This is kind of depressing actually.
Ew.
Huh?
(All I see is a more photo-realistic rendering of two cartoon characters from Rebels.)
If someone took the time to re-dub all the Gungans with proper English, as well as re-animate Jar Jar to be less goofy, then I think the Gungans could be a pretty interesting part of TPM.
When I look at some of the Doug Chiang concept art for Jar Jar and the Gungas I can’t help but feel that they were a real missed opportunity.
Then again, “many good and interesting ideas poorly executed”, is a pretty decent summary of the PT in general.
That’s okay.
I for one have no idea what a “Norway” is.
Maybe some kinda horned sea-beast?
Too lazy to google, though.
Erm, sure, why not.
(EDIT: Are you thinking about a Narwhal?)
Here are some of the replies to when I asked (be sure to expand that last one):
Uh, yes? He’s a money-grubbing businessman/slave-owner who has a huge nose and lives on a desert planet where he gambles in chariot races straight out of Ben-Hur.
We’ve had this discussion before, and not just with Watto…there’s Jar Jar, the Nemoidians…some people see it, some people don’t. Some who don’t see it argue furiously that it’s not true, for some reason.
Nah, it’s not necessarily weird to not notice those things – but it’s definitely the sort of racial coding that ought to be avoided when writing.
I guess it didn’t bother GL though (cf. the Neimoidians, whose voice actors were deliberately told to mimic line readings by other non-English-speaking actors saying the lines phonetically.)
I guess it didn’t bother GL though (cf. the Neimoidians, whose voice actors were deliberately told to mimic line readings by non-English-speaking actors saying the lines phonetically.)
Well I mean, to play Devil’s Advocate here, I would imagine Neimoidians might not speak English as their native tongue and they do have very odd mouths so I would assume they would speak English pretty awkwardly.
http://www.davechen.net/2012/02/racism-stereotypes-phantom-menace-star.html
In a 1999 article for the Boston Review, Alan Stone corroborates Gottlieb’s take on things. He also identifies one of the reasons why Lucas got himself in trouble: he made the aliens English-speaking. Unlike aliens from the previous Star Wars films (see: Chewbacca, the Ewoks, all the people in the Cantina scene), the aliens in this film spoke our language and had accents and other characteristics reminiscent of the ones found in ethnic stereotypes:
What has made my student and many other cultists of his generation feel betrayed is the new ingredient in Lucas’s recipe: aliens who, unlike any of the previous exotic life forms, suggest racist stereotypes. The evil henchmen in this story seem to be Fu Manchu style Asians, and the primitive Gungan people who live under the sea suggest old Hollywood stereotypes of African-Americans.
I’m not sure I personally see it as intentionally meant to be racist, but it was certainly a poor choice.
Yeah, I definitely see why people are bothered by these characters/aliens.
As one of the quotes above says, the Neimoidians’ accents kind of make sense, but they do end up sounding a bit too familiar for some people’s comfort. So Lucas’ lazy writing for the PT definitely had/hhas some bad side-effects.
The Gungan controversy (apart from Jar Jar being annoying as hell) eluded me since I wasn’t familiar with the context.
Maybe I’ll get crap for asking about this; but how exactly are Gungans supposed to be racist?
Or maybe I should rather ask; who are they supposed to be stereotypes of? I get why people complain about the Neimodians, as well as Watto. But who exactly are the Gungans supposed to be similar too?I’m honestly curious about this, because I feel like I’m missing some connection here that everyone else seems to find quite obvious.
Creole-/Caribbean-/African-Americans
If you are genuinely so-very un-racist that you fail to appreciate that, I applaud you.
Well, I live in Norway, and I know very little about Caribbean culture. I also had no idea what Creole was until you mentioned it and I googled it.
Maybe I’ll get crap for asking about this; but how exactly are Gungans supposed to be racist?
Or maybe I should rather ask; who are they supposed to be stereotypes of? I get why people complain about the Neimodians, as well as Watto. But who exactly are the Gungans supposed to be similar too?
I’m honestly curious about this, because I feel like I’m missing some connection here that everyone else seems to find quite obvious.
