'Rise of Skywalker' Falls Short of Predecessors. Is the Future Streaming? (variety.com) 340
After 42 years the final installment in the 9-movie Star Wars franchise arrived this weekend during a "moment of transition for the movie business," reports Variety:
Its $176 million debut, though massive, ranks as the lowest opening of the most recent three films in the saga, falling far below 2015's "The Force Awakens" ($248 million) and 2017's "The Last Jedi" ($220 million). Enthusiasm for the series is beginning to flag (2019's spin-off "Solo: A Star Wars Story" did the impossible, becoming the first Star Wars movie to lose money). Reviews were lackluster and it's unclear what Star Wars' future will be on the big screen... Disney, the company that bought the rights to the space opera with its $4 billion purchase of Lucasfilm, once envisioned something different for "Star Wars." It believed that the mythology of virtuous Jedi warriors and evil Sith lords was so rich it could spawn a movie a year, making it analogous to Marvel, another in-house purveyor of global blockbusters. Faced with diminishing box office returns, it has been forced to acknowledge that it may have done too much, too fast. Even its ambitious Disneyland theme park, Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, has been a disappointment, with attendance far lower than expected.
The one, recent bright spot for Star Wars lovers has been "The Mandalorian," a Disney Plus series that follows a planet-hopping bounty hunter and a co-star in Baby Yoda that boasts a face cute enough to launch a thousand memes. Buoyed by that success, Lucasfilm is moving along with other Disney Plus shows set in a galaxy far, far away, including one featuring Ewan McGregor reprising his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi. This flurry of activity indicates that Star Wars' future may not lie in cinemas. It may be in streaming.
If that's the case, "Star Wars" is pivoting along with the rest of the movie business.
The Los Angeles Times seems to agree, noting that this year 10 movies accounted for 38% of the total box office "that's dominated by intellectual-property-powered blockbusters, at the expense of almost everything else." As the studios become increasingly risk-averse, much of the market for midbudget comedies, dramas and rom-coms has migrated to streaming services such as Netflix. Studios are loath to risk the embarrassment of a flop, and streamers are more than happy to use such content to draw subscribers...
"The studios are more corporate-driven and guided by marketing and bean counters than ever before, and the ability to invest in originality is all moving toward streaming," said Rick Cohen, who runs the five-screen Transit Drive-In in Lockport, N.Y. "But they still have $200 million to throw at 'Dark Phoenix.' You could have made 10 original movies for that budget."
The one, recent bright spot for Star Wars lovers has been "The Mandalorian," a Disney Plus series that follows a planet-hopping bounty hunter and a co-star in Baby Yoda that boasts a face cute enough to launch a thousand memes. Buoyed by that success, Lucasfilm is moving along with other Disney Plus shows set in a galaxy far, far away, including one featuring Ewan McGregor reprising his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi. This flurry of activity indicates that Star Wars' future may not lie in cinemas. It may be in streaming.
If that's the case, "Star Wars" is pivoting along with the rest of the movie business.
The Los Angeles Times seems to agree, noting that this year 10 movies accounted for 38% of the total box office "that's dominated by intellectual-property-powered blockbusters, at the expense of almost everything else." As the studios become increasingly risk-averse, much of the market for midbudget comedies, dramas and rom-coms has migrated to streaming services such as Netflix. Studios are loath to risk the embarrassment of a flop, and streamers are more than happy to use such content to draw subscribers...
"The studios are more corporate-driven and guided by marketing and bean counters than ever before, and the ability to invest in originality is all moving toward streaming," said Rick Cohen, who runs the five-screen Transit Drive-In in Lockport, N.Y. "But they still have $200 million to throw at 'Dark Phoenix.' You could have made 10 original movies for that budget."
its the story, stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
I think its pretty simple - the latest Star Wars trilogy is nothing particularly new (except for the female lead and black stormtrooper. So very woke, of course).
So the fans have seen it all already, all they get is some fancy CGI andf that ain't enough to keep people interested. And hence the sales dropping.
If they'd made the last trilogy about what happens whan empires fail and collapse, and the rise of warlords, gangsters and nationalists jockeying for position while a remnant empire tries to assert a meagre authority over their old territories... and a resurgent "amateur" police force of sabre-wielding marshals who are trained to restore order to a lawless galaxy... now that'd be interesting. A deathstar that has multiple beams and a new Vader with a new helmet... is not it.
Which is why the Mandalorian is so popular. It is a new storyline in an old world.
Re:its the story, stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
If they'd made the last trilogy about what happens whan empires fail and collapse, and the rise of warlords, gangsters and nationalists jockeying for position while a remnant empire tries to assert a meagre authority over their old territories... and a resurgent "amateur" police force of sabre-wielding marshals who are trained to restore order to a lawless galaxy... now that'd be interesting.
I would watch your Star Wars movies.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
The EU (extended universe) started well but ended up... not so good.
I can understand why a lot of it was scrapped - for one thing, the period before the EU got carried away with itself was when Luke, Leia and Han were still too young to be played by Mark, Carrie and Harrison so much of those stories could not be filmed.
But to throw it all out and not have anything in it's place? What happened in-Universe in that 45 year interim?
Re:its the story, stupid (Score:4, Funny)
The EU already dealt with this before Disney scrapped it all...
Wait, Disney was behind Brexit?
Re: (Score:2)
If they'd made the last trilogy about what happens whan empires fail and collapse, and the rise of warlords, gangsters and nationalists jockeying for position while a remnant empire tries to assert a meagre authority over their old territories... and a resurgent "amateur" police force of sabre-wielding marshals who are trained to restore order to a lawless galaxy... now that'd be interesting
If you're not watching The Mandalorian yet, you should. You've got everything you want right there, except the resurgence of light saber wielding force users.
Re:its the story, stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Because in the original movies they didn't make a big deal about how "THE FORCE IS MALE, THE FORCE IS FOR BOYS!" just because Luke had a wang.
