The visceral effect of Star Wars...is it gone forever?

Timing is everything in art.

Star Wars came out at just the right time and had it been released any earlier or any later I'm not sure it would have had the impact that it had.

Star Wars would've been just as big--actually, bigger--had it come out earlier.

The Wook
 
It would possibly have been considered corny like the early serials it was paying homage to had it been released in say the 60's. Considering it was released at the end of the Vietnam war and when the culture had found cynicism in politics, world events and entertainment to be a mainstay, Star Wars wholesome morality tale of good vs. evil was a breath of fresh air. The effects would have still knocked everyone's socks off though, I'll agree with you on that point.
 
It would possibly have been considered corny like the early serials it was paying homage to had it been released in say the 60's. Considering it was released at the end of the Vietnam war and when the culture had found cynicism in politics, world events and entertainment to be a mainstay, Star Wars wholesome morality tale of good vs. evil was a breath of fresh air. The effects would have still knocked everyone's socks off though, I'll agree with you on that point.

The simple, good vs. evil story is timeless, and told with those never-before seen special effects, it would've been a colossal hit no matter when it came out, prior to when it did. The people didn't walk out of the theater during that magical summer of '77 raving to one another about the film being a "wholesome morality tale of good vs. evil"; they raved about the spaceships and the laser swords and the alien creatures and the mystical forces.

Star Wars is timeless. That is why it endures today.

The Wook
 
My point was that in a time when most of the world was cynical about real life (as was reflected in the films of that day) it was by comparison, wholesome. That was a huge factor in it's success. It wasn't the ONLY thing, but it was a factor.
 
My point was that in a time when most of the world was cynical about real life (as was reflected in the films of that day) it was by comparison, wholesome. That was a huge factor in it's success. It wasn't the ONLY thing, but it was a factor.

Brother Psab, I'm not disputing that the film's wholesomeness came at an especially welcome time. But you wrap up a wholesome story like Star Wars inside the spectacle of the film's wild and magical visual appeal, and I'm telling you, it would be a colossal hit in any decade prior to the 1970s.
 
Yeah, but think about it. If it had been released in the 50s or 60s the technology wouldn't have been there for the VFX, so it might have looked pretty crappy. Therefore might not have been such a success. If it had just been ships on wires with sparklers I seriously doubt it would have done as well as it did. One can claim "story makes the movie" all they want, but a HUGE chunk of SW success was that the effects looked and felt real. Even as a kid, to me, stuff like Logan's Run looked like miniatures and toys. Granted 2001 had the look of realism, but there was very little movement or action to models.

Don't get me wrong, Star Wars has a great story that is indeed timeless, but without those effects I believe it would have been totally forgotten and swept under the rug. Or just have been a cult classic, not the worldwide cultural phenomenon it became.
 
Yeah, but think about it. If it had been released in the 50s or 60s the technology wouldn't have been there for the VFX, so it might have looked pretty crappy. Therefore might not have been such a success. If it had just been ships on wires with sparklers I seriously doubt it would have done as well as it did. One can claim "story makes the movie" all they want, but a HUGE chunk of SW success was that the effects looked and felt real. Even as a kid, to me, stuff like Logan's Run looked like miniatures and toys. Granted 2001 had the look of realism, but there was very little movement or action to models.

Don't get me wrong, Star Wars has a great story that is indeed timeless, but without those effects I believe it would have been totally forgotten and swept under the rug. Or just have been a cult classic, not the worldwide cultural phenomenon it became.

Yes, the visuals, sound design, and music contributed as much as the simple linear story, especially the “visceral” reaction to it. As a 9 year old that blew me away as much as the characters and mythology.
 
Yeah, but think about it. If it had been released in the 50s or 60s the technology wouldn't have been there for the VFX, so it might have looked pretty crappy. Therefore might not have been such a success. If it had just been ships on wires with sparklers I seriously doubt it would have done as well as it did. One can claim "story makes the movie" all they want, but a HUGE chunk of SW success was that the effects looked and felt real. Even as a kid, to me, stuff like Logan's Run looked like miniatures and toys. Granted 2001 had the look of realism, but there was very little movement or action to models.

