Why do people get so angry at bad movies?

[Peelee]

I suspect that set of eye-bleeding, nailboard-screeching story points emanated from Disney's imperative to make back the massive amount they paid George for the IP. Which Disney believed, according to the prevailing views of Hollywood, that it could only make by playing so safe and middle of the road they might as well have been a road island in a school zone.

I suspect TFA is a duplicate of ANH for one simple reason: a group of risk management and marketing consultants said Disney was taking an unacceptably large financial chance if it dared make anything other than a carbon copy of the first film. They believed - or whoever had real power inside Disney believed - that moviegoing audiences are stupid and won't turn up to watch a film that doesn't invoke everything they remembered about the original show, so if you want to break even or profit on the 4 billion dollars you just spent on buying this property from George Lucas, you had better make something that cannot be recognised as anything but Star Wars.

So that's exactly what they did. And what that in turn required ANH with the serial numbers filed off. Which JJ Abrams was likely content to do, because he's not that good at second or third acts of stories, and is perfectly fine to go along with notes from corporate.

The ST is what happens when you try to make art by committee (with a side dish of overcorrecting midway with The Last Star Wars Film). The PT is what happens when a single filmmaker can afford all his vices and nobody can really offer a competing view. The OT is the only case where they got the balance right.

I don't understand why people think the absolute toy juggernaut that is Star Wars must have had the absolute media juggernaut that is Disney dictate that the newest movie had to be the safe, rather than simply hiring a well-known profitable if uninspired director to head the first movie and just let him do his thing. Which, don't get me wrong, was still a stupid decision, but I don't think his milquetoast approach was dictated to him.

[Saintheart]

I don't understand why people think the absolute toy juggernaut that is Star Wars must have had the absolute media juggernaut that is Disney dictate that the newest movie had to be the safe, rather than simply hiring a well-known profitable if uninspired director to head the first movie and just let him do his thing. Which, don't get me wrong, was still a stupid decision, but I don't think his milquetoast approach was dictated to him.

I'm not even talking about the toy sales. Disney paid four billion dollars to own Star Wars lock stock and barrel. And then smashed out a Star Wars film in what was generally seen to be too short a time to make a good film of that scale.

That says to me they were expecting to, and wanted to, make serious bank on that first film at least. And that, in turn, meant they wouldn't have even contemplated an avant garde or massive new direction for the film. (They made that big mistake with The Last Star Wars Film.) His script might not have been dictated to him, but would have had extensive notes from production. Disney directors are more floor managers than actual storytellers.

[Gnoman]

Disney wanted to pump out SW films with yearly releases. There are Problems with that strategy.

[Trafalgar]

Disney wanted to pump out SW films with yearly releases. There are Problems with that strategy.

And now they are pumping out shows. The list of planned Star Wars and MCU TV shows is huge. There are problems with this strategy.

[Rynjin]

Yeah, it'd be tiring if I bothered to watch everything. I KINDA get what they're going for, in that every show seems pretty different overall, don't appeal to the same audiences, but it's still pretty over-saturated.

[Sapphire Guard]

What's your point? Someone wrote an editorial saying "I don't believe he said that" about a quote that was most likely relayed to someone not in an interview setting? And hey, even if we buy Brian's theory, does that mean that the Holiday Special aired more than a single time legitimately outside of NA, or that the VHS tapes people have of it aren't actually bootlegs and are licensed versions? Is it really the specific wording that still manages to capture the overall tone of his behavior towards it, which likely came from him talking to a friend or generally ranting about it in front of others, and was not formally "on the record"? Is your crusade solely restricted to "he didn't say those words?" I get being a Lucas apologist for some things but this one is a weird hill to die on.

I mean, it was enough of a hill to die on that you brought it up in the middle of conversation about something entirely different. It suddenly became unimportant when it turned out not to be true.

It may be an off the record comment. It may also have never been said at all, which seems more likely as no one seems to know when or why it was said or who it was said to, and it's entirely possible it is a misquote, out of context, or made up entirely, which is something the SW fanbase frequently does when they want to complain about George.

