Will The Disney Star War Sequel Trilogy Stand the Test of Time

[Winter]

No.

It wasn't planned out. It clearly was not planned out from the start. There is such a tonal and narrative dissonance between the first and second movies that disrupts the overall narrative and weakens both films.

The prequel trilogy is a tragedy. The Original trilogy is a hero's journey. The sequel trilogy... is a failed marketing product that undermined itself through it's failure to plan out its themes and story.

Then you get into Identity politics, man bashing, Mary Sue-ing, Darth Emo-ing, Death Star rehashing... and a thorough contempt for everything the first two trilogies stand for and accomplished.

The sequel trilogy stands alongside the Spider-Man Clone Saga, The New 52, and Marvels ultimates series as a failed reboot/re imagining of a popular franchise. It is not a follow up as it fails to honor the original stories and themes. So no, it definitely will not stand the test of time.

The DCEU is far more likely to stand the test of time. Lets face it, much of the hate comes from Pavlovian type conditioning from the Disney owned/shilling media. As time goes on, and society grows older and comes back to those films they will likely develop more respect in pop culture. Time has that effect on films where, when media hype about them dies, society begins to view them through their own merits or lack thereof. This is why I believe TLJ will actually lose followers as time goes on.

Not sure if the DCEU as a whole is going to stand the test of time but I do think that Wonder Woman WILL stand that test of time, no doubt. It has a great main character, a great supporting cast, great action scenes, it's core message and themes are thought provoking and it just looks fantastic. Even the flaws of the movie aren't terrible and while the main villains is poorly handled the Idea of the villain is at least interesting.

Critics loved it, fans loved it and it give women a female superhero movie to be proud of instead of being another Catwoman or Electra. Awesome Movie through and through!

[MyUserName]

No.

It wasn't planned out. It clearly was not planned out from the start. There is such a tonal and narrative dissonance between the first and second movies that disrupts the overall narrative and weakens both films.

The prequel trilogy is a tragedy. The Original trilogy is a hero's journey. The sequel trilogy... is a failed marketing product that undermined itself through it's failure to plan out its themes and story.

Then you get into Identity politics, man bashing, Mary Sue-ing, Darth Emo-ing, Death Star rehashing... and a thorough contempt for everything the first two trilogies stand for and accomplished.

The sequel trilogy stands alongside the Spider-Man Clone Saga, The New 52, and Marvels ultimates series as a failed reboot/re imagining of a popular franchise. It is not a follow up as it fails to honor the original stories and themes. So no, it definitely will not stand the test of time.

The DCEU is far more likely to stand the test of time. Lets face it, much of the hate comes from Pavlovian type conditioning from the Disney owned/shilling media. As time goes on, and society grows older and comes back to those films they will likely develop more respect in pop culture. Time has that effect on films where, when media hype about them dies, society begins to view them through their own merits or lack thereof. This is why I believe TLJ will actually lose followers as time goes on.

Not sure if the DCEU as a whole is going to stand the test of time but I do think that Wonder Woman WILL stand that test of time, no doubt. It has a great main character, a great supporting cast, great action scenes, it's core message and themes are thought provoking and it just looks fantastic. Even the flaws of the movie aren't terrible and while the main villains is poorly handled the Idea of the villain is at least interesting.

Critics loved it, fans loved it and it give women a female superhero movie to be proud of instead of being another Catwoman or Electra. Awesome Movie through and through!

Whether or not a film stands the test of time is NOT due to critics or even modern success. It's a Wonderful Life failed upon it's theatrical release, and now it's an immortalized Christmas classic. The Evil Dead films were never blockbusters, but they have been after market successes. The Prequel trilogy was bashed by old school fans but a decade later are respected by the fandom as a whole.

A film or any media product standing the test of time is determined by whether it can stand the test of time AFTER its time. After the media hype and marketing. After the critics saying yay or nay and whether it can find a market with the following generation. The only way a film does so is by its themes and ideas being timeless.

