Hi, all. I've been writing an essay about Star Wars, and I've hit a snag because everyone I talk to likes it for different reasons. At first I wanted to start a poll, but when I began listing separate elements of the films the choices got overwhelmingly broad. So, I'll start, but I would really like to see what resonates with people with different world views about this franchise.

For me it boils down to an aesthetic that feels more believable than other science fiction stories. The music, sound design, background cast, and elaborate, yet down-to-earth costumes create a living breathing environment I am easily immersed in.

I also related with Luke, because I grew up wanting to escape my circumstances and really become someone who could bring peace and order and fairness to the world.

I like the action, and the religious and philosophical aspects of the films, the concept of the force is interesting as well as the ideas of finding balance with oneself and with everything.

There is also the appeal that one person can make great changes in a corrupt order or things, and that even though there are failures success is possible.

leia_slave.jpg

Debates over trade taxation and surprise confidence motions.

Gotcha. So what do you hate about Star Wars?

Too much warfare. Could use less space, too.

Needs more Calamari bell.

The endless possibilities for story "genres" in a unified world. You can have a western set in the Star Wars universe, a political thriller or a science fiction story about what it means to be human. And if you're a good author you can mix those up. To me it was never just about the movies with the cool spaceships and laser swords. It was about what lay beyond what was shown in the movies.
This is actually one of my beefs with the new movies. Although they do show a variety of worlds it doesn't feel like there is much beyond what is shown.

Yes, this x1000. I couldn't have said it better myself and would have ranted for pages had I tried.

I totally immersed myself in the novels, games, toys, and customizable card game as a kid. The movies were cool, but I mostly watched those during the ages 6-10, in elementary school, but in the third through fifth grade I really got into the books. Jr high was all about SWCCG, and then JK.

Then they cancelled obiwan for the PC, episode II continued to be bad, and I got into computers for reasons other than fictional universes (and star wars games were no longer cutting edge compared to similarly immersive universes such as Morrowind).

Also, the mathematician in me is strongly drawn to this idea that "Star Wars" is this very general thing, which can manifest in different settings so long as the basic signposts of the universe are visited. The expanded universe was awesome about this! The prequels and sequels were made by people (GL included) who hadn't lived in the expanded universe long enough to realize that more continuity would have been required to suspend disbelief that Star Wars isn't real.

The new movies are very real, and crappy just like the original movies, but not at all magical.

Oh Star Wars,
Nothing but Star Wars,
Give me those Star Wars,
Dont let them end.

Oh Star Wars,
If they should bar wars,
Please let these Star Wars
...... stayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

And hey, how 'bout that nutty Star Wars Bar,
Can you forget all those crazy creatures in there?
And hey, Darth Vader in his black and evil mask,
Did he scare you as much as he scared me?

BOO!

Oh Star Wars,
Those near and far wars,
Oh STAAAR WAAAAAAARS!

the camera angles

Thank you for the genuine responses so far.
Impi, I have to agree with you about possibilities being a big part of it. In the films we get glimpses of these bigger worlds that were greatly expanded in the books. I read a lot of the expanded universe books, and with the evolving lore things really did feel like they could go anywhere. Heck, there were even zombie stormtroopers at one point. (That isn't praise, btw.)
But the fact is the worlds felt better, and though there was some incorporation with the new worlds and aliens from the prequels into the expanded universe, it never seemed to stick.

Eversor, care to expand on that?

that was a joke.



(In the clip they're talking about the Godfather, I think)

I like the space battles.

Seriously though, how hard it is to find a movie with decent space battles? The closest thing in 40 years is Battle Star Galactica!

Relevant:

Yeah, seriously, the space battles are my favorite part. It might be gauche, but it's what the movies built up the most.

I also think that's what Star Wars did best, and a large part of the reason the movies were so good. The space battles are actually absurd. It's a bunch of pedal-powered spaceships that trade broadsides from 100 yards away. But it works because it's not really a space battle, it's a World War 2 battle. The ships aren't just visually inspired by WW2 ships, they're operationally inspired by them, too, right down to the most powerful and expensive ships being outmoded by inexpensive fighter aircraft. I think the fact that Star Wars is so deeply inspired by something real gives it a feeling of authenticity that's absent from more serious science fiction, despite the latter being much more grounded in fact.

Basically, Star Wars is a samurai movie mashed up with a WW2 movie, dropped in a sufficiently fantastic setting. That's not exactly the part I liked best, but if you want a formula that gets you there you could do worse.

