One Is Greater Than Zero
Nov. 2nd, 2017 09:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmer"The Star Wars Prequel Appreciation Society" has been around for ten years; the person who's kept it running didn't have time to make a big deal of that, but someone did manage to throw in an off-topic comment mentioning the anniversary and didn't get in trouble. That the site may have stayed "necessary" for me is reinforced by a certain apprehension about bringing this up, but at least I can keep telling myself that if I'm "wrong" I'm not the only one in the world that way.
So far as the passage of ten years goes, I can be a little conscious now of having gone in a circle or two. I enjoyed the Clone Wars computer-animated series while it was airing, but haven't gone back to it very much since then; beyond "so much anime and so little time," there might be the unfortunate element of having seen it promoted a few too many times as somehow "necessary" for more benign interpretations of the live-action movies it was set in between. Too, I went from being faced with perhaps having to reinterpret a story I'd begun thinking of as a complete unit to coming very close to thinking of the story as remaining the exact complete unit as before... I know this begins to resemble "prequel denial," but perhaps "four to six" requires "one to three" where additional numbers may be less essential. It could be a bit like how I stopped reading the Star Wars novels and didn't bother to go back to them.
The "Prequel Appreciation Society" might not be the single source for opinions on Star Wars I'll chance looking at these days, but that has made me a little conscious that some people seem to acclaim the really new movies for being "competently made just like they used to be," but at least a few other people seem to have negative reactions founded in specific attractions towards "the original trio." Reflecting on a repeated insistence that not reuniting Leia, Luke, and Han for even one scene was a betrayal of expectations (and after the neo-Rebellion and the neo-Empire, the neo-X-wings versus the palette-swapped TIE fighters, and the neo-stormtroopers out the exhaust port, the omission really did seem to have something to do with not knowing what to do with Luke) while I was getting around to watching the old Star Wars movies this year led to a sudden realisation, though. I spotted only one scene in The Empire Strikes Back with the three main characters together, the one in Luke's medical room in the Rebel base (which might have flashed by some people getting worked up over Leia kissing Luke, even if you can interpret that as being directed at Han).
However, once I'd thought about that a bit I could get a bit more of the point that "even one scene is better than none." More than that, I remembered being pointed to moments throughout the movie with each character doing things for the other two, whether it was Han riding out to search for Luke or trying to get Leia to leave the wrecked command centre, Luke putting everything at stake to try and help his friends, or Leia first trying to avenge and then to rescue Han or turning around to rescue Luke. I can still think "anything can happen with fictional characters; the trick is to develop it," but that just reminds me of the suspicions I have about the second part of that.
So far as the passage of ten years goes, I can be a little conscious now of having gone in a circle or two. I enjoyed the Clone Wars computer-animated series while it was airing, but haven't gone back to it very much since then; beyond "so much anime and so little time," there might be the unfortunate element of having seen it promoted a few too many times as somehow "necessary" for more benign interpretations of the live-action movies it was set in between. Too, I went from being faced with perhaps having to reinterpret a story I'd begun thinking of as a complete unit to coming very close to thinking of the story as remaining the exact complete unit as before... I know this begins to resemble "prequel denial," but perhaps "four to six" requires "one to three" where additional numbers may be less essential. It could be a bit like how I stopped reading the Star Wars novels and didn't bother to go back to them.
The "Prequel Appreciation Society" might not be the single source for opinions on Star Wars I'll chance looking at these days, but that has made me a little conscious that some people seem to acclaim the really new movies for being "competently made just like they used to be," but at least a few other people seem to have negative reactions founded in specific attractions towards "the original trio." Reflecting on a repeated insistence that not reuniting Leia, Luke, and Han for even one scene was a betrayal of expectations (and after the neo-Rebellion and the neo-Empire, the neo-X-wings versus the palette-swapped TIE fighters, and the neo-stormtroopers out the exhaust port, the omission really did seem to have something to do with not knowing what to do with Luke) while I was getting around to watching the old Star Wars movies this year led to a sudden realisation, though. I spotted only one scene in The Empire Strikes Back with the three main characters together, the one in Luke's medical room in the Rebel base (which might have flashed by some people getting worked up over Leia kissing Luke, even if you can interpret that as being directed at Han).
However, once I'd thought about that a bit I could get a bit more of the point that "even one scene is better than none." More than that, I remembered being pointed to moments throughout the movie with each character doing things for the other two, whether it was Han riding out to search for Luke or trying to get Leia to leave the wrecked command centre, Luke putting everything at stake to try and help his friends, or Leia first trying to avenge and then to rescue Han or turning around to rescue Luke. I can still think "anything can happen with fictional characters; the trick is to develop it," but that just reminds me of the suspicions I have about the second part of that.