Haven't seen the latest movie yet, but it's absolutely nuts that there wasn't an outline and narrative arc planned out for the trilogy as a whole. Like, the fact that one writer could start it off, then another picked up with apparently no real idea of where the first writer was going with stuff/what the plan was -- it's just, like. Man. This is a billion dollar franchise. They couldn't plan out the arc of three movies?
@Roz said in Good or New Movies Review:
Haven't seen the latest movie yet, but it's absolutely nuts that there wasn't an outline and narrative arc planned out for the trilogy as a whole. Like, the fact that one writer could start it off, then another picked up with apparently no real idea of where the first writer was going with stuff/what the plan was -- it's just, like. Man. This is a billion dollar franchise. They couldn't plan out the arc of three movies?
I don't think it's proven there wasn't. I think people just want to use that as an excuse.
The fact that they had footage for Carrie for RoS planned and completed before TLJ says to me they absolutely knew where it was going.
Saying the quiet parts out loud since 1996.
@Roz said in Good or New Movies Review:
Haven't seen the latest movie yet, but it's absolutely nuts that there wasn't an outline and narrative arc planned out for the trilogy as a whole.
Like how Darth Vader's arc or even relationship to Luke (or for that matter, Luke's relationship to Leia) was meticulously planned out in the original trilogy? 
@ZombieGenesis said in Good or New Movies Review:
Rian Johnson says there was no set plan for the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
"Not really. That’s what’s been really cool about the storytelling process. There is definitely the idea that we know it is a three-movie arc. We know the first film is an introduction, then the middle act is training, meaning challenging the characters. The third is where they all come together and you have to resolve everything.
But I was truly able to write this script without bases to tag, and without a big outline on the wall. That meant I could react to what I felt from The Force Awakens, and what I wanted to see. I could make this movie personal. I could also just take these characters where it felt right and most interesting to take them. I think part of the reason the movie feels like it goes to some unexpected places with the characters is that we had that freedom. If it had all just been planned out and written down beforehand, it might have felt a little more calculated, I suppose."
No, he was really gracious, in just stepping back and giving us a blank slate to work with. The starting point was The Force Awakens script, which is quite a big, expansive, wonderful starting point. In that way, we are drawing directly from his work. But from that point forward it was a blank canvas.
But it was a completely unknown scenario. I had some gut instincts about where the story would have gone. But without getting in the weeds on episode eight, that was a story that Rian wrote and was telling based on seven before we met. So he was taking the thing in another direction. So we also had to respond to Episode VIII. So our movie was not just following what we had started, it was following what we had started and then had been advanced by someone else. So there was that, and, finally, it was resolving nine movies. While there are some threads of larger ideas and some big picture things that had been conceived decades ago and a lot of ideas that Lawrence Kasdan and I had when we were doing Episode VII, the lack of absolute inevitability, the lack of a complete structure for this thing, given the way it was being run was an enormous challenge.
@Auspice said in Good or New Movies Review:
Now it could be said that Disney should have learned from Marvel, but saying 'they already did this....' No. Marvel did. Not Disney.
Marvel had the bold idea to do multiple movies leading into The Avengers, but the three phase structure and the overall story of the Thanos saga wasn't a thing until Marvel got bought and Disney gave Feige free rein, and the story itself wasn't fully planned out until after The Avengers.
It's also hard to ignore that pre-Disney Marvel gave us the least interesting movies (and outright two biggest stinkers) in the MCU.
The model for movies within the Lucasfilm wing may be wildly different than in Marvel.
And the point is that it shouldn't be.
Edit: Even if you want to nitpick and say that they weren't under the same umbrella when Marvel started, the fact of the matter is that Marvel was still an example. Hell, two previous trilogies weren't entirely planned out, but they still had a writing team that had an idea of what would happen in the sequels after Star Wars was a hit. I mean, guys, the Fast & Furious movies since 5 have had more of a cohesive story arc between movies than this trilogy.
@Arkandel said in Good or New Movies Review:
@Roz said in Good or New Movies Review:
Haven't seen the latest movie yet, but it's absolutely nuts that there wasn't an outline and narrative arc planned out for the trilogy as a whole.
