Why Episode 8 will be so much better than TFA

To add to this, Rian Johnson has always been a big Star Wars fan. He said himself that Star Wars is what got him into filmmaking, and it's his very first memory of going to the movies. Before they even contacted him about doing this film, he was tweeting about how his copy of the Star Wars Holiday Special is one of his most prized possessions.

He also said that he chose to do this film purely out of passion, and his love for the franchise. Whereas J.J originally didn't want to have anything to do with TFA, but accepted once he was offered some more $$.

For someone as talented and smart as Rian, I know he'll put everything he has into this film. So far everything he's said about the film makes him sound very excited for what he has prepared for us all. In an interview he said everyone is "in for a real treat" with this movie, and I don't think he's lying.

 

You may say that the prequels were disliked my friend but sadly numbers say otherwise. Those movies were financial successes and two of them are among the highest grossing movies of all time. They introduced SW to new fans all over the world and they were indeed loved by so many people that even after the whole ''hated'' prequel trilogy had been released, they made TPM in 3D (the very same movie that gave us Jar Jar Binks) and said movie made MILLIONS once more! How can a incredible hated movie that has no fan base do that? You can't blame it on the hype now can you? As there was no hype because EVERYONE had already seen this movie so who gave the ''lame'' movie it's millions of dollars? And I also have to say that if indeed Disney and Lucasfilm are trying to ''undo'' what Lucas did, then they are sadly doing a terrible job cause a cheap rehash is in no way a awesome movie.

As I said before, If you love the movie then good for you. But how can you say that JJ has plenty of imagination? If he does then he really has a bad way of showing it. But don't take my word for it, judge by yourself as you can easily tell one masterpiece from the other. Some things may not be in perfect order but I'm sure you can detect what I'm talking about as TFA is in no way a bad rehash of ANH. Here we go:

1-The movie starts in space with some bad guys that are looking for some important information.

2-Good character # 1 knows that capture is imminent as bad guy in black has his troops kill everyone around.

3-Good character # 1 hides data inside droid and sends said droid away before said character is captured.

4-Droid ends up in the hands of a teen that has been left in a desert planet Said teen is family with powerful Force user but is unaware of the destiny that is awaiting. Teen is a great pilot, knows about the desert and is ignorant about things regarding the Force.

5-Bad guy in black tortures good character # 1 aboard his ship to try to get the info he wants.

6-Teen ends up being chased by evil guys and ends up going to space in the Millenium Falcon.

7-Bad guys have a planet destroying weapon that will put fear in the renegade good guys that oppose them.

8-Group of four living beings travel aboard the Falcon as they decide to take the droid with the info where it belongs. While they are at it, teen hears about the Force from a wise old man.

9-We learn that bad guy in black used to be a good guy that was important to wise old man but he was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force.

10-Good guys learn of evil plot but during those events, teen has to watch the wise old man confront the bad guy in black and see him loose his life.

11-Countless lives are lost when planet destroying base is fired.

12-There is a bad guy in the rank of the evil army that seems to have high rank and he seems to be just as important as the black armored guy.

13-Teen learns that the Force is strong within said teen.

14-Renegade good guys are unmanned and out gunned but they devise a plan where they can use small fighter craft to take down the planet destroying base.

15-Planet destroying base is destroyed but black armored guy escapes and lives to fight another day.

What movie am I talking about my good friend? Can you guess? Must be real easy since they are not the same in any way. Wich is it? A New Hope or The Force Awakens?

--- Double Post Merged, May 16, 2016, Original Post Date: May 16, 2016 ---

Amen to that my friend! I really hope the same and not only that but I also have high hopes that Rogue One will blow us all away!

 

Both ROTJ and TPM were rehashes of the previous movies. I suggest you to have a better look on TPM and you will find a really similar plot to ANH.
And TPM started probably the biggest movie hating agenda ever in cinematic history. Full length documentaries were made just about how dissapointing TPM was (People vs George Lucas). 17 years have passed and people still bash TPM and the rest of the PT. Barely any movie in cinematic history managed to be able to be THAT dissapointing.

That is not really true though. JJ is one of the biggest Star Wars (OT) nerds in Hollywood. Money was the last reason for him taking on ep VII, and he made the movie with real passion. Just watch any behind the scene footage.

