Now that the dust's settled, a re-evaluation of Disney's Star Wars films
- Thread starter T & P
- Start date
Orang Utan
Maybe I like the misery
Wish they’d have turned Flash Gordon into a franchise instead
Spandex
A crazy bulbous punchbag of sound
Fox own the rights to Flash Gordon and have been trying to get a new version off the ground for years. The latest attempt was a Taika Waititi helmed animated version that was announced in June '19, got to the treatment stage but was dropped when Fox cut back on the amount of films it was developing.
There was a 2007 TV series, but it looks shit and was cancelled after one season.
Might happen one day.
Orang Utan
Maybe I like the misery
I reckon they should leave it alone. That ship has sailed.
Spandex
A crazy bulbous punchbag of sound
Depends if someone has a fantastic vision and some great ideas of what to do with it or if, like the Star Wars sequels, they just want to make more for the sake of it.
Orang Utan
Maybe I like the misery
No Max Von Sydow and Brian Blessed is too old
Spandex
A crazy bulbous punchbag of sound
and Buster Crabbe has been dead for 37 years.
They could still use Sam Jones in his "Ted" guise.
Orang Utan
Maybe I like the misery
wossat?
Sam Jones AKA "Flash Gordon" was playing himself in the Ted films. He could reprise his role as Flash but style it like the Ted version of himself.
Orang Utan
Maybe I like the misery
Ah right I hadn’t noticed
ferrelhadley
There is no love between us anymore.
After I watched The Last Jedi I decided to never watch anything Star Wars again. I have heard many great things about The Mandalorian and Clone Wars but I am sure they will eventually be butchered by the studio. Every speculative fiction universe in cinema or TV over the past decade has imploded under the same weight of studios assuming, perhaps correctly, that once they have established a fan base they can then ditch any semblance of effort or coherence to expand the fans and flog shite.
A couple of problems. Rey. In the original trilogy Luke starts off as someone with well established flying skills but bugger all force use. He is a by stander as Kenobi is killed, needing to be pulled away. After training with the greatest Jedi he is able to not die too quickly against a Vader who is trying to keep him alive to turn him. More training and he eventually gets good enough to best Vader but still gets his arse kicked black and blue by the Emperor, only rescued by Vader going on a suicide burn to save him. That is a story arc with coherence and payoff. Rey sits in the Falcon when she has never flown before and flys like an absolute ace. She gets into a fight with Kylo having never seen a light sabre a short while earlier and beats him. Second film she is taking out Snokes guards like they are nothing. She also lifts a whole huge chunk of rocks with no training (Luke was pilling one or two stones no each other).
The writers did not give the slightest shit about the character, the stories structure, or the rules of the universe.
Finn, he has this huge conscious decision to leave the First Order because he sees his buddy die. Then within minutes is happily mowing down other troopers like they are dots on a video game. He also turns into a crazy skilled fighter and bests Captain Phasma in the second film, again its just incoherent random action.
You are not meant to sit in a cinema and notice the thematic coherence of the character development and how it reflects modern anxieties and something etc etc. But these things are the textures that make stories immersive and satisfying. Its the difference between watching a film where a character jumps from action sequence to action sequence and does cool shit but you come out not really giving a fuck and a film where it feels like the character is struggling to build skills to resolve problems in universe, where their bad choices have long lasting consequences for them and the story.
And then there is the Red Wedding Problem. A well known TV show spent several series with its protagonists struggling against odds, making bad choices and getting into trouble to build up to an episode where some very unexpected, but on reflection strongly foreshadowed events happened. Hollywood's take away from this was "people love unexpected shit, lets subvert expectations!!!!!!" From the moment Luke chucked the light sabre it was just random shit happening to "subvert expectations". It had not point and no consequence.
And finally Admiral Hux. When your main villain is being played for laughs with gags about his mother etc, you are not making a drama film.
There is a huge market for films where random shit just happens. That is the Transformers market. Its not me. Disney Wars lost me as a customer. They are making money hand over fist so are very unlikely to give a fuck.
A couple of problems. Rey. In the original trilogy Luke starts off as someone with well established flying skills but bugger all force use. He is a by stander as Kenobi is killed, needing to be pulled away. After training with the greatest Jedi he is able to not die too quickly against a Vader who is trying to keep him alive to turn him. More training and he eventually gets good enough to best Vader but still gets his arse kicked black and blue by the Emperor, only rescued by Vader going on a suicide burn to save him. That is a story arc with coherence and payoff. Rey sits in the Falcon when she has never flown before and flys like an absolute ace. She gets into a fight with Kylo having never seen a light sabre a short while earlier and beats him. Second film she is taking out Snokes guards like they are nothing. She also lifts a whole huge chunk of rocks with no training (Luke was pilling one or two stones no each other).
