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Star Wars: Orthodox or Heterodox?

Posted by Alexei Yaruk-Mundhenk
Alexei Yaruk-Mundhenk
member, 1538 posts
Ad Majorem
Dea Gloriam
Sun 24 Aug 2014
at 23:18
  • msg #1

Star Wars: Orthodox or Heterodox?

So a friend of mine started an argument over the validity of the 'first' three star wars movies, and I thought I would 'pole the room' as it were.

Which is the true Star Wars in your opinion: the Original Trilogy and Extend Universe or the Grand Story Arc currently being finished with the 7nth through 9th movies?
Misty Reynolds
member, 184 posts
Life is deadly. So am I,
but only when crossed.
Sun 24 Aug 2014
at 23:30
  • msg #2

Re: Star Wars: Orthodox or Heterodox?

If it says Star Wars, it is Star Wars.  It's all good... except for Jar Jar Binks.
That Guy With The Face
member, 35 posts
I never forget a face...
Wait, who are you again?
Sun 24 Aug 2014
at 23:59
  • msg #3

Re: Star Wars: Orthodox or Heterodox?

They're all "Star Wars" so far (except for Ep1 - JarJar was too slapstick for the franchise, IMO). I can't speak for the new ones on the way as I haven't yet seen them.

As a side note, I found the best order in which to watch the movies for those who haven't seen them.

4 > 5 > 2 > 3 > 6

You can skip Ep1 without missing anything too important.
swordchucks
member, 825 posts
Mon 25 Aug 2014
at 00:14
  • msg #4

Re: Star Wars: Orthodox or Heterodox?

I'm old and don't like the prequels, but apparently there's a whole generation that adores them and doesn't like the old ones as much.

To each their own.
cruinne
moderator, 6528 posts
what DO you do with
a drunken sailor?
Mon 25 Aug 2014
at 01:16

Re: Star Wars: Orthodox or Heterodox?

Sadly, I think they're all Star Wars.  At least, they're what the creator wants them to be.

Me, I cannot stand Episodes I, II, and III.  The acting is bad.  The CGI is overbearing.  The characterizations are just awful.

The children I know who are Star Wars fans, however, hate episodes I love, and love the ones I hate.

Indeed:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJlbPXZEpRE
facemaker329
member, 6438 posts
Gaming for over 30
years, and counting!
Mon 25 Aug 2014
at 03:15
  • msg #6

Re: Star Wars: Orthodox or Heterodox?

All the movies are Star Wars...it's just that the prequels are really poor storytelling with too much emphasis on grand, sweeping visuals and not enough emphasis on telling the story.  They also kind of take the original premise of Star Wars, as Lucas explained it back in the day, of the average-farm-boy-turned-hero, and throw that out on its ear.

But since Lucas couldn't even maintain continuity between the prequels and the originals on many points, I'm not surprised that the elementary premise of the story went by the wayside, too.

I can't speak for the Extended Universe, I don't think I've read more than a handful of chapters once you move beyond the short-story anthologies that were put together about characters from the original series (Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina and Tales of the Bounty Hunters, specifically).  What little bit of it I know about gives me mixed emotions about the whole thing, because there are some things that they fleshed out really well, I feel, and there are other things that make me shake my head because (I feel) it's just a case of the author trying to make something bigger, badder, and more calamitous than whatever's come before.  Strained my sense of plausibility on some of the stuff...
bobbofeet
member, 178 posts
Mon 25 Aug 2014
at 16:36
  • msg #7

Re: Star Wars: Orthodox or Heterodox?

Of course the Original trilogy (but I too am old).  And I had to be okay with my (then) 5-year old daughter being Princess Amidala when the kids played Star Wars at the playground.

What truly makes me sad is the Extended Universe that has been written (and to a large extent blessed by Lucas) has been dismissed.  The Zahn Trilogy (and the following two books he wrote on a slightly separate arc) was fabulously written and would have brought great closure to the 9-story arc that Star Wars was supposed to be.  I'm cautiously excited about the next trilogy in the theaters (but that's because I'll have teen-aged sons to take to see the movies).
Sleepy
member, 212 posts
Mon 25 Aug 2014
at 16:49
  • msg #8

Re: Star Wars: Orthodox or Heterodox?

