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Writer: Why Watching the Original Star Wars Again Was a Bad Idea (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes: CNET's Michael Franco recently sat down and watched Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope again in preparation for the release of The Force Awakens later this week. His advice to anyone who's thinking of doing the same is to save your childhood memories and skip watching it again. Unlike wine, Franco doesn't think the movie gets better with age. He writes: " Since that first viewing, Luke, Vader and company have loomed large in my imagination, and clearly in the imaginations of many other adults introduced to the sci-fi franchise as kids. So have the rest of the characters, as well as the sounds of a lightsaber, a Wookiee and a TIE fighter and the idea that someday I would learn to control people through the power of suggestion and a wave of my hand. But it now seems that maybe all that got a little gilded in my memory."
You can save yourself the trouble of this one if you just read thi quote:
I know I've been spoiled by movies with bigger and bigger budgets over the years, but it seems like Lucas could have leveled up those costumes.
If you're the kind of person who can't appreciate something as being from an era, because OOH FAST SHINY LOOK A SQUIRREL then OK, rewatching the original films may not be for you. Otherwise, they're still just as good (or not) as they were when they were new.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In TFA he says he fired up his Apple TV and rented the movie. This is not the original Star Wars. This is the Remastered Fifty Times George Lucas is a dick edition that is probably terrible. Go watch the Despecialized Editions and you might appreciate it more.
Just because this guy has become a cynical, unimaginative douchebag doesn't mean the rest of us have.
I watched episodes 4-6 this past weekend and I enjoyed them every bit as much as I did when I was a kid.
'Michael Franco recently sat down and watched "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope" again .. His advice to anyone who's thinking of doing the same is to save your childhood memories and skip watching it again..'
I disagree, the subsequent prequels and the remade insertions into the original were a disaster. Not only that Lucas never went on to make another decent movie. Not only that Hollywood stopped making movies for grown-ups and concentrated instead on special-effect extravaganzas which, while being expensive to produce, would be guaranteed to make money in across the movie going demography.
George Lucas Destroyed Modernity
Back in the day, when Lucas was just a filmmaker, Star Wars was conceived literally as "a cowboy western in space".
It was SUPPOSED to be action-packed and a little cheesy, with hammy 2d archetypes for characters...
The way that this subsequently has ended up hallowed in some peoples' minds (including Lucas, who never has apparently missed a step on his own hagiography) does a disservice to what it was really intended to be.
-Styopa
... and I didn't think it had aged too badly. It's more or less what I remembered. A lean, fast-paced space opera, with a handful of iconic scenes and an uncanny ability to raise a smile. It's not a deep or profound movie, which is in some ways part of its charm.
For me, the Star Wars I loved growing up was never really about the movies. It was about the 1990s games; in particular X-Wing and TIE Fighter, which unlike most other space combat games of the time weren't afraid to allow their starfighters to be complex, tricky beasts, and the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight games. It was also about the early novels; the Timothy Zahn ones in particular, before the later degeneration into unreadability. Those games and books showed a very different Star Wars to the one you saw in the films; darker, more complex and more focussed on detailed world-building, compared to the light-touch magical space-opera of the films.
That Star Wars is gone now; it took a body blow when the prequels ignored it and since Disney took over the franchise it's been officially retired. But that's fine, I can live with that. I'll go and see the new movie and I hope I'll like it. I'm fairly confident it won't be a mess on a par with the prequels. But it won't be the Star Wars I grew up with.
This is just lame. For starters, anyone who saw Star Wars once in 1977, and never watched it again until now, is clearly not a big fan of the sci-fi genre in the first place. Even if you managed to avoid it on VHS, DVD, etc, the original trilogy was re-released to theaters multiple times, the last being in 1997. I saw it again on the big screen then, and it held up as well as ever.
As for his specific points, and how things didn't exactly align to what he remembered from four decades ago, Luke was whiny at first - it is a coming of age story. C3PO has always been a "nervous wreck". He's was a vaudeville type comedy relief. Obi-Wan simply put Luke on the right path and their time together was very short. The movie isn't about Obi-Wan. Costumes were fine, and as for the aliens, I'd rather have practical effects that are slightly flawed than 100% perfect CGI aliens (is that really what he wants??). And finally, it is a very fast paced action movie with only a couple breathers in the whole thing. Yet it manages to create such a vast world with so many nuances in short time - you couldn't take it all in in a single viewing (Ah, maybe that's his problem right there! LOL)
That article was just silly.