People don't care that Rei is a woman. They care that she's a badly written woman like every other badly written woke female lead. Born of a political ideological reason which the creative team behind the new films is very vocal about. When the studio makes such a huge deal about the race and sex of the characters I think it's only fair that the fans make a big deal out of it too. Star Wars fans don't have a problem with representation. Same with Marvel fans, Star Trek fans, etc. We've been happy with it for decades. Long before it was the in thing, and certainly long before these hollywood executives were OK with it. But now all of a sudden we're supposed to pretend that Star Wars wasn't diverse enough because it was made in the 70s. Or Marvel wasn't diverse enough because the people writing for marvel don't know marvels history of being fairly bloody diverse. That these fanbases needed more diversity. That Star Wars needed to be made "for girls." It's insulting and offensive. Thankfully they are hearing this message in their bottom line fiscal earnings reports.
Re: (Score:3)
The Last Jedi had a lot of new ideas, that's why some people hate it so much.
No, some people hate it so much because they know more about Star Wars than just the 6 previous movies. There's an entire set of Star Wars sagas (spread across many, many books) filled to the brim with excellent ideas based on which you could make literally hundreds of good movies. Instead, Disney took an oily piss on them and decided to start from scratch - and they did it very badly.
I don't know why people are so sensitive about the gender and race of the characters. Say Rey had been a young man, what difference would it have made?
See, that is not the problem. The problem is they shoehorned the wrong female actor. Rey is the wide eyed doll who you'd be
The future is (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
What was the SJW content in these movies?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The future is (Score:5, Insightful)
Rogue-1 was done well....AND it had a strong female lead. So, the strong female lead did NOT drive away audiences. This THEREFORE stands as a counter-example to the accusation that people hate TLJ/ROS because of the strong female leads. Other examples of movies with strong female leads, that did well, can easily be found.
So, you refuse to admit that TLJ/ROS were just bad movies, and blame it on sexism. But that argument does not hold water because if sexism alone would drive people to avoid otherwise well-done movies, then Rogue-1, etc, would have done poorly.
What you are saying about black panther is truly amazing....that droves of racist white people saw the movie to hide their racism, yet these same racists white people refused to watch star wars movies because their racism.
That is patently ridiculous. The evidence suggests that Black Panther was just a well-done movie so people liked it, and TLJ/ROS were just terrible movies so people hated them, and racism simply wasn't a factor in either.
You are spinning like a top to make a political issue of what are simply rotten movies.
Could be worse (Score:3)
Could be "Cats" with a new directors cut sent to the theaters.
Even Star Trek eventually gave up on the whole money grab.
Dear Disney
Stop sucking the cash from the dead cows body... Soon it will only be pus.
Re: (Score:3)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Buying the franchise was the best investment ever. With the idiot fandom you can do no wrong and continue to crank out garbage that people eat up. Disney will milk this for eternity, they're close to a century on Mickey Mouse now.
Re: (Score:2)
This last movie actually fixes the 2nd Rey movie. The director for the 2nd one is long gone. Check out this review for details:
https://www.salon.com/2019/12/... [salon.com]
Yeah, the problem with Star Wars is streaming... (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I just do not see why people complain about SJW in the SW movies. I don't see any activism.. it's just that you're going from 90% males in lead roles to more of a 50/50 split.. gasp.. because that's more representative of real life!
As for Daisy Ridley in the role... I think she's a much better actor than Mark Hamill. The first six movies suffered, imo, from an overall lac
Re:Yeah, the problem with Star Wars is streaming.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with Rey is that she's a shitty character with no motivation or reasonable explanation for her omnicompetence. Then the marketing department sells this as "strong female character." They didn't bother writing a good character because they thought having a female character was all that mattered.
Re:Yeah, the problem with Star Wars is streaming.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not knowing things is fine. My problem with her is that she has no motivation to go on the adventure to fight the space nazis. Luke has 5 explicitly stated motivations to go on the adventure: 1) he hates Tatooine, (planet farthest from the bright center of the galaxy), 2) he's interested in space politics ("you know of the rebellion against the empire?!"), 3) he wants to fly military ships (tells Owen and Beru he wants to "join the academy"), 4) he wants to bang his sister, 5) he wants to learn the ways of the force and learn more about his father. So when Obi-Wan says "you should come with me to Alderaan" his choice makes sense.
The only thing Rey ever expresses is her desire to stay on Jakku and wait for her parents. So when she rescues Finn and hears about the mission to get the droid back to the Resistance, she should say "oh, great, you take the robot I'mma go wait for my fam." Since she has no reason to go on the adventure, J.J. has the bad guys attack, forcing her into the next scene. Repeat when they get away and are safe with Han. She would go back to planet and let Finn and Han go on with the droid if given the chance to choose, so J.J. has the gangsters attack.
She never gives any indication that she cares about space politics, or fighting, or the force. Nothing but her parents, and nothing she's doing has anything to do with her parents. She's doing the Star Wars stuff because she's in a Star Wars movie. I haven't seen RoS yet, but I have no idea how to finish the sentence, "I can't wait to see Rise of Skywalker so I can learn if Rey finally accomplishes her goal of ______." I don't know what goes in the blank.
TLJ Destroyed the Story's Past and Future (Score:5, Interesting)
What a disaster. All Lucasfilm had to do, granted a gargantuan budget and all the original leads, was make a somewhat earnest, competent film. Then, like after Force Awakens, they could have ridden an unending wave of effortless hype straight up to Ep IX, with the fanbase hungrily seeking out every strategically "leaked" crumb of info.
Instead, they put out Ep VIII which obliterated the public's enthusiasm and good will, dooming Disney to two years of futile, try-hard PR and outright damage control, where "PR" bizarrely includes insults and transparent smear campaigns against the fanbase.
