Rogue Squadron (Patty Jenkins, Christmas 2023)
- Thread starter Ezekiel
- Start date
It's amazing really: the EU was chock full of Sun Crushers, Palpatine clones, plucky Skywalker kids upstaging 30 year veterans, and a particularly dumb moment of Luke Skywalker's dark side clone Luuke Skywalker (from the "considered to be great" Thrawn trilogy, no less)...and the Yuuzhan Vong is still considered a low point in writing
No matter how it shakes out, Disney did everybody a service with that "none of the EU is canon" decision.
No matter how it shakes out, Disney did everybody a service with that "none of the EU is canon" decision.
I'm not sure if that holds though. The galaxy is divided into a number of regions, some of which are more lawless than others. Further out you go, more lawless things get, which allows power blocs like the Hutts or Chiss Ascendency.
That said, it might be a good idea to have a power vacuum post-RoS. I've been pushing for it for awhile, including in this very thread.
Sturgeon's Law comes to mind, but that's a different kettle of fish.
Cards on the table, I've never been that fond of the Star Wars EU, and especially not anything post-Return. There's been some genuinely good stuff, but that aside, what has Disney produced that's better, as an aggregate? Because certainly not the films. They retconned the EU post-Return, only to give us the sequel trilogy.
And I get it, really. I understand why they'd retcon the post-Return stuff, even if I don't understand why they'd retcon absolutely everything (e.g. KOTOR), but from a question of quality, how has Disney done a better job? Instead of the EU, we get the sequel trilogy. Instead of The Old Republic, we get the High Republic. So far, based on everything I've read, I can't say that Disney's material is better than the old material.
The Vong struck me as someone borrowing a few bits of different WH40K factions and throwing them in a blender to create a “Take that, Jedi!” villain for the setting. And wholly to give unwarranted support to “The Empire did nothing wrong” crowd.
Indeed it was, Galen Erso made the exploitable fault.
And Palpatine didn’t to anything wrong. He did EVERYTHING wrong.
I never really read the comics they were in but to me the Vong always seemed like an attempt at creating a foreign and alien threat to the star wars galaxy and the force. Unfortunately the people in charge of the idea made them needlessly edgy and dumb. Dunno about the empire being right stuff.
I've been saying this since the announcement was made, but at this point the evidence is ubiquitous and damning, especially after multiple lawsuits: the only reason Disney declared the EU non-canon, was to steal from it and change just enough to avoid paying royalties.
I like Filoni, and think his work has been the only thing keeping Star Wars afloat during Kennedy's reign of terror, but the writing was on the wall when Filoni cited his biggest inspiration for Rebels was West End Games' Star Wars RPG. WEG had been defunct for a decade at the time, and the only reason Filoni was given broad creative freedom, was because there were no potential plaintiffs and no basis for a lawsuit for using that work.
Other than that, almost all the shit that's been lifted wholesale from the EU, has been from work that was always LucasFilm intellectual property. Case in point, Dark Troopers' appearance in Mandalorian season 2.
Ah, the Yuuzhan Vong. That's a name I've not heard in a long time.
Even as a huge EU fan, that whole era of Star Wars is lost to me. I haven't read a single book or comic about the Vong war. Conceptually, they work, they've even been teased for literally decades. But they just aren't Star Wars enough to me, they stick out like a sore thumb aesthetically and I now know they're a huge ripoff of the Tyrannids from WH40K. Filoni made their species canon again, and that's about as far as I'm okay with them taking it.
Even as a huge EU fan, that whole era of Star Wars is lost to me. I haven't read a single book or comic about the Vong war. Conceptually, they work, they've even been teased for literally decades. But they just aren't Star Wars enough to me, they stick out like a sore thumb aesthetically and I now know they're a huge ripoff of the Tyrannids from WH40K. Filoni made their species canon again, and that's about as far as I'm okay with them taking it.
I mean, they're already just not paying Alan Dean Foster royalties for his actual, unchanged, I don't think even canon Star Wars books. If big daddy Disney wants to avoid paying people, they just don't.
Why I think a lot of folks rejected the Vong, was because they were little more than a hodgepodge of tropes, some already in Star Wars, some not. And, that audiences were just...expected...to treat them as a serious antagonist faction, without much justification. Like, everything Star Wars fans found mildly irksome if not outright annoying, all piled into one.
Force resistance and immunity? Star Wars fans didn't exactly take too kindly to the ysalamiri, did they. Force resistance is nothing new to the setting, but on the scale the Vong are written to have, it strains the setting's verisimilitude.
An extra-galactic threat? Just...why? the universe already had the Unknown Regions, and that was always characterized as "there be dragons" territory.
A threat to the entire galaxy? how, precisely? how could an extragalactic invasion fleet pose a credible threat to the combined resources and might an entire galaxy? The logistics alone, over the course of a handful of years, break suspension of disbelief.
Jedi hunters? been there, done that. Multiple times over. Don't need any of the above to have that in the setting.
