Going Rogue

There absolutely IS room for more Star Wars stories. 

Tonally different side-steps into other planets and cultures? Yes please. In an era where every movie studio is desperate to create their own series of linked Marvel-esque movies Star Wars is a ready-made galaxy far, far away ripe for exploration. 

I just don’t think Rogue One is the best example of how to do it.

On the plus side, it feels like a different kind of movie. No opening crawl this time, but a flashback to a young Jyn. By the time we see her rescued from an Imperial prison we can surmise the troubled journey she’s been on. So far so good.

It’s the other characters that need some help.

Ok, looking them up on IMDB Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus
don’t seem so unpronounceable but if you’d asked me their names
straight after the movie I'd have been clueless.

Star Wars has a history of throwing together a disparate band of misfits that overcome their differences to achieve the heroic. Rogue One certainly has its merry band and full marks for different ethnicities and accents. But backstories are non-existent and names are just a step too far from the norm to be instantly comprehensible.

As such, I found it really hard to engage with these people or care what happens to them. And if it was in the dialogue, the reason for Imwe and Malbus being on Jedha was lost on me.

With all the rumours of reshoots and rewrites buzzing in my head and with awesome bits from the trailer simply not there I wonder if we’re not getting the film as it was originally intended. Have the characters been softened? There is a lot of deliciously grey morality about. Jyn has been to prison, her dad helped build the death star, Ando kills a comrade within moments of his intro and Jyn’s mentor figure (while lacking any great story function) is acknowledged as a terrorist.

None of the characters get a particularly heroic death, another reason to suppose that they should all have been morally ambiguous. Would I have engaged more if they had more grit?

There’s a lot to love about Rogue One

but it’s a film that didn’t have to be made.

I sound like I hated it, I didn’t. As an old school fan there is a LOT to love about Rogue One. It really does flesh out the Empire era of the Star Wars galaxy and show planets and people beyond the main conflict.

It’s undeniably a Star Wars film with plenty of laser guns, spectacular space battles, glorious visuals (the death star hanging in the sky above Skarif is beautiful) and crazy architecture with consoles at the end of precarious gantries – no place for vertigo in the Empire! 

It’s just that I expect, no, we deserve better.

While it seems generally accepted that Uncle George’s prequels were a bad lot, it’s strange to go back and mine the same territory again unless you’re going to do something different or improve on it. Rogue One does neither.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s nothing like the bland CG-fests of Episodes 1-3 but while Lucas peppered his prequels with new characters that fired the imagination and potentially outshone the main protagonists (Step forward Jango Fett, Zam Wessel, Mace Windu and even Yoda) here the heroes seem to be playing second fiddle to the main saga with too many ‘for the fans’ cameos and references and villains upon villains that only indirectly impact on our main cast.

Given that we’ve never heard of these characters beyond Rogue One and go in assuming none of them are getting out alive, it’s a disappointment that none of them do. What better way to surprise and subvert our expectations?

Instead Rogue One has an inevitability about it that’s almost mechanical in its execution right up to its CGI Princess Leia who’s so placid and chipper, it’s like she’s been dropped in from another movie rather than caught up in the massive space battle that’s just occurred. And while I’m thinking about it, just what was the Tantive V doing docked inside a Mon Calimari capital ship rather than out there fighting? Did someone say ‘contrived’?

More than that, with the death star plans randomly beamed into space where any of the rebel ships could have received them, including those that escaped doesn’t it rather take away the sense of urgency from Princess Leia’s subsequent mission?

What it all amounts to is that as nice, cosy and nostalgic as it may be to see the death star firing sequence recreated, Peter Cushing resurrected and Darth Vader swishing his lightsabre, Rogue One is a film that absolutely didn’t need to be made.

In fandom, it’s commonly known as fanwank, an obsessive need to fill in every continuity gap. This is Space Opera, not Soap Opera. We don’t need to see the moment Bail Organa decides to send for Obi Wan Kenobi. In fact, the more of these self-indulgent moments we see, the more it takes away from the original.

So the rebel boffins didn’t find a way to destroy the death star, it was designed that way by Galen Erso. I know he needed to keep it hidden but couldn’t he have made it easier? At least design fewer gun turrets along that trench.

Luke Skywalker looking to the horizon, yesterday.

