The author manages to use the phrase "a simulacrum of a simulacrum" without making me roll my eyes in the way I do reading some of my papers from college-- which I should probably credit the...
The author manages to use the phrase "a simulacrum of a simulacrum" without making me roll my eyes in the way I do reading some of my papers from college-- which I should probably credit the editor for as well.
Solo in a meta sense was indeed soulless and derivative. It is a profit-driven postmodern exploitation of the Star Wars franchise by following the path that the Marvel Cinematic Universe blazed: write stories in settings and with characters that people already have a fandom, execute it well enough for non-critics to enjoy, and reap the benefits.
I am not, however, going to decry this model. Here we have a vehicle for writers, directors, actors, and technical staff to build names for themselves via big projects with name recognition.
And, being a child of the 90s, I am programmed with that postmodern brand of nostalgia that keeps Funko Pop in business.
"I am not, however, going to decry this model. Here we have a vehicle for writers, directors, actors, and technical staff to build names for themselves via big projects with name recognition." I...
"I am not, however, going to decry this model. Here we have a vehicle for writers, directors, actors, and technical staff to build names for themselves via big projects with name recognition."
I would argue that, by building a universe instead of focusing on stories, these writers/directors/actors are just jumping from one ocean of trying-to-make-it to another ocean of trying-to-make-it. Flooding the universe with films means that more writers/directors/actors can claim they've been a part of the franchise...now how do they stand out? Especially if the film turns out to be more of the same formula...
Disclaimer: I'm neither here nor there about Star Wars but I am genuinely concerned about the state of film media; I think they're being safe and predictable for profit, and prioritizing this before good story-telling.
You may be right about the flooding aspect, but the works do add to a person's corpus. Though Hollywood projects and who works on them are highly subjective, being able to point to a movie that a...
You may be right about the flooding aspect, but the works do add to a person's corpus. Though Hollywood projects and who works on them are highly subjective, being able to point to a movie that a lot of people will have seen and being able to say "see, this is what my work looks like" should be a benefit (full disclosure: I am not and never have been in "the biz"). Special effects artists and other behind-the-scenes technicians especially should benefit from this; they don't need to stand out, they need to be able to deliver quality
I have also not been in "the biz", not even close XD I'm certainly looking at this from a consumer point of view, but I do see your angle more clearly now. I guess I can concede to it as well. I'm...
I have also not been in "the biz", not even close XD I'm certainly looking at this from a consumer point of view, but I do see your angle more clearly now. I guess I can concede to it as well.
I'm so used to movie media being either an art-form or a mode to tell specific tales about small groups of people. I'll be honest in saying that I'm not comfortable with the shift that's occurring. Not saying that all movies have to be #Deep (lol couldn't resist) but...some of the best movies imo were made in the face of possibly flopping with the general audience.
Also, this is a sore topic for me lately as the debates I'm getting into with my SO about How To Train Your Dragon is becoming more and more frequent >;[
This is what got to me about TLJ - this desire to "destroy the past". Why? Why not let old Star Wars alone and start something afresh to wow audiences? When George Lucas made the first Star Wars...
This is what got to me about TLJ - this desire to "destroy the past". Why? Why not let old Star Wars alone and start something afresh to wow audiences? When George Lucas made the first Star Wars movie he created a whole new universe from whole cloth - of course with dozens of inspirational sources from Flash Gordon to Kurosawa, but he still made something fresh and new that hadn't been done before.
It seems this is a problem of Western culture in general - we're in a "decadent" phase when all we can do is mimic or mock the past but can't make anything of quality of our own. It might be economics or demographics or just big historical Spenglarian trends but the "emptiness" of Star Wars is just a symptom.
I'd argue that this strategy, although viable financially in the short term, just means you get to milk an existing fan base for money until they move on to the next cool project. It's a decaying...
I'd argue that this strategy, although viable financially in the short term, just means you get to milk an existing fan base for money until they move on to the next cool project. It's a decaying orbit that slowly spirals down into an IP crash unless something comes along to bolster it anew.
Contrast this to the Marvel Cinematic Universe... Not all movies are great, but they build on one another. They're not afraid to mix things up and offer something new. They show us storytelling on a scale we've never seen before.
Both of these are intellectual properties, and owned by Disney, to boot. But I'd argue that Star Wars is on a downward trajectory, while Marvel is still ascendant, coming off of two mega-hits in a row that redefined movie expectations.
