Not a Bot said:

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Gomer95 said:

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When the sequels were being planned and announced I was like thank goodness there is NO George Lucas involved! But the main problem of them is well, there was no George Lucas involved. They missed his imaginative touch. So we got what we got which I originally liked them in the theater but now I'm like meh they're just ok and yes was lazy writing but if we'd have had George it would have felt like the prequels and I read that he'd have expanded on midichlorians no joke so they still would have been probably been a mess. We'd have gotten a better last look at Luke, Han and Leia though and not had them be what they were, especially Luke.

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You give Kathleen Kennedy and the Disney execs way too much credit. They didn't plan a damn thing about the sequels.

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This. There was literally no plan. Thus, the problem.

The woke checkboxes and a plan are not the same thing. They checked damn near all their boxes and totally botched the trilogy in the process. Their checkbox list should have been two items long: Satisfy our lifelong core fans and bring on board some new, young fans. Build a badass trilogy story around those two directives and hand the whole project to one great director and set of writers to handle as a package from start to finish and you've got a sequel trilogy that people wouldn't be actively trying to forget.

TheNotoriousP.I.P. said:

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Laura Derns plot line was also quite weak, and to be completely honest they shouldn't have introduced her as a new character and instead had Admiral Ackbar commanding as a nod to the OG fans.

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I agree, I disliked her character. Using Akbar would have been better but to quote Cartman "Put a chick in it and make her gay."

I feel like "Put a chick in it and maker her gay" is the approach A&M takes for hiring football coaches.

Correct. They had no planned story arc. South Park was closer to reality than people think. Disney demanded a strong female lead, diverse representation, and toy sales. No one at the exec level, especially Kennedy, cared about the story or had any plan other than those few things. They told Abrams to wing it with E7 and Johnson to wing it in E8 (so long as diverse women remained the heroes).

For the record...

The initial, Michael-Arndt-penned draft of Episode VII featured two co-leads, a male and a female, each in their mid-to-late teens. Abrams and Kasdan then carried roughly the same dynamic over to their drafts, and even in the production/shooting phase, didn't know which character - Rey or Finn - would emerge as the true lead, if either. To the point where John Boyega has stated that when he was cast in the movie he was under the impression that he was playing the lead. The final, muddied product is a result of Abrams' indecision, with Rey ultimately coming out on top, but just barely. It's basically a 55%-45% breakdown, but Boyega's character is the first of the two we meet (in back-to-back scenes), and his character very purposely appeared in the first shot of the very first teaser trailer, 13 months before the movie itself released in theaters.

In other words, in no way did Disney "demand" a strong female lead, as evidence of the above, along with basic common sense + other factors.

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No one at the exec level, especially Kennedy, cared about the story or had any plan other than those few things. They told Abrams to wing it with E7 and Johnson to wing it in E8 (so long as diverse women remained the heroes).

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Yes, as has been reported/discussed ad nauseam over the years, the creatives did, in fact, "wing it." To an extent. That's the kernel of truth you got right. But it wasn't because "no one cared." Rather, it was because, when the project was announced in the second half 2012, Disney CEO Bob Iger promised shareholders that the movie would arrive in 2015. However, when Abrams was hired to direct in early 2013, and the Arndt script was deemed not up to snuff, Abrams decided to rewrite it himself, enlisting the help of Lawrence Kasdan, the writer of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Abrams, Kasdan and Kennedy then asked Iger to delay the movie to 2016, to give themselves the proper time to fully flesh out the story (and potentially even the trilogy), but the best Iger could do was bump it from May 2015 to December 2015, citing the aforementioned promise to shareholders.

And THAT was the fatal mistake of the sequel trilogy.

Not a "strong female lead," not "diversity," or wokeness, or any kind of liberal Hollywood agenda.

Rather, it was a slavish, stubborn devotion to shareholders and stock prices that ultimately did the franchise in. It was Iger's insistence on a 2015 release - and a new saga movie every other year (as opposed to every three years), with spinoffs in between - that forced the creatives to work under impossible conditions, thereby drastically affecting the quality of the movies they were tasked with making.

With an extra year to get TFA right, would Abrams have been the right man for the job? Possibly not.

With an extra year to get TFA right, and less pressure to deliver a new movie every year after, would Kennedy have been a better steward of the franchise? Who knows?

The only thing we know for sure is that this whole endeavor was doomed from the jump, but not because the execs, Abrams, et al didn't "care." It was because of one CEO's insistence that the movie meet a certain release date, based on a single press release from 2012.

