So I just saw Star Wars for the first time today...
Yes, you read that right. I finally sat down and watched Episode IV: A New Hope for the first time in my life. I plan on watching the other two later but I was wanting to start a discussion on the series.
So, I liked Star Wars. I think it was pretty good. The art direction was great, the alien designs were crazy awesome, and the whole industrial space architecture was inspired. That said, I still don't think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Yes, it had some cool setpieces, and the Force and all that, but man, did it rush through things. One minute the farmboy's whining to his aunt about how he wants to go and kill some space nazis, the next he's sobbing over her fried skeleton, and the next he's a gung-ho space pilot kissing his not-yet-sister (from what I heard, it wasn't until Episode V that they decided to throw that twist in). I feel like I'm being a little nitpicky about this, but after all that I had heard about how these movies are practically the Holy Geek Bible, the first one is a little underwhelming. Well, I'm hoping Ep. V will be better- it has Yoda, after all.
But anyway, what do you all think of George Lucas' brain baby? Over-rated? Under-rated? Couldn't care less?
So, I liked Star Wars. I think it was pretty good. The art direction was great, the alien designs were crazy awesome, and the whole industrial space architecture was inspired. That said, I still don't think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Yes, it had some cool setpieces, and the Force and all that, but man, did it rush through things. One minute the farmboy's whining to his aunt about how he wants to go and kill some space nazis, the next he's sobbing over her fried skeleton, and the next he's a gung-ho space pilot kissing his not-yet-sister (from what I heard, it wasn't until Episode V that they decided to throw that twist in). I feel like I'm being a little nitpicky about this, but after all that I had heard about how these movies are practically the Holy Geek Bible, the first one is a little underwhelming. Well, I'm hoping Ep. V will be better- it has Yoda, after all.
But anyway, what do you all think of George Lucas' brain baby? Over-rated? Under-rated? Couldn't care less?
Replies
You must understand, I watched the movies nearly everyday as a child and they are pretty much the largest part of my childhood memories.
I can understand why someone might now feel that its not that amazing, but watching them now is a little different than watching them back in the day. So much has been borrowed and Star Wars has really set a lot of standards in scifi. What was awesome and innovative back then is now cliche'd. This is purely speculation though.
first one was really low budget and yeah rushed second one is my fav of the entire series.
and the other thing is you're watching it in the complete wrong context to how most people watched the first star wars. you have to think about when it was released. Think about the average kind of movie people saw then.. think about the movies people watch now. thats why its special. its like saying charlie chaplin was shit because there wasnt any voice acting..
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as a kid Jedi was my fav of the series, but now Empire is where its at for me, the story arch is great and overall its a bit more serious and darker than the other 2.
as for the new trillogy, revenge of the sith was my fav but it still didnt come close to any of the older ones for me, the acting was just so bad all around.
starwars is awesome, I loved reading the expanded universe novels back in the day, I still preffer Indy though :P please tell me you have seen those.
As for why it took me so long to actually get around to watching these... well, for one, I didn't really feel like I needed to. So much of the original trilogy was ingrained in the public consciousness by the time I was born, that I basically knew everything about the movies without ever having to actually see them. Seriously, it seemed like a requirement for 90's shows to quote Star Wars, especially if it was "I am your father". One of the greatest plot twists, turned into a weak punchline.
I was also part of the generation that grew up with the prequel trilogy, so that may be another reason for it. My memory of those movies are kind of hazy, but I don't recall them being all that bad. They probably just look bad compared to the originals, I guess.
As for the original trilogy, I do love a lot of the stuff they put into it. Although I never saw the movies as a kid, I remember checking out those encyclopedias on all the crazy wildlife they came up with. Reading that, and then seeing all the creatures in the cantina scene go flashing by was kind of disappointing, in a way.
Oh, and to answer your question, I'm eighteen, but I'm a huge animation nut (I'm actually going to college for it!), so the stop motion effects don't bother me in the slightest. I also love the vector graphics on all the computers- it makes the display surprisingly timeless, if you understand what I mean.
It like how toy-story isn't all that impressive today, but was a landmark the time.
The films are not without their faults, as any films are.