My stance on it is similar to cruinne. They're all Star Wars, as Lucas intended. While I don't agree with Lucas' choices in Episode 1 with Jar Jar, he is just as cannon as Luke Skywalker, because that's what's intended. Loving a series as big as Star Wars is fine, but excluding a character that is generally regarded as out of place is wrong. Just because he feels out of place does not mean he is. Consider for a moment how lucky we are in an infinite galaxy like Star Wars to only have one or two characters that stand out negatively. There are bound to be planets outside of the commonly referenced planets that have even worse figures.

The true question is, will I agree with this as much after seeing Episode seven, being affected by Disney's agenda?
Genghis the Hutt
member, 2336 posts
Just an average guy :)
Mon 25 Aug 2014
at 22:55
  • msg #9

Re: Star Wars: Orthodox or Heterodox?

Well, the first three Star Wars episodes, namely episodes 4, 5, 6, are great.  I don't know of any other episodes.
facemaker329
member, 6439 posts
Gaming for over 30
years, and counting!
Tue 26 Aug 2014
at 05:55
  • msg #10

Re: Star Wars: Orthodox or Heterodox?

In reply to Sleepy (msg # 8):

I keep laughing every time someone brings up the 'Disney agenda' with regards to Star Wars.  When Disney bought into the Marvel franchise, people were predicting 'Iron Mouse' as a member of the Avengers...

Really, if you look at the movies in franchises that Disney owns a portion of, what 'agenda' is being pushed?  Disney's agenda is making money, and they're extremely good at it.  With the exception of a couple of dubious sequels from Pixar, they've got a pretty solid track record.  I don't think they're going to make any more of a mess of ep 7 than Lucas managed to make of eps 1-3, all on his own, and they'll probably actually do better at it, because they don't suffer from a fixation with trying to tell a perfect version of the story...

If anything turns ep 7 into a royal mess, it will be JJ Abrams trying to make this the biggest, baddest, coolest, meanest Star Wars ever.  Star Trek: Into Darkness had the potential for being a really awesome movie...and it was still, to me, largely enjoyable.  But there were a LOT of parts of it that left me shaking my head and thinking, 'Abrams, you're trying WAY too hard to make this story 'cool'.  You should have spent more time on writing a good story, so you didn't need to spend as much time on flashy visual effects to try and compensate.'

So, I have guarded optimism for ep 7...but I don't think anything fouled up with it will be Disney's fault.
Sleepy
member, 215 posts
Tue 26 Aug 2014
at 06:10
  • msg #11

Re: Star Wars: Orthodox or Heterodox?

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 10):

The fact is, Disney movies DO detract from the original. Pixar isn't Disney (though they sort of are they aren't, so they don't count anyway). Consider, Disney may own SOME of the rights to Marvel, but each franchise within is not owned by Disney. Spiderman and Ghost Rider movie rights belong to Sony, X-Men belong to Fox, Disney? All the characters that aren't affiliated with Spider-Man, Ghost Rider, X-Men,  Daredevil, and the Fantastic Four.

So yes, that leaves them with the Avengers, but consider that if you were to compare the Avengers to the comic version, they're vastly different, meaning Disney's hand changed them from their original greatness. Yes they were still good, but a good movie doesn't need to change a franchise. Why else is this important? It forces Fox and Sony to keep pumping out movies to keep movie rights so they don't defect back to Disney. Now with Disney owning the ever humungous Star Wars franchise, Fox and Sony will want to clench tighter to what they have.

Am I saying they're going to make a bad Star Wars movie? Not necessarily. Am I saying they will make Fox and Sony make bad movies with their respective franchises? Not necessarily. But consider, Fox and Sony have made bad movies out of their franchises (Spiderman 2 and Fantastic Four come to mind). Disney's agenda is to get the rest of the Marvel universe back to make money, which makes sense, that's a lot of movie money. To do this, they have to keep the pressure on Fox and Sony. That means they'll both want to pump tons of dollars into movies, which often means less 'creative engineering' and more 'CG ALL the things' (like Green Lantern's outfit... *shutter*).
facemaker329
member, 6440 posts
Gaming for over 30
years, and counting!
Tue 26 Aug 2014
at 07:46
  • msg #12

Re: Star Wars: Orthodox or Heterodox?

*grin*  I'm not so sure I'd call that Disney's agenda...Marvel had been working on that before Disney made a bid to get in on the action.  Disney just gives them more firepower to work with...

