doubleofive said:
I was all excited, put it in my calendar even, then noticed “Back in ‘cinemas’”. That sounded rather British to me, then I realized that I hadn’t heard of it because it wasn’t in my country.
I assumed the upcoming ‘BACK TO THE FUTURE’ re-release was coming out across USA too. I’m surprised if it’s just us that’s getting it. Keep an eye on your listings nearer October in case of developments.
In the meantime, I’ll continue on randomly…
BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (released 1986/directed by John Carpenter)
Fanedited Trailer (a nicely ‘updated’ one I came across recently) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBz-8j0H87Q
Teaser Trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIPXEUSi-iM
Theatrical Trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=592EiTD2Hgo
NOTE - rather than starting the Boba escape scene ‘inside his helmet visor’, I might instead start just AFTER the initial shot of his arm breaking through the sand and hitting the ground (immediately after the hand shot fades out), where the background has changed and we now see him grunting as both his arms go up -
…OR…I MIGHT instead start at this point below, just after he has pulled himself out upright, as an alternative way of slightly extending our look at Boba’s escape before the ‘inside his helmet visor’ shot, and the music would blend nicely here with the preceding Boba in the tank shot -
I haven’t been around to comment on this show before now, but I’ve really enjoyed the majority of THE MANDALORIAN’s initial 2 seasons. I wasn’t expecting too much from the TV show side of things initially, but it’s exceeded my expectations with some excellent moments throughout…and it’s been fun to be transported back to a ‘STAR WARSY’ setting on a regular basis.
And since I’ve just mentioned on the main THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT discussion thread that I’d prefer to alter the ending of the 2nd season more to my own taste, I thought I’d show EXACTLY HOW over here.
It was a fantastic moment when ‘Luke Skywalker’ initially revealed himself at the time…but despite a good effort, the digital face replacement wasn’t quite there during all the shots, mainly due to a somewhat ‘dead-eyed’ look I think. On top of that, things then ended up being just a little too schmaltzy for my liking, which is another reason I’d rather alter it. But that’s just my own take on that at the end of the day.
I’ve since seen Shamook’s excellent ‘deepfake’ improvement of the scene on YouTube of course, and I only wish that there could be a future official release of the show using his version. I would be content with the existing ending if that was the case. Anyway, it’s terrific news for us all that he’s actually been hired by Lucasfilm now, and it’s great to know that this type of thing is in very capable hands for their future shows.
Anyway, here’s how I’d alter things for a less schmaltzy, final moment once the summoned Jedi is allowed to enter by the Mandalorian…
As the tension builds, the Mandalorian puts the child down, and then presses a switch to open the doors…
…and as the anticipation builds, we get our last look at the waiting group…
…and then the lightsaber switches off, as we get to the ‘Oh WOW, look who it is!’ moment…
…and as a brief reprise of John Williams’ familiar music plays over Luke’s casual reveal, I’d finish off with a final look at ‘the child’ who looks back at him and blinks…
…and then I’d CUT to blackness as we hear a brief echoing sound (from where the lift door closed during the final shot in the original version), as the echo fades to silence and the words ‘Directed by PEYTON REED’ appear, before the end theme begins as normal…**
So I’d be content with just that, as we only see the best of the existing ‘Luke’ shots, without having to see any more of them. A ‘Jedi’ has heard the child’s ‘Force call’, and come to his aid…so we are at the end of the Mandalorian’s mission now. We effectively end on the sudden ‘Oh WOW!’ factor of the reveal that it’s actually ‘Luke Skywalker’ who has responded, and know that all will be well for the child now, with no further dialogue necessary.
Now onto the NEXT season’s adventures, post haste!
HAPPY NEW YEAR to all.
With one thing and another, It’s been over 2 years since I’ve commented at length about anything specific around here…BEFORE THE DARK TIMES…BEFORE THE RISE OF…er, THE PANDEMIC! But I’ve had plenty of time to mull over the conclusion of the Sequel Trilogy which came out at the end of 2019, and hope to go into some thoughts of my own on it before too long. Along with an idea or two also, but that’s for another day.
