Good or New Movies Review

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JJ Abrams continues to be an overrated nostalgia machine. He did Rian Johnson dirty.

TheOnceler

People should go see Knives Out. It's Rian Johnson finally recovering from the stumble of making a critically acclaimed billion dollar movie.

Ganymede

@TheOnceler said in Good or New Movies Review:

People should go see Knives Out. It's Rian Johnson finally recovering from the stumble of making a critically acclaimed billion dollar movie.

Stolen.

Ghost

@TheOnceler said in Good or New Movies Review:

People should go see Knives Out. It's Rian Johnson finally recovering from the stumble of making a critically acclaimed billion dollar movie.

Looper?

Groth

@Admiral said in Good or New Movies Review:

JJ Abrams continues to be an overrated nostalgia machine. He did Rian Johnson dirty.

I think JJ Abrams is best viewed akin to Michael Bay. He is very talented at putting a few hours of sound and video together to make an enjoyable summer blockbuster. It just wont be memorable or interesting enough to be a fan of.

Ghost

@Groth Agreed. Friend and I were talking a few days ago and we were talking about whether or not the Scorsese argument applies to directors. You have FRANCHISE directors and CINEMA directors.

Abrams is a franchise guy.

Whedon, Bay, Gunn, etc franchise directors.

Del Toro, Scorsese, Cosmatos (Mandy), Rian Johnson, etc are cinema directors.

Gotta grab the right tool off of the shelf.

Edit: Sometimes it works, though. I consider Nolan a cinema guy and his Batman trilogy was great. BUT. He controlled all 3 films in the franchise.

Derp

@GreenFlashlight said in Good or New Movies Review:

I feel like a lot of the backlash to the new trilogy is based on the audience resenting that they now have enough critical thinking skills to recognize the things they weren't savvy enough to notice as kids.

Amen.

Ganymede

I’m going to interject to suggest that franchise directors are more hamstrung creatively than cinema directors.

Knives Out was fantastic, but it was all Johnson. I like Abrams just fine, but he’s working within the confines of a franchise. Nolan had an aberration to work with because Batman is fucking Batman, and I doubt his skills would have worked with Green Lantern.

So I think material is very important. And yes you need the right tool for the material.

Groth

I wouldn't make the split between franchise and cinema. Director flavor tends to come down to how they balance storytelling against spectacle.

Directors like Bay and Abrams lean heavily into the spectacle and are happy to introduce any random story element to hit the right emotional notes regardless if the broader context makes sense. This makes Hollywood suits comfortable because good spectacle is almost always guaranteed sold tickets.

Meanwhile the likes of Whedon and Del Toro have a deep love for the story they want to tell and are less willing to twist it for cheap emotional beats and spectacle but their movies still have a lot of spectacle.

Scorsese is then in the far opposite of the spectrum where there is not meant to be any spectacle, just an intense character driven journey. It makes suits uncomfortable because its really hard to estimate how well it will sell ahead of time.

Arkandel

It's not surprising some directors do better on their own stuff. It's like running a plot on your own game, at your own table, that you devised on your own versus going to someone else's and picking up a plot someone else started which you also have to hand out at the back for them to finish.

What I begrudge somewhat is anyone who goes to a beloved franchise and wants to leave 'their mark' on it. If you direct Dr. Who you don't try to make it your own - it's not your own. You're adding to an existent legacy. The same applies to Star Wars.

Look, there's a reason the Thrawn books were wildly acclaimed among the fanbase. Not everything in the EU was (a whole lot of it was uninspired shit) but the spirit of the original movies was perfectly captured in them, and the tale was incredibly enjoyable because of it.

SG

@Ghost said in Good or New Movies Review:

@TheOnceler said in Good or New Movies Review:

People should go see Knives Out. It's Rian Johnson finally recovering from the stumble of making a critically acclaimed billion dollar movie.

Looper?

The Hard Times is great:

https://thehardtimes.net/harddrive/with-knives-out-rian-johnson-finally-bounces-back-from-critically-acclaimed-billion-dollar-the-last-jedi/

GreenFlashlight

@Arkandel said in Good or New Movies Review:

Look, there's a reason the Thrawn books were wildly acclaimed among the fanbase. Not everything in the EU was (a whole lot of it was uninspired shit) but the spirit of the original movies was perfectly captured in them, and the tale was incredibly enjoyable because of it.

