FF:QLD "CLONE WARS DISCUSSION THREAD - SPOILERS ALLOWED - BE WARNED!"

What bugs me is that people will defend this as just being a 'kids movie'.

That was exactly my thoughts with "Happy Feet." The ending was poorly done, and I explain that to people and they brush it off as, "the ending doesn't have to be good/make sense/whatever because it's a kids movie..."

There's no reason at all a kid's movie can't be something that is thought provoking and well rounded...

Well, will see how Clone Wars goes when I get to it. I just don't think I care.

 

Someone on AICN was trying to differentiate between "kids movies" and "children's movies". I'd modify it to be "kids movies" and "family movies".

"Family movies" would describe any of the Pixar Films, children will enjoy them, but they are sophisticated projects that are also good movies. Toss in The Iron Giant or any of the old Jim Henson films from back in the day.

A "kids film" is, to quote my favourite dog and rabbity thing, "mass produced tourist crap". It's the stuff the studios pump out to grab the kids' parents' dosh during the holiday period and that's it. Of course, there shouldn't be a lower standard.

I'm starting to produce some pretty venomous rants over this whole thing, and I haven't even seen the film yet. I just hope I don't add to the stock after having seen it.

Be seeing you,

Magnus Darcrider

 

Magnus, I'm starting to think you, me and HappyBob should go see this together, if just for the scene it will make when we're in the pub fifteen minutes after it's over.

 

You'll get a few "that's kinda cool" bits, enough to distract you enough...
Did you say (or mean to say) drink before the movie too?

 

I'd be lying if I said I couldn't live with that.

 

I'm all for making a "scene" in a "pub", but no earlier than Thursday. That goes for the movie too, obviously. Anyone willing to go then?

 

Maybe Friday or Saturday night. Weekend would suit me much better, and we can make a night of it.

 

I'm taking the munchkin Friday arvo finally. It's not THAT bad.

 

Yeah, it's not that bad.

I wouldn't have been able to make it over the weekend as I'm in Melbourne. My dad had the day off today and wanted to see it. I tried to convince him to see The Dark Knight, but really, how many more times in my life am I going to be able to see a new Star Wars film at the cinema with my dad?

Incidentally, sorry I didn't get back to you Sammich. Completely slipped my mind. Also, we were seeing it at my local cinema, which would require sherpas for you to get to.

I actually had the completely inverse reaction to the one I was worried about and posted before. Instead, my feeling is "What the Hell are all these people whining about??"

Last week was clearly The Week The Star Wars Died. Don McLean and Weird Al Yancovich could collaborate and write a song to mark the occasion. Long term fans who were reviewers were as negative as you could get without throwing out that hated rhetoric that prevailed when The Phantom Menace was released, and thank Buddha no one used it, otherwise I would have had a strong desire to punch people in the face. Repeatedly. Friends who had seen it were lukewarm in their appraisals for the most part, with only a couple of positive reviews.

Incidentally, a blanket apology to my friends for not trusting them; I value your views and opinions, but it felt like the Avalanche had started and that it was too late for the pebbles to vote.

So now I'm perplexed; did I see the same movie as everyone else who didn't like it? Sure, it's not great, but it is good. I've got complaints about the production, but I can throw the continuity and fanwank ones aside for the simple fact that this isn't my Star Wars. However, I'm not sure exactly whose it is though. For the presumed younger target audience, there's some surprising stuff in here; some violent deaths of soldiers, some severed heads, the fact the hero is a mass murderer, the "flamboyant and fabulous" Hutt, and the bizarre line a teenage female gives about "inspiring" the troops, but maybe that was just my dirty mind that went there...

So in summary, dad and I had fun, but I'm very confused. I will descend into continuity and fanwank arguments when we're all ready to do so

Be seeing you,

Magnus Darcrider

 

My mind went there too, lol.

 

Same here. How odd.

I just got back from seeing it. It wasn't as bad as everybody has been saying, but it wasn't good. I liked the art style very much. I noticed that the textures on everything looked like they've been painted on (like TF2). But the animation was terrible a lot of the time. It looked like it had been animated by people who were new to this kind of thing, Some of the action was good, but everything other than that was bad. The writing was terrible and so was the dialog (I was wondering how they got Christopher Lee and Sam Jackson, but then i realized that they do EVERY script that's handed to them) and it was far too long. I honestly almost fell asleep in the theater.

That said, for a Saturday morning cartoon show, which is what this is, it's not bad. Cut this up into 30 minute segments on the TV this is definatly watchable. But because it's been put up onto the big screen, I find myself comparing it to other animated films and Clone Wars wasn't supposed to be one (until GL needed another ivory back scratcher)

 

I will descend into continuity and fanwank arguments when we're all ready to do so

HappyBob and I will give you a call when we've seen it. It'll be a chance to vent spleens, because the whole continuity thing pisses me off in that lovely, quiet little Nerd-Rage way.


As to the comment on "Whose Star Wars is it?" I think that's a hard question. This film has, by all accounts, bombed at the box office, making something like 10% of what RotS made in opening week, and hence not even scraping the stratospheric amount of cash that Phantom Menace made. I think that the honest-to-god truth is that Star Wars doesn't have an audience anymore. This thing's targetted at "the kids", that's what everyone agrees, but it seems that those kids just don't want to see it. And why should they? Apart from the fact that the movie looks goofy as hell with the bad character designs, what is Star Wars to them? What personal investment do they have in it?

