Disney+ Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022) (1 Viewer)

[Tommy R]

I’m sick to death of people my age lamenting the prequels and complaining endlessly about characters like Jar Jar. I don’t even particularly like Jar Jar, but nor do I think he’s the worst thing in movie history. These folks haven’t taken the high road in more than 20 years. I see no reason to let them off easy.

I’ve said for years that C-3PO is more annoying than Jar Jar.

 

[Osato]

I’ve said for years that C-3PO is more annoying than Jar Jar.

Wow! I hadn’t thought of it that way before!

jar jar doesn’t bother me

 

[Tommy R]

Wow! I hadn’t thought of it that way before!

jar jar doesn’t bother me

Just to elaborate, neither of them bother me much, but C-3PO definitely wins in the annoying department, just looking at it objectively. When I first saw TPM and Jar Jar showed up, I though “Okay, so this is the 3PO stand in.”

 

[SamT]

Y'know what? I hope they do bring him back, if only as a middle finger to the people who have relentlessly trashed the character over the years.

This is like the worst kind of storytelling. Is this how someone is supposed to create a compelling story? His/her goal is to give a middle finger to people? Better to make a youtube video instead and retire.

Please correct me if I'm wrong. Reminded me of a Rian Johnson quote where he said (Years back before Star Wars), he would be glad if his movies upset half the people. Really? That's your goal? Boggles the mind.

 

[joshEH]

This is like the worst kind of storytelling. Is this how someone is supposed to create a compelling story? His/her goal is to give a middle finger to people? Better to make a youtube video instead and retire.

Please correct me if I'm wrong. Reminded me of a Rian Johnson quote where he said (Years back before Star Wars), he would be glad if his movies upset half the people. Really? That's your goal? Boggles the mind.

Many artists have had this as their personal goal when creating their art, going back centuries -- take Stravinsky's motivations when composing the ballet "The Rite of Spring," for example:

https://www.classicfm.com/composers/stravinsky/news/rite-and-the-riot/

 

[TravisR]

This is like the worst kind of storytelling. Is this how someone is supposed to create a compelling story?

Given that Jar Jar was duped into helping Palpatine into power, I think there's dramatic potential with how he has dealt with that. Be it in this show or in a comic or a novel, that's a story that I'd like to see. That it'll piss some people off is just an enjoyable side effect to a hopefully interesting tale.

 

[Jason_V]

Many artists have had this as their personal goal when creating their art, going back centuries -- take Stravinsky's motivations when composing the ballet "The Rite of Spring," for example:

https://www.classicfm.com/composers/stravinsky/news/rite-and-the-riot/

It's kinda like what my mother always said growing up: we're having X and Y for dinner. If you don't like it or don't want to eat it, get the cereal out of the cabinet or don't eat tonight.

No piece of art (or anything else) will make all the people happy all the time. Let the artist do what they want to do and the chips will fall where they may.

 

[Sam Favate]

Take it with a big grain of salt, but TheForce.Net is sounding the alarms that the Obi-Wan series could be in jeopardy. TFN has been around forever; they're not prone to spreading wild rumors. For them to report this suggests there is something there.

http://www.theforce.net/v3-story/fr..._0J-SNfwV149v9qOi_OHaQpejFzaoWnEYPNw584SNxts8

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I don’t buy it. All the scripts are written, the director has been hired, both were locked when Ewan signed on.

 

[TravisR]

If this news were from a more reliable site (The Force.net is just reporting on the rumor and not confirming or denying it), I'd be more worried. That being said, I'm keeping my fingers crossed just to be safe.

 

[Sam Favate]

It does seem it is just a rumor and hopefully, we will get confirmation of that soon. Remember, recently there were rumors that Disney's Hawkeye series was indefinitely delayed and that turned out to be false. The rumor was started by a parody account.

EDIT: Just a rumor, and now debunked.


No, the ‘Star Wars’ Disney+ Series About Obi-Wan Kenobi Has Not Been Canceled

https://www.thewrap.com/no-the-star-wars-disney-series-about-obi-wan-kenobi-has-not-been-canceled/

 

[Sam Favate]

Obi-Wan Kenobi Series on Hold as Calls Go Out for New Scripts

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/h...ayden&utm_term=hollywoodreporter_breakingnews

The production is on hold and the show is being shortened to 4 episodes from 6.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

When will Disney address the neverending mismanagement at Lucasfilm?

 

[Osato]

Hope the show can still get made.

 

[Wayne_j]

With only 4 episodes they had better be 60 minutes, not the 30 minute episodes for the Mandalorean. If the total running time is around 2 hours they would have been better off making it a Disney+ movie.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

When will Disney address the neverending mismanagement at Lucasfilm?

Is it possible that Disney is a/the source of mismanagement?

From the very beginning, it was Disney that insisted on an immovable date for The Force Awakens, which meant that J.J. Abrams came on in triage mode just trying to get some kind of anything made in time, something that hopefully included a path for future films to explore. The reported consensus seems to be that everyone on the Lucasfilm side would have waited but that Alan Horn and Bob Iger were inflexible on that point.

Then you’ve got the internal requirement that each film should be huge, not just “top ten grossing movies of the year” huge, but “unprecedented” kind of huge each time - a ridiculous expectation. Why Disney understands that Ant-Man doesn’t do Avengers money but thinks all Star Wars should do equal business is beyond me.

