Anchorhead

A Star Wars novel presented as Def Poetry Jam. 

His blog is written in the same style, as are his other books.  Not worth the trouble.

And then it won’t matter if he breaks free from the tractor beam. He won’t have but a second to get away from whatever fusillade they send his way.

Something is happening. Here,  in the space above Akiva.  Or maybe down there on the planet’s surface.

If he dies here — nobody will know what it is.

Which means he has to play this right.

He powers down the torpedoes.

He has another idea.

emanswfan said:

Nice little interview with the production designer on TFA.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/why-jj-abrams-and-his-crew-went-back-to-1977-for-star-wars-the-force-awakens-20150713

From the article;

They also reverse-engineered the VFX to accommodate, for example, 2D forced perspective backings rather than relying on CG.....You can glimpse this in a corridor shot in the Comic-Con making-of reel

I caught it immediately and was really happy to see it.  It's that attention to continuity that will make these a welcome addition to the franchise.  Story and character first, but there is most certainly something to be said for visual continuity as well.

DominicCobb said:

Obviously a ghost changed my post when I wasn't looking.

 If it was a ghost, you may have been looking and just not seen it.

Hooterdear said:

         ...there is one thing that bothers me more than anything else: inexperience.  

Here is rundown of confirmed and rumored directors for the upcoming Star Wars films:

Film	Director	Age	Directorial Debut	Number of films
VII	JJ Abrams	49	2006	4
IIX	Rian Johnson	41	2005	3
IX	Colin Trevarrow	39	2012	2
Rogue One	Gareth Edwards	40	2010	2
???	Josh Trank	31	2012	2
Han Solo	Phil Lord, Chris Miller	39	2009	4

           

There are plenty of very respected directors, preeminent in their field, who directed very successful films when they were either younger or had less experience (or both) than the directors in your example.  The films below launched careers and in some cases became standard-bearers for their genres.

Film                         Director          Year    Age      Debut       Films Prior

Jaws                        Spielberg       1975     29        1971          2

Star Wars                 Lucas            1977     33        1971          2

Taxi Driver               Scorsese       1976     34        1967          4

Night Shift                Howard          1982     28        1977          1

Do The Right Thing   Lee                1989     32        1983          3

Stand By Me             Reiner           1986     38        1984          2

Alien                        Scott             1979     41        1977          1 

Not sure about the actual point of your discussion because your examples are hollow.  If you don't think you'll like The Force Awakens, don't go see it.  I saw Phantom Menace and never bothered with the last two films or any of the SEs.  Star Wars as a franchise isn't required viewing. 

If your argument is that you're some sort of completionist who has to see everything and have it all fit together happily, then you may have a problem on your hands.  You might want to give some serious thought to making peace with a multi-format, multi-author, multi-director franchise spanning 45 years.

SilverWook said:

Carrie is looking good here...

 I agree (and made the same screen grab to post) ;-)

Really nice to see.

Jonno said:

 I find it troubling that the film isn't even finished yet and folks are already contemplating their own personal revisions.

Can you not enjoy the primary experience of seeing brand new Star Wars without treating it like so much raw material to be reshaped to your whim?

 I agree.  A great many of us have been waiting for a proper Star Wars film for decades.  This film is still several months away and all we've seen are two short trailers and some behind the scenes footage. Yet there are a fair number of folks here trying to decide what they're going to "correct" first.  I'm surprised by that.  

Tyrphanax said: 

  Leia and Vader have a short encounter on some small planet in the Radio Drama where she's on a mercy mission to an Imperial-controlled planet that she narrowly escapes.

 The planet is Ralltiir, where she receives the stolen plans.  They're brought to her by a soldier wounded in a diversionary attack.  She smuggles the soldier into her personal speeder to rescue him.  

Vader confronts her before she's able to raise ship and forces her and the Tantive captain Antilles to stay there and await a search party.  She escapes the planet by convincing one of Vader's superior officers that his wishes of detaining her would upset her father.  Even though that officer agrees with Vader,   he  prefers gaining favor with her more than upsetting her and her father. He allows her to leave.

To me, it's one of the better parts of the NPR drama because it's all expanded from the movie. This is still back when Vader was a guy in the Empire military, not some universe-controlling all powerful embodiment of evil.  He's very much who he was in 1977.  

