The Star Wars Thread

[Ronnie]

Visions releases tomorrow and it's apparently another hit for Disney Star Wars. Reviews are glowing.

Looking forward to your thoughts @Julius whenever you get round to watching them. I'll prob split the series over the next few days.

 

Edited September 21, 2021 by Ronnie

[Ronnie]

 

[bob]

I watched the first four Visions episodes. Not really feeling it yet. They're a bit boring so far, although the last one seemed a bit better. I don't know if 15 mins is just too short to tell a complete story, but so far they're all a bit meh.

[Ronnie]

Enjoyed Visions a lot, some episodes obviously more than others. I'm glad I spread it out over a few days because a lot of the episodes have very similar storylines. That would be my only negative really. I guess when you give an anime studio carte blanche to tell a Star Wars story, they're all going to involve Jedi and lightsaber duels. In order of preference...

The Ninth Jedi: Really loved this one, great concept. Would love to see more
TO-B1: Very surreal but I had a great time with it. Beautiful
The Duel: Another stunner. Amazing animation, action and character designs
The Elder: Enjoyed the surreal, creepy vibe of this

Tatooine Rhapsody: Enjoyed this more than I thought I would
The Twins: Very out there! Cool action. Really terrible and stiff dialogue
The Village Bride: People seem to really love this one. I was pretty meh on it. 

Akakiri: Weird and a bit all over the place.
Lop & Ocho: Terrible. Actively hated it.

Would love to see a season 2, but give it to some other animation studios around the world please. There's so much potential.

[Julius]

Glad to see you enjoyed it @Ronnie. I've kind of been dragging my heels on it as I l started sinking my teeth into The Sopranos a couple of weeks back, and it's proving veeeeeeery difficult to drag myself away from it; the only way I would right now is by treating Visions like a film and digesting it all in one go, but that doesn't seem like the best way to take it in from what you're saying. 

9 hours ago, Ronnie said:

Would love to see a season 2, but give it to some other animation studios around the world please. There's so much potential.

...okay, half-jokingly but also half-seriously, I hear what you're saying and I'd love to see some other studios take a crack at it. One of those things where I think Star Wars is a big enough pie for everyone to get a chance to take it on. 

But western animation has been in a bind for a long time, almost fully transitioning to 3D, with a lot of 2D projects these days (such as Cartoon Network shows) being outsourced to Asia (often South Korea). 

I think one of the key reasons Visions could be made in the was because anime studios already have the infrastructure and organisation in place to crank out relatively short episodes in a reasonable amount of time (and for most of these studios it's worth remembering it was likely a side project). Not only that, but with enough time and resource they can put out movie quality animation - many of these studios putting out episodic projects as well as films - whereas outside of big studios in the West (such as PIXAR, DreamWorks, WB Animation and Illumination), because of the focus on 3D films these days, I think it just wouldn't be as practical.

That's not to say that there aren't teams that I wouldn't love to see tackle Star Wars from the West though - Laika and Cartoon Saloon come to mind in particular - but those teams in particular are in a very niche corner of animation as it is, and it wouldn't surprise me if they simply didn't have the time and manpower to turn something around in a reasonable timeframe for a project like this. 

And I hear you on the Jedi and lightsaber duels, even without watching the series yet, because it was something I was concerned about based on the trailers. With 10 - 22 minutes to work with, I'm not surprised by what @bob said about it being too short a time to tell a story, and I think the decision to go a certain way by some of these studios is because they're basically auditioning pretty openly to be part of a potential second season (or even crazier, I wouldn't be surprised if Disney had at the back of their minds to ask for a miniseries from some of the studios with more positively received episodes) or just want to put something out to grab the eyes of Star Wars fans - I mean, this could be their only chance to work on Star Wars!

But, at the same time, it sounds like it might have worked out better if some treated this like a pilot episode rather than a short. I won't go any deeper than that until I've watched it, but from every short I've watched, going too large in scale can easily backfire, and so it's generally better to focus in on something intensely. An intense match of Dejarik? A night in the Mos Eisley cantina? An Imperial cadets' classroom? A high stakes game of Sabacc? There's so much they could do. 

