LotR??? Middle-Earth is close to Tatooine?
Do you truly believe that how people vote affects their Force alignment (if I may call it that way, as an old D&D fan)?

Oops! i think i was meaning LotJ? But i had been looking at the Lord of the Rings Mod for Minecraft recently, so stuff happens ;)

And yes how you vote does indeed affect your Force alignment (i have no issue with that phrase, also as an old rpg fan). In fact everything you do and think affects your life's Force alignment, as each action has a re-action out in the world which can certainly affect other peoples lives.

As Yoda said, "For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere.”

This 'connection' of everything is very interesting as a philosophy, as it also has elements in the sciences as well (all the way back to the Big Bang etc), and i came across it during my martial arts training as a child, this eastern philosophy that i was lucky to be made aware off alongside the physical training of the arts.

Star Wars (Original Trilogy) does a fantastic effort of putting that framework into a sci-fi pop-corn movie about space wizards ;)

For me it was what made The Empire Strikes Back so good, less the big reveal (of Darth as Luke's father, surprising and interesting as that was), or the so called 'darker' story plot (of Rebel failure); those training scenes with Luke and Yoda were just simply magical stuff caught on film, and we are very lucky to have them imho.

But yes all our actions and decisions do indeed not only effect our own personal Force alignment in life, but they have obvious repercussions in the world around us, between you and that tree you cut down (or allow to be cut down) to how you deal with the people you meet. It all matters, it all counts. A Jedi attuned to the Force takes all this into account with their actions.

This is a large part of why the prequels and Disney Star Wars feels so hollow and empty to me, they lost the connection to the Force they so strongly and perfectly depicted in the Original Trilogy. It becomes a simple gimmick, a means to enact parlor tricks and battle scenes, and not much more.

Except he was praising the prequel trilogy as having better story outline than the original trilogy, so I don't think that applies. And all this completely separate from the fact that I don't see how conforming to a template (the hero's journey OR a Shakespearean tragedy) makes a person good at story outlines.

Also, completely personal, and I'm very certainly going to blow it out of proportion to its importance, but it weirds me out to see people using the subtitle abbreviations to refer to the Star Wars movies (even when they don't end up mixing them up with other fantasy stories :D). Every movie in the series doesn't have a standard subtitle abbreviation, and 2 titles have the same subtitle abbreviation, so I have to do a double pass every time I see one of those.

Nobody calls the first prequel PM. It's usually called "ep1" when in a discussion obviously about Star Wars
I almost always forget the title of the 2nd prequel, and nobody shortens it to AotC. That sounds like the shortened form of that American politician republicans have nightmares about. I'd say "ep2" is more common as well.
People may have initially referred to the 3rd prequel as "RotS", but they really shouldn't now, because it has the same abbreviation as the latest movie. "ep3" seems more common regardless, or at least on equal footing with "RotS" (before the latest movie).

The original trilogy seem to be more referred to using roman numerals, (with the first sometimes just being called Star Wars). The only exception, I think is RotJ, which again, I feel shouldn't be used too much now, considering the newer movies with the so similar titles (and "Empire", I guess too, but that's perhaps a bit long for an abbreviation).

The newest trilogy is fresh in the pop culture consciousness, and I don't think a popular shorthand has been fully developed yet, but I hope it sticks to the numbers, especially because I don't automatically remember every title immediately.

Ahem...so yeah, silly rant over, and unreasonable expectation for everyone to use the numbers to refer to the movies is now active!

^^Thanks, Pajeet, but no thanks! Not even for free!

One consequence of referring to episodes by number:

I happen to like the forest battle scenes in episodes 6 and 7. From reading this, at first glance one would think those two movies were released around the same time, but they were actually released 32 years apart.

To put it another way, if copyright terms were reasonable (as opposed to being way too long as they are now), episode 6 would likely be public domain, and episode 7 definitely wouldn't be. (Episodes 1-3 were released just long enough ago, but not too long ago, for one to ask whether a reasonable copyright term would put them in the public domain or not.)

