Well this is just sad. We're just over 30 days from the conclusion/wrap-up of the
Skywalker saga(!), and it appears that nobody gives a flaming rip.
About what I'd expect. Thanks, Rian!
Seriously, four years ago we had about a 7,000 page thread leading up to the opening of
The Force Awakens...lively discussion, trailer analysis, predictions, debates, etc. Granted, that was before we all knew it would be such an uninspired, soulless "reimagining" of a movie done right the first time, 38 years prior (and before Kennedy turned the second installment over to a demented gnome who was obviously lying about his love of the property).
Would any of you had guessed, 4-5 years ago, that it would be so hard to care about
Star Wars? I am on record as being concerned about the rushed trilogy releases and the "something every year" output. As it turns out, even Disney/Lucasfilm finally realized that maybe too much of anything is too much? Just a shame they couldn't have realized all this in 2014 or so, planned out a coherent, three-movie arc, took their time on the story/characters before one inch of film rolled, maybe even *gasp* listened to George a little (he kinda came up with all this stuff, after all), etc.
And then maybe
this thread would be 7,000 pages too.
Just sad...
How do you goof up/mishandle
Star Wars?!? With the established characters, backstories, fan goodwill/enthusiasm, it seems anyone could almost accidentally make a thrilling, enjoyable sequel trilogy. How hard could it possibly be?! The only other media entity I can think of that shit the bed to such a degree in recent years is DC/Warner brothers. People ask "how does one mess up
Star Wars?" Gosh, I don't know...maybe go ask the people who managed to screw up the first live action appearance of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman together on the big screen? How do you mess that up (and then make a follow-up that is actually
worse?! I don't know, but they certainly did. I suffered through both of those turds-on-a-bisuit and I can't believe the amount of time and money spent to create such an unwatchable pair of movies.
These people - Hollywood movie execs, producers, movers-and-shakers, etc. - are going to learn, one way or another, that all the fan-service, three-point-landings, fast-food tie-ins, social media driven "hype", stunt-casting, CGI, geek cred, etc. will never -
never - beat a good, solid story. They seem to put all that other stuff in first, and then hire 22 monkeys to sit in a room and try to hammer out some sort of story to hang it all on.
They're doing it backwards.
There is
no way Palpatine was destined to be in this trilogy back in 2014-2015. I'll never be convinced that was the overall plan all along. There's no way.
Good grief, I could type a novel on all this. But what does it matter at this point, right?
Yeah, I'll see
Rise of Skywalker, of course. But it'll be the first SW flick since 1999 that I've not seen on the Thursday night advance screenings (and the first since 1980 that I've not seen on opening weekend). Because I know what awaits, and I only deem it worthy of week-later, Tuesday matinee outlay. I'll throw $6 at this. Those other two got my full money in 2015 and 2017, but not again. If I want to blow money on something derivative, soulless and unasked for, I'll go see The Knack at the county fair (but two of them are dead, so it wouldn't be the real thing anyway).
I would love to be proven wrong, and have my mind changed. But, above all, I'm a realist. Painfully, at times. And I don't see how the people who started all this nonsense are going to suddenly "get it", pull it together and tie all this up in two hours in a way that doesn't seem desperate, slammed-together and "hail mary".
Palpatine? Seriously? Snoke was just a pit-stop along the way, huh? Okay...whatever you say, Kathleen/J.J.
I'm staying spoiler-free, but I did see where a certain character is returning (a pilot). So when you factor that in, plus Palpatine, Lando, the presence of the second Death Star (and, I assume Endor and, since it's a law that no
Star Wars movie can be made without Warwick Davis, I'm sure we'll see a greying, cane-using Wickett)...it seems this movie is looking to repeat some of those 1983 ROTJ beats in the way that
The Force Awakens so strongly cribbed from the 1977 original. I get the feeling that they're going to lose their minds and go all-out on this one in a desperate effort to right the ship on their one remaining opportunity. The means we're probably going to get a Boba Fett cameo (at the very least, Slave I in that armada of ships accompanying the Falcon in the second trailer; whether it's still owned/flown by Fett isn't the point; the fact that unhinged fan-service will be implemented will be the reason it appears. I don't even know if Boba Fett is alive or not in this particular canon...I can't keep up with that craziness anymore. People say the ship from that
Rebels TV show is next to the Falcon, so that tells me that any ship/vehicle we've seen or thought was cool since 1977 has a solid chance of showing up.
It's all a little easier to swallow/process when you just take a "okay, whatever..." stance.
What
I'm looking forward to, 15+ years from now (after Kennedy and Lucas and some others have passed) is the hardcore exposé on the how/who/why all this stuff got so idiotic. All the producer notes, mandates from Kennedy, disastrous test-screenings, the arguments, the resistance (hey!) to trying anything truly new/original, the green-lighting of various "less than" characters, sequences, dialogue, etc. It'll be a great book, whoever writes it. I want names named, reputations sullied, etc.