The Death of Star Wars

I think my favourite is the one from on her majesty secret service, the actor who only played him in one movie.

 

The only group of any legitimate size saying this would be people who aren't currently fans of any Star Wars films, in which case they're not relevant to the life/death of Star Wars at all.

 

That's total BS and you aren't a 'true Bond fan' for thinking that!!!

For real though, I may have watched all of two Bond movies. They are fun, but not really my thing. Isn't it crazy how crazy SW fans can get?

 

Survived Jar-Jar Binks.
Survived Yoda flipping around like a spastic frog and screaming like an old man on too much blue pills.

It's true that most SW aren't masterpieces. And I don't think is a coincidence that the first two are usually seen at the top of many rankings of the films - they set the stage, and then pushed the story. The first internet outrage that would have occurred in 1983 would have been fraking epic - honestly....it would have been even more psychotic than the prequel era and TLJ. Who's Mon Mothma? What are these squid characters? Who are the Bothans? Boba Fett died like that? I can go on....I'm sure we all can. But even ROTJ didn't live with all the baggage that 20+ years of novels and comics built.

There's also a reason why comic books reinvent themselves with drastically different tone and even retcon entire universes and characters. [Not saying that doing that hasn't become too frequent these days....because it is for both DC and Marvel] SW will always become bogged down in both in-universe baggage and emotional baggage.

There was 20 years between trilogies which meant an entire generation grew up on the old EU. Then another decade plus between the prequels and the sequels, which took us both back to 40 years ago, but also 30 years into the future for those characters....think of how weird that is. And in between, you got an animated series (which similarly contained Jar-Jar Binks and nameless droids wandering in a desert and a joint-Jedi fever dream and....etc.) which was another generation growing up on vastly different content.

That's 4 different generations with 4 different worldviews, preferences, and approaches to film/animation/novels/comics. That's a lot of people to satisfy in one single universe that simultaneously going backwards to find out what the characters were doing 30 years after we last saw them.

So, if people think their version or reverence of SW somehow kills it....well, as Luke said of the Jedi, they're vain.

 

Stop judging old guys!!! Blue pills are like my midichlorians bro, but in a good wa...................geez...never mind.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 11, 2018, Original Post Date: Jan 11, 2018 ---

That's total insight-GOLD!! My middle son reminded me over the weekend that he loves the sh1t out of TPM and the rest. Not my thing really, but I like them. But from his perspective, they ARE the thing!!

I didn't like ESB when I was in 4th grade....too mushy.... And I LOVED ROTJ in 7th or 8th grade, but now it's reversed.

Give your kids a break. Do it for the children. If you hate the new SW, you hate children. My dogs love the new SW. Guessing you hate dogs too you heartless bastards. (I don't know if you are a true bastard by definition, but you are heartless if you go against your dog's liking. I'm just saying. )

Edit: My one dog loves Cassian Andor, my poodle thinks he's too derivative. Discuss.

Edit-the-second: I have a poodle. Deal with it yo!

Edit-the-third: I mostly hate children.

 

First of all, great post. I've tried to reach across to the "other side" too and I know it's not easy. As with most SW fans, I'm trying to come to terms with this movie and trilogy, and as individuals, we all have different ways to get there (or walk away).

Personally, I think the OT already kind of ruined SW. I think after the news that Disney bought SW, many fans were hoping for something "better". Every fan has their own version of what that is. I think it's fair to say the brains behind the ST kind of missed the mark, but I think they still hit the target, at least on the outer edges. The ST was supposed to be the great redeemer, but I don't think people realized that if it failed at that it could be the great divider.

The OT had serious undertones. Any scene with the bad guys was serious and menacing. We haven't gotten that from the PT and now the ST has followed the PT in that sense. The PT was made for GL's kids, but the OT was made a little more serious for the times, it didn't have GL's kids in mind. Humor was kept solely for the good guys (except for the odd unplanned storm trooper who bumps his head). The OT and PT tried to have exposition and explanations on things, though the PT missed the target entirely, the OT hit close to center. The ST is again close to the PT in this regard.

To answer your question, yes, I've seen some people just completely lose interest in SW. Some are or are going to ignore the rest of the new canon in preference to the EU (legends), while others are just going to gravitate to other Sci-fi. This is no longer the 70's where SW is one of only 4 decent source for sci-fi. We're pretty saturated with this stuff now, and not just in movies and TV shows, but also in video games. It would be quite easy to avoid SW if one had a mind to and still get all the sci-fi one wants without really feeling the loss. Especially when you consider we can always watch the OT.

