This is a really well-done fan edit of the Ep IV scene, this time showing Obi-Wan recall the sequences from Ep III.

The Force Awakens gets a number of technical category nods for the Oscars (Film Editing, Original Score, Visual Effects, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing). There was some hype that it might get a Best Picture nomination, though I thought that seemed silly. I do think Daisy Ridley's performance would have been reasonable for Best Actress.

pacino wrote:

Warszawa wrote:My bew rankings:

ESB
ANH
RotJ
TFA
RotS
TCW
TPM

flip RotJ and TFA for me and those are my rankings

If I am ranking them in order of quality, I think it goes:

ESB
ANH
RotS
RotJ
TPM
AoC
TFA

In terms of personal feelings, I'd flip ANH and ESB - ESB is the best film on an intellectual level, but the first Star Wars is the emotional fave.

Wow, you put the new one behind the prequel trilogy? Did you hate this movie or did you like the prequels a lot more than they're given credit for?

Gimpy wrote:Wow, you put the new one behind the prequel trilogy? Did you hate this movie or did you like the prequels a lot more than they're given credit for?

He said in the other thread he didn't like the new one at least partly b/c they abandoned the political angle.

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:

Gimpy wrote:Wow, you put the new one behind the prequel trilogy? Did you hate this movie or did you like the prequels a lot more than they're given credit for?

He said in the other thread he didn't like the new one at least partly b/c they abandoned the political angle.

That's not exactly it: I didn't care for this new one because it was completely bereft of new ideas. It could have left out politics if it just did something different... at all different... from the OT.

I do think the prequels get too much shit, even though I also know there are lots of legit criticisms of them, many which I have levied myself. This new TFA is better made, better acted, with better written dialogue - but the prequels had new ideas, and that's the most important thing.

It's so not the most important thing

How original was A New Hope? It was supposed to be a Flash Gordon remake and its main characters fit their archetypes pretty neatly.

Wizard of Oz in space

Grotewold wrote:Wizard of Oz in space

The original trailer made that more explicit, but the story got reshaped during post-production.

Gimpy wrote:How original was A New Hope? It was supposed to be a Flash Gordon remake and its main characters fit their archetypes pretty neatly.

light sabers
the death star
darth vader
millenium falcon
stormtroopers
the force

it was extremely original. The prequels' new ideas include midichlorians and jar jar binks.

bleh wrote:

Gimpy wrote:How original was A New Hope? It was supposed to be a Flash Gordon remake and its main characters fit their archetypes pretty neatly.

light sabers
the death star
darth vader
millenium falcon
stormtroopers
the force

it was extremely original. The prequels' new ideas include midichlorians and jar jar binks.

That's absurd.

And it's also absurd (though not nearly as much as bleh's post) to suggest that Ep VII had nothing new, but it's just not worth debating. The opening chapters very rarely do much other than introduce ideas to us. In Ep IV, Vader was on screen for 10 minutes and gave us a weak lightsaber fight and one Force choke. We didn't see any powerful use of the Force until Ep V.

You think it's absurd that those ep IV ideas were original? The idea that they aren't original is absurd. And there were dozens of other original characters and stuff in there. And my point with the ep I ideas is that being original doesn't really matter if the ideas suck.

bleh wrote:light sabers

The concept of energy swords in fiction had been around for decades at that point.

bleh wrote:the death star

The destruction of the Death Star was pulled from The Dam Busters

bleh wrote:darth vader
stormtroopers

This is the villain and his cronies from The Fighting Devil Dogs (1938). The term "stormtrooper" is taken from German soldiers.

bleh wrote:millenium falcon

I'm not really sure what's original here.

bleh wrote:the force

Pretty similar to a lot of eastern beliefs

Luke pretty much walked out of Campbell's work as the hero archetype. The plotline of A New Hope borrows heavily from Kurosawa. The settings and characters are influenced by Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.

I love Star Wars. It's great. But it's not very original.

Was the dam in dam busters a giant space station that could blow up planets?

The Falcon was a used junky dirty ship that was constantly breaking down. It was an original concept for a sci-fi movie.

Name some movies that you think are original and let's see if we can both play that game.

bleh wrote:Was the dam in dam busters a giant space station that could blow up planets?

I'm not saying Lucas is liable for copyright infringement or anything, but I don't think the plot, characters, or setting of Star Wars was original.

I know about Dam Busters. I didn't say the fight at the end was original (although it still was in many ways), I said the Death Star, ie a giant space station called the Death Star that flies around and destroys planets was. And you can go through any movie and find parts that have similarities to previous movies. I mean you're taking 15 different works of fiction and saying Star Wars wasn't original because it has similarities to small parts of them. You can do that with practically every movie from the last 100 years.

Everything is derivative. It's only more noticeable in VII because it's major influence is from the same franchise.

bleh wrote:I know about Dam Busters. I didn't say the fight at the end was original (although it still was in many ways), I said the Death Star, ie a giant space station called the Death Star that flies around and destroys planets was. And you can go through any movie and find parts that have similarities to previous movies. I mean you're taking 15 different works of fiction and saying Star Wars wasn't original because it has similarities to small parts of them. You can do that with practically every movie from the last 100 years.

My point was that Star Wars wasn't original because the characters, plot, and setting aren't original. You're the one who brought up the minutiae of the movie to point to originality. By your strict definition of original, everything ever is original.

The funny thing is that we're actually on the same side here (I think). When I originally said Star Wars wasn't original, it was in response to claiming The Force Awakens was the worst Star Wars movie because of a lack of originality. It's all derivative. I'd take a good movie that borrows a lot from older stuff than a terrible movie that did some things differently.

The whole point of Star Wars (and this was pretty well discussed when it was originally released) was that it was an homage to the movies of Lucas's youth. Sort of like Pulp Fiction.

And yeah, when it comes to movies, or really anything, originality is pretty rare. If something were truly original, no one would understand it or be able to connect with it.