The Final Star Wars Trailer

[Yukaphile]

Really, with stuff around like Patreon, other crowd-funding means such as GoFundMe, YouTube, social media, and streaming platforms like Amazon Prime and Hulu, is Hollywood even needed anymore? They are obsolete, and it's the last desperate and dying breath to those who know it, but don't wanna admit it.

[Mecha82]

You really do believe your own BS rhetoric and fantasy that SW becoming public domain would magically make things better in your eyes do you. Reality is different than your delusions so why not focus on enjoying what you love instead of complaining about what you haven't even watched and read. But i guess that would require having sense and not being overly fanatical fanboy of something that at long run doesn't matter. Truth is you take SW far too seriously to point that it ruins your own life.

[Yukaphile]

It means individual artists and content creators could actually have the means to sustain themselves in producing art. Lucas himself had huge WTF moments. What is fundamentally the difference between those and individual artists versus what it is now, the elite holding it back? Just because a huge percentage would be shit doesn't mean all of it would be. And I guarantee you a lot of it would probably be better than anything they've done since a certain point. Maybe you're just creeped out by the idea of Japanese companies making anime Star Wars with cute, hyperactive girls and naked scenes? That's your right, but really, Star Wars at this point belongs to us, not those in charge. Seriously, knock off those personal attacks now, or I will report you. And ruining my life? LOL. I am about to launch my own series of original novels. I think I can get it done. "Ruin your life" implies you care, yet your clear sneering shows you don't, so it's just the same old rhetoric of "get a life" to hardcore nerds. And I've said over and over people who love the new stuff are not shitty fans. The people in charge, those with leadership positions, are held back, worse than Lucas was, and it's them I take issue with, not even them so much as my own anxieties with what they are doing. Thus, I am saying you are not a shitty fan for loving the new stuff. But YOU, meanwhile, are the one sneering at me and insisting I am ruining my life with this. Please. That's a whole layer of double standard right there.

[Yukaphile]

You're not a shitty fan for loving the new stuff. And I'm not a shitty fan for wanting it in the public domain, period.

[Yukaphile]

Is Chuck ruining his life with what he's done? He has a Patreon. I've had one for a while, mostly to support others, that is now void. But now I'm using it to organize my own series of original novels, so... you're just being the stereotypical "jock" (quotations because you ain't a jock, this is simply in terms of classical stereotypes) picking on a nerd. Again, you're not a shitty fan. I refuse to be treated as one, though.

[Yukaphile]

How I live my life is entirely MY concern. No one else's.

[Yukaphile]

Here's the thing. If it was in the public domain, they could still keep making their movies, but then they'd have to compete with other companies doing the same thing, which hey, wouldn't that be quality control? Really. It means they'd have to break boundaries, instead of getting caught in intellectual inbreeding. Imagine if, say, Paramount was adapting Legends material? Easy work, just do the older stuff. Or entirely new material. And so Lucasfilm/Disney would need to work hard to make sure they could compete.

[MissKittyFantastico]

This already happens with plenty of copyrighted works. Have you seen the Hellraiser franchise?

That was actually foremost in my mind - I just a couple of months ago finally got masochistic (ha) enough to watch Deader and Hellworld (which, damn, if the latter hadn't had Lance Henriksen showing up every now and then I would not have made it to the end). Not sure I can summon the courage to tackle Revelations.

I'm not suggesting IP ownership is some magic salve against producing crap just to cash in on the name - I've watched Transformers: Dark of the Moon - just that it's naive to think public domain, with the entertainment industry we have, would be any healthier for "the brand". At least Disney, for all its faults (and don't get me started on Disney abusing IP ownership), has a vested interest in maintaining a level of quality such that people can safely assume, year after year, a Star Wars film will be worth seeing because it's a Star Wars film (whether or not they succeed in that is another matter). Throw open the gates and there are plenty of two-bit studios perfectly happy to take people's money up front and not care one bit whether anyone ever wants to see another Star Wars film ninety minutes later when the credits roll. As Dany's ladies would say, it is known. Best case scenario once things calm down - like Sherlock Holmes and King Arthur, since you mention them - every few years somebody ventures a movie or a series, and maybe it's good, or maybe it's that thing with Jude Law. I don't know about you but I'm not that dispirited about the course of Star Wars right now.

I'm all for engineering some serious changes in how we work as a civilisation (I mean our current attitude worked out okay for some of the drell, but I'm not entirely sure the hanar are in the market for another bunch of compacts) but throwing Star Wars into the public domain ain't gonna be the spark that lights the way to the future, it's just going to frell Star Wars sideways.

