I thought everyone knew that La Règle du jeu is the Citizen Kane of movies.

Oh please, not the film critics and their crap. If anyone, I despise the film critics. They consider themselves as an "experts" of film and are presenting their subjective opinions as something objective. Films are an art and art is purely subjective. There is no science it and certainly no objective measure.

Lord Haseo said:

...the PT fell short...

Depends on what yardstick you use.  As a cynical cash-in, it didn't fall short at all.  It made money, so it was a big success in that sense.  As an artistic endeavor, well, it was a trainwreck.  It's certainly not a work of art in the sense of the term that has any positive connotations.

Calling the SW saga anything but art is insulting.

I can live with that.

Lord Haseo said:

Calling the SW saga anything but art is insulting.

Insulting to whom?

I've spent 4-5+ hours of each day for the past year doing something StarWars-related; mostly preservation stuff.

So I certainly love StarWars, but come on... it's not the Mona Lisa.

imperialscum said:

They consider themselves as an "experts" of film and are presenting their subjective opinions as something objective.

I know it's anecdotal, but Roger Ebert -- as a film critic -- doesn't match this description at all.

He was famously modest and managed to evaluate every movie he viewed in the context of what its director was trying to achieve; e.g., http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-delta-force-1986.

And yet, he was stupid enough to arrogantly claim that video games could never be art; having never before actually played any video games whatsoever.

And when he was called out on it, he didn't change his mind nor become open to opposing evidence. Instead, he merely admitted that he ought to have just kept his trap shut about it in the first place.

chyron8472 said:

And yet, he was stupid enough to arrogantly claim that video games could never be art; having never before actually played any video games whatsoever.

And when he was called out on it, he didn't change his mind nor become open to opposing evidence. Instead, he merely admitted that he ought to have just kept his trap shut about it in the first place.

Well, he was certainly entitled to his opinion.

I only brought him up to serve as a counterexample to imperialscum's description of "all" film critics.

The SW Saga ... that's means the OOT and various select elements of the EU, right? If so, yeah, that's art.

If you mean the PT & SE, though ... pfft.

imperialscum said:

AntcuFaalb said:

Star Wars =/= Citizen Kane

I think that Star Wars (OT) is way better than Citizen Kane.

I just don't see what is so great about Citizen Kane. I mean yes it is a good film and has some amazing cinematography but I don't enjoy the story and the characters. A few useless film critics labelled it as "the best film of all time" and now people are blindly following that crap.

IMO Citizen Kane is easily the greatest film of all time. Every camera move,every music que, every composition and every special effect invented a new language of cinema.  Plus the story is totally captivating.

It's often been comented that Citizen Kane has more special effects than Star Wars!

Orson Welles' cinematic legacy is as ill treated as the OT... just odd that Lucas is doing it to his own work?!?!

imperialscum said:

generalfrevious said:

The Ewoks only existed to sell toys. Everyone knows this. 

That's a dumb statement. The furry creatures were part of the story from the beginning. They changed it from Wookiees to Ewoks because it is harder to get lots of 2.20m actors then lots of short ones.

completely wrong there. It was originally wookiees in Georges treatment but the reason he didn't use Wookiees had nothing to do with finding actors ( i don't know where you get that information from because i have never seen that reasoning anywhere). It's been pretty well documented that it was because he had already introduced Chewie as a character that can fly a spaceship and have intelligence and that Wookiees could no longer be the "primitive" race to defeat the Empire that George wanted. Early on in the writing of "Revenge", Endor was going to be populated with a race of Yuzzums (which the yuzzum ended up in Jabba's palace and then as a singer in the SE's). Ewoks weren't even part of the of the story until later on. Even Gary Kurtz said that he became disillusioned with George after ESB  when he noticed that his priorities had changed from Story and character and focused more on selling toys. 

When you see the early designs for the Ewoks you can see in their final design that their sole purpose was to look cute and look similar to Teddy bears to sell toys. Nothing more. The only reason we got the headdresses was because the costumes were too hot and they had to cut a hole in the back of the head for ventilation so they had to add the headdresses to hide this. Otherwise there would have looked almost identical to the childs toy. 

So Not a dumb statement at all.

adywan said:

imperialscum said:

generalfrevious said:

The Ewoks only existed to sell toys. Everyone knows this. 