Now that I think about it, I seen people say that Star Destroyers shouldn't be able to be outmaneuvered or taken down by small fighters such as in RotJ, but that's kinda WWII-esque since the naval battles of the war put an end to the idea of dreadnought/battleship dominance given the surprising effectiveness of small aircraft with targeted bombs.

OTOH it takes a fast ship like the Millennium Falcon to outrun an imperial cruiser!

There's this really dumb star wars nerd who went on Canadian TV to complain about how they were dropping bombs in TLJ in zero gravity, and how in the OT they would never have done anything this dumb and unrealistic.

Yeah, he had to go there since they wouldn't let me take part in Canada's Next Top Virgin.

As opposed to how Tie Bombers and Y-wings dropped bombs?

That said, I do think they moved painstakingly slow. I see what they were going for thematically. In terms of "naval battles in spaaacccceee", I can't think of those ships having a real-life equivalent. A B-17 but hopelessly unprepared?

Edit: They are actually called B/SF-17 Heavy Bombers. Just google'd it.

So I know this is a Star Wars board, and I hope I'm not breaking any rules by posting this here, but while we're on the topic of westerns / WW2 / etc. set in space, has anybody checked out Space Pirates? I heard it was awful.

Millennium Falcon is probably supposed to be a civilian cargo plane of some sort. Maybe something like the Avro Lancastrian, a turret-armed heavy bomber retrofitted into a freighter.

Only tangentially related to Star Wars but I'm really tired of people using "deconstruction", "subversive", "postmodern" or ideas like "breaking the fourth wall" in a way that's universally laudatory. I think people get off on using "big words" to describe media as though it somehow reinforces the legitimacy of their views or something.

First, 99% of people everywhere don't really understand much about postmodernism, nor is it all that wild, nor did it even bring to the table things people think it did. People think things like breaking the fourth wall is postmodern and somehow makes works better by the virtue of it having philosophical words behind it. Nope and nope, and nope. Breaking the fourth wall is super old, way before postmodern and can quite clearly be done poorly and distract from works. Deconstruction and subversiveness are also not new or unique to postmodernism, postmodern philosophers just tried to reframe some of the ideas. Nor are deconstruction and subversiveness all that hard to do or even original. You can watch dozens of uninteresting TV shows or movies which attempt all of those things, and Don Quixote smashed and succeeded in all of those things 400 years ago on a level hardly seen since.

Inspired by this:

But yeah, what I like about the OT is that it had great character progression, an engaging story, relatable scenes with lots of human emotion and struggle, and good conclusions. It's just a good story that made use of cutting edge special effects, and many things came together just right.

I also like how the conflict of the main character is resolved through belief and religious fervor. Normally I'm not a fan of western things inspired by Eastern religious, and generally I think Buddhism is a **** belief system, but it was still interesting to have that as a key feature of the main character.

Vastly more entertaining than superhero ****, which I have almost zero patience for. Though I read Watchmen and that was alright. A case where "deconstruction" actually worked.

The Superhero with a Thousand Faces

coming to a theater near you

When I was in high school we used the word "trippy", to mean what most people who use "postmodern" probably mean. Using the word postmodern in the way you (and I) find so annoy is about as vacuous as the word trippy (which can also make a person sound like a hippy, which may be another reason not to use them). I guess the upshot is by using the word "postmodern", one can say nothing while affecting having been educated, or by obliquely referring to a nexus of ideas they can't actually put into words.

That being said, deconstruction is actually quite unique to the postmodern. Many people who use the term use it to describe things that are fairly typical, and which aren't distinctly postmodern, like a work that belongs to a certain genre but still defies some of the conventions of that genre. But they're simply misusing the term. Something like that has very little to do with deconstruction, whose technical meaning is much more specific, and is closely connected to Derrida's work (although he took the term from Heidegger).

Goddammit, I hate Twitter.

<Tweetard> "It's been done before (SAYS I)! It didn't need to be done again!"

There's already millions of dumb tweets out there - you didn't NEED to make another one!

Does anyone think that the background of a Star Wars movie is important?
People didn't like the prequels because they were too political, and for some, too confusing. I liked that on paper the first three films showed the downfall of something that was treated like a utopian society. In the OT the rebels are fighting to restore that idyllic government, which I think resonates with those who view past governmental establishments as being perfect in the "good old days." I really feel like the new movies would have benefited from a having the political background that doesn't show the rise, or fall of a government, but instead a government that is vast and indifferent to the plight of minorities in the face of threat.

Or is the retreading of the rebellion vs the empire something that is so tied to the franchise that it can't be Star Wars without it?