TheBoost

xhonzi said:

I have to jump and say I think a lot of you are looking past hal's point and that I think he has one.

Better artists and artisans and, shock!, paying someone talented to help write the scripts, the dialogue, and to direct would have gone a long way.  Hiring someone with the talent and the, *ahem* cajones to stand up to George when he was wrong... That would have cost more money.  Money that George apparently wasn't willing to spend.  And because of that, he has a few more bucks (maybe) than he would have had.  And a crap reputation to show for it.

 

 I disagree. I'm sure there were many talented, creative, and perceptive artists working at LFL during the PT production. Many probably had insight into the flaws of the PT films.

That the culture of the place and Lucas's own desire to be the end-all-be-all of the creative process  (and drink his coffee seated) have little to do with who got paid what.

If Lucas had been willing to have a talented writer rework the script, or willing to let another more passionate director tackle the material, those people would no doubt have been paid, but I don't think the money was the problem.

xhonzi said:

Frankly, I think we've been funnier here than those ol' RASSM'ers were back when.

But here are some links to some of the classic hijinx:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.starwars.misc/browse_thread/thread/2df4468abcbbba6b/bc0fe925df6be79b?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=101+uses#bc0fe925df6be79b

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.starwars.misc/browse_thread/thread/ad1c93ed6582c63c/6aa9bfc5e3aa4325?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=101+uses#6aa9bfc5e3aa4325

 Seriously, what the hell is a RASSM?

Bingowings said:

Nope they were all his (they have gone down to roughly normal again now).

 He doesn't look like your average movie-star+personal trainer muscle-man. Not Brad Pitt in Troy or Christian Bale as Batman.

He looks like he could kill me.

see you auntie said:

Re: Tom Hardy

This is Tom Hardy.

 I still cant believe thats the twerp from "Star Trek Nemesis."

Are those CGI?

CP3S said:

I find this thread amusing.

I'm not extremely good looking either and literally every woman I have ever been close to has at one point or another gentle told me I walk really weird...

 

Hidalgo with Viggo Mortenson.

Not bad. Wish it had made up its mind if it was a fun action film or an epic drama.

If only they could MIX Nolen's gritty realistic Batman with an uprising of angry monkeys. What a movie that would be.

Ep 1: Fighting Trade Boycotts

Ep 2: Mysteries Never Solved

Ep 3: Battle of the Younglings

xhonzi said:

 

We just watched the Lester/Salkind Three and Four Musketeers. 

And the fight choreography... is weird.  I'm not sure if it's intentional, or perhaps a bunch of actors refusing to take sword fighting lessons, but they are, to use the words of my wife, "total spazzes" in the fights.  It's possible it's more realistic than the slick choreography of today's films... but it looks really random and that basically the good guys win out of sheer luck.

 I LOVE the fight choreography in these movies. It's messy, and dirty, and you win out of sheer gusto rather than excellent choreography.

No doubt there are many master swordfighters throughout history, but I'm willing to wager that a good portion of swordfights were more like in these movies than they were like "The Princess Bride."

I might have killed myself about an hour ago. The pain is intense.

How long is it okay to eat a chicken sandwhich that's been in your car? It was in a baggie!

HotRod said:

EyeShotFirst said:

I haven't had a relationship in a long time. It's not because I am afraid or lazy. I would just prefer I had some money to be able to show a girl a good time, working on that. I am 20 after all.

Showing a girl a good time don't cost much...Just gotta have the moves man, the moves!!!

Quoted for TRUTH.

Six bucks is two cups of coffee and a dessert at "Dennys." Are the women in your social circle all members of the Country Club and drive Bentleys? If not, they might not be rolling in funds either and their expectations won't be as monetary.

Best date I ever had was an icecream cone in the park then a walk to her apartment to watch "Fellowship of the Ring" on bootleg DVD.

CP3S said:

TheBoost said:

 Or a third option.

The Bond films are an endless series of spy movies with no real continuity, but occasional nods to previous movies that aren't meant to mean much.

Why the metal gymnastics to try and fit films into logic and labels that they are plainly not made to fit?

