zombie84

It's less a resolution thing and more the quality of the optics. The Episode II and III cameras had really bad sensors and only 2/3" CCDs, just like news cameras--well, the prequel cameras were news cameras, retrofitted for movie use.

As the technology gets cheaper and easier to view, 3D and high framerate filming will eventually become standard, it's just a question of whether this is 5 years, 10 years, or 20 years. It's just a natural progression in the trajectory to capture real life. First we had sound, then we had colour, then we had 3D and now we have frame rates that better approximate real life motion. Doug Trumbull has been working on a 128FPS system for about 30 years, because after years of testing he felt that was the frame rate at which it would indistinguishable from real life. He held a screening once, a tech demo, and Spielberg was there, and the projection screen was inclosed in a box. Before the film starts a man walks out in front of the screen and starts explaining the technology and what they are about to see. Spielberg says something like "when is the actual screening going to start," when the enclosure surrounding the screen lifts and reveals the man is actually a projection. He was the demo, but he was impossible to tell from real life. I want to see that, I'm excited for that day, when films are in colour, in sound, in three optical dimensions, and in real-life motion.

We are on a trajectory for as complete an immersion as possible, and these seem to me to be pretty obvious routes. Some people have this knee-jerk "ah, it's a fad" mentality but I don't get that, it's seems more that people just don't like change, even when it increases the immersion of the film. Eventually they will accept it, just like all the people who thought sound was ruining films dealt with it. That, by the way, is true, there were huge amounts of people who felt that sound betrayed the very foundation of motion pictures, because it was a visual medium done in a certain style where people didn't speak. Same with colour, because black and white was seen as more artistic and proper--colour was a gimmick; and it sort of was. But ultimately it made the films more realistic, and that's what won the day.

The problem with high frame rate in the past was projection, and it still is today. But when we were dealing with film, you would have had to replace the entire projector. Now that we are in the age of digital projectors, it might be possible to just update or mod the existing hardware--I'm assuming that is what is happening with the Hobbit, it would be doubtful so many theaters would install new projectors just for one film. It's also easier to build cameras with higher frame rates now that we are digital, whereas in the past with 35mm cameras the entire thing had to be gutted from scratch.

You_Too said:

No matter how stupid this might sound, I think that even though this could be considered a technical step forward, I think film is film and video is video and one of the things that makes a film feel like a film is how the motion differs from reality.

I would love to see The Hobbit in 48fps after seeing the 24fps version just because I'm interested in how it would feel to watch it that way, but I'm pretty sure I will prefer the 24fps version. I can somehow imagine 48fps would look a lot like the motion interpolation effect all new TVs have. Every time I got to an electronics shop they have TVs displaying films like Avatar, motion interpolated to double or triple framerate and it looks horrible.

It's not like that. Those TVs are showing 24fps and 29.97fps videos converted. The Hobbit was filmed natively in 48fps. There's not much precedent because no major movie has been released in a native framerate that high. The only conversion in the Hobbit will be if you see it at a 24fps framerate, so if there will be artifacts of any kind it will be in that version.

Just got a whole bunch of Dreamcast games.Was disappointed to find that Quake 3 Arena was unplayable because of the controls. Might be a good reason to invest in the keyboard and mouse.

Has anyone heard of Zombie Revenge? It's fantastic! I had never heard of it before and took a gamble but it turned out to be far better than expected. It looks and plays like Dynamite Cop and Die Hard Arcade, except you beat up zombies and mutants instead of thugs and terrorists. It's apparently a House of the Dead spin-off and uses the same character models and designs. Really fun late 1990s arcade beat-em-up. Not the biggest replay value but very fun, and it's long for an arcade title. I want to play this with 2 players now.

Also got Gigawing 2. Probably one of the best bullet-hell titles I've played in a long while. It's short but sweet, and has great graphics and even better music. Too bad this was never released in the west.

Also been playing a lot of 18 Wheeler. It's fun but really, unnecessarily difficult. I've had it for three days and I can't get past the second race!

What do you think the boxing match was for? Vader is testing Darth Back. If Darth Back can defeat Vader then he proves he is strong enough to be his apprentice; if Vader can beat him, then is useless and deserves a pummeling.

Lucas re-used the same idea for Episode III. Palpatine is testing Anakin with Dooku to see if he is strong enough but Dooku doesn't know it.

"It's like poetry, it rhyms."

