Star Wars general purpose movie stuff

For those unfamiliar with Kazanjian, he produced The Empire Strikes Back, The Return of the Jedi, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Rookie, Demolition Man, and more.


In the late J.W. Rinzler’s Howard Kazanjian: A Producer’s Life, Kazanjian says, “Generally speaking, I think that the filmmakers on The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi didn’t understand the story.”


He elaborated, “They didn’t understand what a Jedi Knight was all about. That’s the simplest way to put it. Skywalker’s the story, and I think that’s what they failed at. I’m not talking about just Mark Hamill as Skywalker. It’s the overall psychological story of Skywalker, and of course, the Jedi Knights. The ardent fans know more about the storyline than the filmmakers.

Kazanjian is not alone in his opinion. Marcia Lucas, George Lucas’ ex-wife and one of the editors on A New Hope shared a similar opinion.


She said, “I like [Lucasfilm President] Kathleen [Kennedy]. I always liked her. She was full of beans. She was really smart and really bright. Really wonderful woman. And I liked her husband, Frank [Marshall]. I liked them a lot.”


However, she then noted, “Now that she’s running Lucasfilm and making movies, it seems to me that Kathy Kennedy and J.J. Abrams don’t have a clue about Star Wars. They don’t get it. And J.J. Abrams is writing these stories—when I saw that movie where they kill Han Solo, I was furious. I was furious when they killed Han Solo. Absolutely, positively, there was no rhyme or reason to it.”
Lucas continued, “I thought, ‘You don’t get the Jedi story. You don’t get the magic of Star Wars. You’re getting rid of Han Solo?’ And then at the end of this last one, The Last Jedi, they have Luke disintegrate. They killed Han Solo. They killed Luke Skywalker. And they don’t have Princess Leia anymore. And they’re spitting out movies every year. And they think it’s important to appeal to a woman’s audience, so now their main character is this female, who’s supposed to have Jedi powers, but we don’t know how she got Jedi powers, or who she is. It sucks. The storylines are terrible. Just terrible. Awful.”


Lucas added, “You can quote me—J.J. Abrams, Kathy Kennedy—talk to me.”

Chukzombi said:

However, she then noted, “Now that she’s running Lucasfilm and making movies, it seems to me that Kathy Kennedy and J.J. Abrams don’t have a clue about Star Wars. They don’t get it. And J.J. Abrams is writing these stories—when I saw that movie where they kill Han Solo, I was furious. I was furious when they killed Han Solo. Absolutely, positively, there was no rhyme or reason to it.”
Lucas continued, “I thought, ‘You don’t get the Jedi story. You don’t get the magic of Star Wars. You’re getting rid of Han Solo?’ And then at the end of this last one, The Last Jedi, they have Luke disintegrate. They killed Han Solo. They killed Luke Skywalker. And they don’t have Princess Leia anymore. And they’re spitting out movies every year. And they think it’s important to appeal to a woman’s audience, so now their main character is this female, who’s supposed to have Jedi powers, but we don’t know how she got Jedi powers, or who she is. It sucks. The storylines are terrible. Just terrible. Awful.”


Lucas added, “You can quote me—J.J. Abrams, Kathy Kennedy—talk to me.”

Click to expand...

Unfair criticism. The writing process has changed since her time.

Nobody knows what JJ and Chris Terrio's first draft looked like.

jayrebb said:

Unfair criticism. The writing process has changed since her time.

Nobody knows what JJ and Chris Terrio's first draft looked like.

Click to expand...

It's not unfair, the criticism is aimed at the finished product and that's the only thing that matters.

Chukzombi said:

It's not unfair, the criticism is aimed at the finished product and that's the only thing that matters.

Click to expand...

Which should be assigned to the head of studio/ lead producer. There was no reason to throw JJ's name out like he hand-crafted the movie.

If I recall properly in the deal, Disney still have to give royalty to Lucas for the merchandise from everything that Lucas created. I wondered for a while why they tried really hard to get ride of the old characters and add their cheap versions in the first new movie. My guess is Disney wanted to create a new cast and get ride of the old ASAP. Tey didn't wanted to give back money to Lucas.

Heian said:

If I recall properly in the deal, Disney still have to give royalty to Lucas for the merchandise from everything that Lucas created. I wondered for a while why they tried really hard to get ride of the old characters and add their cheap versions in the first new movie. My guess is Disney wanted to create a new cast and get ride of the old ASAP. Tey didn't wanted to give back money to Lucas.

