Ha ha nice one Solo4114 I used to love WEG SW about a million years ago and I think it's one of the reasons I like this movie.
Time will tell whether this film has legs or not. Other posters here are right I think, it is a war movie with a star wars veneer or dirty dozen meets SW. It's unashamedly a fan service film too.
On balance if I felt like watching one of the new SW films it'll R1 I reach for over TFA or TLJ. how about everyone else?
Haha, thanks. I knew of the WEG game for years, but actually only picked up copies of the books about a year, year and a half ago. I'd love to get a group going on that stuff, but it's tough finding time and folks who can play regularly. If you're still into WEG's RPG, check out
www.rancorpit.com.
I think the film illustrates something...different in Star Wars. Something which, perhaps, people are only just starting to realize, actually. Star Wars is no longer the "once in a blue moon" thing it once was. I think part of why the OT is venerated as much as it is is because (A) it was the first of its kind and the first within the overall series, and (B) it was a relatively rare thing. You had 3 films in a 6-year span of time, then
nothing (film-wise) for 16 years, and then another 6-year span of 3 films, and then nothing (again, film-wise) for another decade.
Then, in the span of
three years, you have
four films coming out. In a way, I think what Star Wars is becoming is much more like what the James Bond series is (kinda). Bond films are still an "event" because they only have one every few years or so (sometimes it's only one year, sometimes it's every 2 years, sometimes it's even more, but it's only ever one at a time). However, for people who want to watch the films, there are
25 official films (not including Never Say Thunderball...er...Never...Again), and not all of them are viewed as equally good, even (especially?) among serious Bond afficionados. The original four or five films are well regarded, but there's a fairly large body of work that's viewed as either imperfect or inferior to those standards, and especially some controversy around the newer material.
The Disney-era LFL model appears to be to put at least one Star Wars film out every year. Not necessarily one "numbered" episode every year, but one Star Wars film every year. They will not all be uniformly good. For all of the "If Marvel can do it, why can't LFL?!" rhetoric, there are plenty of Marvel films that are, at best, also-rans. They're entertaining enough, but they're hardly all equally good. The first two Thor films were pretty blah. Iron Man 2 was...you know, ok, I guess... Iron Man 3 was generally regarded as a very weak entry. Captain America: The First Avenger was viewed as only kinda so-so when it first came out (although I think it improved over time). Nobody talks about The Incredible Hulk anymore, and the character has become a supporting character because, unsurprisingly, the Hulk actually isn't all that interesting in and of himself. As good as The Avengers was, Age of Ultron was only so-so, in my opinion, and felt overstuffed. Captain America: Civil War had similar issues.
Bottom line: not every film is gonna be a mega-hit or a classic for the ages. And as more and more content comes out, the odds of a film being a miss or only a bunt, rather than a solid hit, get higher. There will still be amazing films in this series. But there will also be ones that aren't as good. Oddly, I've found that accepting this has made me better able to appreciate the films overall. Mostly because I'm a little less demanding about them, in that I don't expect every film to be ESB. I mean, yeah, we should. We should expect it, and Disney/LFL should produce that level of quality every time...but in the real world, that's just not gonna happen. So, I take what I can get and enjoy what I enjoy. And when they make one I really dislike, I'll speak up, but I won't get as bent out of shape about it as I did with the prequels, where it felt like that was IT. Star Wars was DONE and there would never be anything more.