[jadenova]

It's pretty much the worst possible constellation of directors:

You have a director that is legendary at setting up more plot threads then a colony of silk-worms during metamorphosis (and he is also legendarily bad at unraveling the threads, but this ain't that bad as long as at least some threads merge into a final conclusive goal; the remaining threads can always be used to create more installments or fan fiction).
The next installment gets a director that sets out to so thoroughly subert all expectations, that his declared goal is to cut off every single plot thread that is still dangling, which means in this constellation, he is going to cut off every single plot thread, because they were all left dangling by the first director.

You get one movie setting up nothing but expectations and you get a follow-up movie that is nothing but dismanteling and undermining expectations. One director creates a cozy play-rug full of beautiful motives that one can't resist but step on and the other director pulls that rug right out under you the very moment you tread on it. It can't get worse, really.

Well said.

[Wargriffin]

Wonder Woman is the classic case that DC's overlords at WB cannot understand the concept of a DC hero outside Superman or Batman being a success seeing how poorly they capitalized on it.

[Winter]

Wonder Woman is the classic case that DC's overlords at WB cannot understand the concept of a DC hero outside Superman or Batman being a success seeing how poorly they capitalized on it.

I actually find it funny that all Three of DC's Trinity have had a hand in reshaping the Superhero Genre on the pages of comic books, the small screen And the Big Screen. Sure Marvel has had their fair share of hits but most of the time it seems that's more of a team effort while the Trinity are able to change the face of genre on their own.

[Wargriffin]

Wonder Woman is the classic case that DC's overlords at WB cannot understand the concept of a DC hero outside Superman or Batman being a success seeing how poorly they capitalized on it.

I actually find it funny that all Three of DC's Trinity have had a hand in reshaping the Superhero Genre on the pages of comic books, the small screen And the Big Screen. Sure Marvel has had their fair share of hits but most of the time it seems that's more of a team effort while the Trinity are able to change the face of genre on their own.

It stops being funny when you realize that comics wise... WW is pretty much 5th place behind Green Lantern and Flash

seeing that Sups and Bats tend to have two on goings with Action just hitting 1000 and Detective hitting 1000 coming up

WW on the other hand has pretty much struggled to maintain one line with Sensation comics having been canceled for years and the fact that her main line mythos keeps getting reset every 5 or so years since COIE usually having successful launch and then problems arise and new writer is brought on board and screws everything up so bad they just relaunch the book and start from scratch



WW theatrical success was the perfect time to rally around her, instead WB wrote it off as blip and placed all their bets on JL being their blockbuster JL which is going down in history as the Dud of the DCEU, IE the whole reason the DCEU exists failed miserably


We keep rambling off into something other then star wars!

[Jonathan101]

Well, only time will tell if the new trilogy will stand the test of... time. However, I remember the uproar that the prequel trilogy caused. It killed Star Wars, they said. "George Lucas destroyed my childhood," they said. "Where are my Dreadnaughts and Victory Stardestroyers!" they said. "Too much politics! This is not my Star Wars!" And here we are, 20 years later, with two tv series directly linked to them (the two Clone Wars series) and one indirectly linked (Rebels), books, comics, and some video games. One of them, Knights of the Old Republic and its follow-ups, drew heavily from the aesthetic and the background of the Prequel Trilogy.

So, what will happen with the Sequel Trilogy? Hard to tell when we are sitting at the middle of the story. It will also depend on the derivative material that will come out of the movies. The Clone Wars did wonders for the Prequel Trilogy. We already have Resistance and, so far, I like where they are going.

One thing is sure though, whatever they do, fans will be bitching. I firmly believe that who ever had directed those movies, the fans would have been bitching. If Steven Spielberg had directed the movies, or Guillermo Del Toro, or Peter Jackson, or Ridley Scott, or George Lucas (the Great Childhood Destroyer) it would have made no difference. Because there is no way that each of these directors' vision on Star Wars would have been exactly the same as "the fans." Oh, some that hate the present trilogy may have been satisfied, but others would be bitching with the same rabbid rage we can see, hear and read on the Internet these days.