 

That TPM can have similar plotlines I can dig but no movie is just a lame rehash as TFA. And if we are going to talk about movie bashing then that's fine as well. Sure, I'm not going to say that TPM hasn't been bashed cause I would be a great liar as I too have bashed many things about it. You see, that's what I find that makes me different from many TFA fans and that's that I'm not in denial. I really love the prequels but do I find them perfect? Heck no! Jar Jar sucked, Qui Gon's atitude gave the Jedi a bad name and I just hated Mididorkians. The nightclub in AOTC was the lamest thing ever, Anakin and Padme's romance robbed the movie of much needed time, Grievous was overhyped in the media and ended up being very lame in the movie and seeing Kit Fisto, Agen Kolar and Saesee Tiin die in that incredibly STUPID way was just horrifying! Those deaths sucked even more than Boba Fetts! I can find many things that I wished were done better but I have to take the movies with their flaws but when it comes to the fans of TFA, most of them want EVERYONE to see this as an awesome movie and they quickly enter denial mode when you say it is a rehash. Why can't they just admit that it is? They don't have to stop liking it because of that but they want to force everyone into seeing JJ Abrams as a genius who saved SW when in fact his movie is the most unoriginal SW movie to date. And though it's true that to this day, the prequels are bashed, let us not sing victory about TFA because as the hype has died down, already it is starting to be bashed. Even the L.A. Times and the Washington Post have bashed it and the movie hasn't even been out for a year! How much more will the bashing be once all the hype has died down? Already fans around are calling Finn the new Jar Jar and Rey learning the Force on the fly is just as bad an insult as Mididorkians.

 

I agree and disagree.

I don't think that TFA is a direct rip off of ANH. Don't get me wrong, I totally see the similarities in parts but I see them as completely different films.

I also think that TFA will age a lot better than the prequels. I feel like TFA touched pretty much every type of Star Wars fans - from the original fan-boys to the new generation!

TFA strategically laid down the foundation for a new Trilogy and new generation of Star Wars fans. TFA did what it was designed to do and exceeded expectations (imo).

 

When did I say I loved TFA? Or that it wasn't a rehash of A New Hope? You really aren't reading my posts, you're just assuming that I'm saying what you want me to say. It's becoming increasingly frustrating to talk to you because you just aren't getting my point, and you want me to be saying something that I'm not saying at all.

You really didn't have to break down why TFA is a rehash of A New Hope. I agree with you on that. That isn't my argument.

I also never said that Star Wars doesn't have a fan base. It most certainly has a fan base, one of the biggest of any film out there. That's why it made so much money.

Just because a movie does well financially, doesn't mean it's good.

You said it yourself, the proof is in the numbers:







The Phantom Menace made $431,088,295 when it was released. When it was re-released in 3D, it only made $43,456,382. That means only 10% of people wanted to watch it again. That is not a lot of people.

The highest rating the prequels got was 68. They weren't well received. You can bend it however you want, but 9/10 Star Wars fans I have talked to have disliked the prequels.



81 is a completely average score. That's all TFA is, an average movie. It's nothing special. But my point is that it did significantly better than the prequels. People liked it better. The average moviegoer likes this movie better than they did the prequels. And that's what Disney is trying to do here. Get the average moviegoer to know that they will remain true to the OT, and not the PT. And they hired J.J to do that. That's what I'm saying. However you probably won't read this and continue on about how I "love" TFA and "hate" the prequels. Sigh.

 

Wrong you are again my friend. I have indeed read your message as it is now you who are saying that I'm going to act as you want me to act but you need to get your numbers straight on a few things. $431,088,295 was just the start in the US but where did you leave the $924,317,558 that TPM made? Then you also seemed to miss the $102,727,119 that the 3D re-release did. The movies were great hits and if you want to say that all this money was made by just the new fans cause the mayority of the OT fans hated it then be my guess but that's awfully alot of money considering that (as you said) a very large majority of moviegoers disliked the prequels. Oh and another thing, I'm not really convinced at how movies are rated these days as the rating sistem is kind of sucky. Metascore even went as far as rating this trashy film with the same rating it gave TFA:

--- Double Post Merged, May 16, 2016, Original Post Date: May 16, 2016 ---

Oops my bad. I responded to you but my message came out as a new one instead of an answer.

 

81 is a pretty solid score, not just "average".

"Revenge of the Sith" received an "average" score.

PS: just to be honest: "The Hateful Eight" received a 7.3/10 on Rotten Tomatoes.

 

I don't know where you got those numbers because they're false. And "trashy film" is 100% your opinion. You're saying the hundreds of film critics that rated it know less about films than you do? Right.

