Does it bother you that Disney will be risk averse with Star Wars?

[Karha of Honor]

Especially if you liked the EU?

Does it bother you that they will take zero risks with this rock solid franchise with which you could play around while not losing the appeal of the brand?

Are you worried it will be a franchise with no flavor? You think the movies have the hand prints of the directors on it?

[ScreamingDoom]

What makes you think Disney will be risk adverse? Rogue One was such a big departure from Star Wars in tone and content (a gritty war movie instead of a fun space adventure?) that it represented a huge risk, I think.

[Fixer]

Episode VII was definitely playing it as safe as possible and playing off nostalgia.

The story is almost note for note "A New Hope" but not told as well and favouring action scenes over story and character building.

The First Order is just a rebranded Empire. With bigger and more powerful ships, a bigger more powerful death star and palette swapped TIE Fighters. Snoke is just Emperor Mk II. Kylo is a Vader wannabe.

The Resistance is a rebranded Rebel Alliance, with more modern X-Wings, a new Rebel Base. Starkiller base fired the Reset button to make it the tiny Rebel Alliance facing the massive Empire again.

What concerned me even more was the total lack of care in creating the story. If you listen to the directors commentary, they change and cut backstory and history of on the fly characters just to make a scene fit, then you have weird plot holes from them changing other scenes later. This is why everything is so contrived, there wasn't really a plan so much as an aping of scenes from it's forebearers.

This is why I haven't bothered in any of the fan theorising about who Snoke is, or who's Rey's parents are. The writers hadn't considered it while making the movie, I don't see the point in putting in more effort then they did.

It's arguable they needed to play it safe to repair the image of the brand and it's an entertaining watch made with obvious love for the original trilogy. However story it makes Episode VII almost a non-movie in the long run and a poor introduction to concepts such as the force or the Jedi.

As such I've maintained for a while that it's really going to be Episode VIII is going to be one that sets the new direction for the Universe and will be the one that makes or breaks it.

[Karha of Honor]

What makes you think Disney will be risk adverse? Rogue One was such a big departure from Star Wars in tone and content (a gritty war movie instead of a fun space adventure?) that it represented a huge risk, I think.

My understanding is it was partially re shot because the test audience felt it was to much of a war movie.

[Fixer]

What makes you think Disney will be risk adverse? Rogue One was such a big departure from Star Wars in tone and content (a gritty war movie instead of a fun space adventure?) that it represented a huge risk, I think.

My understanding is it was partially re shot because the test audience felt it was to much of a war movie.

Actually it was re-shot because the original happy ending didn't seem fitting.
http://www.gamesradar.com/star-wars-rog ... dark-side/

[MithrandirOlorin]

There was nothing Risky about Rogue One, the movie was entirely about jerking off Fan Boys

[SlackerinDeNile]

There was nothing Risky about Rogue One, the movie was entirely about jerking off Fan Boys

To be fair so was Episode VII, but I quite liked both movies. I agree with many of the criticisms that people had against both recent Star Wars films but I guess my expectations for the franchise have been quite low since I grew up with the prequels.

[Formless One]

You know what the riskiest thing they could do with the franchise is? Not make more Star Wars movies. Leave a perfect story be rather than attach more crap to the canon. That is honestly what I would do if I had the brand. However, if that's not an option because Corporate Interest, well...

I pretty much agree with what Fixer said, except the part where he said it was even arguable that they needed to play VII safe. They shouldn't have. You can't polish gold with crap. You can't improve upon a good movie like ANH by aping it and giving the half assed script to a sub-par director like J.J. Abrams, whose work on Star Trek should have signaled them that he does really badly at Science Fiction. For evidence, the best of the Nu-Trek films is definitely ST: Beyond, which he had no hand in. You need to actually write a tight script with a good story, and most importantly a plan. Otherwise you end up with the problem most serialized franchises eventually suffer from. A general lack of direction. The only franchises that can get away with not planning an ending are those that are episodic to begin with, because individual episodes are supposed to stand on their own merits even when watched out of order. However, if each episode is intended to continue a plot arc larger than itself, as is the case with Star Wars films, then the whole arc needs to actually have that larger foundation. If not, eventually (or even immediately depending on how bad you are at writing), the audience is going to wonder where you are going with this. If you have no answer prepared ahead of time, you run the risk of running out of ideas before you get to the end. Worse, if you took too much from preexisting material (even if your intent was homage), its going to give people the impression you have no ideas at all. Improvising like this is actually the most risky thing you can do with the story in the long run. You don't want to start off on the wrong footing with a trilogy, or else you end up with elements you have no idea what to do with, like Jar Jar Binks.

Also, despite that potshot I just took at Jar Jar, I really dislike the potshots the movie itself took at the expense of the Prequels, which I see as part of the attempt to "play it safe" (i.e. appeal to nostalgia for the older trilogy). I know a lot of vocal fans exist online who hate them, but that's not the consensus I hear offline. Quite the opposite. Those films at least had a plan, so they could (to a degree) recover from a bad start. But either way, critiquing them within a new movie takes you out of the world by calling attention to the Fourth Wall. That works for a very postmodern movie like Deadpool, but not a melodrama like Star Wars. Its a small thing, but very annoying. It also calls attention to the degree to which they wanted to ape the original trilogy. Which is the worst thing (other than the clear J.J. influence on the movie's sense of scale).

No, I think that in many ways these new movies need to be their own thing and they need to take risks. In some ways, I think Rouge One shows that they can make a successful movie that doesn't feel like the old movies. I have my criticisms of it (which I have not shared because I still need to see it without the horrible 3d effect), but one thing I cannot say was bad is the directing and sense of purpose the movie had. It was in a different style, but that was not a terrible thing. It still felt like it belonged in the Star Wars universe despite that. I hope that Ep. VIII takes a lesson from that, and that they get their asses off the couch and start writing ahead rather than by the seat of their pants.

[Rocketboy1313]

I do not accept the foundation of the question.

[phantom000]

There is this thing with movies i call 'franchise detritus.' Detritus is the fragments of decaying organisms, it can also refer to the micro-organisms, usually fungus, that grows on dead organisms. It is an effective metaphor for some movies i have seen because they come off very much like a studio trying to cash in on a series that is already finished.

Terminator is a great example of this because every film after the second one feels like there is no point to it. They aren't trying to tell an interesting story they just want to use the franchise to get our money while doing the minimum amount of effort.

Such films usually range from 'watchable' to just boring. Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection feel like they are just going through the motions to fill up time before the credits. Jurassic Park 3 is about the only one that can be considered good, maybe because they used the same director and Sam Neill is always fun so it is a film i can watch.

Indiana Jones and The Crystal Skull is another 'decent' movie but like the others it feels more like a shameless cash in of the franchise. It's not bad but i get the feeling they made just as an excuse to work together one last time. On the making of they talked a lot about memories and 'the good old days'

What this has to do with Star Wars is that it could very well be headed down this very same path. Episode VII felt like a self parody, spending a lot of time poking fun at the original trilogy while being more interested in Han and Leia despite the movie is not supposed to be about them. The whole thing feels like it was made to be 'profitable' rather than interesting. Fine, a movie needs to make money but it is hard to build a franchise off a movie that is not interesting. They tried it with Transformers and did not get very far, are they even making Transformers 5?

The Marvel Cinematic universe made a lot of money because each part was great on its own, DC is trying something similar but running into trouble because they keep cutting corners. So it does seem very likely that Disney will keep trying to remake the classic trilogy until one of them finally bombs bad enough that no one wants to touch it.