Re: Overly Harsh
Actually I hope JarJar is in the new movie - being horribly tortured, and then sliced to bits with a light-saber. A touch of the Game of Thrones sensibility would really improve Star Wars.
JJ Abrams and Star Wars: I've got a bad feeling about this
“Boys are only interested in pirates and Star Wars,” my daughter tells me. She is four and speaks with the confidence and clarity only a four-year-old can manage. Star Wars Thirty-seven years on, and the Star Wars franchise still captures kids' imaginations Her proof? The games played, toys brought in and the clothes worn …
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Wednesday 21st May 2014 10:47 GMT Steven Roper
Re: Overly Harsh
"I think you meant Alien Resurrection. 3 was not too bad"
Agreed, 101%. Alien 3 is actually my favourite in the trilogy (the alleged Resurrection doesn't exist in my world, much like the mythical Highlander 2 that didn't get made either.) I liked it because it raised the stakes, and therefore the suspense, to even higher levels than Aliens, by eschewing the hardware and making the protagonists even more expendable than Marines.
In Aliens, Ripley had access to a military arsenal - machine guns, grenade launchers, flame throwers, sharp sticks... the outcome was a foregone conclusion. But in Alien 3, it was down to just the sharp sticks. My favourite line in the entire trilogy is in 3 - Ripley's immortal and beautifully sarcastic, "What about torches? Do we have the capacity to make fire? Most humans have enjoyed that privilege since the Stone Age!" describes the desperate situation perfectly. And don't forget the Big Whammy at the end - that Ripley sacrifices her life to wipe out the last surviving specimen of the Xenomorph brings the story, Wagner-like, full circle.
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Wednesday 21st May 2014 12:39 GMT Gordon 10
Alien Resurrection. 3 was not too bad
I actually liked them both equally in a not a patch on the first 2 way! Its just that 3 had so many false starts and rewrites and it almost made David Fincher's brain explode. Google Alien 3 wooden planet for a hint.
I just felt 3 was a bit of an Alien rehash with the generation of british character actors prior to all those currently appearing in GOT. Also I've never quite gotten over the disappointmnent I felt when Hicks and Newt were killed off - offscreen. That still makes me sad :(
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Wednesday 21st May 2014 10:01 GMT btrower
Not even bad
Those things have all been so mediocre they did not even register. Now that I see the common thread I will steer clear. To paraphrase an old expression from Wolfgang Pauli, those movies were 'not even bad'.
I am glad that others said it: Star Wars was OK, but not nearly as great as people seem to think. I am a long time sci-fi fan, but The Godfather movies were truly great; Star Wars is not in the same class at all. Our culture is pretty vulgar, so the fact that something is really popular is not much of an endorsement.
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Wednesday 21st May 2014 10:12 GMT Jonathon Green
"Star Wars' concept of space was a new telling of space. Space before Star Wars had mostly been a camp Saturday romp. Satin cat suits in Buck Rogers and phallic-shaped rocket ships belching smoke in Flash Gordon."
Right. So 2001: A Space Oddysey, Forbidden Planet, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Things To Come, The War of the Worlds, The Thing From Another World, This Island Earth, When Worlds Collide, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (to pick just a handful of the Hollywood films made before Star Wars which addressed SF/space themes and received significant mainstream attention without the aid of satin catsuits or phallic rockets) never happened then...
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Wednesday 21st May 2014 12:45 GMT Gordon 10
A little pedantic imo
The only one slightly comparable to Star Wars in that list is 2001 - and even that is at the other end of the spectrum - its pretty damn opaque for the average movie goer.
The rest are undeniably great movies but very much of their time and therefore difficult to compare to the new Blockbuster era ushered in by Messrs Speilberg and Lucas and of which only SW and 2001 are examples of that canon.
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Wednesday 21st May 2014 13:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: A little pedantic imo
I suggest you to watch Forbidden Planet. Far better than 2001 (which is highly overrated just because the Kubrick worshipping) - and it couldn't be different, Shakespeare's "The Tempest" is far better than any A.C. Clarke book....
If a movie without lasers zapping around is not good for you, well, it's your problem...
