Writer/director Rian Johnson gives Star Wars fans just about everything they could want in The Last Jedi, assuming they didn’t require it to follow the story beats, narrative cleanliness, and relatively consistent tone of The Empire Strikes Back. That, of course, means that Johnson has given a large number of fans what they didn’t want.
How badly has George Lucas damaged the Star Wars franchise? At Box Office Mojo, The Clone Wars’ revenues are being compared to Final Fantasy and TMNT – and after two weekends, it’s losing to both.
Is it possible that the failure of the second Star Wars trilogy has nothing to do with plot, character, and storytelling and everything to do with physical space?
David Wong offers “The Top Ten Sci-Fi Films That Never Existed.” (And, yes, it’s geeky.) The title is cool because it’s accurate while having its own little sci-fi vibe. The content is cool because Wong brings to the task a keen understanding of what works (and how it works) in narrative and in movies.
The troubles with Revenge of the Sith are large: conception, narrative arc, tone, and pacing, all related to a failure by George Lucas to acknowledge what, exactly, the prequels represent, and to shape the material accordingly. And the raw materials of the movies suggest a startlingly detailed, mature, and nuanced vision, not just a popcorn space opera.
The (mostly rhetorical) question raised by George Lucas’ changes to the original Star Wars trilogy is at what point a movie is “finished.” Put another way: Is there a version of a movie that should be considered the definitive version? If so, who gets to decide?
