han isn’t easy for him, it’s an active choice to commit to his path.
From the moment the second trailer for TFA came out, and it was clear they had committed to a new cast, I knew Han Solo was going to die. It’s an extremely obvious narrative beat. In fact, I thought it was fairly obvious that all three main characters would die, one in each movie. With Luke appearing at the end of TFA, that meant he was for sure doomed in TLJ. They might not have followed through with Leia if Carrie had lived, but the new generation stepping up to replace the old generation is a very common story device, and pretty baked in to Star Wars at a fundamental level at that.
There’s nothing wrong with the idea of passing the mantle to the next generation. It’s why Alec Guinness wasn’t the star of “Star Wars”, they were already using the trope before we even knew who Kenobi was.
Oh, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it. I liked both Han and Luke’s deaths. I think it’s weird that anyone would say killing them is not Star Wars, when as you say, Kenobi did the same thing.
Right. I’m agreeing with you. I’m sure Marcia Lucas deserves tons of credit and has plenty of good ideas, but the notion of killing the OG heroes as being a mistake is not one of them. It’s a very standard trope (in a good way.)
but the notion of killing the OG heroes as being a mistake is not one of them. It’s a very standard trope (in a good way.)I think part of the problem with both Han and Luke isn’t that they die, it’s is that Abrams/Johnson felt the need to make them both kinda suck.
The joy of seeing Han Solo again covers up the fact that he’d not only regressed from when we last saw him and gone back to being a smuggler, but is also apparently really shitty at it. He’s worse at it in TFA than when we first met him in ANH, mostly for the sake of a couple of throwaway gags and an excuse for a Raiders-referencing action scene.
And when we meet Luke, he hasn’t just exiled himself to this planet, he’s completely given up and is sitting around waiting to die. Dude might as well be sitting in the dark listing to The Cure.
So our hero mentor characters aren’t heroes anymore and are both failures at the stuff we like them for being good at.
As for the Rey having force powers and not knowing why, Luke was the sameNot really. He has a Jedi mentor in Obi-Wan Kenobi, who trains him aboard the Millennium Falcon as they’re flying to Alderaan. And it’s not even until the end of the movie that he uses the Force to make a shot that he openly bragged about being able to make even back at Rebel Base. And to top it off, they explicitly mention that his father was a Jedi right in the first film.Love it or hate it, Luke’s mastery even at the beginning of the second film isn’t comparable to Rey’s by the end of TFA. Rey demonstrates not just a connection to the Force but instinctively uses it in ways the audience has seen it used before, but she hasn’t.
Luke had four point three minutes of Jedi training after living a comparatively comfortable life. Rey had been using the Force to survive on her own for years, and fights with a lightsaber the same way she fought with her staff earlier in the film. This was set up very obviously in TFA. The seven year old sitting next to me got it first go. Adults who can’t get it years after the movie first aired remain very funny to watch.
And the most we see Luke do with the Force before training extensively with Yoda is pull a lightsaber out of the snow under a life-or-death situation. That seems about right for someone who received “four point three minutes” of training from a Jedi Master. I “got” that Rey used Luke’s lightsaber like she used her staff, but it remains funny to me that people insist that Luke’s prowess and ability with the Force is comparable to Rey, who uses a Jedi mind trick in TFA (something we don’t see Luke do until Return of the Jedi).
Luke instinctively used the force without knowing it also, that’s why he thought it was no big deal to make that shot, becuase he had been using the force all along on Tatooine. Anakin used the force without training more than either of them when he was pod racing. So Rey’s force sensitivity is not without precedent.
I have zero issue with Rey’s Force “sensitivity.” You raise a good point about Anakin using the Force with zero training (almost exclusively in the form of premonition), but arguing that Luke had been “using the Force all along on Tatooine” is a reading of the film I’ve never seen before. I don’t know if that’s something they added in the new Marvel comics that are Officially Canon, but nothing in the film really implies that.My issue is that Rey, seemingly out of nowhere, Jedi Mind Tricks a Stormtrooper. To me, that far surpasses anything we saw Anakin or Luke do before they received any kind of training. We only saw Jedi Masters do it. Luke didn’t do it until Return of the Jedi. If Rey had seen someone else do it and then tried it herself, I would have found that more plausible. But instead, Abrams relies on the audience having seen Jedi do that before. Like a lot of his work, it’s a narrative shortcut.
“My issue is that Rey, seemingly out of nowhere, Jedi Mind Tricks a Stormtrooper. To me, that far surpasses anything we saw Anakin or Luke do before they received any kind of training. We only saw Jedi Masters do it. Luke didn’t do it until Return of the Jedi. If Rey had seen someone else do it and then tried it herself, I would have found that more plausible.”
Rey “Jedi Mind Tricks” a stormtrooper very shortly after Kylo was busily trying to do it to her, and even more very shortly after she instinctively pushed back against him while he was doing it and realized that she overpowered him. It’s perfectly plausible by your exact standard!
Fair enough. I haven’t seen the movie since it was released in theaters. I remembered that scene bothered me, but it looks like a don’t have a leg to stand on.The Force Awakens: 10/10
No, you were correct.
No it’s not. Pushing back against someone who is trying to probe your mind is totally different than magically intuiting you have the power to issue psychic commands. Kylo himself wasn’t actively doing the “mind trick” thing on her, which could have justified it.
And thus ends arguably the most ridiculous statement I have ever uttered. But I stand by it!
If you want to do it that way, then, blocking a couple of harmless zaps from a softball-sized drone is totally different than firing torpedos from a fast-moving starfighter while under attack and flying through a narrow trench, yet everyone seems to accept that was fine.
And it’s worth noting that you’ve moved the goalpost for your argument from “Star Wars sets up and pays off Luke’s use of the Force at the very end. It teaches the audience at the same time Obi-Wan teaches Luke what the Force is and what it’s capable of. This is good storytelling.” to “SPACE MAGIC DOESN’T WORK THAT WAY”. This movie set up Rey’s use of the Force easily as much as the original one did for Luke’s, with the added bonus that the audience didn’t need to be clued in anymore like they had the first time.
No, Luke’s training in the Falcon is directly related to what he does in the DS. The only thing he uses the Force for is to make the shot. The rest: flying, etc., was all done by Luke using regular ol’ skills.They’re the same thing, both are about using the Force to literally guide your hand. Same skill, different applications.
I think you’re conflating my posts with someone else’s, but to answer your second point, Rey’s use of the Force is totally different and unearned. I have no problem with someone having a preternatural connection to the Force that manifests in accidental or natural ways they may not even be aware of . See Broom Boy. See Anakin in TPM.Nor do you need to have every little Force power explained laboriously or set up to work. Luke is never shown how to use telekinesis but manages to do it in ESB, no doubt because he’s been playing with the Force for months between movies and has figured some stuff out through trial and error.
But none of that is what happens in TFA. And, dorky as it is to say, I’ll say it again: Rey being probed by Kylo doesn’t mean she should “know” that mind-tricking is a thing that exists. It would have been VERY easy for the script to have fixed this problem, for Rey to have stumbled onto this skill by accident or for Kylo to have tried it on her specifically so she’s at least primed to know it’s a thing.But that’s not how the scene plays out. It’s one of countless dumb, unforced errors the movie commits.
The only way TFA “sets up” Rey using the Force is that someone says to her mid-movie, “Hey, there’s a thing called the Force and you should try it sometime.” That’s a million miles away from what happens in “Star Wars” and deeply insufficient justification for the feats Rey pulls off.
Rey knows that mind-tricking (and “lifting rocks” with your mind) is a thing because it’s part of the legend of Luke that everybody is familiar with by the time of the Sequels. At the time of A New Hope, the Empire has suppressed knowledge of the Jedi so much that Luke isn’t aware of them at all, even though the Order has been gone only 20 or so years. Although EU writers wrote a lot about Luke “researching” the Force between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, if I remember the ESB novelization right, the story at the time was that Luke hadn’t heard anything else from Obi-Wan’s ghost since the Death Star blew up, and he had no idea about the Force being used for telekinesis until the ability instinctively came to him while he was in mortal peril, about to be eaten by a Wompa. Which kind of jibes with what Rey does, since both her mind trick and and her use of telekinesis come with either her or Finn in mortal peril (ditto for Leia’s use of telekinesis to rescue herself from dying in TLJ). Unlike Luke at the beginning of ESB, at least she has the idea in her head that doing something like this is possible because Han confirmed for her that the stories of Luke doing incredible things with the Force weren’t just stories, and because she’d experienced a Force vision after touching Luke’s old saber, indicating that the things he could do might be things she could do, too.Her ability to use a lightsaber is more problematic and would be a bigger deal, if we’d ever seen Luke receive instruction in anything lightsaber-related beside blocking shots from the drone in A New Hope. Due to the prequel retcon that Yoda’s a lightsaber master, it’s possible Yoda might’ve taught him, but in ESB, Luke goes from having seen Obi-Wan duel Vader in a New Hope to holding his own against Vader in ESB, on the strength of Yoda teaching him to do…flips?All of which is to say, that while I see the complaints about her being a Force savant are based on something, I’m not too worried about them, because they’re not precisely unprecedented. As with so much of the Sequel series unpleasantness, you could’ve avoided a lot of these problems by reintroducing Luke in TFA, instead of having the bone-stupid “Map to Luke Skywalker” plot (stupid map plots are such a big thing with Abrams that he tripled down on the device in Rise of Skywalker, with poor results). If Luke had been in that first story, someone could’ve taught her, even if only by example.
Well, no, Rey didn’t know about mind-tricking because she “heard about the legends.” She thought Luke was “just a myth” and had literally never heard of the Force until Maz told her about it. So it just doesn’t track that she had been exposed to an even partial list of Jedi abilities.You mentioned one of the reasons why I hate the dumb EU. They go out of their way to explain shit where no explanation is required. The way the scene plays out in ESB isn’t remotely like you describe in from the EU. Luke isn’t spontaneously manifesting the ability. He is literally acting like it’s something he’s thought about and tried before (perhaps unsuccessfully.) But he seems completely aware that it’s possible and isn’t accidentally stumbling into it.Between Luke, Anakin and Rey, Luke is the ONLY one who used the Force prior to receiving training.I have no problem with the concept of a Force prodigy who accidentally manifests skills, like Broom Boy or Anakin.