The big issue about the new three vs the old three is the quality of characters and overall writing in general. So many of the good things in the original 3 come from the directors. The new three had the disadvantage of being, as you said, just ingrained in the culture. So I think the quality suffered a bit. Anyway I have a whine list a mile long about the new trilogy, but I don't want to get into all that.
Quickest way I can think to sum it up is this:
The original trilogy was character driven. The new trilogy was technology driven.
remember being a huge fan. I am still not , although I kind of like it.
One of my mate had a light saber and that was pretty cool as an 8 year old
The later versions were pretty poor in comparison
Star treck is ridiculous (their characters sux sux, humans with ridiculous makeup and simple story), and Star wars, it's like a mental marturbation LOL ("pajote mental"). I'm quite old now, but when i was a child, i said mayself, what the hell is this film? the force?. It had the same level of paranoia as too many japanese animes, jedis... omg.
Almost all space films are not credible. Films like these, for a broad public, are not of my taste. I'm sure too much people love the Dragon Ball film ¬¬
I laughted a lot when i watched yoda fighting like a sonic with his light saber, that's not serious, he had difficulties to walk... and in just a second, he's super Sonic! with super mega powers of jedi.. c'mon ¬¬
Stars wars = Total Paranoia with non futuristic designs and ridiculous aliens (they didn't have ipods omg!)
Sorry if i offend some Fanboy
Most movies weren't even attempting to make fantastic/alien settings that were as detailed and teeming-with-life as Star Wars again yet either. There were plenty of awesome scenes in other movies (parts of Robocop, the post-apocalypse scenes in T2, parts of The Neverending Story, Total Recall, etc) but pretty much nothing that had stuff like that in pretty much every scene throughout the whole movie. Nowadays, there are movies that do that kind of stuff all the time. It's almost the standard for scifi action now.
I liked Phantom Menace when it first came out too. As a whole, the new trilogy isn't as cool as the originals, but the first time I watched Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan thrust their sabers right through a big metal door, and then start doing all kinds of crazy flips and stuff, I was like O__O.
"Paranoia is a thought process characterized by excessive anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion"
Personally I like Empire because it had such a huge impact on my tiny 5 year old brain, it was also the first "big movie" I got to go see, and it scared the pants off of me at points. What a ride. I never saw the first one until it came out on tape, but my brother filled me in (he's 6 years older then me) long before I saw it. We also got into Return because our backyard was Endor. I was not hot on the ewoks (their action figures didn't move that well and they couldn't hold guns).
They're still good to watch, incredibly cheesy but its more fun to connect to the memories that spun off of Star Wars. Without those, it probably would have very little to offer. I'm glad it came along and influenced as much as it did. I'm not sure Sci-fi would be what it is today without it.
If you have seen star wars this late, i assume you didnt enjoy spaceballs as much...or you havent seen it at all?. I totally agree with Vig, i liked it so much when i was a kid and now i think it's the memories that i enjoy most.
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AHAHAH!!! Awesome.
But I guess this just shows how the plot and characters were a basis for what was to come and how it influenced our culture so deeply? That or how Harry Potter just stole bits of pieces of every popular story until it became a best seller. :P
After being raised in the Simpsons generation where I knew all the Star Wars cliches and seeing the Epi I-III, I finally actually watched the original triology. And thought it was really awesome.. becuase you could just FEEL something genuine about it, about the characters and the story and all. And it just fills you with a sense of imagination... not that it was necassarialy the best made movie ever, but the original trilogy had that 'it' thing going for it.
The biggest issue I had with the prequels was that they felt like remakes of the first trilogy and Anakin was a little bitch. How about aggressive use of the force, and just fighting in a more savage way to show he is going dark instead of a bunch of whining.
At Jox. I think you can say that about any movie if you break it down like that. Harry Potter in terms of what the viewer experiences, to me at least, Harry Potter feels very different from Star Wars. You can say the same thing about the Lord of the Rings movies if you compare them to Star Wars the way you did
sure year laters after everyone else has stolen everything from the sources and treaked and fine tuned it, it would not be overly impressive. but compair it to other flicks of around the same time. like logans run, and disneys black hole. its easy to see how advanced these movies were for their time. the big thing about star wars is it let sci fi become respected cinema. ridley scott said himselff he could not recieve any backing for alien untill star wars became a hit. star wars also provided an example of a sci fi movie being taken seriously. with costumes that felt believalbe for the time and characters. and not every one either wearing silver spandex or medieval robes despite their social class.
