TheBoost

After digging "Death Troopers" I decided to give this "Zombies of the Old Republic" a shot.

No. Bad idea.

SPOLIERS FOR THE FIRST 30 PAGES OR SO FOLLOW

Right off the bat it's about the Sith. You know, the SITH, the evil warrior caste of darkside users who have plunged the galaxy into war and terror countless times? Those guys.

Well the story starts on the Sith Academy. Within the first chapter or so it turns out that Sith-A was beat up by Sith-B when they were Freshman, and Sith-C took a photo of Sith-A naked and tied to a bed.

Yes. The SITH ACADEMY OF EVIL is an unpleasent summer camp. I imagine Darth Maul used to get his bed short-sheeted, and they once shorted out Vader's robot hand by putting it in warm water.

I closed the book and took it back to the library immediatly following that scene.

ray_afraid said:

TheBoost said:

 

On a side note, discounting the EU and the PT Chewie IS the only wookiee we meet. Perhaps he's a particuarly poorly groomed wookiee, and it's his hygene and style that she's insulting, not his race.

I dunno bout that. From his greaser-style slicked back hair in ANH to the soccer boy hairstyle in RotJ, Chewie has been pretty stylish and seems pretty clean and combed... Maybe it's the lack of clothes?

 LOL. All other wookiees wear pants and ties. Chewie is a nudist!

Bingowings said:

 

Would he be 'Racey' if he called him "Fatty Boom-boom"?

 

 No... but the movie would be SO much better.

On a side note, discounting the EU and the PT Chewie IS the only wookiee we meet. Perhaps he's a particuarly poorly groomed wookiee, and it's his hygene and style that she's insulting, not his race.

While drugs clearly aren't out of the question, a heart attack at almost 60 isn't a rarity, even in healthy men.

I'll always remember this moment at Mania 7, when wrestling actually made me cry.

ben_danger said:

 

enstead of adding aliens though, really need to look at adding all those sideburns that we lost after ANH.

 QFT

I cant see Bingo's picture, but the law has exceptions written into it including motorcycle helmets and carnival events.

TV's Frink said:

corellian77 said:

Bingowings said:

the ban includes masks and any headwear that covers the face 

So does that also mean kids can't wear Halloween masks?

On the plus side, I guess any would-be robbers wearing a balaclava would be arrested before they even made it to bank.

I read this as baklava, which led to an amusing image in my head.

Not to be confused with a balalaika which can be dangerous to eat or wear!

Darth Hade said:

To tell the truth, I never liked the look of "the cave" in ESB. I didn't like that it looked like some sort of hidden or long buried structure. It should have just been a cave, nothing more. 

 While I've never wanted the explanation, I've always liked that there was a structure there. It hinted at something ancient and mysterious. Implied a richer backstory than we'd ever get to know.

Just saw a rather decent low-budg sci-fi film... "HUNTER PREY" directed by Sandy Collora (notable for making Batman fan-films before this)

It's a Peculiarly similar movie to the aforementiton "Enemy Mind."

A group of aliens carrying a prisoner crash on a desert planet. One alien hunts the prisoner. They talk, try to outsmart eachother, question eachother's politics.

I'm not saying that he copied the film (or vice versa). It seems a case of convergent evolution... similar adaptations to similar problems.

• No money for sets? Shoot in the scenic desert
• No money for actors? Limit it to 2 or 3 people.
• Hard to set up a conflict with just two people? Make it prisoner/hunter. Easy.

And it just goes to show what care and competence can do (Hunter Prey) with very little compared to whackness and superwhackness can do (Enemy Mind).

muddyknees2000 said:

TheBoost said:

 

Frankly I wish there were MORE superfluous aliens in ROTJ.

 Yeah, i feel the same way.....seems that these movies always crammed most of their aliens into the same third of the movie, just to show you they exist, then its just humans for the rest of the show. ANH has aliens in its first 1/3, ESB the last 1/3, and Jedi the first 1/3 again, though this one has a few species that trickle into the rest of the film (though i dont think that ewoks should count ;)

 Growing up, I thought the Empire/Rebellion conflict was a human thing,and it was a human Empire.