Don't get me wrong, Star Wars has a great story that is indeed timeless, but without those effects I believe it would have been totally forgotten and swept under the rug. Or just have been a cult classic, not the worldwide cultural phenomenon it became.

We were talking about if it came out earlier but with the same fx.
 
I absolutely disagree that the visceral thrill of discovering Star Wars is over. If it were, my nephews, who were born in 1997 and 2008 respectively, would not be the big Star Wars fans that they are. When my older nephew, Nickolas, was a toddler, ANY time he heard the 20th Century Fox fanfare on the television, no matter where he was in the house, he would come RUNNING, yelling "Star Wars, Daddy, Star Wars!"

The magic of Star Wars is still there, but not everyone is open to it.

For those of us who grew up with it, in many ways, familiarity has bred contempt, though mostly toward attempts to bring new elements into the story. I, for one, will likely go see SOLO when it comes out, even though I am not a fan of the kid that they cast as Han, simply because it IS Star Wars and I love that universe too much to not revisit it on the big screen whenever I can.

Do I love all the new films so far? Eh, I can't say that I do. I loved Rogue One, and I thoroughly enjoyed both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi as I was watching them, but as a writer, sometimes it's hard for me to switch off the analytical part of my brain and simply enjoy a story... especially when it's something that has so deeply permeated my existence.

Those are my $0.02 on the matter. As always... your mileage may vary.
 
I recently watched a documentary called "Jodorowsky's Dune". It's about the very ambitious and failed attempt at bringing Dune to the big screen in the 60s. Jodorowsky made a few very artistic movies and had this vision of making Dune the movie messiah that would change perception, so he recruited tons of artists to work in it, Chris Foss, Moebious, Dan O'Bannon, H. R. Giger, Pink Floyd, even Salvador Dali. There was an incredible ambition behind the movie and everyone involved was raving about the vision behind the movie, how it was to be the biggest thing and had got made it would have changed the face of cinema forever, even more than Star Wars has ever done.
Now, in relation to this topic I kinda disagree with them on that. I am a massive fan of the original novel and Jodorowsky's vision would have been an awful adaptation. Might have been a great movie that's kind of based on elements of the novel but not a good adaptation of it. The budged of the movie obviously inflated and nobody wanted to finance it (I would have loved to hear people from studios telling their side of the story from a rational point of view instead of the artists being artists with their vision). And ultimately every studio told him that it is a brilliant movie pitch that won't be received well.
I think therein lies the key and the big appeal of Star Wars. Let's suppose that Jodorowsky managed to get the budget to realize his vision and pull off Star Wars-esque effects in the 60s. Sure it would be groundbreaking, but the whole thing was way too abstract and artistic to have a really wide appeal. Star Wars did hit the jackpot by combining the groundbreaking visuals with a simple, relatable fairy-tale story that managed to not feel too childish. I think Jodorowsky's Dune would have had an unbelieveable effect on the artistic approach and visuals of cinema, but it would not have become the pop-culture phenomenon as Star Wars. Anyway, the documentary is well-worth the watch, it probably would make more sense out of what I'm babbling on about.
 
I want to respond but I can't tell, in my own mind, how much of my disappointment with the franchise now is based on most of the new films, or if it's really just about how disastrously mishandled Luke was in TLJ. They had the opportunity to do something grand with Luke...one final big blow-out for/with Luke... you know, let's send this badass Jedi hero off with a BANG! rather than the SLAP (in the face) we got when Riann castrated him and turned him into a babbling senile old hermit. You can create something new and interesting while still being respectful of what came before. It was Johnson's mission to "kill the past". He could move on from the past without making a mockery of that character and the whole mythos that has been created over the last 40 years. It felt like Johnson was giving the finger to SW fans, the world Lucas (and Co.) built, and hell, he may have given the biggest finger of all to JJ!
I hadn't seen any Johnson films previously but had read much about them and typically always fantastic reviews. The film I saw was not like those reviews at all.

