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Posted
by
timothy
from the management-always-gets-the-uphill-outhouse dept.
mvar writes "Varioussourcesreport that a few days ago at CinemaCon Disney announced their plan to release, following the 2015 JJ Abrams Episode VII, a new Star Wars movie every 1 (one, uno, une) year. Yep, get your stomachs ready, because that's a lot of Jar Jar Binks."
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Are they planning to continue the story after the events of "Return of the Jedi?" If that's the case, hopefully we can safely assume that Jar Jar will remain in the past.
The physics of Hollywood is such that it will eventually suck everything dry, like locusts ravaging the landscape until it's so barren that they starve to death. Any good stories that they have produced will ultimately be repeatedly milked to death until they are bone dry.
Indeed... And now that I've read a couple of TFA's, it sounds like... they might even release an ENTIRE MOVIE devote to Jar Jar, if they felt like it. They're talking about alternating between standalone character-based movies, and episodes of the main plot line. I do, in general, have more faith in Disney than in George Lucas for coming up with a quality film. So, we'll see what happens.....
And now that I've read a couple of TFA's, it sounds like... they might even release an ENTIRE MOVIE devote to Jar Jar, if they felt like it. They're talking about alternating between standalone character-based movies, and episodes of the main plot line.
Well, isn't that a good thing? Anyone(?) who wants to see Jar-Jar can watch the J-J movies, and anyone who doesn't doesn't lose much else.
Does anyone need to see the Anakin movies (Ep 1-3) to understand the Luke movies (Ep 4-6)?
Quite the reverse really. There are several points of emotional significance in 1-3 which are utterly meaningless if not confusing without having first seen 3-6.
I'm pretty sure he's referring to the recent work DIsney has done with movies like the Pirates of the Caribbean and those Marvel universe movies no one ever liked
It's still better than the prequel trilogy -- Super Mario Bros is at least so disjointedly fucking confusing as to keep you wondering. Still better writing than Lucas's terrible "romantic" banter. Just.. awful.
Now that there are hundreds of millions of dollars is film deals being made the Hollywood powers that be will make whatever movie they want and don't care about a bunch of books that were written years ago.
I was pondering that, too. I suspect Disney will at least take some inspiration from non-movie canon sources, though, to capitalize on their popularity and to save on creative investment. It's not like they're letting J. J. Abrams reboot (and by which I mean completely trash) the entire storyline.
"Star Wars X11: The Flying Leopard." Luke Skywalker (Justin Beiber) and Hans Solo (Ashton Kucher) compete for the attentions of Princess Leia (Taylor Swift). The sniping gets nasty and escalates into fist fights, which Hans wins easily. Humiliated, Luke decides to train in the ancient Jedi martial art of "Domas", which coincidentally looks a lot like Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do, only with CGI enhancements. Hans gets a surprise in the big showdown when Luke delivers a flying kick, but the match continues.
Wake me when Rockey Balboa (Sylvester Stallone... still) gets on the scene half way through the movie (not because the ship is too long, but because his walker doesn't work as well on the shag carpet mind-deck).
(In case it wasn't obvious, that was delivered with a great big/eyeroll)
The comments from people who automatically assume that just because its Disney it's going t somehow be aimed at toddlers hasn't been paying attention the last twenty years or so. Pretty Woman, Pulp Fiction? Released under branches of Disney.
Stop thinking about Davy Crocket or Mary Poppins - Disney doesn't make live action like that any more. They went after a real director for Episode VII, they have old school Star Wars folk like Larry Kasdan working on the solo films, and again - seen any of the Marvel pictures?
The problem with the prequels wasn't the kiddificaton - that's always been in Star Wars (the droids, the Ewoks, Chewbacca to a certain extent). It was because Lucas cannot write dialogue or direct actors worth a damn and he took too much on for those films. Most casual folk don't realize that he did it direct either of the original sequels. He is brilliant, just it at those things (and even Carrie Fisher's help ghost writing couldn't save the Padme storyline, George has such a fundamental misunderstanding of women it cannot help but show).
I was never more happy than when Disney bought Star Wars - the Disney of today is much different tha the Disney we (or our parents) grew up with, and all this immature "OMGZ ITZ DISNEY!" knee-jerk garbage here and elsewhere just shows a fundamental lack of knowledge of the film industry over the past couple of decades, where Disney has realized that they have the best success when they outsource for talent and bring in the best people to do the job and trust them to do it right.
Personally I cannot wait for Abrams to have his stamp on the franchise, and the future directors who will have an insane amount of resources to make hopefully great Star Wars films. Disney is just signing the checks here and making sure it doesn't turn into porn - other than that, I think you will find this isn't Walt's Disney any more.
The comments from people who automatically assume that just because its Disney it's going t somehow be aimed at toddlers hasn't been paying attention the last twenty years or so. Pretty Woman, Pulp Fiction? Released under branches of Disney.
On the other hand, you can count on Disney to milk it for all it's worth, and then some.
I occasionally watch "Once Upon a Time" (Disney owned/produced), which started out well enough. Then they started adding in other Disney characters from different timelines, and it just got... ridiculous.
Shortly after the Disney purchase, an episode featured a rather prominent Start Wars ringtone from one of the characters' cell phones. Yeah. That fit right in.