All that being said, SW won't die. I fully expect Disney to churn out some movies to appeal to those fans like me. SW is bigger than what GL ever thought it would be, it has exceeded all his expectations and one man's imagination could no longer keep up with demands. I'm hoping Disney realizes the untapped potential it has here and tries to cater to all fans, but in separate movies or trilogies. Probably around 40-50% will be happy at whatever is put out on the silver screen, and half or so will follow suit or dislike it. If they keep changing it up, fans will keep coming back in case this is the time they'll get an episode that they like.

 

same here .

 

I doubt very much that "The Last Jedi" means the death of Star Wars. I didn't like the film, but I find this idea rather hard to swallow.

 

I'd have to disagree. I have a brother who grew up on the OT, his kids grew up on the PT, all of them so far hate the ST. I didn't mind TFA, but they disliked it one and all, and now with TLJ, they've pretty much sworn off of SW. Even their 6 year old hates TLJ. I bought him a bunch of SW ships for xm as (those figner sized ones) and he looked at them, then at me and said "I don't like SW anymore..." dropped them and went to play soldiers (yeah, toy plastic soldiers like in Toy story) with my son. I loked to my bro and laughed (he was a bit embarrassed maybe thinking I'd be offended, I found it hilarious... from the mouth of babes) "wow, how times have changed!" was my only reply.

Anyways, my nephews had pretty much every SW ship in lego or for action figure that was made. They played with their SW stuff like crazy. They liked R1, but so far the ST has pushed them away big time. The only discussion we had of TLJ this xmas was of how much it "sucked" (it was so bad I even played some devils advocate trying to defend it lol... yeah... me ). This is not me telling you to dislike the movie or trilogy, but just informing you that there are some hardcore fans who are being driven away.

Let me put it to you this way. I'm on here trying to find answers and a reason to like this trilogy again. I'm not saying everyone who disliked TLJ is on here to find a way to like, but I can tell you there are many SW fans who just can't be bothered anymore. I think TLJ jumped the proverbial shark for some fans, and quite simply, some are taking their money to some other sci-fi. You can say good riddance or that they were never really SW fans, but if that makes a dent in future SW's movies, Disney will take heed... even if they believe they have to make some SW movies that you don't believe are really SW and lean more on sci-fi themes rather than sci-fairy tale themes..

 

I don't see where any of those people are thinking along the lines of "Star Wars films were always bad," in reference to the PT and OT. I thought that's what was being referenced.

 

Familiarity breeds contempt.
The more Star Wars films are being made , wether they be good or bad is ultimately irrelevant, the lesser the impact will be.
Couple this with a medium like the internet that gives even the smallest of vocal minorities a megaphone and you get not what the OP calls the death of Star Wars but the inevitable banality of it. "Just another SW movie folks, nothing to see, move along."

Disney need to be really careful with how they treat this franchise. I prefer a trilogy every decade or so than one SW film a year ...

 

Star Wars as a cultural icon has long been dying, and it wasn't the PT, EA, EU, or ST that had anything to do with it.

It's the lack of cultural unification that's consequence of diverse niche cultural facilitation and isolationism provided by the expansion of communication and entertainment technology.

Up until the past decade, if you wanted to find a niche of a non-mainstream culture, you had to go looking for it in the 'underground'.
Now the underground is a Facebook or forum away, and it'll probably be a top listed item in your google search.

It's actually now really quite challenging to list a cultural behavior or enjoyment that is mainstream.
Even Baseball is falling, and while I was never a fan, if you walked up in 1985 and told me Baseball wasn't going be a ubiquitous cultural icon in 20 years, I'd have had a hard time figuring out how that was going to happen.

It's very easy now to exist in a silo world and I'm not slamming that. It's just what it is.
There's not just one avenue to get entertainment from anymore, and in the past decade, it's blown wide open beyond even the expansion of the late 90's and early 00's.

2007 was a pretty big year for the advent of the shift of expanding the diversity of cultural identity so far beyond any idea of mainstream.
Mainstream now just means huge commercial enterprises.