The difference is that the prequel trilogy had many good ideas but a horrible execution- the books, games, shows etc. could expand on them because they were still "good ideas" and they introduced a whole bunch of characters and worlds and systems that were itching for explorations.

The sequels though? They have carbon copies and rip-offs of OT stuff- Jakku is just another Tatooine, Starkiller Base is just another Death Star, the Hosnian system (which isn't even named in the film) is just another Coruscant AND it's blown up immediately etc.

Hurting it more is that most of the stuff we would WANT to see explored...has already been explored in Legends, and it seems to have been explored in a more interesting way. Both Legends and Disney canon had the New Republic, but Disney made them a bunch of space hippies who got themselves killed, while the Legends New Republic was every bit as complex as you'd expect from one born of the fallout of a vast and bigoted evil Empire; both Legends and Disney had Luke Skywalker create his own new Jedi Order but only the Disney version has said Order wiped out before it got off the ground.

It's not even 100% clear right now if prequel-era stuff and prior is canon or not- it's been declared non-canon, but they haven't really touched on the era that much, and obviously a lot of the writers who worked on both Legends and Disney EU material aren't all that happy that their carefully crafted continuity has been eradicated and try to work around it (e.g. Timothy Zahn has been careful to contradict his original Thrawn backstory as little as possible; James Luceno threw in a cameo from the droid belonging to Darth Plagueis in his Tarkin novel etc.). This means that they are functionally in limbo, awaiting a permanent death sentence once their inevitable replacements come along. Even worse, The Old Republic MMO is still ongoing and continuing it's Legends-era plot line.

So, while you CAN compare the stuff that came out after the prequels to the stuff we'll get after the sequels...do remember that the prequels offered a LOT more meat to eat from that the sequels did, and the prequels were also largely filling in an empty wilderness while the sequels are- as far as many EU / Legends fans are concerned anyway- trampling over established territory with inferior offerings.

[Yukaphile]

Here's one crucial fact I think a lot of people might be missing. Some people, God help us all, actually like the new Star Wars continuity, and want to see it continue, as a universe to expand and go new places. I have no idea why, but they do exist. The problem is that with Legends now both non-canon and discontinued, this means it's become a case of fandom civil war, in which Legends fans are going to end up fighting the new fans, Legends fans who want acknowledgment from those assholes in charge that their continuity is still valid, can still continue someday if they have the means and inclination to do so. And new continuity fans who have no ill will towards the new stuff, they just like it, and wanna see it go on for a while. This is why the decision to ax Legends was just so dumb, because they could have kept Legends going on the side, but nooooooo... they wanted a complete reboot, but thanks to George Lucas's marching orders that they COULD NOT reboot the six movies, that was impossible, so... bah. This won't end well, trust me. No, the new film trilogy won't stand the test of time because it's becoming too corporatized, and if anything will herald in a new fandom civil war as I had indicated.

[Winter]

Here's one crucial fact I think a lot of people might be missing. Some people, God help us all, actually like the new Star Wars continuity,

Okay, just a quick point in regards to this please keep things polite as there are fans who enjoy the Disney Era. I enjoy the Prequels despite their flaws and I know there are a few fans of the Disney Era here as well and I'm also pretty sure that Chuck is one of them. There's nothing wrong with liking something that others don't and that goes for fans of the Disney Era and to be fair, there are a lot of good points to this series.

I'm not asking you to change your opinion on anything just to not have a Us vs. Them mentality when descussing this series. While I may not agree with many fans on the direction of the series (and have sadly met more then one jerk who said that not enjoying them made me a terrible person) I Have met fans who enjoy the Disney Era but are more then willing to admit that my views have a point to them.

So again, please remain polite on the subject.

[Yukaphile]

Sorry, guess I let my fury at Disney over the mistreatment of Legends filter into this.