Star Wars *OT* (Off-Topic)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Monday, July 13, 2015, 14:08 (3230 days ago) @ General Vagueness

We don't know anything substantial about the story.

I don't want to know anything more about the story.

Oh I get that, I'm just saying you can't know if it's good if you don't know what the story is yet.

Of course. I never said I knew it would be good. At this point I feel like I have many reasons to think it is likely to be, and that excites me.

To be fair, I had forgotten they got him as the writer on this one. Still, has he never written anything you didn't like?

I've liked everything I've seen that he's worked on.

fair enough

Has Harrison Ford not signed on to any movies you didn't like?

Sure; a few. See my comment to Cody about that quote.

Your quote to Cody was that you don't think he's lying. I don't think he's lying either, but I don't know that his sensibilities and yours line up. You're saying now that they don't always line up; if I was you that wouldn't only make me excited, I would also consider the possibility of this being a case where his thoughts don't line up with mine.

I revise my statement. I've always appreciated Harrison Ford. His early work is fantastic (even the non-action stuff like American Graffiti and Witness). There are a few movies he's done that I'm not sure I'll like, but I haven't watched them in part because they weren't well received, but Ford is the kind of actor who can be better than the movie he's in. Actors (and writers, for that matter) have a limited amount of control over making a film good. Being involved in something that won't turn out as well as you'd like it to is precisely the situation he was worried about with the new Star Wars, which is why your logic is silly--you assume that his judgment of scripts is necessarily reflected in every movie he's made. Good scripts get changed. Good scripts can get made into lousy movies. That said, bad scripts seldom get made into good movies. The man has starred in some of my favorite movies, so when he calls a script remarkable, that's an endorsement.

...

Nearly every blockbuster movie since Star Wars has been influenced by Star Wars. It's hard to describe the effect that movie had on the culture. I've not been very engaged either, but the prequels felt like a betrayal of my faith in Lucas as a creator. The mucking with the originals upon rerelease should've been the canary in the coal mine, but I wanted to believe. I'm not going to let my disappointment in that quell my excitement over what looks like an good faith effort to right the Star Wars ship.

Weren't you one of the people complaining about people who said they felt they were owed something other than the final game by Bungie or other developers? Yet here you are talking about George Lucas's betrayal, like there was some kind of agreement between you, like you knew him. Maybe I'm reading "a betrayal of my faith" wrong, but any way I look at it it seems melodramatic.

I think you're reading it wrong. He betrayed my faith in him as a creator. It's another way of saying I lost confidence in his judgment and his abilities as an artist. If he decided the make documentaries, or art house films about migrant workers or something, I wouldn't feel justified calling it a betrayal just because he's not making space operas any more. If Bungie decides that what will work best for them as a studio involves making a game for a different platform, that's not a betrayal. That's a business decision. (If I felt differently, I would have been part of the crowd that ditched Bungie in 2000.)

I'm not being cynical. I don't think they're deliberately misrepresenting the movie. If you mean "why are you so pessimistic?", I don't think I'm even being pessimistic, I'm trying to be realistic. I don't say stuff like this because I think something will be bad or to make other people think things will be bad, and in this case it's not even really about lowering expectations, it's about encouraging people to think things through. Maybe there's more material out there than I've heard about, AFAIK it's the video above, one teaser, some stills, some vague quotes like the one you gave, and a list of people working on it, and I don't think that's enough to have an informed opinion.

I've stated all the reasons I'm excited, and I don't need any more information--I know enough to be hopeful about Star Wars again, and that a big deal for me because the franchise was a very important part of my childhood.

Being hopeful and being excited are two different things. Hope is great, hope makes life worth living, hope doesn't need evidence, nor should it. Excitement, on the other hand, should be backed up by something, I think.

My hopes are intertwined with my excitement for the new Star Wars movie. I'll never understand how fan sites seem to attract people who object to fans who act like fans.