Better known as 318230.
The author complains about Luke being whiny, but what does he expect? The whole back story with Luke was that he is miserable and stuck on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Then of course there's the fact that he keeps asking Owen when he can go to the Imperial Academy. What lonely, bored high school/early college aged kid wouldn't be whiny?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
hilarious the first time.
.. unimaginative douchebag.
News at 11
"We Brake for Nobody"
OK, so the humor level is about 6th Grade, but it's still more fun than watching the first Star Wars again.
the whole Star Wars universe. The original was clearly a kid's movie, as were all the follow on stories. It's like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny- there's something wrong with you if you haven't grown out of it by the time you're 8 YO. I mean really, one of the movies had teddy bears ferchrissakes!
I do a lot of 3D printing and I swear if I see one more Yoda head or storm trooper head or light saber being printed by an adult I'm going to scream! If you look at sites like Thingiverse or Youmagine, 70% of it is iPhone cases, 29.9% is star wars figures, and the rest is good/useful/interesting stuff with some artistic or functional merit. I wish they'd spin off separate sites for that stuff so I could avoid searching through all that dreck...
many other adults introduced to the sci-fi franchise as kids
Maybe you just grew up?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
That's offensive. In the future please use LBGTQNAA.
Honestly, if you think Star Wars IV hasn't aged well, watch the prequels. They are excruciatingly bad.
If you think a classic story has aged then it sounds like you were too young or immature to realise what was going on in the first place.
The story hasn't changed, only your perception of expectation of it has changed which makes me believe that you don't like it as much any more because you simply don't remember what it was like in the first place. Rose coloured glasses for your hindsight.
I just watched it recently. It was exactly like I remember it, cheesy and entertaining. If your suggestion is to not watch the original because it may ruin it for you, then maybe you don't like Starwars.
The past isn't what it used to be....
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Fuck Lucas, if you're not watching the original theatrical version (yes you can find a torrent of the before-George-Lucas-raped-your-childhood version which is quite good) you aren't seeing the real thing.
It doesn't sound like he was fan to begin with since he talks about seeing it last at 9 years old? But, then he says he saw Jedi as a senior in high school? Okay, so New Hope comes out in 1977 and he's 9 years old.
Jedi came out in 1983. That's 5 years. So he was a senior in high school at 14? Not impossible but pretty unlikely.
Yea, I'm a fan of the original trilogy and it was sad to see George Lucas turn in to his own characters (young Lucas = Anakin, old Lucas = Vader). I still have PTSD from the first prequel which came out when *I* was a senior in high school, so I won't be in line at the theater for the new movie any time soon, but, it's also okay to make fun something when done well (there are 3 Rifftrax of the original movies) but this is supposed to be "commentary", filed under "tech culture"? Really? This is a poorly written editorial and some how ended up on /.
I was nearly 20 when "Star Wars" first hit the screen and, except for "2001", it was the best science fiction movie to date. Compare it to "War of the Worlds", "The Phantom Planet", Panic In The Year Zero", "Robinson Crusoe On Mars", "Crack In The World", "Farenheit 451", "Planet Of The Apes", etc and you will find nothing comes even close to the epic sweep of adventure that the original "Star Wars" brings to the screen. Hell, I do a rewatch every year and it is still my favorite episode in the series.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Some people have no taste. Yes 3PO's whiny, the costumes can be funny at times and Luke's a big complainy-pants before he matures into his Jedi persona in SW:ROTJ but this is all part of the fun IMHO. We watched the HD remastered version last night as we are watching the six movies chronologically, one per day, leading up to when we'll be seeing SW:TFA on opening night (Empire tonight!). As ever that 1977 movie, now turned into as multi-time-remastered classic is still one of the best movies ever made. Despite being slightly marred by the now dated-looking CGI Lucas slapped on top of it (why walk a big CGI creature right infront of the Luke & Ben in the "These are not the droids you're looking for" scene?), the imagination, tension and (still) wonderful imagery in crisp HD with DTS-HD Master audio makes it one of the movies to own if you have a decent system to enjoy it on. Maybe watching it compressed to death through an Apple TV wasn't the good idea.