The problems with The Last Jedi were the kind that damage the brand as a whole (because they signal the intent of decision makers at the top): deliberately antagonizing the core fanbase, openly going out of its way to hold the OT in contempt, prioritizing a political agenda over the quality of the story and characters, and wasting the rare (and now lost) opportunity to reunite the OT cast to properly say goodbye.
Re:TLJ Destroyed the Story's Past and Future (Score:5, Informative)
Turing things on their head as Johnson likes to do generally requires a pretty well thought out plot to do so and the time available to write a script like that just wasn't available to him. It's very obvious that Disney expected Johnson to pick up the draft Abrams had left for him and had the basic outline ready before he wrote a single word. However Johnson didn't want this and I'm pretty sure Kathleen Kennedy, the chief of LucasFilm, was right behind him on everything except giving him the time to write an original script properly. She's apparently such a fan of him that the only reason why he's still formally employed at LucasFilm is only because of her.
Not that Johnson is an anywhere near competent director or writer, but considering how he tried to write a very original script when the time Disney allotted him was to finish a maybe 50% complete script, his chances of succeeding weren't very high even if he wasn't an idiot. As hard as it may be to imagine, The Last Jedi could have been a lot worse than what it was. Don't get me wrong, a competently run studio would have either delayed the release or stopped him right in his tracks before he could throw out Abrams' original outline. But we are talking about LucasFilm run by Kathleen Kennedy here so that wasn't going to happen.
Re: (Score:2)
They should have given the whole trilogy to Rian Johnson. JJ tries to do twists but isn't very good at them. We knew that since his days on Lost, and on Star Trek.
TLJ would have become like Empire - initially very divisive but when it paid off in the 3rd movie people felt differently about it. People forget how upset they were when Empire came out - Luke get trained by a muppet and turns out to be the son of the bad guy (unbelievable), then loses badly in a fight with him, and their favourite character Han
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't think it was bad, but (Score:5, Funny)
it felt like something I have seen before. Maybe that is what they aimed for?
Rise of Skywalker' Falls Short of Predecessors. (Score:2)
Rise of Skywalker' Falls Short of Predecessors.
It sucked balls. I hated the star destroyers with planet killing weapons, they looked like weird triangular stingrays with giant penises and the final battle was just plain weird. A fleet of 'just people' show up, wipe out a fleet of star destroyers with planet killing weapons because the star destroyers have no navigation beacon but the attackers can apparently manoeuvre freely and wipe then out the star destroyers at will without a beacon? And Palpatine hanging on the end of a robot arm asking to be 'sacr
Good enough for the mouse (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Gravy towards the $4B purchase of Lucas Films (Score:2)
$4B is a pretty deep hole.
The future is in avoiding Skywalker (Score:5, Interesting)
The Mandalorian succeeds because it is far and away from the Skywalker story, and drops the tired good vs evil trope.
Fallen Order explores the "Execute Order 66" moment and its fallout. Its story, while not large enough for a movie, was actually really good and far more interesting than any of the recent movies.
A gritty Darth Bane movie would be awesome -- who wouldn't want to explore ancient sith culture, witness a sith lord's creation, and origin of the rule of two? Lets see some Bad vs Evil. Maybe too dark for Disney.
I don't think you need to avoid film, but perhaps you do need to be willing to avoid the old formula, tighten the budgets, and take some risks on stories with fully unknown characters.
Re: The future is in avoiding Skywalker (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if they had developed the same old story it would've done loads better. The problem is that the woke character set cannot be cast in a bad light. Luke and Han in the originals have plenty of character flaws giving them depth and a somewhat interesting story, yes the end is predictable but the journey isn't.
In these reboots, the newly introduced main characters are perfect because they're politically not allowed to be weak or flawed so it makes the whole story predictable and boring.
Re: (Score:2)
Have you seen The Last Jedi? The "woke character set" are very much portrayed in a bad light at times, that's one of the reasons some people don't like it.
Interestingly the same was said about Empire when that was released. Han gets frozen instead of saving the day, Luke loses to his dad.
Re: (Score:2)
I was really hoping they went beyond the good/evil thing in Rise of the Skywalker. That seemed to be where Johnson was headed in TLJ, Rey being less interesting in the light/dark sides and more on helping her friends. The end of the Jedi order in that film was an opportunity to move beyond its flaws and give birth to something that really did bring balance to the force, in the form of Rey and Kylo coming together in the end.
The Mandalorian is riding on nostalgia for now... It's certainly not well written. O
It's not about "too much too fast"... (Score:2)
It was all about trashing the franchise for the sake of making a buck and no thought about the fanbase beyond milking them for moolah.
Seriously though, adding in a feminist agenda, nerfing the lightsabers, and killing off beloved characters in less-than-epic ways has all had a very cooling effect on fans.
The Mandalorian seems to be following the franchise formula, and it's working.
The last three movies? Not so much, and look at the numbers.
Maybe there's a learning experience here for The Mouse. Somehow, I d
the didn't love the story nor the fans (Score:5, Insightful)
Rey is great. Finn is great. Rose was terrible because she was irrelevant and ruined the plot. Poe was ignored in 8. Hux was useless and lacked credibility all the way through. Snoke was wasted.
The story was completely wrong. JJ failed to take us anywhere new, and Rian just spat in the faces of all the fans. Luke drinking from the teat of a sea-monster was a massive disrespect to Mark Hamill and the fans. Rose rescuing Finn was terrible. The casino diversion was irrelevant garbage. Brienne of Tarth was completely wasted - I wanted to see her more.
The problems with Star Wars 7-9 had nothing to do with ethnicity, SJW agendas or gender - it's just that there was no story that made sense in the Star Wars universe and i had no investment in any of the characters. They wasted too much time on "who is Rey", "who is Snoke", and other "mystery JJ garbage" instead of telling us a good story.