In this portion of the NPR version, he's disrespectful and mean to her, but he still answers to other officers so he doesn't really have the authority to make her stay or to search her ship.

It would be nice if they showed some of this in Rogue One. It would also be a perfect way to end the film and give them a Vader and Leia cameo scene tying this into the first film.

-----edit-----

I should mention that this part of the story does not lead directly to the opening of the first film.  Leia goes back to Alderaan for a short while.  She spends some time alone contemplating joining the rebellion in earnest after being more of a supporter\sympathizer.  The Empire's brutality on Ralltiir bothers her a great deal.

While at home she and her father also host a dinner for the officer who allowed her to leave Ralltiir.  By the end of the evening, she and her father are all-in on joining the rebellion and that eventually leads to the opening of the first film.  If I had to guess, the Ralltiir and Alderaan parts of the story probably happen just a few days or so before the start of the first film.

That would be between George and the Lucasfilm employee. 

My wife is 15 years with an intellectual properties law firm. I'll try to repeat this the way my non-IP brain heard her explanation. ;-)

Stormtrooper on the toy package has TM after it because that easily recognizable figure, in a setting we know to be the Star Wars universe, is trademarked.  It's a notice to consumers and competitors that the entity inside the box (toy, setting, name) refers to a Star Wars franchise related item. Meaning: Consumer, - rest assured that's a real Star Wars toy. Competitors - "we'll sue if you copy it or use it without permission".

It could only have the R after it if it were an actual registered trademark granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It isn't, nor will it ever be. Even Lucas wouldn't have tried to register Stormtrooper. He used that term, he didn't invent it. He has no rights pertaining to it unless it's being used on a Star Wars related toy, game, etc and is referring directly to that character.

He was clever with Droid because there was no known use of that shortened/slang version of Android prior to 1977. He also made his trademark application very specific and worded it to include just about every version of a personal electronic or automated device possible.

TV's Frink said:

Ronster said:

I guess this will be the first thing we will see before the film.

 Source?

 http://www.thx.com/

A year ago I would have said most likely not.  Two years ago I would have been totally against it, out of caution over knowing very little about what direction they were going.

However, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way Top The Forum.  After a 30+ year drought of excitement over Star Wars, I became a fan of the film again. As you all know, I'd become an NPR\EU fan only. 

Abrams changed everything. Lucas started the process by finally letting go of the franchise entirely, as well as legally.  Disney  began the rebuild (baseball reference) by assembling a new team.  A team of people who care, who can write, who can direct, who can edit, who can design, and who can act.

After the trailers, the leaks, the interviews, etc, I'm very excited for this film.  It feels like it did just before Empire came out.  The universe is vast and full of possibilities again.  Honestly, I'd long since given up hope.  It's been a pleasant surprise.

What does this have to do with watch parties?  I'm glad you asked.  ;-)
I have no current plans for a watch party. That's not really my sort of thing. I'm more of a pre-watcher of the previous season\film\etc to get ready for a premier.

I also live rurally, so the handful of nerd friends I have are far away. I will, however, almost certainly dust of the original film and watch it the weekend prior. I haven't watched it in nearly ten years.

I've also given some thought to what I'll wear to the film.  Nothing out of the ordinary, just specific things that are comfortable, such as my favorite pair of desert boots. Fitting in color and texture.

What I haven't decided on yet is some piece of paraphernalia related specifically to the first film.  If I had that TI watch, Id be all over it.

To me, this is more of a thing that should be looping in a pop art installation, as opposed to actually sitting through. I watched the first three minutes or so.  Nice use of non-SEs for the originals and a nice call-out to Harmy's work.

Jonno said:

BuddhaMaster said:

Let me throw an analogy in here. If a ugly girl uses makeup just like a beautiful girl, they will both look similar but the former girl will look beautiful in an artificial way.

 Casual misogyny: the strongest tool in any argument.

That's what stood out to me as well.  It also took away from the point trying to be made.  

"When I was a boy I was brought up in a circus. My only real friend was a huge, magnificent African bull elephant. One day, his handler mistreated him and he went berserk.

