Why Exactly Do We Care About Star Wars?

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

Why Exactly Do We Care About Star Wars?

Yahtzee wonders if we'd care about Star Wars as much as we do if Episodes I-III were merely okay.

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[Da Joz]

Can we please just let Star Wars go? Why are so many people holding on to it? It's time to move on.

 

[themilo504]

Did the huns ever invade france and England?

I also agree that episode 6 has some stupid moments like the ewoks and luke throwing away his lightsaber.

 

[Skyy High]

Counterpoint: The Avengers. Disney knows it's sitting on a goldmine here.

 

[RJ Dalton]

Did the huns ever invade france and England?

I suspect that's a joke. The huns invaded Rome and most of middle Europe. They may have gotten as far as France at one point, but England wasn't Engalnd at the time. My knowledge of history is a bit sketchy, so you may want to fact check me, but I believe England was still under control of the Saxons at this point.

On topic, I actually didn't get into Star Wars until I was about ten years old, maybe twelve (don't remember). That was a few years before the Special Edition came out, but I was pretty much an instant fanboy once I took the time to watch it. Having grown older and detached myself from my fanboy tendencies, I've been able to be critical of the series, but a lot of it still holds up, despite the bits of it that have gone outdated (stolen datatapes! boy, what an anachronism that's become). Empire is the best of the series. The other two are held together BY what Empire did for the series and would merely be pretty good without it.

But when you talk about what Star Wars deserves . . . What Star Wars deserves is to be allowed to be what it is. A pretty good, fun adventure series. This notion that there needs to be more movies is what I find most bothersome. We didn't need the prequels. Sure, they could have been good movies, but we'd have lost nothing if they'd never been made, whatever quality they could have been. And we'll lose nothing if a new trilogy is never made. This is the thing that George Lucas (and Hollywood in general) never understood. You have to quite while you're ahead. Dragging a series on inevitably only drags it down. Leave Star Wars at its original trilogy and let it be what it is.

 

[Parakeettheprawn]

Can we please just let Star Wars go? Why are so many people holding on to it? It's time to move on.

Yes, can we? I gave up the second Dave Fiolini's animated series was given the right to rewrite the whole of Star Wars canon as it saw fit without anyone telling them "stop, we actually want to see an Imperial Commandos 2! Stop making the Mandalorians pacifists! Stop making characters dead or not dead that already had finished story arcs!" Guhhh... even thinking of it now is just downright unpleasant. I used to love Star Wars as a whole, I didn't even complain about the Ewoks... but my gosh it is just not worth it now. Maybe if EA produces some decent games I'll buy them, but that's it. If anyone ever tries to get me into Star Wars again, either they're gonna let me reboot it (and I mean personally, so we can finally start making more things like KotOR 2 and less like Masters of the whatsitsname in terms of quality), or I'm not going to even bother.

Counterpoint: The Avengers. Disney knows it's sitting on a goldmine here.

Counter-counterpoint: Spectacular Spider-Man, Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, and Tron Uprising all being cancelled due to "low ratings" because Disney jammed them on the sick dog that is (or at least was) Disney XD. Nevermind they were winning awards and had pretty good fan bases when they weren't jammed on XD at nearly 10 PM (who does Disney think they are kidding?) at night. And then what do we get? Hulk: Agents of Smash and Ultimate Spider-Man. Also, PotC: Armada of the Damned. And rumors that Tron 3 is actually not going to even feature the Grid! And the fact Ultimate Spider-Man is pretty much just there to advertise elements from the movies in a slightly tweaked universe. They also have outright said they just want to remake Seven Samurai but with Jedi. They aren't even pretending it's original -- it'll literally be just sticking lightsabers into an older movie, like with CGI added on.

Out of everything Disney's done thus far, the only things that seem worth hoping for at this point (IMO) are that Gravity Falls finally remembers its most appealing hook was conspiracy and mystery, that EA makes us some half-decent Star Wars games, and that the Marvel Movieverse continues to do well.

 

[irishda]

Star Wars never really held a sacrosanct place in my heart. I thought they were all fun movies, but as my movie experiences grew, I came to understand that they weren't really that good from so many standpoints (and yes I saw the original cuts of the first trilogy, not that that really matters). I consider it a blessing, since that meant I could enjoy the prequels (just as fun as the original, even with the annoying characters) and news about it doesn't really incur a lot of frothing rage.

 

[antidonkey]

Hun was a slang term for Germans during world war 1.

I was always more of a Trek fan myself so I was never emotionally invest in the Star Wars franchise even though I enjoyed the original movies and had tons of the various product tie ins as a child. I guess it was because I found RotJ to be entertaining yet dumb.