Of course it did.... (Score:2)
Even if The Rise of Skywalker was the most perfect movie ever made (and I actually think it was fairly decent, better than I expected TROS to be), it's opening would suffer. It seems like Hollywood is daft to understanding that sequels earn based on the prior movies. What came prior to The Rise of Skywalker -
The Last Jedi, which clashed with many fans, followed by A Solo Story, which tried casting a new actor into the role of Han Solo and fell fairly flat. Therefore, it was pretty much guaranteed that The
Woke weariness (Score:2)
Woke weariness had a big impact. After watching woke politics recently ruin Terminator and The Last Jedi and Solo a lot of fans held off on going at all. By all accounts the woke politics were dialed back quite a bit, unfortunately the damage was already done. Unfortunately Rey has now been forever cemented as the prototypical Mary Sue.
When you hold your fan base in contempt they are inclined to notice and spend their money elsewhere. When you do so in the hope that an entirely new class of woke fans are go
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
One is enough (Score:2)
Killing off compelling characters (Score:2)
Maybe it's because the fans are getting tired of the powers-that-be killing off so many great characters.
On the other hand, maybe the opening numbers aren't as good because the fans are waiting to hear positive feedback before going.
Yeah, ruinig the franchise was the point! (Score:2)
You can only ever be art (aka good) and a business at the same time by chance and accident. They have fundamentally opposing goals.
Art is meant to resonate with what touches you, and give you new insights into that. Useful when something is vage, and hard to put a finger on. But that necessarily means it is specific, and individual, and might even be hated by some. It is a work of passion, by people that are driven, with own interests.
A business, on the other hand, tries to maximize profit (even though a *s
*vague. *END up. Not "and up"! (Score:2)
Jesus... I'm amazed how somebody can make an error that is based on an acoustic similarity... while writing! :D
Let alone *me*.
I'm sorry, and will perform harakiri now. ;)
Pixar (Score:5, Interesting)
Toy Story 4, the *fourth* entry in the series, grossed a billion dollars worldwide. People will go see movies in a movie theater, even sequels using well-worn characters, if they are made with some thought and skill.
Old and Tired (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't hate Kylo Ren...and I can't love Ren or Finn or anyone. They're shallow abysmal characters who do not relate to any audiences. That and well, the acting (with a few exceptions) is abominable. CGI Carrie Fisher? really??
The story is old...and tired...and there are no parallels in the modern world. Yes, they're trying to make it relevant with open pervasive racism and 'woke af' (lord knows I hate that phrase) characters; but it's simply abysmal.
The best Science Fiction is always relatable. The new trilogy falls far short. I'll wait for the video.
The best Science Fiction right now is on Amazon Prime (thank you Jeff Bezos). The Expanse is relatable, it shows humanity as it is now (and will always be)--haves vs have not. Intelligensia vs Blue Collar. Corporations vs Government. And as a bonus the Earth/Mars/Belter Tech is what we will achieve realistically in the next 200 years or so, which is about the setting of the series.
To pochuye ke?
Maybe Star Trek and Star Wars will finally be buried where they should have been long ago.
Dragonriders of Pern anyone?
Re: (Score:3)
This is the problem with woke writing. You can't write believable and relatable characters because you can't show certain protected classes in a negative light. Have someone seriously injure Rei? Well that might incite violence against women. Show Finn in a bad light? Well that might be considered racist. It's part of the reason why all the villains in these woke movies are white guys. No one cares if you show white guys cocking up, or being evil. But every black, female, asian, etc character is a represent
Get better writers (Score:2)
Why is it so hard for Disney to tell that the screenplays are crap?
Re: (Score:2)
This is the last movie from the great George Lucas... so it's delayed release compared to today's other movies.
The future is later this week. (Score:2)
Christmas is a big day at the theaters. So, low weekend box office this week... they'll make up for it.
If the story is rubbish then what do you expect? (Score:2)
This is Disney/Hollywood flogging a horse that is not only dead but has been pushing up the daisies for over a decade.
The problem is a real lack of originality in the world of Movie Making in the USA.
How many prequels/sequels that are nowhere near as good as the original have been released in the past 30 years?
Then we get the Marvel universe and all its spin offs. Lots of action but really very little in the way of good story telling.
Then there are the movies that are plain c r a p.
Disney/Hollywood really d
The simplest explanation: Timing (Score:2)
So, a movie is released the weekend before Christmas...the Saturday of which is the busiest day of retail shopping of the year. It's already Chaunukah week. Holiday prep weekend is plenty to keep people busy. On top of that, while the die hard fans are going to see it Friday or Saturday, you have lots and lots of people like me, who aren't big on either trying to book seats in advance, or roll the dice that there will be seats available in the theater. Finally, there's a good chance that movie tickets to se
Movie was...OK (Score:2)
Critic reviews vs. fan reviews is the problem (Score:2)
All you really need to know is this. Rotten Tomato scores are flipped on this last movie (Rise of Skywalker) and The Last Jedi (the 2nd movie).
2nd Rey movie, TLJ:
91% critics liked it
43% of the public liked it
Newest movie, TRoS:
57% critics liked the newest movie
86% of fans liked the newest movie
This last movie is probably the best of the three Rey movies. For what I'd consider the core fans, the pissed off superfans, and even the general public.
Critics have a completely different view on fun movies. They rat
The Whole Thing Was Dead With the Prequels (Score:2)
Let's let it die a reasonably dignified death.
Or maybe the Disney star wars movies are crap? (Score:2)
With the exception of the excellent Rogue One, all disney star wars movie (I haven't seen ROS, not going to) feel like fanfiction. Re-hashing the main beats from canon, poor writing, no overall plan for the trilogy.. The last jedi pretty much killed what was a guaranteed event movie every christmas if it had been handled by semi-competent writers who love the material. When you see what can be done with The Mandalorian, disney is almost taunting us that they could write a good trilogy the whole time if they
Previous two were... mediocre (Score:3)
I don't care about the gender, ethnicity or orientation of the characters. I haven't seen #9 yet because #7 and #8 were just sort of poor in a wide range of ways.
