The generational effects of what the Star Wars films tell (intriguing piece)

[Blue_Adept]

There are a lot of think pieces out about the latest Star Wars film which a lot of people will easily ignore because "hey, it's all pew pew pew garbage!" but that misses a lot of important things, not just about us as a society but also what things are put into play that millions of people will see and influence, sometimes subtle and sometimes overt. Long time writer Gerry Conway has one of the better ones that's a bit more concise than some others and worth reading.

Star Wars, The Generations

George Lucas was the avatar of the Boom generation, and his obsessions, fantasies, political beliefs, life choices, myopias, and sense of destined self-importance are all hallmarks of the generation he embodied and spoke to.

Rian Johnson is a true representative of Generation X, a talented and gifted man whose singular voice has been muffled by the presence of aging giants taking up creative space around him. If Johnson had arrived on the scene in 1972 with a film as smart and accomplished as his debut “Brick,” I could easily imagine him having been embraced as were Lucas or Spielberg or Friedkin, and given the same opportunities they received for far less accomplished debuts. (“THX-1138,” for all its technical achievements, suffers from an intellectual coldness of execution; no one ever has made a case for “Sugarland Express” as other than pleasantly forgettable; and the less said about “The Night They Raided Minsky’s,” the better.) But Johnson, and his fellow Generation-X directors, men and women, came of age as young filmmakers in the early 2000s– an age dominated by Baby Boom filmmakers like Spielberg, Lucas, Cameron, et al. Johnson’s opportunities (and theirs) were diminished. To contrast, in the ten years starting with “Sugarland,” Spielberg made eight films; Johnson made three. Not everyone is a Spielberg, of course, but it’s a fact the Baby Boom generation sucked up most available funding for filmmaking between the mid-1970s and the late 2000s. Talented filmmakers like Rian Johnson (and fellow Generation-X director Patty Jenkins) paid their bills and honed their skills directing television, where they contributed (with other shut-out Generation-X creatives) to an explosion of remarkable narrative experimentation unequalled on the big screen itself.

[saidsimplesimon]

1. Concise?

The author of this piece casts both Mr. Lucas, and Mr. Spielberg in a less favourable light than I would shine on their works. Yes, GenX has gotten the short shift in the deal from boomers like me.

[Blue_Adept]

2. Compared to some other these-like work being put out there, this is definitely concise

And part of it is putting them in a less favourable light because it factors into what TLJ is attempting to say.