By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Mandalore76 on 23 March 2018
Edit Thread
Soundwave said:
Insidb said:

TFA completely invalidates this argument, which is why people aren't taking this seriously anymore. Most of your points have been picked apart by very credible arguments. You can't just say, "but episodes 1-3" and have it justify your other points. TFA, RO, and TLJ all won their box office years. TFA is the #1 domestic film OF ALL TIME. It's the #2 film OF ALL TIME. You can't talk about originality, when most of Cameron's works have apparently been lifted from other source material. You can't talk cultural phenomenon, when Star Wars has been part of culture for over 40 YEARS.

ALL of Cameron's films have made about $6.5B, while the Star Wars films have made nearly $9B. You know what, though, that's just the films: Star Wars, as a franchise, has made nearly $45B. It's clearly not "failing" or "crapping the bed," because 8 more films are slated and it's been making billions since the prequels.

In the context of this thread, my points are fair. Star Wars is not some "never miss" franchise that hasn't had multiple previous entries that have been poorly received by large groups of people. It has been over shadowed multiple times by other film properties too. I'm not saying Star Wars isn't popular (obviously it is), but this notion put forth by the OP that it's always been this holy, unsurmountable, infallible IP until The Last Jedi is laughable. 

There really probably hasn't been a truly great Star Wars films since the early 1980s, The Force Awakens is probably the best of the bunch since then and I'd say it's no better than something like Avatar, probably a tad worse. 

Also if you look at Star Wars film box office post 1977, TFA and TPM are outliers because they have a decade+ of pent up hype/build-up you look at other Star Wars films without benefit of that and there's a steep drop off in box office, so that's been happening for years now, The Last Jedi is if anything just falling into line with that. 

Just for the record, while (predictably) a large step down from the OT, I do think the Disney Star Wars films are still a good deal better than the prequels. The Disney movies at least recapture much of the grittier feel of the original Star Wars films whereas the prequels had gone full cartoon/cheese/kiddie tone that didn't feel like the originals at all. The acting, dialogue, scene staging doesn't feel like an embarrassing junior high play. At least the characters in these new movies feel like real people in a lived in universe and not some kid's toy box come to life, for that I'll give them credit. 

"Revenge of the Sith" is light years better than any of the Disney Star Wars films.  While "The Phantom Menace" and "Attack of the Clones" weren't great, at least they weren't carbon copies of the original series locations and plots.  "The Force Awakens" was practically a shot for shot remake of the original Star Wars.  I get it that, that's what sells these days.  But if I want to see a movie about a novice force user orphaned on a desert planet looking for some secret schematics at the same time an evil empire is searching for them while getting aided by a smuggler and his Wookie companion with an escape from said secret empire's planet destroying base complete with trench scene battle climax, I'm going to just watch "A New Hope" again, not "The Force Awakens".  "Rogue One" was okay, but really only memorable for the Darth Vader fan service at the end.  "The Last Jedi" was a hot mess that felt more like a Seth McFarlane spoof than an actual Star Wars movie.   You don't think that movie had kiddy, cheesy dialogue?  Seriously?  There were entire scenes that felt like they were lifted from the "Blue Harvest" episode of Family Guy and the Robot Chicken Star Wars parodies.