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You’re Rian Johnson... now what?


Tank
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I dont think anyone thought that. Just something set in a similar time period. Ive never played the game or even seen it, Im just aware of the time period.

The internet is full of fanboys who did exactly that. They heard new, fresh, unconnected and immediately jumped to OH I BET I HOPE IT BETTER BE AN ADAPTION OF KOTOR.

 

Cause nothing says NEW and ORIGINAL like adapting a decade old video game that takes place in the past.

 

It was never in the running and it annoys how much people whine and complain about how unoriginal Hollywood is, and yet unless its their favorite thing that already exists, they lose it.

 

I agree with this. I would not want to see KOTOR adapted. It would be just as asinine as adapting A New Hope into yet another film and combining it with the Legacy of the Force novels and changing the names.

 

Oh, wait . . .

 

Yeah, but The Force Awakens is actually good.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

So, let me get this straight. You are saying KOTOR 1 & 2, which were both awarded video games of the year for 2003 and 2004 respectively, isn't? I think millions would disagree with you.

 

KOTOR is definitely better than any fan fic and the vast majority of EU novels out there.

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So, let me get this straight. You are saying KOTOR 1 & 2, which were both awarded video games of the year for 2003 and 2004 respectively, isn't? I think millions would disagree with you.

 

KOTOR is definitely better than any fan fic and the vast majority of EU novels out there.

Calm down. :p My snark was for Legacy of the Force. I played KOTOR once a long time ago.

 

Cool, Zerimar! Mine was great. :)

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What

Not because of that. I wasn't gung-ho on that series either. Didn't hate it, but didn't love it either. The Force Awakens was a different kind of suck.

Did it suck on its own merits, or did it suck because it didn't follow EU continuity?

 

Which would you like more-- a terrible Star Wars movie that follows your continuity, or a great SW movie that ignores it?

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I wouldn't be interested in either, to be honest. It's really difficult to separate the two because of how much they plagiarized what they declared non-canon.

And yes, it sucked on its own merits. The story was an uninspired rehash--not even a good retelling, like KOTOR was--the one likable character (Poe) doesn't get enough screen time, the rest of the original characters are only mildly interesting, and the returning characters are completely off, apart from Han. Carrie Fisher seems tired and less interested in the film than Harrison Ford was, the latter of whom still gave a great performance and was the film's one saving grace. The film boasts that it follows what made the original Trilogy great, but only because it copies its plots to the letter. The film itself has no heart and seems to completely miss the feel of Star Wars, which even the prequels embodied, albeit flawed.

So yes, I was not impressed. I actually went to the cinema expecting to get a decent film I would like, albeit an apocrypha in my eyes, and would gage whether or not I would continue to follow subsequent films. What I experienced determined that I would not, apart from perhaps a few spin-off films.

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I think, Tank, what you and I can't wrap our mind around is that I think to him the movies are not special. What I mean is that they aren't any more important to Star Wars than some novel no one has ever heard of written in the early 90s.

 

We see it like this: there are the movies, then there is all the other stuff that is made for people who just can't get enough. The movies don't just have a primacy, they have a supreme primacy.

 

He, I think, sees the entire history of the Star Wars galaxy as being even and they just happened to begin telling the story with movies and they just happen to make movies about certain parts of it.

 

To me and I'd guess to Tank Star Wars is not meant to be that. It's not meant to be Game of Thrones. It wasn't conceived in that way and when it is made in that way it ruins it or at the very least isnt as good.

 

This is a problem with the prequels, Lucas is trying to tell us the whole story. He wants to show how Palpatine becomes Chancellor, rigs a war, becomes Emperor and all that. What he should have done is focus on the role of the main charcters inside of that story. That's what he did in the OT and thats what JJ did with TFA. It's the difference between Saving Private Ryan and a 12 part documentary on the History Channel about WWII.

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I wouldn't be interested in either, to be honest. It's really difficult to separate the two because of how much they plagiarized what they declared non-canon.

 

And yes, it sucked on its own merits. The story was an uninspired rehash--not even a good retelling, like KOTOR was--the one likable character (Poe) doesn't get enough screen time, the rest of the original characters are only mildly interesting, and the returning characters are completely off, apart from Han. Carrie Fisher seems tired and less interested in the film than Harrison Ford was, the latter of whom still gave a great performance and was the film's one saving grace. The film boasts that it follows what made the original Trilogy great, but only because it copies its plots to the letter. The film itself has no heart and seems to completely miss the feel of Star Wars, which even the prequels embodied, albeit flawed.

 

So yes, I was not impressed. I actually went to the cinema expecting to get a decent film I would like, albeit an apocrypha in my eyes, and would gage whether or not I would continue to follow subsequent films. What I experienced determined that I would not, apart from perhaps a few spin-off films.

 

This comes from a PT fan: the moment where Rey looks at the old lady cleaning a part and then looks with longing at that ship taking off feels more like Star Wars than the entire PT combined.

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You know, I would have to agree with that. As much as I disliked the film, it did have its moments, and Rey's introduction was one of those.

See, I am not rooting for these films to be terrible. On the contrary, I hope they are good, and I hope everyone who sees them enjoys them. To me, it's just not a story I have any interest in following, just like a franchise I am not interested in (which is almost what new canon Star Wars feels like to me--only the name is the same).

To be honest, the one film outside of the original Trilogy that has that Star Wars feel to it to the highest capacity is The Phantom Menace. Ironically, I also think it is the weakest of the prequels. It's funny how the two are not necessarily conjoined.

