ST What's An Acceptable Artistic Goal for a Big Budget Studio FIlm?

If we could go back in time and ask William Shakespeare (assuming he existed and wrote his plays) what he wanted to get out of writing Macbeth, he might tell us:

"to entertain people and make a little money."

An exotic dancer at a strip club off the interstate bypass might tell you the same thing.

A Disney executive would probably amend that to say "to entertain people and make a lot of money."

I don't see the problem with TFA having the goals of

1. entertaining people by appealing to the goodwill general audiences and fans have for the original Star Wars movies, including its plot elements, its characters, its iconography.

2. setting up a new series of movies by having the original cast help introduce us to a bunch of appealing new characters and handing off the series to those new characters

3. making a boatload of money.

Works for me. Seems like millions of people have been bountifully entertained by this model of a modern movie megahit.

You're free to expect something else from the movies you pay to see. But this movie delivers what it sets out to deliver. The exact commercial exchange promised by all the movie's advertising from the day the first teaser trailer was released is that you will give Disney some of your money, and in return Disney will provide you with a movie that reminds you in an exceptionally entertaining way of exactly how much fun you had watching the original trilogy.

 

If a movie doesn't drive me to the depths of nihilistic despair and the heights of joy while simultaneously making me question my very existence and every decision I've ever made, then it is an utter failure. If other people like it, well then that's even worse.

/s

 

Maybe I'm the odd one out here, but I really don't need modern movie megahits in my life. I was working while the newest Avengers movie was on last night, and seeing TFA again today was just more of the same. Good guys running, making sassy jokes, lots of explosions, unrequited angst, and triumphing against all odds. Is looking for an original, well-plotted, and character-driven sci-fi movie asking too much? 'Cause then I'm happy to stick to reading those things--what're they called? Oh, books.

 

I don't expect Star Wars to be a Blade Runner or 2001 and it shouldn't try to be.

 

Not to be that guy, but Shakespeare wrote MacBeth to kiss King James's a, er, ingratiate himself to King James. He had become accustomed to a certain standard of living, and when James took the throne, he was worried that his plays might not be in demand at court anymore. Maybe choose one of the comedies for your example, perhaps?

 

Erm.. I want to be entertained by the movie I'm watching not reminded how much fun I had watching a different one. Nostalgia doesn't do much for me personally so if I had to pick one thing it would probably be originality.

 

That's fine. No one is required to like The Force Awakens. I'm just saying it's a perfectly acceptable Star Wars movie with perfectly acceptable artistic goals for a high level commercial endeavor.

you're being that guy. What you're talking about is idle speculation concerning a point about which there is insufficient evidence in the historical record. It's a set of assumptions arising out of one possible interpretation of the text of the play itself within its historical context.