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Star Wars coming to Blu Ray (UPDATE: August 30 2011, No! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!) — Page 88

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yeah... a slave plantation... where you get paid...

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Quackula said:

yeah... a slave plantation... where you get paid...

And are free to leave.

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Okay. I admit that you can leave and are paid. That still doesn't erase the fact that LFL and GL are virtually indistinguishable from one another, and most of the employees are just puppets of whatever GL is thinking about.

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generalfrevious said:

That still doesn't erase the fact that LFL and GL are virtually indistinguishable from one another, and most of the employees are just puppets of whatever GL is thinking about.

Puppets as in "do what they are told"? What's so wrong with that? Isn't that what an employee is suppose to do?

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Meaning, I think, that there's no one to challenge Lucas in his ideas, like Gary Kurtz did. So we end up with Jar Jar Binks. So you have a LFL populated by sycophants instead of a collaborative effort to create movie art.

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avoidz wrote: Meaning, I think, that there's no one to challenge Lucas in his ideas, like Gary Kurtz did.  So we end up with Jar Jar Binks.

Originally Jar Jar was going to be able to inflate himself like a porcupine fish.  Someone talked him out of that idea.  Good/Bad?

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none said:

Originally Jar Jar was going to be able to inflate himself like a porcupine fish.  Someone talked him out of that idea.  Good/Bad?

 Indifferent. 

(on the other hand, that might  just have provided him with the odd moment of actual humour, who knows?)

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avoidz said:

Meaning, I think, that there's no one to challenge Lucas in his ideas, like Gary Kurtz did. So we end up with Jar Jar Binks. So you have a LFL populated by sycophants instead of a collaborative effort to create movie art.

On the other side of the coin, Lucas attitude and conviction (being free to do what he wants and how he wants) managed to improve some of his own companies like ILM (and therefore, cinema as we see today) and the move to digital cinema.

And who is to say nobody challenged Lucas ideas even in the PT? Maybe not at the scale of Gary Kurtz, but I believe he was open to suggestions. (As of today, I know he is with The Clone Wars animated series, as shown in many interviews and videos. And that's LFL nowadays.)

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(sigh) Why didn't GL just retire in and let Kurtz run LFL and SW? ROTJ/PT would have been much better and we would be enjoying the unaltered OT in prefect quality. Good people don't hang on as much as untalented frauds.

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Alexrd said:

 

And who is to say nobody challenged Lucas ideas even in the PT? Maybe not at the scale of Gary Kurtz, but I believe he was open to suggestions.

 TPM Documentary is very insightful towards this issue, as it is very candid.  If you watch the process of TPM, Lucas is surrounded by younger guys who grew up as SW fans, and now finally got a chance to work with him.

If you watch the Doc, you can see they are not going to question Lucas, because he is frickin George Lucas!  I know if I worked on the PT back in 1997 as a 25 year old kid, I would have been intimidated as hell to question Lucas about anything.

The only person who really questions Lucas is Ben Burtt when they all watch the first rough cut of Episode I.  Just watch the reaction of everyone after the movie ends, it is a look of horror.  Ben Burtt sort of challenges Lucas about the ending and whether there is too much going on for the viewer.

As much as I am not a fan of Episode I, this documentary is really good.  Its a shame Lucas didn't do it for Episode II and III, but again I think it was too insightful and too revealing for his taste.

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 (Edited)

It's weird... the Lucas of the original trilogy seems to be such a cool guy.. devoted, passioante, with a good eye for story telling and the wisdom to work together with others... let them contribute...

It makes you wonder what happened... All the movies were commercial films that had to make money, but still there is so much soul especially in the first two ones. When I watch the PT Lucas, he doesn't seem like someone who does the movies to make money... They should be successful, but there seems to be a lot of heart in them as well, just that it never comes out on screen. Also with the SEs - I don't think "Jedi rocks" was his attempt to spoil the fun, I think he really wanted to put something cool up there, something to give to his fans. That is probably why he cannot handle criticism that much when it comes to those changes.

The first trilogy is probably the most successful piece if art of the last century, judging from the way these caharcters have embedded themselves in the public consciousness. The only one in the last century up to this is porbably Tolkien. It's miraculous how someone can lose talents and instincts that were so great...

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Maybe GL made the OT so good so that he could psychologically scar as many people as he could with the PTSE later on; in a sense a practical joke 40 years in the making.

Too bad the BD's are not going to wow anyone in a positive way.

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Wait, so you actually believe that the PT is actually a long, dragged out practical joke? That Lucas only made the OT good so he could come back later and disappoint people with some mediocre-at-best prequels, just for his own amusement?

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He believes whatever is needed to make him as depressed as possible.

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I don't believe this to make myself depressed. I think the decisions made in the SW franchise over the last 15 years have revealed GL's true nature. There was no way the man made the movies we love.

I don't like it that you people consider me mentally ill because I have a pessimistic view on the franchise, and that we are at the mercy of a sadist when it comes to watching these movies on DVD/BD.

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generalfrevious said:

I don't like it that you people consider me mentally ill because I have a pessimistic view on the franchise, and that we are at the mercy of a sadist when it comes to watching these movies on DVD/BD.

Not hearing what you are saying is a form of illness.

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I  must say that even though he expresses it in a rather extreme way, in principle I must agree with generalfrievous but I see the SE situation as more of a marketing scheme :-D

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 (Edited)

I wish he really was twirling his mustache and being "sadistic". At least that would be kooky and interesting. This whole dumb thing is just about keeping it an attractive franchise for kids. Does anybody remember that hacky phrase  "It's time to bring____into the 90s!" Basically, the special edition is Poochie.

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 (Edited)

Lucas is the same basic person as 1977, artistically. Star Wars came out 50% the way he wanted, TPM came out 90%--his constraints in the early days and his heavier collaboration hid his true flaws. The only problem and the only real change since 1977 is that his ego grew sometime in the early 80s and then took over all other parts of his personality some time in the early 1990s. But then, what would you expect? He was the most revered mogul on the planet, he was treated by us and by even regular joes as though he was a god. In a way, it's hard to blame him for his personality change because its a product of the environment and understandable in some ways if you really think about it. For sure, he has a lot of psychological complexes beyond this, like his stubborness, obsession for control and reclusiveness, but those have always been there, and in fact in some ways the proper harnessing of those qualities was what made his early films good. Once the environment and context changed those qualities started becoming toxic, but in some ways you can't really blame him for the environment he found himself in.

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^ you hit the nail on the head, zombie!

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That was one of the more concise and cogent analyses on Lucas I've ever read, zombie84.

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@ Zombie84: Absolutely SPOT ON, Sir!!! Very well said indeed. The trouble is I think he gets irritated by the fact many people like the other 50% - the part that made compromises due to budget which actually made the films better - and he's basicaly trying to sweep that under the carpet. I really am of the opinion the George Lucas I loved in the 70s/80s never actually existed. That - for me - is even sadder than this whole SE nonsense he's inflicted upon us with each new release...

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I agree; hits the nail right on the head zombie. 

I also agree with nerfherder on GL: his real flaws were more and more prominent as time went on. The thing I most hate about him is his stubbornness in refusing to release the OOT (no the GOUT really doesn't count) on modern video format. The entire DVD format lived and died without the actual OT gracing it, and it looks like Blu-ray will see the same fate in regard to SW. The OOT as we know it should have been there, but it never really materialized except in a shoddy laserdisc port.