I thought we were talking about if the story was good?
I thought we were talking about if the story was good?
I literally just made this thread...Which prequel designs have stood the test of time? Ain't no one begging for a Naboo star fighter, lol.
Typing posts like this pretty much equate to saying "I have no interest in pop culture". Which...I mean, that's your right. But then why are you here anyway?
Those aren't really brands in the same way Star Wars or the MCU is though. They're all more traditional films that don't have "universes". E.T. is just a single film, and the other films are based mostly around the casts that you had: Back to the Future is a vehicle for Michael J. Fox, Indiana Jones a vehicle for Harrison Ford. Of the ones you mentioned, I wouldn't even think to revive them except Ghostbusters, which is a concept that can support a "universe" (though really should just be a trilogy).
Ok...like your confidence. My money is on the downward trend or less than TLJ (dom and ww)....pending JJ doing the imo impossible ..I am sure there will be an avatar bet thread when the full trailer is out in October. If there isn't a full on thread then sure but otherwise I rather wait for the whatever is cooking once the full trailer is released as we tend to do here.
$700M domestic is a reasonable expectation. The third movie in the trilogy should see an increase over TLJ.Star Wars is still gigantic domestically, 700m won't be too difficult for it to achieve here.
It's the finale of the Skywalker Saga. Palpatine is back. EVERYONE will show up.
Star Wars is based on kids TV serials. That doesn't devalue it in any way shape or form, but I see no reason to pretend otherwise. Star Wars has a 'gee whiz' tone. Empire is tonally darker than the original. But is Star Wars notably darker than Dark Crystal, or Goonies, or Return to Oz, or The Black Cauldron, or hell The NeverEnding Story?It's tone that's the difference though. Fairy tales can have things in that you look at after the fact and go "hey that's pretty fucked up". Like Captain Hook is a grown ass man who murders kids and is trying to kill Peter Pan.
But the one is whimsical and light so it's acceptable and the tone is very clearly established.
But Star Wars was always fairly serious. It's why the shoe-horning in of the Ewoks felt kind of out of place because tonally it doesn't really fit that great with the previous two films.
Lucas' intentions and the finished product were often at odds, at some point I think a creative work just takes on its own life.
Interesting how the trilogy that doesn't have General Grievous is less successful in this area. Very interesting. Who could have saw this coming.
Star Wars is about the innocene/naivette of teenage-dom (not childhood and there's a big difference) meeting the harsh reality of adulthood. That's really the story in a nutshell. E.T. is a kids movie, but Star Wars never was.
Star Wars is based on kids TV serials. That doesn't devalue it in any way shape or form, but I see no reason to pretend otherwise. Star Wars has a 'gee whiz' tone. Empire is tonally darker than the original. But is Star Wars notably darker than Dark Crystal, or Goonies, or Return to Oz, or The Black Cauldron, or hell The NeverEnding Story?
Lucas said it was for young people in interviews back in 1977, literally saying it was closer to a Brother's Grimm fairy tale than it was 2001 A Space Odyssey.
But then most don't realize how dark and complex the Brother's Grimm work was either, thinking that the sanitized Disney versions represent the fairy tales of old. Heck, most forget how dark those early Disney movies like Dumbo and Pinocchio are.
Well I mean if Star Wars is basically only one of two "mega brands" ... really what's the problem here? It's in a pretty exclusive club by that metric, just because MCU is having their peak moment doesn't mean Star Wars is necessarily doing anything wrong.
"Nobody except Disney makes movies for young people anymore," he said. "I want to open up the whole realm of space for them. Science fiction is okay, but it got so involved with science that it forgot the sense of adventure. I want 'Star Wars' to make them think of the things that could happen. I'd like them to say, 'Gee! Wouldn't it be great if we could go and run around on Mars?' Kids today seem to be having a very boring childhood.
Go watch Return to Oz and get back to me.That's where Lucas' inspiration may have started from but tonally I don't think it's where it ended up.
Tonally there is a huge difference between like Empire Strikes Back and a Disney film. Even when I was little kid I immediately could delineate in tone between Star Wars movies and the regular "kids stuff" that I liked to watch.
I mean even so much as The Goonies versus Indiana Jones ... they may be inspired by similar influences, but they are also very, very different in tone.
"Nobody except Disney makes movies for young people anymore," he said. "I want to open up the whole realm of space for them. Science fiction is okay, but it got so involved with science that it forgot the sense of adventure. I want 'Star Wars' to make them think of the things that could happen. I'd like them to say, 'Gee! Wouldn't it be great if we could go and run around on Mars?' Kids today seem to be having a very boring childhood.
...
"The reason I'm making 'Star Wars' is that I want to give young people some sort of faraway exotic environment for their imaginations to run around in. I have a strong feeling about interesting kids in space exploration. I want them to want it. I want them to get beyond the basic stupidities of the moment and think about colonizing Venus and Mars. And the only way it's going to happen is to have some dumb kid fantasize about it--to get his ray gun, jump in his ship and run off with this wooky into outer space. It's our only hope in a way."
