PJ Media must be desperate for copy to use Kathy Shaidle. I saw the first SW movie in 1978. It was fun. The rest after that, boring.
Maybe it was a good idea for Fox to cancel Firefly. It became legendary.
Notice how all the ethical “issues” that the lefties angst about as a result of technological advance have been throughly explored in written SF?
Who cares if Star Wars is a retelling of Parsival, Beowulf, or Gilglamesh for that matter. Now personally Mel Brooks “Jews in Space” is a funnier future history, but each to his own.
And, as for star trek, you better hope that more people are inspired by that, than this neo Malthusian drivel here.
Your only hope Obiewan is that we dreamers keep dreaming and fighting for the future or else the adults who are pissing their pants and crying that dystopia is our future will get their way, and won’t that be fun!
I have to say that while I’m not that big of a fanboy…but this was a rather weak and poorly written article. I ended up quitting in boredom around pg 3.
I had seen one article claiming that we owe Princess Leia’s gold bikini to Ornella Muti’s outfits in Flash Gordon. So that’s two ways that Flash Gordon influenced the movies.
I was kind of miffed at her dissing of the Flash Gordon serial (I think she only mentioned one), more miffed than at her dissing of the SW movies.
There are lots of good reasons why Star Wars sucks, or at least why Star Wars isn’t any more worthy of praise except as a popular popcorn-action-flick. But the author of this articled tried way too hard to adopt a folksy, informal style of writing that ultimately fell flat.
Not to mention that most of the “reasons” listed as why Star Wars sucked were little more than condescending sneering at other people’s passions; what in the world does Harley Davidson and World of Warcraft have to do with Star Wars? Nothing, except they all have followers the likes of which apparently give Ms. Shaidle the creepy-crawlies.
I wonder how old she is, out of curiosity. I’ve seen, more than once on PJ Media, contributors and commenters start foaming at the mouth over people who are “wasting their lives” by watching movies/playing video games/collecting memorability/doing anything that they personally do not approve of as an Enriching Hobby, and it seems to me to be at least partially a factor of age. As a young conservative who somehow manages to (a) hold a steady, well-paying job while (b) playing video games, I frequently find myself ashamed by the kind of reactionary, knee-jerk attitudes expressed by people who ostensibly share some significant portion of my politics and who make a career out of communicating them.
She’s younger than I am–she said that she didn’t see it on the first release (she’s not that old) but went with her boyfriend at one of the reissues. I suppose nobody wants to be in her cohort, but I was assuming someone in her 20′s–young enough to still know it all. On further reflection, maybe late 30′s/early 40′s would be a better guess.
Yeah, I’ve been getting more and more turned off by PJ. They used to be really good, now they’re turning into a bunch of hardcore conservatives who hate libertarians and tech people or people like me who think religion is just fine for other people… as long as you they bother me with theirs. And yes, I like video games by ID, hung out with bikers into my twenties, have no complaints about the SD&RR that went along with my years in the music business and have little interest if some prissy conservative type dampens her panties over such things.
I’ve got them all on DVD, and many others, so what? Since I’m not trying to sleep with her, her opinion on pretty much anything means absolutely “” to me.
I’ve never been much of a SciFi fan. I liked the first Star Wars movie in the 70s. I’m pretty sure I saw the second one, but I don’t think I saw any of the others. I’ve got nothing against it, though.
I think I understand where she’s coming from. She is criticizing the culture of people living their lives through vicarious entertainment, rather than actually living their lives and doing things. I’m pretty sure the engineers who got us to the moon in the 1960s didn’t spend their time going to “cons” and reading “fanzines”.
She could have written much the same article about obsessive sports fans; the ones who sit on the couch cheering and hollering at the athletes.
It’s one thing to criticize people who never do anything. But this sort of argument that goes:
(A) There are creepy, obsessed people who do nothing but play video games/go to conventions/watch or read SF, therefore
(B) People who play video games/go to conventions/watch or read SF are creepy, obsessed people who are wasting their lives.
It’s a fundamental failure of logic, and it’s condescending and contemptuous besides. How sterile and enervated human culture would be if everyone were fixated only on some narrowly-defined band of “acceptable pursuits”.
Hard to compare. Cons were different before Star Trek. I expect many of the engineers were SF fans (certainly many claimed to have been inspired by the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon newspaper strips), and some probably went to cons, but I don’t think the FIAWOL level of obsessiveness cropped up until the Trekkies started showing up.
I wonder whether anyone else could make good SF movies and get rid of some of the dreck that passes for SF in Hollywood? Imagine a decent (true to the book) movie of Childhood’s End. Or Ringworld. Or Footfall. I am quite sure some other people can think of other examples.