Which other animation studios would you like to see tackle Visions or some other potential projects in the future? I've got a few in mind, but I'll wait until I've watched the series first 

[Ashley]

38 minutes ago, Julius said:

But western animation has been in a bind for a long time, almost fully transitioning to 3D, with a lot of 2D projects these days (such as Cartoon Network shows) being outsourced to Asia (often South Korea). 

*Cough* English-speaking Western animation studios

[Julius]

14 minutes ago, Ashley said:

*Cough* English-speaking Western animation studios

Yeah, probably a bit of a generalisation on my part, but I think the core of it rings true. I'll rephrase it to "popular and mainstream Western animation", but my main point is that in terms of global awareness and sheer output of Western animation, I'd say it's unfortunately an accurate depiction of how it is these days. 

Outside of Japanese animation and the use of foreign studios for cheap labour, foreign language animation itself is an incredibly niche corner of the industry. I'd love some examples of studios that fall outside of this, because I'm genuinely having a hard time locating more than just a few! 

[Ashley]

Yeah I was pulling your leg mostly but it did make me think I'd love to see what some French studios did with the franchise.

[Ronnie]

3 hours ago, Julius said:

the only way I would right now is by treating Visions like a film and digesting it all in one go, but that doesn't seem like the best way to take it in from what you're saying. 

Everyone is different so maybe you would respond to doing that well but it definitely wouldn't have been for me, especially as someone new to anime. The storylines are very similar. Like I said that's my one negative really, the smaller ideas you came up with off the top of your head would be great, but the 9 stories here are all Jedi related because you give a studio 1 story to tell, they're going to go Jedi. No spacebattles either so you can imagine how I felt about that. 

Each episode also has a 5-10 minute behind the scenes feature in the Extras section, so that might increase your play time. 

3 hours ago, Julius said:

Which other animation studios would you like to see tackle Visions or some other potential projects in the future?

I've honestly no idea. It was spoken from a position of complete ignorance. I know nothing about animation studios around the world apart from the big boys in the West obviously.

My point was more because I can't say I love the anime aesthetic a lot of the time (even though a lot of the episodes here are beautiful). My comment was mostly inspired by this tweet:

 

Edited September 29, 2021 by Ronnie

[Ashley]

Going to contradict myself a bit and say Cartoon Saloon (unless we class them as a Gaelic speaking studio but not sure if they do). They're the studio behind Secret of Kells, The Breadwinner, Song of the Sea. Theirs is the second one in the tweet Ronnie posted (top right).

[Ronnie]

The Book of Boba Fett release date!

 

[Cube]

Hopefully it's short so there isn't a long wait for Mandalorian. Still odd that one of the few characters worse than Jar Jar is getting his own show.

 

[Ronnie]

Nice The High Republic poster. 

Really looking forward to the third novel

[Julius]

The Christensenaissance continues. 

As originally reported by THR:

Quote

Hayden Christensen is staying in the fold of the Galactic Empire.

The actor will reprise his role of Anakin Skywalker, aka Darth Vader, in Ahsoka, the latest Star Wars live-action series from Lucasfilm and Disney+, multiple sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.

And then all but officially confirmed by Rosario Dawson:

Done dirty by the execution of the prequels which pretty much killed his career, I'm glad that Hayden is seeing the love from fans he deserves, such as when he was at SWC 2017 for the opening 40th Anniversary panel and got a standing ovation. Finally gets the chance to prove those who hated Anakin in the prequels that it wasn't entirely down to his performances, which I always thought was obvious. I really don't think it's a coincidence that some of Anakin's best scenes in the prequels are scenes where he's not speaking, such as the staring off into the Coruscant skyline after the Siege of the Jedi Temple in ROTS, or when he slaughters the Tusken Raiders in AOTC. 

Also gives another show where we can hope for a live-action flashback to The Clone Wars era stuff, and seeing the actors in live-action versions of their animated counterparts' costumes would be awesome. 

[Ronnie]

Force ghost Anakin conversing with Ahsoka?? Fans would lose their mind! It's a shame this leaked, would have been an incredible moment if it happened with no prior knowledge. 

