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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday September 13 2017, @01:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the dark-side-or-a-new-hope dept.

It was announced last week that Colin Trevorrow will no longer direct Star Wars: Episode IX. In finding his replacement, Lucasfilm turned to a familiar face... J. J. Abrams:

J.J. Abrams, who launched a new era of Star Wars with The Force Awakens in 2015, is returning to complete the sequel trilogy as writer and director of Star Wars: Episode IX. Abrams will co-write the film with Chris Terrio. Star Wars: Episode IX will be produced by Kathleen Kennedy, Michelle Rejwan, Abrams, Bad Robot, and Lucasfilm.

The release date has been moved from May 24, 2019 to December 20, 2019.

Also at Entertainment Tonight. Here's another article about Trevorrow's firing.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday September 13 2017, @04:35PM (11 children)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday September 13 2017, @04:35PM (#567276)

    It's all so very boring now; I cannot imagine how people sit through the slew of "Superhero" movies

    The problem is that modern movies suck at a much greater rate than they used to. Someone will probably cite whatever that Law is called that basically says "95% of everything is crap", that we only remember the good stuff from the past, etc. That's true, but today, in movies, that number has gone up so it's now 99.99% of everything is crap, so there isn't anything good coming out. I cite as evidence the fact that so many Hollywood movies now are remakes or franchise installments. In short, they're just not making any original movies any more. So no, it isn't like the past; back in the 70s, there was lots of new stuff: Star Wars and Alien, back then, were brand-new and revolutionary. Now, what do we have? More Star Wars and Alien installments, except they're not that great and the franchises are getting really old and tired.

    My recommendation: don't bother with any modern movies unless the reviews really are so great that it's a guaranteed slam-dunk. Instead, watch old classics. If they're good, they won't get boring (unless you watch them too many times of course), and even if they're not *that* good, they're still fun to watch from a modern viewpoint.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by tangomargarine on Wednesday September 13 2017, @04:54PM (1 child)

    by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday September 13 2017, @04:54PM (#567283)

    Someone will probably cite whatever that Law is called that basically says "95% of everything is crap"

    Sturgeon's Law [wikipedia.org]

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday September 13 2017, @06:31PM

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday September 13 2017, @06:31PM (#567365)

      There's so many new Laws in the Internet Age it's hard to keep them all straight: Sturgeon's Law, Poe's Law, Betteridge's Law, etc.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @04:54PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @04:54PM (#567284)

    Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law [wikipedia.org]

    Agreed that the constant remakes are getting stupid. Everybody is drunk on 'member berries. I'd at least like to see a proper remake of Fritz Lang's Metropolis if Hollywood absolutely needs to remake shit. The themes may be even more relevant today than they were in 1927.

    Not all remakes are bad, however. Compare and contrast 1951's The Thing from Another World and John Carpenter's 1982 remake The Thing. Then compare and contrast 1956's Invasion of the Body Snatchers with 1978's Invasion of the Body Snatchers. With The Thing, the remake is superior. However, the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is not nearly as good as the original.

    A more modern example. From everything I've heard, the recently released remake of It is better than any previous attempts. (May not strictly be a remake depending on how you look at it.)

    The problem is that Hollywood doesn't exist to create art. Occasionally they bankroll somebody who creates art, purely by chance. Hollywood exists to make money.

    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday September 13 2017, @06:37PM

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday September 13 2017, @06:37PM (#567368)

      Not all remakes are bad, however. Compare and contrast 1951's The Thing from Another World and John Carpenter's 1982 remake The Thing. Then compare and contrast 1956's Invasion of the Body Snatchers with 1978's Invasion of the Body Snatchers. With The Thing, the remake is superior. However, the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is not nearly as good as the original.

      What are you talking about? The '78 version is better, especially with the pod-people having the creepy scream. But both those versions are really very good in their own right. The '90 version isn't so great.

      However, while you point out inadvertently that remakes are are not a very recent phenomenon, I contend that 1) they're FAR more common now than in decades past, and 2) when they were done in the past, the results were usually good, as seen by your examples. (I can't think of many great counter-examples, other than the '90 version of Body Snatchers, and even that wasn't horrible.)

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday September 13 2017, @06:39PM (3 children)

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday September 13 2017, @06:39PM (#567372)

      The problem is that Hollywood doesn't exist to create art. Occasionally they bankroll somebody who creates art, purely by chance. Hollywood exists to make money.

      No, this isn't the problem at all. Hollywood has *always* existed to make money; that's nothing new. What's changed is that Hollywood is now far more risk-averse. They'd rather bankroll a remake or franchise installment because it's virtually guaranteed to make a profit, even if it isn't a huge profit, than a totally original production that could either totally flop or be a gigantic hit like 1977's Star Wars.

