What film is the shot of the goat standing up from?

What everyone conveniently glosses over in this conversation is that A New Hope was itself nothing but a shameless remix of many, many things that came before it. Lucas grew up watching westerns and sci-fi serials, so he wanted to basically make a new movie that could do exactly for kids in 1977 what those other movies had done for him decades earlier. There are no new ideas in that movie; just a fresh coat of paint.

The Force Awakens is just the next step in the same cycle. It's made by people who saw A New Hope as kids, and it's made for kids who deserve their own iteration of the old ideas delivered in a way that best meets their sensibilities.

Remixing old ideas is not new. Remixing old ideas is not bad. There are always going to be children who need new entertainment. Just because a bunch of bitter old assholes on the internet think The Force Awakens is worthless doesn't mean anything.

What gets me is that the people in favor of film's survival tend to argue that film should forever be an option for anyone who chooses to use it, yet the opposing side usually takes the stance that film should wiped out completely and nobody should ever have an option other than digital ever again.

Fighting over personal preference is petty and pointless, but fighting to actually reduce the number of options that future creatives have is downright evil. Nobody's going to take your Alexa away. Don't ruin someone else's passion by shitting all over their Arriflex.

So you want people to have more choices, but you DON'T want them to have the choice to shoot on film?

That doesn't really make sense.

I think it's beyond ridiculous that this is still treated like a serious debate.

The argument from those in favor of film has never been that every single project should be shot on film; the argument is that someone who desires to shoot on film should have the option to do so. Yet, the argument from the other side seems to usually be that every single project should be digital, and anybody who chooses differently is a failure wallowing in nostalgia.

The introduction of a new tool doesn't instantly make its predecessors obsolete. Imagine if everyone had stopped using paint the instant that oil pastels were developed.

Some great insight but I'd like to point out that Lawrence of Arabia has got plenty of dissolves in it. It's not every single scene transition, but its more than "none"