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Wednesday 21st May 2014 17:27 GMT JEDIDIAH
Re: A little pedantic imo
Forbidden Planet is like Star Trek version 0.1. It's much better as a movie despite of it's obviously cerebral underpinnings. It doesn't seem to be trying to make itself painful like opera. 2001 comes off like it was trying to be opera. It's something you watch because you are culturally superior not because you actually like the thing.
Still. The design of pretty much all sci-fi before Star Wars favored the "shiny and new" approach and outfits that looked like they were trying too hard to be futuristic. The rustic design approach of Star Wars was a different direction.
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Thursday 22nd May 2014 11:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: A little pedantic imo
SW visuals are stunning, but how things are displayed is very much related to how people perceive them in a given point in time. The Fifties were when airplanes abandoned WWII camouflages and where shiny metal objects. The first astronauts suites were also silver. Future was shiny. It inevitably influenced how a story should be told "visually". The second part of the '70s was different It was a time of crisis. Vietnam war showed a less shiny army, and a lot of soldiers and weapons among the forest mud. and dirtied by it and showing long war use. Future was much gloomer. This shift probably in one way or the other, changed the way to "show" a story.
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Wednesday 21st May 2014 10:27 GMT hammarbtyp
Who are we talking about here?
A director with a patchy track record, a history of recycling bits from other genres', the inability to write scripts where the characters are anything more than 2 dimensional and is a mastery at the art of marketing.
I'm sorry are we talking about JJ Abrams here? because it sounds awfully like George Lucas. On that basis the Star Wars franchise is in good hands.
(as a side note, it was amazing watching the end of 633 squadron last night how much George Lucas lifted for the death star scene in the 1st Star Wars film. All it needed was a ghostly voice telling Cliff Robertson to "use the force, skipper" and it would of been virtually word for word)
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Wednesday 21st May 2014 10:35 GMT lee harvey osmond
Re: Who are we talking about here?
Close but no cigar.
It was The Dam Busters. Dialogue?
Q: "How many guns do you think?
A: (The Dam Busters) "I'd say about ten guns"
A: (Episode IV) "I'd say about fifty guns"
and so on. This is not to say of course that the scriptwriters of 633 Squadron weren't lifting chunks of Anderson's 1954 masterpiece, because they almost certainly were.
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Wednesday 21st May 2014 10:40 GMT lee harvey osmond
If not JJ Abrams, then who else?
I mean, take on a great space/western franchise like Star Wars, and do a good job, or, even a great job? Who is there? Who else could Disney have chosen?
Thinks: Firefly. Did Jos Whedon ever write or direct any films or TV that was any good? In the genre? Recently? One would love to think he was offered the job but had to turn it down on account of being too busy.
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Wednesday 21st May 2014 18:05 GMT Youngdog
Re: @Me If not JJ Abrams, then who else?
The Civil War analogy never sat right with me. The historical Union always struck me as the good guys so I could never equate them with Firefly's blatantly evil Alliance. It also suggests that Joss Whedon might be some 'cold dead hands' nutter and as he's from a Union state (NY) that doesn't work either.
Call it post-colonial guilt but I always saw the Alliance as representing the overbearing British empire. Casting the amazing Chiwetel Ejiofor in 'Serenity' and him doing such a bang-up job probably didn't help!
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Wednesday 21st May 2014 12:55 GMT Gordon 10
Re: If not JJ Abrams, then who else?
@lee h o
"Did Jos Whedon ever write or direct any films or TV that was any good? In the genre?"
Ahem - Avengers Assemble ring any bells? Arguably a sub-genre of the SciFi/Fantasy movie.
I believe he ruled himself out of the SW running early on - (although so did JJ until the moola was increased no doubt). Also I may be getting my timelines muddled not sure whether the grosses were in for AA at that point.
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Wednesday 21st May 2014 10:48 GMT Steen Eugen Poulsen
The Force is always with Star Wars, it's just an utterly brilliant setup.
I once heard a story about Columbus and people saying anyone could discover USA, where he ask people to put an egg upright, after failed attempts he picks up the egg and smashes it so just the end breaks leaving it upright. One comment that he could have done that and Columbus respond something like "you didn't".
