I was a massive, huge Star Wars fan as a kid. I thought it was such a fun universe, but since the prequels, and especially since Disney bought it, I keep finding myself thinking... it's really not...
I was a massive, huge Star Wars fan as a kid. I thought it was such a fun universe, but since the prequels, and especially since Disney bought it, I keep finding myself thinking... it's really not that interesting of a setting.
As far as sci fi it doesn't seem either especially unique as far as concepts, or applicable to any sort of real world issues.
Obviously a lot of people still enjoy it, but I'm often left wondering how much of that is based on the setting being actually compelling, versus Disney constantly shoving endless amounts of star wars in everyone in the western worlds faces constantly at all hours of the day.
I always think about how interesting a Culture, or Expanse or Ringworld videogame with a huge budget could be. I wonder if the sheer amount of mindshare and dollars Disney has put behind Star Wars has in any way prevented that from happing though.
Sorry for the sorta off topic comment, but seeing new Star Wars stuff these days is a lot more likely to make me feel sad than excited because of those thoughts.
I am a fan of the first, first, Fast and Furious movie. From 2001. Great characters, nice themes, cool things happen, well paced, an overall nicely rounded and fairly tight story. Totally my jam....
I am a fan of the first, first, Fast and Furious movie. From 2001. Great characters, nice themes, cool things happen, well paced, an overall nicely rounded and fairly tight story. Totally my jam.
Then they started ... changing. The studio turned it into a franchise, and "elevated" it to empty-headed blockbuster status. I don't like the franchise. It's totally lame.
So I don't go to the films. I don't even go looking for them, they don't have space on my media server, they're just not my jam.
However, I don't sit around zero-summing Hollywood over their existence. "If only F&F didn't exist, that money would be available for things I love. Wow, that'd be great. Fuck F&F for sucking up resources that could directly cater to my tastes."
Every single year, tons of stuff comes out that's not my jam. I just don't watch. I also don't jump into threads about the thing I won't watch anyway and shit all over it. I don't populate threads and comment chains about the latest F&F or JW release and shit all over it with "wow, another shit movie" and "boy, I can't wait for them to figure out how much of a waste these stupid lame projects are and stop so we can get some real movies made."
But that's me.
I don't like Star Wars because "it's being shoved in my face." The F&F Franchise, the Jurassic World Franchise, lots of properties, are shoved in my face. Even on social media, people pile into threads gushing about "oh it was sooooo kewl when the dino ate his face" or "the cars went to space and they saved the day, kewl." It's kind of next to impossible to not be made aware of these big franchises.
I leave them to their fun. They obviously get something out of those franchises.
Kewl. Takes all kinds to make the world go round. Totally kewl, which is an old school cooler version of cool. Very rad.
What won't make the world go round is when fandoms start weaponizing against one another. "If only you'd stop hogging the (spotlight/studio/investors) then our stuff would have more, so knock it off and stop liking what you like. Jeeeeeeez, enough already, grow up and like the right stuff for a change."
Star Wars and Marvel, the two fandoms it's apparently kewl to shit on. The fandoms we're supposed to "move on" from and "stop liking." That we've apparently been tricked into liking or something.
What if people just like Star Wars and Marvel because ... wait for ... they do? Why do they have defend that? Why is it necessary to try to "explain" why they like them. Why can't the response just be "oh awesome, Star Wars makes you happy. Rock on." No, it's "sigh, I guess, but Star Wars really is lame and I just wish it would make way for things I like more."
I want to preface this by saying that I 100% agree with everything you're saying. People shouldn't shit on people for liking things. A friend of mine always says, "LET PEOPLE ENJOY THINGS." As a...
I want to preface this by saying that I 100% agree with everything you're saying. People shouldn't shit on people for liking things. A friend of mine always says, "LET PEOPLE ENJOY THINGS." As a serial complainer, I've taken her words to heart, and I've come to terms with the fact that people (most people, in fact) enjoy things that I do not enjoy.
But I also want to use your comment as a platform to say I think its still totally valid to criticize, and even lament, what certain franchises have become. Especially when a juggernaut like Disney completely and systematically sanitizes every property it gets its hands on. Of course masses of people like them, its been engineered to appeal to the lowest common denominator (I don't mean that as an insult).
I mean, imagine if Disney got their hands on the Dune franchise. They would be completely different movies. And I don't mean in an artistic expression sort of way. I mean I don't think Disney is literally capable of telling that story without compromising it in a way that contradicts the source material.
This is a multifaceted issue because its also wrapped up with the long-rising popularity of digital media, video games included, which has seen a similar trend. Obviously Star Wars as a property was a national phenomenon from day 1, but Star Wars games were meant for a very specific audience when they first started releasing them, and that very specific audience adored them.
Then now happens, and these smaller audiences misplace their frustrations on the general audience. "Everything is made for everyone now, so its everyone's fault for liking it." That's definitely not fair to my aunt, who just wants to take her kids to a nice, unnoffensive movie this afternoon. Obviously, its all profit-motivated, because why wouldn't studios/distributors want to maximize ticket sales or game purchases?
Still, it kind of means smaller audiences are now left in the dust. I'm sure its still frustrating for you to know you may never see a movie that scratches the same itch that the original F&F did. I'm not saying its a travesty or anything, but definitely a bummer right?
When something gets popular, it tends to get sterilized, caricaturized, or Flanders-ized. Seems like those are our options. I hope someday, though, smaller audiences will be able to easily find things that are meant for them without having to sift through piles of mass-produced panacea.
Maybe it's because I grew up in the Dark Times, when we had three Star Wars movies and then nothing. Literally nothing for quite a long time. More than a decade. Very, very occasionally some super...
