Tyrphanax said:
PT remakes just aren't going to happen. Speculation is pointless.
Five short years ago, pretty much everyone would have said the exact same thing about the Sequel Trilogy. Never say never... especially when greedy corporations are involved.
DuracellEnergizer said:
Akton said:
The PT is so full of jarring discrepancies and displays such a cavalier, wanton disregard for OT-established facts about the era it purports to cover, that one simply cannot accept it for what it claims to be (the canonical first three episodes of the Saga). Looking at the saga as an extended history laid out in a tome like The Journal of the Whills, one would have little choice but to consider the PT apocryphal; a gloss added so long after the fact (and so clumsily) that its historical veracity must necessarily be doubted.
That said, the route for remaking the PT that I think Disney could feasibly take is this: Present it as an "alternate" telling of the events - a "What If" or "Elseworlds" type of thing... One that just so happens to be in perfect accord with the PT-era references in the OT and which respects the plot twists of the OT and flows like a proper story when viewed chronologically. They could even leave the episode numbers off of them and treat the remake as though it were the apocryphal version (but, wink-wink, nudge-nudge we'd all know it represents the proper version of the events). That way the PT, TCW, Rebels and all that other crap can stay "on the books" as the official "canon" and we can have our PT which everyone but us would ghettoize as a "Legends" story.
OT-ers are happy. PT fanboys are happy. Disney makes money.
I doubt it could happen before, say, 2030... But as long as it happens and I get to see it, I'll be satisfied.
Of course, not every OT fan agrees on how a proper PT should play out. I for one know things I'd like to see featured in an alternate PT would be reviled by other fans and vice-versa. Do we then start making multiple alternate PTs to suit the tastes of everyone?
It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to not be the irredeemable pile of shit that the present PT is.
I think there are a few more or less universally agreed upon demands:
- Don't introduce us to Anakin as a little kid.
- Don't contradict anything established in the OT.
- No Jar-Jar type stupidity.
- Make the Clone Wars the backdrop of the entire Trilogy, as the Galactic Civil War was for the OT.
- Figure out a way to preserve the plot twists in the OT.
- Make Obi-Wan, and not Anakin, the protagonist of the Trilogy (as Lucas stated he'd be back in the OT days).
It doesn't have to satisfy each and every one of our pet preferences about lightsaber colors or use of "Darth" as a title or what have you... No doubt the ST will have things here and there that will annoy us, or that will not meet up to our expectations. In both cases, it just has to be a solid effort that respects the OT as the Foundation that this whole thing is built upon, and does not insult our intelligence by presuming we'll eat up any old contradictory, half-baked, barely thought out story shat out at the last minute by a fat, passionless, cynical billionaire, just so long as a few lightsabers are ignited and some spaceships go "pyoo pyoo."
The PT is so full of jarring discrepancies and displays such a cavalier, wanton disregard for OT-established facts about the era it purports to cover, that one simply cannot accept it for what it claims to be (the canonical first three episodes of the Saga). Looking at the saga as an extended history laid out in a tome like The Journal of the Whills, one would have little choice but to consider the PT apocryphal; a gloss added so long after the fact (and so clumsily) that its historical veracity must necessarily be doubted.
That said, the route for remaking the PT that I think Disney could feasibly take is this: Present it as an "alternate" telling of the events - a "What If" or "Elseworlds" type of thing... One that just so happens to be in perfect accord with the PT-era references in the OT and which respects the plot twists of the OT and flows like a proper story when viewed chronologically. They could even leave the episode numbers off of them and treat the remake as though it were the apocryphal version (but, wink-wink, nudge-nudge we'd all know it represents the proper version of the events). That way the PT, TCW, Rebels and all that other crap can stay "on the books" as the official "canon" and we can have our PT which everyone but us would ghettoize as a "Legends" story.
OT-ers are happy. PT fanboys are happy. Disney makes money.
I doubt it could happen before, say, 2030... But as long as it happens and I get to see it, I'll be satisfied.
Whatever else this film does or does not do, I hope it gives us great, big, heaping platefuls of IG-88. I've loved that spindly, sinister-looking SOB for more than the past 3 decades now, despite having seen him do nothing at all on film other than standing next to Dengar, completely immobile.
The idea of seeing him in action, being a bounty hunter, and actually putting that wicked arsenal of his to use (particularly his "killing blade") in a film not directed by Josh Trank makes me even more giddy than the thought of seeing Luke, Han and Leia onscreen again.
