ST It took a forgery to get him called an artist.

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-george-awakens

Solid mostly unbias read. I think many who dislike TFA have also begun to view the PT in a much 'warmer' light.

 

I read it. Rather than concede the writing, direction and acting were terrible in the PT it blames younger fans and the Internet.
Listen this guy deserves all the $4B he got for the franchise. Absolutely. He was and is a shrewd, phenomenal businessman. But TFA's success has not made me think the PT is somehow better.

 

Sums it all up really.

 

I agree with some of it, i feel it's being too hard on J.J saying he'll never be a "master" seems a bit harsh, who knows, maybe he's just starting out. I do agree that Lucas is terrific at world building and that this movie could have needed more of it and i would never take away the OT from Lucas. The force awakens does not make appreciate the PT's though, quite the opposite. People keep saying that Lucas took risks with the PT and didn't play it "safe" or "hollywood" and maybe that's true but I've always felt it hard to see since so much is wrong. Maybe what ended up looking as risks were just GL not being a good film maker... Anyway, interesting article either way.

 

Yes, I get it, you guys hate PT. I said what I said specifically about people who DISLIKE TFA are viewing the PT in a warmer light.

 

When you link to an entire article not all comments are going to be about your small text next to it...

 

You don't need to create a new thread for every review/ article. Stick this in the review thread. It's going to be locked soon anyway.

 

.. How does this belong in the review thread? This doesn't belong in any other thread.

 

I disagree with this completely. There are going to be kids that see this movie first before the other films and it will be their first "Star Wars" experience and no doubt a thrill. The OT was similar when it came out and so was the PT. It now has three different generations experiencing the SW experience for the first time. With the PT, for a lot of people it was just about the time between ROTJ and TPM. It was going back to the universe, not so much experiencing it for the first time. TFA was a great SW experience for me, a long time SW fan, and I can only assume it was a great first time experience for others.

 

I wouldn't say unbiased at all. He mentions 'Gen-Xers' a couple times which makes him sound like a guy longing for the 'good old days'. And if I am being completely honest, the majority of people that dislike TFA are already fans of the PT or are already 'warmed' up to it. I'm not saying the PT is ******, it has flaws like all the films, but it's misleading to say that people are now liking the PT more because of it. What do I know, maybe they actually are, but I believe if anything it is bringing out the interest in SW again so people are going back to the PT to catch up again and see if they've missed anything.

 

That's actually the main thrust of the article. JJ Abrams has revived interest in George Lucas. Which is most certainly true.

 

Interesting read. However, I understand a backlash against TFA, which I love, might be inevitable. Its RT rating may even drop a bit over the years, but not my much.

However, the PT may be God awful or noble failures for some individuals, some of whom are self-appointed experts, but not for most people as JJ has argued.

 

While there is some credit to the article and tfa does tread some similar ground it most certainly introduces something new and fresh to star wars, personally i think the article is being a little harsh on JJ, what he and the team have created given the expectation is quite amazing.
The prequel movies while full of amazing skill and commitment were not good films, some seem to forget what fans love about star wars, when i watched the phantom menace, i was like wheres the music i love and wheres the x wings, tie fighters, none of it ever clicked for me, i dont call that nostalgia, thats what i expected to see and for me some of the heart and soul of a star wars movie.
TFA yes does tread a few similar beats but it captures some of the feelings you got from a new hope, you root for rey, you despise kylo, to me it feels like star wars in a way georges later movies never did.
More of the same is fine with me and ultimately what i expect, not a universe i dont recognise or characters i cant connect with.
Personally i think this rehash or reboot thing is getting blown out of proportion.

 

'The thrill that cannot be recovered"


Apart from for the millions and millions of people for whom the film was thrilling and made them feel like a kid again?

 

Interesting read

 

That's not the same as what that's referring to. Unless you manage to have amnesia, you will never be able to experience the feeling you get when something is 'first'. 'feel like a kid again' is just another way of saying it tickled your nostalgia button.

 

Who are they? How do you quantify them?

Why would films that are viewed as inferior by some suddenly become better when someone doesn’t enjoy another movie in the same franchise? I don’t get that logic at all.

Its kind of stating the obvious really and it applies to many films or bands or other mediums because its hard to recreate that first time experience for anything that’s such a phenomenon. All you can do is make a good attempt at pushing the series along and keeping it popular and still relevant. I think TFA does that. But as already mentioned there will be plenty of people introduced to SW for the first time with TFA and they will (hopefully) be experiencing that thrill for the first time too.

 

Lol. Whyre some of you getting offended by this observation. It's just something to observe. I've seen multiple people across different sites say things like 'the PT may have sucked in some ways, but at least it expanded the universe/was something new/etc'.

 

I don't see anyone offended.

 

The spite of the sated; I've always found it strange.

 

Exactly; see my above post.

 

LOL. Who's offended? Just wondering what you based your assumption on. I've seen it too on this forum, but its such a small minority that it can't be applied as a sweeping statement across the board.

 

Anyone who thinks that the existence and qualities of one thing has an effect, positive or negative, on the value or worth of another thing, is likely to be simply reacting rather than reflecting. Whatever the good or bad things about the PT, they are still the same. If people are only now realising that PT had scope, then that's a failure of them to ever analyse the PT for something other than what they thought they wanted from it, just as they are now only analysing TFA for the things they don't like about that.

TFA has strengths and weaknesses. the strengths don't make it perfect, the weaknesses don't make it flawless. Nothing in TFA has any effect whatsoever on the quality of other movies.

 

Honestly, I don't get it either, but it's happening. I've seen some people say they thought the prequels were awful, but when compared to TFA, they are suddenly amazing.

 

I think its possible to view the PT as very flawed films BUT to also see that TFA exposes that they were not totally without merit.

The two strengths of the PT for me would be firstly that it tries to tell a new and over arching story and its focus on location and design. Now I don't think he really does the former of those all that successfully because it really fails in terms of personal drama, beyond scripting and acting theres simply not IMHO a good personal story that's told on these films, TPM and AOTC especially are pretty much empty of this.

I think its more successful with the latter though, it spends time building up location and a sense that events are part of a wider world and those locations are generally new and often interesting.

Abrams film is more effective in terms of character for me although I still think still a "plot blockbuster" rather than a character story like the OT but I think its really lacking in the above. The middle section of TFA especially is crying out for someone like Lucas to be involved and inject some new ideas, nothing there is 1/10th as interesting as Mos Easily, Bispin, Degoba or Jabba's palace.

Beyond the ideas as well Abrams film for me feels "small", as if its events are only concerning those we see with less of a sense of a wider world, not helped by things like zipping around the Galaxy in 10 secs ala his Trek.

 

For a movie that showed us sights unseen a lot of people seem to want the sequels to show us sights seen.