Your Unpopular TV/Film opinions.

[Xeogred]

Han Solo is Harrison Ford. You can't be Harrison Ford. Nobody wanted this spinoff.

You have a virtually endless universe to work with in Star Wars. But nah, let's do backstory spinoffs of context you never wanted and strip away every ounce of your imagination left!

Star Wars was such a huge thing for 90% of my life. It's hard to let it go.
(doesn't help that EA has destroyed it in gaming too)

[chuckster]

Han Solo is Harrison Ford. You can't be Harrison Ford. Nobody wanted this spinoff.

You have a virtually endless universe to work with in Star Wars. But nah, let's do backstory spinoffs of context you never wanted and strip away every ounce of your imagination left!

Star Wars was such a huge thing for 90% of my life. It's hard to let it go.
(doesn't help that EA has destroyed it in gaming too)

I love Harrison Ford and Han Solo, and I'm with you. People love the Star Ward Bounty Hunters,

And it's sad to look back on a time when so many great Star Wars games were coming out. Especially in the early 2000s, it was an awesome time. Star Wars has(had) one of the most developed and far-reaching fictional universes out there. I'd love to see some Old Republic movies, Mandalorian movies, tales of Luke's Jedi Academy (forget that now); something that builds on the universe, not half a dozen movies revolving around the exact same things we've seen already.

Speaking of games, I'm still mad about 1313. I'm not too sour about games I can easily avoid playing if they're bad, but the fact that a great concept like that was just thrown away is heartbreaking. It's the same with Prey 2. Prey (2017) turned out to be so bland and middle of the road after we got that awesome bounty hunter trailer years ago.

[Exhuminator]

Star Wars was such a huge thing for 90% of my life. It's hard to let it go.

I'll always love the classic trilogy. But the series has been on a downward spiral since The Phantom Menace. Disney has made it really easy for me not to care anymore. And yes, I've seen every Star Wars film up to this date. No interest in seeing further ones.

[marurun]

I think the Star Wars trajectory has been... special. The original films were such a unique combination of unoriginal elements mixed up together in very original ways. They're incredibly pulp derivative and yet simultaneously ground- and genre-breaking, or at least the first two films are. Return of the Jedi is where the series started to veer into more traditional action-adventure territory, with many of the pitfalls that come with that. And then there's a couple decade gap and suddenly there's the prequel trilogy. Those films were also rather unique, and uniquely bad. There are some very high quality elements buried within a mess of modern genre tropes, bad editing and story decisions, and stilted green screen acting. The end result, however, is still rather unique and original, even if it isn't really very good. And that's where The Force Awakens comes in. The Force Awakens is a perfectly serviceable modern blockbuster sci-fi action film. In fact, it's almost mundane in that respect. It's a perfectly fine film, but it's not in any particular way original or unique save it's cinema family lineage.

So the series started our rather special, wandered into mainstream territory, veered sharply into uniquely bad territory, and then pulled back up to a much more mundane space.

[samsonlonghair]

I think the Star Wars trajectory has been... special. The original films were such a unique combination of unoriginal elements mixed up together in very original ways. They're incredibly pulp derivative and yet simultaneously ground- and genre-breaking, or at least the first two films are. Return of the Jedi is where the series started to veer into more traditional action-adventure territory, with many of the pitfalls that come with that. And then there's a couple decade gap and suddenly there's the prequel trilogy. Those films were also rather unique, and uniquely bad. There are some very high quality elements buried within a mess of modern genre tropes, bad editing and story decisions, and stilted green screen acting. The end result, however, is still rather unique and original, even if it isn't really very good. And that's where The Force Awakens comes in. The Force Awakens is a perfectly serviceable modern blockbuster sci-fi action film. In fact, it's almost mundane in that respect. It's a perfectly fine film, but it's not in any particular way original or unique save it's cinema family lineage.

So the series started our rather special, wandered into mainstream territory, veered sharply into uniquely bad territory, and then pulled back up to a much more mundane space.

This is a pretty fair overview of the franchise. I think "safe" is an especially good description of The Force Awakens. Abrams gave Star Wars fans exactly what they wanted (and I don't blame him for that) but he didn't challenge his audience to anything new. The Force Awakens is basically a love letter to the first Star Wars film.

[marurun]

I think "safe" is an especially good description of The Force Awakens. Abrams gave Star Wars fans exactly what they wanted (and I don't blame him for that) but he didn't challenge his audience to anything new. The Force Awakens is basically a love letter to the first Star Wars film.

I think it could be argued that Lucas was an experimenter, and with the prequel trilogy, an auteur of sorts as well. He's really good at taking tropes, especially pulp tropes, and messing with them. He was creatively involved in Indiana Jones and Labyrinth as well. His experimentation with Star Wars generated something rather unique, and his revisiting of the series later in life resulted in something equally unique, for all the wrong reasons. Abrams, however, is not particularly experimental. He's good at faking depth. He knows how to generate that 10% of the iceberg above the water and he's good at playing to popular trends. He knows how to identify what people think they want and how to play to that. But he doesn't really go beyond that. The Force Awakens is homage to those most common, average wants of Star Wars fans. It is a somewhat shallow, typical-Hollywood version of Star Wars. It's not that he's giving fans what they want. Nobody can give them that. Lightning in a bottle is just that. He's giving fans those most easily accessible, surface wants that most Star Wars-related media has already indulged in for years. But because it's a Hollywood blockbuster it's also got to conform to the special kind of shallow-ness movies are expected to exhibit.

[Ack]

More of you guys need to go see the true Episode 7: Ewoks: The Battle for Endor.

[marurun]

I want to see the Topher Grace cut of the prequel films. He reportedly has been dabbling in editing to gain experience and did a single feature-film length cut of scenes from the prequels that makes a lot more sense. But of course he only showed it to friends at his house at a party and it's not out floating around anywhere.

[Exhuminator]

He's giving fans those most easily accessible, surface wants that most Star Wars-related media has already indulged in for years. But because it's a Hollywood blockbuster it's also got to conform to the special kind of shallow-ness movies are expected to exhibit.

You 100% nailed my problem with the modern Star Wars films. They're bubblegum.

[samsonlonghair]

You 100% nailed my problem with the modern Star Wars films. They're bubblegum.

Now hold on, I might grant you that The Force Awakens is bubblegum, but Rogue One? Nah. A movie wherein all the main characters die isn't exactly bubblegum.

Edit: Not saying that Rogue One is a perfect film; just saying that it's not bubblegum.

More of you guys need to go see the true Episode 7: Ewoks: The Battle for Endor.

I think you mean DROIDS! The Adventures of R2-D2 and C-3PO