The Wordplay articles are very illuminating on the subject of screenwriting:
http://www.wordplayer.com/welcome.html
Also Truby's articles and interviews on Youtube. In this one he attacks the idea of the three act structure of movies:
Absolutely right.
I've got probably hundreds of pages of notes on my computer for possible stories for a prequel rewrite. Everything from going Flash Gordon with Obi-wan as a Hans Zarkov character to Anakin's wife being a Joan of Arc character having visions of the good side of an extremely schizophrenic Anakin/Vader inspiring her to begin the Rebellion. Then there are the more reasonable stories, the ones that cleave close to what the audience would expect from watching the OT.
The problem with making a story about Anakin Skywalker is that the OT played off of the fact that Luke's father was a mystery to Luke to make him fearful. If an audience knows exactly how Anakin was seduced to the Dark Side, no matter how it happened, it would lessen the impact of the OT. For you only fear what you don't understand, and Luke must travel the path to becoming a Jedi not knowing if his actions are a mirror of his father's actions before he fell. In a way, Anakin's story is already told through Luke's journey in the OT. So making Anakin's story the focus of the Prequels is frivolous.
Obi-wan's story is also unfitting as the focus of the prequels, for we already know exactly where he ends up at the end. Also, telling his story requires knowing Yoda and a lot about the Force, making the films not work if they were to be watched before the the OT, or in proper numerical order.
In the end, I think that the prequels can't be about the Jedi or the Force, because to do so would simply repeat a lot of the OT. It would have to be a smaller story, with a main character whom we don't know, with a goal that doesn't have to do with doing something we already know the fate of. For example, having a story about someone fighting for either the Republic or the Separatists will inevitably end in tragedy, so if you want an uplifting tale, that's out.
I'll probably be altering my Stars of War thread soon, so you can read there what I have in mind for a "rewrite" of the prequels. I say rewrite because there are way too many ways to rewrite the prequels, and with a focus on entirely new characters and situations during the same period of the Clone Wars, the existing prequels and EU need not be discarded to have a compelling origin story for the Star Wars universe.
Orci: "I only want to be on Star Trek as long as I’m useful and helpful to what Star Trek is. The minute that I’m a burden on it, then I should not be here. I want the best idea to win. Hopefully, if this movie works, Paramount will be thinking about a third movie and, if I have the best idea, I should win. If I don’t, someone else should win. That’s how much I love Star Trek. The best idea should win, period."
Did he ask anyone besides Lindelof? He could have asked me...
I came up with a Star Trek 09 sequel where the Enterprise uses Spock Prime's knowledge of the future to preemptively meet V'ger thousands of light years from Earth. The Enterprise is seen as an infested organism like in the original, but in this timeline the ship is transported by V'ger to the machine planet that originally accepted Voyager, and Enterprise is given sentience to fulfill the mission that its crew is so unwilling to accomplish:
"To explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life forms and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before."
Therefore the crew is forced to deal with a ship that will go anywhere in the universe except for Earth and the planets of the Federation.
I think that it's a better story than KHAN! again.
Yes to the Matrix being the heir to Star Wars. It came out the same year as TPM, and soon everyone was pretending to be Neo in their backyard, not baby Anakin.
I think that the Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings film series were all trying to be the same story in different costumes.
Nobody has mentioned John Carter yet. After listening to the director's commentary and hearing about how everything in it was designed to simply begin an epic series of movies, It's really sad that they won't be making any more.
Thanks, unfortunately due to the computer problems, I haven't had the time to transfer anything but the final few scenes to the other machine. I'd really like to see what these settings do to the whole movie though, so perhaps I'll get to more scenes later.
Though I used the same color changes here, the gamma has been boosted while the contrast has been lowered compared to the final shot of the movie. This is because the final shot is darker than the previous scene, and I didn't want to blow out any highlights. Looking at these again, I could probably bring the brightness down a bit without crushing the blacks.
I'm still not entirely happy with the color here, I think that it should probably be slightly more red. However this is really difficult to do without it bleeding into other parts of the image, or giving the entire movie a reddish cast.
