Why do people get so angry at bad movies?

[Sapphire Guard]

Still nothing about George 'working very hard' to keep the despecialised editions out of peoples hands.

Just someone complaining about how illegally watching copyrighted material owned by someone else is... illegal? Well, yeah, of course it is.

Disney tightened copyright laws to keep Mickey Mouse in their hands, blame them. Even though SW is much more recent than 1928 so that's irrelevant to SW.

[warty goblin]

Also a creator editing and revising their work and deciding that's the version they're going with from here on out is pretty much completely normal. That's why they made the changes in the first place, they like that version better, and authors do it all the time for second editions. Tolkien massively edited parts of The Hobbit prior to Lord if the Rings for instance, which seems to have produced zero outrage.

In the case of the OT, I think it's arguable not selling the previous edition is a mark of artistic integrity - painful as it is to use that word for a product as commercially debased as SW -since it's standing by the work and creative vision instead of collecting the easy check. But that contradicts the weird and massive Fan Ownership Complex that animates the SW fandom, so out the door with that, I suppose.

[Tyndmyr]

In the case of the OT, I think it's arguable not selling the previous edition is a mark of artistic integrity - painful as it is to use that word for a product as commercially debased as SW

Yeah, I'm not gonna give Star Wars credit for not cashing in. The entire history has been one of cashing in.

That's fine. Errybody needs money. But you don't get to create the giant licensing empire that was the EU and also be snooty about one's work being the only authentic version.

[Rynjin]

Just someone complaining about how illegally watching copyrighted material owned by someone else is... illegal? Well, yeah, of course it is.

Take about half a second to think through the implications of it being impossible through legal means to procure copies of the original work.

[Mechalich]

Also a creator editing and revising their work and deciding that's the version they're going with from here on out is pretty much completely normal. That's why they made the changes in the first place, they like that version better, and authors do it all the time for second editions. Tolkien massively edited parts of The Hobbit prior to Lord if the Rings for instance, which seems to have produced zero outrage.

Tolkien wasn't able to make the original editions disappear though. For purposes of literary analysis - historical, comparative, developmental, etc. - it's actually very important to be able to compare across editions. The issue with Star Wars OT isn't that Lucas made a bunch of changes and revisions it's that comparison is essentially impossible unless you're lucky enough to have the old VHS tapes from the 90s with a system capable of playing them, and even that's an impermanent solution because VHS breaks down with extensive use. The original Star Wars trilogy is an academically important work (in the field of visual effects at the very least) and not being able to see what it originally looked like is a loss.

[Ramza00]

Tolkien wasn't able to make the original editions disappear though. For purposes of literary analysis - historical, comparative, developmental, etc. - it's actually very important to be able to compare across editions. The issue with Star Wars OT isn't that Lucas made a bunch of changes and revisions it's that comparison is essentially impossible unless you're lucky enough to have the old VHS tapes from the 90s with a system capable of playing them, and even that's an impermanent solution because VHS breaks down with extensive use. The original Star Wars trilogy is an academically important work (in the field of visual effects at the very least) and not being able to see what it originally looked like is a loss.

This seems obvious at first glance, but it is really a whole lot more complicated than how you said it. Technology creating rules that are not eternal, likewise legal and copyright. For example in the late 1500s and the 1600s, the barroque / beginning of the modernist era ...

during that time we see in the Sci-Fi works (which also incorporated religion at the time) lots of talk about the book of creation and how the King (or other forms of Sovereign) can strip your name from the book of creation.

Likewise in the 1700s to today we see a whole lot of horror involving ghost stories, hauntings, obsession, etc. During the 3rd French Republic of the 1870s to WW2 there was an obsessions of too many words being written, how we collapse under all of this paper with its smell of mildew, etc. Pretty much I am saying there is ideal theory where we think the world is neat, orderly, how the world of the mind is mirrored in the world of the living with no tensions, everything is in its place and it is minimal and futuristic. Likewise there is other way to see history / tell stories of culture and the world is full of ruins, forgotten things, dirty and grit in a punky kind of way.

How much did Young 19 year old Luke get wrong about The Clone Wars and "The Republic" when he talked to that Old Geezer while fixing up the Gold Chrome Droid? How much did Luke learning about the complicated history of the universe and the force which connected him "Broke Luke" during Empire and ROTJ?

