It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
Thanks Ray. I mean…I don’t know what else to say; What an absolute disaster. And also completely crazy and unpleasant.
How bad were things that they couldn’t finish the last three weeks? How much of this are they going to scrap? Will they take their names off the project? Clearly this will not be a Lord and Miller film. Will the new director shoot enough new footage to have their name on it? Rewrite? Reimagining? Change characters? Could we seriously see Han Solo: A Star Wars Story by Alan Smithee?!? And they are going to do a new movie by May 2018. Do they just ignore it at D23 and/or Comic Con in 4 weeks? I assume the cast is going to be *ahem* busy filming?
Oh the press tour for this one will be fun!! I have an ulcer on behalf of the Lucasfilm PR department.
Wonder how comprehensive the crew NDAs are over there.
“Kathy, her team and Larry Kasdan have been doing it their way for a very long time. They know how the cheese is made and that’s how they want it made,” said the source. “It became a very polarizing set.”
Much like with the shit known as Rogue One. It’s Bob Iger, once again meddling, because he knows what Star Wars is, and if it isn’t his way. It’s dumb shit city. This is an embarrassment, and Kevin Feige must be counting down the days, til the SWU is his to run.
Seems like from a PR standpoint, everybody would have sucked it up for three weeks, assuming everything is in the can for a first directors’ cut. Going public suggests extensive work is needed, and maybe they had to change horses while the actors are all still available or something.
I also wonder if this is a case of a giant scale movie inexplicably going into production without a full script. Seems like sometimes they just pre-viz all the money sequences and then do most of the dialogue and character stuff on the fly. It’s a wonder any of these things turn out coherently.
Hey, I can think of a couple of other movies with production problems.
Let’s see…Gone With The Wind and Wizard of Oz.
How’d those pictures do?
So Variety says they were fired for clashing with Kennedy and Kasdan. Well. Well. Well. I don’t know what the NDAs are like, but I do know neither Woody Harrelson or Donald Glover seem like the sorts who will be able (or inclined) to hide if they are unhappy or angry. Does Woody have more Apes publicity to come?
JS I get your personal opinion on Rogue One is negative but I’m not sure that’s the example to invoke here if you’re unhappy Lord and Miller were fired. I mean what are you really saying to Disney there? “You’re stupid to interfere, look what happened to Rogue One!”? To which they’ll reply “A critical and commercial hit earning over a billion world wide, meeting or exceeding our hopes and with an excellent Rotten Tomatoes score? You mean another huge blockbuster? Great!” Whether they were right creatively can be debated forever but really? They don’t care, they got their smash hit.
Do I think that they can pull off a Rogue One miracle here? No. Not really. No. This feels different. Oh and Tony Gilroy is unavailable.
Doug R you just invoked two movies from 1939. 78 years ago. 78 years ago!!! Things were done a tiny wee bit differently then. And by that I mean completely different. Not remotely applicable to modern film making.
So…how long until Fox moves Deadpool 2 up a week?
Of course this could turn out fine, like Wizard and GWTW. But there’s no way of knowing that, so I’m sure studios don’t make decisions like this lightly. But even back in the day, the public took an interest in behind-the-scenes stuff, especially if major IP was involved. The search for an actress to play Scarlett O’Hara was pretty big news, even without an internet. And everyone had an opinion about casting — Clark Gable was practically forced into playing Rhett Butler by popular demand. So I’m not exactly surprised that a shake-up in the Star Wars universe is being treated as big news among film folk.
I think Wizard of Oz and GWTW are apt comparisons, because they are both IP-generated films and they are both producer-driven, rather than director-driven.
And I’ll have to agree with JS on Rogue One. Even though it was a critical and commercial hit, I think R1 was mostly successful because of its ending, aka the producer-driven part. At least, I think that was the point being made.
I have a bad feeling about this…
(Someone had to say it)
Any other SW Geeks (or casual fans) thinks this whole Han Solo origin story is a bad idea? Or is it just me?
After an hour, I took it out of the front page headlines! Corny but funny.
As for replacement directors, lady I checked,the Directors Guild has a rule a credited producer can’t take over.
