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Star Wars has never been good


Jotari
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43 minutes ago, James Bond said:

It was just a fad of the time, only difference with fads nowadays is that Spielberg and Lucas are still milking...

I wouldn't put it solely on Lucas. Had he been more restrictive of his copy right and not allowed like a million different people to publish Star Wars fan fiction under the expanded universe label, then the series probably would have died. Or went the way of Terminator in which they manage to make a new movie every few years but there's nowhere near enough hype around it to secure super block buster status.

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8 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I wouldn't put it solely on Lucas. Had he been more restrictive of his copy right and not allowed like a million different people to publish Star Wars fan fiction under the expanded universe label, then the series probably would have died. Or went the way of Terminator in which they manage to make a new movie every few years but there's nowhere near enough hype around it to secure super block buster status.

If we could have avoided something like "Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones" then it should have died for the best of the series...
I believe the Mandalorian for example would have existed in a separate way and universe...

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4 hours ago, Jotari said:

Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

Using a Star Wars quote in the thread's opening is rather ironic.

 

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

I wouldn't put it solely on Lucas. Had he been more restrictive of his copy right and not allowed like a million different people to publish Star Wars fan fiction under the expanded universe label, then the series probably would have died. Or went the way of Terminator in which they manage to make a new movie every few years but there's nowhere near enough hype around it to secure super block buster status.

Another interesting quirk of the series was in their willingness to just give a lot of control of lore over to nerdy pen and paper RPGs, as the West End Games (WEG) D6 Star Wars RPG system was allowed to flesh out a staggering amount of the universe. Many have said that the WEG D6 Star Wars RPG is what keep Star Wars alive in the late 80s (before Lucasfilms stared making a push into book publications in the 90s), and when one of the first big Extended Universe authors (Timothy Zahn) asked for a setting bible, they didn't have one, and instead handed him some of the RPG source books as a reference. When LucasArts started making the famed X-wing and TIE fighter series, they used (and credited) some of the ships from the WEG D6 SW RPG. Even when Disney took over, they hired one of the writers of the D6 RPG as one of the people to oversee the series canon.

Honestly the Star Wars RPGs have always been stellar, with the exception of the 1st D20 system that Wizards of the Coast crapped out when they first got the license, but they did redeem themselves latter by releasing Saga Edition, which I still think is my favorite of all the D20 systems.

Edited by Eltosian Kadath
redundancy
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Correction: Star Wars was briefly good from May 19th, 1999 to May 19th, 2005.

 1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Well that's cheating. Everything is great when converted into Lego.

 

Edited by AnonymousSpeed
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1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Correction: Star Wars was briefly good from May 19th, 1999 to May 19th, 2005.

 

I would say it was briefly more interesting during the prequel years, but even Revenge of the Sith only reaches heights of okay.

Best thing by far to come out of Star Wars is Robot Chicken.

Edited by Jotari
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On the one hand: Star Wars has always been more about spectacle over substance. The special effects in the original trilogoy were legitimately groundbreaking and fantastic for their time; the prequel trilogy had some amazing battle scenes and some pioneering use of CGI; their music has always been absolutely top notch. It's basically a big series of summer blockbusters that relies on its technology to put on a show, so it's hardly a surprise that they've not aged particularly well as their once-revolutionary effects have become old hat.

On the other hand: the original trilogy was a part of my childhood, so they will always be my personal favourites due to the rose-coloured glasses of nostalgia. I even kinda like the ewoks and they're pretty much just objectively naff. But hey, I had action figures of Wicket and Chief Chirpa as a kid, so I have fond memories of them that stretch way beyond the movies.

People my age mostly tend to think the originals were best, people who were kids around the time of the prequel trilogies mostly seem to think that they were the best, and give it another decade or so and I'll bet that people who grew up on the sequel trilogy will think that they're the best. And we'll all be wrong. Because actually, none of them were any good. But that's OK. They didn't have to be. They were blockbusters.

