If you're in your late forties or older, do you like the new films and how your heros happily ever afters were taken away? Although, we were kids back then. The new films are all aimed at twelve year olds. So fo we have a right to expect more from kids movies?
shareI was born on the last day of September 1972. I think I was too young to be caught up in Star Wars fervour (I doubt I'd be able to understand what was going on at age four) so whilst I love the OT, I wasn't as hyped up with it as many here are, to the point of hating on the Prequels (I don't, I like them a lot, too).
They used the OT characters as props basically. How else can anyone explain making a Star Wars sequel, hiring the original trio, and then never even letting them have a reunion? KK went out of her way to shit on Lucas' Star Wars and I have a feeling it's going to catch up with her when Episode IX is struggling to break even. They won't get another dime from me as long as that incompetent dilettante is running Lucasfilm.
shareI'm 45. Old enough to watch the originals when they were first released in the cinemas.
Pretty much everyone I grew up with followed Luke's character arc. There's a lot of character building for him and the story around him. There's a lot of narrative spread across the original trilogy; even more if you include the references back to the Clone Wars. All 3 movies have aged well, IMHO, storywise and effects.
TFA brought in a lot of potential for stories. Rey's natual ability with the Force, being the obvious one. Then there's Snoke, Phasma and Finn's back stories, Kylo Ren... there's a whole load of foundation stones on which to build a great story. And then TLJ came along and pissed it all away, replacing it with a check-list of what should go into a SW movie without adding anything new.
Once creativity runs out in a franchise runs out, all the movies suck. Look what happened to Alien and Terminator. Superhero movies are heading the same way fast. I'll be skipping the Han Solo movie, and I certainly won't be watching the sequel to TLJ until the public reviews are in.
Original fans like me aren’t the intended audience for these Disney sequels, and aren’t we lucky to have grown up with the original trilogy instead of these heartless little films made with a social agenda in mind.
shareYes we are very lucky.
shareAhem brotha!
shareI agree. To me, Star Wars is the OT first and the PT second, with Rogue One as a bonus. But to be honest, I don't give a toss about the adventures of Rey, Finn and Kylo Ren.
I fit the age group you mention. I saw Ep. IV in its initial release at least a dozen times. Nearly every kid I knew had a birthday party centered on seeing Star Wars. What today's younger audiences cannot appreciate is how truly revolutionary Star Wars was. It had the magical special effects that you dreamed of films like Logan's Run having, and the comic book good-vs-evil story that you might have wished for 2001: A Space Odyssey when you were 7 years old. The revolution wrought by Star Wars was more significant than any other film I've seen while I've been alive. There was a buzz around The Matrix, Avatar, and a few other films, but those pale in comparison.
I think most of the films, beginning with the Lucas prequels, have completely sucked. The only exceptions are Ep.III, which I rate a passable B-, and Rogue One, which I thought was terrific, an A- or so. Rogue One appealed to me in part because of its gritty look, which harked back to the feel of Ep.IV as well as other sci-fi films of that era like Alien.
Forget all the PC nonsense. It's certainly there in Ep.VII-VIII, but that's not the real problem in my view. What cripples every Star Wars film since Ep.V, even ROTJ to some extent, is their absence of wit. The interplay between Han Solo and Luke/Leia is funny and unforced. C3PO's overly genteel quips and snobbery toward R2D2 were funny. Han kicking Chewbacca into the garbage chute was funny. The humor in the older films was simply superior, more subtle and better written by real talents like Lawrence Kasdan and the once-ambitious George Lucas. What we're supposed to laugh at now is the overacting hysteria of John Boyega, or a short little Asian girl who can surprisingly kick butt. It's lame. I blame studio hacks and marketing teams beginning with the insufferable Kathleen Kennedy. You feel the constant presence of an agenda that has nothing to do with good moviemaking. This trend isn't entirely the fault of younger generations of filmmakers. It really began in 1983 with ROTJ, so George Lucas shoulders much of the blame for the stupidity of big budget sci-fi films of today. I'm still amazed that Rogue One was greenlighted. It saddens me that it's not universally revered as the best Star Wars since The Empire Strikes Back. It means that we're less likely to see higher quality films like Rogue One.
Rogue One was an excellent movie and a good companion piece to A New Hope.
shareI saw Star Wars in the theater many times. Most of those were before it was changed to "A New Hope".
Empire Strikes Back was good, but it was half a story. I saw that multiple times as well.
I saw Return of the Jedi just once in its original run. It was a bad film - other than Luke and the Emperor scenes.
What I imagined of the Darth Vader story was ruined by the awful prequals.
What was left of the Luke, Leia, and Han stories have been trashed by Disney, but Lucas messed them up in ROTJ before that.
I prefer the Expanded Universe to these films. Not all of it, but most of it.
I guess you didn't like the Ewoks either? That's fine, just asking.
shareThe Ewoks were cliche and awful.
Jabba the Hut and his Fraggle Rock court was awful ... made worse in the Special Edition.
Leia being Luke's sister was poorly written and didn't make sense.
The dialogue between Leia and Han were as bad as the lines edited out by Marcia Lucas in the original Star Wars.
Return of the Jedi is mostly awful. It's too bad George Lucas took everything bad about Return of the Jedi and expanded upon them in the Special Editions and prequals.
True points except the sister part. I think that was done to make peace between Hon and Luke.
The best thing to come out of ROTJ was Leia's slave out fit! How many millions of people today were born from that Halloween costume? It's still popular too. And that's not including porn.
I'm old enough to have seen the original films during the original theatrical runs, and have no problem with the new films treatment of the old stars. Luke considering killing Ben is the only thing I think should have been altered.
I don't like The Last Jedi as much as I do any of the original three films, but my dislike is based on its weak/non-sensical plot and its failure to build on what was developed in the previous film.
As for being geared towards kids, I disagree there as well. Both The Force Awakens (which I consider to be second only to the original Star Wars if ranking the films), and to an even greater extent The Last Jedi are more adult-oriented than any of the original trilogy. You could make a case that Star Wars appealed to young and old, but truthfully all three of those films were kid-friendly action films.
If The Last Jedi had a coherent, and better, plot, it would have been a fine movie.
"If The Last Jedi had a coherent, and better, plot, it would have been a fine movie."
But it's not unreasonable to think that the slavish adherence to diversity, creating strong female characters, and so on, had something to do with the inattention to a better written story. Just read the NY Times article to see where Kathleen Kennedy's head was really at.
It's hard to make that connection. None of the weak plot points would be corrected by switching anyone's gender or race. The filmmakers definitely had a social agenda in mind when casting, but that's immaterial as long as they produce a good movie.
shareIt's not just casting. The social agenda affects dialog, character interactions, character development, etc.
share