There is a reason why Obi Wan gives a certain point of view speech to Luke. He did not want to call himself a liar / misleader, even though how Obi Wan introduces himself to Luke is literally "LUKE No, my father didn't fight in the wars. He was a navigator on a spice freighter." / BEN "That's what your uncle told you. He didn't hold with your father's ideals. Thought he should have stayed here and not gotten involved."

Yes the point I am making even our fiction reflects reality in an ideal and non-ideal ways, in many ways if we just look at things from different points of view.

[Sapphire Guard]

Come on, it is significantly easier to find the original trilogy versions than it is to find a first edition copy of the Hobbit. George didn't go around making things 'disappear'. that is simply not true. If you have the VHS or DVD, no one took it from you or prevented it from existing. The stories were remade with the updated version, the original one wasn't made to disappear. If someone tried to campaign for a wide rerelease of the hobbit as it was originally intended in 1937,given equal weight as the modern version, they'd just be laughed at. (There is one, but it's a very niche scholarly work with a bunch of essays, you don't go down to your local bookshop to pick it up. That's what you get if if the concern about having the originals is for academic reasons, but that's not what this is about. Nobody wants the originals because they want to go into a detailed examination of George's creative process, they just want the original versions available because they want them)

Anyone who is actually sincere about wanting the original versions for academic film history reasons can get them. Nothing has disappeared, it is trivial to get the VHS versions and the DVD rips of the original versions of them are freely available on Amazon and Ebay, etc. They're also all on Youtube. There is zero risk of them being lost to history whatsoever.

The idea of wanting the original versions as 'what it originally looked like' but with modern video quality is inherently contradictory. It wasn't shown in cinemas in 1977 in 4k with modern technology, and it was never intended or designed to be seen as such. If they actually did do a remaster, they'd need to touch things up with CG that were never designed to be seen in such detail, so that version would actually be further away from how the story was originally intended to be seen than it is now.

Take about half a second to think through the implications of it being impossible through legal means to procure copies of the original work.

It's not impossible at all to get the SW DVDs with the original versions on them, if you really want them. I found one available for $25 with a random google search today. Don't believe me, try it.

Guess I'm adding another 'SW fandom meme that is completely false' to the list.

[Rynjin]

They're only available via 3rd party sellers and attempts by people to KEEP them from being lost. It's the same as a lot of old video game ROMs. You cannot buy a new copy of the original work. Period. They don't make it anymore.

And you better believe, like the ROMS, that if there was any profit to be made from it they'd start shutting down these methods of obtaining the original as well.

I don't even consider myself a Star Wars fan; I certainly can't point to any mainline piece of Star Wars media I'm especially fond of, including the original trilogy. I'm just annoyed on the principle of the thing because there are quite a few things that HAVE been lost, or mostly lost to time when they didn't have to be.

[Peelee]

George didn't go around making things 'disappear'. that is simply not true.

Except for when he went around making things disappear, I assume?

If I could find every copy of [the Holiday Special], I'd smash them with a hammer.

[Anteros]

You do understand that's a joke right? Right??

They're only available via 3rd party sellers and attempts by people to KEEP them from being lost. It's the same as a lot of old video game ROMs. You cannot buy a new copy of the original work. Period. They don't make it anymore.

And you better believe, like the ROMS, that if there was any profit to be made from it they'd start shutting down these methods of obtaining the original as well.

I don't even consider myself a Star Wars fan; I certainly can't point to any mainline piece of Star Wars media I'm especially fond of, including the original trilogy. I'm just annoyed on the principle of the thing because there are quite a few things that HAVE been lost, or mostly lost to time when they didn't have to be.

It's a bit silly to attribute the lack of distribution of a nearly 50 year old product to some sort of malevolence by George. If Disney thought the unedited originals would sell well they'd be on the shelf at every merchant in America.

[Peelee]

You do understand that's a joke right? Right??

Was it also a joke when he successfully blocked virtually all distribution of it, including almost entirely blocking it from airing outside of North America? Because if so, that's quite the commitment to the bit.

[Rynjin]

It's a bit silly to attribute the lack of distribution of a nearly 50 year old product to some sort of malevolence by George.

It's not any kind of malevolence; the motivation as I've always seen it as is shame. Lucas is a notorious perfectionist. He genuinely thought the original version of the movie was flawed and couldn't help but go back and try to "fix" it.