I would have no problem if Rey accidentally stumbled onto skills, particularly during crucial or life-threatening moments (like that ESB novel writer tried to apply to Luke.)
Nor do I have a problem with Rey being an expert in hand to hand combat and that some of that would translate to being able to use a lightsaber at least somewhat competently. (Ditto Finn. Frankly, too much is made of the “only Jedi can use a lightsaber with killing themselves. C’mon, it’s just another kind of sword.)
But the mind-trick thing really breaks the movie for me. And, unfortunately, it comes on top of Rey being amazing at literally everything else the movie throws at her and never once needing to rely on any other character for help (contrast that with Luke, who has his life saved by others multiple times in both ANH and ESB.)
And, once again, the movie didn’t HAVE to make these mistakes. It could have easily justified Rey as a Force prodigy with just a little tweaking here and there and done so in a way that was logically consistent AND made for a more endearing, dimensional, relatable character.
But the movie went in another direction!
Some odd things here:had literally never heard of the Force until Maz told her about it.Three scenes earlier, Han is giving her the big “The Force, the Jedi, all of it, it’s all true” speech from the trailer. She’s not asking what the Force is (or what the Jedi were, or who Luke is) during that speech, and Maz isn’t explaining it to her later. In the Maz scene Rey is confused because she had a vision upon touching Luke’s lightsaber, and Maz explains the vision is the Force calling to her.And yes, she thinks Luke might be a myth, until Han tells her otherwise. But the thing we remember about myths are the fantastic things that happen in them: the Medusa turning people to stone, Hercules killing the Nemean lion with his bare hands. Why wouldn’t she know about the amazing things Luke Skywalker could do? You mentioned one of the reasons why I hate the dumb EU. They go out of their way to explain shit where no explanation is required.The novelization isn’t EU, it was a contemporaneous book based on the script and approved by Lucas. The EU is more like what you were doing when you speculated that Luke had been practicing and somehow discovered telekinetic powers despite not having seen Obi Wan or Darth Vader use those abilities. However, in this case we might both be off: in the original script, available online, Ghost Obi Wan tells Luke to “think the saber in [his] hand,” and that’s what gives him the idea (I don’t think that line is actually in the movie, though…).Between Luke, Anakin and Rey, Luke is the ONLY one who used the Force prior to receiving training.Is this one a typo? You contradict it in the next sentence, when you note that Anakin was using force skills before he ever met a Jedi.No argument that the writing could be better. I said as much in the comment you’re replying to. But a lot of people (NOT accusing you of this) seem to be less upset about the inelegant writing than they are by the fact that Rey is good at things. And that’s a weird complaint to tie to the force suggestion scene, because in the lead up to that scene, Rey has a pretty decent streak of not being awesome at everything: she’s pretty hopeless with the blaster Han gives her, she freaks out and runs away when she has the force vision, and she gets effortlessly captured by Kylo Ren.
“I think you’re conflating my posts with someone else’s, but to answer your second point, Rey’s use of the Force is totally different and unearned.”
Looking back, you’re right, and I apologize. That was something Killa K said, not you. Although I do want to point out that Killa K graciously admitted completely misremembering the sequence of scenes involved in this part when it was pointed out to them.
Rey’s ability to manifest expert-level Force skills remains bonkers. She shouldn’t even know those skills even exist, let alone be able to do them.As you said, Luke uses the Force exactly ONE time, after training. Rey uses the Force a half-dozen times with nothing.
People who keep saying “it’s the same!” truly aren’t paying attention.
but the killing of Han Solo is obvious; Harrison Ford wanted him dead. It was either kill Han Solo or no Han SoloFair. Ford wanted out of the part so badly, you can taste it – but did they have to do it in such a emotionally dead and completely pointless scene?
Yeah, didn’t Ford want Han to die in Return of the Jedi? If Carrie Fisher hadn’t died, I don’t think there’s any chance he would’ve appeared in Rise of Skywalker. But it was a nice thing for him to do. But yeah, I assumed he basically told them, either I’m coming back to kill Han, or I’m not coming back. All the other problems with the movies… sure, tons. But the Han thing, they were kind of boxed in.
Old mentors die in Star Wars, it’s an official thing. Han got slotted with the role in Force Awakens
Sometimes Bad X or No X, means that No X is the right approach. In this case, I don’t think it is so much that they killed them as the way they did it. As Marie Antoinette said, it is all about the execution.
Also, I will add that the idea that anyone can be force sensitive is deeply threatening to people that think of themselves as being genetically or racially or culturally superior, and therefore it was really, really cool. It provoked way too much rage to be just about story. I absolutely hated that they walked back on that.
when I heard that Han Solo would be in Star Wars 7 I assumed it would be “one and done”; I was more genuinely surprised when he showed up in 9. Ford has made no secret of his extreme dislike for the character. In fact I assume when they approached him to be Han Solo he demanded (1) an absolute shit-ton of money, (2) kill Han Solo, and (3) guarantee another Indiana Jones movie, and he knew he’d almost certainly get all of it, which he has.
Harrison Ford was about as open and public about his desire to see Han Solo dead as Daniel Craig has been about wanting to see someone else take on the Bond role. I was actually surprised that Ford agreed to do The Force Awakens at all. He’d been stating that he had no interest in reprising the role for decades. He’d moved on and done the Indiana Jones and Jack Ryan franchises, along with a pretty impressive output of other work over the decades. He’s also been very public about viewing acting as just a job. He has other interests in his life that take priority. I really never expected to see him pilot the Millennium Falcon ever again.
That was easy for him to say when he was one of the most in-demand actors in Hollywood, harder to say when your phone isn’t ringing off the hook. Still, having seen Ford phone in a decent number of performances over the years, it was a little surprising to see how earnest his performance was in TFA. I was expecting a lot less, and was surprised when Solo’s death in the movie left me wanting more.
I’m sure the huge paycheck was a factor in his reconsidering playing Han one more time. And I agree, I was totally expecting a wooden performance but was surprised with how he and Driver played off each other.
like saying the corn you found was the best part of the shit you ate
Well, that’s a fucking take.
The thing is, Luke doesn’t just “have force powers”.He’s force sensitive naturally, yes, but the stuff with him and Obi-Wan on the way to Alderaan is there for a reason. It’s supposed to show that he’s being trained in their use, and even if he does some self training on his own, that’s where his powers come from. Training.This is important because it ties back into the tradition of eastern fantasy stories that Star Wars is evoking/emulating. The master/student relationship is a core theme in many of those stories.
Exactly this. People seem to keep wanting to point to Luke’s abilities as proof that anyone complaining about Rey is being – at best – pedantic and misogynist at worst, but the issue is the filmmaking. Star Wars sets up and pays off Luke’s use of the Force at the very end. It teaches the audience at the same time Obi-Wan teaches Luke what the Force is and what it’s capable of. This is good storytelling.Why people want to point at what most people agree is an example of bad storytelling in The Phantom Menace to excuse the bad storytelling in The Force Awakens is beyond me.
And the thing that’s most important is that Star Wars was never a wholly original work. It was always riffing on themes from older stuff. Wuxia stories, WWII fighter pilot movies, westerns, etc. It works best when people understand those themes it is riffing on and work within that framework.This is why Rogue One and The Mandalorian work so well. They understand the stuff they are trying to evoke and paint within the lines of that stuff. So it all makes sense and doesn’t throw people off wondering why it doesn’t feel quite right.
If the force is so easy you can learn it in a plane ride, doesn’t it make sense that a force sensitive person could learn it through trial and error over their life?
No, it does not.First, because it’s not “so easy you can learn it in plane ride”. Luke isn’t exactly a Jedi Master just from that one trip.Second, because the point is that you can learn the basics from a teacher and then practice on your own.Third, because Rey isn’t shown to have been doing any practice or trial and error at all. It’s not like she was out on the sands of Jakku practicing her force skills.
A) Rey’s not a Jedi Master during FA, either.B) That point is made up by you. Obviously the basics are something you can pick up by yourself, otherwise no one would ever have been able to wield the force.C) Because the movie starts with her leaving Jakku. We don’t see James Bond graduate spy school.
And Luke also uses the Force exactly once, while he’s still receiving instructions from Obi-Wan’s ghostly voice!Rey uses the Force several times with no help.
Nah, Luke wasn’t some farm boy – he was stashed on Tattooine under the watchful eye of Obi Wan for the very specific reason of keeping him away from his father.
TROS’ problem was that it crapped on the notion that anyone could be born with a strong connection to the force, called out with great impact in TLJ. Han was a prime example – he got out of all kinds of ridiculous scrapes probably because he was strong in the Force, but no formal training with it. He viewed it as skill and luck.
As for Luke dying, I viewed it as him becoming fully one with the Force the same way Obi Wan did. He basically handed off his corporeal being to the Force, enabling himself to appear on Crait as a distraction to the First Order and afterwards, spent, simply becoming a part of it. Given how he’d clearly left behind many of the Jedi ways, I thought it was perfection; him achieving complete connection on his own terms.
I am one of those people who thinks that Marcia Lucas is as essential to the original trilogy as George, I don’t know about that, but even if I do disagree – I feel bad for Marcia here.
One: She’s been more or less used almost solely by thoughtless chuds online as some sort of cudgel against George Lucas for about a decade now. Sure, they praise her, but it’s always a backhanded sort of praise – the kudos aren’t really FOR her, but a way to use her as a means to denigrate George Lucas as much as possible. Essentially: Chuds and Chads in Star Wars Fandom invoke Marcia like redditors used to invoke “cucking.” It’s basically the same thing, and it sucks. Always has.Two: She’s basically not been doing too well lately, I don’t think. Or at least it doesn’t look that way. The last two times she’s been on camera talking about Star Wars, it was1) This interview with Duwayne Dunham
2) This appearance with Ben Burtt at an Academy Screening of Star Wars and Rogue OneIn both cases she seems… it’s hard to say, but she doesn’t seem like she’s doing great, and she seems to have a hard time putting together sentences and making sense of herself, which partially explains the critique being quoted in the book. Three: In keeping with the above – there’s been a sense that she’s been taken advantage of for large chunks of her life, and taken for granted for just as long, and this specific drama seems to be combining both of those things into one big dumb non-controversy as a means for YouTube grifters to get a couple weeks churn out of once again using her as some sort of weapon against an idea of George Lucas that they have in their head, to be whipped out and flopped down whenever they want to feel somewhat empowered.People don’t really care about Marcia Lucas, or even what Marcia Lucas thinks. They certainly don’t really care how she is, or what she’s doing. They care about how they can use her to weigh in on her ex-husband George, to be a referendum on George – or, as a bonus, to be used for knocking Kathleen Kennedy and JJ Abrams “down a peg.”
