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Star Wars in 50 years.

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How do you think people will remember Star Wars half a century from now? Will anyone even care about these movies by then?Is there any type of legacy these films will have then? What are your predictions? Just curious.

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Best case scenario : Star Wars will continue to live on, the PT & latest SE united as a "cohesive" saga beloved by ADHD sufferers everywhere; the fans will, of course, consider the PT superior to the OT. The OOT will exist only on long-obsolete media and sought after only by film historians and a dwindling fringe group of aging purists. The EU will probably be 110% shit at this point.

Worst case scenario : Star Wars popularity will die down and be all but forgotten, remembered only by film historians and a dwindling fringe group of aging fans.

On second thought, I'm not so sure which of those two is the lesser evil ...  

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There will probably be more sequels in the vein of the PT; the OOT as we know it will probably no longer exist, and nearly everyone will believe the 04 versions are the originals. Historically SW will be seen as the first link in the long collapse of American cinema, where the multiplexes are full of remakes of remakes of obscure horror movies and TV shows. Lucas will still be alive thanks to medical advances and control every aspect of LFL and sink into nadirs unimaginable to the present day. 

If you really look at history, it's just a downward spiral in a bottomless pit.

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Well, the Wizard of Oz movie has been around for over 70 years and I think its just as fondly enjoyed now as it ever was.  It certainly has had more and more merchandising over the years and is still a very lucrative franchise.  I remember growing up in the 1970's we only had 3 network channels and the Wizard of Oz was shown once a year on television.  That was it.  It was something to look forward to yearly.  Then came cable, vcr's, dvd players, blu-ray players, etc.  It has managed to stand the test of time and also managed to be preserved in every format that its been available in.  Who would've thought that 70+ years later you could own a digital copy (blu-ray) in such a gorgeous Hi-Def image of a film that old!!??

The biggest difference between that and Star Wars is the people that own the Wizard of Oz cares about that film... it is a piece of art, a piece of history.  I have a great-niece now that is 3 years old and watches the dvd around the clock!  She's as thrilled to be watching that movie now as her parents were before her (and their parents before them).  It's timeless... classic!  Star Wars unfortunately has been bastardized, re-done, and re-done again (which is fine, but not at the expense of losing the original film).  After Lucas is finally done re-doing these films for the Xth time, the films may still carry on a legacy, but sadly those up-and-coming fans won't be able to enjoy them for what they were.  I'm sure with the technology out there, the Wizard of Oz could become a true wonder to behold, with realistic CGI'd flying monkeys and a witch that makes you believe a broom can fly!!  With all of that being done, would they really have to make the original film unavailable?  No!!  But as the Great and Powerful Lucas has proven.... there is no reasoning with that man.  Sad really.  There's nothing stopping him from releasing our beloved OOT, other than stubborness.  Not money, not resources, not logic..... just stubborness.

Perhaps George would see the light of day if the monkeys got CGI'ed and all copies of the OZ that we know were destroyed.  Or if Gone With The Wind had CGI'ed fires and Gable was replaced with George Clooney because he was closer to the look of what the writer/director had truly envisioned.  And of course all current copies of the original film would need to be destroyed as there's no way someone could enjoy the old versions since we have these shiny new versions to watch.  Would Mr. Lucas have the ability to acknowledge how wrong all of this would be?  I'm sure other directors/writers/etc would definitely voice their opinions on the matter.  Bottom line is.. He's a poor little rich kid with minimal (writing and directing) talent, but lots of resources (toys) at his disposal.  He appears to be incapable of creating something new that will ever garner the 'greatness' and spectacle that was the original star wars franchise.  So he chooses to keep tinkering with them and gives everyone a razzy that has the guts to state how wrong he is and shows no concern for the genuine fans that prove time and time again that we will buy the product if given the chance to!

Think I got a little sidetracked here..sorry.  To answer the initial question... I think there will always be Star Wars fans, but in 50 years instead of it being remembered as the 'classic' story that it deserves to be, sitting next to other great films of time, it'll be remembered as that 'work in progress' film the George never could get right..... It's sad really.

