[Star Wars: The Force Awakens Pitch Meeting] (Viewer #357,075)
Yeah, this pretty much covers everything awful about this movie.
[Star Wars: The Force Awakens Pitch Meeting] (Viewer #357,075)
Yeah, this pretty much covers everything awful about this movie.
To be fair, the first Star Wars trilogy had a lot of the problems that the new ones have. The thing is, if you wanted soft sci-fi with good special effects & space magic back when they came out, you were pretty much limited to Star Wars. By contrast, the modern Star Wars movies aren’t just competing against decades worth of space operas, they’re also competing against the Star Wars expanded universe.
Give me Grand Admiral Thrawn over Kylo Ren any day.
The problem with all Sci-Fi movies is that the medium drives the story. Action adventure takes precedence over good character development and sophisticated plots demanding the receiver think. When the film tries to bring to the fore this type of story telling it rarely achieves its goal. Perhaps that is because most of the films derive from books and reading is a much different way of communicating ideas than a film. I am not saying it is impossible but the way films are made practically demands a simplification of approach to satisfy the primary goal of the producers which is to make money.
Just responding to your first two sentences:
Maybe that is why the original Star Trek series and the movie “2001” endure and other sci-fi offerings fade into the background. They had their gee-whiz spaceship scenes, but what they were about were stories, themes, personalities, questions. I’d say that the original Star Wars had that going for it, too.
When the medium doesn’t drive the story, and action/adventure doesn’t take precedence over character development, you’ve got something. Something with a little gee-whiz garnish.
In other words, “You kids get off of my Han!”
And those take talent to make, which modern day Hollywood possibly doesn’t lack but which they certainly seem to not want to take the risk to let create films that don’t comfortably fit into what they think will make them money.
$tar War$
Alien$
$uperheroe$
$tar Trek franchi$e
Jua$$ic Park