For all things Episode VIII related info including spoilers.
The release date is now December 15, 2017.
The Official Synopsis from Star Wars.com
“In Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the Skywalker saga continues as the heroes of The Force Awakens join the galactic legends in an epic adventure that unlocks age-old mysteries of the Force and shocking revelations of the past.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi opens in U.S. theaters on December 15, 2017.”
Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud:
Rian Johnson wrote the script and KK approved it. This was not a collaborative effort and if it was, credit would have been listed in the end credits of the film and registered with the Writer's Guild of America for all to see.
I have a good friend that's written several blockbuster movies and once, a manager tried to claim 33% of the writing credits because he managed the star and co-writer. Lawyers were involved and it went to Arbitration.
My friend won the case and was given his 50% share but he'll never work with those people again.
If that happened on a Star Wars film, it would be the talk of Hollywood so the bottom line is that it didn't happen.
The idea that no input was given by Kennedy is just stupid.
The Resistance "Bomber" was annoyingly dumb, even for scifi. Zero gravity, yet they're replicating a B10 bomb run dropping bombs out the bottom. Lazy writing. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Fish:
The Resistance "Bomber" was annoyingly dumb, even for scifi. Zero gravity, yet they're replicating a B10 bomb run dropping bombs out the bottom. Lazy writing.
That's only ONE dumb point in the film.
Again, I think if the scene in the throne room had gone differently (and they wouldn't have purposefully shit on Luke's character) there would be a more positive response... [Reply]
Originally Posted by Rausch:
The idea that no input was given by Kennedy is just stupid.
That's not the way she works.
Abrams and Kasdan wrote Episode VII. Abrams and Chris Terrio are writing Episode IX and just pitched the story to Iger. Kasdan wrote Solo.
Rian Johnson wrote this entire film while JJ was shooting TFA and he even asked JJ to change something at the end of TFA that would help his story.
I've stated several times throughout this thread that everyone from Kasdan to Lucasfilm staffers have said that Rian Johnson's movie is "weird" and doesn't feel like "Star Wars". I'd also made mention that many people were thrilled that JJ was co-writing Episode IX because he'd "Right the Ship".
I expect many of the things in TLJ to be reversed in Abrams film because Rian Johnson just basically said "Snoke doesn't matter, Rey's parents don't matter, Captain Phasma is worthless and Luke is better off dead".
That was all Rian Johnson.
And Kathleen Kennedy isn't a writer or a director or a storyteller.
She's a producer, which means that she provides support (i.e. studio, crew, etc.) for her storyteller(s), in this case, Rian Johnson. [Reply]
Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud:
Rian Johnson wrote the script and KK approved it. This was not a collaborative effort and if it was, credit would have been listed in the end credits of the film and registered with the Writer's Guild of America for all to see.
I have a good friend that's written several blockbuster movies and once, a manager tried to claim 33% of the writing credits because he managed the star and co-writer. Lawyers were involved and it went to Arbitration.
My friend won the case and was given his 50% share but he'll never work with those people again.
If that happened on a Star Wars film, it would be the talk of Hollywood so the bottom line is that it didn't happen.
Actually producers almost always (and frequently do) contribute to scripts and stories and provide copious notes that are routinely ignored by the writer (which is why you have a whole second business in re-writing scripts). The WGA rules don’t allow producers to claim credit on scripts unless there is a pre-existing written deal between the writer and producer. There are other exemptions to the rule if the writer is also the director.
I find it next to impossible to believe there weren’t all kinds of back-and-forth on the film but given the end product and how it tears down many of the set-ups from TFA I could be wrong. [Reply]
Originally Posted by RINGLEADER:
Actually producers almost always (and frequently do) contribute to scripts and stories and provide copious notes that are routinely ignored by the writer (which is why you have a whole second business in re-writing scripts).
Just laughing because based on many conversations with film producers, that's so true
Originally Posted by RINGLEADER:
The WGA rules don’t allow producers to claim credit on scripts unless there is a pre-existing written deal between the writer and producer. There are other exemptions to the rule if the writer is also the director.
Yeah, that's what happened in my friend's case. The co-writer's (and star of the film) manager suddenly claimed that he co-wrote the film, reducing the share from 50% to 33.33%. It was an ugly process but he eventually won but what a bunch of crap.
Originally Posted by RINGLEADER:
I find it next to impossible to believe there weren’t all kinds of back-and-forth on the film but given the end product and how it tears down many of the set-ups from TFA I could be wrong.
From my understanding, she allowed Rian Johnson "to do his own thing", only to become more involved with Rogue One and eventually, Episode IX and Solo.
What's interesting is that Rogue One was an unmitigated success that clearly surpassed (and eventually changed) what the Star Wars Stories would become and earn at the box office. KK was so busy with overseeing all of the changes to Rogue One, then hiring Trevorrow and setting up Episode IX while Lord & Miller were making a film that was waaaaaaaaaay out of the loop of what Star Wars is meant to be that it's possible that she just lost track of Episode VIII (that last part's not confirmed but I have heard that she's been laser focused on Solo since firing Lord & Miller). Rehiring Abrams was a no-brainer for her because she trusts him implicitly and it's just one less thing for her to manage.
What's really strange is that Rian Johnson's film is such a mess that the story group, led by Kiri Hart, couldn't help to create a better story. I had heard that the first draft contained way too many new characters and that KK asked him to cut them out of the film in order to focus on Rey & Ren but that's about the extent of the original changes.
