Hacker Cinema
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
2015 · Film · 136 min
Part of Star Wars Collection
Directed by J.J. Abrams
AdventureActionScience Fiction
Thirty years after defeating the Galactic Empire, Han Solo and his allies face a new threat from the evil Kylo Ren and his army of Stormtroopers.
3 positive12 negative2 mixed21 neutralfrom 38 commenters
Where to watch
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38 comments on Hacker News
I liked it better than the force awakens but I think we could both agree they’re all safely in the “not worth watching” bucket so the order we stack them in there doesn’t matter. (9 definitely is on the bottom though)
I don't disagree that there is a divide between people who prioritize mechanics and those who prioritize emotions, but I think it's overstated. I think if you're thinking about mechanics, it's because the emotions failed you on some level. For example, I thoroughly enjoyed the JJ Abrams Star Trek, even if I don't think it's a great movie, because it's basically dramatically functional. Halfway through Into Darkness I was squirming in my seat thinking about the plot holes, because the movie doesn't work on any level.
With the Last Jedi, I honestly don't think the central problem is that the creators were trying to appeal to everybody at once. I think that better describes the Force Awakens, which miraculously succeeds at doing so at the cost of being kind of forgettable (see my point about Star Trek 2009 above). I think the issue with the Last Jedi is that it makes a very specific set of choices that don't please everybody.
The thing is, in some ways I'm the kind of old fan you're talking about, though I may be younger than you. I pored over books of EU spaceship schematics, read the Star Wars Legacy comics, played the video games, etc. Maybe my experience was different than yours because I watched the prequels at a similar age to the originals, because they were coming out in theaters when I was a kid.
I am not a casual fan, but I'm also not a superfan. I think it's easy to dismiss people who liked The Last Jedi as casual, but Star Wars is such a dominant cultural phenomenon that there is a massive spectrum of how much people care about it and what it means to them.
This has all been kind of a scattered argument. I'm not sure what my conclusion is. Maybe that the real issue with The Last Jedi for many people isn't that it ignores the lore. The prequel trilogy already directly contradicts loads of aspects of the original trilogy that EU creators and fans had to no-prize away. I think it's more to do with how The Last Jedi conceives of Star Wars as a story, and what it considers important and what it does not.
>Arguably, the original trilogy was simply dungeons and dragons in space. Wizards, rogues, and knights in space.
It was basically Flash Gordon plus WW2 movies plus samurai movies plus fairy tales and Arthurian fantasy in space.
I think one of the reasons why The Force Awakens is not good is that it tries to copy previous Star Wars movies, but Star Wars has always been best when it copies stuff from other genres and mixes them together into a new thing, not when it tries to copy from its own previous films.
>it's pretty much the only widely known sci-fi films from the last 70s early 80s
Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien, Blade Runner, and The Terminator are all widely known late 70s / early 80s sci-fi films.
Probably not as well known but still pretty widely known are Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Thing, and 2010: The Year We Make Contact.
> Here [2] is a table of best selling movies, inflation adjusted. No movie made in the past 25 years, including the endless men in spandex movies, is among them.
The Force Awakens (2015) is #11. Avatar (2009) is #15. Avengers Endgame (2019) is #16. And that’s just in the top 20. Not too bad for a list that covers a century of films, especially when you consider the limited entertainment options available in the first half of that century.
As much as I despised for example the first new Star Wars, The Force Awakens:
"The film grossed $2.07 billion worldwide, breaking various box office records and becoming the highest-grossing film in the United States and Canada, the highest-grossing film of 2015, and the third-highest-grossing film at the time of its release"
Well this is just straight up false. Moana was a massive success. Frozen is a monstrous success for them. Star Wars not being a success is objectively false. The Force Awakens is the second best selling Star Wars movie of all time.
Hahaha the only specific example you have is a single prop? Kathleen hasn’t even directed any Star Wars movies, she’s a producer. She was one of, what, 14 producers on Boba Fett? Whatever creative credit you’re giving her credit for, if it’s even true, was executed, directed, acted, filmed, and approved by many other people. This feels like some kind of bogus internet meme talking point. (Edit: aha! I see that it really is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Force_Awakens#Fan_backlash)
George Lucas did many orders of magnitude more damage with the Phantom Menace and stretched out and trashed Star Wars with the prequel trilogy 15 years before Kathleen was even hired.