I’m really looking forward to the Ender’s Game movie–big stars (Ender is being played by the kid from Hugo; Petra by Hailee Steinfeld, Graff by Harrison Ford, and Mazer by Ben Kingsley), and lots of oversight from an author who’s an experienced theater director who knows what good sci-fi films look like (Card has frequently said that Serenity is the best sci-fi movie ever made, and that he only wants to see Ender’s Game filmed if it can be that good). Due for release in 2013.
Not long after the release of Flash Gordon and its rather steamier spoof, there was a school trip that almost taught some of the kids rather more than the school bargained for.
Most of the school sit in cinema, excitedly waiting for Flash Gordon’s titles to come up. Someone from the school was in the projection booth, fortunately. Titles come up – and it’s Flesh Gordon!
I got a bit peeved by her notion that video gaming is completely pointless and a certain sign of the downfall of humanity. Nevermind the studies that show that surgeons who play video games score better on hand eye coordination tests. If you’re ever so unfortunate as to need surgery for something you just might actually wish your surgeon has been playing some Super Mario from time to time.
And who would want to fly in an airplane that didn’t have a pilot who’s put in countless hours on a flight sim.
Then there is notion that violent video games will lead to more murder and rape. This despite the fact that murders and violent rapes have been on a steady decline and yet the number of hours spent playing Call of Duty and Mortal Kombat have been steadily increasing. Seems that video games are actually improving society rather than detracting from him.
Then, my anecdotal experience that pretty much everything I know about computers I’ve gained through playing video games. I had a Commodore 128 when I was kid because the level of game play for many of the games went beyond mindless button mashing and actually involved strategy and tactics. And here I’ve worked in the IT field for 15 years now and own a home and pay my taxes.
She’s just peeved at video games because she’s a self centered women that wants a “real man” to pay attention to nothing but her and the things she finds interesting. No wonder the married population is at just 50% now days.
I was thinking of saying Battlefield 3 but thought two FPS’s would be redundant. And for some reason Mortal Kombat just popped into my head. Not the old one from the ’90s but the new Mortal Kombat released last year as a reboot of the original title. Having a chance to reflect on it more I should have just said Skyrim. *drinks an invisibility potion and runs away from the mean old giant chasing him*
When I hit “as much as I hate science fiction in general” that was enough for me. So why is she reviewing it then? I don’t care for baseball, and I certainly wouldn’t spend the time to write an article explaining why you shouldn’t either.
I don’t even care for Star Wars, but the idea that no science fiction fan ever accomplished anything is absolute bullshit. No, scratch that, it’s an absolute lie.
What exactly has her ideal “man,” Mark Steyn, accomplished besides crying about the death of the West? This is a guy who complains that we’re building cruise ships instead of battleships–ignoring (a) that it isn’t as if we haven’t built plenty of more useful military hardware than a huge floating target for the enemy, such as, I don’t know, the planes that actually target them; and (b) the fact that building cruise ships provides jobs for many tax-paying Americans, and thus helps build more military hardware. He also claimed that the recent Italian ship disaster was a “metaphor” for the fall of the West, which is code for “I’m going to use it to slander the rest of you while I join the NRO crew on…er…our cruise ship.”
Having ranted, there is one, and only one, real reason SW sucks: it is really bad sf. But who gives a damn? It’s harmless…unless, like this Nazi bitch, you consider it harmful to spend one single minute of your time not building battleships for the State while armed men monitor your every mood, ready to shoot if you fail to produce your quota.
Years after I first saw Star Wars, I saw the classic movie about the turning point in the Pacific, and realized the battle scene against the Death Star was a total ripoff.
In 80 or 81 I walked home from my preschool, and my dad had come home before expected (he was a trucker) and I see my brother and my father driving home, and bro tells me how they just got back from seeing “Empire Strikes Back.”
They didn’t wait for me to come home, or pick me up early and went. I HATED my Dad and was jealous of my brother for sharing that experience, and I cried like a 5 or 6 year old, which is how old I was.
PJ Media must be desperate for copy to use Kathy Shaidle. I saw the first SW movie in 1978. It was fun. The rest after that, boring.
Maybe it was a good idea for Fox to cancel Firefly. It became legendary.
Notice how all the ethical “issues” that the lefties angst about as a result of technological advance have been throughly explored in written SF?
Why can’t we just all get along……
Who cares if Star Wars is a retelling of Parsival, Beowulf, or Gilglamesh for that matter. Now personally Mel Brooks “Jews in Space” is a funnier future history, but each to his own.
