
The Growing Emptiness of the “Star Wars” Universe - bshepard
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-growing-emptiness-of-the-star-wars-universe
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bshepard
I shared this mostly because of the Gibson quote enclosed, and if you don't
want to read the article, here's the quote, which involves a coolhunter who
can viscerally sense cool and uncool evaluating Tommy Hillfinger:

"This stuff is simulacra of simulacra of simulacra. A diluted tincture of
Ralph Lauren, who had himself diluted the glory days of Brooks Brothers, who
themselves had stepped on the product of Jermyn Street and Savile Row . . . .
But Tommy surely is the null point, the black hole. There must be some Tommy
Hilfiger event horizon, beyond which it is impossible to be more derivative,
more removed from the source, more devoid of soul."

~~~
stochastic_monk
There’s a picture from Radiohead’s original OK Computer website which this
reminds me of.

“DENY OXYGEN

There is nothing I can say which will come as any sort of surprise to anyone.
There is no work I can produce which hasn’t been done before. There is no
music I can listen to which doesn’t remind me of something else. There is
nothing I can do that isn’t documented in weekly magazines. My life is
essentially a last-minute rush to reorder trivial, pointless, or stolen ideas
into a primitive semblance of originality. Most of my time is spent crying in
darkened rooms trying to remember who I was.”

The Gibson quote also reminds me of Synecdoche, New York, a stunningly
beautiful film I probably can’t fully recommend because it’s so brutally
depressing.

~~~
SiempreViernes
I think that partly this is simply an effect of accumulating experience as you
get older.

For example, these days it feels like I don't find as much good novel music as
I did before. But of course if I haven't heard _any_ music at all, everything
will be novel, and so looking where I have already looked plenty before will
not turn up as much novelty.

I mean, I can still find plenty of novel thing if I look outside of the top
lists of the UK and the US, or look longer back in time, so its not simply
that my tastes have narrowed but rather I just have a better overall
knowledge, and what I would have found novel before I now recognise as
inspired from something else.

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danso
> _“Solo” discovers that the young Han is pretty much identical to the older
> one, with the same skills, mannerisms, and values. It would’ve been
> interesting to learn that Han was once a sensitive boy with a musical gift_

A wacky, subversive twist like that would go a long way in getting me
interested in Disney’s direction, but I just don’t associate them with
anything particularly risky. Which is ironic because I thought the casting of
Adam Driver was brilliant — it’s almost possible to imagine him single
handedly saving the prequels if he were retroactively cast as Anakin.

He’s good enough that I’ll go watch Episode IX, but the ending of “Last Jedi”
left me incredibly underwhelmed. What storylines and character arcs are even
worth wrapping up? I guess I’m mildly interested in how they’ll even attempt
to make Rose and/or Finn relevant.

~~~
le-mark
In my opinion, the decades of novels in between star wars movies where much
better than the prequels and sequels we eventually got. At varying times,
different novels were canon then not canon. But in the end, Lucasfilm
jettisoned the lot. Maybe there were IP issues involved I don't know but the
Timothy Zahn novels were epic.

Unfortunately, Lucasfilm didn't embrace them and mine them the way Feige is
mining decades of Marvel comics for the MCU.

~~~
ceejayoz
> But in the end, Lucasfilm jettisoned the lot. Maybe there were IP issues
> involved I don't know but the Timothy Zahn novels were epic.

In fairness, Disney seems to have recognized that in re-canonizing characters
like Thrawn.

~~~
smacktoward
The expanded universe had a _lot_ of absolute junk in it. It's easier for them
to throw it all out and then selectively re-introduce the few bits that are
worth saving than it would have been to drum out the bad bits one at a time.

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bsenftner
That Emptiness has been apparent event since the 2nd film, and is simply
continued by Disney. Disney is milking a dead cow, to the delight of the Star
Wars fans who have been sucked into this drivel for nearly 40 years. It's a
fucking space cowboy western with Buck Rogers quality sets, acting, and
direction. Beyond the metaphors lost from the original film, Star Wars has
been decades of childish marketing and quality story line missed opportunity
disappointments.

~~~
whywhywhywhy
It's not just milking, it seems they have actual contempt for the existing fan
base to the franchise and trying to dismantle the foundation piece by piece in
the worst way possible while simultaneously trying to build their own thing on
top.

I'm not a Star Wars fan (Episode 1 killed it for me), but watching this from
the sideline has been nothing short of bizarre to me.

~~~
Retra
The existing fan base isn't the 6-10 years old toy-demanding target audience.
In 15 years, those people will be spending their money trying to participate
in the nostalgia being engineered today and the existing fan base will be
largely irrelevant.

