I'm certainly excited about a live action Star Wars tv show in the vein of Game of Thrones, but after seeing the quality of the post-book portion of GoT, I'm cautious about content produced by...
I also don't recall hearing that the Game of Thrones guys are working on a new star wars franchise, so that is really cool
I'm certainly excited about a live action Star Wars tv show in the vein of Game of Thrones, but after seeing the quality of the post-book portion of GoT, I'm cautious about content produced by Benioff and Weiss. Though, to be fair they were working within the framework of an established narrative; so having more creative freedom may result in the same quality as the initial GoT seasons.
There were a few pretty good episodes after season 4, but yeah the overall writing quality took a serious nosedive. I mean it would've been difficult for anyone to build on to post-ADWD ASOIAF,...
There were a few pretty good episodes after season 4, but yeah the overall writing quality took a serious nosedive. I mean it would've been difficult for anyone to build on to post-ADWD ASOIAF, considering how much trouble even Martin seems to be having, but a lot of D&D's decisions have been dubious to say the least.
Last season felt very poor to me and you could feel the lack of guidance from GRRM in the writing. I honestly hope that WoW ditches much of what happened in the show...it felt predictable at best.
Last season felt very poor to me and you could feel the lack of guidance from GRRM in the writing. I honestly hope that WoW ditches much of what happened in the show...it felt predictable at best.
The whole, 'build a fanservice dream team to capture a wight to convince cersei to team up' bit legitimately felt like some player's half baked dungeons and dragons scheme. Complete with...
The whole, 'build a fanservice dream team to capture a wight to convince cersei to team up' bit legitimately felt like some player's half baked dungeons and dragons scheme. Complete with disposable mooks who only exist to get killed to provide tension.
Please don't get me started. It's so painful and my wife has only seen the shows so she think's I'm just a debby-downer, but it was really, really bad. I lived on /r/asoiaf for years until they...
Please don't get me started. It's so painful and my wife has only seen the shows so she think's I'm just a debby-downer, but it was really, really bad.
I lived on /r/asoiaf for years until they turned into a TV-show subreddit. I still browse /r/pureasoiaf from time-to-time but the wait for WoW has been so long... I'm just about over it. WoW better be good, that's all I got to say.
They were very book-heavy for a long time as /r/gameofthrones handled the show. They weren't anti-show but did carry very little of it when I first joined and they had almost no memes and little...
They were very book-heavy for a long time as /r/gameofthrones handled the show. They weren't anti-show but did carry very little of it when I first joined and they had almost no memes and little shitposting - that was all saved for /r/gameofthrones.
As they grew that changed and by the time BrendanBFish became a mod - not that he was the cause (I like and am jealous of his write-ups) - it was getting pretty out-of-hand. The show was really taking off and the sub start directing people to blogs instead of having text posts. Again, none of this was a change to rules of the sub or anything like that, it's just what started happening. I suspect some degree of monetization was occurring - via blogs and podcasts - and there is nothing wrong with that per se (especially for the mods who put so much time in) but it rubbed me the wrong way.
Last time I checked, which was some time ago, it was just as much shit-posting and memes as /r/gameofthrones. Maybe it's changed now but I don't plan on going back.
I like /r/pureasoiaf because it's smaller and 100% book focused, but I suspect more than one person watches the show and then posts their "theory" on what happens next, but hey, that's how it goes.
I guess that's fair. There's still a bunch of neat fan theories and analyses that get posted to r/asoiaf, and it's still leagues better than r/gameofthrones, but as the subscriber count grows even...
I guess that's fair. There's still a bunch of neat fan theories and analyses that get posted to r/asoiaf, and it's still leagues better than r/gameofthrones, but as the subscriber count grows even as the content drought approaches its eighth year, the signal to noise ratio is bound to get worse.
I don't think volume and timing are the problem, here. Two of the three standalone Star Wars stories have been/will be about characters (Han Solo, Boba Fett) where mysterious origins are part of...
But I think we're going to be a little bit more careful about volume and timing.
I don't think volume and timing are the problem, here. Two of the three standalone Star Wars stories have been/will be about characters (Han Solo, Boba Fett) where mysterious origins are part of the characters identity. Why are they faffing about with a Boba Fett movie when they could be making an Obi-Wan movie?
Also, I liked The Last Jedi, but I am a Star Trek fan first and a Star Wars fan second, so the fact that The Last Jedi subverted some of Star Wars' longest running themes and made them more Trek like was a feature, not a bug, for me. But I'm also totally willing to admit that it was an odd fit for the Star Wars mythos. It seemed like Rian Johnson was subverting these expectations for the sake of subverting them, not because it pushed the story of Star Wars forward in a compelling way.
