Once you start down that path.....
Nov. 29th, 2014 11:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
levadeI gotta tell you this. Star Wars was an enormous part of my years growing up. It ate parts of my imagination that I will never see again.
This isn't a bad thing. I feel fortunate that I saw the original trilogy before the prequels because if you came onboard with the prequels first? I'm sorry. Really. There needs to be an apology made.
No, they weren't all bad. I loved parts. I hate, loathe and want to spit at other parts which I won't get into here because I respect other's opinions and expect the same back.
But they lacked a lot of what the original trilogy had -- and yes, there were problems with Eps. IV, V and VI.
I think when you have a story that spans so many years, so many generations and a writer who changed his mind so many times (yes, George, I mean YOU) there are bound to be issues.
My second fandom is Tolkien, and it suffers the same problems. Two writers, though Christopher was working off his father's notes and writings, and a very long time span, with the same generational span of fans.
Opinions change, views shift, and what was once widely accepted suddenly is viewed with a skeptical, cynical eye.
I really think you have to look at generational differences. There's been a shift in the perception of life since 1977 when Star Wars (A New Hope) came out. Fans then saw it one way. Fans now see it another.
So this trailer isn't going to be perceived the same by all the fans. You have fans who were adults in 1977. Some were kids. Some weren't born yet.
Me, I'm in the middle. I grew up in the middle of all of it, but there are definitely fans younger and far older than me. I'm from the age of grunge and disillusionment, where we knew darn well we weren't going to be able to do as well in life as the generations before us and yes, we still resent that, sorry. It was more gritty and, in some ways, more honest.
We're kind of back to the lalala, everything is fine here, we're all fine, how are you? generation when most certainly it is NOT all fine.
That's another rant. :p
So, the trailers. I...am on the fence so far. I'm cautious in trusting JJ Abrams with SW. The first Star Trek movie was fine, the second? A bloody pulp of a shipwreck.
Can he understand it all and embrace the generations of fans and not screw it over like George did with all of his canon re-writes? Hm. I don't know. I hope so! I would love to see something that was as controversial and wonderfully written as Empire Strikes Back.
No Ewoks, please. No JarJar (one can only hope he's dead by now or someone finally killed him).
Star Wars was a mythology in its conception, and turned into a marketing monster by the prequels. Can we go back? Not sure. Hope so, but not holding my breath.
Seeing the Falcon again reminds me of that story (forget which book...and no, not going to talk about EU books) where the people in charge of monitoring the outbound and incoming flights have a conversation about why the Millennium Falcon is up on the pad again, like it is so many mornings. "Don't worry, he's not going to make trouble," one says. "He goes up there to remember the old days."
Aww, Han. Damn, dude. I hope they haven't totally neutered you!! Sometimes I wish you hadn't married Leia. I wish you'd stayed wild and rebellious or maybe gone out in a blaze of glory.
And Luke. Luke was someone I understood as he stood there staring out at the sinking suns, wishing so hard he could get off that backwater world.
Be careful what you wish for, eh?
Especially if you're a Skywalker.
But that's the thing. For life-long fans, regardless of age, these stories and characters have found a place to live in our hearts, in our imaginations and they grow as we grow, changing with the years. That's why I say it's perception. George put it out there for the world to see and it became ours, our story, our friends fighting for their respective sides. It continued and grew.
It was not stagnant. It didn't die. Fans wrote stories, authors wrote EU books and contradicted each other and fans argued and dressed up and dreamed....
Once you put a story out there, it is never solely yours again. Not if it sparks in readers/viewers. I think George was smart to sell it and get out. It wasn't his any more.
This isn't a bad thing. I feel fortunate that I saw the original trilogy before the prequels because if you came onboard with the prequels first? I'm sorry. Really. There needs to be an apology made.
No, they weren't all bad. I loved parts. I hate, loathe and want to spit at other parts which I won't get into here because I respect other's opinions and expect the same back.
But they lacked a lot of what the original trilogy had -- and yes, there were problems with Eps. IV, V and VI.
I think when you have a story that spans so many years, so many generations and a writer who changed his mind so many times (yes, George, I mean YOU) there are bound to be issues.
My second fandom is Tolkien, and it suffers the same problems. Two writers, though Christopher was working off his father's notes and writings, and a very long time span, with the same generational span of fans.
Opinions change, views shift, and what was once widely accepted suddenly is viewed with a skeptical, cynical eye.
I really think you have to look at generational differences. There's been a shift in the perception of life since 1977 when Star Wars (A New Hope) came out. Fans then saw it one way. Fans now see it another.
So this trailer isn't going to be perceived the same by all the fans. You have fans who were adults in 1977. Some were kids. Some weren't born yet.
Me, I'm in the middle. I grew up in the middle of all of it, but there are definitely fans younger and far older than me. I'm from the age of grunge and disillusionment, where we knew darn well we weren't going to be able to do as well in life as the generations before us and yes, we still resent that, sorry. It was more gritty and, in some ways, more honest.
We're kind of back to the lalala, everything is fine here, we're all fine, how are you? generation when most certainly it is NOT all fine.
That's another rant. :p
So, the trailers. I...am on the fence so far. I'm cautious in trusting JJ Abrams with SW. The first Star Trek movie was fine, the second? A bloody pulp of a shipwreck.
Can he understand it all and embrace the generations of fans and not screw it over like George did with all of his canon re-writes? Hm. I don't know. I hope so! I would love to see something that was as controversial and wonderfully written as Empire Strikes Back.
No Ewoks, please. No JarJar (one can only hope he's dead by now or someone finally killed him).
Star Wars was a mythology in its conception, and turned into a marketing monster by the prequels. Can we go back? Not sure. Hope so, but not holding my breath.
Seeing the Falcon again reminds me of that story (forget which book...and no, not going to talk about EU books) where the people in charge of monitoring the outbound and incoming flights have a conversation about why the Millennium Falcon is up on the pad again, like it is so many mornings. "Don't worry, he's not going to make trouble," one says. "He goes up there to remember the old days."
Aww, Han. Damn, dude. I hope they haven't totally neutered you!! Sometimes I wish you hadn't married Leia. I wish you'd stayed wild and rebellious or maybe gone out in a blaze of glory.
And Luke. Luke was someone I understood as he stood there staring out at the sinking suns, wishing so hard he could get off that backwater world.
Be careful what you wish for, eh?
Especially if you're a Skywalker.
But that's the thing. For life-long fans, regardless of age, these stories and characters have found a place to live in our hearts, in our imaginations and they grow as we grow, changing with the years. That's why I say it's perception. George put it out there for the world to see and it became ours, our story, our friends fighting for their respective sides. It continued and grew.
It was not stagnant. It didn't die. Fans wrote stories, authors wrote EU books and contradicted each other and fans argued and dressed up and dreamed....
Once you put a story out there, it is never solely yours again. Not if it sparks in readers/viewers. I think George was smart to sell it and get out. It wasn't his any more.