It didn't use to mean that. It used to mean "what almost everyone is into", and yes, it was always highly commercial.
However, now it's pretty much that the only defining characteristic of "mainstream" is the commercial aspect because there's definitely not a main chunk of the culture defined by the stream of whatever is being put out.

Don't like "mainstream" radio? Cool. Flip on your choice of playlist or streaming app.
Don't like primetime TV? Cool. Flip on your choice of streaming shows and/or youtube channels of your choice.
Don't like a franchise? Take a number. Order from any number of other ones.

Look at the music industry. It doesn't know what to do to adjust. Major studios are suddenly having to go back to 1960's style monetary models to keep afloat - that is, relying on touring. And that's because music has absolutely exploded online so vastly that not only can you get anything for free, but there's also an absolute FLOOD of music now available. So much so that it's now actually physically impossible to digest even a sizable portion of the artists available to even the most marginal of degrees.

Even if you only played one second of only one song per artist from every artist on soundcloud, for instance, you would be at it for just over 110 days...straight.

And that's just on soundcloud.

We are awash in a racket of media culture and there's no central avenue or "downtown" hub for it all.
Though some may point to Facebook's ubiquitousness, even there the world of culture is tailored to your preferences, and as such, you don't have to see whole aspects of other intracultural aspects of society if you don't want to (and in some case, even if you would have, but just don't know about it ... yet).

Impulse entertainment is at its zenith at the moment, and that zenith is going to keep getting higher because Cable TV is only just starting to buckle at the knees, because networks are just getting started on direct user delivery systems with each taking up their own streaming service.

Star Wars only became such a huge cultural icon because of the lack of diverse flexibility in cultural isolation during the era in which is reigned.
Look at it this way - in 1976, SW needed (adjusted) 50 million dollars to make a film that absolutely shook the ENTIRE culture and took over everything.

Today, studios blow 20 to 30 times that size, into the 200 to 300 million dollar ranges, to make a film and the most you'll get out that is a bump for a few years in sales on merchandise and maybe some fans for a bit. But you're absolutely NOT going to start a cultural movement where the majority of the culture can all refer to that same reference point of your movie and all understand the connection.

Even Star Wars itself is too fractured now. It has grown and grown to tailor to a branching of fan cells who each like an entirely different thing about Star Wars, not just because they see Star Wars, personally, in their own way, but because they literally engaged with a mass of content which a mass of other Star Wars cell cultures didn't engage with. And then there's another group just like that one who focused on their engaged content and then another...etc...

The OT isn't STAR WARS anymore.
It's the OT.

I can't walk up to fans at this point and say I LOVE STAR WARS! and have any confidence that what I'm thinking of as Star Wars is what they are also thinking of.

Star Wars, in short, has become like religion.

I can walk to anywhere there's some church and say I LOVE CHRISTIANITY and adherents will agree.
But that doesn't mean very much like it did once in the pre-Luther days of the Holy See.
Which Christianity do I mean? Unitarian? Lutheran? Catholic? LDS? Baptist? etc.... Everyone of these sees their Jesus and God differently. God dammit all!

That's what's happened to Star Wars.
There have been two large gaps of films and in each gap period, a huge range of content came out in the form of everything short of a major film (and in some cases, even and animated one of those) and each had their own perspective and angle on the Star Wars universe.

Every little tangent delivered in the form of media content to consume regarding Star Wars is itself another sectarian introduction into the Star Wars metaculture.

TLJ didn't kill Star Wars, Star Wars media and a well articulated consumer communication technology zeitgeist did.

What happened with the fanbase with ST is the same thing that already happened with the PT (seriously...I've already gone through this "swearing off Star Wars" before...hell...I went through it when GL shut off all original cuts of the OT and you could only get the CGI'ed releases). Only this time you have even more Star Wars sects than before.

So no. Star Wars isn't suddenly being left by swaths of people. It's being left by swaths of people again and more so now because there's even more niche groups within Star Wars than ever.

As to a cultural icon beyond the fanbase.
Star Wars has looooong been dead on that front.

All that's out in the mainline that the entire culture can connect to out of Star Wars are the MOST basic icons of the OT, things like Vader's mask and the image of a lightsaber, and those icons are about as foggy on details as the Devil and the Cross are to Christianity.
It's the most bearbones of the entire thing which carry on, and there's literally no chance of Star Wars repeating itself in cultural permeability due to the nature of consuming entertainment now.

