Jub wrote: ↑2019-06-19 05:20am
That's complete bullshit. There's a large gap between the fairly infamous Turkish Star Wars and A New Hope and it shows in everything from the effects, to the acting, to the lighting, to the script itself. One can't look at those two films side by side and say that the crews making them were equally skilled, that the technology behind them was equivalent, and that they'd both equally entertain an average audience.
Taking an even broader view there's a marked difference in quality between many consumer goods. Take for example cheap bootleg DVD rips versus official 4k supported BluRay disks, they can show the same film and one will have notably improved visuals and sound than the other. The same goes for a dollar store toy and a collectors figurine, cheap shoes that might last a year and a more expensive pair that will last a lifetime, etc.
And those metrics are measuring quality are defined by people. You can measure the quality of the image and sound objectively, but those are not connected to how a person might evaluate the overall quality of a film because a film might have worst sound and video quality, but other qualities like writing and acting might affect the overall experience and reception of a film.
You're using the "average audience" as a barometer, which in itself has already made your criteria non-objective. You're defining the audience taste, then making an argument about how films can be "objectively" measured according to the taste of the audience you've created. That's not objectivity.
Objectivity is a set of definable facts, like pixel numbers and etc. Taste and preferences can never be objective.
Allowing breathing room by filling in a previously only speculated upon back story for several key characters. Adding Midichlorians really added a ton to the lore about the Jedi and the Force. Adding a child actor was clearly a brilliant move that I expect to be repeated in a Star Wars sequel any day now...You have a funny idea of what breathing room means.
We got a lot of development about how the Jedi and the Republic functioned, we got a lot of new designs of ships and etc. We got to experience what life was like in the core worlds. That's a vast expansion of breathing room for the OT.
Not to mention that there are things in the PT that will objectively age worse than the OT. The CGI, for instance, looks pretty awful by modern standards and makes it obvious that the ships we see on screen aren't real. That same complaint can't be made for models which will always at least look real.
See the video by CGI artists commenting on the CGI. Every special effects will feel dated as time went on. I can make the same argument about the movement of some puppets in the OT being too jerky and stop-motion like.
The only issue is whether we mind those dated special effects. Some people mind them more than others. It's not an "universal" view shared by everyone.
I should really write a sequel to a classic like East of Eden and fill it with modern slang and set it in space. That would really give that musty old tome room to grow and connect with modern fans! I'll go in and Poochy the shit out of classics because apparently nobody can enjoy something unless you update its style to catch every passing trend!
That's what the creators did with Star Trek. The atmosphere and "feel" of Star Trek evolve with time, and that brought in new generation of fans to the franchise. The same issue happened when Battlestar Galactica was rebooted/re imagined. It's only the hard-core fans that will complain about all the "changes" they've done to Star Trek.
If that isn't the case explain the rise of the cheaply produced reality show genre? How about the glut of low effort movies released in the 90's when box office takes were down?
Studios will make the cheapest and easiest thing that they think will get a return.
Because people enjoy different kinds of entertainment and they are under no obligation to share your preferences?
So pander to the masses, make PG-13 films designed and focus-grouped to appeal to the widest swath of their target audience as you can, and keep shitting out films in the same genre until audience fatigue sets in and one finally flops? That's the modern trend in film; remakes, genre chasing (look at the teen fiction boom we just went through after Twilight and The Hunger Games hit big), and endless films with no message designed only to put butts in seats and make a tidy profit.
I can't condone making a film only to make money just like I can't condone any other harmful byproduct of capitalism that sacrifices quality and artistry because you can get a better ROI on easily made junk.
Films are meant to entertain the masses, especially blockbusters. You are under the illusion that studios should cater to your sense of entitlement instead of trying to cater on what the masses actually want to watch.
They might not be a film "classic", but most people don't go into movies expecting a "classic".
I saw the OT as a kid, probably 7 or 8 at the time, which would have made ANH just shy of 20 years old when I saw it. By your flawed logic, I should have hated it for not being modern enough. So how do you explain a nearly 20-year-old movie capturing a modern child's imagination?
Did you watch the special edition? Part of the reason they did the special edition was because Lucas wanted to reintroduced the OT to a new generation of fans with updated SFX. Some people did complain about the CGI in the special edition, but the special edition was well-received.
