Well, I snorted happily at this . . . but just how old is the target audience for this blog?: "a puppet who is so damn cute that he makes Lambchop look like a drug-addled prostitute." Shari Lewis was just lucky PETA and assorted vegan nuts were not around in 1957.
Of course, the real irony here is that like in many other franchises, by far the highest quality Star Wars stuff is the stuff that actually was fully aimed at kids - ie the animated series (Star Wars The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels).
The joys of animation is that, unlike live action, it is generally considered a ‘kids’ medium and so most executives, whilst still willing to give a decent budget, don’t especially care about it so tend to pretty much give the creators free rein when it comes to how they produce it. In the case of the Clone Wars, the team thus pretty much decided “f*** it, so long as there’s no gore or swearing we can pretty much do whatever we like, so we’re going to take this kids show and instead write it for adults, making it full on war show homaging as many classic WW2 movies as we can whilst still keeping things entertaining enough for the young ‘uns”. Thus, not only is it arguably the best quality content Star Wars has produced, but with the talent Lucasfilm had at its disposal, many of their sequences and arcs are arguably up there with some of the best adult action shows going.
If you want a good illustration, check out this scene from the Star Wars equivalent of D-Day - all of the cinematography, sound design, framing, and other filmmaking aspects are genuinely better than about 90% of modern films even now: https://youtu.be/5DAywBKyatc?si=k1bizPnG9edwnty-
The idea that those mediocre cartoons were better or even comparable to the original trilogy is bonkers I’m afraid. They are moderately better versions of the completely horrible prequels, that is true.
I don't really get why people think those animated series are any better than the contemporaneous movies. They're okay... but so are the movies, IMO. Different strengths and weaknesses. I can see valuing the series for the lore, but that is different from watchability.
I mean, whether the prequels were "fully aimed at kids" or not, kids liked them a lot more than adults. Strongly disliking the prequels is something people over 30 do***. For younger people they are just three of those six movies they liked when they were kids. In 20 years they're going to like the new ones, probably.
And I just couldn't get past how Clone Wars looks like a low-quality PS3 cutscene.
There was a series of shorts about the Clone Wars made by Genndy Tartakovsky that aired on Cartoon Network in 2003 - I remember that being really awesome. They were in Tartakovsky's classic Cartoon Network style (Dexter's Lab, Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack, etc). Haven't seen them in forever, though. I think they're on YouTube.
***At some point Phantom Menace hit the "camp switch" for me. I seriously love that movie. I love everything that is bad about it so much and there is so much about it that is bad. Clones and Sith are still pretty meh to me.
Clones is absolutely the weakest, although I love Yoda getting to be a badass.
Clone Wars is… fine. It does a good job of being adventure serials set in the SW universe, which is what all Star Wars ought to be. It nicely fills out the world so it’s not just a backdrop for Anakin being moody in Episodes 2 and 3. Introduces or adds meat to some good characters (Dooku, Maul, and Grievous are good villains that get not nearly enough screen time in the movies).
But it is pretty pulpy and the plots are convoluted. There are great moments but a lot of it is forgettable. And there is a LOT of it.
Star Wars is fantasy, not science fiction. For fantasy to work the best, there has to be some mystery about why things are the way they are and we as audience members have to play along by suspending our disbelief that there could be a galaxy with space wizards and swords and awesome spaceships and that allows us to enjoy the movie. For science fiction to work, there needs to be some explanations provided so the audience can understand the context within which the story is being told, and that allows us to enjoy the movie.
Star Wars sucks when it is explaining itself. I don't want to know who Darth Vader was as a child and why he became evil and I care even less about how many midichlorians are in his bloodstream or whateverthefuck. I only need to see a good guy kiss a good woman while they are shooting lasers at bad guys. I don't have strong feelings one way or the other on the Mandalorian TV show but if the movie is just dudes flying through space and shooting lasers at the bad guys, I'll go see it.
Totally agree. I thought The Mandalorian was a breath of fresh air when it first came out since it didn't seem to want to be anything more than an episodic spaghetti western in space. But I checked out when he went from The Mando with No Name to Djin Darrin, protector of the Mandalorian culture and we had to start learning the rules of who can carry the emo-saber and were expected to have some sort of emotional reaction to characters from the cartoon series that no one watched.
Similarly, I actually liked Solo, but really wish they hadn't wasted 20 minutes on the Kessel run. I never understood the need for some people to justify a scientific inconsistency in a throwaway line in the first movie with anything other than "maybe that guy who seems to be a bit of a bullshitter and con artist is talking some bullshit to people he thinks he can con."
I hate the need for a prequel to precisely answer so many questions. If someone wrote episodes 7 8 and 9 first, then 4 5 and 6 would feel the need to write things so they exactly end up at the place necessary to start out Episode VII.
I mean “the fall of Anakin Skywalker” and “Han Solo as a young smuggler” are fine ideas for prequels, but some of the Easter eggs are really over the top and raise more questions than they answer. Or fail to answer the *actual* plot holes.
