DavidBrennan

zombie84 said:

[....] that's a shocking disappointment for something in the Star Wars brand. That brand was once thought of as golden, untouchable, on a pedestal few if any other brands had, and now it's a struggle to just make money off of it.

Some day soon....the truth of the above quote will make me sad.

I remember being said in '08, when the horrid TCW flopped - limped in and out of theaters with nobody caring, and the few people who did see it hating it.  As a SW fan, I suddenly felt foolish and lonely.  I felt like, "Is this what's become of my passion: not even good enough to be the target of jokes anymore, but just this wretched, propaganda cartoon that nobody even cares about?" 

I should feel similarly with TPM 3D's failure, but I'm currently so angry at the LFL shills at TheForce.net that I almost feel happy about its floppage.  But I have a friend in Chicago who went to see the midnight showing, expecting a large crowd?  He said it was empty - as in, a dozen people.  That SW has devolved to this is indeed sad.

If only LFL would hire me, I know what to do with the brand!  Yeah, right.  Everybody's got solutions.  It seems to me that Dave Filoni is the current point man for the SW brand, and the creepy little dude is running it into the ground, both commericaly and artistically.  The 'Darth Plagueis' and Rinzler's 'Making of' books might be the lone worthwhile bearers of the "Star Wars" brand name since ROTS.

zombie84 said:

[....]  no, the hype did not kill TPM, did not cause the criticism or the unfair expectations. Hype, in fact, was the one thing the film had going for it. Episode I minus the hype gets you a flop, with the same bad reviews but this time barely any money and barely any audience.

That is the crux of the issue, and sums up, I believe, the truth of the debate, "If people didn't like them, they wouldn't have been hits!"  Now we see what the movies do sans hype, and it's like a control experiment: they do nothing.

I read in an article (I think linked to here, a few pages back), that at the time of TPM's re-release, AOTC was already half done, and so that adds still more certainty to its re-release.  But I will be shocked if AOTC hits even 30m dom. 

DominicCobb said:

[....]

Of course, what they should do, is re-edit the film to make it better.

Funnily, I think that if LFL would hire Adywan and have him work some magic on TPM and AOTC - he does better CG work and cooler improvements than all of ILM put together at this point - they could have probably amped up the business $10m or so, just because of the curiosity draw.  Instead, they just used the butt-ugly, DNR'd to hell, Blu-Ray master, which had no significant changes (aside from the removal of the Don Rickles Yoda puppet, which I thought was a good change.)

TheBoost said:

DavidBrennan said:

I'm reading 'Darth Plagueis' right now (not sure whether this was discussed before.  It's VERY good....

 

 

Why is the Emperor kneeling to a giant mad pickle?

The same reason Vader kneels to a giant made prune:

....And the same reason American men pretend to cry and bow their heads in prostration when the military is being shown at sporting event Jumbo-trons: as a gesture of subservience and inferiority. 

No, actually, Darth Plagueis is of the "Muun" species (as seen by the Banking Clan character in AOTC and ROTS).  But I have no idea what the deal is with the scale of his head in that painting.  It is definitely weird.

Any people with distaste for the current state of the SW "brand" or LFL in general feel any vindication by the floppage of TPM 3D? Between the flopping of TCW in 2008, and now this re-release, it's clear that Star Wars has lost a great deal of esteem amongst non-hardcore fans. 

I'll paste parts of a post I made at TFN (that started me getting banned, again) to sum up my thoughts:

[TPM 3D] will make about 60% of its net overseas. Absolutely standard for action/adventure movies. Everybody appreciates that money is money no matter where it's earned. The reason for the focus on US BO is because it's easier to generate comps that way and, in many cases (such as most re-releases) you can't generate good overseas comps, or even get the figures until many months after their release.

So let's quit this charade of saying it was some sort of epic triumph overseas. It wasn't. It did the same business overseas as it did in the U.S.....crap business.

So we can look at its BO in several terms:

1) On its own terms: It was advertised in the Super Bowl and was heavily, heavily marketed (as most of us will attest, and as detailed in the Hollywood Reporter article linked to above). Movies advertised in the Super Bowl are supposed to make more than 40m.
VERDICT: Flop.
2) Relative to other re-releases: Here, we can look to (a) the recent Disney re-releases - even though they had probably less than half the ad budget of TPM, and were only released for a limited time, (b) the SE releases, and soon (c) Titanic. It did less business than any of these where it can be comped to them. The SE also blew this away. Any international comps are rendered irrelevant by the fact that international BO has grown tremendously since 1997. Only include true nearest neighbor comps, not cherry-picked random countries to bolster a pre-determined argument.
VERDICT: Flop.
3) Relative to SW: SW is obviously (or at least it WAS) a major franchise/brand. The movies are considered more than just hits, but also cultural hallmarks. They are NOT supposed to open at #4 (in fricking FEBRUARY) and then absolutely TANK each successive weekend, with worse legs than Joe Swanson.
VERDICT: Flop.

