I am stupid excited for the the two ewok movies and the 2 season ewok cartoon. They are awful but they are my childhood.

I still have the two Ewok movies (and OT) sealed on VHS. Doubt they're worth much, but it's a cool collectible on the shelf.

I loved the Ewoks show as a kid, but watching it several years later with my kid, it didn't age well. I'm more interested in the old Droids one as that seemed to have some interesting backstory going on plus they used ships like the A-wing and B-wing more often.

Is the droid one coming to Disney+ ? I have the Ewok cartoon ripped to dvd from a vhs recording when it aired. Needless to say the quality is...umm....yeah.

I tried buying the Ewok movies DVDs a few years back but they were out of print.

Yeah, I read some of the print version, he didn't come right out and say it but he basically admits there's times when a showrunner/filmmaker should have a plan ahead of time and he pretty much means Star Wars.

Kinda goes back to the BSG reboot, where they kept saying the Cylons had a plan but it turns out that was just the Marketing department at SciFi Channel and the showrunners were making it up as they went along.
I can't imagine agreeing to pay so much for a TV show and not have some idea of what's going to happen. I can understanding making changes as you go along, but at least have some kind of plan for an ending even if you end up changing it.

I wish we could see JJ's director's cut of TROS, that person I know that I've mentioned before that is really close to the Bad Robot organization has said there's a much longer cut and Disney butchered it for the theatrical. I really want to know who the hell Matt Smith was going to play.

I give some respect to Abrams for being able to somewhat unofficially admit that the Sequel Trilogy could have been better if it had been more planned out.

Kathleen Kennedy's contract with Lucasfilm is reportedly been extended 3 years through 2024

https://collider.com/kathleen-kenned...tract-renewed/

Howevever, looks like only Collider and the Matthew Belloni newsletter are reporting it right now. None of the major trades are reporting it yet.

I’ve always liked Kathleen Kennedy. She’s produced some really good movies over the years (although looking at her filmography, I wonder how much of that is riding Spielberg’s coattails) but she just doesn’t seem to have decent grasp on the Star Wars films. She seems to have a hand in the Disney+ shows too so that’s working out well for her. But the films have been mostly a mess since she took over.

Yeah, the TV stuff has been good, maybe because she didn't have her eyes on it as much as the films?

Maybe if she gets the right people in place like Filoni (with Chow and Howard) she can just make sure things are going well but let them handle the details.

I think the issue is creative differences. If you look at everyone who has worked on and left Star Wars projects, they are some of the bigger and more trendy creative types that probably didn't sign up to be micromanaged by Lucasfilms and Disney. There is a big pattern here.

I don't think micromanaging is necessarily a bad thing when it comes to a universe like Star Wars. The key is that the micromanager needs to have a vision for the overall universe (and a vision that works and makes sense in the established context of the universe) that keeps the writers and directors in line.

Like someone needs to be in charge and say "No, the Force doesn't work that way," "You can't use the Force to do that," "No, we don't want to open a can of time travel worms in Star Wars," or "That's fucking stupid. You can't do that."

And if those writers and directors are unwilling to comply, they are shown the door.

And while I don't doubt that Kennedy probably is a micromanager, I think she doesn't have any kind of feel for what works and what doesn't work in Star Wars. She was Peter Principled in charge of a franchise that she doesn't respect or understand. She strikes me as someone who is very "corporate," and doesn't have any business running the creative side of something like Star Wars.

Yeah, as a business woman and film producer I don’t doubt Kathleen Kennedy is good at her job. As someone who’s supposed to be
a creative force (no pun intended) for Star Wars though, I don’t think she’s the right person for the job.

Kathleen Kennedy seems like a good collaborator to empower directors to get their vision on the screen. That served her well for all the standalone projects she's done before, but from what I can see, the two film "franchises" she was involved with before Star Wars were the Jurassic Park films, which have a spotty history, and Indiana Jones, which were driven by the vision of Lucas and Speilberg.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005086/

Once Lucas left, Star Wars needed a new central creative voice, and I don't think Kathleen Kennedy was it. She wasn't Kevin Feige at Marvel Studios, planning out the franchise a dozen movies and decade in advance. She seemed to be focusing on each movie as it came, with no "big picture" of how all the movies worked together. Which means when the movies came together, they came together really well, but it also meant she was giving the filmmakers enough rope to also hang themselves. Disney also seemed to be giving some pushback on this, likely expecting something run a lot more like Marvel Studios.

