No Right Answer: This Generation's "Star Wars" Part 2

[Firefilm]

This Generation's "Star Wars" Part 2

A three-way debate? A two-part episode? What is this, sweeps week? It doesn't matter, because it's debate time! Kyle pulls out a wild card with his opinions, while Chris and Dan try to gather their forces. The arguments being made must grow, go on long journeys of discovery, and then end up where they began, but changed. Wow, maybe this generation's Star Wars is this description?



And don't forget, if you don't understand our decisions or want to have more of our material to complete your shrines to us, Mondays feature a new written companion piece titled No Right Explanation. We dare you to make less sense!



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[Canadamus Prime]

Wouldn't this generations Star Wars be defined by cultural impact rather than financial or critical success or failure of expectations?

 

[Qitz]

A Dan, Kyle and Chris three way? Awesome.

Trying to argue while drinking is one way to try and get a three way point across, or to drown your two opponents.

 

[Chaos999]

STAR WARS - I would love them if the first scene in the first episode would be a declaration that the Jedi lost most of their powers or control of the force.

 

[Scarim Coral]

I laugh so much at the attempted drink and get to say the final words. (Not so smart eh?)

Anyway I would have to go with Lord of the Ring as this generation "Star Wars".

 

[Dukeoftacos]

Harry Potter is the clear winner of this one. It has created a world for people of all ages to fall in love with, and great characters to identify with.

Lord of the Rings never really held that kind of cultural captivation. We all enjoyed the movies(and books) but it never really got a whole lot bigger than that. The argument that the prequels qualify because it was a social obligation to see them is kind of hurting the argument. People wanted to see the Potter films and read the books and waited in lines at midnight to do both with excitement to see it unfold, not dread to see how much further it would collapse.

 

[Cursed Frogurt]

I really dont see how you can argue that LotR is "this generation"'s star wars when it's been around for so long.

Wouldn't this generations Star Wars be defined by cultural impact rather than financial or critical success or failure of expectations?

^ Exactly, and that is clearly Harry Potter.

I'm surprised no one chose Halo. That has huge culteral significance. A lot of Halo fans grew up with the franchise and it's still going.

 

[BrotherRool]

Star Wars is about world building (and incidentally, I thnk the prequels are pretty good about it) it's not about success or fame because Star Wars had those only in a particular way, it's the way people play games and read books about the universe and want to explore more of it that makes it Star Wars.

Lord of the Rings film did no more world building, just retrod the books. Harry Potter is hard for me to judge, I'd say it's more about the characters and the world but the way other people react to it doesn't match up with that, I'd say Diagon Alley an Hogwarts have the same feel as Star Wars.

Star Wars does a lot of world building, but it's never stopped, it's silly to pin something to just the films when so much else surrounds it. I wasn't really alive/aware between the two sets (which is why I can enjoy the prequels more because I have only his world to accept whereas between films fans created a new world) but I'm pretty sure there were always Jedi Academie and Tie Fighters and books.

=> Harry Potter is this generations Star Wars

Wouldn't this generations Star Wars be defined by cultural impact rather than financial or critical success or failure of expectations?

True, and I think that would make it Lord of the Rings Trilogy. It was having an impact on popular culture before they were even made into movies (The live action ones anyway). And it's also going to have a much better prequel.

This is why Lord of the Rings can't count. It was so clearly many many generations ago Star Wars, it's not a new thing that's sweeping around the world and becoming a pop culture phenomen, it's clearly a thing with always has been a cultural phenonemon. People were introduced to them through the films but they didn't go away and create their own culture and invent the fantasy genre, instead they just started reading and looking at the stuff LotoR fans had been doing anyway

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

All Harry Potter characters are unable to ascend from their original roles?

Daniel Radcliffe?

Cedric Diggory?

Arthur Weaseley?

...which was nice.

I feel I must disagree.

Anyway, this generation's Star Wars is Transformers - Most popular, Highest Grossing, and goddam embarassed to have ever seen it. And you'll STILL get people telling you that Bayformers is greater than ORSON WELLS as Unicron.

Which they are wrong about.

