Even if not done all that well, it still may be enjoyable We do have the good historical NASA movies/series so it's not like the alien fantasy stuff was all there was.

(the alien and paranormal stuff on the History channel, on the other hand...)

[replying to Maul2]
Oh, come on. It's been 40 years. Are you against all non-serious books/movies set around historical events? Making up a hidden history behind the headlines is probably its own genre.

Hell, if someone did an Apollo 13 movie where it turns out they were attacked by aliens and had to fight their way back to Earth Lovell himself would probably approve.

It's OK, I still respect you the same as before...

Another fun read is 'Paperback Apocalypse: How the Christian Church was Left Behind' by Robert M. Price. It starts by looking at what prophecy was actually in the Bible, as the writers saw it (did you know much of the Psalms are the remnant of polytheistic worship? Damned interesting), then moves on to the entire history of American "end of the world" religious fiction up to Left Behind. The fact The Omen is included makes it on topic as well

That's reading way too much into stormtroopers. There is no terror from them, never has been, apart from the usual when dealing with enemy soldiers. I'm sure many were drafted, and not fanatics (only in an all volunteer army, or at least service, can you ascribe any political identity to them). Replace them with a generic WW I soldier in a gas mask from any side and you'd have the same effect.

What the prequels did was ruin the Clone War. I mean, here was a mythical historic struggle of the previous generation that the Republic won, but probably at great cost. I think we all assumed they were FIGHTING the clones, or maybe the fight was over cloning (similar to iirc the wars in the DUNE books that led to the ban on computers). To reduce it to "our clones fighting their robots" makes it rather meaningless...

Hmm... I'll disagree slightly. There can be great, well told stories where the characters really don't matter but the plot is complicated and well done. Rendezvous with Rama or most of Asimov's books are good examples On the flip side you can just have well done characters interacting with no real plot- I saw the touring version of 'In The Heights' last year and while my sister bitched that there was no plot, I didn't care and just enjoyed the characters.

Mind you, a perfect book/movie/play will have BOTH, but if one aspect is great you don't mind if the other is a bit weak.

Star Wars and Star Trek don't count, as those people are directly killed by the main characters as part of the plot. Now, if the Death Star had accidentally fired at some point destroying a random planet, THAT would have counted

(you could count all the Ewoks who died when the remains of the second Death Star rained down on Endor, but unfortunately that wasn't shown on film...)

And double feature it with Magnificent Seven.

Make sure you have some sugar tits to munch on while watching

It's just once it wins,we consider it "good".

You remind me of my friend who was seriously pissed at the end of Avatar the Last Airbender as she for once wanted evil to win. It didn't help that she loved Azula

Actually, after mentioning Birth of a Nation I realized it would be better to have them do an earlier film, so we can see the changes that happened. For example, 1913's The Last Days of Pompeii. It's so early in film technique that they put up a title card saying what's happening, then show that scene which the audience can now put in context.

If there's a genre of film that really needs more commentaries, it's these old classics.