ST How Has the ST Affected Your Interest in Star Wars?

At this point I am not interested in the Sequels
I don't care if The Rise of Skywalker is a flop or not I don't care if i watch the movie on the premiere day or in 2 months later and i don't care what happens in the movie

For me the sequels were a big disappointment and I understand that these movies are not for me but for another generation of fans

I will never stop being a Star Wars fan but these new movies simply are not to my liking and I do not consider them in my headcanon but I will still to give the Mandalorian and other new shows and movies a chance but for now the future of Star Wars doesn't excite me too much

 

Why in the nine Corellian hells did noone tell me that some kind soul started an animated fanfilm adaption of the first chapter of the Thrawn trilogy from Legends? I just stumbled upon it on yt and am in love.

 

Oh, cool, thank you.

 

That's very true. The extra details we were given about how the Lucasfilm-Disney deal went down in Bob Iger's new book re-opened old wounds for me. You're right. The fact that we know that Lucas had treatments available and that they were willfully discarded makes it hard to take. We will never know what could have been...

 

Rumor has it that it was a grand total of 10 pages, which appeared during the valuation of the company. We know he wanted more midichlorians and the grandchildren story that to me just sounds like Star Wars Jr.

What has GL made that was worthy of putting on a screen in recent history? I'm sorry, I think we were spared from his treatments.

 

Perhaps I'm biased because I like the PT, but I have always been of the opinion that most of the problems with the PT are technical things like acting and dialogue. I've never had a problem with things like Senate scenes, midichlorians, many lightsabers, Yoda fighting, the polished look of the Republic etc. And I think less people would complain about those things if the scripts had been better written. The mandate for TFA seemed to be "people love the OT, people hate the PT, therefore make TFA resemble the OT and not resemble the PT in any way". The problem with that is they didn't get to the root of why the PT didn't resonate with as many people and avoided like the plague stuff in the PT that was actually good.

They could have gone with Lucas's treatments and given it to better scriptwriters to give it less clunky dialogue than Lucas would have written and then given the script to a director who can work with actors better than Lucas can. The things that Lucas brought to the PT - an overarching story that connects as a trilogy and also connects to the larger Saga, a new era, new lore - are exactly the things that feel lacking in the ST to me and those things were probably there in the treatment. Assuming the rumour is true, ten pages are plenty.

 

He was overseeing the Clone Wars cartoon, which was pretty incredible, IMO.

 

key word cartoon! not a movie.

 

Yes, much of what was done there felt very PT cartoony, and it felt like it played better because it was a cartoon - unliek the PT that just suffered from the same treatment.

Dude, don't get me wrong. The good stuff in the PT's was good. The jedi in their prime, the characters, many lightsabers, the feel of the republic. The technical things that were wrong were pureGL. The acting...Hayden could have been better, but Portman and Jackson are terrific actors that came across like they were reading from card. That's bad directing - which when you think you can "fix" everything in post, you just let slide. Dialogue, Lucas too.

But with the good, the reality is that the PT's problems weren't just technical and execution didn't feel like Star Wars. I don't want totally retro, but in trying to advance technology, he made the PT feel way different than his original movies. I don't think they age well. The cartoonyness is so cringey. The just obvious terrible choices that were made are painful to watch.

The over-arching story, the story of the rise and fall of the empire, anakin etc. - that's what GL was good at. It's the bet thing about the PT that turned Star Wars into an Epic saga.

So, that is the role I think they needed to have for Lucas. I think it's the role they gave him. I thing the over-arching story is going to be quite a bit like the concept of the treatments. I think we're getting the story of the grandchildren, one of which would likely have been a dark sider. We're getting the story of the aftermath of the empire - I would say that GL was never going to make the story about some new bad-guy aliens. I think this is ultimately the same big-picture story. I don't think GL works well letting anybody hold the wheel. His best work is done when he doesn't direct it, but he wouldn't let that happen on the PT. He was supposed to be the consultant for the ST, but I don't think he was going to do well with directors and writers turning his ideas into something useable and then executing them.

Anyway, my thesis is we're getting some thing that is not too far off from the GL treatments from the overarching story/saga leve.

 

I can understand that. I never had an issue with the use of CGI in the PT. It looks well integrated for the most part, it allowed a lot of interesting worlds, aliens etc. that wouldn't be possible practically, and it continued the Star Wars tradition of pushing film technology forward. I also grew up in the PT era though, so I think I take their aesthetic for granted. I can see that the aesthetic jump between trilogies would be jarring for some people.