That's a dumb statement. The furry creatures were part of the story from the beginning. They changed it from Wookiees to Ewoks because it is harder to get lots of 2.20m actors then lots of short ones.

completely wrong there. It was originally wookiees in Georges treatment but the reason he didn't use Wookiees had nothing to do with finding actors ( i don't know where you get that information from because i have never seen that reasoning anywhere). It's been pretty well documented that it was because he had already introduced Chewie as a character that can fly a spaceship and have intelligence and that Wookiees could no longer be the "primitive" race to defeat the Empire that George wanted. Early on in the writing of "Revenge", Endor was going to be populated with a race of Yuzzums (which the yuzzum ended up in Jabba's palace and then as a singer in the SE's). Ewoks weren't even part of the of the story until later on. Even Gary Kurtz said that he became disillusioned with George after ESB  when he noticed that his priorities had changed from Story and character and focused more on selling toys. 

When you see the early designs for the Ewoks you can see in their final design that their sole purpose was to look cute and look similar to Teddy bears to sell toys. Nothing more. The only reason we got the headdresses was because the costumes were too hot and they had to cut a hole in the back of the head for ventilation so they had to add the headdresses to hide this. Otherwise there would have looked almost identical to the childs toy. 

So Not a dumb statement at all.

One of my earliest memories was me and my brother feverishly rippping open a range of ROTJ toys from their silver and black packaging at xmas including:

- The speeder bike and rider (rider bloody didn't fit on the bike but still awesome, it exploded when you ressed a button!!!)

- Han and leia in forest camo

- leia as bousch

- klaatu

- admiral Ackbar

- and of course Ewoks - wicket and paploo

So the toys TOTALLY worked on us!

Played with that sh*t 'til all the paint had been worn off and we'd lost all the accesories.

adywan said:

imperialscum said:

generalfrevious said:

The Ewoks only existed to sell toys. Everyone knows this. 

That's a dumb statement. The furry creatures were part of the story from the beginning. They changed it from Wookiees to Ewoks because it is harder to get lots of 2.20m actors then lots of short ones.

completely wrong there. It was originally wookiees in Georges treatment but the reason he didn't use Wookiees had nothing to do with finding actors ( i don't know where you get that information from because i have never seen that reasoning anywhere). It's been pretty well documented that it was because he had already introduced Chewie as a character that can fly a spaceship and have intelligence and that Wookiees could no longer be the "primitive" race to defeat the Empire that George wanted. Early on in the writing of "Revenge", Endor was going to be populated with a race of Yuzzums (which the yuzzum ended up in Jabba's palace and then as a singer in the SE's). Ewoks weren't even part of the of the story until later on. Even Gary Kurtz said that he became disillusioned with George after ESB  when he noticed that his priorities had changed from Story and character and focused more on selling toys. 

When you see the early designs for the Ewoks you can see in their final design that their sole purpose was to look cute and look similar to Teddy bears to sell toys. Nothing more. The only reason we got the headdresses was because the costumes were too hot and they had to cut a hole in the back of the head for ventilation so they had to add the headdresses to hide this. Otherwise there would have looked almost identical to the childs toy. 

So Not a dumb statement at all.

It's further evidence of Lucas' strange thinking about race.

A member of an isolated South American tribe may never have seen an airplane before but eventually be trained to fly one.

We see the Ewoks help Chewie drive an AT-ST and figure out laser rifles and speeder bike controls so how is that different from Chewie co-piloting the Falcon?

The main reason Lucas' went for the design was play against their look.

They look cute and small and yet they beat the Empire which is a great idea in principle but the way it plays out in the film as it was released doesn't work.

They need to be turned into tribal warrior people (who just happen to be small and furry)  instead of comedy teddy bears who wave spears about and smack themselves in the head.

It's been pretty well documented that it was because he had already introduced Chewie as a character that can fly a spaceship and have intelligence and that Wookiees could no longer be the "primitive" race to defeat the Empire that George wanted.

I agree, that was one of the main reasons too.

Even Gary Kurtz said that he became disillusioned with George after ESB  when he noticed that his priorities had changed from Story and character and focused more on selling toys.

Well not "even". Kurtz was pretty much the one who came up with that crap. It was in that interview where he tried to convince people that he left because Lucas changed his priorities... while in reality he got fired because ESB spiralled over-budget.

imperialscum said:

It's been pretty well documented that it was because he had already introduced Chewie as a character that can fly a spaceship and have intelligence and that Wookiees could no longer be the "primitive" race to defeat the Empire that George wanted.