Box office across all three of the sequel trilogy moves. The same is the case for the three movies in the original trilogy btw, so I guess we should conclude that "Return of the Jedi" was the only Star Wars was movie people actually liked, since The Force Awakens is one of the most successful movies of all time?
In reality, sequels tend to be less successful than the original, but can expect a certain audience. Since only very successful movies get sequels, sequels are still safer investments than original movies.
I agree the buck stops with Kennedy BUT the original story was that Michael Arndt (Toy Story 3) was hired to write a trilogy. He didn't write fast enough (for Iger?), and Abrams replaced him and his story. What we can deduce, is that ad hoc unconnected movies wasnt plan A.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/nov/09/star-wars-michael-arndt
There is also maybe more recycled Arndt ideas scattered through the trilogy than he gets credit for.
https://www.indiewire.com/news/general-news/michael-arndt-reveals-rejected-plots-from-star-wars-the-force-awakens-a-much-larger-role-for-redacted-95887/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95mL3us0HSQ
The begining of a Star Wars The Force Awakens review - it'a not done yet, but I believe it lasts about 12-13h at this time.
He also has a response to a hbomberguy video (that's also an analysis of Dark Souls 2) that lasts something like 10h, and multiple 3+ hours reviews of games and movies.
Pretty crazy that it's entirely scripted and is carefully edited - for 10+ hours!
And I'd argue he has solid analysis in general!
> My personal impression from watching The Force Awakens was the opposite
Totally fair, it really is a remake of A New Hope. I think the same could be said of The Phantom Menace, for better and worse, but there is precedent in how to start a trilogy ;)
Episodes 8 and 9 do a lot more to stuff new ideas. Episode 8 still felt obliged to repeat the major plot points of 5 and 6 (I'll ding it for that), but once those were out of the way, the plot could really do its own thing.
> But sure, let's skip all that and fast-forward to a point where the good guys somehow ended up again as the scrappy underdogs, fighting against an overwhelming enemy. Nevermind even explaining what went wrong.
It's not the reading I came away with. The good guys won, set up the New Republic, became a bit too complacent. Despite Leia and others warning about the First Order faction springing up out of the ashes of the Empire, they weren't taken seriously. These are the resistance the films focus on.
The First Order showed that it was serious business by blowing up Coruscant, capital of the New Republic (as well as the Old Republic and the Galactic Empire).
> The Star Wars sequel series (episodes 7, 8, 9) come to mind. I think the majority of complaints came about because they dared to do something new to Star Wars.
(Warning, Star Wars rant follows)
Interesting to hear this direction of criticism.
My personal impression from watching The Force Awakens was the opposite: It felt like the movies where at the same time obligated to continue the story of the original trilogy (due to them being sequels) but at the same time not allowed to introduce any substantial new ideas.
That led to a very strange kind of "rhyming" history which really strained my suspension of disbelief:
Even though the Empire had been defeated and the Death Star blown up (twice), 20 years later somehow nothing noteworthy has happened except that a new Empire has sprung up - which looks and behaves exactly like the old one, has its own copies of Darth Vader and Darth Sidious and somehow can't think of anything better than building a third Death Star - which is promptly blown up again!
Same on the side of the good guys as well: Last time we saw them they were celebrating victory with flying colours, having freed the galaxy from the grip of evil, ready to usher in an exciting era of a nascent new galactic republic.
But sure, let's skip all that and fast-forward to a point where the good guys somehow ended up again as the scrappy underdogs, fighting against an overwhelming enemy. Nevermind even explaining what went wrong.
If the heroes do everything right, archive full victory - and still end up in the exact same place as they had started, I can't help but feel dreadful.
I'm sure the restrictions here didn't really have to do with canon: They were sequels, so strictly speaking there was no canon to respect, and the Extended Universe canon that did exist actually was a lot more daring and interesting than what the movie attempted. So my guess here is that the restrictive approach came from the producers who didn't want to risk their investment by trying out anything new.
