TM2YC

thecolorsblend said:

Any of the Harry Potter movies might've been contenders if WB hadn't been determined to turn the entire franchise into mere revenue-generating shlock.

My younger brother was/is a huge HP fan (I like it too) so I used to love winding him up by telling him my theory that Jk Rowling had just shamelessly copied it all from Star Wars. e.g.

- Harry = Luke
- Voldemort = Vader
- Dumbledoor = Obi-Wan
- Harry lives with his Uncle/Aunt
- Magic = The Force
- Wizards = Jedi
- Deatheaters = Sith
- Wands = Lightsabers
etc

At first I was just making it up for fun, then I thought, actually this IS a ripoff of SW! I kept telling him that the series was gonna end with Voldemort saying to Harry

"Dumbledore never told you what happened to your father..."

DuracellEnergizer said:

Pfft. Everyone knows that the alien overlords used pyramid ships, not flying saucers.

 

Oh yeah... I stand corrected. I was forgetting this amazing 1994 documentary:

Baronlando said:

I would go with something like GHOSTBUSTERS and BEVERLY HILLS COP, only because of 2 things: the similarly broad appeal (lots and lots of people from all the demos turned out for it and loved it) and that mix of playing it straight and goofy that is really difficult to pull off now for some reason. Maybe because people are way more anal about everything striking a consistent tone and blah blah blah, but who knows. When you see NEW HOPE with a crowd it's always surprising how much people laugh, even Empire and Jedi never really managed that.

Ghostbusters has that witty-sharp-tongued-dialogue/zaney-characters/blockbuster-action thing that alot of 80s movies have. Movies since have one or two of those things but usually not all three.

I would see SW at the Cinema every week if it was playing! Seeing a movie in a Cinema is so different from home because of the audience (Unless they're talking and playing with their phones!!!).

There's a cinema in London that does a double bill of Marx brothers every year (ADATR & ANATO). I go each year and it's attended by middle aged guys n gals like me, pensioners, families and their little kids. We all laugh at different bits, me I'm laughing at Groucho and kiddies are giggling at Harpo. Watching my DVDs of the brothers at home is great but it's not the same.

           ^ C3PO             ^ Chewie         ^ Han Solo               ^ Luke

^Thanks SilverWook. THIS is why I started this thread, to hear about things I've missed that might have a wee SW buzz about them.

I never got round to 'Titan A.E.', all I knew was that it bombed in spectacular fashion, but just watched the HD trailer on YouTube. It looks great and is crying out for a BR as you say. I'm almost unsure if I should watch it in SD lol (Edit: It's been on TV in HD, I wonder if I can find it...).

On a similar note, I watched another animated box-office-bomb, Disney's 'Treasure Planet' on Netflix HD for the first time the other week. That is a stunning Steam-Punk/SF world full of SW thrills with a central kid who has no father tripping off on an adventure across the galaxy.

I'm a big B5 fan. 'In The Beginning' was a great feature length TV movie from that show. Great characters and big ass space battles deciding the fate of earth, pure SW fun. Shame half the cast have since died from the B5 curse :(

Just remembered the EXACT reason I never watched 'Titan A.E.'. It was because this was a terrible, terrible poster...

...yuk! Back in those days you couldn't so easily just click on YouTube and watch a trailer. Poster art mattered!

Anyway, getting a bit off topic here. Back to the "Spirit of SW" discussion...

I think the George Lucas Produced 'Red Tails' from last year actually had more of Star Wars about it than his PT ever did.

It's got heroic but fallible, wisecracking and likeable characters that you care about in the life-or-death struggles they face. The dogfights are some of the most thrilling movie battles since Red-Leader first shouted "S-Foils in attack position". There's a whole bunch of fun to be had with the added bonus that there is some serious weight in there too.

Hell, if the Red Tails were all flying X-Wings it would be Star Wars.

(Forgive the Jar-Jar use... couldn't find a better spoof)

       ^ Luke Skywalker.

                  ^ Han Solo

              ^ Princess Leia

(Darth Vader^)            ^ Obi-Wan

                  ^ Grand Moff Tarkin

                  ^ Darth Vader

            ^ General Dodonna

When I get to editing the 'Battle of Yavin' part of my 'Lost Workprint' FanEdit. The 'Red Tails' are gonna be flying for the Rebellion!

