manifested as a giant Yin-Yang
A Taoist's Dream
Posted on 01/01/2018 1:10:56 PM PST by Kaslin
People get old; their characters either die or get recast.
What do you do with a generational classic like Star Wars? I was a high school movie theater usher when the first film came out -- at MY theater! I can't tell you how many times I saw that movie, forwards, backwards, inside-out...
But here we all are, 40 years later, Alec Guinness, Peter Cushing, and Carrie Fisher are dead, Peter Mayhew has chronic arthritis, Harrison Ford has had some recent high-profile incidents with judgement, and the remaining actors aren't getting any younger.
So, what do you do when a beloved cast becomes too old to maintain the characters? Either the characters age with the actors, or the storyline remains fixed in time and the characters are recast, or the characters are killed off and replaced in the epic.
Star Trek offers a comparative glimpse. Before the actors became too old, the franchise handed the baton to "The Next Generation." In my mind, the only flaw was in how they handled the death of Kirk. If Star Wars fanatics are forming a petition to remove the latest movie from canon, why not petition to redo the death of Kirk, too? Of course, I'm being facetious, but the similarities remain: Scotty, McCoy, Spock, Nurse Chapel/Computer, are dead (in their actors), only Kirk, Sulu, Uhura, and Chekov remain from the principle cast. Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford are still with us, as well as Billy Dee Williams and Anthony Daniels (as active performers), but that's it. And for how much longer?
So what is a franchise supposed to do about it?
-PJ
I think everyone liked the first Star Wars, after that they get kind of lame.
Yeah - I agree with most of that. But that’s how it is with movies and music these days. The people that create it are liberals with crap agendas.
That doesn’t stop me from going into a theatre, ignoring their leftist agenda and enjoying the sheer action entertainment though. Same thing with music. I don’t allow liberals to keep me from having a good time. I USE and discard their work as I wish.
A Taoist's Dream
I saw the movie on someone else’s dime, for which I am thankful, and frankly enjoyed myself. At the time, I was more surprised by the emasculation of Chewbacca. In my Star Wars, Han shot first and Chewbacca ate that porg.
worldwide 1 bill 56 million school back in session tomorrow.
Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney. So he had nothing to do with the storylines of the most recent star wars movies.
Oh, BTW, Rey saved The Books. They’re on the Falcon.
Having seen it I agree it is a great film -- just from a look and feel, despite the new requirement that the lead hero be a chick.
It also has a flaw as fatal as the one in the Death Star itself. Rather than expose that flaw here, I will send you to the hilarious ('cause it's true) EWW:
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Rogue One was good, but no one survived it to tell the story. I don’t mind that so many heroes were killed—that’s the tragedy of it. But you needed someone who was “there” to “live” to tell the story we were told. If someone had survived the it, even the droid though I’d prefer someone else, it would be in my top three Star Wars movies.
I am so cynical about how awful these movies have become (R1 an exception but Force Awakens should be on a poster in Planned Parenthood) I am expecting a "reboot" of A New Hope starring Justin Beiber as Luke, Beyonce as Leia, and Keanu Reeves as Obi-Wan.
Sorry but I disagree completely. I could care less about making like cynical or killing off the old characters, SW was good v evil and if you think this movie “returned” sw to that, I don’t know what movie you were watching.
This movie left nothing that binary anywhere.
No one is evil and even Rey, who is “good” comes across as simply less cynical and naive than purely good.
There movie leave the audience with literally no reason to come back.. because it’s just going to be more shades of gray and nihilism.
About the only concept that isn’t completely destroyed is some vague notion of “hope”.. but even this is somewhat ephemeral.
There are plenty of execution issues that can be ripped apart, but the real problem is SW is no longer Good V Evil as of this movie...
Somebody did. But who, why, and how (like so much else in this clusterbomb) are left to the viewer to not care about.
The pantless teddy bears was the third movie (after "Empire Strikes back") and yes, you did the right thing. The pantless teddy bears is where the franchise jumped the shark. "Star Wars" just proceeded to get stupider and stupider with each iteration. It became so bad that Mr. Plinkett's reviews were actually far more entertaining than the horrible movies.
Saw the first one when it came out. Thought it was a crappy cartoon (manipulative, dishonest, shoddy), never went back.
George Lucas’s first installment of Star Wars, was masterful. Let’s face things, he literally forever changed the world with that installment. But, let’s take a moment to identify why we could so easily learn to “love” each major character.
Lucas spent time describing Luke as a farm boy, living with his loving Aunt and Uncle. We watched him work, and yearn to leave home. We watched him get sucked into something bigger than himself, against his will. By the end of the first movie, we knew things that Luke would do, and would never do. We knew that Han was a scoundrel, but one with basic principles of loyalty. We knew things that Han would readily do, and what he wouldn’t do. The same can be said for Leia.
By the end of movie 3, we knew these charctes very well. We knew how they could work together, and form a team, that they could depend upon one another. Alas, the 30 year lag between the first installments of SW, caused Lucas to lose this storytelling capabilities.
In every installment from that point, there is NO CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. We have no clue what any of the charcters in the last several installments care about; and we generally do not care about them. Rey, who has starred in the last 3 SW installments has absolutely NOTHING to endear us to her. She stands for nothing, but what she FEELS at any given movment, and that can be from slicing Kylo to pieces, to taking falling madly in love with him - depending upon her mood at the time.
There is nothing engaging about ANY of the new characters, from the bug-eyed old woman who apparently is in pistol battles for reasons unknown, to Kylo who seems like a spoiled Milleanial who didn’t get his nap, to the droids who exhibit more personality and charisma than any of the living creatures. The Black Stormtrooper offers NOTHING to the movie, other than he is a black character.
All Disney is doing, is shaking the money tree.
The teddy bears Star Wars was the third movie and the end of the original series. It ended with the Jedi winning.
In the same respect that this is just a movie.
What could be more anti-Star Wars than the prequel trilogy?
True that! TLJ didn’t introduce, thankfully, any characters on the level of Jar Jar Binks.
I thought the movie was better than I was expecting going into it based on many reviews I read. This being the 8th movie, ninth if you found Rogue One, it is difficult to come up with new plot lines or twists. Many of those who voiced disappointment in their reviews are disappointed in that the film didn’t go in a predictable direction. I personally thought that made it more interesting. The movie left enough question marks to bridge to the 9th chapter.
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