Anyone on this board dislike Star Wars?
- Thread starter heavylids
- Start date
You know the reason why Luke survives ROTJ and Vader redeems himself? Lucas didn't want to disturb the children with Luke's death. So the fate of Luke's and Vader's character is also just a marketing ploy. You can consider every decision in a movie to be driven by market demands. Sometimes it's true, but most of the time it isn't. Heck, doing a cliffhanger ending is a marketing strategy, because it gets more people in line for the sequel. The "kiddy faire" was already added in A New Hope with the droids. Star Wars has always been kiddy faire. Most fans forget about that because they are adults now and still like these movies. The kids who like the Prequels now will still like them when they are adults. And they'd be disappointed just as well if someone did Episodes 7-9 and aimed at the new generation of kids.
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I dont like that the final three will never be made. Just making 6 out of 9 is just wrong in my book.
I love the famous quote by Tim in Spaced just after he refuses to sell a Jar Jar Binks doll to a little kid:
Bilbo Bagshot: The Phantom Menace was 18 months ago, Tim!
Tim: I know, Bilbo, OK? It just... it still hurts! That kid wanted a Jar Jar doll!
Bilbo Bagshot: Kids like Jar Jar!
Tim: Why?
Bilbo Bagshot: What about the Ewoks? They were rubbish! You don't complain about them!
Tim: Yeah, but Jar Jar Binks makes the Ewoks look like... fucking Shaft!
Lucas insisted from the beginning that Star Wars was aimed at pre-adolescent children, so no one should have been shocked or called it a "sell-out" when the third movie rebounded from the darkness of the second and added lighter, child-friendly aspects like the Ewoks. What really changed during the interim was that twelve year-old moviegoers in 1977 were eighteen in 1983 and preferred what they saw as the "evolution" of the movies away from the gee-whiz appeal of the first one.
That said, ROTJ is the least good of the original SW movies - but then, one of the three had to be.
That said, ROTJ is the least good of the original SW movies - but then, one of the three had to be.
I consider it a blessing considering how shitty 1-3 were. I really wish Jedi would have gone the way it was supposed to and lead into 7-9, but instead we got the Teddy bear dance party. Not that Jedi was awful, but it was where it went downhill.
ROTJ did go "the way it was supposed to" and was enormously successful, so Lucas deciding not to do the next three movies had nothing to do with either the public reaction or his own plans for the film not "going the way it was supposed to."
Gary Kurtz had some different ideas about what direction it was supposed to go. Ultimately, Lucas was the one to make the call and Jedi wasn't bad - I just would have preferred to see the version Kurtz said was the initial plan which would have led into more sequels.
Yeah, it does seem to, and while it's easy to make it stick that he copped out to market Ewok toys to youngsters, I'm not convinced that that is really the whole story.
In an interview on some show, the name of which I can't remember right now, George Lucas explained that originally the Ewoks were planned to be Wookiees. (According to the Wiktionary, Ewok is "the syllabic reverse of Wookiee".) However, in preproduction, they realized a problem, which is that in Chewie, Wookiees were already established as technologically capable. The need for the natives of the Sanctuary Moon to be technologically incapable were twofold. On the one hand, it needed to be plausible that the Empire would underestimate them. On the other hand, the metaphor with the Vietnam war needed to be established, where the technologically disadvantaged jungle natives defeat the imperial invaders. So, the Endor natives needed to be less capable than Wookiees, so they found it natural to make them smaller.
Now, George Lucas did not say the following, but on later reflection, I have come to appreciate that another factor, supporting the idea of making the Endor natives smaller than Wookiees, is the question of what the overall tone of Return of the Jedi was to be. It was already established in The Empire Strikes Back that the Imperial Stormtroopers actually were ruthless ground warriors. A ground battle between technologically deprived Wookiees and Imperial forces should have been very bloody, with fierce growling, Wookiees ripping off arms and heads, heavy stone age weapons, and so on, and very scary to children, much more violent than it actually was on screen. Therefore, if the Endor natives had been Wookiees, the ground battle would have been even more ferocious than the one in The Empire Strikes Back, in which the point of ferocity had been made in the trilogy already. (Incidentally, just as the point of a massive space battle had already been made in A New Hope.) No, Return of the Jedi was supposed to be upbeat, and go out on a positive feeling, and not refocus on themes already covered in previous episodes. I believe that accomplishing this also imposed a demand that the Endor natives be smaller than Wookiees.