The writers did not give the slightest shit about the character, the stories structure, or the rules of the universe.
Finn, he has this huge conscious decision to leave the First Order because he sees his buddy die. Then within minutes is happily mowing down other troopers like they are dots on a video game. He also turns into a crazy skilled fighter and bests Captain Phasma in the second film, again its just incoherent random action.
You are not meant to sit in a cinema and notice the thematic coherence of the character development and how it reflects modern anxieties and something etc etc. But these things are the textures that make stories immersive and satisfying. Its the difference between watching a film where a character jumps from action sequence to action sequence and does cool shit but you come out not really giving a fuck and a film where it feels like the character is struggling to build skills to resolve problems in universe, where their bad choices have long lasting consequences for them and the story.
And then there is the Red Wedding Problem. A well known TV show spent several series with its protagonists struggling against odds, making bad choices and getting into trouble to build up to an episode where some very unexpected, but on reflection strongly foreshadowed events happened. Hollywood's take away from this was "people love unexpected shit, lets subvert expectations!!!!!!" From the moment Luke chucked the light sabre it was just random shit happening to "subvert expectations". It had not point and no consequence.
And finally Admiral Hux. When your main villain is being played for laughs with gags about his mother etc, you are not making a drama film.
There is a huge market for films where random shit just happens. That is the Transformers market. Its not me. Disney Wars lost me as a customer. They are making money hand over fist so are very unlikely to give a fuck.
AverageJoe
...
You should still watch The Mandalorian.
Athos
Well-Known Member
I wasn't stranded on a desert island, and I can see they're complete shite.
T & P
|-o-| (-o-) |-o-|
Well there’s always one isn’t there...
Athos
Well-Known Member
Come on, I get the whole 'nostalgia for your childhood' aspect, but, absent that, the original films are pretty weak, and the subsequent stuff is utter shite.
ferrelhadley
There is no love between us anymore.
Ok the original trilogy was a bit shit thing. Fair opinion if you are into heavy weight human drama. Its not the Godfather or Kramer vs Kramer. But its of that era. No one judges Jane Austin, The Beatles or Eisenstein as if they had been created yesterday. Art is understood to be of its time. The original trilogy was not deep in its examination of the human condition but it was something like the disco of cinema. It was an unabashed optimistic hero story. It was an escapist fantasy about goody good over coming horrible evil. When it was released there was a lot of 50s nostalgia around and in some ways Star Wars was a 50s cowboy film in space.
But it created an archetype (and it consciously drew heavily from archetypes). It was a break away from the grimness that the 70s seemed to be for the people of that era but of the grimness people in later decades felt. It believed in its world and believed in its optimism in a way that really cut into people for decades.
Luke's journey from farm boy to space saint was plotted with a care and focus on detail that lent credence to the hokey message and the cheesy dialogue.
This is why people sneer at the later stuff as "fan fiction". Fan fiction is almost universally about setting a story someone creates in someone else's universe. The geography and characters are all there but not the soul and the intuition of why those characters are in that setting. In speculative fiction you almost always need to be a character who is out of place, someone you relate to and follow their journey into the created world. Rey or Finn should have had this role but it was too much like actually doing your fucking job for the creatives at Disney to do that. Luke took this role in the OG. You go with him as he meets the space wizard and hires the Falcon, you watch as he learns about "the force" and rescues the princess. Then as he grows, he deepens his understanding of who he is as a person and the world he now finds himself in you follow with him feeling his victories and setbacks. It is not the greatest examination of the human condition on celluloid. But its a fun journey that makes sense in its own world for many many millions.
Its about connecting with Luke is such a way you are punching the air when he scores a win. By the end when he gains the maturity to see the good in Vader and all that you feel like its almost you that has seen it. This is what good story telling is about. Drawing you in and making you believe. But again, many people will not find this set of stories compelling. We respond differently to different stories. As we age and change we also respond differently to stories.
Tying it back into the the last trilogy. Many felt it sucked because it was just thing after thing. There was no journey. Just the buzz of a light sabre fight, the buzz of nostalgia, the buzz of an unexpected thing and then the end of the film.
