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How you pictured Anakin pre-PT — Page 5

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LordZerome1080 said:

He is not a good writer, the guy who helped write Empire was.

IMHO George can craft dialogue and story that is enjoyable in every direction; stories that are either hilarious or incredibly deep and thought-provoking depending on how you look at it. In many ways, his writing surpasses Laurence Kasdan’s. Don’t assume I’m joking either, this is genuinely my opinion.

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I mean, there’s definitely a legit argument one can make that he’s a good writer, based on certain factors. But I wouldn’t mention dialogue if you were trying to get people to agree with you.

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Harrison Ford infamously wanted to tie George to a chair and make him say the lines he’d written for Han. 😉

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Where were you in '77?

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Wasn’t nearly all of ANH’s dialogue rewritten by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz?

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ChainsawAsh said:

Wasn’t nearly all of ANH’s dialogue rewritten by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz?

I don’t know for sure if it’s known exactly how much they wrote, but at the very least a decent amount of it was yes (not to mention actors rewriting lines on set).

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Oh yes, Guinness couldn’t stand most of the dialogue from the script he got despite enjoying the script quite a bit. Lucas is just pretty bad at fully grasping the way humans would naturally talk to each other in a normal context. He’s great at capturing and reproducing, and, well, writing that which speaks to the core of each one of us, I believe.

Also, Star Wars’ script was picked by the AFI as one of the best ever, while none of the other films’ were, not even TESB, so that has to say something about his writing. I believe American Graffiti was at least nominated as well.

And I don’t quite buy the people that say that Star Wars’ script is only like 30% Lucas.

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A script is more than just dialogue. Even if the dialogue is 30% Lucas it’s still mostly Lucas’s script.

One thing I that was crucial to the success of Star Wars’s screenplay was the multiple drafts of rewrites that were done not just to improve dialogue, but to streamline, simplify, and strengthen the story. It’s unclear to me how many drafts the PT went through but I strongly suspect there weren’t enough, considering how expansive Lucas’s vision tends to be (McCallum mentions on the commentary for AOTC starting shooting without a finished script, and Lucas talks a lot about various reshoots). This fact hurt the films and made them a little scattershot; but also in general Lucas is, as stated, not great with the human element and his writing struggles when it comes to dialogue but also the specifics beats of what make up character dynamics and character arcs.

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Absolutely agreed, and your first two sentences condensate perfectly what I was trying to say.

I believe in the prequels Lucas would spend more time with a general story in mind rather than with actually the scripts of said stories, leading to the point where there were 2 or 3 (maybe even just 1?) drafts before one of them became the shooting script for The Phantom Menace, and something similar happened during the other prequels. Lucas, fully aware of his shortcomings as a writer, probably knew the scripts sucked, and we all did too. ~

IIRC Lucas wanted others to write/direct the PT? At least to rewrite his scripts à là Kasdan in ROTJ, TESB and RotLA. That’s why Jonathan Hales was brought on board for AOTC, but I think Hales barely had any time at all to do anything with the script though.

It’s interesting to notice that the human aspect tends to be difficult to George in most things he do, at least filmmaking wise: writing character dynamics and dialogue when script-writing or dealing with actors when directing.

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Yeah he definitely wanted others to do the PT initially (approached people like Kasdan and Ron Howard), which was kinda in line with how he wanted the SW franchise to be from the beginning. The problem was that the people he met with would just tell him that he should do it, which is a totally understandable response considering he would essentially still be the mastermind behind the films and at that point his writer/director track record was pretty fantastic.

Big picture wise it’s hard to argue that he’s basically some sort of genius. So yeah on some levels he’s a great writer, because he has amazing ideas for worlds, characters, story, themes, etc., it’s something he understands really well. And on some level he’s a great director too, because he knows what he wants and he’s great at communicating and working with the various departments to create this incredible world and build fantastic sequences. But his talent definitely breaks down on some level, and the human element is the best I can do to pinpoint it.

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It’s also worth noting that any time deleted footage is released the characters all start talking in prequel-esque dialogue.

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DominicCobb said:
It’s interesting that so many pictured him with dark hair. Is that because he turned bad? What are you saying about people with dark hair? As someone with pretty dark hair myself, I have to say I’m offended.

Sebastian Shaw (RotJ Anakin) actually had dark hair when he was younger.

But I can see the point of casting Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen to make Anakin look more like his son.

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I assumed he would be like Luke but more foolhardy and headstrong. Strong in his beliefs and quick to anger, impatient. Naturally gifted, a great starpilot and a cunning warrior.

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I now like Hayden as Anakin for the most part. But when I used to daydream about alternate prequels, I liked to imagine Anakin as a Michael Fassbender as Magneto type of character.

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I pictured someone more mature, more adult. Not the whining, pretty boy c*** that we got.