Some of the director hirings/firings I can’t really fault Lucasfilm for:

-In the case of Josh Trank, he had directed one well received indie and had been signed by Fox to do a tentpole for them, which was being overseen by Simon Kinberg who was also involved with Lucasfilm at the time. I don’t like much of Kinberg’s work but he’s regarded as a professional, and he vouched for Trank. Lucasfilm could not have reasonably expected to foresee that Trank would allow his dogs to do over $100,000 worth of damage to the house Fox rented for him during Fantastic Four, not could they have foreseen that he would be partaking in the illegal use of hard drugs on the set. When that got out, they let him go before production had begun.

-Somewhat similarly, Gareth Edwards directed a well regarded indie monster movie and was helming Warner’s Godzilla tentpole when he was hired. At the time, it had been reported as being a smooth production. Lucasfilm couldn’t have known that Edwards wasn’t able to deliver and needed help finishing the film, so they had no way to anticipate that the same would happen to them - on a film that Disney had them rush into production without a finished script in order to make an arbitrary deadline.

-The behavior of Lord and Miller on the Solo set is almost unprecedented, to the point that the DGA was not prepared to defend them after their firing. It is extraordinarily unheard of to have directors-for-hire repeatedly refusing direct orders from their supervisors to film the script they were hired to direct. According to trade reporting which has not been seriously disputed, they kept coming in every day and filming whatever they felt like and improvising entirely new scenes that did not match what the second unit and effects units were doing. To be told once, “stick to the script” isn’t crazy. To refuse to follow that instruction so many times that they left the production with less than 40% of what was on the page ever having been shot is insane. How could anyone anticipate that?

-Colin Trevorrow came highly recommended from Steven Spielberg, who had worked closely with Kennedy for years. He directed a major blockbuster successfully. He wrote a script that Kennedy liked, and was only let go after the death of a leading actor made it impossible to film that script. Trevorrow was unable to find an alternate idea that Kennedy liked and was let go, but that’s a really hard one to blame anyone for given the circumstances.

I’m not saying Lucasfilm has been a perfect operation but I think they had an incredible run of bad luck. I wonder if Disney’s insistence on immovable release dates just messed with the culture there in a way it hasn’t been able to recover from yet. When George Lucas ran the ship, trilogy movies came out every three years, they only did one big project at a time, and it was they who decided when their projects were ready, not a network or big studio. With “Clone Wars,” Cartoon Network didn’t say “give us a show by this date or else.” Rather, they created and started working on the show and then sold it on their terms.

I’m not in the room. I have no idea what actually went on other than what’s been reported. But I think Disney came in with boundless enthusiasm to have more Star Wars in the marketplace without fully understanding how Star Wars is made.

 

[Sam Favate]

Ewan McGregor, on the press tour for Birds of Prey, told the AP the production is not delayed but that they are working on scripts. He says the show will still air when it was supposed to air (a time that we still don't know). He also says he is looking forward to playing the character again.

There is a video of McGregor's comments here:

Ewan McGregor on the Obi-Wan Series: ‘It’s Not Been Put On Hold.’
http://starwarsunity.net/2020/01/24...w0zMAlQt6RhXTpPj9ld-ZLEiq3GH2Vd3pokMoGq2yX6E8

 

[Jason_V]

All of your director/writer musings are spot on, Josh. This kind of thing happens in the industry...it just gets magnified 100X when it's Star Wars and Disney. If this was 1977 or 1983, would we even know about all these problems? Likely not.

Then you’ve got the internal requirement that each film should be huge, not just “top ten grossing movies of the year” huge, but “unprecedented” kind of huge each time - a ridiculous expectation. Why Disney understands that Ant-Man doesn’t do Avengers money but thinks all Star Wars should do equal business is beyond me.

I don't know...there's two competing things here: internal expectations and then internet expectations. Just because Force Awakens made a jillion dollars, the internet expectation is a jillion plus one for anything that comes after it. I get there is a number a movie has to reach to be profitable (or a number of viewers a show has to get for the advertisers), but when the expectation for Rise of Skywalker is a jillion plus a jillion, that's just not going to be possible.

Long gone are the days of solid triples or doubles in the movie business. A movie that doesn't cost a ton of money to make but has a nice return on it. These days, everyone want the grand slam. Sony couldn't get Charlies Angels on base; Universal crapped out both Doolittle and Cats. Why not make a $50 million movie and have it gross $200 million? That would be a nice profit and a good story. Sure, top grossing of all time is a nice story too...but you have to spend SO much more to get there.

 

[Philip Verdieck]

Is it possible that Disney is a/the source of mismanagement?

<... Lots of insanely detailed info ...>
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Josh I quoted you entirely over on an Ars Discussion

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020...r-ragnarok-director/?comments=1&post=38587567

regarding the original authors opinion on Lord and Miller.

 

[Sam Favate]

This is a good article about all the turmoil on Lucasfilm's projects, something we have been discussing here:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/24/...us-delay-star-wars-script-problems-production

BTW, the article says the Kenobi show is due in 2021 - presumably late 2021, since filming sounds like it is also set for next year.