OK you wrote 20 minutes about “the Kessel run in 12 parsecs” and a whole movie about why they didn’t put better exhaust shielding on the Death Star, but not 30 seconds on “hey wouldn’t Sidious/Vader be a wee bit suspicious that a known agitator and Senate colleague of Padme Amidala has suddenly adopted a baby girl? At the same time Anakin Skywalker’s stepbrother also adopts a kid with Anakin’s last name?”
What's really funny about the Solo backstory is, OK, sure, you've explained things that nobody wondered or cared about, like "why is his last name Solo," but you've also introduced some characters/plot points that I'd MUCH rather have explained to me, like "are Lando and his droid fucking?"
And also, would that not be the FIRST thing Han would mention to Leia once this slick dude starts hitting on her? “Yeah this is my old buddy Lando. He fucks droids. Threepio better watch his ass”.
Yeah, I got off the bus with the Mandalorian when Grogu got shipped off to Jedi school. I would've been much happier if the show had never made contact with the Jedi.
I think Star Wars expanded fanbase loves the hard sciencification of the fantasy tho. There are tons of books that will tell you what ever button on Vader’s beathing apparatus does. But that’s not explained in the movie. I think you’re right. When the movies or shows try to hardify something fantastical, like the Force is measurable in your blood, it tries to make the fantasy real at the expense of the wonder.
The best thing about the first Star Wars movie, and the reason why people keep trying to use its universe, is the design of the universe. Most sci fi movies look painfully of-their-decade (original Star Trek with the flip hair styles, Clockwork Orange with the intense 70s jumpsuits, etc). Star Wars looks cool. The clothes look cool, the vehicles look cool, the weapons and droids look cool. And the reason why is that the premise of the Star Wars universe isn't a utopia/dystopia with advanced technology, it's a space-skinned pirate movie or western. You don't watch an Errol Flynn movie for its plot, you watch it to see him board ships and sword fight and swing from the sails.
The main fault of both the prequels and the more recent sequels is that they assumed the main characters were what people were attached to and tried to build fancy storylines around them. But the point of Star Wars is to make a serviceable action movie plot in a really cool setting. This is why all the good Star Wars movies and TV shows practically abandon the "main" characters.
I agree with this, and I hope I more-or-less got to this idea in the piece. And one reason I liked this movie is that the stuff looks very cool -- you see AT-ATs, and they look heavier and more detailed than the originals. The CGI is better than it was in the '90s, and they avoid it when they can. The originals had lots of cool stuff, and this one has cool stuff, too.
Yeah, I think this is something that really came across in a lot of the 1990s video game adaptations of Star Wars, before things were complicated by messier and glossier movies. Dark Forces, Shadows of the Empire, Rebel Assault, TIE Fighter - these games recognized that what was great about Star Wars was atmosphere and design. It's such an incredibly distinctive aesthetic, despite extreme simplicity. It's brilliant.
It takes a lot of aesthetic ideas from, for example, Dune and makes sure they are used for a romp. That's why the Star Wars franchise is what it is and the Dune series is what it is. Not a knock on Dune; that's just how the appeal shakes out.
Point: I have seen ZERO advertising for this movie. In fact, this post is journalism solely because it broke the story that this movie was even released. I don't know how a studio can put butts in seats if nobody knows that their product exists.
Aside: I'm the last Gen Xer born so I am the target audience for the original Star Wars and in my mind, other than those first three, the best Star Wars movies are easily the standalones "Rogue One" and "Solo". Take that for what it's worth, but I want more of those geared-to-adult additions to the universe.
I found out as an adult many years after the fact that the animated Animal Farm adaptation they showed us in elementary school was in part funded by the Office of Policy Coordination, a propaganda arm of the CIA. I always wondered why the ending was different from the book (in the animated version the animals rise up against the rule of the pigs) but only much later did I find out why.
Anyway, I remember it being okay but conspicuously short on fart jokes.
You are a vanishingly small audience. Rogue One was good but also a mega downer, and nobody wants to take their kids to that. Solo was boring ass shit. Couldn’t care less to watch any Star Wars TV show for more than a couple of episodes, including and especially Andor.
Phil Lord and Chris Miller probably would've made a pretty cool "Solo" if Disney hadn't developed a raging phobia of "fresh ideas" in the wake of the "The Last Jedi" nerd backlash and replaced them. I didn't hate Howard's, but "boring ass shit" is pretty fair criticism.
I don't think it was made for kids, and that's why it was good. The best parts of Star Wars were the dark parts. I mean, it's Star Wars, not Star Wheeeeeeeethisissomuchfun!
I took my 11-year old twin sons to see it last weekend. They declared it the best movie they had ever seen. They then started watching the whole back catalogue, for which they’d previously had zero interest. They loved each one including the original Star Wars. (Whereas I, who was thrilled to see the original in its opening week, now find the skinny Imperial Storm Troopers rushing around to resemble characters in an off-brand aerobics video.) The point is, if kids love a 150-minute
movie, it’s awesome. I personally found the baby Yoda adorable and it almost distracted me from the fact that the Hut family look like giant wet turds.