The second draft shortened it to just, "The Empire Strikes Back," which is saying the same thing. But then Lucas felt that the boxing idea was too real-world, so he changed it to a lightsaber match instead. Gary Kurtz suggested it would be better if he fought Luke instead of Darth Back, so that's where the climactic saber duel originated from. Darth Back was eventually cut down to a side character, and they even made prototype action figures of him, but his few scenes were all cut out. There have been bootleg prototype toys on eBay from time to time but none are authentic.

Sorry Wolfenstein 3D! Who thinks of the 1981 Wolfenstein when they hear "castle wolfenstein"? :p That's like specifing A New Hope when you say, Star Wars is a classic film! ;)

Father Skywalker said:

zombie84 said:

Father Skywalker said:

thecolorsblend said:

 

Wexter said:

Is this even a serious question? How about the same reason we haven't yet cloned a human being? Because it doesn't seem right. Basically the Clone Wars were about Republic pitting their artificially manufactured disposable human beings against the armies of disposable machines. And everyone was so degenerated that it didn't even strike them as a moral dilemma. Now if "Clone Wars" (which was established as soon as Episode IV) was in fact about this dilemma - and the bad guys would be in favor of such policy - that would make an interesting conflict.

I think you're missing the forest but hitting the trees. Doesn't it mean something that the morality is scarcely ever discussed? Nobody seems to terribly mind the loss of life. The absence of that concern for life manufactured to kill and/or die is what morally indicts the Republic and the Jedi.

 

Just like during/in the original trilogy.......

"Great shot kid that was one in a million"- Han Solo, five seconds or so after the first death star exploded and was blown up and the millions of people on it were burned to death in a large, giant explosion........ As well as "ye-hooo", after killing two of anakin skywalker's tie fighter pilots.......

"YE-HAWWW"-Lando Calirissian after blowing up the second death star, and, guess what??? The same thing that happened with the first death star..........

Star Wars, hence the title obviously, is about war........Yet none of our "heroes" or "good guys" ever experience regret for killing stormtroopers. Luke skywalker even killed stormtroopers, not in self defense, but in anger after anakin killed obi wan......

Nothing suprising going on there during/in the prequels trilogy!!!!

The Star Wars films are about war, in the sense of Where Eagles Dare, the movie inspiration for first person shooters. You have bad guys and you have heroes, and the heroes kills the bad guys to win. Just like the serials. They are Villains, because in the end it's a black and white morality tale, a fantasy without real-world examples because it's a morality play. Lord of the Rings is like this too. Ultimatelyt it is isn't applicable to real life, and is actually a bit offensive if you really break it down, but fantasy's get away with it, because they are fantasy's and also play on our inherant either/or biases.

Well, then don't criticize the prequels for that kind of disposable life morality; both han solo and lando calirissian were happy screaming guys, who screamed like cowboys when millions of people were burned to death in a giant explosion........Hmm......... That sounds very kind, moral, and nice, let's give them medals of good moral character (sarcastic tone).....

There are 2 things that i don't understand about what you had just said. Where eagles dare??? That's a kickass iron maiden song, but what does that have to do with star wars?? I also don't understand your last sentence, please explain it better, fantasy is offensive but gets away with it, what???

The Iron Maiden song is based off the 1968 Clint Eastwood WWII movie that inspired the 1992 video game Castle Wolfenstein, the basis for FPS games. It's a great action film, and Lucas seems to have used part of the plot when making Star Wars too! And yeah, fantasy gets away with it. That's why people--myself included--love Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Lord of the Rings, and other films. They should be terribly offensive, but they aren't, mainly because they are intentionally unrealistic. It's the same thing with a film like 300. A film that is embarassingly racist. But I love it. Temple of Doom gets the same pass in my book. I overlook things that would cause me to write letters to the editor because the fantasy environment promotes leniency. Based on their popularity, this is widespread.

Father Skywalker said:

thecolorsblend said:

 

Wexter said:

Is this even a serious question? How about the same reason we haven't yet cloned a human being? Because it doesn't seem right. Basically the Clone Wars were about Republic pitting their artificially manufactured disposable human beings against the armies of disposable machines. And everyone was so degenerated that it didn't even strike them as a moral dilemma. Now if "Clone Wars" (which was established as soon as Episode IV) was in fact about this dilemma - and the bad guys would be in favor of such policy - that would make an interesting conflict.

