Force Awakens did misled us - into thinking there was a plan. I think the rush was partly due to the availability of Ford, Hamil, and Fisher (particularly Fisher). And it still wasn't fast enough, so it didn't matter.
To be honest, I think - the same thing that happened with the sequels, to a degree happened with the prequels. The show-runner didn't have his head in the game and was too distracted with well, non-story specific elements.
I agree on Abrams - he's a decent director, and good at origin stories or introductions, but he needed someone else for the through arc, a macro visionary. They didn't have that. Somebody like Peter Jackson or Kevin Feige, or even the Russos, who can see all the pieces and how they need to fit together to make a cohesive and entertaining story. Instead what we got was three separate films, that don't quite fit together.
Rise is an amusement park ride - it was created to be an amusement park ride, nothing more or less than just that. They admitted that up front. Abrams was charged with creating a 4D film that had just the right spurts of action to fit the demands of a ride. It's why we had all those action sequences, and certain sequences that don't quite fit. For the amusement park ride. (Although why people find it fun to watch films while being beaten up by their chairs - is beyond me. But to each their own.)
Jedi - was ambitious. But it was also done by someone who either never bothered to watch Force Awakens, or did and decided to ignore 80% of it, and do his own thing. Shame Abrams did kind of the same thing with Rise - he also ignored the films that came before, although not quite to the same extent.
Weirdly, Rogue One paid more attention to everything that came before and after it, than Jedi and Rise appeared to. Rogue One and Andor didn't have to - but they do, as does Mandalorian, and OBi Wan. They are doing a better job in the continuity department with the television series than the films (it's usually the opposite with these things...)
I think if you don't care about continuity that much, Jedi probably worked better for you? Or if theme is more important than a solid character arc? Although I agree the character arcs are in Jedi, but Jedi is so insanely busy with inside filmmaker jokes that it's hard to see them. It's a film a film geek would adore, but anyone who is obsessed with the story or characters - will want to scream at. That's Rian Johnson though - he is a filmmaker's filmmaker. He really appeals to film geeks or critics. Because there's lots of little details in his films and it's where his focus tends to be. I mean you either like Rian Johnson or you don't, I think. I can take him or leave him, myself. While Knives Out series was entertaining, I didn't fall in love with it.
That said? I agree that if Iger had been in less of a rush and more present, like say a Kevin Fiege or even a Peter Jackson, then the series would have been more cohesive. (Notice I didn't say Lucas - Lucas is not a good show-runner, all he cares about is Industrial Light and Magic and the FX. The story was never his main thing. It's kind of obvious in the prequels, also in the tweaks that Ford, Kasdan and Fisher made to his scripts in the original films. Fisher was kind of famous for stating that Lucas wasn't a good script writer, he's not. And he did not direct actor's well - Alec Guinness and Liam Neesom, almost killed him.)
That's Star Wars main problem as a franchise - it doesn't have a good show-runner with a vision. Star Trek has kind of the same problem. Both are all over the place in terms of quality and continuity. They are almost as bad as comic books and soap operas, and sigh, the Whedonverse.
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To be honest, I think - the same thing that happened with the sequels, to a degree happened with the prequels. The show-runner didn't have his head in the game and was too distracted with well, non-story specific elements.
I agree on Abrams - he's a decent director, and good at origin stories or introductions, but he needed someone else for the through arc, a macro visionary. They didn't have that. Somebody like Peter Jackson or Kevin Feige, or even the Russos, who can see all the pieces and how they need to fit together to make a cohesive and entertaining story. Instead what we got was three separate films, that don't quite fit together.
Rise is an amusement park ride - it was created to be an amusement park ride, nothing more or less than just that. They admitted that up front. Abrams was charged with creating a 4D film that had just the right spurts of action to fit the demands of a ride. It's why we had all those action sequences, and certain sequences that don't quite fit. For the amusement park ride. (Although why people find it fun to watch films while being beaten up by their chairs - is beyond me. But to each their own.)
Jedi - was ambitious. But it was also done by someone who either never bothered to watch Force Awakens, or did and decided to ignore 80% of it, and do his own thing. Shame Abrams did kind of the same thing with Rise - he also ignored the films that came before, although not quite to the same extent.
Weirdly, Rogue One paid more attention to everything that came before and after it, than Jedi and Rise appeared to. Rogue One and Andor didn't have to - but they do, as does Mandalorian, and OBi Wan. They are doing a better job in the continuity department with the television series than the films (it's usually the opposite with these things...)
I think if you don't care about continuity that much, Jedi probably worked better for you? Or if theme is more important than a solid character arc? Although I agree the character arcs are in Jedi, but Jedi is so insanely busy with inside filmmaker jokes that it's hard to see them. It's a film a film geek would adore, but anyone who is obsessed with the story or characters - will want to scream at. That's Rian Johnson though - he is a filmmaker's filmmaker. He really appeals to film geeks or critics. Because there's lots of little details in his films and it's where his focus tends to be.
I mean you either like Rian Johnson or you don't, I think. I can take him or leave him, myself. While Knives Out series was entertaining, I didn't fall in love with it.
That said? I agree that if Iger had been in less of a rush and more present, like say a Kevin Fiege or even a Peter Jackson, then the series would have been more cohesive. (Notice I didn't say Lucas - Lucas is not a good show-runner, all he cares about is Industrial Light and Magic and the FX. The story was never his main thing. It's kind of obvious in the prequels, also in the tweaks that Ford, Kasdan and Fisher made to his scripts in the original films. Fisher was kind of famous for stating that Lucas wasn't a good script writer, he's not. And he did not direct actor's well - Alec Guinness and Liam Neesom, almost killed him.)
That's Star Wars main problem as a franchise - it doesn't have a good show-runner with a vision. Star Trek has kind of the same problem. Both are all over the place in terms of quality and continuity. They are almost as bad as comic books and soap operas, and sigh, the Whedonverse.