This is interesting -- I was thinking this is EXACTLY the context in which this movie might click. It seems like a great watch-along for kids that age: Simple enough for the kids, smart enough for the grown-ups.
My issue with the movie is that the only reason it’s a movie is that Disney hadn’t had a theatrical release in 7 years and Mando was the only part of the IP with any momentum left. Jon Favreau said that almost literally in an interview on why they made this instead of Season 4.
Mando had a great formula for a “six (22 episode) seasons and a movie” all ages episodic sci fi adventure, and they blew it on 3 half length seasons one of which was actually “The Book of Bo Katan” and a movie that is 4 episodes wearing a trench coat.
I think so. I don't think anyone at Disney or LFL really thought they had a banger on their hands, but I want to imagine they're surprised by how poorly it performed.
I read this column and it was good. But then I read a different more serious post by somebody else, and your voice was still narrating that post in my head, and it ruined it.
My totally unbiased take is that any future Star Wars should just be variations on Andor. There’s enough childish slop already to satisfy generations of morons young and old.
Totally. Andor takes a throwaway line from the Original Movie and spins it (à la Rozencranz and Guildenstern are Dead) into an amazing exploration of the human costs of resistance movements. I’m currently trying to get A24 interested in my script about the guy from cloud city with the super headphones and his complicated relationship with his father.
Honestly, I'm kind of in the other boat. I haven't watched Andor, so I make no comment on whether or not it's good, but the general vibe I get from it and the way Star Wars fans react to it is that it's kind of the apotheosis of the whole nerd insistence that all their childhood geek obsessions Are Really Really Serious Actually And So Everyone Has To Take Them Just As Utterly Seriously As I Do. Like, sorry, I'm sure it's as good as everyone says it is, and maybe it's a failing on my part, but I just don't think I can personally take a serious and grim and sober exploration of the realities of authoritarianism and oppression and sexual assault and Other Serious Grown-Up Stuff seriously when I know full well it's set in the same universe which has fucking Ewoks running around.
I'm also of this opposite view but not because of Andor specifically. The juice in Star Wars at this point is in telling different kinds of stories in this aesthetic and basic mythic universe that people like. It is good that there is silly kid targeted stuff and also Andor, but leaning on the Andor will not fix what ails the mainline movies. They just aren't very good for a variety of mundane, often production-issue-related, causes. No bold or mild tonal direction will fix that.
Ewoks are vicious creatures, small but deadly, like the Vietcong they were modelled after! Andor has a decent amount of humour, honestly too much for me in Season 2. YMMV.
Between Skeleton Crew and Andor there's room for a lot of good things. They are very different shows.
Skeleton Crew was nice. But I also recognized it as a Star Wars show for kids (and, very obviously, an attempt to ride the coattails of Stranger Things) and significantly changed my expectations.
I liked Andor, but there's a lot of room between the kind of Very Serious Drama that's going on there and the utter dreck that is "The Acolyte." Forex, the Star Wars: Starfighter movie coming out this time next year seems like it could be good, although I'm prepared to be disappointed.
I think there’s room for both. My kids entrance into SW was Jar Jar. They LOVE Jar Jar. The fanbase is varied enough that Lucasfilm can cater to many age groups. That said, I think there’s a limit to how young or how R-rated to take things.
I more or less agree with the Red Letter Media take on it, which is that it's a few episodes of the show stitched together into a movie because they could and it'd been 7 years since a movie. The show never grabbed me because to me Grogu is basically Minions.
“The phantom menace was geared at kids” is a retcon. No. It wasn’t. No trailers were aimed at kids. I don’t remember marketing aimed at kids. I remember a lot of toys coming out (itself basically faking scarcity for collectors). So I never understood that.
It’s a trash movie EVEN if it was geared at kids. Which I think was retroactively argued as a cop out.
I didn’t get the inclusion of Jar Jar until I watched TPM with my kids and it was only thing they loved about it and now want to watch “the jar jar movie.” Not saying I like it, but I get it.
I assume you’re being sarcastic—which I get. There are other ways to appeal to a mixed audience. Like I said: I get what George was going for with Jar Jar.
I get what he was going for. But there’s a world of difference in quality of execution between bluey and masha and the bear? Ya hear me? And within that gap is where criticism lies. There is nothing wrong with putting in a bumbling goofball to appeal to children. But there’s are bad ways to do it. And that was a bad way to do it.
A wise man once said “every book is a kids book if the kid can read”.
George. George was bad at it. He didn’t make the prequels for any creative reason he made them because Star Wars was running hot AF after about 10
Years of very good video games and novels and a whole
Group of teens born after empire came out were just getting into it. And because there was no creativity or reason for them to exist we got the mess they were. And
The toys were just trying to recreate the Kenner rush of the original. It was about George taking the reins of his franchise back from The people who made x-wing, and wrote the thrawn novels.
