ATMachine

One thing that’s interesting to me in JW Rinzler’s Howard Kazanjian biography is that allegedly one reason David Lynch turned down doing ROTJ was that he didn’t want to make a film that would be scored with John Williams’ music. I know Lynch generally prefers unsettling audio tracks rather than orchestral music pieces in his own work, but it’s still frankly startling (and certainly ballsy) for a a director to say they wouldn’t want a John Williams score if they directed a Star Wars movie.

I wonder how he felt about Toto’s work on DUNE. Was that something Dino De Laurentiis insisted on, perhaps?

ZkinandBonez said:

Z6PO said:

How “Star Wars” Flopped a Shot

I was watching 4K77 a few days ago and ever since I saw the RocketJump Film School mini-documentary about the editing of ANH I’ve been unable to not notice many of the problem-solving edits, and creative workarounds used in the film, but I’ve never noticed this one before.

As someone who has directed several shorts films, as well as having done a fair bit of editing, I find these creative solutions really fascinating and also very relatable. It does unfortunately make it much harder for me to just enjoy the film the same way I used to, but at the same time it has given me a whole new appreciation of the hard work that went into the film.

PS. Did you make this video or did you just find it on YT? Either way, it should be “flipped” not “flopped”. When I first saw the post I was a bit confused about how a shot could flop.

“Flop” was the jargon used inside Lucasfilm itself, I believe. GL asked for shots to be “flopped” so frequently that on Temple of Doom the crew made him a baseball cap with the text “Professor of Flopology” with the last word there in mirror writing.

The second draft of TPM played with that - “Obi-Wan Kenobi” was the name of the old Jedi Knight who was killed by Darth Maul, and “Qui-Gon Jinn” was his apprentice, who took on his fallen Master’s name in memory of him when he became a Knight.

Oddly enough, Kieron Gillen (who’s written some Darth Vader comics in the Disney era) also used that idea in his Warhammer 40,000 comic about Marneus Calgar - who it turns out was originally named Tacitan as a kid, but took on the name of a fellow Space Marine cadet who was slain by a treacherous instructor.

I’ve never liked the Cloud City SE scenes because there’s at least one major instance of simple sloppiness where they couldn’t be bothered to keep things consistent (the disappearing window behind our heroes when the stormtroopers arrive behind them after Vader shows up).

Does it say anything? A lot of the OT-era graphical “alphabets” were just gibberish - that was usual in Ralph McQuarrie’s designs for instance. Since it’s from ROTJ it might say something though.

If that dialogue meddling hadn’t happened this SE change of replacing Clive Revill with Ian McDiarmid would actually appeal to the vast majority of people. Even - dare I say it - hardliners like us. A great example of how so much in the SEs is self-sabotaging.

Lucas the Barbarian said:

As a side note, as much as I want Lucasfilm to release the original versions, I also think it would be in poor taste of them to do it after George dies if he doesn’t give them his approval (which he most likely won’t). George’s approval is really the only thing holding back an official OOT release.

Meanwhile, on the Coruscant newsnet vox pops…

“As much as I want a post-Palpatine galactic government to bring back the Senate, I also think it would be in poor taste of them to do it after the Emperor dies if he doesn’t give them his approval (which he most likely won’t).”

But seriously, I think it would reflect well on Lucasfilm if they released what many fans considered to be the “true” versions of Lucas’ best-known work. Even if he doesn’t see it that way, one could argue that creators are sometimes too close to their own work for a proper perspective.

Welcome to the Disney family. There are no death sticks here. There have never been death sticks here.

That’s one reason why it’s so interesting to me that films like Solo use rear-projection for the cockpit scenes instead of blue-screens.

Lucas tried using that exact method on the first film back in 1976 and it didn’t work at all. ILM supplied hardly any usable footage beforehand and what they did give was too fast-paced for the actors to react well against. Blue-screens were a backup used out of necessity.

Same with the lightsabers on the first film. Rotoscoping was added only because the original idea - an “in-camera” effect using glowing sticks with electric cords hidden up the actors’ sleeves - looked absolutely terrible. Plus it severely hampered the actors’ range of motion in the duel. If they’d gone with the rotoscope idea from the beginning the Vader/Obi-Wan Death Star deul could have had stunt doubles and been as spectacular as the ones in ESB and ROTJ.