It gives me a headache to talk with you.

I realize this argument is pointless. You just aren't getting my point. I'll stop this debate now for the sake of my own mentality

 

81 isnt really the average on metacritic. 81 is rather a very good score.

Fair points and I agree mostly. Although imo JJ still saved Star Wars from the mixed feeling it was since the prequels. Before TFA we didnt have any SW movies to compare them aside from the originals. Now that we have these new ones, imo the whole PT looks just embarrassingly bad. I mean compare the two only on visuals. Not the CGI, but the visual style. TFA is what a SW movie SHOULD look like. It perfectly captured the real essence of the originals. The PT was artificial, cartoon like and way too clean, while the ST (so far) looks realistic and living. Same with the Rogue One trailer. If not anything else, but it looks exactly like how a SW movie should, which is already a huge improvement on the prequels imo.

JJ really understood the importance of characters in Star Wars, and TFA is fully a character driven movie as the originals were. The PT barely had any different characters, yet alone character developement during 3 entire movies. Almost everybody is the same, boring, blankly staring copy-paste of each other (except Sidious and Jar-jar)...The technique and style of the narrative was something like this:
1, Two or three characters talk about exposition 2, Action scene. Nothing more, nothing less. It was like a very expensive soap opera.

TFA went back to the cores and also mixed it with modern movie narrative, which imo was also massive improvement on the PT's narrative style.
Also TFA provided probably the best acting and dialogues in the whole saga (which sometimes werent really the best even in the originals). So in short, everything which sucked about the prequels (dialogues, characters, acting, visuals, narrative) worked very well in TFA. The only thing which sucked was the unoriginal story. But! This is only the first episode, a mere prologue to a trilogy. The one which sets the tone and introduces the conflict and the characters, so the story can very easely be salvaged in the next chapters.

I dont really think TFA is going to be liked or hated more than now, because nowadays we have youtube, social media, forums etc were people already discussed every pro and contra about the movie. In 1999 it was entirely different, and as more people started to discover the internet, more people realised just how terrible those actually were...

Btw I dont really think there is too much originality left in Hollywood. Please name me blockbusters from the past 5 years which were good and also original, because imo TFA is a lot better than around 90% of the blockbusters released since ROTS.

 

No problemo my friend if you want to end the argument here then I can respect that but just so that you can see where the numbers come from then here be my guess as I don't lie and I see it as something low if someone has to lie to defend their own arguments. All you have to do is simply type The Phantom Menace and google does the rest for you yet I took the liberty of doing it for you so I hope you don't mind.
Here's the link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Episode_I_–_The_Phantom_Menace

And here's the pic:


Amanaman may be called many things but a liar ain't one of them.

Oh and please take some Tylenol or some Advil cause I don't want your headache to get worst.

--- Double Post Merged, May 16, 2016, Original Post Date: May 16, 2016 ---

PS: Even though you try to gain footing in our conversation by showing my typo errors, it really doesn't bother me since I think I write rather well for just having been to the third grade in an American school. I'm from Puerto Rico and I took every other grade from 4th up here in my island so I think I write pretty good for a spanish islander Amanin.

 

Since when is good box office equal with quality? TPM was always going to be a huge success. The hype and the lack of competition (nowadys there is a blockbuster out every month) guaranteed it.
However, if you look at the tendecy, AOTC made a lot less (it sold almost 40 million tickets less in the US) showing the dissapointment.
A Star Wars movie is always going to be financially successful regardless of the content.

 

Yes my friend those are really some valid points yet that's what many TFA fans don't get. Many of the people I talk to about TFA try to defend the movie no matter what you say. If you say that the movie was a rehash of ANH they deny it by saying it made tons of money. If you say that even the Prequels made tons of money they defend TFA by defending it's hype. If you say that people are starting to bash the movie now that the hype is going down they will tell you that JJ just did his job in giving fans what they wanted. It's kind of an endless circle.

The funny thing is that as I have said before, though I do love the PT as much as I do the OT, I don't find the PT flawless. It has so many things that I would have loved to see done in another way yet I'm not less of a man for saying that but when you say something negative about TFA, it's almost as if you insult somebodies manhood! People can tell me that for all the hype they gave him, Grievous really sucked and I can live with that and I agree but don't say the same thing about Phasma who sucked WAY more than Grievous cause you get all these people defending her and you have to hear fans say that they are really saving her character for the next movie and whatnot. Phasma was just as overhyped as Grievous to the point that many were saying that she was the new Boba Fett of the series but God forbid that you badmouth her cause you quickly have the ghost of Uncle Owen looming over you saying that there will be hell to pay.