Hard to market citizen Kane there going back to newspapers for no good reason. And without his editor.
I am too young to corroborate this but I can certainly affirm the conclusion. Kids can get good movies. Phantom Menace is not that. I can believe that noticeable elements were put in it for kids, but that's not the same thing and doesn't speak to quality at all.
The best part of this comment is I can't tell whether "ot" is a typo for a repeated "to" or a typo for "not" and each way completely flips the meaning,
Your reaction to the first Star Wars movie is similar to the reaction people under 70 often have to Sergeant Peppers. Because of your age, you're completely clueless about how shoddy and unimaginative science fiction Movies were before Star Wars. Everything that's happened since Star Wars builds on it, and so of course it's easy for them to look better than Star Wars now. But when it appeared on the scene, it completely revolutionized what a science fiction movie could be.
I appreciate how revolutionary Star Wars was because one of my Star Wars nerd friends made me watch the "making of" that was on one of the DVDs. For as much shit as I give George Lucas, I respect that he took on an insanely ambitious project and pulled it off.
Star Wars is famous for being famous for what it did to movie making and audience expectations. People today go see a SW movie because it’s popular. People today listen to the Beatles because they’re famous and they assume they should like this because other people do. But sometimes what made them great (SW and the Beatles) is a moment in time that doesn’t translate to new audiences 50 years later. My kids don’t automatically love Hey Jude because it’s my favorite song. The assumption then, seems to be, that because SW is famous and revolutionary, every new movie or show must ALSO be mind-breaking too.
Empire strikes back may be the most perfectly edited movie to ever exist.
It also ruined Star Wars because it raised the bar to a level the series has been chasing. The problem with Star Wars is that it’s not a continuous thought out universe. It’s a pastiche of fairly tale elements painted over with sci fi. Knights. Princesses. Storming the castle at the end on horseback. Chosen one. And a big fire breathing dragon that destroys planets.
It’s like when people try and flesh out arthurian legend. It doesn’t work. There’s no meat on the bone.
Great movie, but I wonder how much of Star Wars “greatness” is interwoven with groundbreaking movie making. It’s like those Avatar movies, they’re nothing burgers, empty calories, but make billions because you HAVE TO SEE IT, it’s like Nolan films, they are a must see because they’re groundbreaking film making, not necessarily because once the luster fades, they’re incredible movies (The Dark Knight notwithstanding).
I sort of agree with this. Star Wars is a shallow story that was never meant to be expanded into a “universe” and you can see the cracks when they do. The times make no sense. The original Star Wars ripped off (were inspired heavily) by Kurosawa and medieval fantasy stories. Knight, squire, rogue, princess, wizard, weird monster, evil black knight massive fire breathing dragon at the end that’s going to destroy the good guys home town.
Star Wars distilled that down. And a new hope was good for it. Not all stories need to be groundbreaking sometimes derivation is important.
Yes! Star Wars was a perfect alchemy of pairing Kurosawa and the other tropes you described with a fundamental story: the hero's journey. I think what the general audience loves about it is not the deeper lore that came later. So, when current content, based off a cartoon, based off a prequel, based off a throwaway line from Luke to Obi-wan in ANH ("You fought in the Clone Wars?"), comes out, it's not automatically going to be the same "groundbreaking" cinema experience that the originals had; it's derivative and too inside baseball at that point. But audiences go into those movies expecting to be blown away because the franchise is famous for that.
Well, I snorted happily at this . . . but just how old is the target audience for this blog?: "a puppet who is so damn cute that he makes Lambchop look like a drug-addled prostitute." Shari Lewis was just lucky PETA and assorted vegan nuts were not around in 1957.
Shari Lewis hosted a PBS show in the ‘90s. There are plenty of people in their 30s and 40s who remember her and Lambchop.
And they’ll continue singing it forever just because…
Well someone doesn't have parent brain I see.
Whatever gets me to sit next to my kids watching new star wars!
Too cryptic for me to understand . . . but I am a parent and had a brain last time I checked.
Of course, the real irony here is that like in many other franchises, by far the highest quality Star Wars stuff is the stuff that actually was fully aimed at kids - ie the animated series (Star Wars The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels).
The joys of animation is that, unlike live action, it is generally considered a ‘kids’ medium and so most executives, whilst still willing to give a decent budget, don’t especially care about it so tend to pretty much give the creators free rein when it comes to how they produce it. In the case of the Clone Wars, the team thus pretty much decided “f*** it, so long as there’s no gore or swearing we can pretty much do whatever we like, so we’re going to take this kids show and instead write it for adults, making it full on war show homaging as many classic WW2 movies as we can whilst still keeping things entertaining enough for the young ‘uns”. Thus, not only is it arguably the best quality content Star Wars has produced, but with the talent Lucasfilm had at its disposal, many of their sequences and arcs are arguably up there with some of the best adult action shows going.
