STAR WARS ROGUE ONE - December 16th

[AndyDursin]

JJ Abrams going "one and done" and Rian Johnson picking up the pieces

ROGUE ONE IS THE FIRST STAR WARS STAND-ALONE FILM, RIAN JOHNSON TO WRITE AND DIRECT STAR WARS: EPISODE VIII
THE TITLE FOR DIRECTOR GARETH EDWARDS' STAND-ALONE MOVIE, FEATURING ACTRESS FELICITY JONES, IS REVEALED, AND RIAN JOHNSON IS CONFIRMED FOR STAR WARS: EPISODE VIII -- COMING TO THEATERS MAY 26, 2017.

“Always in motion is the future,” Yoda said. The future of the Star Wars cinematic galaxy, however, is taking shape.

This morning at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, across the street from Lucasfilm, Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger hosted a shareholder meeting where he announced news regarding the first Star Wars stand-alone movie as well as Star Wars: Episode VIII.

Rogue One is the title for the first film in a unique series of big-screen adventures that explores the characters and events beyond the core Star Wars saga. Rogue One will be directed by Gareth Edwards (Monsters, Godzilla) and written by Oscar nominee Chris Weitz (Cinderella, About a Boy, Antz). The first actress cast is Felicity Jones, who garnered an Academy Award nomination and critical acclaim for her performance in The Theory of Everything. The idea for the story of Rogue One came from John Knoll, an Academy Award-winning visual effects supervisor and chief creative officer at Industrial Light & Magic. He will executive produce along with Simon Emanuel (The Dark Knight Rises, Fast & Furious 6) and Jason McGatlin (Tintin, War of the Worlds). Kathleen Kennedy and Tony To (Band of Brothers, The Pacific) are on board to produce and John Swartz (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) will co-produce. The film starts shooting this summer in London and is due for release on December 16, 2016.

In addition, Iger confirmed that Rian Johnson will write and direct Star Wars: Episode VIII. The film, which continues the saga after the events of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, is set for release on May 26, 2017 — forty years and a day after the release of Star Wars: A New Hope in 1977. Johnson is widely considered one of cinema’s most gifted young filmmakers, having directed the modern sci-fi classic, Looper, as well as Brick and The Brothers Bloom. He was also behind the camera for three episodes of the critically-acclaimed TV series Breaking Bad, including “Ozymandias,” which series creator Vince Gilligan named as the best installment of the show. Kathleen Kennedy and Ram Bergman, producer of Looper, Don Jon, Brick, and The Brothers Bloom, are on board to produce.

[sprocket]

" ... modern sci-fi classic, Looper"

Really?

Source Code and Oblivion were both better. Looper was a confused mishmash that was too smart for its own good.

[AndyDursin]

I also disliked LOOPER on a number of levels -- and it certainly wasn't good storytelling. Not to mention, the kid in it was positively awful -- I hope they don't have another Jake Lloyd lined up for these pictures!

These days, apparently it's enough to be granted the keys to the entire STAR WARS franchise. Says everything about where filmmaking has gone in 2015, doesn't it?

[DavidBanner]

Looper was frankly a disaster.

Rian Johnson did well in directing episodes of "Breaking Bad" where he could be supervised by that show's producers and deliver the coverage they needed. I'm even more skeptical about his writing/directing abilities than I am about Abrams. Although the two men do have in common that they were good TV directors who probably would have done better to stay on the small screen.

I have no idea what to make out of "Rogue One" other than a large shrugging of the shoulders.

In the meantime, Lucasfilm is pushing a whole new batch of books that appear to just retread the territory we've already seen from over 35 years of Expanded Universe books and comic books. I understand if they want to do a reset on the post-ROTJ stuff, but why muck with the great Brian Daley novels or the other pre-Jedi stuff? I have no interest in this pile of new books or any of the other material. We've already gone down these roads, years ago.

All of this really feels like a desperate cash grab by Disney and Lucasfilm. I'll wait to see the reviews on the new movie, assuming it makes it to theaters this Christmas. If they're what I think they'll be, I'm fine to just watch it on cable, if I have the time.