The aliens on Mos Eisly I assumed were there for business, since it was a port town, and the aliens on Cloud City were there because Cloud City wasn't in the Empire. Was never clear why the Admiral Ackbars were there in ROTJ.

It was the EU and the PT that really defined that it was a galactic empire over everyone.

Akwat Kbrana said:

Mostly innuendo. "Look at the size of that thing!"

"Get on top of it!" "I'm trying!"

"You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought!"

"She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts."

Etc.

 I cant tell if you're joking or not. I've never thought for a moment that any of that was innuendo at all.

We have the pilot written. It's a little "Casablanca" meets "Tales from the Golden Monkey" but I like where it's going. We want at least three scripts in the bag before we start working on recordning.

Currently the title is "Paragon- A Star Wars Tale." Paragon Station is the name of the setting, but neither of us are in love with the name.

Working on character names. We have a bartender, the local drunk, and an angry, overzealous stormtrooper (the only one assigned to the district).

Right now we're using placeholder names, but here are some names I'd like to use:

• Davnes (Dahv-ness?)
• Jambe Davbar
• Adywan
• Xhonzi
• Ripplin

If you'd like your nethandle to be a character name, or you're totally opposed, let me know. I wont use anyone's without express permission. Production is still months away.

ben_danger said:

I think prune-face was just another excuse for an action figure really.

 I've always found this to be a cheap shot at Lucas.

Were all the aliens in the cantina just an excuse? Were the ugnauts or Lando's copilot just excuses?

We complan that all the shuttles in ROTJ were the same, but if they were different were they just excuses to sell another vehicle?

Frankly I wish there were MORE superfluous aliens in ROTJ.

Empire also couldn't exist without Jedi, as it counts on Jedi to wrap up its plot threads.

Yeah. Mind=Blown.

My favorite album cover.

For what it's worth, I prefer SW to ESB. Also, dramatically I think ESB has an unfair advantage as it doesn't have to wrap anything up, it can just HIT HIT HIT with the drama.

...

...  ...

I mean you're all jerkoffs.

Bingowings said:

Film series aren't new (my hatred for the word 'franchise' being used in this context is on record).

I think "franchise" best applies to modern ganre-films that are plainly and statedly trying to launch a connected series of films.

Carl Lemme wasn't trying to start a "Dracula" film series.

Kenneth Branaugh is plainly trying to start the "Thor" series, happy meal toys, cartoon spin-off.

CP3S said:

TV's Frink said:

TheBoost said:

no one cared

This.  And why care now?

Not to start anything, but here is another example of if it isn't relevant to you, it doesn't need to be talked about at all attitude. I just don't get where this attitude comes from.

There are a ton of threads with discussion I would be hard pressed to care any less about, as such, I just don't click on them. I think people would get more than a little annoyed with me if I jumped into every sports thread and asked "Who cares? Why does this matter?" etc. Asterisk obviously started the thread because it is an interesting topic to him.

 I think you've misunderstood my point (can't speak for Frink... if he has one)

I'm not saying I don't care. I'm saying that Romero and the audience of the day didn't care.

And I'm not arguing that the idea of sequals didn't exist in the 70s. They made almost 30 "Blondie" movies in the 40s!  Just that the modern notion of the hit franchise, where every filmmaker claims that they have a trilogy in mind, and almost all actors in genre pictures are tied to multi-picture contracts, wasn't the standard in the late 60s.

"Planet of the Apes" was a hit, and they quickly made a string of cheaper and cheaper sequals. If you want convoluted reasoning, look at the fuzzy continuity of those films, just made a year or so apart.

"NOTLD" was a hit, and Romero didn't revisit it for a decade. And it was set in the 70s because it wasn't "PART II" of a single story set in 1968... it was just the sequal being made in the 70s.

asterisk8 said:

TheBoost said:

This was 20 years before every genre film was automatically assumed to be part of a trilogy. I think the time discrepancy is just a non-issue.

Again, this was after the entire Planet of the Apes franchise, so I don't know where you get this idea.