Bleeding, dying, he came and found me, stood on one leg, his best trick, picked me up and put me on his back. The drunken handler came along and emptied his gun into his eye... I emptied my stage pistol into his"

My second Bond film to see in the theater (1974) and has remained a Top Five ever since.  The soundtrack is in my car as we speak.  Don't know that I've ever been without it.

Rest in peace, sir.  You will be missed.

SilverWook said:

 I want them to make a third one where Mace, (the other one) is actually still alive, and had gone all Col. Kurtz with the Duloks.

 I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a light saber. That's my dream, my nightmare.

Crawling...slithering...along the edge of a light saber . . . and surviving.

ZkinandBonez said:

Also I think we should change the subject before Frink goes into conniptions.

 An excellent idea.

AntcuFaalb said:

Honestly, I never gave a shit about what a young Darth Vader would look or even be like.

It was just never a thing for me. 

 Same for me, starting in 1977.  I may have wondered why he was so mean, imagined where he lived, where he came from, etc. However, those thoughts were fleeting.  

I didn't really care too much about him or find him terribly interesting. He was just a masked bad guy who answered to his superior officers. He was in a supporting military role, working for others.  His own superiors didn't seem terribly interested in him or his thoughts.  He was just someone they tolerated.

 Even if the prequels hadn't been shit, they were still three films about young Vader. A character in which I had little interest

Bingowings said:

I can't disagree more.

Between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back there was so much playground speculation about the world that has since been replaced by the PT.

Luke's dad was a great pilot a friend of the venerable knighted Ben....

If they had explored that tangent, the original story,  I agree that it could have been interesting. On filling in the blanks with my imagination, I was there 100%. 

However,  it was all handled so terribly by Lucas that he ended up ruining the mystery and the depth of the character. 

Ronster said:

I think it's probably the most Fatal error to make three films about a bloke who should have remained mysterious and a folklore legend in war time.

We never needed to know who he was what he did or where he went only what he became from vague recollections about him previously.

It fails on so many levels how they handled this aspect.

The question should really be... How did you picture Darth Vader before the mask came off revealing Sebastian Shaw?

And within that question you have a definitive conclusive answer contained within a question.

We should never have known who he really was but only we got to finally see what he looked like eventually. And even then we really know very little about him.

My thoughts exactly, for the past 30 years.  Vader was weakened as a character by the Father alteration to the story, damaged by the unmasking, and made laughable by the PT.  He should have remained a complete mystery.  

Brief interview with Kasdan.

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/05/lawrence-kasdan-star-wars-force-awakens

A fair point, well made.

Before my opinions on her get misunderstood, let me be clear.  I appreciate her talent and physical beauty in equal measure. She's going to bring the depth regardless of how they present her. 

They wouldn't have hired her otherwise.  As rebo said, they don't need an A-lister in a small role. They need her talent for something that character provides within the story. We'll have to wait and see.

To put it more clearly with regard to how I feel about her physical beauty; why CGI over her at all?  Why can't she bring gravitas to the character (which is a given), as well as be seen?  Why an alien?  Why not a human as a close friend or pivotal character?

To borrow from an episode of Doctor Who where a character sits on a planet-destroying weapon, much to the dismay of the person wielding it;

War Doctor: Don't sit on that!
Moment: Why not?
War Doctor: Because it's not a chair, it's the most dangerous weapon in the universe.
Moment: Why can't it be both?

SilverWook said:

It's a safe bet she gets a cameo in the flesh someplace in the movie...

 I would hope so.  Her talent and credibility are a given.  People want to work with her for a reason.  She brings depth and weight to a role.

From my shallower side;  I wouldn't cast a woman this beautiful and then draw a cartoon in her place.

DuracellEnergizer said:

^Shame to waste a beautiful actress by having her play some goofy CG alien.

 I have to say, I've been very surprised by that also.  If I had her in the cast of a film, I'd want her on screen as much as possible.  That's an awful lot of talent and beauty to cover up with an animation.  

Question for you, Bingo.  Since there are only a handful of us who are going to understand your new avatar, am I to take it that you approve of Missy?

Ithink if they stick with rumored storyline of traveling with the Doctor for a while this coming season, it would be very interesting.

No doubt, she's not good and can't be trusted, but she could be a powerful ally fighting for a common cause.  Her interaction with a now refocused Clara could also be quite interesting.