AFAIK Lucas had a very rudimentary naive vision of what the original film should be like, and the initial nerdish freak show version was totally rehashed in editing to create an actual story with characters, which the rest of the franchise is based on.

I blame Lucas for all the awkward dialogue and impractical creatures and creations in that whole strange universe that he gets credit for creating.

LOL -- even if I somewhat agree with @ant, too.

Lucas maybe doesn't get enough credit for being a genius, Tolkien-esque "world creator".

Sure seems like he was at his best when he took that creative genius and paired it up with other people (NOT yes-men) to cover screenwriting duties (anything beyond broad-strokes, particularly dialog), directing, and probably casting etc. also. Given that, I breathed a sigh of relief when he sold to Disney. Star Wars wasn't going anywhere but down with him at the helm, but I like what Disney has done with it.

Then again, what do I know? His franchise to do with as he pleased. Just so happened that *I'm* also pleased with the net result...

Depends how you define failure? If it makes a bunch of money but is shit, it's successful to the suits but a failure to the fans.

CoD games are a great example of this.

If it's critically hailed by fans but doesn't squirt out the bucks (Firefly/Serenity, Babylon 5 etc), it doesn't matter how well it's received by the fans because it may not ever continue as a franchise.

More to the point, if you subjectively enjoy a piece of shit, are you wrong? Because TLJ, imo, is a turd. You seemed to enjoy it. Who is right? Both? Neither? Does it matter?

In the end, what we see on screen is a factor of studios looking for stuff that will make a fortune, not what is going to make a great film in terms of artistic merit. If they cared about artistic merit, there are dozens of fantastic stories in the SW extended universe novels that could have been picked as starting points for 7/8/9. The stories of Grand Admiral Thrawn or Rogue Squadron for example.

A shit aggregated score will not prevent Ep 9 from coming out so why does it matter? Hopefully it might spur the writers on to actually putting together a story that isn't the equivalent of the OJ chase in space, but I'm not holding my breath.

"Mark Hamill on the latest Star Wars films."

He really isn't speaking specifically about the latest Star Wars films. This is one of many videos of interviews with Mark Hamill in which people try and take things out of context and make it sound like he is trashing the new films. He is not. This video is from 2016 and is posted by an account named "Jar Jar Abrams", if you were looking for any clue as to the intent of this person. I don't know when the interview was initially filmed, but it would be helpful to know when, relative to the release of The Force Awakens.

He is pointing out that Hollywood judges the success of movies only by the money they make, hence Transformers. He notes that companies, such as Disney, buying up other movie companies, should be cause for concern. How will Disney judge success of The Force Awakens? Probably on revenue, since TFA did about $2 billion. Does that make it a success or a good movie? That is actually the point he is making, that pure revenue doesn't judge success. I think his point is more that Star Wars makes a shit-ton of money, Transformers makes a shit-ton of money, but does that make Transformers a better/more successful franchise than Star Wars?

Rotten Tomatoes has most Transformers movies at sub-50%. Are they a failure? The last 2 Star Wars movies are sitting at 90+% on Rotten Tomatoes. Does that mean they are a success? I found TFA to be a fun, nostalgic Star Wars film, but it wasn't The Best Evar. I have seen TLJ twice in the last week. I think it is fantastic, almost as good as Empire, but it still has its problems.

The user review on Rotten Tomatoes for TLJ is 54%. Does this mean the movie is a failure? Or are user reviews just the internet rage machine, concentrated? I am done with aggregated/collected game and movie reviews on the internet. Too much hate, too much agenda-ranting. Nowadays, I have found some game and movie reviewers that seem to see games and movies like I do. I read their reviews and then judge for myself.

Be critical of the things you love.

*promote for those who are being ushered in to the Star Trek universe with discovery. It is an iconic franchise that helped shape society.

Your next Sci-Fi-Horror Franchise. Just saying.

I've said it before, i'll say it again - all women films are fine, all women remakes are fine, but for god's sake let it not be this tokenistic gesture of bullshit.

This wasn't done because it was a good idea. How do i know? Because a ghostbuster remake at this point wasn't a good idea. If you think otherwise name the 4-person cast, women and/or men, that would make this a good idea.

We're not ready for a ghostbusters remake, but i imagine a lot of shrewd businessmen in hollywood saw a gilt-edged opportunity in the booming equality scene and Ghostbusters scripts were being floated at the time. Not done for any good reason; done for money. And now this will be cited as to why female led films don't succeed.

People so easily forget about the aliens franchise. Potentially one of the biggest franchises. All of them have been female led (Noomi Rapace, Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder) in a genre that is barren of other successful examples, and it was originally written for a man.

