On one hand, cinema lets you experience the cutting-edge visuals and audio of a 'Star Wars' film in the format that has the most impact.
On the other hand, television means more "content". Ideally, it allows more room for world building and characterisation.
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No.
shareNow that we all have big HD tvs and good sound, tv is a better format for everything. The trouble with theaters is poor projection, poor sound, annoying, talky, loud, cell-phone-using audiences, and smelly candy and popcorn. You can now see and hear a movie in your own home with equal or better quality, but without the distractions of a mob of noisy, smelly idiots surrounding you.
shareCinema is mader for bigger set pieces and Television can be better for slower build-up shows.
The real issues is good content in either format can make it look good.
I think the last few episodes of Mandalorian would have been just as good on cinema screens as on the television.
Yes, because Disney thought a SW MOVIE meant wall to wall CGI vomit and explosions with no cinematography or story.
shareThe prequel boards are that-a-way, bud.
shareThe prequels weren't much better than the SHEquel trilogy, Reylo.
shareGotta disagree with you... Ace.
Revenge of the Sith is wall-to-wall drama with a healthy slathering of thrills tossed in for good measure. It goes down real swell, like a foamy pint of the best brewed ale this side of the rolling Caledonian hills.
The prequels weren't better than the sequels period.
As far as the CGI comment, you missed my point: There is waaaaaay more CGI in Eps. II and III - and BAD CGI - than the sequels.
No, cinema is the ideal format for "Star Wars", the great big immersive short-term experience allowing the audience to be swept away by a simple story, that looks great and is told well. It's a fact that your TV at home just doesn't carry you away the way a top film in a cinema does, there are distractions at home that aren't there in a movie theater, which does make me deeply sad for the fate of theaters.
It's actually a surprise that they've been able to adapt the intense experience of a SW film to the meandering format of series TV so well, but then, they're doing everything on this show pretty damn well (so far). Perhaps it's because they've had the bright idea of stealing their tropes more from western films than from space operas, that allows for a slower pace and more isolated characters.
I think it's because they're not telling big epic stories with the fate of the entire galaxy hanging on every scene. This is the journey of one lone gunfighter and his friends and sidekicks through the world that forms the backdrop for the movie trilogies.
Quite a large backdrop it is too. A good sized galaxy is hundreds of billions of stars. If there have been spacefaring races there long enough, who knows how many terraformed planets you'd have capable of supporting life? You could visit a planet (or ten) every episode and never run out of new ground to cover. This kind of tale is much better suited to a TV series than a movie, which favors more focused and tightly directed storytelling.
One thing I will say: theaters aren't going away, pandemics and ever improving home gear notwithstanding. Seeing movies with an audience is a great bonus - yeah idiots with their cell phones left on are annoying, but having other people there to react adds to the fun of watching the film. Seeing a movie in the theater is a night out with friends, a first date, it's a social experience and not just the viewing itself. So streaming will never entirely replace it.
The lone adventurer is a classic in TV series. You had the Lone Ranger, the Fugitive, the Golden Monkey series years ago (loved it), the Young Indiana Jones, and so. It works well in TV... but it can become very repetitive.
In general, the two formulas that work well in TV repeatedly are drama between characters and mystery solving. Everything else burns quickly. Check how quickly the Marvel universe declined in TV after the (absolutely wonderful) first Daredevil season.
Star Trek, for example, was drama between characters in a scifi context. That allowed the franchise to release hundreds of episodes before reaching a franchise fatigue.
Star Wars is pure pulp adventure, and one of its main influences was actually a TV show: Flash Gordon. So, can it work in TV? absolutely. Can it work repeatedly in TV? I don't think so.
There's an old movie industry saying: "A movie should be about the single most important thing that ever happens to one person". Which obviously dates from before the days of the big move franchise, but in general, movies are about events that are extremely important, or extremely important to one person, and TV series are different. A movie is about one person determining the fate of the world or the universe, or determining the direction of their own life or their family's fate, in a short and intense experience. Whatever the fate of the movie theaters, I hope the art form of the movie NEVER goes away, it is a beautiful and emotionally rewarding way to tell stories.
Of course the same rule can't apply to TV series, a TV series has to be about ongoing adventures of some sort. Even the modern TV series that are basically one long story have to be super episodic, and it's not actually easy adjusting the save-the-galaxy stakes of the Star Wars films to th slower, smaller-stakes needs of a TV series, but they've done it. There's life in the franchise yet!
Depends on what you like but for me personally it's a better format for almost everything.
But I am a book person and like my stories long...
Well, the problem was, for a long time tv shows didn't have a big enough budget to adequately do the special-effects that would make a Star Wars tv show actually look good. It wasn't until streaming came about, with their larger budgets and better film-making, that it's possible for us to finally get tv shows that get the treatment they deserve.
shareIt depends on the stories. All Star Wars stories aren't homogeneous. Certain ones work better on the big stream (Empire Strikes Back), while others work better on TV (Mandalorian). We'd really have to see both on the other formats to make a certain determination which works better.
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