Star Wars: Episode VII to be directed by J.J. Abrams **NON SPOILER THREAD** — Page 46

Jonno said:

If you want something to complain about, just look at the genuine balls-up that is Alien Resurrection (which makes the critical error of insisting that the series is all about Ripley, against all logic and good taste).

So, we can't complain about Alien 3 but we are allowed to complain about Alien 4? Nice. But I already made a fanedit of Alien 4, I'm in peace with this movie now.

I think Bingo is right about the "soap Skywalker storyline" of Star Wars being a weakness of the saga, but that's also what makes the 6 movies a "saga". So it's both a weakness and a strenght, IMO. Had the movies been better it would only be a strenght I guess. (I always wished the Alien movies could have a more structured storyline between them, other than just Ripley/creature in a different place each time. Anyway move along))

TMBTM said:

So, we can't complain about Alien 3 but we are allowed to complain about Alien 4? Nice. But I already made a fanedit of Alien 4, I'm in peace with this movie now.

Sorry, I should have been more clear. I haven't heard anyone say that Alien 3 is a bad film (yet)... It's the Hicks and Newt thing that I'd have thought people would have come to terms with by now. I can understand it coming as a shock in 1992, but with the proper perspective it can be seen as emblematic of the series as a whole: in this battle, everyone loses.

Oh well, if you're still not happy about I guess you could fanedit that too.

Jonno said:

TMBTM said:

So, we can't complain about Alien 3 but we are allowed to complain about Alien 4? Nice. But I already made a fanedit of Alien 4, I'm in peace with this movie now.

Sorry, I should have been more clear. I haven't heard anyone say that Alien 3 is a bad film (yet)... It's the Hicks and Newt thing that I'd have thought people would have come to terms with by now. I can understand it coming as a shock in 1992, but with the proper perspective it can be seen as emblematic of the series as a whole: in this battle, everyone loses.

Oh well, if you're still not happy about I guess you could fanedit that too.

Maybe one day I could fanedit Alien 3, but Prometheus first, haha! ;)  Like I said: I liked Alien 3 (but I heard many people saying they don't like it), and yes, the Newt/Hicks thing still bother me. But also the fact that the story did not evolve into something else than another moody movie trying to recreate the suspens of the first after Cameron left the ground covered of Alien bodies. But it's a great looking movie. It has a point. It's rather bold. I usualy like bold decisions in movies. But this time I guess I wanted a little more fan service, lol.

Jaitea said:

he was a evil Jedi....who are called Sith

DuracellEnergizer said:

 

Jaitea said:

he was a evil Jedi....who are called Sith

I miss the days when "Sith" wasn't synonymous with "evil Jedi".

 

What was 'Sith' synonymous with before Star Wars?

J

An evil Jedi is not a Sith. 

There could be many evil Jedi (Jedi turning bad), but two Sith at a time, according to Yoda (who is in fact George Lucas here...)

But an evil Jedi can become a Sith (or not. He can just stay an evil Jedi).

TMBTM said:

An evil Jedi is not a Sith. 

There could be many evil Jedi (Jedi turning bad), but two Sith at a time, according to Yoda (who is in fact George Lucas here...)

But an evil Jedi can become a Sith (or not. He can just stay an evil Jedi).

I know but right from the start in all the merchandising & promotion in 1977 Darth Vader was known as 'Dark Lord of the Sith'......I had a T-shirt with that on it in '77

Sith wasn't mentioned on film till episode 1 in '99, but between '77 and then, if you were into SW you knew a Jedi gone bad was a Sith,...and back then you could probably have a whole host of them

J

Jaitea said:

TMBTM said:

An evil Jedi is not a Sith. 

There could be many evil Jedi (Jedi turning bad), but two Sith at a time, according to Yoda (who is in fact George Lucas here...)

But an evil Jedi can become a Sith (or not. He can just stay an evil Jedi).

