Yes to the Matrix being the heir to Star Wars. It came out the same year as TPM, and soon everyone was pretending to be Neo in their backyard, not baby Anakin.
I think that the Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings film series were all trying to be the same story in different costumes.
Nobody has mentioned John Carter yet. After listening to the director's commentary and hearing about how everything in it was designed to simply begin an epic series of movies, It's really sad that they won't be making any more.
You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)
Ryan McAvoy said:
Ulysses was a saturday morning kids cartoon Star Wars knockoff par excellence back in the day...
"No, no Mr Lucas as I told your legal team it's not a Light-Saber, it's a Light-Blaste... erm, ah, I mean a Light-Pistol, yes a Light-Pistol"
Brilliant. Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors and G Force were favourites aswell!
silverwheel said:
The Matrix really struck me as the true heir to the original Star Wars. If the sequels hadn't screwed the pooch so badly, that film series could have been the new OT.
That makes The Matrix even more SW!
It took GL a quarter century to forget how to make a decent follow up.
It only took the Wachowski's four years... that's modern effeciency for you.
And like the PT the two Matrix follow ups not only managed to suck on there own they actually managed to inflict damage on the original concept! lol
VIZ TOP TIPS! - PARENTS. Impress your children by showing them a floppy disk and telling them it’s a 3D model of a save icon.
Ryan McAvoy said:
vacuum said:
i also liked redtails, but back to the topic. i thought space raiders (1983) had some of the same fun that star wars had, anyone seen it? its on you tube.
I loved that Roger Corman documentary but I haven't seen any of his Sci-Fi stuff like 'Battle Beyond the Stars' or 'Space Raiders'.
Must add them to the watch list.
At school, I did eat the crisps though...
Be forewarned, SR is one of those Roger Corman productions using just about everything left over from Battle beyond The Stars, including the FX shots. (The Wookiee like creature in the poster isn't even in the movie!) You're better off seeing BBTS first...
It's like Seven Samurai in space, and good fun. (The Blu Ray looks great.) Also, some kid named Jim Cameron worked on the models. ;)
Where were you in '77?
The Matrix sequels were just over complicated. They tried to be too clever with them and they ended up being all over the place when there was no need. And your absolutely correct, after seeing the original Matrix I was f***ing hyped for the next 2!!! It was brilliant.
NeverarGreat said:
Nobody has mentioned John Carter yet. After listening to the director's commentary and hearing about how everything in it was designed to simply begin an epic series of movies, It's really sad that they won't be making any more.
I was waiting for somebody to mention John Carter Of Mars'. I really enjoyed it, I didn't LOVE it, but it was way better than alot of other half baked franchises that go on for film after film. It deseved a couple of sequels, the plot twist at the end was very clever and it left me wanting more. But when you go over on the budget so much that the film needed to be one of top grossers ever to break even you've killed the franchise yourself before the audience even queued up.
The problem was that GL and others had ripped off the source books already leaving the film feeling (Unfairly) derivitive of Star Wars.
^ A screenshot from AOTC
VIZ TOP TIPS! - PARENTS. Impress your children by showing them a floppy disk and telling them it’s a 3D model of a save icon.
I mistook Space Raiders for 'SpaceHunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone' for a minute there! Woah. Lol
Oh yes Ulysees 31 or 'useless knees' as Phillip Schofield used to call it.
Not only did it have a laser-sword (it's not exactly a knew idea) but the sound effect was practically the same and the soundtrack ripped chunks out of John Williams score for ESB and mixed it with Queen's Flash Gordon score.
Nice designs though.
Yeea... ok perhaps not
space raiders and battle beyond the stars are made up of the same miniatures footage.
I liked the ship in SpaceHunter. Thought it was very Star Warsesque (apologies I don't know how to post pics on my IPad)
DominicCobb said:
The heir to the original SW I believe is the LOTR trilogy most certainly.
I've heard many similar quotes saying "LOTR is this generations Star Wars".
Since I'm a little older than that bracket and didn't 'grow up' with the LOTR films I can't comment if this is true really (I suspect it is). I grew up watching Star Wars on VHS, listening to the BBC LOTR radio drama and reading Judge Dredd lol
I grew to love Peter Jackson's films but Gandalf will always be Michael Hordern for me...
^ Gandalf ^ Bilbo ^ Frodo (And Bilbo in PJ's films)
^ Aragorn
or even... ^ Aragorn
VIZ TOP TIPS! - PARENTS. Impress your children by showing them a floppy disk and telling them it’s a 3D model of a save icon.
Ryan McAvoy said:
I love it. It might not be the most realistic but it certainly is a great adventure. So many WW2 video games were inspired by this film (RTCW, Commandos etc.)
真実
Ryan McAvoy said:
DominicCobb said:
The heir to the original SW I believe is the LOTR trilogy most certainly.
I've heard many similar quotes saying "LOTR is this generations Star Wars".
Since I'm a little older than that bracket and didn't 'grow up' with the LOTR films I can't comment if this is true really (I suspect it is). I grew up watching Star Wars on VHS, listening to the BBC LOTR radio drama and reading Judge Dredd lol
I grew to love Peter Jackson's films but Gandalf will always be Michael Hordern for me...