Certain looks don't date. Your TV Kirk avatar has not dated, movie Kirk has:

30's

60's

90's

now

If a sci-fi director is wise he/she picks a timeless look 1982's Blade Runner:

and not like 1982's Wrath of Khan:

Of course it has no effect on the quality of the movies or my enjoyment of them. The haircuts in ST:TMP are less dated than ST:WOK but I'd rather watch ST2 100 times before watching ST1 again lol

Well exactly, you just proved my point ;-)

The second shot you linked to ^ (I'm guessing to show I was wrong and that the grading is good in skyfall?)... this one:

^ the car window on the right is an unnaturally bright blue, bond's suit is also electric blue despite actually being Grey as in this next shot:

Also I suspect that the almost supernatural levels of grey fog have been digitally enhanced. But I agree the grading is more natural here than the shots I selected above. It's an outdoor scene in natural daylight so they couldn't mess with it too much. Unlike night scenes in the same environment like this where they can go crazy with the colour:

I'm not saying there isn't beauty in there, in the same way that a Disney film looks absolutely beautiful.

These precise audio edits are very hard to get just right.

For the Jedi Council scene in my edit of TPM I wanted to dub over the line...

"It is possible he was conceived by the midi-chlorians."

My second effort, that's in my finished edit has Qui-Gon saying:

"It is possible he was conceived in the force."

But, my first attempt was:

"It is possible he was conceived by the force."

Unfortunately to everybody's ears this actually just sounded like:

"It is possible he was conceived by force."

Which as you can imagine got fixed in my edit pretty damn rapidly!

Hmmm... David Lynch's Star Wars... I feel a FanEdit coming lol

Carrie fisher's opening narration:

"A beginning is a very delicate time. Know then that this is a galaxy far, far away. The Known Universe is ruled by the Imperial Emperor Palpatine the First, my father's master. In this time, the most powerful thing in the universe is the Force. The force extends life. The force expands consciousness. The force is vital to the Jedi. The Jedi Council and its masters, who the force has served for over 1,000 years, use the blue force energy, which gives them the ability to move objects. That is, to lift any object in the universe without moving. Oh, yes. I forgot to tell you — a saviour exists on only one planet in the entire universe. A desolate, dry planet with vast deserts. Hidden away within the rocks of these deserts are a people known as the Tuskan Raiders, who have long held a prophecy that a boy would come, a messiah who would bring balance to the force. The planet is Tatooine, also known as Dune..."

cue music DAH DAH DAH DAAAH!

This one?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gvqpFbRKtQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEDFGzqMgpI

TV's Frink said:

Opinions please...are these understandable?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFOXWuDqijI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hE8w_kkl_E

"Steve Grievous"!!! :D just those two times was funny enough. Can't wait to hear them say it over and over.

and yes it's crystal clear.

Have you got Sam Jackson saying it too? when he's talking to palpatine outside the senate

thejediknighthusezni said:

        I'd give POTC alot of points for managing to capture the "Makin'-it-up-as-we-go, off-the-cuff" energy of the ANH characters.  It's set in a very particular time and place, so it couldn't quite have that peculiar ANH sense of timelessness.  It had a good dose of mystical, magical elements. POTC would be a good study if ever there is a female main protagonist in the SW universe.

Yes I was gonna suggest that. I can totally see that 'Pirates OTC' could be seen as a SW like adventure romp. Probably a formula that explains it's massive box office appeal.

Keith Sparrow, Lizzie Swoon and Outlandish Bland as Han, Luke and Leia. The Pearl is the Falcon, plenty of over-the-top villains, zipping round the Caribbean/galaxy, running from the evil (British) Empire.

Thing is I hate POTC with a f*cking vengeance! So it's not quite ticking all the SW boxes for me at least lol ;-)

Produced by JB, what do you expect...

The POTC theme music is admitedly EPIC though!

CatBus said:

Ryan McAvoy said:

Over saturated visual eye-sore like films like 'The Kings Speech', 'Skyfall' etc will date very quickly.