Exemplary
Maybe it's because I grew up in the Dark Times, when we had three Star Wars movies and then nothing. Literally nothing for quite a long time. More than a decade. Very, very occasionally some super low budget knock-off might dip a toe into the sci-fi or adventure waters, but it wasn't very common. And they often weren't very good.
My point is I never formed some sort of expectation, or entitlement, to certain franchises or certain kinds of content. Because that didn't exist. I just cheered and got happy when something cool came along, and otherwise learned to live with limitations. Because that was reality.
Unlike today, where people expect their every whim to be personally catered to. And feel entitled to blow up in abject rage when it's not.
Movies cost money. People want to be paid, supplies and sets have to be paid for, all of that. Someone has to put that money up. And the way it works (because, for some reason that I don't get, super rich people never seem to write a check for their dream franchise or dream project to be made reality) is you talk someone with money into paying for the movie/show/whatever.
That person is referred to as an investor. And they want their money back. Or, at least, they want some sort of chance they'll get their money back. That's why they invested. They don't invest because "oh, wow, what a great idea, so cool and original and full of magic; it'd be a crime if that didn't get made."
No, the gave that money to the producer, who gave it to the director, because they saw it as an investment.
Studios are the same. They're investing their money, and they want a return. What's been happening at Disney for the past couple of years? Their very uncreative board and even more very uncreative institutional investors have been muttering dark ominous things about the lack of return on what Disney shells out for various movies and shows.
Disney's no different from any of the others. I go through Reddit threads where people are losing their minds over Warner Brothers looking at cold numbers and deciding to write off nearly finished projects because their accountants felt the sure-thing tax credit of the write off was probably more profitable than the chance the project might hit the zeitgeist just right and become mega-profitable.
It's something that I rarely get the sense social media seems to understand. It's a business. These movies, especially the kinds of movies "fans" demand, start counting their budget at a hundred million dollars. Most "big budgets" these days are 100-200 million.
That's a lot of fucking money. And yet you see fans screaming with froth and drool flying from their mouths about decisions studios will make "just because it was more profitable." Or "they only care about money."
Everyone only cares about money. That's the point of the capitalistic system the bulk of the planet's population has been indoctrinated into. Doctors will tell you "this is a very serious condition you have that needs immediate treatment", and then in the next breath say "oh well, too bad, get out" when you explain you don't have the money to pay for treatment. That's the world we've allowed to rise up around us all.
That's what I think of when you say "smaller audiences." Small audiences, niche content, it's a lovely thing to think about in the abstract. But the reality is they (studios and investors) want money. They want lots of money. They want their money. And they don't get it by paying premium prices for niche projects.
A small audience project, a niche market, can't earn back a nine digit investment. Not reliably. Not as a general expectation. Sure there are exceptions. Sure some movies do hit the zeitgeist just right and explode into the stratosphere, rain money back down on their gleeful investors; but most small movies generate small returns.
Creatives have their heads in the cloud. They're supposed to. They're creative. But when you turn imagination into reality, it costs money. If you write a book, it costs a little money. A lot of time, but hardly any actual money.
The moment other people are involved, money is now involved. They all want to get paid. A blockbuster movie is incredibly expensive because today's audiences have been trained to sneer at anything which isn't picture perfect.
From Snow Crash, the thoughts of a character looking at a crowd gathered for a street concert:
He stares at the crowd, five thousand potential market shares, young people with funkiness on their minds. They've never heard any music before that wasn't perfect. It's either studio-perfect digital sound from their CD players or performance-perfect fuzz-grunge from the best people in the business, the groups that have come to L.A. to make a name for themselves and have actually survived the gladiatorial combat environment of the clubs.
That was written in 1992. It's become reality. The whole of mass entertainment lives and breathes that passage. Everyone, audience members, wanders around completely unaware of how entitled they sound when a low budget project appears and they sigh over how amateur it looks. Over how "lame" or "obvious" its effects are, over the readily apparent shortcuts the project had to take to finish and release. Over anything in that project that doesn't drip with money having been poured into it.
My point is not "feel sorry for studios" or "those poor put upon investors." My point is that more "fans" need to recognize the reality of the business that supplies their entertainment. Because it is a business. No one lays down a hundred million plus for a movie simply to make you or me happy. They do it because they hope that hundred million turns into at least four or five hundred million.
Does it suck? Yeah. Is it reality? Yeah. Is there a better way? Cheaper tools is the only thing that doesn't involve the whole of society restructuring. Which is why I get so bemused, exasperated in truth, so often when I see all these demanding idiots moaning about the latest big budget flop that "didn't fill my expectations to the letter" in one breath, but then shitting on AI in the next.
Small projects, niche projects, that's something AI is going to make happen. Not now, and probably not next year. But it will make that happen. AI tools, once they're developed and matured, are going to enable someone with creative vision to sit at a keyboard and press buttons.
Those button presses will materialize virtual actors and virtual sets and virtual effects into visual reality. More button presses will manipulate all that, create scenes that a storyteller will be able to use to link together as a story. Not a story someone has to read, because who reads these days? They're too busy bitching about movies and watching Netflix on their phones to read.
But when a storyteller has a fully enabled AI console in front of them, they'll be able to manifest stories you can see and hear. Not student films or low budget neighborhood productions, not guerilla filmmaking on the run with corn syrup blood and fast cuts to hide that the actors aren't really fighting, not anything where you can see the wires and have to put blinders on over inch thick sunglasses to see past the flaws.
Digitally perfect visual storytelling. Movies. Whole movies you'll be able to sit down and watch. Movies that today would cost nine figures, thousands of people, and dozens of months to produce. But with mature technology will cost a fraction of a fraction of all that. A handful of people at best, working on affordable computer technology, using equally affordable software, will able to slide into whatever niches they decide they have a story to tell in.
