General grievances (random fan rants)

Headland was Harvey Weinstein's personal assistant (in her words: "for about a year"). In the same article, she claims that working for him "was very educational and cool", proclaims "there's nobody like him", and calls him "brilliant" and "a genius". The worst thing she says? Working for him could also be "pretty boring". From 2012:

ew.com/movies/kevin-smith-dogma-held-hostage-harvey-weinstein/

The picture itself may be Photoshopped, but that might be because genuine photos of the two of them together are hard to come by. However, since we have Headland herself comfortably stating that she worked for Weinstein, and describing him in glowing terms, much of the "riling up" (or the grounds for doing so) must be credited to Headland herself. 


Probably. She does laugh and very quickly move on after bashing the prequels in the 2019 clip, like she felt uncomfortable giving a proper account of her feelings toward them. Kind of ironic, however, for an openly gay woman. Sexuality is apparently fine to flaunt publicly and judge people over (i.e., if they disagree with it), but the prequels? No, let's just throw them under the bus, along with George Lucas, and move away from an open discussion.
 

A lot of what these people say is rooted in convenience and optics. I mean, she went from coolly praising Harvey Weinstein in that 2012 article in an industry publication, to exhorting everyone on Twitter to "Believe women" (as well as accusing the respected playwright David Mamet of being "an old white guy who doesn’t believe rape is a thing" and later deleting many of her old tweets):

boundingintocomics.com/2020/04/23/rumored-star-wars-showrunner-leslye-headland-calls-white-women-at-the-top-the-silent-killer/

It sure is. Pretty cute, I find, to know she once was Weinstein's personal assistant, and that she lavished praise on him in print, yet this is the same person that would later burble that Ralph McQuarrie's hiring was some kind of fluke that happened within a counterproductive, misogynistic system that George Lucas, at best, unwittingly propagated and was a major beneficiary of (along with all those other "old white guys", I guess).  

East Asia is absolutely my top choice for cinema and entertainment in general.

Reconstructed tweet (in case they delete it or Twitter tanks thanks to Elon):

Star Wars Timeline
@swt_Channel

Even at its worst, I still vastly prefer #StarWars Sequel Trilogy over Prequels.

6:27 PM, 13 Nov 2022

It's just their opinion, but it seems like kind of a strange one for a person called "Star Wars Timeline" to flaunt. From their Twitter bio:

"Big fan of Legends & Canon."

O, RLY? So the sequels are better than the prequels even at their alleged worst? Even when other fans have called the sequels an atrocity and accused them of shitting all over existing SW canon? Even when the prequels clearly did an extraordinary job of worldbuilding and expanding the lore of SW?

They expand on their opinion in a couple of replies:


Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold it. You never understood "the need to hate something you don't like"; yet you just decided to issue an attention-seeking tweet declaring that you "vastly prefer" the sequels over the prequels, "even at [their] worst"? What a load of old cobblers.

Finally, there is this one other reply from them:


Ah, the passive-aggressive "for kids" sneer. Alas, this gripe shows you that most prequel complaints boil down to errant expectations and faulty assumptions. The prequels were never intended to be "war movies". There are plenty of those already. The prequels are a political allegory and a Bildungsroman mixed with courtly romance and Greek tragedy. And because it's also Star Wars -- and George Lucas Star Wars, at that -- we get plenty of colourful digression and jazz-like accenting of critical themes.

In short, the PT is a seven-hour tone poem about a society falling into corruption, done in an artistic, operatic, Saturday matinee B-movie style. Yes, the films are designed to appeal to children, but in a positive way. Why this continues to be a means of dismissing the prequels or damning them with faint praise remains a mystery to me. There's nothing wrong with a bit of gay raiment. These people need to read Phil Pullman. To quote the man himself: "There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book."

These prequel critics have much to learn.

Right. That comment of theirs does reveal a shocking ignorance of the formalistic documentary-fantasy style of Star Wars under George Lucas and the harking back, in the prequel timeframe, to the Golden Age of Hollywood. It's kind of ironic that a person calling themselves "Star Wars Timeline" has such a dim grasp of history and how the trilogies are tonally bifurcated to reflect different eras and historical sensibilities.

Also, I can't help noticing some bizarre dissonance in the "poster" shots they used to announce their tweet:




First of all: yuck. What's up with the fuzzy, colour-banded, dot-matrix look of the fake prequel poster? It's obviously taken from a file with low colour depth. I suppose that makes it look a tad "Of the 90s", but come on, try to present a consistent argument, even visually.