And when the pros are serving up fanwank, where is there for fans to go? What stories are left for the 8 year olds to dream up with their Christmas action figures? Maybe better ones than are being served to them.

This makes me somewhat reticent about further spin-offs that try to plunder the ghost of Star Wars past. What further nods and cameos will be shoehorned into the Han Solo or (rumoured) Boba Fett movies. Surely it’s better and more exciting to make companion pieces to the latest trilogy? What if Po Dameron had a side adventure between chapters? How about a story that fleshes out the woefully underused Captain Phasma?

I grew up with a Star Wars that looked to the horizon. The future. Excitement. Come on Star Wars, enough naval gazing. You’re better than this.

The Writer Bubble

 
For a long while I’ve been going to networking dos for writers. They’re great. Vital, even. Catching up with friends, forming new relationships. Sometimes writers at the same level, sometimes a bit further along the path willing to shine a torch on the road ahead of you, other times writers just starting out to whom you can pass the benefit of your experience thus far.

But hanging out with only writers can in itself be a comfort zone and that’s a one way ticket to Rutsville.



Yes, many of us writers also produce, script edit and get stuff made but we do also need to find dedicated producers that want to work with us, connect with other people in the industry, script editors, TV execs, commissioners.

We need to stop thinking of these people as gate keepers trying to keep us out and more like, well… people. Friends, colleagues that you are going to have a fabulous time working with.

“Oh, I can’t talk to them, I’m only a writer.”

I was very lucky. My ticket to the International Drama Summit at Content London 2016 came to me free as a finalist in the C21 Drama script competition. At nearly £400 it’s not cheap. But getting out of the writer bubble gives you a different perspective on the business and makes it seem less scary and impenetrable.



So began three amazing days of sessions and speakers from across the globe, all about the gogglebox. Many of them were on the creative side – Tony Jordan, Jed Mercurio, Marnie Dickens, Tom Basden and Anna Winger ON THE SAME PANEL!!! - while others were more business-skewed like the session on Drama finance after “Brexit”.

Polly Hill from ITV. Not keeping you out.

And it was a level playing field. No us and them. No green room. Everyone in the business together. No egoes, no “oh, I can’t talk to them, I’m only a writer.” Everyone friendly, good natured and receptive. One minute you’re on the escalator with a showrunner from South Africa, the next you’re chatting in the coffee queue to an American producer with $$$ burning a hole in his pocket, desperate for a good script.

As a writer trying to knock on the door of telly, I came away feeling there ISN’T someone trying to keep us out. Sure, we have to have a certain level of skill and that comes with time and hard work. But if you’ve got stories to tell, people want to hear them.

These are my top tips based on the things I was hearing at C21.

• Don’t be afraid to tell YOUR story. It’s unique to you and that’s what they want. Don’t try and skew it to fit an existing formula. Producers, program makers and ultimately audiences want to be surprised. But whatever you do, tell it with PASSION.
"Avoid the middle at all costs. Go for extremes."
Jane Tranter (Producer, Bad Wolf Productions)

• We all have something to say. The wounds in our lives that we’re trying work through in our writing. Drill down and find yours. Go to the places you don’t want to go within yourself to find what you’re really about. Then write that. 

"If you want to be universal, be specific."

Sarah Phelps (Writer, And Then There Were None)

• “Auteur driven” was on everyone’s lips. They want the next Fleabag – but that doesn’t mean you have to star in it or have your main character talk to the camera (see point 1 above). They want dramas that are so specific to that writer’s voice, experience and worldview. Intimacy and specificity are the key.

"Small, intimate, worthy can still be big in scope.

Universal themes in International Shows."

Sharon Tal Yguado (EVP, Fox Networks Group)

• Think of your audience. Given what’s going on politically it’s clear that great swathes of people feel unrepresented and this applies to TV too. It’s an image of Britain we like to export but not everyone lives in Downton Abbey. Not everyone is middle class and owns their own home. Not every woman is Olivia Coleman. If you’re worried you’ve got nothing to say because you grew up on a housing estate, didn’t get a media degree and you’re not a white heterosexual man, stop worrying and get writing.

"Entertain the people who have been missed out."

Greg Brennan (Producer, Drama Republic)

Above all, the main message from C21 was "Make great content and audiences will come."

Philip is the winner of the C21 Drama Script competition and was mentored for his final pitch by Tony Jordan.