I remember standing in the rain for two hours to see The very first Star Wars. I remember the audience actively cheering the heroics of Luke and Han and “Booing” Darth Vader. And the applause at the end was something I had not heard in a movie Theater since my childhood.
The next two were good too, but did not have the impact of the First one, which came at the end of a Hollywood era of negativity and ambivalence about good vs. evil (Midnight Cowboy, MASH, Etc)
By the time Episode One was in production, Star Wars had become a franchise, a product producer, an action-figure generator and a cliche. I went to the theater to see Episode One and was bored and disgusted beyond words.
I didn’t even bother with the next two, except as late nite TV filler fare.
Oddly enough, I feel the same about Disney, which means the suckiness of VII will be exponential. }:-O
Just my humble opinion, but my Sci-Fi movie fan creds go all the way back to “Forbidden Planet”, which also used Disney Effects and Live Action and was a WONDERFUL Picture! :-)
I saw the first ever showing in Indianapolis w some friends. We’d seen a few commercials and just went out of boredom more than anything. The theatre was a third full, maybe. The opening segment, the music and scroll, was pretty cool until .... the empire’s star cruiser. WOW!!
Couldn’t agree with you more. I have NO-O-interest in further SW films. Why? The public no longer wants what SW was: a good/evil myth with good winning. Today’s audiences want evil to win. They don’t even believe evil IS evil, everyone is equally good and bad and value judgments are out. We saw that with Ep1-the only one I saw in the theater. Anakin was BAD, he was dangerous, he was flawed-yet he was given access to even more power. If Lucas had wanted to show how good can fall, he would have made Anakin like Luke-not a greedy,whiny,easily duped punk. I only saw the end of the third one on tv by mistake and almost wet myself laughing when the new Darth Vader started stomping around like Frankenstein singing ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’ in the Mel Brooks movie!Some good guy turned bad! Some bad guy to fear!
Now the anti-hero is revered. All the talk I hear is for the darksiders to prevail. Add to this the absolute necessity for Disney to make back the money they paid for the franchise and you have a custom-designed-to-appeal-to -every demographic disaster in the making. I expect vampires, teen angst cutters,transvestites,gays and Teletubbies( the damp diaper set has to be cultivated) to be represented. If EpIV were made now it would bomb. The Empire would have to slaughter all of the foolish Rebels and PC would be in every line of the script.
I wish they would leave SW alone. You don’t keep dumping excrement on perfection. Lucas did that. He pimped out his original idea, changed his own attitude re. heroism & morals, then sold it to a bigger brothel-Disney. Disney never has, never will, and cannot produce Epics. It is a mouse house that has to fill Disney stores with juvenile merchandise. All we will get from a mouse house is mouse crap. It won’t be MY Star Wars-any more than cat crap offered on a buffet would be my dinner. I pass...and pity those who will swallow-and buy-anything.