And I fervently hope that Abrams won't jump back into the next Star Trek infliction as an active producer. I'd be a lot happier if he directed a new TV pilot - NBC could certainly use his help again these days.

[Paul MacLean]

I'm now convinced there's a plot to poison good film music...

Alexandre Desplat to Score ‘Star Wars’ Spinoff ‘Rogue One’

Posted: March 15, 2015 by filmmusicreporter in Film Scoring Assignments

Alexandre Desplat revealed in an interview on Radio Classique’s Culture Club that he will be reuniting with director Gareth Edwards on the upcoming Star Wars spinoff feature Rogue One. Felicity Jones is attached to star in the film, which is scripted by Chris Weitz (Cinderella, The Golden Compass). No plot details have been revealed yet, but the movie is said to be the first in a series of big-screen adventures that explores the characters and events beyond the core Star Wars saga. Kathleen Kennedy (Jurassic Park, The Sixth Sense, Lincoln) and Tony To (Band of Brothers, The Pacific) are producing the Lucasfilm production. John Knoll is executive producing the project with Simon Emanuel and Jason McGatlin. Desplat has previously collaborated with Edwards on last year’s Godzilla. Rogue One is set to be released on December 16, 2016 by Walt Disney Pictures.

http://filmmusicreporter.com/2015/03/15 ... rogue-one/

[DavidBanner]

I don't mind Desplat as a composer - he's written some good scores. I enjoyed his work in The Imitation Game and Grand Budapest Hotel this past year. I recall enjoying his work in Benjamin Button as well.

The real question to me is: who else is out there as a young up-and-coming composer of film scores to be able to pick up the baton after we lose Williams? We've already lost Goldsmith and Barry, who were the other major voices from the 70s-2000s to my ear.

I think we still have many productive years to come from Horner and Shore, and I do enjoy some Zimmer scores (although I realize he is extremely unpopular here.) I've liked some James Newton Howard work. Thomas Newman's work varies. Mychael Danna did a nice score for Life of Pi. Michael Giacchino is a nice TV composer - he did some great motifs for LOST and I understand his UP score was nice. But I haven't heard anything theatrical from him that didn't sound either tinkly or bombastic. I suppose Ramin Djawadi could improve with time - I do like his work on Game of Thrones but the theatrical stuff I've heard from him, like Dracula Unbound, is just too bombastic for my ears.

Are there any other significant composers out there that I'm missing?

[AndyDursin]

There arent. This is the one time Giacchino would have made more sense since he can at least mimic another composers style. Desplat failed with his Harry Potter and Godzilla scores to such a degree that I question him getting this kind of assignment.

Beyond that, this problem is two fold, its not just the lack of talent, but the way music itself functions in film is much less vital than it used to be. We aren't getting melodic/thematic scores because Hollywood doesn't want them. They want the bombast and wallpaper excessiveness that's become the stamp of Zimmer and his stable of clones. It's possible some younger Composer might have ability but it's hard to know when they're just pressing the drone button as instructed.

[Paul MacLean]

It's sad that composer hiring is all based on one's connection to hits rather than actual talent. There are much better composers in France than Alexandre Desplat, like Philippe Sarde, Jean-Claude Petit and Frederic Talgorn -- who are each are ten times more gifted than Desplat, but Desplat is A-list.

Likewise in England they have first-rate people like George Fenton and Trevor Jones, but they seem to have fallen out of fashion in Hollywood. Dario Marianelli is also a very talented composer...yet Patrick Doyle gets all the best jobs.

There are still a few "elder statesmen" around, like Laurence Rosenthal and John Scott...but they are dismissed as unfashionable "old men" (even tho they are about the same age as John Williams).

[AndyDursin]

The good news is Theo will be too young to see this, so I can already save my money. I have 0 interest in seeing a Desplat-scored, Rain Johnson-directed STAR WARS movie.

But this is very much in keeping with how Hollywood now recycles the same actors and directors in every project. Most major movies now seem to be scored by a combination of Desplat, Giacchino, and the Zimmer drones. It's all a formula and the same individuals continuously fall in line.