I love the first three Thrawn books, but when you set aside how well-written they are, in spirit, they're fanfic filled with Zahn's trademark political intrigue, eidetic memory characters, devoted retainer characters, and logic puzzles with slightly inductive answers. I don't think it's fair to say they weren't leaving his mark on the property, especially since at least one of the characters has been folded into the rebooted franchise.

Ghost

The Thrawn Trilogy were three books in what was 20+ years worth of fleshing out the Star Wars universe (and keeping it alive) through books, comics, video games, and RPGs...

...and Lucas didn't do anything but "okay" it.

Years later he picked Star Wars up again to make the Prequel Trilogy claiming that all of it was his vision, that it's his universe, and has never given warm fuzzies or respect to all of those content creators.

Fuck George Lucas. Star Wars is better off where it is now.

Those content creators, the actors chased off of social media, and the people who play wanted to be a part of Star Wars to keep it going even though the prequels were horrible? I respect them. They're keeping the candle lit. We are all on the same team, and Disney is working to keep it going, too.

George Lucas threw Star Wars away. Be on THESE PEOPLE'S sides, not Lucas'.

Auspice

@Ghost Years ago I got to sit and talk with David Weber (author of the Honorverse novels) at length about writing. What it is to be an author. His experiences. etc.

He told me how he was once approached to write a series of books about Leia. And initially he was thrilled: he was being asked to write in the Star Wars universe!!!

but then he found out that- oh. Authors within SW were very very very very closely controlled by Lucasfilm. If he'd agreed, he'd have been given a very specific formula, every plot point, etc. It'd basically be ghostwriting in a sense. Other people would decide everything that happened and he'd just connect the dots.

So none of the books written pre-Disney are truly the author's own creation. They're just putting someone else's story (Lucafilm) into their own words.

Ganymede

@Ghost said in Good or New Movies Review:

Those content creators, the actors chased off of social media, and the people who play wanted to be a part of Star Wars to keep it going even though the prequels were horrible? I respect them. They're keeping the candle lit. We are all on the same team, and Disney is working to keep it going, too.

And this is why I find so much wisdom in Ratatouille.

Ghost

@Auspice said in Good or New Movies Review:

So none of the books written pre-Disney are truly the author's own creation. They're just putting someone else's story (Lucafilm) into their own words.

This surprises me, because (Lucas Quote here...)

"There's my world, which is the movies, and there's this other world that has been created, which I say is the parallel universe—the licensing world of the books, games and comic books."

"I don't read that stuff. I haven't read any of the novels. I don't know anything about that world. That's a different world than my world."

Which has always been weird to me because Quinlan Vos, Aayla Secura, the term "Coruscant", swoop racing, dual-bladed lightsabers, the planet Dac and the tension between the Quarren and Mon Calamari, Thrawn, etc all showed up BEFORE the prequel trilogy and they were all either in the prequels or the animated series.

So which is it, George? Either way he's quoted as not knowing anything about that world and doesn't give it respect, but to many, many, many people this stuff is Star Wars.

Auspice

@Ghost Well, he's also not Lucasfilm, solely. It's quite likely that it was handed off to another team that controlled it all. Sure, his company, but someone else's circus.

Ghost

@Ghost said in Good or New Movies Review:

but to many, many, many people this stuff is Star Wars.

By this, I mean:

There are people who love the novels, the video games, the comic books, the RPGs, and any given person may have only been exposed to one or more elements of the EU. There aren't a lot of nerds out there who ONLY watched the Original Trilogy between 1984 and 2000. These people weren't really aware that KOTOR or the Thrawn Trilogy weren't canon, only to later find out that Lucas was just signing checks and later didn't consider any of it to be HIS universe.

Which, yanno, sucks.

Rinel

@Ghost

As a point of fact, Thrawn was reintroduced into canon after the Great Canon Purge. Disney had already nuked the EU by then. They've brought back some things; Rakata Prime is shown in an official map, so the name at least survives.

GreenFlashlight

@Ghost said in Good or New Movies Review:

Which, yanno, sucks.

I don't fully get that. Like, if you enjoy the books, they're still on your shelf, right? If you like the comics, they're still in your longbox. George Lucas can't take them from you, or make you stop liking them, or make you think they didn't happen if you want to think they happened. The only thing anyone can do is not make movies about them, which they could still choose not to do even if the books and comics and whatever are canon; so how does it hurt anyone?