King's writing is most certianly medocre. Tolkien was a brilliant writter. If you could't understand Tolkien's books, that is too bad, but it is not his fault. Most people can read his books and understand them just fine.
The only SE change I can actually say I prefer over the original was the ROTJ ending. I really don't like Ewoks too much, and them singing Yub Nub and celebrate the love is not something I have ever felt was the greatest ending to the trilogy. The yub nub bit worked well enough, but I kind of prefer the musical bit from the new one. I even kind of liked the idea of seeing other planet celebrating (until Jar Jar was added anyway), though, it is a bit silly considering the Emporer's body hasn't even gone cold yet, so to speak (yeah, I know, he got blown up), and they are already tearing down his statue. Seems for such a figure to be so powerful he would need a lot of loyalties, loyalties who wouldn't just give up the second he is dead.
As for the Hayden ghost, not only is it annoying that they removed Shaw and dismantled a moment in the film that was absolutely perfect the way it was, this change makes no sense at all! Obi-wan is an old man, and Anakin is still in his twenties. Someone didn't think that one through very well... If they had gone ahead and put Ewan's Obi-Wan there and maybe even the CG Yoda as well, then it would have made a little more since. Hell, just to make it even more weird and nonsensical, I think they just should have pasted the entire PT cast in there, kind of like at the end of a play when all the actors come out to take a bow. They could have had Padme, and Mace Windu, Shmi, Qui-gon, and just for kicks, Jake Loyd's Anakin could have been there too also, and let's not leave out Jar Jar, and Watto.
The only Anakin Luke ever met was the Sebastian Shaw Anakin, how would Luke even recongnize Hayden as his father's ghost? It just doesn't make any sense to make this change. It is just a lousy attempt to tie the two trilogies together, and to make it stand that the series is really the Tradgedy of Anakin Skywalker.
I don't watch a whole lot of TV, but the little I do watch, I have not seen a single SW commercial. The last SW commercial I can recall seeing was way back when ROTS was just coming out. But like I said, I watch very little TV.
Ziz said:Or another Cromartie when they least expect it. Back in 1990 people (general audience, not fans) couldn't figure out how Arnold could come back for T2.
Although Cromartie's likeness was not an actual Terminator design like Arnold was. Remember, he lost all his flesh and had to regrow it, then he had to have a plastic surgeon make him look the way he did. So I cannot see them replacing him with a robot played by the same actor. I'll miss Cromartie, I was beginning to grow attached.
LOL, when I first saw Revenge of the Sith, that over the top scene where Palps transforms kept reminding me of the villian from Howard the Duck. Then when he saws "unliiiimited poooooower!" I could hardly believe my ears. At first I thought Lucas meant it as a homage to Howard, but when you are making a movie that is suppose to be a good movie, it is bad idea to include references to movies that have already proven to be overly crappy, even Lucas knows that. But then again, wasn't Howard in the crowd at the podrace in Ep. I?
Wow, that sounds like some crazy stuff! If I didn't know any better I'd think you were making this stuff up. I am pretty sure they are trying their damnedest to drive this show as far into the mud as they can. Maybe they just don't want to be doing this anymore and are looking for a cancellation to get them out of their contract. Many long running shows usually start getting good around their third season, the fact that Heroes is pretty much giving up and this point doesn't bode well for its future.
Never seen this guy before, but after watching that review, I can say that angry video game nerd is a lot cooler and a lot funnier (well, most of AVGN's later stuff isn't that funnier either). The best thing about that review is that it showed the highlights of how freaking bad that movie was. The one scene he left out that was worth mentioning was where Miss. Earth-I-Think discovers a tiny duck dick sized condom while rummaging through Howard's wallet as he sleeps. Oh, and those duck tits are still one of the most disturbing images I recall from my childhood.
Darth Chaltab said:I'd work there too; I know plenty about the history of consoles!
Who would pay more?
Not me man, I live under a bridge.