How much of a new audience actually went to see the prequels? How much of the box office gross they made was courtesy of old fans, either the generation who grew up with them in the theaters, or my generation who grew up with them on VHS? Star Wars matters to us. We're invested in it, it's important to us in a way it can never be to kids of the new generation. Now of course plenty of them see the movies and dig them, have fun with them, but it's not an event. It's just some other special effects movie of middling quality when it comes to writing and acting, that has nothing that puts it above the pack other than a history that they don't care about. It's harsh, but I'm really beginning to think it's true. And even if it's not, it doesn't change the fact that this movie's doing really badly.

Star Wars is over. For 25 years it was a license to print money, but no more. And that sudden realisation is pretty sobering to me. It's the end.

 

Don't look at me fellers... I knew it was the end the moment the credits rolled on Revenge of the Sith. Actually, I think I believed it when TPM, while a not-bad film in it's own right, finished that night back in 1999. That wasn't the Star Wars I grew up with, it was just... different. Not in a bad way, and no-one will ever catch me saying otherwise. Call me on it if I ever do though.

 

Honestly, I don't think it's the end really. End for us I think, and this move and what's to come may not be targeted at the right people. But if you see my kid in a toy store looking at the new lightsabres and figures and stuff, you'd think it was far from over. Depends on how they keep the Franchise going. A really kids based cartoon series might save it for another generation, but I think when any kid with an interest sees the originals and the pre-quels, they've got a chance to capture some more people...sure makes mine happy.

I'm still in love with the originals so it'll never be done for me.

 

I agree in that way - I can keep/take what I want from Star Wars. For some, it's just the OT, for others, it's as much as they can get. I have always been in the vein of "whatever comes, it's part of it". So I don't have hate for, for example, Enterprise, because it's Trek too.
Same for this. I'm happy to take all of it on board. This is what they obviously want us to experience as part of Star Wars, so I took it in. My thoughts on this movie above stand, for what it is, it's alright. For what it's meant to be, well...

 

But if you see my kid in a toy store looking at the new lightsabres and figures and stuff, you'd think it was far from over.

That's actually a very good point, K. I'd forgotten about your little Padawan over there.

 

I can't see The Clone Wars damaging my opinion of Star Wars, because frankly, my mind doesn't even register this as a movie. Calling three back-to-back TV episodes a film just doesn't do right by the franchise, the fans, or the show's creators. What would have and should have been a harmless, take-it-or-leave-it affair for older fans has been judged out of context, and that's done a lot of unnecessary damage.

I might have been bothered with continuity a few years ago, when the Clone Wars multimedia campaign was in full swing, and the books / comics / cartoons fit together with relatively little trouble. The majority of stories were maturely written, compelling, and milked every drop of moral ambiguity from the setting. At the time, during the lead-up to Episode III, it felt like the Clone Wars were happening then and there. It was exciting. It was relevant.

Now, I just don't care. I might sound cynical or jaded in saying that, but honestly, I'm not. I just don't feel it's worth worrying about. Hell, I've even reached the stage of my life where I'm no longer compelled to read every Star Wars novel. This must be the "adulthood" I've heard so much about. It's not as bad as I thought.

I don't think anything could kill my interest in Star Wars. As far as I'm concerned, Revenge of the Sith ended the series with dignity. That was three years ago. My obsession has since dropped to a healthier "Rather Keen" status. That has nothing to do with The Clone Wars, and nor should it. It's a natural result of the passage of time.

I'm still keeping half to two thirds of an eye on the Expanded Universe, cheifly the Legacy era. It might be a parallel universe of authorised fanfiction, but it's gone to some very interesting places of late. I don't see why an ill-advisably glorified cartoon should affect my opinion of this, or any of the six real movies, or the franchise as a whole.

When I see The Clone Wars this weekend, I'm expecting this to happen very early on. I will watch the first three episodes of a children's cartoon, a spinoff of a science fiction series I rather like, and I'll try my very best to judge it as such.

 

I never said Clone Wars is damaging or will damage my opinion of Star Wars, at least as a whole. More that my own opinions on Star Wars have become a little more complex, a little more fragmented, a tiny bit more jaded and more than a little past-tense.

As for parallel universes of authorised fanfiction, I'm all for them, and I think that in Star Wars it's been done really really well, and it's something I gain a great deal of enjoyment from to this day. The EU is almost like a separate entity to me now, a thing that stands completely on its own, built completely on its own foundations to the point that if you removed the central pillar (the films) the structure would still stand solidly on its own. Sure, there's a whole lot of rotten timbers in there (*Shakes fist at Kevin J. Anderson*), but the strong parts are more than strong enough to support the whole.



I think this metaphor's getting away from me.

Point is: Star Wars is over in a big, public, obvious sense, but not in every sense. I don't read every one of the novels, but I'm enjoying the everloving crap out of the KotOR and Dark Times comics, and the Legacy of the Force novels (the Legacy comic just isn't grabbing me for some reason I'm finding hard to articulate). And I'm going to be reading the Clone Wars novelisation because it's a Star Wars book with Karren Travis's name on the cover. Go figure.

But to me, the EU is personal, a nerdy guilty pleasure that I knowingly and happily indulge in. As a bigger entity, something that can capture the imagination of the masses, Star Wars has been and gone. And it's kinda sad, you know? Damn shame.

 

May as well use my shovel to dig this thread up.

The TV show has just started - I'll be giving this a go to see how it moves on from the 'movie' part of it.

 

I watched the first 3 episodes, and that's frankly enough for me. I might go through the whole season or whatever when it's done, but I'm certainly not going to be on the edge of my seat waiting for each new ep.

 

I like the series - as a TV show, it works fine. As a movie, not so much.

The latest Episode involving a fresh (ie; newb) squad of clones repelling an ambush was really good. It's not classic Star Wars but it's entertaining enough in 20min intervals.