As a long-time fan of the Original Trilogy’s imaginative world-building, I wondered what a regular live-action TV show would offer in a ‘Star Warsy’ setting…so I’m glad to say that I’ve found plenty of impressive and fun moments throughout THE MANDALORIAN and THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT shows so far.
After previous disappointments with certain aspects of the franchise, I’d kept my expectations very low for THE MANDALORIAN. I initially had some reservations about how things would turn out when I found out that the main character was going to be accompanied by a little, doe-eyed, Disney-fied ‘yodaling’…but he’s turned out to be a big hit now, even though I wasn’t too keen on the idea at the start. And due to the way things progressed in the show, I warmed to him too…especially as he remained SILENT throughout, rather than being given some kind of awful ‘toddler Yoda’ voice. Thank the Maker!
Yes, there’s been some overly-goofy moments along the way, but both shows have had enough entertaining moments in them to offset any eye-rolls I’ve had with them. And Boba’s ‘backstory’ involving his experiences with the Tusken tribe really helps to strengthen his initial appearances in THE MANDALORIAN show for me now too.
So yeah, It’s still a great time to be a fan of the franchise I reckon, and if the overall quality of these initial two shows are anything to go by, them I’m certainly looking forward to all the other live-action spin-off shows yet to come too.
However, having said all that…
just as I thought that THE MANDALORIAN season 2 finale’s last moments came off a bit unconvincing and cloying for my taste, I also had a couple of niggling issues with the opening episode of THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT too…
…because a scene showing EXACTLY HOW Boba escaped from the Sarlacc was always going to be a big moment that a lot of us were looking forward to seeing onscreen…but I’m afraid that Robert Rodriguez came up with something very mediocre, as far as I’m concerned…because the way he ended up putting this major sequence together was lacklustre and cheap-looking I thought, with lazy camera angles and strangely-edited shots…and very little sense of jeopardy overall. And as a fan of a lot of his work, it pains me to say that.
I’d hoped for a much more substantial sequence for that moment, but it was poorly handled I felt. Practical effects can look excellent if they are done well, but the start of the Sarlacc ‘flashback’ was a gloopy, rubbery-looking disappointment for me, and the whole thing seemed rushed overall. And I didn’t particularly like the way Boba was shown to escape in the first place, with his hand suddenly bursting upwards through the sand like something out of the ending of ‘Carrie’! Some may love what we got, but I guess I just hoped for something a bit more dramatic and better-staged for this particular sequence.
Hell, I’d rather Boba had just managed to get his jetpack to splutter back into life for a few seconds eventually to be honest, and then grenaded the beast’s insides on his way out for good measure. At the very least I’d have liked to have seen less cutting and better camera angles used on the actual scene Rodriguez came up with…as the ONLY thing that salvaged it for me somewhat, was the neat accompanying music that started up once Boba broke out of the sand. But a missed opportunity for this particular set-piece to have been something more special I reckon.
So just for fun, I played around with the opening of the show for a while to see how things would look and sound if it was re-arranged a little more to my liking…which just involves simplifying things even more when it comes to seeing Boba alive outside of the Sarlacc that he escaped from eventually - at some point after the barge exploded, he just DID…with the method UNSEEN this way, so that I can imagine whatever I wish… 😃
We begin with a certain short musical fanfare, as it fades out to the silence of familiar blue wording…
…then we CUT to the existing opening scenes…
…as we see a familiar figure inside a healing tank…
…then we CUT to a whole new ‘flashback’ here, as Boba recalls a desolate part of Tatooine…
…then we CUT back to Boba moving uncomfortably in his healing tank at this point…
…then we CUT to the rest of his ‘flashback’, where we hear heavy breathing from inside a familiar helmet, as the score kicks in at this point…
…then things continue normally as per the episode, as a Sandcrawler comes across Jabba’s barge wreckage at night, and the Jawas steal Boba’s armour, etc…
(by the way, re-instating the initial ‘flashback’ showing Slave I on the watery world of Kamino would work equally fine for me too, as a juxtaposition to then seeing a ‘flashback’ to the sands of Tatooine afterwards - seeing as we then got a shot of Slave I taking off from Kamino in the 2nd episode of the show)
And while I generally liked the majority of the music heard throughout both of these shows, especially the main and end themes…there were certain moments where I would have liked something a little less bombastic personally. And the scene where Boba is getting dressed in his costume finery by his droids was one such moment! We got an overly-dramatic piece of music throughout the scene, which made it faintly ridiculous I thought…which is a pity, as it would have been a neat moment if there had been a moodier, lower-key piece of music over it I reckon…or no music at all.
