You're both wrong.



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This is still more "Star Wars" than The Last Jedi.

Never said it would have guaranteed a successful or well received trilogy. And of course it isn't the only problem with the ST. But it was the start down the path to what we eventually got with the ST. Inconsistencies with the plot and character development covers a lot of problems people had with the ST. Of course I know about Lucas's midichlorian laden trilogy plan. Just because he came up with a terrible plan doesn't mean that planning things out is a terrible idea.

There were definitely a lot of problems with the ST and a lot of opinions both good and bad about the individual movies. But among of those who did not like TLJ it's a very common opinion that one of the reasons is because of the different direction he took from TFA. Likewise it's a very common opinion of those that didn't like RoS that one of the reasons why they didn't like it was because of the reactionary approach that JJ took trying to backtrack a lot of what TLJ did.

You can make the argument all you want that a plan wouldn't have made a difference at all. I don't know what the ST would be like if they did plan it out, if it would have been better or not. But what I do know is that they didn't bother to plan it out and the trilogy we did get was not ideal.

There's a world of difference between a "very common opinion," and one that "pretty much all agree" on. Like, an opinion that 20% of the audience holds is "very common," but nowhere near a majority, let alone nearly everyone.

It sounds like even you can't agree that not planning it out was definitely a mistake, since you concede you have no idea if the alternative would've been any better. And you're also confusing correlation with causation. I.e. just because the ST both wasn't planned and turned out terrible doesn't mean it turned out terrible because it wasn't planned.

I'll concede my wording was ambitious to apply to everyone. However, out of those who didn't like the ST there is a very common opinion that a lot of that had to do with lack of planning among other things. How each entry veers off in a different direction from the other.

I don't know if the alternative would be any better because nobody can know because it didn't happen. So arguing that a lack of planning had nothing to do with it based on something that didn't happen while totally ignoring what actually did happen is ridiculous. No, I do not get correlation confused with causation. This isn't some RCT with an experimental group and control group randomized with similar demographics. You can't apply rigorous scientific methodology to something that's based on opinion and speculation. But sometimes if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's mostly likely a duck. And if a trilogy of movies suddenly changes direction and is incongruous in plot and tone from one entry to the next why do you think that is? Lack of vision, lack of leadership, lack of planning.

It's like you don't even remember what you originally wrote:
Again, a world of difference between arguing something is one issue "among other things," and saying it was "the one downfall", i.e. singular issue.

You're right, that would be ridiculous, which is why I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing that nobody can say for certain that was the issue, let along the singular issue, like you originally stated. It's you who was attempting to argue certainty about something not certain, as well as ubiquity about something not ubiquitous, and singling it out instead of laying it out as a merely a possible factor of many.

Sure I can. I've been doing it. Look, differing opinions can be fine, but opinions should be based on facts and logic, at least if you want to argue them in front of me.

So you're saying that ESB being incongruous in plot and tone from the original Star Wars is due to a "lack of vision, lack of leadership, lack of planning," and thus bad?

Jay G. v tanman
Round 3

*ding ding*

The Star Wars is serious, serious business!

Are we only on round 3? Our are we not counting the separate TLJ thread?

Oh.
Round 9

*ding ding*

This is less like a boxing match and more like getting jumped in a dark alley for having a different opinion.

That wasn't the only issue by far. But, IMO, (because apparently I have to label everything that's my opinion otherwise it will be subjected to rigorous scientific methodology) lack of planning was the one downfall of the entire ST.

Truly you have a dizzying intellect.

Wow really? You think this is what rigorous scientific methodology is? Ok then...

And it's quite obvious that differing opinions are not fine for you.

You're going to tell me, with a straight face, that the OT as a whole, is just as incongruous in plot and tone as the ST? Considering the ST had several scenes in TLJ and RoS that specifically undermined the movie that came before it?

ESB feels like a natural continuation of ANH.

It's ROTJ that feels strange and incongruous and poorly planned. A second Death Star (they couldn't think of anything else), Luke and Leia being siblings (they had to deal with "There is another line" from the previous movie), the movie being oddly structured (so many dangling plot lines from the previous movie).

Regarding "plan" vs "no plan":

I was kind of surprised when listening to Vince Gilligan talk about Breaking Bad that even though he had a general idea of where he wanted the story to go, he didn't really have much of a plan mapped out on how to get there. The story each season kind of grew organically as he and the writers worked on each episode. It worked out well for them, IMO, because they are just really, really good writers. Good writers can write good stories, even when--sometimes especially when--they are winging it. And not-so-good writers are going to write not-so-good stories whether they have a plan or not.

So whatever you think of where TLJ took the story, TRoS could still have been a really good movie if its writers were skilled enough with character, tone, plot, and pacing to write a good story of their own. They weren't.

I borrowed the 4K UHDs of the first six films from my brother's friend. I watched The Phantom Menace earlier and have Attack Of The Clones on now. They are just as shitty as I remembered.

You wouldn't have to clarify everything as your personal opinion if you didn't first try and pass it off as something nearly everyone agreed on, which isn't true.

