Disney buys Lucasfilm

[Blarghagh]

 

 

 

But I don't need all my movies to be timeless classics.  That's hard to live up to, that's all I'm saying.

Maybe I am reading too much into it. But the problems with those movies isn't that they're not timeless classics. It's that they're bad.

 

 

If you look away from the fact that the originals are timeless classics, they're pretty bad too. Well, New Hope and Return anyway. Empire still holds up pretty well.

 

I've seen that claim before. They're not bad the way the prequels are, not in the same way or the same degree.

 

Last time I saw that someone was complaining about the camp. But at least camp has emotion in the characters and it's not a bunch of wooden people talking. The fights aren't completely self-indulgent, they carry the emotion and relationships with them. Every fight with Dooku is completely void of character. The fights with Grevious have nothing. The fight with Maul has nothing until the second half. The one fight in the prequels that really does have character to it is dragged out way too freaking long and with some truly dreadful choreography. It needed to be cut to a third of what it was.

 

The originals weren't that bad. The fights existed to show the character relationships, not just flash lights around. And they kept themselves short, which helped focus on the emotion.

 

 

It's mostly Return of the Jedi that earns my dislike and it has nothing to do with camp. I actually rate that film below all of the prequels, as mediocre as they are. Beyond a decent opening act that doesn't actually go anywhere the film has nothing going for it. It wastes all the interesting hooks that Empire set up with uninteresting conflict resolutions, sets up interesting hooks by itself and proceeds to chicken out, needlessly rehashes the climax of the original, runs on comic relief rather than story, neuters an iconic villain in favor of an over the top cackling witch that is about as intimidating as an old folks home and spends a far too large stretch of its running time with a padding subplot regarding annoying teddy bears going to war because it doesn't actually have anything left for most of the heroes to do.

 

It's got no tension, with the exception of Harrison Ford everyone in the cast stops being likeable, it glosses over all the interesting character developments of the previous film by using an awful plot point to just cancel them out, and even the serious action sequences are played for laughs. I don't understand how Phantom Menace gets blamed for pandering to kids and ruining Star Wars when Return of the Jedi did the exact same things, except much worse. The only reason Return of the Jedi gets a pass is because we had already been with those characters for two movies.

Edited May 1, 2014 by TrueNeutral

[TheChris92]

Return of the Jedi was the beginning of Star Wars' decline that would set stage for the prequel'sawfulness. It introduces us to a bunch of furry gophers, whom would single handly taking down anpowerful expanding technology superior empire. Because **** the man, right? Everybody knows the little man will always tremble the bullies with the ever reliable power of plot convienience. Lucas’ bizarre and ever-present fascination with little people didn’t hurt the first two films. The Jawas were cool. The Ugnaughts were cool. Kenny Baker as Artoo was cool. But George had to push his luck. The Ewoks are not cool.

Edited May 1, 2014 by TheChris92

[Calax]

The problem with Attack of the Clones is that the movie just kills all momentum with the romance plot. And a point that was made recently by the Nostalgia Critic (who did an episode about the good points of the prequels) is that nobody in the Prequels are really terrible actors (except for maybe the kid Anakin). Most of the problems with those three films can be traced back to the direction, which is pretty terrible when you get down to it.

 

RotJ suffers by the fact that they threw in Ewoks, and there was a huge mood whiplash between the Endor segments, and the space battle above. If the entire movie had stuck with the tone of the space battle (fun romp but with that undertone of "OH CRAP" going on) then you'd probably have one of the stronger segments of the entire series. But instead to break it up with the comedic bits on Endor, and it just becomes a problem.

 

I don't think Abrams is going to mess this up, as I stated before. The light hearted space opera that Star Wars tends to be, is right up his directorial alley. I mean, the big thing for him is that his movies tend to stick with the fun aspect and pacing over big dramatics. Recently we've been hit with a deluge of things that should be fun (Marvel movies, I'm looking at you) that instead are choosing to go with heavy themes and discussions. The fun factor is still there but the movies aren't existing just to have fun (ok, Thor 2 did), instead they spend a lot of their run time pointing at a variety of things and going "SEE!? This is a parallel to the world!"

 

I mean, Neither Trek movie really was aiming much higher than popcorn actiony romps, which is what we really want with Star Wars is it not?

[Amentep]

 

I think the argument is, generally, that Lucas works better with a strong collaborator in scripting (Katz and Hyuck on American Graffitti, Brackett and Kasden on EMPIRE

Lucas was a consultant on the story, but he didn't write Empire, that was all on Kasdan & Leigh - The originalscript was headed by Leigh, which is quite different from what Empire eventually turned out to be when it was re-written.

