Posted on 12/23/2017 9:01:54 AM PST by EdnaMode
As always, the Christmas season is all-but drowning in new movies, a fact amplified even more by the now-standard pre-Christmas monster (Star Wars, The Hobbit, etc.) that now kicks the year-end blitz into high gear. There has been a lot of talk about whether merely being one of the biggest movies of all time is good enough for The Last Jedi, but we should note that at least part of the comparative downturn for the eighth Star Wars episode is due to a deluge of kid-friendly competition this time out.
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Paramount/Viacom Inc.’s Downsizing debuted on Friday in wide release, trying its best to be the adult movie of choice amid a crowd of kid-friendly crowdpleasers. But that’s a tough place to be when A) a lot of adults are seeing the kid stuff, B) the reviews aren’t exactly off-the-charts and C) there is a lot of high quality adult-skewing fare in some level of wide release. As such, with mixed reviews, brutal competition and most of the publicity concerning Matt Damon’s foot-in-mouth commentary about Hollywood’s legacy of sexual harassment, the Alexander Payne comedy earned just $2 million on Friday.
At a glance, that sets the movie up for a miserable $5 million Fri-Sun/$7m Fri-Mon debut weekend. Barring a possible Oscar nomination for Hong Chau, there is little reason to expect this $68m-budgeted fantasy, which for the record I liked just fine, to stay in theaters beyond the MLK holiday. This is another critical blow to both Paramount and Matt Damon and a poor end to another miserable year for the Viacom-owned studio. For their sake, I really hope that Mission: Impossible 6 is at least as good as Rogue Nation or Ghost Protocol…
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No it has tons of meaning. No matter what the budget and marketing and splits it means the movie is already turning a profit. It means anybody thinking the franchise is imploding is high. And it means the money factory is churning.
As with some reviewers I've watched, would you agree or disagree that the Star Wars universe is actually quite limited leaving little room for plot development.
With this movie being a trilogy, and with more characters being killed off, including a very underdeveloped main villian (Snoke), where can this thing go?
Isn't the rebellion almost smashed?
What will the next bad guy club be called: First Order, Empire, Clan of Angry White Guys?
Well, one thing is for sure, being Disney they’ll keep churning out these movies and cartoons based on racial stereotypes (eg Moana) until the end of time. Have a good Christmas!
It’s only limited if they stay obsessed with Clan Skywalker. There’s tons of room for plot development if they get back to the original blueprint. The Expanded Universe (ie all that stuff that was canon until Disney bought SW and made it all not canon while bringing some stuff in) was HUNDREDS of books, and comics, and video games. The vast majority of which never had a Skywalker, and even the stuff that did they were usually minor characters doing cameo appearances.
Who cares if Snoke was undeveloped. It’s not like we knew anything about Palpatine when Vader threw him down the pit. Really we probably know more about Snoke now than we did about Palpatine when Return ended. As for where can it go: there’s a new Emperor in town, and a rebellion, and a bunch of characters and a huge galaxy.
So the rebellion is almost smashed. There wasn’t much rebellion left after Empire either. The one thing this rebellion has though is seeds. I see it going kind of Hunger Games, there’s going to be a lot of rebelling that isn’t actually tied to the rebellion. The big question is do they kill Ren or reform him.
I don’t really worry about the names. I’m hoping they drop way back. Old Republic or Pre-Old Republic. There’s good stuff in that section of the story, and a chance to really cut away from Clan Skywalker. We really need a trilogy with no Skywalkers, they’re what limit the story.
I think there was a need to get some version of that last gasp of the Empire. Those books by Tim Zahn were great, the really started the novel section of SW and all that came from it, it’s a chance to let some characters take some bows. Also they needed to win back fan loyalty after the prequels. The stuff we’ve gotten from George always was that the next trilogy was really the clean up of the Empire, and there was definitely fan desire for that. But then after that, once we’ve finished the trilogy of trilogies that are the rise and total fall of the Empire it’s time to get FAR away from all that.
Of course Rey is a Mary Sue. And Luke is a Marty Stu. The foundation block of the franchise is MS characters.
Luke very much is a Marty Stu. Remember part of the original concept of the Mary/ Marty character is that they’re stand-ins for the author. So on the one hand you have Lucas - raised in the suburbs, has no intention of following in the family business, likes hot rods, wants a life of adventure. Then you have Luke S. (he’s even NAMED after the author) - raised on a nowhere planet, has no intention of following in the family business, likes land speeders, wants a life of adventure.
Luke is a self-inserted, wish fulfillment by George. He’s so much of a Marty Stu they should be called Luke Ses.
They’re pulling in parts. I’m glad Thrawn is in, sad Mara Jade isn’t (yet, please). I can totally see why they cut it off though. Canon can become an albatross, with tens of thousands of pages of books and other stuff SW had a LOT of canon. At that quantity canon largely only exists to let the fanboys cry foul and declare that character can’t be there, and that’s not what that button does. Just look what all that canon did to Star Trek. By chopping it down to six movie they got it manageable, gave themselves room to create, a chance to fix some mistakes George made, and get a relatively clean slate. As much I’d like to see them pick some of the novels and just make movies out of those, I get the desire to let the albatross sink.
Rey was inserted from an already established universe. Check up on the definition of a Mary Sue/Gary Stu (If the Rey character was male).
Luke “failed” a lot. He never really failed, not when it mattered. As for being called a shrimp by his love interest and a nuisance by the older kid he looks up to, well guess what, that was George’s life. The bespectacled nerd who wasn’t popular with his peers. In the end Luke WAS a perfect character. He beats the Empire single-handed TWICE, reconciles with his dad, and is the big hero of the hour that everybody looks up to.
Mary/Martys don’t have to be inserted into an existing universe. They just have to be stand-ins form he author. And again Luke S Lucas. You can’t be more of a stand-in that being NAMED AFTER THE AUTHOR.
Here’s a fine little short that shows just how much George and Luke are the same guy: https://youtu.be/mZ49Smi2SLQ
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