CN=poolmeister.OU=lurkers.CN=slashdot
Lucas made a whole bunch of alterations to the original trilogy that change the feeling of the movie. If you want to time travel back to the 70's, you need to watch the despecialized edition.
I just sat down and watched Hardware Wars (1978, directors cut) and it demonstrated that Star Wars was a masterpiece of technical and special effects.
Also, Luke was supposed to be a farm kid, not larger than life. The whole point was the ordinary farm kid had this in him. Duh.
star wars definitely has not aged well... there are many more compelling stories than post-apoc Force. tbh the games and the mmo 'the old republic' have much more compelling stories. TOR in particular is kind of epic. force user factions slugging it out at the height of their power? epic. The movies are not good, and has not aged all that well, but it has spawned some epic stories from third parties
After seeing the movie for the first time after 20 some years, Obiwan letting Luke fire up his father's lightsaber kina bothered me a little. Holy crap, he's waving this thing around IN THE HOUSE! I got a 17 year old & there is no way he is playing with a lightsaber in the house. TAKE IT OUTSIDE & make damn sure the dog is inside!
My wife would be like "NO WAY is he playing with that thing", you take it back to the store right now!"
Dammit I must be officially old now.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
Lucas gave an interview once where he explained his original motivation for making Star Wars: he wanted to make a movie with sets. The old-fashioned, Hollywood studio way. (Unlike, say American Graffiti, which was shot on location.) When you watch Star Wars, feel like you are on alien worlds, and space ships, and in outer space. But for the filmmaker, the whole thing was done on studio lots, with painted sets and props.
I rewatched the move some years later, and it really struck me how easy it was to visualize the scenes being shot on the stage of my high-school auditorium.
Everybody's got an opinion, I guess, but I think Episode IV (or, let's face it, the movie that everyone means when they just say "Star Wars") holds up really well.
- The music -- is there anyone in the world who doesn't hum along? The music is melodramatic, but is a perfect match for the tone of the movie. Epic story! Heart-stirring!
- Princess Leia, childhood crush justified
- Han and Chewie, one of the best science-fiction buddy pairs; always wondered about whether their mixed-language conversation was partly inspired by Lassie ("Bark! barkbarkbark! Whine, bark!" "Little Jessica's in the well, you say, and she's refusing to leave until all her demands are met, and you think she may have been hypnotized?!")
- Special effects *still* look good to me; the more original ones generally seem more organic and real than the fancier replacements within scenes (thought the wholly new insertions are dumb)
- The story overall
- The camera movements and other filming choices still make it seem to me like "a modern" movie. One example: Film stock can bother me; I dislike evident grain, and the really orangey cast of a lot of '60s and '70s movies (not sure how they originally looked, but that's the way they look to me now). Star Wars has only a very slight cast; compared to others from the late '70s or early '80s (and some far more recent), it just doesn't feel dated in the same way. Some movies you get the impression that you're "watching a movie," but with Star Wars, I am totally sucked in / absorbed, even with the funny wipes between scenes. Can't see those wipes elsewhere without thinking of SW, actually.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
But it now seems that maybe all that got a little gilded in my memory.
I find your lack of faith disturbing, Michael Franco.
Oh, Dad. Stop coming on here and embarrassing me in front of my friends.
When I saw the original Star Wars, it was an epic.
When I saw The Empire Strikes Back a few years later, it seemed...smaller. The plot had become parochial; the relationship between Han and Leia had degenerated to bickering. The cognitive dissonance resolved when I realized that I wasn't watching an epic: I was watching a comic book on the big screen.
I suspect a lot of Star Wars fan behaviour is reactionaryism -- they see the Trekkies wandering around with Spock-ears and want to show that Star Wars is better. Twenty years ago, the proof that Star Wars was better was that the fans didn't get involved in that sort of nonsense, and just watched the films....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
They are in experience in themselves. Watching them was much better than watching any of the remade versions Lucas has put out. The movie has a very genuine and unpretentious feel yet still has all the excitement you remember from when you were younger.
Yeah because Empire was a total kids flick *eye roll*
Wrong. Han didn't shoot first, Han fired, and Greedo died. There was no second shot.
