You must log in or # to comment.
Star Wars is now the schlocky, uninspired, cheesy “sci-fi” that the original Star Wars killed by changing the whole genre back in 1977. It’s time that the next George Lucas emerges and ends the travesty that is Disney SW. I don’t see it happening with the risk-adversity of modern Hollywood.
I mean, George could’t even edit his first film right and got way too much help from who was around him. When he got famous and nobody could talk down to him his movies got meh at best… and jar jar at worst
So you’re saying GL isn’t really the guy who was responsible for “a new hope”?
I’m saying the ideas were there and the work is its child for sure, but he had a lot of help from great minds of the time. A movie is not just made by the director, and if his/her voice is too strong it will kill the talent around him. That’s what I think happened after his success
and jar jar at worst
🤣🤣
The new show isn’t great for reasons other than Disney being woke.
On the one hand I don’t mind some new interesting plots involving same sex partners or similar. However, I agree with you that modern studios are forcing the issue to the point that it ruins everything.
That’s great and fine but you can apply this meme to every new show 🤭
There’s a pattern.
My entry point into Star Wars was KotOR so I’ve always been pretty critical of the average Star Wars media. I really enjoyed Rogue One, Andor, Mandalorian S1&2, and Clone Wars S7. Star Wars can deliver sometimes.
With a budget of $180M I was hopeful that Acolyte could be great, and it hasn’t delivered yet.
It’s on a positive trajectory however.
In what world is it a positive trajectory? The first two episodes were by far the strongest, and it’s been falling fast in 3 and 4.
Lol
What does this mean, you admit this particular show is not very good but might eventually be good?
This stupid woke/dei shit is just the culture war du jour, if the product that was being released was excellent, there wouldn’t be as much fuel to call a show bad for whatever reason.
But as the previous poster noted, there have been properties that were celebrated on release because they are good. The first Mandalorian episodes meet a near orgasmic fervor.
Acolyte at best is maybe just ok to not very compelling imo, that’s up against the other now recent star wars properties like Andor, which is and was critically acclaimed. The argument just falls apart when you use an objectively not very good show like Acolyte.
I mean the shows premier was a rocky start but it’s getting better. I think it’d a decent set up. Even the first three episodes of Andor were pretty slow. You have to set the stage. Introduce the characters. The plot. The season is going to be good, I’m very sure.
Fair points, all of them, I’ve heard from a friend that the most recent episode is excellent. I’ll keep giving it time.
It was mad. Definitely worth it.
I feel like a lot of “woke” shows are not great, but they get a cult of defenders and haters boosting it’s popularity because of some perceived culture war. When it’s really just execs trying to make their milk toast slop shamelessly appeal to a wider audience.
No one complains about Spiderverse (after it came out) because it was good
milquetoast btw https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milquetoast
confusing isn’t it?
I prefer milk steak.
Thank you my dude 🙏
Bigots aside, I’m convinced most people are 100% fine with queer and gender non-conforming characters so long as they’re well written.
People like characters that act like actual people – not pandering, one dimensional, rainbow capitalistic tokens.
Exactly. You’re not supposed to mention what they “identify” as. Or any other gender nonsense. Unless it is the focal point of the story to be told, then don’t mention it. That’s how you normalize something. By not drawing attention to it.
My favorite example is a character on Agents of Shield. He was a scientist that had a drinking problem. We knew about it from the start but didn’t find out why until later in the season. Years prior, he was drinking and driving while his husband was in the passenger seat. Got into a wreck, and his husband died. It wasn’t until that moment that we knew he was gay. Why? Because it was irrelevant. Spoiler alert, no one cared. He was a well written character, who was easy to sympathize with, who coincidentally happened to be gay.
Like how Marvel writers lately keep saying they’re getting hate for writing strong female leads, when really they’re getting hate for writing idiotic Mary Sue’s.
The standard for a Mary Sue character has gone way up too. The Japanese really figured out the formula with isikais where the protagonist is almost always good at everything or OP in some way, but the writing/world building is better. There are enough gems amongst the garbage that people know what a good one should contain now.