 

As far as I understand, George officially came up with the story (which would be true even if he had little involvement, since it connects back to those original scripts he'd worked on), Leigh did the first iterations of the script and Lawrence did the last iterations on the script after Bracket passed away.

 

 

Return of the Jedi was the beginning of Star Wars' decline that would set stage for the prequel'sawfulness. It introduces us to a bunch of furry gophers, whom would single handly taking down anpowerful expanding technology superior empire. Because **** the man, right? Everybody knows the little man will always tremble the bullies with the ever reliable power of plot convienience. Lucas’ bizarre and ever-present fascination with little people didn’t hurt the first two films. The Jawas were cool. The Ugnaughts were cool. Kenny Baker as Artoo was cool. But George had to push his luck. The Ewoks are not cool.

As I recall, the Ewoks was a marketing decision; the fight on the forest moon was a sequence cut out of Star Wars that would have featured the Wookies. When they brought the concept back for RETURN, the decision was made to create a new race instead of reusing the Wookies (which allowed them to sell more toys and stuff). Why the race had to be furry short creatures could be up to Lucas liking to put little people to work, but it also may have simply been to not re-create the Wookies visually.

Edited May 1, 2014 by Amentep

[TheChris92]

As far as I understand, George officially came up with the story (which would be true even if he had little involvement, since it connects back to those original scripts he'd worked on), Leigh did the first iterations of the script and Lawrence did the last iterations on the script after Bracket passed away.

I wasn't denying that -- but his role could best be summed up as a consultant on the story front, whereas the actual screenplay was drafted by Leigh & Kasdan. It started out completely different from how it eventually became, then it was re-written by Kasdan.

 

 

As I recall, the Ewoks was a marketing decision; the fight on the forest moon was a sequence cut out of Star Wars that would have featured the Wookies. When they brought the concept back for RETURN, the decision was made to create a new race instead of reusing the Wookies (which allowed them to sell more toys and stuff). Why the race had to be furry short creatures could be up to Lucas liking to put little people to work, but it also may have simply been to not re-create the Wookies visually.

Which doesn't change the fact that their implementation was about as subtle as a spermwhale in a airplane luggage compartment -- The furry rats of Endor was originally conceived to be a slithery band of reptilian lizard creatures, which actually might have worked well looking from a contrast perspective – the evil Empire being brought down by something equally scary and slimy (but fundamentally misunderstood.) This did not sit right with Lucas though, so he got skittish, and changed them to everybody's favorite litter picking devices, Ewoks – essentially Native American teddybears -- Like you said, for marketing purposes, ready to be snapped up and snuggled by countless children the world over. The laws of 'Return of the Jedi' weren't governed by art or common sense or the needs and requirements of Kasdan's screenplay – the revenue generated from action figures, boxes of novelty cereal and pajamas governed them.

[Hurlshort]

Ewoks are adorable and you are probably dead inside if you don't like them.

 

[ShadySands]

I must be dead inside then

 

but at least that explains the smell

[TheChris92]

Well I am completely jaded so that sounds about right.

 

I found the Jawas more adorable, especially the one you get as a companion in TOR. He just might be the best companion in that game.

Edited May 1, 2014 by TheChris92

[Amentep]

Which doesn't change the fact that their implementation was about as subtle as a spermwhale in a airplane luggage compartment --

Wasn't really arguing it did; I think most people admit even if they enjoyed RotJ (and I did, but know many who didn't) that there are parts of it that are creatively compromised.

 

As an aside I don't think the cute fuzzy bear approach was necessarily bad, they could have done something interesting with it. Instead it was a slapstick routine and I don't think it ultimately worked.

[TheChris92]

 

Which doesn't change the fact that their implementation was about as subtle as a spermwhale in a airplane luggage compartment --

Wasn't really arguing it did; I think most people admit even if they enjoyed RotJ (and I did, but know many who didn't) that there are parts of it that are creatively compromised.

 

As an aside I don't think the cute fuzzy bear approach was necessarily bad, they could have done something interesting with it. Instead it was a slapstick routine and I don't think it ultimately worked.

 

Well, glad to see we can agree on that then.

[Zoraptor]

The really weird thing was the novelisations of the prequel films were a lot better then the films. They structured it out better, they provided more depth to the plots and why things were happening and showed the reasons characters made the choices and reactions they did.

 

But when you have a series of films that can be entertainingly cheesy to a point, you shouldn't have to rely on the novelisations for it to really click.

 

Yep, the novels are why I say that the story in the prequel was not actually the problem many make it out to be. I've almost certainly said it before but all of Matt Stover's Star Wars novels are worth reading, but in particular the RotS novelisation as (and despite me liking the movie version a fair bit) it shows what could have been done with George's ideas.