Technically, the author of the original article is probably right. C3P0 *was* a pretty annoying robot, and I remember having the realization that he grated on my nerves a bit the last time I re-watched the original Star Wars episode 4 too.
And sure, the quality of the costumes of the aliens aren't all that impressive by today's standards.
But I wonder how many other movies, cartoons or TV shows he remembered fondly as a kid but didn't ever re-watch as an adult? Because wow, if you do that with some of them I personally loved as a kid, it's brutal how awful they really are. (I grew up liking shows like "Super Friends" in the 70's -- and that's a GREAT example of a cartoon best left as a childhood memory and not EVER revisited!)
I think with the original Star Wars series though? I've gone into it with expectations adjusted for the era. Before Star Wars, there were hardly ANY movies dealing with aliens or outer space that weren't completely cheesy! Viewed through that filter, I find it stands up pretty well today as some of the best film-making of the 70's dealing with the genre. Those cool blaster sounds? They came up with banging on steel tension wires holding up telephone poles to get those! They didn't have all the computer and CGI tech. we take for granted today to pull any cool sound desired out of a hat. And new technology had to be developed just to film Star Wars, with cameras running along wires and so forth.
Not only that, but the first time I re-watched Star Wars as a young adult, I remember being really shocked/impressed by the complete lack of cursing in the films. That became such a "staple" for any movie with action and explosions in it, it seemed strangely missing from Star Wars. But that's part of the beauty of it. Nobody needed to drop an F bomb to get the point across that someone was scared or tense or angry. It was all kept very clean and kid-friendly without becoming sappy.
I've seen them recently and they were exactly as I remembered them. I enjoyed them. I haven't seen the prequels yet. I've seen parts of the prequels but after having seen those parts, could not force myself to watch the whole thing.
The new one coming out, from the previews, looks like it will be Star Wars meets Batman Returns. It looks to be very dark, unlike the light hearted action of the first movies. I usually don't care for dark, so I probably won't like the new one. I may or may not see it in the theater depending what I hear from friends. I'm sure many of my friends will have seen it by Saturday morning.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Because we were kids once and nostalgia is a thing.
The hoopla over Star Wars has always baffled me.
The hoopla over Hollywood has always baffled me. You remember when people were seeing counselors for feeling suicidal because they couldn't go fuck furry blue people like in Avatar? But when Star Wars came out, there was nothing quite like it. Its popularity was backed up by sequels. The actors have gone the extra mile and been spectacularly good to fans. And people have a need to belong to something, and to wear silly hats, and Star Wars is as good a way to fulfill that as any. It's a damn sight better than most.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I agree with you in the sense that SW is a children's franchise. I loved SW as a kid (but only for the last 20 minutes of space battling), but then by the time Empire came out I wasn't so enthralled anymore.
I don't know, I will always have a soft spot for the original, like many my age, but I certainly don't live for the movies.
Now, the Star Wars universe is *very* compelling to me. The idea of alien civilizations who have lived with technology for thousands of years before we were even walking upright and which appears to be magic to us... THAT is cool to think about. Probably my favorite interpretation of Star Wars is the MMO "Star Wars: The Old Republic" which is very creative and really takes time to delve into many unique and inspired stories.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
That means Han shot first... And last.... And all the shots in between...
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
Am I the only person that thinks star wars is nothing but an overrated merch machine? I was exposed to star wars for most of my childhood, and sure I liked it when I was 7-8 years old. But as I matured, so did my taste in fiction I suppose. The last movie I saw with my father was Episode 1 and I have regretted it ever since. I haven't even seen the other 2 prequels, and I don't plan to. I also don't plan to see this new one, if only to show my distaste for having everything that I remember beign chopped/screwed/repackaged and force-fed through every available media and merchandising outlet. If there is one thing that I loathe, it is being marketed to. Yuck. Most people seem to eat that shit up with a spoon though.
Yes when watching the original again it's amazing how few lines Obi-Wan says in the entire movies.
Perhaps the conversation felt deep when watching as kid even though it's very short.
I still want to believe the movie is about Obi-Wan. It's something that can happen in real life. You encounter an old man that you instantly recognise as trustworthy and caring, like some aura is emanating of him. Benevolence and well-being, wisdom.
