C3PX

Haha! Don't worry Gaff, you are much prettier than she is... err... at least Carrie Fisher is much more attractive than Rowan Atkinson.

When I first saw TPM my first reaction was, "Well, there has got to be a learning curve, right? The guy has been out of it for a long time, by the next film things should really start getting good."

I was completely certain that the lightsaber fight at the end of the movie was a sign of things to come. Unfortunately, it was the very last time we would see anything like that in a Star Wars movie.

Looking back, TPM, as awful of a film as it is, actually has more warmth and heart to it than the others. Even with Loyd's bad acting, I felt bad for him as he leaves his mom behind. When Qui-Gon got impaled with Maul's lightsaber, I was right there with Obi-Wan thinking, "No! Why did that have to happen!" Even when Obi-Wan was hanging on for dear life above the bottomless pit with Darth Maul taunting him from above, I was on the edge of my seat wondering how he was going to get out of it.

The other two films evoked either a gag reflex or smirks and laughs every time they tried to be emotional or dramatic. Shmi's death scene had me groaning rather than feeling bad for him. The injustice of him murdering all the Tusken Raiders made me feel mad more than anything, Padme's reaction to it just made me furious. Obi-Wan's dramatic, "He was killing... younglings." and Padme's reaction literally made me laugh in the theater the first time I saw it. So did my friend who was sitting next to me.

And the ending of ROTS, the confrotation should have had huge emotional impact, but instead the thing comes off as silly and overly stylized as they are hovering on the backs of droids over molten lava, as Obi-Wan preaching as his friend as he slowly burns to death. It felt more sick and twisted than anything else.

I still think TPM is an awful film. It may luck out by having a few good parts, but to me those good parts are not near enough of a reward for all the muck you have to wade throught to get to them.

DarkFather said:

I think Axia likes the challenge of trying to win the opposing side over. Strangely enough, the most effective method of doing that is going to be completely unrelated to whatever issues he's trying to convince the opposing side of. A large portion of it is going to come down to who he keeps as his social proof.

Interesting points. Another thing I have considered is that perhaps more than liking the challenge of winning over the opposite side, perhaps Axia is just simple used to being the odd man out, and in the minority, and finds himself most comfortable in that position.

I experienced this in my own life, as I spent much of my teen years living overseas. I eventually adapted to the culture and fit in rather well, but I still stood out, I had a horrendous accent and the other kids would laugh at me sometimes for "butchering" their language. After moving back to the US during my college years, I found that my peers thought I was extra cool because I spoke with a goofy accent, I didn't quite dress the way they did, and I was clueless of the last five years of pop culture (kind of funny, for a time here in America, fitting in and being cool was all about being weirder than everyone else). Suddenly, I was kind of popular, and felt very uncomfortable with it. So I worked hard to alienate myself and shake the positive attention for negative attention. I did this by befriending and hanging out with the awkward students everyone else ignored. By doing this I managed to get away from the, "You've got to meet this guy, he is really cool." to "Look at those freaks over there!" which I was far more comfortable with.

Perhaps Axia feels the same way, which is why he sticks around even though he adamantly disagrees with us on just about everything, because he feels more comfortable being in the out-crowd rather than the in-crowd, which is what he might be at TF.n or other sites. Or maybe I am just really stretching on all of this, and he really just likes a challenge. :)

At any rate, I am glad to have him around. Places like this get WAY to bland when everyone agrees on everything. Hope we are not wigging him out by analyzing his behavior like this.

DarkFather said:

I like them. Then again, it's their approval you want. Making threads like this is one of the more harder ways to do that. To become part of an already established pack, you're going to have to buddy up with the Alpha Male. Don't let man-made forum ranks deceive you. The moderator is only Alpha from a shallow perspective. Look for the one that everyone agrees with most, asks the most questions to... the one with the most social proof. Time is running out before the precedent you've set becomes cemented in the pack's collective mind, Axia. You're a straggler. Nobody wants to be the straggler when night falls and DarkFather rises. Tick tock.

WTF? Lol!

That was random, and interesting. Now it has me worrying about my status at OT.com and plotting out ways to rise in prominence. So who, in your view DF, is the current Alpha Male in our little sausage fest of a forum? I can think of a few candidates, but no one definitively. I can't think of any member who is asked as many questions or agreed with as much as Adywan. But it can't be a guy like Adywan, because he has a whole freakin fanbase of his own who hang on his everyword and think he can do no wrong, and who confine themselves to his threads. You go in there it is a whole different community, most of his followers I have never seen post outside of the SW fanedits section. Ady is most definitely Alpha Male of his little wing of the forum, but that has very little impact on the pack as a whole.

What constitutes "social proof"?

Wow, and suddenly the song "Spring Time for Hitler" pops into my head.

This is a fun little thread.