As for something like this making a lot of money, I am not sure. Maybe it would depend on what kind of a city you lived in, a big city might keep such a thing afloat longer. But I think such a place would have such a limited appeal, that you would not be able to pull in enough money to even cover the initial cost of all the consoles and accessories, let alone rent and overhead. If I thought such a place could make money, I'd do it and hire myself to work there. You could even set up small TVs with the various consoles connected to them to allow visitors to try out each system.
Gaffer Tape said:Zombie is actually getting Secret History published?! Amazing! I've read that all the way through twice now, and one of the first things he says in the book is how the nature of it would probably keep it from ever being published! I'm glad to see he managed to work something out.
Kind of off topic, but I just stumpled upon this. http://www.legacybookspress.com/books.html If you click on the link and think "What the hell? What's this have to do with anything" just scroll down.
Looks good, pretty generic cover, but of course he couldn't use anything that is copyright. Pretty steep price tag, but I think I will eventually purchase one anyway. Would be cool to have a hard copy lying around and Zombie put a lot of hard work into it, he deserves to get something for it, even if it is just whatever fraction of that price tag the publisher gives him.
rcb said:i'm sorry, but puppets look to fake in a movie.
LOL, and CG doesn't?
The guy uses some very weird wording in his attempts to be poetic. "Suspicious of my fellow treasure hunters", "coughed defensively". Don't get how either of those work in their context. Oh well. Always good to hear of someone rediscovering a great old console. I like the picture of NES, SNES, NUS, and NGC all together.
If I ever become so rich that I simply don't know what to do with my wealth, I intend to open up a console museum. Imagine a room filled with every console ever made, under glass and surrounded by its accessories, showing first hand the changes in technology, shapes, sizes, and designs of consoles and their media over their history. I'd even hire a tour guide to memorize the entire history of each console, give guided tours, and answer any and every question they get asked about each console. That would be pretty cool, but a long ways off, at the moment I am just a poor hobo living under a bridge, my laptop powered via an extention chord spliced into a nearby street lamp, and my faint, but existant, wifi signal lifted from some nearby resturant.
It is dumb we are having a debate as to which version of Sy Snootles was a better character. Sy is a pretty lame character either way. The CG Sy scene just made the scene all the worse by making it longer than it already was and making it an over the top caricature of the original scene. In its 1997/2004 incarnations, it is the kind of scene that would make one embarrassed to be a Star Wars fan. I rank it right up there with "giant flee surfing" in my top five reasons why you might want to hide the fact that you like Star Wars.
The fact of the matter is, you own the actual original cd, you have just run into challenges related to a function intended to prevent piracy. In your position, I wouldn't hesitate to do a few google searches...
Wow, I didn't know they were doing a second one. That is pretty cool. Thanks for the link and info Ady.
HotRod said:Ok check this out
It's quite funny!!
Vader being a Jerk
I know that was posted over a year ago, but yeah, I love that clip. I really want to redo it in full quality sometime and actually put it in the movie. Sometime when doing an SW marathon with many people it would be really funny to pop the version with this scene on it in the DVD player.
Anyway, while looking at that old video again I stumbled across this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=701NiTGsvHA&NR=1
Which was pretty funny and along the same lines, though it took me a while to get over the fact that Darth Vader has no freaking eye brows in that clip!!! (Yes, I really am that much of a 2004 SE virgin. I heard the eyebrows were removed, but I think this is the first time I actually have seen him without them and it looks freakin weird).
LordVader said:I love it! Although rightfully cut quite unecessary...
Agreed. In fact, I believe Adywan mentioned never seriously considering actually putting it in revisited. I think he made it as kind of a concept of what he could potentially do with the scene, with Jar Jar thrown in as a joke. I like the idea behind it, not the Jar Jar bit, but seeing the destruction from a more detailed point of view, including the perspective of someone on the planet surface. Adds emphasis to the fact that a whole planet of people just died, and brings you closer to Obi-Wan's reaction. The destruction of this planet is a huge event, that is basically forgotten after a few seconds of screen time.
LordVader said:And if you please I've never seen the footage of Bail and Jar Jar dieing on Alderaan, if anyone could point me to it I'd love to see it!
