Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (J.J. Abrams, December 20, 2019) Movie • Page 415

this trilogy should have been all new characters with no ties to old ones

 

Ok it's not a good movie but come on guys, claiming any element of making a huge blockbuster movie, much less the concluding film to the Star Wars saga, is "not that hard to do" is silly

 

It's astonishing that Chris Terrio went from winning the Academy Award for Best Screenplay to writing this

The thing that frustrates me the most is I liked Force Awakens and I really thought that JJ Abrams was at worst going to be a solid choice for directing this film, and now I feel like I wasted a lot of time getting invested in these characters while it increasingly it feels like everyone is ganging up to kick TFA by extension

 

Just wrap up a 40+ year old saga, easy peasy

 

Fair, fair. Saying it's not hard is wrong in retrospect and disrespectful to creators everywhere. I regret phrasing anything as such.

 

Disney wanted that nostalgia $$$

 

All good! Appreciate you being able to say that. I've seen it a couple times in this thread, and I think we can criticize something while also acknowledging that having ideas that we think are better than what we ended up with is a lot different than writing the script, filming, and dealing with the production difficulties this movie had. I don't like the job JJ did on a very fundamental level but I still respect him for even being able to put the movie together.

 

I feel extra dumb for writing that, especially because I posted this not even two weeks ago.

 

I dunno if I agree. The non-Episodes should’ve branched out further faster, but if they’re gonna make “Episode VII, VIII, & IX,” they gotta tie it in. Though, maybe you’re arguing they shouldn’t make more Episodes, which, fair enough, but I still personally disagree.

It’s eight movies. There were more movies going into Age of Ultron. Most television series have more hours of content going into their finales.

If you’re talking making everyone happy, sure, that’s impossible, but that’s been impossible for years. One could argue it's always true w/ any art and/or entertainment. On a purely creative level, any professional should be able to do it.

If the problem is the fan base, fuck Star Wars fans, lol. And, if the problem is Disney... the problem obviously is at least partially Disney, & either way, fuck that monopoly. But, let’s not pretend space wizards are that complex.

 

Maybe I missed the explanation, but did Luke and Lando go to that planet to look for the Jedi hunter, and when they didn’t find him Lando just decided to stay...forever?

 

And just to be clear, I’m not saying that the overall art of making big budget films isn’t always hard & complex, requiring so many people who are skilled in so many ways.

But, one, I don’t see that discussed as much w/ movies like Dark Phoenix or Amazing Spider-Man 2; feels like a cop out to defend a franchise you love, which, fair enough, but not really accurate. And, two, I’m not talking about every step of making the film. I’m talking specifically about writing the basic story.

 

I've been as critical of this movie as anyone, definitely haven't defended it. But saying writing the story is easy just shows a lack of understanding of the process. And yeah, writing the stories for those movies you mentioned couldn't have been easy either, otherwise they would have been good movies. And from everything I've heard TRoS had tons more logistical challenges that had to factor into the writing process. Could it have been done better? 100%. Can we even understand how difficult it was? I'm gonna say no

 

Just to be clear, when you say writing this film was hard, do you mean,

"It is difficult to come up with a film-length story that would work as a finale to the eight prior episodes,"

or,

"It is difficult to function within the corporate monstrosity that is Disney"?

Because those are two very different things.

 

Some things should be easier than some writers make them, JJ particularly. He forgoes traditional setup/payoff because he likes surprising viewers and he’s too beholden to nostalgia to do anything truly interesting.

I can’t remember who said it but an old writing saying goes “if there’s a problem with your ending then there’s a problem with your act one”, and the Force Awakens is a bad foundation to build on. Not an impossible one, the Last Jedi works, but JJ got caught up in re-instigating dumb stuff from the first movie that didn’t actually matter

 

It's difficult to write a good screenplay period. It's difficult to provide a satisfying ending to a single film, much less a trilogy, much less a series of trilogies (I don't agree this last part was even necessary, but that's the decision they made). It's difficult to write around Carrie Fisher's passing. It's difficult to write while navigating the realities of production, any writer will say that. There's so much decision making that goes into any film that whenever one turns out well it's a miracle.

Again, I am not saying JJ and Terrio did a good job, but it's easy to be an armchair critic without understanding everything that goes into making a movie.

