The headline is from the NYT, here.
“‘Star Wars’ fans have an enormous sense of ownership, which works to the benefit of the movie company and to the detriment,” said Steve Sansweet, the president of Rancho Obi-Wan, a nonprofit “Star Wars” memorabilia museum, and the former head of fan relations for Lucasfilm. “There is a growing feeling among fans that the movies are starting to come out a little too frequently.”Oh, apparently, it's not truly cosmic fatigue, just a pacing preference. I'm bored with that. I want to see people deciding they've had enough at long last. But I'll just turn away from fandom. I have some things I've liked far too long. For example, I just quoted Bob Dylan (in the previous post).
Posts
123 comments:
Get woke, go broke.
PS: h/t Insta
Oh, it's not fatigue for me. I loved Last Jedi. I'm just not ready to see someone other than Harrison Ford playing Han Solo.
And, the thing about the Star Wars films is that they're epic in nature. A few simple people fighting against the oppressive Empire. A few against a galaxy.
Han Solo fighting some galactic thugs with a rag tag bunch of scoundrels helping him?
Meh.
"Han Solo fighting some galactic thugs with a rag tag bunch of scoundrels helping him?"
Isn't that what happens in all Star Wars movies.
Sorry, I quit after "The Empire Strikes Back." I heard "Return of the Jedi" was bad.
Judging from the reviews I have read, the problem isn't fan fatigue. That's just spin put out to hide the real problem. The film just isn't very good. Too much SJW service. Apparently it is not doing good business in China, which these days is the kiss of death for a movie like this, you know, escapism with lots of laser battles and explosions.
Sorry, I quit after "The Empire Strikes Back." I heard "Return of the Jedi" was bad.
"Return of the Jedi" was when they realized that the real money was in selling cheap plastic crap to kids and fanboys. It was the last Star Wars movie I ever saw. You didn't miss anything.
I heard "Return of the Jedi" was bad.
It was a bad repeat of the very first Star Wars movie.
Just imagine the original with all the fun, magic, and wonder sucked out.
@Lars
Exactly.
Only the first movie was any good, and we can’t even see the original anymore because Lucas defaced it. I do remember waiting in line on a snowy/rainy night in a pothole pocked parking lot, neon lights reflected in the puddles, to see it the first time and I wasn’t disappointed. That’s probably the only time I wasn’t disappointed by a Star Wars film.
Young Han Solo finds adventure when he joins a gang of galactic smugglers, including a 196-year-old Wookie named Chewbacca.
Han Solo always reminded me of a nickname he might have earned when one of his friends walked in while he was masturbating. That's reason enough to see the prequel.
If I had three wishes from a genie in a lamp I would spend one of them on putting Star Wars out its misery. I fail to understand how the saturation point wasn't reached and breached years ago for the rest of you (it certainly was for me).
I haven't seen it yet, and I probably won't until it is out of theaters. This isn't a comment on this movie's specific quality, so much as that it is surrounded by so many other things of questionable or out right bad content. I'm not spending around $20 to not be entertained for a few hours while also having to go somewhere else for the privilege.
I remember seeing a video on youtube where a guy was lambasting fellow fans for not going to see the Justice League movie. His argument wasn't that it was a good movie and it would be entertaining and well worth the money they would spend. His argument was that since Justice League didn't to well at the box office that DC wouldn't make all the other movies that would have resulted if it had been successful. Star Wars fanboyz are like that too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9mP2s4xE3o
Via Ace of Spades HQ:
Soylo: A Soy Wars Soyry Will Be Disney's Lowest-Earning Soy Wars Entry Yet
Headline thanks to Comics Artist Pro Secrets. If the headline is indecipherable to you, Ethan Van Sciver says that Disney is producing "soy-based entertainment" -- cucked-out movies where all the women are bad-ass and decisive and all the men are ineffectual Pajama Boys and pansexuals -- and he calls their new movie "Solo: A Star Wars Story" "Soylo: A Soy Wars Soyry."
Full article at the link, but that should tell you enough about why the movie isn't doing well.
“There is a growing feeling among fans that the movies are starting to come out a little too frequently.”
I think that's a nice, neutral theory to proffer. The problem is Marvel keeps pumping out movies -- what, ever three or four months? -- and the audience hasn't faltered yet. They're solid, well-crafted entertainment. They know what they are -- action soap operas -- and they do that very well. There's no reason Star Wars can't be the same.
There are a lot of fans who think the problem is that the person directing the Star Wars franchise today (Kennedy) is like the polar opposite of the superfan who is running Marvel's movies (Feige) -- she has no affection for or attachment to the franchise she's running, and it kind of shows.
For my part, I think it's that the last three Star Wars movies (before Solo, which I haven't seen) were kind of sloppily constructed. Rogue One's last hour or half hour was pretty solid, but the first half of the movie is a disjointed mess. The shift between Force Awakens and Last Jedi was abrupt and jarring -- where Marvel has (sometimes irritatingly) done the work of setting up narrative threads in one movie for a payoff in another, it's like the Star Wars team set up a bunch of narrative threads in movie 1 and decided to toss them all out in movie 2. It's just . . . sloppy. Make the movie you want to make, I guess, but when you're working as part of a series, you expect a little more overarching narrative control.