I never had that specific toy but based on my experience with other toys from that time frame, I’m guessing the success rate was around 50%.
From what I’ve gathered the pegs were a bit large and the figures often ended up oddly hanging off the side rather than fall of.
However, I was mostly fascinated by the Kenner employee who apparently felt that Luke “should” be fed to the Sarlacc.
Although this isn’t anywhere near as absurd as some of the other early SW posters were, I still think this one of the weirdest ones I’ve seen.
Sure, it doesn’t have weird gorilla Chewie, or Conan-Luke, or any of the trippy weirdness of the Polish posters, nope, the guy who made this decided to use the picture of sad Luke.
I mean, even the weird posters tried to give it either that space-opera/space-epic feel or at least a weird space-fantasy vibe to it, but this one has a picture of a sad-looking Mark Hamill (and Leia in pink, which is also kind of amusing).
Entertainment Weekly just released part of the deleted scene with Unkar Plutt at Maz Kanata’s Castle. The whole scene will apparently be included in the 3D Collector Edition Blu-ray.
It seems that Duracell is going to release a movie-based SW commercial every year now, just like they did with TFA last year.
(I wonder if Verizon will make another SW commercial as well. It would after all make more sense with the plot of RO than it did TFA.)
This is the best I can do for the Star Wars Weekly X-Wing
Yeah, that’s the same one that I found when I googled it.
However, the Norwegian one I posted above is in high-res, but the colours are a little off. I guess I could try to colour correct it and add English text, but I don’t exactly have any need for it.
The more I see of Krennic the more he reminds me of JeJerrod in earlier and superior draughts of Revenge of the Jedi. I wish there was a way of making JeJerrod less weak in the final film.
Somehow make his deleted scene in the third act HD and reinstate it into the film.
Not really enough though is it? I would replace him with a new scripted performance.
By 2040, CGI will become so photo realistic and the software to create it so inexpensive that this will certainly be an achievable goal to the common man within that timeframe.
That’s a nice thought. There’s only so much fanedits can do currently, but technology like that will open up a whole new world.
You’d still have to deal with the legalities of using someone’s likeness though, and you’d still have to find a convincing voice actor.
(Imagine the chaos that would ensue if fans had that kind of technology and could convincingly imitate whomever they wanted. There’s laws about these kind of things for a good reason.)
(I got bored, so I figured I’d post some more SW school supplies. For some reason these things always amuse me.)
.jpg)
.jpg)
(I can’t help but feel that someone like Darth Vader doesn’t really belong on a “safety blade” with “round edges.”)
I might be overthinking this, but it seems that Moroff (the Wampa-looking guy we saw in the BTS video) might be a little bit more important than just a simple background character.
Judging by his appearance on Jedha in the new trailer, and his action figure being packaged with a Shoretrooper, he might appear in the film twice.
I guess it’s possible that he might be part of Saw Gerreras resistance group alongside other alien characters that’s been named so far like Edrio ‘Two-Tubes’, and maybe even Bistan and Pao.
Btw, Edrio has been given some backstory;
He is a male Tognath mercenary pilot who flew alongside his eggmate, Benthic. The two shared the nickname derived from the breathing apparatus that allowed their Tognath physiology to process oxygen atmospheres. Edrio’s homeworld Yar Togna was conquered and occupied by the Galactic Empire, forcing him to flee as a refugee. Desiring to strike back at the Empire, Edrio and Benthic had allied with Saw Gerrera some time before the Battle of Yavin.
I am starting to think about tickets (no word on pre-sales yet?), and wondering if anyone has good information about any 70mm Film showings?
Probably a really dumb question, but do they even show digitally-shot movies on 70mm?
hm, well i guess i overly-quickly read the info about the filming, the camera used was indeed a digital camera, the Arri Alexa 65. I saw the mention of 70mm lenses and jumped to film in my head.
Well darn. I guess i will have to stick with the digital IMAX 3D, since i doubt there will be any other way to see this in large format.
Yes, for some reason I too was for a long while under the impression that RO would be shot on film. However it seems that only the ST trilogy will be on film while the standalone ones will be shot digitally.