Oh yeah, and Transformers 4 is coming out soon - let's see how many people enjoy the NEW prequels.


MWahahahaahahaahahahahahahahahah

 

[Mikeyfell]

snip

The most important thing to consider is the attitude of the culture surrounding the generation.

Back when the original Star Wars came out they transcended what Si Fi movies could be, and an entire generation of people got caught up in that movement. The people of Gen X wanted more. They were hungry for more good stuff and Star Wars was the reason for it.

Spin the clocks forward to Generation Y and what is the attitude of the culture now days? What do people want? They want the same old crap. New ideas get shunned in favor of re-releasing something with enough brand recognition to make millions with out even having to be good. And what has better brand recognition that Star Wars.

Generation Y doesn't want to make their own thing if there's something they can remake they know will sell. You see the same attitude in videogames "We could make an original game but we know Call of Duty will sell so lets just make that." "We could make an original movie but we know Star Wars movies sell so lets just make more of those." That's why every crappy movie that does moderately well gets a sequel regardless of whether or not it needs one.


And the reason it's Star Wars and not Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings is because the general quality of what passes for entertainment these days is on a downward trend. Making bad versions of something guaranteed to sell is what lies in the heart and soul of Generation Y.

 

[Fayathon]

Oh god, arguing while drinking, that was the funniest damn thing I've seen in a while.

As for voting on the win, LotR would be my choice, it was a big, epic adventure and revived high fantasy for lots of people. Harry Potter could claim that, but it never felt quite as epic to me, everything happened in pretty well one major area for most of the conflict, and only really resolved anything in the end, whereas LotR you can see the progress of the story based on where the characters are and they slowly wear out, even between the movies, HP felt like the characters got to be fully restored between films, so their struggle wasn't quite on par with LotR's heroes.

Edit: I am aware that I skipped Star Wars, that was kind of intentional, I don't feel that the new movies are anywhere near up to snuff in comparison to LotR or HP.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I'm sure there is a "this generation's Star Wars", unfortunately it could never impact said generation the same why. And that's because this generation is cluttered with different types of media, primarily the internet.

Back when Star Wars was released, TV only had a handfull of channels, the movie industry wasn't the bloated blockbuster behemoth that it is now (one that Star Wars had a hand in), and we didn't have the internet. Because of that it had a lot more room to expand and become the cultural phenomenon that know today.

Today however, there's so many different types of entertainment fighting for attention that anything which might be impactful is quickly pushed to the side for the next shiny new thing.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Look at those guys.

All debating together.

[sub]Yes, I'm a child[/sub]

Gotta agree with Chris on this one.

Harry Potter has had such a huge cultural impact on this generation.

Not me though. I read the books and was finished with the franchise years ago.

 

[Xman490]

Even by the spit-take, Chris was twice as good as Dan or Kyle, because Chris didn't make a mess and break out laughing.

Also, Chris's point "Harry Potter is 8 MOVIES" makes more sense than any "obligation" people have to see the other ones. I don't remember much of the prequels, not even the third one (which I saw when I was 13 or so). I didn't even see more than one Lord of the Rings movie.

Harry Potter, on the other hand, has half of one of the Islands of Adventure in the Universal Studios theme park in Orlando, Florida! Sure there's other parks for LotR and maybe the Star Wars prequels, but dammit, the Harry Potter land is the one I went twice to!

 

[Pat Hulse]

I say Star Wars is Gen Y's Star Wars for a number of reasons.

First we have to pin down what being a generation's "Star Wars" even means. To me, Star Wars was a powerhouse of iconic popular culture that stood as the example of what defined fanboy/fangirl-ism for that generation. When Star Wars came out, people didn't just love it, the obsessed over it. They quoted it, they bought the toys, they re-enacted scenes, they argued over which was the best and which was the worst, they argued over head-canon, they built this enormous expanded universe...

I'd say Harry Potter comes close to fulfilling that role, but I think it falls short simply because it isn't an obsession shared specifically with Gen Y. Gen X-ers, Baby Boomers, and even the Greatest Generation all love Harry Potter.