I think you're missing the forest but hitting the trees. Doesn't it mean something that the morality is scarcely ever discussed? Nobody seems to terribly mind the loss of life. The absence of that concern for life manufactured to kill and/or die is what morally indicts the Republic and the Jedi.

 

Just like during/in the original trilogy.......

"Great shot kid that was one in a million"- Han Solo, five seconds or so after the first death star exploded and was blown up and the millions of people on it were burned to death in a large, giant explosion........ As well as "ye-hooo", after killing two of anakin skywalker's tie fighter pilots.......

"YE-HAWWW"-Lando Calirissian after blowing up the second death star, and, guess what??? The same thing that happened with the first death star..........

Star Wars, hence the title obviously, is about war........Yet none of our "heroes" or "good guys" ever experience regret for killing stormtroopers. Luke skywalker even killed stormtroopers, not in self defense, but in anger after anakin killed obi wan......

Nothing suprising going on there during/in the prequels trilogy!!!!

The Star Wars films are about war, in the sense of Where Eagles Dare, the movie inspiration for first person shooters. You have bad guys and you have heroes, and the heroes kills the bad guys to win. Just like the serials. They are Villains, because in the end it's a black and white morality tale, a fantasy without real-world examples because it's a morality play. Lord of the Rings is like this too. Ultimatelyt it is isn't applicable to real life, and is actually a bit offensive if you really break it down, but fantasy's get away with it, because they are fantasy's and also play on our inherant either/or biases. That's why it's okay to have a film like Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Harrison Ford is killing conscripted German citizens for laughs, while in reality films/books like The Reader or Slaughterhouse Five would turn Indiana Jones into a brainwashed mass murderer as much as any Nazi. Yet we cheer him on as he machine guns Germans while we boo when John Wayne is under fire from them. It's a bit disgusting, but hey that's the way George Lucas makes films, did you see Red Tails? A movie that is racist to both white AND black people! Congrats to him!

Maybe. But since the entire debate--whether it's good, bad, or a non-issue--is never brought up, discussed, or even alluded to, it really just feels like the script failed to pick up on a serious thematic issue inherant in the film. In other words, it's a bit of a plot hole. To me, it doesn't seem deliberate design. It seems the same reason that the entire central mystery of Attack of the Clones--who ordered the clones, and who Sifo-dyas was and what he was doing--was simply ignored in the sequel. Which is to say....who the fuck knows. It was simply dropped.

...what the hell!? How can you have a sequel that does that?? But Lucas went that far. I'm not sure what he was thinking. But basically the effect is that he pretended Episode II didn't exist. Which is awesome, because that movie is terrible. But it's just one more nail in the coffin for why the prequel trilogy was an epic failure of sometimes embarassing preportions. Can you think of another trilogy that simply jettisons the entire plot 2/3 of the way through? Well, maybe that is why Revenge of the SIth is so watchable, so I don't regret it, but it's certainly an indictment against George Lucas from his own self.

One of my first dates ever was seeing Rocky Horror in a theater! Do I also get that prize?

TheBoost said:

My parent's first date was to see Star Wars, so I didn't get to see that.

My parents went on a date to see Star Wars too. It wasn't their first but it was one of their first. My mom was a Trekkie, and my dad was a sci-fi fan who was going through a Tolkien phase. Match made in heaven? They had heard of this great new movie called Star Wars that everyone was talking about it, so naturally it was one of the first dates they had together.

They hated it. They walked out before it was over.

For their sins, they bore a son who made a small career talking about that film.

True story!

1990osu said:

^^People who say that the less Lucas was involved, the better the movies were.  The idea that Gary Kurtz was this genius and he and Marcia Lucas saved SW from being a flop, and Irvin Kirshner and Kurtz were the only reason ESB was good. 

Part of that is true, but Lucas was also part of the team and that's where he worked best. When he went off on his own, the supports he relied upon weren't there and the films sucked. Plus, I think Lucas' skills diminished naturally with old age. But I don't think people argued that he was always talentless, just that his collaborations hid or offset the flaws he had. The only reason he collaborated was because he set that environment up in the first place, so it was a deliberate part of his method.

I think the argument is that he is a hack now, but wasn't before. I mean he made American Graffiti and Star Wars! What person would say he never had any talent?