I wasn't a fan of Anakin in the prequels at all but a big chunk of that was down to the terrible script. Glad he gets to come back and right a few wrongs.

[Julius]

1 hour ago, Ronnie said:

Force ghost Anakin conversing with Ahsoka??

Looks over at the sequel trilogy

l

Of all of the things they managed to mess up in those films, not seeing Anakin's force ghost at the end of IX and never seeing him actually talk to Ben or Luke is high on the list of things that deeply irk me. Kylo was on Mustafar at the start of IX, for crying out loud! Hurts even more when they had some interesting concept art for him potentially turning up in the trilogy, such as:

But yes, absolutely agree it would be great to see him talking to Ahsoka, though I'm not quite sure what could be so important for him to turn up here and not in the sequels if it is as a force ghost and not a flashback (and I doubt I'm the only one who would question it). For that reason I'm probably a bit more excited to see him in Kenobi at the moment, even if I am way more nervous about his inclusion there. 

[Ronnie]

57 minutes ago, Julius said:

Of all of the things they managed to mess up in those films, not seeing Anakin's force ghost at the end of IX and never seeing him actually talk to Ben or Luke is high on the list of things that deeply irk me.

I dunno, seems a bit fan-servicy to me. Anakin talking to Ben I could maybe appreciate, to show how conflicted he was or something like that but I don't think it was necessary. Anakin talking to Luke just wouldn't have fit at all imo. The Yoda + Luke scene was perfect though 

[Ronnie]

Book of Boba Fett trailer out!!

Looks great, and as usual, I'm so pleased they don't seem to be showing much at all.

Also a lovely looking poster shown off:

PS: I hope they give Fennec Shand a personality because even her one line in that trailer was painfully bland as usual.

Edited November 1, 2021 by Ronnie

[Cube]

At least she has more personality than the main character.

[Ronnie]

Yeah the total lack of any sort of personality for the two main characters is my only concern with this show. It could work with one lead being like that but not two. Hopefully there are plenty of side characters that bring a bit of levity to proceedings, kind of like Peli or Mayfeld in Mando.

The series looks good though, as expected and that poster is nice. Love the angle on the Slave I Boba Fett's ship.

The tone of the trailer was pretty hilarious too, with Fett basically being like "I want to respect people and negotiate fair business". Bit different to the usual epic trailers you see these days 

[Julius]

It's been a fairly quiet year for news by Star Wars standards, but the last week or so has seen a flurry of activity. 

Firstly, as originally reported by THR, Patty Jenkins' Rogue Squadron has been delayed out of 2023 due to scheduling conflicts. However, some on the leaks side of things have actually stated that production isn't going well behind the scenes. Which, with Lucasfilm's track record since the move to Disney, has happened so frequently that maybe we should have been expecting it to happen again? 

Elsewhere, One Take News got the scoop on Chloé Zhao being the director for Kevin Feige's Star Wars film. According to some, the film will be set before any other film in the Star Wars universe - and with KOTOR Remake on the horizon, I don't think it's too crazy that we start to see other Old Republic era media on the way. 

Something I've been fawning over the last few days is the re-release of the cinematic trailers for The Old Republic in 4K, coinciding with the game's 10 year anniversary. So far, only Deceived and Return have been re-release, but rest assured the others are on the way. 

Can't believe it's been over a decade -- I remember going crazy over Deceived back towards the end of primary school! Which makes me feel a little nauseous...still think these are the gold standard for cinematic trailers. I'd love to see these on the big screen, or better yet one day have a full film like this. It would cost a fortune and take a lot of time to render, but just look how good they still look! 

To round it out, Andor is apparently going to last for three seasons; LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga might be releasing on 5th April 2022 (and weirdly no, apparently they didn't mean 4th May?) according to the GeForce leaks; and Matt Smith has finally talked loosely about his cut role from The Rise of Skywalker. 

With Disney+ Day tomorrow on Friday, there's a special going up on the service relating to Boba Fett, and I would expect some more official news and potentially a teaser / trailer or two. Been a pretty crazy news week, hope we get a first look at Kenobi tomorrow on Friday! 

