SparkySywer

theprequelsrule said:

imperialscum said:

SparkySywer said:

rocknroll41 said:

Servii said:

Rodney-2187 said:

I’ve already seen opinions of TFA and TLJ improve.

The OT is revered because it’s a well made set of films.

Art is subjective. If the OT was as objectively well-made as you say then why did places like Time Magazine and Empire Magazine shit on ESB when it was new? We also mustn’t forget that a lot of people also crapped on RotJ up until TPM was released.

Art is subjective, and the quality of a movie is subjective. But the OT is undeniably popular, and not simply just because it’s old or because le Star Wars fans are le dumb. It’s also incredibly influential, in a way the PT and ST, like them or not, never will be.

Agreed completely. As I stated so many times on these forums, films are purely subjective, there are no two ways about it.

Still OT has something special that extremely few films ever had or ever will.

To say “purely subjective” is a rather extreme position. There may be an element of subjectivity, but there objective elements. Is Britney Spears as good a musician as Mozart?

Mozart has a lot of qualities that Britney Spears doesn’t have, and they’re worth talking about. But whether or not Britney Spears is as good as Mozart is subjective.

theprequelsrule said:

imperialscum said:

theprequelsrule said:

imperialscum said:

SparkySywer said:

rocknroll41 said:

Servii said:

Rodney-2187 said:

I’ve already seen opinions of TFA and TLJ improve.

The OT is revered because it’s a well made set of films.

Art is subjective. If the OT was as objectively well-made as you say then why did places like Time Magazine and Empire Magazine shit on ESB when it was new? We also mustn’t forget that a lot of people also crapped on RotJ up until TPM was released.

Art is subjective, and the quality of a movie is subjective. But the OT is undeniably popular, and not simply just because it’s old or because le Star Wars fans are le dumb. It’s also incredibly influential, in a way the PT and ST, like them or not, never will be.

Agreed completely. As I stated so many times on these forums, films are purely subjective, there are no two ways about it.

Still OT has something special that extremely few films ever had or ever will.

To say “purely subjective” is a rather extreme position. There may be an element of subjectivity, but there objective elements. Is Britney Spears as good a musician as Mozart?

I think you do not understand the basic concept of objective/subjective. As a scientist and an engineer, I have a very clear idea of what objective and subjective is. The definitions of objective and subjective are actually pretty simple. Objective is something that can be quantifiable by a metric. On the other hand, subjective is something that cannot be quantifiable.

Are there some elements of films that can be quantifiable by certain metrics? Yes, there are. For example, like how many words from the script were faithfully reproduced in the actual dialogue in the film (you will get a percentage score). However none of the elements that are quantifiable really matter when we think about “how good the film is”. When we say “how good the film is”, we pretty much think of purely subjective elements. So what I said still essentially holds true.

And yes, Britney Spears can be as good a musician as Mozart, since it completely depends on an individual opinion. Music is also an art and therefore completely subjective thing too. Unless you will come up with objective metrics, such as “notes per second”, to quantify “goodness”, which does not make sense at all, as it does injustice to some of the great minimalist composers, like John Adams.

So taste cannot be measured? Talent can’t be measured? At least not by any quantifiable metric? Editing skill and decisions in film making, the pacing of the script, quality of special effects, composition of shots? These are all subjective by your definition, yes?

How would you measure whether or not any of these things were good or bad? You’d need some set of standard, but those set of standards can’t be objective. You can’t prove what blocking should have been used, or how long a take should have been.

It’s the is-ought distinction (Hume’s guillotine), you can’t prove what ought to be solely based on what is. You can only make claims about what should and shouldn’t be based on some set of standards, which are subjective.

Every attempt to define an objective set of standards, or prove whether some art is objectively good or bad, falls short. A movie can be objectively artistically complex, or objectively popular, or objectively influential, or objectively a box office hit, or objectively thrilling, but none of these are inherently, objectively good.

Especially because a lot of the time, people want different things out of movies. Sometimes the same person wants different things at different times.

Sometimes people want schlock BS popcorn movies with cringe dialog. Sometimes people want pretentious arthouse kino from 1729. You really can’t prove either of them wrong.

The planets montage never bothered me in theory, although in execution, I didn’t need more Jar Jar or shoddy CGI Tatooine.