JEDIT: Here's an updated frame:
I've probably crushed some blacks again, and I'm still using the old source for lack of a better method and the aforementioned technical difficulties, but I'm more interested in getting the colors right at this point rather than the black and white points. Though if anything stands out, feel free to point it out.
Yeah, I think that it is mostly in the way that the story is told that makes the PT unwatchable. At its core it has many strengths, and if Abrams were to restructure them, it would go a long way to making them stand on their own. But if you can simply change the past, that destroys creativity. Restrictions breed it, and the PT is one heck of a restriction to a great saga. Better to select the story of the ST in a way that makes the PT and the OT better.
My venerable Premiere Elements crashed on me, and despite reinstalling the software, starting my XP 64bit in safe mode, and rolling back my video driver, it seems to be dead. Incidentally, if anyone knows how to fix
"The exception unknown software exception (0xc0000005) occurred in the application at location 0xOc7f10e3."
please let me know. In the meantime, I got the program to run in compatibility mode on a windows 7 machine, and cranked out this sample tonight:
Here's the original 2004 DVD frame for comparison:
Enjoy!
I don't get it. Why would someone who loves the movies as they are want to change them?
Also, the two trilogies we have now are far too connected as it is. The OT (or rather what's left of it) is the only thing holding up the PT.
'disRegards!
The Force is a mystical energy field that all living things have, and can tap into. However, the Force can choose a particular person or family, and those individuals are destined to change the galaxy.
I believe that anyone could be trained to use the Force, but the Force obeys its own rules, so if that person was not chosen by the Force, progress would be more difficult.
Midichlorians are believed by the Jedi to be a good indication of whether a person is chosen by the Force, but even they are unsure of what a high midichlorian count actually means, and if a teacher of the Force is in tune with a person, they can better determine the person's potential than any blood reading.
Alien was horror, Aliens was action, so what're you planning for this one? It sounds like a disaster movie in your "billions" comment.
Just got back from the movie.
Overall, I'm very conflicted about this movie. On the one hand, it has good action, reasonably good characters, and some genuinely engaging scenarios.
On the other hand, it really retreads the Wrath of Kahn, to the point where it begins to ruin WOK and this movie. So despite it being really fun and engaging as a sequel to the first movie, as a Star Trek fan I would rather not have even seen it.
One quibble: When Kirk says that Spock threw him under the bus, it took me out of the movie a bit. Anachronisms bug me.
"I have been known to make mistakes...from time to time."
Have a picture of Chewie strangling Lando:
"...just trying to help!"
*Dons Orson Welles voice*
"Pinky, what are you doing on that infantile Star Wars forum?"
Saw the movie yesterday. It was a solid entry, definitely better than 2.
Kind of spoilerish below...
It would be crazy, but I'd really like them to stick to the idea that Tony Stark was done with the Iron Man suit. After all, the point of the movie was that the suit was a "cocoon", and that it was his mechanic's mind that was important. So the next movie could prove it by having him build something that is a quantum leap beyond the suit in terms of coolness.
The best part of Iron Man 1 for me was that apart from the arc reactor, you could kind of believe that building a suit like that may be possible. With this movie, there are aspects that are entirely unbelievable. But I guess the cat's out of the bag as of the Avengers.
CatBus said:
The worst thing about Star Wars being so very, very overrated? The worst thing about the monolithic presence of this franchise, whose each entry devalues the whole? There’s one truly magnificent movie and one very good movie that are being swallowed up by cancerous growth of the larger entity. They’re two flowers, choked out in a lot full of weeds. And there’s some guy named JJ Abrams bringing in a backhoe and a whole bunch of new weeds.This statement has some truth in it, but it doesn't go nearly far enough because it completely sidesteps the impact of the rampant revisionism in the Star Wars filmography.
If you look at the complete saga as it exists in 2011 with all revisions, you're down to one good movie (ESB:SE), one middling movie (ANH:SE), and crap. The "flowers" he thinks are still in the garden are just dandelions like the rest at this point.
