Lucasfilm & Disney Will Make So Many Star Wars Films You'll Never Live to See Them All
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[url=http://www.wired.com/2015/11/building-the-star-wars-universe/]Courtesy of Wired.[/url] Huge fucking article, so here's some headline-relevant highlights:
[quote]These new movies won’t just be sequels. That’s not the way the transnational entertainment business works anymore. Forget finite sequences; now it’s about infinite series.
[...]
Everywhere, studio suits are recruiting creatives who can weave characters and story lines into decades-spanning tapestries of prequels, side-quels, TV shows, games, toys, and so on. Brand awareness goes through the roof; audiences get a steady, soothing mainline drip of familiar characters.
Forget the business implications for a moment, though. The shared universe represents something rare in Hollywood: a new idea. It evolved from the narrative techniques not of auteur or blockbuster films but of comic books and TV, and porting that model over isn’t easy. It needs different kinds of writers and directors and a different way of looking at the structure of storytelling itself. Marvel prototyped the process; Lucasfilm is trying to industrialize it.
Nonfans might scoff, but the universe of Star Wars has more than an audience—it has followers.
[...]
Both Abrams and Rogue One director Gareth Edwards admit to having been dazzled by their first days on a Star Wars set, paralyzed by the coolness of being near Harrison Ford in a Han Solo costume or a platoon of stormtroopers. Eventually, both say, they settled into doing their jobs. But they also talk about sensing something bigger. Taking shelter against British weather beside a towering set I’ve been asked not to describe, Edwards—covered in black diesel soot and weighed down by gear—looks damn happy. “I feel I know this universe,” he says. “It feels like going back home, the place you live in your fantasy life.”
All these people are describing more than just a franchise. What they’re talking about is a paracosm, psychology-speak for an imaginary world. Lots of little kids have them—especially creative ones. So do writers. Think Narnia or Yoknapatawpha County. J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth is an obvious example, with its multiple languages, cultures, and thousands of years of history.
Like tales from Middle-earth, stories set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away seem to have leaked through a boundary between here and there—as if things are happening in the Star Wars universe even when no one is looking. A New Hope created the effect through allusion, just as Marvel and DC movies now do. But in New Hope, the allusions were to a canon that didn’t exist. It’s hard to remember, after decades of accumulated story cruft, that when we first heard of the Imperial Senate or the Clone Wars, we didn’t know what they were. “The first time you watch A New Hope, you’re aware of all the things happening offscreen,” says Kiri Hart, who runs the Lucasfilm Story Group. “It feels real.” Obscure yet familiar, the ideas seem more alive, like the ads for life off-world in Blade Runner or the Weyland-Yutani corporate logos in Alien. This is why fantasy novels and Game of Thrones have imaginary maps as frontispieces.
Television can be particularly paracosmic. By my count there are roughly 710 hours of in-canon Star Trek movies and television encompassing—thanks to time travel and mirror universes—more than 14 billion years of history. That’s a big paracosm, with a lot more room for stories. “I often think about the areas of the Star Trek universe that haven’t been taken advantage of,” Paramount’s Evans says. “Like, I’ll be ridiculous with you, but what would Star Trek: Zero Dark Thirty look like? Where is the SEAL Team Six of the Star Trek universe? That fascinates me.”
[...]
Lucas was the original keeper of the Star Wars flame, but now we all live in his paracosm. And come to think of it, maybe comics aren’t the best analogy; this is more like Dungeons & Dragons. (I mentioned: nerds.) Shared universes are distributed paracosms. The allusions frame out a world, and our imaginations build the rest—so we become invested in that alternate reality, not only as consumers but as participants.
It can all go south, of course. The whole endeavor could become crass, commodified. Eventually a distributed paracosm might just feel like branded content, like every movie and TV show and Lego set is just a commercial for other movies, TV shows, and Lego sets. “We all have to be careful of the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire trap,” Evans says. “When that show premiered and was once a week, all I wanted to do was tune in. The minute they changed it to five days a week, it seemed a lot less special. Let’s not flood the market.” This is the shared universes’ shared Ragnarök—dozens of movies with impenetrable interconnectivity floating amid a sea of unending remakes, reboots, rewarmings. For those of us with emotional investments in these characters and these worlds, that would be heartbreaking, like the commercial in which Fred Astaire dances with a vacuum cleaner.
[...]