#1-6: Vader, or Anakin who we know becomes Vader, one of the most entertaining villains in movie history. He has a cool voice. He has more great lines than can count "the Emperor is not as .. forgiving as I am". (#1-3 don' have vader as such, but you see his creation). also has the Emperor who is deliciously evil
#7-8? Darth emo? A whiny brat? Snoke - who appears (as of end of 8) to just be a miscellaneous bad guy.
The Empire was understandable - a corruption of the vast and powerful republic. The Order?? What are they? The evil empire was defeated. How did its remnants manage to build vast fleets of ships and a planet killer far more powerful than the death star. The whole point of the first 6 was that Darth Sidius (Emperor) had to perform this large set of manipulations to corrupt the powerful Republic and gain control.
Plot. argh? A side trip to a casino planet during a desperate space chase? An obvious use of hyperdrive as weapon that has never been tried before?
Special effects -good, but not the state-of-the art effects if the earlier movies. Nothing really visually interesting.
I don't think the poor turnout is due to "woke"characters. Its just that the previous movies were not very good.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re: No, the future is no fans (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: No, the future is no fans (Score:5, Informative)
Not even so early an example: The Thrawn Trilogy
It's specifically mentioned that Thrawn is unusual in that he's non-human but managed to rise high in the ranks of the empire (in secret). I remember reading that as a 10 year old and a lightbulb going on: "Huh, that's right... all the empire characters in the movies are humans and the rebellion is a mixed bag. Weird"
Re: No, the future is no fans (Score:4, Interesting)
And just like in real life, it was white males who took the lead to destroy this great evil.
It's just that the SJWs who work for Disney decided that because of the color of their skin, they must work for the other side. Fuck that. Dividing us and making us fight with one another, instead of being united against the rich fucks that are ruining our country.
Re: (Score:3)
And just like in real life, it was white males who took the lead to destroy this great evil.
It's just that the SJWs who work for Disney decided that because of the color of their skin, they must work for the other side. Fuck that. Dividing us and making us fight with one another, instead of being united against the rich fucks that are ruining our country.
I'd mod you up but I already commented. SJWs are the useful idiots of the 1%.
SJWs aren't the useful idiots (Score:3)
The Useful Idiots are the folks over reacting to them. Anti-SJW videos are heavily supported by the 1% think tanks, get a mountain of views on YouTube and are able to latch onto pop culture to go viral (ever wonder why there were so many anti-SJW Captain Marvel videos? It's because Google's brain dead algorithm was promoting any video with Captain Marvel in it).
We've
Re: (Score:2)
Follow the Money (Score:4, Interesting)
Disney has been extremely irresponsible in who they allow to work on Star Wars from a shareholder perspective. They have allowed political hacks* who clearly do not love the series at all to be involved in all of the creative direction and a series that used to print money is now going down in flames. There's no argument here that people are just "tired of it" because the Force Awakens did alright.
* Examples include making statements that the whole Empire is symbolic of "white supremacy" and taking it publicly as a matter of pride that there are no new white male heroes. Guess who a huge chunk of your loyal fanbase are? White males--and you're publicly calling them out.
While I agree with this, note that Abrams was at least able to assemble a crowdpleaser in The Force Awakens, temporarily keeping the SJW messaging far enough beneath the surface to avoid souring the public's enthusiasm for the first new Star Wars film in years. The sharp decline of Star Wars box office fortunes can be traced directly to when audiences saw The Last Jedi, and the mask really slipped.
TFA delivered three unprecedented blockbuster weekends (twice dropping less than 40%), then stayed in eight figures for another month:
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/m... [boxofficemojo.com]
Compare that to TLJ:
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/m... [boxofficemojo.com]
Uh, whoops, wrong link . . . dunno how that happened. Here:
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/m... [boxofficemojo.com]
Of course, it's unfair to compare TFA's success to literally any other movie's except Last Jedi's. Some expected a sharp dropoff in interest and enthusiasm for a second film arriving only two years later, but TLJ's $220M opening weekend (down only 11% from TFA) put even that fear to rest.
The point is that fans did give TLJ a chance, for whatever reasons. TFA satisfaction (and plot hooks) had given them a reason to come back, the marketing machine was firing on all cylinders, and the critics were full of praise. The Last Jedi was poised to perform just as well as The Force Awakens and everything was going so smoothly . . . right up until audiences actually watched the thing. A considerable portion were unimpressed (or worse) and bad word of mouth led to an unprecedented dropoff in the next weekend. Projections were that TLJ would gross around $450M less than TFA, but instead it earned around $700M less (even with the benefit of that inflated opening).
That is why you see Solo and RoS suffering heavily in their FIRST weekends (just like Justice League did after BvS), despite both having significantly better user reviews than TLJ.
TL:DR - Somehow there was no sign of "sequel fatigue" and "Star Wars fatigue" (trotted out again in TFS) until they suddenly struck during the second weekend of Disney's third film.
Start Wars borrowed heavily from WWII (Score:2)
Re:No, the future is no fans (Score:5, Interesting)
Disney has been extremely irresponsible in who they allow to work on Star Wars from a shareholder perspective.
I was shocked when J. J. Abrams said, after the Force Awakens, that there was not a story arc or plot in place for the trilogy. Disney gave Rian Johnson nearly unlimited latitude to direct *and write* the second movie. That is just insane. I can't hardly think of anyone who could possibly be respectful of the material enough to be trusted with that degree of freedom in a billion dollar franchise loved by millions. I think most would have safely assumed that Star Wars, in the hands of Disney, would be written by committee, but they insanely did the exact opposite.