Out of curiosity, have you ever watched TPM on VHS? I only replaced my copy with a DVD a few years ago, so I only recently discovered that there are actually two cuts of TPM on home video. The VHS version cuts out a lot of bad CGI. The podrace is shorter and the more cartoony stuff is taken out. A few awkward-looking shots are also removed. I forget all of the changes, but it is a significant improvement. All these years I have been wonderig why people have complained about the CGI in TPM so much and, after seeing the DVD version, I better understand why.

There certainly are remnants. Kylo Ren is a descendant of the Jedi Killer and Rey is a descendant of Kira. We know that Luke was exiled on an island, but based on Mark Hamill's reaction to TLJ and his wish that Disney had stuck closer to Lucas's treatments, I am guessing that the actual details were quite different. We also know that the differences are significant enough for Lucas to have felt "betrayed" by the final product according to Bob Iger. We know that Lucas wanted to include the Whills and the "microbiotic world" and those probably weren't elements that you could just remove and say that it is the same story. I don't think he would have reset things by destroying the Republic and allowing the Empire to rise again because I have a very hard time not seeing the motivation behind that story choice not being a desire to enhance OT nostalgia.

You have an interesting point about Lucas likely not using all new villains for the ST. I can see that. Including the Empire in some capacity would make the Saga feel more cohesive. Again, I just doubt that Lucas would have just reset the status quo to where it was in ANH. The remnants of the Empire could easily have been a terrorist organization or a fanatical cult that rose up against the New Republic. It would have been a new dynamic instead of just re-using the conflict from the OT. I wouldn't be surprised if Palpatine's return was outlined in Lucas's treatments though. We know he liked Dark Empire and he is also an element that can tie the whole Saga together.

 

@Reepicheep775
First, great name. Reading those books to my kids now for the first time. 1/2 way through Caspian.

I think the First order could have been done better, could have used more than a couple minutes of the new republic existing. I like that they're kind of fringe terrorists that end up more powerful than the republic thought, and another super weapon is a way to get there...just that's a bit to ANH.

I basically like the bones of the idea, but it felt like they became the empire too easily. TLJ should not have started with "the first order reigns". They blew away the republic yesterday. That doesn't mean they've consolidated power into an empire like organization yet. It does feel un earned and the idea of a novel conflict that keeps it within the bounds of the galactic civil war story.

So maybe I like your idea of the new republic suffering from growing pains, making it vulnerable to the first order until they ultimately cause enough chaos to get control.

I really don't know what Lucas wanted, but I really really don't think there were going to be Vongs or whatever.

 

@fugacity Agreed.

Also, that's awesome that you are reading the Narnia books to your kids! I'm actually re-reading Prince Caspian right now as well.

 

My first born's named Lucy.

 

My Mother died suddenly, two weeks before Episode 7 came out.
Now my Dad and my cousin both passed away this spring.
So losing Han, Luke, Carrie IRL, and now possibly other characters that were so important to me growing up is just feeding my existential dread and fear of my own mortality.

 

When I watched the new trailer, I felt warm fuzzies in spite of my dislike of the first two films in the ST. I thought it looked cool. I wanted to see it. But then I forgot about it in about 10 minutes. Usually, when I see a new Star Wars trailer, I can't get it out of my head. I actually considered not watching the trailer until after my midterms are over because I feared it might distract me from studying. I guess not.

This probably has less to do with the quality of the trailer and more to do with the current state of my fandom. *sigh*

 

I'm curious about the Mandalorian series, and I'm hoping Disney's propensity to ... disney-fy stories in that instance at least will be limited. From the trailer, it comes across as gritty and (gulp) authentic.

But the movies? So strange to say this with a Star Wars film less than two months from theaters, but I have no interest, even in what they're (evidently) doing with the classic, loved characters. Luke Skywalker as a blue-tinged or invisible cheerleader for Rey? Yeah, no thanks.

 

i cant even be hyped for Mandalorian anymore after they announced the story is about how the First Order came to be.

 

To be fair they never said it's about how the First Order came to be....It's more in a nebulous way of how the galaxy would let the First Order come to power 30 years later...it's not ACTUALLY about the First Order's origin....Now could they collide, maybe....But it's not actually about the First Order's rise.

If you read the actual interview you'll see the context.

 

This is the quote in question.

 

I've definitely lost interest in the movies. Mind you, TFA and Rogue One had definitely whet my appetite for more Star Wars films, but after TLJ and the apparently out-of-kriffing-nowhere resurrection of Palpatine... meh.

That being said, my interest in both the tabletop and video games is alive and well, and Fallen Order — much like The Sith Lords before it — is set to make me fall in love with Star Wars all over again.

 

To me the series really is the PT and CT era. That’s the heart and soul. The PT doesn’t add anything of value in terms of story. It’s just rehashing old tropes in an inferior way and changing how we feel about things.