 

It’s not easy to write a good screenplay but many choices JJ continuously makes are obviously wrong

 

Yeah I completely agree haha

 

I still maintain that what they did with with Leia was probably the best possible version of what it could have been given the circumstances.

 

This is *really* close to my ranking.
- - -
I think JJ Abrams is an extremely talented director and filmmaker but his writing and storytelling instincts and style are fundamentally flawed. He has achieved spectacular professional and financial success though and has even given a Ted Talk on his approach to storytelling, so I do recognize how silly it is for a wannabe writer who has never gotten anything published in his life to call a guy who is worth $150 million and is one of the most powerful people in Hollywood who happened to get his start as 'only' a screenwriter a bad writer, but there it is.

I would say writing anything well is hard work and it takes time, and good writing is something that is completely and utterly undervalued in today's big-budget Hollywood filmmaking environment. Huge budget blockbusters will literally go into production without a script in place, which is like moving forward on the construction of a ridiculously expensive house with no blueprint. What could go wrong??? I feel that a good story and a well-written script are the most important aspect of a good movie but I do recognize that a lot of people do not feel the same way.

I am as guilty of it as the next person, and it can be really fun to talk crap about a guy like Chris Terrio and blame this whole mess on him, but in real life there is a very strong chance that Chris Terrio thought bringing Palpatine back for this film was a TERRIBLE idea but had no real say in the matter and it became his job - which he was highly compensated for - to try to make it work along with all of the other demands and decisions made by the corporate beast that is Disney in a really short period of time. It also could have been his idea, and maybe that information is even out there at this point, but I honestly stopped even paying attention because this movie is so fucking terrible it is not worth the time or energy.

 

My original comment that led to this conversation was,

"I hate the low bar we have for professional writers, lol. It's absurd that we treat a ninth space wizard soap opera adventure as this herculean task."

And, I stand by that. Out of context, calling any creative task "easy," like in the "any human being can do it" sense, is absurd. It's the same mindset that leads to people under-valuing & wanting to under-pay my graphic designing brother. I get that; sorry if I didn't make that clear. But, if you're a professional writer, you should be able to write a good Star Wars Episode IX. Not even great, just GOOD. Just at that very basic story level, before getting into the nuances of dialogue, direction, acting, editing, etc. (which, yeah, I know, has a lot of moving parts & whatnot).

That is what shouldn't be hard for someone in that field. If it's not, then wow, we've got a really rough landscape of professional writers. Which, based on the fact that an Academy Award winning writer said he wished he had two films worth of space to do this... maybe is true.

By the way, even w/ all those complexities, all those places where things can go wrong... Saying that one turning out "well" (not even "great") is a "miracle" ...is such a belittling of the word "miracle," lol, geez.

I mostly agree. I think the main Leia problem is that they over-exerted themselves.

Like, there are surprisingly natural Carrie Fisher moments, & while the story execution of her death wasn't great, the usage of body double worked really well. It was the best version of what I had been hoping for since walking out of TLJ. But then, because they really wanted to get as much mileage out of this beloved character, & more beloved actress, as they could in her last hurrah, they aimed too high. Some of those moments are rough, lol, as one would expect. Should've gone w/ a "less is more" approach, imo.

 

(I can't believe the lockdown has me talking about this movie again, I hate myself, ha ha ha... )

 

They should have had her die peacefully in space like it seemed like they were going to do. It was a beautiful scene and send off that had me, my friends, and others in the theater tear up. But then she was like "jk, i can make myself float back onto the ship! wahoo!" and then we were just confused and annoyed.

 

Basing this off the fact that I've heard probably dozens of filmmakers use that exact phrase, but ok

 

I still fucking love that floating scene, lol. Maybe the Star Wars talking point that makes me feel the most divorced from reality. Wish I could find just one other human being who has better than "eh, I don't completely hate it" to say about it.

No, yeah, I know. It's really common. That part was a more personal opinion, lol, one that goes beyond just filmmaking.

If you're the kind of person who says that every day you're alive is a miracle, then sure, by that same low bar, plotting a pulp adventure film is miraculous.

 

This movie really got us arguing about the very act of movie making.