The disconnect comes because a lot of people prefer the original version before changes, where the original version no longer matches Lucas' "vision".

[Trafalgar]

It's not impossible at all to get the SW DVDs with the original versions on them, if you really want them. I found one available for $25 with a random google search today. Don't believe me, try it.

Guess I'm adding another 'SW fandom meme that is completely false' to the list.

I am sure what you found was this.

That's an inferior version copied from a nineties laserdisc that wasn't even letterbox. That's not what we are talking about. We are talking about a remastered and restored version of the original films. That's where you take the original negative or a print and project it directly on to some super ultra high definition sensor. You end up with image quality better than the original film. The audio goes through a similar process.

This is important for a couple of reasons. First, the film can be unashamedly shown on modern TVs and projectors with better image quality than the original theatrical release. Second, this preserves an important piece of film history. Love or hate Star Wars, it radically changed the movie industry and the original negatives will degrade over time. See this article from the National Film Preservation Foundation.

If you buy any movie from before 2000 on blue ray, it will probably say "remastered from the original" on the cover. This includes such classics as the Police Academy movies, all seven of them. But that's not true for the original Star Wars movies because of decisions made by George Lucas. From a 2004 interview:

"The special edition, that’s the one I wanted out there. The other movie, it’s on VHS, if anybody wants it. ... I’m not going to spend the, we’re talking millions of dollars here, the money and the time to refurbish that, because to me, it doesn’t really exist anymore. It’s like this is the movie I wanted it to be, and I’m sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it."

Unfortunately, in many ways the originals are better than the special editions. And I think that's part of the reason Lucas was against remastering the originals.

[Saintheart]

From a 2004 interview:

"The special edition, that’s the one I wanted out there. The other movie, it’s on VHS, if anybody wants it. ... I’m not going to spend the, we’re talking millions of dollars here, the money and the time to refurbish that, because to me, it doesn’t really exist anymore. It’s like this is the movie I wanted it to be, and I’m sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it."

Unfortunately, in many ways the originals are better than the special editions. And I think that's part of the reason Lucas was against remastering the originals.

Just a footnote for the interested or desperate - one of the more popular (or at least still floating around) fan-edited tweaks of the original OT was the Adywan edits (Google them). In around 2004 or so, Adywan got deeply snotted by the Special Editions and decided to try and take out the rubbish and tweak some of the stuff that the Special Editions didn't fix. A lot of this was on the Star Wars site originaltrilogy.com, and Adywan's original list of changes he made can be found here.

It's not perfect, but if you can find a copy of it, it might be slightly more digestible than the Special Ed versions.

[Tyndmyr]

It's a bit silly to attribute the lack of distribution of a nearly 50 year old product to some sort of malevolence by George. If Disney thought the unedited originals would sell well they'd be on the shelf at every merchant in America.

Star Wars is still a hugely popular and relevant IP, though. Yeah, lots of 50 year old things are dead and gone because nobody cares about them. That's life. People do care about Star Wars, though. That ain't it.

[warty goblin]

It's a bit silly to attribute the lack of distribution of a nearly 50 year old product to some sort of malevolence by George. If Disney thought the unedited originals would sell well they'd be on the shelf at every merchant in America.

Probably not at this point, because Disney really just wants people to sub to Disney+, and the sort of person who cares enough about Star Wars to care probably has already subbed. Or hates Disney SW enough that they won't just on principle.

Was it also a joke when he successfully blocked virtually all distribution of it, including almost entirely blocking it from airing outside of North America? Because if so, that's quite the commitment to the bit.

"Artist releases 2nd edition, stops publishing 1st edition" and "artist hates thing they made, stops selling it" are just like... normal things artists do all the time. I can't say I can think of other cases where people have spent like 20 years moaning about how this has ruined their childhood either. But then the SW fandom is in my experience unusually annoying, and I say this as somebody who finds fan culture as a whole obnoxious to the point where I refuse to consider myself a fan of anything just to stay the hell out of it.

[Gnoman]

Also a creator editing and revising their work and deciding that's the version they're going with from here on out is pretty much completely normal. That's why they made the changes in the first place, they like that version better, and authors do it all the time for second editions. Tolkien massively edited parts of The Hobbit prior to Lord if the Rings for instance, which seems to have produced zero outrage.

