They’re not supposed to be fresh or inventive, but there’s a line between variations on a theme and literally repeating yourself, nostalgia porn. TFA is way over that line.
I subscribe to the view that what Star Wars IS, fundamentally, is a band of plucky rebels against a powerful Empire, which is why TFA recycled that storyline. You can say “did we really need to have another Death Star” but we kind of did, because when you have a story of a group of freedom fighters/terrorists against an all-powerful evil establishment, the story has to be them blowing something big up, essentially. That’s how you win a guerilla war. You can’t set any other story in the “Star Wars Universe” because the Star Wars Universe consists of that story. You can tell because of how little world-building the films provide (compared to say, Star Trek, or Game of Thrones, or whatever) and how bored people get when they do try to world-build.
The Rise of Skywalker will therefore either retell that story or it will fail, just like a new Fast and the Furious movie must retell the story of a bunch of outlaws driving fast cars, and a King Kong movie must retell the story of a giant ape on the rampage, and a new Die Hard movie must retell the story of Bruce Willis saving the day against some villain or other. Setting the story in some other galaxy fools people into thinking that the story parameters are anything other than extremely narrow.
I don’t buy this premise but even still what part of that says you need to have the literal Millenium Falcon piloted by the specific characters Han Solo and Chewbacca? What part says the hero has to live on a desert planet and not know who their parents are? Why is it necessary that the villain wear all black with a full face mask and a modulated voice? And talk to a hologram projection of his even more powerful master? Etc etc etc.
Oh, sure. But outside of the trimmings, light sabers and masked evil guys and whatnot, what does Star Wars even consist of? Like with Star Trek (which I don’t particularly like, incidentally) you could write an abstraction of what the show consists of. You know, like the opening says, seeking out new life forms, new civilizations, boldly going where no man has gone before, etc etc. What would such a summary of Star Wars even look like? I submit that it’s “well there are good guys, Jedis, who use their powers for good, and there are bad guys, Sith, who use evil lightning and cackle and stuff and they fight each other with laser swords”. When you strip away the specifics, by which I mean the characters we like, the drama and romance, it’s childish. To ditch the old standards like the Millennium Falcon etc would simply be to expose the paper-thin premise on which the whole thing stands.
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And it was deliberately set up that way, it’s a fairy tale, a fable. “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” is the opening to a fairy story. Fairy stories are supposed to be light, airy, to recycle classic themes. As soon as you get into “blah blah midichlorians” it’s like you’ve launched into a technical explanation of how the mirror on the wall in Snow White works. Nobody cares and they’re going to get mad at you for interrupting the nice fairy tale they’re trying to enjoy. Star Wars fundamentally cannot encompass the new or the complex any more than Cinderella can.
The premise is open ended. Many thousands of stories have been told under the umbrella of Star Wars. Most do not come close to the level of similarity between TFA and New Hope / Empire. It seems you think it’s somehow a big fraud to do anything different at all, but personally I appreciate that e.g. henchmen in James Bond don’t always have to throw bowler hats.
There have been 3 good Star Wars stories imo.
Star Wars, Empire, and KOTOR.
Rest are terribad.
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I know nothing about the extended universe, but let’s check out:
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The Thrawn Trilogy. This is the original heroes against a new Imperial Dark Lord.
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The X-Wing series. “Captain Wedge Antilles led his elite group of pilots against the remnants of the Empire.”
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Dark Empire:
No Star Wars fan can forget how they felt the first time they saw Luke Skywalker kneel before the Emperor and join his side. Watching Luke succumb to the dark side as his father did was essentially powerful enough that author Tom Veith could have written the rest of the comic using old scripts from the Ewoks cartoon and we still would have been blown away.
I am looking at you deadpan right now.
What I’m trying to say is, it’s not woke to be like “TFA would be so much better if it had instead featured a ship called the Fillennium Malcon, fresh new ideas!”. It’s going to be the same Empire Bad, Rebels Good stuff until the end of time, it’s a matter of whether you acknowledge this or not.
Same although I did read some stuff as a kid which was fine and have heard good things about some of the recent comic books from people who had similar grievances to me about TFA. A bunch of people have said KOTOR is really good (never played). But whatever, even if we grant the premise that most Star Wars outside of the first two films is bad, that doesn’t make The Force Awakens not gross pandering. Like if the contention is the only good Star Wars story is the literal exact story told in the first two movies, down to specific elements like a Death Star, a desert planet, a bad guy wearing a black full face mask, and so on then don’t make another one. Or accept that it is just pandering and nostalgia porn.
This is so lazy. All stories are like good guy versus bad guys, amirite, why do we even bother changing the names?
For my money this is easily a top 5 all time trailer and idk why this can’t just be the movies from now on
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The Old Republic is infinity times more interesting than Whatever Happened to Leia and Han’s Bat-Eared Offspring?
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I think when TFA came out, it was such a relief that it wasn’t another plodding prequel with stilted dialogue, that it made up for a lot of the movie’s sins to some people (probably myself included, although I view it much more critically now).
I remember when first watching it, I was kind of subconsciously checking off boxes in my head. “Likable protagonists that I can stand watching? Sweet. Sith villain with anger issues? Yeah that’s cool.” I even remember kind of relaxing in my seat early on with Poe’s “So how does this work, do I talk first, or you, or…” line, since it’s the kind of sarcastic humor I missed from the OT. But yes, the movie could have had all these elements without echoing the same overarching theme of the earlier ones.
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I‘m just rewatching TFA and TLJ in preparation for going to the movies on Saturday and I think I am more clearly able to articulate my problem with TFA and it‘s stupidly placed plot.
Of course it copies A New Hope to a certain extent, but I am fine with fan service. However whereas you have the Death Star and Starkiller Base as a mid movie reveal, that is part of a coherent plot in A New Hope. You can draw a line from Leia giving the message to R2D2 to Luke blowing the thing up.
TFA starts out as the hunt for Luke, then after almost an hour you have the „reveal“ by the base being used, then no one cares about it for half an hour until everybody scrambles to evacuate the resistance base immediately, but they are all totally calm about it - Han and Leia have a chat about parenting. No one cares about Luke anymore.
It just feels so awkwardly paced that I remember leaving the cinema thinking „this could have been a truly great Star Wars movie if they just had taken a few more days to rearrange the script. Unbelievable to blow it that way.“
And yet the best film in the series has no such victory, event or climax for the rebels and ends with one hero getting his hand cut off and the other frozen in carbonite. Weird how that works.
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Why even post that? You know what the answer is, i.e. that that’s act 2 of a longer story which concludes with the plucky rebels blowing something big up to achieve victory over the evil empire, and that that’s inevitably the way that story had to conclude. You might as well tell me Owen and Beru dying was sad.
Probably because what was good about that movie was the exact opposite of the trope you are trying to shoehorn the entire series into (mostly rightfully so). There were characters in the middle like Lando as well that did not fit neatly into the good/bad paradigm that most of the series suffers from.
To be fair I mostly agree with you. I am just saying there is no coincidence that the undisputed GOAT Star Wars is entirely different from the rest of them on what you are talking about. And my main point is that it is possible to have a SW movie that doesn’t so neatly fit into those small areas of plot you are trying to argue the entire series is permanently stuck in.
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None of this happened in Rogue One
When do we open the thread for spoiler discussions? Popcorn.gif