 

 

The fights aren't completely self-indulgent, they carry the emotion and relationships with them. Every fight with Dooku is completely void of character. The fights with Grevious have nothing. The fight with Maul has nothing until the second half. The one fight in the prequels that really does have character to it is dragged out way too freaking long and with some truly dreadful choreography. It needed to be cut to a third of what it was.

 

The originals weren't that bad. The fights existed to show the character relationships, not just flash lights around. And they kept themselves short, which helped focus on the emotion.

 

 

Yeah, the prequel fights and a lot of the set pieces gave me the distinct feeling that hey were included to do something else, hooks for games/ toys or pad the movie out or showcase sfx rather than serving the story- the pod racing and the pursuit of whatshername/ Jango at the start of AotC were utterly implausible and worse, far too long. I thought most of the space battle stuff were fine though except the utterly derivative and pretty silly one at the end of TPM, but then pretty most everything about TPM was a bit silly.

[ManifestedISO]

Sorry if re-post. But I am onboard with everything mentioned below, other than lambasting "cute" ... I enjoy Ewoks. Well, maybe that's too strong of a word. Tolerate might be better. 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_joDNOpeWWo

[Oerwinde]

Sorry if re-post. But I am onboard with everything mentioned below, other than lambasting "cute" ... I enjoy Ewoks. Well, maybe that's too strong of a word. Tolerate might be better.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_joDNOpeWWo

I'm not sure I agree with the first rule, but the other 3 yeah. Leia and Han almost certainly are going to have something to do with running the new Republic, and Clone Wars showed how to handle the urban Star Wars stuff properly.

[Walsingham]

Ewoks are adorable and you are probably dead inside if you don't like them.

 

 

Ewoks are not adorable.

 

They are introduced to us as miniature bears, who trap other larger sentients and take them back to their stinking s***hole of a village before burning the flesh from their bones and gorging on their internal organs. They are also clearly trained bike thieves and terrorists. Making them smaller does not instantly make it all OK!

 

You fancy taking a dip in this pool of piranhas, Hurlshot? IT'S OK THE PIRANHAS ARE ONLY SIX INCHES LONG!!!!! GET YOUR FACE RIGHT IN THERE AND GIVE THEM A KISS!

 

However, I am dead inside. It's just a coincidence.

[Valsuelm]

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/how-is-jj-abrams-going-to-ruin-star-wars-let-me-count-the-ways

[ShadySands]

[ManifestedISO]

A girly Fett?! Well I love a woman in a mask, who can thoroughly kick ass ...

[Walsingham]

A girly Fett?! Well I love a woman in a mask, who can thoroughly kick ass ...

 

I was about to joke that I should introduce you to one of my exes. Then I noticed that you actually live relatively near her. Ironically this has convinced me that I shouldn't.

[Raithe]

What so many were hoping for..
 
http://vimeo.com/marcrienzo/thevoice

 

[Oerwinde]

What so many were hoping for..

 

http://vimeo.com/marcrienzo/thevoice

Was that Jeremy Irons as Thrawn? From the comics I imagined him younger.

[Hassat Hunter]

What so many were hoping for..

 

http://vimeo.com/marcrienzo/thevoice

 

"This is a fan edit"

Makes sense, see TOR, Wing Commander, Force Unleashed etc. footage...

[Raithe]

Yup, a fan edit.. but that's what most of the hard-core fans were expecting.

[TheChris92]

[Valsuelm]

 

I've always thought that Hayden Christensen and Jake Lloyd got a bad rap for their acting skills. It wasn't their fault their dialogue was crap and the directing was abysmal. The 'love' scenes especially always made me cringe. Wasn't hard to wonder how Lucas ended up divorced after seeing those. There's no way a man or woman who was ever truly in love wrote those.

 

You have very good established actors that all look like they are horrible actors in the prequels, not because they suck, but because the dialogue and directing is so abysmal. Don't get me wrong, Hayden may be a bad actor, but how would we really know from the prequel trilogy? If we only knew Portman, Neeson, McGregor, Lee, et al from the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy we'd generally think they were all bad actors too.

[ManifestedISO]

 

A girly Fett?! Well I love a woman in a mask, who can thoroughly kick ass ...

 

I was about to joke that I should introduce you to one of my exes. Then I noticed that you actually live relatively near her. Ironically this has convinced me that I shouldn't.

 

 

Well then, I would request your ex be that of Keeley Hawes, and for her to live in nearby Los Angeles, and for me to become her errant whipping boy. 

 

How near is relatively, anyway, out of curiosity.