There's three major differences here:

1. The Hobbit wasn't nearly as popular when the changes were made as was true of the SW trilogy.
2. The changes were made very early. It is only the first edition (possibly second) of the book that has the original text, and the print runs of that were very small despite good reviews because of a paper shortage. Meanwhile the SW special editions were over a decade after the last of the original films
3. Several of the changes were diegetic - Bilbo lied in-universe about the Ring, and his false account is what was originally "translated", while later versions were "from" Frodo's repaired account.

All three of this things make the reception of the changes fundamentally different.

[Sir_Norbert]

2. The changes were made very early. It is only the first edition (possibly second) of the book that has the original text

The revised edition was published in 1951, 14 years after the original publication.

[Gnoman]

True, but very few people had read the books before that, because there wasn't a lot of paper to spare for printing fantasy novels. Something to do with a disagreement of some sort on the continent.

[Mechalich]

"Artist releases 2nd edition, stops publishing 1st edition" and "artist hates thing they made, stops selling it" are just like... normal things artists do all the time. I can't say I can think of other cases where people have spent like 20 years moaning about how this has ruined their childhood either. But then the SW fandom is in my experience unusually annoying, and I say this as somebody who finds fan culture as a whole obnoxious to the point where I refuse to consider myself a fan of anything just to stay the hell out of it.

"Artist releases 2nd edition, publisher stops publishing 1st edition." You left a key word out. Under normal circumstances published artists do not have total control over their creations once they've published them. Generally artists who hate the things they made can stop producing more works in that vein, but they have no ability to prevent the continued sale of existing works. Publication is, very critically, an act of surrendering control over something to the public. It is initially a limited surrender, but when copyright lapses it becomes total.

For example, Peter Benchley came to greatly regret publishing Jaws after learning more about sharks and becoming a conservationist later in life. He would have very happily suspended publication, but he did not control the rights, Fawcett Books does. Jaws remains very much in print today.

The situation with the original editions of the Star Wars trilogy is highly unusual because George Lucas was both artist and publisher - via Lucasfilm, which he controlled completely - at the same time, a thing that only happened because 20th Century Fox allowed him to retain additional rights because they lacked confidence in the film. That Disney hasn't released a remastered version of those editions suggests there's language in the sale contract of the franchise prohibiting them from doing so.

[warty goblin]

"Artist releases 2nd edition, publisher stops publishing 1st edition." You left a key word out. Under normal circumstances published artists do not have total control over their creations once they've published them. Generally artists who hate the things they made can stop producing more works in that vein, but they have no ability to prevent the continued sale of existing works. Publication is, very critically, an act of surrendering control over something to the public. It is initially a limited surrender, but when copyright lapses it becomes total.

So really the unusual part here is "artist got himself a good enough contract to retain control of the IP"? That's interesting as a specific piece of history, but I still fail to see how this is in any general sense a bad thing. If anything it seems like the creator retaining more control should be more common, or are you arguing broadly for more executive meddling and corporate control of artistic endeavors now?

[Sapphire Guard]

I already addressed that, preserving the movies for history has nothing to do with needing a HD remaster, they're already preserved for history and anyone that sincerely wants to get them for academic reasons can get them. The SW original movies are not at risk of being forgotten or disappearing. No one demanding a HD remaster seriously needs that to preserve the movies for history, they just want it for themselves.

Even that link about film preservation is clear that big movie productions don't need it, it's small indie movies that are actually at risk of being lost to history. And obviously a film production in the 80s were never planning or intending the films be released with modern tech, so the 'as originally intended' argument doesn't hold water.

Re the Holiday Special: https://www.cbr.com/star-wars-holida...-sledgehammer/

Turns out, that's probably not true either.

That Disney hasn't released a remastered version of those editions suggests there's language in the sale contract of the franchise prohibiting them from doing so.

Is that your only basis for this assumption? Because there is potentially many other reasons, unless you have some kind of actual information that's a weird conclusion to jump to. Absent any evidence, I'm going to assume this is another random meme with no basis.

[Peelee]

Re the Holiday Special: https://www.cbr.com/star-wars-holida...-sledgehammer/

Turns out, that's probably not true either.

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.

[pendell]

From great love comes great hate. If we've got any divorce attorneys here, I'm sure they could tell some stories along those lines.

