ShadowDancerWhen I say, "Why aye, gadgie," in my heart I say, "Och aye, laddie."London, UK
To be honest, stealing the Death Star plans was never a story I considered needing to be told. It was just a hook that A New Hope came from. I was hoping for a story either about Rouge Squadron, and/or something after RotJ to help fill in the time between that and Force Awakens.
I'm therefore reserving judgement until we get at least a proper trailer, and until we see if Force Awakens sucks
I was expecting Rebels to deal with the Death Star plans as it seems like a natural place for that storyline to go and I kinda hoped they would because the producers running the show are big fans of the EU, so we would have seen elements of Operation Skyhook (because they keep trying to sneak EU content back in).
To be honest, the childhood of Anakin Skywalker was never a story I considered needing to be told either. I'm very disappointed of Stephen Colbert, who was asked the other day by George Lucas why he didn't take over the Daily Show from John Stewart. Colbert should have asked George in return, why he ruined the SW franchise with the prequels? The bottom line is, we never get what we want, only what we deserve. What I want to know is, what did we do to deserve this, George?
ShadowDancerWhen I say, "Why aye, gadgie," in my heart I say, "Och aye, laddie."London, UK
Makes you think twice about the concept of not being able to kill an idea. We have an example of that right in front of us that you can beat the life out of it. And it proves just how clueless the man really was and how he struck gold with the original trilogy and didn't even know how or why. Ok guys, we made movie history, let's not do that again. I sure hope that Episode 7 will put us back on track and I don't care if he watches it or not. lol
Doesn't Lucas still insist that the Star Wars Holiday Special is 100% canon, and even insisted that when the comic about Chewbacca's father was made, that they had to make sure that what was shown in the Holiday Special was still intact? I watched some of that thing and it was horrible. Why do Wookies live in houses that pretty much look like a typical house from the 80's or whatever? And why was that Wookie kid while abducted by the Empire watching cartoons about Luke, Han and the others? Are we supposed to assume that someone in the setting actually made that stupid cartoon for some reason?
I don't know what you are talking about, but it sure sounds horrible. I think I don't want to know. I tried to watch a few of those animated SW shows too, but those didn't do it for me either. I hope that with new management and talent we'll finally get what we have always wanted.
Given that Lucas has said that if he had his way, he'd wander the Earth smashing every bootleg copy of the Holiday Special until it was entirely lost to history, I doubt he's very invested in its canonicity. The EU sometimes referenced it, (retconning names like "Lumpy" into nicknames like "Chewie," or referencing the "musical acts" to be cute), but the Holiday Special has no defenders, certainly not Lucas. And with the new canon, it's fully divorced from the continuity (unless someone references it in "Rebels" or something).
ShadowDancerWhen I say, "Why aye, gadgie," in my heart I say, "Och aye, laddie."London, UK
Thats one part of the "proper" EU that I won't miss!
Been doing some digging into what went wrong with the prequels and it seems to come down to one thing.
George Lucas has some great story ideas, but he fails at the execution. When he made the original trilogy, he had a team that were happy to tell him "it would be much better to do it this way" and so that helped those films become what we know them to be. They wanted to make films they could be proud of.
By the time the prequels came along, those people were gone. They'd moved on to other projects, found George too difficult to work for or retired or whatever. Instead, Lucasfilm had people who were either fans and were happy to do whatever George wanted because it was their dream job or people who didn't care about the quality of the films being made, only how much money they'd make from them, so they just let George do whatever he wanted. The end result, a movie trilogy that you can see the potential in but failed to live up to it. If only he'd had the right people working for him...
I find that official explanation very convenient as it tries to absolve Lucas from any responsibility with regards to his involvement in the making of the prequels. It would be credible if the original trilogy didn't exist or couldn't have been used as reference. Not only did he have the originals but he kept fixing them after they had already been successful with the fans, warts and flakey SFX included. Sure many competent collaborators had left the company by then but I'm fairly certain many were also replaced by people who grew up with or were fans of the original episodes. The problems didn't lie in the details but the overall story arcs. I enjoyed the sounds and sights of the prequels but the stories and characters were lackluster to say the least. His own reasoning about the technology not being able to render his vision onto the big screen might have been true in his mind, but you don't need a Cray computer cluster to come up with an exciting plot with complex and interesting characters. I know that at the end of the day it's just entertainment and it's mostly about business, so from his point of view he did well.
I've read that explanation elsewhere before and it keeps popping up every time Lucas opens his mouth about SW in public (and when making smug remarks about other people's work). ;-)
https://medium.com/absurdist/whose-fantasy-who-s-fantasy-4ede7a60a1a3 Is a link to a medium opinion article the thesis of which is "In a fantasy universe, ther isn't any real reason why a main character in a movie Shouldn't be black, and so I'm hyped for the new movie as a refreshing change of pace re: the rule that the main character/sympathetic character is always white". Good read.
While there's always going to be stupid merchandise, I have been quite impressed by some of the stuff I've seen so far. With the Sphero BB-8 droid, the X-Wing and Millennium Falcon drones coming to mind.
Comments
I'm therefore reserving judgement until we get at least a proper trailer, and until we see if Force Awakens sucks
George Lucas has some great story ideas, but he fails at the execution. When he made the original trilogy, he had a team that were happy to tell him "it would be much better to do it this way" and so that helped those films become what we know them to be. They wanted to make films they could be proud of.
By the time the prequels came along, those people were gone. They'd moved on to other projects, found George too difficult to work for or retired or whatever. Instead, Lucasfilm had people who were either fans and were happy to do whatever George wanted because it was their dream job or people who didn't care about the quality of the films being made, only how much money they'd make from them, so they just let George do whatever he wanted. The end result, a movie trilogy that you can see the potential in but failed to live up to it. If only he'd had the right people working for him...
When I saw that I couldn't help but say...
"Stay on Target, Stay on Target!"