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Fang Zei

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14-Oct-2006
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16-Aug-2025
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Post
#315787
Topic
legacy of the force - book
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/315787/action/topic#315787
Time
I've shared my thoughts on the NJO here and elsewhere, but I think it bears repeating.

I'm been convinced, especially since that story of the abandoned bantam/darkhorse invasion storyline came to light, that del rey wanted to tell a Star Wars story that could only be told in the medium of novels. I've only read a couple books from the series, but what I did read really gave me a vibe of "this could never be done as a movie." You don't even see comics set during that era.

Although I will admit that after hearing about what happens with Zonama Sekot in the Force Heretic arc, I understood even further what their whole point with the series was. It gave it a kind of fantasy feel, which of course is what Star Wars itself has.

Another thing is, well, y'know how a lot of us prefer to think of the original trilogy as the real story and the prequels as just prequels? I think this kind of backs that up because it shows how grand Luke Skywalker's life ended up being. Born at the end of the Clone Wars, fought in the Galactic Civil War, helped build the New Republic, fought people from another galaxy far far away and proved himself the greatest Jedi ever.

Troy Denning's post-NJO trilogy also sounded cool because of the whole "now, let's get back to where we left off before the Vong showed up" thing. Using that concept of the Killiks also had me interested.

As for Legacy of the Force, acknowledging the old Marvel stories was a pretty random move, but like the Killiks in Denning's trilogy it's cool that they're mining these old and ambiguous materials for ideas.
Post
#315737
Topic
Will your interest in the Star Wars universe be affected...
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/315737/action/topic#315737
Time
Hey, the fact that there's now a better format around than vhs is kind of what puts a damper on being enthusiastic about the movies themselves isn't it? I'm being serious, by the way. There was no 4:3 and 16:9 with vhs, everything was just 4:3. Hence the glory of the 90's. One last time in '95, SE in '97, both on the same format, equal treatment.

The funny thing is that (as if it needs to be said) the discrepancy in quality between the two versions on dvd is, well, pretty much all I keep coming back to these Star Wars message boards over. I say pretty much because I am into other things like the comics. I'm still reading Dark Times because of the upcoming live action series, which is another thing that holds my interest. But again, it all comes down to that hope that we'll all finally get what we want.

The problem is that if Lucas doesn't follow through with actually remastering the OOT, we'll really wish that he just hadn't bothered with the laserdisc ports. A friend of mine makes this sort of comparison from time to time, but I think it's particularly apt here: that's like getting half a handjob. Star Wars will have gone from a piece of history to a piece of mere nostalgia.
Post
#315495
Topic
Further proof GL has lost his mind... Clone Wars
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/315495/action/topic#315495
Time
Hey, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they debuted an awesome OT game when (or sometime after) they finally get around to giving the movies the ultimate treatment. It's just that right now they're doing a Shadows of the Empire style, self contained story. On a larger level, it's all just a pawn in the larger scheme of being a step towards the live action series (yes, the dark side analogy is indeed very fitting).
Post
#315486
Topic
Official: 'THE CLONE WARS' movie in Theaters 8/15/08
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/315486/action/topic#315486
Time
Yea but that's the thing. At least with the PT he was directing again, and apparently having fun doing so. I would've thought he'd realized by now that he's got less years ahead of him than he does behind and that he better get going on having fun spending his vast billions on those small, esoteric works.

Coppola called him out on it recently in some interview about Youth Without Youth, saying something to the effect of "ok, George, I've done it. Now it's your turn."*

I mean, seriously, I just don't get why he's still in the Star Wars pool unless he really thinks he's doing the film world a favor by continuing to make all this money off of Star Wars so that he can do things like give 150 million dollars to USC. In all honesty that's been my theory for a while now, especially since the GOUT debacle. This is what people are thinking of when they talk of Lucas' attitude towards the fans. It's as if he's saying "Oh, you want me to spend my money on restoring the half-finished versions of Star Wars? Too bad, move on to other movies or make your own, but leave Star Wars to me."