Amoral, socially Darwinistic, religious beings obsessed with self-improvement and strength through conflict? that's literally just the Sith.
All that biomechanical shit? that's literally just the Arkanians, just minus the former's obsession with cybernetics.
All that just made them a "Villain Sue" faction, and it's little wonder Star Wars fans didn't take kindly. It's like the old "bad DM" trope of building a party of antagonistic NPC's whose races, classes, and abilities perfectly counter the PC's, without any Achilles' heels or weaknesses for the PC's to exploit, setting lore be damned, just for the sake of giving the PC's a good shellacking.
How does that work though? The old EU books are still being published under the "Legends" label. But I don't think the status of a work in terms of canon has bearing legally.
Hawki: You know them?
Bob: Well of course I know them. They're me.
Hawki: 0_0
Star Wars: Rogue Squadron Reportedly Delayed Due to Patty Jenkins' "Creative Differences" With Lucasfilm
The latest report comes from former THR editor Matthew Belloni, who says Jenkins was frustrated by the micromanagement of select Lucasfilm executives, eventually opting to pursue other opportunities while Lucasfilm worked on fixing its internal problems.
"That's not unusual, of course, but it's a laughably recurring problem at Lucasfilm under president Kathleen Kennedy, say agents: Top filmmakers are dying to make a Star Wars movie—until they sign on and experience the micromanagement and plot-point-by-committee process," Belloni writes in the latest issue of his newsletter.
He adds, "It happened to the Game of Thrones guys, David Benioff and Dan Weiss, who were hired to create a new trilogy but bailed. It also happened to Rian Johnson, writer and director of 2017's The Last Jedi, whose own planned trilogy was shelved. Jenkins wasn't willing to dick around, and she has other projects, notably Wonder Woman 3 at Warner Bros., where she enjoys more creative freedom."
The one Star Wars project I was even slightly interested in. But if it was going to be another micromanaged committee movie...
The latest report comes from former THR editor Matthew Belloni, who says Jenkins was frustrated by the micromanagement of select Lucasfilm executives, eventually opting to pursue other opportunities while Lucasfilm worked on fixing its internal problems.
"That's not unusual, of course, but it's a laughably recurring problem at Lucasfilm under president Kathleen Kennedy, say agents: Top filmmakers are dying to make a Star Wars movie—until they sign on and experience the micromanagement and plot-point-by-committee process," Belloni writes in the latest issue of his newsletter.
He adds, "It happened to the Game of Thrones guys, David Benioff and Dan Weiss, who were hired to create a new trilogy but bailed. It also happened to Rian Johnson, writer and director of 2017's The Last Jedi, whose own planned trilogy was shelved. Jenkins wasn't willing to dick around, and she has other projects, notably Wonder Woman 3 at Warner Bros., where she enjoys more creative freedom."
The one Star Wars project I was even slightly interested in. But if it was going to be another micromanaged committee movie...
Its interesting because thats literally what happened with the MCU after Iron Man and up until Age Of Ultron. Essentially everything was constantly being run through this thing called the comics council and then through execs literally during filming and it was a big mess. After Wedon quit Bob Igor put Kevin Fiege in charge with explicit intent to have a single voice. Kevin has a team now that co-ordinates any timeline stuff and helps with easter eggs, but its much more of an artist collaborative effort with directors and writers.
There were rumors that after the box office issues with the new trilogy that Dave Filoni was tapped to run Star Wars in the same capacity, but it sounds like that still hasn't happened. All that said, good riddance to her.
Patty Jenkins is just the wrong pick for Star Wars. I only really saw her WW movies, and while I'm not impressed with either, that's hardly a complete view of her skills. But she's just not the right person to do Star Wars.
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Huh? I thought she only made three movies. I didn't watch Wonder Woman 1984 and thought Wonder Woman was average, but I'm not into capeshit save for a select few entities anyway. Monster was pretty good. What's ST?
This is the same Disney that shut down all of their game studios, because they weren't dominating the entire gaming industry and not making all the money in the fucking universe. Keep in mind, most of their games did financially well, but went home crying like bitches and destroyed everything around them in a spoiled fit. Fuck'em!
How does that work? Wonder Woman and Star Wars aren't as far removed as you might think (swords and magic for instance)
Is this really a surprise though? All of these franchises are continuity-heavy.
The irony is that Jenkins did WW1984, and not only is that a pretty tepid film IMO, but it really doesn't sync in well with the DCEU as a whole.
It doesn’t sync in with the two major tent poles of the DCEU: Batman v. Superman and Justice League (either version) but it looks to me like something that will sit happily next to its own first movie, Aquaman and Shazam. And to a lesser extent the three…let’s call them acquired tastes that are the Suicide Squad movies and Birds of Prey.
People keep complaining the MCU movies all look the same because they have a unified aesthetic but now we’re turning around and complaining that WW84 doesn’t look like Shazam? You can’t have it both ways.