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Tiptup said:
From everything I know of the production history of Empire, that art vs. franchise switch didn't really occur until the box-office returns came in for the film. Before that, George still had a passion for adding interesting story elements and he invented most of the key plot details. (Zombie can correct me if I'm wrong though.)
Anchorhead said:
Star Wars took the world by storm because that's exactly what it didn't set out to do. It was created with the idea of film first, franchise second. Once that changed, so did the quality of the story.
Star Wars took the world by storm because that's exactly what it didn't set out to do. It was created with the idea of film first, franchise second. Once that changed, so did the quality of the story.
From everything I know of the production history of Empire, that art vs. franchise switch didn't really occur until the box-office returns came in for the film. Before that, George still had a passion for adding interesting story elements and he invented most of the key plot details. (Zombie can correct me if I'm wrong though.)
He always did, really. As sentimental and nice as Anchorhead expresses, its really not as accurate as it seems. Lucas retained merchandizing rights way back in 1973 when he started making it he had "visions of R2D2 mugs and action figures" when he was writing-- just as a fun tie-in the way they had robbie the robot toys in the 50's and stuff like that. Besides which, many feel ESB is a much better picture--whatever honesty Lucas had lost was made up by Kershner, who if you examine the behind-the-scenes history really believed in ESB and really tried to do something special with it, often to contrary of Lucas' wishes. Its Kershner's film, not Lucas', and I think thats why ESB is special. But the issue is very complicated, and cannot really be summed up so succinctly.
And really, thats another thread--I'm really enjoying reading these memories here, lets keep them coming. I'm not so much interested in debating what the technical truth behind the situation is because its interesting simply to hear the perspective of people who saw the film back then and how they view it, which is really the point of this thread.