No, the Solo movie is a great idea, that George left them. Kasdan thinking he isn’t a hack, is always so cute. Kennedy should fucking know better, but these fucks love to think they are Pablo or Dave. It’s annoying. If they fucked up Luke… Fuck these people, but I have faith in what Rebels has revealed.
That aside aside, Night Owl… Look at the merch. It died on the vine. You can have all of that shit, but guess what? If kids don’t want a figure. This film doesn’t have much a shelf life. Also, they paid Felicity Jones a lot of money, for one movie. That’s what you get, when you meddle with a film… Losing to Marvel Studios and taking a bath on merch. If you think they didn’t want to.beaf Civil War, or as Geoff calls it, Avengers 2.5 ! You’re fooling yourself.
Lord and Miller, are considered real talent, and are probably repped by some serious people. This does not look good for Star Wars as a brand, and the same can be said of their hiring of Trevorrow. All of this makes the case, for producers who got lucky with TFA, and everything else? Looks like a struggle.
I didn’t know that George left them that idea. Interesting. Got a source or link to that? I’d like to read up on it.
It was in some TFA articles, discussing Kasdan last year. Where he found the treatment or whatever, and it was decided he would write the movie. I swear, this was out there, because George always loved the Solo.
sounds like kasdan brought down the hammer
(who thought hiring l&m was a good idea in the first place? comedy directors with a background in animation and one pretty good super-lightweight live-action comedy (that veers into the silly ditch at the end) and its shitty try-hard sequel. what a shocker comedy directors with a reported penchant for improv aren’t suited to the structure and rigours of filming big-budget action adventure sci-fi)
“Any other SW Geeks (or casual fans) thinks this whole Han Solo origin story is a bad idea? Or is it just me?”
not just you, it’s dumb
George also gave us The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.
I’d say he’s batting .000 as far as prequels go.
Have there been any good prequels? And I don’t mean reboots, because they are setting up a new timelines and not operating on the old one (Star Trek, Bond, Batman Begins, etc.). And I don’t mean prequels where it’s episodic and doesn’t require continuity between the previous film (Temple of Doom).
I can think of only one, but it’s cheating because it’s a sequel and prequel at the same time: Godfather II.
JS I did look at the merch. One google of “Rogue One merchandise sales” brought up story after story with quotes from non-Lucasfilm sources on how sales were very strong and did well. I stopped after two pages of articles. Civil War, eh, maybe. But this was a brand new story, that was a culmination in the series. Plus beating it by $130 million domestic when international cuts of box office are what they are is not nothing. Plus you may as well argue that they were also upset they couldn’t beat Titanic and Avatar with Force Awakens. I mean, maybe, a bit. But they were never going to, with Star Wars so weak in Asia. Either scenario not that big a deal when you have a hugely profitable movies.
Again there is nothing that happened on Rogue One that would indicate to Lucasfilm they are wrong to take this drastic action on Han Solo. I hate that they did it, but on Rogue One they had a win so of course they think they can do the same again and be fine. Except on Rogue One they had plausible deniability. Hey lots of big movies do reshoots! True. But this Han Solo situation is pure insanity. Lots of big movies do not fire their directors with three weeks to go. And according to this interview it was not George Lucas’s idea. He had the idea for an anthology of tales, but not Solo specifically:
http://screenrant.com/star-wars-anthologies-george-lucas-idea/
I hate hate hate the idea of this movie and I’m rooting against it, so this was good news. Han Solo was a rogue space pirate. I do not want to see the muppet baby version. I wish the guys my age in Hollywood who make decisions would let go of their childhoods.
Rogue One was purely okay. People lost their shit over it for no reason. Fuck these prequel stories.
Seems like Kennedy and Kasdan should get the benefit of the doubt here over Lord and Miller, just given the experience differences.
It’s actually kind of shocking that this doesn’t happen more often considering that indie directors with one or two small films are immediately promoted to studio tentpoles and expected to produce billion dollar grosses, even on established IP. All the more kudos to people like Patty Jenkins for pulling it off.
Even with their other films being massive hits, Lord and Miller and certainly playing in new territory with something as valuable to Disney and fans as SW.