I’m really not sure how the isekai genre comes up if we’re to look for good writing. Every isekai protagonist seems like the definition of a Mary Sue, or whatever the male term is.
There’s also a pile of harem anime that used most the same ideas.
I’m pretty sure the defenders are 99% bots.
I saw someone saying the little girl who played princes Leia is a “national treasure” on reddit. I don’t think a normal person goes around talking like that.
I liked Obi-Wan because I liked seeing Obi-Wan hit Vader with a lightsaber and Corran Horn being semi-canonized
Everything else is irrelevant.
while not movie media, the same can be said with games. BG3 is blatently woke, hell the emperor blatently hits on the player regardless of gender and other elements. Elden Rings mythos is basically full of woke elements (Marika creating Radagon, who is basically herself, but in Male form to get into a romance with Renalla. just on this element alone, it is either considered trans (Marika having a clone who changed genders) or lesbian (if you choose to believe Marika is always female and trans not being a thing) as the relationship with renalla happened.)
while there will be people who will complain about it, if the contents good, people will overlook it.
Totally, the other thing both of your examples did well is actually integrate the “Woke™” elements into their world in a natural and believable way. None of it unearthed established canon or went out of its way to score rainbow capitalist diversity points
I don’t like the visuals of Spiderverse
Some people say all art is subjective
They are wrong, like you!
i dont like food
No, the writing was just bad.
I strongly prefer strong female leads (and my tastes only get more LGBT when it comes to novels), but those movies were terrible. Just horrendous. I still can’t bring myself to watch episode 9, or anything star wars since then
I’m not even that big a star wars fan. I love sci-fi and fantasy, because I love the new ideas they contain - star wars was never special to me, it was just good
I’ll never forget leaving the theater after episode 7, my whole department took off to see it on release. I just remember everyone being relatively satisfied, even the extreme star wars nerds, but I just looked at my team lead who I shared an office with. .
We used to talk about Star wars all the time, especially the extended universe, but we looked at each other and I saw pain in his expression, and I knew I shared the same look. I don’t think we ever spoke about Star wars again
And after episode 8, I now just feel dread when I see a blaster.
It wasn’t that nostalgic for me, it wasn’t that my standards were unreachable - they were just bad movies.
It also felt unoriginal
The prequels go well with the sequels. Star wars is a story about collapse followed by heros saving the day and it all makes sense. It comes from both a hero’s journey and tragic plays. The problem with the new stuff is that they abandoned the old way of story telling. Not only did they fail to come up with a plot more complex than big weapon destroys planet they completely failed to tell it in a way that made me care. It felt cheap despite having a much bigger budget than the original A new hope.
I remember sitting in the theater for Episode VII. I had a sense of excitement because it could be anything. It wasn’t an adaption of a book I’d already read, like Game of Thrones. It wasn’t a remake, like the Disney live action stuff. It was a reboot, but in a totally new direction since they threw out all the EU stuff.
It was retreaded garbage.
The only movie I’ve ever been more disappointed in while sitting in the theater was Cowboys and Aliens, because I was so excited for it to be xenomorphs. So sad. But it did cement that I will never trust a movie with old Harrison Ford in it.
Wasn’t the writing always bad though? (I might be biased, I never liked Star Wars.)
The dialog was always mediocre to bad, but otherwise the writing was pretty good. Characters had growth arcs, acted in understandable ways given their characterization.
Star wars, star trek, loads of other shows have suffered the same problem here.
I don’t mind female leads or LGBT, or Latin / Asian / African or whatever typenof actors, none of it is a problem, ehy should it be?
I mind when the writing is cringe worthy bad, but I’m supposed to like the show because of reasons like
“the main actor is black, … AND A WOMAN, gasp!”
or
“But 30 percent of the characters are gay, it MUST be good now, RIGHT?”
or
“That widely know character with a rich and very well defined backstory is now a stone cold murderer AND lesbian, this show rocks!”