If you want a good illustration, check out this scene from the Star Wars equivalent of D-Day - all of the cinematography, sound design, framing, and other filmmaking aspects are genuinely better than about 90% of modern films even now: https://youtu.be/5DAywBKyatc?si=k1bizPnG9edwnty-
The idea that those mediocre cartoons were better or even comparable to the original trilogy is bonkers I’m afraid. They are moderately better versions of the completely horrible prequels, that is true.
I don't really get why people think those animated series are any better than the contemporaneous movies. They're okay... but so are the movies, IMO. Different strengths and weaknesses. I can see valuing the series for the lore, but that is different from watchability.
I mean, whether the prequels were "fully aimed at kids" or not, kids liked them a lot more than adults. Strongly disliking the prequels is something people over 30 do***. For younger people they are just three of those six movies they liked when they were kids. In 20 years they're going to like the new ones, probably.
And I just couldn't get past how Clone Wars looks like a low-quality PS3 cutscene.
There was a series of shorts about the Clone Wars made by Genndy Tartakovsky that aired on Cartoon Network in 2003 - I remember that being really awesome. They were in Tartakovsky's classic Cartoon Network style (Dexter's Lab, Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack, etc). Haven't seen them in forever, though. I think they're on YouTube.
***At some point Phantom Menace hit the "camp switch" for me. I seriously love that movie. I love everything that is bad about it so much and there is so much about it that is bad. Clones and Sith are still pretty meh to me.
Clones is absolutely the weakest, although I love Yoda getting to be a badass.
Clone Wars is… fine. It does a good job of being adventure serials set in the SW universe, which is what all Star Wars ought to be. It nicely fills out the world so it’s not just a backdrop for Anakin being moody in Episodes 2 and 3. Introduces or adds meat to some good characters (Dooku, Maul, and Grievous are good villains that get not nearly enough screen time in the movies).
But it is pretty pulpy and the plots are convoluted. There are great moments but a lot of it is forgettable. And there is a LOT of it.
I significantly prefer Clone Wars: the final season over Episode III, which tells the same story but from different points of view.
I don't even think I've managed to see Episode III all the way through without becoming dead.
Star Wars is fantasy, not science fiction. For fantasy to work the best, there has to be some mystery about why things are the way they are and we as audience members have to play along by suspending our disbelief that there could be a galaxy with space wizards and swords and awesome spaceships and that allows us to enjoy the movie. For science fiction to work, there needs to be some explanations provided so the audience can understand the context within which the story is being told, and that allows us to enjoy the movie.
Star Wars sucks when it is explaining itself. I don't want to know who Darth Vader was as a child and why he became evil and I care even less about how many midichlorians are in his bloodstream or whateverthefuck. I only need to see a good guy kiss a good woman while they are shooting lasers at bad guys. I don't have strong feelings one way or the other on the Mandalorian TV show but if the movie is just dudes flying through space and shooting lasers at the bad guys, I'll go see it.
I like this distinction.
Totally agree. I thought The Mandalorian was a breath of fresh air when it first came out since it didn't seem to want to be anything more than an episodic spaghetti western in space. But I checked out when he went from The Mando with No Name to Djin Darrin, protector of the Mandalorian culture and we had to start learning the rules of who can carry the emo-saber and were expected to have some sort of emotional reaction to characters from the cartoon series that no one watched.
Similarly, I actually liked Solo, but really wish they hadn't wasted 20 minutes on the Kessel run. I never understood the need for some people to justify a scientific inconsistency in a throwaway line in the first movie with anything other than "maybe that guy who seems to be a bit of a bullshitter and con artist is talking some bullshit to people he thinks he can con."
They literally felt the need to write an origin story for Han’s fuzzy dice.
I hate the need for a prequel to precisely answer so many questions. If someone wrote episodes 7 8 and 9 first, then 4 5 and 6 would feel the need to write things so they exactly end up at the place necessary to start out Episode VII.
I mean “the fall of Anakin Skywalker” and “Han Solo as a young smuggler” are fine ideas for prequels, but some of the Easter eggs are really over the top and raise more questions than they answer. Or fail to answer the *actual* plot holes.
OK you wrote 20 minutes about “the Kessel run in 12 parsecs” and a whole movie about why they didn’t put better exhaust shielding on the Death Star, but not 30 seconds on “hey wouldn’t Sidious/Vader be a wee bit suspicious that a known agitator and Senate colleague of Padme Amidala has suddenly adopted a baby girl? At the same time Anakin Skywalker’s stepbrother also adopts a kid with Anakin’s last name?”
What's really funny about the Solo backstory is, OK, sure, you've explained things that nobody wondered or cared about, like "why is his last name Solo," but you've also introduced some characters/plot points that I'd MUCH rather have explained to me, like "are Lando and his droid fucking?"
And also, would that not be the FIRST thing Han would mention to Leia once this slick dude starts hitting on her? “Yeah this is my old buddy Lando. He fucks droids. Threepio better watch his ass”.