Crazy. I would kill to know what in the hell is going on. I’m a big Star Wars nut, since I was a kid. I wasn’t a fan of either Force Awakens or Rogue One. Not as pumped as everyone else about Rian Johnson. Then you see the Book of Henry reviews, now this…Gilroy taking over Rogue One, shit, even Josh Trank…it’s never boring over there. I just hope someone makes a really killer Star Wars movie in the next couple of years, like a real classic. We’re not off to a great start, quality-wise, and I don’t see a ton of reasons for optimism at the moment.
My guess is it’s because Lord/Miller didn’t include enough call-backs to random-ass aliens from the original trilogy.
C’mon if you sign up for a Disney film you are signing up to make a toy commercial plain and simple and they are going to have tight reins on you. What creative freedom did they think they were going to have?
But on the other side, these release dates of a Star Wars film every twelve and then a jump to six is insane and I am not surprised that some stress is beginning to show. Besides who they get to finish it up, who do they hire for future installments if you can’t keep Lord/Miller on the reservation.
As I said in the other thread after watching Trek Beyond last night Justin Lin would be a fine replacement, his movies and the action in them are slight and a hair too hectic, but giving who he would be replacing I don’t think it would take away from the project. They should at least keep him in mind for the inevitable Luke and Biggs shooting Womprats in Beggars Canyon film.
Night Owl, how can you breathe #bp? Go to Target, go to Walmart, and read toy sites. The Rogue One toys were an epic bomb, that Hasbro are trying desperately NOT to buy back. Who fucking uses Google for this shit? Seriously. If you know the right sites. This is a thing, and Hasbro has less than three months to clear out that dead weight, and stock TLJ merch.
It’s a TPM toy re-release toy cluster, that’s fucking up their ANH 40th toy plans right now. But hey, it did soooooo great. Two things: I’ve read more than once out there, that Disney were miffed by not. beating Avatar, and expected more from Rogue One. Sure. Highly profitable films, but you responding like Rogue One doesn’t have a stink on it, that people aren’t stink facing my beloved TFA, is just bonkers. Oh yeah, Rogue One hardly had any merch, outside of force for change shirts, and stuff at Target no one bought. You’re reading about Star Wars merch. What Rogue One merch they made? Probably got needlessly destroyed on a beach.
Man, no. He was a race car driver. That’s what he was, and went back to racing, after he and Leia separated. The racing is in the movie, but people love Han. Why not give them a fun, swashbuckling Solo movie?
Oh yeah… Lord and Miller should have stayed with WB. They got this job for a reason, because they are huge talents. Kasdan is a fucking hack, who hasn’t made a good movie in 26 good damn years. Let his kid, who is a talented filmmaker… Wrap it up. Oh yeah… We all know this means Solo is getting reshot to death right?
And one more additional thought. If any Star Wars film did Wizard of Oz money (in todays dollars) Kennedy would be out of a job and Lucasfilm would be folded into Marvel.
I am basically ignorant when it comes to toy sales and what’s popular and what isn’t and the reasons why. I did a quick Google search on Star Wars toy sales, and several articles (like this one: http://fortune.com/2017/01/25/star-wars-powers-toy-industry/) suggest that Star Wars toy sales were extremely strong in 2016 and up from 2015, in large part due to Rogue One.
I was struck by a comment allegedly made by Lord & Miller, that they were shocked to not have total creative freedom on a Star Wars movie. That seems hard to believe. They’re young but they’ve worked for major studios before.
Yeah. They mention the movies, but not that Rogue One directly helped. It’s just implied. TFA moved product, but Rogue One? Not so much, and their first quarter numbers bare that shit out. 24 percent for entertainment brands, and not listing Star Wars separately is a tell. Shit. Go look at the January stock price. The stock is rebounding now, because summer movies, and TLJ is coming. Rogue One is out, and that stock? Wasnt moving, but we aren’t here for toys.
That aside, lord and Miller should just do Flash. It was foolish of them, to do this movie, but who doesn’t want to do a star wars movie?
Man this is terrible, they were a perfect match for the character, with perfect casting, so it’s a shame to see the aged producers screwing it up.
True they lump the movies together and say in general Star Wars toy sales were strong in 2016. Is the stock price that dependent upon toy sales? You can look at the stock price and definitively conclude that it’s because of one film’s toy sales?
