A Spirited Perfect Ten

[PhotoDave219]

I wish they would have put SWL in DCA too but where is the room? The Marvel expansion pad area doesn't seem very big. My vote was always for the Simba lot which could have been connected to DCA by bridge or tunnel.

Third gate makes more sense.....

 

[Mike S]

I think that interpretation of him will soften, as you predict, with Episode 8 and 9, and it becomes more apparent exactly what they did with him here. And what they did is take the Darth Vader concept, fixed it up, and presented it the way it should have been - the way they handled Kylo Ren was the biggest middle-finger to the prequels they did in the entire film, and we should be cheering about it. Particularly those that can't get past the "A New Hope 2.0" stuff - if you recall, Vader was rather upper management in that film, not some supreme villain.

Spoiler

Basically, Kylo Ren in this film is equivalent to Anakin in Episode III. He had not fully fallen to the dark side yet, and his killing of Han was the equivalent to Anakin murdering the younglings - his final step to the dark side. However, in this case, they didn't force us to sit through 2 films worth of "What a sweet young boy Ben was!" or "Wow, Ben is turning into a bratty teenager out of control, let's send him off..." It was far more logical and satisfying, and now we have a real reason for him to be a bad-**** in the next two films.

And that's coming from someone who isn't particularly a fan of the whole Sith business to begin with, nor Kylo Ren - but what they did with him was just brilliant once you realize what they did there...

Spoiler

and when Kylo Ren killed kids it was nothing to him. Terrible, but shows how even more bad-*** he is than young Anakin.

 

[Tigger1988]

I also think what set him off to begin with was Disney looked at his treatments for episodes VII-IX and then dumped them and went their own way.

And thank god they did.

Who knows what kind of mess Lucas had planned.

 

[LieutLaww]

probably another trilogy of trade war negotiations Disney had the treatments as part of the deal, they had the option to use them or as is the case to discard them and continue the story in their own way, which looking at the $ Billion dollars that TFA has made was the right decision. I hope that Disney do release (or they get leaked) the treatments just so we get to see what may have been rightly or wrongly.

 

[Hakunamatata]

And thank god they did.

Who knows what kind of mess Lucas had planned.

More Jar Jar Jinx crud I'm fairly certain.

 

[LieutLaww]

You know Snoke is Jar Jar right

 

[Hakunamatata]

You know Snoke is Jar Jar right

 

[LieutLaww]

 

[FrankLapidus]

George Lucas has backpedaled on some of the statements he made in the Charlie Rose interview and apologised for the "white slaver" analogy:

“I have been working with Disney for 40 years and chose them as the custodians of Star Wars because of my great respect for the company and Bob Iger’s leadership,” Lucas said in his statement, issued Thursday afternoon by Disney. “Disney is doing an incredible job of taking care of and expanding the franchise. I rarely go out with statements to clarify my feelings but I feel it is important to make it clear that I am thrilled that Disney has the franchise and is moving it in such exciting directions in film, television and the parks.”

Lucas concluded by adding: “Most of all I’m blown away with the record breaking blockbuster success of the new movie and am very proud of JJ and Kathy.”

http://variety.com/2015/film/news/g...wars-successors-are-white-slavers-1201670406/

 

[Disney Analyst]

George Lucas has backpedaled on some of the statements he made in the Charlie Rose interview and apologised for the "white slaver" analogy:

“I have been working with Disney for 40 years and chose them as the custodians of Star Wars because of my great respect for the company and Bob Iger’s leadership,” Lucas said in his statement, issued Thursday afternoon by Disney. “Disney is doing an incredible job of taking care of and expanding the franchise. I rarely go out with statements to clarify my feelings but I feel it is important to make it clear that I am thrilled that Disney has the franchise and is moving it in such exciting directions in film, television and the parks.”

Lucas concluded by adding: “Most of all I’m blown away with the record breaking blockbuster success of the new movie and am very proud of JJ and Kathy.”

http://variety.com/2015/film/news/g...wars-successors-are-white-slavers-1201670406/

Someone got a stern talking to by Disney

 

[FigmentJedi]

I also think what set him off to begin with was Disney looked at his treatments for episodes VII-IX and then dumped them and went their own way.

probably another trilogy of trade war negotiations Disney had the treatments as part of the deal, they had the option to use them or as is the case to discard them and continue the story in their own way, which looking at the $ Billion dollars that TFA has made was the right decision. I hope that Disney do release (or they get leaked) the treatments just so we get to see what may have been rightly or wrongly.

Actually they kept more then you'd think. They've said the whole "state of the galaxy post-Jedi" was taken from George's notes and the idea of Rey and a Stormtrooper switching sides were present in Michael Arndt's original drafts based on George's outlines (and Luke was more involved). The whole "shoehorning another Death Star into the plot" was Disney's though. Whenever George spoke vaguely of his version, he kept talking about family drama.

And really, George's big picture ideas have always been just fine. He's just terrible with writing dialog. Just filtering his concepts through people better at executing them usually has good results. Just look at how much The Clone Wars show improved upon the Prequels.

