ZkinandBonez

joefavs said:

Oh for sure, Laura Dern is one of my favorites. I just had no idea she was even a possibility. Del Toro’s name has been bandied around for months, but Dern is completely out of the blue.

Well, many people were surprised that Max von Sydow would be in a Star Wars film. And although Dern is mostly known for more artsy films, she was after all in Jurassic Park so I can’t say I’m too surprised.
(I kind of like the idea of one of David Lynch’s go-to actors appearing in a SW, considering how he turned town ROTJ. Of course that’s just pure coincidence, but I find that kind of appropriate.)
I’m also kind of curious to see who’s going to get cameos in this film, considering how different a director Johnson is from Abrams. I felt that the cameos in TFA kind of reflected Abrams’ work, so It’ll be fun to see who Johnson invited to play bit-parts.

joefavs said:

Here we go! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQQMLE4FuIQ

Also, Benicio del Toro and Laura Dern (?!) have just been officially announced.

Both of these news makes me really excited.

(Seriously though, Laura Dern in a SW movie, that’s awesome. Of course it could just a brief “cameo”, but that’s still pretty cool.)

Apparently the Coca Cola Company had their own sets of SW marketing posters back when ANH and ESB were being released. I really don’t know how these tied in with their product, they’re simply very cool-looking SW posters.

I should have posted this in my previous post, but I forgot, so here’s a somewhat cheesy newspaper ad which I find kind of amusing for some reason;

Some more unused SW poster designs;

Another ROTJ poster by an unknown artists (probably the same guy who made the last poster in my previous post).

Unused UK release poster for ANH by Tom Beauvai;

ESB poster design by Manuel Sanjulian;

ESB poster design by Roger Kastel;

ROTJ designs by Robert Hunt;

Misc. Ralph MacQuarrie poster designs.
(Please let me know if you find/have any high-res versions of these.)

DuracellEnergizer said:

Here’s the rest of John Alvin’s unused SW poster designs;

And here’s some misc. unused poster designs which I find interesting and cool-looking;

Unused Ralph McQuarrie designs;

(I know most people know of this one, but it’s still awesome.)

Unused poster design by John Solie from 1976;

Some unused marketing posters for ANH;

Some early Tom Jung designs;

Misc unknown artists;

Just some more rumours, but I thought it was worth sharing anyway.

http://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/2016/02/new-han-solo-a-star-wars-story-casting-rumors.html

LexX said:

The second book in the Thrawn trilogy, was it Fleet of Twilight in English, is about a whole abandoned fleet. They had some way to control it by very few people.

I’m actually reading that book right now and the Katana fleet is more or less from the clone wars era, granted that is in the pre-PT clone wars canon so it may not fit perfectly with the new time-line, but it’s very close to Forgotten Noble’s scenario.

Also I’m sure there’s some PT RPG sourcebook somwhere that can offer some info on how many people/droids that’s needed to run a cruiser. Or you can probably find similar, if not the same, info on Wookieepedia.

(The Thrawn book was called Dark Force Rising btw.)

moviefreakedmind said:

Yoda Is Your Father said:

“I think i’ll call you… hmmm… Vaaader. Yes, Vader”

I forgot about that. That was so terrible

Did that actually happen? I remember some pretty terrible dialogue from ROTS, but I don’t recall that specific exchange happening.

DominicCobb said:

ZkinandBonez said:

Well, to be devil’s advocate, was Palpatine ever supposed to have aged naturally? His appearance in ROTJ is quite, for the lack of a better word, “alien” looking. That’s not to say that I think ROTS solved it brilliantly, but I never interpreted OT Palpatine’s wrinkles as being natural, and he does look kind of melted. I also remember the novelization (which was Lucas canon) hinting at his unnatural age.

Although I know now that this is not the case, but when I watched ROTS for the first time as a teenager I thought Palpatine’s aging scene was him being transformed back into his true age by the Force lightning. Which made sense to me after all that Plegeuis talk about artificially maintaining life with the Force. In retrospect though, that’s giving the PT too much credit.

No, not aged naturally. Aged unnaturally and deformed by the dark side. But still a gradual process that occurred in part due to aging.

Again I wouldn’t have minded it too much if they made him look like in ROTJ or if there’s was some sort of explanation besides “scars.”

That was my impression as well. That he was just corrupted by the dark side.
Of course nowadays I try to ignore the PT, but when I first saw ROTS I assumed that his “aged” look was his true form and that his more natural age (e.g Ian McDiarmid without makeup) was maintained by the Force and that his fight with Mace drained him of power, thereby returning his appearance to his true deformed self.

The reason I don’t tend to give Lucas too much crap on this particular part of the movie is because it doesn’t really make sense to me that he’d age from regular Ian McDiarmid to melted-face old man in just 20-ish years. So I think that they’d be forced to make an excuse for it regardless.
It’s just a pity that the EU retconned him into regularly aged person, and not some ancient evil that hid his true age. Which I feel would have been the intention anyway in the OT, because I doubt that someone looking more or less like he did in ROTJ would have had a hard time being voted as the supreme chancellor or the Republic. A melted face, and evil yellow eyes should have tipped the Jedi off, so he definitely would have had to have looked normal at this point in history.

moviefreakedmind said:

DominicCobb said:

• Palpatine transforms into wrinkly face rather than slowly aging into it.