Of COURSE it's not Walt's Disney anymore. They went to the Dark Side when they hired Michael Eisner. Any takers on where Lucas got the inspiration for Darth Vader?
In principle I'm not against Disney having Star Wars, but they've already made two bad decisions. 1st, they're going away from all of the Expanded Universe. Hand of Thrawn was really the way to go for the next trilogy. Beyond that, you don't have 20 years of additional product be part of the official continuity and then *poof* decide to crap on everyone and declare it persona non grata. That's just plain rude.
Just as bad, they brought in Abrams to direct. Seriously? There's a lot of good directing and writing talent out there, and JJ is not it. He already trashed Trek. I'm glad you enjoyed his version of Trek. Yes, it had much higher production values than the mess that was all of the TNG movies, but his movie was crap. One huge plot hole after another and things that frankly just didn't make any kinds of sense. I haven't seen anything from his latest Trek endeavor that makes me want to see it, and I haven't heard anything from Disney that makes me want to see the new Star Wars.
Three bad decisions. I love them as much as the next geek, but rolling out Ford, Fisher and Hamill?! Really?! Ugh.
Personally I cannot wait for Abrams to have his stamp on the franchise, and the future directors who will have an insane amount of resources to make hopefully great Star Wars films.
Which is, ironically, one of the visions Lucas originally had for the series.
"With an unlimited number of possible adventures, he [Lucas] could turn it into a bona fide franchise, having new directors have their go in the Star Wars galaxy, each making their own version of it. It could be like a space opera version of James Bond!
I always thought that the original trilogy was like that anyway. R2D2 was kinda "cute" and there mostly for comic relief, paired with an effeminate straight man in the form of C3PO. Then there were the Ewocks. The whole first movie was a typical Disney-esq coming of age yarn.
Yes, indeed. C3PO is a droid. It's a given that he has shortcomings. Jar Jar was simply a bumbling fool with SO much luck following him around that it did explain why he was still alive, but at the same time made him annoying as hell, because EVERYONE was waiting, hoping and praying that he finally bites the dust due to his antics and time and again we were being disappointed.
Well Disney is doing Marvel universe movies every year so a Star Wars based movie might not be so bad since they can do sequels or prequels maybe they'll do a series of Revan movies or a Yoda movie it's hard to say given what they have to pick from. Though I wouldn't expect them to hold to the canon histories exactly which will piss off the star wars nerds but to be more like how they're doing IronMan and the Avengers movies compared to the comics.
1 lovable rogue WITH a talking pet that only he understood.
1 Young boy guided by an ancient wizard and two sidekick characters one of which only he understands.
The only difference between Star Wars and a BAD disney movie is that Star Wars was a GOOD Disney movie, of which Disney has made PLENTY.
And it wasn't Disney that added JarJar, it was George Lucas. Disney's comparable movie recently was the Pirates of the Carribean. And if anything, with the later movie
Highlander 2 didn't happen - it was an alternate, dead-end timeline. Nothing to see there, move along.
If Disney is going to ruin Star Wars, they're going to do it by appealing to the broadest possible market, something Lucas was desperately trying to do himself, and mostly succeeding. Did anybody here actually eat any C3P-Os in the 1980s?
New films could potentially ruin those that came before it. Highlander 2 springs to mind..
Okay, that's a good point. But at the same time, I'll never be ten years old again when I watch a Star Wars movie, so I'll never have the same experience. I accept this and look forward to seeing what they come up with. After all, I can always hate it later once I've actually seen it.
I also take heart in that Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill may need the money, but Harrison Ford doesn't and he signed on. That's a weak sign, but I'll take it as a good one.
Exactly. And today, just as it was when ET busted box office records, wild success with young movie viewers is necessary to achieve generational popularity. Disney is the perfect choice: There's no danger that they'll have budgeting problems, they're keenly aware of what a cash cow this'll be if they do it properly, and by properly, I mean to suggest they'll do their best to capture another generation of merchandise buyers.
The Jar Jar comment means Disney is going to squeeze the shit out of the franchise until only pennies fall to the ground. Then they'll crumble it up and throw it away for the next cultural trash the masses will pony up for.
Jar Jar will become the standard character. Perhaps Jar Jar Jr. will even become a bumbling Jedi, cutting up droids by accident.
So, this is the disney plan. Make one valid entry and then churn churn churn out sequels CoD-style until they've burnt the whole franchise to the ground.
They're planning to own the exclusive rights to anything star wars related for the next 2000 years, if they can do it cheaply and shoddily for ridiculously high licensing fees, they will.
A bit like the LOTR series, maybe they're actually planning to continuously shoot one movie that then gets sliced to comfortable (relatively speaking) run times.
“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”
“Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.”
I expect we'll see a mix. They obviously want to do episode 7/8/9 but.. they have a wealth of source information out there. Tons of books.. What they'll probably do is have a team working on the "Core" movies and other teams filming other movies. Based on other books/characters/etc that will help keep it a little fresher.
I have very strong doubts that disney would bother looking at the expanded universe, much less actually acquiring the rights to make those stories. I wish they would, but I think they won't.
One movie a year isn't that much when you've got a three-year lead-time. It's not necessary to complete each movie individually in a year 2013: Script treatment 2014: Shooting #1, Script treatment #2 2015: Post-production and release #1, Shooting #2, Script treatment #3 2016: Post-production and release #2, Shooting #3, Script treatment #4 And so on. The trick would be hanging on to your actors; you'd probably need to rotate through different producers/directors too.
