Lately I've been thinking a lot about Star Wars as in more than I usually do
But recently it's been less about the movies and more about what people think of the movies
See I'm fascinated by the responses to the last Jedi the movie is a massive critical success
It's a massive commercial success, but among a sizable portion of the fans. It's divisive in a way. I haven't seen from a major blockbuster
maybe ever
Occasionally, I'll skim through social media reading reactions from people who hated it, and there's a line that I've encountered countless times
Everytime I see this, I wonder what does that even mean what makes a good Star Wars movie? And more importantly,
What do we want from a Star Wars movie? So I decided to figure it out.
I put on my Skywalker Ranch hat to prove that yeah, I went there once, and ventured outside to get to the bottom of this.
Before we get started quick disclaimer
I'm going to try to keep this as objective as possible, but it's Star Wars
and I have opinions on Star Wars that are bound to crop up in some way so
Really quickly here's my take on every movie
And New Hope and Empire are masterpieces, Return of the Jedi is good the prequels are not good,
but Phantom Menace is the most watchable, Force Awakens is good Rouge One is pretty. Last Jedi is great. Here's my ranking.
Let's get back on track
So when I asked, What do we want from a Star Wars movie?
You might just think: the same thing we want from any movie, ya dummy.
For it to be good.
But Star Wars is more complicated than that.
I think it's accurate to say Star Wars is the biggest American cultural phenomenon since football. There's lot of big movie franchises,
but none quite like this. Of the 10 highest-grossing film series, Star Wars is the only one that's not an adaptation.
It's not based on novels or comic books, which means there's no safety net of source material.
What do I mean by that?
Well going into a Harry Potter movie, most people already know the story from the books, or with the Marvel movie even if it's not
based on one specific comic, it's usually an amalgam of a few different story-lines, plus
you know who's not going to die because they're already appearing in trailers from movies coming out the following year.
But Star Wars is the only major film series where the primary story developments happen
exclusively in the movies. When audiences go into a new Star Wars movie, they don't know what's going to happen.
It's an entirely different experience than just about every other modern
blockbuster. And while other series have been rebooted and remade Star Wars has been one ongoing
story that has continued for 40 years and counting. There is simply no other film series that works
this way. We live in a strange time where Star Wars is
omnipresent new Star Wars material is available in books, comics, TV shows, video games and
Disney plans to release a new Star Wars movie every year until long after we're all dead.
But it wasn't always like this.
"A long long time ago."
"In a galaxy far away."
Back in 1977 things were much different. There was no Canon, no episodes, no Wookiepedia.
There was just a movie called, "Star Wars, a billion years in the making and it's coming to your galaxy...
this summer."
What married the most astounding spectacle ever put on screen with a classic story, both mythic and relatable and it became the most successful
movie of all time
Three years later
There was a sequel, and back then what did people want from a new Star Wars movie?
Pretty much just more Star Wars. And while the Empire Strikes Back is in many ways a truly strange sequel
- We'll get into that more later - It gave them that it had the cool fun
Surface elements of the first one and built on the story in surprising ways. And another three years later
What did people want from seemingly the last Star Wars movie? More Star Wars, plus an ending, and they got it.
Everyone liked Star Wars, everyone got what they wanted and everyone was happy.
And then we entered the strangest , arguably most important, time in Star Wars history.
After
1983 it seemed like Star Wars was over.
It was complete, and for generations of audiences, including mine, we experienced it simply as this.
We consumed Star Wars with no hype, no
anticipation and no
expectations, the movies simply were.
"Collect the complete Star Wars trilogy one by one, in their attractive new packages or
In this collectible gift pack." We were like devout Christians and this was our Bible.
We watched them over and over and over, studying them,
memorizing them, discussing them. And then in 1991, what became known as the Star Wars Expanded Universe began.
Countless novels and comic books and video games filling in every gap in the story of the original trilogy,
telling stories from earlier in the timeline and continuing the story after Return of the Jedi.
Soon, there was not a moment in the saga unexplored.
