lazypadawan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lazypadawan) wrote2011-03-19 12:33 pm
lazypadawan) wrote2011-03-19 12:33 pm
Figuring It Out
Nothing like unwinding after a long week with a little Facebook battle to get you through a Clone Wars-free night. You've seen before on this LJ how much I despise Lucasfilm's baffling boosterism of various people like Simon Pegg who proclaim they're really big Star Wars fans/geeks yet will run to every waiting reporter with the nastiest comments about the prequels, which of course get published and widely disseminated. Well, I unloaded a lot of frustration on starwars.com's Facebook and of course, the usual tools defend starwars.com and Pegg.
Imagine if you'd ever see a celebrity say to the media something like this:
The first Star Wars movies were total rubbish. The special effects aged badly, the creatures look like muppets, the story was simple-minded with an irritating black-and-white approach to good and evil, the dialogue was below par for a comic book, and the acting was terrible with the exception of Alec Guinness.
Now the prequels were by far a vast improvement. Imaginative worlds, real artistry in Lucas's vision, a thinking person's musings on the gray areas between good and evil, real drama, and a far more talented cast. It's like comparing sugary soda pop to fine wine. Too bad Lucas matured later instead of making his first set of movies closer to the commentary on the Vietnam War he originally envisioned. Because if he had, then Star Trek wouldn't have won the science fiction battle.*
Like hell Lucasfilm would ever promote this guy's work or re-tweet his comments or regard him as a friend of Star Wars. You wouldn't see this guy at a Celebration ever, only if he's walking around with a badge he bought himself and with no Tumblr photo ops. Many Star Wars fans would consider him at best a "non-fan" and at worst a total pariah.
By the same token, if a Celebration guest ever started ragging on the first set of Star Wars films or told jokes at the expense of say, Carrie Fisher's personal problems, that guy would get the hook right away and never get invited back.
Yet all of those things I've described have been directed at the prequels, and still such people are welcomed as Star Wars fans and promoted by Lucasfilm.
Why?
Because Lucasfilm understands and respects the emotional connection--attachment if you will--fans have with Eps IV-VI. They would never sanction anyone denigrating those films because they genuinely worry about upsetting fandom's sensibilities. Everybody involved with Star Wars, whether it's a prequel film actor or someone involved with Clone Wars or a game designer or a comic/book author, is expected to speak about those films with reverence.
However Lucasfilm doesn't think very many people have that emotional connection with Eps I-III, so it's not understood and it's certainly not respected. Toes can be mashed, feelings can be hurt, movies can be crapped upon because really, who loves them anyway? And the ones who do, well, they don't matter. They're not real fans: too young to have experienced the glory years of '77-'83 and too old to be Clone Wars fans. Since when is anyone associated with the first set of Star Wars films, games and other expanded universe, and Clone Wars expected to speak about the prequels with the same reverence expected of the Imperial trilogy? When have you ever seen people excited about how such and such is going to reference the prequels?
For Lucasfilm and lot of the tool poseur groups out there, a real Star Wars fan must at least love Eps IV-VI even if he hates everything else. A vociferous fan of those movies is considered passionate and genuine. An equally passionate advocate of the prequels is considered fringe, militant, weird, a dilettante, and not genuine. Not that they mind taking our money of course.
As long as they have this two-tiered view of fandom, nothing is going to change.
*This is of course NOT my personal opinion.
Imagine if you'd ever see a celebrity say to the media something like this:
The first Star Wars movies were total rubbish. The special effects aged badly, the creatures look like muppets, the story was simple-minded with an irritating black-and-white approach to good and evil, the dialogue was below par for a comic book, and the acting was terrible with the exception of Alec Guinness.
Now the prequels were by far a vast improvement. Imaginative worlds, real artistry in Lucas's vision, a thinking person's musings on the gray areas between good and evil, real drama, and a far more talented cast. It's like comparing sugary soda pop to fine wine. Too bad Lucas matured later instead of making his first set of movies closer to the commentary on the Vietnam War he originally envisioned. Because if he had, then Star Trek wouldn't have won the science fiction battle.*
Like hell Lucasfilm would ever promote this guy's work or re-tweet his comments or regard him as a friend of Star Wars. You wouldn't see this guy at a Celebration ever, only if he's walking around with a badge he bought himself and with no Tumblr photo ops. Many Star Wars fans would consider him at best a "non-fan" and at worst a total pariah.
By the same token, if a Celebration guest ever started ragging on the first set of Star Wars films or told jokes at the expense of say, Carrie Fisher's personal problems, that guy would get the hook right away and never get invited back.
Yet all of those things I've described have been directed at the prequels, and still such people are welcomed as Star Wars fans and promoted by Lucasfilm.
Why?
