Big Boy Laroux

Fully aware - which is why i said "the next movie".

TGM

I thought the whole point of these anthology movies was to have a different take and feel than the ones with all the Skywalker drama. Now it feels like Disney is back peddling. Disappointing.

RoyalTea

goddammit.

bluetoast

I doubt it's an issue of merchandising. That shit is always set in stone way in advance.

brayzie

George Lucas originally retained control of Star Wars in order to avoid studio/corporate meddling in his films. And yet, when it came down to it, he allegedly allowed for the merchandising opportunities for kids' toys to affect the integrity of the film's story.

The creator owning the material or a corporation owning it, either way, seems like the story is always going to be subservient to the merchandising possibilities.

Artman

Ideally it would be something that would fit in well watching before the OT. ROTJ and TFA weren't quite as dark as ANH and ESB, so even a return to that tone would be welcome.

I also hope they don't try to include a Han cameo. Wasn't the young Han supposed to be mid 20's? (which is what they cast)

The Bus

Cars merchandise sold $1 billion by the end of 2006 alone, more than double of the film's gross worldwide.

As long as the merchandise makes more money, it's going to lead business decisions.

RoboDad

I think you are reading a lot into the article that wasn't really there.

Consider the tone of the original Star Wars. The opening scene featured stormtroopers blasting into a rebel ship, killing many rebel soldiers, Vader crushing a man's throat, and then sending his minions down to Tatooine to burn Owen and Beru to crispy critters (not to mention the many Jawas who were slaughtered).

And then we get to the Cantina, where Ben chops off someone's arm with his lightsaber.

And then the REAL levity begins, when Tarkin orders the destruction of the entire planet of Alderaan, killing billions of innocent people in a matter of seconds.

Yeah, I wouldn't want MY Star Wars movie to be tonally consistent with that AT ALL.

milo bloom

While all those things did happen, ANH was still put together in a way that didn't linger on those things or really show all the gore. The tone was still that of people being caught in the wrong place at the right time and trying to keep their skins in one piece long enough to make a difference.

Giantrobo

Agreed.

But then again, why would it be news if that is true? Hey, "lighter" works for Disney properties....All I've been hearing for the past several years is how no one wants dark films. So it would make sense that they would do this, if that's in fact, what they're doing.

Draven

It's "news" because after the success of Force Awakens, anything that could possibly be considered "trouble" for the next film is clickbait central.

RoboDad

Kind of the way Rogue One is about a group of people trying to keep their skins in one piece long enough to make a difference.

Lingering on gore does not make a movie better, or more realistic in any way. If you need to see gore to be entertained, perhaps the Star Wars universe is not the right place to be investing your time.

DaveyJoe

There's nothing in Monsters or Godzilla to indicate that Edwards suddenly wants to linger on gore, however, he does create a dark tone and somber feeling throughout the course of his movies. That's probably the issue Disney could have with the movie. From a marketing standpoint, they want these movies to be as kid-friendly as possible. You can't please everybody, you had people complaining about Finn's "WOO!" in the last movie, but parents will complain if the new Star Wars is sad. I personally think there's room in the SW universe for a somber movie or two.

islandclaws

Right. But all of that was done in a film that wasn't trying to "maintain the tone" of a $4 BILLION franchise investment. Disney is going to do everything possible to make every SW film - episodes or not - look like they were made at the same factory.

GuessWho

Good point. CapAmer2: Winter Soldier had the tone of a political espionage drama while Guardians of the Galaxy & Ant-Man were action comedies... and yet you can tell they were all made "at the same factory"


A lot of public education has to be made about Rogue One though--and that's a hurdle. I've seen several message boards with people seeing the trailer asking where are Rey & Finn. The point that this is a standalone prequel is not getting across to the masses. Us movie dorks, yes; the masses, not so much.

Paul_SD

The first comment over on Devin Faraci's site for this story is spot on. To paraphrase, it's not about audience's preferring one tone over another. It's about congruency between the subject matter, approach, and tone.

I'm a little balse towards Star Wars at this point (Still havent bothered to see TFA). But I thought the trailer to this looked very intriguing. Probably the most interesting aspect being that it looked like Kennedy and LFL were going to allow for more idiosyncratic one-offs rather than trying to maintain a Disney-like house style over every little spin-off.

While there is a 50/50 chance the re-shoots will improve the final work, from here on out the film is unfortunately under a black cloud and will always be second guessed as to what "It might have been" had the studio not had the desire to try to homogenize it for 4 quadrant consumption.

Shannon Nutt

This has to be an issue of Disney going over Kathleen Kennedy's head (if, indeed, all this "execs hated it" stuff is true). At last year's Star Wars Celebration, Kennedy was sitting right next to Edwards when he told the crowd he wanted to put the "Wars" back in "Star Wars" (and the crowd went nuts). Most of the crew they hired worked on movies like "Black Hawk Down" and "Zero Dark Thirty" in the past...Kennedy knew EXACTLY what kind of movie Gareth was making.

I was looking forward to a "darker" Star Wars film - after all, that was the WHOLE POINT of these spin-offs when they were originally announced...they WEREN'T going to have the same tone as the "Saga" movies...this was supposed to be a war movie, the Han Solo movie was going to be a comedy/heist film, etc.

Mike86

I understand it from both sides I guess. Us as fans want something set in the Star Wars universe with a tone different from the main films but Disney wants to be able to still sell Star Wars as a family friendly brand and for that reason being dark and gritty isn't the best option. If they can find some levity and get somewhere like say Civil War which had a serious tone but was also filled with enough light heartedness that would probably be ideal and I'm guessing that Disney hopes for a balance like that film.

Maz Kanata

Edwards takes big-budget ideas and makes low-budget movies out of them. That is why he is a divisive, love-it-or-hate-it genre director. You barely saw the two monsters in MONSTERS. You only got about 7 minutes of Godzilla in GODZILLA. Most audiences seemed to have wanted a two-hour Godzilla monster mash in that latter film. I imagine this is the same exact "problem" in his latest. He made a low-budget type war film that happens to have the Star Wars moniker. Disney wants a huge, epic crowd-pleaser that will crossover well into foreign markets. MORE MONSTERS! MORE GODZILLA! MORE DARTH VADER! MORE FUN!!!

MBoyd

Slash film says its 40% of the movie being reshot with heavy involvement by Christopher McQuarrie. Sounds like a huge amount to me. I bet we don't see this until May 2017.

http://www.slashfilm.com/rogue-one-reshoots-details/

bluetoast

Which once again leads me to ask why the fuck they didn't bring this up at the script stage- but that article seems to indicate there was more being written while it was already being filmed.

MBoyd

That's such a huge chunk of time too. Will the actors even be available? Won't be surprised to hear about recasting.

TGM

I'm sure the end product will be cool, but damn I really want to see the original darker take at some point.

bluetoast

I'm also thinking this would have been less of an issue if ep VIII still had the May release date. Now this movie is the sole SW movie for a year, so the pressure is higher (in addition to living up to VII's box office).

E Unit

Jesus, what the hell happened.