JCC Embrace The FU - Formerly the STAR WARS IS BAD thread

I’ve never liked Wild Wild West, so I dont quite see your point.

 

Yeah then the joke doesn't work.

 

It's fine, once we have substituted "original" as a shorthand for aesthetic quality we will no longer need to examine the ideological hell context that is making all of these arguments about the internal workings of a single franchise.

 

I don't see why you're harping on that so hard, Ramza. You can--and arguably should--replace "original" with "novel for this franchise" and retain the entirety of Even's argument. As comforting to Bob Iger as it may be, no one's trying to have some weird metaphysical debate with King Solomon about whether there's anything new under the sun. We're just pointing out that it's both odd and un-enjoyable to recycle the same story in less than ten hours of total footage.

 

I thought Samuel Johnson was credited with a multi axis critique for movies in which "original-unoriginal" was on one axis and "good-bad" was on the other. You don't have to choose!

 

Well Jabba I see two possible courses of actions for you to affect change:

1. Become an employee of either Disney or Lucasfilm. Enjoy a meteoric rise in power until you attain the CEO-ship of Disney or the Presidency of Lucasfilm. Both Iger and Kennedy are mid-sixties, so they won't last forever. Then, keeping in mind the recycled TFA was a box office monster, you keep up the guise that you serve your true masters, the shareholders. While doing so, you (almost) surreptitiously have an original Star Wars film made, one befitting of your vision and the beloved GFFA. It will go one of two ways; like-minded fellows will see this as a new dawn, and it will attain mighty box office success, and you will then be allowed open free-reign for further original works within the Star Wars Universe. Or, thanks to the sheeple it will bomb and you'll be fired and the company placed into "a safe pair of hands". But it won't matter by that point as your film will be out there, and there will be no bringing it back. It won't be a hill you've died on, but a mountain. And, I can assure you, I will see your film. I imagine it will be the cinematic equivalent to a Homer Simpson designed car (or worse, on parr with the PT), but I will see it.

2. Vote with your wallet. Don't see TLJ.

 

Not seeing it significantly hampers the ability to complain about it.

 

He fell asleep during the previous one.

 

I've said it before but people were more forgiving of TFA being an ANH remix because its primary goal was to establish the characters. If TLJ somehow ends up being ESB 2.0 you will see a much different reaction (at least around these parts).

How many times I do have to post this??

 

My objection is precisely the fact that arguments on the subject have restricted themselves to the latter context and implicitly argue there is anything essentially worth keeping in the franchise model. Beyond that, even our notion of the originality of a new Star Wars (qua culture) would be unduly hampered by the restrictions placed on it within the current framework of filmmaking - for all its much-vaunted freshness the original film is somewhat nakedly pro-status quo (There actually are clear demarcations between good and evil! Fighting to restore the old order is good! Buy our toys! Buy our toys! BUY OUR TOYS!) and it was doomed to be because there is ultimately only so much "originality" big studios will permit (which of course makes it especially fitting that so many big properties are recast historically as cultural risks rather than mere economic risks). The entire enterprise is a polluted and worthless concession to the Hollywood machine.

 

I want to see a debate between Ramza and George Lucas.

 

Ramza: "Star Wars was always terrible."

Lucas: "It's stylistically designed to be the way."

 

Congrats! Sad you couldn't get them for the metreon tho.

 

Don’t tell me you somehow got into that 9:45!

Anyway, as long as I’m in front of authentic IMAX watching TLJ, I’m happy, and that’s what Dublin has.

 

Yes, capitalism is bad. This is a revelation! If you don't think there's anything at all worthwhile about the Star Wars franchise as a whole, then why bother? I don't think there's anything worthwhile about the MCU, so I don't tend to go into those threads, at least not for years. I'm never in any rush to watch them and I certainly don't pay for them. Maybe I'm misinterpreting you; I'm still half-asleep.

I would argue that the PT, intentionally or not, called into question some of the things in ANH that you have issues with. The Republic and the Jedi were corrupt and inflexible and the films made a decent argument for them deserving destruction. The wars were frauds. That it fell flat on its face was not simply because of Lucas wanting to sell toys or that such ideas are somehow not allowed in the franchise. Star Trek didn't stay the same after TOS. It evolved despite being a money-making enterprise for Viacom/CBS/Paramount shareholders. I don't see why Star Wars is fundamentally incapable of evolving and introducing new things just because of the way it started out and the corrupting influences of the systems that are behind it and everything else.

 

I don't think Lucas conceived Star Wars as a toy merchandising exercise back in the mid 70s. He lucked into the merchandising rights because the studio didn't value it. But once he figured out what the real source of his revenue was going to be, then holy **** did he ever commit.

 

No he really went for it. He wanted Star Wars stores.

 

lol no, I'm going to be in Michigan that whole week, watching it at a local theater there. Not even Imax, but that's okay, I'll catch an Imax showing later on.

 

Admittedly I'm not making especially coherent arguments because I'm prioritizing pessimistic contrarianism while also trying to sort out my feelings on the subject (overriding impulses being "discussions surrounding TFA in the immediate aftermath were so miserable they're not worth saving" together with the usual "capital bad" and "Star Wars bad"), so misinterpretations are hardly your fault. I think where I'm trying to go with this is something like:

• "Originality" (or "novelty" to use Wocky's totally fair distinction from more abstract concerns) is a big concern as regards TFA. I think that's fair, it bugs some people more than it bugs others, and I think even the staunchest TFA defender/apologist/sycophant/whatever would concede there are, at minimum, strong parallels.
• However, it seems simultaneously that novelty is some kind of attempt to smuggle in a qualitative appraisal under an unrelated veneer - I contend novelty, in art, is different from what constitutes good art (let's bracket what constitutes good art because hahahaha **** that). This, for me, as someone with kind of a low opinion of the whole series these days, sends up a red flag.
• At this point I start thinking - hey, wait, novelty is almost exclusively discussed within the context of the franchise, the eternally tired PT vs OT vs ST rigamarole, and this inside the franchise approach is also the dominant mode for discussions outside of this forum (where it might be excused given the whole theforce.net thing) on seemingly non-partisan mass media pop culture appraisal sites.
• That's lame, it takes away focus from new franchises. After all, surely the next Star Wars, in terms of cultural impact, will not be from Star Wars, Star Wars can't eradicate its own status quo.
• Wait but my entire conception of cultural impact is conditioned by the same market forces propelling the current franchise model.
• Wait but Star Wars itself is weirdly non-revolutionary considering the usual narrative surrounding it. Indeed, it seems to be a deliberately safe package.
• 
  
• At some point I actually concluded that Star Wars was secretly an extraordinarily neoliberal film and consequently it descended into haphazard self-critique in the PT and self-imitation in the ST in line with the decline of that framework and its current farcical self-caricature but wow that's a stretch.
• Stick with the "everything is awful" version.

As for why I keep posting here, I happen to enjoy these bad films and I think these weird, non-contributing arguments are fun to make. I don't bother with Marvel films for pretty much the same reason you don't, actually.

 

Enjoy Michigan, stay warm!

Now if the IMAX theaters around the Bay Area would just drop the 3D...

 

Ramza Star Wars is neoliberal? Did I miss a scene of Mon Mothma dropping traditional pensions and instead offering Alliance pilots 401(k)s? Privatizing public transport on Chandrilla? Signing a free trade agreement with the Hutts including an ISDS clause?

 

It's the UP. I expect it'll be worse than Hoth.