I’m tired of existing shoes being ruined this way. You want to make a show where all characters are black transgender women? Go ahead, make a NEW show, leave existing stories alone. If the writing is good, I’ll watch it, I don’t need a brave gay black Winnie Pooh.
But that won’t happen, because they’ll take an existing show, shoehorn in a whole bunch of check boxes, black check, gay check, ooohhh bisexual check! And that’s it. Writing? Oh yeah, sure, we’ll have someone throw up over paper and we’ll use that because we have all the checkboxes, we gon be great!
And another show lies ruined.
Watched any good movies with strong female leads lately? I just watched Birds of Prey and thought it was the best live action DC movie in a long time
I’m intrigued, I’m not a big fan of DC movies but I’m willing to give them another chance. Could you give me a quick synopsis?
The less said about the sequel trilogy, the better, but do yourself a favour and don’t miss out on watching Andor just because of the movies. That show is just really good and also incidentally Star Wars.
The bad batch is apparently also great, along with the latest clone war seasons (according to my friend at least)
I’m just not ready… Seeing Star wars just fills me with negative feelings. I hope I’ll get there one day - I loved the EU and the more they accept back into cannon the more I want to get back into it… But I just can’t give it another chance yet
I’m just not ready…
I’m almost the same way. I’m not really feeling negative about it, though. I just feel nothing towards it, which is almost worse. Like you said, though… maybe some day. The interest is still there somewhat, just not nearly enough for me to act on it.
I love that we still can see a sane take sometimes.
“I bypassed the compressor!”
Still sucks that some audience minds associate character to actor a bit too much. Rei’s actor didn’t do anything wrong, and she deserves future chances.
For me the issue is not only the bad writing, but the over saturation of content as well.
There are just too many spinoffs and sequels now, ever since Disney bought the rights. I got bored of The Mandalorian halfway into season 1. Same goes for Obi Wan. Rogue One was great, but I didn’t bother with Solo or even Episode IX. Stopped paying attention after that.
The only Star Wars content I’m looking forward to is the remake of Knights of the Old Republic, and only because the original was among the best RPGs I’ve ever played. Couldn’t care less about anything else. Disney killed off my enthusiasm for the franchise. Maybe I just wasn’t as much of a fan as I thought I was…
Solo was pretty alright - worth seeing once. And Andor was fantastic.
Seriously, if you like star wars but find everything you’ve seen under the Disney release umbrella to be underwhelming at best, watch Andor. It is incredible. The worst thing about it is it is proof that good Star Wars content can be made today, and instead all the make is garbage.
After I saw 7, I thought, okay the story is super derivative, but I’m actually connecting with the characters like I used to in the original trilogy. Watching the prequels I was never fooled at any point into thinking these were actual humans on screen, but this time I felt something. So leaving the theater, I thought, well, at worst 8 and 9 will be a lot of fun, if you don’t focus on the plot.
It turned out that a portion of 8 was like that for me (I thought the scenes between Rey and Kylo were very cool) and the rest was stuff I never wanted to see again. And then 9’s plot was nonsensical to the point that I don’t think I’ll ever want to subject myself to it again.
I’ll never ever understand why even the most cynical studio in the world would want 7, 8, and 9 to be made without even a skeleton of a plot drawn out for the whole trilogy before starting on the first movie. It’s absolutely insane to me.
They somehow managed to lose even some of the most dedicated fans.
No I miss old star wars content. Specifically where Luke and Leia make out and where exactly George was going with that shit.
Jokes aside, pronouns is the dumbest possible hill to die on with regards to the starwars universe. OF COURSE gender is going to work differently when you put a bunch of wildly different species together. Gender dimorphism is not some universal rule the rest of the galaxy has to follow. Hell, sexual dimorphism isn’t even universal ON EARTH. why the fuck wouldn’t you run into a them or xir every now and then? What about those bug people from clone wars? You think bug people are gonna have mommies and daddies or what?
It does feel a little unnatural when they force the inclusion of some lesbian couple for the sake of inclusion. I don’t have a problem with that but don’t force it. Let the story develop over time where it feels natural. You don’t see rushed straight relationships in Hollywood.