Disney’s stock is dependent on so many different things, I can see the Force Awakens opening moving the needle because it confirmed the series would succeed and that the Lucasfilm investment would pay off, but they have got worldwide park sales and cable channel issues that probably have more of an impact on the stock price than what the films do. They have an ABC News/Pink Slime lawsuit staring down at them which if it doesn’t break their way would be like passing an Avocado Pit like a Kidney stone, now that could play havoc with them in the market.
LockedCut, curious at what makes them a match for a Han Solo, they seem a little hyperactive and silly to me. Neither attribute seems a fit for Solo.
I’m going with Hasbro stock, that was rather low in January, but has risen all year.
They are a match in that they are male and under 45. That is true of Lord & Miller, Rian Johnson, Colin Trevorrow, and Gareth Edwards. That seems to be the main criteria for directors here.
OK JS I can find nothing legitimate to support what your saying so I’ll leave you to it. I did find articles on several new Rogue One figures and toys being released in the coming months along with a two different comic books and two books. So clearly it’s making money for somebody. Strange to be adding new Rogue One product if the original run was such an epic bomb. Hmmm.
My original point was simply that trying to say to Lucasfilm that it’s a mistake to drop Lord and Miller because of what happened with Rogue One makes zero sense. They took drastic action and got a win in its general reception (yes I know not with everyone) and financially. They are trying to do it again and of course they think they can. They don’t care a bit if you personally hated it. If they can pull off even close to Rogue One numbers and response with Han Solo after this mess they will be overjoyed. Maybe it could have been something more? We will never know but I have no doubt Lucasfilm 100% believes they did the right thing. Whatever it could have been with Lord and Miller is gone.
With that? I’m out.
This is bizarre for several reasons. Anyone who has read the recent Vanity Fair article on TLJ will recall that Rian Johnson repeatedly expressed his surprise at just how MUCH creative latitude Lucasfilm gave him, to the point he actually asked for MORE conferences with the Lucasfilm story group. This doesn’t chime with the story of Lord and Miller being kept on such a tight leash. And as for Kennedy? She’s one of the greatest, savviest producers in movie history (you think it’s a coincidence that most of Spielberg’s biggest triumphs came under her stewardship?). But if you consider that Edwards was shut out of the Rogue One reshoots, she has now canned FOUR directors (Edwards, Lord, Miller, Trank) from one franchise. Stunning. And with only a couple of weeks left in principal photography? Stunning. The only comparable situation I can think of off the top of my head is Donner and the Salkinds on Superman. Yes, Lucas took over post production on Return of the Jedi from the over-his-head Richard Marquand, but that was only fulfilling his expected obligation rather than booting out the director.
JS – I’d take issue with your advocacy of Feige running Lucasfilm, his track record with directors needs examining too. The Edgar Wright fandango? Whedon and Favreau running for the hills? Alan Taylor seems to have been treated shabbily too.
ROGUE ONE was an excellent Star Wars picture, miles better than A FORCE AWAKENS – so whatever reshoots or retooling is going on via Kathy Kennedy and/or Disney, I think it will be for the better.
Night Owl, it is a known commodity, in the toy community, that Rogue One stiffed it. And stiffed it big. Those comic books were in production before the movie, as were the books. They plan this shit out in advance.
And again, that’s the problem with lfl right now. They think they know everything. They don’t, but let’s hope Shit Weasel didn’t just screw up a sure thing… That’s getting reshot to death….oy.
Space… No.
Dr. wally, that’s what’s happening, because Kennedy is leaving in 2020, and Kevin’s contact ends the same years. Alan Horn has his back, and it’s just a thing that Disney seems to want to happen.
Now, sorry, but Antman is awesome, Whedon was more of a Ike casualty, and Jon seems to have a nice relationship with the Marvel guys. He is in Homecoming
All that being said, the Alan Taylor thing is still a fucking shit show, so yeah. You got him there, but I’d doubt he’d fire four directors like Kennedy has.
Does no one else see the irony?? There’s a heated disagreement about the character of Hans Solo, so Kathleen Kennedy fires first.