Here you go LordVader.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REcPHFWOB8Q
Youtube link to Adywan's clip.
I have always felt that Stephen King is a bit of a prat. His works are way over rated, it pains me how many serious literature teachers consider this guy the next Shakespeare. Of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and I'd hesitate to call anyones opinion stupid just because I disagreed with it. Many people feel Lord of the Rings is a masterpiece and that the Silmarillion is just a shadow of what it was meant to be, an unfinished work never finished by its creator. I believe had the Silmarillion been finished by Tolkien and published while the author still lived, it would not recieve such harsh criticism.
A little off topic, but the coolest thing about Stephen King is that fact that he writes a story where the main character gets hit by a vehicle and is killed, then a mere matter of months later gets struck by a vehicle himself and is nearly killed. After a hell of a time in recovery, King buys the van that hit him, and goes batshit on it with a baseball bat (total nutter!). Originally he planned to demolish it by hand via sledge hammer, but I guess he found out what a task that would be and had it demolished the usual way. A little over a year after the accident, on Stephen King's birthday, the man who hit King is found dead, supposedly of a painkiller overdose. Hmm, makes me wonder what wish Stephen made that year as he blew out the candles... Creepy stuff. I am not reading anything into it, it is all a matter of a series of coincidences, but it is interesting to reflect on.
skyjedi2005 said:Even as a fan of Crichton's in the 90's now i realize just how overhyped his works are. His body of work is slim compared to other writers. If Spielberg did not make films of his books to make him an overnight celebrity would he have tried harder to write some more good books?
John Grisham wrote more novels than he did and had more bestsellers. That lawyer writer guy and his law thrillers. Still i Like Crichton Better.
I don't think a small body of work is a negative mark on a writer. Just look at the works of John Ronald Raul Tolkien that were published while he was still alive? The list is pretty shallow. He may have a large body of work on stores shelves now, but they are all collections of very rough drafts that he never intended to have published. Sure, John Grisham taks out another novel every six months, all of which are automatic NY Times #1s, but Grisham is basically the "fast food" of literature. He comes up with an interesting story idea slightly different than anything else he wrote before, then he types it out as fast as he can, and they rush it to the publishers, and a few months later it sells over a million copies. People buy it because Grishams name is on it, read it, and forget what they by the time the next one comes out. The best books in the world never wound up on bestseller lists, but many of the most pointless and meaningless ones have.
And I don't think it would have been a bad thing if his books had never been made into films, he was still a great writer, and had I been lucky enough to discover him without having Spielberg's Jurassic Park bring my attention to him, I would have still loved his stuff. I disagree that his later books were not very good. I was not the fondest of some of his earlier stuff , but I particularly like some of his newer stuff, like State of Fear. It is all a matter of preference.
Interesting list. Not sure how some of the hotter ones ended up closer to fifty and some of the weirder ones ended up closer to one. Just the fact that Nova from Planet of the Apes is not on this list makes this a pretty bum list in my opinion. Shameful, seriously shameful. After all, what is hotter than a half nude woman in animal skins who doesn't talk?
And Dax at #3 while Scarlett Johansson's character from The Island is clear over in #47? I believe Dax's high ranking is related to fans' severe over rating of DS9 as an ST show.
It was funny to see some old women of sci-fi that I have long since forgotten about. I was really surprised to see Xev Bellringer (Xenia Seeberg) and Zhaan (Virginia Hey) pop up on that list. Brought me back to the days of the 90s and earily 00s when the sci-fi channel was still awesome (strangely, by showing freaking weird barely watchable, if watchable at all, crappy sci-fi shows from Canada, Germany, Australia, and beyond. And more importantly, by showing minimally edited science fiction movies in the evenings, weekends, and into the wee hours of the morning, sometimes amazingly cheesy sci-fi channel original movies (the modern B movie). I miss that old sci-fi channel, the new version of it is pretty weak, and would have sunk long ago if it were not for BSG, Dr. Who, and the few people who have not yet grown tired of SG-1.