I think though now that the sequels are out, tonally it works better without the planets montage. Maybe I should try editing it out again. I wasn’t ever able to get it quite right with the movie’s audio, but I got it pretty good with the soundtrack. Maybe a blend of the two would work.

thedewback2 said:

The theater I go to is doing private theater showings where you can bring your own Blu-Ray and they’ll play it for you and up to 25 people. I think I’m going to bring 4K77 one of these days.

I’m talking to my local theater about doing that, actually. Covid permitting, and my and whoever else having the moolah permitting.

Servii said:

I do wonder what George was picturing when he thought of the Clone Wars.

Hmm… so Obi-Wan was a vet of WWII. But we can’t exactly say WWII. Let’s come up with something less on the nose.

Well, World Wars I and II were both wars with the same name.

Same name is sort of like being the same war.

Same war… Cloned wars… Clone Wars.

Alright, on to the next scene.

rocknroll41 said:

Servii said:

Rodney-2187 said:

I’ve already seen opinions of TFA and TLJ improve.

The OT is revered because it’s a well made set of films.

Art is subjective. If the OT was as objectively well-made as you say then why did places like Time Magazine and Empire Magazine shit on ESB when it was new? We also mustn’t forget that a lot of people also crapped on RotJ up until TPM was released.

Art is subjective, and the quality of a movie is subjective. But the OT is undeniably popular, and not simply just because it’s old or because le Star Wars fans are le dumb. It’s also incredibly influential, in a way the PT and ST, like them or not, never will be.

theprequelsrule said:

Servii said:

Simply, Rey is not Luke, despite the films treating her like she is, and I honestly think it’s a reductive treatment of her character. She has a different personality, different goals, and different relationships.

The point is Rey should have been far more tempted to the Dark Side then Luke because of the environment she was raised in.

I disagree with the notion that people raised in bad environments are led into having questionable morals, and I really like that in the ST (or at least, TFA and TLJ), Rey was screwed over by the world, had parents who abandoned her, and lived a shitty life, but still had a moral compass that pointed north. Kylo had it made, and had parents who loved him, but he still turned to the dark side.

Screw the actual quality of the prequels or their hypothetical reboot, the angry zoomers alone would be worth it.

Reddit neet zoomers ruined the word Karen, have made boomer no longer a fun word, and they invented Simp so it was never good.

Add a framing device to the framing device of R2 telling Poe about the time he told Luke about the prequels.

I really think that they should loosen up on canon, or have multiple different continuities or something like that. Not in the same way as Marvel or DC, though. Maybe they should have no official canon, but a few continuity projects. I don’t know.

But with a fandom so big and so diverse as the Star Wars fandom, having one official continuity is an awful idea. I mean, for one, there might not have been such a poor reaction to the prequels or TLJ if they weren’t the only backstory for Darth Vader, or the only continuation of Luke’s story. If other people could try their hands at those stories, people wouldn’t care if this one particular one wasn’t right for them.

Especially if Lucasfilm wants to treat Star Wars like a modern mythology. There is technically a Sherlock Holmes canon, and a Robin Hood canon, and a King Arthur canon, but they don’t behave the same way that Star Wars’s canon does. They’re a central group of ideas and stories from which other stories radiate out from.

theprequelsrule said:

SparkySywer said:

I kind of wish they and the mods would reconcile so they could come back, but a lot of them have said they are no longer interested. Oh well. Can’t change that anymore.

Then you are still in touch with some of them outside of OT.com?

Most of them are on Fanedit.org, that’s where I’m in touch with them.

Delpheas said:

It you’re going for “whole Skywalker family” why not add Shmii and Padme?

Let’s add the whole Skywalker family, and also try to fit in the ST with Legends

ESB better fight, RotJ better story moment

theprequelsrule said:

Servii said:

Personally, however, I prefer the RotJ duel because of what’s at stake in the moment. The scene isn’t really about the physical fight itself. It’s a spiritual battle between Light and Dark. The sword swinging is really just a backdrop to the struggle in both Luke and Anakin’s hearts against the absolute evil of the Emperor. And I always get chills when Luke shouts “Never!” and the chilling music starts. The choir that sings both during Luke’s outburst and when Anakin is about to save his son is really stunning.

Me too! I also love the music - the weird synthesizer when Vader (holding Luke’s lightsaber BTW!) is looking for Luke in the shadows, then the chorus when Luke unleashes his anger.

Is that synth? I never noticed that.

NeverarGreat said:

I don’t like the way TROS handled things, but at least now there’s a good case to be made that things are different now, as opposed to after ROTJ.

