Star Wars Trailer
Amber_Scott
Member Posts: 513
in Off-Topic
So I presume everyone has been watching this all afternoon?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCc2v7izk8w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCc2v7izk8w 21
Comments
Though I gotta say, this trailer looks amazing.
I'm very sceptical about this new Episode. Even if it will be a good movie, it will be bad because it is plain old Star Wars, but milked to the max, again. Poor H. Ford has to play same old Han Solo again, this is really a bad choice. He isn't in the right age for this, Ford is supposed to play different characters by now! Imagine Sir Alec Guinness playing Han Solo in the original movies, does that sound like the right choice?
Honestly, don't we have enough Star Wars? We got two freakin' trilogies, that's six full movies. And that's only the main thing, there is the expanded Universe still, even if it's non-cannon now, one can still enjoy the books and whatever there is. Who is going to watch all of this, if it never ends? Even LotR isn't that long!
Maybe it is good time to check out.
Thanks.
One can find justification for BG:EE, as well as for the new Star Wars if one is inclined to do so. BG:EE also was also a project that wasn't nearly as big as doing a new movie, with a budget like Star Wars would have. So one can't complain much about BG:EE, it allows playing a classic on newer platforms more easily (without the hassle of mods). It also hopefully helps Beamdog to create something original in the future, now that there is an established fanbase and so on.
But imagine you have the budget for doing something as big as Star Wars, and what do you do? Dig out some ancient franchise, and let the elderly actors play their young and energetic characters from back then. This is called milking a franchise, it's happening everywhere and with everything. I'd rather see something new being created, instead of watching H. Ford embarrass himself playing a womanizing, reckless, shoot-first-ask-questions-second smuggler, while he should be playing someone an elderly person can better portray...
There is something that makes me uterrly content with Harrison Ford playing in this movie. We have to consider all years that might have passed between episode VI and VII. Getting to see older Han Solo is not a shocker to me. I kinda called it.
All through 4,5 & 6 we were thinking "What's going to happen next?". That hook was largely lost in the frankly rather onanistic 1,2 & 3. Now however we are being offered the scenario of "Whatever happened to......?".
As someone who was in his twenties when Star Wars first came out and is now in his fifties I look forward to seeing how 'my' characters have fared in the intervening years!
I saw Star Wars for the first time when I was three years old sitting in my parents car at a drive-in theater. I was hooked. It's most likely the reason I like swords so much. I've watched every movie since and even the prequels (which were far from perfect) offered elements of fun for me. I don't know if this new movie will be something spectacular or just a nostalgic visit with old friends, but I'm in either way.
As for Ford's (and Hamil and Fisher and the rest) inclusion, that again is exactly what people have been asking for, some link to the original series. And until you see how they are used, I am not sure how you can judge if it is appropriate. They may not play the action heroes and may be more parental in appearance. Think Connery in The Last Crusade. Until we see, it doesn't make sense to judge.
It is true that Hollywood in particular does a lot of reboots. I don't suspect that this is (as you put it) "let's not make any effort to create something new, let's just take something popular, and milk it, again!" so much as "with as expensive as everything is to make today, the INVESTORS aren't willing to take a risk on an unknown quantity." If it isn't a guaranteed money maker, why invest billions of dollars in it on the HOPE that it will sell. At least that is what the investors are saying. And considering how much it takes to make a big budget movie like Star Wars, can you blame them for not wanting to back something completely untested over a known and successful formula?
Star Wars was one of those million to one combinations that struck a cord with the general public. It was alchemy as much as it was chemistry. Magic in a bottle. The fact that the second trilogy didn't do well is a proof enough of that. Hopefully that which you are poo-pooing, a return to the original in full force, will recapture some of that original magic.
But don't fall under the 'Trendy' belief that just because a lot of people are doing it that there can't be originality out of it. I went into a store one time in my 'Walking Dead' tee-shirt. The kid behind the counter said that they would never watch that show because "Everything today was Zombies. It was all done to death." Yes, there are a lot of zombie movies and TV shows out. Yes, quite a lot of them are crap. Judging "The Walking Dead" sight unseen, merely because others have done it and not done it well, is kind of blind in my view. Maybe he wouldn't like what he saw if he watched it. I can take that. But to blindly judge without sampling? Not smart in my book.
IMHO, Star Wars is not a bad thing to keep making the odd movie for. Do you know War and Peace was not really meant to be read as one ginormous book, but several different ones? Big novels from famous big-name writers were often serialized back in the 1800s? This is a lot like that I think, and it's not necessarily a bad thing to break things up a bit.
As for creativity, the most creative things usually happen when working with lots of restrictions. Anyone can draw a line, for example. How about we put some restrictions, like using ink when you only have a pencil to write with? You'd have to get creative, probably grind up the poor pencil to make bad ink.
The biggest reason hands down we will keep getting SW movies as long as they are profitable though isn't just money though, it's also the fact that people like sci-fi and fantasy, and NOTHING is as hard as making a sci-fi or fantasy movie in a new, unfamiliar universe. Its hard to get the balance right between explaining whats different/possible without being tiresomely pedantic, and this is why most mid or low budget fantasy movies tend to falter. LotR helped get around this with pretty big prologue sections, and by making the movies EXTREMELY long (though IMHO very good and worth watching). Books have the same problem, if an author sucks at introducing and explaining their New World, the whole thing was a waste of everyone's time. So, considering how not spectacular the track record is for fantasy and sci-fi, it should be expected that studios will prefer to work with existing franchises where people already know what Hyperspeed is, or what the Galactic Empire is (and that they're Space Nazis).
@the_spyder I don't know if I'd say the prequel trilogy didn't do well, it just wasn't as popular, especially with the loud 'hardcore' SW fanbase. And the funny part, most clearly still went to the prequels after meeting Jar-Jar Binks, the most unintentionally disturbing thing I've ever witnessed in a movie. I'm sure it made decent returns, or we wouldn't likely be seeing any new investment. http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/Star-Wars this suggests they were VERY profitable actually, even without accounting for the truly stupendous returns on the paraphernalia, which must have dwarfed the considerable box-office returns. Tons of games, toys, more novels, etc.
This looks like a step forward of the things that, thematically, made the originals great. And who's to say that Harrison, Carrie and the rest are not filling in the Alec Guiness role? Personally, I am expecting mostly glorified cameos from them, as they provide a link from the old story to the new.
Abrams is much more suited to the Star Wars universe than Star Trek. I never felt at home with his 2 voyages with the Enterprise, as he was telling different stories in a different (more visual, action-oriented) way than the Star Trek audience expect. These were great space opera movies, and name checked all the right places from the Star Trek canon, they just did not feel like Star Trek movies. Those same skills play much more to the strengths of the Star Wars universe.
One thing I am guessing that will not be appreciated by a large part of the audience in this forum is just how significant Star Wars is to those of us who grew up with it transforming science fiction and cinema around us. If you watch the original trilogy now, as one of many available stories, if feels trite and very cliched - that is the unfortunate fate of a movie that is so influential that it affects everything that follows. So many of the standard tropes, gags and throw-away quotes that are ingrained in our culture now come from those movies, but if you did not live them back at the time, they feel more like a hacked up collection of pop-culture references rather than being the source. If you lived through them, that connection to the source is strong, and 30 years on the desire to live just one more adventure in a long time ago in a galaxy far away is stronger than ever.