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Reasons the New Star Wars Movie Will Disappoint

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o·pin·ion
o'pinyan   N
1. A view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge

There. Now we've got that out of the way, so I can shoot my mouth off without someone saying, "You're wrong!!" No I'm not. By definition, my opinion cannot be wrong. So shut up.

See, it's necessary to get that out of the way at the onset. Because there is not a single film franchise in history that has produced such a rabid and dedicated fanbase. So someone, somewhere, is bound to read this and spend more time thinking about how much of a jerk I am, than even considering that I might have some good points.

So you know, I am a Star Wars fan. Everyone who knows me knows this. Even if you don't know me, and have only visited My Films Page, it's pretty obvious. I am old enough to have seen the very first movie in the theater a bunch of times. I don't even remember how I managed it. But at 9 years old, I saw it like 13 times!

What this means is that I am part of the Original Trilogy generation. So I also remember how this went the last time there was a set of new movies made. The younger people, the current generation, loved it. But people from my generation looked at the Present Trilogy with some angst, if not outright disdain. This is because it's not "my Star Wars", or "the Star Wars I grew up with". For my own thoughts on this, I can give my short, short review: I liked TPM quite a lot, but the next 2 got progressively worse.
Whatever the case, at least I can say this much - I was happy that George Lucas was the one that made those movies. Because for whatever people like or don't like, at least it was the original author that had his hands on the wheel.

This brings me to the first point about why the new movie is a mistake.

It's not being made by George Lucas
If the original author has no hand in the story, it's not part of the same story. I'm sorry. But it's not. It's nothing more than glorified fan fiction. This movie (and any and all that follow), are going to be the greatest Fan Films ever made. But they can never be anything more than that. It doesn't matter how many original actors you bring back. It doesn't matter how many original characters are referenced. It is not part of the story because it's not from the original author.

I would go as far as to make a comparison to George RR Martin, writer of A Song of Fire and Ice (HBO's Game of Thrones for the non-readers). If he doesn't finish the last book in that series before some tragedy befalls him, then the story will be left unfinished. I don't care which of his family, friends, or closest confidants finishes the books for him. If it's not written by him, it's not the same story - it's someone else's idea of an ending. In other words, glorified fan fiction.

I'll get back to this at the end... I'd like to get in to my next gripe first.

The special FX are going to suck
It's not that the FX are going to be low-quality or anything like that. Of course they are going to be VERY high quality. But they will be TOO high quality. Such to a point that they will be blindingly hyper unrealistic. Everything will look SO clear and SO flawless that it will actually look so real that it will look fake. Because even reality doesn't look that real. Did that make sense?

Or even worse, you could use this example... I'm going to use the shot of the Falcon from the trailer here. This is the image. Right from the trailer. Pfft... I've seen higher quality in video game cutscenes.

When I saw this, I thought for sure that the trailer was a fake. It had to be. Because there is NO WAY that this could be the shot that is going to set up the excitement for one of the most anticipated movies of this decade.

Seeing this still frame, I thought it was bad enough. Then I saw the actual clip. It looks so unlike any flight sequence ever done in a Star Wars film. There has never been a sequence where a shaky camera follows a ship through a loop. That looks like something out of Battlestar Galactica, or the new Star Trek movies. They are fine there. There is no precedent there. But here in the Star Wars FX universe, there is a precedent.

On top of that, and above all, it looks fake to the point of being cartoonish. Again, when I saw it, I thought it must be a fan made effect. Evidently it is actually for real. And it's terrible.
If all of the flight sequences are done like this, I may actually walk out of the theater in disgust.

Let us not forget that groundbreaking FX is what put Star Wars on the map to start with. Because all of that ground has been broken over and over again, there is pretty much no chance we will see anything new. Well, except stuff like...

WTF is this thing?
This is an example of trying to invent spiffy new things for absolutely no other reason than a crappy attempt to be clever.

Seriously? Do we need another lightsaber design? Especially one like that? A lightsaber broadsword?! A design taken from a medieval weapon that, as far as we know, didn't even exist in that universe? By all accounts, those weapons only existed on this planet a few hundred years ago. In the Star Wars universe, weapons like that wouldn't have been seen or used for 1000's of years. So why the hell would someone have a lightsaber designed like that?!

I know I sound like a whining kid when I say that stuff. But I nearly sprained my neck when I rolled my eyes at that one.

Expect to see a lot of this sort of nonsense. There will be new droids, that are similar enough to be familiar. The ships will be redesigned, if only slightly. The way things move will be the new director's vision, and not match what we hope to see. In other words...

It's not going to look like Star Wars
Here again I will cite the Present Trilogy for doing something right. The space battle at the end of TPM. That was done incredibly well. The flight characteristics of the ships were great. It was fast. There was a lot of action. In short - it looked real. More to the point, it looked EXACTLY like what you'd expect from a Star Wars film, in every respect.
The entire movie; the music, the cuts between scenes, the sound, the acting... Everything really... It actually held the exact look and feel you would expect. Perhaps that's one reason that I've always like TPM where many others despised it.

For the record, I actually do have a standard at which I expect the new movies to be held. The space battle sequence at the end of ROTJ. That is, without a doubt, as perfect a sequence as you can get. Except when the Super Star Destroyer crashed into the Death star. That was bad. But the rest of it was hands down the best science fiction effects sequence ever produced. Ever. And it was done with miniature models, many strips of film, a lot of patience, and in 1982 or so.
That is the standard. If the new movie doesn't look at least that good, they will have failed.

Considering what we know of the team that is writing, filming, and directing this movie, we already know that no matter what they say, it is NOT going to look like a Star Wars film.

Conclusion
I'm going to circle back around to the point I made first, because it really IS the one that bothers me the most. I've read a lot of the novels. And I'm quite fond of many of the stories. I especially liked the X-Wing series. But they are nothing more than very well done fan fiction. They were authorized by the original author to be canon. But they can never really be official because they weren't part of the original author's stories. All "canon" means is that they were approved to be included in what became known as "The Extended Universe". But there has never been any claim of ownership by those authors.

They are going to tell you that these new movies are derived from some of the more popular story lines in those novels. Maybe. But that doesn't change the fact that George Lucas didn't write a single line of any of it. It was all written by fans.

So no matter how many people flock to see the films - and there will be tons of flocking going on - in my eyes, they will never be the real thing.

While I'm at it here, I'm going to show a clip that I produced. Why? Partly because I can. But mostly to show, that I am an extraordinary fan. And I believe that the fans have kept this franchise alive because THEY have been bringing their vision to the entire enterprise.

I have been a fan of science fiction, and special effects in particular, for as long as I can remember. So when I saw the first Star Wars movie, I was totally blown away. It wasn't until I was in my 30's that computers finally got fast enough that I was able to actually produce some of the effects myself. I spent weeks on that clip, between the models, animation, and the rendering times. And I did it because I thought it looked cool. I did it because I'm a fan.

In the end, what I'm trying to say here is that the new owners of the Star Wars franchise are going to try to tell you that this is a "New Star Wars Movie". But it's not. It couldn't be. But it will be a spectacular fan film. The best ever made. In my view, they should be more honest with the audience. Because right now, they are not doing that at all. They are acting like this was THEIR property all along.


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