As Tim of Ctrl-Alt-Del said, they've been pumping out Marvel-universe movies faster than that, and most of them have been pretty darn good. If they mine the better expanded universe fiction, there's no reason to expect they couldn't produce decent movies at a one-per-year rate.
The first scene, in the first movie, is a slo-mo shot of Jar-Jar Binks getting his head sliced off with a lightsaber. That might go a ways towards regaining the audience that Lucas has managed to piss off so heavily with eps 1-3. Casually mention a disease that wiped out all the Gungans and Ewoks...
I doubt it though, I imagine Disney will continue the Lucas development cycle: 1) Think of products that can be marketed easily to kids 2) Come up with some script that links those products together in some manner. Regular rules for storytelling, or logic need not apply. Hire any actors who will sign, giving the main roll to the worst actor you get. 3) Sell as much merchandise as possible, use some of the profits to make the next movie, starting over at 1.
I sincerely hope I am wrong mind you and that Disney hires someone who *gets* what was attractive about most of Eps 4-6 and makes films in keeping with those at least, but I doubt it will turn out that way.
Yup, I think you pretty much nailed it on all points, but I would add this: Whatever is produced, the kids are guaranteed to love it. It turns out that children are kinda stupid and have terrible taste. I think the "adult" reaction to all this is to just leave the Star Wars franchise to the children, and not to expect it to entertain us adults. This is our attitude to everything else that Disney does, so why an exception out of Star Wars? Let the kids have their cartoons (let's face it, that's how the franc
Yup, I think you pretty much nailed it on all points, but I would add this: Whatever is produced, the kids are guaranteed to love it. It turns out that children are kinda stupid and have terrible taste. I think the "adult" reaction to all this is to just leave the Star Wars franchise to the children, and not to expect it to entertain us adults.
It's a sensible and rational suggestion, but there are good movies for kids that also manage to entertain adults. George Lucas din't have the knack, but Pixar (Wall-E, The Incredibles, Up) and Dreamworks (Antz, Shrek, Wallace & Gromit) does.
The first scene, in the first movie, is a slo-mo shot of Jar-Jar Binks getting his head sliced off with a lightsaber.
Unfortunately, the second scene has the camera view swooping through the door marked "sekrit cloning lab" into a room filled with tens of thousands of mechanical pods. Lids on the pods slide open in unison, as the camera zooms in to the blank soulless gaze of a Jar-Jar clone. Scrolling title text rolls from the bottom of the screen, receding to a vanishing point:
too fast, too mercifull. toss him into a sarrlac and have footage in the belly of him screaming and getting disfigured during a few minutes of slow digestion
Agreed. There used to be a time when Disney used to stand for quality but that's really no longer the case.
I was kid when Empire was first released. The story was way too dark/scary for me at the time. Now, the movie is absolutely amazing,
There's a lot of really cool stuff they could do in SW movies. It doesn't have to be gory. If you sacrifice toy sales, you can make a hell of a better movie. Kids don't belong in the theater. They don't need to see a movie of beheadings, bar fights, understanding what boun
1) Think of products that can be marketed easily to kids
I am famously cynical and even I think you're being simultaneously overly and inadequately cynical. Inadequately because kids will buy anything stamped "Star Wars", and overly because I don't think Lucas is just trying to make stuff that appeals to kids without any concern for whether it's a good idea or not. Remember, he doesn't need more money, he's got enough money to make lots more of it investing even in sure things.
I think one of the most interesting things about Lucas' Universe is there IS a great deal of room for adversity. If you've got thousands of planets with life there is the possibility that it will run the gamut between cute and cuddly (Ewoks) to big and nasty and slimy (Jabba the Hut) to big, bad-ass warrior tribes (Wookies). The biggest problem with the latter movies is it appears Lucas tried to focus too much on the cute/cuddly/silly side (everything from the young Anakin to Jar Jar) and left those of us "a
Personally I was sick to death of the whole franchise after the 2nd sequel/prequel? (the second new one released after the first 3 originals).
Personally after growing up with and loving the original trilogy, the poorly executed CGI completely killed it for me whilst seemingly adding nothing groundbreaking to the main story.
It has now become a case of I will actively avoid anything star wars based, and I hate them all for ruining what was quite possibly the best Sci-Fi story ever made! Fuck Lucas, Fuck Dis
For some extremely loose definition of science fiction. Star Wars had fiction but no science. It is sword and sorcery in space.
Irvin Kershner, director of Empire, himself said Star Wars is not science fiction -- it is a fairy tale. It is mythology in the truest sense. Joseph Campbell remarked at length about the mythological qualities of the original trilogy, calling it a modern mythos for our time, and the primary reason for its success. It embodies many of the mythological themes that remind us of the es
Personally after growing up with and loving the original trilogy, the poorly executed CGI completely killed it for me whilst seemingly adding nothing groundbreaking to the main story.
Not that the original stories were particularly groundbreaking... They were pretty much a collection of long extant tropes strung together with some spectacular (for their time) special effects.
I was going to say at least the franchise is being handed to JJ Abrams he is a fairly competent director. So the new movies in the series may at least be PG13 and action packed I don't think its JJ Abrams style to do a G or PG rated Star wars Fern gully.