All I can say Sean, is good choice in not picking the red one. And you are exactly right, as long as you like it, that is all that matters. Does it really get 123mpg? That is impressive, that'd probably be about, what? 150 miles on a full tank?

Nah, not really worth ten bucks to me. I really liked the story, but the film itself grates on my nerves. And I'd never wear the "IS THIS YOUR GOD? T-shirt (though it does make me laugh), it is pretty tacky looking for one, and I actually like Lucas.

That would be cool if someone got the two writers together to talk about their inspirations. I haven't seen Fanboys, but I am sure die LUCAS die doesn't even compare to it in the slightest. dLd feels like a school assignment that was turned in incomplete, and then abandoned once the grade was given.

If they'd whip the script back out and reshoot the whole thing, it could be a pretty cool little indie film.

As you can see by how much I have written about it, I really liked the damn little thing a lot. Just didn't quite leave me satisfied, I feel like I ate half of a sandwich and am now craving the other half which doesn't exist. I wonder if this guy has gone on to write/make any other films?

Watching this thing has really made me wish I didn't live so far away from all my old friends from university. I'd love to take some of the old scripts I've written and a camera and see what we could throw together. Indie film making is awesome. Being an adult where nobody you know has time for stuff like that sucks.

No, it is missing too much footage, and it is in serious need of dubbing. I'd love to read a full script of it though, I felt it was, for the most part, relatively well written.

I found the trailer for it on youtube, and it is funny how much flaming there is from people complaining about the premise of the film. "fuck you guys George Lucas is a Hero!! best guy in hollywood! you self go DIE!!" - actual youtube comment by eidos90. Ah, youtube! Breeding ground for intellectual thought, freedom of speech, and aspiring young future high school drop outs...

Anyway, I flipped through the commentary track on the thing, an lucked out hitting on a spot where the director explains his logic being leaving in shots of the clapperboard, film crew, gaffed lines, and retakes. His idea was that each of the characters are essentially all trying to be the hero of their own film (trying to find themselves and their path in life, like we all do around that age), and that he left these bits in there as part of the story telling process.

Sure, giving that explaination makes it sound all artsy and what not. But it would be like a guy writing a book and leaving in all or most of his grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, and explaining it away as being part of the story telling process, representing the fact that the hero of the story is a flawed individual. Interesting idea, but regardless of intent, it comes off as the lousiest excuse since the classic, "My dog ate my homework".

Anyway, thanks None for pointing this little flick out to me. It is a fascinating little piece.

ferris209 said:

and DO NOT put it in a pasture with anything it could trip over. Believe me, if there is one thing in a pasture that a horse could trip over, it will find it and trip!

Yeah! Isn't that the truth! I grew up around horses, so I know exactly what you are talking about.

It isn't so much buying the horse that is the expensive part, but feeding it constantly and the occasional vet bill. Not to mention I live in the city, so it would be pretty useless here. I do know how to ride though, and that is a conforting thought.

-----WARNING----- This post suddenly becomes beyond worthless after this point.

In my imagination, in the event of a nuclear war when everything is knocked out by an EMP, I will be wandering around and scavenging when suddenly I stumble upon an old farm house. I go inside and discover an old man and an old woman. They have died in each others arms. I gently close their eyes and ponder how lucky they were to have died in peace rather than lived on witness this post-apocalyptic world we now live in. I leave their house and discover a horse in their back pasture. I approach him, we stare at each other for a bit, then I hoist myself up onto his back, and from then on we are the best of friends. Galloping about the wastelands together. Blowing the heads off supermutants. Rescuing women and small children from raiders. Saving the world from self aware computers, etc. Everyday I will think of the old man and woman and the wonderful gift they unwittingly gave me after their deaths.

If I didn't know how to ride a horse, none of this could ever happen, and I'd be forced to travel about on foot in this grizzly future that I am pretty certain we will see in our lifetimes (sans the mutants and the computer thing).

I actually downloaded the version I got for the dielucasdie site. So I suppose that was the completed version?

If that is the case, then I'd have to say it is very lousy film making. Basically using the term "experimental" to mean poorly edited and unfinished. The version I saw has actors asking for their lines, and multiple takes of the same scenes. It honestly feels like a project a lot of hard work and time went into, and then they lost interest, said screw it and called it good. If the DVD version actually was a real completed film, I'd probably buy it. But the commentary tracks are the same length as the version I saw, so I guess the DVD version is the same thing.

I actually thought it had some potential. You were right in saying that it really uses and abuses the SW theme. The trailer makes it sound like some perverse film where a trio of kids decide to take off and go kill Lucas, where the actually film (or the 145 minute mess I saw anyway) was far better grounded than that, and was really about growing up. Making that awkward transition from childhood to adulthood. The character of Mark felt like he could fit right in at this community.

ferris209 said:

Screw it, roll like a real man and get a horse!!!