*I could be remembering wrong, it might've been an interview with Lucas where that topic was brought up.
Post
#315407
Topic
Official: 'THE CLONE WARS' movie in Theaters 8/15/08
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/315407/action/topic#315407
Time
What really just has me down about Star Wars right now is that the fact that it's on overload (and it is on overload) just doesn't bode well (to me at least) about the possibility of us OOT fans getting what we finally want any time soon.

However, those comments by McCallum about all the 100 hours of documentaries has me convinced that we will see a fairly grand treatment for the next home video release. I just hope it doesn't take more than another couple years to actually happen.
Post
#315404
Topic
Will your interest in the Star Wars universe be affected...
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/315404/action/topic#315404
Time
Y'know what? If I had the theatrical versions of all six movies in 1080p24, yea, I probably would just move on forever with the possible of exception of Episode VII and onward (if those were ever to get made).

But that's the whole point of what I've brought up time after time. They're going to wait to give us all what we want for that very reason. "Buy other stuff in the meantime!"

I'm just trying to remain optimistic that based on certain comments ("it'll all come out in the end; we're focusing on television now; etc") we're going to be getting it sooner rather than later.
Post
#315401
Topic
Further proof GL has lost his mind... Clone Wars
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/315401/action/topic#315401
Time
There were a couple things I forgot to say actually (man, my mind wanders sometimes):

-Lucas was an animation nut back around the time he got out of USC and as zombie pointed out that never really went away.

-What I was talking about in regards to the new Clone Wars show is that it actually looks fairly cinematic, and unlike the old animated shows, this one is actually getting a theatrical release.

one last thing:

They've been milking those three years between Star Wars and Empire for, what, 30 years now? I was surprised as anyone when Lucas announced way back when ('05?) that there'd be a cg Clone Wars show, but 22-19 bby is the new 0-3 aby.
Post
#315397
Topic
Further proof GL has lost his mind... Clone Wars
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/315397/action/topic#315397
Time
There are loopholes in just about everything Lucas has said over the past few years in regards to Episode VII. The 60 Minutes interview from '05 when he says "there is no Episode VII." Well, no, there isn't, that's because it doesn't exist right now. That doesn't mean it never will. The biggest loophole is the "This is the last Star Wars movie I will ever direct" comment.

As for the PT and this series specifically, well, I'll say this. Recently someone put up online a Ted Koppel interview from '83 where Siskel, Ebert and some other critic discuss Return of the Jedi and its merits. The other critic whose name I can't remember brought up the point that "it might as well be a cartoon." Ebert cleverly responded with "Well, I think these are the kind of movies Disney should start making."

Here's my point with all this. Remember how people said ROTJ was where the trouble really began? Remember how by the time we got to ROTS they were calling it a Pixar film? I think this simply finishes it off by making it completely CG at last.
Post
#315312
Topic
Further proof GL has lost his mind... Clone Wars
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/315312/action/topic#315312
Time
-Anakin's a Jedi Knight by this point in the story. You can have an apprentice as soon as you're a Knight.

-That particular screenshot I always thought was a lens flare, not another sun. However, in the newer trailer there are some shots of Anakin and Ahsoka walking around on a planet that definitely resembles and probably is Tatooine.

-Funny, I never noticed the significance of the armor until you pointed it out, SilverWook. Guess we now know what happened to the plot point of Anakin gradually collecting the various pieces making up the Vader armor, which was rumored back before Episode III was released:

GL: "nah, save it for some future spin off."
Post
#315279
Topic
Further proof GL has lost his mind... Clone Wars
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/315279/action/topic#315279
Time
canofhumdingers said:

i always thought it would be neat to have Z-95 Headhunters (the precursor to the x-wing in "in-universe" history) in Revenge of the sith.


They're brought up in a conversation Anakin and his friend have with some pilot in Mos Espa in the opening chapters of The Phantom Menace novelization. I still remember reading that a week or so before the movie opened, and by that point I'd pretty much figured out that these chapters wouldn't be in the actual movie so I thought "hmm, well that's a nice nod to the EU."

SilverWook said:

I don't know if it's canon or not, but I recall reading somewhere the Rebels stripped down the Y-wings to make them easier to maintain and so forth.

