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Making of Return of the Jedi (the book) Thread — Page 9

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NeverarGreat said:

Lucas's idea of the Jedi in ROTJ was much different than in the prequels, and I think much more interesting. I get the feeling that there was a warrior class and a priest or guru class, and only the warriors were called Jedi. These were doctrinally male, and to become Jedi they were trained by the gurus or priests in the ways of the Force, inheriting lightsabers from their fathers. The knowledge to construct lightsabers was lost long ago, so there's an ever dwindling number of them, and they are rare and highly prized possessions. I really wish Lucas had stuck with this idea through the prequels.
Eh I don't really get this vibe from the OT at all. The whole "only guys were Jedi" thing. I mean yeah the Jedi we see are guys but Leia gets a force message from Luke in ESB. It's pretty obvious that the force isn't some super exclusive male only thing so there's no reason the assume that the Jedi were like that either.

That said even with the making Leia Luke's sister thing. Just going off the original films themselves they had different lives growing up. Luke lived a harsh life on tatooine being a farmer. Leia lived a life of royalty. It's not exactly like Ben should assume that the Princess lifestyle would prepare her for the trails of being a Jedi. Especially in the OT where it's shown that hard work is necessary to achieve Jedi status. It clashes with the PT though (like that's a surprise) where young untrained Anakin is racing in a podrace apparently too dangerous for any other human... All because of off the scale bacteria. So yeah adding the PT into it they should both have the same amount of Jedi potential because midithingys.

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I think the 'Jedi are male' idea, even if it was never spoken, is probably true for the OT. After all, they were modeled on samurai, a strictly male profession.

Kitbashed
Essays, videos and thoughts on the inspiration behind Star Wars.

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Heilemann said:

I think the 'Jedi are male' idea, even if it was never spoken, is probably true for the OT. After all, they were modeled on samurai, a strictly male profession.

This is what I was getting at. Obviously women could fight in feudal Japan, it's just that they would never get the designation of Samurai regardless of how skillful they were. In the book, Lucas says that anyone could be strong in the Force if they worked at it, it's just that the Jedi have some peculiar rules.

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Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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Doing some further reading in the book: it appears that not all the actors got on well with Marquand. Carrie Fisher (who seems to have particularly disliked him) describes Marquand's behavior on set as "kowtowing" to Famous Actor Harrison Ford, but treating her and Mark Hamill "badly" because they were less famous. She wasn't impressed, and neither apparently was Ford.

Another thing that is very obviously evident is George's overriding concern with the budget, above just about all other aspects of the picture. At times it interfered with the shooting of the film. Marquand had to beg, for instance, for permission to have a giant Rancor hand made to shoot closeups of Mark Hamill in; Lucas had initially refused because of the expense.

The story about GL nixing a costly animatronic Sarlacc tentacle (only to later renege on this decision when he decided the monster had to actually be seen) is also mentioned.

Producer Howard Kazanjian reveals that (as with Ghost Anakin) seeing Vader make the decision on camera to kill the Emperor was his idea:

"Darth Vader is standing there as the Emperor is zapping his son," Kazanjian would say. "Then in dailies, we're watching and talking, and I turned to George and said, 'George, we don't see Darth Vader making the decision. There are no close-ups of him.' So we went back and George shot Darth Vader standing there kind of turning his head left and right, and making the decision to throw the Emperor into the pit."

The screening of Marquand's first cut of the film was apparently a disaster; Lucas was not happy with it at all. (Its style apparently felt "not like Star Wars," and in some places the editing was just plain bad. For instance, in the scene where Vader talks to Jerjerrod as they walk down the Death Star hangar bay, "the screen direction was wrong, backward," as Kazanjian pointed out.) However, Sean Barton, Marquand's film editor, had produced a different cut that Lucas liked a lot more.

Oh, and the book also explains some of the weirdness of that leaked clip of the early Rancor scene: the original attempt at the scene used a large Rancor suit, Godzilla-style, but the results were so ugly that they had to be essentially excised from the final film and replaced with a puppet matted into Hamill's scenes.

“That Darth Vader, man. Sure does love eating Jedi.”

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The Rancor suit was seen in the From Star Wars To Jedi doc. It looked unfinished, as they were probably shooting a test.

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Where were you in '77?

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NeverarGreat said:



Heilemann said:

I think the 'Jedi are male' idea, even if it was never spoken, is probably true for the OT. After all, they were modeled on samurai, a strictly male profession.


This is what I was getting at. Obviously women could fight in feudal Japan, it's just that they would never get the designation of Samurai regardless of how skillful they were. In the book, Lucas says that anyone could be strong in the Force if they worked at it, it's just that the Jedi have some peculiar rules.


This is entirely untrue. There are known documented cases of female samurai.

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Ah, I wasn't aware, going mostly off of Kurosawa et al. Examples?

Kitbashed
Essays, videos and thoughts on the inspiration behind Star Wars.

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 (Edited)

ATMachine said:

a Jedi certainly reinforces the idea that GL was already thinking about Force potential in genetic terms. On the other hand, it makes the story that Obi-Wan had to "discover" Anakin and recruit him into the Jedi Order (as Ben tells Luke in Kasdan's draft) a bit strange.

Not really. This is how I figure that would work. You have two brothers, their father was a great Jedi Knight but was killed in the line of duty. Anakin idolizes his father and wants to honor his memory and take up the mantle.

While Owen grew bitter over the loss of his father and didn't want to have anything to do with those wizards who got his father killed. So when Obi-wan comes around hoping to recruit the sons of Skywalker to help in the desperate fight against the rising clone menace Owen wants nothing to do with it.