That's about the opposite of depictions of old people as old-fashioned, bigoted, inflexible, repulsive or downright evil (e.g. the big bad corporate executive, the remorseless senator or vice-president that has shady deals with the aliens and a rogue intelligence organization, etc.)
Nope, Obi-Wan is your ideal grandpa or dad right away, or that one teacher that got a full classroom of whiny bastard children complying from the first to the last day, doing nothing other than, er, teaching.
When I watched the original Star Wars, first we went as a family to the London opening, so it was a "Big Deal" (tm).
Second though, was that the pace of the movie was so much faster than anything I had ever seen!
It was so fast for me, that details about the plot or whether is made sense or not, simply did not apply.
It was all about the rush of the new, the space and landscapes, the machines and the simplistic mystical idea of good is better than evil because of a mystical life "force" which a kid was able to let flow through him at a crucial moment. It wasn't even that the kid couldn't have done it on his own, but rather, that the odds were weighted in his favour because of this "force".
They could have taken the "force" out of the movie completely and it would still have made sense. People fight with swords without needing a "force", he could have hit the exhaust port without the "force" too. It just added an extra level of intrigue and mystery.
If I compare it with 2001: A Space Odyssey, for example, the pace of Stars Wars was extreme.
Of all the considerations of making another in the series, the pacing is one of the key elements, and I hope they get that right in the Force Awakens.
Wait.... 3CPO was annoying?
I thought that robot was about the only classy guy in the movie.
Now, R2D2.... that bot was freaking annoying.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
You simply can't watch these movies through the eyes of an adult. You need to be a kid again. I provide the following counterpoint, which totally gets it... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The thing is, he really isn't that annoying in the original trilogy. He's hapless and completely pessimistic, but he's not that annoying. In the prequels, however, he's gone to complete bumbling stupidity and slapstick humor at his expense, sometimes to the ridiculously improbable level. Look at ESB; Luke and Han are missing, and Threepio stupidly tells Leia how long the odds are. Afterward, he realizes what he did, and he super-awkwardly tries to apologize to her to make her feel better. He understands how big a mistake he made, and in a completely droid-like way, tries to fix it. In AotC, on the other hand, he's literally chopped up in a cartoon-like fashion and reassembled with different body parts and accidentally participates in the battle, all the while telling snarky bad jokes. There's no deeper layer of subtle understanding; he's just gone from the pessimistic character to the comic relief.
The AK47 is supposed to be pretty damn inaccurate beyond about 30 yards....
Not the most accurate assault rifle, true, but it is fine at least out to 100 yards.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Apparently Michael Franco shot first.
I suspect a lot of Star Wars fan behaviour is reactionaryism -- they see the Trekkies wandering around with Spock-ears and want to show that Star Wars is better. Twenty years ago, the proof that Star Wars was better was that the fans didn't get involved in that sort of nonsense, and just watched the films....
You obviously do not have a brother who has imagined that he is a Jedi for almost 40 years....
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
R2 and 3PO weren't Leia's. They went into the service of Captain Antilles after Padma gave birth, to disappear among all the other droids. 3PO was wiped for security but nobody thought to wipe the astromech. It's just an astromech! It doesn't even talk!
Captain Antilles' job for the Organa family is transporting them around safely. It's why he was there when Obi-wan and Padma met up with Senator Organa and it's why he's there years later trying to escort Princess Leia back home.
I was a snarky teenager when I saw the original Star Wars (no IV: A New Hope), and I was impressed by how much the audience laughed at every campy, over-acted scene and every bit of rote dialogue. Of course, that was basically the whole movie.
Up until recently, whenever I re-watched the movies, I was never able to re-capture that delightful feeling of camp from the first movie (IV: A New Hope), but last night I did - and I noticed (again) all of the Star-Trek sound effects (quietly in the background), the use of Photon Torpedoes (did they ever make it to other movies), and so on.
This isn't an endorsement of the new movie, which I haven't seen - and I'm sure it's not the kind of endorsement anyone who has fallen in love with the movies would care to hear. But it's my experience of re-watching the first movie and how I was able to recapture the magic I felt back then when R2D2 being zapped and falling over had the audience groaning with laughter over the well deserved fate of an annoying character (but all of the characters were annoying to that audience.)