Annnnnd Boom!
Yeah, and it was all because of her corporate greed-o.
Triple… palm? Fucking amazing.
Let me just add YOUNG INDY IS AWESOME!
I’m sure it’ll be fine. Sounds like they just believed Lord & Miller were taking too much license with the character.
John’s right, it will be fine. They have proven with their control of the Marvel and Star Wars movies that they will always be able to produce a movie that’s just (sigh) fine.
Wow what a shit-storm this has stirred up….it’s all over the twittersphere, it is just NOT like Disney/Lucasfilm/Marvel/Pixar to allow something like this to go THIS public – you look at how seamlessly they handled all of the shake-ups with The Good Dinosaur, Ant-Man and Frozen, this whole thing just feels very off from a PR standpoint.
And that’s the thing – the movie could be too silly, it could be an interesting failure at worse so what?? It’s a “stand-alone” and it’s still gonna make cash no matter what – I guaran-fucking-tee you that no matter how much of a shit-show this movie is, it will STILL make a ton of cash and move a ton of merch because there are no EASIER lays out than Star Wars fans.
Seriously going back to last year, seeing and reading all of these reviews of Rogue One as “Best Since Empire!” EXACTLY the same way they described Attack of the Clones 15 years earlier!
And there’s the rub: the fanbase is easy, why the hell go to the trouble of adding at least 50% more cost and a shit-ton of bad press towards creating a stand-alone kids movie that nobody is going to remember six months later anyway?? (Just like Rogue One) It doesn’t make sense for it to play out this way to fire these guys just a few weeks before filming ends….it had to come down to somebody’s ego bottom line. Because on the SURFACE, it doesn’t make much sense from a creative or financial standpoint.
And thanks JS for giving me credit for coining a term that half of the film critics and industry pundits out there were using last year. 😉
did it occur to anyone that lord and miller – who have directed exactly two feature films, a straight up fluff comedy that’s part one and two of the same story – got the sack because their film-making simply isn’t good enough?
(animated movies are completely different beasts from live action in terms of design and execution and are not comparable from a technical standpoint, artistic merit aside)
this reverence for them is flat-out hilarious and baffling. probably the greater problem here is that people actually think of lord and miller as higher calibre film-makers after making a couple silly live action comedies. based on what exactly?
Leahnz maybe yes they were in over their head but four movies is STILL a pretty good track record and that’s just a genuinely unique fucking track record: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, 21 Jump Street, The Lego Movie, and 22 Jump Street….two heart-warming family films sandwiched with two hard-R rated raunchy comedies that EACH achieved exactly what they set out to do! Who else has put out that kind of bizarro mix in recent years?? 🙂
Spielberg couldn’t do it….cough cough 1941….cough cough Warhorse….cough cough Tin Tin…..I can think of maybe two directors in my lifetime who have pulled off that kind of freaky genre-bending streak: Danny Boyle and Jonathan Demme. The late great Demme did Stop Making Sense then Something Wild then Swimming to Cambodia then Married to the Mob then Silence of the Lambs then Philidelphia…..but that shit was more than 25 years ago, that’s fucking talent. 😉
Until these guys fall flat on their face and put out a Fanf4stic or A Life Less Ordinary or New York New York then their streak is ALL we have to go on.
And 22 Jump Street – not a world-beating movie – but a big budget comedy sequel that’s actually FUNNIER than the original, how often that does shit happen?? 🙂 You can literally count all of the comedy sequels that have pulled off THAT particular feat since the 1980’s on ONE hand: Addams Family Values, Wayne’s World 2, and…….
I DO wonder if the Lord & Miller hype comes more from their unique choice of projects and a decent amount of luck than actual chops but….until proven otherwise, that’s all we have to go on. Whereas Kennedy and Kasdan have the legendary resumes of course….but still plenty of Congos, Dreamcatchers, Milk Money’s, and Wyatt Earp’s marking up their track records as well. Fair or not.
are you even serious right now geoff, i hope not because your comparisons are fucking ridonkulous and illustrate my point above exactly
I’d say Austin Powers the Spy Who Shagged Me was funnier than the original. Those other two I didn’t see & can’t remember.
