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McCallum comments on the TV series and the prequel special editions

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i don't think i would've ever imagined being this disinterested in star wars news.
thank the maker
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The one that was most painful for McCallum to let go was Yoda's voyage to take exile on the swamp planet of Dagobah, where we meet him again as the Jedi trainer of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) in "Episode IV -- The Empire Strikes Back."

Suddenly, the article loses a touch of credibility with me.
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Im drained of it all and couldnt care anymore, George can release 50 special editions for all i care, the only way he sees my money for DVDs as if he does the unthinkable and releases the O.O.T, in are off the guys here, other than that Im only interested in fan SEs...

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If Lucas made a "phantom edit"-style special edition, would you be interested?
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i like that the anti bush rhetoric was never a part that of ep3, even though mccallum calls bush being elected a nightmarish situation. funny
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Originally posted by: Adamwankenobi
If Lucas made a "phantom edit"-style special edition, would you be interested?


But George loves Jar Jar too much to get rid of him......
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Originally posted by: battlewars
i like that the anti bush rhetoric was never a part that of ep3, even though mccallum calls bush being elected a nightmarish situation. funny


But it was cool what he thinks of him, IMO, nonetheless.
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I like how he claims that no one in the fanbase had any complaints about the cause for Anakin's turn being love for his wife. Um, I'm raising my hand! Can't you see me? It's as frustrating as being in class, knowing the answer to a problem, but the teacher refuses to call on you!

And, lo and behold, it turns out that the TV series is going to be a convenient little loop hole for them to rectify all the plot holes they should have dealt with in the movies. "What about Ben and Owen?" "Um, we'll deal with it in the TV series." How much you want to bet that there'll be an episode where a 4 year old Leia has a Force-induced dream of Padme, waking up to say, "My mother is very kind, but sad."

Pathetic.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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Originally posted by: Gaffer Tape
How much you want to bet that there'll be an episode where a 4 year old Leia has a Force-induced dream of Padme, waking up to say, "My mother is very kind, but sad."

Pathetic.


I'm pretty sure that they'll address that, as it is a major plothole. Though I doubt it will be in that way.

By the way, if you'll check the "ranch edit" thread over in "preservation and fan edits-star wars," I've just uploaded that " Leia remembers her mother" ROTJ scene, where I have slightly altered it so it makes sense. Check it out if you are so inclined.
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How much you want to bet that there'll be an episode where a 4 year old Leia has a Force-induced dream of Padme, waking up to say, "My mother is very kind, but sad."


LOL!
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Originally posted by: Gaffer Tape
I like how he claims that no one in the fanbase had any complaints about the cause for Anakin's turn being love for his wife. Um, I'm raising my hand! Can't you see me? It's as frustrating as being in class, knowing the answer to a problem, but the teacher refuses to call on you!

And, lo and behold, it turns out that the TV series is going to be a convenient little loop hole for them to rectify all the plot holes they should have dealt with in the movies. "What about Ben and Owen?" "Um, we'll deal with it in the TV series." How much you want to bet that there'll be an episode where a 4 year old Leia has a Force-induced dream of Padme, waking up to say, "My mother is very kind, but sad."

Pathetic.


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It is funny cause McCallum first instinct was right about the hardcore fans not buying 'doing it all for love'

It is so funny how times have changed for me, 5 years ago, if this article was posted I would be salivating about some SW news, I would always enjoy reading McCallums & Lucas' quotes about the saga, now everytime I read it I just get annoyed and could care less about the TV show and their revisionism on the last 6 movies. The biggest insult was when McCallum said, "The TV shows will be more character driven." Huh, wasn't the prequels about a character who falls from grace to become the 2nd most evil person in the galaxy?

I will be honest the only reason I read this article was maybe the slightest hint of talk about the O-OT. I think Lucas knows if he releases it, every older fan from the OT won't care about SW anymore, so he has to keep our interest that anytime he talks we waiting for those special words, "I am please to announce the O-OT on DVD....."

We will reply, Thank you George, now put a nail in the coffin.
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lucas and mccallum look like theyve lost their souls
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"We're hoping that in three or four years time, we'll have to never have to answer another question regarding 'Star Wars,'" McCallum said. "With the series, we're trying to do 100 hours worth and answer every single thing anybody has ever dreamed of, thought of, imagined or hoped for."