Yeah, I got off the bus with the Mandalorian when Grogu got shipped off to Jedi school. I would've been much happier if the show had never made contact with the Jedi.
I think Star Wars expanded fanbase loves the hard sciencification of the fantasy tho. There are tons of books that will tell you what ever button on Vader’s beathing apparatus does. But that’s not explained in the movie. I think you’re right. When the movies or shows try to hardify something fantastical, like the Force is measurable in your blood, it tries to make the fantasy real at the expense of the wonder.
The best thing about the first Star Wars movie, and the reason why people keep trying to use its universe, is the design of the universe. Most sci fi movies look painfully of-their-decade (original Star Trek with the flip hair styles, Clockwork Orange with the intense 70s jumpsuits, etc). Star Wars looks cool. The clothes look cool, the vehicles look cool, the weapons and droids look cool. And the reason why is that the premise of the Star Wars universe isn't a utopia/dystopia with advanced technology, it's a space-skinned pirate movie or western. You don't watch an Errol Flynn movie for its plot, you watch it to see him board ships and sword fight and swing from the sails.
The main fault of both the prequels and the more recent sequels is that they assumed the main characters were what people were attached to and tried to build fancy storylines around them. But the point of Star Wars is to make a serviceable action movie plot in a really cool setting. This is why all the good Star Wars movies and TV shows practically abandon the "main" characters.
I agree with this, and I hope I more-or-less got to this idea in the piece. And one reason I liked this movie is that the stuff looks very cool -- you see AT-ATs, and they look heavier and more detailed than the originals. The CGI is better than it was in the '90s, and they avoid it when they can. The originals had lots of cool stuff, and this one has cool stuff, too.
But there’s something wonderful about a clunky puppet yoda in ESB
Yeah, I think this is something that really came across in a lot of the 1990s video game adaptations of Star Wars, before things were complicated by messier and glossier movies. Dark Forces, Shadows of the Empire, Rebel Assault, TIE Fighter - these games recognized that what was great about Star Wars was atmosphere and design. It's such an incredibly distinctive aesthetic, despite extreme simplicity. It's brilliant.
It takes a lot of aesthetic ideas from, for example, Dune and makes sure they are used for a romp. That's why the Star Wars franchise is what it is and the Dune series is what it is. Not a knock on Dune; that's just how the appeal shakes out.
Oddly, the fanbase is fickle enough that some fans want story (characters) over spectacle.
One point and one aside.
Point: I have seen ZERO advertising for this movie. In fact, this post is journalism solely because it broke the story that this movie was even released. I don't know how a studio can put butts in seats if nobody knows that their product exists.
Aside: I'm the last Gen Xer born so I am the target audience for the original Star Wars and in my mind, other than those first three, the best Star Wars movies are easily the standalones "Rogue One" and "Solo". Take that for what it's worth, but I want more of those geared-to-adult additions to the universe.
I did see an ad for it, but that's probably just because I'm a sucker for Mario, so I got to see all the kid-targeted previews.
Did you know there is a like, for-kids, fart-joke version of Orwell's "Animal Farm" coming out? Yeah.
I found out as an adult many years after the fact that the animated Animal Farm adaptation they showed us in elementary school was in part funded by the Office of Policy Coordination, a propaganda arm of the CIA. I always wondered why the ending was different from the book (in the animated version the animals rise up against the rule of the pigs) but only much later did I find out why.
Anyway, I remember it being okay but conspicuously short on fart jokes.
Whoever approved, acted in, participated in the complete and foul rewrite of Orwell has a special place in hell.
You are a vanishingly small audience. Rogue One was good but also a mega downer, and nobody wants to take their kids to that. Solo was boring ass shit. Couldn’t care less to watch any Star Wars TV show for more than a couple of episodes, including and especially Andor.
Phil Lord and Chris Miller probably would've made a pretty cool "Solo" if Disney hadn't developed a raging phobia of "fresh ideas" in the wake of the "The Last Jedi" nerd backlash and replaced them. I didn't hate Howard's, but "boring ass shit" is pretty fair criticism.
I don't think it was made for kids, and that's why it was good. The best parts of Star Wars were the dark parts. I mean, it's Star Wars, not Star Wheeeeeeeethisissomuchfun!
No, Star Wars is a combination of all of the above. The reason it was a massive success and many sequels weren't.
No, Star Wars is a combination of all of the above. The reason it was a massive success and many sequels weren't.
Completely agree on which Star Wars movies are the good ones. Solo was really good and it's sad that it didn't do all that well.
I took my 11-year old twin sons to see it last weekend. They declared it the best movie they had ever seen. They then started watching the whole back catalogue, for which they’d previously had zero interest. They loved each one including the original Star Wars. (Whereas I, who was thrilled to see the original in its opening week, now find the skinny Imperial Storm Troopers rushing around to resemble characters in an off-brand aerobics video.) The point is, if kids love a 150-minute
movie, it’s awesome. I personally found the baby Yoda adorable and it almost distracted me from the fact that the Hut family look like giant wet turds.