Disney tried the same tactic with Chinese audience, and many Chinese casual film goers said the movies look too dated for them to enjoy.
That's complete BS. There are plenty of movies that people consider must-see classics, that parents show their children after having themselves first seen it as children. I'd never heard of Vietnam or seen another film from the 70's when I saw Star Wars for the first time. Again I challenge you to explain how I latched on to it when by your logic it was no longer relevant to the zeitgiest of the mid 90's?
Read what I say. The
popularity of the films is connected to the zeitgeist of the era. Your personal enjoyment of the OT is your personal taste and experience. What "revived" the popularity of Star Wars as a franchise in the 90s and early 2000s was the prequels being released in cinema, combined with the airing of the OT on tv stations and release on DVDs.
Without the same set of cultural zeitgeist, a franchise can fail to take off in certain parts of the world. The Star Wars franchise had trouble breaking into China because the cultural zeitgeist for responding well to the OT movies simply wasn't there in the 2010s.
Casual fans aren't that important when talking about art or about a franchise in general. Most fans will still go see a Star Wars movie whether it caters to them or not. Then, as long as they enjoyed it and it generated water cooler talk, they'll go see the next one too. For an example look at Avengers: Endgame it wasn't designed for casual fans but still smashed box office numbers, how do you explain that?
Casual fans are important because they made up the majority of the viewers. The bombing of Solo suggest there are Star Wars movies that won't interest the casual audience.
Endgame succeeded because it managed to turn a large portion of casual fans into loyal fanbase that have to see Endgame on opening day. And Endgame was marked as an end of an era, and these kind of movies usually prompt even the non-fans to be curious about it and watch it in the cinema.
For example, The Return of the King made a lot more money than the first two LOTR movies. There were many people who decided to check out ROTK even though they have never seen the first two movies or read the books. Once a movie is properly hyped up, even the non-fans will check it out.
So everything should be made to appeal to the broadest possible audience, no fans should ever be considered when making anything, and if you complain you must be some disconnected superfan who'll never be satisfied anyway? Am I reading you right?
Yes. I think as superfans we can be too entitled in what we want in a movie. Take the recent Godzilla movie. It looks like it is going to make a loss at the box office. While many Godzilla superfans felt the film gave them what they wanted, the casual audience seems bored or indifferent to the movie.
Franchise films can succeed if they appealed to the casual fans, but listening to superfans can affect the overall reception of a film. I think as a rule, superfans are horrible at expressing what we actually want from a film. And having superfans in charge of directing a SW movie might not be the best idea as well. The production issues of R1 was saved by reshoots by a director who said he was NOT a Star Wars fan. He essentially made an argument that as a non-fan, he can be more detached in making a film that will appeal to a large audience.
I've posted an article in another thread that express how I feel about the role of fandom in a franchise.
What’s at the root of these types of campaigns? In recent years we’ve seen a growth in entitled attitudes among some fans – a feeling that has always bubbled under the surface, but which has risen as the internet has given more and more amplification to their voices. As far as these fans are concerned, their beloved characters and universes are not “owned” by their makers – but by those who spend their hard-earned on going to watch them. And so criticism moves out of the realm of simply being a reaction, into something that drives a cause – the injustice will not stand, the wrong must be addressed.
But just as an author cannot claim complete ownership of a work once it’s been given to the world, so too an audience has no right to claim ownership while it’s being created. The only duty that a filmmaker has is to deliver the work as they see fit – and to deliver commercial success, of course, if that’s what they’ve been hired to do. In general, if the work is good, it has a chance of succeeding – even if it might make decisions that not every viewer would have made in the process.
Fandom has, and always will have, an important role to play in art and culture. To consume, to engage, to enjoy, to criticise, to analyse, to adapt. But demanding to have a say in the work itself isn’t part of the deal. It fails to take into account that not every other fan may even agree with one’s criticisms; not to mention that, frankly, fans don’t always know best what they actually want. And the time and effort that some groups expend campaigning against works they don’t like would surely be better spent encouraging, or even creating more of, ones that they do.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... s-entitled
The article sums up my stance about the amount of influence a fan should have over a franchise. I certainly do not believe a filmmaker should be reading what I post about the SW movies as something they should seriously listen to.