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What IS Star Wars to you

Discussion in 'General Movie Discussion' started by RoyleRancor, Nov 25, 2020.

  1. AnthonyJohnston1

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    It is a great story that always helps me to believe in a better life, that you can overcome everything. It is also the best movie to watch with my family (our Christmas tradition) with a favourite food and coffee.
     
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  2. Darth KreVass

    Darth KreVass Rebel Trooper

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    Star Wars for me is... a fantastical escape into George Lucas's world. With all the movie franchises out there, Star Wars pushes all the button for me. I saw SW at age 13. It's still the best.
     
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  3. Phantom Menace

    Phantom Menace Rebel Official

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    Star Wars to me is the battle between good and evil. Deciding who you want to be and living out your legacy. Friendships and relationships being formed as they go through their journey to give the people of the future a chance to truly live in peace. The main thing about Star Wars is hope. Hope to win the minor victories even if it means death. Hope that the future can see peace and tranquility.
     
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  4. oldbert

    oldbert Guardian of Coffee Breaks

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    Growing up and getting older, making bad decisions and better ones, developing relationships with friends and family members and even former "enemies", dramas and highlights. B-Movie like but surrealistic funny moments right beside real heart wrecking situations.
    A galaxy far far away and yet so near with relatable characters and family dramas for 3 generations now. A fairytale of believing in a better world till the last breath.
    If you read between the lines, a compendium of stories that are quite ok in my opinion :D
     
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  5. Jedi Knight Fett

    Jedi Knight Fett Jedi General

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    Star Wars is adventure to me. You f you bring me on a new adventure you are doing something right. The universe is endless don’t just use the same characters over and over. Use what the universe lets you which is pretty much anything.
     
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  6. Jayson

    Jayson Resident Lucasian

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    I answer the following from the consideration of the first Star Wars film, and only through that lens.
    Everything that followed that film were further iterative artistic responses to it, and the rules it laid out were only bent where they were bent later because those rules were first defined back at the start.

    To me, Star Wars is a form of art.
    It's not so much about the subject or object of that art.

    To me, you could do Star Wars in a painting whose subject is go-karts.

    It is an artistic aesthetic - a way of art. Like impressionism, or surrealism.

    It is its own genre of film, it's own genre of art. It's so unique and distinct that you are hard pressed to find other examples of it.
    Which...I find both incredible, and tragic at the same time.

    It's so very strange to see a form of art explode, and almost not at all become an adopted form of its medium by stylistic genre.
    It's almost unheard of in art for that to happen.

    To ask me what makes Star Wars unique is to ask me what makes French New Wave, or German Expressionism unique.

    The only reason that Star Wars is about lasers and space ships is because of the form.
    One of the principle components of the form is a lacking of boundary on imaginative expression. In this respect, it is akin to expressionism.
    It requires the subject to not be bound by practical limits, and only bound by expressionist limitations.
    That is, what you want to express and convey is what defines the design, subject, and objects of the art.

    From there, it expands and becomes incredibly complex as Star Wars does something few artforms do - it comments on its own medium's history. Quite openly.
    It's one thing to reference previous art in new art - lots of art does this. Music, most notably. It's even got a name: pastiche.
    But it's another to use those references as a discussion on the medium itself as part of what moves the subject of the story.

    Using the subject to comment on the human condition and history as metaphorical abstractions represented in iconified subjects and objects within the art is to "move the subject of the story" in Star Wars. Art does this a lot. This isn't unique to Star Wars. A simple ball in art can become extensively much more and discuss so much more about the human condition and history.

    But what makes it unique here is that this metaphorical subjection is then looped into the commentary on the medium's history and relies upon the commentary through its references as part of the metaphors' comprehension as meaning. Essentially, the narrative only works because of pastiche, and the pastiche only works because of the narrative.

    And both only work because of the expressionist freedom of the design.

    It's why opening on the droids instead of Luke works. That whole opening relies on immediately challenging the understanding of relating to humans by thrusting us right into being asked to care for two objects that aren't human at all, but are being treated like we should care about them as if they are, and works because it pulls on references to the medium that convey human vexation and concern - most notably, helplessness, confusion, panic, and loyalty.

    It openly uses a (often silent) commentary on the craft of the art as the means to convey the subject of the art.
    And it is this very device which makes the other three even possible.

    For example, the entirety of the fantasy air, which is used to break open the boundaries for the incoming metaphor, is pushed to something that is understandable and digestible by shooting the bizarre and unfamiliar aesthetic with an incredibly grounded and typically dull camera approach of the objective documentary (i.e. no running shaky cam - otherwise known as cinéma vérité).

    The final notable aesthetic of this artform is contrast. All art contains contrast, but Star Wars is almost exclusively defined by extreme contrasts in every respect.
    If there's tons of action on the screen, the camera is more calm. If we're in the dark, the lighting will be extreme and vivid where it hits. The good guys and bad guys will be as far apart in aesthetic and behavior as possible.

    Keeping in mind that pastiche is a form of art which comments on the medium of the art as part of the art, and relies upon the audience's literacy of the artform's back catalog, all of the above was said to understand the following bite-sized statement:

    This is Star Wars to me.

    Star Wars is an artform where the pastiche tells the audience how to understand and feel about strongly contrasted abstract expressions which become the subjects of a narrative where they are employed as icons of the human condition and history, and which themselves become part of the pastiche as the art proceeds.

    It's an absolute shame that this form of art isn't carried on, and that all that did catch on out of it was the artform of the "Blockbuster".
    Star Wars absolutely initialized that artform, and everyone followed it.

    But that's a mere fraction of the artform that Lucas created.

    Pastiche Expressionism.
    It should be given that name, or something like it, and it's just a da*n shame that there's not more of it out there.

    Cheers,
    Jayson
     
    #26 Jayson, Feb 23, 2021
    Last edited: Feb 23, 2021
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