Rick McCallum Exits Lucasfilm! — Page 2

zombie84 said:

Wasn't Rick Berman in charge of TNG just when it began to get good? Or am I one of the few people who think the best thing to happen to that series was Roddenberry passing away, god bless his soul?

Anyway, yeah, McCallum gets too much shit. He was just doing his job. And he did a great job! He wasn't meant to be there creatively, he was more like a production manager, and the amount of management he had to juggle was mind-boggling, and each film came slightly under budget and schedule. Hell, he made Episode II without a script! Can you imagine the logistics? On top of which, he subtly prodded Lucas into more useful directions, like bringing in a dialogue coach in Episode III. The fact is, Lucas was the boss, and he wanted someone to carry out his wishes. McCallum knew this, and had he resisted significantly Lucas would have fired him and found someone capable of that. Howard Kazanjian doesn't get shit, but he did the exact same thing. Why? Because that's how it goes. Anyone who hasn't had to do their incompetant boss' bidding hasn't spent enough time in the work force.  Some producers want to be in on the creative side, and some enjoy being managers and taking a backseat. Arguably, the prequels needed that guy, but Lucas was the one in charge and he wasn't going to let that happen.

On top of which, McCallum started out with a bang with Young Indy, not to mention Singing Detective. Great series. "Want to do the prequels?" Hell yes, where do I sign. I think he acted in good faith, George Lucas was a god and these were thought to be the biggest films of the century, but after Episode I he realized, "oh, damn, all those doubts I had during production were true. Oh, well. I'm under contract now. What's the point of quitting?" No one goes after the producer of The Green Lantern. "WHY DIDN'T YOU MAKE SURE THE FILM WAS GOOD??? ARGHHH!" But Gary Kurtz sets an unrealistic precedent. And look what happened to him? He was fired, and after one more film that was the end of his career. If McCallum had any incling to be a creative head he would have got into directing. He was interested in management, and to that end he did a fantastic job.

I wish him well. And I hope he winds up on better films. He deserves it.

Berman is a controversial figure amongst Trek fans to this day. His odd decisions about the musical underscores of all four series under his tenure did not endear himself to some. I've read he didn't like scores that stood out like TOS episodes had. There is a point around season three(?) when the TNG scores become bland.

Like Lucas, he gets the blame for things fans didn't like, wrecking the Enterprise D, killing off Kirk, etc.

A brief look at the IMDB reveals Kurtz hasn't been sitting on his butt lately, either.

I thought it had more to do with the high cost of the series? They weren't filming these on the backlot at Universal!

Some episodes were pretty good, (Indy caught up in WW1 spy intrigue) others were about as dry as an old history textbook. IIRC, one whole episode was Indy wrestling with the decision to enlist and nothing else. Not exactly an action packed episode. I couldn't make it through any of the kid Indy episodes.

The show did continue on cable tv as a series of tv movies though.

Funny how really old Indy has ended up on the cutting room floor next to Sebastian Shaw's Anakin.

I thought the episode where Harrison came back to do the wraparound story was good. Kind of like that final episode of Galactica 1980 with Starbuck, it came too late.

zombie84 said:

Tyrphanax said:

Bingowings said:

BmB said:

All I know is he was incredibly annoying kiss-ass to listen to in the prequel special features and commentaries.

I found Joe Letteri defending the dried banana turd CGI Jabba much more annoying personally.

JOE LETTERI: We wanted people to think there was a giant banana turd on set with Harrison Ford and we just photographed him stepping in it.

Yeah, that was pretty egregious.

I think you guys are forgetting that, in 1996, to insert CG like that into unseen 1976 footage was pretty impressive, and looked real(-ish) to us. Almost no one was bashing the CG quality of Jabba in 1997; it hasn't aged well, in the same way that all CG from 1997 hasn't, nor have many early 3D video games like 1996's Resident Evil (one of my favourite games of all time that I routinely play every so often). But for the time, it was for sure a proud moment in ILM history.

It was amazing that they could put Jabba into that footage. Problem is, it looks nothing like the Jabba we saw in ROTJ. The revised version was an improvement, but the skin color still seems off, unlike the TPM Jabba.

They should have at least considered building a scaled down Jabba puppet and inserted that into the sequence. That approach would not be far removed from what George has claimed he was going to do with those shots originally.

They might have cheated Jabba's size to better fit him into the 1976 footage. After all, Harrison didn't know he was interacting with a giant slug at the time time. ;)

You'd think Ben Burtt would have had a box full of unused voice tracks for Jabba from 1983 they could have remixed into new dialog.

IIRC, it's mostly the same dialog that was in the original script, which also made it into the comic and novelization.

I firmly believe Jabba is out of his gourd on some controlled substance in ROTJ, which might explain the difference in attitude. ;)