"Ann Althouse said...
"Han Solo fighting some galactic thugs with a rag tag bunch of scoundrels helping him?"
Isn't that what happens in all Star Wars movies.
Sorry, I quit after "The Empire Strikes Back." I heard "Return of the Jedi" was bad."
I never started. I've only seen clips here and there of scenes but never watched any of the movies.
Re: Clyde:
The problem with that thesis is you can imagine someone saying pretty much the exact same thing in the original Star Wars -- Luke doesn't drive the narrative so much (other than, well, he sees a pretty girl asking for help and wants to rescue her). Leia drives the plot forward from the protagonists' perspective. And Han is just along for the ride.
When you go to a movie, or rent one, just remember into whose pocket you're putting your $.
Haven't been to or rented a movie in 20+ years. The moguls of Tinseltown will have to do without my money, thank you.
I have a male friend that holds the position that Star Wars fall from grace occurred when Lucas altered the original film to change the scene between Han Solo and Greedo: Han shot first.
Essentially, the action of the morally ambiguous Solo is retroactively changed in the edited re-release to be more conducive to selling toys.
As such, it becomes the Original Sin of the franchise: the movie you first saw no longer exists, and everything after is outside the garden.
My friend extrapolates that this is the seed from which the SJW aspects of the modern Star Wars films flowered.
This argument is, not coincidentally, also why I have never had sex with this friend. I hope that one day he is able to find the geek girl of his dreams, but I will not be the one to dress in the Princess Leia slave-girl costume.
LWL
I wish George Lucas had retired from filmmaking after making his sublime AMERICAN GRAFFITI. STAR WARS is a blight upon popular culture.
I will not be the one to dress in the Princess Leia slave-girl costume.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E38p1w3Sui4
"And, the thing about the Star Wars films is that they're epic in nature. A few simple people fighting against the oppressive Empire. A few against a galaxy."
In other words, you're cheering for the terrorists who would violently undo the legitimately incorporated galactic empire! (How many people died, do you think, in the blowing up of the Death Star?)
Well, blogger just dump my 500-word essay on why Marvel does this so well and where Disney missed the boat.
Trust me, it was really good.
Short form: Stories are about emotion. Marvel superheroes embody basic emotions everyone relates to: rage (hulk), daddy issues (guardians, iron man), geeks wanting to be successful and desirable (iron man), brother issues (thor), needing to belong to a family (guardians).
Get that emotion right, and no one's gonna care if the plot is nonsensical.
That's built into the DNA of the characters. Star Wars had Luke and that's it.
"STAR WARS is a blight upon popular culture."
Popular culture is a blight upon popular culture.
"How many people died, do you think, in the blowing up of the Death Star?)"
Seeing how it was a movie, approximately 0.
Actually, my rewrite was better. Less gassiness.
"In all of the time we spend observing the Rebel Alliance, we never hear of their governing strategy or their plans for a post-Imperial universe. All we see are plots and fighting. Their victory over the Empire doesn't liberate the galaxy--it turns the galaxy into Somalia writ large: dominated by local warlords who are answerable to no one.
Which makes the rebels--Lucas's heroes--an unimpressive crew of anarchic royals who wreck the galaxy so that Princess Leia can have her tiara back."
https://www.weeklystandard.com/jonathan-v-last/the-case-for-the-empire
In other words, you're cheering for the terrorists who would violently undo the legitimately incorporated galactic empire! (How many people died, do you think, in the blowing up of the Death Star?)
Undoubtedly. Read the history of the struggles in the Caucuses between the Muslim tribesmen and the Russian and Persian empires called “The Sabres of Paradise” and you will find most of Star Wars in it, by way of Dune, which straight up ripped off Sabres. (Light Sabres?). Of course in Dune, the evil guy was the hero’s uncle who was executing a dark plot from the emperor, not his father.
I have always said that the Muslim terrorists have the more romantic story line.
How many people died, do you think, in the blowing up of the Death Star?
"The first Death Star is depicted in various sources of having a crew of:
265,675, as well as 52,276 gunners, 607,360 troops, 30,984 stormtroopers, 42,782 ship support staff, and 180,216 pilots and support crew."
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/36238/what-is-the-total-number-of-people-killed-on-the-2-death-stars-when-they-explode
"Short form: Stories are about emotion. Marvel superheroes embody basic emotions everyone relates to: rage (hulk), daddy issues (guardians, iron man), geeks wanting to be successful and desirable (iron man), brother issues (thor), needing to belong to a family (guardians)."
Hmmm...I don't agree that everyone relates to these particular issues, but to the degree people have issues, there are better movies to be made about them than super-hero and space opera movies. (Not that I didn't read Marvel and DC comics when I was a kid--as well as Gold Key, Harvey, Charlton, Dell, Archie, Classics Illustrated, etc.--and not that the occasional, well-made super-hero movie isn't fine, but the saturation bombing, if you will, of movie theaters with super-hero movies and their pop-culture kin is appalling.) I always wonder what the actors think of the silly dialogue and action they're expected to perform.
