Easterhay

Wow, no Asians in the OT, eh? Someone's been tampering with my TESB again, clearly, and RoTJ too.

And Vader's only in the prequels for a minute? Again, damn my copy of RoTS - it must be a pirate recording.

Only one woman in the OT? Yup, I always knew Mon Mothma was a drag artist.

I agree that the new trilogy should disregard the EU books - they're bloody awful.

Damn you! I thought I was being oh-so original in killing off Han in the first half of Part VII in my own fan-fiction set after RoTJ.

Unlike your story, mine's not realised as a screenplay but instead it's a trilogy of books. Can I just ask you, what made you kill off Han? I did it because I found the character impossible to write for. He just seemed surplus to requirements during/after RoTJ and the Han that we all know and love and died in that carbon slab. Also, it satisfies Harrison Ford's idea that Han should die, which reinforces the feel of TESB, which is that heroes are mortal and are not infallible.

Anyway, great job so far. I like the echoes of the past in Jeni being told a falsehood about her father's death. Like you, I've only taken the films as canon and have disregarded the EU in my own humble efforts.

The only place I've ever read that L:ucas didn't like TESB is in Simon Pegg's autobiography - and I don't think he mentioned where he'd found that out. I've never really believed it but I think it serves a lot of fans to go along with it.

For the record, though, there is nothing of Leigh Brackett's screenplay in the film so anyone thinking that all that is good about this movie is down to them is really fooling themselves I think. Lawrence Kasdan replaced Brackett - he didn't work with her - and I think the general consensus is that he did a fine, fine job.

Gaffer Tape said:

zombie84 said:

 There is about 20 seconds more on Coruscant and about 90 seconds in the pod race. That doesn't sound like much, but pure CG eyecandy for two full minutes can be pretty tedious. 

It is, but what always gets me is in the commentary track, George ADMITS that that material was cut because it buggered up the pacing.  So if he knew it didn't work (which it doesn't), WHY DID HE ADD IT BACK IN?!

I do think "plastic surgery addict" is the best analogy to describe him.

Because the pacing of a film when watched in a cinema has to be a bit more ruthless than the pacing of a DVD.  Most films seem to get a few extra bits these days in their DVD releases.  Look at Lord Of The Rings - blimey, The Return Of The King is monstrously long now.  And check out Avatar: two more versions, each longer than the theatrical cut.

Thanks, Alexrd.  I was considering leaving the forum alone but I think I'll stay now, in the hope that someone can be tolerated for having a different opinion here, and not be called a "troll" or a "dick" (amazing that such insults fly over the moderators' heads) just for going against the grain on some issues.

For the record (really, for the intellectually challenged - and they shout the loudest here so they know who they are), I think the original originals should be given a Blu-ray release.  They should be packaged with every version of the films that come out, because I think it's startling to see how they started out and how many revisions have been made to them since their respective release dates.  There's clearly enough people who want them, so why not? 

And then we shall have peace.

CO said:

Easterhay, what was your username at TFN, just so I have a frame of reference of who I am talking to? 

What would really help, here, is if you told me what TFN stood for.  Can you do that for me, darling?

zombie84 said:

No.

I knew you'd take issue with TFNers having a "type." He's not being accused of being okay with the SE or prequels, there are plenty people here who have those views, including to some degree myself. It's not that everyone there fits into said type, because I am a long-standing member there, just that there is a unique brand of Star Wars fan with particularities that is mainly found at that place. Having been posting there for over a decade, I've come to recognize this. CO was a long-standing member there too, I think like me all the way back into the 1990s, and he would be able to recognize someone from there when he met one.

The fact that this guy is (vaguely) familiar with my work in the past seems to indicate this, as my book was first discussed at that place.

Well, you see it's very dangerous to assume (and given you've written something which is chock-full of assumptions then you should know this above all others).  I actually found your "work" on the internet and contacted you directly (admittedly before I read it) to say thanks and that this was something I'd wanted to read for a long time.  I was expecting an informed essay on the films, something similar to The Magic Of Myth.  Boy was I surprised.  I didn't contact you since because, well, if you have nothing good to say, say nothing. 

Still, I'm very amused to read your above post.  It seems you have your head so far up your own arse you don't know truth from fiction.  Christ alone knows who you think I am but you just keep sweet-talking me, dumpling - you (like the rest of your ilk) are endless fun.

Well, we always dislike those aspects of someone's personality that we recognise in ourselves, "Fink".