Of course, once they started getting smaller, the temptation was to explore how they looked even smaller. And, George Lucas said, they eventually began to get attracted to the look of the Ewok, which cemented the transition away from Wookiee to Ewok. If only he could have heard Admiral Ackbar calling, "It's a trap!"
Loved the OT, the real ORIGINAL OT. Inspired great many hours of imagining myself living the a SW universe and interacting with Han Solo, Luke, Leia...
Caveat - I don't really care how much Lucas wants to try and justify Ewoks, the simple fact is that the Ewoks should have been humanoid aliens. The whole idea of technologically inferior, indigenous race beating a technologically superior, invading army is all fine and good. But when you try to tell me that a teddy bear can wield a 2 foot long club, and generate enough torque and momentum to knock out a storm trooper wearing armor, I just stop paying attention because that is non-sense.
The theme that Lucas was supposedly going for could still be accomplished with normal, 6 ft tall aliens. There were absolutely no logical reason to use teddy bears except to sell toys to children.
Liked the PT for the eye candy portion. Ignored the story and the characters Obviously those things weren't important to the people that made the movie.
Really annoyed at Lucas for re-doing the OT and making all the changes. If you can going to digitally alter stuff, can you please digitally alter the Ewoks to be normal human size so the battle of Endor would be more believable?
Caveat - I don't really care how much Lucas wants to try and justify Ewoks, the simple fact is that the Ewoks should have been humanoid aliens. The whole idea of technologically inferior, indigenous race beating a technologically superior, invading army is all fine and good. But when you try to tell me that a teddy bear can wield a 2 foot long club, and generate enough torque and momentum to knock out a storm trooper wearing armor, I just stop paying attention because that is non-sense.
The theme that Lucas was supposedly going for could still be accomplished with normal, 6 ft tall aliens. There were absolutely no logical reason to use teddy bears except to sell toys to children.
Liked the PT for the eye candy portion. Ignored the story and the characters Obviously those things weren't important to the people that made the movie.
Really annoyed at Lucas for re-doing the OT and making all the changes. If you can going to digitally alter stuff, can you please digitally alter the Ewoks to be normal human size so the battle of Endor would be more believable?
^I've made my peace with the Ewoks. Yeah, it would have been cooler to have Wookiees facing off with the Empire as the Rebels went up against the two Death Stars orbiting Had Abaddon and Luke faced off with the Emperor over a lava lake. But it is what it is, and there's enough good stuff that I can leave the Ewoks to the kids who were watching their first Star Wars movie, unlike the world-weary jaded 13-year-old who was on his third.
Was 15 when Star Wars first came out (I will not call it "A New Hope", and you can't make me!), and it was the coolest thing EVER. ESB was a sequel that actually topped the original. then Lucas started losing me when ROTJ appeared. The ewoks ahould have been wookies, and most of the movie was just "more of the same". they liked the Death Star in the first one, so here it is again. they liked all the weird aliens in the canina, so here's Jabbas Place full of more weird aliens for no real reason. Etc. The PT movies are fun to look at, but are all style and very little substance.
Wookies, lava lake? Sounds like Revenge of the Sith to me. It's my strong opinion that the limitations they still had in the 80s made for better movies. They could do everything they wanted in the prequels (or Indiana Jones 4), and they did it. See how that turned out. Heck, I got the Back to the Future bluray, and they included a storyboard sequence how Marty originally returned to the present: by driving into an atomic explosion (if you see these storyboard drawings, you just know that Spielberg, who produced the movie, kept this idea and re-used it for Indiana Jones 4). Instead we got the lightning in the clock tower. MUCH better.
So? The point is ... ROTJ went too far into the ridiculous with the Ewoks. Some people have made their peace with such an obvious flaw and accept the story of the film, regardless of the nonsensical teddy bears. Likewise, I've made my peace with the Gungans and accept TPM and the PT, despite its obvious flaws.
I like Star Wars for the most part.
The Fans... well... they are beginning to wear on me.
The Fans... well... they are beginning to wear on me.
Because a world populated by people living aboard spaceships which routinely traverse an entire galaxy in a matter of days, mystical warrior-monks with magic powers and swords made of pure energy, and space cowboys with walking, talking alien co-pilots, isn't already ridiculous enough.
That about sums it up for me, yes.Because a world populated by people living aboard spaceships which routinely traverse an entire galaxy in a matter of days, mystical warrior-monks with magic powers and swords made of pure energy, and space cowboys with walking, talking alien co-pilots, isn't already ridiculous enough.
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