Yes, that much was obvious. How did you like The OT Condensed In One Movie, Dances With Wolves and Return Of The Jedi + A New Hope anyway?

Yes, that much was obvious. How did you like The OT Condensed In One Movie, Dances With Wolves and Return Of The Jedi + A New Hope anyway?

You've said nothing to indicate you're capable of a rational discussion; I don't really care to entertain you with an answer to your question.

I'm perfectly capable of such when speaking with mature adults.

I'm perfectly capable of such when speaking with mature adults.

And yet you fail to see the irony every time you say something like that...

I'm done with this thread. There's way too much negativity from multiple sources. If you feel that another poster is being irrational/immature/unreasonable then it's unlike that posting such is going to lead to them having a revelation leading to a positive behavior change. It's far more likely to just fan the fires and make things worse. So, for those that are flinging poo back and forth, please keep it here and don't aim high--I don't want it going over the fence into other threads.

The thread bascially turned into what I said it was doing pages ago; 3 or 4 prequel/lucas fans shouting over anyone trying drown out any enjoyment of discussions of the movie and some other posters egging them on.

****... How much do I hate the internet sometimes.

The thread bascially turned into what I said it was doing pages ago; 3 or 4 prequel/lucas fans shouting over anyone trying drown out any enjoyment of discussions of the movie and some other posters egging them on.

****... How much do I hate the internet sometimes.

It's a forum. Nobody can shout over anybody else, each post takes its turn. And there's no good reason to dismiss anyone who is critical of TFA as PT/Lucas fans as some sort of attempt to devalue other opinions. Indeed, most of the main critics here actually said that overall they enjoyed the movies. But any negative points made were challenged over and over so of course we mainly end up just having to justify over and over why we didn't like some aspect of the movie. Nobody is trying to "drown out enjoyment of discussions of the movie". Well except for DeathByGrotz who wanted me to stop posting anywhere he was involved in the discussion and DonovanMorningfire who wanted the thread shut down - which yes, are calls for the discussion to end but that's not coming from the critics. We ARE discussing the movie and have talked in great detail about it. So unless you consider dislike of parts of it not to count as legitimate discussion for some reason, we're doing exactly what this thread is for.

The thread is not going to be nothing but people agreeing with each other about how awesome it was and never could have been - people have different tastes. And that's fine. What's not fine is people attacking others because their tastes don't agree and that's largely what has happened to those of us who thought the movie had significant flaws that weakened it. We have repeatedly been told that our opinions are just based on a need to hate, etc. What you wont find, is a lot of it going the other way with people saying others are wrong to enjoy it.

Not liking some or even all of the movie, is fine if you have reasons. And reasons have been given. I know I have certainly supported my positions, and I've gotten plenty of personal abuse for it. I've given none out that I recall.

5 step programme:

Go back 10 pages.

Read the contributions from that point.

Read my post again.

Appologize.

So early in the morning, and the daily dose of irony is already fulfilled.


Don't like the movie, then supposedly you're "ignorant" or a "hater". Point out that this is ad hom, and you're supposedly "derailing the thread".

The thread is not going to be nothing but people agreeing with each other about how awesome it was and never could have been - people have different tastes. And that's fine. What's not fine is people attacking others because their tastes don't agree and that's largely what has happened to those of us who thought the movie had significant flaws that weakened it. We have repeatedly been told that our opinions are just based on a need to hate, etc. What you wont find, is a lot of it going the other way with people saying others are wrong to enjoy it.

Not liking some or even all of the movie, is fine if you have reasons. And reasons have been given. I know I have certainly supported my positions, and I've gotten plenty of personal abuse for it. I've given none out that I recall.

Very true.

5 step programme:

Go back 10 pages.

Read the contributions from that point.

Read my post again.

Appologize.

Apology accepted.

Welcome back.

I said it before. But if anyone feels left out.

Happy to provide the party for your soul, mang.

After all, this thread is something special:

I said it before. But if anyone feels left out.

I knew I was missing something while reading through this!

Thanks for sharing Mouthymerc

Well there's some more irony... considering who insisted that opinions conflicting with his own should not be posted...

Beer? Naw bro, I live in Washington!

(Subtitle: Cheech and Chong hitting a big fat joint like two madmen)

5 step programme:

Go back 10 pages.

Read the contributions from that point.

Read my post again.

Appologize.

Apology accepted.

Welcome back.

Troll much? Thanks for proving my point though...

What knasserl said hit the nail, Lucas "gift of legendary" (lets say something nice about him every once in a while. I'm sure he needs that.) made the legend, firstly his cineastic, and later on his business thinking. Abrahams is also great at what he does, but he did was I was afraid of. He made Star Trek more Star Wars (he said so himself on the Making-of, boy that would've pissed me off if I were a "pure" trekkie) and he did the same to Star Wars...he made it "more" Star Wars.