But that's then. That's some future tomorrow. Right now, movies cost big bucks. Prestige tv costs big bucks. I'm always happy when something I like comes along, but I never feel like they owe me a thing. Because I don't register to them. I'm one person out of 7.9 billion who currently exist on the planet.
And I definitely never look at someone delighted with a project I hated and say "grow up, move on." As a certain character people have turned hated on into a whole religion once said, "how rude."
You are just like me. I love F&F the first. I had it for cool movie when it came ou, shiny fast cars and all... I was 15 at the time, the perfects target for this movie. I have played NFS...
You are just like me. I love F&F the first. I had it for cool movie when it came ou, shiny fast cars and all... I was 15 at the time, the perfects target for this movie. I have played NFS Underground of course andlove the theme that started by watching F&F. The I saw 2F2F and was like "Why they switched such a cool cars for Evo and Eclipse? There is nothing special about them." I mean he opening sequence wss over the top but with cool cars! The rest was just an action movie... And this trend continued. I have bought F&F on Blu ray (I like having my things physical) and I didn't bother with the rest of them. EDIT: I forgot the important thing here! I see F&F in different light today. It is still fast shiny cars, but woth Donnie Brasco mixed in. It is movie about relations, about undercover cop becomeing part of gang eventually valuing his new found team more than being a cop - up to the point of revealing himself to save Vince. It is movie about respecting each other. When Dom nods at Brian after he is handed the keys to Supra after the drag race, that is the time when Brian finally earned his respect. While I like fast shiny cars, I love this "newfound" view on this movie.
Star Wars is kind of another story. I bought episodes 1-6 when they came outon Blu ray as complete saga. I was on the new ones in cinema including stories. I even bought Solo and I'm thinking about Rogue One since those two add up to originals. I won't be buying new ones though, probably.
I don't blame studios for making new movies in such franchises. If they didn't spend money on them, they would spend it on another stupid thing.
I have explained myself here some time ago, I'm not native English speaker and heavy topics are kinda hard for me so that the message comes along the right way and is understood correctly. I shouldn't but I will talk about one such topic now - inclusion of BAE people in movies. I want to say right now that I don't have anything against BAE! I love Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson, Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee and many many others. My problem is not with the people, my problem is with the system where if your movie don't have such people in one of main roles, you are basically fu**ed - you will be pointed at and shunned upon for making movie that includes only white people or that includes white and black but no asian etc. Let me tell you - have you seen Home alone? How many different than white people were in main roles? On the contrary - Could there be somebody else against Sly in Demolition man? What I want to say is that if the actor is good, it doesn't matter how he/she looks, they will get cast. But in today movies I feel like sometimes there are people forced into the role just so that producer can say "Yes, we have added them." I mean isn't this even bad for the actor? To be just some, forgive me the ter, thing to be included because producer has to (but can't pay some big name, for example)?
Why I started this - many new movies kinda leave negative impression on me because of that. Thus - if they didn't make just another F&F movie, they will spend money on something other I wouldn't want to see. And once again to be clear - there are movies that are new and also great and also has BAE actors in them. I loved Dune for example! I don't like Netflix' take on Witcher though, where they totally fu**ed up Triss - beautiful and very well shaped pale skin redhead in the game and l, well, not that good in the series. Not that the actress is ugly, definitely not! But she just doesn't fucking look like the character she plays!
(I know there are similar things in the past, ie. Red in Shawshank redemption, but I don't have visual template/pattern for him - see? Not native English speaker, I don't know how to properly say that.)
I hope I get understood. I'm here for answers if somebody wants me to clear something up. Hell, I'm very willing to clear anything up as I want it to be understood what I meant.
What about Andor? Frankly, it seems clear that Andor is a one-off and nothing as good will probably happen again (or at best they will try to milk this concept some more instead of finding a new...
I was a massive, huge Star Wars fan as a kid. I thought it was such a fun universe, but since the prequels, and especially since Disney bought it, I keep finding myself thinking... it's really not that interesting of a setting.
As far as sci fi it doesn't seem either especially unique as far as concepts, or applicable to any sort of real world issues.
What about Andor?
Frankly, it seems clear that Andor is a one-off and nothing as good will probably happen again (or at best they will try to milk this concept some more instead of finding a new one, which will dilute its uniqueness), but Andor is special because there are no Jedis, no force, and it's about a very "normal" civil resistance against the Imperium. Thanks to that it has more obvious parallels to real world issues. And the world feels unique because they're focusing on something else than the few big "cool" things already established in the original trilogy or the prequels.
In my opinion Andor shows that the setting actually can be pretty interesting, it's just that the owners are usually not interested in making it so. I stopped caring about Star Wars almost 20 years ago when episode 3 came out (and that was pretty much "meh, might as well finish it the trilogy") and here I can't wait for the second season.
I've heard good things. I haven't seen it myself though, because it becomes very difficult to filter out the wheat from the chaff, and it's also intimidating because I've mostly disengaged with...
I've heard good things. I haven't seen it myself though, because it becomes very difficult to filter out the wheat from the chaff, and it's also intimidating because I've mostly disengaged with Star Wars since roughly the same time period (since episode 3 came out). There's been so much officially sanctioned lore that's come out since then, and Disney declared all of the EU stuff I DID engage with as non-canon. (Except they're sort of reusing some of it?)
If it doesn't have a lot of lore references and tie-ins, I may check it out.