I certainly hope "films with more than two colors" isn't a description used in history books to describe how films from the latter twentieth century are visually unique...

Here's something I made,

The top two screenshots are from 2012's cutting edge digitally graded 'Skyfall, the bottom two are from colour-tinted silent films made almost 100 years ago when film was in it's infancy:

...or is that the other way around?

Let's hope films start looking like this again, sooner rather than later:

Also I did this GODFATHER 2013!!:

OH Yes! It's sooo much better!

(Rant over)

Bingowings said:

For me the score to Silent Running is highly evocative (more than a generic symphonic suite would have been) for many years I could be found sobbing at the sound of Joan Baez's voice, not just because she sounds rather haunting (and looks just like my mum) but I just kept thinking about that poor little robot chappy *sob* tending the *weep* discarded remnants of Earth's *cry* plant life for all eternity... with his little watering can with the painting of childrens on it... *WHaaaaaaaaaa!*

Maybe you had to grow up with it. I first saw it last year after I bought the new BEAUTIFULLY restored Blu-Ray of 'Silent Running' on the good doctor's reccomendation.

I didn't enjoy it at all. Loved all the BR extras though about the making of. I hate the Joan Baez song at the end in particular lol

Hey, it's me. said:

For a non fantasy film, in terms of spirit and adventure I'd go for 'Midnight Run' its action packed, fast paced, funny and has some drama woven in there too. 

Never even heard of 'Midnight Run' will have to check it out.

It's got Yaphet Kotto in it, I'm sold!

Agreed Bingowings, Raiders does have the simple SW fun factor for sure. You know what I've never seen close encounters! Must rectify that soon.

CatBus, I think we kinda agree about GL setting out to be timeless. "Sure, you can avoid references to pop culture...use a classical score". This was exactly GL's intent of using JW and not say Led Zeppelin. In comparison, the 60s/70s folk influenced soundtrack to the proto-SW film 'Silent Running' is sooo badly dated it makes the film hard to watch for me.

And just because SW looks different to what's out now doesn't mean that dates it. Just that what's out now will soon date. As you said the over saturated visual eye-sore like films like 'The Kings Speech', 'Skyfall' etc will date very quickly. Digital Graders are just excited by their new toys and will learn to not tinker wih every shot til the faces are half orange/half blue in time.  They'll realise that the rich, wam and realistic palettes of 70s and 80s films like SW, 'The Godfather' and 'Raiders' are infact timeless.

CatBus said:

imperialscum said:

In my opinion, nothing ever came close to Star Wars OT.

Yeah, I agree, but not because Star Wars is so great nothing comes close, but because Star Wars managed to perfectly capture the zeitgeist of 1977.  It was an adventure movie before adventure movies became absorbed into action movies.  It was (space opera) sci-fi before sci-fi became just another demographic target.  If Star Wars were released for the first time today, it would seem weirdly retro in a lot more ways than the special effects--the pacing, the cinematography, everything would scream 1977.

Firefly was what Star Wars would have been if it were unhitched from the 70's, swapped some adventurous spirit for character study, and given a lot better dialogue.  It's not the same thing at all, really, IMO.

Then again, maybe Star Wars is only tied to the 70's in my mind.  Someone watching Star Wars for the first time today probably gets a totally different feeling from the movie than I do.

I always thought the OT was pretty timeless, it was concieved that way. It was set in fairytale past of cowboys, knights and swashbuckling but also looked futuristic and exciting. The costumes were all fairly basic appealing styles we'd all recognise from other movie genres.

One problem with the PT was the outlandish costumes.  Padme's costumes were beautiful (I've seen them upclose at a couple of exhibts) but sometimes you can see Portman can't even move in them and there were too many costume changes too.

The only dated thing is the "Hippy" (For want of a better term) haircuts in ANH. They always date that movie and date photos of me with similar ;-). By the time ESB and ROTJ had rolled around the haircuts had become more measured with the arrival of the 80s. Luke's haircut is badass and timeless in ESB.

Ronster said:

That PDF was a major part of it at least for me and I am sure others too. but it seems some people did not know it was there. So that needs fixing and make it a clear seperate download companion.