Second: yuck again. I hate seeing the "Disney" logo on the prequel poster, but not on the TFA one. Talk about Bizarro World. Things are stuck and placed where they don't belong. It's especially grating when a) the prequels are the work of George Lucas, and b) Disney did a lot to distance the company from them in a desperate attempt to "win back" the fans and Make Star Wars Great Again.

Third, the TFA poster is clearly not, well, the TFA poster. It's far too nice and Drew Struzan-y compared to the one that Disney actually used. Even the logo is way too retro and obviously goes back to earlier designs belonging to the Lucas era. Just as the prequels can't be claimed "for" Disney, neither can the fan service corporate rehash of TFA be claimed "for" Lucas or implied to be commensurate with his wishes (or of a piece with the main Star Wars Saga).

Fourth, by comparison, the prequels receive a drab triptych that looks like it's advertising some bland-ass streaming re-release of the movies, and the repetition of ROTS imagery (Yoda and Grievous) is annoying. It doesn't remotely sell the grandeur and magnificence of the prequels. Well, except for...

Queen Amidala. Yeah, stop and think about that one, "Star Wars Timeline" guy. You're playing the wondrous, otherworldly prequels off against the pipsqueak Disney characters, even as you denigrate the prequels in your actual tweets. If only TFA and the sequels were half as authentic as the prequels or one-tenth as imaginative. This nitwit wants people to believe the crumbs are better than the banquet. Stop the world now, I want to get off. 

The problem that I have with these kind of "discussions" on platforms like Twitter (going by the quotes that Cryogenic provided) and why I can't take anything about them seriously is the point that there are no arguments being made anymore, it's just statements being randomly put together. I mean what does this guy even mean with "directing style"? What am I supposed to respond to a statement that demands me to fill it with any kind of substance? It's completely pointless. It then seems to shift to the same old "complaints" ("laughable dialogue") that are - again - not backed up by any explanation or substantial argumentation.

It's a sad thing. These guys are having a "discussion" but neither of them is learning anything from the other because - effectively - it is not more than robots interacting. It's devoid of any depth.

Very disappointing to learn that about Leslye Headland. There was also this recent video from Jar Jar Abrams, which makes me think that she just sweet talked about the prequels and Star Wars in general to Lucasfilm to get the gig:



But then again, Lucasfilm is known to hire people who openly hate on the prequels and Lucas, as they did so with Abrams and his friend Simon Pegg.

Similarly very disappointing is this from Tony Gilroy:



I had high hopes for him as well, because he made some promising comments before, but it too seems like simple lip service. Jar Jar Abrams is really good at digging dirt on all these people. I don't understand the need for these people, beyond a general feeling of having power over a great asset as Gilroy implies in that interview, to infiltrate a franchise they don't like. Just when I started to warm up slightly to Disney, all this stuff comes out. My respect for Rian Johnson keeps growing, though, because at least publicly, he has said nothing but good things about Lucas and the prequels. You need that kind of professionalism, no matter what your personal feelings may be.

You pretty much encapsulated why I don't use Twitter. Sure, I'll occasionally glance at something, like the above exchange, but I don't much care for the platform (or most of the people on it) and I've never had an account.



Hmm, well, I kinda get what she's saying, but it's easy to conclude she's more interested in having a filmmaking career and sticking it to men than in making competent, interesting films. Although that would probably be a simplistic takeaway. She makes a very good point that instead of waiting for things to happen in life, you often need to seize every opportunity and learn by doing, especially when you're working in an industry historically dominated by men. 


Yeah, I was already aware of those remarks by Gilroy. The guy must be doing something right, since "Andor" has received almost universally glowing praise. I don't think a person working on the franchise has to like or admire it in advance. What matters is what they actually do when they get to play in the sandbox. It's good in the case of "Andor" to have a fresh approach. That said, the show does lack a certain je ne sais quoi, as well as any notable joie de vivre (see? the French understand!), and hiring a hundred people like Tony Gilroy probably wouldn't be a good idea. "Andor" is better, in some sense, being the exception to the rule. I wouldn't like to see it becoming the rule. 


Unfortunately, that's not entirely true. Rian Johnson actually admitted a few years ago, right as "The Last Jedi" was about to hit theaters (in December 2017), to having "cynicism" toward about the prequels, and that he had "a similar kind of reaction to them" that most people (in his opinion) of the same age experienced:

Credit to Anthony for fishing out the following obscure link:

naboonews.com/2017/12/07/the-last-jedi-director-rian-johnson-praises-george-lucas-and-the-story-of-the-prequels/

The actual link:

www.tf1.fr/tmc/quotidien-avec-yann-barthes/videos/soiree-diapo-de-rian-johnson-star-wars-dernier-jedi.html

RJ's comments are below:


Also, when he spoke to the British film magazine Empire, he took a side-swipe at the prequels in two different interviews.

