The Star Wars travesty demonstrates the incredible power of brand

Cafe Society
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I wrote this post on 9/14/2017, and I think it’s aged quite well:

The ongoing hype about Star Wars is about getting back a thrill that can be no more

Anyone here think the sequel trilogy turned out great? I don’t mean “tolerable,” “acceptable,” “meh+,” “I’m gonna fight you on it because this is the Internet though I don’t actually think it was that great myself,” etc. I mean you genuinely think the whole thing is a worthy continuation of the OT. Anyone?

Anyhow, I’m going to add here to what I wrote in 2017. It’s amazing what a brand can do. We are so hungry for the lines-around-the-block thrill of 1977, 1980, and 1983 that we’re just gonna pretend that who ever owns the IP is able to deliver real Star Wars. Disney Star Wars is Star Wars. And if they sell it in a few years to Amazon for $50 billion and Bezos puts a new Jar Jar Christ serial on Prime–that will be Star Wars too!

It doesn’t matter if it’s a hot, steaming ******** liquefied and served to the masses through a feeding tube–it’s Star Wars! We love Star Wars, we crave Star Wars, and we’re happy to be fools for anything with the brand name on it.

Personally, I don’t get it. The OT movies were good. They were of their time in a good way, and they hold up well in the way that a large number of 80s movies hold up well and for that matter a large percentage of 80s music holds up well. If you were alive at the time, it felt that you were constantly getting bombarded with new and interesting pop culture. It felt fresh, and it was largely lacking in cynicism. (Personally, I had a big problem as a teenager with 80s music after 1985, but that’s another story…) The OT is fine–but hardly worthy of the near worship it receives.

The amount of money to be made, however, was almost enough to bring the Prequels into being via abiogenesis–it certainly didn’t feel like intelligent design! (Buh dun-dun tish.) If the Prequels have any charm to them, it’s that they were helmed by George-o himself, who brought a naive, sincere, unsophisticated, and just plain moronic gloss to them. Make no mistake, the Prequels are a vast merde-pile with a few semiprecious stones tossed in–but they are not cynical in feel.

But the Sequels. Hmm, I’m debating with myself whether such massive, monumental incompetence can be dubbed “cynical.” The trilogy is going to go down in history as the greatest degradation of an IP ever. Indeed the greatest example of pop culture hubris imaginable!

But yes, it’s cynical, for while the execution has been clownishly inept, Disney has used its ownership of the IP as a license to print as much money as possible. Let’s have a Han Solo origin story (flopppp, whoops!) Let’s have an Obi-Wan movie (it’s called “development hell,” Ewan). Let’s give Rian Johnson a trilogy of his own (what’s up with that? hahaha!). Let’s give those idiots who effed up the last season of Game of Thrones a trilogy (they ran fast and hard from it–hahahahaha! oh my). Trilogies! Spinoffs! More trilogiessss! It’s cynical, greedy ineptitude at its finest.

We live in an era in which the wheels are coming off a lot of buses, and the would-be adults in the room are revealed as mere infants. Just look at the idiot in the White House as example #1. And despite all the mad incompetence at Disney–despite all that, people are still giving these fools chances–and their money. Because it has the name “Star Wars” on it.

Funny. And sad.

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Me.

But I’m not going to fight anyone over it. You didn’t like the sequels, ok, get over it, and find something you do like. I’m willing to bet there’s stuff out there you love, and I don’t. Oh well. I don’t need to justify my likes and dislikes to anyone, and neither do you.

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I loved it. I remember posting after The Force Awakens “they remembered it was supposed to be fun!” They final three were, for me at least, fun. I enjoyed them munch than the prequels, which I found plodding and tedious. I just saw ROS and loved it.

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I think I agree with you, if I’m understanding right.

Where the original trilogy was what it was, and the prequels were not great, at least both trilogies had a sort of coherent point to them- the original one was the story of Luke Skywalker, and the prequels were the story of how Darth Vader and the Empire came to be. And they were coherent- even the prequels, as bad as they were, were coherent in their story- we found out who Anakin was, then we find out how the Empire starts, and then how Anakin turns to the Dark side.

But the third trilogy was… just crap with no actual coherent story, which seem to be made solely for the purpose of selling tickets and merchandise. I blame the lack of an overall “trilogy-runner” to keep it all coherent. In the original and prequel trilogies, George Lucas played this role when not actually directing the films himself (he directed 4 out of 6). But in the new one, there doesn’t seem to be anyone with an overall vision of what the trilogy is exploring, or resolving, or whatever. Instead there’s just a pair of directors who stepped all over each other’s feet. In lieu of a trilogy-runner, they should have had ONE director direct all 3 movies.

I mean, what did the third trilogy resolve? A conflict that popped up out of nowhere, and wasn’t even referenced in the first two movies. And with all new characters with little link to the originals, except for digging up the old actors to give some forced continuity.

They’d have done much better by focusing the whole thing on the fall of Ben Solo and his eventual redemption along with maybe some serious revelations about the nature of the Force w.r.t. good/evil. Instead, we got the First Order out of nowhere, a second Rebellion out of nowhere, and basically a rehash of the first trilogy, and some weird non-sequitur garbage in the third movie. And to make it worse, the new cast generally aren’t well written or developed all that much. I mean, we know more about Rey’s background, but as far as the main characters, do we know more about THEM at the end of the trilogy?