VHS tapes stopped worldwide production in...2009? A few years ago anyway. They actually aren't manufacturing VHS magnetic tape for a few years now, anywhere on the planet, and it was a specialty genre since 2004 or so. Even Episode III was never released on VHS in the western world, and Episode II's VHS release was partly lip service to the medium...

AntcuFaalb said:

zombie84 said:

DVD was a once-in-a-lifetime home video revolution. It won't be repeated on blu-ray, and it won't be repeated on any next format, just like it wasn't repeating with VHS, Beta, or Laserdisc. The sales revolution that DVD brought was the idea of people buying movies. People tended to have relatively small collections of VHS tapes or Laserdiscs, and a lot of movies weren't even priced for the sell-through market, they were meant to be rented. When DVD came out, they made it a collectors market that targeted sell-through, and even regular people who only had 25 VHS tapes over the span of 15 years now amassed 150 DVDs in less than half that. The fact that there haven't been rental chains in the better part of a decade certainly helped this along.

Part of it because the picture/sound difference between DVD and VHS was huge, part of it was because the idea of special features was new and exciting and part of it was because the availability and afforability created a new mentality where people owned and watched every movie they liked. That's not being repeated with Blu-ray; the picture quality is not the same step up (even though it is in resolution), and there isn't sufficient reason to buy for special features if you already own the DVD special editions. So, they are content with their DVDs and aren't rushing out to build a huge blu-ray library, let alone replace their old one.

The DVD market is fading away rapidly, so I feel like nowadays if people buy a new movie or a movie they don't already have they are more inclined to get the blu-ray, which now often come bundled with the DVD version anyway. But because people already collected hundreds of DVDs building up a library, they aren't going to replace all that. It's easy to replace 50% of your 32 VHS tapes, but much harder to replace 50% of your 132 DVDs.

Also, don't forget that many people simply don't own HDTVs (yet).

True, sort of, increasingly most people do, since non-HDTV's haven't been made since about 2007, and since new HDTVs cost less than non-HDTVs ten years ago, this is an increasingly slim, slim minority. In fact, I don't know a single friend that owns a CRT SD TV as their main set, and most my friends are students under the poverty line in Canada. Hell, I make less than $20,000 a year. Which technically makes me poor. And if I can easily afford an HD LED monitor in 2012, which costs less than $200, which is probably what I spend on beer in two months...well, who the hell can't? No, seriously. Non-HDTVS have not been manufactured for a good five or six years. It's amazing to live in this time, when you can get an HD, high quality LED monitor for $180. Twenty years ago people were spending that much on gold-plated cable connectors....

You must live in the United States pf Blockbuster Video.

But seriously, the last time Blockbuster mattered was 2004. The company has been effectively dismantled since 2008 or so. You must have some of the last locations in the world near you, and they haven't been a force in the undustry for a good 6 or 7 years.

DVD was a once-in-a-lifetime home video revolution. It won't be repeated on blu-ray, and it won't be repeated on any next format, just like it wasn't repeating with VHS, Beta, or Laserdisc. The sales revolution that DVD brought was the idea of people buying movies. People tended to have relatively small collections of VHS tapes or Laserdiscs, and a lot of movies weren't even priced for the sell-through market, they were meant to be rented. When DVD came out, they made it a collectors market that targeted sell-through, and even regular people who only had 25 VHS tapes over the span of 15 years now amassed 150 DVDs in less than half that. The fact that there haven't been rental chains in the better part of a decade certainly helped this along.

Part of it because the picture/sound difference between DVD and VHS was huge, part of it was because the idea of special features was new and exciting and part of it was because the availability and afforability created a new mentality where people owned and watched every movie they liked. That's not being repeated with Blu-ray; the picture quality is not the same step up (even though it is in resolution), and there isn't sufficient reason to buy for special features if you already own the DVD special editions. So, they are content with their DVDs and aren't rushing out to build a huge blu-ray library, let alone replace their old one.

The DVD market is fading away rapidly, so I feel like nowadays if people buy a new movie or a movie they don't already have they are more inclined to get the blu-ray, which now often come bundled with the DVD version anyway. But because people already collected hundreds of DVDs building up a library, they aren't going to replace all that. It's easy to replace 50% of your 32 VHS tapes, but much harder to replace 50% of your 132 DVDs.

If I remember, the third one was okay if you looked at it as a dark comedy instead of a horror film.