See also, Lucas could have completely stopped the Holiday Special from ever being seen again, but he hasn't.
The point is, the assertion that George 'went around making things disappear' is false as far as any actual verifiable evidence shows. The reason I'm so strict on this is that there are a lot of crazy lies floating around the SW fandom, so my default stance is now sceptical until proven otherwise.

As far as I know, all changes to the first edition of the hobbit are in The Annotated Hobbit, including the entire original text of chapter five.

If you want a copy, Amazon has it both new and used.

No effort has been made to deny people the ability to read the original Hobbit's text, quite the contrary.

Do you mean the History of the Hobbit, published 2007. I think that was the one that had the original version.

Of course. The same is true of SW. There hasn't been an effort to prevent people from getting hold of the special editions, Lucasfilm just hasn't done a remastered version, and from this the SW fandom has somehow concluded that they have a right to said remastered edition, and the fact that it wasn't made is due to some kind of grudge against them by lucasfilm.

[Peelee]

I mean, it was enough of a hill to die on that you brought it up in the middle of conversation about something entirely different. It suddenly became unimportant when it turned out not to be true.

It didn't become unimportant. The specific words are unimpotant because his actions said that same thing, so your rebuttal of "those exact words may or may not have been spoken based on one person's opinion" rang hollow. Again, what was your point? That he didn't block dissemination of the Holiday Special to the best of his abilities? Or that he didn't say "I, George Lucas, must block dissemination of the Holiday Special to the best of my abilities"? Because if it's the latter, cool, doesn't matter.

See also, Lucas could have completely stopped the Holiday Special from ever being seen again, but he hasn't.

George Lucas could have stopped piracy? Wow. To think that he doesn't use those powers at all. What a waste.

[Precure]

George Lucas could have stopped piracy? Wow. To think that he doesn't use those powers at all. What a waste.

I mean, it's on freaking youtube.

[The Glyphstone]

If he released a revised and digitally enhanced version with multiple songs by Jar Jar Binks, no one would want to watch it anymore...

[Peelee]

I mean, it's on freaking youtube.

Bootlet copies being disseminated are indeed why I didn't say it was a complete success on Lucas's part. Because the only way you'll be able to watch it currently is by a bootleg copy. Which, as I said previously (albeit in a more snarky manner), Lucas was unable to prevent.

[Poldon]

Do you mean the History of the Hobbit, published 2007. I think that was the one that had the original version.

Both The Annotated Hobbit and the History of the Hobbit have the original version.

[Forum Explorer]

I suspect that set of eye-bleeding, nailboard-screeching story points emanated from Disney's imperative to make back the massive amount they paid George for the IP. Which Disney believed, according to the prevailing views of Hollywood, that it could only make by playing so safe and middle of the road they might as well have been a road island in a school zone.

I suspect TFA is a duplicate of ANH for one simple reason: a group of risk management and marketing consultants said Disney was taking an unacceptably large financial chance if it dared make anything other than a carbon copy of the first film. They believed - or whoever had real power inside Disney believed - that moviegoing audiences are stupid and won't turn up to watch a film that doesn't invoke everything they remembered about the original show, so if you want to break even or profit on the 4 billion dollars you just spent on buying this property from George Lucas, you had better make something that cannot be recognised as anything but Star Wars.

So that's exactly what they did. And what that in turn required ANH with the serial numbers filed off. Which JJ Abrams was likely content to do, because he's not that good at second or third acts of stories, and is perfectly fine to go along with notes from corporate.

The ST is what happens when you try to make art by committee (with a side dish of overcorrecting midway with The Last Star Wars Film). The PT is what happens when a single filmmaker can afford all his vices and nobody can really offer a competing view. The OT is the only case where they got the balance right.

I think that's giving JJ Abrams way too much credit and not giving Disney enough. Plenty of films and franchises owned by Disney have done their own thing, or have made the product they wanted to make, with Disney more or less standing to the side and happily profiting off of it. And looking at other things JJ Abrams has done, well, he's not really a brilliant writer from what I can see.

[Keltest]

I think that's giving JJ Abrams way too much credit and not giving Disney enough. Plenty of films and franchises owned by Disney have done their own thing, or have made the product they wanted to make, with Disney more or less standing to the side and happily profiting off of it. And looking at other things JJ Abrams has done, well, he's not really a brilliant writer from what I can see.