Yes, Empire Strikes Back, arguably the best film in the entire canon, was directed by Irvin Kershner, but you'd better believe that Lucas was tremendously involved, and that the story was a cohesive one seamlessly spanning Empire and Return of the Jedi. The second act in a trilogy (or within a single 3-act movie) is supposed to be where our protagonists hit rock bottom. Things are bad, the antagonists are at their peak, the outlook is dim. But you'd better have a story arc in place ahead of time to get them out of that mess and give them something to succeed at. Individuals need their personal arcs to fulfill, and the story as a whole also needs that resolution.
What Rian did in that second film was to totally eviscerate the entire story arc set up in The Force Awakens. The antagonist, Snoke, was simply killed with little fanfare and no real resolution within our hero's quests. The good guys didn't just hit rock bottom, they were nearly totally wiped out (the resistance cut down to a single ship of a few dozen people!). There literally was nothing left to start with for the final movie, except a handful of individual characters.
Some people have asked why Palpatine was revealed so early in the final film - there was not suspense or mystery at all. In fact, not only was he flat-out revealed in the opening crawl, but he was revealed in the trailers themselves! There was good reason for that - it was because Rian screwed things up so bad that Abrams had to take the extraordinary step of creating and introducing the ultimate antagonist AHEAD of the film, so it wouldn't completely look like it was pulled out of his ass on a whim quite so obviously.
The Rise of Skywalker was not without its flaws (they had a hard time coming up with anything for Finn to do in the final act, for example) or plot holes (why was Finn even bothering a "ground attack" on the surface of the command ship when the flying fighters could have just all targeted it directly). However, all things considered, I don't know that any other writer / directory could have done better with that final movie given how screwed up the trilogy was left after Rian Johnson.
So now you have SJW type people that hate the movie because it gave into the desires and pressures of the fans (the disliked Rose character was totally pushed to the side, and her adoration for Finn was not just totally abandoned, but replaced with the Jannah character who totally buddied up with Finn for the rest of the movie). Heck, a lot of liberals wanted Finn and Poe to become intimate partners. So sticking Finn with, not just a likable woman, but a black woman at that, was just way, way too conservative and safe. (yes, there was a female / female kiss at the end during the celebration, but even I, as a conservative, see that as just a token thing thrown in for liberals). The hardcore fans are never pleased because they were still bitter about the handling of Luke, the whole Mary Sue thing (did Rey ever fail or make a mistake or have a flaw in any way?), and the addition of new force powers (transferring life force from person to person, the special bond between Rey and Kylo and the ability to physically exchange objects somehow). Heck, I saw a therapist bashing the movie because Rey's romantic kiss at the end with Ben was detrimental to women that ar
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
The fact that Star Wars has sucked since the original trilogy has NOTHING to with the skin color or gender of the main protagonists.
It has everything to do with poor writing and poor directing, with movie makers focusing on the visual expression, the story becoming an afterthought. This is a general trend and, sadly, has been for a long time.
However, this is hard for many people to see, so instead they rain hate on the most obvious symptoms, e.g. Jar Jar Binks in the prequel trilogy, Tauriel in The Hobbit o
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No, the future is no fans (Score:5, Informative)
Oh god it's all SJW's fault again isn't it?
Well, why don't you explain why the people in charge of developing these movies were antagonistic with fans ala ghostbusters 2016. I mean, driving your fan base away with repeatedly bad movies, stacked with terrible stories, terrible writing, terrible characters really isn't a winning combination by any stretch. If they'd give Jon Favreau(the mandalorian) the writing of it, you can bet your ass that there would only be mild complaints.
Anyway, don't worry ...
Uh dude. Can you not recognize media shilling for something that's terrible? I mean opening weekend in the "big china" market it cleared $2.2m not a typo. On top of that, once you look at the actual numbers the movie didn't even cross $200m for the NA market. It opened under the previous movie, and on average the following week you see a 50-80% drop off in the second week. It will probably cross $550m but it won't be a massive commercial success in the minds of the mouse. I'll just round this out and remind you that The Joker crossed $1B a month or so back, beating Deadpool. Pretty good for a R-rated movie.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
It's not that you are wrong about the movies being bad, it's that you are wrong about why they are bad. It's not some huge conspiracy to put down the poor straight white man, it's just that they make a lot of bad movies.
Look at the trailer for the new Ghostbusters. It looks shit, and that's because they really don't know what to do with the franchise. The original actors are all either old or dead, they haven't got any decent story ideas and just re-making the original movies won't work. But they can't leav
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What are you talking about? The new Ghostbusters trailer looks awesome! It actually looks like a new concept (a kids movie), instead of "let's do the last movie over again but, I know, make them women so it kind of looks like a parody".
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not some huge conspiracy to put down the poor straight white man, it's just that they make a lot of bad movies.
It's not a conspiracy in the sense of secret meetings and the like. It's a product of they all think the same way, under penalty of being ostracized for wrong think, and thus compete to see who is the most woke. It's a perverse competition of sorts and although the outcome resembles a conspiracy against white people I think that's not literally a conspiracy. It's just what happens when a bunch of left wing types get together since they usually harbor a low key hatred towards white people. I would say th
Re: (Score:3)
Re:No, the future is no fans (Score:5, Informative)
I think the most insulting thing about these hack SJW writers taking control of old nerd touchstone properties is them deciding all of a sudden that Sci fi/fantasy/nerd stuff in general wasn't diverse and progressive. This mostly seems to be because their fanbases (in predominantly white countries) are mostly white men. And white men are bad, so their fanbases must be bad.
It's why you get, for example, Star Trek writers acting like having a female lead, or a black lead, is some milestone of wokeness that everyone should pat them on the back for breaking the glass ceiling in implimenting. It's insulting to the fanbases who have kept these things going for decades. And it shows a massive lack of respect and familiarity with the source material which often puts their terribly written morality plays to shame.
