I had concerns the moment Disney bought the franchise, and then immediately announced "Done deal, we’re announcing a new Trilogy, right now, yes, now. We know it is what you want to hear - TRILOGY.
It includes George Lucas’ ideas, but won’t remind you of Lucas in any way. We want new, but we also want nostalgia. JJ abrams is directing it because you space nerds and drama geeks like him - he did Star Trek, which was like Star Wars, right…?".
Original Star Wars 1977, as far as I am aware, did not immediately get ‘the upfront trilogy treatment’, and neither did The Matrix. I also doubt that Batman Begins had a planned trilogy. It is fun to see good things do well without the weight of great expectation.
I think the idea of telling people upfront that something will be a trilogy is a little bit disingenuous… Mass Effect being a good example.
Do you think people would have been kinder to the new films if it wasn’t declared up-front to be a trilogy?
That’s a pretty good take. I think the only thing in the prequels that made me rethink my love for Star Wars was midichlorians because they fundamentally changed the concept of the Force. It helped that the prequels didn’t alter any characters. Yoda was Yoda. Kenobi was Kenobi. They were just younger. Okay, R2 had retconned jump jets that he never used again, but they were who we understood them to be. Vader was maybe whiner as a teen than we thought, but his trajectory made a kind of sense.
In contrast, the new movies are directly messing with the original characters and it turns out that everything they did was moot. They failed. The New Republic was destroyed, the First Order is rising, and the Jedi Order was wiped out. The original trio even sucked as parents!
Then Solo comes out, and while it’s not a bad movie, it just ran down a checklist of things we knew about Han and the Falcon and just crammed them into one movie.
Yeah, in terms of getting mad at Lucas, I was far more pissed off about the retcon edits and additions in the original trilogy than I was about the prequels. They were just boring bad movies that could be ignored, and didn’t change anything.
I’m no connoisseur of films but what a bitter, angry guy, like someone got their Mensa card and then was sent to count coconuts in the South Pacific. I’ve glanced at several articles on his site and each one just makes me angrier than the last.
He has the sort of deconstructionist mentality that thinks everything is just moving lips and words on pages and speaking truth to power is making LCD comments while trashing the LCD audience able to buy into it. The burning irony of a 100 proof drink that tastes like a life spent poorly.
I’m such a chump that I bought Ep 8 and have it on the shelf because I didn’t want to not have every movie in Steelbooks. Completionism is a jealous and angry goddess.
The new sequels ‘ruin’ the happy ending of ROTJ, and it really isn’t all Johnson’s fault… he isn’t the one who put in the magic mystery box shit… thats JarJarAbrams’ fault. Johnson is just pretentious and took his ouvre too seriously. TLJ is terrible but its not worth going shitload crazy over. I was probably more pissed at the Mass Effect 3 ending becuase THAT was even more stupid.
And fuck Red Letter Media, there ripping into Lucas was good in its time, but video after video of the same shit, FOR ALMOST A DECADE, is tiresome. I really don’t think they offer anything original in there ‘analysis’ (most people would easily agree Lucas let success get to his head and made subpar movies). Plus RLM humor is goddamn ingratiating. Its supposed to be edgy/offensive to the basement dwellers they seem to offend (a TROPEY AS SHIT stereotype) when its really a projecion of there shitty attempt at being ‘filmmakers’ They can’t even ‘get’ B movies right… because they have no talent or originality. Its not as easy as these shitheads (or as most of these self professed culture critics assume) think.
RLM ultimately pisses me off because they spawned A SHITLOAD of copycats who have no critical sensibilities AT ALL, and the comedy usually sucks, especially the real trailers or sin cinema whatever… that shit was never funny to me. I just cannot stand those arrogant fucks. Its as bad as RPS with there incessant need to keep referring to PUBG as PLUNKBAT assuming they have some cultural significance except to themselves, and also putting Dark Souls as best CPRG. WTF is up with that? Fuck RPS, pretentious fucks.
I may not agree with your take on TLJ (I’m mostly with @Desslock there), but I’m with you on this. The Prestige is fantastic, and an example of a truly well executed twist (in that it enhances, rather than M Night Shamayalan’s, the movie on rewatching)
Agreed, RPS becoming issue, especially that UK/‘Euro’ (actually UK) websites are anti-Steam anti-Valve so suddenly.
Without Steam, how else will I play those good (Non-EA) Star Wars games of my childhood?
DISCS!!!??? I thought they were drinks-coasters!
Not sure what to say about RLM…other than that their analysis can go on for a very long time. I appreciate the humour, for now, but yea you are right in that everyone tries to make silly jokes and references now. At least RLM made me realise that I wasn’t alone in noticing the more bizarre aspects of ‘film culture’.
They certainly have nailed down the “manufactured controversy with socio-political overtones” marketing technique used by media companies to keep interest high on product, and generate continuous SM buzz. And how invitation-only previews and special screenings are used to try to pump up Rotten Tomatoes critic numbers out of all proportion to audience reactions. I am sure the same thing isn’t happening in the gaming industry!
Yea, that’s also why I could watch The Dark Knight over and over again, but found Batman Begins a bit stale after a couple of viewings. Batman Begins made me love movies again after seeing it on TV randomly.
Back when The Dark Knight was announced, I was sh*itting on the whole concept of a sequel to BB. I can say I was wrong about that. However, just as Dark Knight Rises was announced I was thinking… “oh wait there is going to be a big nuclear bomb and the Bat-plane explodes… because Chekov’s Bat-Plane. Damn. That isn’t going to mean anything”. Lol. I suppose it was faithful to ‘The Batman Movie’ (Adam West).
Sad to say that TDKR film didn’t hold up to the hype, and its themes were presented during quite a baaaad time for parts of the western world… but it wasn’t really ‘about’ anything.
I still don’t get the “mystery box” complaint about Abrams. If he was writing and directing the entire trilogy, and never planned to answer any of those questions, then sure, I can see the complaint. But he was crafting a world that other people could play off of, so setting up interesting questions that don’t have answers is just part of creating an interesting story. What is Snoke’s backstory? How did Maz get the lightsaber? Who are Rey’s parents? Who are the Knights of Ren? Those are all questions that a filmmaker can use as jumping-off points for his own story.
Or to put it another way: When Lucas made Star Wars, people weren’t saying, “Why didn’t Lucas explain what the Kessel Run is? What are the Clone Wars? What does Dark Lord of the Sith mean? I hate Lucas for putting in all these mystery boxes!”
I haven’t seen any other reviews of the prequels that go into as much depth as the RLM ones: showing how Lucas uses the same shots over and over again, showing how the prequels contradict the original trilogy, and on and on and on. If you can get past the humor, there is an insane amount of content there, besides “Lucas surrounded himself with yes-men.”
