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Old 05-05-2020, 11:28   #1712
Chris
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Re: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and other TV Snippets

I know we all want the Star Wars saga films to look like a perfectly consistent nine-chapter epic but the reality is that they are three separate trilogies produced decades apart, in the wrong order, and with no clear forward-looking concept, within each trilogy, of the story outside of itself and its predecessors. They were all made according to the storytelling techniques and the movie-making fashions of the time with the single exception of Episode IV which pretty much invented movie-making techniques then eschewed storytelling fashion in order to tell its story in a way that was considered extremely old-school at the time.

Nonetheless there are certain conventions within star wars saga storytelling and The Last Jedi plays around with them a bit. It makes for an unsettling, bleak tale, but I think it is the direction V was going in, and might have gone further towards had the conventions of the time allowed it. Giving the heroes a good kicking at every turn and leaving everything unresolved at the end was very brave for a family film in 1980, even if they were at that point assured of the chance to complete the story with another film.

There are plenty of deliberate nods towards V in The Last Jedi and in many ways its possible to view the two stories as flip sides of the same coin. Did Rian Johnson push it too far in one direction, forcing Disney to beg JJ Abrams to 'repair' the franchise with a grand finale? Maybe. But I still think TLJ is an excellent, thought-provoking piece of cinema, and a good example of the strengths of permitting different storytelling approaches within a shared universe.

Anyway, back to the topic.

I'm delighted to hear that Taika Waititi is getting a star wars feature film gig. He deserves it on the strength of Mandalorian part 8 alone. And also Thor Ragnarok, which is one of my favourite MCU films.
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