You don’t see rushed straight relationships in Hollywood.
You may want to sit down now, because if you like, I can gather a list of all movies whose script contains the line
“and then the hero gets the girl despite there being no perceivable chemistry or other factors they have in common except him being the main character and her being The GirlTM in the movie. They kiss. The End.”
Obligatory “just watch Andor” comment.
Seriously. Go and watch Andor. It proves that good Star Wars content can be made. It has a diverse cast. You just need good writing and a vision. That’s what’s missing from the new content.
I’m good thanks. I’m not subscribing to s streaming service where the business model is pumping out content faster than the competition
🏴☠️
No
I felt like Andor was pretty dang boring… Loved Rogue One, though.
But I don’t want quality content when I open up a Star Wars series. I want the same old Republic vs Empire setting, some easygoing action with light sabers, bit of humor, a couple of furry characters and plot holes I can drive a truck through.
Edit: make that a barge. I want to drive a barge through not a truck.
Science fiction is primarily a form of social critique and commentary, according to the Titan, Professor Isaac Asimov.
Coming from a childhood raised in the deeply conservative Southeastern USA, SW felt like a validation of belief in religious magic, patriarchal paternalism, and accessible exceptionalism from hard work.
Before the information age, these ideas were far less clearly false. Now I see the parallel in religion as a toxic dead mythos, misogyny in western culture, and propaganda of a feudal death of democracy.
While I long for the nostalgia of the past, shinning a more modern perspective on that past reveals hideous flaws. The framework is dead to me, but admitting such a reality to myself is to give up a part of my childhood.
Not quite. These people literally just hate actors and actresses that arent white. ive heard them say it out loud.
While I’m sure some people do I don’t think that is the norm
What other people are complaining about Disney have a “woke agenda”?
it’s just racists and bigots.So I’m not allowed not to like something?
Are you being deliberately obtuse? We’re talking about the people saying Disney has a “woke agenda”. It’s literally panel one of the comic. i don’t really care whether you like the show or not.
Maybe you’re saying you don’t like minorities and gays. because that’s what people are referring to when they talk about "woke"ness.I can dislike a movie without disliking all LGBTQ+ people. Calling it woke is one thing but what you are saying is that people who dislike the newer Star Wars are effectively discriminatory. That is very much not true. Sure newer Disney might be unpleasant for someone who is homophobic and racist but that doesn’t mean that people who dislike it are disliking it because of the liberal characters. I dislike it because sucks and make zero sense. You are tying to things together that aren’t correlated both ways. One can hate newer Star Wars because they are homophobic but the hate of newer Star Wars doesn’t mean that someone is homophobic.
I do miss being younger and happier.
Why does every idiot who is not a Star Wars fan think that repeating the normie stereotype about it is very smart? Which is this pic BTW.
Star Wars since the OT and till around 2006 had very clear borders between, 1, that which doesn’t get mentioned, but follows from what’s shown, 2, that which doesn’t get explained, 3, that which is explained by magic, 4, that which has decent, but very roughly cut sci-fi descriptions and, finally, 5, that which is taken seriously.
Disney doesn’t understand how to use any of these categories, especially that core plot points can only belong to #5, that #1 is not just fan imagination, but part of the paradigm, that #2 is not a box for everything lazy, that #3 cannot be center of the plot, and that #4 is still necessary.
Perhaps with #2 and then #3 before #6 we could all be happy and all violence in the world would be finally over.
What’s #6 ?..
The only one after #10
I’m trying to get your joke here, because in my comment the connections between numbers and rules were given in the paragraph previous to the one with # notation.
I’m making fun of your comment as it doesn’t make sense.
Well, it does, and when a comment does make sense, but not to you, and instead of asking where you are wrong you are trying to make fun of it, it just means you are a clown.
Well I tend to be a little crazy so clown is probably not that far off
My shoes:
To answer your first sentence. Perhaps it to try and show an interest in something you like.
Yes, only it’s generally unpleasant to say condescending stuff of the “I’ve got you figured out and I see this thing deeper than you” kind to someone who’s very well familiar with the thing in question when you are not.
