ST Your predictions about the reception of the ST

I don't love The Matrix and I'm a well educated man with a passion for cinema. I certainly wouldn't call it "garbage" (because of the things you've mentioned) but neither do I think it's as remotely as clever as some think, and I certainly wouldn't describe it as a "masterpiece". They did use the 'bullet time' effect well (which made it stand out), and they made the production look quite lavish. But for me there are several gaps in logic, an excessive use of violence (specifically automatic weapons) which makes me feel uneasy when depicted as 'cool' and some very clunky dialogue. I still like it though... but it's no masterpiece.

 

It's dated junk cinema, and the ST, whatever misgivings we have, will not end up in the dustbin as it has.

The worst thing for the ST is if it's reception is a collective "meh". As it stands the Entertainment Weekly's of the world will hail it as saving the "franchise".

 

I think the overriding sentiment will probably be "meh"... but I don't think that will be reflective of the films quality per se, but rather a consequence of people's expectations. Does anyone think these films will have the cultural impact/significance of the OT? Even if they are good there's a risk they will be lost amidst the swell of other, more 'popular' films ('popular' as in contemporary popular). Ultimately I don't care how they are received... I'm more bothered about what I think of em...

 

Agreed.

 

King_Crimson : Just to add to this, in case you've forgotten... this isn't the first time you've been warned for this, just like you've been warned multiple times before about baiting or flaming other users too.

 

I agree.

 

Wait… did someone actually say the original Matrix was bad?

 

The original trilogy being first and groundbreaking will never be topped in the minds of many.
So it won't ever top it, just on those grounds. The prequel trilogy will be topped I predict because
there will be better quality control. I like what was done with the Star Trek reboot, but others hated it
- so there will be a polarized reaction for sure. The other thing that might sink the sequel triology is
how well the cast is received. One big boost is if they succeed in making it FEEL like star wars again
with the bad guys with british accents, the aged gritty feel - that will go a long way. It will be highly mixed
I think, but overall significantly better than the prequels for sure.

 

I'm expecting a very good reception, if only because the PT has set the bar so low for so many. I think the new movies will please adults as well as kids (something Lucas lost sight of somewhere along the way...) and I also think Disney has garnered a lot of good will because of how well they've managed the other franchises they picked up. I predict around a 75% positive critical response.

 

I'd be willing to bump that 75% up a little higher into the upper 80's...remember that ROTS is at 80% on Rotten Tomatoes. I'm thinking that it will be widely acclaimed, with a number of older dedicated fans griping because it doesn't meet their specific expectations. Casual fans will probably be happy with having a new Star Wars movie in the theater. Critics, like you said, will likely view it as an improvement over The Phantom Menace. That will be the movie Ep. VII will be compared with the most, in my opinion.

The most important demographic (children) will LOVE it. And their will buy billions of dollars worth of video games, Legos, costumes, action figures, pajamas, dishware, etc. I have a 5-year-old son who has only recently become a Star Wars fan, primarily through playing Lego Star Wars. When the new movie comes out, he will be ecstatic. This will be his trilogy in the same way that the OT was mine, if that makes sense.

And, fwiw, my son has seen every movie in the saga except ROTS and his absolute favorite is Attack of the Clones. What do critics and fanboys know anyway?

 

I agree with VibrantCybran.

 

I would say that for those people who think the OT is the bestest thing ever it still will be. For those who think GL lost it after the OT or even for those others who think he lost it with Jedi and think that other people were more responsible for ESB than him and it was done in spite of him but not because of him they are invested in liking these new movies no matter what/

For some one who never thought anything was lost and all 6 movies are great I really only look at those people with a strange fascination. Then there are those within various subsets who seem to want to make the films with only the tools available at the time of the OT.

They will be very saddened to learn this isn't going to happen. I expect that as part of the PR push there is going to be some focus on how many "practical" effects they are going to use and the fact that they are shooting on film seemed to cause joy to these people. I always find it odd that the exact same approach of pushing technology to it's limits during the OT which people loved is then loathed for the PT to do the same.

The fact that the PT was brimming with practical effects often gets completely skimmed over. It's highly doubtful the ST will come anywhere near the PT in terms of PE work when even PJ abandoned them for The Hobbit but I would guess people who don't bother with looking into how the movies were made will forever think that everything in the PT was CGI not appreciating the difference between that and digital composition.