Oh yeah, horse back is the way to go! I wish I could afford a horse... or land for a horse...

Those are most impressive. Major improvements. Good work.

The depths of problems like this are beyond fixing via editing. This is reconceptualize and rewrite level stuff. The problem with this whole fanedit craze is we decide that everything wrong with a twenty year old film can and should be fixed, and the end result is a hacked up film. Just take a look at all the ROTJ fanedits who tried to "fix" the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi by removing them...

Sometimes good enough ought to just be left alone. Fanedits work when you take something crappy in hopes of making it into something bearable (though this begs the question: what is the point?). But fanedits of decent or good movies is something hard for me to get my head around.

none said:

but i'm biased because i apprecate the other 'were going to break into Skywalker Ranch movie' "die LUCAS die" which was conceived at the same time as 'Fanboys' but was not studio produced. It's more experimental and really uses/abuses the Star Wars as a vehicle to gain viewership. It's a difficult movie. The fact that these two movies exist is more interesting then either one.

Does a completed, edited, and polished version of die LUCAS die exist? I've been looking and there is very little information out there about the thing. I have found video links through google that claim to be the film, but they are all a bit of a mess, including undubbed scenes and retakes, and a very confusing partial ending. Is this just the state the film was abandoned in? Or does a complete version exist?

Yeah, the brighter lights really gives the whole thing more life. The original shot feels rather flat.

"Now come on, which cockpit is more useful? Seems more logical."

First off, you are looking at a screen shot of the entire cockpit of the Jedi starfighter, and a zoomed in shot of one part of the X-Wing cockpit.

I couldn't possibly tell you what those knobs in the X-Wing cockpit were for, and even if the information explaining it to me was out there somewhere (probably is), I really couldn't care less to bother looking it up to find out. The whole point is to look high tech and alien. I think that was well accomplished. Why be bothered by the tape deck? When the movie was made the prop guys certainly didn't dream people would ever have the ability to freeze frame and capture images with such detail they'd be able to see what it is. It just there to add more detail to the cockpit. It is a movie, a work of fiction. It is filled with props and sets, actors and puppets. None of it is real. So what, the prop guys used a cassette player to add flare to the cockpit. Why should that bother you or distract you in anyway while watching the film?

"as far as the fancy CG HUD display serving no purpose, that just seems silly. I think you are probably just saying that becuase you dont like them."

I meant it serves no purpose having an CG HUD, because you don't need one, all that is done with the fancy glowing displays can be done with real hardwired displays. The best purpose it serves is to make the SW universe look like it is taking massive leaps backwards in science and technology, when twenty years ago the standard were holo display screens, and in the future they are knobs and lights. Not even the fancy Imperial Star Destroyers have the fancy displays their earlier generation models had. That is just silly. And again, the whole glare thing. I shudder to think. Also, what happens if your ship gets damaged to a degree where your holo projectors (or whatever they are called) go off line. Oops! My controls disapeared!! You've got steering and that is probably about it.

You are right, I don't like the Jedi Starfighter. For a sci-fi ship it is cool enough, but it just doesn't feel like a Star Wars ship to me. I always loved the SW ships and would do everything I could to find detailed pictures of the models and diagrams of the ships when I was a kid. I'd even pull out pencil and paper and draw out blueprints for my own SW style ships. They had a really unique look and feel to them compared to many other sci-fi ships. The flashing lights and knobs really worked great, reminded me much more of real airplane cockpits, only more alien.  The PT ships don't. They are just your generic sci-fi rocketships. All a bunch of wedges with fins. Get a class room full a little kids, and ask them all to use their imagination and draw a picture of a spaceship, I'd bet you 80% of the kids would draw wedge shaped ships with fins. Nothing wrong with the PT ships being finned wedges really, it just comes off as very unimaginative to me. The most interesting ships in the PT to me are the Naboo Fighter and the podracers, and maybe Darth Maul's ship. And the little fighters Obi-Wan and Anakin are in at the beginning of ROTS with the ion engines, (though with things like buzz droids in the scene, and CG clone troopers, it is hard to admire the ships in peace for very long). None of the other ships in the PT strike me as anything more than more of the same.

And MP3 has been around since the ninties. I know all that, in my dates I was going by what was the standard at the time. Hardly anyone owned CDs back in the eighties. Everyone I knew was switching out their record collection for inferior cassette tapes at the time, kind of like how everyone is switching out their CD collections for digital copies now.

zombie84 said:

Last weekend I found an LP of Return of the Jedi. I put it on, not expecting much since I never thought ROTJ was as good as ESB for the score--but my god, it was amazing! The quality--I was hearing things I had never heard before, nuances that I never knew about!

Ah, progress! We've come a long way in technology. 1980's the LP -----> 1990's the CD -----> 2000's the MP3. We've come a long ways! Is it just me, or do we continually lose something with each advance?