And, as for star trek, you better hope that more people are inspired by that, than this neo Malthusian drivel here.
http://news.yahoo.com/un-panel-says-retool-world-economy-sustainability-164515165.html
Your only hope Obiewan is that we dreamers keep dreaming and fighting for the future or else the adults who are pissing their pants and crying that dystopia is our future will get their way, and won’t that be fun!
That just about melted my iPhone…
I have to say that while I’m not that big of a fanboy…but this was a rather weak and poorly written article. I ended up quitting in boredom around pg 3.
~Jon
George Lucas is the only reason you need for why Star Wars sucks (now).
Forget about Star Wars. I am thinking some time in the year 1980 there was this really trashy-campy sci-fi movie “Flash Gordon.”
I have only one name to speak regarding Flash Gordon. Ornella Muti. ‘Nuff sed.
I had seen one article claiming that we owe Princess Leia’s gold bikini to Ornella Muti’s outfits in Flash Gordon. So that’s two ways that Flash Gordon influenced the movies.
I was kind of miffed at her dissing of the Flash Gordon serial (I think she only mentioned one), more miffed than at her dissing of the SW movies.
Flash Gordon remains one of my favorite movies to this day. I have no negative words for it and never will.
There are lots of good reasons why Star Wars sucks, or at least why Star Wars isn’t any more worthy of praise except as a popular popcorn-action-flick. But the author of this articled tried way too hard to adopt a folksy, informal style of writing that ultimately fell flat.
Not to mention that most of the “reasons” listed as why Star Wars sucked were little more than condescending sneering at other people’s passions; what in the world does Harley Davidson and World of Warcraft have to do with Star Wars? Nothing, except they all have followers the likes of which apparently give Ms. Shaidle the creepy-crawlies.
I wonder how old she is, out of curiosity. I’ve seen, more than once on PJ Media, contributors and commenters start foaming at the mouth over people who are “wasting their lives” by watching movies/playing video games/collecting memorability/doing anything that they personally do not approve of as an Enriching Hobby, and it seems to me to be at least partially a factor of age. As a young conservative who somehow manages to (a) hold a steady, well-paying job while (b) playing video games, I frequently find myself ashamed by the kind of reactionary, knee-jerk attitudes expressed by people who ostensibly share some significant portion of my politics and who make a career out of communicating them.
She’s younger than I am–she said that she didn’t see it on the first release (she’s not that old) but went with her boyfriend at one of the reissues. I suppose nobody wants to be in her cohort, but I was assuming someone in her 20′s–young enough to still know it all. On further reflection, maybe late 30′s/early 40′s would be a better guess.
Yeah, I’ve been getting more and more turned off by PJ. They used to be really good, now they’re turning into a bunch of hardcore conservatives who hate libertarians and tech people or people like me who think religion is just fine for other people… as long as you they bother me with theirs. And yes, I like video games by ID, hung out with bikers into my twenties, have no complaints about the SD&RR that went along with my years in the music business and have little interest if some prissy conservative type dampens her panties over such things.
I’ve got them all on DVD, and many others, so what? Since I’m not trying to sleep with her, her opinion on pretty much anything means absolutely “” to me.
I’ve never been much of a SciFi fan. I liked the first Star Wars movie in the 70s. I’m pretty sure I saw the second one, but I don’t think I saw any of the others. I’ve got nothing against it, though.
I think I understand where she’s coming from. She is criticizing the culture of people living their lives through vicarious entertainment, rather than actually living their lives and doing things. I’m pretty sure the engineers who got us to the moon in the 1960s didn’t spend their time going to “cons” and reading “fanzines”.
She could have written much the same article about obsessive sports fans; the ones who sit on the couch cheering and hollering at the athletes.
I’ve never been much of a SciFi fan.
Reading Heinlein in on my “to do” list. I’ve never been in the habit of reading fiction, though. I’ll have to make an effort.
It’s one thing to criticize people who never do anything. But this sort of argument that goes:
(A) There are creepy, obsessed people who do nothing but play video games/go to conventions/watch or read SF, therefore
(B) People who play video games/go to conventions/watch or read SF are creepy, obsessed people who are wasting their lives.
It’s a fundamental failure of logic, and it’s condescending and contemptuous besides. How sterile and enervated human culture would be if everyone were fixated only on some narrowly-defined band of “acceptable pursuits”.
Hard to compare. Cons were different before Star Trek. I expect many of the engineers were SF fans (certainly many claimed to have been inspired by the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon newspaper strips), and some probably went to cons, but I don’t think the FIAWOL level of obsessiveness cropped up until the Trekkies started showing up.