I know but right from the start in all the merchandising & promotion in 1977 Darth Vader was known as 'Dark Lord of the Sith'......I had a T-shirt with that on it in '77

Sith wasn't mentioned on film till episode 1 in '99, but between '77 and then, if you were into SW you knew a Jedi gone bad was a Sith,...and back then you could probably have a whole host of them

J

Yep, retrospectively that's very true. "Sith" is even in the novelisation of SW, IIRC. So Sith always were, and still are the opposite of the Jedi. But "the rule of two" comes in the way when it comes to think about the future of the Sith for the sequel trilogy. Since both last Sith died in ROTJ you can't have Sith anymore, only evil Jedi, or evil users of the Force. Unless some Sith were carbon frozen somewhere in the galaxy or cloned...

EDIT: but thinking about it, even the clone of a Sith would not be a Sith without the teaching of a Master... (in the prequels they established cloning as being creating babies, who then are growing fast. Not a direct adult clone of someone with full memory of his past.)

Unless those new evil users of the Force just call themselve "Sith" in hommage to the ancient Sith... Brain explodes.

On the subject of Doug Chiang, here's an interview from last month's celebration where he talks VERY kindly of Lucas and working with him on the prequels:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCswvnWOzAg&feature=youtube_gdata_player

EVERYONE talks kindly of Lucas at the Celebration.

TMBTM said:

But it's a great looking movie. It has a point. It's rather bold.

Grrrrrrrrr

Bingowings said:

Everyone assumes it will be about the children and grandchildren of the Rebel heroes of the OT facing some old style new threat.

There is at least some mystery there if you ignore the EU (which I hope they do) but it would be more fun to have it about the children/grandchildren of someone killed by the Rebels of the OT.

Have them the new heroes and our heroes the new villains (well some of them).

Shake the thing up a bit.

Interestingly enough, I was reading some articles on that Secret History of Star Wars site the other day, and this lines up surprisingly well with what Lucas was talking about back in the 70's and 80's. For a while there he apparently had the idea that the prequel trilogy would be more political in nature (kind of like Dune I think, although none of the quotes mentioned it directly), the original trilogy would be light hearted action, and the sequel trilogy would be more philosophical, asking if good and evil were really as black and white as we'd seen in the other six movies. If they went with what you're talking about, we would have nine movies that actually matched that version of the "original vision."

Edit: Also with the whole Sith thing, Timothy Zahn mentions something kind of cool in the annotated version of Heir to the Empire, which is that when he was writing the book, nobody aside from Lucas himself actually knew what a Sith was -- for all anyone knew, it could be a species or a group that Vader ruled over in his spare time. He actually wanted the Noghri to be called the Sith, and he described them to look kind of like Vader's armor, and imply that it was based on them, but Lucas nixed the name. It's also why older EU novels were so big on the phrase "dark Jedi." The writers weren't entirely sure what a Sith was, so they went with something a bit more simple and descriptive, starting with Zahn.

Jaitea said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

 

Jaitea said:

he was a evil Jedi....who are called Sith

I miss the days when "Sith" wasn't synonymous with "evil Jedi".

 

What was 'Sith' synonymous with before Star Wars?

J

Owyn_Merrilin said:

Also with the whole Sith thing, Timothy Zahn mentions something kind of cool in the annotated version of Heir to the Empire, which is that when he was writing the book, nobody aside from Lucas himself actually knew what a Sith was -- for all anyone knew, it could be a species or a group that Vader ruled over in his spare time. He actually wanted the Noghri to be called the Sith, and he described them to look kind of like Vader's armor, and imply that it was based on them, but Lucas nixed the name. It's also why older EU novels were so big on the phrase "dark Jedi." The writers weren't entirely sure what a Sith was, so they went with something a bit more simple and descriptive, starting with Zahn.

Lets face it Star Wars is Dune Lite, just as Dune is Robert Graves in space on drugs.

The story of Paul Atreides is the hero's tale even more so than Luke's but what happens next to Paul and Leto is much more unexpected and interesting than anything that happens to Anakin and Luke.

I just hope the writers dare to be bold with these films to counter the safe, safe dullness of the prequel plots.

Sorry DuracellEnergizer, my misunderstanding, I never read any of the EU books

Owyn_Merrilin said:

 

Edit: Also with the whole Sith thing, Timothy Zahn mentions something kind of cool in the annotated version of Heir to the Empire, which is that when he was writing the book, nobody aside from Lucas himself actually knew what a Sith was -- for all anyone knew, it could be a species or a group that Vader ruled over in his spare time. He actually wanted the Noghri to be called the Sith, and he described them to look kind of like Vader's armor, and imply that it was based on them, but Lucas nixed the name. It's also why older EU novels were so big on the phrase "dark Jedi." The writers weren't entirely sure what a Sith was, so they went with something a bit more simple and descriptive, starting with Zahn.