The time to put [spoilers] tags on, has long since past. So the cats out of the bag, you know soilent green is people, you know rose bud is a sled, you know the magicians tricks before he does them because you've watched it a little at a time.
There was a time when "no, I am your father" was holy shit, instead of a bad punch line. If all you've ever known is the joke you've been programed to laugh on cue dispite how intense the moment might actually be.
"I love you!"
"I know."
BAD. ASS.
And then it came to the big reveal. I was surprised how much it affected me. I knew it going in- I had known the big twist for practically my whole life- but it was still shocking. Major kudos to them for pulling it off. THIS is what I expected Star Wars to be like.
One thing that was kinda weird for me was whenever Luke and Leia kissed. Seeing as I already knew they were brother and sister, I just kinda squirmed.
haha yea, the funny thing about that line was that it wasn't even in the script. I think it was just an ad lib from Harrison Ford and it turned out to be one of the best movie lines ever.
I loved Star Wars in the late 90s. Nothing beyond owning the remastered VHS editions though. But back then, the series was something different. Then the new series started up, and all the re-edits and retcons began. To me, the most interesting guy in the whole thing was always Ford/Solo, and then they even went back and made changes to the movies that completely changed the tone of his character.
To me, the franchise has been spoiled by Lucas' constant tinkering with it. He should have left it alone, and not butchered the old films to allow for the new prequel story he wrote to work.
I probably would have been more receptive to the newer films if they told a different story. I'm sure there were other events that happened in that universe. Like maybe a trilogy where Darth Maul was the main villain. Instead, they just beat a dead horse to set up the events to a story we knew the ending to 20 years ago.
I don't remember people 10 years ago saying the old Trilogy would have been much better if a CGI Jabba the Hut was inserted back into the suddenly retitled Episode 4: A New Hope.
So along the way of all of this, I just stopped caring about the whole SW brand.
Hehe, you just made my day jox.
I never was a fan of star wars myself, I was exited as a kid when my father bought me the trilogy in VHS but after watching them I was like meh. Not my cup of tea like some say. The models for the small battle ships are cool though :thumbup:
Wait, wait... all the changes you're complaining about like adding jabba, 'changing' characters (yes, han shot first... but is it really a huge deal to the overall character arc?) etc. were all added FOR the remastered versions that you remember so fondly, not after. There were no changes to the original 3 after they started on the new trilogy. It was always called Episode IV: A New Hope in the opening crawl, just not originally in the title sequence since FOX wouldn't allow it. It was changed in the title in 1981, which is a long while before the remasters. I've always thought adding jabba in was one of the best changes they made, but then I grew up long after ROTJ had been released so jabba as a big slug was already ingrained in my mind. It just felt like they were fixing up a continuity error by doing that.
Wrong.
The Greedo / Han scene has already been fucked with a few times since the 1997 releases, and they now shoot almost at the same time. This happened on the 2006 DVD re-released that were each film had about 100 edits and changes made after the already changed 1997 versions.
As for Jabba, that scene has been redone too, with a new reaction when Han steps on his tail.
Also, some old characters have been replaced with actors from the new Trilogy. Even Phantom Menace has had some changes done since it's first DVD release.
Every time there is a new home video release of these movies, there is a laundry list of changes made to it. He continually fucks with the movies. New inserts were being filmed to keep inserting into the old movies during the making of the last one. The ending of Jedi was changed and expanded in the last DVD release, and has Hayden's version of Vader imposed over the old actor's ghost image.
Here: I went and found this for you as a citation.
Just wait until the eventual blue ray release.
Anyways, I never said that the changes made them bad movies. Just that I lost interest in them. I still like Empire. The beginning of Jedi is cool too. I have no desire to see Episode 3, and what I did see of Episode 2 bored me to the point where I just shut it off and never came back to it.
