The Star War of today

[Asita]

And note that they literally needed a space wizard to angle the torpedos 90 degrees to pull off the shot and blow it up.

Can we please stop repeating this insipid line of thought and actually use our heads? If the success of the shot could only be accomplished with space magic then the mission would not have happened at all because to the best of the rebellion's knowledge nobody was capable of it. In order for the mission to proceed, they had to believe that success was possible, even if it was remote.

Additionally, if you pay attention to the visuals as they're explaining it, it becomes clear that they aren't firing missiles so much as dropping bombs. The oft-quipped 90 degree angle thus rings a bit hollow because the bombs are falling in the first place, not flying. The issue was that they required pinpoint accuracy and near perfect timing, not that it was impossible without space magic.

The dang scene was practically a recreation of the climax of the Dam Busters (itself a dramatization of Operation Chastise and its 'bouncing bombs' in WWII), for pete's sake.

This can even be seen in the animation, though a poor angle makes it difficult to recognize at full speed and without knowing what you're looking for.

 

[StatusNil]

I mean, does that excuse or justify months of sustained abuse by "fans"?

It's not meant to excuse or justify any of that SocMedia crap. Merely pointing out why the current Star Wars product sucks compared to the classics, resulting in people not liking it. It's gone so goddamn meta in its concerns, where it's not so much a story as a collection of gestures pointing outside of itself, clumsily fitted together.

This is the pathological result of trying to appease dumbed-down "cultural criticism". The original point of that Pop Culture analysis thing was to examine what were the unexamined assumptions of entertainment products, arguably in order to see what the audience was supposed to take for granted. But of course that made the culture industry self-conscious about the "messages" it was "sending", causing them to aim for the approval of the overflow of former "Critical Studies 101" students populating the entertainment press, instead of, y'know, crafting good stories. So now it's just pompous assholes signaling other pompous assholes about what virtuous lessons they are teaching the unthinking masses who are supposed to flock to see their messaging. Because "Muh Fandom!" apparently owes them the support they're looking to exploit.

So you see, the Star Wars of today is an entirely different proposition to the original Star Wars. That's why it's so useless to try to defend the crappiness of the new ones by denigrating the originals. There is simply no comparison, no matter what kind of superficial similarity there may be regarding some isolated plot points.

 

[Ogoid]

It's not meant to excuse or justify any of that SocMedia crap. Merely pointing out why the current Star Wars product sucks compared to the classics, resulting in people not liking it. It's gone so goddamn meta in its concerns, where it's not so much a story as a collection of gestures pointing outside of itself, clumsily fitted together.

This is the pathological result of trying to appease dumbed-down "cultural criticism". The original point of that Pop Culture analysis thing was to examine what were the unexamined assumptions of entertainment products, arguably in order to see what the audience was supposed to take for granted. But of course that made the culture industry self-conscious about the "messages" it was "sending", causing them to aim for the approval of the overflow of former "Critical Studies 101" students populating the entertainment press, instead of, y'know, crafting good stories. So now it's just pompous assholes signaling other pompous assholes about what virtuous lessons they are teaching the unthinking masses who are supposed to flock to see their messaging. Because "Muh Fandom!" apparently owes them the support they're looking to exploit.

So you see, the Star Wars of today is an entirely different proposition to the original Star Wars. That's why it's so useless to try to defend the crappiness of the new ones by denigrating the originals. There is simply no comparison, no matter what kind of superficial similarity there may be regarding some isolated plot points.

Yes, that's mostly what I've been getting out of some responses here.

I mean, if everyone here can bear with me for a moment while I go into a preposterous flight of fancy... if a character - oh I don't know, let's say, Leia - who has received nothing but acclaim and praise over the forty years of her existence would suddenly find a much less welcoming reception from the very same people all that time down the line, then might I perhaps suggest that the problem could conceivably reside not with some intrinsic moral fault with the latter?

I mean, golly, imagine that. If so-called media criticism hadn't gone on a self-imposed crusade to make sure all art it "analyses" has to go under the lens of, and conform to, a political ideology, people might not be so sick to death of anything that smacks of even a hint of said political ideology so as to be as open-minded and tolerant in their approach to it as they were nearly a half-century ago.