I will readily pin all the problems with the sequel trilogy either directly on Abrams' shoulders or as a direct consequence of his decisions.

[Rodin]

I'll still stand by TFA as "the film that needed to be made at the time". They weren't worried about the fans - the fans would have come back no matter what. They were worried about getting general audiences who had been turned off by the prequel trilogy, as well as focusing on getting a new generation of fans. They went safe because they needed to, and it worked. TFA brought by parents back to Star Wars the way something more experimental probably wouldn't have. Heck, it brought me back.

The problem was that they didn't have a plan beyond that. They didn't have a series bible set up with plot points Abrams had to hit. They didn't build a series bible based on what Abrams created. They just handed off the next movie and said "make something".

Could TFA have been better? Sure. It also could have been a lot worse. It's probably the best overall of the sequel trilogy, and if I were to go back and watch one TFA would be it.

[Saph]

The problem was that they didn't have a plan beyond that. They didn't have a series bible set up with plot points Abrams had to hit. They didn't build a series bible based on what Abrams created.

That's because Disney's plan/goal/bible for Star Wars was "make money". George Lucas had a creative vision for his setting, Disney didn't. It's why the Original Trilogy had so much influence while the Sequel Trilogy is so forgettable.

[Forum Explorer]

That's because Disney's plan/goal/bible for Star Wars was "make money". George Lucas had a creative vision for his setting, Disney didn't. It's why the Original Trilogy had so much influence while the Sequel Trilogy is so forgettable.

Again, to be fair to Disney, they may not have made a plan, but they didn't prevent JJ Abrams from making a plan. They just wanted to make money, and as far as I know, didn't give JJ Abrams many if any restrictions. Just 'hey here's a butt load of money. Make us a Star Wars movie for a new trilogy.'

From what I've heard when they brought in Rian Johnson, he was given basically nothing to work with. Just, 'make a sequel to TFA' which is much much harder to do.

And as a blow to Disney, why did they swap writers anyways? That really didn't help, for all that I'm convinced that JJ Abrams would've blown it regardless.

I'll still stand by TFA as "the film that needed to be made at the time". They weren't worried about the fans - the fans would have come back no matter what. They were worried about getting general audiences who had been turned off by the prequel trilogy, as well as focusing on getting a new generation of fans. They went safe because they needed to, and it worked. TFA brought by parents back to Star Wars the way something more experimental probably wouldn't have. Heck, it brought me back.

The problem was that they didn't have a plan beyond that. They didn't have a series bible set up with plot points Abrams had to hit. They didn't build a series bible based on what Abrams created. They just handed off the next movie and said "make something".

Could TFA have been better? Sure. It also could have been a lot worse. It's probably the best overall of the sequel trilogy, and if I were to go back and watch one TFA would be it.

That's what I thought at the time, but in retrospect they really painted themselves into a corner with TFA. Building something off of it that wouldn't absolutely piss off fans is really hard.

[Rodin]

That's what I thought at the time, but in retrospect they really painted themselves into a corner with TFA. Building something off of it that wouldn't absolutely piss off fans is really hard.

Oh, absolutely. That's why I brought up the series bible. There should have been a sequel trilogy skeleton plot written before Abrams was hired. He could then do TFA within that framework and still have made a "safe" movie that left room for the characters to grow. Instead, the lack of guidance or coordination made it very difficult for a coherent trilogy.

I'm not saying TFA doesn't have flaws. Just that criticizing it as a safe movie/retread is rather unfair when that was the entire point. You open with something safe that lays the groundwork, then go into your more experimental plot lines (like the good bits of The Last Jedi). But you have to plan it first.

[Dragonus45]

Again, to be fair to Disney, they may not have made a plan, but they didn't prevent JJ Abrams from making a plan. They just wanted to make money, and as far as I know, didn't give JJ Abrams many if any restrictions. Just 'hey here's a butt load of money. Make us a Star Wars movie for a new trilogy.'

Which if they wanted Abrams to continue the whole way through three movies would be great. When the plan is to do three movies each from a different director then you compounding your problems.

[Peelee]

I will readily pin all the problems with the sequel trilogy either directly on Abrams' shoulders or as a direct consequence of his decisions.

Seconded.