That’s a fair point and I agree. But I don’t think the state of the galaxy post-TRoS is differentiated enough from RotJ for there to be a significant difference between Rey or Luke rebuilding the Jedi, or Poe or Leia rebuilding the Republic, or whatever comes next.

Maybe spinoff material can pick up the slack for TRoS, but I don’t think an Episode 10 should rely on ancillary media to be understood.

theprequelsrule said:

SparkySywer said:

Episode 9 should have addressed how to build a new society, not just a New New Republic, and how it would avoid the flaws of the Republic that led to the Empire and the First Order. But that’s a little bit off topic. What matters is that what comes next for the galaxy after Episode 9 - it should put an end to this particular conflict. They should have thought about how to prevent another fascist from taking power where their parents did not. Especially because the Last Jedi did address these issues, so it’s not like it’s an idea completely removed from the sequel trilogy.

I don’t want Star Wars to address anything political. It is a Space Opera where people have laser swords. It is escapist fantasy. The Prequels tried to have “ideas”, and these were just unwelcome and out of place in a popcorn blockbuster.

The complaint about the politics in the prequels is a bit of a misnomer. Political storylines are interesting, and (although I personally wasn’t a fan) it’s been well received. IIRC, even at the time. But don’t quote me on that. The Parliamentary Procedure in the prequels was the bad part.

Putting some depth into how the Republic fell and the Empire rose from its ashes, that’s interesting. “Tabled, this motion is… Or is it?” is not.

theprequelsrule said:

RicOlie_2 said:

Yeah, that’s pretty accurate. The Star Wars sections of this site are still pretty active, but Off Topic has yet to revive. Maybe one day… But that doesn’t mean it’ll be as fun as it used to be. No moderation meant things got pretty delightfully ridiculous at times and there was a repertoire of inside jokes/forum memes that will be lost to time.

I’m not sure if those sections really are that active. There was a time when a new topic would get many responses in a day. Now you might go days without any replies.

To be expected I guess. Star Wars is mostly played out I think.

There is a Woke mentality that had crept into this place too. Tends to stifle any real debate, since real debate might cause offense. And to the Woke mentality being offensive means being hateful, which is being harmfull…and I am going to stop there before random thoughts goes the way of the politics thread.

There’s a lot of new active posters, a lot of them seem pretty chill. Hopefully there will be a third wave on OT.com. But the older posters being gone sucks hard, and the circumstances around their departure were really unfortunate.

I kind of wish they and the mods would reconcile so they could come back, but a lot of them have said they are no longer interested. Oh well. Can’t change that anymore.

imperialscum said:

SparkySywer said:

JadedSkywalker said:

Its his story and its in no way collaborative. The stories are his and very personal.

Star Wars is my go to example I use when I want to talk about how movies are a collaborative art form, because of how much the Original Trilogy is not just George Lucas’s work.

The other people who worked on the OT didn’t just help Lucas realize his vision, they created part of the vision themselves. It’s not just that Star Wars would have failed without them, Star Wars just wouldn’t have been Star Wars without Ralph McQuarrie, or Marcia Lucas, or Gary Kurtz, I could keep going.

Hell, if you look at what happened behind the scenes of the Empire Strikes Back, it’s clearly not just George Lucas’s movie. While Lucas was working on Raiders of the Lost Ark, Irvin Kershner shot the movie in such a way that Kershner’s vision would be the most prevailing in the final cut. Often there was only one or two (usable) takes, and when there were more, there was not that much variation in them. Lucas was essentially unable to make his own movie out of ESB.

This is also why Richard Marquand was hired for RotJ. Marquand was a weaker, much less experienced director, but he wouldn’t have the balls to do what Kershner did. He also micromanaged a lot more with RotJ, as opposed to Empire, where he rarely even showed up on set.

The only way you can look at Empire and say it wasn’t a collaborative project, is if you’re being cheeky and making some comment on how adversarial Kershner and Lucas’s relationship got toward the end.

This is ultimately why I like new Star Wars much better than the prequels. The prequels are what happens when you take everyone but Lucas out of Star Wars. John Williams is the only person (besides Lucas) I can think of off the top of my head who was there for both the OT and PT, but even his input was severely neutered, especially in 2 and 3, although that’s a long story all on its own.

For better or worse, Star Wars is being made by the fans now. The fans may have wildly different ideas of what Star Wars is, they might even have downright dumb ideas of what Star Wars is, but they have a more holistic view of what Star Wars is.

You should probably read what you actually quoted before you reply.