Because Lucasfilm understands and respects the emotional connection--attachment if you will--fans have with Eps IV-VI. They would never sanction anyone denigrating those films because they genuinely worry about upsetting fandom's sensibilities. Everybody involved with Star Wars, whether it's a prequel film actor or someone involved with Clone Wars or a game designer or a comic/book author, is expected to speak about those films with reverence.
However Lucasfilm doesn't think very many people have that emotional connection with Eps I-III, so it's not understood and it's certainly not respected. Toes can be mashed, feelings can be hurt, movies can be crapped upon because really, who loves them anyway? And the ones who do, well, they don't matter. They're not real fans: too young to have experienced the glory years of '77-'83 and too old to be Clone Wars fans. Since when is anyone associated with the first set of Star Wars films, games and other expanded universe, and Clone Wars expected to speak about the prequels with the same reverence expected of the Imperial trilogy? When have you ever seen people excited about how such and such is going to reference the prequels?
For Lucasfilm and lot of the tool poseur groups out there, a real Star Wars fan must at least love Eps IV-VI even if he hates everything else. A vociferous fan of those movies is considered passionate and genuine. An equally passionate advocate of the prequels is considered fringe, militant, weird, a dilettante, and not genuine. Not that they mind taking our money of course.
As long as they have this two-tiered view of fandom, nothing is going to change.
*This is of course NOT my personal opinion.
no subject
Needless to say I absolutely love the prequels and like them better than the OT...the OT has that nostalgia feeling around it, but in my opinion it´s the Prequels that made sense to the whole story. I also do love the Clone Wars series (btw, why does everyone think it´s for children? It´s like watching the news, war, corruption, politics...)! So maybe I´m just too open minded for the whole fandom?;) This reminds me sadly of the discussions in the republic senate...
no subject
In fact, they grossed as much money as, if not more money than, the movies that we're supposed to think "siphoned off a huge chunk of SW's fandom," and which "SW fans fled to in disgust," like "The Matrix," LOTR, and Spidey.
Bashers like to say, "Adjusting for inflation, the prequels didn't gross nearly as much as the OT, so they aren't really hits." Well, neither did "The Matrix," LOTR, and Spidey -- so how come they're considered hits?
no subject
no subject
I like the first "Matrix" movie. I couldn't get into either of the sequels.
I'm still not sure how the first "Matrix" could have "stolen TPM's thunder," as has been frequently claimed, given that it came out a month before TPM, and made almost all of its eventual gross within that month.
no subject
I wouldn't say that the first one stole TPM's thunder, but it did represent a more "mature" equivalent of what "Star Wars" represented-- a modern retelling of old-as-time myths. Just as Lucas drew from the inspiration of his own generation's sci-fi of space-operas and adventure matinee serials, the Wachowskis drew from their childhood spent watching kung-fu action flicks and mindbending anime. The two series are very much related in that sense, and back in '99, "The Matrix" was something new-- something TPM, no matter how good it was, could never be. So that's where a lot of the comparison comes from.
I liked TPM much more, obviously, but I also loved the first "Matrix" when it came out, and dig the two sequels well enough, too (at least SW fans are more loyal than the flocks who deserted that franchise). I can certainly respect the Wachowskis a hell of a lot more for creating their own series than I can guys like Peter Jackson or Christopher Nolan for simply reworking or adapting pre-existing ones.
no subject
But whatever. I'm not in charge of movie ratings.
Yes, I suppose "The Matrix" was something new, whereas TPM was a continuation of a story that began 22 years before and had been much-watched since then.
What stuck in my craw was the hypocritical nature of so much of the Matrix-boosting, TPM-bashing discussion: "The FX in TPM are so show-offy." Not really -- for the most part they are subdued and part of the background, or just THERE, part of the story...and if you want show-offy, look no further than "Matrix," where they stop the movie in the middle of an effect, circle all the way around it, and then resume the movie. If that's not "show-offy," I don't know what is. And, I think the "awkward dialogue" and "stiff acting" criticisms could apply to "Matrix" as much as they could to TPM. But since "Matrix" was more "adult and sophisticated," it gets a free pass.
I still don't see how it stole TPM's thunder, anywhere but in Darth Media's collective reportage...which became a sort of faux conventional wisdom, repeated by the fanboyz. At least until the sequels to "Matrix" came out, whereupon, as you pointed out, they fled the series like it had leprosy.
A few stragglers held on, though, trying to save face and insisting that the Wachowski brothers "pwned Luca$." It was amusing. I recall one of them claiming that the reason "The Matrix Reloaded" dropped so severely in grosses in its second weekend was because "it wasn't that publicized." Someone, not me, replied, "What? What was that you said? I got too distracted by the dozen or so ads for 'The Matrix Reloaded' that were featured on the Internet and on the television."