I'll still stand by TFA as "the film that needed to be made at the time". They weren't worried about the fans - the fans would have come back no matter what. They were worried about getting general audiences who had been turned off by the prequel trilogy, as well as focusing on getting a new generation of fans.

I don't think this was the problem you're making it out to be. "The fans" are an insanely small subsection of the crowd that pays to watch Star Wars. If you remember the hype of the advertising for Ep VII, it was insane. There was going to be a new Star Wars movie after, 20 years. The people who loved the Prequel Trilogy, kids at the time, were now adults and could see more of what they loved. The people who hated the Prequel Trilogy, already adults now two decades older and reminiscing about their youth and could watch Star Was finally get back to good. Short version is, everyone was going to see it already. It did't need to be safe, it didn't need to be insipid and soulless, and it was most certainly not "the film that needed to be made at the time".

It was simply a director known for being a flash-in-the-pan making, quite expectedly, a flash in the pan.

[pendell]

Thinking about it, I'm reminded of the earliest (to my knowledge) Retcon in the Star Wars universe -- Splinter of the Mind's Eye , originally intended to be the sequel to Episode IV. If Ep. IV had bombed and the movies were not expanded to a trilogy, this would be the canonical sequel.

Among other things, Luke and Leia are not siblings and are romantically interested in each other. Darth Vader remains a villain and there is absolutely no family connection there.

But it was rubbed out of Star Wars history when Empire came out. And you know what? No one cared at all.

ETA: Okay, so retroactively it has been set to 1 year before ESB, but almost no one remembers it. In the popular consciousness, it has ceased to exist.

I think there are a couple reasons for this.

1) Splinter was a bestseller, but it didn't sink deeply into the popular consciousness. No one was greatly invested in its plotline or story -- and so, no one was disappointed when it winked out of existence.
2) The eventual Empire was the best Star Wars movie ever made. It took all the relationships in the first movie and took them to the next level. There was humor. There were tender moments. There was comic relief, there were muppets. There were exciting spaceship chases and lightsaber duels.

It's as if , when replacing Splinter-canon with Empire-Canon, Lucas had taken away a dinner of canned beans and given us steak instead. Who can complain about that?

3) Perhaps most critically, it respected the investment of the audience in the previous movie. All the characters plotlines continued and they were built up, made more interesting and three dimensional. So it as easier to accept these changes.

I'm probably the odd man out because I was really salty, at ten years old, about the whole "I am your father" reveal by Darth Vader. I flat didn't believe him. What's more likely ... that out of the billions of beings in the galaxy that Space Hitler just happened to be Luke's father, or that Space Hitler was lying through his teeth? Something he'd been doing earlier to Lando earlier in the same movie?

Absurd. I assumed he was lying. And continued to believe that right up until it was confirmed on-film in Ep. VI. I still thought it was a terrible idea and terrible story writing.

But I got over it. Why? Because Mark Hamill, David Prowse, and James Earl Jones *made it work*. Their scenes together in Ep. VI really sold the idea of these two being family, despite it being so ridiculously implausible. So I was able to get over my distaste at the idea and accept it as part of the story , because it fit neatly and the rest of it was pretty good.

Yet somewhere between 1982 and 1998 Lucasarts dropped the ball and substituted live action cartoons against CGI green screen for solid writing and character development. So I can't really blame the ST trilogy for that; the pattern of turning star wars into a glorified kid's cartoon was already well underway in the prequels. The prequels generated an immense amount of hate typified by Red Letter Media's inimitable review . It's only since a new generation of fans have grown up having loved the shows that the hate has died down .. only to flare up again with the ST trilogy, which doubled down on the sins of the prequels with (in my view) none of their charm.

I suppose I'm just going to have to lower my expectations. To me, Star Wars is childhood dreams. To Disney, it's a cash cow to generate as much revenue as possible. Sort of like an Expanded Universe, except this one has films and TV shows rather than being confined to novels, comic books , and video games. Which were, let's be honest extremely uneven in quality. For every Knights of the Old Republic there was a Jedi Academy, of which the less said the better.

If they were interested in the artistic merit of the universe, I would suggest that Disney 1) Set the timeline forward to avoid having to downplay the original cast's characterization and achievements 2) Have ONE AND ONLY ONE director/storyteller for the entire sequel 3) Give Rey an actual character development arc, rather than allowing to be a better pilot than Han of his own ship and a better saber fighter than Kylo Ren right off the bat.