 Oh, Boost, I am reminded why I love you so much.

Nuttin' but love right back atchoo dawg. :::hits chest with fist:::

Warbler said:

only if he reads this thread

Gaffer Tape said:

I don't particularly dislike it, but I do admit it gives me the visual image of those codpieces from the Schumacher films...

uuuuuuuhhhhhh.... .... :::shuddders:::

• Rise of the Scorpion King
• Rise of the Silver Surfer
• Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
• GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra
• T4: Rise of the Machines
• Rise of the Apes (new planet of the Apes movie)

I hate to somehow group Nolen's new Batman in with those poopy, poopy films.

xhonzi said:

But back on topic, I can't say the casting info has thrilled me.  I'm also waiting for the title to change.  It needs its own identity, unless it's part 2 of a three part Dark Knight trilogy and Batman Begins is just a prologue.

I assume Hardy and Hathaway will be good because I trust Nolan enough.  I'm still hoping Talia is in the movie too... just because Catwoman is so... obvious.

I just hate the word "rise" in a title. It's totally overused. And hasn't he risen pretty well in the last two flicks>

Warbler said:

 

 

That was the last year before the merger.   The Vikings apparently lost the trophy.  Minnesotatians, WHERE IS THE ED THORP MEMORIAL TROPHY!? 

  

 

 How can you trust Vikings not to steal?

Bingowings said:

TheBoost said:

Why the metal gymnastics to try and fit films into logic and labels that they are plainly not made to fit?

To typo is human but that one is so cool it hurts.

 Sheesh, metal gymnastics WOULD hurt. :(

twister111 said:

Warbler said:

I don't know that you can everything else a remake/reboot/reimagining of Batman, just because the movie serial came first.   I'm not sure that movie serials count.

Well that's kind of getting into subjectivity. I mean most people "count" Keaton as the first Batman in movie form but, that's completely false. Adam West was the first Batman in theatrical movie distrubution. Whoever was Batman in Batman Dracula was first in a small exhibition in a museum. So who gets credit for the first?

 Does being first really matter? If Andy Warhol's Batman/Dracula hypothetically had been first, would it matter, since no one saw it? Would it make Burton's "Batman" a remake?

If something is a 'remake' doesn't it require a familiarity with the original on the part of the creator?

If there's a newly discovered film of "Green Lantern" from the 70s, does that make the new Green Lantern suddenly a 'remake?'

Bingowings said:

 

So either Dench is playing at least two different M's or Bond is a codename for the 007 agents and Craig is a totally different human being playing out a professional biography to confuse anyone trying to identify him and previous agents.

 Or a third option.

The Bond films are an endless series of spy movies with no real continuity, but occasional nods to previous movies that aren't meant to mean much.

Why the metal gymnastics to try and fit films into logic and labels that they are plainly not made to fit?

Warbler said:

I don't know that you can everything else a remake/reboot/reimagining of Batman, just because the movie serial came first.   I'm not sure that movie serials count.

 Again, this is how muddy the waters are of even what counts as a remake.

Just because a film features the same fictional character, is it a remake? The Batman serials's plots were in no way remade. The villian "The Wizard" never made another appearance in Batman films

Couldn't the 1960 Batman just as easily be a sequal to the Batman serials of the 1940s? There's no major contradictions in story. Different cast and style, but so is "Batman and Robin" compared to "Batman Returns." Or are they just more Batman movies?

Gaffer Tape said:

Wait.  That just made me think of something.  He based his novel off of the script?  Which script?  Didn't Lucas alter significant portions of the story during production?  Wasn't the shift made from "dark side seduction" to "driven mad by lost love" done in pick-ups?  So how close is the novelization to the movie?

That might be why the novel was good. Both of those are in it, but it goes even deeper, dwelling on Anakin's overwhelming fears, mostly of death.

Bocce_Linguist said:

Bingowings said:

In terms of space battles the one at the end of TPM looks WWI to ANH's WWII (colourful simple fighter craft /less colouful gritty fighter craft ).

The problem isn't so much in the design but it the writing.