...in the Star Wars universe, time moves. Han Solo, Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, and the legacy actors playing them can grow from callow youth to wise old age and then pass the torch. Literally. Like, count on a lingering scene of one of those olds offering a lightsaber to one of the new kids in Force Awakens. The universe can extend for 10,000 years forward and back from the moment Luke blows up the first Death Star. “In the case of Rogue One, we’re essentially making a period piece,” Hart says. “The benefit of making additional episodes that move forward on the timeline is that we are making new space for ourselves.”
Every shared universe can expand, but the Star Wars paracosm’s particular structure can do it along the x-axis, taking the heat off of any single narrative moment. Comics universes really only expand along the y– or z-axes, if you see what I mean—more characters or more locales. Robert Downey Jr. can play Iron Man for only so long. If you want to keep making Marvel movies, you’re going to need a new Iron Man or a new universe. That doesn’t make them bad. It just makes Star Wars different. “Star Wars is its own genre,” Kasdan says. “Like all genre, it can hold a million different kinds of artists and stories. They say ‘Buddha is what you do to it.’ And that’s Star Wars. It can be anything you want it to be.”
Kasdan should know; besides Lucas, perhaps no person has done more to define Star Wars. So it’s a little ironic that the line he says is his favorite of everything he’s written comes instead from Raiders. It’s the one Kennedy quoted: I’m making this up as I go. “For you and me, we’re making it up. Here’s how I’m going to behave, here’s what I’m willing to do to make a living, here’s what I’m not willing to do. How we make up our lives as we go,” Kasdan says. “That’s such a powerful idea. It’s exciting. The biggest adventure you can have is making up your own life.”[/quote]
Expect the Star Wars universe to reach the massive size it did under the old Legends Expanded Universe, only with a shitton more movies, Marvel writing the comics, EA doing the video games, and no, the Tartakovsky Clone Wars cartoon isn't a part of the new "canon".
But I hate Star Wars....
I hope this means more Jedi Knight,.
The star wars universe is pretty big and there is room for more movies.
I just hope not all of them focuses on the jedi/sith and the force.
[i]"We'll be friends forever, won't we Pooh"?[/i]
Pigglet asked,
[i][del]"Even longer"[/del]
"Until we're milked to death"[/i]
Pooh replied
[QUOTE=Radley;49137314]The star wars universe is pretty big and there is room for more movies.
I just hope not all of them focuses on the jedi/sith and the force.[/QUOTE]
I'd be okay with a non force focused series done on netflix akin to Daredevil. (If we're going down the licensed from Disney to Netflix route)
Star Wars movies are going to become the new comic book heroes movie with annual releases.
And this is what I don't like about Disney getting the IP.
[QUOTE=Pvt. Martin;49137676]And this is what I don't like about Disney getting the IP.[/QUOTE]
I prefer this over getting nothing
[editline].[/editline]
The best part of the deal was that Lucas no longer has a say in anything, so people can actually be creative with Star Wars now
I'll only be satiated when it becomes real. What a time to be alive
I can't wait for the day that the only movies playing in theaters every day of the year are capeshit and endless Star Wars spinoffs and sequels
I'm totally OK with this
this is the opposite to what Lucas did, which was... nothing at all. He didn't do anything. He made 3 bad movies and then forgot about it.
[editline]18th November 2015[/editline]
I just hope it doesn't fuck the quality up horribly
Marvel hasn't made a HORRIBLE movie yet. It's worst yet was Thor, and even that was pretty acceptable.
[QUOTE=J!NX;49137781]
Marvel [I][B]Studios [/B][/I]hasn't made a HORRIBLE movie yet.[/QUOTE]
I think you meant to say this, because there are plenty of horrible movies with the Marvel name on them.
[QUOTE=J!NX;49137781]I'm totally OK with this
this is the opposite to what Lucas did, which was... nothing at all. He didn't do anything. He made 3 bad movies and then forgot about it.
[editline]18th November 2015[/editline]
I just hope it doesn't fuck the quality up horribly
Marvel hasn't made a HORRIBLE movie yet. It's worst yet was Thor, and even that was pretty acceptable.[/QUOTE]
Howard the Duck
Hm, honestly i'd rather a handful of mainline series' and a ton of miniseries' between the major events of the movies rather than cluttering theaters with a dozen SW movies a year.
