That's a fight between the metaphorical dark and light side. Star Wars is about the literal fight between agents of the dark and light. Without that, it's too generic to be interesting.
The Last Jedi - Actually Widely Hated?
- Thread starter crookeddy
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I have a whole host of materials, from comics to video games, that disagree.
What's unique about the star wars universe without the force? And anyway, to move the story forward I think you have to move past rebellion vs empire more so than sith vs jedi.
Learned from Lucas on that one.
The original trilogy wasn't about light side vs. dark side. It was about Luke. The prequels were not about light side vs. dark side. They were about Anakin.
Yes, Star Wars is about good vs. evil in a broad sense, but it's how that story was told that matters. Personally, I think the prequels are incredibly bad movies, but they at least coasted on the idea that they were showing the backstory - Anakin falling instead of Luke resisting.
The whole story has been told now. There is nothing interesting left about Star Wars - it really is "too generic to be interesting".
The franchise sorta reminds me of an aging popstar who was absolutely huge in her time. She's still a huge name in pop music. They'll occasionally wheel her out and people will be interested because of her name, but every time that happens people get a little less interested. And what does that popstar do when she tours? She sings the oldies...
I think what might happen with Star Wars is a focus on the fans rather than general audiences. I think that's the only way they can move forward. The fact that AOTC and ROTS are generally regarded better than TPM is enough to show that.
I'm not going to deny the second Death Star was unimaginative, but I prefer it because it felt like a great end to the Rebellion storyline. What was once a very small collection of people has grown to an actual fleet. You really get the idea this was the Rebels actively making one huge gamble that could see them win or lose instead of survive or die. It's a shame it had to be a Death Star instead of just some important fleet-to-fleet battle.
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Star Wars has an aesthetic and plenty of races, planets, and technology for the setting/universe it exists in. All one needs to to plop in characters and setup a story. Any story really. It got enough room for about anything to fit, including different time periods.
On this part I disagree. Personally, I would love to see more "slice of life" style stories with Star Wars, from bounty hunters, to rank and file soldiers working in the larger galactic background, setting and aliens. Star Wars is really large enough to tell any number of stories within it and expand upon briefly mentioned details or adventures referred in the past.
Star Wars is large enough to allow for so many different possibilities that saying "there is nothing interesting left" strikes me as, well, a bit short sighted.
I don't know. That fleet battle in ROTJ is still one of the best space battles in the franchise, period.
Maybe what I should have said was "there is nothing unique left", but that's almost the same thing.
Sorry, but this kinda illustrates my point:
Yes, it does have "an aesthetic and plenty of races, planets, and technology", but I don't think that really makes it unique. I think at this point it stops becoming a 'Star Wars universe' and just becomes 'a universe'. You say "all one needs to do is plop in characters and setup a story", but that's like 99% of what makes something interesting. The universe itself isn't very unique. The 'races, planets, and technology' are just the background, and they're really not very interesting taken alone.
Agree to disagree on this point.
That’s the thing. You either take a big risk on something more creative and fail (TLJ) or you give the fans something safe and succeed. It’s what happened after TPM, and I think it’s what might happen now.
You can also hope to put out a movie as good as the originals, but I doubt that’s going to happen.
The Clone Wars did listen to the fans, and changed a lot from Phantom Menace but I wouldn't say it "succeeded" lol
Sorry, I meant to qualify that “success”. The Clone Wars was directed at fans, so it was a huge hit in that sense. But it was never going to capture the general public. Same to a lesser extent with the prequels. [Did you mean Attack of the Clones?]
I think Disney would be smart to follow that example.
Then you don't understand anything about how the film and entertainment industry works.
The Star Wars fandom is large, but it's a "raindrop in a puddle" in comparison to the general filmgoing public.
Appealing solely to the fandom will be the death-knell of the Star Wars franchise.
Oops, yes I meant Aotc.
Well, I think Lucas played it safe with Aotc and definitely with Rots. There’s one thing people liked about Tpm, and that was the gimmicky lightsaber fight.
So:
Aotc: Jedi vs. Boba Fett, Yoda fighting, Jedi fighting together in an arena, two Jedi vs one sith, one Jedi using two lightsabers to fight one sith.
Rots: Another two Jedi vs one sith, Jedi vs robot guy with four lightsabers, Palpatine vs a whole bunch of Jedi, Yoda vs emperor throwing senate boxes around, obi-wan vs anakin on a lava planet, swinging around on ropes.
That’s not even counting all the times lightsabers are pointlessly whipped out for other stuff.
A duel used to be the big confrontation at the end of the movie. In the last two prequels, Lucas just sprinkled them in everywhere because he knew they were an easy way to get certain fans onboard. And it kinda worked. That’s what I mean by playing to the fans.