Starting with the embarrassing TCW in 2008 and continuing with this re-release, SW has clearly lost a great deal of esteem in the eyes of the common man. It has become cheap and the value of the words "Star Wars movie" don't have the same value (culturally or monetarily) as they used to. Yes, parents still reflexively scoop up armfuls of SW merchandise for their third-graders, but that's a fundamentally different value than being able to get tens of millions of people to pay money to sit in silence for 2+ hours and give you their time as they watch and listen to what you have to say. Lots of companies can get hording Americans to buy tons of junk, but not many people can get them to truly give their time and attention. Now, sadly, SW cannot get that from people.

LFL has largely just become another cheap plastic crap company, and the utter floppage of the TPM re-release demonstrates this starkly. (Maybe that's expected when the brand is entrusted to weirdos like Dave Filoni. But whatever.)

SilverWook said:

Let's not fight old battles, or retread old arguments in this thread?

That's fine.  I just don't believe that anybody who believes the Clone Wars movie (an unmitigated flop) is better than the biggest hit in the history of motion pictures could be shocked ("Shocked!") that other people would be surprised at that predilection.  It's just phony, is all.  And I just wanted to just say that.  But I won't carry on about it anymore.  The facts speak for themselves.

Crygor64 said:

Having met Jake on more than one occasion I can say he's definitely a nice guy.

Honestly, when I look back at all the hysteria about the prequel trilogy I'm a bit embarassed. Yeah, they're not great, but they're also not as bad as people thought 10 years ago. Far worse things have hit the screen since that time including Twilight and Avatar(d).

I remember getting into a 10 page argument with some wanker on this forum just because I dared to say that I took my kids to see the Clone Wars movie and we all had a good time. Apparently that's blasphemy in the eyes of certain ass pained faboys.

So....TCW > Avatar.

Is this a page at TFN or a LFL press release? 

This is definitely an opinion that the phrase, "Different strokes for different folks" was created for. 

That's fine if that's your opinion - I'm sure that there's at least one person out there who thinkw TCW is better than ESB, too - but I'm sure you also understand that you're in a vanishingly small minority, and so declaring that opinion is going to accomplish little more than make some people think you're just trying to ruffle feathers or (more likely) brag about how unique you are.

Wow, that's very impressive stuff there!  Thanks for the link, FrederikOlsen.  I'll make sure to leave a comment praising his work.

I'm reading 'Darth Plagueis' right now (not sure whether this was discussed before.  It's VERY good....

....Although it suffers from one flaw that effects most of the EU, which is the shoehorned references to other SW places, species, and characters at every turn.  I'm about 1/3 of the way through, and most of it thus far could be called the biography of Darth Plagueis.  Well, you could read biographies of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas....and the four of them COMBINED would drop fewer location and people's names than this thing does.  The references are always so damn SHOEHORNED, ya know?  Just trying too damn hard to give the impression that it's all one perfect, cohesive fictional universe. 

But most of the time (not all, but most), the quality of the story and prose are greater than that persistent annoyance. 

For my fan documentary, I created a CG model of the book (with bump maps, binding, back cover, and everything).  I'm pretty proud of how it turned out.  In animation, I think it looks a touch better.

Apart from this, I'm skimming through good ol' 'Shadows of the Empire'.  Not perfect - yes, Dash Rendar was an eye-rollingly cheap imitation of Han Solo - but it's still a fun, easy read....without the slavish conformity to the messy EU leviathan that increasingly infects newer books.

I'd love to make a fan version of SotE - probably a CG cartoon.  But that's way too much work, and just one little dream project of mine.

If you think it was dull and uninteresting, than I guess that's just a matter of personal taste, and on my metaphorical tastebuds, the meals were delicious.

Don't get me wrong, I definitely think the OT was better overall, as noted in my previous post where I tallied off the memorable OT vs PT tracks.  But I still think the PT was great.  The .FLAC albums of both TPM (thanks, Torrent!) and ROTS are probably some of my post played playlists on my VLC media player - though, yeah, the Anthology box set for the OT definitely gets played more for me.

I don't have the ear (or necessarily the interest) to scrutinize the scores as much as bilditup1, but looking at things in their totality, I can't imagine many people seriously thinking the PT scores were bad.  I mean, how many movies nowadays have truly powerful, memorable core melodies?  Not very many at all.  The atonal/atmospheric/throbbing beats, exemplified by Transformers and The Dark Knight, are what modern scores strive for.  Those that might try for memorable melodies usually fail.