Someone please explain to me why in the hell they didn't explain at the very least, the most important things in the MOVIES?

Leia remembering Padme, why Owen dislikes Obi-Wan, etc, etc.......shouldn't that sort of stuff be explained onscreen? Especially since it's already in the OT...

I never thought I'd ever heard myself say this out loud cuz I never thought it possible.......but I really wish that Star Wars would simply die cuz it has lost all its magic through poor writing, poor planning and poor execution.

Even if Lucas never releases the OOT, I just want it to die....I simply do not care anymore. It's ruined, so let's forget it. Just a cash cow. I'm making my own set of the OOT and I'm putting SW to rest permanently in my mind. I will skip over anything I hear or read.

Doesn't ANYONE in the whole Lucas organization see the cracks in the foundation here?
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very well said cable x1. thats exactly how i feel
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I just cant believe how the once mighty Star Wars has fallen, from what I believe was its peak in the 1980s to this, If someone would have told me in the 80s that one day that Star Wars would have ended up like this, i would laughed my head off...

I kinda feel for some who didnt experience it at its peak then, so they could experience it without crap that surrounds it these days...........
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A TV series WILL be the kiss of death for SW. I would bet a boatload of money on that. A TV show will turn SW into Star Trek which people will get tired of very, very fast.

Whatever happened to making a graceful exit?
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Originally posted by: Mr Bungle
I just cant believe how the once mighty Star Wars has fallen, from what I believe was its peak in the 1980s to this, If someone would have told me in the 80s that one day that Star Wars would have ended up like this, i would laughed my head off...

I kinda feel for some who didnt experience it at its peak then, so they could experience it without crap that surrounds it these days...........


Absolutely agree with you Bungle.......we remember SW at its height when nothing and I mean NOTHING could even touch that kind of coolness.

It's very sad to see something so great turn out like this. But such is the way of things, I guess......

I think a bunch of us fans should get together and do our own prequels..........

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Ooooh, meat for the grinder.

The one that was most painful for McCallum to let go was Yoda's voyage to take exile on the swamp planet of Dagobah, where we meet him again as the Jedi trainer of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) in "Episode IV (sic) -- The Empire Strikes Back."

McCallum's taste is not in sympathy with my own. It is better for Yoda to say he's going into exile, then not be seen again until Luke finds him. To show Dagobah in the PT is to continue the unfortunate recent trend of showing things before introducing them -- the first and most objectionable example of that probably being the inserted Docking Bay 94 footage in ANH:SE.

"Personally, I felt they held things up and I was bored by them. At the end of the day, all anybody wanted young and old was to find out how Anakin turned to the Dark Side. We were already on dangerous ground as to how and why. Basically because he's in love with his wife and wants to protect her."

First of all, I've got to commend McCallum on his uncharacterstic honesty here. He admits they were on shaky ground with the Anakin subplot, and that he was bored with the other subplots. (Maybe because they didn't have CGI automatons flying around and killing each other?) Anyway, if McCallum believed that all anybody wanted was to see Anakin's fall, that goes a long way towards explaining the paucity of development the other characters and plot threads got. Why should we care about the disposable villains, the incompetent heroes, or the gaping plot holes? We came here to see Hayden Christiansen fall into lava and talk like James Earl Jones!

At first, McCallum said, he thought that the thought of love turning Anakin to the Dark Side would be a difficult concept for the hard-core "Star Wars" fan base to accept.

His first instinct was correct. While I find the concept less objectionable than others, I find the execution to be shoddy. We are given a rather shallow reason for why Anakin first began his investigation of the Dark Side, but not why he would continue being a Darksider for twenty years, or how he got on the path to being a hotshot Imperial commander. If anything, the ending of Episode III made me think he was a man destroyed, useless to himself and others, and probably a suicide case.

McCallum said, in fact, that there was never really a consideration of implementing (Qui-Gon) in "Revenge of the Sith," at least in a physical form.

Sithspit. Or equivocation and dissimulation. The scene, as filmed, doesn't work. It violates the fundamental rule of storytelling: Show, don't tell. Surely Lucas at least considered using Liam Neeson in Episode III? The real reason for Neeson's absence, when revealed, will be either incredibly interesting or incredibly banal.

Of course, McCallum knows that he and Lucas will be up for criticism for putting special editions out in the marketplace again, but he insisted that it's not about money.