You have some minor errors:
* Mulholland Dr. comes up twice (and different files)
* Same for The Fellowship of the Ring (but the file seems the same)
* Again for Se7en
* In general, most of the movie with a ":" in their title are duplicated ("2001: A Space Odyssey", "Kill Bill: Vol.1", "Star Wars: The Force Awakens")
Also, kudos for having some screenplays I've never found around
I think the '90s had a bit more variety than the '10s and (for now) '20s. E.g. we seem to have lost good legal procedurals, thrillers, weird fiction, and "small scale" sci-fi.
Fo example, what are the'10s equivalents of "A Few Good Men", "Seven", "Dark City" and "The 13th Floor"?
There is _some_ stuff, but less than before, replaced by a massive amount of super hero movies or long-running franchises.
As a support clue, I invite you to consider the winners of the MTV Movie Awards, which are more "popular" than other Awards:
92 Terminator 2: Judgment Day 93 A Few Good Men 94 Menace II Society 95 Pulp Fiction 96 Seven 97 Scream 98 Titanic 99 There's Something About Mary 00 The Matrix (bonus: not 90s)
compare with the 10s
10 The Twilight Saga: New Moon 11 The Twilight Saga: Eclipse 12 The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 13 Marvel's The Avengers 14 The Hunger Games: Catching Fire 15 The Fault In Our Stars 16 Star Wars: The Force Awakens 17 Beauty and the Beast 18 Black Panther 19 Avengers: Endgame
I have the feeling most "risky" movies, for lack of a better word, have moved to streaming services.
The term is "soft reboot" [1].
It's a common tactic used very widely. See Jurassic World (Jurassic Park), Star Wars: The Force Awakens (SW: A New Hope), X-Men First Class (X-Men 1/2/3), the new Jumanji films etc etc.
[1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SoftReboot
Ah well I'm safe then because I thought Force Awakens was pretty shit and never even saw the following two movies in the ST
> Comment was removed (why?), this loads it eventually:
> https://snew.notabug.io/r/worldnews/comments/h7ghoc/zoom_say...
This is what was posted: (some hyperlinks missing)
Fuck reddit and it's censoring.
Business Hall of Bootlickers:
Reddit: took $150M from Tencent. Removed threads like this
Activision Blizzard: banned player for supporting Hong Kong democracy protest. Confiscated all his winnings. Fired his interviewers
Apple: censors Taiwan flag emoji in iOS in Hong Kong
Apple (partial entry): censored Hong Kong protest map from App Store. Relented after backlash, now letting app into App Store.
Vans: censors pro-HK democracy design in its shoe design competition
NBA (partial entry): rebuked Rockets manager for his pro-HK tweet, saying NBA was "extremely disappointed with Morey's inappropriate comment." Backpedalled after backlash, now saying they support Morey's freedom of speech.
Disney / ESPN: forbids mention of Chinese politics when discussing Rockets manager's pro-HK tweet. ESPN hosts castigated Morey & speculated about his sincerity, but they will not talk about what caused the tweet: China's encroachment on HK
Viacom / Paramount: censors Taiwan flag from the jacket worn by Tom Cruise in the new "Top Gun" movie
Disney / Marvel: censored Tibetan monk from "Doctor Strange" and turned him into a white woman. Movie screenwriter: "if you acknowledge that Tibet is a place and that he’s Tibetan, you risk alienating one billion people who think that that’s bullshit".
ASICS, Calvin Klein, Coach, Fresh, Givenchy, Pocari Sweat, Valentino, Versace, Swarovski: details here
Marriott: apologized to China & changed "Taiwan" to "Taiwan, China" after China threw a hissy fit
Nike: removed all Houston Rockets products from their China webstore
Activision Blizzard: cut livestream when American University team held up pro-HK sign.
Apple: handed over iCloud data & encryption keys to China
Riot Games: censors the words "Hong Kong", forcing casters to refer to team "Hong Kong Attitude" as "HKA".
Cathay Pacific: fired employees for FB posts supporting HK protests.
Apple: minimized the seriousness of iOS exploits that enabled China to track Uyghurs, when 1M+ of them are rounded up by China in concentration camps
Google: censored pro-HK game "The Revolution of Our Times" from Google Play because it was about a "sensitive event".
