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If you had your choice, would you have wanted George Lucas to stop after 1977? — Page 2

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Anchorhead said:

xhonzi said:

Ah, I knew you'd pipe in here eventually, Anchorhead. 

If I didn't know any better, I'd say that had a hint of "where's that kook from the 70s" in it.

 No... it's more of an "I admire you for taking a stronger stance than I am willing to.  I see where you're coming from, but I'm too much of a coward to cut my leg off to stop the spread of cancer.  I'm also not quite sure what's it's like in that world, and I wonder if you have cupcakes there... And oxygen" kind of thing.  It's like we all hate wearing pants, but you're the only guy willing to walk around without them!

Wait, does that help?

xhonzi said:

You're the only one I could think of that would be a definite 'yes' for this thread.

Definite is a strong word (maybe). There are three scenes in Empire that I think are fantastic.

Asteroid field chase.
Falcon's approach to Cloud City.
Luke hanging below Cloud City. - By far, my favorite moment from the entire film.

I love the scene where he throws the grappling hook at the weather vane on Cloud City and misses.  ;)

IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!

"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005

"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM

"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.

Rewrite the Prequels!

 

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I love Empire and Jedi, yet i am tempted to say yes.  Because TFN would not exist, nor would prequel/special edition gushers, lovers of bad cgi, and Lucas sycophants.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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^That is why you fail.

If you simply ignore these things, you still get to enjoy ESB and ROTJ.  I realize that I'm repeating myself, but in my defense, you are repeating yourself over...

...and over...

...and over...

(ad nauseum).

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xhonzi said:

And no NNRRPPB!.... :(

Fixed.  If you leave off the exclamation mark one more frinking time, so help me, I'll strongly consider putting you on ignore, posting that I ignored you, then take you off ignore, posting to let you know I'm no longer ignoring you.

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No. ESB was and still is amazing. ROTJ was a letdown yes, but not that bad at all.

I would only for a few obvious reasons (GODDAMN MIDICHLORIANS!) but primarily for the Holiday Special, and Howard the Duck.

VADER!? WHERE THE HELL IS MY MOCHA LATTE? -Palpy on a very bad day.
“George didn’t think there was any future in dead Han toys.”-Harrison Ford
YT channel:
https://www.youtube.com/c/DamnFoolIdealisticCrusader

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TV's Frink said:

^That is why you fail.

If you simply ignore these things, you still get to enjoy ESB and ROTJ.  I realize that I'm repeating myself, but in my defense, you are repeating yourself over...

...and over...

...and over...

(ad nauseum).

Yeah because Ice cream posts are so enlightening.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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xhonzi said:

 No... it's more of an "I admire you for taking a stronger stance than I am willing to.....I'm also not quite sure what's it's like in that world, and I wonder if you have cupcakes there... And oxygen" ....It's like we all hate wearing pants, but you're the only guy willing to walk around without them!

No strength required.  It came quite naturally.  It started not long after Empire and then Return just cemented it.  I suppose it seems weird to you guys, but I never give it any thought.  Truth is, I seldom watch the one version of the one film I do like.  It's all NPR for me now.

There are probably similar situations with other entities for people around here - other films, music groups, TV shows, etc.  Star Wars just happens to be one of mine.

Oh, and for the record - we most certainly have cupcakes in my world. 

Just don't bother looking for any with Yoda or Ewoks on them.

The pants thing? - well....uuh....I....I mean...um..it's..........man, how about that crazy Astros\Phillies game last night? 

;-)

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skyjedi2005 said:

TV's Frink said:

^That is why you fail.

If you simply ignore these things, you still get to enjoy ESB and ROTJ.  I realize that I'm repeating myself, but in my defense, you are repeating yourself over...

...and over...

...and over...

(ad nauseum).

Yeah because Ice cream posts are so enlightening.

I sometimes get the feeling that if we were to have an OT.com meet-up, it might look a lot like this;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjSVRsoBYNY

;-)

 

 

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Knitting, and knitting, and knitting, and...