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canofhumdingers said:

They were certainly rare, but did exist. If you spend some time on google you'll find out about the more famous accounts. The following link provides a decent general overview of what is known.

http://www.military-history.org/articles/samurai-wars/female-samurai-warriors.htm

That's very interesting, thanks. But, the occasional aberrant female samurai aside, the point stands that samurai and indeed warriors in general, has throughout history been a primarily male profession.

Kitbashed
Essays, videos and thoughts on the inspiration behind Star Wars.

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MOAR!

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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From NYCC:

Rinzler will be releasing eBook versions of his "Making Of..." trilogy of books next week. Each eBook will contain, in addition to the entire text of the hardcopy books, up to 30 minutes of video and up to 30 minutes of audio. The audios and videos will be extremely rare behind the scenes looks at the 3 films. Some of the audio is expected to be very interesting (1 example was a discussion on the set between Lucas and Sir Alec Guinness regarding the proper way to deliver the famous "May the force be with you." line).

2 of the videos that will be included with the eBooks were shown:

1 ) Speederbike chase test footage shot using modified Kenner 12" figures on hand-built Speederbikes (different design from final film) doing basically the whole sequence from the film (with some differences in dialogue and shots/events). All of the characters' voices were provided by Ben Burrit. The miniature forest used for the sequence contained scenery created for the miniature VFX shots for "E.T." which ILM was still working on at the time.

2 ) Rebel briefing scene where Lando announces to Han that that he's a general. Lots of improvised banter between Ford and Williams before they go through the actual dialogue from the script.

An additional video was shown from the filming of the scene where Luke surrenders himself to Vader on Endor. The video features the voice of Marquand both directing the actors and providing Vader's dialogue. This video was really funny, not only for hearing Marquand speaking Vader's lines in his own voice, but for Marquand's stage directions ("Annnnnd...ZING!" when Luke tries to reach Vader's "good side"). Sadly, this video will not be included in the eBook and was going back into the vault after the panel.

http://www.imperialshipyards.net/SMF/index.php?topic=8829.msg166124#msg166124

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Ben Burrit? Shouldn't it be Ben Burrito?

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During the Burtt Panel at the Celebration Europe the huge screen behind him read "Ben Burt"... ouch.

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God, Lucas was already in his control-freak phase during ROTJ wasn't he? I mean, that Black Friday thing was terrible of him!

I’m just here because I’m driving tonight.

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Well you say that without having seen what was thrown out. Besides, coming off of the quagmire of Empire, it's not so strange, and the end result speaks for itself.

Kitbashed
Essays, videos and thoughts on the inspiration behind Star Wars.

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Tack said:

God, Lucas was already in his control-freak phase during ROTJ wasn't he? I mean, that Black Friday thing was terrible of him!

Heilemann said:

Well you say that without having seen what was thrown out. Besides, coming off of the quagmire of Empire, it's not so strange, and the end result speaks for itself.

What's this all about?

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A whole bunch of finished effects shots for the space battle were cut.

It was not about being a control freak, it was a totally necessary thing to do when editing. Stuff has to go. JEDI's three-pronged finale was one of the most innovative things done for the movie ( they're still aping it today) and that takes some trial and error.

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ray_afraid said:

Tack said:

God, Lucas was already in his control-freak phase during ROTJ wasn't he? I mean, that Black Friday thing was terrible of him!

Heilemann said:

Well you say that without having seen what was thrown out. Besides, coming off of the quagmire of Empire, it's not so strange, and the end result speaks for itself.

What's this all about?

It was about calling attention to the fact that Lucas had every right to be a control freak if that's what he was. It was his movie, which he had poured an ungodly amount of money into, and which every person in the world was waiting for; if that's not a good time to be a control freak, when is?

And as for Black Friday, I merely wanted to point out that you can't rightly call it unfair when you don't know what was rejected. The movie was probably a lot better for it.

That's all.

Kitbashed
Essays, videos and thoughts on the inspiration behind Star Wars.

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Heilemann said:

ray_afraid said:

Tack said:

God, Lucas was already in his control-freak phase during ROTJ wasn't he? I mean, that Black Friday thing was terrible of him!

Heilemann said:

Well you say that without having seen what was thrown out. Besides, coming off of the quagmire of Empire, it's not so strange, and the end result speaks for itself.

What's this all about?

It was about calling attention to the fact that Lucas had every right to be a control freak if that's what he was. It was his movie, which he had poured an ungodly amount of money into, and which every person in the world was waiting for; if that's not a good time to be a control freak, when is?

And as for Black Friday, I merely wanted to point out that you can't rightly call it unfair when you don't know what was rejected. The movie was probably a lot better for it.

That's all.

er.. Let me try this again..

What is this "Black Friday" incident you guys are talking about? And what "end result speaks for itself"?

Ray’s Lounge
Biggs in ANH edit idea
ROTJ opening edit idea

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Oh, nothing. I overreacted to this fact about Lucas rejecting hundreds upon hundreds of effects shots from ILM.

I’m just here because I’m driving tonight.

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The Ebooks have just gone on sale. I'm a little reluctant to purchase these. Not only are they almost as much as i paid for the hard cover versions of the books, but it is unclear if the video content can be played on their kindle PC app. If anyone gets any of the books can you please try it on their free PC app to see if the extra content will play? (i don't have a kindle or ipad)

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adywan said:

If anyone gets any of the books can you please try it on their free PC app to see if the extra content will play? (i don't have a kindle or ipad)

Well, I've tried one of the free "Kindle Editions with Audio-Video" on the PC reader and the Android app and both of them showed a "Your browser does not support the video tag" error in place of the video.

So I guess this is true:

Kindle Edition with Audio/Video
Audio/Video content is available on latest generation Kindle Fire (except 1st generation), Kindle Fire HD, iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch devices.
I still hope someone manages to extract the videos from all three books... I don't plan to buy another tablet for them.