Edited November 10, 2021 by Julius

[Ronnie]

33 minutes ago, Julius said:

Patty Jenkins' Rogue Squadron has been delayed out of 2023 due to scheduling conflicts

Gutted. A starfighter squadron film is what I want most in Star Wars, so I was really sad to hear the news. Insider accounts claim that Lucasfilm won out though in wanting to delay it and Disney agreed, LF apparently want to get it right and not rush it to market.

Unless Feige's film is what the following is (which I don't think it is from reports) I'm surprised @Julius you didn't mention the project that's apparently been in development in secret for a while behind the scenes, that's apparently taking Rogue Squadron's place in 2023. At first the leaks pointed to an Old Republic film/trilogy in the works but apparently it's looking more like a High Republic one. Interesting!

Excited for Andor getting three seasons. Really looking forward to that show. 

38 minutes ago, Julius said:

hope we get a first look at Kenobi tomorrow! 

Friday! 

[Julius]

3 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

Friday! 

Haha oh wow, it's been a long week! 

7 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

Gutted. A starfighter squadron film is what I want most in Star Wars, so I was really sad to hear the news. Insider accounts claim that Lucasfilm won out though in wanting to delay it and Disney agreed, LF apparently want to get it right and not rush it to market

I wouldn't say it's what I want the most, but the fact that the only good dogfights we've really had in a film since Disney took the reins were way back in Rogue One, I'm definitely hungry for it. 

On the second point, I guess there's a first time for everything  Iger wanting to go out on the obscene high of Endgame, Toy Story 4 and Episode IX in the same year really clouded his judgment I feel, and obviously The Force Awakens, Rogue One, and Solo all had plenty of reason to be delayed. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that is the case, but if anything I feel like the only reason Disney would give into Lucasfilm on something like this is how poorly Episode IX turned out, critically and financially (when compared to other Star Wars films and even the other films in its trilogy). 

13 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

Unless Feige's film is what the following is (which I don't think it is from reports) I'm surprised @Julius you didn't mention the project that's apparently been in development in secret for a while behind the scenes, that's apparently taking Rogue Squadron's place in 2023. At first the leaks pointed to an Old Republic film/trilogy in the works but apparently it's looking more like a High Republic one. Interesting!

Yeah, I read that and I think I maybe just jumped the gun and assumed it was Feige's film, because I feel that's been in the works a bit longer than has been let on in the past, and also because if there's someone out there who can run a ship so tightly that their film can take the place of Rogue Squadron in 2023, it's absolutely going to be Feige. 

Honestly I feel like they risk confusing more casual fans with The Old Republic and High Republic split. The former is getting a game probably releasing by the middle of the decade, and potentially some films in the works, but the latter so far is largely published works. If they want to make The High Republic their connected universe thing, which I feel is the plan, then yeah, they really need to get to work on it I feel: animated series, live-action film, the works. 

[Ronnie]

30 minutes ago, Julius said:

I wouldn't say it's what I want the most, but the fact that the only good dogfights we've really had in a film since Disney took the reins were way back in Rogue One, I'm definitely hungry for it. 

I loved the whole dreadnought sequence at the start of TLJ, and obv the Resistance saving the day on Takodana in TFA, but yeah, definitely hungry for more spacebattle/Rogue One style stuff.

32 minutes ago, Julius said:

I feel like the only reason Disney would give into Lucasfilm on something like this is how poorly Episode IX turned out, critically and financially (when compared to other Star Wars films and even the other films in its trilogy). 

Iger realised about over-saturation with a film every year (and I think Marvel is belatedly seeing the same thing now) and he course corrected on that. Hopefully the same will be true about not rushing a film to market.

Be interesting to see how it shakes out with the Old/High Republic eras. Maybe we'll hear about it on Friday. I could definitely see confusion though if they don't handle the split right.

[Julius]

Disney+ Day news for Star Wars has started dropping...

...and then they switched over to Pixar, which will be going on for the next little while, followed Marvel. I hope that's not all there is for Star Wars, was really hoping for a Kenobi trailer, especially as this leaked yesterday. 

Edited November 12, 2021 by Julius