On that last, I thought KK's take on female heroines is ridiculous. She seems to imply there were no female leads before she created Rey. In fact, SF LOVES female heroines such as Ripley or Sarah Conner. It's just the characters need the same kind of arc male characters do to make their heroics plausible. If you don't want them to be dependent on men, give them female role models and mentors. That shouldn't be hard. But to my mind Rey started out near-perfect and never really had any struggle or growth through the movies, and so came across (to me at least), as flat and uninteresting, whatever her gender.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Saintheart]

Again, to be fair to Disney, they may not have made a plan, but they didn't prevent JJ Abrams from making a plan.

As a bitter long-time sufferer of Lost, I learned long ago that the name "JJ Abrams" and the word "plan" rarely occupy the same sentence, unless that sentence contains some variant on the words "No", "None", "Improvisational", or the phrase "Not a great".

On that last, I thought KK's take on female heroines is ridiculous. She seems to imply there were no female leads before she created Rey. In fact, SF LOVES female heroines such as Ripley or Sarah Conner.

Hey, wasn't there some prominent heroine in a 1970s movie about a space war sometime? I think her name was Duchess Layla?

It's just the characters need the same kind of arc male characters do to make their heroics plausible. If you don't want them to be dependent on men, give them female role models and mentors. That shouldn't be hard.

I came across a comment on a youtube video that (as they often do) provoked me to the point of eye-gouging apoplexy such that I had to respond in a moderate way. The comment was basically a complaint that Leia doesn't get a single moment of grieving on screen in ANH for the destruction of Alderaan given her entire family was presumably blown to bits, while Luke gets to avert his eyes at the bodies of Beru and Owen, and gets to sit morosely at the Falcon's sabacc table after Obi-Wan is killed.

As said, I was apoplectic, but my response was basically: are you kidding? That's your complaint? Princess Leia, at this point in her career, is a hardened insurgent against the Empire. She's the youngest senator in galactic history at the age of 18, breaking her own mother's record. She's stood up to Imperial torture and mental probing, she's thrown shade at fearsome Imperial figures like Tarkin and Darth Vader himself, she's lied flat out to them even with her homeworld at stake, and when she's rescued unexpectedly by a bunch of ragtag idiots including a walking carpet, a swaggering pirate, and a somewhat-naive-looking farmboy, she takes charge of them and more or less directs how they get out of the joint. She's resilient, capable, commanding, and doesn't wilt into teary asides even in the face of global annhiliation, outright saying "We have no time for our sorrows, commander," when one of her own subordinates says that when they heard about Alderaan they feared the worst for her.

Which is to say: she behaves like most classic male characters do in action films. She's strong, independent, and proactive in every sense of the word.

But to my mind Rey started out near-perfect and never really had any struggle or growth through the movies, and so came across (to me at least), as flat and uninteresting, whatever her gender.

Which is why it's my deep regret they relegated Finn to basically comedic sidekick. Of all the characters in TFA, he's the one that most resembles an actual protagonist, because he's proactive. He's given the choice to gun down unarmed villagers, and refuses. He decides to rescue Poe. When he sees Rey in trouble on Jakku, he intervenes. When he wants to impress her, he lies (and it's the only moment in the film where Harrison Ford's eyes come to life, it might be added). When he goes to the Imperial fortress planet, it's to rescue her. He risks his life to take on a Force wielder with no Force abilities and with a weapon that he's not too familiar with.

And the first thing they do with this great character one film later is rip his clothes off, put him in a leaking bubble suit, and have him bang his head on his medical cubicle.

[Sapphire Guard]

It didn't become unimportant. The specific words are unimpotant because his actions said that same thing, so your rebuttal of "those exact words may or may not have been spoken based on one person's opinion" rang hollow. Again, what was your point? That he didn't block dissemination of the Holiday Special to the best of his abilities? Or that he didn't say "I, George Lucas, must block dissemination of the Holiday Special to the best of my abilities"? Because if it's the latter, cool, doesn't matter.