[jkholm]

I'm a bit ambivalent about Desplat. I listened to several cues from Godzilla recently since that is the obvious template for what a future Star Wars score from him might sound like. The Main Title isn't bad. I'm a sucker for anything with odd-meter rhythms and Desplat builds intensity quite nicely. The rest of the score is another matter. The orchestrations are well done and there are some good ideas here and there. Taken one at a time the cues are listenable but the whole thing is missing something. it sounds like a rough draft. Remember on Siskel and Ebert when they would criticize a screenplay and say it needed a few more runs through the typewriter? That's what the Godzilla score sounds like. Some good ideas, but it needed more development. He should have written motifs that were better suited for thematic development and added material that united the score.

I suspect one of the problems for both Desplat and Giacchino is that they are so popular they don't have enough time to write well composed music. I think they are capable of writing good music but they're just too busy. Hopefully, Desplat will have lots of time to work on the Star Wars score.

[AndyDursin]

. Taken one at a time the cues are listenable but the whole thing is missing something. it sounds like a rough draft.

There's no theme. That's my problem. I haven't heard any score from Desplat that made me want to go out and buy the album, because like you said John, it's missing something. Sure, it's orchestral music -- yay, great -- but it's "busy," hollow and empty. He has the tools but lacks the melodic talent, that special gift, that separates someone like John Williams or Jerry Goldsmith or James Horner from Desplat. He creates workmanlike music that has nothing distinctive about it.

I don't think you need to go any further than Godzilla or Harry Potter. His scores on the latter just plain sucked, and the only redeeming component of HP was when they literally tracked Williams' scores into it. As for Godzilla -- David Arnold's score was a million times more interesting musically. So was that end-credits music from Cloverfield that Giacchino wrote.

Right now though, he's the toast of the town, for those who still care about the medium -- which are far fewer than 10, 20 or 30 years ago.

[AndyDursin]

All kinds of details coming out about this film -- dubbed a STAR WARS ANTHOLOGY picture.

In some ways this is a bit more interesting, because at least it's not the Skywalkers again.

http://variety.com/2015/film/news/star- ... 201475420/

The upcoming “Star Wars” standalone film, “Rogue One,” will follow a group trying to steal the Death Star plans, it was revealed at Sunday’s Star Wars Celebration, which also showed a special teaser for the upcoming spinoff.

“A band of resistance fighters unite for a daring mission to steal the Death Star plans in Star Wars anthology film, Rogue One,” the official Star Wars account tweeted on Sunday.

Felicity Jones, who was previously confirmed to star in “Rogue One,” will play a rebel soldier. The film will take place between Episode III and Episode IV, but closer to “A New Hope.”

The news was revealed at a panel with Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, Lucasfilm SVP of development Kiri Hart and “Rogue One” director Gareth Edwards. Josh Trank was scheduled to appear at the panel to discuss his own standalone film, but wasn’t on hand, with moderator Pablo Hidalgo saying he was “under the weather.”

The “Rogue One” teaser opened with a somewhat idyllic bird’s-eye view of a lush forest planet, showing a TIE fighter soaring above the trees before the camera pulled back to reveal the Death Star in close orbit. The teaser utilized one of Alec Guinness’ lines from “A New Hope” in voiceover, as Obi-Wan Kenobi explained, “For over a thousand generations the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the Empire.”

The final moments of the teaser ended on a chilling note, as garbled distress messages from what sounded like soldiers or pilots crackled over a radio frequency, before the sound and title card fizzled out as if the signal had been abruptly cut off.

Since the film doesn’t begin shooting until this summer — where it will lens in the UK and other undisclosed locations around the world — the footage was wholly comprised of CGI wizardry from Industrial Light & Magic. Edwards also revealed a concept art image that showed a squad of soldiers on the ground and in low-hovering crafts, faces covered and guns up as they ran towards an unseen threat in the darkness.

Edwards emphasized that the film is first and foremost a war movie, “It’s called ‘Star Wars,'” he pointed out wryly. Below-the-line talent and production heads have previously worked on a number of combat films, with Edwards name-dropping “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Black Hawk Down” and “Saving Private Ryan” to give fans an idea of “Rogue One’s” inspirations.