(Off on a tangent though - funny thing about Hellraiser, I know it wasn't the case but it's really easy to imagine the original being an unrelated script that's just Frank and Julia and Kirsty and so on that the Cenobites were written into. That's not a criticism, it's a great film. But it got me wondering if maybe the 'jam Pinhead into some other story' method wasn't necessarily the worst idea, it just needed to be done well, in a way that respects the themes and meaning of the Cenobites, and with good existing stories that have parallels to those themes, rather than just using them as random demon figures who pop up to dole out gory punishment in shitty slasher scripts. I love Hellbound as a dark fantasy, but I don't know that I'd say expanding the lore of the Cenobites themselves was actually a good trajectory either.)

[Mecha82]

Is Chuck ruining his life with what he's done? He has a Patreon. I've had one for a while, mostly to support others, that is now void. But now I'm using it to organize my own series of original novels, so... you're just being the stereotypical "jock" (quotations because you ain't a jock, this is simply in terms of classical stereotypes) picking on a nerd. Again, you're not a shitty fan. I refuse to be treated as one, though.

Thing is Chuck is doing online reviews if not as his main job then as side job while you are just using time to complain about things on internet. He needs that Patreon to get paid from his reviews so that he can keep those going. After all he is doing lot of work when making those reviews. In other hand that attitude that you have enforces those stereotypes that you so hate and make rest of us also look bad.

I'm not suggesting IP ownership is some magic salve against producing crap just to cash in on the name - I've watched Transformers: Dark of the Moon - just that it's naive to think public domain, with the entertainment industry we have, would be any healthier for "the brand". At least Disney, for all its faults (and don't get me started on Disney abusing IP ownership), has a vested interest in maintaining a level of quality such that people can safely assume, year after year, a Star Wars film will be worth seeing because it's a Star Wars film (whether or not they succeed in that is another matter). Throw open the gates and there are plenty of two-bit studios perfectly happy to take people's money up front and not care one bit whether anyone ever wants to see another Star Wars film ninety minutes later when the credits roll.

Well said. I totally agree with this. While big corporation like Disney holding IP isn't perfect, public domain isn't solution either. It's also reason why I see Yuka's rhetoric about public domain some how being solution to everything to be naive and pure fantasy. At least I don't want to see flood of bad direct to DVD SW movies over well made big budget movies.

[Yukaphile]

Well, I've already set up my Patreon. The second tier is for fanfiction spoilers, so I dunno if it's legal, probably skirting a gray line, but the first is about a name-drop shout-out at the end of every story I finish (original story or fanfiction), and the third is about getting preview chapters to my original stories as I finish them, though with no spoilers. And no, I ain't overcharging them either. It's $1, $5, and then $10 for the three tiers. That's just a starter-up. Seriously, who the FUCK are you to judge me with that age-old put-down, "Get a life?" You're acting just like William Shatner did at his worst!

I really must take issue with this here. I think the technology has grown so much and that Star Wars creates such powerful feelings in hundreds of millions of people, that the claim "IP is holding back the shit" is a LOGICAL FALLACY. Do you see some of the videos on YouTube? Lightsaber battles, or hell, even ship engagements? It's probably the same for Star Trek. No oversexualization, no hyperactive screaming girls like in anime, no nudity, no creepy fetishes, no WTF moments like George had and Lucasfilm has had since. They're low-tier independent passion projects. It's more of the ways that Hollywood is more obsolete than ever. Now, imagine if copyright IP did not hold them back? I think it is safer to say that alongside the shit, given what feelings this story evokes in others, that there'd also be a high number of stories people would prefer over Disney's Star Wars. Or even the prequels. Taste is subjective. And again, that does not mean the big corps couldn't make them themselves! It just means they'd have to compete with other moviemakers, and I think even in a Communist system (not collectivist, mind you), that competition promotes innovation, so that would be a form of quality control. It's just being pulled tighter and tighter within an elitist tyrant's grip. George had echoes of that in the early 2000s and late 2000s, but now it's getting out of control.

Also, while I don't want it, I keep citing how Legends fans want adaptations. Winter is one such fan. And I think as badly as I'd dislike it, people like him deserve to get what they want. Clone Wars was not an adaptation. Rebels is not an adaptation. The new movies are not adaptations. Well, you know what? If it was in the public domain, then Winter here could probably get the Legends adaptations he wants on YouTube, or Amazon Prime, or somewhere else, from big companies or independent artists! But hey, that tears down the elite power structure holding these stories back and compartmentalizes the entertainment industry, so that's out. I feel the same for Star Trek. The technology has caught up to the point where independent artists are the future, not big greedy corporations with short-sighed goals that is merely about maximizing the bottom line, nothing more. I used to think copyright IP was about ensuring you had to ask permission to borrow an existing franchise. Now I realize it's not meant to actually ensure the lower-class peons could profit off their fan projects to keep themselves going because they care about the artwork. It is about shielding those at the top from losing their money, no more, no less. And it's pathetic! Trust me, the pandering to not only Legends fans, but all other corners of fandom (EU fans, prequel fans, original trilogy fans, KOTOR fans, and so much more) is far from over and is only going to get worse...