Star Wars: The Franchise

[technicolor]

Yeah, I always felt a bit sorry for Christensen. His performances were baaad in the prequels, but the material was wretched and Lucas doesn't know what to do with actors. Portman was bad as well, but she had given good performances elsewhere, so was able to have a career afterwards. Christensen's career was dead in the water when it's perfectly possible that a stronger director who knows how to lead inexperienced actors might have gotten something better out of him.

If you compare it to the sequels: From what I've seen of Daisy Ridley outside of Star Wars so far, she also didn't have so much experience coming in and needs good direction to deliver performances. But for all their weaknesses, the sequels had okay to good scripts and competent directors. TROS was the most inconsistent and IMO you see that her performance is shaky in parts because the material is all over the place.

[Mutagen]

I think the non-verbal aspects of Hayden's performance were pretty good, especially in Revenge of the Sith. The problem is that as soon as he opened his mouth he was SUCH a mismatch for playing the character who would eventually become Darth Vader. Not that I expected him to perfectly replicate James Earl Jones of course, but it was just SO far off. Granted he was also working with some of the worst dialogue in the franchise, so he was starting from a disadvantage to begin with. 

I find Benedict Cumberbatch a little overexposed, but in this case, I sort of wish there was a way to travel back in time to 1999 and hire him for the role. Vocally I feel like he could've nailed it (and I'd love to hear him try to salvage the "I hate sand" speech).

As for Daisy Ridley, I think in some ways she is at more of a disadvantage than Hayden was. For all Lucas' flaws, at least Anakin Skywalker had a pretty clearly defined origin and journey. It was badly executed, but the basic idea of the character makes sense (born a slave, suffers the traumatic loss of his family, falls to the dark side in a misguided attempt to protect his new family, is eventually redeemed by his son). It's very obvious that they had NO idea what was going on with Rey and let each screenwriter/director wing it in regards to who she was or where she came from. So given that Daisy was basically working with a random grab bag of ideas every movie, I think she did as well as could humanly be expected. 

[ElleCee]

I definitely agree that George is a horrible director. The only thing I liked about the prequels was Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn and Darth Maul. Natalie was not great. The only other film I've see Hayden act in was Jumper. I loved the concept and Jamie Bell was fantastic. Hayden shitty. I guess for me he's just one of those actors that I hate. I'll move it over to that thread. lol

[kostgard]

If Deborah Chow is still in a leading position on the Obi-Wan series, I will be cautiously optimistic. She directed two of the best episodes of The Mandalorian. I like her directing style. I would like to see if she can get a good performance out of Hayden. Or if at the very least she can find a way to work around his limitations.

I feel like the live-action TV series are working towards redeeming Star Wars after the recent movies faltered. The most recent films failed because there clearly was not a “Bible” or any overall vision to guide the trilogy and they became so terrified of making people mad that they ended up making no one happy by taking zero risks (Seriously - between the lack of organization and the racism from the fans that Disney didn’t immediately shoot down, it’s no wonder that John Boyega and Oscar Isaac basically torched their bridge to Star Wars and walked off with middle fingers up).

Jon Favreau seems to have a strong vision for The Mandalorian. If they do the same for Obi-Wan, everything might be okay. Even Hayden Christensen.

[Ladybug]

Mar 11, 2005 14:51:31 GMT -4 kostgard said:

Jon Favreau seems to have a strong vision for The Mandalorian.

Dave Filoni is also a big creative force behind the Mandalorian, Clone Wars, and Star Wars Rebels along with Favreau. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of the Star Wars universe and I think he gets the underlying themes really well. My son is a huge fan of Star Wars: The Clone Wars and gets super excited whenever he hears about any Star Wars project that Filoni is involved with.

[lea1977]

We just watched Solo A Star Wars Story this weekend. I don’t understand why the hate. It was fun to watch with the kids.

[famvir]

Jul 22, 2020 3:27:16 GMT -4 lea1977 said:

We just watched Solo A Star Wars Story this weekend. I don’t understand why the hate. It was fun to watch with the kids.

Probably because Alden Ehrenreich isn't Harrison Ford. I saw Ehrenreich in "Hail, Cesar," where he plays a famous singing cowboy that studio executives tried to shoehorn into an English drawing-room movie.

He had a scene where he makes a tiny lasso out of a stand of spaghetti and does rope tricks at a fancy restaurant which it (turns out that was his own trick).

Anyway, I found him charming in Hail, Cesar, and found him charming in Solo.

But I can see being pissed off the whole movie because they didn't time travel Harrison Ford up 45 years to play Han Solo.

[Mutagen]

I liked Solo much more than I expected to. I don't think the behind-the-scenes drama showed too overtly, although I did think the movie felt like the first draft of an even better version of the same story, if that makes sense.  

Woody Harrelson was the MVP if you ask me, he really captured the "ruthless Western in space" vibe the movie seemed to be going for. 

[Deleted]

I think Solo is a decent movie that needed a bit more work. If they weren’t in such a rush to release it on Memorial Day weekend and pushed it back to December, when all the other recent Star Wars movies were released, I think they might’ve been able to improve it. I do admit to having fond feelings for it mainly because it’s the last movie I saw in a theater with my dad before he died.

[kostgard]

Speaking of Solo - Donald Glover just signed on to his own Disney+ "Lando" series.