The very thought that one of the most prolific producers of all time - the producer of E.T., Gremlins, the Back to the Future trilogy, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, The Sixth Sense, A.I., Munich, and Lincoln, just to name a few - along with one of the most famous screenwriters of all time - the writer of The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and The Big Chill - and one of the most famous TV writer/directors of all time - the creator of Felicity, Alias, and Lost, not to mention the director of a damn good Mission: Impossible movie and a great Star Trek movie - didn't "care" is one of the most asinine things I can think of. Same goes for the idea that any of these people were so driven by wokeness that they couldn't see the forest for the trees.

It's all just so incredibly stupid, and nothing more than the stuff of mindless YouTube grifters and the like, which you guys fall for hook, line, and sinker.

Yeah, there's a very fair criticism of a lack of a defined overall arc which is why we get the disconnect between TFA and TLJ. But the woke agenda folks are at it again I see

TFA was for me the exact movie we needed at the time with the right amount of retro fan service mixed in with introducing a bunch of new characters. Though it has its flaws and has a new Force user picking things up a little too quickly (welcome to Star Wars) it was a solid start.

But the unfortunate lack of communication/overall plan made TLJ awkward at best, while it had some great ideas they didn't quite all work together and left Abrams to try to wrap all of that up in TROS in a way that just didn't work.

What is it like to completely ignore objective facts in order to continually push such a false, deranged narrative, while also clearly having no clue how the business or the development process works?

Honestly, I think I can live with TLJ with a few changes / edits. I don't think it was that far off from being good. I know many disagree - unfortunately, some of the screw ups in it were massive.

TROS is a flaming pile of crap that couldn't possibly be saved by a couple of reshoots and throwing some things on the editing room floor. Complete disaster of a movie.

My favorite was the cavalry charge in a space battle. nm, that was RoS. I get all those terrible movies confused.

Finn dying in TLJ would have been a better character arc. Movie still would have stunk in the scheme of the whole sequel trilogy, but that would've been better.

Instead we had that whole stupid thing that Rose did? And then the terrible dialog after? BLEGH

The side mission for Finn should have been to a stormtrooper camp or some such. It was a huge miss on an obvious story arc.

TCTTS said:

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For the record...

The initial, Michael-Arndt-penned draft of Episode VII featured two co-leads, a male and a female, each in their mid-to-late teens. Abrams and Kasdan then carried roughly the same dynamic over to their drafts, and even in the production/shooting phase, didn't know which character - Rey or Finn - would emerge as the true lead, if either. To the point where John Boyega has stated that when he was cast in the movie he was under the impression that he was playing the lead. The final, muddied product is a result of Abrams' indecision, with Rey ultimately coming out on top, but just barely. It's basically a 55%-45% breakdown, but Boyega's character is the first of the two we meet (in back-to-back scenes), and his character very purposely appeared in the first shot of the very first teaser trailer, 13 months before the movie itself released in theaters.

In other words, in no way did Disney "demand" a strong female lead, as evidence of the above, along with basic common sense + other factors.

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No one at the exec level, especially Kennedy, cared about the story or had any plan other than those few things. They told Abrams to wing it with E7 and Johnson to wing it in E8 (so long as diverse women remained the heroes).

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Yes, as has been reported/discussed ad nauseam over the years, the creatives did, in fact, "wing it." To an extent. That's the kernel of truth you got right. But it wasn't because "no one cared." Rather, it was because, when the project was announced in the second half 2012, Disney CEO Bob Iger promised shareholders that the movie would arrive in 2015. However, when Abrams was hired to direct in early 2013, and the Arndt script was deemed not up to snuff, Abrams decided to rewrite it himself, enlisting the help of Lawrence Kasdan, the writer of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Abrams, Kasdan and Kennedy then asked Iger to delay the movie to 2016, to give themselves the proper time to fully flesh out the story (and potentially even the trilogy), but the best Iger could do was bump it from May 2015 to December 2015, citing the aforementioned promise to shareholders.

And THAT was the fatal mistake of the sequel trilogy.

Not a "strong female lead," not "diversity," or wokeness, or any kind of liberal Hollywood agenda.

Rather, it was a slavish, stubborn devotion to shareholders and stock prices that ultimately did the franchise in. It was Iger's insistence on a 2015 release - and a new saga movie every other year (as opposed to every three years), with spinoffs in between - that forced the creatives to work under impossible conditions, thereby drastically affecting the quality of the movies they were tasked with making.

