I'm not saying TFA is a bad film. But I do think it was the safest, and even the laziest, sequel to anything I've ever watched. I think they just went overboard with all the fan service in it, and that's partly due to the prequels being such a flop, that they thought they had to put as much Star Wars (the best ones) back into it as possible. For me, it would have been great if they handled some of the reintroductions a little bit more patiently. The whole thing felt like a production to shove as much of the originals in from the get go, so much so, it felt clumbsy and hamfisted to the point where the contrivances just spoiled the whole thing. It's like Disney got excited about having the licenses that all they could think about was making a film so they could fit scenes of it into a trailer showing everything iconic about the series in one crack early. A wee bit of restraint would have been great. Surely they could have found a better way to write how the Falcon turned up (as one example) again, and with Chewie and Lando just so happened to be in the same part of space to reunite them with it? OK.
Except that is more or less what they did – Han & Chewie didn’t appear until 40 minutes in, Leia not until 80 mins, and Luke not until the last two minutes, allowing the new characters space to develop. Incidentally, holding Luke back until right at the end was not an easy, safe choice – it would have been the easiest thing in the world to have him come in and save the day half way through, and probably what would’ve happened if Disney had been controlling everything. Of course the marketing was always going to focus on the familiar stuff right from the beginning, but that’s not how the actual film plays out. Also regarding Han finding the Falcon, it was clear from the film that they were actually looking for it, and had an idea of who had stolen it. Han even says at one point “You think it was luck that we found the Falcon?”
The development of TFA was a long process which started with some basic ideas from George Lucas, Michael Arndt then started developing a script, eventually JJ Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan took over to develop the final screenplay, and they worked with the ‘story group’ at Lucasfilm to ensure continuity with all the other things that were being produced (Rebels, books, other films etc). It was a collaborative effort that was far more complex than just Disney telling them to chuck in a load of TIE fighters and X-wings and bash out any old rubbish because they knew people would lap it up.
They chose to go the direction they did for a reason. When ANH came out no-one knew anything about the Force or Jedi or midichlorians(!), it was just a simple space adventure with great characters and an underlying tone of mysticism – the deeper and darker stuff came later. Now some people might have preferred that they made a film that was more complex and could only be understood by people with a prior knowledge of the history of the Force and the Sith and all that, but what they were trying to do was bring in a new generation of kids who had maybe never seen Star Wars, keeping it simple the way that ANH did – while still containing enough references to the original films to keep the older fans happy. There’s nothing wrong with not liking the way they did it or wishing they had done something more original or risky, and there’s nothing wrong with thinking the callbacks went too far in places (which I agree with), but that doesn’t automatically mean that it was all just a cynical Disney-controlled cash grab – it was just the direction they chose to go in.
Before TFA, we’d only had two types of Star Wars films – the originals (great) and the prequels (poor) – I was happy that TFA was far closer to the quality and spirit of the originals than the prequels, and introduced likeable new characters. When you think about how many potential pitfalls there were and how many things they could’ve got wrong, I think they did a great job.
They had an massive script re-write to shrink the roles of two new characters, they've pushed the release date back twice, and they've had reshoots. Carrie Fisher is responsible for some of that but not all.
Nope, that's completely wrong. You're getting it mixed up with Rogue One (which had major rewrites and reshoots) and Episode 9 (which has been pushed back from May to December 2019). Episode 8 was always due to come out in December this year - if it had been pushed back twice that means it would have originally scheduled to come out in December 2016 - only a year after TFA and at the same time as Rogue One. That makes no sense. There were some slight chnages made to the script regarding a couple of the new characters - but that was way back in early 2016, well before filming even started. Carrie Fisher had already finished all her scenes and they've already said that they haven't changed Episode 8 to take into account her death. At least get your facts right.
Lucasfilm isn't a separate entity to Disney, it's owned by them. It's Disney execs that hired a new director and ordered massive reshoots on Rogue One, to what avail I'll never know. I'm not sure they trust Lucasfilm or the people they hire, it's why JJ is back.
Yes Lucasfilm is owned by Disney, but it is a separate company. If Disney wanted to make all the decisions why didn’t they just buy the rights to Star Wars and then disband Lucasfilm, so they could do it all themselves? And again you're saying stuff with absolutely no evidence. The reshoots on Rogue One came about through the director and Lucasfilm wanting to rework the final act to make it flow better, and they hired Tony Gilroy to help get it done quickly as they were short on time - the original director was still fully involved. JJ is back because Lucasfilm feel he did a good job with TFA, he was executive producer on TLJ and he can easily slot back into the process at short notice (they had originally asked Rian Johnson but he wasn’t available).The original director was fired because the script he had come up with simply wasn't working, he was unable or unwilling to improve it and apparently his working relationship with Kathleen Kennedy had completely broken down.
It was the same with the Han Solo movie, they were apparently deviating too far from the script and the actors and writers were uncomfortable with it. Kennedy had first hand knowledge of how the production was going and made the decision based on that, this is just the practical reality of how things work in the real world. If what you’re saying was the reality, then why would Disney (who supposedly only care about money) bother employing Kathleen Kennedy at all, as according to you she is just sitting around in her office doing nothing and not making any decisions? You have absolutely no evidence or inside knowledge to back up what you’re saying. If Disney were controlling everything and making all the big decisions, why bother hiring big name writers and directors? Why not just hire nobodies to just go through the motions and churn out any old rubbish? Why would high profile people risk their reputation by putting their name to something they had next to no creative control over? We all saw what happened to George Lucas’ reputation when he made bad Star Wars films.
An explanation doesn't make it any less dull.
Whether it's dull or not is not the point, you're moving the goalposts - you said you didn't understand it, I explained it and said it was (partially) explained in TFA.