Of course the purpose of the death star was to destroy planets with their populations of billions of humans and untold numbers of cute pandas, polar bears and whales!
“But if your’e going to make an omelette, you have to break some eggs.” as the New York Times described Stalinism.
I saw The Last Jedi. The special effects were really impressive. How is it possible to create such fabulous new worlds and populate those worlds with such lame characters stumbling around in stupid plots?......I'll contnue to watch the Star Wars movies. Every so often something happens that triggers a memory of that first fine careless rapture, but then they get politically correct and you realize you're not in a galaxy far, far away.
I always wonder what the actors think of the silly dialogue and action they're expected to perform.
"They drove a dump truck full of money up to my house! I'm not made of stone!"
Don’t even get me started on Star Trek sequels, where they went so SJW that they turned the Federation fascist.
“Ye can nae break a stick when it’s in a bundle” <<-- Actual line from “Fascist Scotty.”
Robert Cook said...
I always wonder what the actors think of the silly dialogue and action they're expected to perform.
I suspect most are fine with it. They know exactly where they stand on the prostitution scale.
"I always wonder what the actors think of the silly dialogue and action they're expected to perform."
From Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘N’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood by Peter Biskind:
Lucas, in looking back on the production later, observed, “I realized why directors are such horrible people, because you want things to be right, and people will just not listen to you, and there is no time to be nice, to be delicate. I spent all my time yelling and screaming at people.”
Once again, George was not terribly helpful to the actors. The dialogue was awful. As Harrison Ford famously told him, “George, you can type this shit, but you sure can’t say it.”
-LWL
@LWL:
I read that book...it was excellent!
Comments predictably full of people too hip for Star Wars.
My wife and I saw Solo last night and both found it thoroughly enjoyable. So far these spinoff stories (Solo and Rogue One) seem more fun and satisfying than the new "Episodes".
I can understand the reluctance to see new actors playing Han and Lando. That's probably a big contributor to this film not blowing up the box office. I wasn't sure what to expect, but Alden Ehrenreich and Donald Glover both nailed their performances.
Oh, and there's no SJW crap in this movie -- unlike Episode VII and VIII it's delightfully free of nonsense. Frankly, I think that criticism has been overblown in the case VII/VIII but it doesn't even make sense to level it at Solo or Rogue One. Evidently anti-SJWs are becoming conditioned to see feminist propaganda in everything the same way actual SJWs see racism in everything.
Ponder the paradox of Carrie Fisher. She was not, by her own admission, a very good actress. She delivered the clunky lines in a clunky way, but she was by far the best Star Wars princess. The clumsiness of her acting actually enhanced the fantasy. It wasn't acting. It was cosplay. She was a nice girl playing along with a twelve year old's fantasy adventure.
Solo? I didn't know they made another Man from U.N.C.L.E. movie!
Really, Clerks covered the whole Death Star thing years ago.
The original trilogy was good. I don't know why you'd skip out on Return of the Jedi, even if the selling point was a bunch of muppets.
The prequel trilogy was...terrible. There were a lot of good ideas in there, but Lucas was a terrible director. If you have a few hours to kill and aren't disturbed by "dismembering women in your basement jokes", I recommend the Red Letter Media analysis of the prequel trilogy movies.
Rogue One was good, a little messy, but good. The Force Awakes was a nearly beat-for-beat rehash of "A New Hope", but this time with a Mary-Sue! It was good though. I'd say that it makes clear the problem of modern film-making when you compare it to A New Hope. Not only does everything have to be bigger and louder, but also it is no longer enough to show an interesting set-piece, you have to have explosions and ACTION! with every scene.
The Last Jedi...was just terrible...not only did it trash the story threads set up by the previous movie, but it also crapped all over the 'rules' of Star Wars universe. Long, drawn out, space chases are not a thing in Star Wars. They've never been a thing. Neither is "ramming a lightspeed" a thing. In THE PREVIOUS MOVIE, they had a ship jump to hyperspace inside another ship and nothing bad happened to either ship.
Star Wars fatigue, or Hollywood fatigue?
I stay out of the box office.
No box office here. Free yourself from the box office.
Tregonese,
I loved that Man from UNCLE reboot. It would be nice if they made a sequel to that one.
"Oh, and there's no SJW crap in this movie -- unlike Episode VII and VIII it's delightfully free of nonsense..."
I haven't seen the movie, so perhaps what I have read is wrong:
"Lando Calrissian is pansexual, according to Solo: A Star Wars Story’s co-writer...
(Director/writer) Kasdan told Huffington Post he wanted to bring more LGBTQ representation into the Star Wars universe, and wish he pressed a little more to have that representation visible in Solo.
