Remember when Star Wars was awesome? When it owned the sci-fi genre and had the most devoted fans in the world, including its own legion of real storm troopers?
And then came the prequels… and then The Clone Wars…
This is where a big portion of the fans of old lost interest, where many became angry at George Lucas for what happened with Star Wars and more recently with Indiana Jones. While there were a billion different overpriced toys to buy from for the franchise from a million different Star Wars toy lines, the franchise was heading in the wrong direction.
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To me, Star Wars was no longer the cool thing and it was no longer exciting… How could that possibly happen? I used to love it! The prequels were dumbed down and not as respected as the originals, changes were continually being made to the originals for a dozen different variations of the DVD sets, most of the video games were weak and the obvious focus and effort was placed on merchandising which was getting out of hand. It had become an absurd case of quantity over quality in all facets of the Star Wars business model.
What interesting timing for Star Wars to fall a few notches in the minds of many fans, as Star Trek began to make its triumphant return with J.J. Abrams leading the charge. And to the pleasant surprise of moviegoers around the world, the movie was a smashing success critically and financially. Trek had stepped up to re-claim the sci-fi throne from the faltering Star Wars (we’re talking movies here).
One of the bright spots in all of this for Star Wars was its two amazing Knights of the Old Republic video games which brought Star Wars to a new era, with a strong story based 4,000 years in the past. The games won major awards (including game of the year for the first), were critically acclaimed and everyone seemingly loved them. It was even rumored that they might make a film based on the first game. It’s funny that the only good games we had seen in the franchise in such a long while had to distance themselves as far as possible away from where the movies had gone -- We also saw this with The Force Unleashed.
While gamers waited eagerly for a third installment in that franchise on the new generation of video game consoles, we were instead given news that the next game made by Bioware (the electronic entertainment company behind KOTR) would instead be an MMO (massively multiplayer online game like World of Warcraft) and the trailer for it debuted not long ago.
John over at The Movie Blog picked up on the trailer for this game and made a great point – If the prequels were anything like this, everyone would be a lot happier, and the state of Star Wars a lot different.
You must watch this video and see how awesome it is:
Imagine a movie like that? Instead, the recent Star Wars films targeted children in a dumb way. People of all ages loved the original trilogy movies without having overly childish moments, characters and dialogue – why do it like that now?
Anyways, instead of a movie like what we see in that trailer, we got this:
… and this:
We got ripped off.
What do you think of this trailer and where do you see the future of Star Wars heading?
Source: The Movie Blog
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71 Comments
i THINK A NEW MOVIE SHOULD BE AND LOOK JUST LIKE THIS,ESPECIALLY IF THERE IS A PROBLEM OVER FINDING ACTORS. THE CLONE WARS CARTOONY LOOK WAS BETTER WHEN Genndy Tartakovsky DID IT.
it’s action and potential like that that makes me upset that the movies are over. they could be so much better. i love star wars, every movie. i never get tired of them. but that trailer was the most awesome display of action i’ve seen from anything star wars
Beautiful piece of work. Looked better than all three prequels put together. As someone who doesn’t know any of the comics, novels or other peripheral tie-ins, can anyone fill me in about the Star Destroyers at the end? I didn’t think they existed at this point. Or were the ones that “evolved” during the movies supposed to be based on these designs from the past?
@Rob: “Nope, it’s not based on one movie. Star Wars earns much more $$ as a brand across many forms of media and product. It’s based on the general feeling about the franchise. Many feel negative or nothing at all for Star Wars nowadays, most feel positive about Trek.”
You’re comparing the opinions of one very large franchise with a very recent reboot. Not based on one movie? What else has Star Trek offered that could have possibly skewed your opinion in recent times?
“It’s about what’s the best Sci-Fi out there in terms of movies and what people want to see next.”
Again, the Star Wars movie series is over. Star Trek has been rebooted. Are you expecting Star Wars to be rebooted with new actors, in-trend directors, and plenty of lens flares shots? Ridiculous.
I need to channel this negative energy…
“Remember when Star Wars was awesome? When it owned the sci-fi genre and had the most devoted fans in the world, including its own legion of real storm troopers?”
You dismiss the original trilogy so quickly. That movie still amazes, and will continue to amaze generations to come. The Star Wars fanatics are still out there. Unlike what you claim, it’s probably more likely that all these new Star Wars features inspire new fans.
“This is where a big portion of the fans of old lost interest, where many became angry at George Lucas for what happened with Star Wars and more recently with Indiana Jones. While there were a billion different overpriced toys to buy from for the franchise from a million different Star Wars toy lines, the franchise was heading in the wrong direction.”
