The Resistance Broadcast – Did JJ Abrams Write Star Wars: Episode IX From Scratch? Plus our NEW The Last Jedi GIVEAWAY CONTEST!
On this episode of The Resistance Broadcast, we discuss….
Poll Results; Giveaway Announcement; Rebels Trailer And Images; Dave Filoni Discusses The Final Half Of Season 4; The Last Jedi Home Release + Deleted Scenes; JJ Abrams Announces The Episode IX Script Is Done; Scoundrel’s Rundown; Tweeting With The Resistance; Final Thoughts.
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Leaders of the Resistance: John Hoey, James Baney, Patric Covey
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GIVEAWAY CONTEST!
We are giving away a Star Wars: The Last Jedi bundle package to ONE lucky listener, which includes:
- The Last Jedi on Blu-ray
- The Last Jedi novelization by Jason Fry
- TWO Resistance Broadcast T-shirts
To enter all you need to do is follow us on Twitter @RBatSWNN and RETWEET this tweet below! Once the tweet is activated by hitting 750 RETWEETS, we will announce the winner in two weeks! GOOD LUCK, and May the Force be with you!
***GIVEAWAY***
Star Wars: The Last Jedi bundle contest!Two easy steps to enter:
1) FOLLOW us @RBatSWNN
2) RETWEET thisOne lucky listener wins:
– The Last Jedi on Blu-ray
– The Last Jedi Novelization by Jason Fry
– 2 Resistance Broadcast shirts
#StarWars #podcast pic.twitter.com/zOocvH5IUW— The Resistance Broadcast | Star Wars News Net (@RBatSWNN) February 26, 2018
News Net
Rebels trailer and images for the two episodes airing 2/26: here
Filoni discusses final half of the series: here
The Last Jedi Home Video Release + Deleted Scenes: here and here
JJ Abrams confirms finished Episode IX script: here
Scoundrel’s Rundown
Check out John and Chad’s recent Hasbro Toy Fair NYC coverage: here and here
You can watch Clayton Sandell’s recent documentary “The Force of Sound” here
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The Resistance is coming at you TWICE a week now. So keep your ears open for our next transmission which will come your way Thursday, March 1 with another brand new episode!
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— The Resistance Broadcast (@RBatSWNN) February 20, 2018
Special thanks to Matt Pasterick for our theme song!
Founder of SWNN, MNN and The Cantina forums.
Born on April 24, 1980.
regarding the blu ray discussion. I want the best picture and sound quality.
Yesterday I watched a blu ray again after months of digital only and I was blown away by the quality. Especially the blacks and overall colors and sharpness.
That’s why I will always buy my favorite movies as a hard copy, as long as digital mediums haven’t caught up.
RIGHT ON! Me too. Thanks a lot for listening to the show 🙂
From scratch…? Hrmm. Well at this point the die has already been cast. I’m just not that concerned with how this script turns out. More curious as to where the heck they’ll take it. Leave it open for sequels? End it definitively?
lol at the cabin scene… very romantic 😛
To reverse a bit… that was a good point about Ezra. I had forgotten how many people actually knew he was a Jedi.
I think this trilogy will have a clean, definitive end. How that will be pulled off, I have no idea. But it sounds as though Lucasfilm has no solid plans to launch right into E10 after this trilogy concludes.
I’m still getting used to hearing the phrase “Episode 7″…but to think that we’re in a place to even consider an “Episode 10” is still surreal.
Never underestimate the power of the Disney side….to milk as much money out of it’s properties as humanly possible and leave a dead, empty husk on the side of the road when all life-blood has been extracted. Ok, that was a bit dramatic and over-the-top…..but not by much. I hate to be such a pessimist, but I truly believe that Disney’s top priority is profit, not good story telling and satisfying the fans. I’m not saying they DON’T care about those things, I just think that money comes first before all else. And who can really fault them for that? That’s the ugly truth of capitalism (which I believe in, even though it can be truly ugly at times).
Of course disneys motivation is profit. There’s nothing pessimistic about it. And why not? No profit = no movies.
You think someone will put up millions and not expect a return on investment? That’s not an ugly truth about capitalism it’s a great truth about capitalism.
No capitalism = no movies. (Or do you think communist countries regularly produce great cinema? Sure there are Russian gems but you get my point )
You think 20th century fox didn’t greenlight Star Wars purely for profit? It was a calculated financial risk. But fox didn’t make the film, Lucas and his team did. Same with Disney and the new films.
they hire the artists they feel will do the best job with least risk. And those artists care.
Your derision of capitalism is nonsensical.
With the exception of tiny independent films, self-financed with no expectation of making money back, Capitalism is the reason cinema exists.