 

[NearTheEars]

George Lucas has backpedaled on some of the statements he made in the Charlie Rose interview and apologised for the "white slaver" analogy:

“I have been working with Disney for 40 years and chose them as the custodians of Star Wars because of my great respect for the company and Bob Iger’s leadership,” Lucas said in his statement, issued Thursday afternoon by Disney. “Disney is doing an incredible job of taking care of and expanding the franchise. I rarely go out with statements to clarify my feelings but I feel it is important to make it clear that I am thrilled that Disney has the franchise and is moving it in such exciting directions in film, television and the parks.”

Lucas concluded by adding: “Most of all I’m blown away with the record breaking blockbuster success of the new movie and am very proud of JJ and Kathy.”

http://variety.com/2015/film/news/g...wars-successors-are-white-slavers-1201670406/

Yeah, Bob probably had a little talk with him.

 

[doctornick]

To address the Star Wars/Disneyland issues, seems like the easiest thing to do is to put it in DCA.

My guess is the people making the decisions are not grand visionaries.

To be a little fair, I don't think they have the amount of space anywhere to do 14 acres at DCA, do they? If they were committed to doing something of that scale and wanted to put it in DCA, it probably would have had to involve closing and redoing a significant part of the park. Would it have fit in, say, the Hollywoodland area if they tore down Monsters Inc, the Frozen sing along, the dance party area and Aladdin theater? The parking lot where they are planning the Marvel stuff doesn't seem all that large.

A third gate would have been ideal.

I think all the closings at Disneyland totally suck. There has to be a way to keep a large amount of that area and have Star Wars at the same time.

By "closures" do you mean the temporary or permanent stuff? The only permanent closures AFAIK are the Big Thunder Ranch/petting zoo and maybe the canoes and Hungry Bear restaurant. Everything else that is being closed (the island, riverboats, Fantasmic, railroad) is supposed to come back in 1-1.5 years albeit with a shorter river trip and new train path.

 

[The Empress Lilly]

I'd really, really like to take Tony Baxter to Hearthstone and ask his opinion on this, about five drinks into the evening. It would be the Ultimate TB Diatribe that fanboys would pay hundreds of Disney Dollars to witness at D23.

Tony Baxter? TB planned to convert the area into his steampunk sci-fi Discovery Bay. You know, "where would the gold from Big Thunder be spend?.....ooh I know!.....in 'DLP's 'Tomorrowland' adjacent to Frontierland!'"

SWL is still a step up from anything Baxter would've build, if he had gotten his way. 20k submarines and 'DLP's Videopolis' next to BTMRR? No thanks. A carefully hidden SWL is much more modest.

 

[doctornick]

I see Lucas is now getting all snarky since TFA has come out and made a billion dollars.

The irony is that Lucas is one of the largest shareholders of Disney stock -- he should be happy with the success.

 

[choco choco]

I cannot take credit for this statement, pulled it from some random comment on an article that I was reading, but this just about sums up how I feel about Lucas and his "Star Wars films are my Children" unapologetic apology tour:

"If George Lucas is the parent and Star Wars is his kid, then J.J. Abrams and Disney are Child Protective Services."

No actually the more apt comparison is: If George Lucas is the parent and Star Wars is his kid, then Disney is the gold digging matriarch who ensures her well-being by pulling the strings so that her dim-witted son JJ Abrams marries into money.

 

[AEfx]

No actually the more apt comparison is:

Given how Disney provided ample compensation (actually, at the time, it was thought they overpaid) to the tune of over $4B to Lucas, calling them a gold digging cougar is laughable, at best. If you want to go down the tract of Lucas selling his soul for money, you'd be more apt.

 

[ChrisFL]

side note: I found it ironic, slightly, that George Lucas spent years "fixing" Ep 4-6 which people loved and had few complaints about, yet never seemed to want to fix Ep 1-3 which were widely panned.

It seems clear to me that he thinks he knows better than everyone else to this day.

 

[choco choco]

Given how Disney provided ample compensation (actually, at the time, it was thought they overpaid) to the tune of over $4B to Lucas, calling them a gold digging cougar is laughable, at best. If you want to go down the tract of Lucas selling his soul for money, you'd be more apt.

The currency we're talking about here is creative capital. Without it, Disney would be in the poorhouse, and they have unwisely spent nearly all of their trust fund without replenishing it under Bob Iger.

 

[FigmentJedi]

side note: I found it ironic, slightly, that George Lucas spent years "fixing" Ep 4-6 which people loved and had few complaints about, yet never seemed to want to fix Ep 1-3 which were widely panned.

It seems clear to me that he thinks he knows better than everyone else to this day.

For the most part his OT tweaks were focused on the aesthetics and that fits with George's longtime obsession with visual storytelling that he's been very vocal about ever since the prequels. Even the few fixes he did with the prequels were just visual ones, like replacing the ugly Yoda puppet in Phantom Menace with the CG model from the other two prequels for the Blu-Ray.
At least it seems like the Blu-Ray cuts are the end of these tweaks with Disney and Lucasfilm having its eyes focused on the future.