She probably deserves better than that. She’ll probably never get it. Because Star Wars fandom has never ever been inclined towards anything so noble.
I’m with you. I mean, huge props to Marcia Lucas, but what did she think should have happened to Han and Luke–they die in their sleep?
Agree on almost all counts. Also, am I the only person now a little tired of the Lucases of the world complaining about the Disney versions? (First of all, look at the prequels and physician, heal thyself.) The simple fact is that Lucas SOLD the company and the IP. If he and the rest of the old guard were just going to bitch about it forever then why sell? Really, it’s bad form. I’m not saying that they have to stay utterly silent. But it’s really easy and risk free to say about movies that have already been made “J.J. and Kathy, call me.” If George Lucas didn’t want anyone else to play in his sandbox, he shouldn’t have sold the sandbox. It’s that simple.
This right here! There aren’t too many self made female heroes in modern pop culture. They’re either the “chosen one” or the daughter of a chosen one. Having her be abandoned daughter to a pair of scumbags, who through her own fruition became a genuinely honorable hero, was one of the best moves made by Star Wars. Too bad Disney and Jar Jar had to cave to the reddit trolls.
As for the Rey having force powers and not knowing why, Luke was the sameBut . . . he wasn’t, though. He was strong in the Force, and naturally talented, but he didn’t just manifest a bunch of Force powers and Force visions and the ability to kick-ass with a lightsaber out of nowhere. Rey went from zero to “Luke at the end of Empire Strikes Back” over the course of one movie with zero training.
The reason is simple . . . it’s a Star Wars movie and they needed a lightsaber battle and JJ Abrams doesn’t give a shit about forming a coherent, supported narrative so he said, “fuck it, she can use The Force now. And can totally hold her own against Kylo Ren, who previously wiped out an entire academy of trained Jedi.
“And can totally hold her own against Kylo Ren, who previously wiped out an entire academy of trained Jedi.”
Jedi trainees, of course, but people should stop deliberately leaving out that Kylo Ren at this point had just been gutshot by Chewie’s nasty laser crossbow thing, the incredible power of which the movie had repeatedly drawn attention to, and he was shown to be visibly and seriously impaired in this fight.
Can a person who already very clearly knows how to fight and who also has very clear Jedi potential manage to fight to a draw (before getting interrupted by an imploding planet) against a severely wounded Jedi/Sith who also never completed training? Why not?
Can a person who already very clearly knows how to fight and who also has very clear Jedi potential manage to fight to a draw (before getting interrupted by an imploding planet) against a severely wounded Jedi/Sith who also never completed training? Why not?Still no.
The key phrase there is potential. Rey had never seen a lightsaber until, like, the day before. Hadn’t even heard of The Force until the day before that. And lightsabers are supposedly very difficult weapons to effectively wield. (Which, logically, they’d have to be, otherwise they’d be carried by more than force-users and some dumb coughing cyborg). And she’s up against a highly trained Jedi/Sith who was powerful enough to wipe out an entire academy of similarly trained recruits and somehow keep Luke from stopping him. Sure, he’s severely injured, but that’s a deeply inadequate explanation. Maybe he kills them both in 10 seconds instead of 3, but both she and Finn should’ve been toast.
Sure, you really want to you can twist things around enough to make it sorta-kinda-maybe-if I squint and tilt my head, make sense, but it takes a lot of heavy lifting to get there which means it’s lazy writing. It’s there because it needed to be there, and instead of building Rey’s abilities in a logical way so it feels earned, JJ Abrams said, “eh, fuck it, Kylo’s hurt or whatever, doesn’t it look cool, though!”
I mean, shit, contrast that against the Luke/Vader fight in Empire. Two movies of build-up to it, Luke’s had his training, it’s the showdown with the big bad . . . and Luke’s wildly outmatched from the start. The only reason it isn’t over in seconds is that Vader doesn’t want to kill him, and Luke’s just good enough to give him a couple of surprises and get in a few licks. That is until Luke gets a lucky shot that hurts him, then Vader loses his temper and lops off Luke’s hand.
I mean, you watch that fight and you feel it. The power-imbalance, the danger, the fact that Luke is just out of his league and that Darth Vader is fucking scary.
In TFA there’s none of that. Abrams doesn’t have the patience for it. It’s just “WEEE! Lightsabers!”and the cheap, half-assed bait-and-switch, “Finn’s fighting with the lightsaber! OH, now REY’S the one who’s really going to fight with the lightsaber!”
“The only reason it isn’t over in seconds is that Vader doesn’t want to kill him”
Oh, just like how Ben was immediately fascinated by Rey existing and being able to resist him, and also having been directly ordered by Snoke to bring her to him? Is it lazy writing to have had multiple explanations for why Ben didn’t immediately kill her presented and shown on the screen? (For that matter, is it “heavy lifting” to simply remember what actually happened in the movie?)
I think what gets lost in this argument is that people are comparing films aboutmspace magic ade in the 70s and 80s where the idea of the Force and what a Jedi can do wasn’t as formed as it is now after an entire prequel trilogy and several TV shows. We don’t even see something get moved by the Force until Empire. It’s ultimately all space fantasy and there’s no real metric that we can use to determine what and is not realistic. There’s no Canon text that said that the Jedi Mind Trick is a level 4 move and only done by the Jedi Masters.I think there would be a different backlash if the only display of Force Abilities that Rey gave us was deflecting lazers from a training robot. We have a stronger image of Jedi now and limiting Rey to what Luke did in ANH would just seem boring.
It’s ultimately all space fantasy and there’s no real metric that we can use to determine what and is not realistic.It’s not so much about what is and isn’t allowed by Canon, it’s about well-developed storytelling. Taking a bunch of unexplained, presumptive shortcuts to power-up Rey so we can have a lightsaber fight at the end of the movie is lousy storytelling, not because it is or isn’t Canon or because it’s impossible to justify, but because it’s unearned. JJ Abrams does this shit a lot. He skips the dramatic support structure needed for a compelling story so he can hit his Big Drama and Big Action beats (See also: Star Trek) but they all feel unsatisfying and hollow because he doesn’t do the storytelling work needed to earn those big flashy moments. Rise of Skywalker is really the culmination of that, with a bunch of BIG DAMN STUFF that isn’t remotely earned and just comes off as big loud garbage and moments that should be rousing, emotional beats and, instead, are just kind of cringey and embarrassing.
It’s weird that Ford doesn’t seem to have a problem with Indiana Jones not dying (as far as I know) — you’d think he’d want a closure on that story as well. As far as “heroes are born” trope — Star Wars didn’t invent that. Lots of myths assume that the heroic peasant boy is really the long lost prince or something and in terms of SF, Dune (which Lucas borrowed a lot from), even goes so far as to assert that its hero was a result of eugenic breeding!
There’s a very easy explanation for that; Ford loves Indiana Jones and hates Star Wars.
I think Ford has said a few times that he doesn’t really hate Star Wars or Han Solo, he just thought Han dying in Return of the Jedi would’ve been better for the character’s arc and the story as a whole. He starts the trilogy out only for himself, and he ends it by making the hero’s sacrifice and demonstrating that winning a great victory comes at a cost.
I also think he’s been annoyed by fans/interviewers insisting on talking about Star Wars for the past 40+ years. He’s got nothing to say. He doesn’t hate it, he just doesn’t care. It’d be like if everybody you ever spoke to wanted to talk about some shit you did when you were 10. Like, I don’t hate my Elementary School production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but I don’t have any particular opinion about it either, and I certainly have no interest in discussing it all the time.
Luke was never a “Farm boy from nowhere”, even in ANH, he was the son of a great Jedi knight. Legacy was built into the series from the jump, for better or for worse. TLJ’s brilliance was in rejecting that mandate.
RIAN JOHNSON, AN INDIE DIRECTOR WHO BUILT HIS CAREER FROM THE GROUND UP: anyone can do great things, no matter where they come from 🙂
JJ ABRAMS, SON OF TWO SUCCESSFUL HOLLYWOOD PRODUCERS: absolutely the fuck not
Holy shit, I didn’t know that about Abrams’ family. IT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING!
Supposedly, while Abrams was still a teenager, he went with his dad to test screening of Escape from New York. In the Q&A afterward, his dad criticized the opening scene, which showed Plissken getting arrested during a bank heist gone wrong, and JJ asked Carpenter what happened to Adrienne Barbeau’s character, because it wasn’t clear to him if she lived or died. In the final cut of the film, the opening is taken out, and Carpenter did reshoots with Barbeau in their garage to show that her character was dead.
Strong disagree about the death. Also, everyone attributes Ford wanting him dead – yeah, that was 1983.Han and Indy is all Ford has now. If him wanting him dead was so true now, why did he come back for 9? It wasn’t for the $$Marcia is dead on in her criticisms.
I like Marcia Lucas as much as the next guy, but “…all but cements her place as one of the architects of modern Hollywood cinema” is laying it on a bit thick.
The undeserved Marcia fawning is almost as bad as the mostly undeserved Gary Kurtz fawning.
It’s a fair cop. Jaws and Star Wars pretty much set the template for blockbuster movies for the next few decades, so she deserves the accolades.
And they think it’s important to appeal to a woman’s audience, so now their main character is this female, who’s supposed to have Jedi powers, but we don’t know how she got Jedi powers, or who she is. It sucks. The storylines are terrible. Just terrible. Awful. No one Marcia Lucas: We need more Skywalkers in Star Wars!
“I like Kathleen. I always liked her. She was full of beans. She was really smart and really bright. Really wonderful woman. And I liked her husband, Frank. I liked them a lot.”Who doesn’t like Frank and beans?Anyhoo, I don’t begrudge the individual writers and directors too much because I actually enjoyed episodes 7, 8, and 9 individually but think they absolutely failed as a trilogy. It should be obvious that there was no coherent vision behind them, much less a well thought-out plan, and that has to be laid at the feet of Kathleen Kennedy. I’m kind of impressed she kept her job.
