Damage Control PR Spin for Star Wars Begins

[Tony the Tigger]

It’s all sequel trilogy

This is the inherent "problem" for me. I mentioned it back when I first read about Disney using a "generic space" backdrop. What?

I am the typical "OG" Star Wars fan. Born in '71, saw "episode 4" in the movies as a kid, and there was nothing else like it. Loved it, saw the next two, obsessed with collecting every Kenner toy with my paper route money.

The reason Harry Potter is what Harry Potter is, on the other side of town is because they made it so you could walk through the movies. Those places you saw and came to love and wished you could visit - you could visit! Brilliant.

Disney wanted (needed) one of those. I'm not sure if they "got" why, though.

First they committed to Pandora because it was technically the biggest selling movie, so that made sense to somebody. Plus it was the only thing available at the time. But Pandora is no Potter. (It worked out fine in the end, but it's not at that level.)

Then they realized they could get Star Wars, and they did. Now, that could have matched and/or beat Potter. (Heck, Potter is almost a remake of Star Wars - and that's a compliment - with wands instead of lightsabers. I saw the parallels as soon as I saw the Sorcerer's Stone.)

I'm not sure Disney would have done Pandora had they purchased Lucasfilm first.

The first thing I thought of when Disney bought the rights was they would do what Universal did for Potter. I could visit the places I loved in those movies - and by "those movies," I mean 4, 5, and 6 - the only movies LOL. The prequels were "meh," and while the sequels have been enjoyable to me, once the Band-Aid has been invented, new iterations of band-aids can be awesome but never have the same cultural impact as when they first came out where none existed before. No sequels can ever do what the originals did because the circumstances that existed around the originals no longer exist. There would have to be game-changing innovation. Maybe they can go there after they put the Skywalker storyline to bed (as much as I never want to see that happen, and would barely consider anything like that to be "Star Wars." It would be, in fact, "generic space.")

I said on these boards that I was disappointed in their decision to not install the famous lands from The Big Three, and was roundly dismissed and ridiculed. I don't know if a lot of the general public just didn't realize they were going "generic space" and recent movies or what. But my presumption (and I'd bet the presumption of many) was we'd be able to walk through Dagobah and/or see the two suns of Tatooine and some Tusken Raiders/Jawa/Bantha, or Hoth. Heck, they're installing gondolas - take us through Bespin (Cloud City) on the way!

The only reason the prequels and sequels exist is because the originals were game-changing, life-altering stories in new and fleshed-out worlds and mythologies (understatement) many of us loved. All Star Wars love and fandom goes back to The Big Three. How do you not make your land focus on those?

So as big a Star Wars fan as I have been for 40 years, I am not super motivated to go see generic space new character land. The new characters are good, but will always be incidental to me. I am truly enjoying the new films, but they are not as big as 4,5,6 to me.

If I could walk into the tree on Dagobah, underfoot AT-AT's on Hoth or ride a Tauntaun, fly through Bespin - then even though I don't wait in lines like I used to in my 20's, I'd wait in line. I'd pay extra. I'd be excited. I'm less excited than I should be, and I am not either a Disney or a Star Wars naysayer. I love them both. I'm sure it will be "fine." I wanted it to be mind-blowing. Maybe they'll continue to add things based on guest feedback, who knows?

 

[Monorail_Orange]

As someone who, like the OP, doesn't much care for Disney's handling of the Star Wars franchise, I always cringe when ST criticism turns political. As a proud, card carrying Leftist, I have absolutely no problem with female leads or racially plural casting, nor do I think "diversity" is one of the ST's myriad sins. Heck, I was all for JJ Abram's original idea of having the trilogy's Big Bad be a vampy, force-wielding female villain, likely on par with a Maleficent or an Evil Queen. What a difference that would have been from what we got - another wrinkly, deformed geriatric (no offense, Palps).

Since the release of TFA, I've long thought the ST's biggest issue is that we, the audience, are really seeing Episodes 10, 11, 12 of the saga, instead of Episodes 7, 8, and 9. Think about it - the most interesting elements of the ST (i.e. the establishment of the New Republic, the transformation of the Imperial Remnant into the First Order, the concurrent falls of Kylo and Luke, and the breakup of Han and Leia) have all happened off screen. We have to be filled in about these momentous events either through clumsy flash backs or supporting ancillary EU material. There's an awful lot of telling, not showing in the new films to make up for the thirty or so years we missed. From my experience, this has created a lot of canon whiplash and confusion:

"Wait - what's the First Order? Where did they come from? What planets did they just blow up? Where's the rest of the Republic? What's the difference between the Resistance and the Republic?" Etc., etc...