I can’t say I’m a huge fan of Star Wars or Lord & Miller. Nothing against either, just saying not in either’s camp. I don’t know if it was ego, as in I feel disrespected – you’re gone!, or pride, as in I’m not going to the grave with crap Star Wars film being made on my watch! but I applaud her if it’s the later. I kinda think it’s a better long-term financial decision to scrap something that’s bad. I’m glad the “it’ll make a lotta money anyway, who care” mentality that’s floating on this board wasn’t in her office.
I know there’s no real way to measure how much people didn’t spend, nor why, but how much does a whack installment dent the value of a franchise? I’d point to Spiderman III and X-Men 3 but those Transformer movies sure don’t seem to let up in grosses.
If Superman Returns had been any good, could it have hit half a billion? Who knows but I don’t believe anyone at WB didn’t believe it underperformed.
Who’s to say who’s right? We’ll never see what coulda been. Unless it really was about ego and process and basically the same film comes out. I wonder did Eisner ever go to bed thinking “Thank God Depp didn’t listen to me and played Sparrow straight” cuz no way is Pirates a multi billion dollar franchise on its own.
I do hope they’ll stop trying to make an origins story out of everything. I suppose it makes sense for Darth but is anyone seriously that lacking of imagination that they need it literally drawn out for them of how someone becomes a small-time hood? He sold some of his roommie’s text books and space vehicle hubcaps to pay for med school until he realized hustling was more his calling. Maybe he and Chewy have some kind of Defiant Ones/48 Hours meet and go from there.
People always wonder when people know they’ve got a bomb on their hands and don’t do anything to correct it. Maybe it would’ve been fine, or even better than fine, but if they won’t have to live with letting it slide and watch it blow up in their faces. OTOH, if it’s crap, it’s 100% on the producers.
Geoff, Spielberg directed Schindler’s List and Jurassic Park AT THE SAME TIME.
If that doesn’t count as genre-bending successfully, then what does?????
So if Ron Howard is taking over, will he include himself in a cameo as…
Opie Wan Kenobi?
Good point Palmtree and he also did Minority Report and Catch Me If you Can in the same year as well so impressive but he also failed even more times….
’89 – ‘Last Crusade AND Always
’97 – Amistad AND The Lost World
’05 – Munich AND War of the Worlds
In most cases, one of those films felt like an afterthought.
Yeah…but…Jaws followed by Close Encounters? Raiders followed by ET and Poltergeist?
I wonder how well the Lord and Miller films will age, but those Spielberg ones are ageing quite gracefully.
Good point on the afterthought. Spielberg got so involved he let Lucas do a lot of the editing on Jurassic Park, it really shows in the amusement park ride editing of the Ford Explorer sliding down the hill/through the tree. More of that on Lost World, the clean slide of the trailer past the actors.
Palm, I’m not comparing Lord/Miller to Spielberg as an apples-to-apples comparison – I mean wow The Lost World, Amistad and Saving Private Ryan came out within 14 months of each other. I don’t know what the actual production schedule was and I still think he could have put more thought into The Lost World but to do three big, vastly different films like those back-to-back-to-back is still DAMN impressive – that’s what makes Spielberg Spielberg.
It will take literal decades for Lord/Miller to get to this point and to answer your question, I see The Lego Movie aging MUCH better than the rest and holding up years from now UNLESS…..they release a slew of shitty, knock-off pseudo-related sequels to diminish its legacy. I don’t see that happening though.
But what Lord & Miller have done SO FAR is still pretty damn unique, there’s obviously a reason that Disney/Lucasfilm jumped on them to direct this thing and it’s not just because they were flavors of the month like Josh Trank or Gareth Edwards. The whole concept of a Young Han Solo adventure sounded pretty damn iffy on paper….just like a ‘Jump Street movie or Lego movie. And hiring them added a sort of level of legitimacy to it.
Ron Howard will make a fine, passable entertainment of it I’m sure….just like Ant-Man or Doctor Strange or Rogue One or Beauty & the Beast. And it will be good enough and make a boatload of cash regardless….because in the end the most ardent die hard Star Wars fans aren’t looking for genuine quality – they just want to be serviced for being die hard Star Wars fans.