The PT had, in my opinion, at least four great melodies.  That alone makes it a solid collection. 

A little off-topic....what about non-movie SW scores?  I like the Shadows of the Empire score a good deal.  It sure feels very Star Wars-y to me.  I'm sure that there've been scores for video games and such that were popular.  Any thoughts on those?

adywan said:

Looks like The Sun (where the article first originated) has yet again been making crap up. :

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=411096898907652&id=135520326465312

Way to go spoiling all of our fun there, dude! We were having a good time piling on.  And then you come along with this wacko conspiracy stuff saying that the mainstream media lies.  Shame on you!

Sluggo said:

....

I used this great helpful graphic as the basis for my new .SVG logo (created in Inkscape, with some preliminary work done in Gimp, specifically the tracing of the 'Star Wars' logo).  This is vector art, so it can be scaled infinitely and, most important for me, imported into Blender and extruded into 3D.

Suggestions and comments more than welcome.  Got the font graphic from the Font Thread here at OT.

MOVED POST TO MORE RELEVANT THREAD  -DavidBrennan

theprequelsrule said:

DavidBrennan said:

I defy anybody to watch 'Capturing Avatar' (or the dozens of terrific "Making of" featurettes that the production released for free online leading up to 'Avatar's release) and compare that to the PT.  James Cameron's philosophy for creating quality performances for actors in synthetic environments (all green screen for the PT, mostly performance cap for AVTR) was 100% the opposite.

 

Yeah, but it didn't matter in the end; I thought Avatar was crap. Every fictional Cameron film since True Lies has been an unintentional comedy. Compare the "acting" in Avatar with that in Aliens or Terminator.

But modern audiences have held blockbuster films to lower and lower standards for many years now. I think the only major summer blockbuster of the last 15 years that I have enjoyed was Iron Man.

And for the record: Jake Lloyd's acting sucked in TPM. He actually lowered the quality of the dialogue by his terrible delivery - quite a feat.

Thanks for all your opinions and declarative statements.  I'm sure you have a great grasp of the engineering logistics and technological processes that I was referencing, too. 

And, "every fictional Cameron film since True Lies" is a real long list there, chief: Avatar and Titanic.  The fact that you used "every" rather than "both" is evidence that you have no clue what the hell you're babbling about, which was kind of obvious, anyway. 

You're going to respond with a bunch more declarative statements and proclamations of film technology expertise.  So, to save myself the time later on, I'll just write in this post: "Thanks for your declarative statements and opinions."

One thing that I think is worth noting is that - though I like the PT (and love ROTS) that doesn't have the simple metaphorical or idiom stock value that the OT had, not even close.

-Darth Vader as shorthand for scary, all-powerful dude

-The Force as shorthand for religion/spirituality/wisdom

-Yoda/Obi-Wan as shorthand for wise old man

-Death Star as shorthand for weapon of the power structure

Even less common things, like Tattooine being cited as a backwater place from time to time. 

In this sense, I think the OT is much like the Bible or popular folklore - like Robin Hood being shorthand for guy who steals from the rich to give to the poor.  But the PT was just too complex and/or plain ol' messy (both in plot and characterization).  As LFL has increasingly doubled-down on the PT direction of things - by making the TCW cartoon, customizing the OT to fit the PT in the BluRays, but not the other way around, releasing TPM 3D, etc. - they're really either trying to prop up their weak spot or else they just don't know what part of the movies truly resonate with people.

So I think that, because of their true comparison to the Bible and popular folklore, the OT will live on as long as anything in our culture.  But I don't expect that people will often be citing, say, Nute Gunray as the shorthand for a corrupted, myopic businessman.

So it's all limited to the OT.

That's a fun dream.  I always feel so refreshed when I wake up from any sort of vivid, dynamic dream.  Even nightmares feel cathartic.

XyZ said:

@ DavidBrennan

I do think there have been graphists who reworked these famous fonts at the time they designed the posters. If you want to make it authentic, just get the higher res scan you can get of the 80's logos. There's no other ways to have them 100% accurate. I never found the least copy or custum logo wich was accurate. And I can tell you people really appreciate these logos when you use the good ones.

Okay.  I'm not going to be using that same text, though.  (If I were, I'd turn it into a .SVG by using Gimp  >  Selecting the Text  >  Selection to Paths (Curves).) 

So....I guess what I'll do instead is write the text out in Times new Roman that I will be using ("& False Flag Terror") and then customize the endpoints of the letters by copying-and-pasting the endpoints of the letters from the ROTJ logo.

