What We Want in A Live-Action Star Wars/Star Trek TV Show

[Vince]

Link! (http://io9.com/5850559/what-we-want-from-live+action-star-wars-and-star-trek-tv-shows)

I especially like his reasoning for why the show should be so dark and depressing to the point of being nihilistic.

[Dasquian Belargic]

"Star Trek is about progress, Star Wars is about the persistence of evil"

He's right! :o

[Rev Solomon]

He's comparing Gene Roddenberry's very overt and intentional philosophical framework (the hope for humanity is in the future) to George Lucas's biggest storytelling blunders (Palpatine wins because all the heroes are drooling idiots). Not a fair comparison in my mind.

Star Wars, the original trilogy, is about a small group of ragtag heroes struggling together against insurmountable odds because they believe in something better. Through their loyalty and personal sacrifice, they eventually succeed in throwing off an evil dictatorship that appeared to be eternal and indestructible. Even a viewer who knows nothing of the EU can assume the heroes have monumental challenges ahead of them as they try to build a civilization to replace the crumbling Empire, but the message is undoubtedly still one of hope and progress. Despite the bleak portrayal of the galaxy in the prequels, that's still the outcome of the saga.

Besides, if you go all bleak all the time, you end up with Battlestar Galactica, and no one wants tha-- oh, dear, I've lost my audience entirely now. :uhoh

[Crusader]

I always thought Star Wars is about the impact of choices and that it is never too late to make the right ones. It is a common theme in the entire old trilogy and in the new one as well but the other way around.

A New Hope: In the end Han decides to take part in the battle of Yavin because he realizes that there are more things in life worth fighting for than money.
Empire Strikes Back: Lando thinks that he can deal with Vader to his advantage but he forgets that you can't change the devil because the devil will change you. At the end of ESB he choses to fight Vader before he loses his ability to chose his own way forever.
The other big choice is a little bit more obvious: Luke does not join Vader.
Return of the Jedi: We have Lukes choice to redeem his father and to overcome his anger eventually forcing his father to make a choice between him and the emperor.

The prequels are a completly different animal since everyone believes they are doing the right thing but the outcome makes it more and more worse:
TPM: Jedi Council changes its attitude torwards training Anakin.
AOTC: Jar Jar and the senat give emergency powers to Palpatine. Jar Jar you are a genius! / Padme and Anakin decide to marry although they had agreed otherwise at first.
ROTS: Anakin reveals Palpatines identity to the council but in the end joins Palpatine to "save" his wife...

It is kind of ironic that in both trilogies we have a common theme of people changing their mind in the end but in the OT those choices lead to a better outcome in the end while the choices in the PT lead the characters more and more into darkness.

[Rev Solomon]

That's a good reading of the movies that captures the best of both trilogies. My objection was with the article's author taking the prequel trilogy and ESB to support the idea that Star Wars is about the persistence of evil. It's a very selective interpretation, and, if we extended it, it would mean that all those choices you talked about were irrelevant to the fate of the galaxy. They might change a small group's chances of survival, but they can't make a dent in the PERSISTENT EVIL of the Dark Side.

I also object to the author's assertion that George Lucas has two settings: scary and messed up, and Care Bears. That might fly for the prequel trilogy if the "scary and messed up" parts of the story weren't just as hokey and poorly thought-out as the saccharine parts. If we get a gritty, bleak vision of the Star Wars universe from someone who thought RotS was gritty and bleak, I'm not interested.

[Captain Untouchable]

I've always had more of a virtue and vice perspective on Star Wars. It seems to me like it's a story of how good begets evil, evil begets good, and one can't exist without the other.

In the Original Trilogy, the Empire is the ultimate totalitarian evil regime. But unlike the Third Reich - which seems to take a fair bit of inspiration from - the Empire isn't defeated by an alliance of foreign nations in a toe-to-toe conventional war. It's downfall comes from a handful of regular people who portray all of the quintessential medieval virtues. Prudence, justice, temperence and fortitude are the cardinal virtues, and they're all about doing the right thing, and standing firm against overwhelming odds. The theological virtues are faith, hope, and love - they take a farm boy, a smuggler, and a spoiled brat and turn them into the heroes that save the galaxy.

In the Prequel Trilogy however, the seemingly utopian democracy of the Republic crumbles because of vices - the seven deadly sins, and so forth. The Trade Federation is all about avarice and greed; the Separatists throw in a little envy and lust for power. The Republic's politicians display sloth and complacency in not being more proactive about the war with the Separatists. The Jedi meanwhile suffer from pride, and that makes all their prudence and dilligence go out of the window. The fear-anger-hate descent of Anakin into Vader begins with a lack of courage and fortitude, and ends at plain old wrath.

No matter how good and pure the Republic was, you can't escape from the sins and vices of "human" nature: that's a pretty common sci-fi trope. On the flipside, no matter how dire and dark the Empire made the galaxy, virtues started popping up, and provided A New Hope.


That's my take on it, anyway. But like most good stories everyone takes something different away from it: the opinions expressed in the article are certainly no more right or wrong than anyone elses, and I for one find it really interesting to discover just how different someone else's take on a story is. :)

[Vince]

In my point of view, the author was more making a contrast of themes between the two stories rather than saying that they were the core themes of each.

If that is truly the case, I think he (author of the article) may be right. Even visually, the two stories are quite different, with the OT (I really don't ever count the PT) being grey, gritty, and very dirty, and Star Trek being a very clean, more bright sort of visual aesthetic.

Both have themes of progress and choice within them. Other than the very nature of the challenges faced by the characters within each story is Star Wars' more negative take on technology; Star Trek in fact uses technology to highlight the seemingly inevitable rise and progress of man.

[Captain Untouchable]

Even visually, the two stories are quite different, with the OT (I really don't ever count the PT) being grey, gritty, and very dirty, and Star Trek being a very clean, more bright sort of visual aesthetic.

That's the thing my dad always says he likes about Star Wars. He likes that all of the Rebel tech seems used and shabby, rather than all pristine and factory-fresh like a lot of other scifi.

It was something that the new Battlestar captured as well, which I think adds to the "realism". The flipside of course is that it makes Star Trek seem even more utopian: they're so super-advanced that wear and tear don't even exist anymore!