Now wouldn't that be a stronger, more progressive world to die in?

 

[Vanilla ISIS]

That's a hard question because we would have to imagine 40 years of pop culture without the Star Wars influence.
The impact of SW on the movie industry can already be seen in 1979 (for example, Star Trek: The Motion Picture only got funded because of the success of Star Wars so we would probably never even get TNG).

The modern version of the "sci-fi nerd" was a result of the original trilogy.
The "ruined my childhood" crowd really became a thing after the Star Wars prequels.
The meticulous overanalyzing of movies online is largely the result of The Phantom Menace review by RedLetterMedia.
People didn't really do that before, at least not to the extent where they basically go through every frame of the movie looking for faults.

There are too many variables to consider when answering your question.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

That's a hard question because we would have to imagine 40 years of pop culture without the Star Wars influence.
The impact of SW on the movie industry can already be seen in 1979 (for example, Star Trek: The Motion Picture only got funded because of the success of Star Wars so we would probably never even get TNG).

The modern version of the "sci-fi nerd" was a result of the original trilogy.
The "ruined my childhood" crowd really became a thing after the Star Wars prequels.
The meticulous overanalyzing of movies online is largely the result of The Phantom Menace review by RedLetterMedia.
People didn't really do that before, at least not to the extent where they basically go through every frame of the movie looking for faults.

There are too many variables to consider when answering your question.

I fucking despise RedLetterMeida. And all the hack Youtube Critics it spawned copying his style to the point of sounding like him.

 

[Ninjamedic]

I fucking despise RedLetterMeida.

Very cool!

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

I fucking despise RedLetterMeida.

Very cool!

My hatred for them began when they dissed the Hobbit movies.

 

[Trunkage]

I fucking despise RedLetterMeida.

Very cool!

My hatred for them began when they dissed the Hobbit movies.

The Hobbit movies didn't need to be dissed? That's news to me. After the first one, I just waited till the got on Netflix

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

I fucking despise RedLetterMeida.

Very cool!

My hatred for them began when they dissed the Hobbit movies.

The Hobbit movies didn't need to be dissed? That's news to me. After the first one, I just waited till the got on Netflix

Its the whole debate with 48 frames and how bullshit their arguements are.

And as the sequels come out they completely forgotten what happened in the last movies, shows how much dishonest they are.

And the Hobbit movies are good stuff. One of the phew movies where its not an obnoxious Superhero movie with Self Aware humor.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Its the whole debate with 48 frames and how bullshit their arguements are.

And as the sequels come out they completely forgotten what happened in the last movies, shows how much dishonest they are.

And the Hobbit movies are good stuff. One of the phew movies where its not an obnoxious Superhero movie with Self Aware humor.

Look, you're entitled to an opinion on whether a movie was fun for you. If you enjoyed watching it and held your interest, then congratulations. Noone can take that experience away from you.

But.. the hobbit movies are bad.

The original concept for the Hobbit movies was that Guilermero del Toro would direct them, there would probably be two of them and they would have a whimsical and fairy-tale like tone similar to the books (and very different from Jackson's lord of the rings movies).

And while we can't be 100% sure what happened, it seems increasingly as if money got low, executives panicked and realised it couldn't afford to gamble on del Toro's personal vision for the Hobbit. So del Toro "left" (apparently voluntarily, although there are interviews in which he is clearly close to tears about it). Jackson was bought in and had to start filming right then without finishing pre-production before the script was even finished and with the studio now micromanaging the whole film. The two films were split into three in the hopes of getting more money out of it.

And I think what's really tragic about the result is that there are still the seeds of that original vision and the original concept in the Hobbit movies, but the result is that in the final product they're buried under lazy, studio-mandated filler and references to the Lord of the Rings because hey, you liked the Lord of the Rings right? It was a cash grab, and it worked, but it's still a cash grab.

I mean, you can check out Lindsey Ellis two (i.e. three) part video essay on it for a more detailed breakdown of the huge problems these movies had (including screwing over the New Zealand film industry), but here's a random example just because it really struck me..


Notice the music? Think about it, does it sound a bit familiar?