I don't think it's a contradiction. Yoda is saying there is nothing more he can teach him, but that he still needs to confront Vader to graduate; confronting  Vader isn't something Yoda can provide so this is something Luke needs to seek out. I think in fighting Vader in ESB, and learning from that and meditating on it, and practicing in the months since then, he is in the place that Yoda wished he was at the end of ESB--capable of taking on Vader, emotionally and physically--and now he just needs to go ahead and finally do it.

Well, part of the reason kids are so into it compared to adults is because they have the time to be into it. If you are an adult, you have a wife or husband, you have kids of your own, you have a job and a mortgage, so when you only have 2 hours a night where those things don't require any more attention, you may just enjoy having a beer and watching the hockey game on TV (is this an insight into Canadian mentality or what?). So no wonder kids are more into TV shows and comics and video games. I think I love all those things way more than kids do, because here I am as an adult with adult responsibilities and yet I still make the time for stupid things like that. Kids have the time for those things by default. So if a movie is on TV that they like they can watch it, while guys like us have more important things to do. That's one of the tragedies of growing up, but nonetheless....

Easterhay said:

I actually think the latter instalments of Harry Potter are the very films you wouldn't show to kids, to be honest. My two have yet to see the final one, for example.

 

Depending on the age. I mean, when we say "kids" it's a big difference between 7 and 12. I might think twice before showing the final three films to a seven year old (although I probably would anyway...when I was 7 I watched Terminator and Robocop and Aliens, and they all scared me to death and I loved them for that, so I'm of the mentality that it's okay to be scared of movies).

I've heard a lot of people found the end of ROTK moving (that line "You bow to no-one" gets a lot of plaudits), I just remember feeling "When is this going to end?". A whole cinema laughing at one line in ROTS, though? Well, that's a new one on me, I must say. Maybe the acoustics made it sound like it was more people than it truly was. I saw the movie twice at the cinema and not a titter did I hear at that scene. Just goes to show you, eh?

 

I agree about ROTK. I love that film, and I remember being really annoyed by the 5 endings. I still think the ending with Sam is a mistake. But nonetheless, it was a very moving cinematic experience for the majority of the audience. And with ROTS: Yeah, people laughed at "younglings", even when it was a very serious scene involving murdered children, and they laughed at the romantic dialogue too.

I wouldn't attach too much importance to the Oscars, you know, zombie. A lot of that voting is purely political. I'm not saying LOTR didn't deserve its awards - it probably did - but I think to ignore the technical achievements of the SW prequels was petty and undeserved. These are the same people who showered Titanic with awards, remember.

Sure, who cares about technicalities. The prequels got technical awards. But when you get awards for stuff like acting and directing--you may not agree with it completely, because everyone has an opinion. But I think there is some sense of consensus that you've made a decent film if that happens. No one is giving Spice World a best picture Oscar. And no one is giving Return of the King a Worst Picture Razzie. But the fact that ROTK got a best picture nod and ROTS a worst picture nod--that indicates the general reputation a film has. And when it's that extreme--the best and the worst--it tends to count a lot. People aren't idiots. If everyone is saying a film is great, it's probably worth watching at least (some exceptions given, but that's besides the point), and if people say a film is awful it probably is not all that amazing. So these are useful indicators and why I bring them up. Obviously there is no accounting for taste, but I think it's kind of cheap to say "I'M NOT CRAZY, THE REST OF YOU ARE CRAZY!". I think Temple of Doom and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull are the best Indy films, but I do recognize that everyone else thinks they are the worst, and not without good reason.

Well, I dunno, I was 13 when the film came out and I really liked it. I feel like I was actually the perfect demographic--I was old enough to follow the political scenes, but young enough to still laugh at fart jokes. And when I put 2 and 2 together and realized Sidious is Palpatine it blew my mind because I felt like I had done the work to solve a puzzle, even though it was obvious to adult fans.

And like I said: I still like the film. I think I might be one of the only people here that will admit that. It's a film most people don't like, but maybe because I was enough of a kid but also enough of an adult that something clicked with me.

But saying it should appeal to six year olds means nothing. Six year olds don't have sophisticated tastes. But the rest of the series is mostly made to have it both ways: entertaining kids with graphics and actions, while stimulating adults with realistic characters and an interesting story. And, of course, there is cross-over, since adults are entertained by the effects and kids pick up on the better-than-average story.