Yes and no.
Hiring JJ Abrams for Star Wars was an argument many smart people assumed would work, especially after the first Star Trek reboot, which was the successful Star Wars/Trek combo that the TNG movies wish they were. And Force Awakens sorta did work, at least for one movie, as much as it was a pale copy of a New Hope. That they never realized that Abrams’ episodic TV work, ESPECIALLY as an executive producer instead of a direct writer, was tantamount to endless wheel spinning with no forethought into any ending or indeed any character choice ever? That was the major problem. But to be fair, around the time Force Awakens was being developed, the mass realization that Abrams was an extremely flawed writer and filmmaker was only starting to form: he was already beginning to develop Force Awakens when Into Darkness came out. And ignoring his role in the narrative failures of all three sequel movies collectively and singularly (he still was a producer on Last Jedi even if he didn’t direct it) while laying it all on Kennedy despite that fact that she was further from the production process than him just shows how easy it is even for ostensibly “neutral” eyes to see a multi-Academy Award nominated producer as some sort of incapable intruder.
As well, both Lucas and Feige benefitted from being men with early low expectations. No one expected the first Star Wars or Iron Man to be so successful, and to be fair, some of both Star Wars and Iron Man’s immediate follow ups were considerably shakier prospects (notably Incredible Hulk and Thor, and later Thor 2 and Iron Man 2; and for Lucas, can anyone say “Christmas Special”?). Yet a lady comes along and makes Disney more money than anything else EXCEPT Marvel (and technically now James Cameron through the 20th Century Fox purchase), and she’s still a “Failure”.
But lets focus on Feige. He essentially was custom made by Marvel to become their curator, working solely for them for nearly a decade before being handed the reins on Iron Man, yet still had some obvious missteps and bungling with the afore mentioned projects. Everyone ignores that now. Indeed, its worth noting how much more hit and miss Marvel television work has been, both in animation and in live action, which equally falls under his purview, even when reasonably wholly discounting the early ABC and Netflix stuff that Ike Perlmutter controlled instead of him: neither Agent Carter nor Falcon and Winter Soldier were by any means unmitigated successes. Meanwhile, Mandalorian, Rebels, the end of Clone Wars, and Bad Batch, all also under the purview of Kennedy, have all been extremely successful, financially and critically and in popular support. You might argue that that’s all Dave Filoni, but SHE elevated Dave Filoni to his current position. Not George, not Bob Chapek, not Bob Iger, she did.
It would just help to be consistent in our critiques of folks. I would love to know exactly why she’s at fault for everything wrong with Star Wars, yet she can’t possibly be responsible for, say, Shaymalan’s best work (Sixth Sense and Signs) or Zemeckis’ best work (Back to the Future and Roger Rabbit), Eastwood’s surprisingly excellent romance, or much of Spielberg’s later oeuvre. Or if you stipulate all that, then still somehow coming to the conclusion that she’s still less responsible for everything RIGHT with Star Wars and laying that all on Filoni and Favreau. It’s just oh so convenient.
At the end of the day, I think Marcia Lucas is absolutely right to lay this on JJ Abrams. These failures of poor story management are far more consistent with many of his previous failures, ESPECIALLY with previous episodic sci-fi franchises, and do not reflect Kennedy’s otherwise generally golden touch. Some of Lucas’ points might not be exactly WHY they failed, but the general idea is extremely fair.
Hiring JJ Abrams for Star Wars was an argument many smart people assumed
would work, especially after the first Star Trek reboot, which was the
successful Star Wars/Trek combo that the TNG movies wish they were.
Star Trek (2009) gets worse every time I watch itInto Darkness was a start-to-finish train wreckI was flabbergasted when Disney handed their shiny new gazillion-dollar franchise over to this guy, and not the least bit surprised when the sequel trilogy ended up being an absolute mess
I REALLY wanted to like Star Trek… and I think they came pretty close to actually pulling it off, becuase the characters all get decent development and the overall story is pretty good. but the more you think about the plot the worse it gets. I used to think that they got screwed by the writers strike, becuase you could re-write the middle part of that movie and eliminate a bunch of the stuff that doesn’t make sense once you start thinking about it. But then I read about how JJ Abrams writes the big, impressive moments first, then writes the plot to get from one big visual to the next and it became clear that nothing was ever going to save that movie.
Ah so he’s like Zack Snyder!
“Here’s a cool big thing!!!”
“Okay, how did the characters get there?”“Umm..yeah”
– “Here’s some red gunk! And it makes BLACK HOLES. That travel through time!!!”
– “…Where even the hell do I start with that?”
I vividly remember the feeling of seeing Star Trek (2009), walking out of the theater into the sunlight and suddenly realizing “That sucked shit…”
I don’t disagree. I just think it takes those repeated watches, especially after Into Darkness came out.
Into Darkness was an opening-night disappointment for me. My brother actually turned to me during the Kirk death scene and said, “Right now, I feel nothing.” I couldn’t disagree.I actually liked (and still like) the 2009 Star Trek. It promised a bold new direction, something so bold and new that it absolutely justified wiping out all of Star Trek’s continuity for. Then Into Darkness was a cover band version of Wrath of Khan, just with all the emotional stakes removed. It kind of ignored the fact that Nemesis had been a similar semi-remake of Wrath of Khan, and that the 2009 Star Trek had borrowed from Wrath of Khan pretty liberally as well.
I loathe Star Trek Into Darkness. It turns into an outright rip-off of a much better movie in the second half. Don’t remind me of what I could be watching instead!
I’ve said it a million times: Guillermo del Toro is the director they should’ve gotten.
Exactly. I blame Abrams for the mess that the sequel trilogy became. While Kathleen Kennedy and Disney should have laid down an outline of what the sequels should have been, Abrams was the one that put down a framework for them.
JJ Abrams did write outlines for VIII and IX.Which Rian Johnson promptly threw out.They did say to Johnson that he could do whatever he wanted, so he did. It was up to the producers to steer the ship. They could have having done that commit to some of Johnson’s ideas now they were stuck with them for want of a better descriptor or provided any kind of guidance, direction or oversight – but instead they literally chose the worst of all worlds in letting JJ Abrams reverse every single thing.This is totally on the leadership. Rian Johnson did what he did because he could and then after that JJ did what he did because he could. The people steering the ship were for all intents and purposes completely absent.
“Which Rian Johnson promptly threw out.” No he didn’t. That didn’t happen at all. Johnson even wrote the script while TFA was in production and JJ got to look at it, even changing the details of a scene at Johnson’s request. Jesus, you guys have turned in to the next generation of the people who mythologized Marcia and shat on George. Just making shit up and then believing it.
Or lack of framework, really.
I mean, was it his idea to have three different directors to make each movie with no plan on how they would connect to each other?
Two different directors, in the end, but it was certainly his idea not to give a shit about that while doing the first movie, as is his tradition, and it was certainly his idea to literally shit on the second film while doing the third.
The one error I think you can justifiably put on Kennedy’s shoulders is the hiring of Abrams to finish things off. I know people like to cite the revolving door of directors as a bad move, but as we all know, the beloved OT also had a revolving door of directors. I think using Abrams as an opener was a shrewd use of his talents that neatly sidestepped a lot of his flaws. I think proceeding to use him as the closer dragged all of those flaws screaming to the forefront. While the individual film’s faults lie with Abrams, I think it’s fair to say Kennedy’s decision to bring him back was a blunder.
I agree. Though to be fair, she literally had 2 billion flat green reasons to think otherwise, especially under somewhat difficult last-minute circumstances.
Kevin Feige – overseer of the team that built up the Marvel Cinematic Universe from the ground up to increasing financial and critical acclaim over twenty three films (peaking financially in Endgame at around $2.8 billion). Kathleen Kennedy – overseer of an IP that was already well built up over decades and very famous (even if not quite at its original trilogy peak) and couldn’t even manage a narratively coherent trilogy over three films. Financially and ultimately creatively thrown into the exact reverse (I mean Rise of Skywalker on top of being lambasted by just about everyone, got outgrossed by Aquaman).I mean, the Matrix trilogy over their three films, Resident Evil and even the Terminator series (over their first four) managed a more coherent narrative than whatever happened with Star Wars from one film to the next, never mind three.After the initial successes of the MCU, Kevin Feige has been attributed as being a key player in keeping everything on track leading to Endgame and it all integrates well enough.On the other hand, it’s been well established that there was no plan from the start for the Star Wars trilogy (they were winging it) and the narrative of the three films (especially the last two) were all but at war with each other. Kind of the job of the person overseeing the whole thing and it’s hard to argue they weren’t on top of it all based on looking at the end product and the state the narrative was in by the end of it (plus critical and financial declines versus the MCU – trending in the exact opposite direction for a good length of time up to 2019).
You’re judging Feige’s results after 23 films with, lets be REAL clear about what “ground up” means, FIFTEEN Marvel films he was Producer on before hand, starting with the X-Men and Spiderman franchises at Fox and Sony in 2000, to prepare him for his role as IP curator and President. Arguing Marvel Phase 1 was building an IP from the ground up when the IP is, and I cannot stress this enough, a 100 year old comic company that had multiple box office topping films in then recent years? It’s one of the most disingenuous arguments I’ve ever heard, and I can only hope you don’t realize it was the one you were making.
That versus Kennedy’s results after 3 films and having a couple months to, not prepare a new trilogy, but prepare for the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney, THEN getting to work. This would essentially be like judging Feige for just Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, and Iron Man 2. I’d quite comfortably argue that Kevin Feige at that point in his presidency was 1 for 3, just like Kennedy. All three of which, it absolutely must be noted, were MASSIVELY outgrossed by Rise of Skywalker. But again, no one EVER gives him the shit that Kennedy gets. Nope, Thor 2 was all the fault of that Game of Thrones dude, can’t be a glitch in Feige’s pre-ordained genius! Everyone is happy to blame Feige’s failures on the directors and writers, and every success on him, and for SOME reason, it’s the exact opposite with Kennedy. Gee, I wonder why? And again, this wholly ignores the TV side, which again, most people would be LOATHE to give ANY credit to Kennedy for because of the hard-on they have for Dave Filoni (reasonable though said erection may be).
