Star Wars Movie and Streaming Series Discussion

Chooch555 said:
I like it when trailers don't tell you things.
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Agreed. This trailer showed nothing major. Just that it's in the Mandoverse and Grogu's cuteness is in it. Thats all we needed. We know this will connect to the larger picture in this Mandoverse era post ROTJ pre TFA, and that Ahsoka Season 2 in this era is also coming next year. So, I'm sure this helps further set everything up. Especially with Thrawn having returned to this Galaxy.

I'm excited. I love Grogu so much, so I was excited anyways, but with everything going on in the Ahsoka show as well, we are going to see some really cool stuff.
 
What the fuck, Disney.

I just pulled this out of an Associated Press story.

“I always was interested in doing another ‘Star Wars,’” says Driver, who starred as Kylo Ren in the trilogy kicked off by “The Force Awakens.” “I had been talking about doing another one since 2021. Kathleen (Kennedy) had reached out. I always said: With a great director and a great story, I’d be there in a second. I loved that character and loved playing him.”

Driver says he took a concept to Soderbergh for a film that would take place after 2019’s “The Rise of Skywalker.” That movie culminated in Ren’s redemption and apparent death. Driver had undertaken the trilogy with an arc in mind for Ren that inverted the journey of Darth Vader. As the trilogy evolved, it didn’t play out that way. Driver felt there was unfinished business for Kylo Ren, or as he was known before turning to the Dark Side, Ben Solo.

Soderbergh and Rebecca Blunt outlined a story that the group then pitched to Kennedy, Lucasfilm vice president Cary Beck and Lucasfilm chief creative officer Dave Filoni. They were interested, so the filmmakers then pulled in Scott Z. Burns to write a script. Driver calls the result “one of the coolest (expletive) scripts I had ever been a part of.”

“We presented the script to Lucasfilm. They loved the idea. They totally understood our angle and why we were doing it,” Driver says. “We took it to Bob Iger and Alan Bergman and they said no. They didn’t see how Ben Solo was alive. And that was that.”

“It was called ‘The Hunt for Ben Solo’ and it was really cool,” adds Driver. “But it is no more, so I can finally talk about it.”

Soderbergh, in a statement, said: “I really enjoyed making the movie in my head. I’m just sorry the fans won’t get to see it.”

Representatives for Disney and Lucasfilm declined comment.

It's been a period of transition for the feature-film operations of “Star Wars.” Kennedy, the longtime Lucasfilm president, is expected to step down by the end of the year. After a feature-film lull, numerous projects are in various stages of development or production including Jon Favreau's “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” Shawn Levy's “Starfighter” with Ryan Gosling, a film directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy featuring Daisy Ridley returning as Rey, a James Mangold-directed movie and a new saga helmed by Simon Kinberg.

For Driver, who starred in Soderbergh’s 2017 heist comedy “Logan Lucky,” the decision was mystifying. Who wouldn’t want to see a Soderbergh-directed “Star Wars” film?

“We wanted to be judicial about how to spend money and be economical with it, and do it for less than most but in the same spirit of what those movies are, which is handmade and character-driven,” Driver says. “‘Empire Strikes Back’ being, in my opinion, the standard of what those movies were. But he is, to me, one of my favorite directors of all time. He lives his code, lives his ethics, doesn’t compromise.”
 
If they came in with both a good and economical idea and it still got shot down is absurd. But more likely they wanted to keep Kylo Ren as the new Darth Vader for marketing purposes, so any return to Ben Solo might undermine that?

But Driver is right, if there was a coherent arc for his character it was lost along the way and incomplete.
 
Ru1977 said:
Ah well I guess. Iger has an allergy to good ideas.
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That's one interpretation. Another: it was not as good as the most-invested person in the project is selling it to be and they smelled flop. And Driver is pulling a Ryan Reynolds PR move to help revive the project.

I really have no desire to revisit any of the Prequel characters except Rey, to see Daisy given her due. Ben showed some promise, and hey - they just showed Asajj re-aliving so resurrection is canon now.

