Yeah it was a rehash but with the mess of the prequels I don’t grudge them going back to familiar ground to start over with. They did a good job making a new story with a familiar plot I thought.
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That’s an interesting article. I suppose I agree that Hollywood does little to prepare children for the realities of celebrity culture. But an apparently not-so-obvious fix I think is to not market a culture of celebrity in the first place. The concept of movie stardom seems to be a real detriment to the craft of acting for cinema. Why develop the skill of disappearing into a role if you were hired just for being recognizable?
An analog might be if people harassed the guy who formulated some of the paints used in a famous paining. It’s a great craft to do, and we are richer for it, but the hype does not help.
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Mr. Plinkett’s 70-minute Phantom Menace review is still the perfect explanation of how and why that movie sucked.
(Mixed in with the silly stuff and analysis, he’s got some uncool “humor.”)
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But this time the story is told from the Death Stars’ point of view!
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A friend of mine hadn’t heard that there was a new Star Wars movie this year, she was quite pleased after I showed her the trailer 
{trolley hat on}
So if The Force Awakens is basically A New Hope with knobs on, how do they stack up if you compare them as two versions of the same story?
The plot is basically the same, although the script is slightly less clunky in FA. The cast in FA is more interesting (more than one woman for starters), and the visual effects are much better. The music is pretty much the same for both, although I assume FA has all the wizzy surround-sound gubbins that I rarely notice.
Judged like this, I’d say that The Force Awakens is better than the film we had forced on us in '77.
{trolley hat off}
I’ve got a kid who is blowing off The Force Awakens and Rogue One, saying that the trailers looked far less imaginative than the prequels were. So I guess they are a heretic! Personally, even though I grew up with the original trilogy, I was never a huge fan. And despite people slagging the acting and story in the prequels, those were also IMO the weak areas of the original trilogy - although to a lesser degree.
I will say though that if you like to geek out on sound design, both trilogies are rich with brilliant work. If I didn’t so dislike John Williams’ score (another heresy!) I could easily just listen to any of them as music on their sound design merits. It’s really the only thing I wonder about with regards to TFA.
I’ve actually watched that review more times than I have watched the movie.
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Oh, me too. I saw the Phantom Menace once. And I’ve watched the review twice.
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How old’s the kid? Or more importantly how old were they when the prequels came out. One of the major miscalculations there was George Lucas’ insistence that Star Wars was for children. And you know what? A lot of young children love that shit. So its relatively common for kids who were introduced to that first, or who were the right age when it was released to prefer to prequels. Though in my experience when most close in on adult hood and develop some taste they come around.
A lot of my friends with kids were really careful about when and which order they showed these things to their kids. To prevent obsession with the prequels. They didn’t want their kids first introduction to Star Wars to be something they’d be embarrassed with later. The TFA coming out not so much. Most of my friends with young kids hitting around the right age last year just took them to TFA without showing them much else Star Wars. And then everyone was running around with little kids dressed as Rey, or sleeping with BB-8 Plushies.
As for you not being into it? Sure I know plenty who aren’t. If you’re not to into it, as a family, I can’t see your kid getting too bogged down in it. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong just not digging it. The originals have their short comings (including acting and story as you point out). And those problems, its become clear, grow RIGHT out of George Lucas. So some of it is baked right in. Unavoidable. In the originals he collaborated with a bunch of people who could execute better, and tell him no. So they managed to over come their problems, and develop some considerable charm. In the prequels he didn’t. So they didn’t. Regardless of how imaginative they were visually.
Sound design was quite good, per usual. Its something Abrams typically has a good handle on. The visual design and effects were like wise fairly good. There’s an absolutely charming use of simple, practical methods on all fronts. There’s a scene with a sort of alien canape. Its basically a slice of apple with some romesco, fennel frond, and pomegranate seeds stapled to it. It looks suitably alien if you can’t identify those things by sight. “Hey Look some weird space fruit!” but it makes me giggle with how clever and old school it is since I can see the strings. The new droid’s voice was apparently recorded and designed by Abrams screwing around with his iPhone and a couple of comedians playing around with vocal techniques.
Every behind the scene anecdote from these things seems to be a fun story about collaboration and delightfully low rent solutions. That’s sort of the thing that finally got me excited about the whole thing. Its real film making. The sort of thing that traditionally hasn’t happened in big block busters. Disney, especially through Pixar and Marvel have gotten very good at fostering that sort of thing. And it seems like they’re working hard to embed it in Lucas Film to an even greater extent. It gives me the hope.
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Winsor & Newton can’t go to the mall any more without getting absolutely mobbed by paparazzi.
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