Star Wars had terrible dialog and the actors complained about Lucas’ flaccid direction. Cite. Otherwise, I agree: the film works despite its, “comic-book characters, an unbelievable story, no political or social commentary, lousy acting, preposterous dialogue, and a ridiculously simplistic morality.”
I credit the special effects. And I tip my hat to the film’s design as well as its score.
This meme “you only think Star Wars is good because you were a kid when you first saw it” is utter rubbish. People should really give it up; it’s not insightful. It’s just specious.
There are many things I liked as a kid that I have long since discarded, and that is true of virtually anyone who remains a fan of any of the original trilogy but is now grown up. I still think Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back are good because they were good. Even as a kid, I thought Return of the Jedi was a bit off and I think even less of it now. But the other two? They’re very good, simple as that. And the prequels? They’re crap.
But Ep. IV and V? No, those movies are still great, and for me and many fans they’ve worn very well. They had (and have) real magic. And VI still isn’t as lame as the prequels.
Careful. Opinion here was fairly evenly divided between those who thought Avatar was a great movie, and those who were honest enough to admit it wasn’t.
People who like Avatar are liars, then?
Avatar has a better story than star wars. They’re both simple stories with not much to them. They’re vehicles for holding the experience together.
The reason effects alone don’t cause universal acclaim like they did for star wars is that we’re a lot more spoiled now. Avatar is technically impressive, but not hugely better than all of the other amazing effects we’ve seen in movies over the last 2 decades. Whereas Star Wars was far more revolutionary and impressive on the basis of its effects.
A movie made now can’t be as far ahead of its competitors on a technical level as Star Wars could be, there’s just not that much room to be able to differentiate yourself in terms of quality.
Incidentally, I find other than the effects, the actual filmmaking aspects of most of the star wars movies was almost amateurish. For example the use of different types of wipes constantly makes it feel like the project of a high school editor working on his film project.
So the Academy Awards for best music, best costume design, best set/art decoration, and best editing were ill advised? It seems a heck of a thing for a movie that’s “amateurish” to win such specifically voted-upon awards.
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Star Wars had terrible dialog and the actors complained about Lucas’ flaccid direction.
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I flatly disagree about the dialogue. The dialogue was just fine. It wasn’t naturalistic, nor was it witty or clever in the manner of a movie like “Pulp Fiction,” but the dialogue perfectly suited the characters, the story, and the needs of the scenes in which the words were spoken. Yes, you’ve quoted the New Yorker peice before. Gosh, the movie didn’t have any political commentary. Who gives a shit? The fact is that* people who panned the movie were wrong.* They didn’t understand what they were watching; it was too new (and unfinished.) Brian de Palma made fun of it? That just makes me more convinced it’s a good movie. Brian de Palma’s made some of the most cartoonish, silly movies MEANT to be serious films in the entire history of cinema.
If you can watch the original series and then the prequels and NOT see the difference in filmmaking quality I honestly don’t know what to say except… I mean, example after example has been cited. The lack of coherence and logic in the prequel stories has been gone over and over again. The original series had simple, black and white characters; the prequels had characters who were absolute ciphers, characters that seemed to have no particular purpose and didn’t behave in a consistent fashion, aside from Palpatine, who’s just Super Evil Dude. There is NO acting in the original series as bad as the acting in “The Phantom Menace,” and it’s saying a lot when you can make Natalie Portman a worse actor than Steven Seagal. The dialogue scenes are all shot just like a daytime soap opera. The complete lack of use of basic filmmaking techniques in the prequels is right there on the screen.
I have to agree about the dialogue. The editor in me kept wanting to change things
“We found the remains of a base, we estimate it has been deserted for some time.”
No. I realize that people screw up and make mistakes when they talk, but generally you try to get the grammar correct, unless there’s a reason for it. It ought to be “…we estimate it has been deserted for three weeks.” or “…it has been deserted for some time.” If you estimate something, there should be a figure associated with it, or else you haven’t done any estimating.
“I think he might mean Old Ben Kenobi.”
“He’s just a crazy old man. I don’t think he exists any more.”
Weird way to talk about an individual. “I don’t think he’s around anymore” or “I think he died”. If you talk about him existing it sounds like you’re talking about the Abominable Snowman.
Don’t get me started on parsecs.
Sure, the script wasn’t flawless, but it was more hit-or-miss than crappy. Because it did hit as often as it missed. While some of the dialogue maybe didn’t make sense semantically, there was a certain rhythm to the script that certain other movies like Pirates of the Caribbean: The Black Pearl enjoy. A good rhythm makes dialogue memorable even when the content is perhaps not so inspired.
“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”
“Don’t try to frighten us with your sorcerous ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the rebels’ hidden fortress.”
“Hokey religion and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side.”
“I used to bulls-eye womprats in my T-16 back home.”