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I disagree. I think the Original Trilogy still holds up:

A New Hope didn't have much new when it came to storytelling; it was in many ways a classic Hero's Journey with a Space Epic reskin. But cliché doesn't mean bad; I've seen a lot of people these days defend bad storylines because they were at least surprising and the alternative would've been predictable; I strongly disagree with this notion. Tropes are tools; it is not the use of tropes and templates in-of-themselves that make a story bland; it is the use of these tropes without any thought or storytelling effort put into them. A New Hope's narrative may not be conceptually fascinating these days, but it is a reasonably-well-constructed narrative with a solid and interesting cast of characters.

Empire Strikes Back is commonly held up as an example of a good sequel, and for good reason. The writing competency and the interesting characters are still there, and now it is telling something more original: a story where the heroes are constantly on the run and don't actually win; their only 'victory' being that they manage to get away, but the tone of the ending makes it clear that they still lost. Even today, that is hardly cliché.

Return of the Jedi does rehash a lot and suffers for it; there's a reason it isn't as highly regarded as the others, but it still maintains a mostly-competent narrative and that core cast of interesting characters are still, well, interesting.

 

As for the prequel trilogy... well, they're bad. There's no getting around that; they are poorly-written. However, they still manage to somewhat impress because they are at least interesting; the overarching narrative of a well-meaning but ultimately-rotten republic being corrupted into an evil empire is ultimately very fascinating at the conceptual level, and in every moment in the prequels, it is clear that there's an interesting story that it's trying to tell.

 

Empire Strikes Back is looked back upon most fondly by a lot of people because it is both conceptually fascinating and competently structured. The rest of the OT are the latter, while the prequel trilogy is the former. The biggest problem that the sequel trilogy has, aside from very obviously not having had a plan, is that they are neither.

I will admit that I did grow up with the prequels and the OT, but the thing is that I'm not a huge fan of the series; I liked the films, but stuff like SpongeBob and Zelda were a bigger part of my childhood than Star Wars. The Star Wars films were just fun films; my nostalgia for them is very limited.

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3 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

I disagree. I think the Original Trilogy still holds up:

A New Hope didn't have much new when it came to storytelling; it was in many ways a classic Hero's Journey with a Space Epic reskin. But cliché doesn't mean bad; I've seen a lot of people these days defend bad storylines because they were at least surprising and the alternative would've been predictable; I strongly disagree with this notion. Tropes are tools; it is not the use of tropes and templates in-of-themselves that make a story bland; it is the use of these tropes without any thought or storytelling effort put into them. A New Hope's narrative may not be conceptually fascinating these days, but it is a reasonably-well-constructed narrative with a solid and interesting cast of characters.

Empire Strikes Back is commonly held up as an example of a good sequel, and for good reason. The writing competency and the interesting characters are still there, and now it is telling something more original: a story where the heroes are constantly on the run and don't actually win; their only 'victory' being that they manage to get away, but the tone of the ending makes it clear that they still lost. Even today, that is hardly cliché.

Return of the Jedi does rehash a lot and suffers for it; there's a reason it isn't as highly regarded as the others, but it still maintains a mostly-competent narrative and that core cast of interesting characters are still, well, interesting.

 

As for the prequel trilogy... well, they're bad. There's no getting around that; they are poorly-written. However, they still manage to somewhat impress because they are at least interesting; the overarching narrative of a well-meaning but ultimately-rotten republic being corrupted into an evil empire is ultimately very fascinating at the conceptual level, and in every moment in the prequels, it is clear that there's an interesting story that it's trying to tell.

 

Empire Strikes Back is looked back upon most fondly by a lot of people because it is both conceptually fascinating and competently structured. The rest of the OT are the latter, while the prequel trilogy is the former. The biggest problem that the sequel trilogy has, aside from very obviously not having had a plan, is that they are neither.

I will admit that I did grow up with the prequels and the OT, but the thing is that I'm not a huge fan of the series; I liked the films, but stuff like SpongeBob and Zelda were a bigger part of my childhood than Star Wars. The Star Wars films were just fun films; my nostalgia for them is very limited.