The Lord of the Rings movies use their music in a specific and very thoughtful way, to help tell the story. There are over a hundred distinct and repeating musical phrases within the soundtrack, which are often connected in ways which indicate themes or ideas. The Nazgul theme in the lord of the rings, for example, is specifically associated with Sauron and with the Ringwraiths and only appears in reference to them. It's not a generic action theme, but is meant to invoke a feeling of menace, befitting the narrative role of the Ringwraiths in the Lord of the Rings.

That means one of two things happened here.

1) They ran out of time for the composer to write new material (because again, the script was still literally being changed during production) so they just stuffed in the old theme and hoped noone would notice.
2) They deliberately reused musical themes from the Lord of the Rings movies to invoke nostalgia, without reference to the way those themes were actually used to tell the story of the Lord of the Rings.

Heck, if you watch the films again, you'll notice that they actually do this constantly, because these movies were rushed.

And yeah, the 48fps is more of a gimmick now considering you can't actually watch the movie in its cinematic format. But as someone who did, it looked pretty horrible.. and I watched the non 3D cinematic version. Apparently, the 3D version was worse.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Its the whole debate with 48 frames and how bullshit their arguements are.

And as the sequels come out they completely forgotten what happened in the last movies, shows how much dishonest they are.

And the Hobbit movies are good stuff. One of the phew movies where its not an obnoxious Superhero movie with Self Aware humor.

Look, you're entitled to an opinion on whether a movie was fun for you. If you enjoyed watching it and held your interest, then congratulations. Noone can take that experience away from you.

But.. the hobbit movies are bad.

So whats the point of you saying I am entitled to my opinion and then you say the Hobbit movies are bad like it was a fact? How am I supposed to feel and answer about that?

Yeah I know that Del Toro was gonna direct this (and I think the dude is overrated as hell and believe he is poison to any project) and I have seen Lindsey Ellis review and I own and read the fucking BOOK if any one is a big Tolkien freak its me. And I get it, but than I watch moments like this:


And this:


And this:


How is this considered a "BAD" movie again? And how did it looked pretty horrible the 48 FPS? I am amazed we had scenes like from a troubled production at all.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

It's not meant to excuse or justify any of that SocMedia crap. Merely pointing out why the current Star Wars product sucks compared to the classics, resulting in people not liking it. It's gone so goddamn meta in its concerns, where it's not so much a story as a collection of gestures pointing outside of itself, clumsily fitted together.

This is the pathological result of trying to appease dumbed-down "cultural criticism". The original point of that Pop Culture analysis thing was to examine what were the unexamined assumptions of entertainment products, arguably in order to see what the audience was supposed to take for granted. But of course that made the culture industry self-conscious about the "messages" it was "sending", causing them to aim for the approval of the overflow of former "Critical Studies 101" students populating the entertainment press, instead of, y'know, crafting good stories. So now it's just pompous assholes signaling other pompous assholes about what virtuous lessons they are teaching the unthinking masses who are supposed to flock to see their messaging. Because "Muh Fandom!" apparently owes them the support they're looking to exploit.

So you see, the Star Wars of today is an entirely different proposition to the original Star Wars. That's why it's so useless to try to defend the crappiness of the new ones by denigrating the originals. There is simply no comparison, no matter what kind of superficial similarity there may be regarding some isolated plot points.

Yes, that's mostly what I've been getting out of some responses here.

I mean, if everyone here can bear with me for a moment while I go into a preposterous flight of fancy... if a character - oh I don't know, let's say, Leia - who has received nothing but acclaim and praise over the forty years of her existence would suddenly find a much less welcoming reception from the very same people all that time down the line, then might I perhaps suggest that the problem could conceivably reside not with some intrinsic moral fault with the latter?

I mean, golly, imagine that. If so-called media criticism hadn't gone on a self-imposed crusade to make sure all art it "analyses" has to go under the lens of, and conform to, a political ideology, people might not be so sick to death of anything that smacks of even a hint of said political ideology so as to be as open-minded and tolerant in their approach to it as they were nearly a half-century ago.

Now wouldn't that be a stronger, more progressive world to die in?

Uhh, if a character from 40 years ago, stripped of nostalgia, would be hated by the people that claim to like her, I'm pretty sure they're the ones at fault, yeah.