You're the one who used the phrase "rigorous scientific methodology" to describe my writing, not me. I merely didn't want to disagree, lest this discussion veer off on a tangent about what that phrase actually means. But if you're now stating you were wrong to use that phrase to describe my writing/arguing method, that's fine by me.

What in TLJ do you think "undermined" TFA? To my mind, it clearly built off of everything established in TFA, just not in the way some wanted it to. And I don't know why the OT has to be "just as" incongruous in plot and tone as the ST. There's clearly incongruities in plot and tone, even if some may think they're not as extreme as the ST. I know it's very hard for some, because many grew up with "Star Wars" being this single entity of a "trilogy" of movies, but it one tries to look at them in isolation and consider the first Star Wars only, and then look at ESB, it's a huge shift in plot and tone from Star Wars, but in a good way. It's not "the same plot/tone as the first film, but bigger," like so many film sequels up to that point did, but an actual departure that really developed the overall story. To my mind, TLJ fits into that mold perfectly.

But yes, the regression of TRoS is worse than the regression of ROTJ, and ROTJ didn't directly contradict anything in ESB like TRoS ended up doing with Rey's parentage. But the issue isn't as cut and try as "the movies are incongruous from each other, and therefore bad," as you tried to argue. Evil Dead 2 is incongruous from the original Evil Dead, in that it drastically shifts from horror to comedy, but people don't argue Sam Raimi was suffering from "lack of vision, lack of leadership." It's just lazy thinking, along the lines of "I didn't like X, they did Y to make X, so therefore Y is the problem with X," without any clear thought about whether Y is normally a problem or not, or whether it can really be attributed to be the cause of all the problems with X.

The rest of your post was non-answers, childish lashing out, so I'm going to accept them as concessions to my points, since you didn't have actual rebuttals.

Well, you've gone from "pretty much all agree" to "a very common opinion" which may be closer to accurate, but I would still argue that you're perceiving it to be more common than it is because it's your opinion and you and a few others on the forum have repeated it ad nauseum. Furthermore, I disagree (and have done so in detail in the TLJ thread) that TLJ veers in a different direction from TFA. So much of what happens in TLJ is a completely reasonable narrative extension of what was set up in TFA as well as being consistent with the history of the OT characters - it just wasn't what some viewers had chosen to build up in their own minds after TFA.

I didn't make that argument. In the very post you quoted, I said having more of a plan might have made it better or might have made it much much worse. It most likely would have been different than what we got, so no argument from me there.

The Kevin Feige produced Star Wars movie and Patty Jenkins Rogue Squadron are now officially dead

Twitter

We were already certain the Rogue Squadron film was dead, which is a pity. Especially embarrassing after they made that little video of Patty announcing it.

And I'd forgotten the Feige one was even a thing.

I hope they've been taking this time to create a team to handle the active projects with a unified vision so it's not just a bunch of people doing their own thing.

On a positive note, if Taika Waititi Love & Thunders his Star Wars flick, I might retroactively hold Solo in higher esteem than I currently do.

Is there a single Disney or Lucasfilm executive with an ounce of common sense? How has this regime not been turned over? It’s one thing to shit the bed with the STs… it’s another to have no plan after 4 years.

Fuck it. Just let the teams behind Rogue One and Andor make the rest of the movies. Everything else for the last decade has been a steaming pile of bantha shit.

Waititi is like Nicolas Cage. He’s great when he has people to keep his ass under control.

It's fascinating what a complete hot mess Star Wars is right now. Though considering what we saw in Love & Thunder, it's probably appropriate that Waititi has the only film in active development in a galaxy far, far away.

There's just no vision for anything at Lucasfilm. They're still hiring directors and hoping they can come up with something, then letting them go when things, for whatever reason, don't pan out. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

I'm still surprised Mickey Mouse hasn't cleaned house at Lucasfilm yet.

But I also fear that the sequel trilogy and the general lack of vision have done so much damage to the franchise that it's beyond repair.

I think the only thing they can do would be to fire the leadership at Lucasfilm, put more creatives in control, and throw the sequel trilogy down the memory hole and start from scratch with a new "Episode Seven." But with Carrie Fisher dead and Ford, Hamill, and Williams getting older, that ship has probably already sailed.

Any studio running a big franchise needs to put up a big sign that says YOU ONLY GET ONE CHANCE TO GET IT RIGHT. DON'T FUCK IT UP.

I am at the point where I just let Star Wars die along with other franchises where I only like a few of the movies such as Indiana Jones, Alien and The Terminator. I don't expect to ever get anything good from these franchises again. The only continuations/reboots that I have enjoyed are Twin Peaks The Return and Ash Vs Evil Dead. Even the two new seasons of The X-Files get shittier every time I try to watch them. Just let things die, not that I don't like making fun of them on message boards.

A bit of a tangent, but maybe instead of watching the full seasons 10 & 11 of The X-Files, just watch the good episodes (which aren't the arc ones). I recommend "Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster", "The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat", and "Rm9sbG93ZXJz".