I don't know that star wars couldn't become an interesting setting. It's just that as it's been used, at least in the stuff I've seen, it really hasn't been. I think there are a lot of really interesting, relevant stories that could be told (how come so many normal people support the empire, when from the outside they seem so over the top evil? Are some of the rebels actually bad people? Was the whole "politically powerful, genetically ordained, celibate warrior monk" thing the Jedi had going actually a good idea? Why are Jedi so prone to becoming the most evil people in the galaxy at the flip of the switch). They just haven't been really explored in the canon, instead mostly sticking to the bog standard battle between good and evil set by the original trilogy.
That's fine for a fun action adventure story aimed at kids, and that's exactly what the original trilogy was. It doesn't give a franchise much legs, nor is it particularly interesting as a long term strategy in my opinion though.
Maybe andor does a little more of that exploration though? I'll have to take a look.
This and "how does someone become radicalized against an oppressive regime" is Andor in a nutshell. Personally it goes back to the feeling in A New Hope ( and parts of the old EU ) that this is a...
how come so many normal people support the empire, when from the outside they seem so over the top evil? Are some of the rebels actually bad people?
This and "how does someone become radicalized against an oppressive regime" is Andor in a nutshell. Personally it goes back to the feeling in A New Hope ( and parts of the old EU ) that this is a dirty universe. That what originally made Star Wars interesting and different from other ( at least mainstream ) Sci-Fi of the time, even if the story followed The Hero's Journey like a laser guided missile.
Personally worried about the second season because the first feels very much like someone managed to tell a story they cared about while the higher ups were off churning out the things they thought would earn money. But who knows.
Sounds interesting. I agree with you about the universe being dirty. That was a pretty unique characteristic among Sci Fi of the time, especially Sci Fi movies. I remember loving how grimy,...
Sounds interesting. I agree with you about the universe being dirty. That was a pretty unique characteristic among Sci Fi of the time, especially Sci Fi movies. I remember loving how grimy, weathered and lived in the millennium falcon looked the first time I saw those movies.
I think what was revolutionary about the movies at first was 1) the amount of places that Lucas borrowed from to generate his story and 2) the special effects, which at the time were...
As far as sci fi it doesn't seem either especially unique as far as concepts, or applicable to any sort of real world issues.
I think what was revolutionary about the movies at first was 1) the amount of places that Lucas stole borrowed from to generate his story and 2) the special effects, which at the time were groundbreaking. The "universe" is vast and allows for all kinds of things to feel "at home" but generally those interesting ideas were left to novels and extended universe things that Disney won't really take on.
There are many, many more sci-fi settings and stories that will get more to the social commentary or useful critique you are getting at that Star Wars can't or won't get in to. Mostly Star Wars was and continues to be more about being an "event" than providing a lot of depth. For better or worse, Disney has doubled and tripled down on that idea (probably because, as you've implied, a corporation cannot take those risks with something that is a measurable percentage of their bottom line).
I am still a sucker for these stories and even the bad ones have entertained me, if even from their bad-ness (looking at you, Book of Boba Fett). But there are still gems in there... Andor and some parts of the Mandolorian for sure. But I'll still give any new Star Wars a shot and enjoy it for what it is, mostly mindless entertainment.
In many ways it's a basic fantasy setting with spaceships and guns. And that's not BAD by itself, but it's why they can't ever get away from the force and jedi and such, because there's only so...
In many ways it's a basic fantasy setting with spaceships and guns. And that's not BAD by itself, but it's why they can't ever get away from the force and jedi and such, because there's only so much interest in being a regular dude in a world with wizards and where the people in power are all wizards (or being influenced/backed by wizards). There are definitely stories there, good ones, but I never see people advocating for basically just stories about medieval peasants in a fantasy world, but without all that magic nonsense.
I realize I'm going off topic here, but if you want to read some interesting stuff that deals directly with these ideas, The Black Company books by Glen Cook are all about regular people that just...
because there's only so much interest in being a regular dude in a world with wizards and where the people in power are all wizards (or being influenced/backed by wizards)
I realize I'm going off topic here, but if you want to read some interesting stuff that deals directly with these ideas, The Black Company books by Glen Cook are all about regular people that just live in a world with crazy strong wizards running around.
After reading the Malazan series people often get recommended the Black Company series (or vice versa). While magic in Malazan doesn't inherently mean you're the top dog, it does spell trouble for...
After reading the Malazan series people often get recommended the Black Company series (or vice versa). While magic in Malazan doesn't inherently mean you're the top dog, it does spell trouble for the average soldier. That perspective is prominent in both.
I've not read them, but I'd assume the stories engage with the fact there are crazy strong wizards running around? I think that's the part of the "no force, no Jedi" thing that confuses me. But...
I've not read them, but I'd assume the stories engage with the fact there are crazy strong wizards running around? I think that's the part of the "no force, no Jedi" thing that confuses me. But either way, I'm definitely not saying there isn't some interest, my LARP character specifically couldn't do/learn magic itself, as it was an interesting limitation to put on her, but I think it's not a reasonable priority for the world.
Black Company has been hanging on my long term tbr for a while, I'll have to see if I can bump it up
Yes. Not to spoil too much, but the premise is the crazy strong magic users are basically warlords and they have these armies/mercenary companies that they use to their own ends. The mercenaries...
I'd assume the stories engage with the fact there are crazy strong wizards running around?
Yes. Not to spoil too much, but the premise is the crazy strong magic users are basically warlords and they have these armies/mercenary companies that they use to their own ends. The mercenaries do have some magic users, but they are more limited to "basic" stuff - light healing, maybe some distractions/illusions etc. The protagonists aren't what would traditionally be considered "the good guys" but examining that trope is also a part of it.
Anyways, they are good books if you are into that kind of military/dark fantasy mashup.
I found myself having very similar thoughts after hearing about Dune: Awakening. The setting it very much meant to drive the story, but Arrakis is not necessarily a place I would find fun to...