Aside from Choc's little jab at the EU in his opening paragraph (which bears a half-truth), I would say that his assessment is fairly accurate. Where he is mistaken, however, is when he says the films are not special to me. I will tell you that I grew up with the three original films, watched them obsessively, acted them out with friends, and even made my own extremely amateur fan film with my cousin on my seventh birthday called Santa Claus Strikes Back (yes, I am being serious). It was not until 1997 that I got into the EU with the release of the PC game Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight (which has just turned twenty years old) when my father purchased it for my fourteenth birthday. This opened the door to the Thrawn trilogy, and the rest is history.

 

So the movies most definitely are special to me. It's just that I see them as a "first step into a larger world," as it were. They are still special to me and I try to do a movie marathon every year; it's just that I enjoy that "larger world" even more. This would is the continuation of Star Wars to me, and it always will be. Therefore, it is difficult for me to accept a different world to the one I know and love. Who knows? Maybe once I'm fifty or so my mind may change, but as for now it holds no interest. It's not Star Wars to me. I may be to you, but not to me.

With that said, your point about Star Wars as intended to be a cinematic saga is perfectly valid, and Tank has made this point as well. If that is what it is to you, that's perfectly fine; but it means something different to me. Despite original intent, Star Wars is more than a cinematic saga to me. It is something so much larger than that, and I take it all with zero regrets, both the good, the bad, and the ugly, just like life itself.

I guess that's why, for me, it never really mattered much that the prequels were sub-par, because they ushered in with them a whole new era (really multiple eras) of new EU content, and for that I am extremely grateful. Someone on Facebook once asked how you would describe the prequels in one word, and the word I chose was "harbinger."

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You didn't start reading EU until 1997?? I always got the impression it was much earlier. Although, now that I think about it, the people who seem most upset by the Legends reboot are people who came to the EU later, not those who started with the Thrawn Trilogy in 1991. (This is not a criticism, merely an observation.)

 

Your comment about the prequel era EU is interesting because that's pretty much when I stopped trying to read every novel that came out. I didn't have time with college to keep up and I only really cared about the post Endor landscape anyway. I had movies to tell the prequel stories, and Episode VII was never going to happen (ha!).

 

I read pretty much every book that comes out now, because they send them to me for free, but I do appreciate how the novels have taken a backseat to the movies and TV. The EU should be about expanding the universe, not trying to tell stories that are just as important as the movies. Doesn't mean the current EU doesn't matter, there are great stories there, but they all support what we see onscreen. I really can't think of a SW book I've actively disliked since Twilight Company, and there were way more duds during the early Legends era.

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I read Heir to the Empire the day it came out. I was under the impression Lucas himself had outlined the story and it was legit. I was 17. By the end I was let down, and more bothered that I didnt love by anything else.

 

By the time I finished the third book I was in active hate mode and felt the way about the Thrawn trilogy that Zerimar does about TFA.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

I read Heir to the Empire the day it came out. I was under the impression Lucas himself had outlined the story and it was legit. I was 17. By the end I was let down, and more bothered that I didnt love by anything else.

 

By the time I finished the third book I was in active hate mode and felt the way about the Thrawn trilogy that Zerimar does about TFA.

I actually liked Heir to the Empire when I first read it, but hated Last Command (terrible ending!). Dark Force Rising was meh.

 

The Thrawn trilogy had interesting original characters, but nowadays, not much else redeems it for me.

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Just like everyone else, I think it will be something to do with the beginnings of the Jedi.

 

Here is my other prediction.... This trilogy ends with Chewbacca sacrificing himself to destroy Starkiller base 2.0 ala Randy Quaid in ID4. At that same time, Finn reverses the tractor beam and rather than shooting a laser at Chewie, it shoots the anti-tractor beam. Chewie flies across the MF and falls into a bacta tank which freezes because the beam also knocked out the radiator.

 

The MF and frozen Chewie drift for eons and crash land in Roswell. He is eventually captured and scientists are quick to discover his engineering acumen. Knowing the power of the Kyber crystals on board, Chewie tries to have them destroyed by persuading scientists to use them as an alternative to uranium for nuclear power. However, they are much more powerful than Chewie expects. The Kyber crystals create a tear in space-time eventually allowing time travel, or loops, thus creating the Rian Johnson movie universe.

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From an interview with Rian Johnson on starwars.com:

 

 

 

Rian Johnson: I’m just at the beginning of the beginning of the beginning with it. It really just came about because we had such a great time making VIII, not just with the production, but Kathy, Ram [bergman] my producer, and I, we all just got along so well. All the folks at Lucasfilm, we loved. Disney, we had a great time with Bob Iger and Alan Horn and Alan Bergman. We just really had a great experience with everybody. So we were getting to the end of this movie, and it really started with just, “How can we keep working together? It’s been a great experience. Beyond loving Star Wars, I just love these people, how can we keep this going?” So I just kind of floated out the idea of, “Well, we can talk about a stand-alone movie or something, but the thing that’s really the most interesting to me is the notion of a new trilogy and a new story told over three movies.” My pitch was basically, “Let’s give ourselves a clear, blue, open sky. Let’s say we can set this anywhere, and it’s not gonna be dealing with the characters that we’ve already established. Let’s create a whole new group of folks, a whole new set of circumstances, and let’s go to new places and let’s create a mythic, beautiful, emotional, fun Star Wars story over three films.”
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