Obviously the former, because doing things like authorising screenings at the Library of Congress is something Lucasfilm didn't have to do if they didn't want to, and the real quotes, the ones that actually have sources behind them, are much milder.

But even if everything you said was true, that would still just be fans getting upset that they don't have a right to something that doesn't belong to them.

[Peelee]

Obviously the former, because doing things like authorising screenings at the Library of Congress is something Lucasfilm didn't have to do if they didn't want to, and the real quotes, the ones that actually have sources behind them, are much milder.

Can you link me to any authorized screenings at the LoC? Further, can you link me to people saying there were broadcasts or home release or anything other than piracy after the initial release? Or, more to the point, can you back up your claims with links as you demand others do?

But even if everything you said was true, that would still just be fans getting upset that they don't have a right to something that doesn't belong to them.

Star Wars is commercial art. It is specifically made to be disseminated. This example was largely blocked from being disseminated after the initial broadcast. The target audience (yet another indicator that dissemination is a rather large point of this whole thing) being upset is quite understandable under this system. Don't like it? Don't get into that business.

If you don't like people complaining about George Lucas, then don't listen to them. Simple as that.

[GloatingSwine]

But to my mind Rey started out near-perfect and never really had any struggle or growth through the movies, and so came across (to me at least), as flat and uninteresting, whatever her gender.

Remember what the Big Question about her was from TFA?

It was "who are her parents and why did they abandon her?".

Which means that she was never actually intended to be interesting, she was intended to be a conduit to someone else who the audience was assumed to be more interested in. And since this was JJ Abrams that means it would be a pre-existing Star Wars character who was meaningless to Rey and whose identity would change absolutely nothing about her character or behaviour. (See: Star Trek Into Darkness and who the **** is Khan anyway)

[Sapphire Guard]

What are you actually objecting to here? Fact checking?

Everyone is entitled to be upset about anything for any reason that they please, but everyone else is equally entitled to question it, and there's nothing wrong with asking the basis for why they're upset and investigating whether that is true or not. There's nothing wrong with asking someone why they believe something.

I am cautious of SW fandom claims about George because I've encountered several that turned out to not be true or be based on misconceptions. So my first impulse is to check. What is the issue with this?

If you don't like people complaining about George Lucas, then don't listen to them. Simple as that.

If you don't like me questioning complaints, you can do the same. I don't get the strength of this reaction, when has anyone else ever got called on being pedantic about Star Wars on GITP?

Re Library of Congress, apart from the link I had already, I couldn't find a source, it is true. Wookieepedia says it was screened in Congress in the 90s, but the LOC records themselves don't go back that far, so I couldn't check it. It was screened by the PPaley Center in 2008, but never having heard of that before, I don't know how important it is. Anyone know how to check the backlist of the Library of Congress screenings so I can make sure?

[Peelee]

What are you actually objecting to here? Fact checking?

You haven't checked it, though. You said "nuh uh" with no links despite demanding links from everyone else. Not the best look.

Re Library of Congress, apart from the link I had already, I couldn't find a source, it is true. Wookieepedia says it was screened in Congress in the 90s

Cool! Wookieepedia provides links as citations! What was that link?

It was screened by the PPaley Center in 2008

Got a working link? And was it a licensed copy? That parts really the question, but I'd like to verify it actually happened before we get to whether it was licensed or not.


It just seems like a weird hill to die on. You're trying to fact check already well-known things like Lucas being poor at dialogue to the point that the actors had to come to him to try and get lines changed or cut. You're not fact-checking in general, you're only "fact checking" complaints about Lucas. And being super defensive about it, to boot.

[Sapphire Guard]

I asked for a source for the claim that Lucas was deliberately working very hard to keep the special editions out of people's hands. Not exactly unreasonable.

Asking for a source for the claim that George has it in his contract that original editions not be released is fair, because that is a huge claim to make, I want to know what the basis is. It's not a gotcha or name calling. I'm asking for sources because I want to find out the truth.

I don't need links to argue that the arguments about the special editions about preserving it for history, because the fact that it already is on the DVD is so obvious it goes without saying, as is that cinemas in 1977 were not equipped with modern tech, so the filmmakers could never originally intended it to be seen that way.