Gap: apologized to China for selling T-shirts IN CANADA that didn't include Taiwan as part of China
Tiffany: removed tweet showing model covering 1 eye after China accused it of supporting HK
Marriott: fired employee who liked tweet from Tibetan group
Mercedes: apologized for quoting Dalai Lama on Instagram
American, Delta, United: deleted mention of Taiwan as a country from websites
Audi: apologized for using "incorrect map" of China that left off Taiwan
Muji: destroyed store catalogs that contain "incorrect" map of China
Zara: apologized for listing Taiwan as country
Medtronic: apologized for publishing "illegal content" that listed "Republic of China (Taiwan)" as country
Ray-Ban: changed "Taiwan" & "Hongkong" to "China Taiwan" & "China Hongkong"
Qantas, Air France, Air Canada, British Airways, Malaysia Airlines, Japan Airlines, ANA: changed "Taiwan" to "Taiwan China" on websites
TikTok: censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, Falun Gong
Sheraton: banned Taiwan National Day event. China called event "illegal & a crime against international law"
Disney: shrank/removed non-white characters from Chinese poster of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”
Philadelphia Sixers: ejected fans for supporting HK
Princeton: doesn't talk about the 3 Ts: Tibet, Tiananmen, Taiwan
Leica: released ad on Tiananmen protest. Apologized & distanced itself from ad
Rockhampton, Queensland: censored Taiwan flag in student art project
Cisco: helped build the Great Firewall including module to persecute Falun Gong
MGM: changed Red Dawn's villain from China to N Korea to placate China
Global Blue: fired staff for calling Taiwan a country
L'Oréal / Lancôme: canceled concert of HK artist Denise Ho for her pro-democracy activism
After decades of opening up Western market to China while turning a blind eye to rampant Chinese IP thefts, forced tech transfers, & protectionism, we are looking at widespread control of Western firms by China. Firms that are not under outright Chinese control still kowtow to China out of fear of China's retaliation.
REVERSE ENTRIES:
Matt Stone & Trey Parker: South Park "Band in China"
Red Bull: released video supporting protests for freedom & liberty
Ubisoft: listened to fans, said no to China after initially saying they would tone down game content to be China-compliant.
Prague: cancel partnership with Beijing over 1-China principle
Immutable: offer to repay banned gamer's winnings that was confiscated by Blizzard, got cyber attacked as a result
I would actually say that the latest one is better than The Force Awakens, and MUCH better than Last Jedi. Then again, I'm in my early 20s so I can't really compare it to the original movies.
> Avengers: Endgame brought in $2.7 billion and is the highest grossing film of all time. Only 5 films ever have broken $2 billion.
> Phantom of the Opera the musical has made $6 billion, blowing Avengers out of the water. Wicked the musical has grossed $3 billion, more than any movie ever made. Same for Mamma Mia!.
> In the UK, more people watched The X Factor than Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The book Diary of a Wimpy Kid sold over a million copies in its latest installment.
> Yet none of those things enter conversations about cultural affinity in the same way movies do.
The first metric you mention is not the right one for discussing cultural impact. You'd want to compare number of tickets sold for Phantom of the Opera to number of tickets sold for Avengers: Endgame.
Weirdly, you go on to make the correct comparison for The X Factor.
I'm not convinced that popular video games haven't made their way into the conversations about cultural significance.
What's more movies get privileged in a weird way over other things. Avengers: Endgame brought in $2.7 billion and is the highest grossing film of all time. Only 5 films ever have broken $2 billion.
Phantom of the Opera the musical has made $6 billion, blowing Avengers out of the water. Wicked the musical has grossed $3 billion, more than any movie ever made. Same for Mamma Mia!.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) made $600 million in the first 72-hours, far more than any movie ever. League of Legends makes $1.4 billion a year, again more than any movie ever made. Fortnite makes $2.4 billion.
In the UK, more people watched The X Factor than Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The book Diary of a Wimpy Kid sold over a million copies in its latest installment.
Yet none of those things enter conversations about cultural affinity in the same way movies do.
