Star Wars: Ahsoka

[Hot Pepsi]

BTW, that reminds me to ask....

How does one become a film producer? I mean, not the kind who were directors and/or actors who use their clout to get a sweet deal from a studio for a production company, but any of the many names that show up on big films that don't seem to do much other than tell the director they need to rastify the character by 10% with a schmeer of surfer?

I think I could do that job. It sounds really easy.

[Patrick Thistle]

I dunno if I agree with your take on the live action offerings there. Dave Filoni and Kathleen Kennedy are keeping quite tight reins on the Star Wars live action TV and Marvel has Kevin Feige calling the shots.

[Hot Pepsi]

I dunno if I agree with your take on the live action offerings there. Dave Filoni and Kathleen Kennedy are keeping quite tight reins on the Star Wars live action TV and Marvel has Kevin Feige calling the shots.

That is what they want you to think, but that is not at all the behind-the-scenes story.

There's a new book on Marvel by Johanna Robinson, a podcaster I really like. I haven't read it, but in her promotion for it, she talks about how the Marvel machine has gone off the rails because there are too many projects in the works and their process is breaking down. Feige cannot control it all the way he used to and the practical challenges of keeping all the shows and films on schedule while trying to tell a cohesive story have caused a lot of problems.

They recently announced that they're going to start over with the new Daredevil show even though they'd already shot a few episodes.


Filoni is nominally in charge of the Star Wars TV and it does seem to mostly be his vision for where the story is going, but if you compare and contrast the last episode of Mandolorian or Ashoka against Rebels or Clone Wars, it seems pretty clear that there are a lot more cooks in the kitchen now than there were when The Clone Wars was just puttering along on Cartoon Network.

TV, pretty much by necessity, has a bunch of different directors and writers, which is fine. But IMDB lists 18 producers, including Filoi, Favreau and Kennedy, for Ashoka. It was only 8 episodes.

By contrast, Rebels had 71 episodes, there are 9 total producers (and they didn't all work on all of them) and Kathleen Kennedy is not among them.

Kathleen Kennedy needs to go. The TV shows are getting progressively worse, and they haven't made a new Star Wars film in a long time now despite lots of announced projects coming and going. There are none on the slate for years. How is that not mismanagement?

And a lot of the blame for how the sequels went sideways is on her. They didn't have a concrete plan for all three stories before they started. Say what you want about George Lucas as a director, but as a writer, he started with the end in mind.

This isn't a made-for-cheap soap opera where they can just see how the audience responds to certain characters and make it up as they go along and/or if one episode sucks, that's ok, because there will be another tomorrow and the next day.

[hobbes]

Star Trek did that, it was shit then for the exact same reason, it was written in by lazy people with no imagination for doing anything better.

Star Trek did that because they had fuck all budget and it was the early 60s. That was how you did aliens.
So those "lazy writers" had to resort to tackling weighty social issues through the lens of science fiction instead writing dialogue that made the main characters cringe.
Now I love star wars more than almost anything, but on depth quality and complexity of storytelling, Roddenberry shirts on Lucas from orbit.

[Hot Pepsi]

No, that’s an apples-to-oranges comparison.
Lucas built ILM. That’s his great achievement. He was good at finding other people to help him realize his visions.

As a writer and director, he was limited. His best move was working with Spielberg on Indiana Jones and hiring Irvin Kershner and Lawrence Kasdan for ESB and ROTJ.

Roddenberry was a TV writer. Completely different job.

Star Trek is amazing for the limitations it had. Nothing remotely lazy about it.

[Eggchaser]

Star Trek did that because they had fuck all budget and it was the early 60s. That was how you did aliens.
So those "lazy writers" had to resort to tackling weighty social issues through the lens of science fiction instead writing dialogue that made the main characters cringe.
Now I love star wars more than almost anything, but on depth quality and complexity of storytelling, Roddenberry shirts on Lucas from orbit.

Check shirts?

[Patrick Thistle]

Check shirts?

He probably would avoid wearing a red shirt