Hi,

After watching the last movie "Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens", I must say that the movies are getting worst and worst.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2488496/
Watching it cinema or in blueray does not help, and results are the same.

In my point of view, the movie is destroying the myth of the Force, Jedis,... and many things.

In this movie, it is visibly a modern type of movie recording and making.

Star Wars is becoming commercial, and movie making is using too much special effects. The movie is relatively time to time bloody. The scenes are not well mounted and do not give any hall effects, impressive view, characters,...

Such as the Force and magic might need and deserve more carefull making ; Force brought to commercial movies with so much computer is no point.

The music and sound effects are not well choosen. The storyboard is a nightmare. Starwars movies are no longer made to most public.

Better read the book.

Today the magic of movie making is getting to no impressive results.
Special effect with computer bring even worse.
Special effect shall be the end of good movies, good plots, emotions, and good movie making.

Movies with such actor, really good actors, and really good movie making had something to sell, much more than today's movies.

ex. of actors which brought all to the magic of Cinema:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buster_Keaton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yul_Brynner
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Chaplin
...

I'm not surprised. Franchises are the bane of modern cinema. You made a film and a lot of people liked it? Just serve them up the same thing again and again and watch the dollars roll in.

From time to time you see lists of the 10 biggest-grossing movies of all time; all of them (except for Gone with the Wind) are modern and most of them are franchises. But those figures are fake. They simply reflect the fact that there has been a lot of inflation over the past 50 years, so of course modern films (even bad ones) make more at the box office than old films did.

When you look at inflation-adjusted figures, modern films don't do well. None of the franchises make it into the top ten, though the original Star Wars does.

Dunno ... George Lucas was probably the biggest "franchiser" that Hollywood could hope for. Even "back in the day," he filled toy stores with dolls action-figures, and plastered the Star Wars® logo onto anything and everything that didn't move. It is said that LucasFilm made much more money from franchising than it ever did from tickets, and I have no doubt that this is true. When he wasn't making movies, he was licensing books.

The thing that "these kids today " simply don't understand is that, at the time the original Star Wars movie was made, there was nothing remotely like it. No computers were used in making the special-effects, because, at that time, it wasn't possible to do so. (The Tektronix green-screen display that briefly appears in an X-Wing fighter cockpit was the full extent of "computers" at that time.) Everything was done ... had to be done ... using motion-control cameras and rewinding the same piece of film for multiple exposures in-camera. (But first, you had to invent, and patent (of course), the necessary technology ...)

Movie audiences had never seen anything like it ... period.

Why? Because nothing "like it" existed, or had ever existed. The only significant sci-fi SFX movie that preceded Star Wars was 2001, and of course, many of the same people were involved in both projects. 2001 was memorable but never made any money, and industry pundits confidently predicted the same fate for ["the one-and presumably-only movie" named ...] Star Wars. "Naww, we don't want the merch rights ..."

Today, we simply take for granted the amazing innovations that were created by a small group of people who, on a whim and with a whimsy, dubbed themselves "The Industrial Light And Magic Company."

You probably never saw the original movie. George Lucas totally effed-up all three, trying to "improve" or "fix" them. (If there's one thing that I really wish that The Mouse® would now do, is to re-release the originals, preferably both with and without color-correction.) Go ahead and let the first movie say, "Star Wars," as it did, with no mention of "Episodes."

To me, the latest Star Wars film was respectably done. The acting was clean, and the story ... well, the other movies didn't have too much of a story, either!

Perhaps the very best thing that they did, IMHO, was to give George Lucas a frabjous sum of money in order to keep his hands out of it. Yes, he'd written another screenplay involving "cute kids."

I saw Star Wars VII in the theater. I left feeling indifferent. I didn't like it, nor did I hate it. I didn't get that feeling like I did when I saw Star Wars IV as a kid, which was the first movie I ever saw.

I think all of the endless hype and commercialism as well as 24/7 exposure from the Internet has sucked away alot of the mystery and anticipation of these movies.

Well to be fair episode VII is a part of a proposed trilogy and lets be honest it is better than the prequels.
I rather liked the force awakens, it did have some fun elements (plus BB-8 is a ball of adorable) and enough mystery to make me wanting more.
Is it not as good as the original trilogy? well no but its okay as the original trilogy is a wonderful set of films.

As for me, I just see 'em as a good set of science-fiction / space-fantasy yarns!

Yes, full of cliff-hangers, as all good movies should be. (Lucas put a cliff-hanger into almost every episode.)

The technical execution and directing was superb, the acting was solid (both by the "old hats" and by the "young turks"), and the story sometimes didn't make a lick of sense. But, I enjoyed my two hours at the movies anyway ... and didn't buy one single item of "merch."