I suppose MP3 is to CD what cassette tapes were to LPs, drop in quality, rise in convenience. Not meant as a replacement, but as a poor and portable companion.

Just so it comes out of the mouth of someone other than the author, this most certainly is worth $27 bucks! And it really is a lot easier to read than the pdf on the computer. It is a really thick book. Not really light on the computer type reading. When I first read it back in its pdf only days, I kept wishing there was a print version because I couldn't stop reading it, but I was getting really sick of staring at a glowing screen. I had it on my "to do" list to actually have all the pages printed out nicely someplace, and then to bind the thing myself (book binding is a bit of a hobby of mine). Need less to say, I was quite thrilled when I heard this was actually going to be published.

Even if you are a huge fan of Lucas, and someone who really loves the prequels, this book means you, and will do you, no harm whatsoever. If you wanted you could take it as an extreme and extensive attack against GL, or you could realize and appreciate what the author is trying to do and enjoy the ride. In other words, if you don't start reading the book feeling certain it is going to offend you because it is attacking your hero, then more than likely, it isn't going to offend you. The book presents facts, or at the very least precieved facts based on the available evidence, and it contains mountains of sources to back up every word that is written.

Go out and buy it, you know you want to. If you don't yet, I am sure you will by the time you read the first 100 pages, or really wish you had after needed a precription for a new pair of eye glasses due to burning your eyes out reading the entire pdf version.

SilverWook said:

The old Kenner Raiders "Well of Souls" playset had Artoo, Threepio, and Vader in the hieroglyphics too.

Now that is some detail you have to respect!

Octorox said:

C3PX said:

Gaffer Tape said:

AxiaEuxine said:

ohhh gee thanks for pointing that out, thats gonna bug the shit out of me for the rest of my life. By the way Jedi Starfighters dont have frigging tape decks. PT cockpits for ftw.

Why?  I'd much rather listen to music during my trench run if I had the opportunity!

 

 

Yeah me too. Much rather have some good tunes to listen to while fighting my battles than some fancy CG HUD displays that serves no purpose but to look pretty. Seems like the contrast of a glowing display with darkness of space outside your window would be horribly annoying. Seems like it would create a glare, and glares piss me off.  Give me dimply lit knobs and dials any day of the century.

 

Hey, that's only good if you actually own cassettes! How do you know the PT display couldn't stream my itunes library? :)

 

Screw iTunes! The last thing I need is the damn Apple logo glaring on my cockpit window while I am trying to blow Tie Fighters to bits. The cassette player will do fine. It was state of the art stuff when the movie came out. Even if you don't have casettes, all it takes is a PC or CD player and a tape deck with a recorder (they're very cheap these days). Just plug your PC into the thing, setup a 45 minute long playlist, and hit record. Flip the tape, set up another 45 minute play list, and presto! 90 minutes of your own lovely little tunes all set and ready to play in your X-Wing fighter. Now, all you need is the X-Wing (if you have any luck on that one, let me know, because I could really use one). Itunes, pah! Holo displays, pah! A true pilot craves not these things.

Gaffer Tape said:

AxiaEuxine said:

ohhh gee thanks for pointing that out, thats gonna bug the shit out of me for the rest of my life. By the way Jedi Starfighters dont have frigging tape decks. PT cockpits for ftw.

Why?  I'd much rather listen to music during my trench run if I had the opportunity!

 

Yeah me too. Much rather have some good tunes to listen to while fighting my battles than some fancy CG HUD displays that serves no purpose but to look pretty. Seems like the contrast of a glowing display with darkness of space outside your window would be horribly annoying. Seems like it would create a glare, and glares piss me off.  Give me dimply lit knobs and dials any day of the century.

Yeah, it works for me too. I do think logically Han would have been rather resentful, but it would stand to reason that Chewie would explain things too him, and likely Han would have reacted "Lando!! That POS is here! When I get my hands on him..." and Chewie would have told him to be reasonable and explain all Lando has gone through in order to set things right, and the kind of pressure he was under by the Empire, etc. I can suspend my disbelief. Besides, being a smuggler and scoundral, Han is sure to know exactly what hide preservation is all about.

Gaffer Tape said:

Anakin:  Short-Lando.  Step on it!

Lando:  Okey-dokey, Jedi!  Hold on to your asteroid-shaped potatoes!

Wow, this little parody just got all kinds of kinky.

Think Shortround, only black. And instead of a taxi cab, the Millenium Falcon.

A deleted scene from AOTC, Anakin and Padme hitch a ride on the Falcon,

Padme: "A kid is driving the ship? Why is there a kid driving the ship?"

Young Lando: "Oh, don't mind me, I am just the pilot of this establishment. Sooo, where to, lovely lady?"