Now, obviously ST defenders will say that these new films should be strictly about the new cast. But there are clever, satisfying ways of bridging the gap between the old and the new that just require more sophisticated, nuanced storytelling - something that becomes increasingly difficult for a screenwriter beset by mandates from Disney execs (i.e. immovable release dates, merchandising requirements, park tie-ins, reboot strategies - you get the point).

Hopefully, Episode 9 will tie all three trilogies together. But JJ's comments about it functioning as much as a stand-alone film as the conclusion to a 9 film saga has me worried. We shall see...

Well, take politics out of it. I happen to be on the other side of the aisle from you, but none the less, I also have absolutely no problem with female leads or racially plural casting. I'm looking for a good story based around interesting characters. Everything else you said, I also agree with, the time jump was too great and much has happened off-screen, and thus we don't know the details.

 

[Tony the Tigger]

Y’all read too much into it. The Last Jedi’s an overall good movie.

Agreed.

I don't know whether folks had unrealistic expectations or what, but adults should be able to handle that Luke Skywalker was not perfect. If they'd been paying attention: he left Yoda "too soon," before he was done training. The fact that he didn't turn out perfect is poetic and plausible. He was flawed and left unfinished and without a trainer. Then he went ahead and tried to be a trainer, and one student blew up in his face.

Where's the problem?

Did I want to see that? No. Is it good storytelling? Yes. It surprised me. Very little surprises me in a Star Wars movie now. The ending surprised me. Did I want to see him dead (assuming he is?) Of course not. But it's not up to me. It's up to the storyteller to tell the story. And that story was credible and more interesting than the good guys win in conventional ways all the time. Bad things happen - and not exclusively to the bad guys.

What I'd love to see in the next movie - take us to the other side! We have seen Obi-Wan and Anakin and Yoda peeking through after physical death for years. Let's go with Luke to that other side, and see what goes on there, and let him earn his redemption there by helping more instrumentally from there in the last episode.

People need to just go with it and see what happens instead of acting insulted that Luke wasn't perfect or crying about minorities in the cast.

 

[phillip9698]

Keep saying that because there’s another explanation. Star Wars fans have every reason to visit and keep Disneyland busy (nothing to do with DCA). There’s millions of fans that will love a theme park representation, but it is increasingly clear, it’s not Galaxy’s Edge. The regular Disneyland visitors could be avoiding the parks because Disney sent the message that they are catering to Star Wars visitors. This message can’t be easily reversed.

Huge Star Wars fan here and i purposely made no plans to visit Disneyland or World specifically because of Galaxy's Edge. We have put off all trips Disney until the tail end of the 50th anniversary of the Magic Kingdom.

 

[Magenta Panther]

The question is, why should anyone give a crap what happens to Rey? Zip personality. Just an avatar for Wokeness. I'm not going to invest my feelings in some token. By contrast, I cared a lot about what happened to Leia. And Luke and Han. I was shocked when C3PO was blown apart, and devastated when Han was frozen in carbonite. NOTHING that has happened in any of the prequels or the junk that followed has excited or engaged me in the least. Nostalgia can only carry a spent franchise so far. I really think that the peak has been reached by Star Wars and that it's all downhill from here. I could be wrong, of course, but we'll see...

 

[Tony the Tigger]

Well, take politics out of it. I happen to be on the other side of the aisle from you, but none the less, I also have absolutely no problem with female leads or racially plural casting. I'm looking for a good story based around interesting characters. Everything else you said, I also agree with, the time jump was too great and much has happened off-screen, and thus we don't know the details.

At the risk of repeating myself from other threads: had they done the sequels FIRST - while Carrie, Mark, and Harrison were younger, that would have been so much better. Then they could always do the prequels with any actors. The three main characters went from their 30's to their 60's in all that time.

 

[Tony the Tigger]

The question is, why should anyone give a crap what happens to Rey? Zip personality. Just an avatar for Wokeness. I'm not going to invest my feelings in some token. By contrast, I cared a lot about what happened to Leia. And Luke and Han. I was shocked when C3PO was blown apart, and devastated when Han was frozen in carbonite. NOTHING that has happened in any of the prequels or the junk that followed has excited or engaged me in the least. Nostalgia can only carry a spent franchise so far. I really think that the peak has been reached by Star Wars and that it's all downhill from here. I could be wrong, of course, but we'll see...