George Lucas got the idea and made it come to life, unfortunately we have a sad group of egoistical assholes that somehow thought because they enjoyed watching some children movie when they were kids and in some weird reality distortion filter forgot Star Wars was never Blade Runner or some other epic grown up movie, they had RIGHT's and it was wrong of GL to keep making children movies and toys and whatever else kids stuff has been branded with Star Wars.
It's not about Ewoks and Jar Jar Binks, it's the FACT that the Jedi tries to be nice to them that matters, most of the movies we get shown all kinds of reasons why the bad guys is bad, but until Jar Jar Binks, we never got any example of the Jedi's being nice.
Beating on Jar Jar Binks, is like beating on a mentally retarded kid, it just show how much of an asshole you are.
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Thursday 22nd May 2014 00:58 GMT Destroy All Monsters
They killed Jar Jar! The bastards!!
It's not about Ewoks and Jar Jar Binks, it's the FACT that the Jedi tries to be nice to them that matters
Jedis are Space Progressives? The mix of self-infatuation and direction-by-mantra exhibited in the low-numbered episodes are starting to make sense now.
Duke Leto wants to enter the council? He's a 1%er, throw him out!
Beating on Jar Jar Binks, is like beating on a mentally retarded kid, it just show how much of an asshole you are.
COMEDY GOLD!
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Wednesday 21st May 2014 11:34 GMT Jim McCafferty
Amen to That
An excellent article which captures everything that no one around me seems to care about.
Star Trek was an excellent reboot - in the sense that the audience interest graph stayed pretty much in the high end for most of the two films. There was swizzy technology, audience demographic involvement - and young rebellious children who could grow up to save the universe. Yay.
But in comparison to the previous incarnations the whole experience left me cold. The referential humour was butt clenchingly meta (good: Community, bad: Terminator 3) - and the whole Khan plot tried to be so clever it just came across as stupid (particularly to anyone who hadn't actually seen Wrath). The Federation as a totalitarian government was very hip and modern but again - did we need this change of direction?
I think Star Wars success was down to it being an original story which had been crafted together for years in Lucas and other people's minds. The technology was limited so they had to make it count. It was politically and historically referential but subtlely enough for it not to make people instantly identify with it. If we can have more of that then I'd be happy.
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Wednesday 21st May 2014 11:52 GMT Sir Runcible Spoon
Re: Amen to That
"The Federation as a totalitarian government was very hip and modern but again - did we need this change of direction?"
There have always been factions within each empire that seeks to destabilize for personal advancement - see 'Undiscovered Country' (you only have to watch it once mind, I'm not that cruel)
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Wednesday 21st May 2014 14:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Amen to That
Yes, but one thing is to show there are bad people in the Federation too - still the Federation fights against them, another turning Roddenberry's idea of a Fderation of Planets "in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" in something far worse - and in the process turn Vulcanians is something different as well.
It is that process began in the last ST movies and seasons, but it was one of the reasons those was often so-so in quality. They focusses too much on trying to re-imagine the ST universe to make it palatable to a different audience - the one who needs to see conspiracies everywhere...
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Wednesday 21st May 2014 13:54 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Amen to That
"and young rebellious children who could grow up to save the universe. Yay."
Yaaaaaaaawwwwwnnnn.....
I've enough of "young rebellious children". That's something that sells well to the actual audience, but usually "young rebellious children" just create troubles, rarely solve them.
And that is what exactly Start Trek was not. But Kirk, who was a sort of "enfant prodige", the other characters are men who grow up learning their way through experience, and able to balance the "rebellious" spirit Kirk exibits sometimes. With TNG, they put in charge an older Captain who was able to learn a lot in its carreer (and has an artificial heart to remember him of a time when he was far less "experienced" and far more "rebellious"...).
Abrams just made a group of Wesley Crushers...
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Wednesday 21st May 2014 17:33 GMT JEDIDIAH
Re: Amen to That
> The Federation as a totalitarian government was very hip and modern but again - did we need this change of direction?
Trek taking on current events and embedding them in the middle of the plot.
That's pure TOS. Just go watch the original episodes.
If you don't like that kind of direction then that has some deep and significant meaning that you might want to contemplate further.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