Just want to iterate, I don't think that artists that do so for money are liers or anything of the sort. Everybody needs to live (and artists that have everything and need no more drive in their live mostly...deviate in their work), but for me, personally it's in the first step. In Lucas head he does what he wants and people love it, thats why he does more 0and he thinks he knows what bits people liked the most and tries to improve those parts. And sometimes he fails guessing that, other times he guesses right but fails along the way. Disney doesn't care what they do, most important part is that people like it, and they don't need to guess for that.

Don't want to derail to far from this, but it's also something I came across in Netflix series. There are some amazing pieces of work that nail pretty much everything you can do right in a film, but after the fifth series you realize, yes, those are good shows, but they already knew I would like that...and for some reason I don't like that. In my head that stops cultural growth and social evolution in the long run, but I studied philosophy so I am allowed to make such ridiculous overstatements


Also:
Part of being a long time star wars fan is arguing the sith out of every detail, same goes for being a "movie-enthusiast". Come on, talking about it is about as much fun you can have while not watching it. Or even while watching it (with the right people in the right enviroment)


I once took part in a two hour discussion if the beginning of batman begins or tim burtons batman was "darker" for the audience at the time. And we talked about the feeling of "Darkness", not the optic part, the feeeeeeel. Yes, beer(s) may have been involved.

This is why we can't have nice things

It's very interesting to observe who is and is not spamming the thread with cliched memes, and wasting posting space on attacking other posters, casting spurious accusations, and generally resorting to the sort of behavior one normally finds in the bowels of reddit...

This is why we can't have nice things

Maelora! Welcome back. Been a while.

What knasserl said hit the nail, Lucas "gift of legendary" (lets say something nice about him every once in a while. I'm sure he needs that.) made the legend, firstly his cineastic, and later on his business thinking. Abrahams is also great at what he does, but he did was I was afraid of. He made Star Trek more Star Wars (he said so himself on the Making-of, boy that would've pissed me off if I were a "pure" trekkie) and he did the same to Star Wars...he made it "more" Star Wars.

Just want to iterate, I don't think that artists that do so for money are liers or anything of the sort. Everybody needs to live (and artists that have everything and need no more drive in their live mostly...deviate in their work), but for me, personally it's in the first step. In Lucas head he does what he wants and people love it, thats why he does more 0and he thinks he knows what bits people liked the most and tries to improve those parts. And sometimes he fails guessing that, other times he guesses right but fails along the way. Disney doesn't care what they do, most important part is that people like it, and they don't need to guess for that.

Don't want to derail to far from this, but it's also something I came across in Netflix series. There are some amazing pieces of work that nail pretty much everything you can do right in a film, but after the fifth series you realize, yes, those are good shows, but they already knew I would like that...and for some reason I don't like that. In my head that stops cultural growth and social evolution in the long run, but I studied philosophy so I am allowed to make such ridiculous overstatements

Also:

Part of being a long time star wars fan is arguing the sith out of every detail, same goes for being a "movie-enthusiast". Come on, talking about it is about as much fun you can have while not watching it. Or even while watching it (with the right people in the right enviroment)

I once took part in a two hour discussion if the beginning of batman begins or tim burtons batman was "darker" for the audience at the time. And we talked about the feeling of "Darkness", not the optic part, the feeeeeeel. Yes, beer(s) may have been involved.

I totally see where you're coming from, really, which is why the only thing I quibbled about was the example of Lucas himself. I'd go further to say that there is no 100% corporate or 100% artistic artist in general. The problem we have as viewers is we literally only have their word for it, more often than not, if what they were doing was the company line or their own vision. I can't say I know enough to seperate which artist is doing which and our own subjective views of the movie are plenty different. Where I see genuine enthusiasm and passion from direction and cast, another will see corporate shlock. We can't know what weighs heavier in the end. What I can do (and that doesn't mean anyone else has to, even) is take a cast who unanominously praises JJ's enthusiasm and passion for the project at face value. Same as Lucas's own. Both of these guys obviously care about Star Wars. You hear it from third parties, you notice it in the way they talk about things they did or "had to do". I couldn't call one a lesser effort than the other, even if some of the pre-marketing seemed to go for a competition between the two.