Ignoring the wokeness comment, I do agree there has been a lack of character development of the new characters that would make us care about them more.

 

[DanielBB8]

Politics affected Star Wars and it ruined the franchise. Previously, Diversity was with the alien species, not with the Empire/Jedi casting. They used a sledgehammer without story justification to allow racial diversity. The female lead issue is Identity politics. These are Leftist concepts. If we didn’t have politics messing with Star Wars, they will be more deliberate with casting and story choices. It is just more contradictory and less enjoyable.

 

[Magenta Panther]

Agreed.

I don't know whether folks had unrealistic expectations or what, but adults should be able to handle that Luke Skywalker was not perfect. If they'd been paying attention: he left Yoda "too soon," before he was done training. The fact that he didn't turn out perfect is poetic and plausible. He was flawed and left unfinished and without a trainer. Then he went ahead and tried to be a trainer, and one student blew up in his face.

Where's the problem?

Did I want to see that? No. Is it good storytelling? Yes. It surprised me. Very little surprises me in a Star Wars movie now. The ending surprised me. Did I want to see him dead (assuming he is?) Of course not. But it's not up to me. It's up to the storyteller to tell the story. And that story was credible and more interesting than the good guys win in conventional ways all the time. Bad things happen - and not exclusively to the bad guys.

What I'd love to see in the next movie - take us to the other side! We have seen Obi-Wan and Anakin and Yoda peeking through after physical death for years. Let's go with Luke to that other side, and see what goes on there, and let him earn his redemption there by helping more instrumentally from there in the last episode.

People need to just go with it and see what happens instead of acting insulted that Luke wasn't perfect or crying about minorities in the cast.

How about the fact that the new Star Wars films killed the happy ending in Return of the Jedi? That undid the closure the fans waited for in favor of PC and tokenism and Woke? That reduced the characters to sad tattered losers? Screw those films. They're an abomination. You all can be content with lesser characters and forced diversity and inclusion for their own sake instead of doing so in a way that enhances a story and upholds a legacy. I'm not going to lower my standards in order to keep a dated franchise going for the sake of going. Star Wars is dead. Greed and PC killed it. What a sad way for it to end...

 

[TROR]

The question is, why should anyone give a crap what happens to Rey?

Because she’s hot.

 

[TROR]

Completely agree with you and I have been saying the same thing for months on here but being told that locations from the movies are "not creative". Can you imagine if a themepark made a Wizard of Oz Land but it didn't have the Yellow Brick Road or Emerald City? This land instead used a area inspired by the mythology and themes of Oz? Is it creative? Sure? Is it what people want? Not really. People like the movies for Star Wars not the idea of it.

This is coming from someone who loves Star Wars Land by the way. I know it could have been so much more.

The one positive to come from this is that if Disney built a land from the movies they probably would've made it a land from the sequel trilogy. At least with this set up they can revert the land to something from the Original Trilogy timeline since it is vague.

Except a. The Yellow Brick Road, Emerald City, and Munchkinland are all pleasant, b. Those three locations are in one single county, and c. They’re the only places we really see in The Wizard of Oz.

 

[Tony the Tigger]

Huge Star Wars fan here and i purposely made no plans to visit Disneyland or World specifically because of Galaxy's Edge. We have put off all trips Disney until the tail end of the 50th anniversary of the Magic Kingdom.

We planned our usual first week of September trip, assuming we'd miss it, and go back in a couple of years after the hoopla is more manageable.

After the announcement of it opening early, we changed our trip to August 26-28th. Now those are preview days, but not for our level of AP.

Probably going back in the first week of September for Food & Wine, and hoping it's not overrun to the point that's less enjoyable. (Our passes expire that week, and we're not going getting an AP for awhile after that.

Politics affected Star Wars and it ruined the franchise. Previously, Diversity was with the alien species, not with the Empire/Jedi casting. They used a sledgehammer without story justification to allow racial diversity. The female lead issue is Identity politics. These are Leftist concepts. If we didn’t have politics messing with Star Wars, they will be more deliberate with casting and story choices. It is just more contradictory and less enjoyable.

That undid the closure the fans waited for in favor of PC and tokenism and Woke?

See, these kinds of comments just bug me. But having spent plenty of time on the politics board, there's really no point discussing it, nobody will change their minds or learn anything. That said, if anyone wants to have it out, take it to the politics board.

 

[Villains0501]

At the risk of repeating myself from other threads: had they done the sequels FIRST - while Carrie, Mark, and Harrison were younger, that would have been so much better. Then they could always do the prequels with any actors. The three main characters went from their 30's to their 60's in all that time.