I have all of the films in every format released... they sit on my shelf and have occassionally been played.  But Star Wars for me stopped being fun a long time ago and is best seen when playing in my head as the great films I remembered and not the artificial toys that Mr Lucas keeps tinkering with.  I just don't care anymore.  I don't agree with the posters who say "he raped my childhood" though.  He didn't take anything away from my memories.. they are still there.  And I'll always remember them fondly.  If he takes away my ability to watch them currently the way I want to see them, there's thousands of other shows and movies that I can watch and also spend my money on.  I'll never lose any sleep over it.  He just went from being 'that guy who created this wonderful world for us" to "that idiot that screwed up the films I loved dearly and could care less".  And to the fanboys that will eat up any-and-everything George puts out, all I can say is enjoy it.  I won't judge you, don't judge me.  I think the Prequels are some of the worst films EVER made... mostly pretty eye candy with ZERO substance, horrible acting, HORRENDOUS dialog, and overall uninteresting storytelling.  If you love it.. great!  Enjoy.  :)

Have I ranted enough?  Sorry....

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RickWJ324 said:

Well, the Wizard of Oz movie has been around for over 70 years and I think its just as fondly enjoyed now as it ever was.  It certainly has had more and more merchandising over the years and is still a very lucrative franchise.  I remember growing up in the 1970's we only had 3 network channels and the Wizard of Oz was shown once a year on television.  That was it.  It was something to look forward to yearly.  Then came cable, vcr's, dvd players, blu-ray players, etc.  It has managed to stand the test of time and also managed to be preserved in every format that its been available in.  Who would've thought that 70+ years later you could own a digital copy (blu-ray) in such a gorgeous Hi-Def image of a film that old!!??

The biggest difference between that and Star Wars is the people that own the Wizard of Oz cares about that film... it is a piece of art, a piece of history.  I have a great-niece now that is 3 years old and watches the dvd around the clock!  She's as thrilled to be watching that movie now as her parents were before her (and their parents before them).  It's timeless... classic!  Star Wars unfortunately has been bastardized, re-done, and re-done again (which is fine, but not at the expense of losing the original film).  After Lucas is finally done re-doing these films for the Xth time, the films may still carry on a legacy, but sadly those up-and-coming fans won't be able to enjoy them for what they were.  I'm sure with the technology out there, the Wizard of Oz could become a true wonder to behold, with realistic CGI'd flying monkeys and a witch that makes you believe a broom can fly!!  With all of that being done, would they really have to make the original film unavailable?  No!!  But as the Great and Powerful Lucas has proven.... there is no reasoning with that man.  Sad really.  There's nothing stopping him from releasing our beloved OOT, other than stubborness.  Not money, not resources, not logic..... just stubborness.

Perhaps George would see the light of day if the monkeys got CGI'ed and all copies of the OZ that we know were destroyed.  Or if Gone With The Wind had CGI'ed fires and Gable was replaced with George Clooney because he was closer to the look of what the writer/director had truly envisioned.  And of course all current copies of the original film would need to be destroyed as there's no way someone could enjoy the old versions since we have these shiny new versions to watch.  Would Mr. Lucas have the ability to acknowledge how wrong all of this would be?  I'm sure other directors/writers/etc would definitely voice their opinions on the matter.  Bottom line is.. He's a poor little rich kid with minimal (writing and directing) talent, but lots of resources (toys) at his disposal.  He appears to be incapable of creating something new that will ever garner the 'greatness' and spectacle that was the original star wars franchise.  So he chooses to keep tinkering with them and gives everyone a razzy that has the guts to state how wrong he is and shows no concern for the genuine fans that prove time and time again that we will buy the product if given the chance to!

Think I got a little sidetracked here..sorry.  To answer the initial question... I think there will always be Star Wars fans, but in 50 years instead of it being remembered as the 'classic' story that it deserves to be, sitting next to other great films of time, it'll be remembered as that 'work in progress' film the George never could get right..... It's sad really.