It's as if there was this mysterious unwritten rule that says that you can badmouth the PT and you HAVE to hate it but you are going to be gunned down by Bounty Hunters if you say just the teeniest bad thing about TFA and you HAVE to love it.

 

I think most people who viewed TFA gave it way above 'average' rating.

For example; one of YouTube's most profound Movie-Critics "Chris Stuckman" said it was his favourite film of 2015. There are many more YouTube Critics with similar reviews in regards to TFA. Furthermore, critics such as Chris seem to have an incredibly dedicated fan-base; and because of this seem to be well respected critics - especially with the internet generation.

(Chris Stuckman's TFA Review:

)


I think TFA was incredible and just what Star Wars needed. I also truly believe that Episode 8 will be better! I. CANT. WAIT.

--- Double Post Merged, May 16, 2016, Original Post Date: May 16, 2016 ---

Since when did Lucasfilm/Disney/JJ say at any point that Phasma was going to the new Boba Fett? That was purely fan speculation.

Personally I thought she just looked like a Captain who'd play a similar role as Commander Cody in RoTS... which is pretty much what she was.

 

Yes and no.

I live in Italy, and here there's no much SW "fanbase" between the critics, or not as it could be in the USA. Nevertheless, the movie has been accepted pretty well, even by independent magazines. I never found a totally negative critic: every italian review I read, was a positive one. The more common places were: the good acting level; the gorgeous visuals; Abrams' direction; the general "heart" of the operation. Otherwise, the more common negative critics were the similarities with ANH, or the not-so-conclusive story arc.

If you read the critics on Rotten Tomatoes, you could easily find out that almost every top critic liked the movie as a good blockbuster, not as a masterpiece. But as a really well done action/sci-fi, just as previous Abrams' Star Trek movies.

To me, TFA was both overrated and underrated: overrated by fans, who expected this movie to be something SW has never been; underrated, again, by the fans, who totally lost their mind because of the similarities with ANH.

If the work of a critic is still important, well, TFA is probably the only SW movie almost unanimously well accepted by the critics (81/100; 92% of freshness, ecc...). This means that TFA doesn't missed its aim.

 

There is no such thing as a perfect STAR WARS movie to me. A person either likes a particular movie or doesn't. It's all subjective.

Wait a minute . . . those fans who thought TFA bore too many similarities to ANH "totally lost their minds"?? You're going to judge these fans as insane, because they were disappointed that the two movies were too similar for their tastes? Really?

 

Did you check the source cited for that number on Wikipedia? I guess not. Because it's an outdated number from 2006. But just so you can see where the numbers come from then here, be my guest. All you have to do is simply type The Phantom Menace and click on an up-to-date source. Not Wikipedia. I took the liberty of doing it for you so I hope you don't mind.

Here's the website that Wikipedia got their outdated info from (in 2006):

http://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Star-Wars-Ep-I-The-Phantom-Menace

Retrieved July 25, 2006:



And here's a current picture of that same website, which shows the accurate net profit adjusted for inflation in 2016:



Check your sources before you do things like this. Especially if it's on Wikipedia.

It's worse. You just made my headache so much worse.

 

Not what I said.

But, if a movie is something objectively analyzable, then the similarities with ANH were too much secondary (and pretty transparent) to understand the - sometimes - hysterical critics moved by the fans to the movie. In the first week of projection, from Max Landis to The Huffington Post, we've been literaly submerged by any kind of stupid critic to the plot, to the actors, to the villain, ecc... There's been people disapointed by every choice made by Abrams, even by Carrie Fisher's face.

Too much for a blockbuster. Too much for a good blockbuster, 'cause the movie is indeed good. This lead me to think SW hardcore fans are not so able to understand a movie.

 

I think most people are aware of the rehash, just dont care about it as much as others, rather concentrating on the good parts of TFA. This forum is rather pro TFA, but there are plenty of others which are rather anti TFA and anti ST/Disney if you want to read such things.

The article is correct. It uses the outdated info to show the pre 3D release state of the box office (thus the 2006 data). Later on it uses the post 3D numbers unadjusted.

 

Nice clickbait title lol.

I agree! TFA was far from perfect, but in so many ways, it was exactly what it needed to be. So far, it seems that VIII will be more unique, which is exactly what it needs to be. Very optimistic!