ZkinandBonez

I guess this is technically correct?

Like I said in my previous post; political views can and will provoke people, and Pascal has every right to do so just like anyone else should. Of course you could make the argument that detention camps, internment camps, and obviously extermination camps, are all very different things, but I do get this particular comparisons and what he was trying to say with it. The point I’m making is that Pascal, like many celebrities (and regular people) on social media, are not immune to provocative comparisons.

The eternal issue with these things is where do you draw the line? And when does someone’s definition of when the line is crossed simply boil down to their own personal political beliefs? And can you even make objective distinctions when no written law or rule is being clearly contradicted?

jedi_bendu said:

Wexter said:

Thank you for a thorough answer, however, I respectfully disagree on several accounts.

You’re very welcome. Like you, I doubt that Gina meant the image as openly anti-semitic, but it was foolish to slap such a graphic image on her twitter without looking into it. Same goes to BLM Oxford - it must be the extreme analogy that attracts people who are looking to make a point about extreme wealth inequality, which I suspect was the motive for both Gina and the BLM group.

As for this whole topic in general, I love the character of Cara Dune - a refuge from Alderaan having to find purpose again in the aftermath of the war - and I think a recast is best. I wondered if it’s possible for Lucasfilm to have fired Gina and told her, ‘If you stop sharing offensive stuff for good we’ll consider re-employing you’, but honestly I don’t think the relationship between her and the cast and crew (particularly Pedro, who is staunchly anti-Trump) would ever be the same again. There are plenty of other actors who would love to take on the role.

Should Pascal’s feelings towards a co-star’s political views, or just personality in general, be all that important to a production though? Many actors have in the past and present thoroughly disliked each other yet still managed to act professionally on set.

And I would hope film/TV sets are largely politics-free zones.

I personally take somewhat of a middle-ground viewpoint when it comes to stuff like this. Carano’s tweets (the one’s I’ve seen anyhow) were hyperbolic and some were outright thoughtless, but I still can’t help but feel that her views, provocative or not, isn’t any of her employers business at all. That is provided she behaves professionally and politely on set, which as far as I know she always has.

Of course if someone can point to direct harassment or incitements to harassment, violence, etc. then this discussion is obviously irrelevant and they made a good decisions. But, actors do have opinions, both liberal and conservative and there’s always bound to be things that will upset other people, both inside and outside the film industry. And the internet does unfortunately tend to bring out the worst in people and twitter especially makes it easy for people to quickly blurt out things without much thought regarding the larger context (and this goes double for retweets).

But as Rodney pointed out, companies do of course wish to avoid bad press so they are of course in their right overall.

Either way, as for how this will impact the series going forward, I’d assume it would be fairly easy to write her out of the The Mandalorian. Though we don’t know if they had big plans for her in the Rangers of the New Republic spin-off series as some speculated. It’s not that big of a plot thread to leave hanging, but it did seem like they were planning on doing something with the character.

A Defense of Ewoks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prNOwClygdI - from the EC Henry YouTube channel (3:30 mins long)

Took me a while to figure out what was going on as the VFX video was below a video of someone just driving through Moscow.

They’re weird and exotic, just like SW settings should be. I find it really annoying that the newer films (for the most part) just added more deserts and ice planets. The OT obviously did the same, but that’s for budget and technology reasons.

I especially like Takobo. It’s too bad we didn’t get to see more of it. Horizon base is also pretty unique, so I wonder what inspired the design.

Rikter said:

ZkinandBonez said:

benduwan said:

is there a hd version from “the making of star wars” available?
the same from the empire making of´s…

TN1’s working on a restoration of a 16mm print of “The Making of Star Wars”, but as for right now there’s only an upscale version available. They’re also working on a 16mm print of “SPFX: The Empire Strikes Back.”

Do you know how to get a hold of the “The Making of Star Wars” Upscale I cannot seem to find it… THANKS

Word to the Spookies!

RiK

Go to the Star Wars category, then underneath “Original Trilogy” you’ll see the names of the films, a Magazine and comics category and at the very end “Bonus Features”. One of the top threads should be called “16mm Making of Star Wars” (by williarob). Alternatively you could probably just type in the name of the thread in the search box at the top right corner. The BD upscale is on page 6 BTW, though I just now found a 16mm Grindhouse version mentioned on page 5, though I don’t know if you can still get this version.