Directing may just seem like pointing and sitting behind monitors, but it is actually some very stressful work. Maybe some directors are able to make light of it and take it easy, but from documentaries and interviews, George seems to be one to get pretty stressed.
I never thought George was done with directing back in the eighties and nineites. This guy was suppose to be an amazing up and coming director, by the mid eighties he had just finished with Star Wars, and now was expected to get on with making the kinds of films he had wanted to make, because that is what he said he wanted to do after ROTJ was done.
I didn't expect him to direct the upcoming prequel trilogy, because he said he was going to hire a different director for each film, but I wasn't surprised when he changed his mind and did them himself. He never announced that he was retireing from the directors chair. I don't think anybody believed he never direct another movie again back then. Even back then he was talking about Red Tails.
I still don't think this prelude trilogy will ever happen, not saying it is impossible, but I highly doubt it. If it does get made, I imagine it will be at a day and an age when George doesn't have anything to do with it and the SW liscense has been opened up for others to play around with. Kind of like Star Trek.
Kind of a silly debate, because it didn't happen that way, it is impossible to really know.
I am of the opinion that if The Phantom Menace was released in 1999 exactly as it was released, but without there ever having been an original trilogy, it would have met poor box office success. It would have been considered on par with most other kids action flicks. Without Star Wars having been a known and popular series, I really don't think it would have generated a whole lot of attention. Very likely sequels would not have even been made, but then again a lot of crappy movies get sequels. Of course, the prequels were so closely based off of the OT, it would be hard to imagine them existing without the OT having come first.
It is harder to imagine this scenario taking place back in 1977. Like someone else mentioned, it would be just another sci-fi movie. But it would have been a different movie entirely than the one we got.
Anyway, even if this was the case, I am not sure we would be complaining about the OT, which I guess we would call the ST, sequel trilogy. If it was as badly done as the PT was, then yeah, we might have a few gripes, but it really wouldn't be a big deal to me. Sequels continue a story, there are countless crappy sequels, but they are not near as annoying as prequels, because prequels go around and change the story you already new (to use a non SW example, we can look at ST: Enterprise. There was an episode where they ran into the Borg and nearly get assimilated all these years before Picard made first contact with the Borg, which was suppose to be the very first anybody knew anything of them. Another episode had them run into some Ferangi, when once again, Picard and his crew go on a diplomatic mission to make first contact with the Ferangi all so many years later. These things screwed with continuity, and it pissed off fans. The PT did this same thing.
If there are any movies I dislike as much as AOTC, it is Terminator 3, and Alien Resurrection. Those are two other series I like alot, and both those movies are among the worse sequels the history of sequels has to offer. I simply do not watch those films, and my enjoyment of those series goes undeterred. For some reason, the prequels don't work the same. After seeing the two Hayden Christenson prequels, it was really hard to see Darth Vader the same way again.
Also, rcb, your theory seems to think that we hate the prequels simply because they are not the OT and for no other reason. This is why your logic tells you that if the PT=OT and OT=PT, then we would hate the OT and love the PT. But this is forgetting the important fact that the PT films were simply terrible awful films, from writing, to acting, to the very way they were filmed, they simply sucked. If the hypothetical OT that came out when the PT did because the PT came out when OT did, sucked as much as the real PT did, then I am sure many of us would have hated it, but I am sure we would not still be talking about it.
Hmm, hypothetically speaking, is the hypothetical 1977-83 PT on DVD in its original unaltered form and in anamorphic widescreen?
Hunter6 said:
If you think George Lucas will be to old to direct these "prequels to the prequels"... Think again, look at Clint Eastwood who is 78 and has been directing all thru his 70's. also look at other directors who are in their 70's and even 80's
Something worth taking into consideration is that Eastwood is in far better physical condition than George Lucas. I'd be surprised if George is still directing in his 70s. In fact, I'd be surprised if he ever directs anything again. Red Tails has been a project he has talked about writing and directing himself for the longest time, and now it comes out that he has hired both a writer and a director for the film. I think that may well be a sign he is done with directing.