I have all of the films in every format released... they sit on my shelf and have occassionally been played.  But Star Wars for me stopped being fun a long time ago and is best seen when playing in my head as the great films I remembered and not the artificial toys that Mr Lucas keeps tinkering with.  I just don't care anymore.  I don't agree with the posters who say "he raped my childhood" though.  He didn't take anything away from my memories.. they are still there.  And I'll always remember them fondly.  If he takes away my ability to watch them currently the way I want to see them, there's thousands of other shows and movies that I can watch and also spend my money on.  I'll never lose any sleep over it.  He just went from being 'that guy who created this wonderful world for us" to "that idiot that screwed up the films I loved dearly and could care less".  And to the fanboys that will eat up any-and-everything George puts out, all I can say is enjoy it.  I won't judge you, don't judge me.  I think the Prequels are some of the worst films EVER made... mostly pretty eye candy with ZERO substance, horrible acting, HORRENDOUS dialog, and overall uninteresting storytelling.  If you love it.. great!  Enjoy.  :)

Have I ranted enough?  Sorry....

amen.

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Scenario A : 2060 and some fresh faced kid straight out of BFA bored with the gritty pessimism of current Immersovid storylines will try to get the rights to Battlestar Galactica but fail. She will instead pen something in the same vein but the Yuan is low against Afrodollar and the idea will be dragged from one netware bureau to another. With the state of the solar flare ravaged environment nobody believes an Immersovid with the word Planet in the title will be a hit. Eventually she will find a maverick studio head who likes her style and is prepared to invest in her odd sounding project. It will start progimprinting in a data sweatshop in Reykavik but she will find it a depressing experience. Nothing smells or tastes quite the same way she imagined it and only with the help of her two wives and a Puerto Rican editing team will the project ever get finished. She sits by Fujiazuang Beach with her former school mate Lao Che who had just had a big hit with a film about Snow Octopus and come up with a fun idea about a series of films about an adventurous stock broker when news comes in about the success of Planet Battle the rest is history.

Scenario B : 2060 the ravenous nanobot plague finally converts the last man made object to gray goo. It's a Jar Jar Binks Pez dispenser.

Scenario C : 2060 the time machine returns with a pristine copy of Thee Backslacpkping With Media and a DVD player nobody has a clue what the hell it all means but the cover art is a big hit with clothes designers for the next three decades.

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I will most likely be dead so I don't care.  However, some backup external drives will be passed on to my son.

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RickWJ324 said:

Well, the Wizard of Oz movie has been around for over 70 years and I think its just as fondly enjoyed now as it ever was.

Funny you mention that.  My first thought when I read the question was - it will settle into a Wizard Of Oz\Gone With The Wind type scenario. It will have a core group of fans who may or may not know of the theatrical version of Star Wars 77 or its cultural significance.  There will be film historians and collectors who know and prefer the 1977 version, so it will always have some resonance.  Life goes on - with or without our preferences or favorites.  Other films will come along that mean just as much, and be just as deep. 

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Seriously there isn't a film quite like Star Wars.

It was a lowish budget film which wasn't anticipated for much greatness by many in the industry which became a run away smash hit.

If Jaws was it's John The Baptist Star Wars was King Of Kings of it's time.

People talk about the huge turn outs and hubbubs surrounding films like Titanic and Avatar but like Gone With The Wind on the other side of the temporal balance those were big budget affairs with a degree of a buzz about them years ahead of the release.

Sure lot's of people were predicting Titanic would sink Cameron but at least it was getting tagged and followed.

Only a few magazines (the kind that were sold to the target audience of comic book nerds) were giving Star Wars column space before the the film came out.

It was a pop superstar of a film.

It came largely out of nowhere, people flocked to see it screaming, and they brought tonnes of merchandising, some of which had to be made in haste to keep up with the demand and much of it was 'unofficial'.

The nearest thing to Star Wars is the Beatles.