The one thing I do think will be interesting is if the ST does employ the high octane action approach constantly through the film which is very un-Star Wars as the movies have their big sequences but spend so much time on building to those or coming down from them instead of peppering them constantly throughout the story.

Exactly.

More to the point it was Star Wars that was the phenomenon from which all the follow-up films rode the back of. If the first movie had been akin to Empire I see it was a large hit film but not of the scale of Star Wars. The fact that it wasn't the hit the first film was riding on it's back makes this even more clear.

Anyone who thinks that any film of the ST is going to be anything but a large hit movie is going to be disappointed. Avengers was truly massive but it was no Star Wars. The vast array of media and the way it's broken up means that nothing that be dominant over a long period of time like the OT was. It can't really happen like that anymore.

 

"Set the bar so low for SOME" I'd say... I don't see kids walking around in Star Trek t-shirts etc.

 

Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

In my experience the stated view of the bar being low in the eyes of many is valid. All of the films have flaws and the ST will too. I also agree the ST is likely to get at least initially a high reception even if the quality reception doesn't warrant it in the eyes of many after the initial buzz. Part of the divide is simply the different eras people enter into SW fandom from. Why does everything have to be an argument?

 

It's as valid as stating that the bar is high I.e. it's meaningless and largely anecdotal. What do you want to gauge it against? Box office? Tick. Desire/appetite for more Star Wars films? Tick. Toy sales? Tick. DVD/Blu Ray sales? Tick. The bar being lower than it was after the OT? Probably. The bar being low in general because of the prequels? Absolute unsubstantiated tosh.

 

because we're nerds.

 

I don't see anyone walking around in Howard the Duck shirts either.

 

I'd rock one in a heartbeat if I had it.

 

I've just unlocked him in Lego:Marvel. He's the dogs...

 

You cannot deny that the language of cinema changes over time, or call it the aesthetics of cinema if you will. Now, I am not an expert, but just a huge film buff and I think it does not take a rocket scientist to realize that, for instance, the movies made back in the 1960's are fundamentally different from what you see in theaters now. I am specifically referring to the way the stories are told and even the pacing. Compare the 1933 version of King Kong to the 1976 and 2005 versions. The story is basically the same, and aside from the obvious differences in technology, I think that the biggest differences are in how the story is told. I find the 2005 version to be faster, more action-packed and less hammy. But that's just me, of course. I'm sure people back in 1933 loved it and thought it was the greatest movie they'd ever seen, but I wonder what a 12 year old would think of it. And I'm not talking about the special effects, but about the pacing, dialogues, the editing, etc. My niece, who's 15 years old, asked me what one of my favorite movies is and I said The Silence of the Lambs. She tried to watch it and she said she'd fallen asleep, because it was too slow and, quote, they talk too much. I honestly don't know if it's an age thing or if it's just the fact that she's used to another film aesthetic.

I saw the Robocop remake and while I did not like it, because I think it misses the point of the original movie, I couldn't help but think that it does resemble a lot of the movies made today, that are full of CGI and videogame-like sequences. I am not saying that is necessarily a bad thing, but what I am saying though is that maybe this is the new language of cinema and that maybe that is just the way action films look now.

What does that even have to do with Episode VII?

Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, JJ Abrams reportedly said Episode VII would visually harken back to the Original Trilogy or that it'd have the feel of the Original Trilogy.

While I have no complaints about that, given the fact that I love the OT, I wonder if that is actually a good thing or if we may be expecting too much from this movie or if giving it the feel of the OT could backfire on the whole thing.

Let's see: Episode IV is almost 40 years old and both Episode V and VII were made before 1984. These are old movies. Period. They have the same feel of most movies made back then, even if a case could be made that TESB does not look as dated as, say, Terminator. But they're old movies nonetheless. I sometimes wonder what Episode V looks like to a 7 year old. Most OT fans, myself included, are visually biased towards the OT, because we grew up with them and I tend to believe that we're therefore more accepting of how movies looked back then and of how the stories were told, including the pacing and the editing.

