Iron Pheonix

Thank you so much for doing this, Kanmedhurst. Now that the entire show has concluded, there are some terrific possibilities for encapsulating the best/most essential story arcs. I never started watching the show (…I know, I know - bad fan, bad!). But I am keenly interested in watching a well-crafted miniseries of series of films of it. Consider me one of those who is interested in seeing this.

And yes, Google Drive is perfect. How will we know when they’re available?

And thank you again!

Hi, everybody!

Adywan, I have a humble suggestion for the Sarlacc. I agree; as the years have ground on, I also found it to not be terribly frightening. But the SE’s addition of that cgi beak was beyond awful. I actually laughed out loud when I first saw it! It looked as though Audrey II from “Little Shop of Horrors” was down there, trying to snatch people! It was utterly horrendous in how ridiculous it was.

My idea for making the Sarlacc more intimidating and menacing is the following: Similar to how you animated the facial features of the creatures in the cantina in ANH: Revisited, animate the Sarlacc’s mouth. Make it snap its mouth shut, make its gullet convulse and gulp. Show the teeth champing together, almost like a shark does. That, added with some suitable sound effects, would make it spookier. Part of the problem is that it was just a rubber hole in the ground. We need to believe it really IS a giant, hungry mouth!

And finally, I’d add a few more tentacles. I know it might be a bit tricky - depending upon how it’s done, it has the danger of looking a little hokey and/or unintentionally funny. But you also have the advantage of being able to see the movements of everyone else in the scene. Perhaps one or two shots of the tentacles taking a swipe at some of the figures fighting on the skiffs, grabbing at them? At least enough to suggest that they’re not entire safe up there - that’s all you’d need.

I’ve no idea how difficult it might be to do this. And you might have decided to go in a different direction altogether. But if you are still considering what to do with the Sarlacc, then that’s my two pennies’ worth for a suggestion.

Thank you - your work is nothing short of phenomenal!

My issues with TREK '09 are legion.  However, admittedly, the vast majority of them stem from a script that is unfit to even be used as toilet paper.  The writers, thoroughly incapable of coming up with an exciting, fun, fresh story which would have fit in with 40 YEARS' WORTH OF ESTABLISHED CANON, and instead decided to outright lie to fans (How many interviews did I read where they insisted vehemently, "Oh, we're TOTALLY respecting what's happened before, we promise we won't trash the universe that so many people love!") and then proceeded to put together a story which shat on and kicked out pretty much EVERYTHING which had been established before that with cheap plot gimmicks (Time travel?  AGAIN?  Really?  And a villain from the past bent on revenge?  AGAIN?).  The characterization of Kirk and Spock were horrendous - they were NOT the characters I had known and loved since I was 11 years old.  The production design veered from brilliant to bizarre (Engine room that looks like a brewery instead of a nuclear power plant, plastic meat locker curtains in the shuttles...?) and more plot holes and outright strange developments placed in solely because they wanted to give the visual FX team stuff to cream their shorts over trying to do.  It was a bland, brainless, soulless, generic action film for a generation of people ("This is not  your father's STAR TREK!" crowed the ads.  Yeah, you got that right.  I liked my dad's STAR TREK just fine, thank you.) who don't care about things like, oh, I don't know...  Stupid stuff like coherent plot, consistency with established franchise history and established characterization, and trying to stay true to the spirit of the original.

In other words, it was a perfect script for someone like Abrams to film.

With REAL writers at the helm of EPISODE VII, I have hope against rational hope that at least the story will be good, and not dumbed-down like TREK '09 was.  Besides, considering that TREK '09 was a wannabe SW film dressed in TREK's clothing, perhaps we can consider it Abrams' trial run before tackling the franchise he REALLY wants to do (...but just lied explicitly about it to the press to throw them off.  Sneaky, sneaky little man!). 

Look, I'm under no illusions here.  STAR WARS ain't CITIZEN KANE.  It's not some great literary work.  It's melodramatic space opera.  It's popcorn-munching fun.  But it was based upon great mythic underpinnings - the Hero's Journey.  EMPIRE STRIKES BACK especially honed the performances and story and a solid film was crafted around that.  I just hope that Abrams is capable of swallowing his ego and thinking about the story first.

But I won't hold my breath 'til it happens.

DoubleOFive, I hear you loud and clear.

I have to say I’m disappointed by the choice of JJ Abrams to direct another STAR WARS movie. It’s a safe, corporate, marketable choice – not a very artistically valid one. Is Abrams a horrible director? No. But is a great one? Well… No. As a longtime, old-school STAR TREK fan, I despise and loathe what he did to that franchise (although he was aided and abetted by a script so atrocious and horrible that NO ONE could have made a comprehensible film from it). My issue with Abrams is that he’s all style and no substance. He makes movies which are the equivalent of a meal which looks and even smells delicious. Then you take a bite and realize it tastes like shit.

My example: SUPER 8. It was meant to be Abrams’ homage to those classic Speilberg movies which we kids from the 70s and 80s grew up watching. To give him credit, he was able to REPLICATE the LOOK and to a lesser extent the FEEL of those movies – but NOT the HEART. It just felt… Off, somehow. You could tell you were watching someone else’s take on an 80s Speilberg film and not an actual Speilberg movie. When you’ve got people tossing around F-bombs in front of kids, showing kids vomiting, and a creature which is neither definitively good nor bad (It just wants to go home – like E.T. – yet is kidnapping, killing, and eating people, but is still an innocent victim of abuse at the hands of the US Government… Confused? Yeah, so was I!), it’s either sloppy storytelling or pandering to more modern-day tastes for increasingly accepted vulgarity and cheap bathroom humor – something which Speilberg would NEVER have done, and therefore contradicts and flies in the face of the movies you’re so lovingly trying to recreate.

So, Abrams will make a film that looks and sounds and moves wonderfully. But I fear that the heart of STAR WARS will be sorrowfully lacking. Like a large, beautifully-wrapped Christmas present that, when opened, is revealed to just be an empty box. It’ll be all trimmings and trappings, and no soul. I hope I’m proved wrong. But my enthusiasm (and expectations) for this new SW movie have now just sunk VERY low indeed.

My dearest hope was that someone with a proven track record of handling a massive franchise and infusing it with genuine soul and emotion and depth of feeling and character – such as Peter Jackson – would be given the reigns.  Or even a graduate of the school which created STAR WARS in the first place, like Joe Johnston, who makes fun, rousing adventure movies (ROCKETEER, CAPTAIN AMERICA).  Or someone like Joss Whedon, who has and exhibits a fan’s understanding of what makes something like STAR WARS tick. 

Oh well.  It’ll be what it’ll be.  But I am saddened to say that I won’t be rushing to the theaters to see this.  I may just wait for the safer bet of catching it on VOD or some other home video format.