And quiet georgec! LOL, me and Easterhay just have a couple hours to kill and are posting at the same time.

But no, the excuse--because that's what it is, not an explanation but an excuse--that it is for kids is a total cop-out. If it's all for kids, then why the hell do millions of adults love the originals? It's not just nostalgia, or they'd be wanking off to every crappy show from their childhood like Time Tunnel.

Easterhay said:

I don't believe Peter Jackson makes films for kids, though. From a child's point of view (if I may dare to be so bold) he makes films that are long and boring with quite a few frightening moments. King Kong? Dull as ditchwater until they land on the island. Then it's scary scenes with the natives (not at all child-friendly) and sub-par CGI dinosaurs. Lord Of The Rings? Again, for any kid (and even some adults) it has incredibly long sections where not much of interest really happens (a lot of talking and walking) and then scenes with Orcs that, as with the natives in King Kong, are terrifying for kids.

Fair enough. Maybe Harry Potter is a better example, especially the latter installments. I didn't see the early HP films in theaters, but when I went to the last three or four it was prettty much an equal balance of kids, teens and adults (not parents, people like me who went to see it because they wanted to see it).

I always just have a very vivid memory of a 14 year old girl crying with emotion in the seat in front of me during the end of Return of the King--genuinely being moved by the story and characters TO TEARS--can you imagine that? That's something people sometimes talk about but never actually witness, and she was actually crying with emotion. By contrast, I have a very vivid memory of an an entire movie theater laughing their asses off when Darth Vader went "NOOOOooo" in Episode III. I'm not making any of this up, and people laughed at a lot of dialogue they weren't supposed to be laughing at elsewhere in the movie. Even though I feel like I am one of the few people here that actually really like Episode III that to me was a perfect example of why LOTR won armfulls of Oscars for being really good and the prequels won armfuls of Razzie's for being really bad.

Easterhay said:

I'm not entirely sure what you're basing that on - I mean, regarded by whom? The general populace? Star Wars fans as a whole? Fans of the original trilogy? Fans of the original trilogy on the internet? Fans of the original trilogy on this site?

As the group diminishes so does the capacity for anything approaching a broad-minded view, you see.

Any opinions on Star Wars to which I give any credence are those from the target age group. Given that kids of my son's generation are of the Clone Wars generation, I don't know what they think of the prequels, much less the original films, so I don't really have any basis on which I can make sweeping statements about the prequels I'm afraid.

This would assume that Star Wars has a target audience. It doesn't. Because if it's kids, then all that darkness and political discussion makes it a failure. If it's adults, then all that Jar Jar and fart jokes also makes it a failure. I think it's pretty common knowledge that the original films had a lot of adult fans as much as they had kid fans. After all, who the heck was nominating Star Wars for best picture at the 1978 Academy Awards? Not elementary school children. If you propose that George Lucas was targeting elementary school children exclusively with Episode I, then the film represents a significant break in form and focus compared to the other entries and therefore open to criticism, and number two is a terrible example of a kids film for all the adult aspect like senate debates and philosophical discussions.

The opinion I am basing this on is not seven year olds, true, but then Pokemon would be the Shakespear of modern times if I did that so why are we having this discussion as adults?

In answer to the original question, it was the early 1990s.

I actually did a systematic study of reviews of the trilogy, including retospective ones written in the years since their release, and it seems like 1987-1993 is when the tide turned. I attribute this to a few factors. One, Empire had backlash against it because it wasn't as fun or mainstream as Star Wars, and the reasons people liked Star Wars--being a clever commentry on pop culture, and being fun and humourous--weren't present in Empire. Two, the film needed to find an audience, and while everyday viewers saw the film once and found it decent, Star Wars fans kept coming back again over the years. Three, part of the reason they kept coming back was that the film is far better acted, written and directed, but not as spectacular--but on your home television in the late 80s and early 90s, things like acting and writing become more important than exploding Death Stars, which no longer impress. And finally, the original audience of Star Wars had grown up and was now in their 20s and 30s--and also in control of the media--and appreciated the more adult themes that might have bored them as kids.

So, by the early 1990s, suddenly Empire Strikes Back is a cult film, and Star Wars is the fun, mainstream success that isn't as cool to people who are really serious about movies and the series. I guess you could say it's a bit of a hipster thing, but with good reason.

You can see my analysis of the release reaction here: http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/originaltrilogyreception2.html