 

I remember thinking when I was a kid that perhaps Vader was an alien or a person from a planet called Sith, but when the back-story of Vader being badly burned by lava whilst battling with Obi-Wan at a volcano, I do remember deciding that Sith must be a Jedi who uses the dark side, I've never read any Timothy Zahn books

J

Just had a thought, I can't remember the plot of Star Trek Into Darkness, I enjoyed it at the time, but now I'm starting to think that the film wasn't that great at all, fantastic effects, but really stupid film, who's fault was that, the writer obviously, but it was JJ's movie

I've got a bad feeling about this, I hope it passes

J

Jaitea said:

Just had a thought, I can't remember the plot of Star Trek Into Darkness, I enjoyed it at the time, but now I'm starting to think that the film wasn't that great at all, fantastic effects, but really stupid film, who's fault was that, the writer obviously, but it was JJ's movie

I've got a bad feeling about this, I hope it passes

J

I haven't seen Into Darkness, but I have seen the original, which was similarly awesome when you watch it but forgettable afterwards, and it's for a simple reason: Abrams wanted to make a Star Wars movie, not a Star Trek movie, so the plot was nothing but an excuse to get a lot of action going in the Star Trek universe. I hadn't really thought of it before, but he did kind of miss the mark for it to be a great Star Wars movie, too. It's more one of those other big budget sci fi movies, like Stargate or The Fifth Element, that were good but didn't really stay in the public consciousness.

That last part is kind of how I felt about the prequels, too. I truly believe that if you dropped the Star Wars name from them, they'd be every bit as well remembered as the two movies I just mentioned,  by about the same numbers of people. Especially the first one and the third one, both of which were decent to good movies with a few bad points. I'm at a loss for how to call anything but the special effects and the sound good in the second one, which fails at pretty much everything but having pretty colors on screen. Whereas (heretical comment incoming) I feel like TPM is every bit as good as Jedi, if not better, and RotS is a decent, if not great entry in the series. Not being able to live up to the hype killed those two more than the actual quality did.

Getting back to that soap up there, I wasn't there in '77, but I was in '97, and the buzz and the merchandising was /insane/ all the way up to the release of TPM. I may not have had bar soap, but I had toothpaste, a toothbrush, a toothbrush holder, bath foam....

Point is there isn't a movie on the planet that  could live up to that kind of hype and advertising blitz, let alone the legacy it was up against even without it.

Edit: Since you're the one who quoted me in the other comment, I may as well edit in a reply: I always figured the same thing myself, and I was surprised the first time I heard of the idea of there being a species called the Sith, but it kind of makes sense if you think about it. I don't think there was anything prior to TPM that connected the Emperor to the Sith, just Vader. It may not be the most obvious conclusion to make, but I guess the writers were giving lucas a bit more credit than necessary, thinking he might surprise them.

Owyn_Merrilin said:

It's more one of those other big budget sci fi movies, like Stargate or The Fifth Element, that were good but didn't really stay in the public consciousness.

skyjedi2005 said:

There is no guarantee its not going to be another John Carter, or Lone Ranger.

Of course there's a guarantee. It's a new Star Wars movies. Even Phantom Menace 3D, hated by people, a rerelease, only in 3D in most places  made 100 million. A brand new Star Wars movie? No way that's not doing well.

 There is literally no chance it will not be a success as a single film unless they give this a budget unparalleled in movie history. The only scenario where this works out badly for Disney is if the movie bombs on expectations on par or worse than TPM. Which I don't think it will. Disney knows they can't mess up the movie without pissing off Star Wars fans. That kills the good word of mouth. It will stunt the growth of future Star Wars movies, and they need that initial burst of goodwill towards them if they want a yearly Star Wars film franchise to work.

Of course there's a guarantee. It's a new Star Wars movies. Even Phantom Menace 3D, hated by people, a rerelease, only in 3D in most places  made 100 million. A brand new Star Wars movie? No way that's not doing well.