“There’s a fluidity to Donald and Billy Dee’s [portrayal of Lando’s] sexuality,” Kasdan told the Huffington Post. “I mean, I would have loved to have gotten a more explicitly LGBT character into this movie. I think it’s time, certainly, for that, and I love the fluidity ― sort of the spectrum of sexuality that Donald appeals to and that droids are a part of.”
I haven't seen the old Star Wars film with Billy Dee Williams for quite some time, but I don't recall him being pansexual.
Because what the director is saying is that Billy Dee "Colt .45 It Gets The Job Done" Williams had sex with men, too.
When Billy Dee Williams says in an interview that "Yes, Lucas and I discussed this back then, and we were in total agreement that I wasn't only into chicks and I made sweet sweet love with men, too" I will gladly admit that I missed this subtext.
The issue isn't the sexuality: it is that the sexuality is later added to a character that had no hint of this exposition to begin with.
Create an amazing new pansexual character, sell the toys and bedsheets.
But don't make a sequel to "Mean Girls" and have the gay character Damien turn out to like young boys, just to create frisson.
-LWL
SW fans are punishing Solo for the sins of The Ladt Jedi. Understandable, but it still sucks for cast and crew of Solo.
Solo isn’t amazing, but it’s pretty good, and could have been made a lot better with editing on about 10 minutes of the film.
TLJ was Kathleen Kennedy jamming SJW crap into a franchise she doesn’t understand or really care for.
The problem with all the comic book based movies in the theatres isn’t those movies - especially any made under Feige’s control, 90% of which are good to great (sorry Hulk and Dark World).
The problem is a lack of other great movie ideas.
Althouse has Dylan fatique?? Sad!!
"the movie you first saw no longer exists" Actually it does. A fan found a 1977 un-destroyed, un-molested 35mm print. digitized it, repaired the color, and sound track and released it to the web. It's out there. I have a copy. It is wonderful.
"A fan found a 1977 un-destroyed, un-molested 35mm print. digitized it, repaired the color, and sound track and released it to the web. It's out there. I have a copy. It is wonderful."
Memories have to be bootlegged now.
The problem is not saturation, though I do understand that making Star Wars an annual event will reduce the specialness of the franchise. The true problem is quality.
The prequels suffered from the ending being a foregone conclusion, but the main problem is the movies were simply not very good. I would recommend the crude but hilarious and insightful Mr. Plinkett reviews of them on Red Letter Media for the full treatment. For me, the two main problems were the protagonist was a psychotic man-child and the actors were expected to give good performances with mediocre to bad dialogue while in front of a green screen, interacting with nothing in particular.
The first Disney installment of The Force Awakens was not very creative as it borrows heavily from the original Star Wars, yet it is well executed with interesting characters. I enjoyed it. It left many interesting plot hooks for the sequel, which I looked forward to see developed.
Rogue One had an intriguing premise and some interesting characters but did nothing with them. The male lead Cassian is basically a flat character. The female lead Jyn goes through character development, but the movie never really builds a connection with the audience and the development seems rushed, going from cynical to idealistic so quickly that it seems like two different people. In the end, the best character is a droid. The saving grace is the battle scene at the end is awesome, perhaps the best in the franchise's history.
And then we have the mess that was The Last Jedi. I will admit I enjoyed the movie in the theatre, but that's basically I went in with my brain turned off in order to enjoy the spectacle. It is a movie that gets worse the more one thinks about it. J.J. Abrams had written out the story for the trilogy beforehand with all those hooks setup in The Force Awakens, but Rian Johnson, the director of this film, was given carte blanche to do whatever he wanted. Apparently, he tossed out everything in favor of "subverting expectations" without any consideration of where the story would go from there. I am not opposed to the idea in general - it is something that the prequels would probably have benefitted from - and I like the idea of the Rebels going from bad to worse to worse yet as the story progresses, but he did so many stupid things. Almost every plot hook from the first movie was either thrown away or ignored, save for Luke Skywalker who he changed to be mostly out of character. A good deal of the plot, including a pointless side quest, is driven by a new character who acts like an idiot. And then we get a battle scene that uses a strategy that was not only never hinted at prior, but makes you wonder why it was not the ONLY battle strategy used to the point it ruins the suspension of disbelief.
I haven't seen Solo yet, but one review referred to it as a "fan fiction" which is not a good sign at all....
Tank nailed it in one.
The Last Jedi was terrible. I laughed out loud when Mary Poppins Leia happened and never recovered.
Blogger tim in vermont said...
Only the first movie was any good, and we can’t even see the original anymore because Lucas defaced it. I do remember waiting in line on a snowy/rainy night in a pothole pocked parking lot, neon lights reflected in the puddles, to see it the first time and I wasn’t disappointed.
1977 must be have been a lousy May in Vermont. The original Star Wars was release on 25 May.
Part of the dream that surrounds our articulated knowledge is extracted as a consequence of us watching Star Wars movies, and telling stories about them, extracting out patterns of behavior that characterize humanity, and trying to represent—partly through imitation, but also drama, mythology, literature, art, and all of that—what we’re like, so that we can understand what we’re like. That process of understanding is what I see unfolding, at least in part, in the Star Wars franchise. It’s halting, partial, awkward, and contradictory, which is one of things that makes the movies so complex. But I see, in that, the struggle of humanity to rise above its animal forebears and become conscious of what it means to be human.