JJ is going to make mass audience pleasing movie, thats his thing.Ok...like your confidence. My money is on the downward trend or less than TLJ (dom and ww)....pending JJ doing the imo impossible ..
Yet they both so far got great reviews and did fantastic at the box-office.
Yes they do!I don't really take everything George says as gospel, for one he goes back on things he says or says something completely different like 50 other times.
Kids movies don't have direct parrallels to World War II facism and things like and finding out your father is a grossly disfigured version of Freddy Krueger who basically is a head Nazi or some kind of commentary on Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War, etc. etc.
In fact as a kid if I'm honest I really didn't like Star Wars. It was too serious and too dark, He-Man, Disney cartoons, The Goonies, E.T., Ghostbusters were all more relatable to me as a kid.
Hah! Luke being nuts was the best part of the film! The problem is that while I'd say that Johnson did a terrible job, he was given junk to work with. It'd be like making the second Lord of the Rings film and still being forced into doing things like answering who Sauron is, what the One Ring is and why they have to destroy it, and defining who Frodo is.There's plenty that TLJ could have done, but Rian decided to go nuclear. Kids aren't going to relate to Luke's cynical rambling or appreciate having their expectations subverted at every turn.
We shall see......I wont be watching in a theatre until I see some objective reviews from people with the same feelings around the ST as me .....big.hill.to.climb :-)JJ is going to make mass audience pleasing movie, thats his thing.
Er, yes it is. It's comedic, yes, but it uses the hero's journey as a framework. Plenty of fairy tales follow the hero's journey.
At this point, it seems more like you've made up your mind and will reject any example for nebulous reasons. Avatar, the second most watched film of all time, was definitely successful with kids as well as adults. That you are somehow trying to warp both The Matrix and Avatar into being questionably successful is precisely why I feel like you've made up your mind before even considering these examples.
But your entire premise was that it's impossible to become a giant kid-friendly franchise by being merely a hero's journey. Doesn't matter if the later sequels pivoted away from the Hero's journey framework, POTC is, without a shread of doubt, a modern kid-centric film series that became a smash hit by following the hero's journey without already being massively popular before hand through other literature.
There is no such thing as an objective review though.We shall see......I wont be watching in a theatre until I see some objective reviews from people with the same feelings around the ST as me .....big.hill.to.climb :-)
Poor word choice....review from someone who I share a similar opinion with (objective to me) ....like all the reviews I may disagree with that you may agree with and point me to as reason why movie is the best since sliced bread....but yep no review is objective :-)
The new movies, as much as I like them, rely too much on nostalgia to capture the attention of kids.
Yet they both so far got great reviews and did fantastic at the box-office.
MCU is a testament that character is king before anything else, including story.
Spoiler alert: people who don't like these movies won't like these movies.We shall see......I wont be watching in a theatre until I see some objective reviews from people with the same feelings around the ST as me .....big.hill.to.climb :-)
This is a very light and superficial article to be honest, but there's no doubt Disney/Lucasfilm aren't handling this brand as well as Marvel.
This is the mistake of these new movies. Everything is some variant of "REMEMBER STARWAR?"
Both the prequels and originals had compelling characters in new, wholly original settings. The latter is missing in the sequels
Give me Rey and Kylo over anyone in the prequel trilogy any day.The only compelling prequel character was Palpatine and that was largely on McDiarmid chewing the scenery.
I don't really take everything George says as gospel, for one he goes back on things he says or says something completely different like 50 other times.
Not true...I may be pleasantly surprised....Spoiler alert: people who don't like these movies won't like these movies.
Every movie franchise is struggling against Marvel with the "next generation" of kids because that's simply the biggest thing out there. Star Wars being the #2 isn't surprising, and has been there before —the prequels were beaten by the fantasy (LOTR, Harry Potter) genre back in the early 2000s, for example.
And it's not the first time Star Wars was counted out. Every generation born between Star Wars trilogies (especially those born after the OT and before the prequels) missed out on Star Wars being the "biggest thing."
And this time, Star Wars has competition in the form of the biggest media franchise since... well, Star Wars. Literally, if there was going to be one franchise that managed to compete against Star Wars for being the defining contemporary American mythology for the entire world, it was going to be either Marvel or DC, and Marvel turned out to be it (well deserved, of course.)
Marvel also peeked right as Star Wars started to take a break, with TROS being the only Star Wars movie released in a span of three and a half years and no more announced movies until 2021, with TV Shows picking up the slack.
No doubt Iger wanted Star Wars to be their second Marvel, and it still is honestly, but I think they figured out that Star Wars can only exist from time to time and not at the same pace as Marvel, or the same form.
To me, it's always been clear that Lucasfilm's mission since 2012, especially Kennedy's, was to revitalize Star Wars after the hit it took from the prequels and put an end to the nostalgia from the Skywalker saga with TROS, and then lay the foundations for creating a new Star Wars after that.
Why is Marvel the only metric that matters? They're having their peak moment, Star Wars had that too. MCU will eventually have it's own ebb/flow cycle where it is on a bit of a downswing itself unless you think 30 years from now kids will still think Robert Downey Jr. is the coolest.
The interview is from 1976! He was in the process of making the movie!