I found myself having very similar thoughts after hearing about Dune: Awakening. The setting it very much meant to drive the story, but Arrakis is not necessarily a place I would find fun to explore all its corners and talk to the people living there.
And jedi survivor had an plenty of open world elements. Galaxies was amazing. Still bitter that they killed it with NGE. Been meaning to check out the restoration project, but I don't have time...
And jedi survivor had an plenty of open world elements.
Galaxies was amazing. Still bitter that they killed it with NGE. Been meaning to check out the restoration project, but I don't have time for MMOs these days.
And KotOR was always considered open world before the concept started to shift slightly to require big individual spaces instead of just a universe where you can go anywhere at any time. I find it...
And KotOR was always considered open world before the concept started to shift slightly to require big individual spaces instead of just a universe where you can go anywhere at any time. I find it hard to come up with a definition for an open world that doesn't include KotOR. And of course the MMO The Old Republic is open world in every sense of the term.
I too am totally bitter about SWG's NGE. I had been playing as an Image Designer, and was very good at my job. I had all of the sliders memorized and could remake someone exactly how they wanted...
I too am totally bitter about SWG's NGE. I had been playing as an Image Designer, and was very good at my job. I had all of the sliders memorized and could remake someone exactly how they wanted to be remade with just the old UI. When they threw all of the Entertainer professions into one big soup, suddenly my skills (that people had actually sought me out and paid well for) were next to worthless. It seriously killed the game for me.
Legends of the Jedi was released in 1998. It is an open world role-playing game - - and by RP I also mean that you have to be in character. It is one those MUDs that are "unofficially but...
Legends of the Jedi was released in 1998. It is an open world role-playing game - - and by RP I also mean that you have to be in character. It is one those MUDs that are "unofficially but officially authorized" if that makes any sense. Maybe the correct expression is "officially tolerated".
I'm pretty sure it is technically one of the first open world Star Wars videogames, but there must have been others before.
I was a massive, huge Star Wars fan as a kid. I thought it was such a fun universe, but since the prequels, and especially since Disney bought it, I keep finding myself thinking... it's really not that interesting of a setting.
As far as sci fi it doesn't seem either especially unique as far as concepts, or applicable to any sort of real world issues.
Obviously a lot of people still enjoy it, but I'm often left wondering how much of that is based on the setting being actually compelling, versus Disney constantly shoving endless amounts of star wars in everyone in the western worlds faces constantly at all hours of the day.
I always think about how interesting a Culture, or Expanse or Ringworld videogame with a huge budget could be. I wonder if the sheer amount of mindshare and dollars Disney has put behind Star Wars has in any way prevented that from happing though.
Sorry for the sorta off topic comment, but seeing new Star Wars stuff these days is a lot more likely to make me feel sad than excited because of those thoughts.
I am a fan of the first, first, Fast and Furious movie. From 2001. Great characters, nice themes, cool things happen, well paced, an overall nicely rounded and fairly tight story. Totally my jam.
Then they started ... changing. The studio turned it into a franchise, and "elevated" it to empty-headed blockbuster status. I don't like the franchise. It's totally lame.
So I don't go to the films. I don't even go looking for them, they don't have space on my media server, they're just not my jam.
However, I don't sit around zero-summing Hollywood over their existence. "If only F&F didn't exist, that money would be available for things I love. Wow, that'd be great. Fuck F&F for sucking up resources that could directly cater to my tastes."
Every single year, tons of stuff comes out that's not my jam. I just don't watch. I also don't jump into threads about the thing I won't watch anyway and shit all over it. I don't populate threads and comment chains about the latest F&F or JW release and shit all over it with "wow, another shit movie" and "boy, I can't wait for them to figure out how much of a waste these stupid lame projects are and stop so we can get some real movies made."
But that's me.
I don't like Star Wars because "it's being shoved in my face." The F&F Franchise, the Jurassic World Franchise, lots of properties, are shoved in my face. Even on social media, people pile into threads gushing about "oh it was sooooo kewl when the dino ate his face" or "the cars went to space and they saved the day, kewl." It's kind of next to impossible to not be made aware of these big franchises.
I leave them to their fun. They obviously get something out of those franchises.
Kewl. Takes all kinds to make the world go round. Totally kewl, which is an old school cooler version of cool. Very rad.
What won't make the world go round is when fandoms start weaponizing against one another. "If only you'd stop hogging the (spotlight/studio/investors) then our stuff would have more, so knock it off and stop liking what you like. Jeeeeeeez, enough already, grow up and like the right stuff for a change."
Star Wars and Marvel, the two fandoms it's apparently kewl to shit on. The fandoms we're supposed to "move on" from and "stop liking." That we've apparently been tricked into liking or something.
What if people just like Star Wars and Marvel because ... wait for ... they do? Why do they have defend that? Why is it necessary to try to "explain" why they like them. Why can't the response just be "oh awesome, Star Wars makes you happy. Rock on." No, it's "sigh, I guess, but Star Wars really is lame and I just wish it would make way for things I like more."
I want to preface this by saying that I 100% agree with everything you're saying. People shouldn't shit on people for liking things. A friend of mine always says, "LET PEOPLE ENJOY THINGS." As a serial complainer, I've taken her words to heart, and I've come to terms with the fact that people (most people, in fact) enjoy things that I do not enjoy.
But I also want to use your comment as a platform to say I think its still totally valid to criticize, and even lament, what certain franchises have become. Especially when a juggernaut like Disney completely and systematically sanitizes every property it gets its hands on. Of course masses of people like them, its been engineered to appeal to the lowest common denominator (I don't mean that as an insult).
I mean, imagine if Disney got their hands on the Dune franchise. They would be completely different movies. And I don't mean in an artistic expression sort of way. I mean I don't think Disney is literally capable of telling that story without compromising it in a way that contradicts the source material.