With an extra year to get TFA right, would Abrams have been the right man for the job? Possibly not.

With an extra year to get TFA right, and less pressure to deliver a new movie every year after, would Kennedy have been a better steward of the franchise? Who knows?

The only thing we know for sure is that this whole endeavor was doomed from the jump, but not because the execs, Abrams, et al didn't "care." It was because of one CEO's insistence that the movie meet a certain release date, based on a single press release from 2012.

The very thought that one of the most prolific producers of all time - the producer of E.T., Gremlins, the Back to the Future trilogy, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, The Sixth Sense, A.I., Munich, and Lincoln, just to name a few - along with one of the most famous screenwriters of all time - the writer of The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and The Big Chill - and one of the most famous TV writer/directors of all time - the creator of Felicity, Alias, and Lost, not to mention the director of a damn good Mission: Impossible movie and a great Star Trek movie - didn't "care" is one of the most asinine things I can think of. Same goes for the idea that any of these people were so driven by wokeness that they couldn't see the forest for the trees.

It's all just so incredibly stupid, and nothing more than the stuff of mindless YouTube grifters and the like, which you guys fall for hook, line, and sinker.

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I partially agree with you. Disney got very corporatey with their products and tried to push out too many too soon. See Marvel. They got high off their own early successes.

That being said, if there was a time crunch, I don't know why they didn't just look to adapt one of dozens of Star Wars "Legends" that came out in the 20 years after ROTJ. Or the Old Republic that had video games related to it. They are literally doing that now. If they were pushed for time, that would have made sense and fans would have been thrilled. Instead, they created something "original" that was a dollar store knockoff that tore down the OG trilogy as a parting gift.

Just a weird creative process.

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even in the production/shooting phase, didn't know which character - Rey or Finn - would emerge as the true lead, if either.

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I think you and I both agree that's a bit of a problem when you are trying to quickly develop a three-film series so there's no need to argue on that. The lack of overarching plan was the big problem here, you and I disagree as to who is at fault.

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In other words, in no way did Disney "demand" a strong female lead, as evidence of the above, along with basic common sense + other factors.

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You are right there. It was LucasFilm, not Disney. One of the first things Kennedy did when taking over was appointing Kiri Hart the head of the Star Wars story group. The first thing Hart did was form a committee of exclusively women to develop the new stories. They eventually allowed men into the club, but woke female characters and female storylines were pushed on writers. Abrams and Kasdan seem to have been able to work through it, but Johnson worked extensively with the group for three months for TLJ and we got a hero being a barely-introduced lady in a purple prom dress, Rose, and a main plot point of a bunch of women running out of gas and looking for the nearest service station. It's contrastingly weird because the Rey/Ren elements were fantastic IMO. Cut out the crap forced on it and I think it could have been a great film.

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forced the creatives to work under impossible conditions

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See above. There have been a few exceptions, though. I thought Rogue One was great. Why? It told a good story and the characters worked to advance it, not distract from it.

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With an extra year to get TFA right, would Abrams have been the right man for the job? Possibly not.

With an extra year to get TFA right, and less pressure to deliver a new movie every year after, would Kennedy have been a better steward of the franchise? Who knows?

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I don't think they were ever going to get it right with the creative structure they put in place. Too many cooks in the kitchen and apparently no leader who was willing to put their foot down and say this is the overarching story, these are the key elements, let's work from there.

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Same goes for the idea that any of these people were so driven by wokeness that they couldn't see the forest for the trees.

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TFA wasn't all that "woke" IMO. TLJ...yikes.

I think you think we are arguing that diversity or more "strong female" parts killed it, which I'm not, can't speak for everyone, but my point was that they put a lot more focus on stuff that should be a peripheral concern rather than getting basics right. They failed on an extremely fundamental level, which is why the sequels are so deeply unpopular. They had the wrong people producing this movie and with the wrong motives.

A handful of people almost hired Mark Stoops before a lot of smarter people rebelled and killed the deal before it could be completed, resulting in a much better hire. If the majority of Star Wars fans could have seen where this trilogy was headed and there could have been a massive insurrection, maybe the project could have landed in more capable, trustworthy hands. There could have been room for diversity, more inspiring female characters to motivate a young female audience all wrapped up around a cohesive, satisfying plot that fires up the majority of older die-hards.

