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dreamwars2023-11-20 06:14 pm
annathecrow) wrote in dreamwars2023-11-20 06:14 pm
Chat corner 135: possibilities
Welcome to the Monday chat corner!
This week, my choice of canon media is a little questionable: the three movies announced by Disney this April - one by James Mangold, to be set in the far history of the Galaxy Far Far Away, one by Dave Filoni, meant to tie into his TV shows, and the last, by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, which is supposed to continue Rey’s story as she rebuilds the Jedi Order.
…okay, so I opened my trusty timeline of canon media, found the Mangold movie as the first item, and went “wait, what?”. I am not the most well-informed of fans. I figure you might not be either - or you might enjoy speculating about projects that might never see the light of day (still waiting on my Rogue Squadron movie, Disney!)
What are your thoughts?
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I increasingly get the feeling that Disney doesn't have a long-term plan for Star Wars, and is just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, then doubling down on whatever is most popular at the moment. They really seem to want Star Wars to be the MCU, but the lack of planning (outside of the David Filoni Cinematic Universe, which is really its own thing at this point) is working against them, nor has the constant rotation of directors. At this point, there have been so many movies/projects announced that have failed to come to fruition that I've adopted a jaded "well, I'll believe it when I see it" attitude towards everything.
As I see it, the real problem is that The Rise of Skywalker put such a hydrospanner in the works due to said lack of planning that no one has wanted to deal with the fallout, thus making it more challenging to continue the story in that direction. So instead, we get a lot of prequels and interquels "filling in the gaps" while people try to figure out how to salvage what they can from the situation without outright declaring TROS non-canon/AU.
I had not heard of the proposed Mangold film, but my first reaction on learning they are supposed to be about the origins of the Force is "Heck, no!!!". This is one worldbuilding element that I don't think needs to be explained, and while it's certainly possible it could work, I think it's far more likely that any attempt will end up like the midichlorians from The Phantom Menace.
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"David Filoni Cinematic Universe" -- oh lol XD (but yep, that's what it is)
I think Disney is really struggling with the fallout of the Sequels specifically because it's just so divisive - both as a trilogy and each movie separately. Some people liked them, some people liked parts of them, some people hated the whole thing... It's even worse for them than if it was universally disliked, then at least they could go "er, less of that".
And since Disney's creative direction for Star Wars seems to be run on analytics... well. (I am not bitter, who's bitter... /sarcasm) At least Lucas had a plan. I'm no great fan of ~auteurs~ (or Lucas...), but at least he had that.
As for Mangold... and Obaid-Chinoy... is it just me, or is Disney trying to "overwrite" the more popular (or at least memorable) Legends stories? Tales of the Jedi, New Jedi Order...
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is it just me, or is Disney trying to "overwrite" the more popular (or at least memorable) Legends stories?
It's not just you. The reason they're doing it is because if they use the old characters/settings/plots, they have to pay Lucas (and possibly others?) royalties, whereas if they use their own characters, they keep that money for themselves. This is likely why we keep seeing "the same thing but just different enough for copyright" over and over again, and why there's an increasing shift towards new vs. "legacy" characters.
(It's not that they'll stop using old characters entirely--especially the popular ones!--just that they have an economic incentive to focus on new characters, and that's a major influence on their storytelling choices.)
I think I've recc'ed this before, but Secrets of the Force: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Wars by Edward Grossman has numerous details about the sale to Disney and the company dynamics, and everything I've seen thus far is consistent with this account.
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I do think there might have been an opportunity a few years ago to do The Mandalorian: The Movie, but at this point I feel like (a) mainstream fandom for The Mandalorian has faded a bit, and (b) Filoni doesn’t want to do a film about one or two recognisable characters, he wants to do the cinematic equivalent of a comic-book crossover event.
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Yeah, I think the success of the early phases of the MCU (culminating in Avengers: Endgame) made Disney overconfident that they could keep doing that kind of thing indefinitely across multiple franchises... without doing the necessary groundwork that made those films such a success. We are seeing the fallout in both the recent MCU phases and Star Wars, albeit for vastly different reasons. But I agree, the interlocking serial nature does not help one bit!
Re: release format, I agree with you completely, and I think the question ultimately comes down to where the money lies. Theatrical releases are going to have a higher quality (and thus budget) compared to their TV counterparts and take longer to make, but also have potential for larger profits. I have no idea how the economics of streaming works (poorly, I suspect) or if Disney+ actually makes money, but I think they have an incentive to keep releasing new content on a regular basis to keep subscribers, which favors shorter installments over films. And so on.
However, out of all the projects announced, the David Filoni movie has the best possible chance of actually seeing the light of day, if only because Filoni has been working to this for a long time, and has the charisma and clout to see it through. I'm not so sure about these new directors who don't have that same working relationship with Disney.
It's ironic that A New Hope was inspired in part by Flash Gordon serials, which are themselves essentially comics in film form. I think the difference between comics in general and recent films is that most comics (at least the ones that I'm familiar with) are designed so that any reader picking up any given issue for the first time can follow the plot. However, there are a number of tricks for this, such as footnotes referencing specific issues, that are less feasible for cinema.
Bringing comics to the movies turned out to be a brilliant and extremely lucrative move... but they may have gone just a bit too far.
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While it isn't out yet, I think the writer has a point about stories created for franchises and then changed to be their own thing, as well as the reverse.
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I mean, this is especially fitting given that A New Hope is a retelling of The Hidden Fortress in space, with Westerns, WWII films, and other influences thrown in for good measure.
“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.” ― T.S. Eliot