6 ms·

Much like the Star Wars and Harry Potter franchises, the extent to which Everything Was Carefully Planned In Advance has been greatly exaggerated. It's just not

by jpm_sd 5y ago

Much like the Star Wars and Harry Potter franchises, the extent to which Everything Was Carefully Planned In Advance has been greatly exaggerated. It's just not possible to think that far ahead!

ceejayoz 5y ago
See also: Lost, Battlestar Galactica.
- kennywinker 5y ago
  The “and they have a plan” line in the opening sequence got more and more ridiculous as the series went on and it was clear the cylons did NOT have a plan at all.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    "The plan is to wing it."
  - cwillu 5y ago
    I always say that there was a great 3 season show hidden inside BSG's 4 season run.
    - kennywinker 5y ago
      It was the show that made me realize that 22 episode seasons just don’t work with the kind of serialized story that everybody does now. If bsg had been 8-12 episodes per season every episode would have been gold.
- Izkata 5y ago
  For Lost, there was a rumor online around the second or third season that someone had either figured out or leaked the entire remaining planned plot, so they started changing it in random ways just so they could keep claiming no one had figured it out.
aeturnum 5y ago
I also think this blog post betrays a lack of understanding about when it's appropriate to draw lines around "the plot" of a series. Like, it doesn't surprise me that they played with ideas that might have contradicted the trilogy - but they ended up not including them, and those ideas made an appearance later, which actually supports the claim that they were thinking about 2 and 3 during 1. Like, shooting and then deleting a scene that you think might hurt the plot in future movies is "carefully planning in advance."
- kennywinker 5y ago
  The theory presented is that it was cut for running time, not for story arc reasons. I disagree with the article’s premise that it would have changed the story of the sequels - but they make a good case for it being cut for incidental reasons.
  - aeturnum 5y ago
    I disagree with that read of the evidence they list, to wit: > In the introduction to a copy of the Final Shooting Script included in the book, editor Spencer Lamm notes that “everything” in the script was filmed but “changes occurred during editing.”[...]the part “where Cypher tells Neo there were five potential Ones before him was shot and then cut in postproduction for reasons only [Lana] and [Lilly] know.” So the quotes here say they shot everything in the script, but then they made changes in the editing room for reasons only known to the writers of the trilogy. It could be for runtime! I don't think there's any definitive evidence it isn't, but clearly this account also supports them shooting something that they later realized would screw up their planned script. I also wanna say that there is an ambiguity over if the five "ones" are actually Ones or just people Morpheus believed are ones. It wouldn't contradict the later plotline of Neo being the sixth One for Morpheus to mistakenly free five people who aren't Ones and get them killed - but it would be really confusing! Since the people in question are summarizing a deleted plot arc that the directors removed, I suspect they may be summarizing in a way that wasn't accurate to the understanding of those directors. All of which is to say that the blog article is telling a very specific story about what seems like pretty ambiguous evidence. The script had reference to previous people pulled out as potential Ones having died to agents. It would be confusing to the audience for these to be five "fake" ones and then also have five previous real Ones, but it wouldn't be internally contradictory. The only way it directly contradicts is with a very narrow meaning which I don't think the blog post convinced me was intended. Beyond that - as I said above - since they never put it into the movie I think this could count as "being intended from the beginning" where the beginning is the release of the first movie.
gjsman-1000 5y ago
Disney Star Wars however was by far the most blatant example. The sequel trilogy had no overarching plan at all. The Directors were free to make whatever story they wanted. This of course ended terribly in Episode 8 when Johnson single-handedly destroyed everything Abrams had put in place and left him nothing to go on for the finale.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  Which is kinda sad given that Disney as an organization should be aware how much good storytelling and a "cohesion team" is for the importance of an universe, given their experiences with the MCU. Even the Star Wars expanded universe was carefully and competently taken care of prior the acquisition - so many books and yet so little inconsistencies. Then Disney decided to throw all of the decades of worldbuilding away for three shitty plots and an endless lot of Rey-based Rule 34 material. The Star Trek reboot quality is similarly questionable, but at least they didn't simply go ahead and un-canon all existing works.
  - ourmandave 5y ago
    ...and an endless lot of Rey-based Rule 34 material. Good on ya to point out the silver lining.
    - mschuster91 5y ago
      I actually had to find something I was happy about. Han Solo murdered, Luke and Leia getting sacrificed, for a shitty Palpatine clone of all things? What a disgrace of a chaos of a plot! ETA: not to mention, the "character dies and gets reborn" plot was already questionable in TCW (where Darth Maul was revealed to have survived being sliced in half by Qui-Gon Jinn in Episode 1), but that one at least had a decent bit of usage... Palpatine's appearance was mostly the reveal at the end on Exegol, a fight and his (hopefully final...) death. The only way I can see any future films being set is somewhere between the trilogies (there's more than enough to be explained between EP3/4 or between 6/7) or an alternative-timeline reboot happening after EP6 (or maaaaybe but difficult given the deaths of primary actors, a timeline split caused by the destruction of that superlaser planet).
moritonal 5y ago
Sad to see Harry Potter lumped in there. Whilst the first seven books had a meticulous plan with payoffs from Book 1 in Book 7, I wholly agree that the spin off franchises did not.
Ergo19 5y ago
In my youth it was generally accepted that "George Lucas wrote an entire 9 film series." I don't know how this rumor spread or came to be so widely believed.
- graywh 5y ago
  Lucas had plans for sequels way back in the 70s, even making comments about when Mark Hammill would be the right age, but nothing concrete

by jpm_sd 5y ago

Much like the Star Wars and Harry Potter franchises, the extent to which Everything Was Carefully Planned In Advance has been greatly exaggerated. It's just not possible to think that far ahead!