@Loren W Laurent:
There is a subtext of Lando having something like a romantic affection for his droid companion, L3-37, whose personality is female.
Aside from that, from what we see in the film, he is very definitely into women. One gets the sense that, like James Kirk, Lando probably wouldn't constrain himself to human females, but there's no hint of him being attracted to males.
When I look at the Star Wars stories, I do it, in some sense, with a beginner’s mind. It’s a mystery, these movies: how the hell they were made, why they were made, why we preserved them, why they happened to motivate an entire culture for 40 years and transform the world. What’s going on? How did that happen? It’s by no means obvious.
Disney should fire Kathleen Kennedy. She ruined what should have been a good money making franchise for Disney by turning it into a god-awful SJW moralizing mess. She's responsible for hiring idiots like Rian Johnson.
Blogger Matthew Sablan said...
"I'm not spending around $20 to not be entertained for a few hours while also having to go somewhere else for the privilege."
When I was a kid movies were 50 cents on Friday night. For half a buck you got to go somewhere (across town) and spend a couple of hours in air conditioning eating chocolate covered raisins while watching Burt Lancaster. Then you got to walk home under the street lights. Pretty cool for a 10 year old in 1961.
"So there’s always a little gap when people think it’s going to get better, but you’ve just moved from Suck to Blow. Rather like watching a Star Wars movie."
Han Solo always reminded me of a nickname he might have earned when one of his friends walked in while he was masturbating.
Consider too how often someone gets his hand cut off in a Star Wars movie. Lucas has issues.
The movie was pretty weak but the character of younger Han showed some promise. He definitely wised up a bit in the movie in the last few scenes.
He’s basically a Byronic hero like Rick Blaine in Casablanca.
He shot Greedo first just like he shot Woody Harrelson’s character first. Smart moves because each was going to kill him, He didn’t shoot his own son, which he knew he should have. But it would have been the wrong thing to do. Kylo Ren has a lot of Han Solo, which makes his character interesting. He can’t live up to his father. That’s the main thing about his character. The Dark Side of the Force stuff is all bullshit. A red herring.
The bar scene was good. That's the last Star Wars I saw. Parody western.
Ron Winkleheimer said...
"Return of the Jedi" was when they realized that the real money was in selling cheap plastic crap to kids and fanboys. It was the last Star Wars movie I ever saw. You didn't miss anything.
From all accounts toy tie-ins became Lucas' focus after the original Star Wars came out and he realized just how much money could be made. ROTJ went to crap was because George Lucas fired executive producer Gary Katz half way through filming. The studio had brought Katz back during the 'American Graffiti' days in to keep a tight rein on some of Lucas' bad story telling impulses.
1977 must be have been a lousy May in Vermont. The original Star Wars was release on 25 May.
Apparently you have never been in Vermont. I've been there in July and seen hit 60 - 70 degree temperatures with plenty of wind and in the shade of mountains. It gets cold there. Hell, I've been in Massachusetts and seen snow fall at the end of March.
I read there were issues making the film.
Don’t get me started on Kylo Renn. He looks like Snape. I watch him and see Harry Potter. It’s very distracting. I thought that was a mistake. He needed to be taken over his parents knees and given a good wallop.
Hell I’ve been in Chicago and saw snow fall in the beginning of May! We were at an outside graduation a week ago Sunday and once again, I should have NOT listened to my husband. I was going to wear my flannel-lined jeans and Uggs. and Mr. HotBox nooooooo. I froze.
The first movie was wonder. The second movie was better.
>there's no SJW crap in this movie
That’s not what the review Ace linked to says...
1. Lando is a pan sexual
2. Solo is shown to be a trusting, bumbling White Male continuously saved by Females.
3. Solo is shown to be a coward.
4. The robot, Landos love interest, L3-37 is a Fem-Nazi SJW scold.
Fun fact - toy sales have made 3X the money the movies did.
Oh, and I hate Ewoks.
Don’t get me started on Kylo Renn. He looks like Snape.
Not just me then. I loved him in Undercover Boss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaOSCASqLsE
Althouseian Translation: I have hated this from the second (and arguably best) movie and wish it would die.
Well, good for you. A cultural phenomena which has viscerally changed culture, film making, merchandising, and philosophy, 'discredited' with an elitist sniff.
Madam Althouse: you are not the fan that Star Wars is looking for.
I absolutely bored and indifferent to musical contests and ardently wait for 'drag queen' fatigue. Because I am not a fan, Ms. Althouse would no doubt dismiss my opinion.
But I don't have the crabbed and selfish spirit to 'wish these things were dead' even if only teen age girl and their older equivilents love this level of irrelevancy. Because it is enough that THEY enjoy it and I would be a shrewish person to wish them such ill will..
If you are going to address something as hugely significant as Star Wars, I expect more than 'I hate it and wish it would die.'