I tried re-watching the police academy movies just recently....just don't do it. Some things are better left as fond memories.
Would you accept Star Wars: The Toaster instead?
Knowing it all since the late 70's.
For a person who says he wasn't much of a whiner when he was 9, the author sure got better at it over the years....
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.
Gene Roddenberry had publicly marketed Star Trek (TOS) as a Western in outer space—a so-called "Wagon Train to the Stars." (from the "roddenberry.com" website).
The original Star Wars also reflected a throughback to the 1930's through 1950's styles for serialized westerns, science fiction, etc., with the aforementioned "cheesy" scene transitions, the fairly simple characters, the obvious good vs bad.
Star Wars is still as much fun to watch now as it was then.
Back before TPM came out, my college (I know, I'm old) had a special showing of the original trilogy.
What I couldn't get over was how hokey it all was. What had seemed to me as a kid to be the very pinnacle of epicness (next to Robotech) came across as cheesy, with lame dialogue and a simplistic plot. Yes, even Empire: all its vaunted "darkness" was quite clearly a way of setting up a cliffhanger to make damned sure you were at the theater when Jedi came out.
But it was the best kind of hokey: it was labor-of-love hokey, it wasn't trying to be anything else. It was entertainment in the fullest sense of the word, and it's clear that the people who made these movies, cared passionately about entertaining the audience. So I discovered a new kind of fun and appreciation in watching Star Wars.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
I think it plays well.. but I saw it when it *first* opened in Philly, as an adult, who'd read tons of sf & fantasy. And had seen the old serials. This writer's still missing a lot of the movie.
But then, I really liked Episode 3, which was the episode 3 I'd been waiting for, and apparently 90% of you, at least, still don't understand.
Nor did the utter and complete MORONS who brought their 9 yr olds to see it; that clearly did not understand PC-13, nor much of anything else....
mark "clue: Oedipus Rex"
Were you around 20 years ago? Both franchises attract their share of People Who Take It Too Far.
It's both a blessing and a curse that we live in a society where people have the freedom to be so obsessed over a movie, TV show, or video game, etc.
It's obviously a blessing because we have the freedom to do so. Our societies and countries (in much of the world) aren't so oppressive that we are prevented from engaging and sharing in this kind of creative output, and a lot of us are freed from having to spend the majority of our time not starving to death or not being killed by someone else. This is most indeed a blessing I wouldn't want to trade for anything.
The curse, of course, is that some people will trade these cultural ephemera for real life, and equate them with something deep and meaningful, which they generally aren't, not in the grand scheme of Life, the Universe and Everything. If your stated religion is "Jedi", and it's not meant ironically or as a joke, then there is probably something wrong with you.
However, the blessings outweigh the curses in my opinion.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I was in high school, a senior, when the original Star Wars came out. I was definitely not a nerd, and didn't see it. Really, I don't remember it being big in the culture at the time. No one I knew talked about it, and all that came later, in the eighties.
A couple of years ago I decided to finally watch them all, in order. By then, of course, it was such a large part of the culture that I knew much of what was supposed to happen in the films, and certainly I'd seen bits and pieces of the films over the years. What struck me was how cheesy the original Star Wars was. It really is a children's movie, not the kind of thing that would interest most adults. It seems to me that one has to have seen Star Wars as a child in order for it to really capture your imagination. I can imagine how going back to it might lead to disappointment. The rest of the series wasn't that much more impressive, either. IMHO, of course. But compare it to 2001: A Space Odyssey, which came out ten years earlier.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
Star Wars is a timeless, existential masterpiece.
Luke wasn't really trying to destroy the Empire as much as he was trying to come to terms with his own beliefs and the extent he was willing to go for them.
He ended up trusting an old guy in a desert for his career and trying to save a man who was able to ruin the galaxy.
Along the way he fought not only against storm troopers, but against the Public who thought he should settle for something more mediocre.
The prequel trilogy was about interactions between societies, gobs of people, bloviating about the common good, blah, blah, nothing to be confused with greatness.
You can tell that JJ Abrams gets this because in the trailer he explicitly and unapologetically confronts the viewer as an individual. "You have that power too".
The original trilogy gets a lot of attention because of flashy swords and space dog fights, but it really establishes the inward authority of the franchise.