This is a multifaceted issue because its also wrapped up with the long-rising popularity of digital media, video games included, which has seen a similar trend. Obviously Star Wars as a property was a national phenomenon from day 1, but Star Wars games were meant for a very specific audience when they first started releasing them, and that very specific audience adored them.
Then now happens, and these smaller audiences misplace their frustrations on the general audience. "Everything is made for everyone now, so its everyone's fault for liking it." That's definitely not fair to my aunt, who just wants to take her kids to a nice, unnoffensive movie this afternoon. Obviously, its all profit-motivated, because why wouldn't studios/distributors want to maximize ticket sales or game purchases?
Still, it kind of means smaller audiences are now left in the dust. I'm sure its still frustrating for you to know you may never see a movie that scratches the same itch that the original F&F did. I'm not saying its a travesty or anything, but definitely a bummer right?
When something gets popular, it tends to get sterilized, caricaturized, or Flanders-ized. Seems like those are our options. I hope someday, though, smaller audiences will be able to easily find things that are meant for them without having to sift through piles of mass-produced panacea.
Maybe it's because I grew up in the Dark Times, when we had three Star Wars movies and then nothing. Literally nothing for quite a long time. More than a decade. Very, very occasionally some super low budget knock-off might dip a toe into the sci-fi or adventure waters, but it wasn't very common. And they often weren't very good.
My point is I never formed some sort of expectation, or entitlement, to certain franchises or certain kinds of content. Because that didn't exist. I just cheered and got happy when something cool came along, and otherwise learned to live with limitations. Because that was reality.
Unlike today, where people expect their every whim to be personally catered to. And feel entitled to blow up in abject rage when it's not.
Movies cost money. People want to be paid, supplies and sets have to be paid for, all of that. Someone has to put that money up. And the way it works (because, for some reason that I don't get, super rich people never seem to write a check for their dream franchise or dream project to be made reality) is you talk someone with money into paying for the movie/show/whatever.
That person is referred to as an investor. And they want their money back. Or, at least, they want some sort of chance they'll get their money back. That's why they invested. They don't invest because "oh, wow, what a great idea, so cool and original and full of magic; it'd be a crime if that didn't get made."
No, the gave that money to the producer, who gave it to the director, because they saw it as an investment.
Studios are the same. They're investing their money, and they want a return. What's been happening at Disney for the past couple of years? Their very uncreative board and even more very uncreative institutional investors have been muttering dark ominous things about the lack of return on what Disney shells out for various movies and shows.
Disney's no different from any of the others. I go through Reddit threads where people are losing their minds over Warner Brothers looking at cold numbers and deciding to write off nearly finished projects because their accountants felt the sure-thing tax credit of the write off was probably more profitable than the chance the project might hit the zeitgeist just right and become mega-profitable.
It's something that I rarely get the sense social media seems to understand. It's a business. These movies, especially the kinds of movies "fans" demand, start counting their budget at a hundred million dollars. Most "big budgets" these days are 100-200 million.
That's a lot of fucking money. And yet you see fans screaming with froth and drool flying from their mouths about decisions studios will make "just because it was more profitable." Or "they only care about money."
Everyone only cares about money. That's the point of the capitalistic system the bulk of the planet's population has been indoctrinated into. Doctors will tell you "this is a very serious condition you have that needs immediate treatment", and then in the next breath say "oh well, too bad, get out" when you explain you don't have the money to pay for treatment. That's the world we've allowed to rise up around us all.
That's what I think of when you say "smaller audiences." Small audiences, niche content, it's a lovely thing to think about in the abstract. But the reality is they (studios and investors) want money. They want lots of money. They want their money. And they don't get it by paying premium prices for niche projects.
A small audience project, a niche market, can't earn back a nine digit investment. Not reliably. Not as a general expectation. Sure there are exceptions. Sure some movies do hit the zeitgeist just right and explode into the stratosphere, rain money back down on their gleeful investors; but most small movies generate small returns.
Creatives have their heads in the cloud. They're supposed to. They're creative. But when you turn imagination into reality, it costs money. If you write a book, it costs a little money. A lot of time, but hardly any actual money.
The moment other people are involved, money is now involved. They all want to get paid. A blockbuster movie is incredibly expensive because today's audiences have been trained to sneer at anything which isn't picture perfect.
From Snow Crash, the thoughts of a character looking at a crowd gathered for a street concert:
That was written in 1992. It's become reality. The whole of mass entertainment lives and breathes that passage. Everyone, audience members, wanders around completely unaware of how entitled they sound when a low budget project appears and they sigh over how amateur it looks. Over how "lame" or "obvious" its effects are, over the readily apparent shortcuts the project had to take to finish and release. Over anything in that project that doesn't drip with money having been poured into it.
My point is not "feel sorry for studios" or "those poor put upon investors." My point is that more "fans" need to recognize the reality of the business that supplies their entertainment. Because it is a business. No one lays down a hundred million plus for a movie simply to make you or me happy. They do it because they hope that hundred million turns into at least four or five hundred million.
Does it suck? Yeah. Is it reality? Yeah. Is there a better way? Cheaper tools is the only thing that doesn't involve the whole of society restructuring. Which is why I get so bemused, exasperated in truth, so often when I see all these demanding idiots moaning about the latest big budget flop that "didn't fill my expectations to the letter" in one breath, but then shitting on AI in the next.
Small projects, niche projects, that's something AI is going to make happen. Not now, and probably not next year. But it will make that happen. AI tools, once they're developed and matured, are going to enable someone with creative vision to sit at a keyboard and press buttons.
