Official Teaser Trailer for Lovecraft Country

"HBO’s new drama series, based on the 2016 novel by Matt Ruff of the same name, debuts this August. The series follows Atticus Freeman (Jonathan Majors) as he joins up with his friend Letitia (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) and his Uncle George (Courtney B. Vance) to embark on a road trip across 1950s Jim Crow America in search of his missing father (Michael Kenneth Williams). This begins a struggle to survive and overcome both the racist terrors of white America and the terrifying monsters that could be ripped from a Lovecraft paperback."

Cast: Jonathan Majors as Atticus Freeman, Jurnee Smollett-Bell as Letitia Dandridge, Courtney B. Vance as George Black, Michael Kenneth Williams as Montrose Freeman, Aunjanue Ellis as Hippolyta Black, Wunmi Mosaku as Ruby Dandridge, and newcomer Jada Harris as Diana Black.

Lovecraft Country is executive produced by Misha Green (of Underground fame), J.J Abrams, Jordan Peele, Bill Carraro, Yann Demange, Daniel Sackheim and David Knoller.

Me:  ...

Well! J.J left me no choice! I’ll just have to imagine Kylo Ren’s Entourage as a bunch of Eternally Sexy, Lethal Force Users, Supermodel Warriors.

https://imgur.com/gallery/WKkli

https://imgur.com/gallery/j9OQylb

Beyond the proof that the guy who uploaded this is involved with Bad Robot that he provided at the end of his second post, these definitely seem legit because the first post was in 2018, before The Rise of Skywalker came out, yet the treatment contains some blatant concepts that ended up finding there way into that movie that I have a hard time believing anyone but J.J himself could have come up with (plus, the rest of the plot is very J.J-like, as I’ll get into.)

So these definitely seem to be the discarded Episode VIII and IX treatments. Thoughts?

- Luke’s reasons for coming to Ahch-To definitely seem more in line with TFA than in TLJ, seeing as if he wanted to just “go there to die” he wouldn’t have left a freaking map to the place behind, plus it seemed off that someone disillusioned with the Jedi ways would go to the site of the first Jedi Temple to begin with. His portrayal also matches what we saw at the end of TFA (seeming to be in mourning for Han), and fits the “kind but sad” description from the script. And far from cutting himself off from the Force, Luke has been influencing it from afar as part of his grand plan, explaining Rey’s vision when she touched his lightsaber.

- Luke has a wife and kids! Sadly for EU fans, the wife is not Mara Jade.

- It was Luke’s influence via the Force that explained the things Rey could do that fans deemed her a Mary Sue for, plus some other things that weren’t so routinely noted such as the remarkable coincidence that she and Finn just happened to run into Han and Chewie right after obtaining the Millennium Falcon. Not sure how well this would have gone down...

- Saccrum, Snoke’s home planet, is literally Exogol. Secret ancient Sith planet that is nigh impenetrable to all non-Sith, site of the final battle and (as we’ll soon learn) where Snoke is repeatedly cloned and where Palpatine is resurrected by Sith alchemists...it’s fucking Exogol.

- I recall concept art for Kylo Ren’s partly metallic face floating around.

- Dathan Naut seems cool, but she never really amounts to much.

- So it seems J.J Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan’s vision for the Sequel Trilogy always seemed to boil down to “All the generations of Jedi vs. all the generations of Sith reaching a climactic battle, with Skywalker vs. Palpatine at the heart of it, and the Palpatine who becomes a Skywalker as the key to victory.” That idea was always where they were going.

- Jedi/Sith Holocrons were always gonna be a thing, which is why Rebels worked them in.

- Live-action Ahsoka was also always an objective, it seems, and I bet the way they wrote her out in Rebels’ “Twilight of the Apprentice” was to potentially serve as a lead-in for her appearance in the Sequel Trilogy. But because that never came to pass, they brought her back toward the end of the series and set her on the new trajectory that she’s currently on. Honestly, I think that’s for the better, Ahsoka wouldn’t have really fit in the main film series.

- Not big on this Cfi-Xi character, she mainly seems to be here to “no homo” C-3PO. And her main role relating to the Sith Planet ended up played just fine by C-3PO in TROS anyway.

- BB-8 had the kind of fake-out death they ended up giving to Chewie.

- Wow, so Hux was supposed to die in Episode VIII and Phasma in Episode IX originally. Funny how that got totally flipped backward in the versions we actually ended up getting.

- OK, this “family time” that Rey’s getting is precious. It’s sad we didn’t get to see this.