^ Gandalf ^ Bilbo ^ Frodo (And Bilbo in PJ's films)
^ Aragorn
or even... ^ Aragorn
Growing up, LOTR was always the animated cartoon from the 70's.
imperialscum said:
Ryan McAvoy said:
I love it. It might not be the most realistic but it certainly is a great adventure. So many WW2 video games were inspired by this film (RTCW, Commandos etc.)
Commandos on the Commodore 64? Tape loader baby yeah!!!!
Since anime has come up...
Loosely based on the series of novels often cited as an influence on Star Wars, it was both a movie and a tv series. The animators slipped in a couple Star Wars characters into crowd scenes.
It was also the earliest use of CGI blended with traditional cel animation.
Sadly, neither version is on DVD.
Where were you in '77?
Nah. G force or 'Battle of the Planets' was the daddy for 80's anime
Hey, it's me. said:
Growing up, LOTR was always the animated cartoon from the 70's.
Life doesn't get much better than watching this moment does it...
PJ's LOTR took so much inspiration from this masterpiece. So much so that there is a guy on YouTube who has FanEdied footage from PJ's trilogy to match Bakshi's soundtrack, pretty clever stuff. Some of it is so close it's spooky, some of it (When PJ didn't actually film those scenes) is a little rougher but still very clever.
I hope one day that like the OT we'll get Ralph's original unaltered Movie = or ROUM for short lol
I can't stand the re-dubbed end from the post PJ VHS, DVD and Blu-Ray releases.
If this had come out before Star Wars it would have stormed the Box Office and guarenteed a sequel. But coming a year later it did good business but audiences probably wanted blasters and droids. Spirit wise, the cracking pace of Bakshi's version is pure Star Wars. Bakshi's fellowship are already leaving Rivendell before Jackson's even got Frodo out of Bag End.
VIZ TOP TIPS! - PARENTS. Impress your children by showing them a floppy disk and telling them it’s a 3D model of a save icon.
The original version has been aired on the UK SF channel quite often and its brilliant.
Loved that cartoon... Yeah PJ took a lot of free story boarding from that piece....
But it is after all epic so why change it
Again, on the Anime front. Katsuhiro Otomo's 2004 'Steamboy' has a lot of nice SW elements. Beautifuly animated epic fantasy.
^ Luke ^ Leia
^ Vader (The father of Steamboy)
^ Stormtroopers
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Hey, it's me. said:
The original version has been aired on the UK SF channel quite often and its brilliant.
Would love to get a rip of that.
VIZ TOP TIPS! - PARENTS. Impress your children by showing them a floppy disk and telling them it’s a 3D model of a save icon.
one of the best sci fi animes I ever saw apart from the obvious ones was this...
Well worth checking out the animation and CG is beutifully done and the story is ok too.
Hercules Parrot says :
... there are a lot of failed links ...on this thread
Away from movies for a moment, the future set FF books had plenty of Star Wars thrills for any kid with a dice and a pencil:
I re-purchased a few of these books as iPhone apps last year... great fun
VIZ TOP TIPS! - PARENTS. Impress your children by showing them a floppy disk and telling them it’s a 3D model of a save icon.
SilverWook said:
Titan A.E. got pretty close to what made Star Wars fun, IMHO...
It had a young hero with father issues, spunky heroine, Han Solo type, loveable alien sidekicks, and a MacGuffin both sides were chasing after. It had it's own humorous spin on sneaking into a secure area to rescue the heroine. There was a chase scene in a field of giant ice crystals that could give the ESB asteroid scene a run for it's money.
Did I mention the Earth gets obliterated in the first few minutes of the film? That sequence blew me away on the big screen.
It also had a great musical score, and a decent song filled soundtrack. I played the CD to death for a while.
I don't think it was marketed very well, (non cutesy animated films are still a tough sell) and it wasn't a box office success. Had it come out before Episode One, I feel it could have caught the wave of pent up demand for Star Wars that was building at the time. I went to see it about three times, and I only saw TPM once.
It does have a footnote in history as one of the first digitally projected films. Also probably one of the last feature films to have a honest to goodness Cinemascope credit.
I liked this movie so much, I collected quite a few items. Beyond the action figures, I've got animation drawings, and the now pretty darn rare Laserdisc release. (As with TPM, the LD never came out in the U.S.) I've also got a demo disc for a Playstation game that unfortunately was never released.
The movie did get a small cult following as evidenced by the amount of fan art out there. Alas, some of the fan sites I used to visit have vanished over the past decade.
If Fox would get off it's butt and release it on Blu Ray, I'd rush out and buy it. :)
What a fun topic, and what truth that this film was horribly underrated. I really don't have much to add to the original topic, but I did want to make the extremely off topic but fully in character point that Don Bluth, the genius behind Titan A.E., Land Before Time, Anastasia, The Secret of Nimh, and many other brilliant films in competition with Disney, is...a...Mormon!
