Truth and Beauty Bombs

100 years from now people are still going to watch star wars
but basically anything I think is good will
be lost in the march of time

become a professor and write books/papers about the things you think are good

teach a class about them and force people to watch them, hopefully inspiring future people to do the same

but you might want to live 100 more years just to be safe

Destroy every bad thing.

The opening premise actually makes me pretty happy.

I mean, I wish they weren't watching special editions, but still.

If it's any consultation I think Star Wars/Trek will be long overshadowed by another exquisite corpse of bad sci-fi fantasy by that point. Only reason those 2 have lasted so long is they rode the wave of syndication/summer blockbuster at the perfect opportunity (thereby also shutting out competition by their mediums restrictions) and their popularity will wain as t.v./film continue to become less relevant.

at this point they are not watched for their qualities but for the fact that they are watched, it won't be as popular as it is now but
it will be pointed at as a representative sample of this time period

it might also have something to do with a lot of sci-fi being crap

even if there are some obscure gems
(would love to know what these are)

it's nice to have a few well-branded titles that have passed the majority of the population's approval

Wars & Trek are both better than whatever else may have added itself to that list
X-Files?
Firefly?

Cheer up, with a bit of luck humanity won't exist anymore!

i dont think star trek has ridden a wave of anything
there has been a new series at least every decade since it started

That's true for all media unfortunately. I guess at the very least most/all of the stuff we like will be preserved in some fashion via affordable digital storage.

They're still alot of people who actually think of these franchises as good/intelligent/unique properties (alot of them vocal older fans) so the attention given to them will diminish p. sharply as they start to die off.

drew i'm surprised you care

Wars hasn't really missed a decade either.

Its "biggest" gap (to me) is probably between The Battle for Endor (first aired in 1985) and the Zahn trilogy (started publication in 1991).
It was still mainstream enough to launch a major toy line in 1995.

The original series came on as colour television was being widely adopted, it was syndicated for many years and it was watched by children. Since there is a limited number of popular shows within a given format/genre playing on t.v. at once it won the market via being the first one out.

I think star wars will fall from popularity not because it is old but because we will stop idolizing technocracy.

Some other archetypal story about youth confronting the establishment of old age will replace it with the aesthetics of the time.

gbo, would you describe our modern culture as aestechnic?

Could see this happening:

like frankenstein was a book involving this stuff in the victorian era. If you read that book you'll see how it applies to that time period but not right now but we still love frankenstein re: he sails around in wooden boats and writes letters and not emails.

Probably this will happen to darth vader? Like he'll survive but abstracted from the story he came from as some token monster.

Star Wars is more like old myths/legends/folklore/epics/w/e, the elements of which are more important than any technology presence imo.

It will only lose if Lord of the Rings continues to outcool it.
LOTR was first, so it's actually pretty fair.

I think Star Wars may have taken advantage of LOTR's non-mainstream-ness, but LOTR fixed that pretty decisively via Jackson.

become a hollywood executive and make mediocre sequels and reboots of all the things you like

each one precipitating a wave of reviews urging the viewing public to watch the superior original instead

I mean, I love Rankin/Bass animation, but obv that is going to lose to ILM/Henson effects in a live-action movie.

And obv the overly shiny and strange-looking prequels were going to lose to better CGI, heavy use of motion capture, beautiful New Zealand, etc.

become a master criminal and leave a DVD at the scene of each crime

Cheston the technology presence was important because it mirrored the world around people and people related to it.

Not so sure people will relate to it for much longer and another story that includes the myth stuff -- which I referred to as archetypal -- will replace it.

okay so I am not talking about
star wars being a
huge thing but like
just thinking about the absolute tons of movies from the 20s-40s that are p good but only a very tiny subset of the population will have seen
compared to how many people have seen that shitty casablanca movie
it is like
that sort of thing

If it helps then, I haven't seen Casablanca, but I have seen plenty of other old movies.

Yes this.

Also, Drew, I think as technology expands and allows for greater and easier creation and distribution of entertainment the collective focus becomes muddied, so they'll be less attention paid to a few strict cultural milestones via everyone watching what they find interesting instead of what's on t.v./cinemas. Star Wars may continue to be popular but less so and their's greater chance a decent product might survive.

become a popular boy band and tweet incessantly about movies

Sure, Yamsu, we don't see media monopolies in this day and age.

I'm not saying blockbusters or media conglomerates are going to go extinct, what I'm saying is since the cost of producing is becoming cheaper and showcasing it to masses of people becomes easier, that major show and film endeavors will have less of a stamp on entertainment culture as time goes on.

Taking one semi recent example, Avatar made over 2 billion gross yet no one talks/gives a shit about it and it's effect on film/film making (3D resurgence) is already on the way out. There's tons of amateur and professional talent utilizing affordable resources and that's only going to increase. So people talking about/remembering low end shit is only going to become more prevalent.

who still watches movies with only two dimensions

I'm probably projecting my own ideals wrt the future of entertainment re: think the concept of an entertainment industry is p. ridiculous when we have access to more books/films/shows/games than we could possibly consume in our lifetimes at no cost.

Yamsu, I feel the same way. It's basically supply side culture. I have a feeling things will start shifting towards treating culture as culture. Like cultural events will be more tailored to the communities they are made in rather then being treated as objects to mass produce and acquire wealth.