Not an official video, but still some really interesting observations about the VFX in the series, especially the young Luke effect which seems to most likely be a type of deep fake like I assumed.

VFX Artists React to THE MANDALORIAN Bad & Great CGi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Wmocp4iHvA - from the Corridor Crew YouTube channel (16 mins long).

VFX Artists React to THE MANDALORIAN Bad & Great CGi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Wmocp4iHvA - from the Corridor Crew YouTube channel (16 mins long).

The blurb:
“Niko, Wren, and Clint take a look some of the visual effects on display in the Star Wars series ‘The Mandalorian’!”

I’m too young to have seen either when they were new, but I did see Droids when I was a kid in the early 2000’s through a really crappy bootleg I got from my older brother. I remember really liking the 1st story arc with the two racers, especially the episode with Boba Fett. The Lost Prince was also pretty fun, but the rest I found to be a slog and I never finished the series. I did see The Great Heap a few years ago and I thought it was fine (though I probably would have liked it more as a kid).

It’s quite interesting reading about the making of Dark Empire II and Empire’s End as you can tell Veicht and Kennedy weren’t overly enthusiastic about making them as the first series was pretty much intended as a self contained story. Though I would say that Dark Empire II deserves some credit, nor just foe the top notch art, but for some interesting ideas it played with. I especially like Ood Bnar; the idea of an ancient Jedi that is so old he became an old gnarled tree is about as mythological as you can get. His origin story in Tales of the Jedi was a tad bland I think, but that series overall did a great job at feeling different from the OT while still fitting within the SW mold. It definitely embraced the more fantasy-like elements. As much as I like Timothy Zahn, I do think it’s a real shame that the EU used his style as their standard instead of embracing the wilder aspects of the early Dark Horse comics. Like the Marvel comics before they weren’t afraid to go crazy with the IP and try new things, but after a few years they began playing it safe (the comic crash in the 90’s probably didn’t help either) and much of it began feeling very formulaic. Plenty of solid stories, but not living up to it’s full potential IMO.

BTW, I’m curious to hear what people here, in relation to my own and Pakka’s essay, feel about the Dark Empire comics? Especially the first of the three series.

I ask because of how much of an anomaly it is compared to the later EU comics and novels, and because of how it’s often referred to as the last of the early EU days before everything was set in stone and they could go more wild with their storytelling. Now it obviously acknowledges canon in that it brings Palpatine back from the dead, and even Boba Fett returs, but it was and is still quite controversial for how loose it played with the established lore. And that’s why I personally kind of love it. It feels pulpy and kinda silly, while still being very dark and gritty. It acknowledges the personal journeys of the characters, but it visually feels like it belongs to an entirely different universe and it brings in all of these crazy things from out of nowhere. Palpatine’s return, to me at least, feels like something you’d see in some old movie serial or read in an old comic where the bad guy is inexplicably returned through some flimsy excuse simply for the sake of having him return. The later EU spent a lot of time trying to explain how the whole Palpatine clone thing actually worked, especially after the Prequels, but I feel like it treated the concept of cloning in an appropriately surreal and pulpy fashion. It feels almost like something out of ancient mythology where he is simply reborn in a new body and he even tries to possess Leia’s child at some point. The scale of this series is also off the charts, with giant probe droids towering over cities and superweapons galore. It has a very French-Belgian comic feel to it, with style and narrative being more important than logic or world-building, which I feel is very OT-like. And if I remember correctly Lucas was inspired by Valérian and Laureline and other French-Belgian comic series.

Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy made a comic a few years prior to Dark Empire called The Light and Darkness War which I think is a masterful example of surreal fantasy storytelling, which apparently Lucas was really impressed by (hence why they got the job). This comic is a fantastic example of how to do symbolic stories that only creates the illusion of world-building. And it is in many ways very similar to Dark Empire in it’s overall feel.