No character whose backstory could not easily be looked up. Official Star Wars guides and then cyclopedia were published. For over 20 years
fans were taught they could learn and know everything about Star Wars.
They were given a canonical version of events that happened after the original movies ended
and they accepted it. The expanded universe taught fans that there were answers to every question, that the backstory to everything will surely be explained somewhere.
They could learn all the rules.
They could know everything about Star Wars.
In 1997, my generation finally got to experience something we'd wanted for as long as we could remember: the Star Wars trilogy on the big screen.
"Now, for its 20th anniversary, the adventure of a lifetime returns to the big screen."
The original movies were re-released into theaters as the Star Wars Special Edition.
But they weren't exactly the original movies. As we all know, George Lucas made some alterations.
Some were small, like cleaning up old matte paintings
But others were bigger, changes that impacted characterization, that fundamentally changed scenes.
We pretty much all agree that these changes were a mistake,
but this moment marked a shift in Star Wars fandom. For the first time, the fans knew better than the creator.
They said, "No, George Lucas, Han shot first, Luke didn't scream as he fell and Sy Snootles was better off staying in the background."
Okay, we got to talk about the prequels, and yeah these movies
have a lot of problems, but we're not gonna talk about those
we're gonna talk about the two things here that are important. One, they were all backstory.
They gave us origins for the major characters from the original movies, as well as the minor ones.
They gave us more backstory than anyone actually asked for. 2, they didn't feel the same. The originals were scrappy.
They were about a relateble Protagonists, who were mostly regular people, who came from humble beginnings. The world felt lived in and tactile. And the prequels
abandoned all of that. They were stiff and formal. The characters were all royalty, politicians and monks, who spoke stilted, vaguely
medieval sounding dialogue, in varying degrees of British accents. "I will take back what's ours." "Sorry m'lady."
The world was clean and artificial, and quite often was obviously created in a computer. While there still existed surface elements like;
lightsabers, spaceships and alien planets, the relatable, tactile feeling that made the originals feel special,
was totally gone. I should underline that a few times, "The feeling, was gone."
We're gonna come back to that, because what people wanted from these movies was more Star Wars.
And what they got contained elements of Star Wars, but it didn't feel like the Star Wars they remembered.
Okay, we're almost caught up to the present
This is the final part of the story. So in 2012, Disney bought, Lucasfilm and announced
They were going to make new movies continuing the story after a Return of the Jedi, so episodes 7, 8 and 9
But you already know that. For the first time in 32 years, the story of Luke, Skywalker Leia
Organa and Han Solo would be continuing, and not in the expanded universe, since that was all scrapped from Canon, in a new movie.
For Kathleen Kennedy and the Lucasfilm team, and J.J. Abrams, director of Episode 7, there was one
Major goal: make it like it used to be and, more importantly, make Star Wars feel like it used to. On
every level the force awakens was designed to give viewers the Star Wars experience
they hadn't had since the original trilogy. All those changes in style and approach in the prequel trilogy,
they were reversed. The characters once again talked like normal people
The protagonists were relatable. They came from humble beginnings
The movie was shot on 35 millimeter film, and used real sets and practical effects. The art direction was dirty and lived in. It was
once again relatable and tactile. It felt like Star Wars again.
The movie wanted so much to give viewers the feeling they'd missed, that it largely based its structure around the original film.
While it featured new characters, unlike those we'd encountered before, the story beets and visuals were all familiar.
It was designed to reassure us and win us all back, by being just like the Star Wars
we remembered. Disney's new one a year plan for Star Wars goes like this: one year
we'll get a new episode in the main saga, then the next year
we'll get a spin-off, another story taking place within the world of Star Wars.
And they'll alternate like that. Now for all the faults of the prequels,
they were always designed as key components in the main saga. But the spin-offs, like rogue one and the upcoming solo, aren't.
They're basically Wookipedia articles, in movie form.