~~~
baud147258
But then why are they making origin stories that would only interest existing
fans?

~~~
Jtsummers
Contemporary nerd culture. It's all about being in on things, so you have 20
year olds that act like old fans of ST:TOS when they were -30 years old when
it first aired, and was the last of the series that they ever watched (they
may not have even watched it). They know everything about it, titles, air
dates, actors who played bit parts and became famous later. Or people who
didn't give a shit about Spiderman in the 90s who're fully read up on his
wikia content now.

This leads to a faux or ironic nostalgia act by everyone involved: the "fans",
the actual fans, the creators, and the media around it all.

It's making things pretty dull because this spans all ages. Older folks may
have actually been fans from the start, but they still fall for teh nostalgia
trip of the new media and spend money on it. And the media companies make
things that are designed to appeal. To nod and wink at you for being so
clever, for knowing which episode or comic issue that quote came from. For
knowing that this guy was a villian in the comics, but here we'll give him to
you as a bit part. Wink wink.

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spodek
The irony of a New Yorker article on the blandness of an institution lacking
the punch of its early life is sadly obvious to long time New Yorker readers.

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krylon
When I watched the first of the new Star Wars movies, I felt pretty much the
same. It was not bad as such, but it felt so derivative. More so, I felt that
it was not derivative for a lack of imagination, but because the creators were
playing it safe, deliberately avoiding any deviation from a proven recipe.

And given that Walt Disney now owns the franchise, I have no expectation that
any future movies set in the Star Wars universe will be any different. Which
is a little sad, because the Star Wars universe is such a great backdrop to
tell all kinds of interesting stories.

~~~
amelius
It would be cool if movies could be forked :)

~~~
jejones3141
Perhaps one could do for Star Wars what The Orville has done for Star Trek.

~~~
ManFromUranus
Thats essentially what the Mass Effect franchise is. Bioware got sick of being
constrained by the Star Wars IP, costs, and continuity and simply created
their own "Star Wars" which is actually much better than Star Wars IMO, or it
used to be anyway.

~~~
stephengillie
Likewise, Babylon 5 was originally a Star Trek reboot. One of the writers
couldn't get his idea to take hold, so he went independent.

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bynkman
A bit click baity. Solo delivered what was promised. But really, I think his
big issue is really the big issue with Hollywood. But he doesn't really
address that. Most _new_ takes on regular tropes are being written for TV. Our
trope vocabulary is bigger now than years ago. (Maybe seeing Upgrade on
Sunday, will deliver. We'll see.) And really, we are in an era that has an
embarrassment of riches. Which is probably why I've become more picky with my
media intake.

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abalos
I didn't hate Solo, but it's really disappointing that Disney is throwing away
a whole bunch of ridiculously good IP.

One example is the Knights of the Eternal Empire trailer
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkgzXpKbVGE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkgzXpKbVGE)).
I want to see that story. I felt more in this 5 minute trailer than I felt all
throughout The Last Jedi. That can be said for pretty much all of the trailers
from The Old republic.

~~~
baud147258
I've like all the trailers for SWTOR (and enjoyed playing the game), but
trailers are different from movies, they are telling a short story without any
details, which, expanded on a full-length movie, would be on the same level as
the Disney movies.

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DanAndersen
Eli Schiff wrote a good review of TLJ a while back that similarly describes
the dead emptiness/meaninglessness of Star Wars nowadays:

>The sequels, and in particular, Rian Johnson's latest episode, have now fully
deconstructed the Star Wars universe, and shown the characters and their
motivations to be vacuous. The only character remaining who really grasped the
depravity of the situation is Kylo Ren. Now that there is no hope for heroes
(even the Resistance doesn't believe in those anymore—after all, heroism
reinforces a hierarchy that must die), we await the climactic explosion of an
end to this universe that it deserves.

>More likely though, given that we're dealing with Disney, we probably won't
get anything of the sort. And for that reason I now realize why fans of all
stripes didn't like The Last Jedi. What they saw in the mirror was so
horrifically disfigured and alienating that it couldn't be confronted. For
though history is far from over, with everyone either too smart to continue
living, or too stupid to die, it may be there's no one left with the will to
make history anew.

[http://www.elischiff.com/blog/2017/12/27/star-wars-death-
dri...](http://www.elischiff.com/blog/2017/12/27/star-wars-death-drive)

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viraptor
I find it weird that they only present an old person's view. I understand the
demographic of the newyorker, but this review may only make sense if you saw
the movies in the order they came out in. But there's a huge number of both
kids and adults for whom this is their first (or close to) star wars
experience. I can't unsee the previous movies to get it that way, but many
people haven't seen Chewie and Han yet, they don't know about the card game,
they don't know why Han shooting first is significant in any way, and who will
think it's obvious why Han is bragging about the distance not speed. Let's not
forget to try to understand what will they see, while we complain about some
issue with prequels.

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5DFractalTetris
Reminding me that a cornerstone of my childhood was a series of cinematic
figurine advertisements cribbed from one of Kurosawa's weaker pictures doesn't
heal the wounds any faster.

~~~
5DFractalTetris
...but also, "Thx 1138" is basically perfect cinema and my life was better for
it. Thank you, Mr. Lucas.

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Matticus_Rex
For a contrarian view...

I love all of the new Star Wars movies. And most of the new books. All of the
new comics. Rebels was fantastic. I will buy and consume every bit of it, and
I will genuinely enjoy it.