Now, JJ Abrams is left holding the bag: among the old characters, Luke is dead, Han is dead, Leia is alive but Carrie Fisher is not. Among the new characters, two movies in and we're still not sure how Rey fits into all of this, Finn and Poe pretty much got sidelined in TLJ after being front-and-center in TFA, and the most compelling and interesting character is Kylo Ren. Which is fine, I guess, and Adam Driver certainly has the skills to carry the franchise, but of the four new characters introduced in TFA, Kylo is the only one who's development feels consistent across both films.
I hadn't heard an analysis like that before. In what ways do you think TLJ was more Trek like? I'm in the same boat as you in preferring Trek, but I didn't find TLJ very enjoyable.
Also, I liked The Last Jedi, but I am a Star Trek fan first and a Star Wars fan second, so the fact that The Last Jedi subverted some of Star Wars' longest running themes and made them more Trek like was a feature, not a bug, for me.
I hadn't heard an analysis like that before. In what ways do you think TLJ was more Trek like? I'm in the same boat as you in preferring Trek, but I didn't find TLJ very enjoyable.
I haven't seen TLJ since theaters so my memory of why I felt this way is a little fuzzy, but here goes: Star Wars is all about the Skywalkers. Even movies that aren't directly about the Skywalkers...
I haven't seen TLJ since theaters so my memory of why I felt this way is a little fuzzy, but here goes:
Star Wars is all about the Skywalkers. Even movies that aren't directly about the Skywalkers still manage to indirectly be about the Skywalkers. The Skywalkers are Special™. They are The Chosen®. They turn and the galaxy turns with them. The galaxy teems with trillions of sentient beings and yet somehow it seems that the only story worth telling is the story of this one family.
Star Trek is about humanity. Six series, six captains, not a drop of blood shared between them. Star Trek has only recently started slavishly retelling its past, and that was unsurprisingly under the direction of an avowed Star Wars megafan. Even more recently, this whole idea that Burnham is Spock's adoptive sister is very odd, and very un-Trek. It's the first time the showrunners of a Star Trek show have felt compelled to put such a strong tie-in to an existing character at the center of a new show.
Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Discovery, but I'm not nuts about it either. The point is this: Star Trek portrays an inherently more meritocratic version of humanity and sentient life in general. As a Federation citizen you can work hard and fulfill your life's calling. In Star Wars, if you're not a force-sensitive or a close friend of a force-sensitive, we don't give a shit about you. And the only way to be force-sensitive is to be born with it. You can't earn it. You can't work for it. Either you're born with it or you're not.
TLJ subverts this:
Rey is nobody. She's not Luke's niece or some nonsense like that. She's a scavenger from the middle of nowhere. Luke wasn't even from nowhere, he was hiding on nowhere.
The kid on Canto Bight also appears to be force sensitive and underlooked.
Individually I don't think either of these is enough to draw a conclusion but together I think Rian was trying to make a subtle point about force sensitivity being much more common than we think, and the Jedi Order was so blinded with dogma they were only interested in a certain level or kind of force sensitivity. The idea that there could be force sensitives all over the place and we just plain don't know about them because of ancient dogma is compelling to me, but it's a pretty sharp divergence from traditional Star Wars fare, which is that Star Wars is the story of the Skywalkers.
But, there's a time and a place to subvert long running themes and I just don't think this was it. On some level it might have been more satisfying to make Rey a Skywalker and wrap up the "core nine" on that note. If Rian wants to go subvert the core themes of Star Wars perhaps he should be doing it in a standalone trilogy without so much baggage. Because now JJ Abrams has been handed a complete mess. The contrast is just so striking: TFA was so safe and TLJ was so risky. Frankly I'm skeptical of Abrams' ability to bridge the gap he's been handed here. The back three might've been more satisfying had they all been safe, and the risks were saved for the standalone stories and future trilogies.
Oh I agree with you there, I actually really liked the fact that Rey didn't have some mystical bloodline and was just what she appeared to be. Bit of a departure from traditional Star Wars, and it...
Oh I agree with you there, I actually really liked the fact that Rey didn't have some mystical bloodline and was just what she appeared to be. Bit of a departure from traditional Star Wars, and it might have been cool if she was Obi-wan's secret daughter or something, but no, I don't think that detracted from the movie at all. The problems I had were more with the poor plot pacing, confusing and contradictory world building, frankly bizarre character development, and Po's status as a Designated Hero.