And I say this as someone who has only liked 3 out of the 10 movies.
The SJW nonesense in TLJ was bad. It was overshadowed by the appalling writing.
Lucas first wife was there through the first two. She seemed to be the only one able to tell Lucas the truth. After that, Star Wars went downhill. She has most been airbrushed out of why the first two were so much better.
For a synopsis of the reasons Ms. Althouse is to busy to delve into while admiring RuPaul's pumps is this:
The Last Jedi
1). Was horribly written
2). Was boring
3). Had ham handed political screeds in it (and has since the Attack of the Clones). Essentially it was a rant over the Defeat of Hillary, down to using political slogans Hill used in the campaign.
4). And when the fans exhibited their distaste, they were called fat, basement dwelling, white male misogynists.
Well.
You can just feel the love there. Ergo, Solo.
People forget the 3 pre-sequels were crappy money grabs by Lucas.
The last two with Mark Hamill have been more-or-less above average. Disney isn't "respecting" the Star Wars tradition because its a soulless corporation concerned with Making $$ and pushing PC liberalism. To imagine it would do otherwise is a pipe dream.
Fanboys will cry and complain - but Disney doesn't give a shit - as long as they keep showing up shelling out $$$ and buying Daisy Ridley Dolls.
And Disney ins't "Going Broke" or "Losing Money". They're just making less $$ then they planned.
Sorry.
I bought a couple of Jynn Erso dolls about 80% off at a TRU liquidation sale. I figure to take them to the rifle range at some point.
The Last Jedi was bad. That's why. If it had been good, Solo would be making more money.
I swore off the Star Wars movies after episode 3, Revenge of the Sith in 2005. I briefly considered seeing the new trilogy, but when I read a review it became obvious they were just rewriting the original trilogy with updated characters, so begged off. I won't pay a dime to watch anything Disney makes with the franchise at this point.
" I won't pay a dime to watch anything Disney makes with the franchise at this point...."
That is why I will only see it as a pirated video with Chinese subtitles.
-LWL
Oh Yea wrote:
"Only the first movie was any good, and we can’t even see the original anymore because Lucas defaced it. I do remember waiting in line on a snowy/rainy night in a pothole pocked parking lot, neon lights reflected in the puddles, to see it the first time and I wasn’t disappointed."
"1977 must be have been a lousy May in Vermont. The original Star Wars was release on May 25th
How old are you? I saw Star Wars for the first time, and in a theater, in the Summer of 1978. You could even see it in theater the day before The Empire Strikes Back premiered. In those days it was common for successful movies to run for 2 years or more in regular theaters, though not consecutively- they would return every few months for another run.
This is the Academy in Ms. Althouse showing: 'I don't like this and what I don't like should stop.'
Well, the Academy and Church Ladies.
The dislike is no big deal. It is the censoriousness which is well, by lights rude, appalling and when pushed hard enough, dangerous.
Granted, I would happily have every Post Modernist Philosopher thrown into a rattlesnake pit and blithely told that these are just social constructs which they are certainly smart enough to see through.
But I think Post Modernism is far more damaging than a B level space opera.
Yeah, I didn’t go see it on the day when it came out. Hardly anybody did. The audience grew by word of mouth. People saw that movie twenty times or more. There was no “video” for it to go to, or even much TV. So as long as people lined up. But to be honest with you, I lived near Buffalo at the time, snow in May wouldn’t have been unusual. I know it was when the days were shorter because in May or June, it didn’t really seem to get dark until 10:00 P.M. there, if memory serves/
Of all the shit somebody could call me out on.
But the thing I couldn’t take about Rogue One is that as soon as the Storm Trooper goes over to the terrorist side (the good guys) he can suddenly hit what he is shooting at.
Emilia Clarke killed off the terminator franchise, she may be doing the same here, the film is not called lando, as much as Donald glover, thinks it us, they can't tell the difference between suave and player, I think that's the proper term,
Oh and limited numbers of actual, exist in this world, not cyberspace, copies of movies that had to be shipped in actual trucks around the country meant that that movie was not going to arrive in my podunk little town until they had run off more copies and they ended their runs in the big cites. it was months before they got overseas. A lot of stuff is so different, it’s unbelievable. That’s why I put in the part about the pothole ridden parking lot. You see them in the Bahamas maybe, but not so much anymore in the US.
You know who would have made a great Lando, except for his color? Alan Rickman. Think Sheriff of Nottingham / Hans Gruber
And another thing that would have been fun would have been Godfather action figures
in retrospect, the crosspromotion with childish gimbino, was a bad call,
han is dead, luke is gone, resurrecting lea seems improbable, the rebels are down to handfuls of fighters,
I don't see new and recent movies unless they're Marvel or space operas.
I didn't see the original till 1981, on laserdisc, I saw empire a year later
I didn't see the original till 1981, on laserdisc, I saw empire a year later
I've got that beat. I read the novelization before the movie came out and didn't see the movie until years after it came out. Erma Bombeck (humor columnist) actually had that as "Things To Say At A Party To Stop The Conversation."