~~~
Clubber
I enjoy them too. I remember when the prequels were announced sometime around
1998 or 1999. I literally cheered on my couch. Some are better than others of
course, but they are still very entertaining.

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empath75
I’ve enjoyed the stand alone movies quite a bit more.

The new trilogy suffers from having so many protagonists that none of them
seem worth caring about. It seems they have HBO-envy and wanted to ape the
structure of a long form multi-POV serial and jam it into a 2 hour movie and
it just doesn’t work.

~~~
Cthulhu_
I'd argue it's more Marvel-envy (movies, not epic TV shows), and since Disney
owns both, it's more of a "hey this worked, let's try it with another
franchise". I'm no expert, but I feel the Marvel universe is better at it than
Star Wars.

~~~
baud147258
> the Marvel universe is better at it than Star Wars

I think that's coming from an existing story structure (Comics) which work
very well for multiple PoV serials and big cross-over finales. In addition to
that, with the comics, there are a lot of storylines that can be used as
inspiration

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xkcd-sucks
Star Wars has always been an aesthetic more than anything else

~~~
Zhyl
I feel the same way about the Matrix. Even the first film sacrifices a lot in
order to be more cinematic.

I like both aesthetics, admittedly.

~~~
Apocryphon
Sacrifices what- the parallel computation reason for the Matrix in favor for
the simple "humans as batteries" explanation to simplify it to audiences?

I never had a huge problem with that, but that's the one complaint I see
thrown around a lot with the first movie.

~~~
Zhyl
That _is_ a complaint I have with the first movie, but my main beefs are with
movies 2 and 3 making almost no sense whilst having bigger and more expensive
set pieces. The first movie's main crime is that it promised so much but never
really explored any of the themes, characters or locations that they
established.

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paulie_a
I only saw star wars as an adult and even the original ones seemed overhyped
and unimpressive. Bad acting, bad storyline. It's a "meh" series. I haven't
even bothered to see the new Disney ones.

~~~
amp108
I don't know what makes the storyline "bad", necessarily, but I _really_ don't
understand the acting charge, especially against the original 1977 release.

Alec Guinness, James Earl Jones, Peter Cushing, Harrison Ford--none of these
are slackers. Anthony Daniels might not have much range, but he fit perfectly
in the scope required of him. Mark Hamill was convincing as Luke.

The only weak link to me, bless her soul, might have been Carrie Fisher. And
maybe a few bit-players. But the bulk of the show was carried by capable, if
not excellent, actors.

~~~
paulie_a
This is just my opinion. All of those actors are great! They were just not
very good in star wars

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alistproducer2
SW always felt empty to me. Where star trek always dealt with deep
philosophical questions of humanism, consciousness, sentience, and took
scientific plausibility seriously SW dealt with very shallow concepts and
eschewed scientific realism in favor of hyper space or whatever. Just not
nearly as interesting.

~~~
ceejayoz
> took scientific plausibility seriously

Didn't Star Trek essentially pioneer the concept of technobabble?

> eschewed scientific realism in favor of hyper space or whatever

Warp travel? Subspace? Q? Accelerated human evolution into lizard people?

~~~
AlexandrB
> Warp travel? Subspace? Q? Accelerated human evolution into lizard people?

There's a lot of bad Trek out there. But also a lot of good Trek. The best of
it is like a slice of speculative fiction - like a mini District 9,
Interstellar, Her, or Arrival. The worst of it is pure melodrama with
technobabble layered on top.

I think what the parent is getting at is that Star Wars never, ever goes the
speculative fiction route. It's all "character drama in space".

~~~
hobochili
Fair to say that Star Wars is more psychological than philosophical?

~~~
stephengillie
To me, it's more political than mechanical.

Star Wars has more political and interpersonal conflicts lead to shifts of
power. Palpatine gained control of the Galactic Senate through political
maneuvering - letting the Trade Federation apply political pressure through
shipping fees, and then manipulating weak-minded senators while their
stronger-minded companions are fleeing the Trade Federation. Rarely are
technical details relevant to the plot - starship fuel or reactor operation
details are vague at best, an executive summary. They don't goto Watto for
engine parts, but a whole new engine, and Jedi aren't trained on starship
repairs as they have astromech droids.

Star Trek has more situations where mechanical failure or damage leads to
interpersonal conflicts and shifts of power. During the Klingon Civil War, you
get a pretty good idea of how Geordi keeps the Romulans away. Ship fuel was a
main plotline through the entire Voyager series. Everyone on every Starfleet
ship has taken a college class on how the warp core reactor works, and they
flaunt that knowledge regularly.

~~~
baud147258
> To me, it's more political than mechanical.

That's mostly the 1-3 trilogy. The original trilogy is mostly fantasy in
space/space opera