If I was a Disney exec and all I really cared about was a Star Wars trilogy being created that would absolutely kick ass, make a ****load of money, and be perfect for launching more standalones and other SW projects, I'd have
a) picked a writer or pair of writers and said OK guys y'all are writing the entire trilogy from start to finish. You're creating the characters and completing their arcs. I'd also force this person or these people to sit with several groups of lifelong, diehard fans and hear from them what they want from the trilogy and where they envision it going, to give them a sense of what their main audience actually wants.

And b) hire the best director for the project and tell him/her that she's directing all three of them.

Top Gun Maverick this trilogy, give the people what they want, it's not really that hard. They botched the hell out of it.

This. No one cares about diversity or representation if you make a ****ty movie, or in this case, trilogy. On the other hand, no one cares about diversity or representation if you make a great movie. It should always be really far down the list of things to care about in a movie.

Look at the sequel trilogy vs Rogue One and Andor. People HATE the sequels and criticize the focus on casting to no end. They also get called misogynists and racists without fail because God forbid you criticize wokeness. Yet, those same people give 0 ****s about the casting of Rogue One and Andor. Why? Because they're so ****ing good. No one cares Rogue One has an actually strong female lead or that Diego Luna is Hispanic. Dedra Meero is just an incredibly written and played character, by a woman. Luthen is the only white guy protagonist in either, aside from maybe Galen Erso, and he's pretty ambiguous, sacrificing 40-50 guys for the cause. Hell, Vel and Cinta are lesbians in Andor, and yet NO ONE CARES. ETA Hell, I forgot all about Mon Mothma and Maarva. Andor has so many great female characters you lose count. There are no complaints about the makeup of the casts, and the casts and characters are as diverse as it gets. Where is the misogynist, racist, toxic fandom?

Maybe... Just maybe... The criticism of the wokeness of the sequel trilogy isn't founded in misogyny and racism, but in an actual, legitimate criticism of a focus on the wrong things. Maybe, if the sequel trilogy didn't suck balls, no one would care about what the cast looked like.

I'll let ABATT give his own response to that, but as for me, the issue is when woke virtue signaling in terms of diverse casting and female empowerment is all over the marketing as if that's going to matter. They were pretty damn clear in their "this ain't ya daddy's Star Wars" marketing from the get go. And then they delivered three increasingly ****e movies.

I keep going back to Top Gun Maverick but in those trailers it was also evident if you look closely enough that, yeah, this looks a bit more like contemporary naval aviation, some white dudes, some women, some minorities etc...but that wasn't at all the focus of any of the marketing. The Top Gun Maverick trailers were pretty clearly like, hey, 45 year old dude, are you ready to watch Tom Cruise and his buddies kick someone's ass again but this time with better visuals effects and even more homoerotic beach sports? And they knew we were all ready for that. And they delivered it on a silver ****in platter.

Most of the time, when a studio is going out of their way to virtue signal in their marketing leading up to the release of the trailers, you can almost bet that more emphasis is on woke signaling than on making the best movie possible. A project should stay in the can and no one should even think about how inclusive the cast is etc. until it is certain that the plot is amazing and the characters are compelling, especially when you've got a Disney budget to work with.

I actually find woke BS comical and will usually call it out when it is ham-fisted into things, but I didn't walk out of TLJ or RoS, turn to my buddy and say, "That was woke garbage." We both just turned to each other and said, "that sucked." Granted, walking out of the theater, I didn't put much thought into why I didn't like it. I just knew it sucked.

Every movie or show is different for me. I have since mocked the sequels for some of the woke stuff because I've given a little more thought on the characters and story, as well as to of how much the diversity and other nonsense has been brought up about it. That in turn just irked me even more because it makes it seem like everyone involved put more importance on the woke agenda over quality story-telling and characters. I personally think the woke crap always screws up a move or show, for the most part. I don't consider simply casting a person of a particular race, gender, or sexual orientation to be woke; there's more to it than that. It depends on the story being told, or how the characters are handled, or the dialogue. Frankly, I found the DEI of the Rings of Power much more ridiculous than the Star Wars sequels.

As has already been mentioned, there have been some great female led movies, shows, and books. There have been great movies, shows and books with different races. There have been great movies, shows and books with gay characters. But, for some reason, those didn't feel like I had someone's agenda shoved down my throat. I felt like I was watching or reading a good story with characters that happened check those boxes.

That may not really explain it well, but I really don't care to think deeper on it because it's not like we are going to convince anyone. Many of us know it when we see it, so there's obviously something to it. Simply telling multiple people that what they are experiencing is wrong, and they are stupid to think that, isn't going to convince us of anything. Especially when you have Disney execs on video calls specifically highlight what their agenda is.