So here’s how my ideal re-edit of how that would look instead, which would give a much quieter reveal of his costume at this point -
We see Boba in his healing tank, and hear a female voice say Wake up Boba…
…at this point Boba says The dreams are back to Fennec Shand, as he sighs and gets handed his black robe from the approaching droid…
…as Fennec turns to walk away saying Time to go, they’re lined up to pay respects…I’ll let them know you’re on your way, and we end on a close-up of Boba’s gnarly face, as the music fades away…
…then I’d CUT to this shot of Boba now on his throne, as we see him in his full armour again for the first time…
By the way, I reckon Temuera Morrison is doing great in the role so far, and his rugged face and accented line delivery are working very well for the character, just as it did for his ‘dad’.
One other thing about the opening episode of THE BOOK OF BOBA - as much as I love all of ‘Ray Harryhausen’ creature features, I wasn’t too keen on the look of the sand monster at the end. It seemed too on the nose as something the great man would have designed for one of his flicks, but not very ‘Star Warsy’-looking if you know what I mean. Just my own view on that. After looking at it again, I’d probably prefer to remove certain shots of it to make the sequence pass a little quicker, and lessen the amount of skirling that we hear the beast make.
Lastly, I thought Steph Green’s 2nd episode turned out wonderfully overall - I never realised that I needed so much Tusken grunting in my life, and they have been wonderfully portrayed so far. I laughed when a few of them immediately started to take the stolen swoop bikes apart when Boba offered the bikes to them - that was a genuinely funny ‘call back’ to the ones that were starting to dismantle Luke’s speeder in A NEW HOPE, I thought. And Unlike Robert Rodriguez’s 1st episode, this had a really kinetic, cinematic look to it’s set-pieces.
Safe to say that my much younger self would have absolutely lapped all this up if it had been around at the time, even though my current older self would like to tweaked certain things a tad. Roll on the next episode!
IMPORTANT NOTE - if anyone wishes to comment on any of this, please DD NOT re-‘quote’ the entire post, thanks!
CUT to Boba’s face, to begin scene of Jawas taking his helmet and armour -
OR A POSSIBLE ALTERNATE BEGINNING…WHERE THE SHOW WOULD START IN A MORE ‘LINEAR’ WAY WITHOUT SEEING BOBA HAVING ‘FLASHBACKS’ IN HIS BACTA TANK AT JABBA’S PALACE UNTIL MUCH LATER ON -
We begin with a certain short musical fanfare, as it fades out to the silence of familiar blue wording…
…then we CUT to twin suns, as we pan down to a familiar desolate part of Tatooine…
…then we CUT to hearing heavy breathing from inside a familiar helmet, as the music kicks in at this point…and we see an exhausted Boba collapse to the ground, as the music fades down…
…then things continue normally as per the episode, as a Sandcrawler comes across Jabba’s barge wreckage at night, and the Jawas steal Boba’s armour, etc…
…and then we continue as normal as the Tuskens come across him and take him back to their camp…and AT SOME POINT, i COULD THEN CUT BACK TO THE ORIGINAL OPENING SCENES OF JABBA’S PALACE, AND BOBA IN HIS BACTA TANK AS FENNEC WAKES HIM UP…
LATEST THOUGHT - IF I DO A SHORT STORY OF BOBA FETT, I MIGHT JUST END IT WITH BOBA AND FENNEC TAKING OVER JABBA;S PALACE - NOT SURE YET.