This is interesting -- I was thinking this is EXACTLY the context in which this movie might click. It seems like a great watch-along for kids that age: Simple enough for the kids, smart enough for the grown-ups.
My issue with the movie is that the only reason it’s a movie is that Disney hadn’t had a theatrical release in 7 years and Mando was the only part of the IP with any momentum left. Jon Favreau said that almost literally in an interview on why they made this instead of Season 4.
Mando had a great formula for a “six (22 episode) seasons and a movie” all ages episodic sci fi adventure, and they blew it on 3 half length seasons one of which was actually “The Book of Bo Katan” and a movie that is 4 episodes wearing a trench coat.
Now I want to see a movie about 4 Grogus wearing a trench coat.
Baffling why it had to come out ahead of Starfighter tho
Ready quicker? Thought it had more marketable stars? Established property vs. a new entry? That’s my only guess.
I think so. I don't think anyone at Disney or LFL really thought they had a banger on their hands, but I want to imagine they're surprised by how poorly it performed.
I read this column and it was good. But then I read a different more serious post by somebody else, and your voice was still narrating that post in my head, and it ruined it.
My totally unbiased take is that any future Star Wars should just be variations on Andor. There’s enough childish slop already to satisfy generations of morons young and old.
I liked Andor. It seems like a good formula is "Tell whatever story you want, and then set it in the Star Wars universe."
Totally. Andor takes a throwaway line from the Original Movie and spins it (à la Rozencranz and Guildenstern are Dead) into an amazing exploration of the human costs of resistance movements. I’m currently trying to get A24 interested in my script about the guy from cloud city with the super headphones and his complicated relationship with his father.
Honestly, I'm kind of in the other boat. I haven't watched Andor, so I make no comment on whether or not it's good, but the general vibe I get from it and the way Star Wars fans react to it is that it's kind of the apotheosis of the whole nerd insistence that all their childhood geek obsessions Are Really Really Serious Actually And So Everyone Has To Take Them Just As Utterly Seriously As I Do. Like, sorry, I'm sure it's as good as everyone says it is, and maybe it's a failing on my part, but I just don't think I can personally take a serious and grim and sober exploration of the realities of authoritarianism and oppression and sexual assault and Other Serious Grown-Up Stuff seriously when I know full well it's set in the same universe which has fucking Ewoks running around.
I'm also of this opposite view but not because of Andor specifically. The juice in Star Wars at this point is in telling different kinds of stories in this aesthetic and basic mythic universe that people like. It is good that there is silly kid targeted stuff and also Andor, but leaning on the Andor will not fix what ails the mainline movies. They just aren't very good for a variety of mundane, often production-issue-related, causes. No bold or mild tonal direction will fix that.
Ewoks are vicious creatures, small but deadly, like the Vietcong they were modelled after! Andor has a decent amount of humour, honestly too much for me in Season 2. YMMV.
Between Skeleton Crew and Andor there's room for a lot of good things. They are very different shows.
Skeleton Crew was nice. But I also recognized it as a Star Wars show for kids (and, very obviously, an attempt to ride the coattails of Stranger Things) and significantly changed my expectations.
I liked Andor, but there's a lot of room between the kind of Very Serious Drama that's going on there and the utter dreck that is "The Acolyte." Forex, the Star Wars: Starfighter movie coming out this time next year seems like it could be good, although I'm prepared to be disappointed.
I think there’s room for both. My kids entrance into SW was Jar Jar. They LOVE Jar Jar. The fanbase is varied enough that Lucasfilm can cater to many age groups. That said, I think there’s a limit to how young or how R-rated to take things.
I more or less agree with the Red Letter Media take on it, which is that it's a few episodes of the show stitched together into a movie because they could and it'd been 7 years since a movie. The show never grabbed me because to me Grogu is basically Minions.
“The phantom menace was geared at kids” is a retcon. No. It wasn’t. No trailers were aimed at kids. I don’t remember marketing aimed at kids. I remember a lot of toys coming out (itself basically faking scarcity for collectors). So I never understood that.
It’s a trash movie EVEN if it was geared at kids. Which I think was retroactively argued as a cop out.
I didn’t get the inclusion of Jar Jar until I watched TPM with my kids and it was only thing they loved about it and now want to watch “the jar jar movie.” Not saying I like it, but I get it.
Absolutely no way to get children into something without jar jar. He’s the key right? There’s not any other better way of doing that. Nope.
I assume you’re being sarcastic—which I get. There are other ways to appeal to a mixed audience. Like I said: I get what George was going for with Jar Jar.
I get what he was going for. But there’s a world of difference in quality of execution between bluey and masha and the bear? Ya hear me? And within that gap is where criticism lies. There is nothing wrong with putting in a bumbling goofball to appeal to children. But there’s are bad ways to do it. And that was a bad way to do it.
A wise man once said “every book is a kids book if the kid can read”.
The execs being bad at marketing is equally likely to them being bad at producing.