So - when decent people see the right actress for the right role performing quality material, you get successful female led films. You don't say "let's remake something but they're all women lol." It's something that natural and happens when those at the top are blind to gender - that's what you need to sort out, but they throw a few breadcrumbs "here, make a boil-in-the-bag all woman film" and we look the other way.

I feel lost in a world of extremes, where equality is that we split up and write ALL WOMEN films and ALL MEN films and never the twain shall meet, and we argue over which are more successful. I guess it's like our evolution through racism all over again; we're using segregation to solve an equality problem? And some who claim to be egalitarians cheer it on!

I was about to argue that hypersleep would be neccessary even on short trips just to survive the two acceleration burns, but then I remembered that they were free-floating inside their tubes, because Cameron added "gravityEnabled = 0" to the settings of the Alien franchise.

I never get tired of this movie. Back in high school in the 70s my film class teacher let us watch this, it was unheard of. He said if he heard any sniggering during any of it he would shut it off right then so we kept quiet.

He pointed out some symbolism that I didn't get at first, about Callahan and Scorpio on the 50 yard line in the stadium. And the processing plant representing the justice system during the final chase, with Scorpio escaping. He also pointed out that even without a search warrant they would have charged Scorpio for shooting Chico and beating Callahan.

One thing I noticed, the violence in this 1971 movie was unheard of a year earlier. I can't think of any movie from 1969 or 1970 that had anything close to it.

The rest of the franchise got progressively worse for me, although Magnum Force made an effort. ("Me and Smith and Wesson", oh brother. He would have been shot 10 times over before getting to that line)

Could not agree more, for me it was one of the worst movies I watched in 2016. Need to keep reminding myself that for franchises with loyal fanbases, critic review (Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, Metacritic) are basically worthless.

Prometheus was almost great, but there were too many "that's fucking stupid" elements. The entire crew was shit, not a single one was likable. At least with the space truckers in Alien, they were all sorts of assholes, but they were likable assholes. In Prom, they were just unpleasant people, doing unpleasant things, while generally being bad people - I hate them all still.

One thing Prometheus had going for it was visuals - Ridley Scott knows how to film a good looking film, I don't really think anyone can argue that. I really hope the story won't get fucked over this time, and I hope it won't just be a retread either. The reason Aliens was so great, is that it did something new with the franchise; prometheus tried and failed to do that well.

Alien 3 was not actually so shit, I think. It made some damn near unforgivable choices in killing off Newt and Hicks off screen, but aside from that I actually liked it. Close to a retread of Alien, but still a twist on it.

A4 was just shit with some good bits in - the many twisted clones of ripley, the Auton, and the aliens in water was all fun things. The rest is garbage.

I'm cautiously optimistic about Covenant, more classic horror, I wager, but with Scott's signature visuals.. we'll see!

Nailed it.

This entire franchise has been awful from the start. It's like watching someone wearing a deceased relatives skin.... there's some superficial resemblance to your loved one, but the flesh is rotten, it looks horrific, there's no soul and it has all the wit and intelligence of a particularly stupid sack of hammers.

Fuck this, fuck Michael Bay and god help me, fuck you Anthony Hopkins for sullying your god name in association with this shit.

That's a fan theory that explains why James Bond isn't the same guy all the time (Connery, Brosnan, Moore etc.) and kept spying around from the late 60's until now. The idea is that 'James Bond' is a cover identity used by various Agents of MI-6. This would allow for a black Bond but it isn't canon at all. That's why the Craig Bonds rebooted the franchise to allow the reuse of characters (Blofeld) and storylines (Vesper Lind vs. Tracy Bond).
007 is James Bond. The Producers are very protective in regards to this. However, the other 00-agents are pretty much non-existant in the franchise. They showed up in 'From Russia With Love' in a short meeting scene (sans dialogue), 009 died in the first 5 minutes of Octopussy (sans dialogue). The notable exception is Alec Trevelyan played by Sean Bean (I think he was 006), the villian from 'GoldenEye'. You could ague that Javier Bradem's Silva from 'Skyfall' must've been a 00-Agent but it is AFAIK not confirmed. Oh, and another 00-Agent was mentioned in 'Spectre'.
The reason Bond was made a scott was because Fleming like Connery's portrayal so much even though he was against casting him in the beginning. Bond's heritage is a minor plot point (more of a trivia item actually) in 'OHMSS' and a major plot point in 'Skyfall' (the name of Bond's family home).
As I said, gender-swapping Bond is much easier.

I think this franchise seriously overestimates its own importance.

"The return of xander cage"?? Was there anyone on the planet waiting for that?

Page is playing Plant! Gilmour and Waters are back together! Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen are coming out of retirement! and... uh "Xander Cage" is back in that dumb movie??

still.... upvote, because Donnie Yen.