Those button presses will materialize virtual actors and virtual sets and virtual effects into visual reality. More button presses will manipulate all that, create scenes that a storyteller will be able to use to link together as a story. Not a story someone has to read, because who reads these days? They're too busy bitching about movies and watching Netflix on their phones to read.
But when a storyteller has a fully enabled AI console in front of them, they'll be able to manifest stories you can see and hear. Not student films or low budget neighborhood productions, not guerilla filmmaking on the run with corn syrup blood and fast cuts to hide that the actors aren't really fighting, not anything where you can see the wires and have to put blinders on over inch thick sunglasses to see past the flaws.
Digitally perfect visual storytelling. Movies. Whole movies you'll be able to sit down and watch. Movies that today would cost nine figures, thousands of people, and dozens of months to produce. But with mature technology will cost a fraction of a fraction of all that. A handful of people at best, working on affordable computer technology, using equally affordable software, will able to slide into whatever niches they decide they have a story to tell in.
But that's then. That's some future tomorrow. Right now, movies cost big bucks. Prestige tv costs big bucks. I'm always happy when something I like comes along, but I never feel like they owe me a thing. Because I don't register to them. I'm one person out of 7.9 billion who currently exist on the planet.
And I definitely never look at someone delighted with a project I hated and say "grow up, move on." As a certain character people have turned hated on into a whole religion once said, "how rude."
You are just like me. I love F&F the first. I had it for cool movie when it came ou, shiny fast cars and all... I was 15 at the time, the perfects target for this movie. I have played NFS Underground of course andlove the theme that started by watching F&F. The I saw 2F2F and was like "Why they switched such a cool cars for Evo and Eclipse? There is nothing special about them." I mean he opening sequence wss over the top but with cool cars! The rest was just an action movie... And this trend continued. I have bought F&F on Blu ray (I like having my things physical) and I didn't bother with the rest of them. EDIT: I forgot the important thing here! I see F&F in different light today. It is still fast shiny cars, but woth Donnie Brasco mixed in. It is movie about relations, about undercover cop becomeing part of gang eventually valuing his new found team more than being a cop - up to the point of revealing himself to save Vince. It is movie about respecting each other. When Dom nods at Brian after he is handed the keys to Supra after the drag race, that is the time when Brian finally earned his respect. While I like fast shiny cars, I love this "newfound" view on this movie.
Star Wars is kind of another story. I bought episodes 1-6 when they came outon Blu ray as complete saga. I was on the new ones in cinema including stories. I even bought Solo and I'm thinking about Rogue One since those two add up to originals. I won't be buying new ones though, probably.
I don't blame studios for making new movies in such franchises. If they didn't spend money on them, they would spend it on another stupid thing.
I have explained myself here some time ago, I'm not native English speaker and heavy topics are kinda hard for me so that the message comes along the right way and is understood correctly. I shouldn't but I will talk about one such topic now - inclusion of BAE people in movies. I want to say right now that I don't have anything against BAE! I love Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson, Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee and many many others. My problem is not with the people, my problem is with the system where if your movie don't have such people in one of main roles, you are basically fu**ed - you will be pointed at and shunned upon for making movie that includes only white people or that includes white and black but no asian etc. Let me tell you - have you seen Home alone? How many different than white people were in main roles? On the contrary - Could there be somebody else against Sly in Demolition man? What I want to say is that if the actor is good, it doesn't matter how he/she looks, they will get cast. But in today movies I feel like sometimes there are people forced into the role just so that producer can say "Yes, we have added them." I mean isn't this even bad for the actor? To be just some, forgive me the ter, thing to be included because producer has to (but can't pay some big name, for example)?
Why I started this - many new movies kinda leave negative impression on me because of that. Thus - if they didn't make just another F&F movie, they will spend money on something other I wouldn't want to see. And once again to be clear - there are movies that are new and also great and also has BAE actors in them. I loved Dune for example! I don't like Netflix' take on Witcher though, where they totally fu**ed up Triss - beautiful and very well shaped pale skin redhead in the game and l, well, not that good in the series. Not that the actress is ugly, definitely not! But she just doesn't fucking look like the character she plays!
(I know there are similar things in the past, ie. Red in Shawshank redemption, but I don't have visual template/pattern for him - see? Not native English speaker, I don't know how to properly say that.)
I hope I get understood. I'm here for answers if somebody wants me to clear something up. Hell, I'm very willing to clear anything up as I want it to be understood what I meant.
What about Andor?
Frankly, it seems clear that Andor is a one-off and nothing as good will probably happen again (or at best they will try to milk this concept some more instead of finding a new one, which will dilute its uniqueness), but Andor is special because there are no Jedis, no force, and it's about a very "normal" civil resistance against the Imperium. Thanks to that it has more obvious parallels to real world issues. And the world feels unique because they're focusing on something else than the few big "cool" things already established in the original trilogy or the prequels.
In my opinion Andor shows that the setting actually can be pretty interesting, it's just that the owners are usually not interested in making it so. I stopped caring about Star Wars almost 20 years ago when episode 3 came out (and that was pretty much "meh, might as well finish it the trilogy") and here I can't wait for the second season.
I've heard good things. I haven't seen it myself though, because it becomes very difficult to filter out the wheat from the chaff, and it's also intimidating because I've mostly disengaged with Star Wars since roughly the same time period (since episode 3 came out). There's been so much officially sanctioned lore that's come out since then, and Disney declared all of the EU stuff I DID engage with as non-canon. (Except they're sort of reusing some of it?)
If it doesn't have a lot of lore references and tie-ins, I may check it out.