Right... and what's weird about all of this is that we know Johnson is a skilled writer & director. On paper he should have nailed it. Which brings me all the way back around to my original point:...
he problems I had were more with the poor plot pacing, confusing and contradictory world building, frankly bizarre character development, and Po's status as a Designated Hero.
Right... and what's weird about all of this is that we know Johnson is a skilled writer & director. On paper he should have nailed it. Which brings me all the way back around to my original point: he was so dead set on subverting the expectations of Star Wars fans that he fumbled the fundamentals. He looked at all the threads Abrams left him and said "fuck that," but ultimately he took it too far.
And to be fair, I get where he was coming from. TFA was almost offensively safe. But what was good about it was that it set up these four cool characters, and Johnson threw a lot of that away.
I see what you're saying. If he'd just gone with one of the subversions, like Rey being nobody, it probably would've worked out just fine. But when you tack on a bunch more stuff like Luke...
Which brings me all the way back around to my original point: he was so dead set on subverting the expectations of Star Wars fans that he fumbled the fundamentals. He looked at all the threads Abrams left him and said "fuck that," but ultimately he took it too far.
I see what you're saying. If he'd just gone with one of the subversions, like Rey being nobody, it probably would've worked out just fine. But when you tack on a bunch more stuff like Luke becoming a weird hermit, Snoke and Phasma getting offed before being developed enough for it to be meaningful, and whatever the Canto Blight sequence was, you get a movie that's more interested in twists than in being a cohesive piece of media.
I'm certainly excited about a live action Star Wars tv show in the vein of Game of Thrones, but after seeing the quality of the post-book portion of GoT, I'm cautious about content produced by Benioff and Weiss. Though, to be fair they were working within the framework of an established narrative; so having more creative freedom may result in the same quality as the initial GoT seasons.
There were a few pretty good episodes after season 4, but yeah the overall writing quality took a serious nosedive. I mean it would've been difficult for anyone to build on to post-ADWD ASOIAF, considering how much trouble even Martin seems to be having, but a lot of D&D's decisions have been dubious to say the least.
Last season felt very poor to me and you could feel the lack of guidance from GRRM in the writing. I honestly hope that WoW ditches much of what happened in the show...it felt predictable at best.
The whole, 'build a fanservice dream team to capture a wight to convince cersei to team up' bit legitimately felt like some player's half baked dungeons and dragons scheme. Complete with disposable mooks who only exist to get killed to provide tension.
Please don't get me started. It's so painful and my wife has only seen the shows so she think's I'm just a debby-downer, but it was really, really bad.
I lived on /r/asoiaf for years until they turned into a TV-show subreddit. I still browse /r/pureasoiaf from time-to-time but the wait for WoW has been so long... I'm just about over it. WoW better be good, that's all I got to say.
When did they do that? I'm an active subscriber and while they discuss the show, r/asoiaf hates the show. Post-S4 anyway.
They were very book-heavy for a long time as /r/gameofthrones handled the show. They weren't anti-show but did carry very little of it when I first joined and they had almost no memes and little shitposting - that was all saved for /r/gameofthrones.
As they grew that changed and by the time BrendanBFish became a mod - not that he was the cause (I like and am jealous of his write-ups) - it was getting pretty out-of-hand. The show was really taking off and the sub start directing people to blogs instead of having text posts. Again, none of this was a change to rules of the sub or anything like that, it's just what started happening. I suspect some degree of monetization was occurring - via blogs and podcasts - and there is nothing wrong with that per se (especially for the mods who put so much time in) but it rubbed me the wrong way.
Last time I checked, which was some time ago, it was just as much shit-posting and memes as /r/gameofthrones. Maybe it's changed now but I don't plan on going back.
I like /r/pureasoiaf because it's smaller and 100% book focused, but I suspect more than one person watches the show and then posts their "theory" on what happens next, but hey, that's how it goes.
I guess that's fair. There's still a bunch of neat fan theories and analyses that get posted to r/asoiaf, and it's still leagues better than r/gameofthrones, but as the subscriber count grows even as the content drought approaches its eighth year, the signal to noise ratio is bound to get worse.
Yeah, I want to be clear I’m not ragging on the mods. Good subs grow. It’s the natural course of things
I don't think volume and timing are the problem, here. Two of the three standalone Star Wars stories have been/will be about characters (Han Solo, Boba Fett) where mysterious origins are part of the characters identity. Why are they faffing about with a Boba Fett movie when they could be making an Obi-Wan movie?