There should have been "new" versions of many future Rebel workhorses in the prequels. *sigh*


Well, yea, but you're preaching to the choir here. There are plenty of things that are showing up in these various prequel spinoffs that should've been in the movies themselves, simply because the cashcow is still there.
Post
#315212
Topic
Further proof GL has lost his mind... Clone Wars
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/315212/action/topic#315212
Time
Please someone take Star Wars away from this man!!!!!

Too bad it's already made billions of dollars, with several billion more probably left to make.

It's something I said a couple months back, but the simple reality is that GL will continue to crank this stuff out so long as there are people willing to buy it. Meanwhile, the simplification of Star Wars into the SE will remain as the only way you can watch it unless you're willing to settle for a 1993 laserdisc.

I'm pretty sure I'm not wasting my money on going to see this in theaters, especially when it'll be on tv fo free (oh wait, I forgot, that'll be sans two seconds of footage that I'll only see in that 90 minute edit, gasp!!!). Also, I'd kinda like to keep that final time I saw ROTS in theaters (which was at the Uptown in DC) as my last theatrical Star Wars experience ever. It's not like we're getting the OOT in theaters, well, ever. I'll continue to wait for the Definitive Collection Laser - er, I mean Blu-ray disc.
Post
#314908
Topic
JEDI CON 2008-BEHIND THE SCENES CAST AND CREW INFO ON STAR WARS FILMING, DVDS AND OTHER BITS...
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/314908/action/topic#314908
Time
lordjedi said:

I'm not giving them another cent until they release the movies individually and in a boxed set.


The funny thing is that this is exactly what I've been theorizing they're up to. Well, I guess it's more that I'm hoping it's what they're up to, especially if we're ever going to see the OT get the Blade Runner treatment.

I would also hope that George realizes there are those of us who saw the prequels on the big screen and would like the '99 cut of TPM. I'm willing to give the omission of the 35mm version of AOTC a pass, even though I never got around to seeing the DLP projection. I lived just barely within walking distance of the only theater in the Commonwealth of Virginia that was showing AOTC in DLP, but I saw AOTC on 35mm at Union Station in DC on May 16th and it was more than a month before I thought "hmmm, maybe I should see it in DLP." But by that point they'd already switched it out for the DLP of Scooby-Doo.
Post
#314871
Topic
Will your interest in the Star Wars universe be affected...
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/314871/action/topic#314871
Time
At the end of the day, no, I guess it won't really. My cowclops v.2 transfers still serve me pretty well. Star Wars hasn't gotten a blu-ray release yet, but then again neither have 99.9 percent of the other movies out there. An actual new telecine from the old IP's would mean the possibility of watching an anamorphic dvd in A-grade quality instead of a 16:9-ized fan-made laserdisc-to-dvd transfer in C/B-grade quality. Lucas almost had me ready to give him some money back on May 3rd of '06.

I think an irony of Star Wars is that if it didn't have such a huge and active fandom, all of us here would probably have our coveted anamorphic transfers by now. Hell, we would've gotten them long ago. What has me worried in regards to this whole OOT on blu-ray matter is that I could easily see Lucas opting to only include the SE simply to keep everything "nice and neat." On the other hand, if he was that hardcore about keeping to his "vision," we wouldn't have gotten so much as a laserdisc transfer. I would hope that the money made off of that release has spoken adequately to LFL of the desire fans have for the original versions. I also hope that we would've gotten that "market saturation" comment either way, and that it doesn't have anything to do with how LFL is looking at the sales numbers. If they honestly expected it to do better than it did, their egos are even bigger than I imagined.

One thing is for sure, though. It isn't likely that we'll see these movies regarded just as movies and not the "little engine that could" story that we got on the Empire of Dreams doc. Don't get me wrong, I like watching that documentary, but that's still what it is. Anything is possible, though. That comment from McCallum about a hundred hours of documentaries has me fascinated, but even then he would still need to finally cave and give us what we all want in the form of a remastered OOT in order for it to sell a lot of copies (or am I just being naive?).
Post
#313872
Topic
So... your opinion of how much Lucas really had planned out?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/313872/action/topic#313872
Time
Mielr said:

As far as hating Lucas for what he's done to the series, I don't "hate" him, but I am royally pissed at him. The Prequels sort of sully the whole franchise- to the extent that they are able to. They're not taken as seriously and they're not as loved as the OT, so I guess they can only damage the legacy of the OT so much.