You're trying to fact check already well-known things like Lucas being poor at dialogue to the point that the actors had to come to him to try and get lines changed or cut. You're not fact-checking in general, you're only "fact checking" complaints about Lucas. And being super defensive about it, to boot.

Because a lot of the common knowledge things are not actually true. 'Saved in the edit'? Made up by a Youtuber. 'needed to be told no'? Made up by a Youtuber. When I noticed that, it became an area of interest of mine, because a lot of the common memes about George are actually not true. You want receipts, I've got em.

I don't really care about the Holiday special, but you brought it up, so I engaged in good faith. The quotes that can be sourced are I did give you a link to say that there's no good source for that quote, and the sourced quotes are generally milder. I took my first link at its word, but I will try to find a better source for the library of congress thing.

The Wookieepedia source cites this but I couldn't find any reference to it in the article itself.

[Trafalgar]

I asked for a source for the claim that Lucas was deliberately working very hard to keep the special editions out of people's hands. Not exactly unreasonable.

Asking for a source for the claim that George has it in his contract that original editions not be released is fair, because that is a huge claim to make, I want to know what the basis is. It's not a gotcha or name calling. I'm asking for sources because I want to find out the truth.

I don't need links to argue that the arguments about the special editions about preserving it for history, because the fact that it already is on the DVD is so obvious it goes without saying, as is that cinemas in 1977 were not equipped with modern tech, so the filmmakers could never originally intended it to be seen that way.



Because a lot of the common knowledge things are not actually true. 'Saved in the edit'? Made up by a Youtuber. 'needed to be told no'? Made up by a Youtuber. When I noticed that, it became an area of interest of mine, because a lot of the common memes about George are actually not true. You want receipts, I've got em.

I don't really care about the Holiday special, but you brought it up, so I engaged in good faith. The quotes that can be sourced are I did give you a link to say that there's no good source for that quote, and the sourced quotes are generally milder. I took my first link at its word, but I will try to find a better source for the library of congress thing.

The Wookieepedia source cites this but I couldn't find any reference to it in the article itself.

I previously posted a link to an interview with George Lucas where he states that the Special Editions were the only version he would release and that people can watch the originals on VHS. But this proof isn't adequate to you for some reason. The DVD version is based on an inferior laserdisc from the early nineties. Its not letter box and audio and visual is low quality. This is stated by multiple sources. You cannot buy a digitally remastered version of the original Star Wars even though most if not all movies from the 60s, 70s, or 80s have been remastered.

So in summary, George Lucas said he wouldn't remaster and rerelease the originals. The originals never got remastered and rereleased. But you want a signed affidavit from Lucas?

[Rynjin]

Because a lot of the common knowledge things are not actually true. 'Saved in the edit'? Made up by a Youtuber. 'needed to be told no'? Made up by a Youtuber. When I noticed that, it became an area of interest of mine, because a lot of the common memes about George are actually not true. You want receipts, I've got em.

If you've got 'em, post 'em.

[Aedilred]

To go back to the original question for a minute, and sidelining the Star Wars-specific stuff for a moment, I think the reasons why people get so angry about bad movies include:

• They feel it has wasted their time
• They feel it has wasted their money
• They feel it insults their intelligence
• The movie expresses a message or attitude which they find offensive
• They consider that the movie is in some way damaging to the cinematic art form as a whole (because it crowds out other, better, movies, because it encurages casual moviegoers to accept a lower standard of entertainment, etc.)

All of these reasons are, I think, legitimate. While getting angry about them is probably something best reserved for critics and directors rather than the moviegoing public, I think some degree of frustration and annoyance for the above reasons is fine.

But what the conversation actually seems to be about is why fans get angry at movies within their own fandom. And that isn't really about movies so much as it's about the phenomenon of fandom and associated identity and media. In fact as it relates to movies specifically I don't think it goes back all that far.

The chain of events that leads to it goes, I think, something like this:

• Someone (let's call them Adrian) watches a movie (let's call it Sun Battles) and likes it.
• Sun Battles is part of a series of movies and other media, which Adrian, enthused by the initial Sun Battles, goes on to explore.
• As he does so he becomes knowledgeable about the story and setting of Sun Battles.
• Adrian also meets people through his exploration of Sun Battles and socialises with them.