I do not disagree there wasn’t a plan. I do not disagree those films failed. I just think the head-writer was essentially JJ Abrams, and he did not give a fuck as per usual, and the primary mistake was her trusting him because of how well the first Star Trek did and their shared friendship with Spielberg, and yet they STILL made bank. I also just don’t think Kevin Feige or George Lucas had it all as figured out yet either at that point in their head of IP management (again, I refer you to the Christmas Special, or if you want to argue for after RotJ, Ewoks). Yet folks seem a lot more willing to forgive or mitigate their failures in a way they absolutely do not want to do for Kathleen Kennedy, someone who capably ran single productions to critical and financial success as co-owner of her company with Frank Marshall, and CERTAINLY while working at Amblin.
Again, I am asking for consistency in critique here. You either give her credit for all of it, good and bad, or you start actually trying to figure out the nuance about where she deserves credit and blame. And most of all, give her the benefit of the doubt that you’d give a dude who, while beginning his tenure as President of his production company, made 1 good movie and two mediocre to bad ones, just like we did to Kevin Feige.
I mean, this comment thread started off with someone wondering why she still has her job. Bitch has more Best Picture noms than anyone but Scott Rudin and Steven Spielberg, and earned more money at the box office than anyone except Kevin Feige and Steven Spielberg, and she was PART of a huge number of Spielberg’s successes. And yet instead of respect for that giving any sort of benefit of the doubt about how well she can do things, she’s the bitch that “ruined” Star Wars while having Feige’s exact same track record. Not only that, she SOMEHOW ruined it in precisely the same ways JJ Abrams and Bad Robot ruined Lost and Star Trek.
Amazing, that.
You’re judging Feige’s results after 23 films with, lets be REAL clear about what “ground up” means, FIFTEEN Marvel films he was Producer on before hand, starting with the X-Men and Spiderman franchises at Fox and Sony in 2000, to prepare him for his role as IP curator and President.Yeah, Feige was a producer on those fifteen films. But, IIRC, his role was basically to be Marvel’s man in the room on productions over which they had little to no creative control. You could see it in the Sony hack: Feige gave a number of excellent notes on the story for the Amazing Spider-Man 2, all of which Sony seems to have ignored out of hand. Also, I don’t see where him having previous jobs doesn’t make the MCU a ground-up operation.
I would love to know exactly why she’s at fault for everything wrong with Star Wars, yet she can’t possibly be responsible for, say, Shaymalan’s best work (Sixth Sense and Signs) or Zemeckis’ best work (Back to the Future and Roger Rabbit), Eastwood’s surprisingly excellent romance, or much of Spielberg’s later oeuvre.You don’t see the difference between producing individual movies and being in charge of Lucasfilm? Because no one’s saying that Kathleen Kennedy has never been good at anything—she’s an acclaimed producer, but that alone doesn’t make someone a good studio head. From the outside, it looks like she’s been bad at being in charge of Lucasfilm because:1) Of the five Disney-era films, only one of them had a smooth production (TLJ) without major firings, delays, or costly reshoots. This includes stuff like hiring Lord & Miller on Solo, apparently without any advanced knowledge or awareness of how they run a set—basic research you’d think Lucasfilm would do before putting someone in charge of a tentpole property, and2) She announced the Sequel trilogy without, evidently, putting anyone in charge of the trilogy part, apparently just hiring three different writer/directors and trusting, without anyone coordinating their efforts, that they’d tell a single, cohesive story. That didn’t work out.The creative contributions of producers are pretty opaque from the outside, since some producers are very hands-on, others are mainly business-side contributors, and some are in name only, due to contractual obligations. However, the problems with Star Wars are the kind of thing that reflect directly on the studio head: Is she hiring well? Are productions on budget and on time? Is the studio’s overall strategy successful? Arguably, Kennedy’s failed on all of those counts.
I’ve had this link to a section from Kaminski’s book saved for years. Definitely very informative.
fd.noneinc.com/secrethistoryofstarwarscom/secrethistoryofstarwars.com/marcialucas.html
None of it is original research. It’s not very good. Rinzler’s books are great, though.
It’s wild how “The Secret History” has been whitewashed into being a legitimate text on the making of the films, despite the fact it’s effectively a collection of slanted wikipedia entries. But people don’t even stop to think about its origins (it was a blog before it was anything, a blog dedicated to proving George Lucas was a hack more than anything, and if left alone would have “ruined Star Wars”) because that would necessitate looking into where Kaminski’s “research” came from (i.e. a plethora of legitimate biographers, journalists, and writers who did all his work for him sans his slant) and reading basically anything outside of that.
Well. That’s some fun internalized misogyny.
Seriously, is she a Fandom Menace chud now? And they think it’s important to appeal to a woman’s audience, so now their main character is this female
As if Leia wasn’t a central figure in the original trilogy? Did SHE exist only to bring in the woman viewer?Ridley was there because TFA was a remake of SW, turned about 30 degrees to make it look slightly different, and that necessitated a strong featured woman character.
I just made almost the exact same ridiculous comment in jest. Jeez. I should’ve gone with the /s tag, I guess.
Ridiculous because it’s true or because you don’t agree? Cuz I don’t see how a pioneering woman in film can buy into the idea that Rey was pandering. She’s not a good character but that’s because NONE of the writing was very good. Of the valid complaints about Rey, “she has a uterus” is not one. And it’s disappointing to think that’s a POV Lucas might share with other dumb anti-woke bros.
You bring up a good question: do we react to the concept of a character, or the actual character as shown?
Of course explaining why a woman really thinks the things she does isn’t misogyny at all. Yes.
Saying a female character is bad is not misogynistic, but nice try drumming up outrage!
It’s not that she said Rey was bad, it’s that in context of *the quote* she’s saying that Star Wars is pandering to the female audience and *that’s* bad. That said, given how common it is for quotes like this to miss important context from *the larger conversation* I’d suggest giving her the benefit of the doubt given it’s hard to tell whether the quote itself is an accurate representation of her feelings.
Only reading what you want to read must save you so much time!I agree With Lucas that Rey isn’t well written. I very much disagree with her pissy complaint about pandering to women. Especially as a guy who has seen his nieces and the daughters of his friends get excited by a “girl hero”.And I don’t want to hear a fucking word about Princess Leia. Heroic character but *decidedly* not the protagonist.Nor do I want to hear about Amidala, who is just as frequently sidelined and even worse written than Rey.Now kindly fuck off, Luigi.
Marcia’s 2nd husband was the guy who built the library at Skywalker Ranch, whom she was cheating with behind George’s back just as they were trying to adopt. Her contributions to Star Wars were almost nothing. She can speak as a very good film editor but her “expertise” or claim on SW doesn’t mean shit.
I feel bad for Marcia here.
One: She’s been more or less used by thoughtless chuds online as some sort of cudgel against George for about a decade now. (“Star Wars was saved in the edit!” Well no shit. That’s what EDITING IS FOR. That’s why filmmakers DO IT.) Sure, they praise her, but it’s always a backhanded sort of praise – not really FOR her, but a way to use her as a means to denigrate George Lucas as much as possible. Essentially: Chuds and Chads in Star Wars Fandom invoke Marcia like redditors used to invoke “cucking.” It’s basically the same thing, and it sucks. Always has. Two: She’s basically not been doing too well lately, I don’t think. Or at least it doesn’t look that way. The last two times she’s been on camera talking about Star Wars, it was 1) this interview with editor Duwayne Dunham and 2) this appearance at an Academy screening of Star Wars and Rogue One. In both cases she seems… it’s hard to say, but she doesn’t seem like she’s doing great, and she seems to have a hard time putting together sentences and making sense of herself, which partially explains the critique being quoted in the book.Three: There’s been a sense that she’s been taken advantage of for large chunks of her life, and taken for granted for just as long, and this specific drama seems to be combining both of those things into one big dumb non-controversy as a means for YouTube grifters to get a couple weeks churn out of once again using her as some sort of weapon against an idea of George Lucas that they have in their head, to be whipped out and flopped down whenever they want to feel somewhat empowered. People don’t really care about Marcia Lucas, or even what Marcia Lucas thinks. They care about how they can use her to weigh in on her ex-husband George. Or, as a bonus, how they can use her to knock Kathleen Kennedy and JJ Abrams “down a peg.”
She probably deserves better than that. She’ll probably never get it. Because Star Wars fandom has never ever been inclined towards anything so noble.
She must hate women.
Cant believe someone actually said this above in all seriousness and did a “false consciousness” explanation. Wild.
No. She hates any Star Wars that she didn’t have a hand in making. She hated the prequels. She hates the sequels. She doesn’t like Solo or Rogue One. She just basically only thinks Star Wars is good if she was part of making it, and this is her shxtting on everyone else who does work on it to make herself seem better and more important than they are.
Killing Han, Luke and Leia are all fine. The Last Jedi having a message that any nobody can be a Jedi is fine. The issue with the Disney trilogy was a lack of a plan for a trilogy and trusting the first movie to mister “mystery box”. I don’t hate TLJ but it’s clearly a different tone the TFA. And the less you say about ROS(aka Palaptine fucks) the better
I don’t even think there’s a problem with entrusting the first entry to Mr. Mystery Box! JJ is great at starting things! But every question he asked, Johnson answered, and JJ had a tantrum all over The Canon because a man who owes his career to a successful film producer father can’t comprehend someone being special without family ties
That’s why I like TLJ out of all of them. Johnson tried to do something different based on what he had been given.
but the toxic fans screamed and well, we got..what we got.
The climax of the film was basically the Battle of Hoff from ESB with a twist. It wasn’t that different from the previous Star Wars movies.
Believe it or not, studios actually tend to ignore the small and highly vocal segment on fandom precisely because they’re small.The steep drop in box office and merchandising sales from TFA to TLJ for whatever reason on the other hand …
…which was almost exactly the same as the dropoff from Star Wars to Empire.In the age of the Internet, nothing is small that pretends it’s big (or just continually posts crappy Youtube videos as if they were meaningful).
I confess to being tired of “Palpatine fucks” since it’s pretty clearly a “clone went rogue and raised a family” thing.
The worst thing Abrams did was keep Luke hostage the entire first movie
Exactly. Who pays a guhbillion dollars to get the band back together, then doesn’t have the band get together :/
What I can’t understand is how in the world the fuckers didn’t realize they should have at least ONE goddamned scene with all three of the original players.I seriously wonder if one of Ford’s stipulations was that he didn’t want to do a grand reunion scene with swelling music and hugging etc. I mean he seems like the curmudgeonly type who would be against that.