I didn’t think I was putting forth a “derision” of capitalism. I even said that I believe in capitalism. But art and capitalism often tend to be at odds with each other. Usually the objective of art is to inspire, move, and influence mankind. The objective of capitalism is to make a profit. In the film industry, the two of them have been able to work together for mutual benefit for about a century now – servicing our needs as human beings for escapism and entertainment. Nothing wrong with that. You state that “capitalism is the reason cinema exists.” I think you’re partially right. Capitalism has helped the film industry grow and become the juggernaut that it is today, but I believe film would exist in spite of capitalism just because of the basic human need for artistic expression and our ingrained desire for storytelling.
Art and capitalism are often at odds. Agreed. But The film industry, nor any industry, would not exist without capitalism. Literally Every single element of the process is made by a company for profit. Every piece of plastic and metal, every lens, every curtain, every seat cover and popcorn kernel. without capitalism a camera would never have made, let alone sold.
So, while some artists have more creative control over their art than others, make no mistake, unless you are painting in a cave with charcoal, it’s all a business for someone.
But, yes, disneys motivations for profit at the expense of artistic quality is debatable, I’d say in the boardroom of course all they want is to raise stock value, but in the writing room and film studio the people doing the work actually want to make something great. By all accounts JJ and Rians teams had more or less autonomous creative control. Whether or not one likes their art is subjective.
Yeah I predict it’s going to be a clean end. They seem to be moving toward another trilogy that will not be directly connected. Whether that is one by the GOT producers or Johnson, or two trilogies at once, is up in the air.
TLJ turned off many of the old-school fans, and it doesn’t look like they held many of the millennial generation and younger either. The main characters in the ST are Rey, Kylo, Finn and Poe (and maybe Rose). But does anyone (old-school fans, children today and millennials) truly care to see more adventures featuring these characters, especially after how shabbily these next-gen characters were treated in TLJ? I bet most children and millennials as well don’t really care about these characters. Disney could start up a new trilogy with new characters, and they could do just as well, and maybe become more popular. I think the ship has sailed and sunk for the ST characters after TLJ.
I don’t know. I’m an old school fan; having grown up during the OT years. I really enjoyed TLJ and would gladly welcome some further adventures of the new characters. I like them, especially Rey. That said, I get the feeling that the ST was developed from the get-go as something unto itself and once it’s completed, Lucasfilm’s storytelling efforts will focus elsewhere. I don’t think this is the result of any sort of backlash against the ST (Lucasfilm is decidedly not taking marching orders from portions of fandom) but rather that Lucasfilm wished to continue the story following ROTJ, but not indefinitely. And that makes a lot of sense to me.
thank you for listening!!
You’re right, the die has been cast. Disney has pot committed themselves with JJ Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy and there’s no backing out now.
They’ll reset everything back to blank slate I would assume. Except for some minor character developements that is. At the end of IX Kylo is super mega supreme leader instead of just supreme leader. Rey is even stronger in the force and has defeated Kylo for the third time. Poe is still a hothead. Finn is occupied doing some irrelevant sidequest. Maz Canata briefly shows up in a holograph on somebody’s iPhone. There’s a 2 minute long shot of Phasma being useless and dead. The First Order is even moar evil and powerful than they were when they blew up a whole star system. And the resistence has so few members that they comfortably fit into a cloudcar. What happens in X is up to the new director. She/he can do whatever they want moving forward, it’s not like Disney have an idea where the story should go anyways.
I’m more concerned about the end result. If Abrams and Terio took a draft of Trevorrow’s to start with, that’s fine with me so long as they take elements from Trevorrow’s script that are cool.
Rhetorical question — Why limit the 3rd generation’s tale to being a trilogy? If it takes four or five parts to tell Rey’s and Kylo’s stories, why not? The OT just happened to play out that way & the prequels had to be because of mathematics, but why limit themselves with an open playing field? (And then bring Rey and co. back a few years later for a new set of films.)
We got 6 years out of the original trilogy characters not including the comics.
Obviously more in the intervening years!
Yet it feels like just a few days (storywise) have gone by as we head into the concluding episode..
Time doesn’t matter.
If ever anyone asks you what time it is, tell ’em it’s “just after”.
Time is relative. So if TFA and TLJ happen to take place near a large gravitational field, time for the people involved would have moved slower than what we perceived…
Oh and the thing about moving at light speed also slows down time for the people traveling.
In other words, TFA and TLJ really happened in a longer time span, at least from where we are standing…
… I’m sorry, did I confuse you? XD
With all that faster-than-light travel, our heroes should be giants too.