 

[Chessrook44]

Okay, am I the only one who thinks Empire is the weakest of the original trilogy? For me order of goodness goes pretty much 6 4 5 3 2 1. Though 6 and 4 might swap places nowadays, it's been a while since I saw the movies all together.

 

[Big_Boss_Mantis]

Counterpoint: The Avengers. Disney knows it's sitting on a goldmine here.

Avengers got me optimistic.
But then JJ Abrahams happened.
And then EA happened.

So I don't think they are going to make it great. I just think they are going to milk it 'til it dies.

There is nothing that I can say about JJ Abrahams that wasn't covered by Movie Bob's brilliant Big Picture about it.
Giving the director's chair to JJ Abrahams almost assures us that the movies are going to be completely bland and souless. Because that is what ALL of his work up until now has been. Was it bad? Not really. There is ANYTHING memorable about it? Maybe the lens flares.

Being good or being bad, Star Wars were something to talk about after leaving the movies. Even something as bad and cheesy as Episode 1 (yes, it IS worse than Attack Of the Clones) were enjoyable and heck, even INVENTIVE.
Kid Darth Vader driving Formula 1 cars was a horrible idea when you think about it, but it was AN IDEA. It took a direction and went at it.

That does not seems to be what Disney is after. They are just gonna make something to try to please everyone, turn it up to eleven and cash a big fat check in the bank.

And that is EXACTLY what Disney did with Lucasarts, selling the whole license to EA.
Figuring out what genres and developers would work to make an great Star Wars game and assigning individual projects to them would be really THAT hard?
Hell, Lucasarts made game gems just by purchasing and re-skinning popular games with the license. Jedi Knight 2 and onwards were just Quake 3 Arena reskinned, as were Gallactic Battlegrounds to Age Of Empires, and Battlefront to Battlefield.
But, hey ... Why bother? Sell it all to EA for a buttload of money and let them put their """""magic""""" on the franchise.

Disney's purchase could have gone really well, really. Instead, it is shaping up to be the final nail in this coffin.

 

[O maestre]

Did the huns ever invade france and England?

I also agree that episode 6 has some stupid moments like the ewoks and luke throwing away his lightsaber.

"Huns" was also used as British slang for the Germans during WW1 and WW2, it used along the same lines as "Fritz" and "Krauts" It was an allegory for the cruelty of the German soldiers, and the manner in which they raided Europe much like the Huns from antiquity.

Funfact: Mof is WW Dutch slang for germans, it also refers to German unsophisticated and rudeness.

OT: disney has done well with its licenses so far, and i think they will continue to do so, despite the franchises long hiatus. They could probably combine Yahtzees idea, by setting episode seven, a long time after episode six. They better act soon though before Star Wars gets really stale, and its fans get too old.

 

[loc978]

From the perspective of the owners, he's absolutely right. However, from the perspective of fans who were grinding up copies of the Thrawn trilogy and snorting it (figuratively!) before prequels or remakes were a glimmer in George's disturbingly Gammorean eyes... to us, the resurgence of massive popularity is the worst thing that could've happened to Star Wars. Much like every other aspect of geek culture that's gone mainstream... I'd like my niche back.

 

[Elijah Newton]

Okay, am I the only one who thinks Empire is the weakest of the original trilogy?

Quite possibly, yes. I don't mean to seem like I'm singling you out (to each their own, etc etc) but generally speaking it's considered the best of the bunch. I dig that this is a subjective thing, but on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, The Empire Strikes Back currently holds a 97% "Certified Fresh" rating, from a total of 71 reviews, making it the Star Wars saga's highest-rated episode. ( http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/empire_strikes_back/ )

Personally I liked Return of the Jedi best, but I know full well this was because when I saw it in the theater I was just old enough for Leia in a bikini to cause my brain to short-circuit in new and exciting ways but not quite old enough to be put off by ewoks. I wouldn't suggest this makes it the best movie, though.

What enjoyment I still get from Star Wars (and it's been unthinkably long since I've watched the decent three) is almost purely nostalgic. As an active IP it's Lenny from of Mice and Men. Someone who loves it needs to sit down with it and have a brief and final discussion about rabbits.

 

[Mahoshonen]

I have to agree with Yahtzee on this one. A mediocre sequel trilogy would be worse for the franchise as a whole than one that was bad. Bad movies are like really spicy food-hard to digest at first, and there are some types that never go down well, but eventually you can't get enough of it.

If the ST (*groan*) is great, great. If it sucks, we got Harry Plinkett waiting to eviscerate it. But otherwise...Star Wars just stops being fun to talk about.