(Unless of course the future director of the third anthology movie prefers film.)
I am starting to think about tickets (no word on pre-sales yet?), and wondering if anyone has good information about any 70mm Film showings?
Probably a really dumb question, but do they even show digitally-shot movies on 70mm?
Well, Krennic is definitely talking to Vader at some point in the trailer (see second picture) and it would be weird if he didn’t talk back.
Also, judging by the three shots with Vader in them it does seem like he’ll appear in at least two different scenes, perhaps even three (although the last two pictures could easily be from the same scene/set.)
I’m guessing this is a statue of a Jedi on Jedha, which makes sense.
Here’s some ruins on Jedha as the DS fires on it (as we saw in the previous trailer), and I’m assuming that these are also Jedi related.
Here’s the rest of that Russian poster I posted earlier;
Cut-out X-Wing and TIE-Fighter
The X-Wing was included in Star Wars Weekly # 1
I had a hard time finding a proper high resolution pictures of the cut-out X-Wing online, however I do own a copy of the Norwegian Star Wars #1 comic from 1983 which borrowed the design;
(Here’s the instructions in English. This was the only high res. picture I could find online of the UK version.)
I even made one myself about 10 years ago when I bought the comic;
(PS. I didn’t actually cut up the comic, I photo-copied the page and used that. However I had to glue it to some card-stock to make it work properly, and even then it ended up looking a bit wonky.)
.jpg)
%20UK%20%26%20NOR.jpg)
In Star Wars Weekly #2 they included a TIE-Fighter version.
I don’t have the Norwegian comic that includes this; however I did manage to find a scan of the English version in pretty decent resolution;
.jpg)
As a side-note I got a lot of these pictures (the UK ones) from the blog Episode Nothing: Star wars in the 1970’s "For those who Knew Luke Skywalker before Darth Vader was his father."
There’s a lot of interesting info here about the old Star Wars Weekly magazines, and other SW-related merchandise from the UK in the late 70’s.
This is the very definition of greedy.
You should try collection SW comics in Scandinavia, there’s always someone who thinks that everything is way more valuable than it actually is. Especially now that SW is main-stream popular again.
Although, that is definitely the most ridiculous price for a SW comic I have ever seen (especially for something so new)
Yeah, I should probably stop underestimating how far marketing will go to sell something (especially something as big as SW). There’s just something about a Star Wars beer that seems odd to me.
Also, it does make sense to build up to ESB with a “Vader Lives” slogan.
After all they made quite a big deal out of it in the Marvel comics when Vader returned.
.jpg)
Wow, I honestly never noticed that typo, and now it’s really bugging me.
However, I’m curious; was “Vader Lives” (with or without the typo) a ‘thing’ back in the 70’s?
Having grown up during the release of the PT I already knew that Vader would have to survive the events of ANH considering there were two more films with pictures of him on the VHS covers. However it just recently occurred to me that for kids (and adults for that matter) back in the 70’s him being shot out into space by Han must have been somewhat ambiguous.
So for those of you who actually remember this time, was “Vader Lives” a common thing? I haven’t heard of it before, but when I googled it I found a few pieces of merchandise (both official and unofficial) with this ‘slogan’.
Poster from 1978, also with the “Vadar” typo;
.jpg)
Comic ad with an oddly drawn hooded Vader from Fantastic Four #194 from 1978. Even though it’s in a Marvel comic it’s apparently trying to sell a bootleg SW toy. This one actually spells “Vader” correctly in the title, but misspells it in the actual ad several times. Source
.jpg)
This one can’t be real. At the very least it was not licensed.
.jpg)
Were these things common back in the 70’s, or are these just some weird attempt at (possibly bootleg) marketing?
Whoa!
“Startled by the Ewok’s grotesque features”
At first I thought; “Grotesque? But they made a children’s cartoon aboout these guys”.
Then I remembered that they actually looked like this;
.jpg)
I’d be startled too if this^ popped out of a bush.
More buttons/badges from 1977
.jpg)
.jpg)
So, did people actually wear these?
(I know they still make SW pins, but I’ve never seen anyone actually wear them.)
.jpg)
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
