Mocata

Padme is a total cipher. Beyond some lip-service to her role in the Republic collapsing she’s there to give birth and vanish, as the OT dictates. Since the rise of the Empire and the birth of Luke is a given she has no agency in ROTS. Even in the previous films she exists as basic love interest since Anakin has to become evil. She does nothing to act in the face of obvious problems, which would make her have some impact or actual tragedy. A military creation act? That’s good and convenient. Oh wait it’s never mentioned again. Arguably she does a few things in TPM but it’s hardly relevant later. Which is funny because she should have some role in hiding Leia.

It should probably be a case of ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’ but instead it comes off as ‘dumb people are too dumb to do anything right’. Clearly the rise of the Empire wasn’t supposed to be the result of arrogance and hubris alone, but everything seems to point to that; especially in all the spin-off material. The clone army is baffling enough but we’re never shown things like an investigation into where Darth Maul came from. Diminished force powers don’t account for the lack of basic thinking.

doubleofive said:

My feeling after years of study is that Lucas doesn’t want to be reminded of work he wasn’t happy with at the time and only reminds him of what he lost. Every movie he swore it was the last and that he and Marcia could settle down after, but by the time RotJ was done, she was gone.

Doesn’t change the fact that it’s film history and should be preserved, but I get his hesitation now.

It’s not spite, it’s regret.

If he feels regret then he should show it and have some respect for the talent he collaborated with during those years. Instead it’s always him vs the studios, a rhetoric he continued during Red Tails period. Nobody gets me, nobody wants to take a risk, nobody understands my true artistic vision, etc. He spent a lot of energy and time and money on the work in the early days but jeez the tortured auteur thing and one standing alone is a sham and everybody knows it. He’s not David Lynch for crying out loud (someone who also had plenty of support from people close to him for a breakthrough 1977 movie).

Because they don’t want to, and because they don’t need to.

They have claimed a stop motion creature would replace the actor in 1977, but Phil Tippet didn’t get instruction on designing Jabba as a ‘Sidney Greenstreet’ type character until later…

It seems like a pointless topic to raise here of all places, but the problems go well beyond ‘improving’ things if that was ever the true intention. Which is probably wasn’t as most of us already know; George knew about producing and fund raising better than anything else, and a theatrical re-release tied with new effects that used Jurassic Park tech to figure out what could be done in The Phantom Menace was making and saving money all at once.

As stated above there are all kinds of conflicting things he’s said over the many decades, keeping him in the limelight and burying real film history. We have so many threads here about this already and the more he talks the more obvious the lie gets, but Joe Public isn’t that discerning. You can’t even look on IMDB without seeing Episode IV: A New Hope right away despite that not being the right name. They don’t list re-releases and re-iterations as separate entities. Film history is basically gone already at this stage.

Those seem to be names from supplementary materials though so you can see the confusion, he’s probably just been deleted as BoShek says.

Assuming that the two guys Piett speaks to when the fleet is in position are “Commander” and “Commander #2” they both have speaking roles. I don’t think there’s any record involved; lots of bit players in ESB and ROTJ have named characters in the credits.

I would have said someone like Sam Niell would be a good fit for Sebastian Shaw in the Clone Wars. But depicting the earlier days of Obi-wan having to train Anakin is tougher, unless they started a prequel trilogy like 1986. Obi-wan would have to be someone like Jared Harris if they did it in the late 90s.

Things like sci-fi technology don’t matter when it’s all one giant Damn Busters/633 Squadron knock-off 😉

One day I hope this whole thread and all the details and sources can be used to make a good article on mainstream site. At this stage the number of odd claims and contradictions are vast.

JadedSkywalker said:

Can someone articulate how in the name of heck George Lucas can sell Lucasfilm, and then tell Disney to not release the originals, don’t they own the films and all archival material belonging to the Lucas archives?

Paid 4 billion its not his movie anymore.

Its just way too insane to contemplate.

Paying 4 billion to make a potential profit many times more? To them that’s probably worth signing a contract with any clause written in, film or art history can be buried.

I prefer to think that they could have done it with more bombing runs, or if the Empire was more arrogant and took longer to respond, but they ran out of time and pilots which led to the critical ‘one in a million’ shot.

Lexa C said:

George fancies himself in the realms of Michelangelo?! 😄

Very funny for him to say this, also kind of sad. If anything George is clearly one of bean counters who would have commissioned somebody else to create a work of art. Imagine if a Pope back in history claimed that some masterpiece was all their own doing and had the right to paint over it.

“They would say, ‘It’s all white men.'”

Who? Who would say this George, what are you talking about? About the films from 1977-1983? Is this some kind of attempt to make himself seem like some kind of benevolent genius or something? Feel free to link to a source here guys because I don’t get it. It’s like this award gave him an excuse to get his soap box out, and he just felt like making himself victim to undue criticism. Because let’s face it the backlash to things he put in the prequels has never really reared its head.

Something about the action in the clip they just release feels off to me. Despite the lack of cutting/editing it’s not working. Maybe it’s the lack of properly dynamic martial arts camera movement and the lack of old-school pow-powder? Maybe they’re just not trained fighters and are just acting out the motions. It’s kinda weightless for some reason.

Here’s the thing… no movies are made for kids. Film makers (and their financiers) have to cater to paying adults whether they’re parents or not. Star Wars like almost everything else within the fantasy genre is a family film; occasionally scary or anxiety inducing, but generally suitable for viewers that can comprehend the plot. Toddlers without serious faculties shouldn’t be watching it. It’s a fine line that shouldn’t be crossed. You can’t just add things like extended scenes of clowning, toilet humour, and a bunch of stereotypical foreign accents and say that’s how it’s always been. You can’t try and refute criticism by saying only an adult would made those kind of comments.

Mocata said:

I dunno guys, on the one hand sure he has done a lot for cinema, but on the other it proliferates at that false idea of the single genius visionary…

Boy I do hate being right all the time.

What a walking talking dumpster fire of a man.

Yeah they say that but realistically it’s more costly to need so many security measures, the guards, and all the prison transports, the legal systems, the secrecy, when droids and are so easily available that entire armies across the whole galaxy existed a few years ago. I’m not trying to tear down the storyline which was very good, but it’s just not something that I think holds up to much scrutiny.

Haha that’s very funny somehow, maybe because the hair is noticeably worse than in ESB.

Yeah that stuff is pretty odd considering Leia was a leader for the Echo Base and logically would never go out with the grunts. Does George even know what a General is? Why would Han Solo be like Patton or something… then again why was Obi-wan given that rank pre-PT? I wonder if he ever planned an explanation at all. The scale is also so weird compared to the ESB battle, why are there are no air speeders or bombers to give a wider picture of everything. They’re all just in a clearing with a few AT-STs wandering about, there’s no obvious direction to the two opposing forces.

The last few surviving SW grifters can easily be ignored though. Ridiculous Jedi Council style hype shows (and their polar opposites) are just a sign of the times and the broader social media circus as a whole. Something is always “trending” or stirring up a reaction somewhere, so who cares?

I wouldn’t think so hard about it, after all slave labour in a universe filled with robot workers is nonsense to begin with.

You only have to see how many different grades Jurassic Park has over the years to see what a mess things are.

As for the silent movie thing, I don’t know why director’s say that kind of thing. Like George Miller wanted a b&W silent edition of Fury Road to match the dailies. Really? In a movie so heavily reliant on music and heavy colour contrast? Try telling Ben Burtt that SW was “always intended” that way.