It’s not masterful or deep writing by any means, but it is enjoyable and memorable. By contrast, the prequel writing is functional, direct, and boring, when it isn’t painfully bad. The only memorable lines from the prequels are the bad ones, though I will give credit for “You call this a diplomatic solution?” “I call it aggressive negotiation.”
Isn’t that more or less what you said about Star Wars fans in your first post here?
No. How does anything I say even remotely imply lying?
Best editing certainly. I wasn’t talking about stuff like costume design and set decoration, more the director and editor stuff.
Well, when someone says, “I like movie X because of reason reason Y,” and you say, “People don’t really like movie X because of Y, they like movie X because of reason Z,” that does sort of imply that they’re either lying, or too stupid to know their own minds. Neither is hugely flattering.
If you say someone is viewing something through a nostalgiac lens, you’re not calling them stupid or lying - it’s just an emotional reaction that colors our perceptions.
I agree completely, as I have said before - and I especially think that Luke’s dialog early in the movie, in his interaction with his aunt/uncle and the newly-discovered droids, is particularly fine - given that it’s Luke’s acting and dialog which is often the most criticized.
It’s not great, but it’s fine. It’s not “bad”.
I’m just not great with quotes. I don’t know, I guess my brain doesn’t process that way, because I don’t recall memorable lines on my own that much. But I have a buddy who pulls them out all the time. Like
“What a wonderful smell you’ve discovered.”
I also like
“I’d just as soon kiss a wookiee.” “I can arrange that.”
“Some rescue.”
“Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?”
“These blast points? Only Imperial stormtroopers are so precise.”
The problem with your first post is that it’s very patronising to tell a group of people why they like something. Nothing wrong with pointing out that nostalgia plays a role, but that’s not what you said.
I believe there is some truth to the notion that as an adult, you like what you grew up with. It’s my theory as to the generally perceived “infantilization” of people in their 30s and late 20s who enjoy playing video games and watching animated movies and TV shows as a pastime.
However, I also think that’s not the same thing as nostalgia. There’s some overlap, but people do grow up, and while they may retain the same interests, their analytical faculties do grow more sophisticated (or they change, at the very least). The difference between a piece of nostalgia that no longer holds up to your adult self and one that does is extremely marked. Star Wars still holds up for many, many people. It’ll be interesting to see if the people who were 8-12 when the prequels came out in theaters look back on them when they’re 30 with the same, ah, ‘reverence’ that we do for the originals.
It’s also worth pointing out that there are plenty of young kids these days who’ve seen the prequels, who’ve seen Avatar, who in general are used to the kind of CGI we can achieve these days, and still like the originals.
And when they disagree and point out that even from their current perspective Star Wars still has merit, what then? Are they lying to you? Are they lying to themselves and won’t admit it?
I saw Star Wars as a kid (I’m not sure exactly when but I do recall “Episode IV: A New Hope” so I guess it wasn’t its initial release) and I’ve caught it a few times since. It holds up reasonably well. I watched Avatar as an adult, and there certainly won’t be any misty-eyed feelings of nostalgia for that manipulative piece of crap.
Now I can spell out in detail why I think the former is a better movie than the latter, but if your argument hinges on me being biased toward the former because of elements that have nothing to do with cinematic merit, then what’s the point of discussing it? I could list a few dozen points of comparison and you could still come back with some variant on “Oh, you only believe that because you saw Star Wars as a kid.”
In your first post, you say that people who like Star Wars don’t like it for the reasons they claim they like it: they only like it because they were a kid when they first saw it, and have never applied their adult critical faculties to it. You really can’t escape a strong implication in that post of either dishonesty, or lack of intellectual rigor, in the people you are describing.
Well, in fairness, you could have simply been genuinely mistaken about why people liked Star Wars so much. In light of the large number of posters who had specifically denounced the idea that nostalgia plays a significant role in their estimation of this movie, do you still stand by what you said in your first post?
Fine, lack of intellectual rigor. Does it matter that much for entertainment preferences?
Obviously the generalization isn’t going to apply to every single person to likes the movies, but I think it’s generally true. Lots of kids that were 9 years old in 1999 thought The Phantom Menace was the greatest shit ever and will probably look upon it less critically.
And that’s ignoring the fact that blockbusters are run of the mill these days. In the 70s, it was something special, something that really stood out. The first movie of its kind, the sort of thing that became a huge part of the culture. People would see the movie over and over again. It was not only a movie, but a cultural event. It was huge. It permeated the era. It meant more culturally than pretty much any movie because of what a unique phoenomina it was. All of which color the perception of how good it actually might be when evaluated with more critical modern tastes.
So yeah, I stick by what I said at first as a generalization.
If it’s so popular that it permeated the culture to that extent, there had to be something people liked about it, don’t you think?
Sure, it was big and epic and flashy and amazing on a technical level at the time. You could drop a craptacular modern movie that was loaded with stuff like, say, Cowboys and Aliens, into the year 1972 and it would’ve become a huge massive cultural thing. It was well ahead of its time on that level.