Kinda ironic, given that Lucasfilm just released the special editions again with no "improvements." It clearly wasn't about George Lucas seeing more "new light," but Ricky says it wasn't about money, so ... :confused:

"There are a group of people out there who are fascinated by the very creative process of what it's like to put all this s--- together, to change things and see the impact those changes have," McCallum mused.


Why don't you give us the original version of "all this s---" so we can see how things have changed and the impacts those changes have had? Don't cloak your greed and George's filmic OCD with an appeal to film buffs.

"It's like the extended versions of 'The Lord of the Rings.' One of the great things about having conversations with Peter Jackson about it, was finding out, that, people who didn't like 'Lord of the Rings,' particularly, liked it a lot more in the extended versions because everything made more sense for them.


Peter Jackson released the theatrical versions of his films and is on record saying that he doesn't see one as more real than the other. The theatrical cut is the director's cut; he's not shy about saying that. The Extended Editions are alternative versions, not replacements. And don't talk about "making sense" after a six-year exercise in anti-sense.

"That's such s---, I promise you," McCallum told me. "I know there's one line -- 'You're either with me or you're against me' -- that echoes something.


People have been pointing out the crypto-leftist ideas in the prequel trilogy since 1999. Remember Nute Gunray and Lott Dod?

In fact, McCallum added, if the film echoes any war, it's Vietnam.

"George is a product of Vietnam, not a product of Bush," McCallum said.


So Lucas hasn't had a single original idea since the Vietnam War ended? I can almost believe that. How ironic that George Lucas brought McCallum on as his producer, and now McCallum views Lucas as a product.

"It's trying to say, 'Look, if you lie to your parents, if you lie once, it gets easier. If you lie again, there are consequences to everything you do,


That's great. I wish they'd showed that. It would've been really neat to see Anakin slowly seduced by the increasingly easy power of the Dark Side. But that's not what happened.

"We know we want it to be darker, edgier and have fun sense of humor, but it will be more character--based,


Isn't that what they said about the last two movies? And now they're going to try to do "100 hours," "three or four years" (at least four for syndication, probably five) worth of stories? Fixing plot holes instead of introducing them this time? I'll believe it when I see it.

McCallum reminds me of Rick Berman. You think Star Wars is bad now, wait until George dies.
"It's the stoned movie you don't have to be stoned for." -- Tom Shales on Star Wars
Scruffy's gonna die the way he lived.
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I kinda feel for some who didnt experience it at its peak then, so they could experience it without crap that surrounds it these days...........

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It is such a different mindset now for fans who werent there at the beginning. They watch The Original Star Wars as Episode IV, and many put it at the bottom of their lists, because it seems so foreign to the other 5 movies! They have no context of the original whatsoever, they are watching it for the struggle of Anakin Skywalker and the whole movie has no context for it cause Lucas didn't think it up til ESB!

The PT generation continually makes excuses for the newer films, saying I love them but... AOTC is really great, but I agree the romance is pretty bad. What? The romance is the what the whole movie is about?

TPM is really great, but Jar Jar is annoying at times, but you just have to put up with him. What? He is in your face in every scene for the first hour!

TPM is a setup for the whole trilogy, you can't just get the ball rolling in the first movie. My response, did you ever see the Original Star Wars? Besides it being filmed as a standalone movie, it still works well as a setup that got the ball rolling pretty damn quick.

ROTS is really great, but you look too much into plot holes, I not going to worry about Leia remembering her mom, or Padme losing the will to live. What? Why don't we just delete the whole Luke/Leia talk on Endor Scene all together just to get continuity.

The PT settles for mediocrity sometimes, and that is the difference. Star Wars & ESB for most of us are perfect films, that we defend as classics. I never say ESB is great, but...... I say ESB is great, now watch it and you'll understand. We are all honest that ROTJ has its faults, and we all talk about the Ewoks, Luke/Leia being siblings, and Han & Leia could have turned in better performances, but we are hard on Jedi cause we want perfection, that is what the first two movies gave us.

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McCallum reminds me of Rick Berman. You think Star Wars is bad now, wait until George dies.


Oooooooo shit, Scruffy!!!! I felt the sting of that one. You are absolutely correct though. Imagine Star Wars turning into that series finale of Enterprise from last May.

Now THAT is painful agony!!!
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mccallum is pretty much near lucas' age, if lucas goes first mccallum wont be far behind