I agree, that was one of the main reasons too.

Even Gary Kurtz said that he became disillusioned with George after ESB  when he noticed that his priorities had changed from Story and character and focused more on selling toys.

Well not "even". Kurtz was pretty much the one who came up with that crap. It was in that interview where he tried to convince people that he left because Lucas changed his priorities... to suppress the fact that he got fired because ESB spiralled over-budget.

yeh, right. he got fired because of the budget problems with ESB. You don't seriously believe that revisionist bull do you? If that crap is supposed to be true then wouldn't he have been fired once ESB was finished and NOT well after this had already been released and they had already started work on Jedi? They fell out over the direction Jedi was taking and they parted ways. If it was down to him being fired over ESB's budget then he would have been gone long before work started on Jedi.

It's so easy to see through the revisionist lies.

adywan said:

imperialscum said:

It's been pretty well documented that it was because he had already introduced Chewie as a character that can fly a spaceship and have intelligence and that Wookiees could no longer be the "primitive" race to defeat the Empire that George wanted.

I agree, that was one of the main reasons too.

Even Gary Kurtz said that he became disillusioned with George after ESB  when he noticed that his priorities had changed from Story and character and focused more on selling toys.

Well not "even". Kurtz was pretty much the one who came up with that crap. It was in that interview where he tried to convince people that he left because Lucas changed his priorities... to suppress the fact that he got fired because ESB spiralled over-budget.

yeh, right. he got fired because of the budget problems with ESB. You don't seriously believe that revisionist bull do you? If that crap is supposed to be true then wouldn't he have been fired once ESB was finished and NOT well after this had already been released and they had already started work on Jedi? They fell out over the direction Jedi was taking and they parted ways. If it was down to him being fired over ESB's budget then he would have been gone long before work started on Jedi.

It's so easy to see through the revisionist lies.

Well I am just stating what is generally known. Some sources even state that Kazanjian was brought in the middle of ESB.

According to Secret History of Star Wars (which I would consider very "anti-Lucas"), Lucas intended to get rid of Kurtz after ANH but Kurtz persuaded him to let him stay for ESB.

NeverarGreat said:

imperialscum said:

Oh please, not the film critics and their crap. If anyone, I despise the film critics. They consider themselves as an "experts" of film and are presenting their subjective opinions as something objective. Films are an art and art is purely subjective. There is no science it and certainly no objective measure.

If you intend to make an enjoyable piece of entertainment and the result is The Star Wars Holiday Special, well I don't think that anyone would consider that enjoyable. It fails in its purpose, and does so objectively. The fact that we've been using the same formula for good storytelling for almost two thousand years means that there are some objective measures of good storytelling.

Okay so now because I find Citizen Kane not enjoyable, that means it "fails in its purpose, and does so objectively" according to your "measure"?

Speaking of Kurtz, I believe he was the first victim of George's purging of any dissenting voices. By the time Jedi was released from theaters he was purging Marcia from the official story as well. At least ROTJ has some humanity in it, unlike the later prequel films, in spite of its more commercial direction. Let's face it, Lucas would be living on the streets if the very people he later threw out did not save ANH in editing. 

generalfrevious said:

Let's face it, Lucas would be living on the streets if the very people he later threw out did not save ANH in editing. 

Absolutely!

'Empire of dreams' is one of the best docs about film making SW or not (Should've been on the Blu-ray in HD ffs!). It clearly shows that Lucas went to Tunisia and London and shot what looked and sounded like a piece of crap.  If I was a Fox exec and I'd viewed some of the rushes from ANH in late '76 that we see in EOD I'd have sh*t my pants!

But then world class editors, sound people and special effects wiz-kids took hold of George's disaster and carved it frame by frame into a masterpiece.

"A great film isn't directed, it's edited" - Orson Welles

So many mistakes in SW footage (That Adywan has corrected) that they tried to cover up with sound and SF. You just have to look at the fastforward/rewind Tuskan bit to see what these guys did for the film. The Tusken howling is totally iconic and it was created by the editors and Ben Burtt... not Lucas.

Lucas has a great imagination like no other but he's not a good director (He can frame a nice shot, I'll give him that), or writer or anything else! The only halfway decent film he ever directed (Without a big crew of technicians to bail him out) was 'American Graffiti'.