By this point, Adrian has potentially invested time, effort, money and social capital into not only Sun Battles media and products, but into Sun Battles as a concept. It may well have become, to some extent, part of his identity.

And the way that modern media both official and unofficial works encourages Adrian to become a "Sun Battles Fan" as a key part of his identity. Both actively through aggressive cross-platform promotions of Sun Battles-related media and merchandise, but passively through the existence of Sun Battles-inspired internet forums, YouTube channels, conventions etc. which create a society in the most general sense.

Then, a new Sun Battles movie comes out, and Adrian, possibly with some of his friends, goes to see it. And it's bad! At this point, Adrian may be annoyed for any of the reasons I listed at the top of this post. But hes also going to have an emotional reaction to it because he identifies strongly with Sun Battles and now Sun Battles is worse. He feels that personally, because it's hard not to, even if he doesn't fully appreciate why he feels that way.

This is not by any means unique to movies (it applies equally to all "franchised" media) or even to nerd culture as a whole, although I think nerd culture is particularly suspectible to it because of its obsessive nature and generally social limitations which mean that such media may form much more of a social crutch than elsewhere. But you can see it all over the place, perhaps most obviously with sports teams. When Manchester United went into decline, and the fans collectively threw a tantrum, including boycotting club merchandise, that was the same thing. They were on one level annoyed because of the corporate interests they felt were damaging the club, and the fact the team was losing, and that they were buying players the fans didn't like, and that they weren't playing in the way that fans thought Manchester United ought to play (not just that they were losing, but that they were losing while playing "the wrong way"), but at heart where that annoyance came from was that they identified with Manchester United and so when Manchester United got worse (in any way) that affected them on an emotional level.

You can even see it in a situation where the government of a country passes a law you disagree with but doesn't affect you personally. There may be various cogent reasons why you disagree with the law, but the chances are you disagree with it a lot more strongly than you would an identical law passed in a different country, and that's because this law has made your society, the entity of which you consider yourself a part, worse.

As I say I think in movie terms this doesn't go back that far because it's only in the last twenty years or so that franchise movies have become so dominant, at the same time as the internet has enabled and encouraged the creation of such media-based societies on an unprecedented scale, which in turn has contributed to such franchise cinema becoming both more mainstream and therefore more open to public engagement by adults (rather than children or teens). There were movie series before that, of course, but with the exception of Star Trek, it's hard to think of one that had a meaningful cross-platform fanbase devoted to that series before 1999. And while many of the Star Trek movies are (rightly) hated by the fans, the extreme emotional reactions that we now expect every time we get a disappointing tentpole were, in any event, less visible during the years of the OT/TNG movies.

So - and this is where Star Wars is particularly relevant, if I had to pick a point where the balance shifted with regard to movies, it would have to be The Phantom Menace. Star Wars had an established fandom which was heavily invested, and which was kept fanned by novels and the like (with varying reactions as to their quality) but hadn't seen a movie in the series since 1983. Then TPM came along, and for those not old enough to remember, it was hyped beyond belief. It is very difficult to express the relative degree of hype attached to TPM prior to its release because it was so out of proportion to what the moviegoing public were used to.

But while TPM wasn't as widely hated on release as its legacy might suggest (reception was lukewarm, with some mutterings about things like midichlorians) that did open the gate for more "franchise" movies, not least because it proved that a movie will be commercially successful if it caters to an existing fanbase and has sufficient marketing, even if it's not actually very good. It was also a point where Star Wars shouldered its way into the popular consciousness of a new generation, making itself part of the mainstream cultural conversation to the point where even if you weren't a fan, you could no longer credibly express ignorance of it, and thereby, arguably, opening the door for the various franchises which followed.

But as I say, that's movie-specific. The same phenomenon had been going on in other areas of life probably forever.

Now, is it healthy for people to identify with pop-cultural media to the extent that they get a strong emotional reaction to bad instalments? That's a question for the floor, I think, but to my mind, some degree of annoyance is perfectly fine, even good, because it means you're not willing to accept a lower standard of product just because it's got the right brand on it. And reacting accordingly may help to hold media creators to a higher standard, which is good. But the degree to which people get worked up about this and the manner in which they express it, and whether that energy could be better spent elsewhere... well.