So how are there non-believers in STAR WARS?

Zaranthan · Post by **Zaranthan** » Sun Sep 06, 2015 3:31 am

Do you ever need a better reason than wookies?

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sun Sep 06, 2015 7:33 am

I would ask 'Why'd he even do the Ewok thing anyway?" then I remember Jar Jar.

Post by **fbmf** » Sun Sep 06, 2015 12:39 pm

According to Lucas, he had established Wookies as being to sophisticated by the time RotJ rolled around, and wanted a primitive tribe to beat the highly mechanized Empire. So he took the word Wookiee, reversed the syllables, and invented Ewoks.

Maybe it's my 4 year old nostalgia, but the concept of Ewoks never bothered me or my group. I had to be in the my 20s and the Internet be a thing beforevI learned they were generally despised by the fandom.

Don't get me wrong, they're nowhere near as awesome as Wookiees, but I'll take Wicket over Jar Jar any day.

Game On,
fbmf

codeGlaze · Post by **codeGlaze** » Sun Sep 06, 2015 2:24 pm

fbmf wrote:According to Lucas, he had established Wookies as being to sophisticated by the time RotJ rolled around, and wanted a primitive tribe to beat the highly mechanized Empire. So he took the word Wookiee, reversed the syllables, and invented Ewoks.

Maybe it's my 4 year old nostalgia, but the concept of Ewoks never bothered me or my group. I had to be in the my 20s and the Internet be a thing beforevI learned they were generally despised by the fandom.

Don't get me wrong, they're nowhere near as awesome as Wookiees, but I'll take Wicket over Jar Jar any day.

Game On,
fbmf

I was reading a cracked article that pointed out the SW movies were continually re-jiggered to be more kid friendly/kid-consumable. Lucas wanted them to be movies kids enjoyed.

In summary "Star Wars has ALWAYS chosen children over plot".

unnamednpc · Post by **unnamednpc** » Sun Sep 06, 2015 5:58 pm

Yeah, I understand that we, as ADULTS need to shit all over these teddybears (that sentence looks way weirder written out), but conceptionally, they are really just slightly dumber, fuzzier Jawas, and don't tell me you don't internally fist-bump your best childhood friend every time you hear that 'Hooteedee'.
Sure. Those bears are a hokey cash grab. And of those three movies that are of course the only three movies they ever made and why would someone even THINK of something as outlandish as a prequel trilogy oh my god I am glad that never happened let's quickly change the subject, RotJ is objectively the least good. But guys, girls, folks, please, PLEASE don't over-frank-miller your childhood memories. These movies are ALL hokey as fuck. Empire is hokey as fuck. Less than the other two, maybe, but it still has senile Kermit as a Jedi Master, and tries to hide the hokiness under some blue color grading. And that's okay. They are still timeless classics for what they are, they contain elements of genuinely great filmmaking, I love them. But let's not shit ourselves, they are and always have been family friendly joyrides, and maybe we should just stop being so passive-aggressively ashamed of our dorky childhoods.

As to the original question, having in fact just rewatched A New Hope last night, ever noticed how the rebels end their briefing with a collective 'May the Force be with you'? I think you could make the case that yes, on the surface, the Empire's propaganda over the past decades has diminished belief in the Jedi and the Force, but in the remnants of the Republic, the connection to the 'old' beliefs is much more alive. If you are a gigantic nerd, anyway.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Sun Sep 06, 2015 11:32 pm

codeGlaze wrote:I was reading a cracked article that pointed out the SW movies were continually re-jiggered to be more kid friendly/kid-consumable. Lucas wanted them to be movies kids enjoyed.

That may have been the case, but "it's for kids" is a shitty argument because there are kids' movies/books/shows/whatever that are good for more than nostalgia's sake. There's no reason that something made for kids has to be unpleasant for adults. And a lot of things that hide behind that argument have a habit of sucking for kids too. Here's a Star Wars example: Episode II is so bad that it literally made a friend of mine feel ill (or at least fake it really well). He would have been like 12 at that time.