The worst possible case scenario... Uwe Boll gets a hold of the Star Wars franchise and infiltrates Disney.
Are you really a trekkie? 11 breathed fresh blood and new young pretty faces who are reliable actors back into the franchise. 11 was a good move in the right direction. They even pulled off their roles and payed amazingly good homage to the original characters.
Was it a brand new series with full of unknown new content going in a bold new direction? No, sorry no more Captain Janeway's for you... If the movies are successful they might reboot a series though with new characters. Stick to your fan fiction for
Abrams didn't like Star Trek, he never got it and even said so - he liked Star Wars. He managed to even blow up a whole planet with a super large ship and I was waiting for some kind of "Kirk, I'm your father" moment... He'd have used light sabers in his sword fighting scene except that wouldn't have gotten permission from Lucas.
The movie was not Star Trek and despite being a Trek fan, I was not suckered into the typical remake formula that even the most poorly made movies use today. Cameos and geeky back references don't fool me. I guess I'm not much of a Trekkie because I'm not so emotionally desperate that I shutdown my brain at a Spock cameo. Hell, Disney could put Spock into the next Star Wars movie and bill it as both a Trek film and Star Wars film and I bet people would buy it! Sheep.
There are actual recorded interviews with Gene Roddenberry about how Trek was never "dark" and "edgy" and that completely missed the point of it; he had to fight to keep it away from people trying to drag it into that direction. It had the 60's moon landing optimism about the future and how we could aspire to evolve beyond such things; he primarily used aliens to illustrate those things. Today's modern anti-heroes have no place in the world he created. Like religion, the qualities that bring people in are often forgotten and the dogma takes over; having the superficial Trek branding doesn't define what is Star Trek. I wonder why anybody bothers to study or think at deeper levels on literature, because apparently not even the authors do; anymore. I dare not imagine how Candide, ou l'Optimisme would turn out as a movie.
Yes, the last Trek movies sucked because they don't care once they make money and know they can sucker people back for a few sequels - then they bring in somebody to try something drastic so they can continue to beat a dead horse... as if the "franchise" was worn out when in fact it is 100% the studio's fault every time. They make their money because people will settle for back references with a bland thoughtless dream-like state of mind (which is why huge plot holes are commonplace; once you suspend all reasoning... see the "How it should have ended" series) All this stuff is making people more stupid while wasting their time. Entertainment doesn't have to lower your IQ.
"No, George Lucas has sold the franchise to soulless corporate executives at Disney..."
"Nooooooooooooo, THAT"S NOT TRUE, THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!"
"Search your feelings, you know this to be true."
..and Disney is one of the leaders in the charge. The original Star Wars trilogy was fine the way it was. All Disney is going to do is ruin it for everyone.
They'll be using Hamill, Fisher, and Ford again. No problem with the age of the actors.
Because, like the last Star Wars movie produced, it will all be Animated.
It's going to be a new cartoon every year.
That's one reason they cancelled the Saturday morning follow-on of Clone Wars: don't want to saturate the audience.
Unless they started filming for all three concurrently last year, these movies are going to stink. It would be nice if they spent a couple more years making sure the scripts are flawless before filming anything.
They have gone from moderate and popular smallish moderate corporation to a megacorp with all the business practices that follow. They have no artistic integrity anymore. Just suits throwing money around and hedging bets. Then for what turns out good they keep the IP and make sequels.
1. Some lovable, huggable character or characters that can be sold as merchandise and McDonalds Happy-Meal addons. 2. Some comic relief sidekicks that can be turned into their own TV show. 3. Something that can be toy-ified and sold by Mattell or the like. 4. A talking animal, preferably with huge eyes. Can be combined with 1 or 2. 5. A catchy theme. We can somehow recycle the one that exists, but somewhere we have to add some text for Elton John to sing. 6. Nobody may die on screen. At least nobody who doesn't really, really want to.
Once you got that down, throw a few lines of script in to string them together and you're done.
and it's not so bad. I hate to say it but I liked the animated clone wars movie. That said, I can't in a million years imagine JJ "Lens Flare" Abrams making a good Star Wars movie. But you never know. Maybe he'll just end up managing the project and letting better people write/edit/do all the work to it.
I disagree. What we will get is very expensive CGI, lots of regurgitated stock scenes and non-existent sets (because a greenscreen background is not a set).
Jar Jar *is* supposed to be an alien, after all, and there's some validity to the notion that they would have some sort of accent. Since it's a human playing the part and not a real alien, it's entirely understandable that the accent is probably going to have things in common with some accent spoken on Earth. In this case, it happened to be Jamaican... and somehow, everybody and their dog is so offended by it that they want the character's head on a pike.
Are they Sequels? (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Are they Sequels? (Score:5, Funny)
...they'll make it overly kid-friendly...
Oh no! Huey, Dewey, and Louie Binks! Mesa gettin' very very scared!
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I think my selected mirrors must not be updated.
Milking It to Death (Score:5, Insightful)
The physics of Hollywood is such that it will eventually suck everything dry, like locusts ravaging the landscape until it's so barren that they starve to death. Any good stories that they have produced will ultimately be repeatedly milked to death until they are bone dry.
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Re:Are they Sequels? (Score:5, Insightful)
I do, in general, have more faith in Disney than in George Lucas for coming up with a quality film.