 

[Chessrook44]

Okay, am I the only one who thinks Empire is the weakest of the original trilogy?

Quite possibly, yes. I don't mean to seem like I'm singling you out (to each their own, etc etc) but generally speaking it's considered the best of the bunch. I dig that this is a subjective thing, but on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, The Empire Strikes Back currently holds a 97% "Certified Fresh" rating, from a total of 71 reviews, making it the Star Wars saga's highest-rated episode. ( http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/empire_strikes_back/ )

Personally I liked Return of the Jedi best, but I know full well this was because when I saw it in the theater I was just old enough for Leia in a bikini to cause my brain to short-circuit in new and exciting ways but not quite old enough to be put off by ewoks. I wouldn't suggest this makes it the best movie, though.

What enjoyment I still get from Star Wars (and it's been unthinkably long since I've watched the decent three) is almost purely nostalgic. As an active IP it's Lenny from of Mice and Men. Someone who loves it needs to sit down with it and have a brief and final discussion about rabbits.

For my memory the reason for my ranking is that Empire had the big "Climactic action scene" at the start with the Battle of Hoth, and most of the rest was either low-key or short, as opposed to the other two stories which spent all their time building up to the big action scenes of the battles of Yavin and Endor. Maybe I just like the space battles more, and Empire had very little of that. I mean ok sure it had the Asteroid Chase Scene but... there wasn't really much to that.

 

[mronoc]

Did the huns ever invade france and England?

I also agree that episode 6 has some stupid moments like the ewoks and luke throwing away his lightsaber.

During World War I, the germans were ofter referred to as "Huns", specifically in propaganda posters.

 

[Mythmaker]

Amen.

Anything that smacks of trying to "deepen" the story or "improve" the presentation almost invariably results in either mediocrity or disaster That's one reason why I'm not that interested in The Force Unleashed, but absolutely love KOTOR.

 

[Covarr]

The prequel trilogy didn't revitalize the franchise because it was shit. It revitalized the franchise because it was divisive. Revenge of the Sith has an average rating on IMDB of 7.7/10. Keep in mind that's a movie 7.7?by games journalism standards, that would be at least 8.5. Star Wars fans hated it, and people with any sense of good filmmaking, storytelling, or acting hated it, but the general population didn't just like it, they thought it was damn good. Looking at individual reviews, it's got a ton of 10s on both IMDB and Metacritic. The average nerd can tell that it's a steaming pile, but the average member of the masses thinks it's "epic". Even some more discerning viewers said it "redeemed the prequel trilogy".

Let's look at a totally different example: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Not a great movie, but not awful the way At World's End was. But it got quite a bit of attention, and left people excited for the third. Just like the Star Wars prequels, it was "epic". So were the Matrix sequels (which also have disproportionately high user ratings compared to their actual quality), so were Iron Man 2, The Bourne Identity, Superman Returns, and Harry Potter and the Movie Where Nothing Happens Deathly Hallows: Part 1.

When a movie is enough bigger than its audience (in some way, not necessarily geography), it will succeed at any quality level. Movies aren't forgotten because they're mediocre, but because they're ordinary. Epic Move was far shittier than the Star Wars prequels, but nobody really remembers it other than a vague idea that it sucked, because nothing about it was extraordinary. Had nothing to do with how bad it was.

P.S. Thanks

 

[Slothboy]

I can't speak to the current generation of Star Wars fans, but for me Star Wars has always been there. I was a toddler when Episode IV came out and it has been my consistent go-to sci-fi for my entire life. It is what I've always held up other space adventures against to be judged.

I was looking forward to the prequels with the insane fervor of an addict. The only thing I wanted in my life was more Star Wars. I just assumed it would be great because how COULDN'T it be great? Everything so far had been great. I had absolute trust in Lucas.

If the prequels had been awesome, I would still want more films. I would be begging George to crank out some more space opera. If the prequels had just been OK then I would still be wanting more. There are stories to be told and again, so much of my imagination was influenced by Star Wars that it is terrifyingly easy to picture possibilities for the setting.

The only thing for me that is different about my anticipation for the new films is that because the prequels and changes are lame, I'm not mad that Disney bought the IP. Lucas has shown us that his ideas about the Star Wars Universe are no longer compatible with those of his fans. He's either overthought it or underthought it, but the result is that he now has a vision of Star Wars that nobody likes but him.

So if the prequels had lived up to even half of my expectations I would be in rage mode about the audacity of Disney getting in the middle of my precious. As it is, I don't care. I just want more Star Wars.