(ad nauseum)

lol

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Yes! Now having said that I want to say that TESB might have the best story of the three but the problem with Empire is that it requires Jedi to complete itself and we all know that ROTJ was a big step down from SW and TESB but still far better than these so called prequels. Yes George should have been Frozen in 1977 knowing what I know now.

Lucas should have been encased in carbonite in 1996! Then we would have no SE's or prequels.

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Chewtobacca said:

Bingowings said:

I wish he had given up Star Wars to other people after ESB and had concentrated on other things.

That is more or less how I feel.  He should have left ROTJ - and any potential prequels - in the hands of Kurtz and others.

But if Kurtz is to be believed, he would've gone with the downbeat ending to the film.  We'd already had that with ESB.  The story has to have a celebratory ending, like it or not, otherwise it's sending out completely the wrong message.

 

Having enjoyed the Star Wars films, every single one of them, I wouldn't have wanted anyone else to have creative control over them.

That's some bad hat, Harry
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I only wish Lucas made them before he lost the magic that made him a legend.  No scratch that i wish he had made 7-9 instead backstories are boring, he should have moved the story forward.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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We would always wonder, though, what happened before episode four.  What was The Clone Wars?  What made Anakin turn?  Who was Luke and Leia's mother?  We would always wonder...

That's some bad hat, Harry
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I would rather wonder than have films that did not fit the oot canon. 

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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Easterhay said:

Chewtobacca said:

Bingowings said:

I wish he had given up Star Wars to other people after ESB and had concentrated on other things.

That is more or less how I feel.  He should have left ROTJ - and any potential prequels - in the hands of Kurtz and others.

But if Kurtz is to be believed, he would've gone with the downbeat ending to the film.  We'd already had that with ESB.  The story has to have a celebratory ending, like it or not, otherwise it's sending out completely the wrong message.

 

Having enjoyed the Star Wars films, every single one of them, I wouldn't have wanted anyone else to have creative control over them.

I would be more for another celebratory ending if it was Episode IX giving the story enough time to bring down a Galactic Empire in a convincing fashion than Episode VI where an old man thrown down a well is considered a fitting conclusion to the saga and a redemptive act to one of the most iconic screen villains in cinema history.

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Easterhay said:

But if Kurtz is to be believed, he would've gone with the downbeat ending to the film.  We'd already had that with ESB.  The story has to have a celebratory ending, like it or not, otherwise it's sending out completely the wrong message.

I do not see why it "has to" have a celebratory ending.  The word Kurtz used was "bittersweet", implying a more mixed ending; not downbeat like Empire Strikes Back, nor essentially celebratory, which the original Star Wars film had already done, but something in between.  It strikes me that this would have made a more thoughtful ending to the saga.

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Easterhay said:

We would always wonder, though, what happened before episode four. .....We would always wonder...

No - we would not. 

In Star Wars, the audience were told what came before. Personally, I didn't need or want it shown to me in detail.  My imagination was enough to fill in any back story I may have had an interest in.  The mystery of the characters and the vastness of space served the story perfectly.

However, that's not how George works.  Fleshing out every tiny detail of back story is how George controls - and it's also great for franchising a story.  In my opinion, it also happens to be something he's not good at.  He tends to get writer's block rather quickly and ends up having to ham-fist his way out of it, e. g., Vader as father, Leia as sister, second Death Star, Lando as Han II.

He also seems to have an issue - the control mentioned above -  with wanting to explain every detail and nuance. The ridiculousness of Annikin Starkiller (who, by 1999, was an entirely different character than he was in George's original Grand Vision 1975 script) building 3PO is matched only by how completely unnecessary and pointless it is.  It is, however, a perfect example of how George does things - the present at the expense of the past.

He also did it with Indiana Jones.  Instead of letting the character remain a little mysterious and larger-than-life, he insisted on giving us too much information. No more pondering how he may have grown into the character we'd loved for years - turns out he got the hat, the whip, the jacket, the scar, and the fear of snakes all on the same day, within a few minutes of each other, when he was just a kid.  Lucas story-shrinking at it's finest.

I saw Phantom, just out of curiosity, and disliked it. I didn't bother with the other two.  I have zero interest in what came before Star Wars - not in 1977, not now.  Not ever.