This, ladies and gentleman, is a classic example of 'damning with faint praise'.
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And its one of life's (fairly minor) disappointments that its true.
Re:Are they Sequels? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Are they Sequels? (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.tmz.com/2013/04/16/richard-leparmentier-darth-vader-choking-victim-dead-dies-star-wars/ [tmz.com]
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Re:Are they Sequels? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, isn't that a good thing? Anyone(?) who wants to see Jar-Jar can watch the J-J movies, and anyone who doesn't doesn't lose much else.
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As long as they are unrelated to the main story and you don't need to see them to follow it.
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Re:Are they Sequels? (Score:5, Informative)
Does anyone need to see the Anakin movies (Ep 1-3) to understand the Luke movies (Ep 4-6)?
Quite the reverse really. There are several points of emotional significance in 1-3 which are utterly meaningless if not confusing without having first seen 3-6.
Super Mario Bros. (1993) (Score:2)
I do, in general, have more faith in Disney than in George Lucas for coming up with a quality film.
I would assume that Super Mario Bros., published by Disney's Hollywood Pictures in 1993, might be an exception to your general rule. Am I right?
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I'm pretty sure he's referring to the recent work DIsney has done with movies like the Pirates of the Caribbean and those Marvel universe movies no one ever liked
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It's still better than the prequel trilogy -- Super Mario Bros is at least so disjointedly fucking confusing as to keep you wondering. Still better writing than Lucas's terrible "romantic" banter. Just.. awful.
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What. as opposed to Howard The Duck?
EU doesn't mean anything. (Score:4, Insightful)
Now that there are hundreds of millions of dollars is film deals being made the Hollywood powers that be will make whatever movie they want and don't care about a bunch of books that were written years ago.
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"Star Wars X11: The Flying Leopard." Luke Skywalker (Justin Beiber) and Hans Solo (Ashton Kucher) compete for the attentions of Princess Leia (Taylor Swift). The sniping gets nasty and escalates into fist fights, which Hans wins easily. Humiliated, Luke decides to train in the ancient Jedi martial art of "Domas", which coincidentally looks a lot like Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do, only with CGI enhancements. Hans gets a surprise in the big showdown when Luke delivers a flying kick, but the match continues.
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Re: Are they Sequels? (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean like they did with Marvel?
(In case it wasn't obvious, that was delivered with a great big /eyeroll)
The comments from people who automatically assume that just because its Disney it's going t somehow be aimed at toddlers hasn't been paying attention the last twenty years or so. Pretty Woman, Pulp Fiction? Released under branches of Disney.
Stop thinking about Davy Crocket or Mary Poppins - Disney doesn't make live action like that any more. They went after a real director for Episode VII, they have old school Star Wars folk like Larry Kasdan working on the solo films, and again - seen any of the Marvel pictures?
The problem with the prequels wasn't the kiddificaton - that's always been in Star Wars (the droids, the Ewoks, Chewbacca to a certain extent). It was because Lucas cannot write dialogue or direct actors worth a damn and he took too much on for those films. Most casual folk don't realize that he did it direct either of the original sequels. He is brilliant, just it at those things (and even Carrie Fisher's help ghost writing couldn't save the Padme storyline, George has such a fundamental misunderstanding of women it cannot help but show).
I was never more happy than when Disney bought Star Wars - the Disney of today is much different tha the Disney we (or our parents) grew up with, and all this immature "OMGZ ITZ DISNEY!" knee-jerk garbage here and elsewhere just shows a fundamental lack of knowledge of the film industry over the past couple of decades, where Disney has realized that they have the best success when they outsource for talent and bring in the best people to do the job and trust them to do it right.
Personally I cannot wait for Abrams to have his stamp on the franchise, and the future directors who will have an insane amount of resources to make hopefully great Star Wars films. Disney is just signing the checks here and making sure it doesn't turn into porn - other than that, I think you will find this isn't Walt's Disney any more.
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The comments from people who automatically assume that just because its Disney it's going t somehow be aimed at toddlers hasn't been paying attention the last twenty years or so. Pretty Woman, Pulp Fiction? Released under branches of Disney.
On the other hand, you can count on Disney to milk it for all it's worth, and then some.
I occasionally watch "Once Upon a Time" (Disney owned/produced), which started out well enough. Then they started adding in other Disney characters from different timelines, and it just got... ridiculous.
Shortly after the Disney purchase, an episode featured a rather prominent Start Wars ringtone from one of the characters' cell phones. Yeah. That fit right in.
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Re: Are they Sequels? (Score:4, Insightful)
In principle I'm not against Disney having Star Wars, but they've already made two bad decisions. 1st, they're going away from all of the Expanded Universe. Hand of Thrawn was really the way to go for the next trilogy. Beyond that, you don't have 20 years of additional product be part of the official continuity and then *poof* decide to crap on everyone and declare it persona non grata. That's just plain rude.
Just as bad, they brought in Abrams to direct. Seriously? There's a lot of good directing and writing talent out there, and JJ is not it. He already trashed Trek. I'm glad you enjoyed his version of Trek. Yes, it had much higher production values than the mess that was all of the TNG movies, but his movie was crap. One huge plot hole after another and things that frankly just didn't make any kinds of sense. I haven't seen anything from his latest Trek endeavor that makes me want to see it, and I haven't heard anything from Disney that makes me want to see the new Star Wars.