I do think they can produce good Star Wars- we’ve seen that Rogue One was very good. But it was far more of a grownup movie, in that it didn’t pander at all to the toy makers / merchandising. I mean, there were toys, but they weren’t as cynically blatant as D-O in the latest movie for example. But if they’re going for main-story-line Star Wars anymore, I think they’re going to need to gin up a story arc, and force the directors to work within those confines.

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OK, it wasn’t great. Why does it need to be? I’ve gone to see plenty of movies that weren’t great, and most of them, I didn’t regret seeing.

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Well, we’re here to discuss, debate, etc. I think it’s lame to enter a debate and say, “You can’t force me to debate!” Right, I can’t.

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That’s an odd comment. Really odd. The point of making anything is to make it good in some sense, right?

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Your points are very good.

I don’t think the prequels should have been made, ultimately. In the financial sense, sure. In the artistic sense, not needed, probably would have been difficult to make good, and they sure didn’t make them good.

I actually think that, purely from the point of view of story, the sequel trilogy makes more sense. Though it should have been made in the 80s. I’ve read why they didn’t do it, though I don’t remember the reason, as it probably wasn’t a good one.

By waiting until 2015 to do the sequels, they were forced to either use Mark/Cary/Harrison as old folks and try to fill in what happened in the interim (or just say fuck it with respect to filling it in, which sadly is what they did) or continue their story with younger actors and fail to use the old ones. They split the difference and ended up just trashing the old characters while failing to build appealing new ones (or at least appealing new ones that were actually used well). Rey flat-out sucks and Finn and Poe are wasted.

They had all the time and money in the world to do it right, and they made probably the worst possible trilogy they could. That’s saying something.

Star Wars won’t die until it’s been rebooted and relauched and re-everythinged until every last penny is wrung from the corpse’s clutch.

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I didn’t say the recent movies weren’t “good in some sense”. They were. At least, they were good enough that I had an enjoyable time in the theater that was worth ten bucks and a couple of hours. Something doesn’t need to be great to be good.

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Studios make sequels because they sell a lot of tickets. Since 1962 there have been 25 James Bond movies with 7 different actors playing Bond and there is no end in sight.

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I too am surprised, saddened, and disappointed to learn that Disney, a company that exists to make money, will make as much money as they possibly can off of IP they lawfully purchased. :(:(:frowning:

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And then my SIL (ex celeb chef) will still want Darth Vader memorabilia because he identifies. Only vicious Imperial Overlords can manage food-service enterprises.

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Obviously, there have been massive expectations of this IP, and I (and a lot of people) don’t think the new stuff has lived up to that.

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The thing is… there was a time when Star Wars movies were done. For a long time. The idea being that the story had been told–move onto other stuff and make money elsewhere.

So at one point in time, “making as much money as possible” wasn’t a given. Today, it is, and the result is a lot of shitshows.

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Let’s hope there is. The trajectory isn’t looking good right now.

Bond is actually an outlier. It was a “franchise” long before that word was applied to movies. I’m not sure why that model was adopted way back then, but it’s an interesting case. I wouldn’t call the movies “sequels,” however.

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The prequels were utter crap and we’d be better off if they hadn’t been made yet. I think TFA is a fun movie with no depth that is enjoyable but makes no sense as the first installment of a new trilogy. I enjoy the movie and rewatch it often. TLJ is a mess that accomplishes nothing and isn’t even fun doing it. ROS is another fun but shallow movie. I don’t know how often I’ll rewatch it going forward but it certainly ended whatever story they were trying to tell in this trilogy.

I know a lot of my problem with the last three was their lack of coherence. If they were made like the first 3 indiana jones moves then they would be more bearable but we just watched Marvel from the same studio produce a slick and tied together huge movie arc and then fail to even make a trilogy with a coherent plot. I’m mostly bummed by what they could have done with the 5 star wars movies if they had the same brains as the marvel side of their studio.

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I disagree with your analysis. I have thoroughly enjoyed all aspects of the Disney continuation on the SW saga and the EU movies. I even liked Solo. Yeah, that was me, I was the one who liked it.

Anyway, to each his own man. You don’t like the new stuff, or feel it lacks in originality, or would have preferred that they let it lie with it’s previous noble death rather than resurrecting it and making more content (I am fairly certain one of those things is your complaint). I disagree. But this is the Internet and we are allowed to disagree.

Maybe you’re one of the fans who read books about the EU and know all of these really obscure character names. If you are, then good on ya. I never got into SW other than what I watched on the movie screens. I’ve never even watched any of the animated, or the new live action series. I just feel that they are a way for me to sit back and forget about everything, and enjoy a movie for 2 - 2.5 hours.

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As a kid in 1983, I just kept wanting more and more and more new stuff from that same universe, more of every character, just taking for granted the story would fall into place (and it would have, because I was a kid and was more focused on the action and universe). Being older now, I want more from the story, and a lot more of the same stuff that was exciting from the originals, and I’m not sure that’s a possible feat.

To answer the OP, I don’t even know if a worthy continuation of the original was possible. The story was already showing signs of strain in ROTJ and it’s only gotten more strained.

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It seems to me that if the recent Star Wars movies haven’t lived up to their expectations, that’s a problem with the expectations, not with the movies themselves.

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Yes, Marvel shows how to put such complexity together and make it all work. The downside of that (to me, and I’ve heard other say it) is that it can all get a little product-y and it seems that few big chances are taken, but it is pretty darn competent. Poor Star Wars on the other hand…