kradeelav | (no subject)

#this is also what i call the Star Wars Problem (although: wide category lol)#but i mean specifically the thing where george lucas watched a BUNCH of westerns and samurai films and ww2 flying ace films#and then made a space movie ABOUT high points in those other story forms#because he knew those pulp genres inside out and knew what bits he needed to hit in RAF Dambusters pulp when he added laser swords#or in western saloon showdowns when he added spaceships#but then you fast-forward a few decades and people are making star wars movies ABOUT other star wars movies#and like not many of those scenes are going to hit that way - they just wont have the chance#they’ll be a copy of a copy and the emotion is going to degrade like the worlds crustiest reformatted ocr PDF#or a xerox of a xerox of a xerox#they’ve ceased to be about the feeling generated by the Form and have become simply the Form in isolation (via harrietvane)

(good tag essay that hit on what bothers me about disney-era SW stylistically)

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yessss!!! i knew you'd get it.

i know some people would probably rebut by saying star wars is a classic that's strong enough to riff off by itself at this point and - in the hands of a different director, *maybe*; like i do feel like that's what the old EU's strength was - remixing it with other genre high points that all the various authors knew best (would you say that Thrawn has a bit of a bond-movie vibe?). but at the hands of disney... alas, destined to mediocrity by the masses.

frankly to your last point about directors going their own way, i feel like Lucas riffed off of vietnam-era pulp for the prequels too which is why the prequels have a startlingly solid anti-war/imperialism streak that i doubt he wholly intended, but it's what made them (and films like full metal jacket) genuine classics versus being xeroxed from the original trilogy, as rough as parts of them were.