Broom Kid said:
act on instinct said:
I’m not willing to bow in allegiance to brand alone.
For what its worth, I think this is a valuable lesson to learn, no matter how you came to learn it. Nobody should be “bowing in allegiance” to any brand, and forcing an expectation to do so onto yourself is pretty unfair to both the movies and to yourself.
Star Wars shouldn’t be expected to “top” anything. It’s not really a competition. Star Wars movies need to be good, entertaining, involving movies on their own, first and foremost. Whatever standing they may or may not secure in some later brand hiearchy isn’t really anywhere near as important. If Star Wars isn’t the A1 premier brand in film anymore… eh. I don’t think I was getting anything more out of the movies and stories when it was. That status doesn’t really have anything to do with why the stories are great, you know? Something else can be the biggest brand for awhile. I’m not a shareholder in those brands so it really doesn’t matter to me which “team” is ranked #1 anyway, so long as the movies are good.
It’s really weird how everything these days has turned into, basically, sports teams. People hold allegiances to certain one with rivalries against another. I suppose the term franchise is inclusive of both, but I’d hope that the audience engagement would be different. It’s especially weird when the whole competing thing comes up because yes, these days Star Wars isn’t the number one film franchise. But the franchise that is number one is owned by the exact same company as SW, so what difference does it make?
act on instinct said:
Well I pretty much laid out I wasn’t automatically loyal to the brand, so no I don’t care so much who is making the most money or which brand is rated the highest. It’s what’s so special about Star Wars in a post Star Wars world. When the original Star Wars was made the team that would become ILM was flying by the seat of their pants, the technology that made the original films possible had to be invented, many didn’t believe in the film and it had no prior foundation of brand recognition to build upon. I personally take this context into consideration, and take the achievement of A New Hope as a pretty monumental one, enough that it not only worked, but changed the industry. So with that history there is a lot of expectation, seemingly impossible to live up to, but I’d like to see them try anyway. I know some might be fine if the new movies just looked like shinier versions of the old ones, with same but different adventures, I personally want to see the leap that Lucas made, to really push beyond what seemed possible. But the stakes are in the billions now so I understand why ST went throwback, but again I don’t care who makes the most money so I would have probably just preferred the version that audiences hated if it was a result of trying something really new.
You’re absolutely right that Lucas always tried to push the boundaries of what’s possible on Star Wars, and that isn’t really happening post-Lucas (besides Tarkin/Leia in Rogue One). It’s basically the reason he complained about them, according to Iger’s biography. From my perspective, though, it’s kind of a ‘who cares?’ sort of thing.
First of all, these days there’s really only so much boundary pushing you can do. With the advent and proliferation of CGI effects has come the desensitization of the ‘special’-ness of FX of all sorts. The assumption these days is that you can do anything with a computer, so truthfully there isn’t much room for boundary pushing in general. I am curious to see what Cameron does on the Avatar sequels, but I am also skeptical of how ‘revolutionary’ they will be.
All that aside, obviously everyone has different experiences with Star Wars, but for me the appeal was never the effects. Since I grew up with the films, I never quite understood at the time how revolutionary they were, not to mention I also grew up with all the films that came after, so I never saw their effects as special or unique. What always mattered to me far more was the story and the characters. Lucas might have invented a new form of filmmaking on the prequels, but it was the stuff that really mattered that tripped him up.