More Star Wars films announced

[King Daniel]

Having just read this: http://www.geektyrant.com/news/2013/...ars-films.html
It would seem Disney are going to be spamming us with Star Wars movies.

[Mach5]

God, I hope Star Wars doesn't suffer the fate of pre-2009 Star Trek. There's a definite threat of franchise fatigue, if indeed they do release five or more movies in the span of just 6-7 years.

[cooleddie74]

It would have been TEN or more had they gone ahead with rereleasing the other films in 3-D. It's probably a very, very good thing in retrospect that they cancelled those plans so they can focus all their energies on the new stories.

We're going to be swamped enough as is.

[gblews]

I don't get the bellyaching about these announcements. If I were a die hard Star Wars fan (I'm more og a Trek guy, though I do love Star Wars, including 2/3 of the P.T.), I would be ecstatic. I would be even happier with them being made by Disney, who have done a fantastic job with the Marvel movies.

Some of us do love to complain, don't we.

[Chevron Guy]

I don't care how many Star Wars movies they make; I'll just ignore the ones that don't interest me. The young Han Solo flick might be okay, depending on who they cast. Not a big fan of Boba Fett.

[RoJoHen]

My thing is that I just don't really care about all these movies. New trilogy? I'm all for it! But I don't need to see all these standalone movies; I'm not that big of a fan.

[Mach5]

gblews wrote:

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If I were a die hard Star Wars fan, I would be ecstatic.

Oh I'm ecstatic.

[JoeZhang]

Candlelight wrote:

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Lucas said he would do six movies and then stop.

Disney's middle name is 'sequel'.

You have to be very careful with "Lucas said" because it changes so often, at various times he was going to make nine, then twelve, at other times he was going to do what Disney are doing and have various spin-offs directed by other people as money spinners so he could get on with making 'serious' films. The link "No there was another" was intended to be about a character we never saw who would headline one of the trilogies - that morphs into Leia later.

[Skywalker]

CorporalClegg wrote:

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I think killing Maul right away was the was the single biggest mistake (and there were plenty) the PT did.

The three movies were severely lacking some kind of cohesion. If they had a single primary villain out front, with Palps mostly in the background, I think the narrative would have been better for it.

More importantly however, had the film ended with Maul slaying Qui-Gon, facerolling Obi-Wan, and finishing with a bad-ass walk-off, I think the film would have been accepted (perceptually) more positively. The ending would have become the focus and, even with everything else being equal, the other "annoying" aspects of the film would have been overlooked to some degree.

I also think the "unknown" factor would only have helped here because instead of the interwebz lashing out against Jar-Jar for three years, it would be aflutter with discussion on who the fuck was this guy who just showed up out of nowhere and smacked the heroes around.

And the whole idea of butthurt Obi spending the ten year interim chasing down this "phantom" would have made for a much more interesting starting point for Clones.

And I really don't know why Lucas felt the need to get rid of him. Tyranus was pointless, and Grevious was just silly. It was like he was worried people wouldn't have accepted the ten year aging, but then gave us an ancient Lee anyway.

I wonder if he had noticed Maul's overwhelming popularity sooner, if he would have made some last minute changes.

I completely agree with you. Maul could have very easily taken the roles that both Tyranus and Grievous filled in AOTC and ROTS. I think it would have been cool if we discovered that the leader of the Separatist movement in AOTC turned out to be the same Sith that killed Qui-Gon and nearly killed Obi-Wan in TPM; certainly more impactful than the leader being some guy we'd never heard of before.

The only catch, for me, is what to do with the scene early in ROTS, when Anakin killed Tyranus at Palpatine's behest. Honestly, I felt that that scene was handled very awkwardly, and didn't show Anakin's vulnerability to the dark side as much as it did his vulnerability to suggestion from Palpatine. Maybe it could be excised completely, or something.

[RoJoHen]

Skywalker wrote:

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I completely agree with you. Maul could have very easily taken the roles that both Tyranus and Grievous filled in AOTC and ROTS. I think it would have been cool if we discovered that the leader of the Separatist movement in AOTC turned out to be the same Sith that killed Qui-Gon and nearly killed Obi-Wan in TPM; certainly more impactful than the leader being some guy we'd never heard of before.

The only catch, for me, is what to do with the scene early in ROTS, when Anakin killed Tyranus at Palpatine's behest. Honestly, I felt that that scene was handled very awkwardly, and didn't show Anakin's vulnerability to the dark side as much as it did his vulnerability to suggestion from Palpatine. Maybe it could be excised completely, or something.

Well, you could always find a way to combine characters. Or have Tyranus and Maul be there together. Get rid of the damn "only 2 Sith" rule and it makes things a lot easier.

[cooleddie74]

Of course, if you watch and are familiar with the lore of the Clone Wars series you know by now that Maul did indeed survive being cut in half and spent the next, oh, eleven years or thereabouts as a scarred and disturbed cybernetic abberation plotting revenge against Obi-Wan for his defeat at the Battle of Naboo.

The Maul arc actually came to an end (for now anyways) last Saturday morning with what - for an animated Star Wars story aimed at least in part at a young audience - was a dark and very intense story that brought Maul and Sidious face to face for the very first time since the events of Episode I.

That said, it would have been infinitely better for Maul to have returned in Episode II and even III if for no other reason than to expand his character's role and develop him into more than a one-dimensional attack dog with only a few lines. I adore Christopher Lee and like the idea of Count Dooku as a disillusioned and angry Jedi Master who leaves the order and secretly joins the Sith, but Dooku/Tyranus was never the ominous threat he should have been. Christopher Lee's portrayal was a little too sympathetic to create a truly badass, evil Sith Lord.

[RoJoHen]

^Well, heck, if Maul turned into a cyborg in the TV show, perhaps in the movies he could have taken the place of General Grievous.

[tighr]

CorporalClegg wrote:

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And the whole idea of butthurt Obi spending the ten year interim chasing down this "phantom" would have made for a much more interesting starting point for Clones.

I thought that Darth Sideous was supposed to be the titular Phantom Menace? Which really just leads to more reason why Episode I was a failure, because they introduce Maul and then kill him, so what was the point of introducing him in the first place and etc etc... Just really overall very confusing, especially for what was essentially supposed to be a kid's movie.

[RoJoHen]

Honestly, that's a problem I've had with that movie for a while. I could never figure out who "the phantom menace" was referring to!

[cooleddie74]

Sidious/Palpatine was "the phantom menace," that much was clear long ago. Palpatine takes advantage of a major crisis and maneuvers to get elected Supreme Chancellor....Maul (the Sith apprentice) is defeated and believed dead....and as Yoda and Mace discuss which Sith was actually the Master there's a partial camera zoom on the profile of Palpatine as he sternly watches Qui-Gon's funeral pyre.

Palpatine was behind the events in Episode I (of course it didn't hurt that the voice, lower face and chin of Darth Sidious were identical to Palpatine's ). Plus, if you collected Star Wars figures before 1999 you knew that the Emperor's name was Palpatine. So....there's that.