"The Force Awakens" (with SPOILERS)

I have a feeling the Shamalayan-like twist they're building up to is that when all the smoke clears at the end, the Skywalker who survives will be Leia. Who will live out her life and die an old lady in a warm bed.

 

Strong with this one, the sarcasm is.

 

This is really about the original, but it's worth it for Hamill's imitation of Harrison Ford alone.

 

This is choppy, but still kind of fun.

 

The Star Wars franchise is 42 years old. When does it become like James Bond? A solid money maker no studio would ever abandon, but hardly something that drives popular culture. Same thing for MCU of course, but it is relatively young, and also has more characters people already know.

 

The MCU seems to be a long way from that. There is just so much source material and has been built by so many creative people. The MCU also has a huge infusion of material coming with Disney's acquisition of the Fox properties. I don't know that it can ever reach a high point like Endgame again, but that doesn't mean there is a huge decline coming any time soon, either.

Star Wars, on the other hand, seems to be headed in the wrong direction. There have been some decent moments, but nothing has come close to the original trilogy in terms of quality or in terms of the impact on our culture.

 

I don't think Bond is a great comparison to any of these - The best one made $304M, not adjusted for inflation. Adjust for inflation for the 25 films, and Thunderball is your leader at $673M. Very nice, but the median is Goldeneye ($219M) and you have 10 films under $200M. The lowest, inflation-adjusted mainline Star Wars movie is Clones at $468M. I've always felt that Bond is aimed squarely at adults - and adult men - whereas Star Wars and the comic book movies are much more all-ages.

 

I'm not talking about grosses, I'm talking about centrality to the culture. JFK bragged he read James Bond. Presidents have kept their distance from Star Wars (dummies all, IMO).

 

Don't tempt Lucas into coming out of retirement! That was actually pretty well done. I enjoyed it.

In all seriousness, it gives you a sense that probably within the next 5-10 years, fans will be able to convincingly rewrite and remake their favorite films to suit their liking. We'll probably see a better final season of LOST on YouTube in 2025 made by some bored millennial using Adobe Premiere.

 

So I'm of two minds on this:

1. Some of that is visually improved, I'll concede, but...

2. Cooler sword fights and better special effects do not equal better drama. This is the poisonous influence of video games on movies of the last 25 years. The light saber fights in the first three SW films are lame by modern choreography, sure, but they're IMMENSELY better in terms of being infused with actual meaning. Moviemaking and storytelling are different skills that masturbating on a green screen. The reason all the ridiculously impressive lightsaber fights in the prequels are so fucking stupid is they don't mean anything. You don't care about the enemy, so you don't feel anything. The best light saber fight in the whole series is still in Return of the Jedi, because it's the culmination of actual drama, not two people doing corny ass backflips.

 

I suppose I'm kind of making your original point in a way - I'm 35, and growing up, my friends and I didn't give a crap about James Bond. In fact, it would be completely absent from our cultural appreciation, except for the Nintendo 64 game. After that came out, I had one buddy who got into the past movies, and I remember a couple of us being hyped for Casino Royale. But after Quantum of Solace, it fell into the "just another action movie" category for us.

 

Funny. I almost made a joke about tempting Lucas to fuck with the movie again when I posted it.

To Double Down's point, I don't think the revised scene loses any of the emotional weight. It's just a better fight, but still nothing like Yoda hopping all over the place in Attack of the Clones.

I actually thought the big light saber battles in Phantom Menace and Revenge of the Sith were very good. The former lacked real emotional impact until the death of Qui-Gon Jinn, but the latter was a little better in that respect due to the emotional stakes for Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Of course, neither matches Luke Skywalker's duel with Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi. I think I mentioned that one recently. It just works on so many levels, including the physical battle, Luke's internal conflict both over fighting with a father he is trying to save and his own temptation to turn to the Dark Side.