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Comment by yodon | Hacker News Reader

OP's proposed logline for Star Wars would have been a total fail in the era when the logline was needed, namely before the film was made or known.

>Luke Skywalker, a spirited farm boy, joins rebel forces to save Princess Leia from the evil Darth Vader, and the galaxy from the Empire’s Death Star.

This is probably not an article you want to learn logline writing from.

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It seems that this is being used as an example of a lackluster logline coming from a generator, though it's not completely clear.

----- TRY USING A LOGLINE GENERATOR Maybe you’re stuck for ideas, either way, a generator is a cool way to brainstorm, but not end up with a final product. A logline generator can give direction for a character you want to write about, but any generator or formula will leave you with something lackluster.

Star Wars: A New Hope Luke Skywalker, a spirited farm boy, joins rebel forces to save Princess Leia from the evil Darth Vader, and the galaxy from the Empire’s Death Star.

Another hint that it's a deliberately lackluster example is that it violates a rule given in the article: don't use character names.

I don't know what you two read, but the current version is perfectly clear.

> a generator is a cool way to brainstorm, but not end up with a final product... any generator or formula will leave you with something lackluster

There’s a pretty entertaining genre of the worst possible loglines. E.g.: “Farm boy joins terrorists, bombs father’s workplace.” “Businessmen nap on airplane.”

Since Jun of 2023 (date I checked on archive.org) at least, this has read

> A logline generator can give direction for a character you want to write about, but any generator or formula will leave you with something lackluster.

> Luke Skywalker, a spirited farm boy, joins rebel forces to save Princess Leia from the evil Darth Vader, and the galaxy from the Empire’s Death Star.

That's obviously intended as being lackluster. So I don't get how anyone could possibly be confused by this. It's quite plain English.

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