Holy sh*t! Thanks for the tip Ronster!

Just opened my ANH:R DVD9 *.iso in winrar and discovered there's all kinds of goodies hidden in there! Badass range of optional DVD labels and the aformentioned nice *.pdf file.

imperialscum said:

In my opinion, nothing ever came close to Star Wars OT.

Probably true but I did say "Clos-est".

Come on imperialscum you must have had one other movie that was somewhere on the SW funscale...

...even if it was only 3 Deathstars out of 5 lol

Has anybody noticed how a bunch of iconic scfi-fi ships are just modified Roswell-Style flying saucers...

Probably exploiting some kind of ingrained DNA based memory of when we built pyramids for our Alien overlords, or some b*llocks like that.

eiyosus said:

The 2009 Star Trek, for obvious reasons.  :)

That does bode well for the franchise.

*ahem*

haraldo23 said:

Either Avatar or Prometheus.

Both opened enormous doors for future story lines and possibilities. As well as they explored space and other planets, and concepts a little more than your standard big budget sci-fi/science fantasy flick.

 

I highly rated Prometheus (There are a few of us lol), it was the perfect sequel to the spirit of Ridley's vision of 'Alien', just wasn't the 'Alien(s)' carbon-copy most people were expecting/wanting. But I don't see the SW connection at all.

However, I agree 'Avatar' does have a bit of a SW feel. The creatures, the exotic imaginary world, the battles, the adventure, the clearly defined Good vs Evil (With our hero caught between the two). When the sequels finally come out, it is gonna be damned exciting to see what the other moons around Pandora are like. Could they be desert, ice, fire or air worlds?!??!

Plus it's confirmed that Sigourney Weaver is returning for the sequels. Is she gonna be some sort of 'force-ghost' style forest spirit?

daneditor said:

As a Whedonite I have to mention SERENITY (2005).

It has more humour than SW, but it captures the same sense of fun and action - and obviously Mal Reynolds bears more than a passing resemblance to Han Solo.

^Absolutely. 'Firefly' was probably the closest there's been to a live action SW TV show. A bunch of wise cracking and likeable characters tripping round the galaxy in a spaceship, simple really. 'Serenity' was great too.

"What single (Non-SW) movie from the last 30 odd years has come closest to the spirit of Star Wars?... and why?"

Many producers have tried to follow that golden trail of money that GL laid down, but how many have suceeded? Can anybody suggest other Sci-Fi adventures that come close to replicating the fun, drama, action, feel, spirit, design etc of GL's OT?

- Why do you rate them?

- What makes them Star-Wars-esque?

Anything ranging from obvious SW knock-offs like 'The Last Starfighter' to perhaps even JJ's new bastard son 'Star Trek Into Darkness Star Wars'.  Anything from SW spoofs or Superhero movies, to maybe non-Sci-Fi stuff like LOTR. Maybe an old swahbuckler or vintage Harryhausen adventure?

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My opinion?

David Lynch's 'Dune' (1984)

In a lot of ways it's muh darker, wierder and complicated than SW. But for me, it's that same wide-eyed fantastical voyage into another universe of imagination. Plus the music by Toto is on a totally epic scale that in places even surpasses the great JW.

I always wanted to be Luke Skywalker using the force and wielding a saber...

...but I also always wanted to be Paul Atreides, blowing sh*t up with my Wierding Module and the power of my voice.

I had it taped on VHS, I bought the official VHS, I bought the DVD, I imported the extended DVD, I bought the remastered Blu-Ray, I bought the Soundtrack, bought the Dune II PC game... sound familiar?

God just remembered that as a kid I also scratchbuilt a Sandworm vs Harvester diorama out bits of old kits and clay. It was bad ass as I remember!

btw I had zero interest in the other Dune books, prequels, TV shows etc... also sound familiar?

DuracellEnergizer said:

The only one who should do an "official" fanedit of the prequels is David Lynch. He's the only one who can make the PT's discordance work for it rather than against it.

Yes!

Dune is one of my all time favs! Shame even Lynch is ashamed of it, because the one time that guy did epic sci-fi it was awesome.

One day Dune wil be respected... I swear it!!!