Yes, that's my big regret with the whole thing. Sequels first with the original cast in their prime, then the prequels. Although who's to say any Lucas-directed sequels wouldn't have been as much a misfire as the existing prequels? I guess we'll never know.

In hindsight, though, a better structured, more coherent episodes 7, 8, and 9 could have transitioned organically into a satisfying, concluding 10, 11, 12, with the latter trilogy being more independent and less visually and structurally reliant on the OT. And voila! Disney has a 10 year slate of connected Skywalker trilogy films in the pipeline!

 

[Villains0501]

Well, take politics out of it. I happen to be on the other side of the aisle from you, but none the less, I also have absolutely no problem with female leads or racially plural casting. I'm looking for a good story based around interesting characters. Everything else you said, I also agree with, the time jump was too great and much has happened off-screen, and thus we don't know the details.

Hey bipartisanship does still exist! Totally agree, the main issues with the ST are narrative in nature. The films are gorgeously photographed, the special effects are top drawer, and the cast is uniformly excellent. The problems are mainly an under cooked plot and a lack of serious character development. But the actors are doing their best with what little they've been given.

 

[WDW Pro]

Except that's misrepresenting what she said, or reading your own bias into it.

"Q: Writer/director Rian Johnson received a ton of backlash online after "The Last Jedi," with many fans petitioning to remake the film and redeem Luke Skywalker's character. Were you surprised at all by the controversy?

Ridley: I wasn't surprised, no. It’s just a different thing. Everyone’s going to have an opinion now anyway on the internet, but I also think it’s fair. If people hold something incredibly dear and think they know how it should be and it's not like that, it’s fair for people to think they were done wrong. It doesn’t mean they were – ultimately, Rian’s a filmmaker and one person can’t dictate how a film is supposed to be – but freedom of expression, sure."

She wasn't surpised = expected it.
It's fair = understandable.

These are not hard leaps in logic.

 

[Monorail_Orange]

She wasn't surpised = expected it.
It's fair = understandable.

These are not hard leaps in logic.

Well, you're not wrong.

 

[WDW Pro]

Reading this post made me feel like I was watching Fox News... I can’t even begin to make this coherent, but I would love to see the facts that prove this. Especially all this information about Colin as I’m pretty sure he was let go for just being a bad director. I shall wait though for this vast information you have to appear and not just a fanboy who has been writing their own manifesto.

Since you seem to struggle with that new thing called Bing and Google, I'll help you out with what publicly leaked from what I know:

Here's an article from when it leaked that Trevorrow was fired for wanting Luke alive in Episode 9:
https://www.inverse.com/article/42797-star-wars-episode-ix-rumor-luke-lives

And now what I'm going to let you do, since you are so worried I'm writing a "fanboy manifesto" instead of having worked with Lucasfilm at times in the past, is I'm going to let you use that Bing / Google contraption that I told you about to find the interview where Mark Hamill confirms that he and Trevorrow worked on Luke's character in Episode 9 together, and that Luke would have both been alive and VERY powerful. Mark was not happy when Trevorrow was fired, he was not happy at all with Rian Johnson (the two sort of hate each other), and Mark still holds a pretty big grudge that the original gang didn't get to be together in the first film. He's not a happy camper.

Now... all that said, I'm going to give you a little bit of insider information below... it is in the spoiler-ish category, so if you don't want to read it, you need to skip this now:

Episode 9 SPOILER ALERT (highlight to see):
The call came down from Alan Horn as a non-negotiable late last year that Luke Skywalker is to return in Episode 9 in a non-ghost form. The call also came down that Luke Skywalker was to be in a battle in the finished product in which he wins, and that he must appear triumphant and heroic by the end of the film. This was very contrary to Kennedy and Abram's script, as well as Lucasfilm Story Group's ethos. However, it was given as a concrete directive. This resulted in rewrites and reshoots beginning in January of this year to bring Mark and the gang back in to get Luke Skywalker much more prominently featured in the film.

Spoilers End

As for Galaxy's Edge, there's more spin today, but I've typed enough for the morning, so I'll grab those articles later for another update.

 

[Rich T]

I stick mostly to Star Trek.

Star Trek knows (most of the time) how to do alien races right. The Klingons Next-Gen era are wonderful because they're scary and threatening but also honorable and interesting... and a bit comical in their extremist views and lifestyle... yet we get to know many of them as individuals with their own doubts and convictions. Come to think of it, the Klingons needs their own show.