Nostalgia isn't a growing model. You can build on it, though. And I'd argue that Star Wars' problem right no is that it's not succeeding at growing, just at milking the nostalgia aspect. It's a shame, because the new characters in TFA were fantastic, but the storytelling structures are all same old, same old.
My biggest problem with the new films is what you're talking about — Disney is attempting to restructure Star Wars in the same vein as the Marvel "cinematic universe". It's why I poste posted the...
My biggest problem with the new films is what you're talking about — Disney is attempting to restructure Star Wars in the same vein as the Marvel "cinematic universe". It's why I poste posted the article in the first place:
It used to be a “saga”—a story told in the epic mode, in which the fate of the world is inextricably tied to the souls of cosmically important and irreplaceable individuals. It’s becoming a “universe,” in which atomized and interchangeable people embark on adventures that are individually exciting but ultimately inconsequential.
The pre-Disney films were about something, they told a larger story greater than the sum of their parts. The new films are just tales that happen to take place in the same universe — they are essentially disposable. I have not seen Solo, but I resent the fact that Darth Maul shows up towards the end. It's such a cynical plug for future films that it amounts to a pop-up ad for Obi-Wan: A Star Wars Story or wherever they end up using him. They could have teased some new villian — if they had to tease anything at all — but instead, they returned to the well that is the original films. Future films will tease more films yet to come and Star Wars will eat itself.
While I understand what you're saying, it seems to me that that's pretty much what the fans have been clamoring for: something that goes beyond the story of the Skywalker Dynasty and into a wider...
While I understand what you're saying, it seems to me that that's pretty much what the fans have been clamoring for: something that goes beyond the story of the Skywalker Dynasty and into a wider universe. That's definitely the reason Star Wars grew a very healthy (financially speaking) Expanded Universe.
As an example of this, the return of Darth Maul isn't just Disney pulling an old character out of the mothballs... It's an homage and a recognition to Clone Wars as being canon. It's doing Expanded Universe stuff in the context of movies.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe works because although it's a shared universe, each character has their own arc and their own story to tell. That's why it's so exciting to see, say, Thor and the Guardians of the Galaxy meet. They both have their stories, but suddenly you get the joy of seeing them together.
If anything, the problem with the Star Wars universe is that they're trying to engineer this in reverse. It's like we first got the Avengers movie series all the way up to Infinity War, and now they're giving us the first Thor movie.
The difference is that the Marvel universe so huge and rich compared to Star Wars - comics, movies and TV shows going back over 7 decades with multiple storylines and universes and retcons. Of...
The difference is that the Marvel universe so huge and rich compared to Star Wars - comics, movies and TV shows going back over 7 decades with multiple storylines and universes and retcons. Of course the quality varies enormously - for every Infinity War or Winter Soldier you have your Iron Fist or Fantastic Four. But there's enough content to suit all tastes and where the occasional stumble doesn't bring down the whole franchise.
Star Wars traditionally has been "less is more". Sure you have the books and TV tie-ins but the real focus has been the movies (as opposed to movies based on another medium like comic books).
But the Star Wars universe isn't really built for the sheer volume of output Disney wanted to justify their investment. Lucas envisaged an epic of 9 movies with a single coherent Joseph Campbell-inspired thread. Unfortunately he had too much control for the prequels and lost control for the sequels - we really didn't get the Star Wars movies we deserved, with Lucas providing the vision but working with people who could implement it well and having the power to say "no" to his bad ideas.
As someone who spent most of my youth and young-adulthood as a huuuge star wars nerd, star wars has become an interestingly empty thing to me. It's hard for me to see the new movies and such...
As someone who spent most of my youth and young-adulthood as a huuuge star wars nerd, star wars has become an interestingly empty thing to me.
It's hard for me to see the new movies and such without feeling kind betrayed in a low-key way, because I have been reading star wars novels since I was old enough to read novels, and there was such a wealth of interesting lore and canon created for me that Disney threw out. I understand their thought process of it being much less complicated to start over, but the move kinda alienated their true dorkiest of fans. (like, I've read literal hundreds of star wars novels, but I haven't seen TFA yet.) If my feelings are the feelings of other similar level fans (I honestly don't know, none of my adult friends were into star wars) then the apathetic interest I hold now seems like it would have been a bad trade for my rabid fandom, as I would have been first in line to see the adaptation of the Thrawn series, or a movie of the original Solo trilogy.
I guess I felt like the original expanded star wars universe was created for fans, by fans - by authors who wanted to tell stories in that universe with characters they loved, for profit certainly, but for more than that, and it was such a cool place to be. New star wars feels like a place built for me by Disney, to sell movies and merch, and I don't want to be there anymore.
