From my future self in 9/20/24
Last time-
Boy, that flew by, huh?
A quarter century!!
A baby born when the flick came out likely has their own kids!
Damn!
So where are we now?
Last time, I bitched about the internet howler monkeys; and now, even sites like "Honest Trailers" who used to cater to that crowd are sick of them.
Their "The Acolyte" review mocked how every single Star Wars thing since TPM is "the worst Star Wars ever that's killing the franchise".
Well, if Acolyte is the new worst thing ever, and it's set 20 years before TPM, then it's the new worst prequel.
Chronologically as well as in artistic merit.
Guess it's time to leave poor TPM alone, huh?
No? It doesn't work that way?
Because reasons?
Huh.
Yeah, Generation X just has to fucking die.
People born in '99 or later think the prequels are fine.
Oh, they like TPM least, and "Revenge Of The Sith" best, but no one's all "kill Jar-Jar!! Oh my gaaawwwwdd!! This movie raped meeee!!!!".
We're enough time out to see it really was/is just a Generation X problem.
And really only a screamy minority of my age cohort.
Hey, why don't all you brilliant discriminating sophisticates read Neil Gaiman and Ursula Le Guin?
No? Huh.
It was never about real criticism, and wanting things that are good, and more about tribal approval.
"Loudest monkey in the room" shit.
I called it then, but there's no wiggle room now.
The worm has finally turned on internet drama queens.
....I hope.
There's a pile of Star Wars flicks in development, but none of them really excite me.
And just like the prequels, I'll believe in them when I see them.
I'm not gonna stare at the calendar and the clock like with "Freddy vs Jason" ever again.
Nope.
Maybe I was just supposed to go along with the herd for the sake of having more friends.
Hate the prequels because I'm supposed to.
Worship "The Matrix" because I'm supposed to.
Worship Harry Potter because I'm supposed to.
Make excuses for JK Rowling because....yeah, that's where they lose me.
That's where it stops being hip and cute.
Driving Ahmed Best, Jake Lloyd, and Kelly Marie Tran to the brink of suicide wasn't hip and cute either.
Can we stop handing these miserable shitheels the "they just love the franchise so very much" card?
Can we just kick them out of the fandom, and cordon them off in some gutter?
Can we?
Is that a big ask?
Is pointing out "if you're that cruel and gross, you don't really love anything" so damned hard for the media?
We say it about fucking wife beaters.
Anti-fans are wife beaters of culture.
Let's kick 'em out and get restraining orders on them like wife beaters.
Really, if it's just about "I don't like this movie" they've had 25 years to get over it.
Christ, the Holiday Special is worse, and people have fun with that.
That's where it really all falls apart. Hipster fans are able to be ironic and goofy with the Holiday Special, but they turn around and act like TPM killed John Wick's puppy.
Die already.
Hmm, Holiday Special is 47.
Guess we have to wait 22 more years for it to cool all the way down?
I'll be 71 and having stents and a watchman installed.
Yipee.
See you then!! 😃.....😔
I'll retro link this to "Happy seventeenth Star Wars day".
2 comments:
I wonder what would happen if a big Star Wars movie or a hot new Star Wars TV show were to totally flop? Not just with the fans, but in terms of money? I guess we had the computer animated "Clone Wars" movie, where nobody liked it. Or "Solo," I guess that one flopped?
What would happen, would some of the fan base finally die off, or at least give up and get outside and go touch grass?
What would it take to kill the FANBASE? Your "Generation X needs to die" thing had me thinking about that.
Because the Star Wars fanbase is the worst pop culture fanbase ever.
Everything has to be run by them.
I wonder if anyone thinks the CGI backdrop visuals in the prequel trilogy looks bad now?
With tentpole movies being a dying species (what does it say that The Matrix is being rereleased in theaters?), one wonders how much farther CGI could go anyway--the zillions of dollars spent on "Avatar: The Way Of Water" had people asking "why don't you just film an actual dolphin instead of animating the most realistic one possible, couldn't that save money?"
The last time I was entertained by a movie's special effects was "Gravity" and "Pacific Rim" and that was 11 years ago (yes really!)
What do movies really need to cost $250 million for, anyway?
What's making me say this is "Furiosa," which bombed horribly, which I just watched. Did you see it? It doesn't really do anything better than "Fury Road," whose good word it was riding off of. It's fairly mediocre, I think. You get a good chase scene halfway through, but it still looks a lot like the ones from FR. If you want to see Chris Hemsworth try to do a hammy comic villain performance, you get that too. I dunno what you'll think of it.
But I'd be fine with no movie ever costing a jillion dollars ever again.
I don't know that I could watch TPM again. It has so much baggage that I don't know if I can separate the movie from it. I never came around to hating it, though.
Of all the years of my life, if you sent me back in time with my mind at age 41 to relive one year in its entirety, I *think* I'd go with 1999, just to see what would happen.
At least my behavior wouldn't be so embarrassing this time around (I turned 17 that year.)
Would be weird to try and relive getting into Zeppelin, Floyd, Rush, Metallica, etc. and discussing prog rock with Minion and *Legion* and you'd have to watch Columbine and Woodstock '99 happen again, but still, hash tag white people problems everywhere.
The first American Pie was that year and seeing THAT movie again makes me really, REALLY sad now. "More innocent time" geezus, was it? I can't even tell.
You say "Portman checked out by this time" with regards to Revenge Of the Sith but I remember thinking she was a weak link in the first two as well...but there I go, even bothering to criticize TPM.
Who knows.
You're right though--younger, more recent viewers don't seem to hate them at all.
Re: "What would it take for the fanbase to die off?".
That's a tough one.
Short of Kathleen Kennedy going insane, and letting Tom Six (Human Centipede guy) direct one, I dunno.
Just like you can't make one that makes everyone happy, you can't seem to make one that would universally piss everyone off either. The Holiday Special is proof you could make one "Showgirls" level bad, and it would have a cult of hipsters.
Re: Hollywood budget gluttony.
I dunno, for every Avengers, you get a Joker 1 or Deadpool 1.
But then the sequels get rewarded with inflating budget, and you're right back at it again.
Capitalism is kind of broken in that area.
Hell, look at Blair Witch 1 vs 2.
Re: Going back in time to one year.
1996.
That 30th anniversary year for Star Trek was perfect.
The Trek movies didn't get good again until the J.J. ones, and only the 3rd one really nailed it best.
And it was before the Star Wars Special Editions, which is where the fandom really started to go sour, now that I think of it. Yep, '96 was the calm before the storm.
Reading the SW novels, and anticipating the prequels was better than anything we got.
Yeah, here's my hot take; Star Wars peaked at Shadows Of The Empire.
Yeah. Yeah. I said that shit.
Oh, and I'd give my past self my current book idea.
Yep. Give that a head start.
Re: American Pie.
Yeah....did tacky teen movies really need to be defibrillated?
"Heathers" really tried to be the hipster nail in the coffin to that genre.
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