I don’t disagree here, but…
“What interesting timing for Star Wars to fall a few notches in the minds of many fans, as Star Trek began to make its triumphant return with J.J. Abrams leading the charge. And to the pleasant surprise of moviegoers around the world, the movie was a smashing success critically and financially. Trek had stepped up to re-claim the sci-fi throne from the faltering Star Wars (we’re talking movies here).”
… you’ve compared the Star Wars franchise to the recent Star Trek movie. You’ve slagged the toys, the video games, and then suddenly you bring up the Star Trek movie. Way to get the viewers in the mood for a fair comparison.
Oh, but “we’re talking movies here”. That’s why you haven’t brought up any of the old Star Trek movies, right? You used the word “faltering” to describe the Star Wars movies. As I mentioned previously, the Star Wars movies are over. Fin. Ended. It can’t “falter”, it can’t “lift”, because there is no next movie. So you’re comparing a series revival with a dead series. Nice work Rob.
Whoever made that is a better director than George Lucas! Sad but true.
As a friend of mine said, any doofus can make a cool CGI, show me gameplay. As true as that is, it takes more than just any doofus to get the fanboy seal of approval and let me tell you, that trailer has it in droves. They capture something there, something elemental about that era in star wars history that just screams fun.
Both games mentioned before are on many platforms and well worth your time. (KOTOR being the better, by the big reveal moment, I seriously thought about embracing the dark side, and I was comitted good guy then.)
@arrel
Rob isn’t dismissing the original trilogy – he’s holding it up in comparison to the dreck that was the three prequel movies and what’s come since. And I would say that the 3 prequel films were in effect similar to what Abrams did with Star Trek. When The Phantom Menace was released the original films were what, 20 years old? All new CGI and look. Lucas basically did what Abrams did, but first.
Vic
@ arrell,
Relax bud, read all the other comments here. Generally speaking, the majority of folks aren’t overly excited or strongly attached to Star Wars anymore (for movies or TV) and there’s now a lot of negative associated with it that didn’t exist pre-prequels.
Star Trek, as of right now, has an overwhelmingly positive feeling associated with it and most moviegoers want to see a sequel sooner rather than later. Ya, the new movie is why… that’s the point (read Vic’s comment above).
I don’t understand what you’re getting at – This trailer is awesome and seeing it makes us realize (not that we needed to) they could have done so much better with the prequels – That’s all we are saying.
Pretty harsh comments dude, especially the end of your second – All you did was quote and bash. If you love Star Wars, that’s fine, I do to – I didn’t love the new ones as much as the old and I very much dislike the Clone Wars and where they’ve decided to take the franchise.
@ bane
Ive seen gameplay of the old republic you can see some at there site. Its very simaler to the kotor games. I dot to say Kotor 1 and 2 were great games but the mess up was the grapics they were okay at best. The old republic has a little better grapics at this point(which is amazing because grapics for mmos suck). The story sounds amazing at this point. I think if your a fan of the kotor games you will like it. If your not you shouldnt touch this game. Remember its made by the same people(bioware), and they say its basiclly a sequel with 12 times the gameplay.
I’m one of the few (or not) people that love both Trek and Star Wars. The original Star Wars trilogy is still very close to my heart (although I thought ROTJ was the weakest of the 3 with the Ewoks), but the prequels, at best, were mediocre. They had AWESOME special effects, but we already knew that before even watching the films that the effect would be awesome. The acting was terrible (aside from Palpatine)and the dialogue seemed forced and unbelievable. The fight scenes were great (Maul rocked) and I will still watch these movies occasionally because they ARE Star Wars. I am also a BIG fan of the Star Wars novels and wish that Lucas went ahead with the 7-9 films and based them on the novels that occur after ROTJ.
The new Trek, on the other hand, not only had fantastic effects, but it also had something that lacked in the SW prequels: good writing. The characters had depth and emotion and we BELIEVED that these were the characters. Can you imagine the backlash if Pine did to Kirk what Christiansen did to Anakin? The movie would have flopped and JJ Abrams would have killed the Trek movies for good. It didn’t, however, and Trek is now strong again and I suspect we’ll see Trek movies for another 10 years or so.
As for this game trailer. It rocked. I’m not a big gamer, but I would even be interested in buying a PS3 just to play this game. LOL. Lucas should let other people write the stories and direct his property because he really can’t do it anymore. Let him concentrate on getting the awesome effects and the premise of a story and leave the details to more competent people.
In-sane! This game looks badass. Lucas is an idiot.
@ Vic: By Rob’s reasoning, it’d be necessary for Star Wars to either make another trilogy or start a reboot to ‘re-claim’ the sci-fi throne. That’s rubbish. One movie series has ended (albeit on a bad note), and another movie series has been restarted. Unfair comparison.