It ain’t rocket science :/
It’s haircut science!
As much as Ford hates Star Wars, I think he loved his castmates, especially Fisher, and he always seems to get along with Hamill. I don’t think he’d be against it.
I doubt Ford had any requirements other than “Are you sending my money in a single truckload, or is it coming in a fleet of smaller trucks, like Ford F-150s? I’m not sure how the neighbors would feel about an 18-wheeler making its way down the lane to my house.”
Finding Luke should have been the entire first act of TLJ.
It’s like Finding Nemo except . . .
What a profound waste of time that would have been.
Respectable opinion, however, I believe the worst thing he did was have “Another death star?” -”You wish!” that’s (oh my God!) five times as evil. Sigh.
I get what he was going for and the idea to not over shadow the new cast with the old but how he chose to handle them in the movie were just bad. Given what the actors were willing to do movie wise, I would have had Luke and Leia come back for the first movie and have finding Han be a big part of the second movie. Kill him off at the end because Ford wanted it that way and then go into the last movie with some actual stakes like the original films did.
The worst thing JJ Abrams did was “Rise of Skywalker” (really one of the worst things any filmmaker has ever done.) The second worst thing was every other movie he’s ever made.
I think the worst things Abrams did was not a FREAKING PLAN LAID OUT FOR THREE MOVIES.
I was absolutely shocked and still can’t believe that they just… made it up movie to movie? Like, it’s not seasons of a TV show. You’ve got one crack at a follow-up trilogy, and you’re not gonna have one single cohesive vision when you know you’re doing a trilogy ahead of time? Like, Back to the Future II had to spend 1/4 of the movie resolving a throwaway line from the end of the first film, because they didn’t know they’d be doing a sequel. but once they did? They planned and shot the next two movies at once. Why the F couldn’t they have done that with Star Wars? At the very least, good or bad, they’d get to tell the story they wanted and not have to deal with variables like, you know, aging actors dying.
Also SW related. The Obiwan series wrapped filming. I still think it’s kinda silly because the storyline is so contrived but I’ll still like it lol. We’ve always known that Obiwan is hermit for 20 years on the desert planet Tatooine watching close by and waiting for his move to mentor Luke, but here comes the Disney+ series. Let’s write that this happened – 10 years into his hermitting lol. Is that a word? Obiwan must leave Tatooine and an adventure happens for him and it will lead to the eventual battle between him and Darth Vader. The rematch! woop! woop! lol.
https://collider.com/star-wars-obi-wan-kenobi-wraps-filming-ewan-mcgregor/
I’ve been hoping they’d use the Obi-wan series as an excuse to give Kenobi an adventure unrelated to the Skywalkers (the version I stumped for was a noir detective story in the Tatooine underbelly, since Luke is a little kid and there’s no reason for Ben to interact with him), but I’m afraid they’re going to pump as much nostalgia and “look! it’s a thing you know!” into it as possible. If The Mandalorian is any guide, the story won’t make a damn lick of sense.
For the record, the version I came up with goes roughly like this:Luke is five years old, running around and generally being a scamp. Ben and the Larses are friendly; Luke only knows him as this friend of theirs who comes by to visit sometimes. One night Ben has a Force nightmare where he sees a powerful Force-sensitive child being hunted down and attacked. He wakes and rushes to the Lars homestead, but everything is fine. Owen tells him there’s nothing unusual going on, no big Tusken raids or anything. Ben’s like, okay, but he’s hanging around a lot more and being worried. Owen starts to get annoyed that he’s hovering and that he’s going to scare Luke. They eventually get into an argument and Owen tells Ben it might be better if he doesn’t come around for a while.Ben keeps having the Force nightmares and sneaks to the Lars homestead to watch Luke from a distance. Still nothing: no threat, no attack. Nobody (the Empire, mainly) seems at all interested in this random moisture farm. Ben has another nightmare, a little clearer, and this time he sees a structure in Mos Espa. He realizes the nightmare wasn’t about Luke, but that there must be another Force-sensitive child on Tatooine that the Force is warning him about. Ben decides to leave Luke alone for a while and goes to Mos Espa to investigate. But he’s never really spent time there and doesn’t know anyone (and after all, he’s been staying in hiding for the last 5 years, only going into town for supplies occasionally and trying not to be noticed or remembered). He realizes that he needs a native guide, so to speak, so he goes back to Owen and pleads for his help, explaining that it’s not about Luke. Owen says, fine, except it’s Beru who really knows people in Mos Espa. So Beru and Ben head to Mos Espa to investigate.Noir/detective shenanigans ensue as Ben and Beru investigate, and they also get to know each other. (No, there’s no romance. Obi-wan takes the stupid, stupid Jedi celibacy oath seriously. And Beru loves Owen anyway and isn’t going to jump Ben’s bones just because they’re a man and a woman hanging out together.) Eventually they learn that the child’s Force abilities (let’s say, mind reading?) are being used for some nefarious purpose by a local crime lord, so they have to figure out a way to extract the child from the situation and get them sent off-planet somewhere safe. Beru gets severely injured in a fight (Ben won’t use his lightsaber because he doesn’t want anyone to know there’s a Jedi around—in contrast to the cantina scene in ANH when he’s already planning on leaving the planet and time is of the essence). He gets Beru to a bacta tank and gets the child to some friendlies who promise to take them to a new life on a distant planet.Ben and Beru return to the Lars homestead, but when Owen finds out what happened to Beru (she’s fine now, but still) he banishes Ben from the homestead and says he’s not to see Luke any more. Ben’s angry but accepts this, and goes off to his hut to wait, believing that he still has a duty to protect Luke from Vader and the Emperor.
Love this.
See, you get it. There was a rift between the two. Perfect.
That was very entertaining to read. Thank you. Nice storytelling chops!
Thanks!
If it’s like Mandalorian, maybe we’ll get baby….Jaba?
Nice.
Nice! Did you ever read the EU The Last of the Jedi series? It starts kind of like your proposal, except in true EU fashion the series quickly has Obi Wan punt primary protagonist duties to Ferus Olin, a former Padawan-turned-PI (and, for a while, the EU’s most prominent gay character), with a frequently-indisposed Obi Wan running Olin as his primary agent against the Empire.
I didn’t, no; by the time those came out I’d stopped reading the EU novels (I lost interest somewhere in the last third of the Yuuzhan Vong storyline, when I was still in college).
I was in a similar position (I quit sometime before the Yuuzhan Vong). I only wound up going back to the EU because my kids loved it as bedtime reading, and a ton of it was available on Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited service. As always, the quality on these things fluctuates wildly, but that series and a companion series that featured Olin as a kind of teachers’ pet antagonist to Anakin Skywalker while they were both padawans were pretty fun.
hermitting lol. Is that a word? Hermitage is the word you’re looking for.
Clearly he’s gonna run into Darth Maul again. “This time I’m 100% robot ‘cause I backed myself up on one of Sidious’ failsafe bots that aren’t really canon” Only Grievous will have also pulled the same thing but robo-Grievious will have 8 arms and be a Transformer (they actually did a figure of him as a transformer that turned into that big wheel thing he used in the film).
Also Mara Jade will pop up as the plucky young sidekick that winds up shipped off to the Emperor at the end of the series.
And Arden Lynn will beat some people up.
Is it bad that I’d watch that?
Nope. All the characters were essentially the highlights of their respective series. Though Grievious was only good in the Clone Wars animated series.
Arden Lyn basically got her own video game and Mara Jade was one of the best characters in the EU until they killed her off.
In their darkest hour, when all hope is lost. Willrow Hood aka Besbin Ice cream man will jump out of the shadows and save the day!
It could be like the 5 years that Oliver Queen spent on the island in Arrow
Even hermits need to go on vacation man!
The fact that Darth Vader is in it really has me worried. The entire point of ANH was that they hadn’t seen each other since all the shit went down initially.
If these are her opinions on the sequels, I’d really like to hear her opinions on the prequels.
The prequels were like Weezer’s Green Album. The sequels were like a Weezer cover band doing Raditude
AVClub is cherry-picking her opinions in this article to support their general “sequels bad!” clickbait stance. To answer your question, Marcia Lucas hates pretty much everything Star Wars that she didn’t edit herself. She loathed the Prequels. If I recall correctly she said she cried when she saw them because they were so terrible without her influence. She’s a great editor, but a bit full of herself and seems to believe that Star Wars isn’t Star Wars without her touch.
She talked about seeing TPM and crying afterwards.
It’s crucial to determine which kind of crying, though.
We’ve all seen TPM. I think we know.
Bad form.
Regardless of who she is, or anyone’s feelings about the movies, do a lot of book Forwards shit on other people’s work? It seems in poor taste to me.
Don’t listen to her JJ , she’s only bitter and angry and right.
JJ and Kathy can’t hear her over the loud sounds of dump trucks full of money backing up on their lawns.
I’ve never heard her called the “saviour” of Star Wars, that’s ridiculous. For all the Disney/Kennedy haters, who do you think greenlit your precious Mandalorian/Bad Batch etc.? You can’t only criticize their “missteps” and not acknowledge their successes. It’s well known Harrison Ford has always hated SW and only agreed to appear in more to get an Indy 5 commitment, if they hadn’t killed him he would’ve just vanished from 8 and 9 and people would be bitching about that. I’ve seen a big retroactive “The prequels weren’t THAT BAD” movement recently which is mind boggling. Back to Lucas though editing can only go so far and it seems like she just wants to be a bomb thrower…maybe she’s pissed she didn’t get any of that Disney money when her George sold?
If anyone “saved” the original SW it was Leigh Brackett (who wrote on Empire) and the non George Lucas directors. That’s why the prequels sucked, it was all George and everyone else was afraid to tell him “that’s not a good idea boss”.
The sequels have many problems. The killing of Han (or Luke and Leia for that matter) aren’t among their problems.
My biggest disappointment in the trilogy was that I felt that they dropped the ball on Finn. I really thought they were going to reveal in ROS that Finn knew the Force, and I wished it was Rey and Finn teaming up at the end. I also hated the Rey Palpatine plot twist.