But the Planet of the Apes was set in the future, the further future, in the past, in the present, and then a different contradictory alternate future. I don't think it's a fair comparison.

asterisk8 said:

I still have to ask, why is that sort of convoluted logic easier to believe than just that each film is a unique take on the concept of zombie apocalypse?

I don't think it's convoluted at all.

I think "DOTD" both in Romero's intention and the audience's expectations was a sequal to the extremely successful "NOTLD."

I agree with everything you say about the time settings of both films. "Night" is set in 1969, and "Dawn" is plainly set a decade later, but the story implies they happen near eachother. I simply say that at the time, and even now, mostly no one cared about that discrepency.

This was 20 years before every genre film was automatically assumed to be part of a trilogy. I think the time discrepancy is just a non-issue.

I'm sure the new crawls is going to look great.

It's cool that they're being made consistent, but in all honesty, how did you guys even NOTICE that the crawls were that different?

I accept that other fans have keener eyes than I when it comes to SFX errors, or continuity between shots. But even if you watch the films back-to-back, it's two hours between one crawl and the next. :)

greenpenguino said:

Hey, you guys hear? Apparently Vader killed a pair of innocent moisture farmers! Just to get a pair of droids! This galaxy is getting worse all the time...

 Like the Rebllion's never killed anyone. This is war.

Besides, they lived on Tatoine. They were probably Jedi Fundamentalists. That entire religion is based on violence. 

Whats the easiest/fastest way to upload pics to share?

S_Matt said: 

I consider the Final Cut to be the first time Ridley Scott's Blade Runner was actually released. All other versions except the Workprint are bastardized by studio meddling. Its nice that they were released in hi-def as well but I see them only as an example of the damage talentless studio executives can do to a film. Yes, Ridley Scott did voluntarily bow to every ridiculous demand the studio made but I think he was playing the long game there knowing that somehow he'd get to finish the film the way he intended.

The final cut is the restoration of an original creative vision.

 The original creative vision includes "originally I didn't envision the film being so sloppy with atrocious ADR, slow-mo close ups of stunt people instead of actors, and numerous contiunity errors." His original vision aparently also included 21st century digital special effects. How prophetic he was.

asterisk8 said:

The trouble with the first three films being set during the same zombie apocalypse is that each takes place roughly 10 years after the other and yet Dawn of the Dead clearly is set at the beginning of a zombie outbreak. If 10 years had passed, there would have been no chaotic televised arguments about what is happening. Things would've appeared much as they do in Day. Complete and total collapse of civilization from fade in. For Dawn of the Dead to be a direct sequel to Night, it would've needed to be a period-piece set no later than 1969, and yet everything about the film - from the costumes, to the sets, to the technology, and even characterizations - tells the audience that it is 1978.

What's more, as CP3S notes, and as I've always argued, each film offers a commentary on the decade in which it is set. Night comments on race relations in the 60s, Dawn on consumerism in the 70s, and Day on the military-industrial complex of the 80s. For that clear and admitted subtext to have relevance, the films must be spread out over a 20-year span of time.

 

 I think the films are set in the decades they're made in, because that's when they were made. I imagine had someone handed Romero a wad of cash to make a sequal in 1969, he would have set it then.

I've always found the 'social commentary' claims about these films a bit thin. Romero's always claimed that Ben in NOTLD wasn't written as black, and the actor who was cast was the one who gave the best audition. Recast him as a white actor and it makes perfect sense, and any percieved racial commentary vanishes.

And was America so much less consumeristic in the late 60s that "Dawn" had to be a creature of the 70s because it was in a mall? Or was the late 70s just when Romero finally decided to go back to the well and do a sequal to his one big movie?

And dramatically, I dont think you start a film about a zombie apocalypse, which in 1978 wasn't a cliche yet, in the middle of the apocalypse, unless you expect the audience to know this is a follow up to a prior (very well known) story.

If "Night" is about race, and "Dawn" is about consumerism, are "Land" "Diary' and "Survival" commentaries on how the 2000s sucked, lacked inspiration, and wasted my time? ;-)

It seems to me we have three films in a series that simply don't fit well together because of the circumstances and time frames in which they were made.