However, when you look at the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy and the subsequent Clone Wars cartoon, it's enjoyed primarily by Gen Y. Gen X and below all hate the prequels, but for a lot of Gen Y, the Prequels were how they were introduced to Star Wars and while they may not consider them the best, they will certainly be more likely to enjoy watching them than the older generations.

George Lucas created the Prequels primarily to capture Gen Y like he had captured Gen X, and while we can argue that the movies didn't capture the same feeling as the old movies, they still managed to get the new generation interested in Star Wars all over again.

Gen Y is just as obsessed with Star Wars as the two generations before it. They may not be obsessed with the Prequels, but the Prequels certainly changed the face of Star Wars for this new generation. George Lucas's writing and directing skills aside, the universe had never been this fleshed out in canon before.

Regardless of how they were introduced to it, Gen Y Star Wars fans treat Star Wars with just as much love and obsession as the previous generations and certainly on a level above Harry Potter.

On top of that, regardless of how much we dislike the Prequels, nothing engenders fanboy rage quite like Star Wars.

The Prequels may not have been as iconic as movies, but Star Wars as a franchise is still the reigning king of pop culture.

 

[minuialear]

Although I like LotR the best, I'd agree HP has had a general influence (social, financial, etc) over the general populace that LotR and the new Star Wars films don't have, in the same way that the old Star Wars had it over that generation.

LotR is to Star Trek as Harry Potter is to Star Wars, IMO.

I say Star Wars is Gen Y's Star Wars for a number of reasons.

First we have to pin down what being a generation's "Star Wars" even means. To me, Star Wars was a powerhouse of iconic popular culture that stood as the example of what defined fanboy/fangirl-ism for that generation. When Star Wars came out, people didn't just love it, the obsessed over it. They quoted it, they bought the toys, they re-enacted scenes, they argued over which was the best and which was the worst, they argued over head-canon, they built this enormous expanded universe...

Gen Y is just as obsessed with Star Wars as the two generations before it. They may not be obsessed with the Prequels, but the Prequels certainly changed the face of Star Wars for this new generation. George Lucas's writing and directing skills aside, the universe had never been this fleshed out in canon before.

But you just contradicted yourself. If it means being an iconic part of pop culture and fanboy/girl-ism, then the prequels by definition can't fit that bill, as no one is "obsessed with the prequels," and because they aren't an "iconic part of pop culture" or something that any particular generation, as a whole, has embraced as the "in" thing.

Changing the face of Star Wars (something that would only be noticed by people from previous generations that grew up with the originals) =/= being iconic and forever changing the culture of the current generation. Harry Potter has done that (the fact that it was able to do that for several generations, not just the current one, is irrelevant).

 

[avikar]

Kyle is Right in a way, the new star wars does define a generation, but it is still defining the same one, generation x. generation x is the only generation that is worse off than its predecessor and that encompasses the second trilogy. star wars still defines a generation, just all six movies describe the life cycle of generation x.

As far as what I think the star wars of this generation is I have to agree with Chris its harry potter, it enveloped, no consumed the entire population. hell my mother knew who harry potter was and it single-handedly started thousands of children reading.

I know lord of the rings are based on books too are what people would say but they did not spawn an entire generation to read. most people i know have only watched the movies not read the books. The lord of the rings are just good movies, the best of the lot but they do not define a generation like star wars and harry potter does.

 

[Aureliano]

The Star Wars prequels are exactly right. And for the reasons indicated: Star Wars in the late '70s and early '80s was the transition from low and medium-budget fantasy franchises to big budget blockbusters and was amazing because so many talented actors, writers, special effects people, etc. finally had the chance to put it all out there.

The prequels, on the other hand, were after two decades of the industry practicing selling out their fans for the biggest buck and were the apotheosis of such. They put together everything they thought people liked about the original movies except for talent, and even though they were lame people still went anyway.

That is why every series with a big enough following betrays its fans these days. To pick up a random demographic who would never otherwise watch the movie because screw the fans. Fans are already their slaves. (Case in point: play the Mass Effect 3 demo, single player mode)

 

[DRTJR]

I'd say it LotRs, It rebirthed the fantasy genre like Star Wars brought back the Sci-Fi genre.