Huh I guess Star Wars really is dead and TLJ killed it. Good job, you proved it. Haha
Nope, Star Wars is in decline, and I’ve said nothing about TLJ being the cause, just that Disney’s strategy hasn’t worked, which is a reasonable conclusion, if the objective is growth, a conclusion supported by the recent analysis of bloomberg:
What then would you say is Disney’s strategy that has been so disastrous?
Out with the old, in with the new. The Galaxy Edge theme park is the best evidence, that Disney gambled on the strength of the new canon. In the process they alienated a subsection of the previous generations of fans, whilst not being able to win over the new generation. They essentially rebooted the franchise with characters that aren’t as compelling, and so people lose interest.
I see you are unaware of what has happened at Disneyland. It is not the failure you think it is. The access to Galaxy’s Edge has been full up. Crowds have been good. What has not been good is overall attendance because no one wanted to compete with the crowds they expected for the opening period. Disney made plans to address that, but not before people had made their vacation plans and skipped over this summer. I expect next year to be one of Disney’s best at the two parks with Galaxy’s Edge.
And it is your opinion that they rebooted the franchise. That completely ignores the cyclical nature of the story and how much the ST is paralleling the EU stories that so many fans are familiar with. I don’t see any issue with attracting a new generation at all. A number of people who are more casual fans like the ST more then the previous movies. And the box office numbers (adjusted for inflation) show that the ST is more popular than the PT was. The only group I see with a big problem with the ST are those who had expectations of what the ST would and would not include and don’t like that it doesn’t live up to that. A repeat of the PT all over again. Let the writers tell their story and sit back and enjoy. I indulge in spoilers so I can divest myself of all expectations and just enjoy how the story unfolds. Your theories of deconstructing and rebooting over analyze the trilogy and widely miss what the movies say about themselves. The ST was always going to involve the death of Luke in the first Episode (the first one he was in) and Harrison has been saying Han should die for 30 years. They passed the torch and Carrie’s passing forced that to be even more complete. This is the Rey, Finn, Poe trilogy and the OT characters are really just enlarge cameos. You had expectations, perhaps not of exactly what the characters would do, but definitely what they shouldn’t do. It is almost as if Lucas, Abrams, and Johnson set out to make a trilogy that was exactly what you didn’t want to see. I see symmetry in the repetition. I see the parallels in myth, history, and pop culture (Star Wars is a more serious take on Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers after all) and I’m enjoying the tale. It is very much what happens after the great war is over and how things move on. Often it is ghosts of the past that haunt the future and bring back a defeated enemy. I find the story of the ST to be very mythic and very classic and not repetitive at all. Certainly not a reboot. If you want to know what I call a reboot, just look over at Star Trek under CBS. The ST has nice echos of the Zahn trilogy while being new and fresh. Just in the ST, they took 30 years instead of 10 years to regroup and attack the Republic.
The Zahn trilogy does not have Empire vs rebels 2.0, or have the New Republic wiped out of existence, such that we reset the galaxy to an OT state. It does not have a Darth Vader wannabe, who also was a former Jedi pupil of the hero’s Jedi mentor. It does not have a fascimile Emperor. It does not have another Death Star like super weapon. It does not have another Jedi prodigy from a Tatooine clone. It does not have another ground battle involving walkers on a white plane. It does not have another throne room scene, where our hero has to witness the destruction of the rebel fleet, and an apprentice betraying his master to save the life of the hero. The Zahn trilogy was new and fresh. I can’t say the same for the ST. I’m not saying the films aren’t entertaining, and there are new elements, and nuances, but the so called cyclical nature is a poor excuse for resetting the story, and essentially giving us the OT with a new coat of paint. I’m not saying I dislike the ST in general, or that they’re bad movies. I’m saying it could have been a whole lot better, if they hadn’t undone most of the OT’s victories, and in stead given us a new and original story with new and original heroes, and villains, that weren’t in some way a slight variation of characters and stories we have seen before.
The Zahn trilogy does have a reminant of the Empire. It does have a unique Jedi student situation. The Republic is unsteady so the players are pretty much the same as Empire vs. Rebels 2.0. And in The ST, the republic has not be wiped out, only the government. We won’t know what the state of the galaxy is until TROS comes out since only days or weeks have passed since the Hosnian system and the fleet were destroyed. I feel you are making too much of what you see as parallels and you aren’t seeing how different the ST is from the OT. I do not share any of your feelings as to what the story of the ST is. I see closer parallels to the Zahn Trilogy. But in any case it is supposed to be similar. Read or seen the Cloud Atlas? Lucas has been going for a simlar story telling feel in Star Wars. Different generations face similar trials and handle it different ways. Anakin failed. Luke redeemed Anakin. What will Rey do? TROS will reveal it. And I think if they create the right trailer and buzz, the movie is going to do very well.