Three bad decisions. I love them as much as the next geek, but rolling out Ford, Fisher and Hamill?! Really?! Ugh.
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Personally I cannot wait for Abrams to have his stamp on the franchise, and the future directors who will have an insane amount of resources to make hopefully great Star Wars films.
Which is, ironically, one of the visions Lucas originally had for the series.
"With an unlimited number of possible adventures, he [Lucas] could turn it into a bona fide franchise, having new directors have their go in the Star Wars galaxy, each making their own version of it. It could be like a space opera version of James Bond!
Re:Are they Sequels? (Score:4, Informative)
I always thought that the original trilogy was like that anyway. R2D2 was kinda "cute" and there mostly for comic relief, paired with an effeminate straight man in the form of C3PO. Then there were the Ewocks. The whole first movie was a typical Disney-esq coming of age yarn.
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I have no problem with Leia learning to pilot an X-Wing, and her animal friend already is a navigator.
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erm... is Jar Jar *that* different from C3PO?
Re:Are they Sequels? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, indeed. C3PO is a droid. It's a given that he has shortcomings. Jar Jar was simply a bumbling fool with SO much luck following him around that it did explain why he was still alive, but at the same time made him annoying as hell, because EVERYONE was waiting, hoping and praying that he finally bites the dust due to his antics and time and again we were being disappointed.
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Well Disney is doing Marvel universe movies every year so a Star Wars based movie might not be so bad since they can do sequels or prequels maybe they'll do a series of Revan movies or a Yoda movie it's hard to say given what they have to pick from. Though I wouldn't expect them to hold to the canon histories exactly which will piss off the star wars nerds but to be more like how they're doing IronMan and the Avengers movies compared to the comics.
As opposed to the original? (Score:3)
Lets see, the original had:
1 spunky princess
1 lovable rogue WITH a talking pet that only he understood.
1 Young boy guided by an ancient wizard and two sidekick characters one of which only he understands.
The only difference between Star Wars and a BAD disney movie is that Star Wars was a GOOD Disney movie, of which Disney has made PLENTY.
And it wasn't Disney that added JarJar, it was George Lucas. Disney's comparable movie recently was the Pirates of the Carribean. And if anything, with the later movie
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And remind me who the figures of hate in the original trilogy were? Or indeed are.
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In an episode of 'Spaced' Tim says "Jar Jar Binks makes the Ewoks look like fucking Shaft!"
Can you imagine Disney making a film so bad that JJB actually looks play?
New films could potentially ruin those that came before it. Highlander 2 springs to mind..
Re:Are they Sequels? (Score:4, Insightful)
Highlander 2 didn't happen - it was an alternate, dead-end timeline. Nothing to see there, move along.
If Disney is going to ruin Star Wars, they're going to do it by appealing to the broadest possible market, something Lucas was desperately trying to do himself, and mostly succeeding. Did anybody here actually eat any C3P-Os in the 1980s?
Re:Are they Sequels? (Score:4, Interesting)
New films could potentially ruin those that came before it. Highlander 2 springs to mind..
Okay, that's a good point. But at the same time, I'll never be ten years old again when I watch a Star Wars movie, so I'll never have the same experience. I accept this and look forward to seeing what they come up with. After all, I can always hate it later once I've actually seen it.
I also take heart in that Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill may need the money, but Harrison Ford doesn't and he signed on. That's a weak sign, but I'll take it as a good one.
Re:Are they Sequels? (Score:4, Funny)
Han Solo as a crotchety old man.
In my day, we had to make the Kessel run in under 12 parsecs, both ways!
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I wanted to barbeque him and feed him to my dog. BIG difference.
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A Jar-Jar snuff film might actually be fairly popular.
Re:I know (Score:2)
What happened to the starwars that I used to know [youtube.com]?
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Jar Jar will become the standard character. Perhaps Jar Jar Jr. will even become a bumbling Jedi, cutting up droids by accident.
So, this is the disney plan. Make one valid entry and then churn churn churn out sequels CoD-style until they've burnt the whole franchise to the ground.
Star Wars is dead, long live Star Wars.
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...Perhaps Jar Jar Jr. will even become a bumbling Jedi, cutting up droids by accident.
Meeeeesssaaaassossaoorry!
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They're planning to own the exclusive rights to anything star wars related for the next 2000 years, if they can do it cheaply and shoddily for ridiculously high licensing fees, they will.
FTFY.
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Thanks for the correction =)
Maybe they shoot together and then split it up (Score:5, Interesting)
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> sliced to comfortable run times.
So they're going to shoot 12 hours all at once and release one chunk over the next 37 years?
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So it will be a 1 hour movie stretched to three hours every year?
H.L. Mencken (Score:4, Insightful)
“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”
“Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.”
Re: H.L. Mencken (Score:2, Funny)
(Except USA Today)
A mix (Score:3)
I expect we'll see a mix.
They obviously want to do episode 7/8/9
but..
they have a wealth of source information out there. Tons of books..
What they'll probably do is have a team working on the "Core" movies and other teams filming other movies. Based on other books/characters/etc that will help keep it a little fresher.
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There are some good stories in there. I think they should definitely look at it, mine it for ideas, but I'd hate for them to actually *follow* it.
