Hey Non-Star Wars fans: WHAT IS your favorite? (1 Viewer)

[Hubert]

It's the same with anything popular. There will be people that hate LOTR as well, and LOTR fans will go "huh?"

 

[Jeff Adkins]

My favorite would probably be either Grand Illusion or Barry Lyndon. The best films I've seen in recent years would be Magnolia, Requiem For A Dream and A.I..
While I do think the SW films are overrated, there are several others which are far, far worse like Jurassic Park, Men In Black or anything by Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich. Some of the better mainstream action pics I've seen would have to be the Die Hard and Lethal Weapon films (although each of those series has a dud in there).
And I still say if George's name wasn't on Willow, most people wouldn't be buying it.
Jeff

 

[Jeff Kleist]

I honestly don't understand why everyone hates Godzilla so much.

Because it was blasphemous. Two of the original men in the Godzilla suit attended a special pre-screening. One fell asleep, the other walked out muttering something about how "iguanas have their tails up, that's not Gojira!"
Jeff Kleist

 

[TheoGB]

I'm not sure if I can agree that movies are overrated. They can take far more in the box office than they have any right to (cf Batman Forever) but I think the Star Wars movies are rated correctly, in the main.
Myself and everyone I know who likes Star Wars really enjoys the movies. I guess fundamentally I don't enjoy them any more than Aliens (certainly they are similar in style) but I think it's all the other stuff surrounding them that gives them resonance - the books and comics and things.
Frankly they have some great dialogue and, Mark Hamill aside, they patently have fine actors in their roles. Characters are not even paper-thin - they are merely not explained. They obviously have life for George Lucas and I think that shows in the writing.
Coming back to overrated movies I would say the same about Citizen Kane. It *is* a good movie but stripped (like Star Wars in the FX dept.) of it's contemporary originality it isn't *as* impressive as it was.
And yeah, SW might well have spawned a hundred FX-bloated crap movies but they aren't remembered for a reason. Any successful movie spawns its immitators but at least we can be thankful that they bank roll hollywood until it can produce some decent movies.
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[Jay E]

I'm not a big "Space Opera/Fantasy" fan which is way the Star Wars films are not at the top of my list of favorite sci-fi films. They are enjoyable in their own way (I own them on laser), but I prefer films such as 2001, Bladerunner, Quatermass & the Pit & Forbidden Planet, films that have a more serious & harder sci-fi edge.
I really did dislike the The Phantom Menace, and felt that it was way below the standards set by the first 3 films. That is the reason why I'm not buying it, my decision has nothing to do with the hype.

 

[Rich Malloy]

I really, really like the first two Star Wars movies (IV and V?), but the last two haven't been quite up-to-snuff. Return of the Jedi was OK, but the roles/acting were already tending towards self-parody. TPM was just dreadfully boring. Lame intrigue/lame action scenes. The pod race is not enough to save it.
My favorite sci-fi: 2001, Solaris, La Jetee, The Matrix, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (both versions), The Fly, A Clockwork Orange, Altered States... does Stalker count?
Favorite recent films: A.I., In the Mood for Love, Yi Yi, Dancer in the Dark, The Straight Story.

 

[Todd Terwilliger]

What's more puzzling is when people say, "Oh yeah, I love it, but it's not a great movie."

Why? Can't we love something we know is flawed?
To me, this defines my attitude towards SW. I have always loved what I felt were the great things about the movie more than I disliked the bad things about the movies. With Phantom Menace, the equation just shifted too far over: there was WAY MORE that I disliked than what I liked.
The SW series may or may not be a set of glorified B-movies but I'm not ashamed to say that there are many B-movies that I adore while still acknowledging that they are B-movies.
Todd.
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[Dome Vongvises]

Why? Can't we love something we know is flawed?

Hmmm...Good point. I know a lot of movies like that...
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[Brian_J]

Personally, the sci-fi flick that defined my childhood was Aliens.

Childhood? Parents pay attention to what you did very much?
Brian
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[BrianKM]

They did, actually, which is why I have to blame all of my failings in life on Aliens. Damn you, James Cameron, DAMN YOU!
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[Jack Briggs]

Back in 1977, my then wife and I thoroughly enjoyed the first film--so much so that we saw it a total of seven times that summer.
But for both us, the movie didn't have legs. We saw it again a year later, and wondered what we were so enamored about just a year before. Then the sequels arrived, each one lowering the bar.
These fantasies are billed as "science fiction," but they are not. There's no imagination in Star Wars. And the egregious avoidance of scientific plausibility ruins them for me. Taken as glorified cartoons, they still seem shallow.
After the last film, I swore this franchise off for good. I'm not going to see the next one.
As for DVD, when the first one comes to the format I'll probably purchase it for posterity's sake--but only if the original cut is on that disc. If it's only the so-called "Special Edition," forget it.
In short, the franchise simply isn't my cup of tea. I am happy so many of us love this series, but the way I see it, the films have impeded the appearance of more genuine science fiction on the big screen--reason being, all the rest of Hollywood wants to copy Lucas's formula for entertainment. For every Blade Runner or Dark City, there are dozens of interstellar shoot-'em-ups, replete with "spaceships" performing aerobatic maneuvers in the vacuum.
To which I say, next...
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[Scott Calvert]

I also really, really love the first two Star Wars movies. They have a sense of soul and spirituality that is almost unexplanable. John Williams' magnificent score no doubt played a part in this.
One of the failings of Ep.1 (and to a certain extent ROTJ), was the score. JW obviously took inspiration from Wagner and Korngold for the first two scores, but Ep.1's score seems to self-referential. And not even self-referential to the Star Wars films, but rather JW's other work, particularly Indiana Jones. Lucas needs to remind Williams to return to the brassy, instantly identifiable inspiration of the earlier SW films.

 

[Richard Kim]

Jack, to be fair, the SW films are large mixture of different genres and influences besides Sci-fi, like westerns, and Kurosawa. Lucas studied anthropology and folklore in college, and a big proponent of the writings of Joseph Campbell, and it shows in the SW films, in which Lucas is trying to create a modern day myth, so it isn't really fair to call them shallow.
[Edited last by Richard Kim on October 19, 2001 at 01:31 PM]

 

[Jack Briggs]

Mythology can be rich in imagination and imagery--Greek mythology certainly comes to mind here. But even in that light, the Lucas movies still seem shallow--fun sometimes, yet still shallow (in my opinion).
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