Anyways, even as a kid I got why (for example) Han shot Greedo first. And it made Han cooler and established a lot about his character to me immediately. If Lucas wanted to make Star Wars appeal more to kids with his edits, he doesn't actually understand what kids like. The only edits that anyone I knew dug (even as a kid) are the ones that made the explosions bigger and neater and whatnot. The rest of the stuff ranged from redundant (such as the scene with Han asking Jabba to call off the bounty and give him some more time to get him the money) to boring (such as the dance scene in Jabba's palace.) Seriously, who thought a singing Louis Armstrong rat/bug hybrid was going to be huge with the kids, or anyone?

unnamednpc wrote:Yeah, I understand that we, as ADULTS need to shit all over these teddybears (that sentence looks way weirder written out), but conceptionally, they are really just slightly dumber, fuzzier Jawas, and don't tell me you don't internally fist-bump your best childhood friend every time you hear that 'Hooteedee'.

I totally dig Jawas, but the only sense in which the audience is invited to sympathize with them is that the Empire massacres them for no good reason. Otherwise they're weird creatures who abduct and sell droids.
And while I didn't mind the Ewoks as much as most do, the audience is expected to like them as soon as we see them, despite the fact that they are literally planning to eat the main characters at that point.

PLEASE don't over-frank-miller your childhood memories.

I get your broader point, but Frank Miller is really in the same boat as George Lucas: he made some stuff in the 1980s that was awesome (and admittedly kind of ridiculous) but has basically been a parody of himself since about 2000.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Mon Sep 07, 2015 12:22 am

I never liked Ewoks. I don't hate them (unlike the HATE I have for Jar Jar, enough to ban gungans in any game of SW I ever ran). As a kid I pretty much glossed over the parts where they were present. As far as I was concerned back then basically Han, Leia, and Chewie beat the empire's ground forces almost by themselves. I also didn't care about Yoda much. Not that I didn't like Yoda. He was like Mr Miyagi to me. He was a mentor that acted like he wasn't the wise sage he really was until a bit later.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Sep 07, 2015 5:53 am

The "It's For Kids" thing is a shit argument to justify bad decisions. Are there a multitude of kids who prefer to watch the adventures of Phantom Menace Anikin to the adventures of New Hope Luke? No. No there are not.

Yes, kids like cantina scenes with weird muppet aliens. But kids aren't standing up to demand racist jive talk or over-complicated trade negotiations or wooden fucking child actors or any of that shit. All "the kids" wanted was the same thing adults wanted: a Luke-aged Anikin Skywalker having some fucking adventures and getting into lightsaber fights and space battles and saving space princesses and shit. Fuck!

-Username17

unnamednpc · Post by **unnamednpc** » Mon Sep 07, 2015 8:05 am

Of course it's a shit argument. Nothing dictates that entertainment (or any other 'commodity, really) aimed primarily at children needs to be terrible.
Everything else Frank just said is, however, wishful thinking slash outright wrong. I work with children, a lot of children, in the relevant age-group. And they all. Eat. That shit UP. First graders love Jar Jar. They finda Watto (and I despise myself a little bit for even knowing what a Watto even is, trust me) hilarious. They lose their shit over those dorkybattle droids. Because frankly, kids don't have very great taste. And how could they, lacking any frame of reference. If something comes along and is bright and loud (or sweet or whatever) enough, it just gets plastered all over their impressionable little dumb synapses, and then it's their thing, and it'll be some time before their brain will let them even attempt to appreciate the more nuanced joys of, say, a lanky fur-man arguing with pig-dwarves over a robot head.
So if you use 'it's for kids' as saying 'therefore, it's ok for it to be shite', it really just means that you understand how children's brains tick, and are willing to exploit that fact.
Of course, nothing about this means that the prequels nedded to be as terrible as they are, or that it was ok to make them that terrible, just that a lot of what made them that terrible was deliberately done because it was good enough to sell a billion bucks worth of junk to five year olds.

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Thu Sep 10, 2015 4:49 pm

codeGlaze wrote:I was reading a cracked article that pointed out the SW movies were continually re-jiggered to be more kid friendly/kid-consumable. Lucas wanted them to be movies kids enjoyed.

Then why didn't he stress the "Ewoks eat stormtroopers" angle. Kids love that stuff. Cute little teddy bear monsters that eat bad guys?