I'm far more upset about the Special Edition vs OOT situation, because I can
ignore the prequels, but it's hard to ignore the SEs since the OOT hasn't been
given a proper release.


and that's the funny part, I didn't have all that much of a problem with Star Wars in general until May of '06.

Seriously, even back in summer of '05 when my friend and I showed the OT to a friend of ours who'd never seen it before. I brought my silver box over to his place, we watched and it was awesome. awesome.

This is where I point to as evidence that Lucas has not 'ruined' the OT. It would take a whole lot more than that to ruin it.

Zombie, it sucks to read that and think of what might have been. On the other hand, it's interesting as hell to see how things worked and played themselves out. Seeing as how Lucas did end up coming back and doing the prequels, I certainly wouldn't mind seeing another Star Wars trilogy every couple of decades. I can't see Lucas being against this (at least in principle) and unless he writes it into his will there won't be anything he'll be able to do about it anyway. Heck, maybe he could even pitch a story for it and let other people write the screenplay. He has had some sort of involvement with the course of the EU. Maybe he would only end up insisting that Episodes VII and onward couldn't be made because of how he's re-worked them into the post-Jedi EU, but even then it would be cool for him to come up with a story within the midst of that (maybe that huge 100 year gap in the legacy era?) for 7, 8 and 9. After all, Lucas has always been working in the cinematic medium first and foremost.
Post
#313803
Topic
So... your opinion of how much Lucas really had planned out?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/313803/action/topic#313803
Time
While we're on the subject of the number of episodes, there's something I'd like to say.

The prequels are still just prequels at the end of the day. Even in '04 they still referred to the OT as "the trilogy," and something tells me they're going to release them all individually next time around with the option of getting it all in one big expensive set (ala Alien and Superman).

They're are some curiosities:

If he split one long story into three movies, why did he decide (early as May, 1980) that the prequels also warranted as many?

If he was in fact going to do 7 8 and 9, why was he starting in the middle?

Then there's Lucas' throw away line at the very beginning of the audio commentary for Revenge of the Sith about how everything in Star Wars is done in the style of a Saturday matinee serial which was told in 12 parts. Does the "12" have any special significance? In other words, does that mean we'll see episodes VII-XV someday? Or is he just saying that so we'll know how the old serials were usually in 12 parts sort of like how there are multiple Star Wars movies and each movie itself is serialized through the wipes? It's funny, I remember considering counting the number of wipes in that movie to see if it added up to 12, but then I got lazy / started skipping around and fast forwarding.

Here's the thing: I'm theoretically fine with Lucas' insistence of ROTJ being the end of the story, but only so long as the prequels are still just prequels. When Lucas said on the featurette that "when you watch IV, V and VI, he's still the chosen one" and they showed all that OT footage of Vader, I dunno, it all just seemed so out of place. Recently I saw an add for the movies showing on spiketv and they had I-II-III-IV-V-VI just like cinemax did. Again, out of place. Also, it makes me nostalgic as hell for when they would show the O-OT on USA back in the day.

Getting back to the question at hand, it does seem like Lucas used the prequels as on opportunity to do things he didn't in the OT. Episode III is full of that: battle over Coruscant, Wookiees, etc.

Ugh, I've gotta write my thoughts down as bullet points before I go on and type all this stuff. Now I'm forgetting whatever else it was that I was going to say.

I'll end with this:

I think it would be cool to one day see further episodes made, just as long as they aren't directed by Lucas (which they wouldn't be anyway, he's already said he's done with it). I'm intrigued by what could or could not be done regarding further episodes. I'm also intrigued as to the various reports over the years of how many more movies there could've been (five whole trilogies if you look at A New Hope as chapter 1 of a 12 part saga) and what they would've dealt with (stuff that got condensed into ROTJ).