      • (Score: 2) by tomtomtom on Wednesday September 13 2017, @09:50PM (2 children)

        by tomtomtom (340) on Wednesday September 13 2017, @09:50PM (#567492)

        No, this isn't the problem at all. Hollywood has *always* existed to make money; that's nothing new. What's changed is that Hollywood is now far more risk-averse. They'd rather bankroll a remake or franchise installment because it's virtually guaranteed to make a profit, even if it isn't a huge profit, than a totally original production that could either totally flop or be a gigantic hit like 1977's Star Wars.

        ... and I'd wager that this in turn is because the budget for an average film is now so much bigger and is funded in large part by external sources of capital.

        In the old days of the studio system, all the money came from the studio - in effect a few individuals who were deeply involved in the day-to-day running of the business/industry - so they *could* take risks. Many of them went bankrupt as a result. Nowadays, (mainstream) films are funded largely by bond investors and banks, who naturally would like to see a more certain return on their money, given that the "upside" to their investment is "you get your money back". Those investors exert significant influence on which films get made and which don't. I'm sure that the studios have a much less variable bottom line as a result (though perhaps on average lower), but they do this by giving the audiences a large number of mediocre films instead of (at least financially) a few which do incredibly well and many which make a loss.

        • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday September 13 2017, @11:31PM (1 child)

          by acid andy (1683) on Wednesday September 13 2017, @11:31PM (#567528) Homepage Journal

          Yes but the trouble in turn is that the investors only seem to care about immediate, short term profits over the long term health of a franchise. They're happy to trash it and cheapen the brand as long as that one movie makes a profit. The same kind of short term approach goes for most other industries as well and for politics.

          While we're talking about remakes (and reboots which are just as bad), I'm just waiting for them to remake E.T. They consider that movie sacred, but they'll still do it when they run out other things to redo.

          --
          If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
          • (Score: 2) by tomtomtom on Thursday September 14 2017, @09:14AM

            by tomtomtom (340) on Thursday September 14 2017, @09:14AM (#567705)

            Yes - many investments are in individual movies not a franchise/studio/whatever so why would they care about the franchise value? There's no benefit to them because even if they have the opportunity to invest in the next movie in a franchise/series, they get little to no benefit from having invested in the previous movie(s) - so they are simply individual independent investment decisions.

  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday September 13 2017, @09:00PM (2 children)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday September 13 2017, @09:00PM (#567461) Journal

    That's true, but today, in movies, that number has gone up so it's now 99.99% of everything is crap, so there isn't anything good coming out.

    Good movies are still made. Not all movies are made in Hollywood.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday September 13 2017, @09:21PM (1 child)

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday September 13 2017, @09:21PM (#567473)

      Good movies are still made. Not all movies are made in Hollywood.

      1) Depends on what genre you're interested in. If you like sci-fi movies (the kind set in space, with spaceships, not stupid ones about some guy with an earpiece), you're not going to find any of that from Bollywood or small indie studios. You might occasionally find something interesting out of France [wikipedia.org] if you don't insist on it being in space, and don't mind it being incredibly weird.

      2) As I mentioned, there's some pretty interesting movies coming out of other countries sometimes. "Let the Right One In" is a really excellent Finnish vampire movie, for instance, and the Swedish "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" movies were a big hit. But if you're an English-speaking American, you can probably only handle so much foreign-language cinema and having to read subtitles. It's fun and mind-enriching to see some of that, but it's not going to be something you'll want to do every single time you watch a movie, just like most Americans probably don't want to eat Indian food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week, though they might certainly enjoy it a lot a few times a month.

      3) I did say that 99.99% of everything is crap, not 100%. That still leaves room for a good one once in a while. (I might have overstated the number too, 99% is probably more accurate, given the number of movies produced by Hollywood in a year.)

      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday September 14 2017, @01:39AM

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday September 14 2017, @01:39AM (#567569) Journal

        The barrier to entry for quality CGI is falling and will fall even further. You'll see more of it from India [wikipedia.org] and other countries [wikipedia.org]. You'll see more of it on TV [wikipedia.org]. And eventually you'll see amateur filmmakers capable of making good looking feature-length projects using CGI. A single person could produce a computer-generated city/world. But with crowdfunding, amateurs can also get a hold of professional quality cameras and other equipment without relying on a single investor (not that you need pro cameras, an iPhone with a tripod might be sufficient).

        So even if 99% of content is still crap (99.99% is obviously complete hyperbole, find 2-3 good shows or movies a year and you've more than busted past 1 in 10,000), there are growing means to get stories that would never be told by Hollywood distributed to a large audience (online). And they can have special effects.

        (Before the inevitable reply: It's already understood that CGI alone doesn't make a film or show good. But it can expand the possibilities available for talented writers/directors/filmmakers to tell a compelling story.)

        --
        [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]