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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   10109 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025

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I agree that Star Wars is functionally dead now

Andor was legitimately great, and managed to make the already-fantastic Rogue One movie even better in retrospect.

I wouldn't count out star wars just yet. I think there's some small but nonzero chance that a good sequel-sequel trilogy could be made, on the conditions that it be managed by a single visionary director that loves the aesthetics and themes of the star wars series without being beholden beholden to a committee or pandering to existing fans. Or, shooting smaller, I think if the upcoming harry potter reboot TV show ends up working out, I could easily imagine a complete star wars TV series reboot to essentially re-tell the entire story, but with judicious editing, so that all the incoherent and terrible-in-retrospect parts get smoothed out.

That might seem overly hopeful, because 9 movies worth of events (plus however much background detail they want to add) is a lot to coherently condense, but I think advancements in AI will massively reduce the labor of making creative work, and as a consequence multiply the effectiveness of auteur geniuses. Where before all of an artists vision and wisdom could be poured to fill a trilogy, at best, AI might soon be able to spread that effort across a much longer period, like an upscaling algorithm applied to the problem of getting "twenty years to write book 1, and one extra to write book 2."

I wouldn't call it 'legitimately great'. It's..okay. It's a whole quality grade below shows like True Detective or Fargo. Sure it's better than typical netflix slop but that's not much of a recommendation.

The problem is that Andor is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Star Wars. You could have set it in Northern Ireland in the 70s, the West Bank in the 1990s, or France in the 1940s, and nothing would have changed. Hell, most of the second season was set in France in the 1940s! Now that’s why I liked it so much, but it’s not really a good roadmap for further Star Wars media.

Eh, I haven't seen Andor, but I'd describe Rogue One as both the best of the Disney films and an extremely forgettable, mediocre outing. There's just very little in Rogue One to like, I find? It has some pretty space battles if CGI spaceships blowing each other up does it for you, I guess.

You are much more optimistic about AI than I would be. I'm afraid I consider AI an unmitigated disaster for creative industries.

There's just very little in Rogue One to like, I find?

Star Wars are irredeemably silly in so many ways.. and It could've been much better, yes, but I kind of enjoyed the silly action and finally seeing some protagonists die.

I'm not sure why you're so pissed. AI can already write better dialogue than most scriptwriters. Certainly better than George Lucas ever did.

With generative AI, we'll finally get some proper SF on the screen. There's risk that good actual SF could end up produced as miniseries etc.

Well, the first response that went through my head was something like, "well, if you're content with AI slop for entertainment, you do you, but that's cold comfort to those of us who expect more than that". That's probably too mean and contemptuous a thought, though, so let me back up and try again.

I've yet to see anything to convince me that AI can write a half-decent film script. Even if, for the sake of argument, it can do better than the worst human writers, I'm trying not to be content with the bottom of the barrel, or even the middle of the barrel. George Lucas definitely has limitations as a writer and director, though I think some of them are overstated. He struggles with some types of dialogue more than others; and at any rate, I think much of that is compensated for by his immense skill as a visual director. Lucas can compose a scene or a shot incredibly well, far better than most of his contemporaries. For films like Star Wars, which are substantially about immersion, awe, and atmosphere, I can't underrate that.

I'm a bit curious what you mean by 'some proper SF'? What sort of SF do you think AI would make possible? What are you hoping for?

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