Cary Grant was right! This piece of fucking shit just cracked 1 billion at the box office. Goddammit!

One small step for Disney, but one giant step backwards for mankind.

Which wouldn't be a problem, really, if the loud complainers were just complaining for complaining's sake. But since this franchise isn't just scraping the bottom of the barrel but already digging tunnels underneath, the message couldn't be any more clear: No matter how dreadful the designed-by-committee garbage is that the studios pump out, the dumb swine will still eagerly circle the trough and gulp down that swill. Over and over and over.

The optimist in me had hoped that at some point, the majority of "fans" would realise that they're being had, that this stuff is not worth spending money on. That at some point these people would snap out of their battered spouse-like conditioning. I was wrong. And it makes me sad.

For a Star Wars film it limped passed 1 billion.

If you're following what's happening closely, this is considered a huge failure and heads are already rolling... and yes, Lucas is back behind-the-scenes.

Funny thing is I said they'd retcon this trilogy in 5 years or so... but they're already doing it!!! Funny stuff

What makes me sad is people who think they know what's best for other people, and who judge them for making their own decisions. Corporations push and advertise tons of stuff that fails, because people don't like it. Star Wars continues to succeed outside of literally one example (Solo) because people enjoy watching it, otherwise they wouldn't pay for more. The prequels were widely slammed for being terrible, yet each one was a box office hit. At some point you have to accept the majority disagree with you and that's okay.

Though I doubt you will.

Mental gymnastics, bro. Also kind of an ad humninjumninm. But let's take it from the top:

First of all, I don't even factor into the equation: I think these films suck, I'm not paying to see them. Case closed. Easy as pie. If someone wants to see them, expecting the best thing evar: fine. If someone thinks they're great: good for them.

But you already pointed out the problem I have, you just didn't connect the dots: "The prequels were widely slammed for being terrible, yet each one was a box office hit." In other words: people hate these films and they think they suck, yet they STILL spend money on the next one. This is what I mean when I say they act like battered spouses. Do they go in thinking "Well, the last one was the worst one yet, but I'm sure this next one will be way better!" I don't understand it. What is WRONG with these people?

First. Prequels had their problems, yes. But criticism about them wasn't near the same level than for Disney trilogy.

Second, Disney trilogy "success" is rather relative. They bought Lucas film for 4 billions. Add the trilogy budget and promotion costs, and the result is like they barely got their money back. Not to mention, that returns from films gradually diminish - so even Episode 9 grossed billion bucks, next installment will hardly do even that.

I don't think they hate them nearly as much as internet drama queening makes it seem like they do. That's the point. If they didn't enjoy them, they'd stop going, like they did with Terminator, Aliens, etc.


HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Anyway the 'real' new star wars is looking like being The Mandolorian [spoiers in the video link!]:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Efskcq_mqv4

Redletter Media on the nose as usual :)

According to Forbes...

"Rise of Skywalker owned the worst fourth-weekend drop of any Star Wars movie ever.."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/travisbean/2020/01/17/box-office-star-wars-rise-of-skywalker-loses-1200-theaters-continues-plummet/#2bd51fe51ce0

Many hear billions and they think billions means success, but in a series like Star Wars billions can easily mean failure. What we're seeing is an erroding of the Star Wars theater-going audience over the last 4 years do to poor movies and a lack of coherency. Does Star Wars still make money? Yes... but with each successive film it's making less-and-less... and Disney is not happy...

... having spent almost 5 billion on the Lucasfilm acquisition and having spent almost another 2 billion on related theme park properties, Disney has only recouped just over 1 billion on its initial invetsment. This is not the time they want to hear that TRoS doesn't have the legs of earlier Star Wars films (even less than TLJ!).

This is a collossal failure lead by Iger and Kennedy.

Iger brought Lucas back as an active consultant working alongside Favreau and Filoni while essentially "locking" Kennedy away in the Lucasfilm offices until her contract expires.