The fact that there were many events that were mentioned to have taken place pre-TPM, doesn't mean that it was intended that there would be movies to explain those events. It is typical in story telling to make references to past events to add some backstory and history to the characters and events.
AxiaEuxine said:
I can tell by the intelligence level of the posts here that there are very few kids. But you all seem to hate everything Star Wars. None of you seem to like the new MMO idea and Im very excited about that. You all hate the clone Wars and I think the show is awesome. And you all think the orginal theatrical release of the first trilogy is the end all be-all of human exsistence. (that is not meant to be snotty)
I suppose at the end of the day Im looking for a like-minded community to share my favoriteist hobby ever with and I cant share with you becuase anything post 83 you hate.
Well, as can be seen from the various comments, plenty of us like plenty of things post 1983. Such generalizations are not fair to anyone. We are out spoken about our opinions here, we are not afraid to say how we feel. We are not ashamed for disliking anything, or for liking anything. I think it odd you feel "none of" us seemed to like the new MMO idea, since if memory serves, just about as many of us who were disappointed in the idea expressed that they thought it was cool. Tons of people here absolutely love The Clone Wars cartoon, even I have admitted that while it is obviously aimed at the youngins and holds very little interest to me personally, that it isn't that bad of a show, and that if I were in the right age range I'd love it to death.
Countless times I has pronounced my deep love for X-Wing, a 1993 video game, Dark Forces (1995), Shadows of the Empire from (1996). Those three games are three of my absolute favorite bits of Star Wars. I have enjoyed many EU novels and comic books. As much as I dislike the PT as a whole, I have on numerous occasions mentioned my fondness of The Phantom Menace (1999) despite all its flaws. I have before mentioned really being excited about and enjoying the Special Editions of the SW trilogy (1997), but any fondness of the SE as an alternative version of the trilogy I had is sullied by having been burnt by not only having had my prefered versions ignored for a DVD release (after being told by their maker that if I want them, they are on VHS) but also by having the real SE that I enjoyed back in 1997 be ignored.
There are many post 1983 Star Wars things I absolutely love. Sure, there are a few around here who are strict 83 and nothing afters, as well as a few 77 onlys. There are many here who hate everything PT and EU. If I, a guy who loves many things EU, can get along quite well with guys who couldn't stand Empire Strikes Back (my favorite of the original trilogy) or anything that came after it, and if I can get along with guys who consider AOTC to be one of the best films, when I have only managed to sit through it twice and and couldn't imagine detesting a movie anymore than I detest that one, then why shouldn't you be able to get along with us? The bottom line is, you really seem to like SW. Well, so do we. Sorry if we manage to be pretty negative sometimes, but really, as many of us here who you find that don't like something, you will find others who do. We are a diverse group, and we respect each others likes and dislikes, that doesn't mean we wont voice our dislike for things, but we wont judge you for liking them.
As I have said before, we would love for you to stick around and become a regular part of this community. You really shouldn't get offended when we don't like something you like. Plenty of people here dislike things I like. Don't take things to heart so much. This can be a really fun place.
What Jay said about Macs seeming over priced if very true. Often you an amazingly sleek and powerful little machine for a very comparable price to its PC counterparts. The Mac Mini is actually a very good machine for the price, sure they are quite under powered, and you need to find a monitor to go with them, but if you are just looking for a system for casual computer use such as email, word processing, music, pictures, buring CD/DVD etc., it is an ideal system. At $599 it is really is not that expensive. OSX is way better than anything MS has to offer, not to mention the fact that through bootcamp you can install XP or Vista, assuming you have them lying around somewhere.
The stupid thing was that they pretend it was a real hologram. "We have Jessica live via hologram" "You're a hologram now" "How do you feel being the first one beamed in" (oh yeah, good Star Wars terminology right there) "I'm following the tradition of princess Leia!" They made a big deal about it, which just highlights how lame it was that it was fake. If they had simply just done it without saying anything and not calling it a hologram, it would not have been as insulting to our intelligence.