As a contrary example, consider Game of Thrones. For a few years it was the hottest thing in pop culture. Then Season 8 happened and no one talks about it any more, at all. I don't think it's so much that people hate game of thrones so much as they simply lost interest in it altogether; it's a worse fate than hate for a franchise. The former fans don't love it, don't hate it, they just don't think about it at all.

I think that's why changes to Star Wars (the example I am most familiar with) make a difference. There's a lot of passionate love for the characters, the setting, the rules of the universe, and a real sense of closure with the end of Episode VI.

First the prequels (which generated their own share of hate) and the sequels messed with that. People hated episode 1 because it almost literally infantilized Darth Vader. Likewise, people hated the ST because we got useless Luke, playboy Han. We also had the previous legends continuity; the Thrawn Trilogy was far more respectful of the original stories and was far better written than the sequel trilogy.

I think the hate comes greatly from people who saw what came before but still, in their hearts, love the franchise. So they rage and scream and fondly imagine Kathleen Kennedy leaving for other opportunities -- never mind Disney seems quite happy with her performance -- then loudly declare they are done with Star Wars only to come back three days later for yet another rant. Because they're lying to themselves; they aren't "done". They still love what it was and could be. They haven't yet reached the stage I'm at which is "meh, it's a business property. They'll reboot it in ten years anyway. I'll always have the original trilogy".

To me the greatest crime a reboot can do is to savage a beloved character. Even Peter Jackson's LOTR, which was pretty good suffered from this; the Aragorn and Faramir of PJ's movies are less noble, less capable than Tolkien's original vision. This resulted in cries of the character being "ruined". By contrast, no one gave two cents that they replaced Glorfindel with Arwen, because no one cared about Glorfindel.

Which is why, for me, a large change the ST could have made to improve reception of the trilogy would be to set it about two centuries in the future. Push the cast of the OT offstage altogether, maybe leave holos or something of them for the new characters. As it was -- it sometimes seemed that the new showrunners had decided to build up their new characters , frequently colorless and interesting, by the simple expedient of making them better than the old characters. And since the new characters *weren't* more interesting or much of anything in comparison to the old characters, this meant taking down the old characters down several pegs so that the new ones could be better.

This naturally generated seething anger in the fan base which hasn't died down years after the trilogy was concluded.

Ever hear the phrase "sacred cow"? The underlying story there is true in many cultures; if you touch something the local culture considers sacred, you shouldn't be surprised if a mob promptly beats you to death if you disrespect or assail it. For many, the characters of the original trilogy are beloved, sacred even.

Maybe that's part of it. If you read our history there has been plenty of passionate hatred and anger over religious matters ; perhaps in a secular culture tv media has been taken up as a form of substitute for people to become experts in , demand to enforce purity of , and inflict violence when their will is crossed.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Peelee]

From great love comes great hate. If we've got any divorce attorneys here, I'm sure they could tell some stories along those lines.

Old legal maxim: in criminal court you see the worst people on their best behavior, and in family court you see the best people on their worst behavior.

[Doug Lampert]

Come on, it is significantly easier to find the original trilogy versions than it is to find a first edition copy of the Hobbit.

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.

[Rodin]

To me the greatest crime a reboot can do is to savage a beloved character. Even Peter Jackson's LOTR, which was pretty good suffered from this; the Aragorn and Faramir of PJ's movies are less noble, less capable than Tolkien's original vision. This resulted in cries of the character being "ruined". By contrast, no one gave two cents that they replaced Glorfindel with Arwen, because no one cared about Glorfindel.

Well, ackshually....*pushes up nerd glasses*

Arwen replacing Glorfindel annoyed me more than almost any other change. The only one that exceeds it is the mishandling of Faramir. Not because I care about Glorfindel, but because of how the change was implemented. In the book, Glorfindel runs interference with the Ring Wraiths while Frodo rides himself to the ford. In the movie, Frodo is reduced to a helpless passenger while Arwen does the whole job herself.

I have no problem with including Arwen in the scene - she needed more screentime than she got in the books. But she should have been fulfilling Glorfindel's role rather than Frodo's. Frodo solo riding to the ford is a huge character moment for him that shows his hidden depths. He's just a hobbit, but he still manages to power through getting stabbed and rides with a mortal wound through sheer grit and determination. The movie robs him of all that.