Rogue One, is a two-hour film designed to answer a decade's long nitpick or "plot hole" as some
call it about the design flaw on the Death Star. And
Solo, will answer questions like; How did Han Solo get the Millennium Falcon? How did he meet Chewbacca , and presumably,
What is the Kessel run? And then, of coarse,
there's The Last Jedi, which has only been out for a couple months,
and I'm sure you have your own opinion on it.
This is where things get interesting. While to me, at least, it still very much feels like a classic Star Wars movie
it doesn't play things as safe as the Force Awakens. Instead of repeating familiar story beats and continuing a familiar status quo it
pushes the story forward into new unexpected territory. So now that we've caught up to the present it's time for...
Okay, I've gone through 40 years of history, obsessed over the evolution of Star Wars fandom, so what was the point of all that?
Where am I even going with this?
The new Star Wars movies have been the biggest movies of each of the past three years.
They've each received an "A, Cinema Score", meaning general audiences really liked them, and the vast majority of film critics have given them positive reviews.
But the response from the most passionate set of fans, has been extremely mixed.
And I don't think this is as simple as hardcore Star Wars fans being more demanding.
I think over the past 30 years, several factors added up to change the way Star Wars fandom works.
First the canonization of the original trilogy turned the stories into a rigid set of rules.
Then the expanded universe created an expectation of backstory, plus it gave fans a timeline of events
they would later be told to disregard. The special editions and prequels,
created the mindset that the fans knew better than the creators.
And of course there was a huge gap of time between Episode 6 and 7. During which, fans formed
expectations for what they wanted to see. Over several decades, Star Wars fans became Star Wars experts.
Fandom became an achievement, built on an accumulation of trivia. And these movies they waited their whole lives for, were expected to be a reward.
Something they had earned. When we were younger and watching the original movies for the first time, our
priority with each successive film was just to find out what happened next
But now a lot of fans are going into a new Star Wars movie with a checklist, a list of demands,
questions they want answered, scenes they want to see and a strict set of rules the movie must adhere to based on a dogmatic
interpretation of the original films. So most of the fan complaints about the Last Jedi, are the points where the movie does not
connect to the trivia they've learned.
They don't like new force powers that we haven't seen before.
They don't like the speed at which Ray's skills grow, because it's not exactly how it happened for Luke.
They don't like Leia using the force because that's not what she did 30 years ago.
They don't like Snoke's lack of backstory because it doesn't give them the explanations they want. They don't like Luke's
characterization because that's not where he was last time we saw him.
And they really don't like the Finn and Rose subplot, because it's about new characters in a new setting, so doesn't connect to the lore of the original movies in any way.
What seems like these fans want isn't the story, it's a Wookiepedia article.
They want plot, information and payoffs to reward their accumulation of trivia.
They want Snoke to be Darth Plagueis
So they can feel good about knowing who Darth Plagueis is. I have a theory, that the Rosetta Stone for this whole thing,
the key to what many fans want from a new Star Wars movie is this:
The Darth Vader scene from the end of Rogue One. If you do what I did, and search through comments on Twitter or YouTube, from
people who will aren't fans of the Last Jedi,
This scene gets brought up the most as the high point of the new movies.
And you'll see people saying things like:
but while a fun moment. It's essentially empty. It doesn't add anything to the story or a character
It's like an HD remake of a PlayStation 1 game. That thing you already like doing what you expect, but shinier.
While the Original Trilogy is so often treated as the perfect standard to which all new Star Wars must be held,
they share so many of the things people complain about in the new movies. Luke goes from a farm boy,
, who's never left his home, to a force using x-wing pilot,
who blows up the Death Star in about a day. And why was Obi-Wan Kenobi the rebellions only hope? Leia had never even met him.
What did she expect him to do?