Everybody hated the Rey Palpatine twist. Not only was it completely unnecessary to the plot (Rey was going to suddenly squeal “Grandpa!” and go running into his warm embrace??) but undermined one of the great elements from TLJ – that ANYONE can be born strong in the Force, it’s just that most are never identified and trained in any formal way. They’re just naturally good at shit. Tom Brady is force-positive.
Darth Paw Paw!
Maybe she could at least put him onto a good dermatologist.
So much went wrong with Finn. He felt like an afterthought for The Last Jedi, given a plot that felt uninteresting and borderline pointless.
Also why give us this new trio and them split them up for the next film? Just because it worked in Empire, doesn’t mean you have try (and fail) to copy that.
I would have liked it much better if Finn had nothing to do with the Force and instead they went with the idea a lot of people had which was that he inspired and lead a stormtrooper rebellion, on top of everything else showing you didn’t need to have the Force to make a difference.The cracks were already starting to show in TFA when after an excellent start showing stormtroopers were actually people and conflicted – especially affected by the death of their colleagues … the entire setup was immediately wasted by having Finn whooping it up while shooting other stormtroopers in the hanger bay.
“She was full of beans”
And spunk?
Ah! That’s what I thought of too! I love that Bill Bailey’s character was named Bilbo. I can just picture him as a Hobbit.
No she doesn’t
Sounds like their relationship went a bit Darth Icky by the end.
“Full of beans”, I wasn’t familiar with that phrase (English is not my first language), but it immediately made me think ‘oh, so she farts a lot!’
It’s not exactly a common phrase for English speakers either.
That’s nuts. People should use that phrase all the time! It’s super gnarly.
It’s more commonly said as ‘full of piss and vinegar’.
Oh, gotcha. Now that I’m familiar with of course. So I wasn’t even too far off with ‘farts a lot’.
This is the only time I’ve ever heard it.
I don’t know, to me “piss and vinegar” has a more aggressive, rowdy, or mischievous connotation than “full of beans,” which just means lively, energetic, and has a friendlier sound to it. Of course “full of beans” also sounds like something a character in “Guys and Dolls” would say, which ain’t necessarily a bad thing.I wasn’t even aware that it means “full of shit” to some people. I guess context is everything.
Pretty sure ‘full of beans’ is just a way to say the ‘piss and vinegar’ without saying ‘piss’.“Of course “full of beans” also sounds like something a character in “Guys and Dolls” would say”Yeah it definitely sounds like slang from the ‘40s.
Broheim, “super gnarly” doesn’t begin to address its righteousness.
Can you break it down for me, brotendo?
Unless you’re David Lynch
As a native English speaker I’ve only ever heard “full of beans” to mean the equivalent of “full of shit”—i.e., a liar. Judging by the context clues, however, Lucas seems to be using the phrase to mean something more positive.
Well, I like the phrase either way.As a native German speaker, I have never heard the term “Liebkartoffel” in my entire life, btw. I’m guessing it’s your own invention?
Yeah, telling someone they’re full of beans is an insult. It means they’re a gas bag.
So it doesn’t mean that you are surrounded by clones of Mr. Bean…
Not really the same meaning, but I’ve always been a fan of “the bee’s knees”. That phrase is all aces.
Oh yeah, I adore that one. First heard it in my favorite Smiths song “Reel Around the Fountain” (for the sake of preserving that joyful memory, let’s just pretend Morrissey ended when the Smiths did). Been using it ever since. It’s such a vibrant, colorful phrase.
She’s the one who came up with the idea that Obi-Wan Kenobi should die in A New Hope Her and Alec Guinness. While the death was one of the scripted, Lucas apparently waffled on which version to keep and Guinness pushed for the death. Also, Kathleen Kennedy doesn’t NEED to know anything about Star Wars. She’s the manager. She needs to know about moviemaking and the production & business side. She needs to HIRE people who know about Star Wars.
That’s like saying the CEO of Smuckers needs to personally know how to make jam; it’s helpful, but not as helpful as accounting or management skills.
I admire her editing skills. Pity that she’s entirely wrong about this and is using it to score “I’m not like the other girls” points.
I was hoping for a little more insight than “I don’t like what they did.”
She didn’t have all day!
“I like Kathleen. I always liked her. She was full of beans”
Beans, huh? Is that what those are?
What do you run on, Rockette Kathy? I run on beans. I run on laser beans.
I dunno where you get your delusions, Laser Beans!
I am not going to question Marcia’s SW bona fides, but I think it was pretty well-known that Ford was pretty over SW and that was likely a substantial factor in killing him off. Assuming that Ford was unwilling to show up for 3 SW movies (but did the 1 as a favor or a nice big payday), I think you have to respect that when making the story since people would have rioted if they recast Han or just completely disregarded him for the last two movies. I am sure if Lucas had access to unlimited funds, buy-in from everyone and some kind of cosmic safety net (to prevent the loss of Carrie Fisher), the movies might have all turned out differently. But that’s not the world we operate in.Also, seeing as a lot of these comments are re-hashes of older comments, I will add my own, which is that the ST tried to close the OT and start a new era for SW but half-assed both, resulting in what is largely a mess. The stories would have worked much better focusing on either Rey/Finn/Poe or Han/Luke/Leia. Abrams was too scared to let go of the past and a significant portion of the fanbase hated Johnson’s attempts to move on. One reason the EU worked so well is that there was plenty of space to have stories for both which did not have to necessarily be the same story, so people could pick and choose what parts of the lore they wanted to follow. That’s impossible to do with the main story.
And they don’t have Princess Leia anymore.I’m pretty sure that one is neither on JJ nor Kathy. “They have Luke disintegrate,”She may want to rewatch the OT, where Obi-Wan disintegrates. Then Yoda disintegrates.
Seriously, Luke went out like a fucking boss, with plenty of precedent from the OT.
I have a long list of complaints about the sequel trilogy, but the death of Han Solo is not on that list. Sorry Marcia.
I was less irritated by Han Solo dying that I was the notion that 40 years after the fact, one of the heroes of the Rebellion was reduced to trying to pull off the same scams and heists he’d been doing before he ever became involved. It was basically like the creators of the sequel trilogy decided that Han Solo never had a story arc in the original movies at all.
My god, thank you! It’s like he was Max at the end of Fury Road, except saving the entire universe and marrying a princess and THEN saying nope, back to the wasteland. It’s more fun!Even if he and Leia broke up he wouldn’t be reduced to double-crossing space gangs.
I think that some leeway should be given for someone whose son (from his perspective) went berzerk, killed a bunch of people, and became the head terrorist.
That could shake anyone off their axis.
I could see him not feeling like he fit in within Leia’s realm of galactic politics, or his son’s fall shaking him until he retreated to what he knew, or some scandal reducing him to smuggling again.But whatever they decided would’ve required some kind of world building and characters work that the filmmakers were just not interested in.
There’s plenty of stories about Lucas’ first cut of Star Wars being an unwatchable, tedious mess. He got mired in the politics of his make-believe world… kinda like what he did with the prequels, but there was no one to tell him “no” at that point. Marcia was definitely the unsung hero.
Plenty of baseless nonsense stories.
– The AV Club!!!
I can’t bring myself to watch the sequels, and that’s primarily due to the final film. I knew it was going to be bad when they announced the title – The Rise of anything is hacky and trite. There’s nothing to it. There are a thousand other movies, comics, and games that are The Rise of Something. Yuck.Then there was the story.All that said, I sort of feel George screwed the pooch in the prequels by making Jedi superheroes with superhuman powers imbued by the Force. I always much preferred the egalitarian notions of the OT, when it was never stated or even implied that you had to be some sort of mutant to have Force sensitivity. ANYONE could tap into this universal energy if they were open to it. It gave you clarity and focus, and removed some of the constraints of space and time. It was a little bit of Dune, a little bit of Buddhism, a little bit of Shaolin wushu. I will argue to this day that Rian Johnson got that and was trying to democratize the Force with his Rey Nobody and Broom Boy character interpretations. Abrams’ problems are always the same – story and character in service of cool moments, which means once that moment has passed there’s nothing left. It’s empty.I get where she’s coming from, and I think I agree, although Han being killed was 100% Campbell’s Hero’s Journey (which come on, we get it, there are other mythical archetypes to explore) and keeping with the mythological basis of the originals.
when I saw that movie where they kill Han Solo, I was furious. I was furious when they killed Han Solo. Absolutely, positively there was no rhyme or reason to it. I thought, You don’t get the Jedi story. You don’t get the magic of Star Wars. You’re getting rid of Han Solo?This is disingenuous at best as someone in her position absolutely knew that Harrison Ford wanted the character killed long ago. It wasn’t a decision made by JJ or Kennedy.
This is based on how Ford felt during Return of the Jedi, almost 40 years ago, when he wanted out of the franchise. There is no indication he still felt that way today, and considering he accepted to come back for both Episode 7 & 9, and that Luke suffered the same fate even though there’s no indication Hamill wanted out, I wouldn’t jump to conclusions just yet.
Uh… what? It’s wildly known that Ford only came back to reprise the role if they killed him off. It’s assumed he appeared in Ep9 as a cameo tribute to Carry Fisher. He doesn’t explicitly state that in this interview, but I’m working and I don’t have time to look for the right one.Hamill didn’t want out, but just because a character wants to keep playing a role doesn’t mean that character will last forever.
I have never heard nor read anyone associated with the production say “Ford wouldn’t come back unless Han Solo was killed off”. I’ve read a lot of fans speculate after TFA because that ROTJ anecdote was widely known, but that’s it.
40 years ago, Ford told Lucas that he should kill off Han Solo because he thought the character had no arc left and he thought that was the best way to go. That’s all we know for sure. Why and under which condition he chose to come back, we don’t know.
I have never heard nor read anyone associated with the production say “Ford wouldn’t come back unless Han Solo was killed off”This doesn’t need to be explicitly said in public for it to be true, you know that right? ROTJ anecdote was widely knownI mean, there’re interviews from 2008 and 2010 where he reiterates that he thinks Han Solo should die so I’m not sure why you’re assuming those comments were only said 40 years ago.
This doesn’t need to be explicitly said in public for it to be true, you know that right? Except I didn’t say it wasn’t true, I said not to jump to conclusions. If J.J. Abrams had said publicly “We had to kill off Han Solo because Ford wouldn’t have come back”, then it wouldn’t have been fair from Marcia Lucas to complain about it. But since no one said anything, then she isn’t being “disingenuous”: she may not know anything about what Ford wanted and may sincerely believe he didn’t have to die.