I agree with you on the importance of diversity and the quality of Netflix programming, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say that the general public has no interest in comic book movies or Star Wars. The Force Awakens is the third best-selling movie of all time, and Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe occupies about half of the top ten best selling movies.
There is nothing wrong with a space cowboy western, and in fact that's one of the reason people love the original trilogy: plenty of original (for the time) action, good guys on one side and BIG BAD guys on the other, so it is easy to takes sides, add some cheap mysticism (the "force" stuff) and the redemption of the baddest of the bad guys.
Not the most original of the plots [1], but good enough and simple enough that most people can enjoy it. That's not the issue with the current state of Star Wars in my opinion. Also for most people Star Wars is the movies so the issue about what is canon and whats is not is moot [2]: for them it is canon if it appears in one of the trilogies.
I have three other different issues with the current trilogy (and in general Disney's approach to Star Wars).
The first is that the current trilogy is just more of the same. The Force Awakens to me looks more like a reboot of the original movie than a sequel. The Last Jedi is a bit better but only because it looks a reboot of the whole original trilogy: I think that a better name would have been "The Empire strikes the return of the last jedi", and that would even describe the most relevant parts of the movie perfectly. In a way the prequel trilogy is better: while it is not up to par with the original trilogy, I like the contrast between a world where Jedis are available by the dozen (for example see when the jedis come to save the main characters in the arena) versus a world where there are two "bad" force users (Darth Vader and the Emperor) and two "good" force users (Luke and, for a while, Ben Kenobi).
The second issue is more general, and it is related to the fact that regardless of the quality of the content, the more movies you make about a topic or a "universe" the less value the single movie has. Even worse, after a given threshold I won't even watch any movie about the genre because I fear that if I don't see all of them I will miss something. I feel that way about the gazillion of Marvel/DC Comics movies, I feel the same about Star Trek (I only know about the original serie, but I don't have time to see _all_ the episode that I missed) and I fear one day I will feel the same about Star Wars.
[1] Also it seems Star Wars got many idea from other movies. My favorite is the one about getting inspiration for R2D2 and C3PO from the main characters of Kurosawa's "the hidden fortress", though after seeing the movies I would say the resemblance is only in "the character of the characters"
[2] I have to admit that I played to some of the games, and I think that KOTOR has a story that is much better that Star Wars original story. THAT is something I would love to see a movie about.
Be careful, The Last Jedi is definitely part of the "culture wars" effect somebody mentioned elsewhere.
I don't buy it. The Force Awakens is at 88% and culture warriors fought over that one, too. Both films have severe problems from a storytelling perspective, but the problems with The Last Jedi are much deeper, are of the sort more likely to turn off fans of the franchise as well as fans of The Force Awakens. There are plenty of culture-war-neutral analyses of The Last Jedi that absolutely eviscerate the film. For just one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw7pcCj0ORk
While I can't speak to the 49% rating, where I'm seeing the major divide is between Star Wars fans who care about world building, character development, and a coherent story (historically important aspects of Star Wars); and fans who are content just to enjoy the emotional ride from one scene to the next while enjoying the nostalgia.
As from the culture wars perspective, it seems hard to deny that The Last Jedi takes an unnecessarily overt stance on the culture war, daring that sort of criticism. TLJ includes: a postmodern deconstruction of Luke Skywalker and the Jedi mythos, a purple-haired female admiral dominating the only talented white male on their side for displays of what they probably imagine to be toxic masculinity, and all the bad guys are white males with overt Nazi references. I mean, seriously, why can't they just make it Star Wars?
Take another Disney movie as a contrast: Moana. Moana is a hero's journey, just like the original Star Wars. Moana is about a girl character, her mentor is her grandmother, the story is set in the South Pacific and features non-European cultures and sources their mythology for the story. The twist at the end might be considered feminist. But nobody but serious cranks are complaining about it, because none of it gets in the way of the story and for the most part actually enhances it. Moana isn't made some kind of wunderkind. There's no artificially forced interaction between an SJW stand-in and a white male stand-in. There's no postmodern deconstruction of the myths or themes. Disney is just doing their usual thing of mining ancient myths and fairy tales and adapting them for entertaining mass consumption by modern audiences.