Like, who cares if blogs like to over analyze shit? If you'd go to war over a character you'd otherwise like because other people like them in the wrong way, that's on you.

 

[Natemans]

Its the whole debate with 48 frames and how bullshit their arguements are.

And as the sequels come out they completely forgotten what happened in the last movies, shows how much dishonest they are.

And the Hobbit movies are good stuff. One of the phew movies where its not an obnoxious Superhero movie with Self Aware humor.

Look, you're entitled to an opinion on whether a movie was fun for you. If you enjoyed watching it and held your interest, then congratulations. Noone can take that experience away from you.

But.. the hobbit movies are bad.

So whats the point of you saying I am entitled to my opinion and then you say the Hobbit movies are bad like it was a fact? How am I supposed to feel and answer about that?

Yeah I know that Del Toro was gonna direct this (and I think the dude is overrated as hell and believe he is poison to any project) and I have seen Lindsey Ellis review and I own and read the fucking BOOK if any one is a big Tolkien freak its me. And I get it, but than I watch moments like this:


And this:


And this:


How is this considered a "BAD" movie again? And how did it looked pretty horrible the 48 FPS? I am amazed we had scenes like from a troubled production at all.

How is Del Toro a poison to any project? Have you seen Pan's Labyrinth, Pacific Rim or both Hellboy films? Dude's a fantastic and visionary director.

I like the Hobbit films and I have flaws with them, but I disagree heavily that he is a poison.

 

[Natemans]

I fucking despise RedLetterMeida.

Very cool!

My hatred for them began when they dissed the Hobbit movies.

Oh no, how dare people not like these films that I liked. /s

Dude, I like the Hobbit films, but that doesn't mean I'm ignorant of flaws or hear from the other side of the argument.

 

[Natemans]

I fucking despise RedLetterMeida.

Very cool!

Very cool

 

[Terminal Blue]

So whats the point of you saying I am entitled to my opinion and then you say the Hobbit movies are bad like it was a fact? How am I supposed to feel and answer about that?

Okay, so what I said was that you are allowed to like whatever movies you want. People like the Bayformers movies, people like the Twilight movies. People like horrible B-movies from the 80s. There are lots of reasons to like or enjoy a piece of art without it being "good".

However, that does not change the fact that on the technical standpoint, the hobbit movies are not great. They have great bits. Some of the actors do a great job (although some do not), some of the visual effects are nice (although some are not). I would go so far as to say that for how incredibly rushed these movies are and how much studio interference there was, it's actually a miracle they aren't worse, it's a credit to the improvisational skills of Peter Jackson and the production team, but they aren't good movies.

People still talk about the Lord of the Rings movies and get excited about them a decade and a half down the line. People study them to learn how to make movies. In a decade and a half, noone will care about the Hobbit movies.

Like, whatever you feel about Guillermo del Toro as a filmmaker (he's made some stinky movies, but some of his films are rightly acclaimed and he has a very strong sense of visual aesthetic which clearly influenced the hobbit production). He at least wanted to make this movie. He was excited for it, he had a clear artistic vision for it and he spent over a year pre-producing it.

How is this considered a "BAD" movie again? And how did it looked pretty horrible the 48 FPS? I am amazed we had scenes like from a troubled production at all.

So, let's start with the 48fps because it's pretty clear cut.

At 24fps, the illusion of motion is enough to trick your eyes, but it isn't perfect. This means films have to be shot with a little bit of motion blur to compensate. The main appeal of 48fps is that you can get a very, very high resolution image without motion blur or shutter flicker. In a really good, really expensive production this could be cool. It would make jaw dropping CGI look even more jaw dropping (although it's significantly more expensive to do CGI in 48fps). In this production, there are many, many scenes where, when you saw it in a theatre, it just looks like they're on a set.

Even the CGI in those movies is very mixed. Some of it looks downright video gamey. Look at the first clip you posted. It looks okay in very low quality youtube format, but even here there's a clear disconnect between the CGI and the real actors in makeup. Imagine that in a huge movie screen at high resolution, and it's just going to look like a Blizzard cutscene.

But really, the visuals are not the biggest problem with this movie. The biggest problem is the structure and the story.