He’s danced around the question, but he’s made it clear that Ford was hesitant to return and he had to convince him. Plausible deduction points towards Ford only agreeing to return if the character was killed, and I’m calling Marcia Lucas disingenuous because of all people, she’d know how difficult it would be to get Ford back into that role without that death happening.That’s really all I’ve got to say here. I don’t know if we’re going to see eye to eye on this.
No, I don’t think we will but hey, we tried.
Yep, good try.
She doesn’t say anything that a bunch of people have already said before. George allegedly did not like the films either, Hamill criticized them a lot (presumably before someone taught him the basics of “selling a movie”) and Boyega was also disappointed. Even a lot of people who professed to like the sequels have said that they thought the story of the prequels was better.
I get what she’s saying about the killing of characters. Obi-Wan’s death was unexpected and felt like it was important to the story. The sequels’ deaths all felt like they had decided to kill off one character per movie to add “emotions”, and it felt way more manipulative.
Here, I’ll write 10 things that made the original trilogy great, and we’ll see how much the sequels AND the prequels have of them:
1) A sense of wonder: The idea that you’re stepping into a completely new and immersive universe. I think the only one that managed something close to this was Avatar and even it didn’t make much of a cultural impact as it had a rather forgettable story.
Both the sequels and prequels miserably fail on this matter.
2) Clockwork pacing: Things happened when they needed to happen. No one’s story dragged, there is not a single slow or useless section in any of the original three movies.
Only in the first prequel is the pacing any good. In all others it is languid. As for the sequels, instead of clockwork pacing we simply have a meandering mess.
3) A genuine sense of menace: Especially in the beginning, there is a genuine feel that the Empire is a relelntless and powerful force that is never giving our heroes a single moment of rest. Even Princess Leia is well aware of the danger and power of Darth Vader.
In the prequels some sort of an attempt is made, but it is difficult to make an effective villain that’s in the shadows all the time and Lucas largely failed at this. Dath Maul is pretty awesome as a villain and that’s pretty much it. The sequels don’t even pretent that their villains are anything but cartoon characters.
4) New and fresh ideas: Each Star Wars in the original trilogy brought new things to the table. A New Hope set the stage and brought all these ideas forth, Empire brought the theme of facing one’s own darkside and one of the most famous movie twists in history and Jedi brought forth the idea that even someone as evil as Vader could be redeemed.
Lucas tried to make a compelling story of turning to the darkside in the prequels, but largely failed. Anakin’s abrupt trasition from teenage petulance to full-blown genocide is downright laughable. The only thing I saw in TFA and TROS was cheap pandering and lazy rehashing of things, whereas the few new and interesting ideas in TLJ were both underdone in the movie itself and completely discarded in TROS.
5) An atmosphere of WAR: There is a reason the word ‘war’ is placed in the title and is such an important part of Star Wars. Beyond all the special effects and dazzling monsters, it should never be forgotten that these are WAR movies. People look, talk and act like they’re in a war. Scared, stressed, argumentative, impulsive… it really paints a picture of just how desperate the Rebellion is until the very end when they finally prevail.The prequels are certainly different in that they are a movie in peacetime, but in that case a sense of tension and dread should prevail, which is largely absent. For chrissakes, the first half hour of The Clone Wars is Bodyguard in space! As for the sequels, the good guys are all proudly wearing their standard plot-armor like in every forgettable blockbuster out there EVER.6) On that note: terrific battle sequences. The descrtuction of the Death Star, Hoth, the final battle. Need, I say more?
Now, go ahead: Name one good space battle sequence from either the prequels or the sequels! I’m waiting. Oh, sure there’s plenty of CGI porn, but a good and memorable battle? Not a single one.
7) Great characters: The six main protagonists (Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, C3P0, R2D2) are extremely well designed and interact well with each other.
Oh God! If there is any place where both the prequels and the sequels flunk terribly it is THIS! Prequels: Jar Jar… anything more that needs to be said? And Anakin, a petulant twerp who is in addition surprisingly bland, complemented by a milquetoast Obi Wan and Padme, who loses all her spunk the moment the script forces her at gunpoint into a relationship with Anakin. As for the sequels, the less said about these caricatures, the better.
7) A sequential format: The characters travel together in the story, for the most part, constantly rescuing and helping each other out, even someone goes off and does their thing like Luke going to train. There is no sense of disjointed stories running in parallel.
You get a good sequence of events in The Phantom Menace, which despite being a bit on the kid-friendly side and having Jar Jar, I STILL consider to be the best movie outside of the original trilogy. Everything else… forgettable. As the the sequels, the pacing is largely terrible and disjointed. Each character is largely doing their own thing and occasionally meeting up with others to catch up.
8) A deluge of interesting side characters and creatures: They are what make the universe so immersive.
In the prequels, many of these creatures veered off into the cartoonish side, with a clear intent to sell as many toys as possible. In the sequels, there is a relative dearth of them, with the exception of the notorious pogs who solely exist to CGI-out the birds that couldn’t be removed from the shots. Oh, and the notorious tit-monster Luke uses for sustenance, who can forget… her?
9) Swordfights: Each one has a concrete purpose to the story. In the first one, Obi Wan is killed and the torch is passed to the new generation. In the second, Luke learns of the horrible truth. In the third, Luke is put to the final test.
In the prequels we have Darth Maul’s fight with Obi Wan and Qui Gon, which one could arguably call the best swordfight of them all. Everything else is pretty underwhelming… oh, we got to see Yoda hopping about… and the final showdown between Obi and Anakin is pretty undermined by the cartoonish nature of Anakin’s transition to the dark side. Sequels? Well, apart from Rey nerfing everyone she comes across, the showdown between Kylo and Luke might have been a bit more memorable if it didn’t betray just about everything Luke is about: the guy who found it in his heart to redeem frikkin’ Darth Vader is now mercilessly taunting Kylo whom he himself helped turn over to the darkside!
… and finally
10) A coherent story with a beginning, middle and end.
The prequels had an end they were going for, but completely failed at finding a good way to get there. The sequels were from a start a lazy money-grabbing re-hash and the very fact you had directors play Chinese whispers with each other shows hot little they cared about producing a coherent and well-thought story.
1) A sense of wonder: The idea that you’re stepping into a completely new and immersive universe. I think the only one that managed something close to this was Avatar and even it didn’t make much of a cultural impact as it had a rather forgettable story.Both the sequels and prequels miserably fail on this matter.Despite the problems with the prequels, they contributed the most to world building and how immersive the world was outside of the EU.
I agree with some but I was fine with Solo and Luke dying. Harrison is a dbag and always wanted Solo to die. Luke going out like a badass is fucking great and Rey nothing being related to the Skywalkers made perfect sense as you don’t want this power to just be a bloodline bullshit.Long live the Last Jedi! The 3rd best Star Wars movie to me and I’m someone who saw Empire and Jedi in the theater back in 1980 and 1983 and at the age of 9 I thought Return of the Jedi made my life! lol!
We have vastly different ideas of what going out like a badass looks like
Tricking the “new” vader into a fight he can’t win while you let the new rebels flee to fight another day. Showing people who don’t know you were a ghost (the rebels) that you could beat a fucking At-At attack and live on in history as the story of a farm boy turned God, turned grumpy old man, turned legend to save the day again….Man if that isn’t badass then I don’t know what is. And no I don’t care to know what you think a badass is.
People are really out here clamoring for Luke to whip out a sword and go full Kill Bill on the First Order, like him throwing away his weapon and refusing to kill the most evil man who ever lived wasn’t the triumphant culmination of his arc in ROTJ
Seriously, the man was an old man by this point and his failure broke him after he already fucking saved the damn fight the 1st time around. He proved time and time again “ I’M FUCKING LUKE SKYWALKER AND DON’T YOU FORGET IT”.Shit the only thing they missed was when he walked out of the At-At blast that the 1st order guys should have been shiting their pants.
Yes, your tastes are shit.
Disney saw Star Wars as a brand that would make them money, nothing else. The sequels showed that quite well.
What does ‘full of beans’ mean? Is that good?
they had to kill Han; the rest I’m on board with
There is an alternate universe where Lucas never made a 2nd Star Wars movie. Just the one, A New Hope, cryptically called “episode IV”. Wouldn’t you rather live in that universe? I bet people are happier there…
Jesus, I’m tired of arguing about Star Wars.
Isn’t it kind of a no-brainer that ‘Since the divorce, though, her impact has largely been diminished’? Who’s in a hurry to be around their ex? Other than Lindsey Buckingham, I guess.
While I don’t agree with her specific criticisms, I don’t believe the new trilogy is above criticism either. But that’s just me!
I can’t with the weekly relitigating of the sequel trilogy, but I’ll just say I find her deeply likeable even if I think Han Solo’s death was the best part of TFA.
She’s the one who came up with the idea that Obi-Wan Kenobi should die in A New Hope and the trench run. Uhm… Wasn’t it the model-maker who was in charge of making the Death Star who came up with the trench run? (Because the model didn’t set spherically and he didn’t want to re-do it).
IIRC, Marcia Lucas came up with shorting 9-10 runs down to 3, and have Vader’s squadron hunt down the ships doing the trench runs.
To be fair, I think it’s an open secret that the only reason Harrison Ford played Solo in TFA was the fact that he was going to be killed. Yes it could have been handled so much better. Everything post-ROTJ could have been handled so much better. I was also really in to Rey’s story until Rise of Skywalker. They could have even saved the Palpatine’s granddaughter story line by having Rey reject both Palpatine and Skywalker names at the end of RoS by calling back one of her lines in TFA and telling that old busy body at the Lars farm “I’m Rey. Just Rey.”But I cried too after watching TPM so I understand where she is coming from.
By saying Han Solo’s death goes against the idea of the Force is she saying that Han Solo was somehow an off-the-books jedi? because otherwise I’m not clear on how those two ideas are related. I mean, the Force keeps people safe to some extent, but…they didn’t live happily ever after…is that what she was upset about?
Marcia, please don’t talk to JJ, as that would mean he’s still involved with Star Wars in some capacity. He’s done enough damage to last a lifetime.
I can’t believe this sexist incel! Any criticism of the Star Wars sequel is fueled by toxic fanboys!