Here's hoping they give him this voice (something as far removed from James Spader as one could possibly hope for in a huge, killer robot):
TheBoost said:
Idea: Boba and a couple other bounty hunters are all in pursuit of a buried stash of gold and riches. One of them knows what cemetery its buried in, but only Boba knows the name on the grave. They sneak their way behind enemy lines, and it finally ends in a three way standoff to see who's the fastest draw.
"If you're gonna shoot, shoot - don't talk!"
That line has to go to Greedo.
What is everyone hoping for (or expecting) from the franchise once Episode IX is released?
My greatest hope - especially if the ST is of high, near-OT levels of quality - is that Disney-LFL will remake the Prequels. Not an especially realistic hope, I admit (particularly if Lucas is still alive and kicking in the 2020's), but a nine part Saga whose first third is of such drastically lower quality than its latter two is a property that is practically screaming out for repair. I can't imagine they'd let it linger in such a state for very long, especially with "reboots" being a pretty standard facet of modern genre moviemaking.
Apart from that, my other great hope is that they do not make a "Second Sequel Trilogy." Not counting Lucas' very early flirtations with the idea of 12 episodes, and his later PT-era six episode "Tragedy of Darth Vader" BS, the Star Wars Saga has ever (conceptually) existed as nine episodes - a Trilogy of Trilogies, which naturally reflects a three-act story structure on three levels (individual film, individual trilogy, whole saga). It just makes sense. I would hate to see that compromised by the tacking on of an entirely superfluous Episodes X-XII, which would actually be what the PT fanboys wrongly accuse the ST of being.
I'm fine with non-episodic, one-shot and spinoff movies, as the potential to explore the SW universe through films like that was hinted at by Lucas back in the OT days. But the Saga proper should be left alone after the ST is finished (or the PT is remade).
If more episodic, epic storytelling is desired (which the franchise does naturally lend itself to), then I'd hope they'd start an entirely new Saga from scratch. The Saga we now have could be re-branded "Star Wars: Saga I" and the new film could be marketed as "Star Wars: Saga II - Episode I" and could cover another multigenerational arc set at, say, the dawn of the Republic. The concept of "The Journal of the Whills" could be pulled out of the mothballs to make the whole thing seem a little less unwieldy.
Anybody else have such specific hopes and / or expectations for the difficult-to-see, always-in-motion post-ST future?
DuracellEnergizer said:
Ah, Labyrinth ...
*ultraswoon*
Thanks a lot... Now I have to go watch Career Opportunities.
EyeShotFirst said:
RedLetterMedia just put up a Plinkett vid of TFA teaser.
Nothing too groundbreaking here, but I'm glad RLM is continuing their assault against those asinine "trailer reaction" videos - which reached levels of sublimity in Rich Evans' "reaction" to the original teaser. I think I would have preferred a follow-up to that (though it'd be hard to top).
EyeShotFirst said:
I'm a big fan of Struzan, but I would like to see tradition hold sway, and have many posters made. Look at how many different posters the original trilogy got. It's hard for me to pick a favorite, because so many were good. I want to see more Struzan Star Wars work, but I don't want it to be our only option.
Hugh Fleming should get some love. He's a great Star Wars artist.
He does an excellent job capturing the look and soul of the characters, but there is still a heroic look to the work.
Some great stuff there, especially Splinter of the Mind's Eye. It genuinely looks like the poster we might have gotten in 1980 had SotME become the low budget "Star Wars II" it was supposed to have been.
Ryan McAvoy said:
Bottom line. We all want the main poster to be hand painted, old-skool style.
If it's a wierd looking photoshop-nightmare, like most of the Marvel posters, I shall be disapointed.
Hear hear.
And, lest I exaggerate my position, while I am not a fan of Struzan's SE and PT posters, they are by no means the nadir of Star Wars posters.
That dubious distinction belongs to this particular atrocity:
TheBoost said:
I love Struzan's work, but it not him, I'd like to see Alex Ross do them.
I haven't always been the biggest Ross fan in the world either, but these are pretty damn ace (especially the second). I think he's gotten better with age...
Count me in for a Ross poster if it's of that caliber.
brash_stryker said:
TV's Frink said:
unamochilla2 said:
darklordoftech said:
Why is Kylo Ren dressed like Darth Maul? Did Ren meet Maul? Is Ren a Maul groupie?
Maybe that's Abrams way of pleasing the PT fans? He did say he was trying to please everyone.
When/where did this happen?
In the opening panel of celebration, someone asked the question "how do you ensure that you please everyone?" or something along those lines, and JJ joked "well we just will".
There was nothing specifically related to pleasing the PT or OT crowds.