I actually find A New Hope to be significantly better than The Empire Strikes back.  A lot of Empire is just kind of waiting around for the finale to happen, while a New Hope manages to stay comparatively action packed throughout (aside from an understandable blip in the beginning when things are still being set up). And for all the cliche that gets thrown at it, the Death Star is still a pretty great set piece. Was there anything like that in prior Scifi? I know Ming from Flash Gordon has something quite like earth destroying powers and  *checks quickly* Ego the Living Planet predates Star Wars which is somewhat similar on scale, but I can't (in my meagre knowledge of early pop scifi) think of anything quite like the Death Star that works in the same way as both a setpiece and a focused narrative threat that must be eliminated (though I would be in no way surprised if it was ripped off something earlier as I've heard a lot of Starwars was).

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5 hours ago, Jotari said:

Well that's cheating. Everything is great when converted into Lego.

Lego Batman is the best Batman film, and probably will be until they make the inevitable "into the Bat-Verse" in a way that doesn't suck. 

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3 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Lego Batman is the best Batman film, and probably will be until they make the inevitable "into the Bat-Verse" in a way that doesn't suck. 

I would agree with you if it weren't for the existence of Mask of the Phantasm, which is so ridiculously better than it ever had any right to be.

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14 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I would agree with you if it weren't for the existence of Mask of the Phantasm, which is so ridiculously better than it ever had any right to be.

Speaking as somebody that grew up with that film. S'okay. I guess I'm so tired of Joker being shoehorned into major roles of Batman stories that I can't enjoy it as much on the rewatch. It would probably end up being my #2 regardless.

Edited by Zapp Branniglenn
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Original trilogy sucks, but I disagree with the assessment that the effects have aged poorly. While the CGI in the special editions can be pretty awful, I think all the original paintings and practical effects still look good, even if they're a little campy and the framing isn't great. Same goes for the set design.

Lego Batman sucks, it's a movie written and conceived by a boardroom. The best Batman movie is actually Return of the Joker, followed by the Snyder cut.

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3 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Original trilogy sucks, but I disagree with the assessment that the effects have aged poorly. While the CGI in the special editions can be pretty awful, I think all the original paintings and practical effects still look good, even if they're a little campy and the framing isn't great. Same goes for the set design.

It's not that it looks bad now. It's just that it's unremarkable now. They aren't a selling point any more. Nobody is watching the original trilogy these days and being wowed by the effects. They don't detract from the movies, but they aren't really adding a whole lot either. They're just there. Whereas back in the day, they were a major reason to go and see them.

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Them's fightin' words!

Anyway, I'll admit I've always enjoyed Star Wars; I don't have a whole lot of bad things to say about it. My introduction to the whole thing was through Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga (and that subtitle held true for a time), so that's definitely influenced my positive view of the series. I've always been partial to the games over the movies, though.

Say what you will about it, but you can't deny that the music in these movies are phenomenal. The one thing I will say that's bad are the post-release edits of the movies (A New Hope is infamous for this). It's nigh impossible to find the original theatrical cuts.

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5 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Lego Batman sucks, it's a movie written and conceived by a boardroom. The best Batman movie is actually Return of the Joker, followed by the Snyder cut.

Never seen Lego Batman, agree about Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker being the best Batman film, extremely vehemently disagree about Snyder Cut being second best; I'd list Batman films I think are better than it, but the list includes pretty much all of them. Not only would I rather watch the theatrical version of Justice League than watch the Snyder cut, but I honestly would rather watch Batman & Robin than watch the Snyder Cut.

 

4 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Revenge of the Sith exists so we can safely say that Star wars was good at least once. 

Revenge of the Sith is definitely the best of the prequel films and it does manage to get a lot right. I wouldn't say it's as well-written as anything in the OT, but it definitely managed to do key moments correctly (Order 66 being a big example).

 

6 hours ago, Armchair General said:

The only good movie was Rogue One.

Rogue One was okay. It's definitely the only Disney Star Wars film that I enjoyed. I think its main problem is that its core cast of characters, apart from the droid and the blind temple guardian, are not very memorable. Gareth Edwards can direct a decent plot and good action, but he seriously needs help when it comes to characters.

 

5 hours ago, indigoasis said:

Anyway, I'll admit I've always enjoyed Star Wars; I don't have a whole lot of bad things to say about it. My introduction to the whole thing was through Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga (and that subtitle held true for a time), so that's definitely influenced my positive view of the series. I've always been partial to the games over the movies, though.

The title still holds true; there are only six main Star Wars films and one spinoff film.

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