I did read it smile 😃

fmalover said:

My unpopular opinion on the ST: TLJ will be redeemed by the passage of time and stand out as the only worthwhile entry of the ST.

Kind of agree. I have a soft spot for TFA and I can forgive it for not doing a whole lot, because of the context of the time it was made in. Its purpose was to bring back trust in Lucasfilm after the Disney buyout and the prequels, and it honestly did its job.

That said, taking the movies for what they are: TLJ is the only Star Wars movie outside the OT that’s in the “Sequels that actually justify their own existence” club. That’s not surprising, though, it’s a very exclusive club.

JadedSkywalker said:

Its his story and its in no way collaborative. The stories are his and very personal.

Star Wars is my go to example I use when I want to talk about how movies are a collaborative art form, because of how much the Original Trilogy is not just George Lucas’s work.

The other people who worked on the OT didn’t just help Lucas realize his vision, they created part of the vision themselves. It’s not just that Star Wars would have failed without them, Star Wars just wouldn’t have been Star Wars without Ralph McQuarrie, or Marcia Lucas, or Gary Kurtz, I could keep going.

Hell, if you look at what happened behind the scenes of the Empire Strikes Back, it’s clearly not just George Lucas’s movie. While Lucas was working on Raiders of the Lost Ark, Irvin Kershner shot the movie in such a way that Kershner’s vision would be the most prevailing in the final cut. Often there was only one or two (usable) takes, and when there were more, there was not that much variation in them. Lucas was essentially unable to make his own movie out of ESB.

This is also why Richard Marquand was hired for RotJ. Marquand was a weaker, much less experienced director, but he wouldn’t have the balls to do what Kershner did. He also micromanaged a lot more with RotJ, as opposed to Empire, where he rarely even showed up on set.

The only way you can look at Empire and say it wasn’t a collaborative project, is if you’re being cheeky and making some comment on how adversarial Kershner and Lucas’s relationship got toward the end.

This is ultimately why I like new Star Wars much better than the prequels. The prequels are what happens when you take everyone but Lucas out of Star Wars. John Williams is the only person (besides Lucas) I can think of off the top of my head who was there for both the OT and PT, but even his input was severely neutered, especially in 2 and 3, although that’s a long story all on its own.

For better or worse, Star Wars is being made by the fans now. The fans may have wildly different ideas of what Star Wars is, they might even have downright dumb ideas of what Star Wars is, but they have a more holistic view of what Star Wars is.

I’m really not a huge Old Republic fan, but the depth the Old EU went into for such a distant era was really cool.

I don’t think the New EU will ever touch on that era, except maybe a few shallow references. If they did, and tried doing something radical with it, it would piss off Old Republic fans. But if they stayed pretty faithful to the original material, what would the point even be? It’s a Catch-22 that kind of prevents them from touching the era.

They should just bring over the Old Republic stuff and not bother rebooting it. Maybe selectively or with alterations if they want to fit it into the New EU, but largely it would be the same content.

It was pretty extensive and detailed, and it organically explored tons of far-flung eras in galactic history. Hopefully the New EU gets to that level, but when it comes to that I’m worried it might live in the Old EU’s shadow.

I really don’t like the PT/SE/DVD posters. They’re all so ridiculously busy. Same thing with the TFA poster. I don’t like the “Here’s literally everything that happens in the movie crammed into 2x3 feet” style of poster art.

JadedSkywalker said:

The real question is how can you have conflict when the galaxy is at peace, i don’t think you can do the Sith/Empire storyline a third time. Nor can you do superweapons again.

Reopening the ending RotJ had was 100% fine, at least in the political side of things. The New Republic failing would have given them the opportunity to dig deeper into a more permanent solution. Especially now, after the prequels and the Old EU and the New EU making the Rebellion out to be an attempt to restore the Republic. Because you can’t just go back to how things were before the dark times, that’s what gave you the dark times.

It kind of makes for an interesting story if the first attempt to stop fascism in the galaxy wasn’t super successful because they weren’t thinking about how to prevent another fascist from taking power, they only thought about taking out the fascist currently in power.

Episode 9 should have addressed how to build a new society, not just a New New Republic, and how it would avoid the flaws of the Republic that led to the Empire and the First Order. But that’s a little bit off topic. What matters is that what comes next for the galaxy after Episode 9 - it should put an end to this particular conflict. They should have thought about how to prevent another fascist from taking power where their parents did not. Especially because the Last Jedi did address these issues, so it’s not like it’s an idea completely removed from the sequel trilogy.