I recall him going out of his way not to refer to the PT at all, even when questioned directly about it. That, plus his recent reference to the bones of Jar Jar, gives me hope that he has little to no interest in pleasing the PT fanboys (who, for the most part, seem to have rejected this Trilogy out of hand, anyway).
KyloGirlN said:
Hi guys!
Please check this funny parody of Kylo Ren lightsaber! You're guaranteed to laugh :D
I hate the smell of Spam in the morning.
Tobar said:
You could always commission one of them to do one for you.
Highly unlikely. I had a hard enough time explaining to my wife why I needed six inch versions of the same characters I already owned (sometimes multiple) 3 3/4 inch action figures of. I don't know what I'm going to do when the Hot Toys Vader I've preordered arrives...
But, needless to say, I'd love to see what they'd do for the new films too. Here's hoping someone at Disney shares that curiosity at least enough to get us a few "B" version posters out of them (if such things even exist anymore).
Ok, granted that I sold him a bit short in my OP. His OT era posters were pretty inspired (though far inferior to the work done by Jung, Kastel and Sano, in my opinion).
But the Drew Struzan who gave us those early works is not likely to be the one who shows up crank out the TFA poster. It'll (much more likely than not) be the Drew Struzan of the SE and PT posters - the too-comfortable, past his prime, passionless businessman (much like the latter day Lucas who hired him) who was happy to cash six checks by churning out six stiflingly lifeless and forumulaic compositions. I no more want that Strewzan returning to the franchise than I do the Lucas who gave us the SE and PT themselves.
I guess it's a foregone conclusion that the theatrical poster for The Force Awakens is going to be painted by Drew Struzan. The majority of Star Wars fans seem to think that this is a no-brainer. In fact, Struzan has become synonymous with Star Wars in the minds of most fans, utterly supplanting the artists behind the brilliant posters of the OT - Tom Jung, Roger Kastel, and Kazuhiko Sano.
To me, Struzan is inexorably linked with the Special Editions and the PT. His flat, artificial photorealism and boring, repetative compositions never fail to put me to sleep. He's done a few memorable posters, yes, but none of his Star Wars works qualify as such, in my opinion. I think we can all pretty much close our eyes and picture what a Struzan TFA poster will look like - Kylo Ren's face looming in the background, with lifelessly reproduced publicity shots of the old and new heroes floating beneath. Thank you, but no - I've had more than my fill of that.
Aren't Jung, Hill and Sano all still alive and working? Is there even the remotest chance of at least one of them being asked to work on the new films? If not, I still hope the job doesn't go to Struzan. I mean, better him than one of the legion of photoshop hacks churning out the dreck we've been seeing for the past two decades, I suppose. But I'd rather see a more painterly artist like one of the OT guys get the gig.
Thoughts?
If Boba Fett has a Kiwi accent in this film, we can kiss any hope of post-Lucas LFL ever repairing the disastrous mess that was the PT.
If he sounds like Jason Wingreen - or better yet, is actually voiced by Jason Wingreen (assuming he is still able at 95 years old - unlikely, but not impossible; look at Stan Lee, or Christopher Lee for that matter) - then we can pretty safely take JJ Abrams' increasingly open expressions of antipathy toward the PT as signs of an actual official recogninition by Disney that the PT is an unacceptably glaring lapse in franchise quality that they are open to fixing at some point in the future.
Personally, I'd like to see Boba Fett as the white-uniformed Mandalorian Supercommando that we were repeatedly - if unofficially - told he was during the Clone Wars era.
Also Josh Trank won't be directing the film anymore:
Having seen both trailers for the abysmally awful looking Fantastic Four reboot, I can offer a hearty "thank goodness" and "good riddance" in response to this news.
generalfrevious said:
The jokes don't matter, because they are lost films now. George always hated us and wanted to destroy the negatives and mouth rape us with the Special Editions as the only films we could see. Disney has failed us and they are doubling down on the PTSE narrative that has hijacked the franchise for the last 20 years. The OT is gone forever and Disney is making sure any last pockets of resistance get flooded with cease and desist letters.
Working the PT into the OT in any capacity means having to countenance the idea that Darth Vader - the fearsome, mysterious, eminently competent, supremely dignified, and diabolically intelligent central antagonist of the Classic Trilogy - was once a whiny, petulant, lovesick, dunderhead idiot who was tricked into becoming evil.
No thanks. Best to leave the PT in the ever-receding ash heap of the past and let the passage of time efface as much of its presence from our memories as possible.
"You must unlearn what you have learned."