As for the OG, oh my fucking god did the OG music nail it
The music helped tell the story of the journey you were on.
But it created an archetype (and it consciously drew heavily from archetypes). It was a break away from the grimness that the 70s seemed to be for the people of that era but of the grimness people in later decades felt. It believed in its world and believed in its optimism in a way that really cut into people for decades.
Luke's journey from farm boy to space saint was plotted with a care and focus on detail that lent credence to the hokey message and the cheesy dialogue.
This is why people sneer at the later stuff as "fan fiction". Fan fiction is almost universally about setting a story someone creates in someone else's universe. The geography and characters are all there but not the soul and the intuition of why those characters are in that setting. In speculative fiction you almost always need to be a character who is out of place, someone you relate to and follow their journey into the created world. Rey or Finn should have had this role but it was too much like actually doing your fucking job for the creatives at Disney to do that. Luke took this role in the OG. You go with him as he meets the space wizard and hires the Falcon, you watch as he learns about "the force" and rescues the princess. Then as he grows, he deepens his understanding of who he is as a person and the world he now finds himself in you follow with him feeling his victories and setbacks. It is not the greatest examination of the human condition on celluloid. But its a fun journey that makes sense in its own world for many many millions.
Its about connecting with Luke is such a way you are punching the air when he scores a win. By the end when he gains the maturity to see the good in Vader and all that you feel like its almost you that has seen it. This is what good story telling is about. Drawing you in and making you believe. But again, many people will not find this set of stories compelling. We respond differently to different stories. As we age and change we also respond differently to stories.
Tying it back into the the last trilogy. Many felt it sucked because it was just thing after thing. There was no journey. Just the buzz of a light sabre fight, the buzz of nostalgia, the buzz of an unexpected thing and then the end of the film.
As for the OG, oh my fucking god did the OG music nail it
The music helped tell the story of the journey you were on.
krtek a houby
Saoirse don Phalaistín!
Will allow for the thumbs down for Rise, but the rest of the new batch was great. In particular, The Last Jedi.
T & P
|-o-| (-o-) |-o-|
I don’t disagree tbh
I’m a first generation fan and and while not everyone liked at the time of course, it did make a massive impression on those of us who did. But of course viewed objectively, the dialogue was frankly awful at times, and the revolutionary special effects will seem completely unremarkable to anyone born in the 90s or later. The unprecedented sense of wonder, never-before-seen visual effects and glorious escapism of the premise and their characters these films offered when first released makes a massive difference to one’s judgement and fondness
agricola
a genuine importer of owls
I don’t disagree tbh
The unprecedented sense of wonder, never-before-seen visual effects and glorious escapism of the premise and their characters these films offered when first released makes a massive difference to one’s judgement and fondness
I don't know about that - there are bad bits in the dialogue of the original three, but these are fairly rare and most of the time its rather good. The special effects have stood up far better than anything else around at the time, and bits look far better than equivalent CGI scenes in later films:
T & P
|-o-| (-o-) |-o-|
Oh, I completely agree. The prequel trilogy should be cited by CGI teachers as an example of how not to implement the technology. It looked shite.
And of course, the dialogue was even more cringeworthy than in the original trilogy. I despair when people with kids born in the 90s and 00s say their children rather rate the prequels.
agricola
a genuine importer of owls
Indeed, although the one thing I would say in favour of the prequels is that the music is fantastic - various folk have put the full scores on Youtube for all three and they are worthy of far better films.
T & P
|-o-| (-o-) |-o-|
Yes, Anakin's mother's soundtrack suite is rather nice... As is Darth Maul's.
T & P
|-o-| (-o-) |-o-|
Decided to rewatch the recent sequel trilogy over this weekend. Interesting if not unexpected at all to see how much worse films VII, and IX feel compared to their first viewing at the time of their theatrical release. By contrast, whereas tge much maligned The Last Jedi still has a number of highly problematic issues, it is now in my mind the best of the three by a long margin.
kabbes
First intersubjective, then internalised
The Last Jedi is the worst of all nine films. Absolutely nothing any character does has any meaningful impact on the plot, character development or resolution of anything. It’s a bunch of stuff that happens and at the end nobody need have bothered with any of it.
DaveCinzano
WATCH OUT, GEORGE, HE'S GOT A SCREWDRIVER!
T & P
|-o-| (-o-) |-o-|
What, even worse than Attack of the Clones?? Nothing is worse than Attack of the Clones.
Idris2002
Stay Alive in '25
Sex Mission, is it?
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