"I haven't seen Star Wars, but I've read the book."
People stood in line for 3+ hours to see these films. Even the bad ones(but how was one to know?)
One apocryphal tale was of a man who saw SW 100 times.
The only musical equivalent was perhaps the Grateful Dead with their Deadheads (though the drugs added a certain...incentive and ability to appreciate their music)
Ray said...
>there's no SJW crap in this movie
That’s not what the review Ace linked to says...
1. Lando is a pan sexual
2. Solo is shown to be a trusting, bumbling White Male continuously saved by Females.
3. Solo is shown to be a coward.
4. The robot, Landos love interest, L3-37 is a Fem-Nazi SJW scold.
1. is Word of God, but not in the movie. And the Word of God may even be deceiving.
2. and 3. I'd disagree with -- Solo is also shown to be clever, brave, an ace pilot and good at combat. Of course his cockiness sometimes backfires and gets him in trouble (just like it did at times in Episode IV-VI)
4. L3-37 is a droid-liberationist, not a feminist; she's proud, but not a man-hater, and her activist bent is played for laughs.
So once again, anti-SJWs getting triggered seeing feminist propaganda in everything the same way SJWs see racism in everything. Valid criticism turned into an unhealthy obsession.
Hunter,
There is also the contrary impulse: to deny things which are, in fact, pretty blatant because it doesn't fit ones zeitgeist.
I can't speak for Solo. The Last Social Justice Warrior was blatant enough that non-politicals were making comments.
Now that isn't ME, but still.
L3 was a woke droid intersectionalist. But that bit was over quickly and didn't ruin the film.
Ehrenreich's portrayal of Han was about as good as it could be without accidentally slipping over into pure imitation. He started out a little naive, but he learns from his mistakes and is generally decisive and pretty brave. I can live with that.
Stat Wars fans are the worst part of Star Wars. They've been complaining non-stop since the first Ewok appeared in Return of the Jedi.
They drove the creator away from his own creation with their endless poo-flinging of the prequel trilogy. They complained about a black stormtrooper. They complained about a girl Luke Skywalker. They complained that Force Awakens was too much like the one that started the whole thing. They complained about one of the greatest scenes ever put to film, Vader tearing through the rebels at the height of his power in Rogue One, as 'fan service'. They complain that Luke didnt do what THEY thought he should do in Last Jedi, even though disillusionment and redemption are pretty standard literary themes. And on and on and on and on. All this over a world that doesn't exist and in which people move rocks with their minds.
Talk about 1st world problems. Bunch of dorks.
"Return of the Jedi" was when they realized that the real money was in selling cheap plastic crap to kids and fanboys. It was the last Star Wars movie I ever saw. You didn't miss anything.
I actually went to see The Phantom Menace when it came out. Because, well, Star Wars.
Yeah. That was enough.
yes, that part in rogue one was great, you know they have to get to tatooine, but the mechanics of it, from scarrif, Hamill has become a bitter pill,
Considering that a good Star Wars film hasn't come out since 1983, yes, it might be better to take it easy.
When Star Wars first came out, I did see it a few times in theater (may be it was 10 times). And I was the first person at my Middle School with a Star Wars shirt. So I guess I am a bit of nerd on the subject.
Jedi - ruined it for me with Ewoks. It was supposed to be a Sci Fi retelling of the Vietnam War.
Prequel - Jar Jar must die. I think I saw the 2nd one even, but skipped the third.
Force Awakens - Seemed another JJ Abrams bigger and better than anything else. What bothered me was how could a beam from a planetoid somehow travel through inter stellar space, and destroy a planet. Why did the Death Star have to travel between stars to get near a planet to destroy it? And why did the female Luke Skywalker require no training to be a world class light saberist?
I have not seen the latest Star Trek movie either, and I remember skipping school to see a Star Trek movie, I think it was Wrath of Khan. The interstellar transporter in the first reboot ruined it for me.
I feel like a bit of a curmudgeon on the subject of Star Wars and Star Trek. Yes, I even have a tech bible or two.
What I want is a good, fun story and keep the politics out of it.
To me, the whole magic of Star Wars revolves around the force, and those who can use it. Making a prequel that does not involve the force, nor anyone who uses it, would be like making a prequel to 50 Shades of Grey that didn't involve BDSM. Why are you even in that universe?
rcocean said...
People forget the 3 pre-sequels were crappy money grabs by Lucas.
No, we don't
The last two with Mark Hamill have been more-or-less above average. Disney isn't "respecting" the Star Wars tradition because its a soulless corporation concerned with Making $$ and pushing PC liberalism. To imagine it would do otherwise is a pipe dream.
The last two "mainstream" ones have been crap.
And Disney ins't "Going Broke" or "Losing Money". They're just making less $$ then they planned.
Wrong. Disney spent >$500 million to make and market Solo. Worldwide box-office gross was <$170 million, of which they get ~2/3
Their take goes down as time goes on, and viewership drops too, even faster.