You dig all the films - good for you.  You want to bait the board as you did in your Return thread - have at it.  However, if you're going to attempt to speak for me ("We would always wonder...") - expect some push-back.

Now, in the interest of disclosure;  I should point out that I really like all four Indiana Jones films. I'm an ongoing, from-the-start, fan of the franchise. However, the opening prequel portion of Crusade was done....poorly.

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Not at all.

I loved Empire Strikes Back, I enjoyed Return of the Jedi and at the time I thought the Special Editions and Prequels were awesome at the time.

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Not at all.

I wouldn't trade ESB or ROTJ (or the Han Solo adventures or the Marvel Comic) for anything. I can always ignore what i don't like.

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Easterhay said:

We would always wonder, though, what happened before episode four.  What was The Clone Wars?  What made Anakin turn?  Who was Luke and Leia's mother?  We would always wonder...

 See, I am speaking from the generation of SW fans who were around 10-11 years old when Jedi came out, and NOBODY talked about the Prequels, they wanted the Sequel Trilogy.

If you stayed a fan of the Star Wars Trilogy, and thought Jedi was great, then you wanted more adventures of Luke, Leia, and Han.  I remember reading an interview in 1983, that Lucas was going to take 2 years off, and then film the Sequel Trilogy to come out in 1988, 1991, and 1994, take 2 more years off and then the Prequel Trilogy would come out in 1999, 2002, and 2005.  At that time I was in middle school thinking Star Wars films were coming out for the next 20 years, and that was the coolest feeling in the world!

Back in the 80's with no internet, you just waited every summer to see if another Star Wars movie came out, and I remember by 1988, I gave up and thought the Sequel Trilogy would never happen.

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The bittersweet ending of ROTJ would have been celebratory, but with the wiseness of life experience. you win the battle, but you remember that it wasn't free. LOTR sort of ends on a similar bittersweet note, and its very poignant.

But a big part to remember is that the ending described there probably fed into a sequel trilogy. So its not the end-end. You want to have some elation to cap off the trilogy, but things have to be complicated still, because there's a whole 'nother trilogy to actually complete everything. So, Luke walks off like Clint--great! We'll see him as an old man in the next film. Wouldn't that have been great, to have Luke walk into the night now as a Jedi, having earned his maturity, and then we see how that moulded him twenty years later as he tries to figure out how to continue the Jedi way for a new generation, now with some grey in his hair.

I think that sort of ending makes more sense in the context that its the end of a trilogy but not the end of the storyline and not the end of the characters.

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Easterhay said:

We would always wonder, though, what happened before episode four.

It was far more interesting when I was wondering.

One great example, is in the scene in SW(ANH) in the Death Star when Tarkin enters the room, and is asked how the locals will "keep control without the bureaucracy". It's an ingenious line, because immediately we see how the empire is using red tape as a weapon, and we imagine these complex layers of tedious steps a well-intentioned person would have to go through to make any change.  By contrast, in the PT, instead of triggering our imaginations, we are actually made to sit and watch that bureaucracy in all its tedious detail.

Similarly, I was much more intrigued with my mental image of Yoda as Jedi master, before GL went and showed me Yoda being plugged into a light socket.  He just doesn't know when to quit anymore.

"Close the blast doors!"
Puggo’s website | Rescuing Star Wars

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captainsolo said:

No. ESB was and still is amazing. ROTJ was a letdown yes, but not that bad at all.

I would only for a few obvious reasons (GODDAMN MIDICHLORIANS!) but primarily for the Holiday Special, and Howard the Duck.

I hate to burst your bubble, but a movie adaptation of the comic book would have happened with or without Lucas. ;)

I have an old horror mag around somewhere with an early interview with Stan Winston, circa '81 or '82, and there was a photo of his prototype duck suit that looks more like the comic version of Howard.

Where were you in '77?

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Anchorhead said:

 

 

Now, in the interest of disclosure;  I should point out that I really like all four Indiana Jones films. I'm an ongoing, from-the-start, fan of the franchise. However, the opening prequel portion of Crusade was done....poorly.

 I dig all four Indy films as well. I'm curious what you dislike about the opening to Crusade?