Meanwhile, Dave Filoni's overseen years of animated stories that were far more coherent and believable in the Star Wars galaxy than just about everything put forth in The Last Jedi but wasn't a part of the creative process whatsoever.
Originally Posted by Fish:
The Resistance "Bomber" was annoyingly dumb, even for scifi. Zero gravity, yet they're replicating a B10 bomb run dropping bombs out the bottom. Lazy writing.
Originally Posted by Rausch:
That's only ONE dumb point in the film.
Again, I think if the scene in the throne room had gone differently (and they wouldn't have purposefully shit on Luke's character) there would be a more positive response...
where he had a giant magnifying glass pointing out the window :-) god damn this movie gets more stupid the more you think about it [Reply]
Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud:
From my understanding, she allowed Rian Johnson "to do his own thing", only to become more involved with Rogue One and eventually, Episode IX and Solo.
What's interesting is that Rogue One was an unmitigated success that clearly surpassed (and eventually changed) what the Star Wars Stories would become and earn at the box office. KK was so busy with overseeing all of the changes to Rogue One, then hiring Trevorrow and setting up Episode IX while Lord & Miller were making a film that was waaaaaaaaaay out of the loop of what Star Wars is meant to be that it's possible that she just lost track of Episode VIII (that last part's not confirmed but I have heard that she's been laser focused on Solo since firing Lord & Miller). Rehiring Abrams was a no-brainer for her because she trusts him implicitly and it's just one less thing for her to manage.
What's really strange is that Rian Johnson's film is such a mess that the story group, led by Kiri Hart, couldn't help to create a better story. I had heard that the first draft contained way too many new characters and that KK asked him to cut them out of the film in order to focus on Rey & Ren but that's about the extent of the original changes.
Meanwhile, Dave Filoni's overseen years of animated stories that were far more coherent and believable in the Star Wars galaxy than just about everything put forth in The Last Jedi but wasn't a part of the creative process whatsoever.
It's just weird.
Yeah I don't get the disconnect between Episode VII and VIII. As I've said there are things that are choices RJ made that could have been done differently but I don't mind them -- then there are things that just seem like a big FU to JJ and everything that was done to set up the new trilogy. It should have been a mapped out single story told over three films. I find it impossible to believe that RJ was given carte blanche to just do whatever he wanted to the storylines that existed before him (from VII and the original trilogy), but the final product doesn't connect well with the existing story.
Originally Posted by Rausch:
That's only ONE dumb point in the film.
Again, I think if the scene in the throne room had gone differently (and they wouldn't have purposefully shit on Luke's character) there would be a more positive response...
I agree with this.
The bomber scene didn't bother me like it has others. It annoyed me more that the bombers were just a chain reaction of explosions. But it was dumb that you'd use space bombs that require a ship to be over another ship when you could have just used missiles.
Or had the bombers just be drones filled with bombs that can ram the Dreadnought at hyperspace speeds... :-)
As this movie does in so many other ways it was a scene in search of a reason to exist or a point to make. RJ seemed to think we had to have the "moment" with Rose's sis to connect up with Rose and give her some backstory (that is almost immediately forgotten). [Reply]
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
This is appropriately glib. It's pretty much the kind of smart-assed approach to criticism that this movie probably deserved.
Originally Posted by RINGLEADER:
As you say, it's just weird.
The entire situation is weird.
After selling to Disney and appointing KK as the CEO of Lucasfilm, her first act was to throw out 34 years of Expanded Universe novels, comic books, board games and video games, dubbing them "Legends". As much as I disliked many of the liberties taken in some of the EU novels, there was a solid foundation for stories beyond Return of the Jedi, even if it had been decided to make certain aspects canon and other aspects non-canon.
Then, they put together this is Story Group, led by Kiri Hart and put Pablo Hidalgo in charge of overseeing the entire universe and tying each new aspect together by giving aliens names, the Visual Dictionaries, etc. while KK goes on a crazy hunt for an Episode VII director after hiring Michael Arndt to script the film.
She was turned down by more than half a dozen directors and wound up with Abrams, who insisted on writing the story for VII, so Arndt was dumped. Josh Trank was quickly dumped for the Boba Fett movie but Gareth Edwards was announced as the director for Rogue One (which had a story developed by John Knoll and Gary Whitta and scripted by Whitta, only to be re-written by Chris Weitz, with the 3rd act re-written again by Tony Gilroy).
After the success of The Force Awakens (in which Abrams had quite a bit of help from Speilberg and Ava Duvernay after principle photography and the initial edit), Colin Trevorrow is hired for IX, Rian Johnson had been writing VIII while Lord & Miller were hired to direct Solo, a script by Kasdan.
Meanwhile, and even weirder, is that Dave Filoni, who co-wrote and produced The Clone Wars animated series with George Lucas, began to reintroduce many aspects of canon that had been thrown out on Day One by KK, into Star Wars Rebels.
Trevorrow is fired after the awful box office of The Book of Henry flopped, Lord & Miller are fired for being too wacky, Ron Howard is hired to re-shoot Solo, Jack Thorne is hired to script Episode IX yet less than a month later, it's announced that Abrams will direct Episode IX and co-write the script with Chris Terrio.
It doesn't take a critical eye to see that the whole thing is a gigantic clusterfuck of epic proportions. It's going to take a massive effort to turn things around for Episode IX to win back the fans and make the Star Wars galaxy coherent.
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
This is appropriately glib. It's pretty much the kind of smart-assed approach to criticism that this movie probably deserved.
I've never seen one of these pitch meeting parodies before but that was absolutely brilliant. [Reply]