Star Wars itself is, fittingly, an echo of an echo.

Star Wars won't be going away anytime soon in the sense of the primary icons of Star Wars, but what we know as Star Wars will definitely fade eventually and give rise to a different Star Wars just as if any individual of Martin Luther's followers from the medieval era came looking at the Lutheran church today, they'd be very shocked and not able to identify with what they took to be Lutheran.

Time kills everything because humans are fickle.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I think we are overblowing the negative aspect of the reception of the Last Jedi. The reception has, just like TFA, been overwhelmingly positive and it it has received even greater critical acclaim. Furthermore, for every disenchanted diehard being vocal enough to claim that he (yes, they're usually male) will never really care about Star Wars ever again, the franchise will gain a hundred new fans, young and old.

We are often getting caught up in the reception of the internet forum or the comments section. There is a world out there, a real world, where people just love Star Wars and who do not perceive the reception of a Star Wars movie as a zero-sum-game.

I know more people who have grown to actually love Star Wars than I know people who have become disenchanted. Overall Star Wars has actually acquired a much broader cultural reception, especially when you compare it to the 'dark days' of the prequels or the post ESB decade. Media platforms, internationally, talk about it constantly, and always in a positive fashion.

More importantly, The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi are tremendously 'high brow'. Critics and academics will be talking about the two movies for years to come. Star Wars has never really spawned a true academic discourse, but these two movies did.

 

This could be the most well thought out post ever. You, sir, have won the game.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 11, 2018, Original Post Date: Jan 11, 2018 ---

Sweet Jesus in a car-seat!! Who IS Mon Mothma!!?? Serious props for realizing the internet has ruined everything. In the immortal words of Taylor Swift, 'we are never ever getting back together.....like, ever.'

 

The old 'Star Wars is pap anyway' argument is just a reactionary stance that fans sometimes take when they feel that they've lost a debate. Let's face it, most of us can appreciate that SW never had the best plot, action, drama, romance (but obviously the best soundtrack!). It is the combination of all of those elements that were smashed together to make such a cultural hit. Most of us love the films because they made our childhood special!

As for the second point, I believe that part of the appeal for the PT and ST was the length of time that everyone had to wait to watch them. This phenomenon permeated every piece of media before release. Now that we have regular annual movies, that hype is no longer in the forefront of the average person's consciousness. I think that SW will always have it's own cultural identity; after all there is nothing quite like it. The charm may well wear off if they continue the current release rate though.

 

Fot those who think SW is dying, this very thread is proof that it's not, and as for TLJ being the cause for it, well it's not either, if anything it made the fans that don't like TLJ love even more the other films. As for some people saying SW isn't that great... I always heard it from friends and family. I remember the day I made my SW tattoo, even my wife told me: " Star Wars???!!! Really???!!! But there's more to it... I now have two daughters, the oldest, who was 4 when TFA was released when to the cinema for the first time and absolutely loved it, R1? She was literally jumping up and down rooting for Jyn and K-2SO, and now she saw TLJ and understood the story perfectly even though she doesn't understand english... she freaking loved it. As for my youngest, she's 3 years, and already loves deeply boh Yoda and Chewie and those where some of her first words... So if you think SW is dying, it's not.

 

I agree. Beyond that, I think a relatively small portion of the fandom is allowing itself to get to a point where every -- or any -- disagreeable aspect, be it a character arc or plot point, seems sufficient cause to reject either a film, a trilogy, or the entire saga.

This, I think, is partly due to the downside of speculation: theorizing about characters or events and coalescing so much around these ideas as to become creatively immobilized or completely intolerant when something other than what was personally preferred occurs.

A part of that downside also has something to do with facets of human nature, such as selfishness, immaturity, inflexible thinking, and/or unreasonable expectations.

Star Wars always had many more positives and multi-generational appeal than anything else, more so than most franchises can honestly claim. In the end, more people generally do enjoy it rather than criticize or reject it because, on the most surface level, it is good entertainment, better and more memorable than most other films of any space fantasy variety.

I can't help but hear Leia, in Episode V, embracing her inner Ackbar and yelling out to Luke, "It's a trap!" =)

And there are some fans, who, like Luke, can and will rush off to confront a titanic cinematic entity without much forethought or preparation, and to do so only to barely escape the encounter unscathed in some psychological manner.