I can’t help but feel that the little “opening crawl” that was added to Dark Empire issue #1 explaining how it takes place shortly after the Thrawn trilogy kind of did it disservice. I like the idea of a SW story that continues the overall narrative of Luke, Leia and Han’s personal journeys, but which only tangentially related to the OT movies in that they take place at some unspecified point after ROTJ.

At least that’s my interpretation. What do you guys think? Do you agree that Dark Empire was one of the last fully surreal SW stories before the West End Games sourcebook model of thinking took over as the foundation for the lore going forward?

Pakka said:

This is a great essay, and really helped me to synthesize some thoughts that have been rattling around in my brain for a while. Along with rocknroll41’s essays, primarily his great 4-parter from last November (https://henrynsilva.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-real-reason-you-probably-dont-like.html?m=1), I was inspired to finally write my thoughts out and get them into a (hopefully) coherent form. I posted that late last night at https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/star-wars-has-felt-off-to-me-since-1980-essay/id/82758 .

Great essay, Pakka. Glad I could be of some help to verbalize some of your thoughts.

A copy of my response in the Pakka’s thread:
https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/star-wars-has-felt-off-to-me-since-1980-essay/id/82758/page/1#1404749

ZkinandBonez said:

Yes, the WEG source-books, though delightfully geeky and partially responsible for keeping the franchise alive for a few years, really did transform it into something quite different from what it originally was. I personally don’t mind there being some connectivity, especially when it’s narrative based, so the “I am your father” element works well for me because it has such a mythic vibe to it. And it’s interesting how you pointed out the possibilities of the 77-80 years, and I agree that the comics did a great job to tell new stories without shackling it down with lore, because I’ve heard people make a similar argument that they feel that SW was always meant to be the mythological tale of the Skywalkers and they therefore ignore the side stories. As a franchise it’s a real tough nut to crack, and although Lucas definitely intended for it to be a fairy-tale without having to make logical sense of it all, I don’t think even he fully knew what the core of the franchise was. But then again stories do evolve over time, though the WEG interpretation definitely took a more Star Trek-type of approach to it. I don’t think it’s coincidental that the EU and all the sourcebooks coincided with the second Star Trek boom in the late 80’s and 90’s, not to mention the internet which has made it far easier for fans to share ideas and over analyse things.

There was a section of my essay that I ended up removing (it got a little bit off topic) where I talked about how loose canon was treated back in the 30’s and 40’s, using the Universal monster films as an example, arguing that it related not only to how pop culture was just starting to become a thing, but also how the lack of home media made it kind of pointless. Back then you saw a film once, maybe a few more times if you really liked it, and when it was no longer in the theater you simply couldn’t see it anymore. So if the sequel broke continuity you had no way to go back and check and as long as it felt right (by sticking to the core plot and themes of the previous story) no one really cared. It is completely possible that this modern fascination with lore and continuity is simply a natural development of how we consume media these days, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does put SW in this really weird place. My essay was an attempt to at least acknowledge this, but also to point out that even if a franchise evolves and starts to include a more rigid narrative, I would at least encourage creators to treat the setting with an appropriately surreal approach (and quite a few do this reasonably well IMO).

Great essay, Pakka. Glad I could be of some help to verbalize some of your thoughts.

Yes, the WEG source-books, though delightfully geeky and partially responsible for keeping the franchise alive for a few years, really did transform it into something quite different from what it originally was. I personally don’t mind there being some connectivity, especially when it’s narrative based, so the “I am your father” element works well for me because it has such a mythic vibe to it. And it’s interesting how you pointed out the possibilities of the 77-80 years, and I agree that the comics did a great job to tell new stories without shackling it down with lore, because I’ve heard people make a similar argument that they feel that SW was always meant to be the mythological tale of the Skywalkers and they therefore ignore the side stories. As a franchise it’s a real tough nut to crack, and although Lucas definitely intended for it to be a fairy-tale without having to make logical sense of it all, I don’t think even he fully knew what the core of the franchise was. But then again stories do evolve over time, though the WEG interpretation definitely took a more Star Trek-type of approach to it. I don’t think it’s coincidental that the EU and all the sourcebooks coincided with the second Star Trek boom in the late 80’s and 90’s, not to mention the internet which has made it far easier for fans to share ideas and over analyse things.