The Empire Strikes Back, barely advances the overall story of the series. Most of it is spent with characters either running away, or hanging out on a swamp. They
hype up a legendary Jedi warrior, who turns out to be a silly Muppet who steals food. Han and Leia seemed to be on the
run a couple days, while Luke appears to be training for weeks. New force abilities
just appeared through all the movies without us ever seen the characters learning them. The first 40 minutes of Return of the Jedi have zero
impact on the story or characters, beyond just getting Han back. For the final battle of the entire war, a lot of time is spent
on wacky hi-jinx with ewoks. The revelation that Leia is Luke's sister was clearly a late addition to the story, and she's given no closure
with her father, let alone a single scene, which really lets down the promise of there is another. Also
they couldn't think of anything more original than just another Death Star? And by the way,
there is a lot of silly comedy through all these movies.
"OW!"
"Mine, mine, mine!"
"Well, at least you're still in one piece.
Look what happened to me!"
Last week, Pablo Hidalgo, from the Lucasfilm story group, posted this tweet.
And honestly, I could have just made this video a 15 minute screenshot of that tweet. Because it kind of says it all.
So the fans who hate the Last Jedi, who say "it's a bad Star Wars movie", that "it ruins the series." I'm not saying
they're watching movies wrong. There's no wrong way to watch a movie. Well. Okay. You could watch it while texting in the theater,
that's wrong, but it's not that these people are watching movies wrong. It's that in these movies, they're looking for something
they can't get. They want Star Wars to give them the
experience of being eight years old, sitting on their living-room couch and wearing out their VHS tapes of the original movies. For many people
Star Wars is less a movie, than a feeling. A feeling that new movie, seen as an adult, can't possibly recreate.
Unless...
You've got a time machine and go forward to the year
2020 or later, and buy the new trilogy on blu-ray, then transfer the movies over to VHS tapes,
then hop back in the time machine and travel back to the mid-90s, or whenever you were a kid, and give them to yourself.
Strip away the anticipation and expectations and the need for backstory and rules, until they're not new Star Wars movies. They're just Star Wars
Now most of what I've been talking about really just applies to a certain section of Star Wars fans, and just because they've learned the
most trivia about the lore, doesn't make their opinions more valid or more important.
Star Wars is maybe the most popular thing in the world, and it means so many different things, to so many different people.
To the kids who grew up with the prequels and Clone Wars cartoon, the recent converts won over by the new emphasis on strong female
protagonists and diverse casting, the old people who have been around for this entire thing since it started in the 70's and my group maybe
the biggest, or at least the most vocal: the ones born between 1980 and 1992,
the ones too young to see the original trilogy in theaters, who grew up with them on VHS
So what do we want from a Star Wars movie?
I think that's a question worth asking ourselves. As vast as Star Wars is, as much trivia and lore as there is to learn about,
The reason we all fell in love with it in the first place, is the story. Star Wars is, above all else a big sprawling
ongoing story, and, like it or not, that story is going to keep on going.
And if it's going to be meaningful and continue to entertain new generations, it can't just feed us nostalgia.
It can't just recycle elements from the movies
we grew up with. It needs to surprise us, it needs to grow, to show us new sights and characters and stories
we haven't seen before. Part of why I love the Last Jedi, was that it gave me what I wanted,
but also what I didn't know I wanted.
It took the elements that I liked but pushed the story forward into unexpected new territory.
And it created countless possibilities for future new stories in this world.
And I think that's the key, it's
not that we're supposed to let the past die, it's that we need to accept that there's a future as well.
Future with a hell of a lot of Star Wars in it. And it's going to be a lot of different things.
We'll like some, we might not like some others, but every one of these movies is going to be somebody's favorite.
"I don't like sand.
"It's coarse rough and irritating and it gets everywhere."
So beautiful.
Hey guys, thank you so much for watching this topic has been on my mind for like six months now,
so it felt good to finally take some time and dig into it. Now, while you were watching this video
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Go do it. So if you like these videos are making, you want to help us make more of them, as well as launch this
podcast that's gonna be coming very
soon; you should check out the Patreon and pledge or whatever you want there, if you want to yell at me about
stuff and get updates on the things that we're working on, follow me all the social media links I
Probably won't see you back here next Wednesday, because I am leaving on a trip to Ireland and England.
Just to hang out there and have a fun time. And so I'll see you when I get back.
Bye.