Which just shows how careful you have to be in adapting a sacred cow. The change was made with the best of intentions, yet I'm still mad about it nearly two decades later.

[Forum Explorer]

Which is why, for me, a large change the ST could have made to improve reception of the trilogy would be to set it about two centuries in the future. Push the cast of the OT offstage altogether, maybe leave holos or something of them for the new characters. As it was -- it sometimes seemed that the new showrunners had decided to build up their new characters , frequently colorless and interesting, by the simple expedient of making them better than the old characters. And since the new characters *weren't* more interesting or much of anything in comparison to the old characters, this meant taking down the old characters down several pegs so that the new ones could be better.

This naturally generated seething anger in the fan base which hasn't died down years after the trilogy was concluded.

I agree with most of what you said, but I wanted to talk about this, and specifically why most things people complain about in the ST was set up in TFA. I mean, I was originally on board with it, but after watching TRoS I realized that JJ Abrams never had a plan to begin with. Or much of one at least. And instead basically mangled well, everything.

1. First thing is right off the bat, the First Order exists and the New Republic might exist but is ineffectual. So all the heroes efforts in the OT were basically pointless.

2. Which is exacerbated by the First Order effectively wiping out the New Republic. So now the OT's ending was completely pointless.

3. Speaking of pointless, Han and Leia are no longer together, and their only child is a Darth Vader wannabe. So their respective arcs pretty much ended in failure. Except Han is also, you know, apparently back to square one in being a basic smuggler instead of galatically renowned war hero.

4. Speaking of war heroes, Luke has apparently run off and hid. So he's either a coward, broken by some tragedy, disillusioned, or dead.

In short, the First Order is basically the new Empire, nothing the OT characters did had a positive impact and they are all either at square 1 or worse, as they failed in making the galaxy better and in all of their personal relationships. Say what you will about the rest of the ST, but all the butchering of the OT character arcs happened in TFA.

[Manga Shoggoth]

Arwen replacing Glorfindel annoyed me more than almost any other change. The only one that exceeds it is the mishandling of Faramir. Not because I care about Glorfindel, but because of how the change was implemented. In the book, Glorfindel runs interference with the Ring Wraiths while Frodo rides himself to the ford. In the movie, Frodo is reduced to a helpless passenger while Arwen does the whole job herself.

I have no problem with including Arwen in the scene - she needed more screentime than she got in the books. But she should have been fulfilling Glorfindel's role rather than Frodo's. Frodo solo riding to the ford is a huge character moment for him that shows his hidden depths. He's just a hobbit, but he still manages to power through getting stabbed and rides with a mortal wound through sheer grit and determination. The movie robs him of all that.

Indeed. This is one of the things the Bakshi Adaptation got right. He replaced Glorfindel with Legolas but left the rest of the scenes essentially as they are. Had Jackson done the same thing with Arwen I would have had no arguements (and would have even met such arguements with "Well Bakshi did it and it worked"). It's hardly an insignificant part (in the book, at least), and it would have given Arwen a respectable part in a story which is male-dominated. Representation done right, you might say.

But no. It has to be made all about Arwen, and stealing a scene meant for one of the actual central characters.

[Saintheart]

I agree with most of what you said, but I wanted to talk about this, and specifically why most things people complain about in the ST was set up in TFA. I mean, I was originally on board with it, but after watching TRoS I realized that JJ Abrams never had a plan to begin with. Or much of one at least. And instead basically mangled well, everything.

1. First thing is right off the bat, the First Order exists and the New Republic might exist but is ineffectual. So all the heroes efforts in the OT were basically pointless.

2. Which is exacerbated by the First Order effectively wiping out the New Republic. So now the OT's ending was completely pointless.

3. Speaking of pointless, Han and Leia are no longer together, and their only child is a Darth Vader wannabe. So their respective arcs pretty much ended in failure. Except Han is also, you know, apparently back to square one in being a basic smuggler instead of galatically renowned war hero.

4. Speaking of war heroes, Luke has apparently run off and hid. So he's either a coward, broken by some tragedy, disillusioned, or dead.

In short, the First Order is basically the new Empire, nothing the OT characters did had a positive impact and they are all either at square 1 or worse, as they failed in making the galaxy better and in all of their personal relationships. Say what you will about the rest of the ST, but all the butchering of the OT character arcs happened in TFA.

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.