I wonder whether anyone else could make good SF movies and get rid of some of the dreck that passes for SF in Hollywood? Imagine a decent (true to the book) movie of Childhood’s End. Or Ringworld. Or Footfall. I am quite sure some other people can think of other examples.
I’m really looking forward to the Ender’s Game movie–big stars (Ender is being played by the kid from Hugo; Petra by Hailee Steinfeld, Graff by Harrison Ford, and Mazer by Ben Kingsley), and lots of oversight from an author who’s an experienced theater director who knows what good sci-fi films look like (Card has frequently said that Serenity is the best sci-fi movie ever made, and that he only wants to see Ender’s Game filmed if it can be that good). Due for release in 2013.
I remember Flash Gordon as a serial from the ’30s that I watched on TV as a kid and Flesh Gordon as a very funny semi-porn parody from 1980 or so.
Jonathan, you might find this amusing:
Not long after the release of Flash Gordon and its rather steamier spoof, there was a school trip that almost taught some of the kids rather more than the school bargained for.
Most of the school sit in cinema, excitedly waiting for Flash Gordon’s titles to come up. Someone from the school was in the projection booth, fortunately. Titles come up – and it’s Flesh Gordon!
Projector hurriedly switched off.
I got a bit peeved by her notion that video gaming is completely pointless and a certain sign of the downfall of humanity. Nevermind the studies that show that surgeons who play video games score better on hand eye coordination tests. If you’re ever so unfortunate as to need surgery for something you just might actually wish your surgeon has been playing some Super Mario from time to time.
And who would want to fly in an airplane that didn’t have a pilot who’s put in countless hours on a flight sim.
Then there is notion that violent video games will lead to more murder and rape. This despite the fact that murders and violent rapes have been on a steady decline and yet the number of hours spent playing Call of Duty and Mortal Kombat have been steadily increasing. Seems that video games are actually improving society rather than detracting from him.
Then, my anecdotal experience that pretty much everything I know about computers I’ve gained through playing video games. I had a Commodore 128 when I was kid because the level of game play for many of the games went beyond mindless button mashing and actually involved strategy and tactics. And here I’ve worked in the IT field for 15 years now and own a home and pay my taxes.
She’s just peeved at video games because she’s a self centered women that wants a “real man” to pay attention to nothing but her and the things she finds interesting. No wonder the married population is at just 50% now days.
People may play a lot of Call of Duty these days, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a lot of Mortal Kombat afficionados…
I was thinking of saying Battlefield 3 but thought two FPS’s would be redundant. And for some reason Mortal Kombat just popped into my head. Not the old one from the ’90s but the new Mortal Kombat released last year as a reboot of the original title. Having a chance to reflect on it more I should have just said Skyrim. *drinks an invisibility potion and runs away from the mean old giant chasing him*
You, sir, have redeemed yourself.
When I hit “as much as I hate science fiction in general” that was enough for me. So why is she reviewing it then? I don’t care for baseball, and I certainly wouldn’t spend the time to write an article explaining why you shouldn’t either.
What a humorless bitch.
I don’t even care for Star Wars, but the idea that no science fiction fan ever accomplished anything is absolute bullshit. No, scratch that, it’s an absolute lie.
What exactly has her ideal “man,” Mark Steyn, accomplished besides crying about the death of the West? This is a guy who complains that we’re building cruise ships instead of battleships–ignoring (a) that it isn’t as if we haven’t built plenty of more useful military hardware than a huge floating target for the enemy, such as, I don’t know, the planes that actually target them; and (b) the fact that building cruise ships provides jobs for many tax-paying Americans, and thus helps build more military hardware. He also claimed that the recent Italian ship disaster was a “metaphor” for the fall of the West, which is code for “I’m going to use it to slander the rest of you while I join the NRO crew on…er…our cruise ship.”
Having ranted, there is one, and only one, real reason SW sucks: it is really bad sf. But who gives a damn? It’s harmless…unless, like this Nazi bitch, you consider it harmful to spend one single minute of your time not building battleships for the State while armed men monitor your every mood, ready to shoot if you fail to produce your quota.
She missed one heavy influence: Midway.
Years after I first saw Star Wars, I saw the classic movie about the turning point in the Pacific, and realized the battle scene against the Death Star was a total ripoff.
In 80 or 81 I walked home from my preschool, and my dad had come home before expected (he was a trucker) and I see my brother and my father driving home, and bro tells me how they just got back from seeing “Empire Strikes Back.”
They didn’t wait for me to come home, or pick me up early and went. I HATED my Dad and was jealous of my brother for sharing that experience, and I cried like a 5 or 6 year old, which is how old I was.