I often wonder about which versions people refer to when talking about the movies. He says that Empire is far better than A New Hope, which is true if he has only seen the SEs.
imperialscum said:
Oh please, not the film critics and their crap. If anyone, I despise the film critics. They consider themselves as an "experts" of film and are presenting their subjective opinions as something objective. Films are an art and art is purely subjective. There is no science it and certainly no objective measure.
Gotta disagree. There is such a thing as bad art. If you intend to make an enjoyable piece of entertainment and the result is The Star Wars Holiday Special, well I don't think that anyone would consider that enjoyable. It fails in its purpose, and does so objectively. The fact that we've been using the same formula for good storytelling for almost two thousand years means that there are some objective measures of good storytelling.
Thanks!
I remember Lucas saying that he intended for Star Wars to be a big screen experience, but where did he say that?
As a writer, your smartest character can never be smarter than you are.
Bingowings said:
imperialscum said:
Bingowings said:
It's insanely cheap story telling.
Everything else is just by the numbers (just like the PT).
These two sentence (while I understand they are being your opinion) make no sense at all. Care to elaborate on them? And please if you could go a little deeper than the usual insignificant Ewok stuff.
Also I didn't get the reply on the "ROTJ indicating the SE" thing. I would be happy if you could reply on that.
I only mentioned the Ewoks in the sense that they point to Jar-Jar and don't make sense in their current form (I like the idea of them but not it's execution).
If they were only obeying their God on the day where did all the traps come from?
They must have been fighting the Empire for months but we see no evidence of it and why be spooked by Threepio?
A gold man in a flying chair is not more startling than white plastic men in flying chairs and giant metal chicken things or a new moon growing in the sky.
By cheap storying telling I mean ticking off and clearing every possible hanging thread.
That never happens in real life and when it happens all in the last chapter it's clunky, unsophisticated and rubbish.
By by the numbers I mean almost everyone other than Mark and Ian just winging it.
Waiting for the paycheck.
In the first two films the actors played characters in Jedi most of them are just guest stars in a spoof playing themselves.
The thing looks cheap and nasty too for the reasons I've already mentioned.
It's propelled mostly on the momentum of nostalgia for the earlier films which told a story with people in.
About the Threepio thing, it could be that the Ewoks had a specific mythology involving the coming of a golden being that was preceded by the evil forces of darkness in their mechanical creatures, wearing the false armor of white.
Granted that explanation doesn't spring easily to the mind, but if Earth was invaded by aliens tomorrow, I bet that some Christians would have an eye out for the coming of their savior along with the forces of evil.
I think it's meant to be buried on Tatooine, but other than that, it does look relevant. I think many people imagine what the Falcon would look like in thirty years. I imagined that it would be a gutted wreck on some sort of jungle planet.
Hey, it's me. said:
NeverarGreat said:
With Star Wars, pretty much everyone is in agreement as to what is cool about it. There's no need to defend it. Same with Empire.
Jedi however is uneven. There are brilliant bits, and some of the worst moments in the trilogy. I think that watching the first two can make you think that Star Wars is naturally awesome and this is its natural state. When you watch Jedi, you realize just how badly things could go, and how easily. It is the trilogy at its best and its worst, and for this it seems the most relatable, the most, should I say, human. If that makes any sense.
Hmm not really. A film having flaws doesn't make it more relatable IMO. A story with flawed characters makes it relatable. Not a flawed story. That's poor story writing. The characters and story of Empire (and Star Wars to a lesser extent) were pretty much spot on.
I shouldn't have said relatable. It's difficult to describe really. You know movies based on true stories often have trouble ending things in a satisfying way, and the fact that this movie has trouble bringing things together flawlessly makes it more realistic in a sense. You wouldn't expect Ewoks to be a part of Star Wars, or Han to be put in carbonite to quickly be freed from it in the first act. In a way, these unrealistic elements make the movie more alien, because it makes the audience realize that this isn't like real life. But Star Wars is an alien universe, so it's not supposed to be like real life. The paradox is that the flaws make it more intriguing even as they make it worse.
The short of it is that the movie is surreal. It's like watching a movie about a theatrical production of Return of the Jedi, and that makes it arresting in its own way.