I think that the franchise is in good and capable hands now ... better hands, frankly, than "The George" had let himself wander into, because control of the story is no longer autocratic. "The Mouse" knows how to make films, and has the money to spend on these films, and is willing to spend the money.

There were only three Star Wars movies.

You old curmudgeon ...

Haven't seen it yet, but I expect to be disappointed, like I was with the latest Mad Max effort. Can't understand why that got such good reviews ... :shrug:

star wars 4 and 5 are my two most favorites. After that all remaining episodes went downhill for me.

Hey fury road is good fun, much better than the first Mad Max and Beyond Thunderdome.
Sure not as good as the road warrior but thats tough to top

When I first saw "Star Wars," there was only one, and industry pundits were confidently predicting that it would be an utter flop.

There was no "Episode IV: A New Hope." The crawl simply said, "Star Wars."

No one had heard music like that. The "20th Century Fox fanfare" merged seamlessly into the opening bars of the theme. Nothing on the screen but a tiny spaceship ... laser bolts flying from [i]waitaminit ... behind us! And then, and then, ... "THAT gigantic(!) Star Destroyer!"

No one, in the entire history of filmmaking up to that time, had ever done that. (And remember, "no computers were, or could have been, used!")

George Lucas was, and is, a master of marketing. (Not a particularly good storyteller, screenwriter, director or executive producer.) He knew how to develop "one so-so 'cowboys and sorcery in outer space' movie" into a franchise worth billions of dollars ... billions of dollars which he was subsequently paid.

He was persuasive when he needed to be. He persuaded studios to spend what was, at that time, a princely sum on special effects ... promising them that "everyone would come to ILM for sfx work because we own the patents." (Which everyone did.) But he downplayed the possible market value of merchandising, such that the studio simply gave the rights to him. He manipulated the media so that "everyone, everywhere, just kept talking about Star Wars.®" And that's probably why The Mouse decided to pay as much as they did ... and to consider it "a good investment," which it was.

The first one was really a work of genius and hard work. I wish there were more like it.

It was a lot of fun. I remember when it first came out, movie critics saw in it homage to many great western movies in various scenes. (I am old enough to remember when it first came out. In fact, I'm old enough to remember when Hollywood had more to offer than remakes, comic book heroes, and CGI.)

The next two were competent sequels leading to a satisfying denouement. Everything since has been commercialized hockeypuck of the how-can-I-squeeze-more-money-out-of-the-rubes variety.

I remember that Second Son dressed up in a Sith costume to see Jar-Jar Binks v. 1.0; it was the first movie tickets we bought online. Liam Neeson was magnificent in his role, but the rest of the movie was not worthy of a Hammer Films imprint. Give me any Hammer Films 1960s vampire B movie over Star Wars, the Undead. At least Hammer Films had the decency not to pretend that it was doing anything more than Grade A schmaltz.

I never bothered to watch v. 3 or v. III or v. pi or whatever it was I lose track of the messed up renumbering system.

George Lucas and his ego managed to destroy any interest I had in Star Wars.

Other than that, I'm okay with it.

And Casablanca is still the best American movie ever made.

Also, get off my lawn.

Actually, I think that CG and digital-editing have made movies a little bit "too easy to make." There used to be a certain amount of "rough edges" to things. Special effects were done mechanically. For instance, look at the original Godfather movies. The effects (mostly consisting of people getting shot to pieces ) are very rough, indeed. (I would have loved to have been the vendor who sold shooting-squibs and stage blood to that production!)

Also, when I first watched Star Wars, it was a 35mm film print, and there was a definite color-cast to cinematic film stock in those days. Costume designers and set designers knew about this, and planned for it. Nowadays, every print that you see has been digitized, and "color-corrected." Well, sometimes I don't want the colors to be "correct." I watched the first Indiana Jones movie recently from an original 35mm print.

I hope that The Mouse will reach back into the archives that it now owns, and release the original film ... the crawl should say, STAR WARS ... with and without color correction. Undo all of the editing changes which Lucas later did – changes which, IMHO, utterly destroyed the pace and impact of the movie. (Hint: Han Solo did not encounter Jabba the Hutt two or three times. He did not encounter Jabba at all.) Remove the horrible editing-in of the Anakin Skywalker actor in the final scenes of the third movie. In other words, "leave the damned things alone!" Permit me to buy "exactly what I remember," and I certainly will do so.

P.S.: Any mention, whatsoever, of "Jar-Jar Binks" is strictly forbidden in this respectable Internet forum!!

It sux being jaded. Don't it?

I like Fury Road. I like and watched all Star Wars movies. When the next Alien movie comes out. I will be at my local one horse town theater. No waiting in line for a ticket. Pay my exhortation fee for popcorn and a soda without waiting in line also from the kid who makes his play station money working there while in high school.

I make it a daily event every week to go to the movie on my motorcycle or bicycle. I don't want to lose my one horse town theater to lack of interest.