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ccr1633's Replies
I fit the age group you mention. I saw Ep. IV in its initial release at least a dozen times. Nearly every kid I knew had a birthday party centered on seeing Star Wars. What today's younger audiences cannot appreciate is how truly revolutionary Star Wars was. It had the magical special effects that you dreamed of films like Logan's Run having, and the comic book good-vs-evil story that you might have wished for 2001: A Space Odyssey when you were 7 years old. The revolution wrought by Star Wars was more significant than any other film I've seen while I've been alive. There was a buzz around The Matrix, Avatar, and a few other films, but those pale in comparison.
I think most of the films, beginning with the Lucas prequels, have completely sucked. The only exceptions are Ep.III, which I rate a passable B-, and Rogue One, which I thought was terrific, an A- or so. Rogue One appealed to me in part because of its gritty look, which harked back to the feel of Ep.IV as well as other sci-fi films of that era like Alien.
Forget all the PC nonsense. It's certainly there in Ep.VII-VIII, but that's not the real problem in my view. What cripples every Star Wars film since Ep.V, even ROTJ to some extent, is their absence of wit. The interplay between Han Solo and Luke/Leia is funny and unforced. C3PO's overly genteel quips and snobbery toward R2D2 were funny. Han kicking Chewbacca into the garbage chute was funny. The humor in the older films was simply superior, more subtle and better written by real talents like Lawrence Kasdan and the once-ambitious George Lucas. What we're supposed to laugh at now is the overacting hysteria of John Boyega, or a short little Asian girl who can surprisingly kick butt. It's lame. I blame studio hacks and marketing teams beginning with the insufferable Kathleen Kennedy. You feel the constant presence of an agenda that has nothing to do with good moviemaking. This trend isn't entirely the fault of younger generations of filmmakers. It really began in 1983 with ROTJ, so George Lucas shoulders much of the blame for the stupidity of big budget sci-fi films of today. I'm still amazed that Rogue One was greenlighted. It saddens me that it's not universally revered as the best Star Wars since The Empire Strikes Back. It means that we're less likely to see higher quality films like Rogue One.
Okay Mr. Compassion. Why then don't cockroach lives matter? Mosquitoes? Sure, you can make an argument that spiders are more beneficial to humans because they catch and kill many bugs we don't like, such as flies and mosquitoes. But surely there is some insect right on the borderline, a bug that we find both helpful and annoying/dangerous. Where then do you draw the compassion line and become outraged for this or that insect? If you see a family of brown recluses hanging around your baby's crib, are you really going to take the time to escort them all out of your home safely? You wouldn't consider proactive measures of pest control and spray the room, potentially killing spiders that don't really "deserve it"?
It wasn't based on physical attraction. Louis saw himself in Nina and admired her morally bankrupt pursuit to be the first to report and show footage of violent and shocking news. He admired her for this. She was the one person in his life similar to him, and it helped that she was a stepping stone toward his career pursuits. I got the impression that Louis was leveraging his videos so that they could be a professional power couple. He was much more interested in that than sex.