Like how Darth Vader's arc or even relationship to Luke (or for that matter, Luke's relationship to Leia) was meticulously planned out in the original trilogy?
Lucas, love him or lump him in the fan love/hate relationship that's went on for decades, was good at being meticulous in planning it all out like that, including character necessity/screen time to tell their whole stories in as little time necessary to make the most impact. Like, literally, you can hate the prequel, but the character development is done right in the format similar to the original trilogy. No one is over-portrayed/shown for commercial benefit. Like the hate for Jar Jar, that's on purpose, its enough so the 5 minutes of time he gets near center camera in the last two of the prequels we can hate him more for pushing the naboo agenda from non confidence to supreme control.
@Arkandel said in Good or New Movies Review:
@Roz said in Good or New Movies Review:
Haven't seen the latest movie yet, but it's absolutely nuts that there wasn't an outline and narrative arc planned out for the trilogy as a whole.
Like how Darth Vader's arc or even relationship to Luke (or for that matter, Luke's relationship to Leia) was meticulously planned out in the original trilogy?
Lucas was at least a connecting thread through all three films. It wasn't like one director started the project, then another came on who, from reactions from both Johnson and Abrams, disagreed with the first film about where to go, and then the first guy returned and disagreed with the second, it seems. And I'm saying that as someone who really enjoyed both of the first movies of this trilogy. But that's still not a great method for them to build out a trilogy of films without someone steering as a sort of consistent creative voice for the story across all three films.
(Then again, even if it were Abrams through all three, asking mysterious questions and offering no coherent answers is kind of his thing.)
I think it didn't help that narratively speaking and to me RoS seemed to pretty much ignore TLJ and that JJ tried to cram a retcon/soft reboot of his own version of Episode 8 in with Episode 9.
@Jaded I agree. Like it or not TLJ happened. By ignoring it you're not going to appease the people who did not like TLJ because of how you're going to have to drag out your new story with exposition and you're also going to ostracize the people who did like TLJ. It's a lose/lose. I think it would have been best to just springboard off of TLJ and tell the best story you can from there.
SW:ROS direly needed subtle dice noises added to the musical scores. I think if they went all in with the random encounter theme, it could easily be my favourite star wars movie yet.
Adam Driver fucking killed it.
@Auspice Wasn't all of her footage for RoS pulled from the cutting floor of TFA, and like... her clothes CGI'd?
@Arkandel said in Good or New Movies Review:
Adam Driver fucking killed it.
With 0 dialogue for the back half of the movie. We stan his acting chops, despite what he had to work with.
RoS was awesome. I have no idea what else you wanted from it.
Racism isn't Tinkerbell. It doesn't need you to believe in it for it to exist.
@Derp said in Good or New Movies Review:
RoS was awesome. I have no idea what else you wanted from it.
I want it to be exactly like my childhood but also better than my childhood despite not changing anything or asking me to change or think about my relationship to the franchise. And it should have a surfer Rastafarian dog who's totally in my face.
ok poochie
It's fun when you get the joke!
@Derp I don't know what I wanted, but it certainly isn't what we got.
My wishlist was more aimed at the trilogy at large; I wanted the original cast to have a more prominent role. I never expected Carrie Fisher to do barrel rolls or Mark Hamill to wield a lightsaber like Ray Park but something much closer to the EU than what it turned out to be.
At least I wanted the original team to share the screen even once. And now they never will, which is sad.
Otherwise it was okay. TLJ was forgettable and I feel killed Luke off without a good reason or payoff for it. TFA and RoS were stronger. If I have any complaint about RoS in fact it was ***=NSFW content***
But it was well worth watching, at least. Now what?
Alright, apparently I can't get the spoiler tags to work(??) so here's a link to my super super spoiler-filled Twitter rant on what I did not like TRoS:
https://twitter.com/ninae/status/1208145442799681536
And since we are on the topic, here's my final ranking:
Haven't seen the latest movie yet, but it's absolutely nuts that there wasn't an outline and narrative arc planned out for the trilogy as a whole. Like, the fact that one writer could start it off, then another picked up with apparently no real idea of where the first writer was going with stuff/what the plan was -- it's just, like. Man. This is a billion dollar franchise. They couldn't plan out the arc of three movies?