If we still had tags I might say I'm offtopic here. :P
What did you think of Solo? Most of the EU lore went right over my head, but a good friend who's big into the EU stuff told me they were very respectful of the EU lore for Solo and basically...
What did you think of Solo? Most of the EU lore went right over my head, but a good friend who's big into the EU stuff told me they were very respectful of the EU lore for Solo and basically brought back a lot of it into the canon, to the point of using the RPG rules for the card game...
As someone who spent most of my youth and young-adulthood as a huuuge star wars nerd, star wars has become an interestingly empty thing to me.
I'm with you there. Growing up, Star Wars was everything. Now, I still go see the movies in theater, but I don't feel I need to rush to see them. They're just movies now.
I wouldn't say that's off topic at all. The article touched on that in a way that you're hitting. When you have novels that expand on the universe and fill gaps in an interesting way that brings...
I wouldn't say that's off topic at all. The article touched on that in a way that you're hitting. When you have novels that expand on the universe and fill gaps in an interesting way that brings about character arcs that you didn't realize existed, then it's valuable to the canon of a universe.
The author manages to use the phrase "a simulacrum of a simulacrum" without making me roll my eyes in the way I do reading some of my papers from college-- which I should probably credit the editor for as well.
Solo in a meta sense was indeed soulless and derivative. It is a profit-driven postmodern exploitation of the Star Wars franchise by following the path that the Marvel Cinematic Universe blazed: write stories in settings and with characters that people already have a fandom, execute it well enough for non-critics to enjoy, and reap the benefits.
I am not, however, going to decry this model. Here we have a vehicle for writers, directors, actors, and technical staff to build names for themselves via big projects with name recognition.
And, being a child of the 90s, I am programmed with that postmodern brand of nostalgia that keeps Funko Pop in business.
"I am not, however, going to decry this model. Here we have a vehicle for writers, directors, actors, and technical staff to build names for themselves via big projects with name recognition."
I would argue that, by building a universe instead of focusing on stories, these writers/directors/actors are just jumping from one ocean of trying-to-make-it to another ocean of trying-to-make-it. Flooding the universe with films means that more writers/directors/actors can claim they've been a part of the franchise...now how do they stand out? Especially if the film turns out to be more of the same formula...
Disclaimer: I'm neither here nor there about Star Wars but I am genuinely concerned about the state of film media; I think they're being safe and predictable for profit, and prioritizing this before good story-telling.
You may be right about the flooding aspect, but the works do add to a person's corpus. Though Hollywood projects and who works on them are highly subjective, being able to point to a movie that a lot of people will have seen and being able to say "see, this is what my work looks like" should be a benefit (full disclosure: I am not and never have been in "the biz"). Special effects artists and other behind-the-scenes technicians especially should benefit from this; they don't need to stand out, they need to be able to deliver quality
I have also not been in "the biz", not even close XD I'm certainly looking at this from a consumer point of view, but I do see your angle more clearly now. I guess I can concede to it as well.
I'm so used to movie media being either an art-form or a mode to tell specific tales about small groups of people. I'll be honest in saying that I'm not comfortable with the shift that's occurring. Not saying that all movies have to be #Deep (lol couldn't resist) but...some of the best movies imo were made in the face of possibly flopping with the general audience.
Also, this is a sore topic for me lately as the debates I'm getting into with my SO about How To Train Your Dragon is becoming more and more frequent >;[
This is what got to me about TLJ - this desire to "destroy the past". Why? Why not let old Star Wars alone and start something afresh to wow audiences? When George Lucas made the first Star Wars movie he created a whole new universe from whole cloth - of course with dozens of inspirational sources from Flash Gordon to Kurosawa, but he still made something fresh and new that hadn't been done before.
It seems this is a problem of Western culture in general - we're in a "decadent" phase when all we can do is mimic or mock the past but can't make anything of quality of our own. It might be economics or demographics or just big historical Spenglarian trends but the "emptiness" of Star Wars is just a symptom.
I'd argue that this strategy, although viable financially in the short term, just means you get to milk an existing fan base for money until they move on to the next cool project. It's a decaying orbit that slowly spirals down into an IP crash unless something comes along to bolster it anew.
Contrast this to the Marvel Cinematic Universe... Not all movies are great, but they build on one another. They're not afraid to mix things up and offer something new. They show us storytelling on a scale we've never seen before.
Both of these are intellectual properties, and owned by Disney, to boot. But I'd argue that Star Wars is on a downward trajectory, while Marvel is still ascendant, coming off of two mega-hits in a row that redefined movie expectations.