There was a section of my essay that I ended up removing (it got a little bit off topic) where I talked about how loose canon was treated back in the 30’s and 40’s, using the Universal monster films as an example, arguing that it related not only to how pop culture was just starting to become a thing, but also how the lack of home media made it kind of pointless. Back then you saw a film once, maybe a few more times if you really liked it, and when it was no longer in the theater you simply couldn’t see it anymore. So if the sequel broke continuity you had no way to go back and check and as long as it felt right (by sticking to the core plot and themes of the previous story) no one really cared. It is completely possible that this modern fascination with lore and continuity is simply a natural development of how we consume media these days, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does put SW in this really weird place. My essay was an attempt to at least acknowledge this, but also to point out that even if a franchise evolves and starts to include a more rigid narrative, I would at least encourage creators to treat the setting with an appropriately surreal approach (and quite a few do this reasonably well IMO).

This is the first time I’ve heard any suggestion of multiple seasons, so I guess this isn’t a limited series after all?

Since Filoni never got to finish the Fett vs Bane episode of TCW it’s not impossible that we’ll get to see it in a flashback. There’s already been some speculation that the “Book” in the title refers to different chapters in Fett’s life and that it will be mostly or partially about his past. Daniel Logan, who played young Boba in AOTC, could play a young Fett and with a bit of re-writing or maybe some subtle digital de-aging they could pull it off.

Shopping Maul said:

ZkinandBonez said:

screams in the void said:

also , Robert E. Howard deserves a mention in this discussion , he is regarded as the father of sword and sorcery and did a lot of world building for Conan’s world , as evidenced in his Hyborian age essay https://conanthecimmerian.fandom.com/wiki/The_Hyborian_Age Many fantasy authors imitated him afterwards , but never quite captured his spirit . Then there were the many many fantasy film cash grabs that came in the wake of the 1982 Conan The Barbarian film …

Yes, Howard’s another one of those guys that no one has ever quite managed to imitate or adapt to film. Now I do really enjoy the John Milius Conan film, but it really has very little to do with Howard. Unlike Lovecraft though, and despite often borrowing a lot of his ideas, Howard did have a tendency to add a backstory to everything so I’d definitely say he has more in common with Tolkien in that regard then with OT SW. Then again characters/creatures like Yag-Kosha are quite abstract in concept.

Does anyone know if Lucas ever made any direct mention of Howard work as an influence? I would assume he at the very least knew of the character as SW was written right at the start of the Howard boom in the late 60’s and early 70’s.

As a side note: I find it fascinating that Tolkien’s first published book was only one year after Howard’s death. People often forget that Howard did the whole world-building thing before Tolkien, that is, as far as what was publicly available.

Actually, I think the real parallel here is between Lucas and Milius. The thought processes behind Star Wars and Conan are remarkably similar - Milius wanted to create a believable ‘lived-in’ universe in the same way George did, and both were going for a real mythic quality. The ‘father’s sword’ motifs, the aged wizard - Conan even has its villain (played by James Earl Jones) deliver a ‘I am your father’ speech! And both productions had run-ins with Gil Taylor…
Conan and SW have pretty much the same poster art as well…

That’s a really good point. I’d never thought about just how SW-like it actually is. And I do love the whole Riddle of Steel element of the film, it not only serves as a thematic through-line, but as you say, it gives it a mythic quality and makes the story feel like some ancient fable.

“An age undreamed of” is very much the sword and sorcery equivalent of “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” I really wish more storytellers would utilize this storytelling device to its full potential, rather than get bogged down in details like so many series often do. Comparing it to Tolkien again, I have a book from the early 70’s were someone tried to make Middle-Earth match up with a map of Europe, though thankfully people generally just accept it as a fantasy world nowadays. Of course Howard’s Hyborian age map did just that, and that’s fine, but there’s also so much potential in vague settings, like Samuel Butler’s Erewhon or Fritz Leiber’s Nehwhon (literally"nowhere" and “no-when” spelled backwards).

idir_hh said:

Pretty sure that’s for the Andor show, I remember seeing this set in the sizzle reel they showed.