I'm honestly surprised by how many on this thread chose the ending of ROTS as the best thing about the PT... I tend to see it as possibly the worst, not only for the obvious reasons ("NOOOO!") but because it represents the final nail in the coffin of hope for the potentially great trilogy we all envisioned and hoped for since the green, starry-eyed days of our youth. Moreover, the manner in which it condescendingly tied every little loose thread into a neat bow - even to the point of having fully-formed OT style imperial uniforms and technology materialize out of nowhere, just so that we, the moronic sheep in the seats wouldn't start bleating "But wha happa?!" - was particularly egregiously insulting.
I'm of the firm opinion that the PT is so fundamentally flawed as to be beyond any hope of repair, apart from a full, ground-up remake. However, there is one thing I like about it - John Williams' music. He brought the same class and brilliance to these films that he always does, and Lucas, who couldn't be bothered to write more than one draft for any one of these turds, frankly, did not deserve it.
But there's one moment in the PT where Williams goes so far above and beyond the call of duty, it gives one pause and makes one face the irrefutable fact that he cared about this project more than its own creator did - and that is at the end of The Phantom Menace. The main refrain of the triumphant musical cue played here ("Augie's Great Municipal Band") is actually the Emperor's Theme from ROTJ, played in a major key and at a faster tempo. It took me about 2 or 3 years worth of viewings of TPM (which, admittedly, was not that many viewings) to realize this fact and, when I did, my already incredibly high esteem for John Williams dodecadupled. Absolute genius, that man.
And on that day in 1978, the germ of an idea was planted in George Lucas' brain:
"Hmm... What if Darth Vader was C-3PO's maker...?"
I enjoyed that quite a bit, though I think I would've liked it even more if I knew who it was he's satirizing.
Good one on the observation about the implications behind Luke's comments about the familiarity of Dagobah, OP. Like some of the other posters, this had never occurred to me (and I've spent a lot of time thinking about the Prequel Trilogy that the dialogue of the OT hints at, but which we never got).
Biowings makes some very good points about the ridiculously rushed turn that the Republic makes into the Empire (and about the clear implication that "Clone Wars" refers to more than one conflict). Personally, I think Episode III (I'm referring to the hypothetical one, not the one we got, which I find irredeemable) should have ended with only the very beginnings of the Empire having been established, so that by the time we get to Episodes IV-VI we're shocked by how complete that change has become. Having Episode III end with OT-style Imperial uniforms and Star Destroyers, the Death Star already under construction, and Palpatine already looking like the hooded death-spectre he becomes in ROTJ is just plain stupid. It's an insulting bit of pandering to an audience the director contemptuously assumes is too stupid to understand what has occurred unless everything looks exactly as it does in the OT.
This is just another example of the PT having been made with zero respect for the Saga as an episodic continuing story. Wouldn't it have been great if the PT never explicitly showed that Vader is Luke's father, that Leia is his sister, and that Yoda is actually a tiny green critter? Likewise, imagine if the PT had ended with a Palpatine who, having just declared himself Emperor, still looked more or less like the charismatic Senator he had been at the start of the Saga? Imagine how much more impact it would have to return to him in TESB and ROTJ, and seeing how ultimate power and isolation have turned him into a shrouded, wizened monster...
Lucas won't live forever. Once he's gone, and once the ST and spinoffs are said and done with, I hold out hope that Disney could give us a decent remake of the PT - which they could market as an "alternate" version of the story, so as not to seem disrespectful to GL.
Alderaan said:
Oh and I was referring to the shaky cam. There's nothing "real" about snap zooms. It's very unnatural.
All part of the same documentary-like philosophy. Such camera work was impossible in the days of early motion-control photography. That's why you didn't see anything like that in the OT, not some odd notion that it infringes on the "epic" nature of the saga, which you're projecting backward onto the OT.
I don't think anyone hates the PT as much as I do, but some of this petty nitpicking is absurd. Tempering our expectations with some caution is reasonable and laudable, but this whole strangely luddite-like approach to the sfx and cinematography is not at all reasonable, in my opinion.
Alderaan said:
Akton said:
And yet the space battles in SW were shot and edited to emulate WWII dogfight footage... precisely because Lucas wanted an element of dynamic realism that had never been seen in a sci fi film before.
The new stuff is simply following that philosophy with modern filmmaking tools...
The dogfights were effective because of the editing, not the camerawork.
What an odd thing to say. It's both-and, not either/or. The editing was great, but it's not like it came to the rescue of boring, static camerawork. Remember the camera diving into the trench?
But all of this skirts the issue that the philosophy that gave us those dogfights was to add as much documentary-like realism to the space battles as possible. Lucas made no bones about the influence his background in shooting documentaries had on the making of Star Wars.