I find it weird how producers still insist on shoe-horning CGI humans into movies even when the technology clearly isn't there yet.
In Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Snoke is entirely CGI for no discernible purpose, and it's uncanny valley hell every second he's on screen. It's all in the animation, of course; the rendering itself is great, but there's something really off about his movements and facial expressions. What's odd is that they could easily have produced this character using a real actor in prosthetics, with some subtle CGI augmentations.
Tarkin in Star Wars: The Force Awakens is even worse, like something out of a video-game cutscene. I don't understand why they couldn't just have used an actor.
Gollum was definitely a benchmark, maybe even still. Then there's Avatar and Cesar from the Apes movies. But we've yet to get close with actual humans. What started with Final Fantasy we still have that "uncanny valley" in things like Tron and Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Side note: I can't find an article but I believe Gollum was one of the first times deaf movie-goers could actually read a digital actor's lips.
Yes you do.
According to wired, [0] Disney paid Lucas Arts $4.5B, which half was cash.
In 2016, [1] The Force Awakens made $1.54B globally. Maybe it's more now.
Lets say that the last Jedi manages the same success? Well, they made their money back and the new rumored trilogy. That's profit.
When you can put Spiderman and the X-men in the same universe as the Avengers and do the next 20 or 30 super hero movies where one, two, three, four, etc characters from the universe makes an appearance?
I'm pretty sure fans of whatever franchise will line up to throw money in seeing the movies.
This really sounds like a no brainer to me.
[0]: https://www.wired.com/2015/12/disney-star-wars-return-on-investment/
[1]: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/box-office-star-wars-force-852198
> Judge Breyer rejected that argument, saying that "by that logic, Star Wars: The Force Awakens would be a collective work because it arranged the most popular Star Wars heroes, settings, and one-liners into a new movie."
Entirely off-topic, but this line piqued my interest in the judge more than in the case and it seems like he's had a nice, interesting career: Watergate, Volkswagen emissions, fighting the DOJ on marijuana busts.
I assumed characters, based on this...
>In court, mobile developer uCool tried to argue that Dota All-stars is a collective work, because it "took the most popular Dota heroes and arranged them into a new game." Judge Breyer rejected that argument, saying that "by that logic, Star Wars: The Force Awakens would be a collective work because it arranged the most popular Star Wars heroes, settings, and one-liners into a new movie."
Either way, it'll be interesting to see how this shakes down. Dota's history and eventual evolution from wc3 mod into massive commercial properties dota2 & hots is a pretty amazing journey.
You're not the only one who will not be seeing this new film. I learned this after Star Wars: The Force Awakens. As someone who has absorbed much of the Extended Universe eratta, it physically hurt to watch that movie. The story overrode much of what Disney relegated to "Star Wars Legends" - this is an experience not worth re-living with GITS.
I understand the gigantic task of moderating boards on the scale that IMDB's probably were, but social network accounts are definitely no substitute as history on these is not tuned for searching. They're flat streams of haphazard comments to whatever is posted on these accounts.
I just now chose to search IMDB's Facebook page for "Star Wars The Force Awakens" for a recent huge movie, using IMDB's supposed "replacement" to these forums. It ought to get no better than this. Top three results:
1. Which film do you think will be the next $2 billion dollar movie?
2. John Boyega to star in Pacific Rim 2
3. Daisy Ridley to star in novel adaption Chaos Walking
None of these are even about the movie I searched, much less a focused discussion! It's completely useless. But that's not because Facebook's search engine is bad. It's searching what has been posted. No, it's because Facebook is not a search engine for catalogued knowledge to begin with. Why? Because Facebook doesn't even contain organized information. It's the wrong tool for this job. It's like going to a pub to extract information rather than going to a library.
This is in extent a problem I've felt has grown worse lately. The big social networks are eating up the web which is not only a loss due to consolidation and reliance on what the giants decide to do (a ton of eggs in very few baskets), but because social networks are tuned to be live or at best "the fresh of today". That works when chatting daily with friends, but not to look up thoughts and opinions on a movie from 1995, or anything else for that matter.