Yes, the article has now been updated and pointed out that it matches the Andor set.

https://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/2021/01/star-wars-obi-wan-kenobi-set-construction-upsets-residents-of-uk-village-photos.html

EDIT: This turned out to be a set for Andor and not the Kenobi series.

By all means bring up any post-OT concepts if it ties in with the essay. It’s fascinating to see how the later entries in the franchise succeeds or fails at following Lucas’ surrealist logic.

I posted the essay in the OT sections mainly because it primarily related to the OT, and my post-OT addendum was reduced to an addendum mostly because I felt it bogged down the main text somewhat.

Originally posted in the General Star Wars Random Thoughts Thread. Reposted here with NeverarGreat’s permission.

NeverarGreat said:

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/star-wars-is-surrealism-not-science-fiction-essay/id/82402/page/1#1403457

This wonderful write-up got me thinking about an aspect of Star Wars that has recently been bugging me - technological advancement. In short, the technology of Star Wars sometimes seems to advance, but sometimes seems to retreat. In general, the appearances change while the underlying tactics and strategies stay the same. The Razor Crest can fight the much newer TIE fighters and win, Y-wings have a place in fleets for decades, Star Destroyers get little more than a makeover, etc. If there’s an increase in power, it comes at the cost of greater size such as the enormous Death Star and even larger Starkiller.

This all seems in keeping with the surrealist fantasy of Star Wars. Of course, there are notable instances where technology does evolve in this universe, such as Clones making droids obsolete, Hyperspace Tracking/ramming dramatically shifting the calculus of resistance, Death Star Destroyers making a mockery of the power scale rule, etc. Each case feels off for Star Wars because it cleaves to an otherwise realistic expectation of technology, but it violates the surrealist fantasy because it brings the technology from unchanging background to crucial foreground. We must focus on this disruption and that means that the game state of the world has changed; it no longer has the veneer of timeless mythology.

It has been traded away for mere science fiction.

ZkinandBonez said:

I really like that last statement. It’s a very succinct way of summarizing a lot of the frustrations I was trying to express in my essay post. Although the EU has often dabbled in trying to explain technological advancements, I’m glad that no Star Wars content has ever shown us a time in the galaxy when droids and spaceships didn’t exist. They’ve changed the aesthetic a fair bit in the different eras, with some looking even more fantasy-like than the movies, but similarly to how weaponry and building techniques almost never changes throughout Tolkien’s mythos, Star Wars has always had spaceships and droids as they are abstractions rather than straight up technological inventions.

NeverarGreat said:

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/star-wars-is-surrealism-not-science-fiction-essay/id/82402/page/1#1403457

This wonderful write-up got me thinking about an aspect of Star Wars that has recently been bugging me - technological advancement. In short, the technology of Star Wars sometimes seems to advance, but sometimes seems to retreat. In general, the appearances change while the underlying tactics and strategies stay the same. The Razor Crest can fight the much newer TIE fighters and win, Y-wings have a place in fleets for decades, Star Destroyers get little more than a makeover, etc. If there’s an increase in power, it comes at the cost of greater size such as the enormous Death Star and even larger Starkiller.

This all seems in keeping with the surrealist fantasy of Star Wars. Of course, there are notable instances where technology does evolve in this universe, such as Clones making droids obsolete, Hyperspace Tracking/ramming dramatically shifting the calculus of resistance, Death Star Destroyers making a mockery of the power scale rule, etc. Each case feels off for Star Wars because it cleaves to an otherwise realistic expectation of technology, but it violates the surrealist fantasy because it brings the technology from unchanging background to crucial foreground. We must focus on this disruption and that means that the game state of the world has changed; it no longer has the veneer of timeless mythology.

It has been traded away for mere science fiction.

I really like that last statement. It’s a very succinct way of summarizing a lot of the frustrations I was trying to express in my essay post. Although the EU has often dabbled in trying to explain technological advancements, I’m glad that no Star Wars content has ever shown us a time in the galaxy when droids and spaceships didn’t exist. They’ve changed the aesthetic a fair bit in the different eras, with some looking even more fantasy-like than the movies, but similarly to how weaponry and building techniques almost never changes throughout Tolkien’s mythos, Star Wars has always had spaceships and droids as they are abstractions rather than straight up technological inventions.