Since “Rogue One” takes place in the aftermath of the destruction of the Jedi order, Edwards said, “The absence of the Jedi is omnipresent.” Instead of characters relying on the power of an unpredictable Force to save them, the film will center around “real,” grounded human issues. “It’s about the fact that God’s not coming to save us… we have to do this ourselves,” Edwards said. “It comes down to a group of individuals that don’t have magic powers… that have to bring hope to the galaxy.”

Edwards noted that what he loved about the original “Star Wars” trilogy was that it was a very “black and white” universe — with the lines between good guys and bad guys very clearly delineated. “Rogue One,” however, will focus on the shades of grey in the galaxy far, far away — the bad guys can be good and the good guys can be bad.

The film was described as an ensemble piece, despite Felicity Jones being the only announced cast member at this point. Edwards said he wasn’t interested in showing superhuman soldiers who are constantly strong and unfaltering throughout. “We wanted to see fear, humor, warmth,” he said, noting that Jones has embodied those qualities throughout her career.

Hart said the standalone movies are being called “anthology films” rather than spinoffs, and will delve into previously untapped corners of the established universe. “‘Star Wars,’ as much as it is a set of characters… is a a place that we can explore in terms of character, in terms of time frame… We really wanted freedom to do some films that would stand on their own — they can vary in scale, they can vary in genre, they can introduce new characters and new places, and they can still be ‘Star Wars.'”

Kennedy credited George Lucas with encouraging the idea for the anthology films. “It was really George’s idea, not only picking up the saga again — which he never envisioned he would do… he was really interested in exploring all the stories that might exist within the universe.”

The concept for “Rogue One” originated with John Knoll — visual effects supervisor and chief creative officer at Industrial Light & Magic — who pitched the idea to a number of colleagues at the company before taking it to Kennedy.

Kennedy admitted that she was worried about “opening the floodgates [for pitches] if I said yes,” but said that after hearing Knoll’s idea for “Rogue One,” she realized, “there is no way I’m going to say no, this is a really, really cool idea… ‘Star Wars’ stories are not a dime a dozen — this is really hard to do and really hard to get right.”

While fans know very little about the specifics of the mission to steal the Death Star plans from the Empire, Knoll noted that some parameters have been set by the previous movies. “You can’t just do anything — it has to logically fit into that framework,” which allowed him to “craft a good, solid, logical” story to explore this previously untold part of the “Star Wars” mythos.

Because the film is also taking place in the same timeframe as Disney XD’s “Star Wars Rebels” series, Hart hinted that there was possibility for crossover between the two properties. “We can look for ways for them to talk to each other, but we don’t mandate that… [executive producers] Dave Filoni and Simon Kinberg did an amazing job on ‘Rebels,’ and we are facilitating the development of ‘Rogue One’ as well, so we’ll be seeing what happens there. We’re very much aware that things are happening on the same part of the timeline,” she said.

Perhaps because Trank wasn’t present, no information was released about the upcoming standalone film that he was previously announced to direct.

“Star Wars: Rogue One” is scheduled to be released in December 2016, while the J.J. Abrams-directed “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” will hit theaters on December 18, 2015.

[Eric Paddon]

Edwards noted that what he loved about the original “Star Wars” trilogy was that it was a very “black and white” universe — with the lines between good guys and bad guys very clearly delineated.

Really? If they were clearly delineated then by the time of ROTJ we wouldn't have learned about "a certain point of view"!

[BobaMike]

This could be pretty fun- a Star Wars movie not focused on Jedi!

Although I don't like that they are erasing Kyle Katarn from Star Wars. I realize this was coming with the reset canon, but I grew up playing Dark Forces & Jedi Knight..I want HIM to be the one stealing the Death Star plans. (and yes I know that this was later changed that he stole just a section of them, and there were many people tasked with getting the plans, but still...it stings)

Not sure how that Death Star could be that close to the planet though- it'd have to be sitting ON it, from the glimpse in the teaser.

[AndyDursin]

So let's get this straight -- Disney pretends they are the bastions of diversity, and yet in the two (and barely related) STAR WARS movies they've produced, they've cast white British female leads in both of them?? lol

Guess we know which way the focus group testing went...either that or it's the Mary Poppins Effect!



PS - Folded John's post into this thread