They only really get that ticket to undo the solid ending once. You have one opportunity, and if they reopen Episode 9’s new ending, it would be kind of ridiculous. From a storytelling perspective, it erodes any trust in the finality of an ending, but also in-universe, it makes Rey’s generation look like dumbasses. Leia’s generation gets a pass, they were dealing with something new, but you should have known better.

So, obviously the conflict of a second sequel trilogy can’t be Rebels vs Empire or even Republic vs Empire, but it also can’t be something like Republic vs CIS or Republic vs (Insert political group here), because it’ll make Rey’s generation look like real dumbasses if they didn’t think about how to deal with them either. Maybe if the political group was so foreign to anything the galaxy had seen before (and therefore something so out of the box I doubt most writers would be able to come up with it, because of the similarity between the galaxy’s politics and the real world’s), you could justify it, but I doubt it.

I also think something like Republic vs Cartels would be a bad idea, because it’s implied that the Hutts or the Pykes or Crimson Dawn all kind of only exist because the Republic, later the Empire, allow them to exist. The New New Republic or whatever allowing them to exist also makes Rey’s generation look like dumbasses. Maybe they could simply not be strong enough to take on the criminal underworld, but that feels so weak and disconnected from the conflicts of Episodes 1-9, that I don’t know why you’d even bother calling that trilogy Episodes 10-12. Might as well just call it a small spinoff series.

The same sort of goes for something like a Yuuzhan Vong invasion. It would be so disconnected from Episodes 1-9 that there’s no point in calling it Episodes 10-12, unless you pull some really sketchy “Palpatine did nothing wrong he was trying to save the galaxy” shit.

Plus, with how Episode 9 ends in pretty much the same spot as RotJ, any post-TRoS media involving struggling to rebuild the galaxy, or rebuild the Jedi, or Imperial/FO remnants, really has no reason to be post-TRoS. Post-TRoS Rey might as well be post-RotJ Luke, any story about Rey rebuilding the Jedi would probably be better told with Luke. Same with Finn and Poe and Rose or Jannah or whoever rebuilding the Republic. You’d need a really good reason why it has to be them (and “Oh, in canon Luke/Leia/whoever was up to XYZ when this would’ve had to have taken place” isn’t a good enough reason, most people aren’t reading the New EU and aren’t going to know or care). I don’t think TRoS gives enough of a difference between its ending and RotJ’s ending to justify really anything.

tl;dr: There’s no good conflict for an Episode 10-12. I’ve spent way too long writing this, I have no life.

ray_afraid said:

Not gonna spam the thread with image quotes

I knew I wasn’t losing my mind here.

Even if Episode 9 were killer bombad fantastic, I don’t think an Episode 10-12 would be a good idea. But with the Episode 9 we got, it looks like a fourth trilogy would just be at best, a really boring story with characters that were kinda cool in Episodes 7&8 but got neutered in Episode 9, and at worst, literally just a redo of a sequel trilogy.

If we see anything about building a New New Republic while Rey rebuilds the Jedi order (or builds the Schmedi Order or whatever), that’s just a redo of a sequel trilogy, but this time without the OT trio cast. I’m a fan of Episodes 7&8, but if that happened, I’d rather they just decanonize the sequels and not pretend that this trilogy wasn’t a redo. Because they’d have a very hard time convincing me it wasn’t.

The best case scenario I think for a fourth trilogy is if it came out decades down the line, when John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, and Oscar Isaac are very old, and they’d be cameos at best with really minor roles.

I truly think Episode 9 is the last one, though. They really don’t need to make new Episodes like they did before, even if 50 years from now, they run out of stuff to make and want a rebirth of Star Wars like they did with Episodes 1 and 7, I don’t think they need an Episode 10 for that. They can just go out and make a new saga now.

I felt like there might be a need for a thread about more minor fanedits. Stuff that’s worth sharing, requesting, or discussing the creation of, but isn’t big enough to justify creating an entirely new thread over. There’s been a few times where I’ve wanted to make a more minor, conservative fanedit, but with nowhere really to share them, and being too purist to watch it myself, I’ve decided not to. Hopefully something like this can be your reason to actually go and do it.

I imagine a lot of this will be Semi-Specialized Editions or minor tweaks.

Mods feel free to delete this if you think it isn’t necessary.

If Adywan went and prevented the release of the Special Editions and the unaltered movies, I’d begin to question if he did his edits out of love for the movies.