Also, I liked The Last Jedi, but I am a Star Trek fan first and a Star Wars fan second, so the fact that The Last Jedi subverted some of Star Wars' longest running themes and made them more Trek like was a feature, not a bug, for me. But I'm also totally willing to admit that it was an odd fit for the Star Wars mythos. It seemed like Rian Johnson was subverting these expectations for the sake of subverting them, not because it pushed the story of Star Wars forward in a compelling way.
Now, JJ Abrams is left holding the bag: among the old characters, Luke is dead, Han is dead, Leia is alive but Carrie Fisher is not. Among the new characters, two movies in and we're still not sure how Rey fits into all of this, Finn and Poe pretty much got sidelined in TLJ after being front-and-center in TFA, and the most compelling and interesting character is Kylo Ren. Which is fine, I guess, and Adam Driver certainly has the skills to carry the franchise, but of the four new characters introduced in TFA, Kylo is the only one who's development feels consistent across both films.
I hadn't heard an analysis like that before. In what ways do you think TLJ was more Trek like? I'm in the same boat as you in preferring Trek, but I didn't find TLJ very enjoyable.
I haven't seen TLJ since theaters so my memory of why I felt this way is a little fuzzy, but here goes:
Star Wars is all about the Skywalkers. Even movies that aren't directly about the Skywalkers still manage to indirectly be about the Skywalkers. The Skywalkers are Special™. They are The Chosen®. They turn and the galaxy turns with them. The galaxy teems with trillions of sentient beings and yet somehow it seems that the only story worth telling is the story of this one family.
Star Trek is about humanity. Six series, six captains, not a drop of blood shared between them. Star Trek has only recently started slavishly retelling its past, and that was unsurprisingly under the direction of an avowed Star Wars megafan. Even more recently, this whole idea that Burnham is Spock's adoptive sister is very odd, and very un-Trek. It's the first time the showrunners of a Star Trek show have felt compelled to put such a strong tie-in to an existing character at the center of a new show.
Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Discovery, but I'm not nuts about it either. The point is this: Star Trek portrays an inherently more meritocratic version of humanity and sentient life in general. As a Federation citizen you can work hard and fulfill your life's calling. In Star Wars, if you're not a force-sensitive or a close friend of a force-sensitive, we don't give a shit about you. And the only way to be force-sensitive is to be born with it. You can't earn it. You can't work for it. Either you're born with it or you're not.
TLJ subverts this:
Individually I don't think either of these is enough to draw a conclusion but together I think Rian was trying to make a subtle point about force sensitivity being much more common than we think, and the Jedi Order was so blinded with dogma they were only interested in a certain level or kind of force sensitivity. The idea that there could be force sensitives all over the place and we just plain don't know about them because of ancient dogma is compelling to me, but it's a pretty sharp divergence from traditional Star Wars fare, which is that Star Wars is the story of the Skywalkers.
But, there's a time and a place to subvert long running themes and I just don't think this was it. On some level it might have been more satisfying to make Rey a Skywalker and wrap up the "core nine" on that note. If Rian wants to go subvert the core themes of Star Wars perhaps he should be doing it in a standalone trilogy without so much baggage. Because now JJ Abrams has been handed a complete mess. The contrast is just so striking: TFA was so safe and TLJ was so risky. Frankly I'm skeptical of Abrams' ability to bridge the gap he's been handed here. The back three might've been more satisfying had they all been safe, and the risks were saved for the standalone stories and future trilogies.
Oh I agree with you there, I actually really liked the fact that Rey didn't have some mystical bloodline and was just what she appeared to be. Bit of a departure from traditional Star Wars, and it might have been cool if she was Obi-wan's secret daughter or something, but no, I don't think that detracted from the movie at all. The problems I had were more with the poor plot pacing, confusing and contradictory world building, frankly bizarre character development, and Po's status as a Designated Hero.
Right... and what's weird about all of this is that we know Johnson is a skilled writer & director. On paper he should have nailed it. Which brings me all the way back around to my original point: he was so dead set on subverting the expectations of Star Wars fans that he fumbled the fundamentals. He looked at all the threads Abrams left him and said "fuck that," but ultimately he took it too far.
And to be fair, I get where he was coming from. TFA was almost offensively safe. But what was good about it was that it set up these four cool characters, and Johnson threw a lot of that away.
I see what you're saying. If he'd just gone with one of the subversions, like Rey being nobody, it probably would've worked out just fine. But when you tack on a bunch more stuff like Luke becoming a weird hermit, Snoke and Phasma getting offed before being developed enough for it to be meaningful, and whatever the Canto Blight sequence was, you get a movie that's more interested in twists than in being a cohesive piece of media.