The whole Dagobah scene between Yoda, Luke, and the Cave comes to mind as well: what is in there [in the theater/film] is only what we bring with us.

But many decide to go into the "cavernous" theaters clinging intensely to expectations and defense mechanisms, and the resulting vision which unfolds can be unnerving and, in a sense, a defeat of the self: the horror of not finding what you expected, as Luke reeled when he saw his face in Vader's mask.

These are strong and powerful and relevant metaphors -- meta-metaphors even -- within the films themselves. In that amazing sense, Star Wars can teach us much about Star Wars, about life, ourselves, and our world.

And, speaking about teaching....

In my experience, Star Wars has long been a useful educational tool and primary subject of academic discourse.

And there are many other examples, such as:

The Mythology of ‘Star Wars’ with George Lucas
http://billmoyers.com/series/the-mythology-of-star-wars-with-george-lucas-bill-moyers-1999/

Course in the Force
http://college.usatoday.com/2012/11...fessor-offers-philosophy-course-in-the-force/

Various books with Star Wars essays and criticism
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=star+wars+essays

Star Wars Episodes IV–VI: Themes, Motifs, and Symbols
http://www.sparknotes.com/film/starwars/themes.html

From Homer to Star Wars (Harvard University):
https://english.fas.harvard.edu/?post_type=courses&p=7526​

There is even a wealth of Star Wars curricula out there. This is one example:

Star Wars in the Classroom
http://www.starwarsintheclassroom.com​

-- all of which, I think, goes to assert a broader reality: beyond immediate reactions and short-term fandom tantrums over any particular point of debate, there are these greater archetypes, themes, symbols, etc. which can and do emerge in the long-term.

Which is also to say, Star Wars, for any of its debatable imperfections, has always been, and will continue to be, something which can entertain and enlighten.

I find that pretty amazing =)

 

I would say to anyone who is critical of a SW movie to watch them in this context. For me, ANH and ESB are classics that set the standard for the franchise being as big as it is today and built a base of fans like me in the 70's/80's that is going on 3rd generation now.

But ROTJ, PT, TFA, R1 and TLJ are not perfect movies, and nobody should expect them to be when a franchise is almost at Episode 9 or 10. You have to ask yourself this question before you watch a SW movie: Can I tolerate the bad to enjoy the good? If you can do that, you can enjoy any SW movie in that context. There is good in EVERY SW movie, and that is the difference with many Franchises when they start making multiple sequels. I think of Batman & Robin, and that isn't any good in that movie, and that is why the franchise died for almost a decade before being revived by Chris Nolan.

This is why Lucas made these movies as a Saga and not individual movies like Indiana Jones (So they don't have to stand on their own, as they should viewed in a big picture context). If you watch them with the big picture in mind, each movie can make other movies better in some respects because it is giving them all more depth. While I am not a huge fan of the PT, I do enjoy now because it shows the Jedi Order, The Empire, The Crumbling of the Republic, so in that respect it sort of gives a depth to the OT in a macro sense.

I think TLJ will eventually do the same as fans come around and watch it again. I say this because I did not like TLJ the first time around (I was very mad at how the movie played out), but I'm coming around (many scenes have popped up on YouTube) and I am definetly reconsidering my initial reaction to the movie. When it comes to BluRay in the spring, it will get a re-evaluation from me with that same context of tolerating the bad to enjoy the good.

 

AS much as I loved TLJ It was really hard to see Luke Skywalker go; it's like mourning a family member. I think what we are seeing is fan depression, they need time to mourn. They can't look to IX and see what kind of great potential there is right now, but it is there.

I kind of beard witness to this; At my screening, sitting two rows in front of me was a middle aged man with a young boy, I am assuming he was his son.
after the movie, they just sat there and stared at the screen, motionless for a few minutes. It was pretty sad to see people in complete shock. Considering how huge Luke Skywalker was to our culture and as a role model, how would it not effect people to see him go? it is what it is. In time, TLJ will age like a fine wine I'm sure.

 

But I must say that following my own experience, it has really exploded. If you just browse through an academic catalogue or keep a tally with some of the more important journals, you will see that since 2012 especially, it has quite literally exploded. There is so much being written in academia, especially in serious academic articles, that I can hardly keep up any more, even though it is partly my job to do so. Setting up a course now is so much more easy than it was before 2012. There is just so much literature now to support it.