For one the PT is far less similar to the OT than the ST is. Secondly just because Lucas used similar trials to highlight the choices made by Anakin, and Luke, which unlike the ST were part of a single narrative with a beginning and an ending, doesn’t mean that he meant Star Wars to be an endless cycle of similar characters facing similar situations. Lucas also made it very clear he feels each trilogy needs its own visual style:
“They wanted to do a retro movie. I don’t like that. Every movie, I worked very hard to make them different,” Lucas said. “I made them completely different – different planets, different spaceships to make it new.”
So, Lucas obviously felt TFA was too much of a repeat of what we had seen before. Apparently he doesn’t share your views on similar storytelling to the extend that it was used for the ST.
I disagree. I think the PT had more parallels to the OT. To really understand the trilogies you have to focus on the hero and their journey. Anakin’s journey ended in his downfall. Luke rose to great heights and redeemed his father. Rey… what will she do? The death of Qui-gon is closer to the death of Obi-wan than any death in the ST. The great celebration at the end of ANH and TPM. The young boy from Tatooine finding a way off the planet and on the road to becoming a Jedi. The middle chapter where the training is tested and both fail in their major battle and lose a limb. The final chapter where they face their greatest challenge and one fails while the other succeeds. The girl, the guy, the droids, the galaxy in turmoil. In terms of plot points crucial to the final outcome of the main plot, they are far more similar than the ST is to either. Sure it features a McGuffin like the OT, and a hotshot pilot like Han, but it gives the girl the lead role and replaced the princess with the ex stormtrooper. Rey’s training does not flow to success like Anakin and Luke’s and she does not face an opponent she is unprepared for and she doesn’t lose a limb. The mentor only dies AFTER the hero moves on on her own. In some ways TLJ may feel a bit more like TESB in tone, but in plot points it is laid out differently and serves a different purpose.
I too strongly disagree. Your argument hinges on the fact we should just focus on one element of the story, the journey of the hero, which you argue is original, and ignore the vast majority of other highly similar plot points, because they don’t fit your narrative. A film is much more than the journey of the hero. However, even if we go your way, and just focus on the hero’s journey, your argument breaks down. While I would say, it is debatable, which of the heroes, Anakin or Rey, is more similar to Luke in their first films, Rey’s journey in TLJ is anything but original. Her arc is an obvious mix of elements taken from TESB and ROTJ. Her arc starts by first following the plot of TESB, seeking guidance from a Jedi master, who initially turns her down, but after an old friend persuades him gives the hero a few lessons/training, then the hero enters a dark side cave, which gives her some cryptic preview of a reveal that will follow at the end of the movie, then after having a vision of the future, leaves that master against his advice to face the enemy, then switching to the plot of ROTJ, where she delivers herself willingly to the enemy in hopes of redeeming the villain, then that villain betrays and kills his master to save her life, and then back to the plot of TESB for the offer to rule the galaxy at the villains side, and the big reveal about the her parentage at the end. Anakin’s journey in AOTC has far less similarities to the OT than Rey’s journey. While he may lose a limb in a vain attempt to rescue his friend and mentor at the end, the bulk of his story is actually about his feelings for Padme, which lead to forbidden love, resulting in a secret marriage, while his attachments to the past, and subsequent emotional trauma, steer him down a dark path, and together with his secret marriage lay the seeds for his eventual turn to the dark side in the next installment. I should add that we haven’t even discussed the context of the hero’s journey, which in the case of the ST is just a copy of the OT, where a tiny band of rebels are facing an overwhelming force of Space Nazis led by a former Jedi student of the hero’s mentor, who has turned to the dark side, and had been instrumental in the destruction of the Jedi order. The context of the PT is a villain operating from the shadows, who through subversion, and manipulation starts a war, where he controls both sides, and uses the crisis to convince the Senate to willingly hand power over to him, a completely different premise from the OT.
These two videos clearly show how both TFA and TLJ heavily borrow scenes, plot threads, and visuals from the OT, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to call them rip-offs, they represent more of a mix tape of the OT’s greatest hits, with some new elements added for good measure, than an original story:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BX18Icf6fQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AgRgwW1Ovc
Hopefully TROS will finally change that, and offer a story that isn’t in some way an adaptation or remix of the OT.