@ Rob: there’s no excitement for Star Wars at the moment, because the movie series has ended! Four years ago! In contrast, Star Trek has just been rebooted – of course, Star Trek fans are going to have something to be excited about. How can Star Wars possibly ‘re-claim’ the throne, if there are no movies coming?
The prequel movies are pretty much universally acknowledged to not be so good. Do you anything original to offer?
I brought my problem up in my first post and have continually mentioned it: you talk of Star Trek re-claiming the sci-fi movie throne. With that claim, you ignore the original Star Wars movies, and probably some of the great Star Trek movies, which are probably pinnacles of sci-fi. You seemingly had the Star Wars prequel trilogy at the throne, if Star Trek has re-claimed it.
If you wanted to talk about where the two franchises were heading in general, then look at the two franchises! All you did was slag one franchise, and compare that to the start of a reboot (and the Star Trek movie only covers ONE aspect of its franchise). Have you examined the Star Trek toys, books, video games, etc…? Now that I think about it, Star Trek doesn’t have much of a overall franchise going for it in recent times, which makes your attempts even more ridiculous.
@arrell, all this anguish over who sits in The Sci Fi throne ???
Star Trek or Star Wars ???
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Who cares,,,
I the newest dvd’s of the old triology they have Hayden woodplank stand in for the old Anakin guy.
Great- Luke is thinking, hey Obi one and Yoda, ehh.. and some dude? what who is that…. – why would not Obi one turn into Ewan Macgregor than ey? stupid lucas…
I like all 6 movies, and clone wars, you just have to keep inmind that its made for kids. I’d love some more grown up star wars movies yez plz…
@arrel
The point is that Star Wars might never have lost the throne if Lucas hadn’t given us the lame mess that was the the prequel films and what’s come after.
Vic
Why doesn’t Lucas just make a sequel trilogy with characters who have personalities, new Sith villains…etc. Why are videogames the only outlets for this?
To make it a simple as possible. Star Trek has a very positive feeling towards it now, Star Wars does not. Had Star Wars concluded on the second trilogy being as awesome (which it was very far from) as the original and had this Clone Wars movie and TV show not been as it is topping off the negative feelings towards the franchise, then there would not be an issue. So it’s not about when the movies came out or which one got rebooted last.
It sounds like you’re arguing semantics or the meaning of the metaphor, but you’re the only who doesn’t get it. I hope I explained it better here but it’s important to not take it literally. What this is all about is general feelings towards that brand in entertainment at this moment in time due to what has happened to both franchises over the years.
That trailer is definately impressive and pretty. But as always it just follows the same formula of more jedi acrobatics and more and more light sabers everywhere. The original just needed two, Luke and Darth Vader. I think the success of the first triligy was the characters, the story and just the over mystery of the “force”, jedi and sith. Now that is all flushed out, it just “meh”. Every new game or movie just make Jedis into flying trapzee artists and new gimmicky light sabers. No real physical struggle that we can relate to that was done so well with the orignial.
No takers on the Star Destroyers issue? C’mon, I thought you were all Star Wars fans?!
God, just watched that trailer again and i mean wow, jizz in my pants
@ The Big Dentist,
I thought that too when watching it – I don’t know what those ships are or why they have the Star Destroyer design if it’s 400 years in the past. I guess they associate triangular ships with evil in the Star Wars universe…
=) Sweet clip. Any more?
man i’ve never been a fan of either star wars or star trek, i found both boring i’m sorry but that’s how i felt… but had they made this into a movie i would have been there for the premiere based on this trailer alone.Only thing i ever liked about star wars… “Yoda” and of course “The green light saber”. After that those movie made me sleep… i always remembered waking up to luke destroying the death star then me thanging the channel. Whoever did this trailer deserves a chance i think at one of the movies or at least the battle scene of one of the movies…
why’s it such a big deal that there’s star destroyers? did you miss all that awesome before it?
LOL – just interested! And you obviously missed what I wrote before that!
Ditto to what Andy S said. I love both worlds but the prequels for SW were horrible; except SW 3 was watchable (best of the prequels, IMHO).
No idea on the Star Destroyes, but did notice the similarities. Even something like the Tie fighters.
Can only assume these are the way Sith ships are and Sidious used the designs for the Republic’s new fleet.
Also, is that Boba Fett’s great grandmother?
Steven, yeah, I didn’t want to even mention that one!
your so right,thats why i traded all of my star wars films for the terminator films to my younger brother,that trailer was bad azz,and they need to make movies dark and gritty,well thought out,good acting,and great story,the fx have to be spectacular and the scenes were the slow down in the fight scenes were awesome. star wars im afraid is threw unless they strat makeing films a little gritty and dark like dark knight and x-men 1,and 2 ,then they will dwindle away.
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