Fans of Star Wars and Star Trek don't have a problem with diversity. These people are part of the reason why diversity is so accepted today. In a time when it wasn't cool to put a black and white person kissing on TV, nerds cheered for it. Now they're told that they are horrible people because they don't like the new Star Trek, and it must be because it's too diverse. Meanwhile the intellectual content of these shows has hit the gutter so hard that they're delivering pizza to Michaelangelo and Donatello.
Re: (Score:3)
Fox News was constructed to try to influence opinion. Roger Ailes said "what if Nixon could have said 'don't pay attention to what the Washington Post is saying. FAKE NEWS! Look over here where my approved propaganda is broadcast."
Sorry you're uncomfortable because of your fake truth though. Keep playing that victim card!
I make it a point to read from a variety of sources, many of which I disagree with, to try and understand where the truth is. I doubt that you can show me a comprehensive news site without an axe to grind (though if you know one please mention it). So since they all have an agenda I read from many and try and triangulate what's really going on. Not the most efficient but likely the most accurate. If nothing else at least I understand both sides of a given position. I will say that despite how many here
Re:No, the future is no fans (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not that you are wrong about the movies being bad, it's that you are wrong about why they are bad. It's not some huge conspiracy to put down the poor straight white man, it's just that they make a lot of bad movies.
Really? Well let's look at another example. Ever hear of the book and/or game series called The Witcher? One of the characters is a literal snow white(dark hair, pure white skin). Did they cast her as such? Nope, they went BAME because 'diversity' and the director even went out of their way to attack the fans for pointing it out. That was after she said they'd "stick to the cannon of the books."
Look at the trailer for the new Ghostbusters. It looks shit, and that's because they really don't know what to do with the franchise. The original actors are all either old or dead, they haven't got any decent story ideas and just re-making the original movies won't work. But they can't leave it alone either, it's a potentially valuable franchise that still has some goodwill left in it.
The trailer for the new Ghostbusters looks like shit? Guess that explains why progressives were the ones right out of the gate attacking it, and attacking the ghostbusters fans who said they absolutely loved it. Let's also compare the number of likes vs dislikes between the two movies...and...we see people universally hating the 2016 Ghostbusters which was followed by rabid progressives, directors, and actors involved attacking the fan base. Where as the new one, really like the new one and there isn't a damn peep from the directors, writers, or actors over the response.
They try all sorts of stuff in the hope that it works. All female cast, son of hero, CGI resurrection...
No, they're trying to force an agenda. Otherwise they wouldn't have been screeching "the force is female" and other bullshit, while attacking the fan base. The attacks on male fans was bad, the viciousness by progressives attacking female fans showed more women that all they engage in is lip service.
Re:No, the future is no fans (Score:4, Insightful)
But Star Wars should be retarded easy to get right. There's piles of EU source material. Pick the best of those things.
They could have picked the Thrawn trilogy [fandom.com] right out of the gate and made more money then they've ever seen. But nope, they had to pick...no who am I kidding. They decided to write their own horrible fan fiction and throw away all the ideas the Lucas had given them for the next series of movies.
Re:No, the future is no fans (Score:5, Interesting)
Thrawn trilogy doesn't star a female god-figure who is omnipotent and loved by everyone. So that was right out. It also treats the original heroes of the franchise with respect and intelligence when describing what happened after RoTJ. And a lot of them are white males. So it's basically nazi propoganda. As I said, right out.
No no, a much better idea is to get a bunch of people who have never worked on Star Wars, Sci-Fi, or movies before (but are all feminist women) and have them come up with the narrative direction for Star Wars. Who cares if they don't really like Star Wars. At least now Lucas Film is on the right side of history.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe not their fault but there's a reason why shows are majority white/white cultural themed: that's what the majority of the US audience is. Asias the bigger market now anyways so that'll change I think.
For Star Wars don't really get it. 3 pretty good movies and then 5 "ok" ones (haven't seen the latest yet) some of the most loyal fans imo. My friends that are hardcore fans didn't like the prequels and hated at least a couple of the others. How many turds do you have to suffer through before you f
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Back to the SJW thing I get wanting a diverse entertainment product. That said it's become so diverse as to not be representative anymore."
Exactly so. It so blatant I've actually had no choice but to notice and start thinking about race/gender in the past half decade or so. It's actually become alarming. Strong straight white males seem to be outright banned altogether. If they exist at all they are villains and usually deeply emotionally or psychologically damaged. Even historical settings are often chang
Re: (Score:2)
"Strong straight white males seem to be outright banned altogether. If they exist at all they are villains and usually deeply emotionally or psychologically damaged"
Are you on crack? "Strong straight white males" are protagonists in almost every single modern action/adventure movies. Including the movie that this post is about.
You'll make up anything. (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly so. It so blatant I've actually had no choice but to notice and start thinking about race/gender in the past half decade or so. It's actually become alarming. Strong straight white males seem to be outright banned altogether. If they exist at all they are villains and usually deeply emotionally or psychologically damaged.
Take your reactionary culture warrior blinders off. Marvel movies: mostly white guys. John Wick: White guy. Spider man: White guy. If you do a search for "top action movies of 2019" (where I assume some one like you would find your "strong males") you'll find plenty of white guys.
Even historical settings are often changed up to avoid a white male protagonist.
"Often"? You'll just make anything up won't you? Google "best historical movies of 2010s" and you'll see a whole lot of white male faces scrolling through the top image bar.
You're very clearly just making shit up here to fit your culture warrior world view.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No, the future is no fans (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh god it's all SJW's fault again isn't it?
Anyway, don't worry, Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker is already on track to being one of the most popular and successful films of all time. [twitter.com]
I dunno about Social Justice Warriors, but the Ostrich people seem to be blaming the poor performance on anything but the inclusion of woke politics clumsily inserted into action movies. It's either Star Wars fatigue, toxic male ex-fans, manbabies, White Supremacists, and a few other reasons. Reasons given by people working on Star Wars.