In January 2017 (remarks appeared in the February edition, or Issue 332, of the printed magazine):

www.empireonline.com/movies/features/rian-johnson-last-jedi-interview/


In September 2017 (remarks appeared in the October edition, or Issue 341, of the printed magazine):

www.empireonline.com/movies/news/last-jedi-exclusive-image-finn-rose-canto-bight/


In other words...

The prequels are all fake and shiny and not really "Star Wars". Notably, in the more recent of those three sets of quotes (from Dec 2017), RJ not only fesses up to not really liking the prequels on release, but still only indirectly praises them for being a "seven hour kids' movie" -- i.e., sort of Star Wars, but not really Star Wars (ironically: kind of like the Star Wars film that he made).

So there you go. Outside of Deborah Chow, I can't think of one major creative person that Lucasfilm has hired that may have actually liked the prequels on release. This doesn't say anything about their own talents and abilities as filmmakers, however. But there is something quite seedy and off-putting about the entire thing.

No-one at LFL is prepared to step up to the plate and say wholeheartedly, "The prequels are amazing films and I've loved them since I first saw them." At best, you get guarded apologetics, or two-faced bashing mixed with modest praise, or something like Rian Johnson's supposedly earnest fondness of them, only for him to remind everybody that the prequels, however brilliant the "story" they're telling is, are still children's films and nothing (by implication) that adults need take too seriously.  

Tony Gilroy does come across as an arrogant person. It's kind of funny that he thinks he's hot shit, but his series, as you just pointed out, isn't doing too well in the streaming stakes (despite receiving strong acclaim). The craftmanship of "Andor" is, for the most part, outstanding though. In fact, that's probably the reason I'm sticking with it. In my case, I'd be a hypocrite to slay "Obi-Wan" and then reject "Andor" before the end of its first season. So I'm seeing it through till then. I completely respect your own decision, however.


I don't have much insecurity, either. I mean, at the end of the day: Marvel, D.C., LOTR, "The Matrix", "Harry Potter", even stuff like "Game Of Thrones" and "Stranger Things" -- they're all "geek" entertainment, are they not? It's just interesting that the prequels uniquely get tagged as "kids' movies". Yes, George Lucas himself has emphasised that Star Wars is for kids, but when the new people at Lucasfilm do it about the prequels in particular, it feels like they're dumping on them and saying, at the least, they're less than they should have been. The smuggled-in implication is that the backstory of the OT should have been heavy and rich and more adult-like in tone and execution; more, perhaps, in the vein of Peter Jackson's violent treatment of LOTR or Christopher Nolan's procedural take on Batman. There is, after all, a significant contingent of fans who proclaim TESB as the best in the series, and who say that Lucas lost his nerve after that film and pandered to kids in ROTJ, with many of them taking their cue from Gary Kurtz. So when Rian Johnson praises the prequels for being a lesson about the rise of fascism, it feels like he's still bracketing that praise within a broader context, shaped by his earlier "cynicism" that he sketchily concedes he "might have had about them" in earlier years. 


I reckon people like John Knoll and Doug Chiang probably like a lot of the way the prequels were carried off, although I don't recall them giving their opinions on the movies or the trilogy overall. Most of them at LFL are pretty quiet about liking the prequels, if they actually do. It's really quite lame for a company that aggressively pursues woke ideology where everyone is supposedly encouraged to embrace their true self and use whatever pronouns they like. Yet, somehow, just saying a set of Star Wars movies were done brilliantly and don't deserve 99% of the hatred thrown at them is too much for anyone at the company to come out and say.  


I understand your disdain. It comes to us all. Unfortunately, without Lucas, there isn't a guiding mind who is clear on what Star Wars is, or is not. Thus, everyone has a different idea about how to do Star Wars, or how it ought to be done, and some scrambling and backtracking was probably inevitable. Although Lucasfilm itself was not in disarray when Lucas was in charge, he probably did neglect it to some degree in later years, and even looking aside the technicality of Disney pulling the plug, he basically let an important daughter company like LucasArts die on its arse before he sold. George may be great, but he's far from perfect. Good art can and often does emerge from discord. "Art from adversity" 'n' all that. Although it's fine to be critical (as I often am of Disney/LFL), we shouldn't always believe the negative hype.