Now, I didn't dislike the feel of the prequels. If anything, I disliked them because of the writing and acting, but to be 101% honest, I have no problem whatsoever with their look or feel, even if they did go overboard with the CGI here and there. But Episode I is from 1999 and Episode III from 2005. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they look how you'd expect movies from that time to look, right? And what about the pacing? Doesn't it fit the language of cinema of that time too?

Now we're in 2014... isn't it unrealistic to expect a movie made in 2014 and released in 2015 to feel and look like a 1980's movie or a movie released in 1977?

What do we expect it to feel like? What did JJ Abrams even mean by what he reportedly say?

I may have gotten the concepts wrong, but I hope you get what I'm getting at.

Any thoughts on this?

 

My only thought is the original King Kong is perfect and Jackson's was a self indulgent laughable piece of crap.

 

Yes, it is.
Well, IMO, you can make everything practical, deprive yourself from high-tech special effects and go old fashion, mold the story around things you can build and everything, but it's impossible to copy OT's 70's and 80's SF feeling and haircuts. Although I can't remember any J. J.'s statements about returning to the OT feeling and look, I certainly can K. Kennedy's about returning to practical effects. Said in the context of possible fans' dissatisfaction with the PT's CGI and within the context of Disney buying LF and speculated budget for Ep 7 of 200 million $, those words made the saga disservice. First by suggesting that the ST crew tries to distance themselves from the PT, then by giving PT bashers more munition and finally by making it sound hypocritical because of the budget and all that Disney production machinery.
There are some speculations that the ST should look like the OT because it's set after it. I find them funny because the PT fits in the same category, and it still had it's own look and feel which started to evolve in the OT's look and feel in the last movie. I do hope that the ST will start with some recognizable OT elements, but for the sake of the saga, they should evolve into a ST original elements. I am sure that they'll try to keep at least some of the OT uniqueness, mostly through the OT actors and practical effects, but as the rest of the things, I doubt it.

 

Oberst Hans Landa Visivious Drakarn
Yes - I pretty much agree. Cinema is a progressive medium (in terms of the technology involved and how those images are used) and whilst a filmmaker can be influenced by the past, ultimately they are making a film for a modern audience. If JJ were to make a new Star Wars film with the same pacing as ANH, TESB (as much as they are great movies) I don't think it would appeal to many a modern cinema goer. JJ has to take elements of the originals (and the PT) and make something fitting of the generation we're in.

 

Here's the deal.
The prequel trilogy, love it or hate it, lacked something. Some would say it was magic, some would say it's that "lightning in a bottle" a certain director likes to talk about, and some would simply say it just needed another pass when it came time to approve the shooting scripts.
To me the answer is more basic.
It needed someone to say, "no."
Don't get me wrong, George is a genius in many ways and a great filmmaker. But he needed someone to say, "Hey George, this whole quasi-religious thing you have set up, yeah, midiclorians kinda spoil that" or "Hey, George, I know you want to tell the whole story of Darth Vader, but no one cares about what he was doing when he was eight years old" or "Hey, George, I know you want to do a Buster Keaton type of guy in this, but it just doesn't fit" or even, "hey George, you know all those great reveals in the Empire Strikes Back, you know the audience not knowing that Luke is Vader's son, the audience not knowing who or what Yoda was until he'd harassed Luke for a while? Well, when we make these, we have to figure out a way to make it ambiguous as to who Darth Vader is for the audience who watches these in numerical order, we don't need to see Yoda in these, we don't need to know who build C-3PO, because that's kinda dumb."

Disney buying this and controlling it may provide a more diplomatic atmosphere where people can shoot down ideas, or refine them, or come up with contributions that aren't from the desk of the Bearded Flanneled One. To me that gives us hope that these films could be awesome.

Plus, Larry K is writing this. Yeah baby, the guy who wrote Empire and Raiders. Yes!

 

The problem I have with your interpretation (and this is nothing personal but just an observation) is that it makes three major assumptions....
1) That everyone thinks the same as you... namely the PT is inferior. I don't agree with that. I personally think AOTC and ROTS are far better films than ROTJ.
2) That the PT weren't collaborative productions. They were hugely collaborative productions.
3) That autocratic directors don't make great films. Autocratic directors do make great films. And on a similar point... The perception that filmmaking (certainly in a major studio system) is a largely democratic process (or that a democracy exists in the production process for great films) is an illusion. Major studio films aren't really democracies.