I don't know that star wars couldn't become an interesting setting. It's just that as it's been used, at least in the stuff I've seen, it really hasn't been. I think there are a lot of really interesting, relevant stories that could be told (how come so many normal people support the empire, when from the outside they seem so over the top evil? Are some of the rebels actually bad people? Was the whole "politically powerful, genetically ordained, celibate warrior monk" thing the Jedi had going actually a good idea? Why are Jedi so prone to becoming the most evil people in the galaxy at the flip of the switch). They just haven't been really explored in the canon, instead mostly sticking to the bog standard battle between good and evil set by the original trilogy.
That's fine for a fun action adventure story aimed at kids, and that's exactly what the original trilogy was. It doesn't give a franchise much legs, nor is it particularly interesting as a long term strategy in my opinion though.
Maybe andor does a little more of that exploration though? I'll have to take a look.
This and "how does someone become radicalized against an oppressive regime" is Andor in a nutshell. Personally it goes back to the feeling in A New Hope ( and parts of the old EU ) that this is a dirty universe. That what originally made Star Wars interesting and different from other ( at least mainstream ) Sci-Fi of the time, even if the story followed The Hero's Journey like a laser guided missile.
Personally worried about the second season because the first feels very much like someone managed to tell a story they cared about while the higher ups were off churning out the things they thought would earn money. But who knows.
Sounds interesting. I agree with you about the universe being dirty. That was a pretty unique characteristic among Sci Fi of the time, especially Sci Fi movies. I remember loving how grimy, weathered and lived in the millennium falcon looked the first time I saw those movies.
I might check it out some time.
I would love an Expanse open world privateer style game where you can just go mining, pirating, bounty hunting, whatever.
Freelancer.
It's the one thing that comes close and then there's still nothing that's like Freelancer.
It really is one of the best games. I spent far too much of my childhood playing that game, online and offline.
I think what was revolutionary about the movies at first was 1) the amount of places that Lucas
stoleborrowed from to generate his story and 2) the special effects, which at the time were groundbreaking. The "universe" is vast and allows for all kinds of things to feel "at home" but generally those interesting ideas were left to novels and extended universe things that Disney won't really take on.There are many, many more sci-fi settings and stories that will get more to the social commentary or useful critique you are getting at that Star Wars can't or won't get in to. Mostly Star Wars was and continues to be more about being an "event" than providing a lot of depth. For better or worse, Disney has doubled and tripled down on that idea (probably because, as you've implied, a corporation cannot take those risks with something that is a measurable percentage of their bottom line).
I am still a sucker for these stories and even the bad ones have entertained me, if even from their bad-ness (looking at you, Book of Boba Fett). But there are still gems in there... Andor and some parts of the Mandolorian for sure. But I'll still give any new Star Wars a shot and enjoy it for what it is, mostly mindless entertainment.
In many ways it's a basic fantasy setting with spaceships and guns. And that's not BAD by itself, but it's why they can't ever get away from the force and jedi and such, because there's only so much interest in being a regular dude in a world with wizards and where the people in power are all wizards (or being influenced/backed by wizards). There are definitely stories there, good ones, but I never see people advocating for basically just stories about medieval peasants in a fantasy world, but without all that magic nonsense.
I realize I'm going off topic here, but if you want to read some interesting stuff that deals directly with these ideas, The Black Company books by Glen Cook are all about regular people that just live in a world with crazy strong wizards running around.
After reading the Malazan series people often get recommended the Black Company series (or vice versa). While magic in Malazan doesn't inherently mean you're the top dog, it does spell trouble for the average soldier. That perspective is prominent in both.
I've not read them, but I'd assume the stories engage with the fact there are crazy strong wizards running around? I think that's the part of the "no force, no Jedi" thing that confuses me. But either way, I'm definitely not saying there isn't some interest, my LARP character specifically couldn't do/learn magic itself, as it was an interesting limitation to put on her, but I think it's not a reasonable priority for the world.
Black Company has been hanging on my long term tbr for a while, I'll have to see if I can bump it up
Yes. Not to spoil too much, but the premise is the crazy strong magic users are basically warlords and they have these armies/mercenary companies that they use to their own ends. The mercenaries do have some magic users, but they are more limited to "basic" stuff - light healing, maybe some distractions/illusions etc. The protagonists aren't what would traditionally be considered "the good guys" but examining that trope is also a part of it.
Anyways, they are good books if you are into that kind of military/dark fantasy mashup.
Yeah I've been on /r/fantasy long enough to have seen them rec'd. Just been a while since I've thought about them! Ty
I found myself having very similar thoughts after hearing about Dune: Awakening. The setting it very much meant to drive the story, but Arrakis is not necessarily a place I would find fun to explore all its corners and talk to the people living there.
Star Wars Galaxies was the first open world Star Wars game.
And jedi survivor had an plenty of open world elements.
Galaxies was amazing. Still bitter that they killed it with NGE. Been meaning to check out the restoration project, but I don't have time for MMOs these days.
And KotOR was always considered open world before the concept started to shift slightly to require big individual spaces instead of just a universe where you can go anywhere at any time. I find it hard to come up with a definition for an open world that doesn't include KotOR. And of course the MMO The Old Republic is open world in every sense of the term.
I too am totally bitter about SWG's NGE. I had been playing as an Image Designer, and was very good at my job. I had all of the sliders memorized and could remake someone exactly how they wanted to be remade with just the old UI. When they threw all of the Entertainer professions into one big soup, suddenly my skills (that people had actually sought me out and paid well for) were next to worthless. It seriously killed the game for me.
And more recently, there was even another Star Wars MMORPG, Star Wars: The Old Republic...
Legends of the Jedi was released in 1998. It is an open world role-playing game - - and by RP I also mean that you have to be in character. It is one those MUDs that are "unofficially but officially authorized" if that makes any sense. Maybe the correct expression is "officially tolerated".
I'm pretty sure it is technically one of the first open world Star Wars videogames, but there must have been others before.