ceejayoz 5y ago

See also: Lost, Battlestar Galactica.

kennywinker 5y ago
The “and they have a plan” line in the opening sequence got more and more ridiculous as the series went on and it was clear the cylons did NOT have a plan at all.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  "The plan is to wing it."
- cwillu 5y ago
  I always say that there was a great 3 season show hidden inside BSG's 4 season run.
  - kennywinker 5y ago
    It was the show that made me realize that 22 episode seasons just don’t work with the kind of serialized story that everybody does now. If bsg had been 8-12 episodes per season every episode would have been gold.
Izkata 5y ago
For Lost, there was a rumor online around the second or third season that someone had either figured out or leaked the entire remaining planned plot, so they started changing it in random ways just so they could keep claiming no one had figured it out.

aeturnum 5y ago

I also think this blog post betrays a lack of understanding about when it's appropriate to draw lines around "the plot" of a series. Like, it doesn't surprise me that they played with ideas that might have contradicted the trilogy - but they ended up not including them, and those ideas made an appearance later, which actually supports the claim that they were thinking about 2 and 3 during 1. Like, shooting and then deleting a scene that you think might hurt the plot in future movies is "carefully planning in advance."

kennywinker 5y ago
The theory presented is that it was cut for running time, not for story arc reasons. I disagree with the article’s premise that it would have changed the story of the sequels - but they make a good case for it being cut for incidental reasons.
- aeturnum 5y ago
  I disagree with that read of the evidence they list, to wit: > In the introduction to a copy of the Final Shooting Script included in the book, editor Spencer Lamm notes that “everything” in the script was filmed but “changes occurred during editing.”[...]the part “where Cypher tells Neo there were five potential Ones before him was shot and then cut in postproduction for reasons only [Lana] and [Lilly] know.” So the quotes here say they shot everything in the script, but then they made changes in the editing room for reasons only known to the writers of the trilogy. It could be for runtime! I don't think there's any definitive evidence it isn't, but clearly this account also supports them shooting something that they later realized would screw up their planned script. I also wanna say that there is an ambiguity over if the five "ones" are actually Ones or just people Morpheus believed are ones. It wouldn't contradict the later plotline of Neo being the sixth One for Morpheus to mistakenly free five people who aren't Ones and get them killed - but it would be really confusing! Since the people in question are summarizing a deleted plot arc that the directors removed, I suspect they may be summarizing in a way that wasn't accurate to the understanding of those directors. All of which is to say that the blog article is telling a very specific story about what seems like pretty ambiguous evidence. The script had reference to previous people pulled out as potential Ones having died to agents. It would be confusing to the audience for these to be five "fake" ones and then also have five previous real Ones, but it wouldn't be internally contradictory. The only way it directly contradicts is with a very narrow meaning which I don't think the blog post convinced me was intended. Beyond that - as I said above - since they never put it into the movie I think this could count as "being intended from the beginning" where the beginning is the release of the first movie.

gjsman-1000 5y ago

Disney Star Wars however was by far the most blatant example. The sequel trilogy had no overarching plan at all. The Directors were free to make whatever story they wanted. This of course ended terribly in Episode 8 when Johnson single-handedly destroyed everything Abrams had put in place and left him nothing to go on for the finale.

mschuster91 5y ago
Which is kinda sad given that Disney as an organization should be aware how much good storytelling and a "cohesion team" is for the importance of an universe, given their experiences with the MCU. Even the Star Wars expanded universe was carefully and competently taken care of prior the acquisition - so many books and yet so little inconsistencies. Then Disney decided to throw all of the decades of worldbuilding away for three shitty plots and an endless lot of Rey-based Rule 34 material. The Star Trek reboot quality is similarly questionable, but at least they didn't simply go ahead and un-canon all existing works.
- ourmandave 5y ago
  ...and an endless lot of Rey-based Rule 34 material. Good on ya to point out the silver lining.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    I actually had to find something I was happy about. Han Solo murdered, Luke and Leia getting sacrificed, for a shitty Palpatine clone of all things? What a disgrace of a chaos of a plot! ETA: not to mention, the "character dies and gets reborn" plot was already questionable in TCW (where Darth Maul was revealed to have survived being sliced in half by Qui-Gon Jinn in Episode 1), but that one at least had a decent bit of usage... Palpatine's appearance was mostly the reveal at the end on Exegol, a fight and his (hopefully final...) death. The only way I can see any future films being set is somewhere between the trilogies (there's more than enough to be explained between EP3/4 or between 6/7) or an alternative-timeline reboot happening after EP6 (or maaaaybe but difficult given the deaths of primary actors, a timeline split caused by the destruction of that superlaser planet).

moritonal 5y ago

Sad to see Harry Potter lumped in there. Whilst the first seven books had a meticulous plan with payoffs from Book 1 in Book 7, I wholly agree that the spin off franchises did not.

Ergo19 5y ago

In my youth it was generally accepted that "George Lucas wrote an entire 9 film series." I don't know how this rumor spread or came to be so widely believed.

graywh 5y ago
Lucas had plans for sequels way back in the 70s, even making comments about when Mark Hammill would be the right age, but nothing concrete