Manufactured bands will come and go, some will make a lot of money and a bit of an impact but none of them will leave as much of a crater as the Beatles.

They were a chance combination of economic, technological political and cultural influences (plus a large dollop of quality craftsmanship) that comes around only once every couple of hundred years.

Star Wars was the same.

People will be quoting Star Wars and the Beatles without knowing that they are centuries from now in the same way people quote Shakespeare and the King James' Bible (assuming the gray goo doesn't claim us all first).

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Bingowings said:

If Jaws was it's John The Baptist Star Wars was King Of Kings of it's time.

People talk about the huge turn outs and hubbubs surrounding films like Titanic and Avatar but like Gone With The Wind on the other side of the temporal balance those were big budget affairs with a degree of a buzz about them years ahead of the release.

Sure lot's of people were predicting Titanic would sink Cameron but at least it was getting tagged and followed.

Interesting thoughts and I agree, to a point.  In fact I wrote a piece that's on Kaminski's site about it and I also compared the cultural phenomenon of Star Wars to The Beatles.  When I mentioned in my first post that new films come along and replace the big ones, I was speaking specifically of a personal standpoint, as in each viewer's world, not the cultural world. 

I doubt we'll see another pop-culturally significant film event along the lines of - Gone With The Wind, Ben Hur, Sound Of Music, 2001, Godfather, Jaws, Star Wars, Raiders Of The Lost Ark et al.   The entertainment landscape is much different now, much different than it ever was before.  The 20-somethings of today have a mind-boggling array of entertainment options to move them.  Plus the movie-going public is less innocent and more jaded.

Gargantuan summer blockbusters like Titanic & Avatar don't have the staying power that films of past decades had.   The blockbusters that dominate an entire summer these days are released on DVD in time for Christmas, with the studio already working on the next big profit maker.  Bottom line first, cultural & artistic significance second.The target audience is told months ahead of time that the film will be an event not to be missed, the movie-going experience will never be the same, etc, etc. 

That's why I think Star Wars will settle into a different type of historical significance, with a core group of followers. For a perfect example of what I'm talking about with the different mindset of "fans" in the modern age, look at Star Wars itself.  There are original fans such as myself (now approaching 50) who only want the original, culturally significant (to us) version we saw in the theaters - and there are the TFNers who expect & want a regularly updated version.  They come from an entirely different entertainment world - a more fluid entertainment world, a disposable entertainment world.

My point, I guess, is that I agree with you, but for slightly different reasons.  If I'm reading you correctly, you see Star Wars as culturally significant because it probably won't ever be duplicated i.e. Bible, Shakespeare, Beatles.  I see it as culturally significant because it can't ever be duplicated - innocent culture.  That's my own jadedness showing.

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Anchorhead said:

Gargantuan summer blockbusters like Titanic & Avatar don't have the staying power that films of past decades had.

I wish you would clue TNT in on this ;-)

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TV's Frink said:

Anchorhead said:

Gargantuan summer blockbusters like Titanic & Avatar don't have the staying power that films of past decades had.

I wish you would clue TNT in on this ;-)

I've only seen about 20 minutes of Titanic, but I swear, I think it was on TNT.  ;-)

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With the second wave of tv series, SW will be primarily discussed in that context.  The movies are this backdrop.  Like some of the book, they flesh out details, provide context, but there are not pressing towards the current creations dicussion, the tv shows.

I'd guess in under 10 years, fan editing using the LFL archives will be done through the SW.app.  That makes the movies more ubiquitous, if you want to speak using only Anthony Daniels voice you can.  And this just drives some people towards the tv shows.

But the tv shows might not generate that cultural spark.  So expect dwindling fan interaction.  No major drops, just long slow fade.  SW will enter that, hey that was a milestone movie category, but with all media available, it'll be digested and replaced with the next video.  People won't watch video material as repeatedly as they do now.  With everything ever created available, why watch the same thing twice.  A societal split will begin with a few who choose to be data-attached at all times, they become the knowledge class (they are revoked of any citizenship at this point) and a few will dedicate themselves to SW.  Can't imagine what this data-attached knowledge class will bicker about since they'll have consumed 1,000,000 times more SW shit then what the people of this forum have read/watched/processed.  So with the general public constantly blip-verting from experience to experience, relying on the knowledge class to guide decision making.