I think what people miss when JJ and others speak about a movie "for the fans" is that these guys are fans, too. You see the smiles and the grins on set, you can feel the enthusiasm in the backstage footage, even in shots where people don't necessarily know the camera is there. Hell, you have Harrison Ford acting like he had fun with Star Wars again. Disney may have given them a few plot points to hit (or more accurately, DIsney gave Kasdan a few to write in), but what cast and direction did with a script so, ahem, "BADASS!", that's entirely on them. The effort to make everything perfect and the best possible is evident. It shows me they cared. Wether it's TOO perfect, well, that's another matter entirely. That's on the viewer themself. From all I can see, it was an honest attempt at realising, by the sound of everything they said and one could see from the production, their childhood dreams and living them. Personally, I'd call that art. Even if it's 100% corporate. I'm not even going to deny that, because I don't think that's a bad thing at all.

The effect on the individual viewer is, ofc, in the eye of the beholder and always will be. We'll never know for sure if JJ was a spineless wretch who toed the Disney line completely or if he was a giddy, wide-eyed kid living his ultimate dream. We'll never know for sure if Lucas was truly the perfectionist that overshot in worldbuilding or if all he wanted to do was sell toys. Personally, I'd say the truth is somewhere in the middle.

We'll never know for sure if Lucas was truly the perfectionist that overshot in worldbuilding or if all he wanted to do was sell toys.

I think that's easy to know, because it's cart-before-horse problem. Sales people who just want to sell toys have no ideas. People who build worlds do so because they want to, it's what drives them. They don't stop world-building because "it's enough for the toy", they just continue on doing it. Look at TCW, which he had a heavy hand in, it's just one world-building exercise after another, and few toys other than the main characters have resulted.

The toys are a byproduct. A welcome one, no doubt, but still a byproduct. So I'll go with the former.

This is why we can't have nice things

Maelora! Welcome back. Been a while.

Thanks MM. I still read the board, especially when a new book comes out, but the tone of the board has got quite a bit more angry for a while now.

There's still good posters like yourself around though and I'll try to comment a bit more maybe.

It's a shame when fans shout at each other over their favourite fandom. I thought the movie was okay, myself. If someone loved it, then I'm happy they liked it. If they didn't, I hope they find something they like or are inspired to change things in their game. Either way, can't we just get along?

I don't see why you cant be both a creative genius and a shrewd marketer? There's no denying that Lucas has an amazing eye for telling a story. Look at the opening of Sith, the progression of the story with purely visuals for the first few minutes - that's evidence enough to refute the claim that he's a terrible director.

But if I were in his position? Hell yeah I'd try and get some of that sweet, sweet Toy, Underroo and Lunchbox money too.

@whafrog: Yeah, again, won't disagree there. The key difference between Lucas and Abrams or Lucas and Disney is that in Lucas's case, he is Disney, Abrams and Kasdan in one person. Whereas Kasdan and Abrams are, like any other employee or contract artist, directly beholden to their employers.

Lucas himself, on the other hand, puts himself in a similar situation. He needs his art to be successful, because he feels a responsibility for his employees. They are his friends and he is their boss, and from all he says and we hear, he wants to be a good boss and not an *******. He wants them to be able to provide for themselves and their families. That's really a point in his favour, imo. I wish more corporations had that kind of attitude. But it also means that he, too, IN PART orientates himself to the bottom line when doing things that make money, like Star Wars.

That's just a fact of the franchise per se. It's to an extent profit-oriented and what we get on top of it in terms of creativity and worldbuilding is a bonus, but it always comes back to Star Wars needing to make money. Be it because Disney is greedy or because George doesn't want to fire people he's known and worked with for years. So we have that. But does that preclude art and experimentation? Not at all. Are we going to have radically different views on what art and experimentation are, where it begins and where it ends? Abso-fraggin'-lutely.

There's another thing that's a byproduct of Star Wars being so big, though, that I feel often gets put by the wayside: There is a minimum expectation for quality work. People see Star Wars and they expect you to do a good job making it. Look at FFG's books, look at TCW, look at Disney's own quality standards. Hell, look at Kabam and how they're treating Uprising compared to other stuff they've done. Star Wars means you crank it up a notch before you release something. To what end, well, that varies. There's mass appeal, of course, and then we have something like Rebels that goes from Kids Show to Horror Trip in one episode, because it makes sense for the story. You have the safe books, like Heir to the Jedi, and then you have Lost Stars. Star Wars has always brought us both targeted mass appeal and attempts at individuality tossed in there. It's inspired even hack writers like Stackpole to do their very best (hack is a completely subjective opinion of the man; his prose is very good, but his storytelling makes me want to scream at him to collaborate with Zahn already).

Did we get a movie by comittee? Absolutely. Did the people who got handed the comittee's verdict do their very best to make it their own and something awesome? From all I see, absolutely. And with a big name franchise like Star Wars, I think that's all we can ask for. The occassional innovative gem isn't going to be planned. It's just going to come out of nowhere like Grand Admiral Thrawn.