Star Wars - Where’s the magic gone?

[Beloren]

Hey. I’m second gen Star Wars. Episodes 1-3 were my time for Star Wars leading into both Clone Wars series. Once thing I feel Star Wars has lost is the magic feel.

I felt it in Episode 4-6, certainly 1-3, all the clone wars and def incl games like Star Wars the Old Republic (KoTOR & SWTOR) who really did a great job capturing it all. But I must say. I haven’t felt that magic feel in any of the new ones. Not 7, Rogue 1 or 8 altho I really enjoyed Rogue 1 & 8 something feels missing.

One thing I certainly missed was futuristic looking civilisations and worlds and high octane force user action. New films have great story but feel bland and like they are afraid to move on. Did we need 7-9 to be fighting as rebel underdogs again? Had enough of that for SW Rebels and 4-6 did it well enough. It’s also a bit depressing to see nothing changed in the galaxy after Emperors defeat it’s like they just replaced everything like for like and told the same story which while better was like WHY?

Wonder if we have any 3rd gen Star Wars folk where Episode 7,8 and Rogue 1 are your first experiences of Star Wars and you’ve since gone back and watched everything.

[donjn]

Stars Wars over saturation. Try to go one day without seeing or reading anything about Star Wars. Its impossible.
And now this thread....

[I Push Buttons]

Probably because old Star Wars IP was written to be entertaining and Disney Star Wars IP is written by a social justice committee to be political commentary.

[LiiLoSNK]

There's some magic in the canon comics that explain the happenings between ep 4-5.

[Jastall]

People aren't teenagers anymore and have been overexposed to Star Wars.

[Shadowferal]

The storyline certainly hasn't genuinely progressed.

[Deleted]

Nothing is missing. The new movies are good star wars movies. Period.
When I went to the cinema and people were already complaining about the previous movie when I was standing in line for tickets I almost slapped them in the face. Gloryfying the first movies is the same like gloryfying vanilla wow. We all love them, it's ok to love them...but when you look at it without nostalgia glasses you see a cheesy and not very original plot, poor acting etc etc...

[Biomega]

Because movies as a mass entertainment medium have outlived their usefulness. Telling a compelling story in 2-3 hours is incredibly difficult - also engaging in world building and the associated vistas makes it even harder. But good films are not only hard on their creators, they're also demanding of their audiences. The sheer density of it all requires you to be much more engaged than the majority of audiences are ever going to be willing to do.

What remains is spectacle - an audiovisual bombardment with little real substance, that's all flash and bang and little else. Those films tend to be commercially successful, and as a result, studio execs seek to reduplicate those aspects wherever they can. A franchise like Star Wars is expected to return hundreds if not thousands of millions per film. They do not take chances on that revenue. So what you get is essentially a 2.5-hour sensual hyperdrive ride, where out of necessity everything is reduced to simple stagings and shallow plots, with tropes, stereotypes, and callbacks abound. To them, "omg it's YODAAAA!" is worth a lot more than explaining who Snoke is or why he matters. Showing Kylo Ren shirtless is more important than pondering the intricacies of Jedi philosophy. Shining a spotlight on 'the black guy' and 'the Asian chick' is more important than creating deep, complex characters who have an involved function beyond their token presence. They know their audience. They know they want to have a good time at the theater and relax for two hours with popcorn while shit blows up. They don't want to have to think.

What's needed is a medium with less relaxed time constraints, which is more conducive to actual plot complexity and character development. In other words, a video series rather than a movie. I'm actually surprised Disney and Netflix haven't copulated to produce the ultimate streaming offspring in the form of a high-budget live-action SW series. Maybe they have, and it's still gestating. Maybe amazon got there first. I think it would serve as a million times better platform to tell good Star Wars stories, at a pace where people can actually control how they consume it, meaning they can be more involved and the content can be more sophisticated. There's an abundance of possible story lines in the SW universe with vast untapped potential - think of Revan, for example, or the critically acclaimed Thrawn.

Me personally, I am increasingly getting tired of the blockbuster movie as a concept in general, and not just SW movies in particular. I enjoy them for what they are, but that enjoyment forever remains mellow. Most movies I no longer bother going to the theater for, and just catch up a year later when I have a long flight. Heck I don't even bother pirating them. I just don't care anymore. But give me a good, engaging Netflix series, and I won't leave my house for a week.