But Marvel's been rather forthright about the fact that they're really pushing the marketing, etc on those films/titles where they do still own all the rights (several recent articles commented on how Captain America 2 and Guardians of the Galaxy got all this 'collateral marketing' from Marvel, while X-Men got almost nothing...and quoted a Marvel exec explaining to a fan at one of the various conventions, "Hey, it doesn't make sense for us to push marketing on a film where we get only 5% of the profits, when we can put the time and money into a film where we get 100%...")

That could lead me into a whole other string of thought about what Fox did right with DOFP, but that's for a different thread.  Suffice it to say, I don't think Disney's going to push anything on Star Wars that wouldn't likely have been there in the first place.  I think the best thing they did was get someone besides Lucas to direct it...he's had some great hits, but his track record has, overall, been somewhat less than stellar (no pun intended), and more often than not, his films have been noteworthy underperformers at the box office.  When he hits, he hits big...but he's got an awful lot of misses.

I'm not sure J.J. Abrams was the best choice to take the helm...but at least it wasn't Michael Bay.  There will at least be some semblance of a real story, rather than a vague hint of a plotline serving as an excuse to tie all the explosions together.  But given Abrams' record with the last two Star Trek films, I'm very much expecting at least a few 'Now, that's just ridiculous' moments (like a mining ship that's so heavily armed that it can take out a whole military armada...or needing to bore all the way to the center of a planet to create a black hole that will destroy it, when plopping said black hole at the edge of the planet's atmosphere would be every bit as destructive...or having the Enterprise hiding at the bottom of an ocean...)

In that regard, I really hope I'm disappointed when I go see ep 7.
Tileira
member, 401 posts
Tue 26 Aug 2014
at 09:04
  • msg #13

Re: Star Wars: Orthodox or Heterodox?

The first 3 (4, 5, 6) are a very different style from a different era. It's hard to compare them, like it's hard to look at anything from the 70s and compare it to a modern film.

It depends on how you want to analyse it. If you;re looking at the story alone, there's not point in comparing them because they're all part of the same thing. Any canon changes which seem to happen are more to do with Star Wars being A Thing and Lucas being allowed to let the complexity through. He editted out a lot of stuff to make the script sell.

If you want to compare the movies on points...
Style: I prefer the first three for the fun and simple, kind of old fantasy movie, style
Effects: The new ones have better effects, but I don't count this one because the effects we have now were not availble in 1977.
Character: The characters of the first movies are a bit dated and charicatured, but this contributes to the style. As characters the ones in the new movies are more complex, but those movies have a different style. Jar Jar could probably have benefitted from a lower voice though. Having an annoying voice AND irritating speech patterns was a cruel thing to do to him.
Acting: Well, I don't think the acting in the old movies was bad, so much as the style and energy of those movies is different. I think the 'bad' acting is from the characters and style rather than the actors.
Story: The story in the first movies was easier to follow and swallow. The story in the new movies takes a back seat to Awesome Action scenes. At least in the few I watched so much Awesome happens you forget what's supposed to be going on.

In the end I prefer the first ones, but that's because I saw them first when I was younger. I can see why watching the new ones first and then going back to the earlier films would make new fans despair.
This message was last edited by the user at 09:05, Tue 26 Aug 2014.
Mustard Tiger
member, 697 posts
Tue 26 Aug 2014
at 12:36
  • msg #14

Re: Star Wars: Orthodox or Heterodox?

Sleepy:
more 'CG ALL the things' (like Green Lantern's outfit... *shutter*).


Or Rocket Raccoon and Groot from the Guardians of the Galaxy movie. People can hate on CGI all they want, but critics and audiences loved those two characters. CG in an of itself is not a bad thing.
mediiic
member, 33 posts
Tue 26 Aug 2014
at 18:35
  • msg #15

Re: Star Wars: Orthodox or Heterodox?

Now, I know some hardcore fans consider Jar Jar Binks an affront to anything they believe in, but I also know how the children react to a live-sized, moving Jar Jar Binks. How do I know this? It's because where I'm from, a member of the Rebel Legion has the only canon-approved Jar Jar Binks outfit in existance as far as I know. And you people should see the look on those kids' faces, who have seen the series or the movies. And it gets even better, when the guy in the suit imitates Jar Jar.

So, my point is this: you can argue about Star Wars like you would argue about the colour, consistent and odour of strawberries. Some of you will agree with one another, some won't. The prequels are officially canon and  in my opinion, if you want to look at the universe as a whole, you have to accept even the slightest detail of it.
This message was last edited by a moderator, as it was against the forum rules, at 18:58, Tue 26 Aug 2014.
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