Lead Time (Score:5, Insightful)
One movie a year isn't that much when you've got a three-year lead-time. It's not necessary to complete each movie individually in a year
2013: Script treatment
2014: Shooting #1, Script treatment #2
2015: Post-production and release #1, Shooting #2, Script treatment #3
2016: Post-production and release #2, Shooting #3, Script treatment #4
And so on. The trick would be hanging on to your actors; you'd probably need to rotate through different producers/directors too.
As Tim of Ctrl-Alt-Del said, they've been pumping out Marvel-universe movies faster than that, and most of them have been pretty darn good. If they mine the better expanded universe fiction, there's no reason to expect they couldn't produce decent movies at a one-per-year rate.
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Well, no. Disney hasn't produced any Star Wars movies, ever, at all, period.
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Time for a car analogy!
Person owns a car.
Car is used to run over and kill multiple pedestrians.
You buy said car.
YOU WERE RUNNING OVER AND KILLING MULTIPLE PEDESTRIANS!
See how ridiculous that makes you sound? :)
Hopefully... (Score:5, Insightful)
The first scene, in the first movie, is a slo-mo shot of Jar-Jar Binks getting his head sliced off with a lightsaber. That might go a ways towards regaining the audience that Lucas has managed to piss off so heavily with eps 1-3. Casually mention a disease that wiped out all the Gungans and Ewoks...
I doubt it though, I imagine Disney will continue the Lucas development cycle:
1) Think of products that can be marketed easily to kids
2) Come up with some script that links those products together in some manner. Regular rules for storytelling, or logic need not apply. Hire any actors who will sign, giving the main roll to the worst actor you get.
3) Sell as much merchandise as possible, use some of the profits to make the next movie, starting over at 1.
I sincerely hope I am wrong mind you and that Disney hires someone who *gets* what was attractive about most of Eps 4-6 and makes films in keeping with those at least, but I doubt it will turn out that way.
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Whedon's Avengers
I don't think that Disney will be making any of them.
Missed something there?
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Yup, I think you pretty much nailed it on all points, but I would add this: Whatever is produced, the kids are guaranteed to love it. It turns out that children are kinda stupid and have terrible taste. I think the "adult" reaction to all this is to just leave the Star Wars franchise to the children, and not to expect it to entertain us adults.
It's a sensible and rational suggestion, but there are good movies for kids that also manage to entertain adults. George Lucas din't have the knack, but Pixar (Wall-E, The Incredibles, Up) and Dreamworks (Antz, Shrek, Wallace & Gromit) does.
Re:Hopefully... (Score:5, Funny)
The first scene, in the first movie, is a slo-mo shot of Jar-Jar Binks getting his head sliced off with a lightsaber.
Unfortunately, the second scene has the camera view swooping through the door marked "sekrit cloning lab" into a room filled with tens of thousands of mechanical pods. Lids on the pods slide open in unison, as the camera zooms in to the blank soulless gaze of a Jar-Jar clone. Scrolling title text rolls from the bottom of the screen, receding to a vanishing point:
STAR
WARS
EPISODE VII
Rise of the Jar-Jarmy
Close Shave (Score:5, Funny)
You had me at Jar-Jarmy.
Considering that was the last word of his post I'd say that was a close thing.
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too fast, too mercifull. toss him into a sarrlac and have footage in the belly of him screaming and getting disfigured during a few minutes of slow digestion
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Agreed. There used to be a time when Disney used to stand for quality but that's really no longer the case.
I was kid when Empire was first released. The story was way too dark/scary for me at the time. Now, the movie is absolutely amazing,
There's a lot of really cool stuff they could do in SW movies. It doesn't have to be gory. If you sacrifice toy sales, you can make a hell of a better movie. Kids don't belong in the theater. They don't need to see a movie of beheadings, bar fights, understanding what boun
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1) Think of products that can be marketed easily to kids
I am famously cynical and even I think you're being simultaneously overly and inadequately cynical. Inadequately because kids will buy anything stamped "Star Wars", and overly because I don't think Lucas is just trying to make stuff that appeals to kids without any concern for whether it's a good idea or not. Remember, he doesn't need more money, he's got enough money to make lots more of it investing even in sure things.
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I think one of the most interesting things about Lucas' Universe is there IS a great deal of room for adversity. If you've got thousands of planets with life there is the possibility that it will run the gamut between cute and cuddly (Ewoks) to big and nasty and slimy (Jabba the Hut) to big, bad-ass warrior tribes (Wookies).
The biggest problem with the latter movies is it appears Lucas tried to focus too much on the cute/cuddly/silly side (everything from the young Anakin to Jar Jar) and left those of us "a
More?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:More?? (Score:5, Informative)
the best Sci-Fi story ever made!
For some extremely loose definition of science fiction. Star Wars had fiction but no science. It is sword and sorcery in space.
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Irvin Kershner, director of Empire, himself said Star Wars is not science fiction -- it is a fairy tale. It is mythology in the truest sense. Joseph Campbell remarked at length about the mythological qualities of the original trilogy, calling it a modern mythos for our time, and the primary reason for its success. It embodies many of the mythological themes that remind us of the es
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Not that the original stories were particularly groundbreaking... They were pretty much a collection of long extant tropes strung together with some spectacular (for their time) special effects.
Episode 7's already been spoiled (Score:2, Funny)
Star Wars: Episode VII - The Gauntlet of Infinity [digitalspy.com]. Kind of a risky decision to bring in the Marvel properties at this point, but we shall see what JJ Abrams can do.