Odds are they won't break even on this one
"Return of the Jedi" was the worst of the original three, but it was good to have it all tied up and finished. Then came "Return of the Money Dreams," and all these new ones.
"The Empire Strikes Back" is the best.
It's interesting that fun, campy, space adventure movies became such a huge cultural phenomenon. It's interesting that any movie becomes such a cultural phenomenon. I understand the Trekker phenomenon more because those people have a whole series to immerse themselves in.
If you were working on the original Star Wars, there's no way you could have guessed that decades later people would line up days in advance and often in costume to see a Star Wars movie. (Remember when the first prequel came out?)
"Wrong. Disney spent >$500 million to make and market Solo. Worldwide box-office gross was <$170 million, of which they get ~2/3"
I don't see how Solo cost that much. No big name actors. CGI in the extreme. Why did it cost so much?
Reshooting 85% of the film and marketing. The marketing budget is never in the film budget.
And they were correctly nervous at it's reception.
Not that the markets my money made any difference.
Film budget was a quarter of a billion
Whether Solo makes money or not, what Disney bought - what the majors like - is a bankable, extendable 'universe'. Like Marvel, DC, etc. A gang of characters who are familiar no matter who plays them. 11 or so have done Superman. You make a clunker, it sucks, but the next one will recoup.
The show, 'The Last Jedi' was an awful DRAG... We watched it and hated the damn thing. Now Rouge One was a tear jerker, not bad, but the last one was a boring drag. Plus I like 'The Expanse' 10x more than even Star Trek!!! The Expanse is one hell of a good show.
Sequels are almost never good. I loved "Episode IV", but I really didn't need any other episodes.
If a movie like the original Star Wars comes out without publicity or any precedent, and word of mouth alone keeps it in theaters and the audience grows organically from a tiny few, I wonder what use is the opinion that it was a lousy movie?
I read all the hip reviews, one of which said Solo was a low-energy, past-paced Wikipedia history version of Han Solo. Over the years, I have seen all of the Star Wars movies (and again as my son grew up and we watched the early ones on DVD). I can honestly say that I found so many of the more recent movies to be confusing, sometimes silly and boring. By contrast, I thought Solo was thoroughly enjoyable, with a believable and interesting plot with some twists, since this goes back to the early days when the Empire was building but not in total control, and there was a universe full of capitalistic rogues and criminals. The fact that nearly all of the characters in Solo were opportunists trying to make it (and liars and cheaters), gave the movie a context we could understand. I thoroughly enjoyed it and think the yawning reviews and apparently "meh" public reaction are mostly based in the fact that the actors weren't the old crew. The actors in this film were great and not A-listers (except perhaps Woody Harrelson, who was predictably solid). It was a good movie.
Disney put a franchise based on the appeal to white geek fanboys and put an old feminist in charge. You know someone like Althouse.
Who the hell would want to watch a Star Wars movie made by someone like that.
They needed to turn it over to some young talented geeks. Not octogenarian muff divers.
The Force is not feminism you dumb broads.
I have a male friend that holds the position that Star Wars fall from grace occurred when Lucas altered the original film to change the scene between Han Solo and Greedo: Han shot first.
Except that when I saw the first-run original in the theater as a kid, I always thought that Han shot first. It was always a Han thing to do, in a Clint Eastwood "Man with No Name" anti-hero way.
"Except that when I saw the first-run original in the theater as a kid, I always thought that Han shot first."
Han did shoot first originally -- the 'Han shot first' link was to the controversy of that name.
Lucas changed it in his later revised versions.
I worded poorly.
-LWL
Hans shot first, the Rebel Alliance shot first, before the Death Star could shoot, there was a lot of pre-emptive self-defense in the original.
"Hans shot first, the Rebel Alliance shot first, before the Death Star could shoot, there was a lot of pre-emptive self-defense in the original."
In other words, (as I said above)...they were terrorists!
tim in vermont said...
...the Rebel Alliance shot first, before the Death Star could shoot...
Alderaan could not be reached for comment...
Robert Cook said...
In other words, (as I said above)...they were terrorists!
The Death Star was clearly a military target, so no. On the other hand, Han, flying an unmarked ship, and not in uniform, was most likely an unlawful combatant.
Robert Cook said...
"Hans shot first, the Rebel Alliance shot first, before the Death Star could shoot, there was a lot of pre-emptive self-defense in the original."
In other words, (as I said above)...they were terrorists!
5/30/18, 7:01 AM
I always knew you were a closet imperialist, Robert!
Some of it is backlash over The Last Jedi. I've been following the controversy and Star Wars fans are generally pretty ticked off and want some kind of payback against Disney.
I went ahead and saw it. It was between okay and good. Maybe 7 out of 10.
"Han Solo fighting some galactic thugs with a rag tag bunch of scoundrels helping him?
Isn't that what happens in all Star Wars movies."
Not anymore. The thugs in The Last Jedi were just there for comic relief. The movie was more 'Pirates of the Caribbean in Space' than 'Star Wars'
Post a Comment