Denis Villeneuve says the Star Wars franchise “derailed” in 1983 — Page 2

Superweapon VII said:

BedeHistory731 said:

Vladius said:

I like his movies but this is just a loser opinion. People that think this way don’t understand that it’s supposed to have mythological and spiritual qualities. It’s unsurprising that he put the overly simplistic interpretation of Dune into his Dune part 2 movie.

I mean, he got closer that Jodorowsky would’ve done.

I still believe I would’ve like Jodorowsky’s Dune over Villeneuve’s, regardless of “closeness”. Villeneuve’s Dune strikes me as a soulless made-by-committee corporate product.

Oh absolutely. Even the low-budget Sci-Fi Channel miniseries has more charm than the new Dune movies.

I liked Lynch Dune part I more than Villeneuve. There is no Lynch part II to compare part II to. I liked the second part I know people complained about the changes to Chani from the book.

I also liked the sci fi mini series all those years ago and the Children of Dune follow up.

Return of the Jedi is where the prequel rot started to set in, i still enjoy the movie but not the rough patches. And Darth is way weaker in that movie than The Empire Strikes Back and Han and Leia have pretty much nothing to do. The rescue of Han Solo makes no sense but i enjoy the movie serial silliness of it. All except the whiffle bat lightsaber that causes no damage to the aliens Luke is fighting over the pit of Carkoon. No one loses an arm or a hand or a head.

There are some impressive set pieces Jabba’s sail barge, Jabba’s palace. The Death Star II. The Ewok Village. Then you have unbelivable fake stuff like the Matte painting of the Falcon in the Rebel Hangar. Instead of a full size built Falcon.

The Redwoods provide a unique setting for the rebels to chase stormtroopers on Speeders and you believe in the action that they could crash into a tree.

The Space Battle. at the end still hasn’t been topped. I like the chorus and and the part with the lightsaber duel and Luke fighting Vader, but it has nothing on the duel at Bespin, and Vader fights like a weak and already defeated opponent. He is only winning when Luke refuses to fight. The fight is very one sided.

The version with Leia as Queen of her people and Han dead would have been poignant, but would have angered parents and disappointed children and you can’t sell dead Han toys. Leia ends up alone, Luke ends up alone. They both find their duty is separate from their circle of friends. No screenplay for this version exists, we but rely on Gary Kurtz recollection of the early idea for the third film. Han died in his attack on an imperial base. He survived Carbon Freezing just to bite it. As a kid I would have felt cheated if Han killed in such a lame way, I felt the same way in Force Awakens.

The film is an incomplete experience without Lapti Nek, Yub Yub or Sebastian Shaw as Ghost Anakin. I refuse to watch the later versions. I intensely dislike the version with Hayden at the end. I hate Jedi Rocks, and Victory Celebration sounds like an incomplete temp track piece. The Ewoks singing is much more mythological and fits with Threepio storytelling earlier in the movie. They’ve added themselves to the story by helping to fight the Empire.

Villeneuve didn’t include the “dinner scene” in Dune. That is all you need to know about him.

But yeah, ROTJ has always been weird for me because unlike most mediocre movies, ROTJ is mediocre in a DIFFERENT way. Usually mediocre means that on average, any random scene in the movie is kind of mediocre, with maybe a few exceptions. But in ROTJ you get more of like an computed average level of mediocrity, because some scenes are AMAZING and others are just bleh. Like the Emperor throne room stuff and battle of Endor is incredible 5-star stuff. Ewok battle is more like 1 star. Jabba sequence: maybe like 2.5 stars, has lots of problems, is visually interesting, kinda cool but slightly janky. ROTJ doesn’t have one single tone. The throne room scenes are almost like a different movie from the Jabba rescue or Ewok battle.

But if I really had to distill down the reasons for why ROTJ kind of doesn’t work, it’s this: they obviously had no real idea what to do with 2/3 of the main cast. They just throw Han and Leia on “Ewok ground battle duty” despite neither of these characters having the requisite traits to justify this. They just needed the “big 3” to somehow stay involved in the ongoing plot.

Not meaning to sound facetious here but I share Denis’ feelings re RoTJ - so by extension this gives me hope for Dune 3 (I really like his take on Dune and am a huge fan of the books as well).

Unbelievable how many people get filtered by the simple joy of Return of the Jedi

What this poster said on another Star Wars forum about sums it up for me with regards to people wanting the ‘darker’, more ‘adult’ ROTJ that Kurtz allude to:

**"Whilst the original ideas for ROTJ are fun I do kind of feel myself understanding Lucas and the writer’s choice to go with what we got which I don’t think was just low risk and looking to sell Ewok teddies.

The second DS I think not only makes sense in universe with the reasons for the original explained in ANH but I think its an effective shorthand, we don’t need masses of exposition or a complex plot for the ROTJ climate which potentially could get in the way of the character drama.

The Ewoks and Han not dying I kind of suspect was Lucas wanting their to be a representation of “good” which Luke was fighting for. If he’d just wanted a simple heroic story then he would have outlined one for Luke yet what we get is outside of the speeder hijinx a pretty dark one, actually maybe darker than ESB. I suspect Lucas’s feeling was that was really the dramatic heart of the film and we didn’t need MORE growing darkness by having Han die, instead that plot represents goodness and which feeds into why Luke gets so angry at Vader’s threat to turn Leia."**

• end of quote

"Whilst the original ideas for ROTJ are fun I do kind of feel myself understanding Lucas and the writer’s choice to go with what we got which I don’t think was just low risk and looking to sell Ewok teddies.

The second DS I think not only makes sense in universe with the reasons for the original explained in ANH but I think its an effective shorthand, we don’t need masses of exposition or a complex plot for the ROTJ climate which potentially could get in the way of the character drama.

The Ewoks and Han not dying I kind of suspect was Lucas wanting their to be a representation of “good” which Luke was fighting for. If he’d just wanted a simple heroic story then he would have outlined one for Luke yet what we get is outside of the speeder hijinx a pretty dark one, actually maybe darker than ESB. I suspect Lucas’s feeling was that was really the dramatic heart of the film and we didn’t need MORE growing darkness by having Han die, instead that plot represents goodness and which feeds into why Luke gets so angry at Vader’s threat to turn Leia."

Above is what a poster on another Star Wars forum said. Pretty much sums it up for me.

Edit to add:
For those who found the Jabba rescue subplot a bit iffy, it might interest you to know that Rinzler’s take on George’s early rough drafts that he wrote up for ROTJ (preceded by a story treatment written in late fall of 1980), were that the Jabba’s Palace rescue ‘plan’ was a LOT more coherent that the one that went into the film (the script being the result of Kasdan, Lucas, Marquand, and Kazanjian hashing out the story during meetings in the summer of 1981). In addition, he thought that Vader character-wise was more consistent with his Empire (ESB) persona. Han flies the Millenium Falcon, not Lando, etc.