- Hoo boy, “this is the bad ass Luke Skywalker we’ve been waiting for!” Really? Et tu, J.J and Kasdan? In light of the recent showing by Luke in The Mandalorian, I again question why this portrayal of the character is so widely beloved by fans when it has little to no basis in the OT.

- Rey vs. Kylo Ren in a raging ocean backdrop; here in Episode VIII rather than IX. Similarly, it’s a duel that Kylo clearly has in the bag, but a fluke in the Force allows Rey to survive, although I much prefer the fluke we got to the one this treatment proposes because....

- Goddamn it, J.J. You’re doing the time travel / time paradox shit again? Were Lost, Fringe and Star Trek not enough for you to explore that concept in? This is the biggest part of these treatment drafts that rubs me the wrong way, it’s just so needlessly convoluted and cliche.

- Also, yet another Mystery Box in Luke’s severed hand on Saccrum.

- No Jedi Leia in that flashback? Yeah, I can see why Kathleen Kennedy rejected this.

- Btw, Rian Johnson wasn’t the only one who was going to turn Luke into an asshole failure, it seems. Making this highly risky plan with Ben and not letting his parents know about it? Dick! 

- Snoke is the one who destroys Luke’s academy, not Kylo Ren. And he does so as he is dying; another clue-in that there’s more to Snoke than it seems given that he’s still around.

- Lando would have been in Episode IX anyway, albeit still running Cloud City.

- The idea for this Episode IX is that the Skywalkers are a Jedi dynasty that long predated Anakin (Shmi being a descendant of it), and the Palpatines were their Sith enemies. Sheev Palpatine also would have died his first death generations ago and was being constantly resurrected via clone bodies made on Saccrum ever since, so the one that Anakin killed wasn’t the original; Palpatine can’t be stopped unless Saccrum is destroyed. While not as convoluted as the time paradox shit, I appreciate the simpler route they ended up taking.

- J.J and Kasdan always wanted Rey’s father to be a defective Palpatine clone.

- There was never a planned origin for Snoke in these treatments; wherever he came from the bottom line was that Palpatine brought him onto his side by promising to share his key to immortality (constant cloned bodies made on Sacccrum) with him. Again, this ended up being simplified into Snoke just being a whole-sale creation of Palpatine’s from the very beginning.

- Since these are treatments, the “love” part of the dynamic between Rey and Kylo Ren is highly underdeveloped and would likely have been fleshed out in screenwriting. The end result, with the deprogramming vision of Rey and Darth Vader, sounds pretty effective though, but I think I much prefer the Leia death / vision of Han version that we ended up with.

- LOL, the “droid way of making love”. I want to see this idea repurposed someday.

- That’s an interesting twist on Alderaan, although it really doesn’t amount to anything given that the planet Leia grew up on and called home still got destroyed by the Death Star.

- “Magic blood”, another J.J-ism. Again, I much prefer the simpler version TROS gave us.

- The climax’s structure is basically the same as in TROS, with Rey (and others) heading to the Sith planet from Ahch-To and then Leia’s Resistance forces going there from their base, with Rey and Ben facing Palpatine. The biggest differences is that we also have Luke vs. Snoke and Finn vs. Phasma battles going on, in addition to a Jedi vs. Sith ground battle.

- Yeah, I don’t really care for how Phasma’s death is handled: making her hideously scarred and treating her sympathetically don’t sit right with me. Rian Johnson did it better, IMO.

- No red stormtroopers here, but there are red Tie Fighters.

- Ben still gives his life to save Rey, albeit in a less literal manner.

- Palpatine still wants Rey to ascend to the Sith throne and rule by his side. Also: “he loves the smell of burning hair, it reminds him of home”!? Wow, that’s dark in what it’s implying...

- OK, so while not a Jedi, Leia is the Big Damn Hero in the end. That makes sense.

- WTF? Rey straight-up kills Palpatine with Sith lightning!? Yeah, that definitely wasn’t ever gong to fly with Lucasfilm, since it totally contradicts ROTJ’s message! It was inevitable that we’d end up with the more correct “Rey deflects Palpatine’s own Sith lightning back at him”.

- “Rey Skywalker” is the end point for the story here as well, but it ending on Tatooine is so much more emotional than ending it on Alderaan Prime, a place that only just now exists.

One of the most surreal reading experiences I have ever had. 

S. A Novel by Doug Dorst and J.J. Abrams

(J.J. Abrams, 2019)

If you are one of those switch your brain off and enjoy it people then there is a lot to love in this movie. Big space battles, nostalgic callbacks, chase scenes, shooting, more nostalgia, lightsabering, amusing droids, death, two unnamed lesbian extras starring in their own Where's Waldo page, and more nostalgia.

