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wrap this up. Let's git 'er done.
Posted on 11/30/2014 3:13:07 PM PST by EveningStar
Now that the trailer for the seventh "Star Wars" movie is out, you can imagine the anticipation among the millions of fans of the film franchise. And why not? The six "Star Wars" films have been enormous successes: they have grossed over $2 billion domestically at the box office, spawned scores of books, comic books and merchandise (how many kids have their own light saber?) and made household names of characters like Darth Vader, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker.
They've also been the worst thing ever for the science fiction genre.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
I thought they were pretty good movies, not something you would have to concentrate much on, just enjoy the show.
Like most people, I think Jar Jar was a really dumb character as were the Ewoks. Actually, the Ewoks were more than stupid, they were disgusting.
Star Wars takes from the Foundation novels (a galactic empire), from Naziism, from cowboy movies, from Samurai and swash-buckling movies. What raised it was first the music — utterly inspiring and second the backstory when they made up the Jedi v/s Sith storyline
I liked this comment
“The thing is, he really is a SW fan. He’s just one of those neckbeards that stops liking something once everyone else likes it, then claims he hates it.”
I think a book I'd like to see made into a movie, would be AC Clarke's
Rendezvous With Rama
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Isn't that pretty much how Lucas described Star Wars back in '77?
Aliens are not science fiction?
I have always thought SW was campy, but it certainly didn’t ruin science fiction. A lot of great science fiction came out after SW
Some great non-space, non-horror sci fi:
- The Lost Room
- Cube
- and of course, The Matrix
2001 was bold, but went over the heads of most who watched it. It was a great story, but as a movie, long and slow.
Star Wars took sci fi from the realm of cheese and camp, to fiction/possibility. It was ground breaking in its effects. Virtually overnight, special effects were changed, not only in how they were done, but how often. Today's special effects are taken for granted, because of what SW did back in the day.
I'd also say that SW opened the door for movies like Contact and Interstellar to be made. Gone are the days of sci fi being done on shoe string budgets, being relegated to strictly direct to video releases. Sci fi now is viewed as legitimate, where producers will put up big money, knowing that a movie CAN bring in big bucks.
Star Trek had a big following. But in reality, it was a fairly low budget, TV show. Star Wars opened the door for Star Trek to be made, the way Star Trek should be made.
I'd also say that Star Wars breathed life back into 2001. I was 14 when Star Wars (and Close Encounters) came out. From there I became very interested in anything sci fi. Reading was a joy for me and I had a reading class in school, where most of the books I read were sci fi, with the most prominent being 2001.
2001 was legendary, but it was more a film makers movie vs a theater goers. 2001 came out in 1968. 2010 came out in 1984, I would say, primarily from the success of SW and what it had done for 2001.
Because of Star Wars and because of my love for reading, I was later exposed to the writings of Clarke, Pournelle, Saberhagen, Herbert, Bujold and others.
I suspect millions of others also.
No...I don't think Star Wars ruined sci fi. Just the opposite. I think it pushed it farther in movies and literature than anything else has.
Star Wars can barely be called space opera hey space hayburner more likely if one wishes to read true space opera I recommend EE doc Smith has a very good starting point or for something a little easier to find Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars series
> Aliens are not science fiction?
As in Alien Autopsy and Area 51 aliens
Well, “science fiction” is something of an oxymoron at any rate. ( please note that “oxymoron”, which means “sharp dullness”, refers to the conjoining of contrasting or opposite qualities, rather than logical contradiction. )
There is certainly a fantasy element even in the hardest of “hard” science fiction. OTOH, it could be suggested that Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, could be excused as SF in their day ( 1930’s ) when the focus was on the Rocket as an engine of future developments, whereas STAR WARS was merely a reminiscence of this frame of mind. I’d buy that.
When Worlds Collide
Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea
Crack In The World
Fantastic Voyage
Fair enough. No disagreement with that definition.
Or not.
You see Mr. Beale, you are not the arbiter of "good sci-fi", at least in my eyes, so you may want to keep that in mind the next time you want to judge all things through your blurry lens of what is "good" or not.
When I was a kid, I used to like to read science fictions stories up in my treehouse if it was warm or holed up in a corner of my house. Every now and then, I would look up to the sky and imagine that some of the stars up there contained planets studded with life forms and spaceships flitting back and forth between them.
Reading the books, usually borrowed from the library and checked out by the scowling librarian who always suggested something in non-fiction, and the short stories that used to be published in the magazine slicks back in the day, brought science fiction alive in a way that most people today will never experience.
TV and the movies kind of ruined science fiction for me. All that nonsense like "Lost in Space", "ET" and the "Star Wars" movies - which I find ridiculous.
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