May the 4th

[author_by_night]

I was inspired by a Facebook post I wrote a few years ago, expressing confusion over all the May the 4th jokes. I then realized that I'd been doing the same thing to people as a huge Harry Potter fan - they would mention they'd read the books, and I'd start going on about something that wasn't immediately clear to more casual fans, leaving them confused.

I still haven't seen past the first Star Wars sequel. I really need to amend that.

Questions for YOU guys:

1. Is there anything you like only casually, only to mislead people into excitement when you mention it?

2. Have you ever confused a casual fan with ALL the love and knowledge?

3. What is your stance on the Star Wars sequels? Do you consider them canon? (If your comment contains spoilers, please mark it. I originally asked that this be spoiler free, but that's not fair to anyone who really wants to get into it! It IS Star Wars Day, after all.)

4. What is a book, movie, or series you WOULD like to see a sequel or prequel to? Or, if it's already had one of those, do you think it could be done better?

Comments

[melannen]

See, I think my feelings about the prequels are similar to what you were saying about the newer Trek series in your reply - whatever else you say about them, they don't capture the things I really liked about Star Wars. (Also, they had bad acting, poorly used special effects that led into boring action scenes, terrible treatment of way too few female characters, racist stereotypes and blatant cultural appropriation, and incoherent plot and characterization that couldn't hold themselves together thematically. But *fundamentally* I dislike them because they don't feel like Star Wars.)

Whereas the sequel trilogy - for all its flaws, and whoo-ee did it have flaws - does at least feel like Star Wars to me, and it feels like it was made by people who loved Star Wars for the same reasons I do, and who all had a ton of fun in the process. And the things I like about VII and IX are definitely *despite* J. J. Abrams' favorite plots being smeared all over them - but he always could make a movie that felt like a Star Wars movie (for example: the Star Trek reboots. :P)

I mean, a lot of it is probably that I went into the PT with high hopes and grand expectations only to have them repeatedly smashed into the floor, whereas I went into the sequels with zero expectations and very few hopes and they didn't do any of the things I was horribly dreading, which probably isn't fair. But I also think the sequel trilogy itself wasn't trying as hard to be amazing and groundbreaking as the PT was, it was just trying to make fun space movies and retread the OT for a new audience, which meant that when it too failed it failed more softly.

(And, really, the OT was *also* a godawful mess in a lot of ways; we just watched ESB and I have realized the reason I always leave during the so-beloved Han/Leia scenes isn't that I'm too ace for it, it's that Han *never* stops when she says "stop" or gets out of her space when she acts uncomfortable, and I can't read that as charming even when I'm supposed to. *Vader* has more respect for her bodily consent. I am starting to think the Falcon was constantly glitching in that movie because L3-37 was trying to protect Leia from Han. Auuugh. And the timeline! The timeline makes NO SENSE. Anyway.)

[beatrice_otter]

We have different opinions on what "feels like" Star Wars, I guess, because despite the many surface differences between the PT and the OT, the core of the story feels like Star Wars. Whereas, with the ST, the bits that feel like Star Wars to me are usually pretty superficial fanservice, not anything deeper like characterization or theme.

I went into the PT figuring that there was such a fever pitch of expectation about it that it could be The Platonic Form of a good movie, and people would still be disappointed. But I enjoyed myself, and while it wasn't perfect it was good and enjoyable. And I've had a lot of fun fannishly with the worlds it opened up.

I went into the ST with about the same expectations. The first movie was fun but not spectacular, and I left it going "okay, interesting set up, but they better have an incredibly good explanation for the question of why Luke left and what he's been doing, because it does not fit with his character at all. but I like the new characters, and they handled Leia and Han well, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt about Luke." Then the second movie came out, and not only did they characterize Luke so differently from how I see him that I can't accept it's the same character from the OT, they treated Finn and Poe terribly, as well, and twisted Rey's plot arc so it was All About Ren, not about her. On top of that, I saw enough of how racist certain corners of fandom were being about Finn, Poe, and Rose, and how badly the actors who played them were treated by certain corners of fandom, that it really soured my participation in anything fannish with the ST.

On a thematic level, if you take the PT and OT together, what you get is a message that there is evil in the world and sometimes evil wins for a while, and good people can turn into terrible people, and good people can fail and do stupid things, but despite all this evil can be resisted and sometimes the good guys win. Sometimes there is redemption, and grace, and hope, and change for the better. Whereas the ST starts out by saying "suckers, you thought the good guys won, WELL NOT FOR LONG, and now they're fighting the SAME WAR they've been fighting for sixty years, all the sacrifice and redemption of previous generations was for nought, and nothing changes but the superficial stuff." So that by the end of the ST, when the good guys do win, it doesn't feel like they won, at least to me. It doesn't feel like there's hope, or redemption, or any possibility of things ever getting better. It feels like a brief pause before the next round of Palpatine and fascism and stormtroopers and massacres. And the thing is, there really isn't a way to keep the plot similarities and Star Wars 2.0 feel without doing something like that, because if they're still fighting the same war (second verse, same as the first), then all the hope of change and renewal has failed. The more I think about it, the more I realize that there isn't really a way to keep the themes of the OT and PT as I understand them, while also keeping all the plot elements of the OT. Either you have hope for change and growth and better times ahead, or you have the unrelenting struggle of a small rebel group against fascism and the Dark Side and planet-killing weapons repeated over and over again. You can't do both. At least, not for long.

The thing the old Legends EU did right was allow the New Republic to grow and flourish. It was not always right and it had so many flaws and there were still Imperials and there were still Dark Siders and there were still space battles and there were still all of the elements that make up Star Wars, but without resetting it back to square one.

[stellar_dust]

Your thoughts on Luke, and the way the ST changes everything the other two trilogies mean (and what Luke's character has always represented), are exactly the things I don't like. I enjoy (or roll my eyes fondly) at just about everything else about the trilogy, but those two issues are just so huge, that I can never see the story as more than -- one of many possible futures for the galaxy. The EU was thematically much more in keeping with the hope and promise of the end of ROTJ.

The PT, on the other hand, has the core of a really great story about the insidiousness of evil hidden somewhere within it, and I appreciate how it fits with the OT and enjoy the extended media (comics, cartoons, books) around it and all the reams of fic it's generated -- but when I go back and watch the actual movies, the dialog and direction are just so painful and stilted and awful (with the occasional exception of Ewan Macgregor). If it could be reimagined with a different writer and director (and perhaps actors with enough force of personality to stand up to the director when necessary, see: Harrison Ford) then I would be here for it.