I think promoting Dave Filoni to executive creative director for the studio could be a good division of labor for the studio. Filoni seems second to only Lucas in knowing all the lore, possibly even more so, and has good creative instincts. Kathleen Kennedy can deal with the more administrative tasks of running a studio, and keep being more assistive on the creative end instead of a driving force.

Bolded part: which Dave Filoni was able to do in a very small but effective way in Rebels.

Again, hammering home the need for someone like him in control of creative, but with a Kennedy to run the money and such.

I seem to be the only person in the world who wants Filoni to step away from the franchise

Yes you are.

He's given the franchise an incredible new life starting with The Clone Wars, then Rebels and then The Mandalorian. All things that have deepened the franchise while still paying respect to what came before.

Is there something specific you don't like about him?

I'm not as much on the Filoni bandwagon as everyone else. He has told a lot of good stories, but I do have some problems with him:

1) The aforementioned time travel. I fear it's like opening a Pandora's Box, and once you do it, it becomes commonplace like it did on Star Trek.

2) He tends to want to over-explain the Force, and it becomes really woo-ey. (Mortis, the World Between Worlds, "Voices.")

3) He has too many creator's pets like Ahsoka Tano, Rex, and (to a lesser degree) Hondo. I like Ahsoka, and think she had one of the best arcs in the canon, but it almost hits a point where she feels like the main character in the franchise, which I don't think is appropriate for a cartoon character that was grafted into the PT-OT after the fact.

The Clone Wars animated series definitely feels like Ahsoka's show now, but she's only a minor character in a few episodes of Rebels and one episode of The Mandalorian. It feels like she's taking over because of just how popular she is. It sounds like the Ahsoka live-action series will be more of a Rebels continuation with Ezra, Sabine, and Thrawn, so I don't think even that will be about just her.

I love Filoni and hope he's around for a long time to come, but I'm also glad they're exploring multiple storytelling possibilities for future Star Wars plans. It's a broad galaxy. I think there's enough room for everyone to get something they like.

Regarding point 3, in terms of The Clone Wars, I think the show focused on the characters created specifically for that show because they had the most freedom to tell stories with those. With Obi-Wan, Padme, and Anakin, any character development is constrained to be within where they ended at in Attack of the Clones, and where they started at in Revenge of the Sith. Not to mention the fact that we know they'll survive removes a lot of dramatic tension. I remember one episode where Obi-Wan fakes his death, and the let it play out a little bit like he's actually dead, but there was no drama for me, because I knew he didn't actually die, he couldn't. With characters like Ahsoka and Rex, there was always a possibility that they could die, and the writers could make their character arc whatever they wanted.

For time travel, it's almost inevitable that any long running sci-fi or fantasy series will deal with it in some form. Star Trek's first time travel story was episode 19 of it's first season, so it's not like they waited long. For Star Wars, time travel first appeared in the Legends books. At least so far with the shows Filoni has worked on, its use has been constrained, and there's certain rules on its use. Although the Lego Star Wars Holiday Special has quite a lot of (non-canonical?) fun with time travel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow_Is_Yesterday
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Time_travel/Legends

Regarding the stories that "over-explain" The Force, my impression is that a lot of that came from George Lucas. Here's a video about the Mortis trilogy where Filoni emphasizes the story idea came from George, while also saying he tried not overexplain everything about that story, and won't even explain anything in the interview.

He doesn't have enough filmmaking experience outside of Star Wars and as a result makes the franchise "fold back in on itself". Explains stuff that doesn't need explaining (though this didn't start or end with him), doesn't pull enough from other sources, but rather pulls from Star Wars itself, et cetera. I also give Favreau a lot more of the credit on Mando season 1, whereas season 2 seemed like there was more Filoni involvement and thus too much "Hey, look at this thing we're referencing/setting up."

This isn't so much a knock against him directly, but I do think that making "his" characters so integral to the Clone Wars (Tartakovsky's version is better) and Rebel Alliance, it makes you wonder, "OK, these guys shaped the galaxy, yet there's ZERO mention of them in the OT/PT?"

I hope everyone is having a great holiday season.

The Holiday Special in 4K. Something we never asked for, or need.


https://www.slashfilm.com/713069/the...154igDNqBbiCXI

Rifftrax released an edited version of their Riff on Youtube a few weeks back:

For Youtube content match reasons, this versions cuts out Jefferson Starship, the Boba Fett cartoon and some of the commercials.

They have a full version for sale on their site:
https://www.rifftrax.com/the-star-wars-holiday-special

That 4K thing is pretty amazing, there's actual detail in the skin and fur. How are they getting that detail out of an old NTSC VHS transfer?