I've ranked the whole 6 from best to worst a couple of times with different people, and everyone seems to have the same order:
5, 4, 6, 3, 1, 2
The third one is actually semi-decent, if only to see how everything went down, and some decent fighting between anakin and obi wan.
I'm really curious about what the OP's reaction is going to be to the new trilogy after recently seeing the older trilogy for the first time.
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- Added creatures in Mos Eisley, big dino looking thing.
- The Dewback on the hill when they're searching for the droids.
- The flying droid when Kenobi said "these are not the droids you're looking for".
- The added shoot out when they leave Tatooine.
- changing the cardboard cut out to actual humans in the end scene was nice.
All nice little touches that where prefect examples them doing just enough. When you get it right, no one notices, but when you get it wrong... watch out... and they got it quite a few times.
One a side note, I didn't like Indy 4 or Die Hard 4 that much. They took so many liberties with the laws of physics, making their heroes like Super Mario or something. to me they don't feel like a proper part of their series.
I guess that's the rule of 4. The worst part of any trilogy is the fourth.
I was curious about that one. Is there a side by side I can see somewhere?
a)It's much lighter than Empire
b)The final space battle was entertaining
c)The Ewoks are ridiculous (and ridiculously cute)
It reminded me most of Episode IV, which I suppose is the point, seeing as it's the penultimate chapter. Actually, the whole 'full circle' feeling came about in a few ways that most of the people in this discussion probably wouldn't get. Most of the people that I've talked to saw the originals first, then the prequels, so their impression of the series as a whole is likely to be different than mine (having watched it in chronological order). The end of Episode III was clearly supposed to bring about that 'full circle' feeling, incorporating a lot of direct references and even shots from Episode IV. Although I was able to appreciate those, due to the "cultural osmosis" that I mentioned earlier, it wasn't quite as big of an emotional impact as it probably should have been. What's really interesting, then, is that I had the feeling occur in the final confrontation between Vader, Luke, and the Emperor. As Vader watched his own son be electrocuted by Palpatine, I got flashbacks of the prequels- there was young Anakin in his little pod racer, there was Anakin romancing Padme with awkwardly stiff dialogue, there was Anakin slaughtering all of the Jedi children, there was Anakin putting on the suit and becoming Darth Vader- and suddenly it all made sense.
Star Wars is about Anakin Skywalker.
Yes, big whoop, and it's not as if I hadn't already heard it a thousand times before. But now I could actually see the whole thing, all together at last. It took six films and over twenty years, but Lucas captured the whole entire life of a fictional character, from birth to death in cinematic form. That in itself is impressive, a physical example of being more than the sum of its parts.
But this is just my rambling. What do you all think of the series as a whole?
It sucks that you have seen Star Wars so late in life Matthew. Before 1997 Star Wars was the shit, and most of my early memories are of me watching Star Wars or playing with Star Wars action figures. Ever since the Special Editions, Prequels, Clone Wars ... Stars Wars has been dead to me. I'll try to hold onto those pre-1997 feelings as long as possible, but yea, nothing will ever restore the magic. What's even worse is that Lucas is now fucking up Indiana Jones. He must be stopped.
Jar-Jar and the Ewoks don't annoy me at all. Natalie Portman's bad acting in several scenes does.
I will agree some the changes to the Original Trilogy are bad. filling out Mos Eisley = good. cg on C3-PO and Luke's landspeeder during that scene = crap. musical number in Return of the Jedi = bad.
that said I don't make a habit of letting moments of poorly done writing/cg/acting ruin things for me.
Star Wars is all about R2 imo. He's in all 6 movies and will probably be in the next 3. Even jedi cant do jack without him.
People had never heard of Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress." Samurai epics were too boring for mainstream audiences. So Lucas shoehorned the visual sensibilities of Kurosawa with a genre that had a loyal audience. Guess what?! It was chocolate and peanut butter. And nobody had ever seen anything like it.
Also, after the 60s people were tired of being socially conscious. StarWars doesn't end with a 10 minute monologue from an "alien" man in tin foil preaching about the evils of nuclear power. For a lot of people it was very refreshing to just be romantic and have fun. it was the movie people needed at the time.