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I was going to say at least the franchise is being handed to JJ Abrams he is a fairly competent director. So the new movies in the series may at least be PG13 and action packed I don't think its JJ Abrams style to do a G or PG rated Star wars Fern gully.
The worst possible case scenario... Uwe Boll gets a hold of the Star Wars franchise and infiltrates Disney.
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Are you really a trekkie? 11 breathed fresh blood and new young pretty faces who are reliable actors back into the franchise. 11 was a good move in the right direction. They even pulled off their roles and payed amazingly good homage to the original characters.
Was it a brand new series with full of unknown new content going in a bold new direction? No, sorry no more Captain Janeway's for you... If the movies are successful they might reboot a series though with new characters. Stick to your fan fiction for
yes, it was not star trek (Score:5, Insightful)
Abrams didn't like Star Trek, he never got it and even said so - he liked Star Wars. He managed to even blow up a whole planet with a super large ship and I was waiting for some kind of "Kirk, I'm your father" moment... He'd have used light sabers in his sword fighting scene except that wouldn't have gotten permission from Lucas.
The movie was not Star Trek and despite being a Trek fan, I was not suckered into the typical remake formula that even the most poorly made movies use today. Cameos and geeky back references don't fool me. I guess I'm not much of a Trekkie because I'm not so emotionally desperate that I shutdown my brain at a Spock cameo. Hell, Disney could put Spock into the next Star Wars movie and bill it as both a Trek film and Star Wars film and I bet people would buy it! Sheep.
There are actual recorded interviews with Gene Roddenberry about how Trek was never "dark" and "edgy" and that completely missed the point of it; he had to fight to keep it away from people trying to drag it into that direction. It had the 60's moon landing optimism about the future and how we could aspire to evolve beyond such things; he primarily used aliens to illustrate those things. Today's modern anti-heroes have no place in the world he created. Like religion, the qualities that bring people in are often forgotten and the dogma takes over; having the superficial Trek branding doesn't define what is Star Trek. I wonder why anybody bothers to study or think at deeper levels on literature, because apparently not even the authors do; anymore. I dare not imagine how Candide, ou l'Optimisme would turn out as a movie.
Yes, the last Trek movies sucked because they don't care once they make money and know they can sucker people back for a few sequels - then they bring in somebody to try something drastic so they can continue to beat a dead horse... as if the "franchise" was worn out when in fact it is 100% the studio's fault every time. They make their money because people will settle for back references with a bland thoughtless dream-like state of mind (which is why huge plot holes are commonplace; once you suspend all reasoning... see the "How it should have ended" series) All this stuff is making people more stupid while wasting their time. Entertainment doesn't have to lower your IQ.
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Yet [Roddenberry] made plenty of dark and edgy Trek, Wrath of Kahn being one example.
Roddenberry was forced out into an "executive consultant" position, and was against the film. It was good because they went against his wishes.
The true power of the dark side (Score:2, Funny)
What a coincidence (Score:5, Funny)
That's funny. I have a plan to not watch a new Star Wars movie every year.
The world is getting stupider.. (Score:2, Insightful)
The original Star Wars trilogy was fine the way it was. All Disney is going to do is ruin it for everyone.
Original Actors (Score:2)
So... (Score:2)
Concurrent filming (Score:2)
I really hate disney now (Score:3)
They have gone from moderate and popular smallish moderate corporation to a megacorp with all the business practices that follow. They have no artistic integrity anymore. Just suits throwing money around and hedging bets. Then for what turns out good they keep the IP and make sequels.
What will a Disney Star Wars be like (Score:3)
Well, let's look what it has to contain:
1. Some lovable, huggable character or characters that can be sold as merchandise and McDonalds Happy-Meal addons.
2. Some comic relief sidekicks that can be turned into their own TV show.
3. Something that can be toy-ified and sold by Mattell or the like.
4. A talking animal, preferably with huge eyes. Can be combined with 1 or 2.
5. A catchy theme. We can somehow recycle the one that exists, but somewhere we have to add some text for Elton John to sing.
6. Nobody may die on screen. At least nobody who doesn't really, really want to.
Once you got that down, throw a few lines of script in to string them together and you're done.
Meh, think of them as movie serials (Score:3)
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> Chewbacca doesn't say stupid things in a phony Jamaican accent.
But he did manage to nail Han Solo's wife. What a wookie.
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I saw the Star Trek reboot in Hong Kong.The cinema was packed. And I saw about 50,000 Chinese kids wearing ST t-shirts around town that week.
*blows smoke from fingertip 'gun barrel'*
Why? (Score:2)
I saw about 50,000 Chinese kids wearing ST t-shirts around town that week.
What were you doing looking at that many Chinese kids?
That's 7142 kids per day, and 297 kids every hour. Almost 5 kids every minute.
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I saw the Star Trek reboot in Hong Kong.The cinema was packed. And I saw about 50,000 Chinese kids wearing ST t-shirts around town that week.
*blows smoke from fingertip 'gun barrel'*
This should be modded both Informative and Funny,.
Re:but after indiana jones III (Score:2)
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So, its kinda like a TV series, but you have to pay $10 per episode. Genius!
$16. Per seat. Plus the hideously overinflated styrofoam popcorn.