Does anybody know what the font is (or a good approximation of it) for the 'Return of the Jedi' text in the original ROTJ logo?

(I now see that Times New Roman has been cited.  If anybody has a better suggestion, please share it.)

MOVED BY USER.  Not optimal thread for it.

Mr. Bungle said:

AVC: George Lucas seems like, famously, someone who wouldn’t work well with your methods: He doesn’t like rehearsal or, reportedly, a lot of spontaneous exploration on the set. How did you work together?

EM: Well, you still have to make the characters real and in the moment, and that’s your job, so that’s always gonna be the case there. The technical aspect of the Star Wars films is difficult, because there’s no environment. A lot of the time, anyway, we were working on bluescreen sets or greenscreen sets where there’s nothing there at all, and oftentimes, no other actor to work with. Somebody’s just reading lines off the side of the set, and you’re looking at a tennis ball on a stick. So that becomes much more of a technical exercise. But at the same time, it’s still going in the movie, and it still has to be believable. But I like working with George. I like very much being part of the legend of Star Wars. It’s nice to be in that. 

 

I defy anybody to watch 'Capturing Avatar' (or the dozens of terrific "Making of" featurettes that the production released for free online leading up to 'Avatar's release) and compare that to the PT.  James Cameron's philosophy for creating quality performances for actors in synthetic environments (all green screen for the PT, mostly performance cap for AVTR) was 100% the opposite.

Just watch the opening speeches!  Before shooting on one of the PT movies began, Rick McCallum gives a speech that basically goes, "We're on a tight budget so let's get this shit over with in 60 days, people!"  Conversely, James Cameron's speech was, "Thank you so much for all you've done.  I'm so impressed.  We have a long, hard road ahead of us, and there are going to be many late nights and wrong turns.  But we're all in this together and let's make a great product."

The end result?  AVTR was the biggest hit ever, the PT movies are mostly a punchline.  (Though I think this is sad, because I think ROTS was still great.)

Bingowings said:

It could be worse.

A certain young man from Quebec (sounds like the beginning of a limerick), got much of the same (if not worse) and he didn't even get to be in a Star Wars movie.

Ha ha.

Although, I have to say....watching AOTC now in HD, seeing all the "Jedi" in the much-hyped Geonosis arena scene ("Finally see the Jedi at their peak!")....Star Wars Kid was at least as cool-looking as any of those people.  I mean, they were just mindlessly swaying sticks around in the air.  There was no logic at all to the Jedi lightsaber activity (or blaster firing) in that scene, and I'm deadly serious that Star Wars Kid was as good as those Jedi actors.

I agree with Zombie that he was miscast and did a mediocre (not bad, in my opinion) job, but he did have an aggressive, rambunctious look to him as a boy which was probably the reason for his hiring. Really, I think that the character should've been AT LEAST 13 years old, for a variety of reasons.  (Most especially that it's hard to say that an eight year old is "too attached" to things.  Virtually all kids that age are very, very adaptive to whatever crazy situation they have to live through.)

But I also think that it's probably wrong of people to have such pity on anybody.  So he was teased for this.  Fine.  We all get teased.  God forbid you're ugly, or fat, or socially inept, or stupid.  Kids get teased.  Hell, ADULTS get teased.  Instead of telling kids that they should live in the past and attempt to "heal the scarring" or whatever the psychological fad of the day is, we should say, "Ah dude, that sucks.  I remember being teased for my acne and that my mom cut my hair.  That really hurt me.  Well, that's life.  Let's move on."

It just sets a bad example for current kids (and adults) that they should let every tease (real or imagined) dictate their life.  "Sticks and stones", remember.

Well, at first it was the other way around: they were trying to make prequels that integrated with the originals.  That was only modestly successful, so they had to go back and work on it from the other end.

Thanks a lot, EdFarmer.  I just got TradeGothic from Demonoid and I'm overlaying it onto a screencap of ROTS on GIMP, and it looks almost perfect (only the spacing is off, and that can be customized easily).

Although it's odd how different the coloring is between the OOT and the SEs and PT.  On the OOT, they were decidedly blue - almost royal blue.  Now, they're starkly teal. 

Ah well.  For my use, this is MORE than sufficient.  Thanks.

SilverWook said:

I am not for caving into the PC police.

I simply fail to see whether a man is perceived as being femmy or not has anything to do with the quality of an animated tv show they work on.

Oh, I was just looking to say something dismissive and so that's the what came to mind.  Yeah, it ultimately has little to do with the TV show.  (If I disliked every TV show by a gay producer, I think that'd limit my options by half.)