 

[Rich T]

This is the inherent "problem" for me. I mentioned it back when I first read about Disney using a "generic space" backdrop. What?

I am the typical "OG" Star Wars fan. Born in '71, saw "episode 4" in the movies as a kid, and there was nothing else like it. Loved it, saw the next two, obsessed with collecting every Kenner toy with my paper route money.

The reason Harry Potter is what Harry Potter is, on the other side of town is because they made it so you could walk through the movies. Those places you saw and came to love and wished you could visit - you could visit! Brilliant.

Disney wanted (needed) one of those. I'm not sure if they "got" why, though.

First they committed to Pandora because it was technically the biggest selling movie, so that made sense to somebody. Plus it was the only thing available at the time. But Pandora is no Potter. (It worked out fine in the end, but it's not at that level.)

Then they realized they could get Star Wars, and they did. Now, that could have matched and/or beat Potter. (Heck, Potter is almost a remake of Star Wars - and that's a compliment - with wands instead of lightsabers. I saw the parallels as soon as I saw the Sorcerer's Stone.)

I'm not sure Disney would have done Pandora had they purchased Lucasfilm first.

The first thing I thought of when Disney bought the rights was they would do what Universal did for Potter. I could visit the places I loved in those movies - and by "those movies," I mean 4, 5, and 6 - the only movies LOL. The prequels were "meh," and while the sequels have been enjoyable to me, once the Band-Aid has been invented, new iterations of band-aids can be awesome but never have the same cultural impact as when they first came out where none existed before. No sequels can ever do what the originals did because the circumstances that existed around the originals no longer exist. There would have to be game-changing innovation. Maybe they can go there after they put the Skywalker storyline to bed (as much as I never want to see that happen, and would barely consider anything like that to be "Star Wars." It would be, in fact, "generic space.")

I said on these boards that I was disappointed in their decision to not install the famous lands from The Big Three, and was roundly dismissed and ridiculed. I don't know if a lot of the general public just didn't realize they were going "generic space" and recent movies or what. But my presumption (and I'd bet the presumption of many) was we'd be able to walk through Dagobah and/or see the two suns of Tatooine and some Tusken Raiders/Jawa/Bantha, or Hoth. Heck, they're installing gondolas - take us through Bespin (Cloud City) on the way!

The only reason the prequels and sequels exist is because the originals were game-changing, life-altering stories in new and fleshed-out worlds and mythologies (understatement) many of us loved. All Star Wars love and fandom goes back to The Big Three. How do you not make your land focus on those?

So as big a Star Wars fan as I have been for 40 years, I am not super motivated to go see generic space new character land. The new characters are good, but will always be incidental to me. I am truly enjoying the new films, but they are not as big as 4,5,6 to me.

If I could walk into the tree on Dagobah, underfoot AT-AT's on Hoth or ride a Tauntaun, fly through Bespin - then even though I don't wait in lines like I used to in my 20's, I'd wait in line. I'd pay extra. I'd be excited. I'm less excited than I should be, and I am not either a Disney or a Star Wars naysayer. I love them both. I'm sure it will be "fine." I wanted it to be mind-blowing. Maybe they'll continue to add things based on guest feedback, who knows?

Agree with just about everything here. I saw SW in 77 as a college freshman and that was one of the greatest summers of my life. So much fun!

Disney got their Potter land when they opened Cars Land. It's perfect. Even someone who has no interest or knowledge of the Cars films can walk into Radiator Springs and instantly feel the energy, fun and friendliness. It's like the entire land is reaching out to give guests a big hug.

 

[freebird72]

Hang on here folks..... This MAY blow your mind.....



They are MOVIES. Not documentaries.

Go, watch, turn off your brain for two hours and have fun. They were good movies. It is silly to see all the hate these things get but the same people that hate them seem to LOVE the prequels that were vomited on us with Jar Jar and a HORRIBLY bad acted (with an American accent) Anikan. Did I hate the prequels? Yes. Did I go watch them and have fun? Yes. Give it a try. You're not going to get Gone with the Wind or Casablanca here folks.

I agree, it was fun to watch the prequels (although they were BAD). To groan at the horribly stiff "romantic" parts. To roll your eyes at Jar Jar Binks, etc. Fun to hate watch. But then fast forward many years and I'm watching the Phantom Menace with my daughter (who was 7 at the time) and she is laughing at everything Jar Jar says/does, and I realize George didn't make that movie for the original trilogy fans. He made it for kids.