If those things don't do much for you, or are not alone enough for you to enjoy a movie, and as someone who grew up watching Star Wars movies, they certainly were not for me, then this is the sort of movie that caps off a trilogy defined more than anything else by how much of a pastiche it was of Star Wars' of days gone by with the ultimate act of pastiche that in slapping itself together from bits of old Star Wars movies forgot to be particularly coherent (The conclusion for our beloved Leia Organa’s part in all this is particularly damning in this regard. Nice moments, obviously hamstrung by Carrie Fisher’s passing, but why do something some way if you don’t have the ability/material to pull it off?) in an overall way.

When George Lucas began releasing his much maligned prequel trilogy 20 years ago they were savaged by fans and critics alike from beginning to end, but Star Wars Episode IX, the for now last Star Wars movie makes me for one appreciate those admittedly badly made movies all the more. Overdosing on CGI they may have been, bad acting and occasional overwriting they may have been polluted by, but they were original (as original as any of these movies get anyway) stories taking the story of a galaxy far, far away in new directions. They were a clear counter part to their predecessors, where that was the tale of light, of saviours, new hope, and redemption, the prequels were a tale of darkness, of fear and frailty, falling empires and despair. This new trilogy, Abrams entries anyway, just appear to be tributes to the original movies. That Disney could have embarked on this undertaking without a clear thought through arc is bewildering beyond belief, and after getting away with it for 2 movies, with The Rise of Skywalker the chickens have well and truly come home to roost.

JJ Abrams, and Chris Terrio, the academy award winning genius who reduced Argo to what it was, couldn't writing a satisfying Batman and Superman movie in spite of trying twice, is now given the keys to the kingdom in taking home a 42 year saga, but more importantly, retconning as much of Rian Johnson's Last Jedi as possible. In the process it becomes a mess of a movie that can barely even seem to stay logically straight within its own confines, and in its desire to be an act of worship to Star Wars movies of the past manages to triumphantly undo even the socially agreed upon good ones. *spoilers* the end of Return of the Jedi now literally means nothing. *end spoilers* That’s the other great crime of this movie. Kylo Ren putting his helmet back on, key details left out of the film but included in tie-in books, like last years Solo it ties these movies in far too much with the extended universe beyond, it ties it all in with the merchandise, the toys, its testament to modern blockbuster filmmaking at its worst. A corporation trying to drain every cent from you that they can.

I mentioned before how it is all an act of worship to the original movies, but the one thing you can say for this film is that it is so more in the way it cashes in on Star Wars iconography of days gone by more than how it narratively treads as much already tread water as both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi did.

The trouble is that in trying to do that it reveals what a lot of creative bankruptcy there is in the brains of the people making it. So many scenes come off like the creation of some preteen more interested in crafting new cool moments around characters and ideas long established than trying to tell a coherent story. The opening minutes in particular are particularly bewildering from a writing, editing, directing point of view, and is almost certainly the worst introduction to a Star Wars movie ever. I guess now we know why they stuck to the old formulas so closely... Even when they do come up with a good moment (”but there are more of us”) if you happened to be one of the number of people that a few months ago watched the now highest grossing movie of all time then you may have seen a scene that did almost the exact same thing. Further still as more testament to the storytelling incompetence of its creators it manages to immediately undo that moment in order to give us one more moment of nostalgia driven fan service.

So yes, comfortably the worst Star Wars movie I’ve ever laid eyes on. Takes Solo’s issues with trying to transform itself from major movie event into one small part in the larger Disney cog innumerable steps further, makes me pine for the savaged prequel trilogy that had an actual new story to tell rather than just coasting entirely on nostalgia and iconography, completely dismantles the half built arc of its own trilogy, and commits again and again that crime of final chapters where instead of riding your two acts already told story to the finish line, it spends too much time introducing new ideas, new characters, again, we can assume as slaves to the corporation that created them to have new content to shuffle into its other products. It’s a heinous piece of work on so many levels that makes certainly this lifelong Star Wars fan more fully appreciate the franchises weaknesses in days gone by.

Still, the one genuinely good thing here is the conclusion to the central arc of Daisy Ridley’s Rey. Granted, in going the way that they go with it they are annihilating a large part of The Last Jedi’s subtextual brilliance (they try bringing that back to some degree with the aforementioned rare good moment, but then undo it with their pandering stupidity) but her internal struggle over the course of the movie is really well written, and brilliantly played by Ridley herself, and the conclusion basically satisfactory, even if in its wrapping up it still can’t avoid the wallowing in nostalgia. Storytelling wise they could have surely picked a more appropriate location for that character, and the two characters she’s honouring.