They are both a combo of incompetence and inability to pick an audience.
George. George was bad at it. He didn’t make the prequels for any creative reason he made them because Star Wars was running hot AF after about 10
Years of very good video games and novels and a whole
Group of teens born after empire came out were just getting into it. And because there was no creativity or reason for them to exist we got the mess they were. And
The toys were just trying to recreate the Kenner rush of the original. It was about George taking the reins of his franchise back from The people who made x-wing, and wrote the thrawn novels.
Hard to market citizen Kane there going back to newspapers for no good reason. And without his editor.
I am too young to corroborate this but I can certainly affirm the conclusion. Kids can get good movies. Phantom Menace is not that. I can believe that noticeable elements were put in it for kids, but that's not the same thing and doesn't speak to quality at all.
The “it’s for kids” was how people with Stockholm syndrome justified the movies existence post hoc.
George gets way too much credit for Star Wars. That was a group effort. The prequels are what it looks like when only George got his way.
This has convinced me to ot see this movie.
The best part of this comment is I can't tell whether "ot" is a typo for a repeated "to" or a typo for "not" and each way completely flips the meaning,
Lol - well_we’re_waiting.gif
Your headline for this article is the exception that proves the rule of Betteridge's Law ... Because the answer is "yes"
Your reaction to the first Star Wars movie is similar to the reaction people under 70 often have to Sergeant Peppers. Because of your age, you're completely clueless about how shoddy and unimaginative science fiction Movies were before Star Wars. Everything that's happened since Star Wars builds on it, and so of course it's easy for them to look better than Star Wars now. But when it appeared on the scene, it completely revolutionized what a science fiction movie could be.
I appreciate how revolutionary Star Wars was because one of my Star Wars nerd friends made me watch the "making of" that was on one of the DVDs. For as much shit as I give George Lucas, I respect that he took on an insanely ambitious project and pulled it off.
Star Wars is famous for being famous for what it did to movie making and audience expectations. People today go see a SW movie because it’s popular. People today listen to the Beatles because they’re famous and they assume they should like this because other people do. But sometimes what made them great (SW and the Beatles) is a moment in time that doesn’t translate to new audiences 50 years later. My kids don’t automatically love Hey Jude because it’s my favorite song. The assumption then, seems to be, that because SW is famous and revolutionary, every new movie or show must ALSO be mind-breaking too.
Also. No. The first movie was not a shitty b movie saved by the ending. It was a shitty b movie saved by spectacular editing by the real
Hero of the franchise Mrs. Lucas.
Because editing is the unspoken hero in all great films.
Saying it’s a shitty b movie saved by the ending makes me wonder if film something you’re that into.
As for mando and grogu I’ll stick with the experts.
The experts->>
https://youtu.be/CByWbgzOgqQ?si=8k-VVbh2cV-6SiKa
The point about the editing is certainly true (which I learned from the "making of" doc).
Empire strikes back may be the most perfectly edited movie to ever exist.
It also ruined Star Wars because it raised the bar to a level the series has been chasing. The problem with Star Wars is that it’s not a continuous thought out universe. It’s a pastiche of fairly tale elements painted over with sci fi. Knights. Princesses. Storming the castle at the end on horseback. Chosen one. And a big fire breathing dragon that destroys planets.
It’s like when people try and flesh out arthurian legend. It doesn’t work. There’s no meat on the bone.
Great movie, but I wonder how much of Star Wars “greatness” is interwoven with groundbreaking movie making. It’s like those Avatar movies, they’re nothing burgers, empty calories, but make billions because you HAVE TO SEE IT, it’s like Nolan films, they are a must see because they’re groundbreaking film making, not necessarily because once the luster fades, they’re incredible movies (The Dark Knight notwithstanding).
I sort of agree with this. Star Wars is a shallow story that was never meant to be expanded into a “universe” and you can see the cracks when they do. The times make no sense. The original Star Wars ripped off (were inspired heavily) by Kurosawa and medieval fantasy stories. Knight, squire, rogue, princess, wizard, weird monster, evil black knight massive fire breathing dragon at the end that’s going to destroy the good guys home town.
Star Wars distilled that down. And a new hope was good for it. Not all stories need to be groundbreaking sometimes derivation is important.
Yes! Star Wars was a perfect alchemy of pairing Kurosawa and the other tropes you described with a fundamental story: the hero's journey. I think what the general audience loves about it is not the deeper lore that came later. So, when current content, based off a cartoon, based off a prequel, based off a throwaway line from Luke to Obi-wan in ANH ("You fought in the Clone Wars?"), comes out, it's not automatically going to be the same "groundbreaking" cinema experience that the originals had; it's derivative and too inside baseball at that point. But audiences go into those movies expecting to be blown away because the franchise is famous for that.
Diminishing returns in that regard. It’s Lucas as an artist. He got to into “blow them away”. Just keep it grounded.
RIP
Jon Favreau is so money and you bet your ass Disney knows it.