Nostalgia isn't a growing model. You can build on it, though. And I'd argue that Star Wars' problem right no is that it's not succeeding at growing, just at milking the nostalgia aspect. It's a shame, because the new characters in TFA were fantastic, but the storytelling structures are all same old, same old.
My biggest problem with the new films is what you're talking about — Disney is attempting to restructure Star Wars in the same vein as the Marvel "cinematic universe". It's why I poste posted the article in the first place:
The pre-Disney films were about something, they told a larger story greater than the sum of their parts. The new films are just tales that happen to take place in the same universe — they are essentially disposable. I have not seen Solo, but I resent the fact that Darth Maul shows up towards the end. It's such a cynical plug for future films that it amounts to a pop-up ad for Obi-Wan: A Star Wars Story or wherever they end up using him. They could have teased some new villian — if they had to tease anything at all — but instead, they returned to the well that is the original films. Future films will tease more films yet to come and Star Wars will eat itself.
While I understand what you're saying, it seems to me that that's pretty much what the fans have been clamoring for: something that goes beyond the story of the Skywalker Dynasty and into a wider universe. That's definitely the reason Star Wars grew a very healthy (financially speaking) Expanded Universe.
As an example of this, the return of Darth Maul isn't just Disney pulling an old character out of the mothballs... It's an homage and a recognition to Clone Wars as being canon. It's doing Expanded Universe stuff in the context of movies.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe works because although it's a shared universe, each character has their own arc and their own story to tell. That's why it's so exciting to see, say, Thor and the Guardians of the Galaxy meet. They both have their stories, but suddenly you get the joy of seeing them together.
If anything, the problem with the Star Wars universe is that they're trying to engineer this in reverse. It's like we first got the Avengers movie series all the way up to Infinity War, and now they're giving us the first Thor movie.
The difference is that the Marvel universe so huge and rich compared to Star Wars - comics, movies and TV shows going back over 7 decades with multiple storylines and universes and retcons. Of course the quality varies enormously - for every Infinity War or Winter Soldier you have your Iron Fist or Fantastic Four. But there's enough content to suit all tastes and where the occasional stumble doesn't bring down the whole franchise.
Star Wars traditionally has been "less is more". Sure you have the books and TV tie-ins but the real focus has been the movies (as opposed to movies based on another medium like comic books).
But the Star Wars universe isn't really built for the sheer volume of output Disney wanted to justify their investment. Lucas envisaged an epic of 9 movies with a single coherent Joseph Campbell-inspired thread. Unfortunately he had too much control for the prequels and lost control for the sequels - we really didn't get the Star Wars movies we deserved, with Lucas providing the vision but working with people who could implement it well and having the power to say "no" to his bad ideas.
As someone who spent most of my youth and young-adulthood as a huuuge star wars nerd, star wars has become an interestingly empty thing to me.
It's hard for me to see the new movies and such without feeling kind betrayed in a low-key way, because I have been reading star wars novels since I was old enough to read novels, and there was such a wealth of interesting lore and canon created for me that Disney threw out. I understand their thought process of it being much less complicated to start over, but the move kinda alienated their true dorkiest of fans. (like, I've read literal hundreds of star wars novels, but I haven't seen TFA yet.) If my feelings are the feelings of other similar level fans (I honestly don't know, none of my adult friends were into star wars) then the apathetic interest I hold now seems like it would have been a bad trade for my rabid fandom, as I would have been first in line to see the adaptation of the Thrawn series, or a movie of the original Solo trilogy.
I guess I felt like the original expanded star wars universe was created for fans, by fans - by authors who wanted to tell stories in that universe with characters they loved, for profit certainly, but for more than that, and it was such a cool place to be. New star wars feels like a place built for me by Disney, to sell movies and merch, and I don't want to be there anymore.
If we still had tags I might say I'm offtopic here. :P
What did you think of Solo? Most of the EU lore went right over my head, but a good friend who's big into the EU stuff told me they were very respectful of the EU lore for Solo and basically brought back a lot of it into the canon, to the point of using the RPG rules for the card game...
I'm with you there. Growing up, Star Wars was everything. Now, I still go see the movies in theater, but I don't feel I need to rush to see them. They're just movies now.
I wouldn't say that's off topic at all. The article touched on that in a way that you're hitting. When you have novels that expand on the universe and fill gaps in an interesting way that brings about character arcs that you didn't realize existed, then it's valuable to the canon of a universe.