(no subject)

[kradeelav]

#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) 

Comments

[airlock384]

this is probably more in-depth nerdery than OP intended, but I wonder because it's like... it's not as if all the b-movies that Lucas was taking inspiration from are themselves the pure wellspring of culture from which inspiration can be drawn untainted, isn't it? like, what's fundamentally the difference between copying the highs from a western, vs copying the highs from a Star Wars?

... well, I guess the first thing about it is that copying a western is a lot less of a whole move if you are making another western rather than a space western. even then, though, there is famously nothing new under the sun. if anything, it'd be astonishing if you could, in fact, make a western that isn't in dialogue with other westerns in any way!

more I munched on it in my head, though, more I realized that no, I don't think the thing with the Star Wars sequel trilogy is that it's too much of a snake eating its own tail. the expanded universe is full of things that have that exact problem, and it looks like something wholly different! no, I think the thing is that the sequel trilogy does have its own particular pool of inspiration that it draws from, and it just happens to be one that sucks ass. because it's like, The Avengers. it's the spirit that possesses whoever writes crap like "they fly now? they fly now!!".

[kradeelav]

you know, that's also a really good point since there's so many *bad* westerns out there that society's memory has generally forgotten about; it's not like all of them were peak art (let alone the extremely dated/racist bits). but i like your avengers comparison because that definitely feels like the "kind" of issue we're talking about with being overly concerned about marketability, big splashy 'death star 2.0 takes out even MOAR people' scenes ... without realizing why the original scenes were so powerful was because of its emotional stakes to the characters themselves (eg to Leia).