#which...honestly also explains why Rogue One is the best Disney-era Star Wars movie

[fantastic-nonsense]

honestly as much as I bitch about TLJ specifically, I lowkey think the sequel trilogy was doomed no matter who tried to make them because they were made in Hollywood's peak "absolutely nothing we ever make can be sincere!" era, which is antithetical to how George Lucas approached making Star Wars.

One of the most interesting things about Star Wars has always been how absolutely sincere it was about its themes and message and everything that happens in the movies. Even if it's ridiculous, even if it's objectively silly, nothing is ever really treated as such within the movies themselves. A naive farmboy genuinely does have the skill to take down a planet killing weapon. A slave boy from a backwater planet really does have a key part to play in the fall of the Jedi. A group of three foot high killer teddy bears are treated as serious opponents to Imperial forces. Jar-Jar Binks gets to be a Senator with an instrumental, if small, part to play in the story of the prequels. Everything has its place and every part of the story is treated with equal sincerity.

But nearly everything made in the 2010s always had to be funny or meta or self-aware or subversive or self-depreciating about its message and the genre it occupied. There was always a twist. There was always a "I'm more clever than my audience" or "I know this is dumb, but watch it anyway" vibe being brought to the table. Everything always had to take at least one cheap shot at people who wanted to take a piece of media seriously and sincerely treat it as a story whose creators had something to say.

And meanwhile George Lucas was always just like "I have a story, and I want to tell that story. I don't care if people like it or don't like it. My themes are my themes, my message is my message, and you can just die mad about it if you think it's too naive or sincere."

Any world that is fundamentally built on sincerity and genuine belief in a core set of messages cannot maintain integrity when people who do not wholeheartedly believe in the sincerity of that world's message are put in charge of it. The lack of belief will always shine through. The lack of understanding will pervade every inch of the new entry. The sheepish embarassment of "I know this is dumb guys, but watch it anyway because I'm going to do something ~different~!" will always be the audience's takeaway over anything else the creative team tries to say. Because instead of just making a good movie that both logically follows the other ones and actually adds further depth to the existing themes, they're embarassed to even be trying.

Even apart from the utter lack of planning and the mess of executive meddling that went into the sequels...is it any wonder we got the end result we did when no one involved in the creative process actually genuinely, wholeheartedly believed in George Lucas's message and the story they were telling?

[stoogeystuff]

The Unmaking of Star Wars

A few things happened recently that may seem disconnected, but they illustrate an important philosophical difference between Disney and Lucasfilm.

First item: the “Making of Rogue One” book is canceled, plus we receive confirmation that the “Making of The Force Awakens” is also kaput.

Second: Jonathan Rinzler’s blog detailing his time at Lucasfilm – warts and all – is taken down.  Rinzler offers no explanation, but says it won’t be coming back.

Third: Whoopi Goldberg uses her newly-minted status as a Disney Legend to encourage Disney to re-release Song of the South.

Let's start with that last item: it’s not gonna happen, Whoopi.  Other folks have asked for Song of the South to be released, with the same “historical authenticity” argument, and it’s never worked.  Disney is all about suspension of disbelief, not re-examining the unpleasant past.  Hell, their preferred way of dealing with these issues is to blissfully pretend that they never existed.  Disney is not an academic company; they create immersive escapist fantasies where endings are happy and magic is real.  It’s what they’re best at, it’s what the audience wants, and it’s possibly what the world needs right now.

Lucasfilm also creates immersive experiences, but as a company, they’ve always been a little anti-magic.  For several decades, Lucasfilm was on the forefront of showing how movies were made, with elaborate behind-the-scenes books and documentaries about special effects, the art of storytelling, and virtually every other facet of filmmaking.  Jonathan Rinzler was a big part of this – during his fourteen years at LFL, his “Making of” books for Star Wars and Indiana Jones set a new standard for this kind of work.  They’re massive, impeccably researched, and often brutally honest.  If you haven’t read them, they’re great.

Rinzler’s now-defunct blog continued in this tradition, giving a truly insider’s view of working with George Lucas, working at Skywalker Ranch, and the creation of the most expensive independent movies ever made, a.k.a. the Star Wars Prequels.  Rinzler isn’t saying why he removed his blog, but if his terse statements about it are any indication, he’s not happy about it.  (I hope I’m wrong and he’s planning to eventually publish all this in a memoir.)

So did he get hit with a C&D on Disney/Lucasfilm letterhead?  I tend to doubt it, but who knows?  The blog was, after all, titled “The Rise and Fall of Star Wars.”  That said, it was hardly a salacious tell-all.  Rinzler was generally very positive about Lucas and Lucasfilm, and he often stressed that this was just his POV, and not the objective all-seeing and all-knowing Truth with a capital T.  Granted, it seemed like he was eventually going to explain why he left Lucasfilm, but that seemed like it was a while’s away.

Here’s what we do know: Lucasfilm has apparently gotten out of the “Making of” business, just as fans are clamoring for more and more behind-the-scenes scoops.  Why did they scrap Michael Arndt’s take on Episode VII?  How extensive were the Rogue One reshoots?  What led to Phil Lord and Chris Miller getting canned from the Han Solo movie?  We may never find out, at least from an official source.

And honestly, that’s not necessarily a bad thing – this new brand of corporate secrecy (very much in the J.J. Abrams mode) has proven to be incredibly effective when it comes to marketing the movies.  Unlike during the Prequel era, Lucasfilm now gives away very few plot points in advance, which lets the movies stand on their own once they’re released.  And they certainly don’t dwell on the struggles it took to bring something to the screen.  All that matters is the experience of the finished product.  The Lucasfilm philosophy of pulling back the curtain has taken a back seat to the Disney mantra of creating magic.  I get why they’re doing this, and it’s easy to see the gains, but it’s also a bit of a shame that we’re losing part of what made Lucasfilm so unique.