And now we’ve come around all the way back to glowing sticks again. Funny how that works. But a lot of the OT’s use of post-production effects work was driven by practical on-set alternatives simply being unviable back then. That probably was why Lucas learned to rely on optical and then digital effects so heavily.

Right. Even the best artists need people to push back against them in order to make their work as good as possible. It’s when you get people becoming so famous and celebrated that nobody stands up to them anymore that you get problems.

And it’s not confined to celluloid by any means. I can think of several fantasy-book writers who got so famous they ended up being able to ignore their editors and their work suffered for it.

Star Wars has had Wagner baked in from the very beginning. Things like Siegmund in the Ring Cycle claiming the sword left to him by his divine father Odin, and then immediately sleeping with his sister. 😉

Heck, even the spelling of Leia’s name comes from the cries of the Rhinemaidens in Goetterdaemmerung.

That’s the problem with making stories instead of giant multimedia franchises. Stories naturally have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Which conflicts with the franchise-minded imperative to keep a constant stream of content going as long as possible, to wring every last cent out of the brand.

Ave, Caesar! Maclunkey te salutant.

I wonder if there’s a connection (beyond the obvious debt of influence) with Rogue One and Book of Eli scriptwriter Gary Whitta.

Apparently the Janie and Marie Antoinette dolls both have the same model but with different textures, including the color change on that dress.

I honestly think this might be a deliberate flub, since it’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it goof that ensures the film’s original version remains superior in at least one way. Plus the blue/pink dress color swap feels like it could be a tongue-in-cheek nod to Disney’s Sleeping Beauty.

JonathanArthur19 said:

Imagine this, if before they altered everything, they restored the O-Neg and printed it on newer film stock to preserve the original versions for future years and they just, have never told us anything about it and they put the it into the Twentieth Century Fox Film Vaults and hid it from the world, then they go and create the Special Editions. Then they’d go on in 2006 and give us a Laserdisc Master with the original crawl spliced on.

Which has me thinking, did they really restore the original versions, then printed it on new film stock, and then just went and made the Special Editions, then went onto say that they printed over the O-Neg “When these were completed, they apparently were printed onto film and re-cut into the negative, replacing the original negs, which were undoubtedly put back into storage.” - The Secret History of Star Wars, 11/03/09

But could this be a coverup and the “Original” (I use that term loosely due to the fact where my theory is that they restored the Unaltered Versions and reprinted them on newer film stock) Negative, which could still be in the vaults and they’ve kept it under wraps because George acts like a big baby when someone questions the original versions.

I suspect this is exactly what happened.

Beskar being a lightsaber-resistant metal raises the possibility of beskar swords. Or even other things, like staves, or maces…

“Third generation” brings to mind the Phase III Dark Troopers from the original Dark Forces video game, where that applied to a version that could be worn as an exoskeleton by flesh-and-blood Imperial troops.

I think “family portrait” was the phrase used inside Lucasfilm to describe the parallelism of the final shots of the OT (minus ESB) & the PT.

Another sad loss. Rest in peace.

Oh, thanks!

Harrison Ford’s alternate “I’m that one!” take in responding to Threepio’s rattling off the odds during the asteroid chase is also amazing.

What new brief deleted scene? I’ve seen a GIF of Han picking Leia up in the Echo Base hallway on Twitter but don’t know where it’s from.

An interesting moment at 4:55: Anthony Daniels testing a C-3PO bodysuit with a silver arm.

“You probably don’t recognize me because I have a silver arm now.”

Indeed. One wonders whether the sale was in part engendered by the fact that Lucas evidently views the late “Uncle Walt” with rose-colored glasses.

Despite all the ill effects Disney has had the multimedia landscape. And the fact that the nostalgia-fueled worldview of Walt Disney and in particular the Disney theme parks arguably fed into the resurgence of Reagan-era conservatism in a way that would’ve horrified the Lucas who so abhorred Richard Nixon.

As far as I know it’s in the Lucasfilm archives along with a bunch of other studio models. George Lucas was able to pose with it among a bunch of other models in a 1983 photo, for example.

One thing visible in that image that’s interesting that I don’t think many later adaptations have picked up on is that the B-Wings are marked with circular squadron markers on their wings.