[QUOTE=stupid07er;49137799]I think you meant to say this, because there are plenty of horrible movies with the Marvel name on them.[/QUOTE]
we pretend those don't exist and call it a day
No man, this is awesome!
[QUOTE=J!NX;49137781]I'm totally OK with this
this is the opposite to what Lucas did, which was... nothing at all. He didn't do anything. He made 3 bad movies and then forgot about it.
[editline]18th November 2015[/editline]
I just hope it doesn't fuck the quality up horribly
Marvel hasn't made a HORRIBLE movie yet. It's worst yet was Thor, and even that was pretty acceptable.[/QUOTE]
I don't see why not having more star wars was such a bad thing. Even disregarding the quality of the prequels, there is such a thing as over saturation of a franchise. Besides that, is there something wrong with allowing the Star Wars franchise to rest and let other IPs step in and rise to prominence?
kotor movie please
It won't last.
And Disney is infecting the DNA from the start, by adopting current political and social climes instead of sticking to the campbellian basis that needed no climes; for evil was evil and good was good, and the other details of those paradigms were handled by [I]action, tone and performance[/I].
Given that SW is built directly upon the foundation of monomyth means it will last longer than Marvel, which I give about 8-12 more years at best before fatigue kicks in. But having a Star Wars product [I]every[/I] year for the next thirty years and expecting blockbuster status for all of it is fucking insane.
The reason disney princesses worked is because girls were majorly MAJORLY underrepresented, and disney happened to have a huge stable of characters they could bring to market without much need for working them over to fit any motif or theme.
Nerds have plenty of products to represent their interests, and while SW nerds are more faithful than most, all you have to do is look at Star Trek or Dune and see when quality drops and quantity increases, you're asking for an implosion.
If they were smart there would be ONE kids show, ONE adult series, and a tentpole movie/game every three years.
But they aren't going to do that, because they smell nerd money.
It's also interesting that the article left out that comic books aren't doing so well, and needed a literal reboot to get sales back in line with expectations, and just like DC's reboot, those sales are unlikely to last except for a few core titles.
[QUOTE=1nfiniteseed;49137939]I don't see why not having more star wars was such a bad thing. Even disregarding the quality of the prequels, there is such a thing as over saturation of a franchise. Besides that, is there something wrong with allowing the Star Wars franchise to rest and let other IPs step in and rise to prominence?[/QUOTE]
star wars has huge potential, and with George that potential dies pretty terribly
having more bad movies would be worse off, of course, but Disney has a pretty good track record so far
Hope they stick to the original trilogy theme.
Old Republic was boring.
It all comes down to: What's the motivation to do this? If it's for money, get outta here. Creating an industry out of an artform is the worst thing. They're doing it to video games, they've done it to popular music, and now discontent with one movie industry they're making a movie industry within a movie industry.
I don't even like star wars and it pisses me off. These fucking middle men run the show, why do we let them?
One thing that worries me about this is you can only do so much with Star Wars. They aren't exactly the most cerebral movies, and you can only make so many action-adventure sci-fi stories before the formula starts getting bland.
Now don't get me wrong, I think star wars is okay (for the most part). I just think they really need to ensure that they keep good writers on these projects. They need to eventually be okay with telling stories in completely unrelated times or areas than those seen in the existing star wars movies.
basically they better keep it interesting if they plan on making movies for as long as they plan for.
[QUOTE=J!NX;49137781]Marvel hasn't made a HORRIBLE movie yet. It's worst yet was Thor, and even that was pretty acceptable.[/QUOTE]
I thought Thor was just super generic, unlike Iron Man 2, which is all over the place + generic
[QUOTE=J!NX;49137781]I'm totally OK with this
this is the opposite to what Lucas did, which was... nothing at all. He didn't do anything. He made 3 bad movies and then forgot about it.
[editline]18th November 2015[/editline]
I just hope it doesn't fuck the quality up horribly
Marvel hasn't made a HORRIBLE movie yet. It's worst yet was Thor, and even that was pretty acceptable.[/QUOTE]
They may not be bad, but they are certainly mediocre at best to me and bar the original Iron Man and Guardians Of The Galaxy I would never watch any of them by choice.
Im already suffering from hollywood-burnout in regards to their presently established ip's.
Here's hoping for the Kotor movie, and a Jedi Knight series game return and a movie ( I WANT A JEDI TEMPLE SEQUEL! )
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