If I could find (not that I've looked) a version of ESB that has all of the SE changes except the heinous removal of "Bring my shuttle" and all subsequent new shots which interrupt the flow of the hyperspace chase (the beauty shot of the shuttle as it flies towards the Imperial fleet is okay but ultimately still unecessary) then that would be the ESB I'd watch.  Until then ESB is the only film that I feel a kind of dread before watching it (given that I only have the DVD version to hand).

doubleKO said:

Trolling troll, was ignored.

Usually when you ignore someone, it means you don't respond to them. 

Just can't resist me, can you?  Bless.

TheBoost said:

1) Gesture mirrors: “Star Wars: Episode IV” begins with a Blockade Runner that has obviously just escaped a blockade, and “Phantom Menace” begins with a (too) similar ship approaching a blockade, willingly entering it.

Wow... symbolism based on guessing something not in the movie based on knowing the name of a ship when the name never appears in the movie.

 

Also, Obi-Wan and Darth Maul (under all the makeup) are dead ringers

They are?

 

 

Much later, as I began to consider certain very strange scenes in the new trilogy, I realized that they were all elements of a hidden story, adding up to a precise opposite of the original trilogy

This article is like The Da Vinci Code of crap!

ESF said:

That's all Lucas has to say about those shitty films, "They mirror each other like poetry, it's stylistic and bold."

I agree with Lucas here. It is stylistic and bold. Pity it's also crappy.

 

 

 I think the assumption made about the rebel ship escaping a blockade in A New Hope was based on it being called a Blockade Runner.

zombie84 said:

Hmm, reusing the same ideas, themes, situations and images from previous movies in later sequels to said movies while also taking them in new and different directions. How novel. Know what they call that in the real world?

A franchise.

Hmmm.  I've read your stuff, including the big deal you make of the numerous rewrites Lucas made before settling on a final screenplay (because we all know everyone uses their first drafts all the time.  Ho, and indeed, hum.) and I see you're still making a meal of Lucas using recurring themes in the films to create a kind of symmetry and to show how two people can go on the same journey and make decisions that take them in opposite directions.

Tell me, how many other franchises have done this?  Y'know, telling a story in two halves, thirty years apart, and yet still ensuring mahoosive worldwide success? 

Back in the day when I used to play Dungeons And Dragons, if anyone rolled a dice to hit someone and had a near miss, one of us would always say: "It's a hit, it's a hit.  Negative, it didn't go in.  It just impacted on the surface."

What do I like about the EU?  Anything with Timothy Zahn's name on it.  And nothing bearing the name of Kevin J Anderson.

Thank god for that. 

It's awful when someone more articulate than you comes along and puts forth a calm, measured and totally rationale argument isn't it?  What a man you are, though, for taking it on the chin and moving on without some online-centric remark like...well, the one you just gave actually.

Why am I a troll, then?  Oh, I see, because I don't agree with you.  The scales slip from my eyes as easily as rain falls from a Scottish sky.

Mm, you can't be so strong in your convictions if you get all het up every time someone presents you with a different opinion.  I'd take some therapy if I were you.  Otherwise you're gonna have a heart attack by the time you're twenty, and then we'd all be robbed of your intellectual remarks.

See, you're getting all up yourself over something I didn't actually say.  I'm not positing the orginal reason for the slow-paced fight scenes, merely highlighting how it can easily be explained away now, in the greater context.

So, read, re-read, and then reconsider before hitting the old send button.  You're just coming across as a petulant arse.

My five year old son picks the episodes he wants to watch.  At some point. we'll sit and watch them in some sort of order but at the moment he mainly plumps for the last hour of Attack Of The Clones and certain scenes from Return Of The Jedi.  He's recently been allowed to watch Revenge Of The Sith and I think he enjoys that because of its previously forbidden nature. 

I don't impose any kind of watch-these-films-they're-better-than-the-others mentality on him, mainly because I don't subscribe to that viewpoint.

Whatever you say...

Figure of speech.  Pretty common, really.

Far from being clever, you now just look stupid with that remark.

Ooh, you're hard aren't you?  Where's your handbag?

So how, pray tell, am I being a dick?  Or indeed a troll.  C'mon, smart arse, thrill me with your acumen.

Oh, and the reason I came back was someone sent me a PM.  A very nice PM actually.  I thought I'd come back on to the forum and see what was happening - everything had been going fine until you opened your mouth.

Absolutely.  Everyone on here is a fanboy, no exceptions.  Everyone who isn't on here is leading a fulfilling life somewhere else :P