Time is a flat circle
Because The Hero’s Journey is 3 acts:
Act 1: Seperation
Act 2: The Supreme Orderal
Act 3: Unification
That is the methodolgy and mythology to tell the story.
Yes, but what about Act 4: So Long and Thanks for All the Force?
There is no initiation in the Supreme Ordeal. The call to adventure and meeting the mentor is the initiation. That is part of Act 1: Separation.
Initiation into the Special World– after they’ve crossed the threshold
I’m not aware of an initiation after crossing the first threshold. In the case of The Force Awakens, both Rey and Kylo Ren crossed the first threshold during their lightsaber fight near the end of the movie. The start of which, was the lightsaber flying to Rey, rather than Ren.
After that, they both journeyed into their own descent into the Abyss (Act 2: The Last Jedi), as you rightly pointed out.
Luke in the Dagobah Cave and witnessing Yoda’s X-Wing trick — that’s the Initiation of Act II.
I really need to get round to buying a copy of Joesph Campbell’s “A Hero of a Thousand Faces”, but from what I know, The Last Jedi is very much constructed from the Hero’s Journey structure:
Act 2: Supreme Ordeal, or in the case of The Last Jedi, The Supreme Leader Snoke Ordeal
Approach to the inmost cave = Rey’s search for answers in the cave on Ahch-to
Herios Gamos = Rey and Ren force Skype calls
Ordeal = Rey’s disappointment with Luke on Ahch-to
Elixir/Theft = The Jedi Texts that Rey took
Crossing the second Threshold = Rey leaving Ahch-to in The Millennium Falcon disappointed that she did not find what she was looking for.
Then the “Ascent” were the events in Snoke’s throne room
Cumulating in the “Death of Dreams” of Rey failing to bring Ren back to the light.
Crossing the third threshold = Rey moving the rocks on Craite with the force.
There was an interview with Rian Johnson recently, and the interviewer asked him about the books on his shelf (he posted a picture of this on Twitter not long before the interview), and Rian told the interviewer to read “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, as that was the most influential book to read.
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Word has it that Disney uses Christoper Vogler’s take on the Hero’s Journey as a template for all its films. As far as its main differences from Joseph Campbell, it looks like he removed the “female temptress” aspects of the journey.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/26cbe77ada6b374dce8aaf1d31d2040e3c6e91047925b2ce5e2b1a715ca59eea.png
I think one could elongate a hero’s journey into 4-20 acts if they wanted too. Even Lord of the Rings was originally published as six books, later repackaged as three.
A recent trend with YA films attempting quadrologies (mainly “The Hunger Games” and all the other YA copycats) is that they all essentially stretch out Act III into two parts, which I think is a mistake (unless you’re Harry Potter, and you’ve stretched the middle act into multiple films as well).
My original point is basically that Rey’s Star Wars films could certainly stretch out Act II into multiple movies if the overall story warrants it — no need to limit themselves to the old “trilogy tradition”.
The Skywalker saga has always been a trilogy. It has always followed the Hero’s Journey. I see no reason to change this. The Game of Thrones creative team have been brought onboard to craft a series of SW films. It seems we now have the best of both worlds.
It’s just an out-of-the-box sugesstion.
Sheesh.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/86d78e886caa09954f9e3131c3c9da4c656d04ffca29940285f012b0d1841fa2.png
Orderal? Is that something you wipe on your leather car seats to make them shiny and smell good?
I’m just giving you crap, I know you meant “ordeal.”
The Supreme Orderal — that’s when the storyteller throws the acts up in air and shuffles ’em all into a different order.
Crap accepted, and so rightfully deserved.
The ST has turned conventional storytelling upside down. We see the hero triumph from the very beginning (Starkiller Base) and witness the villain grow rather than being allpowerful from the beginning of the series (Kylo could have started out as Supremeleader and not much would change). The mentor figures both lightside and darkside died halfway through the trilogy rather than shortly before the finale and our hero as well as our villain are depicted to be at least equally powerful throughout the trilogy (I would even argue that Rey is more powrful than Kylo).
In the ST trilogy there is no real buildup as far as story itself is concerned. There is no golden thread like the destruction of the Ring in LotR or the defeat of Voldemort in teh Harry Potter franchise. What little story developement takes place in the ST is focused almost exclusively on the characters rather than a quest that needs to be fullfilled. To fit the individual vision of a character in the eyes of the different directors multiple plot threads are inconsistent resulting in bizzare situations like these: an unecessary forceback that could have been cut completele from TFA including useless Knights of Ren, Snoke is now a plot device rather than a character, Maz’ statement ” a different story for a different time” is still unanswered for, Obi Wan Kenobi’s voice speaking to Rey is a still a mystery, Phasma/Canto Bight add absolutely nothing to the plot,…
The sequel “trilogy” is a series of movies clearly made up on the fly so the Disney era saga movies no longer require the form of a trilogy anymore.
