And look at my two posts from June 17th after this thread had layed quiet for two months. Kennedy should put me on the payroll.
I still reject the claim that TFA and RO are "nostalgia" driven movies. If SW films hadn't ended after Jedi and had continued to be released every three years then TFA and RO would have been just as huge had they been released in 1986 and 1989. Sure we could have never had those movies as they are with the actors' ages and modern day visuals (duh) but they would have been seen as just good ol' Star Wars.
Are there
elements of nostalgia in TFA and RO? Definitely. Han's trash compactor reference and the cheesy Walrusman cameo obviously qualify. But one side attacking the other side's "base" was a well that was already being returned to in *1980.* And some critics even called ESB out on that very fact. Grand battle that destroys a base. Check. Lightsaber duel. Check. Four TIE Fighters chasing the Falcon. Check. ESB repackaged a *lot* of what we had already seen in SW. And then ROTJ was somehow even MORE derivative, lol.
Then we got the prequel trilogy where the whole damn thing was supposed to "rhyme" with the OT and we have the Tatooine hero blowing up the big space station in the first one, losing a limb in the second, and all the other countless similarities.
So you can't really fault TFA/RO for having familiar elements as if it's this shocking or lazy or "safe" new thing because it's literally what every Star Wars sequel has done since The Empire Strikes Back. The trick I think is giving us SW films that ARE more like ESB where they don't hit you over the head with the repeated themes the way say ROTJ did. I'll concede that TFA falls into the latter category but RO absolutely was not. On first blush TLJ looks like it might be another blatant retread (with more Dagobah-style training and an epic AT-AT battle) but I have a sneaking suspicion that it's a bit of a ruse and that the finished film will end up going REALLY sideways. We'll see.
I hated him being involved since day one!