Solo, looks okay. The casting of Ehrenreich is confusing. On the one hand, it's Disney at the top, so you know it's 60% or more about the money, period. Yet they cast someone to play the character, a character that was portrayed by an irreplaceable actor. An icon. For the true SW base, this story doesn't need to be told and probably shouldn't be told when they have already put in place what I foresee as being a constant insurmountable problem that will disconnect viewers from ever achieving "buying into" the movie. Alden may knock it out of the park, but it still won't be Han Solo (for me). And for that reason, I probably prefer that simply not made the film at all. And this is also the same reason why someone new to SW will probably love Solo, because they aren't having something they are very familiar with and loved mishandled and prostituted out for... money? Again I'm not sure what Disney is going for with Solo, since they didn't go with Ingruber. At least with Ingruber, I could just pretend like I'm really drunk with blurry vision and believe that is a young Harrison up there. That could never happen with Ehrenreich. No part of the trailers, thus far, when showing the character Solo says to me that I am seeing or hearing Han Solo. In fact I am struck every single time that I am absolutely NOT SEEING Han Solo. And it makes sense. I know we love him and adore him and all, but HF isn't necessarily known for his acting chops. Han Solo basically is Harrison Ford. We know this because every character Ford plays is nealry the same character: Harrison Ford. Always short-tempered, always gets the job done somehow.
They needed HF himself or a near facsimile of HF to pull this off.

Kennedy is s******* the bed with Lucasfilm. I'm begging to think that this was all George's plan from the start to pay back all the haters for the prequels. "I'll show you whiney bastards. I'll let Disney have the franchise and SJW it into the Tattoine sand! You'll be begging for the old days whe Georgie was at the helm stuffing wooden dialog and Jar-Jar poodoos everywhere. Yeah, you Aholes will see..."
 
I agree with this assessment:

https://youtu.be/HeUGLUYYYNQ

Interesting one. He brings up valid points but all in all I disagree with him in general. Sure there are self-important fans who think they should be running the show and are obsessed with wookiepedia and whatnot. The ridiculousness of that is perfectly commented in this:


But I feel that much like trying to bring up the antifeminist comments as a saving grace and main reason for a backlash I feel that bringing self-important "superfans" as the reason is just as wrong as saying that Phantom Menace was bad because of Jar-Jar Binks. There's plenty more wrong with TPM and Jar-Jar is just a small fraction of that. Jar-Jar was only the one thing most people could definitely put their fingers on. I think the most important part that shows how this guy doesn't get what most is when he says that "people especially dislike the Finn and Rose subplot because it's new characters and new settings and it does not directly relate to the original things they know". No, people dislike that subplot because it's awkward, pointless and full of eye-rolling parts.
The first half an hour of TFA has nothing to do with the original setting other than seeing a few stormtroopers and TIE fighters and I think the strongest part of that movie is up until Han and Chewie show up. Most people I know and ended up disliking TFA said that it did start out good but then became a remake of ANH, so I don't think the problem is that there are new characters and settings. It's the execution. Another example is when he says "people don't like Leia using the force because that's not what she did 30 years ago". That's not true either, it's the execution and the way she was using it that people dislike. Plus that's a contradiction with himself because if it was wookiepedia-dwelling EU-librarian superfans who dislike TLJ then they should be okay with the simple fact that Leia is using the force, because that's exactly what she did in the old EU. Also again he states that TLJ pushed the story into an unexpected territory instead of continuing status quo whereas the movie did exactly the opposite.
I agree with his assessment on Rogue One. That was indeed what the aforementioned superfans want, pure unadulterated fan service. Rogue One was essentially a fan-film, it wasn't a Star Wars movie, it was a fan-version of a Star Wars movie. Especially the Vader hallway scene. People were awestruck and in love with that scene, but simply because it was fan-service. In the context of the movie there was nothing to cheer, admire and be enthusiastic about. Imagine if it was a WW2 movie, all our secret commando heroes died and in the end the main SS baddie (who had 2 short scenes in the movie) turned up and started to massacre the survivors, how much cheer and love that scene would have gotten?
I think with the random guy in the beginning had the truth: what we want from a new Star Wars movie is the same we want from a regular movie. A script that makes sense logically , relatable characters with motivations and a clear overall tone.
But that's just my 2 cents. :)
 