Even without that element, the writing for the new movies isn't up to par - not that Star Wars is even that high of a bar.
So while you might want to dismiss them falling short of predictions, keeping in mind that the last Star Wars Movie "Solo" lost money, there is a trend here and it is odd that a Franchise that Disney paid a lot of money for is now underperforming to the point that they are wrapping it up. I would think that Disney would prefer to get a continuing return on investment. But they are trying to force Star Wars into being a standard Disney film, and the fit is bad.
I would rank their issues from top to bottom as:
Poor story lines and plot holes.
Inclusion of identity politics to make stereotyped characters.
Social media abuse of fans.
Meanwhile, "The Mandalorian" SW series is proving quite popular. That puts the lie to the idea that people are suffering Star Wars fatigue.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
The Mandalorian is probably the most original feeling Star Wars story since the original Star Wars trilogy.
Kathleen Kennedy apparently is not controlling it.
Good stories are good stories. Her Force is Female outlook makes it very difficult to tell a good story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
It was like a left wing version of Ayn Rand storytelling Only the enemy was men.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:No, the future is no fans (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I came here to say the same.
The Last Jedi was a bad movie. By all the things you might judge the quality of a movie, it fell short on nearly all of them. The pacing, the storylines, the character development, the continuity. It was all just a mishmash.
I LIKE Finn and Rose. Want to give them a romance subplot? Fine. But their part of the story could have been almost entirely removed from the movie (and spun off into a different movie!) and it would have made TLJ substantially shorter with no effect at all on the final outcome. It should have been left on the editing room floor.
I saw a video recently, pointing out that there's too much exposition where it isn't needed. Characters say things out loud instead of letting the scene carry the meaning and emotion. That's just bad writing.
Politics has ALWAYS been a part of science fiction. Good science fiction is almost entirely about politics, when you drill down. Even the most extravagant space opera is usually about a fight for freedom, an appeal to our love of expression and democracy and whatever else. Politics BELONGS in Star Wars.
But the writing is bad, and that's basically the end of it. Who wants to watch a heavy-handed, dumb story with bad dialogue, no matter how good the message is?
Hire Marcia Lucas back and have her edit these movies. Apparently she saved the A New Hope; let her do her magic here.
Re: (Score:3)
Hire Marcia Lucas back and have her edit these movies. Apparently she saved the A New Hope; let her do her magic here.
Best comment in entire thread. Thanks!
Re: (Score:3)
There were many plot problems aside from the SJW complaints. For example, imagine how stupid everyone feels after not realizing that you could simply destroy a fleet of large Empire ships by using the hyperdrive.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not reading any twitter links.
Re: (Score:2)
They are common character types for a reason easy to plug them into a scene and write for them being a big one I suppose. But there does seem to be a fair bit of man hate or at least writing to weak male characters vs female on the shows particularly sitcoms. Its few male characters that don't fall into one of these buckets
1) bumbling idiot with a smart wife or side kick
2) will screw everything that moves and can't form serious relationships
3) The opposite: overly awkward and takes 5 seasons to ask out a g
Re:No, the future is no fans (Score:4, Insightful)
"exactly what am I being called out for by a film studio giving heroic roles to people who aren't white or male"
Being white and male? Seriously, a racist and sexist proclamation that ANYONE can be a hero OTHER than white males doesn't strike you as sexist and racist? And why? Some political crap about the past... okay, is that going to give your sons inspiration? Or is your son going to see a world through a lens of media in which anyone like him who is strong is an emotionally damaged villain?
Look, I'm actually a big fan of diversity but diversity still INCLUDES white males and white females who aren't rich bitches from Beverly Hills. The best way to accomplish that is NOT to consider race and gender at all and have it develop organically. But if someone insists they should either make a fair effort at equal representation, proportional representation, or at least what we'd want representation to end up at... what is being depicted isn't equal or proportional and if it is how you think the world should be you have some serious self-loathing going on.
That said I didn't really think about race and gender while watching the movie but I don't think the ending made sense. The character that "wins" is completely tipped toward the light so "balance" wasn't restored. There was a character who despite being neurotic and seriously emotionally damaged for most of his depiction could have been viewed as balanced between light and dark or two who could have ended in way that made him a balanced pair. Now that I am considering race and gender I guess that probably wasn't allowed because he had testicles.
Re: (Score:2)
As for your "Mary Stu" commentary, I don't have a problem with type of insertion or with people of various genders being this type of insertion. I have a problem with making an element of that any sort of focus on the gender of the character or in this case of the character relative to male characters. Those male characters you refer to, typically have support within the stories but in a minefield of imagined slights and plot devices that could in any way suggest a female a being a normal flawed human being
Re: (Score:2)
Buh? WTF? This is literally about ruining a movie by dragging far-left politics into it
Buh? WTF? Oh that's right you didn't remotely bother to read my post.
If you never read anything you will be left going "buh wtf" most of your life.
Re: (Score:3)
No, it's about ruining a movie by forgetting that if you want to make a political statement you need to wrap it in a good story, and good characters.
The original Star Wars had far left politics. The original Star Trek was even further left. In fact, at least for the US, Star Trek is *still* far left: a bunch of commie Russian and Chinese loving peaceniks on UBI.
Current feminist movie writing seems to want the audience to immediately idolize their main characters. Good political writing makes you empathize w
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
The sad thing is, them pretending to like bad films is the exact same thought process which makese the films bad in the first place. "we must like it or else it will seem like women can't succeed in films!" "we must write our character to be a perfect omnipotent angel loved by everyone, because if we don't people might think we hate women!" It's intersectional identity politics, with all it's many flaws and contradictions, applied to the realms of screenwriting and movie criticism. The natural conclusion of