Maybe the premise is he comes back to life because all of the people he murdered, including his parents and uncle, are so sick of his whining they send him back to the living world. We can call it:

Somehow Ben Solo Returned: A Star Wars Apology
 
fac said:
If they came in with both a good and economical idea and it still got shot down is absurd. But more likely they wanted to keep Kylo Ren as the new Darth Vader for marketing purposes, so any return to Ben Solo might undermine that?
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But was it a return to Ben Solo? Seems like the opposite.
fac said:
But Driver is right, if there was a coherent arc for his character it was lost along the way and incomplete.
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Screenwriting madlibs was fun but let's get serious now guys.
Schizm said:
I really have no desire to revisit any of the Prequel characters except Rey,
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They've put her in the prequels now?!?
No but, all the sequel characters had a lot of potential, but that was completely squandered. If they do anything to make up for that, even without rebooting or what have you, I'd be open to it.
Chooch555 said:
Or Disney was ready to just move on from the Sequel Trilogy at that time.
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Which means they've kinda read the room but I assume Filoni is still gonna try to vindicate the ST via Mandalorian the way he did the PT via Clone Wars.
 
Ru1977 said:
all the sequel characters had a lot of potential
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This is so true.

To this day I still hold that Kylo, Rey, Finn, Poe, Phasma, BB8 and Hux, as presented in the Force Awakens trailer, are some of the best characters in the franchise.

A stormtrooper who broke his programming? A scavenger from a planet-wide battleground? A charismatic 30 year old supreme commander? A literal wannabe Vader?

The Fletcher who hadn't seen the movie yet had such high expectations for the story that would be told with these characters.
 
Fletch said:
This is so true.

To this day I still hold that Kylo, Rey, Finn, Poe, Phasma, BB8 and Hux, as presented in the Force Awakens trailer, are some of the best characters in the franchise.

A stormtrooper who broke his programming? A scavenger from a planet-wide battleground? A charismatic 30 year old supreme commander? A literal wannabe Vader?

The Fletcher who hadn't seen the movie yet had such high expectations for the story that would be told with these characters.
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I agree the groundwork laid with the main characters was solid. Rey, Finn, and Kylo all seemed to have a lot of potential. All of it was wasted by three movies with no plan and no cohesion.
 
Ru1977 said:
But was it a return to Ben Solo? Seems like the opposite.
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Who knows, but the proposed title led me to think that?

His best story to me was that the characters kept wanting him to turn good, like Vader did in the end, but he never does (see Han, then later Rey) - I feel the biggest problem with the entire ST was once they killed Snoke, that his ascension to the main big bad was undercut by the Emperor coming back in the next film. It seemed to be setting up that Rey would eventually need to put him down, despite having the same instincts as Luke of wanting him to be "repent", while Kylo was trying to pull Rey in as his apprentice. I would have liked to see that play out between two characters not Father/Son but with a potential romantic relationship as the connection.

Going back to the Emperor was really a bad call all around...
 
While I don't necessarily see how it would work, being dead and all (yeah, they've got the whole resurrection thing down now, but I doubt Ben had a huge secret lab that had been going for decades), but if it was played well enough and given a good reason (or, you know, any reason beyond "Somehow Ben Solo returned") then I'd give it a chance. Steven Soderbergh is an interesting choice of collaborator; that tells me there was at least some emotional depth to it.

Personally, TROS is the only sequel trilogy movie I outright despise. TFA and TLJ have enough goodwill and natural build in them to keep me invested, but TROS just undid everything in the messiest, hastiest way possible. What does it tell you that one of its biggest stars seems to have created an entire project just to ensure that that wasn't how his character went out? I'll always say it- as imperfect as Colin Trevorrow's script for Duel of the Fates was, it would've been miles better than what we got. My apologies to any who love TROS, but it just makes me so sad and angry to think of.
 
I'm not a big fan of the ST, but I can find things I enjoy about them... except in TROS. I can't think of one thing I like about it. Not a scene or anything. There are concepts I thought would have been neat but oh well.
 
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