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I disagree on the Vader Hallway scene. When SW came out, Vader was powerful and scary. Over the years he was still powerful but he wasn't this irritable and reckless in who and how he hurt people. We became disconnected from that, mostly due to the PT, because he wasn't an unreasonable monster anymore. I think that scene in R1 refreshed the sense of terror that Vader brought. Probably the best Star Wars moment since 1983, and by that I mean, truest to the original feel of SW. Was R1 fan service? Maybe. And Disney was rewarded for it financially, for not being a trilogy film. Don't make films for people you want to come see your movies. Make movies for people that are going to come see your movies again and again and again. 1 "fanboy" equals 20-30 regular movie goers, when it comes to money spent on the franchise, from tickets, to toys, to models, to clothes, to everything we do here. It's probably more like 1:50. And money-grubbing Disney should know this better than anybody.
 
The Vader hallway scene spoke to some of us and I liked it very much.

The worst thing to happen to Vader wasn’t R1, it was RotJ. RotJ robbed the character of all agency and made him into a complete buffoon.

Then the prequels stripped the character of any residual mystique. I haven’t been truly surprised or impressed with anything Vader has done since ESB until that R1 scene.
 
Loved Rouge One, but I felt the Vader scene was out of place. Tonally, to me, it didn't match the rest of the movie. While initially exciting, afterwards it felt like watching Anakin slaying younglings.

Maybe strange, but that was the only thing that really felt like fan service in the movie. The rest of felt like... Star Wars.

Sent from my SM-J727V using Tapatalk
 
I want to respond but I can't tell, in my own mind, how much of my disappointment with the franchise now is based on most of the new films, or if it's really just about how disastrously mishandled Luke was in TLJ. They had the opportunity to do something grand with Luke...one final big blow-out for/with Luke... you know, let's send this badass Jedi hero off with a BANG! rather than the SLAP (in the face) we got when Riann castrated him and turned him into a babbling senile old hermit. You can create something new and interesting while still being respectful of what came before. It was Johnson's mission to "kill the past". He could move on from the past without making a mockery of that character and the whole mythos that has been created over the last 40 years. It felt like Johnson was giving the finger to SW fans, the world Lucas (and Co.) built, and hell, he may have given the biggest finger of all to JJ!
I hadn't seen any Johnson films previously but had read much about them and typically always fantastic reviews. The film I saw was not like those reviews at all.

Solo, looks okay. The casting of Ehrenreich is confusing. On the one hand, it's Disney at the top, so you know it's 60% or more about the money, period. Yet they cast someone to play the character, a character that was portrayed by an irreplaceable actor. An icon. For the true SW base, this story doesn't need to be told and probably shouldn't be told when they have already put in place what I foresee as being a constant insurmountable problem that will disconnect viewers from ever achieving "buying into" the movie. Alden may knock it out of the park, but it still won't be Han Solo (for me). And for that reason, I probably prefer that simply not made the film at all. And this is also the same reason why someone new to SW will probably love Solo, because they aren't having something they are very familiar with and loved mishandled and prostituted out for... money? Again I'm not sure what Disney is going for with Solo, since they didn't go with Ingruber. At least with Ingruber, I could just pretend like I'm really drunk with blurry vision and believe that is a young Harrison up there. That could never happen with Ehrenreich. No part of the trailers, thus far, when showing the character Solo says to me that I am seeing or hearing Han Solo. In fact I am struck every single time that I am absolutely NOT SEEING Han Solo. And it makes sense. I know we love him and adore him and all, but HF isn't necessarily known for his acting chops. Han Solo basically is Harrison Ford. We know this because every character Ford plays is nealry the same character: Harrison Ford. Always short-tempered, always gets the job done somehow.
They needed HF himself or a near facsimile of HF to pull this off.

Kennedy is s******* the bed with Lucasfilm. I'm begging to think that this was all George's plan from the start to pay back all the haters for the prequels. "I'll show you whiney bastards. I'll let Disney have the franchise and SJW it into the Tattoine sand! You'll be begging for the old days whe Georgie was at the helm stuffing wooden dialog and Jar-Jar poodoos everywhere. Yeah, you Aholes will see..."

High SWIQ post.

A mere "Like" was insufficient.

The Wook
 
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