Maybe it's not so much the specific look* of the fighter crafts but rather the execution of the battles that makes it hard for me to believe/accept that TPM is supposed to be 'before' SW/ANH.

*even taking into consideration your color analogy, there's still a problem, though: we should have at least seen Y-Wings in the PT,  since during the OT days the film makers involved were saying that they looked so 'beat-up' because they were in fact older craft than the X-wings....

I can see both sides of this, but ultimately it seems to me that the choice to not even care that the PT didn't really look earlier than the OT (except smaller Star Destroyers) is a creative choice, not a technical one. Whatever design choices would have successfully made the PT look a generation earlier than the OT could have been acheived in CGI.

(on the other hand, if the Republic has already stood for a thousand generations, how much technological advance do we expect to see in 20 years?)

I believe him that the script read better than the movie, and his novel was freaking awesome! If the movie had been more like his novel, it would have been the BEST film of 2005.

haljordan28 said:

 

the overuse of CGI  to me  was very simple to understand.  This all boils down to greed on lucas behalf.  All about profit.  Lucas owns all of the new state of the art cgi technology.  He used the three PT  films to showcase  what his company was capable of  doing.  No telling how much he has made just on  other companies wanting to use his tech. Not to mention it saves money  not  needing props and  certain locations. Why fly personal and equipment  around the world  at a heavy cost when you can  use CGI  to  create a background or  location for nearly a fraction of the cost.

I would just like to say to Lucas  that you  can't take  money with you  when you die.  The only  true thing you  can take with you  is that which you  leave behind.  A legacy,  a body of work  and he went from being hailed  as a genius and master  film maker  to being ridiculed and  laughed at it.  He ruined his legacy  and his  reputation all for what? A few extra bucks.

Given that Lucas has been overwhelmingly a director interested in visuals and technical processes I think it's baseless, bordering on silly, to say that the use of CGI is motivated by greed.

While it indeed might be cheaper to use CGI backgrounds rather than location shooting or extremely extensive sets (since most of the PT locations could not actually be found on Earth), I fail to see why Lucas is

• obligated to go a more expensive route on his self-funded picture lest he be called 'greedy.'
• forbidden from using the technology he developed for this very purpose.

Also, using the PT to "showcase" his technology kind of ignore the facts that

1. ILM had been a gold standard of SFX for decades, hiring out to do all sorts of films.
2. There's nothing that revolutionary in the PT that the industry wasn't already gearing up for and didn't know ILM (and other FX houses) was already capable of.

As for your moralizing at the end there, George Lucas made some of the greatest films of all time, including four films already in the Library of Congress and on the AFI Top 100. Nothing can take that away from him. And as for his few extra bucks, the PT made almost 3 billion dollars in box office alone.

So let me honestly ask... if Geonosis had been shot on location somewhere, would the AOTC plots somehow not have sucked? If the Gungan City had been an actual set would Jar-Jar have not been annoying? If Mustafar had been real, would the Anakin/Padme romance have worked dramatically? I think what you're complaining about it meaningless when compared to why the movies were actually not good.

haljordan28 said:

"Actually thinking of cutting cost is a scary concept   for a lot of studios, Mccallum contiunues and especially a lot of  stars.But we are not inhabiting that mental landscape at all. WE DON'T HAVE THE HIGHEST PAIN BEHIND THE SCENES TALENT. wE HAVE EVERYBODY WHO WORKED ON YOUNG INDIANA JONES. THIS IS THEIR  SHOT TO MAKE THEIR NAMES AND THEN GO OFF AND MAKE AS MUCH MONEY  AS THEY WANT TO. BUT SOMEBODY ELSE IS GOING TO HAVE TO PAY THEM FOR THAT, NOT US."

That guys is almost amazing to hear. The most  anticipated film of all time and lucas  waned to pinch pennies.Well  we all see the results dont we?

 

The flaws of the PT have nothing to do with money spent.

George Lucas is an independent film auteur who answers to know one and funds his own films. I think complaining that he didn't spend enough money reeks of a childish sense of entitlement.