There is also a conceptual difference here, even if social networks did catalogue information to be browsable. They usually work as advertisement platforms and people write reactionary comments, while on a message board people go there in order to indulge themselves in a discussion or get questions answered = much higher discussion quality. Even if the IMDB boards weren't exactly always top quality, they were often much better than the swamps of Facebook.
That's reasonable, but again this is the #2 grossing film for the year in the US. #1, #4, #5, #7 where PG kids movies. #3, #8, #9, and #10 where comic book movies in a long string of comic book movies.
So, yes revenue was down, but the movies where also very derivative. The top grossing films adjusted for inflation are Gone with the Wind, Avatar, the first Star Wars, Titanic, The Sound of Music, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, The Ten Commandments, Doctor Zhivago, Jaws, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
The Force Awakens might make #10 on that list while being the only franchise movie to do so. But, no movie from 2016 is even close.
I saw that Star Wars: The Force Awakens was on cable TV the other day while flipping through the guide. I almost clicked on it, but then I saw the run time - 3h40m. It is a 2h15m movie. There is no way I'm sitting through that many commercials.
> One of the most common refrains among ex-Disney staffers was that Disney had a strong aversion to risk.
Now why does that not surprise me. Disney stopped making art somewhere in the 1940's (fantasia) and started shipping product. I didn't share people's relief that the force awakens at least didn't suck like the prequels. The writing was so derivative as to almost make it a remake. Instead of Jar Jar Binks, the comic relief was Emo-Vader, but the comic relief shouldn't be the best part of the movie, and I'm not even sure if he was meant to be funny.
I come from the film and TV world. Pretty much the same way of thinking applies to projects in that space -- with a key difference being that the projects there are usually zero-sum. Only one TV network can win the bid on a hot property. So you end up with insane bidding wars on pitches, scripts, and projects that get hot.
Film is sometimes slightly different, in that two or more studios can co-finance a film and share in distribution profits (though this occurs through convoluted means, and for all intents and purposes, there is usually a clear winner among the herd).
Ultimately, however, the same power law usually applies. One hit is often said to cover the cost of 10 or more failures, and then some. (Of course, the converse is sometimes true: one massive failure can tank a studio's year, and occasionally even a studio.)
I'll tell you this much: Disney doesn't give half a shit about any and all box office failures in fiscal 2015 when "The Force Awakens" made $920M+ at the domestic box office, to say nothing of its billion+ more overseas and untold billions in merch. And on any given year, if it had the choice, it would much rather have one hypothetical "Force Awakens" and a handful of flops than, say, a better average return per movie without an outsized monster hit.
They blocked Rey with a lighsaber for 1 month so as not to spoil the movie, is the story I've heard, and it seems reasonable. By the way BB8 is female.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/star-wars-the-force-awakens/bb-8-droid-girl-female/
Oh my god do I hate those. I was a week or two late on the Star Wars train recently, and had to basically stop visiting Facebook because of all the clickbait headlines that they stuff into newsfeeds.
<vague spoiler warning if anyone hasn't seen it yet>
...
...
"THIS CHARACTER WAS ORIGINALLY MARKED FOR DEATH IN STAR WARS THE FORCE AWAKENS!"
Ok, sure, you didn't give me a name, but going into the movie after reading that made it pretty fucking obvious.
I like the selection we have in Canada and I feel it is much better than it was when I first got an account somewhere around 3-4 years ago.
Also, to confirm what you said, we are supposed to get Star Wars: the force awakens first
https://www.yahoo.com/movies/s/netflix-stream-star-wars-force-awakens-only-canada-210123224.html
I saw somewhere that we would get it in about six months.
> Star Wars is for children and always have been. If a bunch of adults complain that the films don't speak to them, there is something very wrong with their state of maturity.
As if Disney executives were shocked to find a bunch of 30-40 year olds lining up for late showings of The Force Awakens on Thursday?
Star Wars may be made to appeal to children in addition to the adult audience, but it's pretty obviously not "for children" exclusively. That's especially true of the prequels and now the sequels, which are obviously made to cash in on the nostalgia of people who grew up with Star Wars in the 80s.
If a bunch of adults complain that the prequels don't speak to them, it's because they're fully aware that their childhood nostalgia is being exploited for cash, and the exploiters couldn't even be bothered to do a good job of it.