[Swalload]

I still felt the magic in episode 7 and rogue one. It was slightly different but still there. In episode 8 I felt like suddenly we were going somewhere else in terms of story telling, it didn't feel the same at all. Some of it I think comes from having "too much new" which is almost non canon. Like the telepathic link between Rey and Kylo (which I enjoyed I think those were among the better parts of episode 8 but I can still see that it was something completely pulled out of someone's ass, it didn't feel like star wars) and Leia flying in space, Luke being completely crazy, even yoda looked crazier. The worse-than-usual jokes and shit... too many weird stuff that were not part of SW universe before kind of break the link and make episode 8 feel out of place.

Didn't feel that at all in episode 7 because it was basically a soft reboot of episode 4 and there was plenty nostalgia bomb to hook people to the old magic. And in Rogue one, while somewhat different, still found its place and didn't kill the magic by adding too many weird shit, like the weirdest was probably the robot and he was easily just another C-3PO token robot role like BB-8 is another R2D2.

[Shadowferal]

No.

There's nothing of the magic that used to exist.
It's merely become a goldmine for Disney to exploit.

[Sorshen]

Kathleen Kennedy happened, that's what.

[sarahtasher]

Probably because old Star Wars IP was written to be entertaining and Disney Star Wars IP is written by a social justice committee to be political commentary.

Ritual question : what exactly the Imperials would have to do in the OT to look more like Space Nazis ? Having a musical routine in which they talk about goose stepping ?

[lewdest]

Go look at the committee that runs it. It's all women pushing their weird fanfic garbage onto it. I'm not saying that Star Wars can't have a female lead, but they added a character that's literally a pink hair SJW and they made Leia fly like Superman. Also some fat janitor lady accompanies Finn on a mission for some reason and it takes up 30% of the movie, and then she tries to kill him because of love or some crap? God it's just awful. Also, make sure you kill off every white male that ever existed in the universe.

[ro9ue]

*looks around*



I like the new movies.




*runs away*

[sarahtasher]

Go look at the committee that runs it. It's all women pushing their weird fanfic garbage onto it. I'm not saying that Star Wars can't have a female lead, but they added a character that's literally a pink hair SJW and they made Leia fly like Superman. Also some fat janitor lady accompanies Finn on a mission for some reason and it takes up 30% of the movie, and then she tries to kill him because of love or some crap? God it's just awful. Also, make sure you kill off every white male that ever existed in the universe.

Dude, in the previous canon, Luke fought a naked Palpatine clone two times They also came out with ''sado-masochists aliens from outside the Galaxy'' as vilains and half a dozen of idiotic superweapons.

As for ''supermen in space'', the argument would be ridiculous if people with the Force were not exactly doing this all the time in both the new and old canon

[Master Guns]

Kathleen Kennedy happened, that's what.

Considering Kathleen Kennedy was beside George Lucas during the entire process of the original trilogy...no?

[Tackhisis]

It is not '77 anymore. People have the technology today better than most things in the SW universe. Even cheaper movies can do wonderful FX. There is a steady stream of the SF movies. Nowadays SW is just the theater for stupid kids, the magic of unknown, which could mask the idiocy, the simplistic and illogical plots is indeed gone.

[sarahtasher]

Go look at the committee that runs it. It's all women pushing their weird fanfic garbage onto it. I'm not saying that Star Wars can't have a female lead, but they added a character that's literally a pink hair SJW and they made Leia fly like Superman. Also some fat janitor lady accompanies Finn on a mission for some reason and it takes up 30% of the movie, and then she tries to kill him because of love or some crap? God it's just awful. Also, make sure you kill off every white male that ever existed in the universe.

Ah yes, it was so much better when everyone invented their own Jedi better than Luke and made entire lame book series about them. Hello Kyp ! Hello Corran ! Hello Mara Jade ! (the books were good, however, with her)

[dd614]

SJWs killed it.

[Trumpcat]

Lucas wrote the story of the six original episodes and all characters. He had it written for episodes 7-9 as well, but Disney decided to scrap it.
That is what happened to the Star Wars movies. Now is the time of Social Justice Wars and Luke giving up.