It’s weird, all Disney screenplays (not just Disney Star Wars) are supposedly now mandated to be written using Christopher Vogler’s interpretation of the Hero’s Journey as a structural template. I haven’t researched him yet, but I think Kenny was referencing his model as opposed to my interpretation, which is based on Joseph Campbell’s original model.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/26cbe77ada6b374dce8aaf1d31d2040e3c6e91047925b2ce5e2b1a715ca59eea.png
As for Rian Johnson, my own speculation is that he was unnecessarily reacting to the mild backlash thrown at J.J. for sorta following the same model used for the OT.
Your before-last paragraph really sums up my grip with ST. You nailed it and in this regard they broke Star Wars.
They ‘d argue it’s changing for the best.
I couldn’t have put it better myself, friend. The biggest issue with the Sequel trilogy is as you said a lack of buildup and consistency. The Force Awakens, much as I disliked it; I argue it is one of those movies that given its blank slate; you could have done a lot of cool things with.
LucasFilm needed to take a step back and really plan this trilogy out. Because, let me be fair; The Original trilogy, great as it was; wasn’t perfect. The gaps do so especially between ESB and ROTJ.
But it had a through line: Luke and Vader and the ideas of adulthood and faith, namely with restoring the Jedi.
A cool idea that the entire Sequel Trilogy could have been built upon was rebirth. What if the Jedi were established and in turn the central theme throughout the trilogy is that do the Jedi, Sith and Force wielders do more harm than good during the galaxy?
That could have been amazing to see for you could have had Luke’s more traditional view, mixed with say Rey, Finn or even Poe’s view. And perhaps, by the end the Order is abolished and something new comes in its place.
Anything. But it was clear that LF wanted nostalgia to sell. And that’s what they got. Oh well. Good thing Marvel Studios is a thing. For that to me feels more like what Star Wars should be doing in the sense of long form storytelling.
I do admire that they tried doing something different with TLJ. But tists and surprises caused by the lack of an overall vision doesn’t feel really satisfying. It’s like one of these TV series that were envisioned to only have 5 season but the show was too popular so they added another season and another one without really knowing where to take the story- To me TLJ feels like season 5 of Breaking Bad. It’s well done and clearly they put a lot of thought into it. But once Gustavo Fring was out of the picture the story lacked much of the golden thread of the earlier seasons and it took a while until season 5 managed to somehwat catch up with previous seasons. I really hope that IX reveals some kind of masterplan behind what Snoke, Kylo, Luke, Rey, or the Knights of Ren were doing. If only one of them had a plan or clear goal that took time unfold over the course of the trilogy it would make the trilogy feel more consistent.
but you know. this kind of things needs a plan. Something they never heard about at LFL/Disney. Not wanting to be ironic or salty, the irony is just blatant out there.
I agree. TLJ basically rebooted the sequel trilogy by nullifying or undoing any interesting stuff that was set up in TFA. I feel that the 3rd film is just going to be a mad rush to sort of tie everything up suddenly. I’d say 4 or 5 feels about right at this stage.
That picture of J.J. – classic. Love the “pseudo-smart intellectual nerd-chic lost in thought” pose. So pretentious. So dis-ingenious. I’ve never seen Spielberg (or even Lucas) take a picture like that.
I’m being harsh. I know. I actually think that J.J. is “ok” as a filmmaker. Not the greatest, but there’s a lot worse out there. I guess I’m just being salty today…
It’s not a posed photo. It’s him at some panel discussion or interview. Get over it.
Ok. I’m over it. Jeesh Crixxxx, do you have a sense of humor?
I predict JJ will have the First Order harness the power of a sun as a weapon, thus making it a literal DEATH STAR.
He made a film that 93% of the critics liked and made 2 billon dollars at the box office. Gee, what a horrible failure.
RT scores mean jack. They cannot distinguish between a masterpiece or just a “safe”, generally agreeable film, hence why the formulaic “eh it was alright I guess” Marvel franchise does so spectacularly over on RottenTomatoes. Box office is an even worse metric to judge a film by, unless you think crud like Transformers are masterpieces?
They don’t mean jack. If you don’t like how RT calculates the percentage, fine. Metacritic also shows strong a critical response for TFA. The Academy nominated it for 5 Oscars.
Box office certainly is an indicator of how an audience likes a movie. You don’t make 2 billion dollars without people seeing a movie multiple times. No one would pay to see a movie more than once if they hated it the first time.
Completly agree. The posture of the guy shows he’s so entitled of himself. Complete a-hole.