The story of the hobbit is a short, simple and quite whimsical story about a journey to reclaim a mountain from a dragon, during which its titular character discovers things about himself. Thematically, it's about how even the smallest person can still be important. It is not an epic action fantasy, and it does not suit being adapted into one. It has nothing really to do with the Lord of the Rings except that one random item Bilbo finds in the hobbit becomes a plot device in the Lord of the Rings, and a few characters like Gollum and Gandalf recur. It is tonally distinct in that it is more childlike, but also narratively distinct in that it is a small scale story. Even at the end when there is a big battle, Tolkien literally has Bilbo knocked unconscious because the battle isn't important to the story.

The hobbit movies have no coherent structure. They have no single story. Instead, they have a bunch of stories mashed together in a way which bizarrely ends up ripping the guts out of the original story so that we can have romance subplots (because we need to trick and patronise women into seeing this movie) and big battle scenes like in lord of the rings and HEY KIDS ITS LEGOLAS and he's so wicked cool and overpowered that he can defy gravity now! Woo, watch out for spooky Sauron! You know who he is because you've seen Lord of the Rings. Does he actually do anything in this story? Lol, no, but he's here and that's important. Oh, and we've got a CGI orc because we need a villain to provide the climax of the first movie since we have to split it into three parts. Anyway, who cares about some interchangeable dwarves and shit. They're not important characters, well except the hot one because he tells a hot elf lady about what he has in his trousers and that's sexual chemistry.

Snark aside, that simple story is gone. It's dead. It's buried under the weight of all these pointless subplots and alternative stories which don't contribute narrative or thematically to what should be the main plot and ultimately rob the main plot of sufficient time to actually develop.

You know, if I were to pick moments of the movie which made me most happy and most excited and which took me back to being a tiny child learning to read this book with my parents sitting by my bed pointing out the words for me, take a look at the scenes in the first movie with the Dwarves, Gandalf and Bilbo in Bag End. Look at the tone of those scenes. They are not amazing scenes, but notice that they do not feel like anything out of the Lord of the Rings, because those scenes are an adaptation of the Hobbit. Virtually nothing else in these movies is.

 

[Squilookle]

If it came out now, I think it'd enjoy the same kind of following as The Fifth Element got. A fun, well paced Space Adventure. And honestly, people would probably compare it to Flyboys and Pearl harbor and say "now THAT'S how you do an exciting dogfight sequence!"

If you factor in the immense influence Star Wars has had on western pop-culture and erased it all for the current release of Star Wars... who knows? I wouldn't even know what that world would look like before the film released.

That said,

The normal stupid design of the Death Star with a glaring hole no one saw

Moon-sized station, remember. For it to have a mere 2-meter wide weakness is actually really impressive.

Compared with real historical superweapons:

Randomly finding a prisoner on a space station measured in square miles

After a droid that witnessed the taking of said prisoner jacked into the station's mainframe and found her? What's so weird about that?

Terrible lightsaber fight. Also, being a main focus of Jedis, lightsabers don't come up much in this movie
Ben dying would have been better if it happened as they were flying out fighting hundreds of storm troopers.

No, no it wouldn't have been better at all. We've already seen a bunch of Stormtroopers die. Time to see a fight with more weight to it. Also highly relevant, from 7:01 onwards-

For a massive space station, there were hardly an tie fighter defences. Or Star Destroyers
Imagine if the Empire came in and did a bombing run of Yavin first to knock out any resistance.

Did you fall asleep during the pilot briefing or something? Explained right at the start of it- first 30 seconds right here.


Besides, after spending so much on such a huge weapon- I can understand the Empire wanting to save the single Rebel base for a special treatment from its largest cannon.

What I still can't figure out after all these years is where are the Death Star's engines?

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

I fucking despise RedLetterMeida.

Very cool!

My hatred for them began when they dissed the Hobbit movies.

Oh no, how dare people not like these films that I liked. /s

Dude, I like the Hobbit films, but that doesn't mean I'm ignorant of flaws or hear from the other side of the argument.

Its the dishonesty they spouted by the 3rd film that made me wrote them off.

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

I fucking despise RedLetterMeida.

Very cool!

Very cool

Very cruel