Look for the Auralnauts Star Wars inspired works on YouTube, but these need to be viewed starting from "EP I: Jedi Party".
Or maybe not, if you can't stand the idea of Jedi Knights being insufferable drug addicted douchebags and androids being deranged psychopaths.
...you need more range time.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I picked up the VHS cassette of this about half-way through seeing it at the cinema. Thank you, Instant Cassettes!
Attack its weak point for massive damage!
When Star Wars was new, I was 11 years old, and I thought it was the greatest movie of all times. And it may still be the greatest movie of all time -- for 11 year olds. Now I'd rather watch 2001 or The Right Stuff -- or The Martian. Now I can actually appreciate Blade Runner, too. And as for Star Wars. . . eh. . . yeah, it's still fun, once in a while, and so are all those legions of superhero movies these days, but it's all kid stuff. I don't want to live on a steady diet of kid stuff, and it's a little disheartening that there's so much of it, and that the kiddie shows get the huge budgets and production values these days. Star Wars (plus a nod to Raiders of the Lost Ark) did that. It led us to this infantile place.
The intense focus on sequels and franchises irritates me too. How much did Disney pay for the Star Wars franchise? Billions? There's absolutely nothing in there that they couldn't have created their own counterpart to -- and it would have been fresher. Why can't we get that Ringworld movie that's been rumored for decades? Why not bring some of the other classic worlds from SF literature to the big screen, or just do something all new? It seems we've reached the point where originality is not merely devalued, but is actually feared and loathed.
I was about the same age when I saw 'Forbidden Planet' in its 1st run as the OP was when he saw 'Star Wars' (That's what it was called when I saw it in its 1st run in theaters.)
I have to say, my overall opinion of FP hasn't changed much. I loved the philosophical implications then and I still do now. I didn't like the stupid mushy romance between the Captain and Altaira then and I still don't like it now. I liked the special effects then (though even as a kid I could see that clunky, barely able to walk Robbie wasn't a very practical design), and I still like them now. (One difference, now I can see the monster without getting nightmares.)
After seeing 'Star Wars', I left the theater thinking it was a lot of fun, but overall, probably not quite as good as Lucas's 'American Graffitti'. Hmm, I wonder, if I saw 'American Graffitti' again, would I think that had aged well or poorly.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
I'd rather see people with Spock-ears than with Jar Jar-tongues!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I saw the original Star Wars movie on the day it came out and was blown away. The special effects were so awesome for the time. Will never forget how much I enjoyed it.
Everything else is a mere annoyance, even Jar Jar Binks.
Jar-Jar was a competent Force user, very likely Sith by the end of the trilogy.
https://www.reddit.com/r/StarW...
Quick summary: Drunken Fist martial arts, highly successful even when the odds are against him, waves his hand before people agree with him, so low-keyed that people under-estimate him (so no one pays too much attention, letting him be out of the spotlight).
At the start of the trilogy? He's helping the good guys.
By the end? He's working with Palpatine.
Every aspect of the pacing puts him as the foil to Luke or Yoda from the original trilogy. He's just not looking for attention.
It made a huge impression. That being said, though I was a child, the thing is just as I remembered it. Like most movies and TV shows I saw as a child. Some people alter their memories markedly with age more than others, this is not uncommon. It's funny to me, I saw No Highway In The Sky on TV around the same time, and that flick is pretty much the same as I remember (awesome). Maybe the issue is something else, having to do with how you've changed, and not so much about the actual flick.
Star Wars (and Star Trek) has always sucked, Stargate is WAY better.
The problem is not in the old films, at least no more than originally. It is in our older selves, worn down and jaded, no longer able to maintain the necessary "willing suspension of disbelief". A good movie requires work from the viewer, not just the actors, writers and crew.
Besides, any hollywood movie is tacky, to a person who makes their living making the real tech! 8-)
However, make sure you know which version you have, Lucas changed the later versions of the movies. 8-(
I recall having a similar discussion into the variance in Batman movies, after the original Joker (btw the ages 9-15). I felt a societal change back then, and why any follow up movies don't appeal to me. I can think of one anomaly and that was Heath Ledger’s stellar performance in the Dark Night Rises. Even as a boy I think Princess Leia's rescue and attire would be appreciated more than a better digital experience.