PS. Is it OK is I copy this over to my post?

screams in the void said:

also , Robert E. Howard deserves a mention in this discussion , he is regarded as the father of sword and sorcery and did a lot of world building for Conan’s world , as evidenced in his Hyborian age essay https://conanthecimmerian.fandom.com/wiki/The_Hyborian_Age Many fantasy authors imitated him afterwards , but never quite captured his spirit . Then there were the many many fantasy film cash grabs that came in the wake of the 1982 Conan The Barbarian film …

Yes, Howard’s another one of those guys that no one has ever quite managed to imitate or adapt to film. Now I do really enjoy the John Milius Conan film, but it really has very little to do with Howard. Unlike Lovecraft though, and despite often borrowing a lot of his ideas, Howard did have a tendency to add a backstory to everything so I’d definitely say he has more in common with Tolkien in that regard then with OT SW. Then again characters/creatures like Yag-Kosha are quite abstract in concept.

Does anyone know if Lucas ever made any direct mention of Howard work as an influence? I would assume he at the very least knew of the character as SW was written right at the start of the Howard boom in the late 60’s and early 70’s.

As a side note: I find it fascinating that Tolkien’s first published book was only one year after Howard’s death. People often forget that Howard did the whole world-building thing before Tolkien, that is, as far as what was publicly available.

RicOlie_2 said:

Great post and thread! It’s given me a new appreciation for Star Wars, and a greater appreciation for the continuity of the ST and PT with the OT, even if I still don’t like either.

ZkinandBonez said:

The Lady & the Hat said:

Good food for thought. I feel the Surrealist aspects of Star Wars are lost on most viewers. With so much sci-fi being derivative of Star Wars, it becomes normalized.

Yes, there’s a great irony in the fact that Star Wars, which started with a movie so weird that most studios rejected it, is now virtually the definition of mainstream. Few of the copycat films over the last four decades have understood what made Star Wars work. There’s been a lot of really good sci-fi inspired by the aesthetic and technical achievements of Star Wars, but not the storytelling “philosophy” it used, at least not in many other big budget mainstream films.

Very true. A similar thing happened with the Lord of the Rings. It sparked a new era of copycat fantasy books, but none of them get what made LOTR so great. I find it really interesting that you mention LOTR a few times in connection with Star Wars, because what drew people to them was quite similar I think:

• Basic good vs. evil story;
• Strong universe building–you really feel that the story takes place in a well-developed world in both of them;
• Archetypal characters;
• An internal logic that also doesn’t try to explain too much;
• A gritty (and thus believable) but also very magical world.

Unfortunately, people just try to copy the aliens and spaceships (in SW), or the different races and the magic (in LOTR), and miss almost everything that actually makes these films/books so appealing. Or their imitation suffers from a failure to write a good plot and they rely too heavily on the above-mentioned elements.

True, both LOTR and SW seems to have managed to really capture a sense of true mythology. Though I would say that where the two differ the most is in the world building, and I wouldn’t go so far as to apply the “surrealism” label to LOTR (though it does treat the more fantastical elements in a more abstract manner than most modern fantasy). F.ex. Tolkien worked out a very details time-line for Middle-Earth and of course he famously made several fully functional languages. The SW languages are generally speaking just gibberish with only Huttese having some consistency (and that’s mostly post PT-era and onward). Lucas originally went for a more more abstract approach to the world building as well. There’s enough there to create a sense of consistency between the movies, but unlike Tolkien he never really bothered to give the aliens much in terms of backstories, again, not until the PT and TCW era. But like Tolkien he did use the creatures and alien races as archetypal symbols, and most of the established lore is not by Lucas but by the EU authors.

It’s really interesting to see how abstract lore can change over time into something more “solid” as the series keep being expanded. Although Lucas definitely wanted SW to be more abstract compared to hard sci-fi I think it’s difficult for him, as it is with most storytellers, to avoid adding to the lore. Of course Tolkien started with the lore and then write the books, so I suppose all implied lore in an film or book can be considered to have “abstract lore” before they expand into a series. I can’t really think of many examples of artists that deliberately avoid continuity/lore.