And in personal experience
to try and show an interest in something you like
people ask questions.
Thrawn though that’s some Dad energy shlock
Bold of you to assume we were ever happier.
Both are true
Disney is shit, star wars was never good
Hate the truth however much you want, it’ll still be valid tomorrow morning also.
For as schlocky of an adventure the OT and Prequels were, they still drew on real world inspirations. The OT pulls inspiration from WW2 and the Vietnam War as the backdrop, a small rag Tage group of guerilla style freedom fighters fighting off the highly militarized empire with weapons that can destroy entire jungles I mean planets in its path.
The Prequels, for as bad as the dialoge was (because Lucas was surrounded by Yes Men instead of people who actually knew how to cover his weaknesses), was about the decadence of the 80s and the exploitation of the labor of 3rd world countries (see the disparity between Anakin being a slave on Tatooine and Padme being a queen of/senator for Naboo), in phandom menace, which quickly shifted focus to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and how republics, like the Roman Republic, and Weimar Republic became the Roman Empire and Nazi Germany, and how America was following the same path.
And this isn’t really some reading between the lines speculation, George Lucas has said that these real world conflicts served as inspiration for the movies. Could it be post hoc rationalization? Yeah it could be, but it’s kinda hard to make those justifications even years after the movies have been released.
The sequels just aren’t pulling from any relevant sources. It was all nostalgia bait without any substance the first order is literally just Hugo boss wearing good stepping nazis 2.0, aka The Empire Again, the New Republic narratively exists only to be blown up by The Empire 2.0, everything is “Look its just like the Original Trilogy!” and it all lacks a cohesive vision and an actual hero’s journey for someone to go through. Like everyone has great setups, a rogue stormtrooper, an ace pilot for the rebellion and a girl who survived childhood gathering scrap from dangerous derelict. And they just all get sidelined for all the nostalgia bait.
in phandom menace, which quickly shifted focus to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and how republics, like the Roman Republic, and Weimar Republic became the Roman Empire and Nazi Germany, and how America was following the same path.
Sir, The Phantom Menace was released in 1999
The entire paragraph is is about the Prequels, I said phantom menace was about 1980s decadence and the Prequels theme suddenly shifted to post 9/11 and the transition of republics to empires.
And honestly I think it’s part of why people leave Phantom Menace off of their watch lists because thematically it doesn’t really fit thematically with the other 2 prequel movies.
America has been on the path for a while though, with the John Birch Society and the like working from the background. They’ve been around since the 1958, and lots of their literature and networks fostered the turn. Others like Bill Cooper, Alex Jones, etc, were active in the 90s and affected by JBS. Waco also had already ocurred.
OKC has some influences from Cooper, and the JBS and other right wing people initially thought OKC was a huge setback for inroads with general audiences, and kept working to change how people feel. Tea party was a huge comeback for them, as people who knew of the JBS warned the Tea Party was just a resurgence.
I don’t know if Lucas or other writers knew at the time, so you might be right. However, there were people warning about it back then, just not really heard or paid much attention to.
The first WTC bombing was in 1993, and Oklahoma City was 1995.
of course the movie franchise about killing space nazis famously had no woke agenda whatsoever until they gave a woman a laser sword
I know right? Fucking liberals.
Misogynists hated Leia back in the 70s, too.
If by “hated” you mean “wanted to bang” then yeah.
One often fuels the other
I was too young to have to listen to their shit then though.
Why do people defending Star Wars keep shitting on sci-fi and fantasy? “It’s just a movie about space wizards with laser swords” they say, as though having fantastical elements negates all criticism.
The original trilogy isn’t schlock. It’s fun, relatively lighthearted adventure in a fantastical setting. It has its flaws, but there is genuine artistry there, and it resonates with people because of that.
And even if I am looking at classic Star Wars through nostalgia goggles, that doesn’t invalidate criticism of new Star Wars stuff. Rise of Skywalker is a train wreck of a movie all by itself, no comparison needed.