Click to expand...

this rings a bell w/ me as well. forgot about that

fris said:

this rings a bell w/ me as well. forgot about that

Click to expand...

they were a success with Baby Yoda, a big success, but they killed that golden goose by shoving Baby Yoda in everything, he's probably the star of one of those new movies that will never see the light of day. Baby Yoda dolls are all over Ollies shelves, rotting because nobody wants them anymore.

You don't throw JJ in, who went through several rewrites against his will, with guys like Rian Johnson who had their first draft accepted.

Oblio said:

It's not JJ good Rian bad, its JJ bad and put Rian against the wall.

JJ fucked up in Episode 7 by having Luke be a total recluse thus allowing for Rian to shit all over my childhood with the worst movie EVER MADE Episode 8. If JJ had established Luke back in the mix with another "new hope" instead of "boohoo Luke" then Rian could never have done Luke so wrong. I am not even talking about Episode 9, wher eyou might actually have a point, this started with 7 and JJ fucked it up in regards to Luke. Oh and killing Han Solo was bad too.

Click to expand...

Although I thought Ford was mainly on board to have the character killed off? Granted, I don't think JJ did great with TFA, but he at least set up potential interesting plot threads to go forward. Nothing he did to Luke was bad in itself. He just wasn't an active part of first movie. Rian just decided to toss any possible good threads and write a shit movie with useless side stories, a space chase that took up 2/3 of the movie for no reason, and "twists" that had zero point whatsoever. It's no secret Hamil and him clashed over his depiction of Luke.

Oblio said:

By doing nothing with Luke he gave Rian the opportunity to do what he did with Luke. I don't hate TFA, in fact I gave it a solid revue opening night on this board all those years ago. JJ still deserves some blame for what ultimately happened to Luke.

Click to expand...

I can sort of understand that viewpoint, but really when trying to introduce new characters, I could completely get why they'd want Luke to mainly be a background character in the initial movie of the new trilogy. Given all the shit that was set up for Rian to do something with in Last Jedi that he just completely tossed anyways, I don't think JJ could have really done much with Luke to prevent the bullshit coming, short of sabotaging other characters by making Luke such a focus of TFA that Rian couldn't drastically change him.

Merrith said:

I can sort of understand that viewpoint, but really when trying to introduce new characters, I could completely get why they'd want Luke to mainly be a background character in the initial movie of the new trilogy. Given all the shit that was set up for Rian to do something with in Last Jedi that he just completely tossed anyways, I don't think JJ could have really done much with Luke to prevent the bullshit coming, short of sabotaging other characters by making Luke such a focus of TFA that Rian couldn't drastically change him.

Click to expand...

JJ cooked up that whole MarySue plotline, JJ cooked up the bad father/husband Han Solo plotline. he fucked the movie/trilogy from the start. i dont care about the first draft.

Chukzombi said:

JJ cooked up that whole MarySue plotline, JJ cooked up the bad father/husband Han Solo plotline. he fucked the movie/trilogy from the start. i dont care about the first draft.

Click to expand...

RLM and FoH didn't care either, as both simultaneously praised TFA on release.

RLM being considered a gold standard on takes around here.

jayrebb said:

RLM and FoH didn't care either, as both simultaneously praised TFA on release.

RLM being considered a gold standard on takes around here.

Click to expand...

go check the TFA thread, i wasnt on board with the Marysue stuff. never was.

Don't recall properly but I remembered that I liked the first movie. I remember hating the whole act in the second movie where they go to a casino planet. That felt forced akin when they added 5-10 minutes chase scenes in all the 3d movie in the mid 2000. Hated the forced relationship. Third movie felt like the "lost" show where they were probably lurking on the internet to try to find better twist than what people wrote on various forums.

Heian said:

Don't recall properly but I remembered that I liked the first movie. I remember hating the whole act in the second movie where they go to a casino planet. That felt forced akin when they added 5-10 minutes chase scenes in all the 3d movie in the mid 2000. Hated the forced relationship. Third movie felt like the "lost" show where they were probably lurking on the internet to try to find better twist than what people wrote on various forums.

Click to expand...

Oh you mean the scene where they free the captive zoo animals who will simply die in the wild but leave the enslaved child workers to their fate?

I'm sure I've said this in one of these stupid star wars threads at some point. I don't think 7 is particularly great or anything, but people would feel very differently about it if 8 and 9 weren't so egregiously shit.

Chukzombi said:

JJ cooked up that whole MarySue plotline, JJ cooked up the bad father/husband Han Solo plotline. he fucked the movie/trilogy from the start. i dont care about the first draft.

Click to expand...

I don't care about what bad stuff ended up getting made worse later, TFA actually had some potential plot points that they could have built something semi interesting out of. Whole thing went to shit once Last Jedi just left nothing redeemable in the slightest.