So that leads us to the bored BFA student Bingowings introduced us to.  After the success of her 'Planet Battle' films, she is tapped by the severed head of George Lucas (part of the knowledge class) to direct the OT Sequels.

 

Bingowings wrote:

Scenario C : 2060 the time machine returns with a pristine copy of Thee Backslacpkping With Media and a DVD player nobody has a clue what the hell it all means but the cover art is a big hit with clothes designers for the next three decades.

(getting out the crowbar)  Download your copy of 'Thee Backslacpkping With Media' NOW before it enters the Library of Congress and disappears FOREVER:

http://noneinc.com/tBSWM/tBSWM_FAQ.html

Full DVD, available from the website, has BONUS commentary, subtitles galore and other features.  Watch it now before it becomes part of the Freakiy Fabulous Future Fashionista!!!!!!!

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I think Star Wars will remain an important cultural icon, like the Wizard of Oz. But in 50 years, I don't think there'll be much new Star Wars content being created. The original trilogy (even ROTJ) will be seen as truly great films, while the prequels will be regarded as mediocre. And we will have the theatrical versions of all Star Wars movies in the latest video standard.

After George Lucas dies (probably in about 20 - 25 years), the Lucas worship will go through the roof at first. His faults will be overlooked much like Michael Jackson gets a free pass nowadays. But in time I think Lucas will come to be seen as an illusive shadow figure, like Howard Hughes. I predict a movie about his life story: The Tragedy of George Lucas.

 

You know of the rebellion against the Empire?

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I doubt Lucas will ever really concede to releasing the OOT properly during his lifetime, but I'm hoping that after he's gone, FOX might step in and begin releasing the OOT alongside the '04 trilogy in order to meet consumer demand.  I don't know much about copyright with regards to film, however, so I don't know if this is a possibility.

Overall I'm pretty optimistic, as I think a core group of the younger generation will continue not only to be aware of but prefer the original '77, '80, and '83 releases  over the '04 set thanks to people like us.  I gave my three younger cousins (now 10, 8, and 6 years old) copies of the originals on DVD, and to my knowledge those are the only versions of the OT they've ever seen.  I plan on doing the same for my own two children once they're old enough.

. . .

Sorry, I just had a vision of my wife talking to my children in the event of my untimely death:

Mom: (reaching into a trunk and pulling out some dusty OOT DVD cases) Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but Lucas wouldn't allow it.  He feared you might follow OT.com forum members and prefer quality over crap, like your father did.

Kids: What is it?

Mom: Your father's Original Original Trilogy discs.  These are the movies of a true Star Wars fan -- not as clumsy and random as the PT.  Elegant movies... for a more civilized age.

“It’s a lot of fun… it’s a lot of fun to watch Star Wars.” – Bill Moyers

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I think people will remember it as it came out in '77.

Sure there are special editions that newer generations will remember but overall the feel of the original trilogy will be the same and it will never be duplicated by any other film(s).

 

Here is a good example. I have a 3 year old son who is very energetic but he will sit still through A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back and if my hand is within a foot of the remote he tells me to not touch it and will smack my hand while his eyes are still fixed on the TV.

I put on Phantom Menace and he wants off the couch and plays with his cars. Then the podrace comes on and he watches that while making noises when its over he asks to see the racing again. I say no and he goes off to play his cars.

 

No other movie can make a 3 year old sit still for two hours. Not even kids ones like Toy Story, Cars (which he loves).

So for generations to come the original trilogys will be loved like we love them and if they see the special edition first I'm sure they will show enough interest to hunt down the unaltered versions.

 

 

Battle droids the robotic incarnations of Jar Jar Binks.