This was important to me though because I am not capable of comprehending the fact that people age over time. If he hadn’t have turned into a wrinkly old man in ROTS I would’ve sat there perplexed staring at the screen thinking, “why does he look older in Return of the Jedi than in this movie?”

Well, to be devil’s advocate, was Palpatine ever supposed to have aged naturally? His appearance in ROTJ is quite, for the lack of a better word, “alien” looking. That’s not to say that I think ROTS solved it brilliantly, but I never interpreted OT Palpatine’s wrinkles as being natural, and he does look kind of melted. I also remember the novelization (which was Lucas canon) hinting at his unnatural age.

Although I know now that this is not the case, but when I watched ROTS for the first time as a teenager I thought Palpatine’s aging scene was him being transformed back into his true age by the Force lightning. Which made sense to me after all that Plegeuis talk about artificially maintaining life with the Force. In retrospect though, that’s giving the PT too much credit.

NeverarGreat said:

http://imgur.com/gallery/DYTys

Wow, these are actually really well made.

I really liked this one.

So apparently there might have been an actual scene with Yoda that was cut from TFA, presumably in a longer version of the Force-flash-back scene.

http://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/2016/02/star-wars-the-force-awakens-yodas-planned-cameo-was-cut.html

Oh, I wasn’t calling it a bad effect, I just can’t say that I find it super convincing. It’s masterful CGI, but it does have a bit of an uncanny feel to me. Had it been in a video game or an animated film I’d consider it brilliant. In a movie however, I see it as somewhat malplaced. But then again I feel that way about most CGI. If it’s subtle it’s great. If it’s something obvious, but representing something inorganic, I can stretch my suspension of disbelief. But when it’s supposed to be something organic, not to mention a human, and a famous one at that, it just feels weird to me.

As for the whole “not being used to it” thing that Bingowings mentioned, I think it goes both ways. A lot of people over 40(-ish) are so used to movies not having digital fakery that they don’t really give it much thought (and of course having grown up with wonky-animatronics, matte-paintings, etc. I get why the smooth motion of CGI seems impressive in contrast). However a lot of kids these days have grown up with CGI, so to them it’s basically just what movies are supposed to look like. Heck, that even applies to people my age (I’m in my 20’s btw) a lot of the time. So I’m not too sure if people really will be able to differentiate it more in the future. I hope so, but I doubt it.
Of course if new movies start using practical effects more, it could help make a differentiation easier as people get something to compare it to.

(Example; seeing the trailer for Jupiter Ascending after having just watched Interstellar, which used miniature effects, I suddenly got the impression that I had just watched the trailer for an animated movie. So the kind of CGI effects that impressed me 10 years ago, suddenly felt really cheap when contrasted to something more real.)

Well, at least real Arnie looks like he’s made of real plastic. CGI Arnie looks like CGI flesh attached to metal.
That’s what I get from that image anyway.

Some scenes in ep. VIII will apparently be shot in Dubrovnik, Croatia;
http://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/2016/01/star-wars-episode-viii-to-film-in-dubrovnik-croatia.html

Also this is happening;
http://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/2016/01/episode-vii-faces-possibility-of-additional-delays-due-to-uk-lighting-technician-strike.html

SilverWook said:

The prequel battle droids not looking like IG-88 was a missed opportunity.

Well, the first Clone Wars TV series did have these guys; http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/IG_lancer_combat_droid
(Having read through the wookieepedia articles for the IG series it seems that the EU guys agree with you. A lot of PT droids were retconned as being IG droids.)

A few vague, but interesting, details mentioned here;
http://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/2016/01/rumor-new-details-on-rogue-one-from-joblo.html

The one of the left might have something to do with the rumour of there being stormtroopers in black armour appearing in the film.
(The article also mentioned some new Tie-fighter designs, which I found kind of weird since this takes place shortly before ANH.)

doubleofive said:

SilverWook said:

There must be a reason they’re not allowed in the Mos Eisely cantina. Maybe Wuher is just a dick?

Could be that they take up space that could be used by someone who actually will buy something.

“We don’t serve their kind here” is a pretty blatant statement with some very obvious allusions to real-life.
I’m not saying I think your analysis is wrong though, but I’m pretty sure there’s more to it. The droid are more or less treated as the lowest working-class in society. The fact that their not technically people, but still have sentient qualities might be part of the reason many don’t like them.

ATMachine said:

ZkinandBonez said:

DominicCobb said:

It’s funny because Lucas talks in From Star Wars to Jedi about how sci-fi directors always make the mistake of spending film time showing off the amazing sets and locations they’ve created just because they’ve spent a lot of time actually making them, but really they should be getting on with the story and letting the setting speak for itself. This mantra is definitely followed in the OT and TFA but not at all in the PT.

You know the more I read stuff like this I start to wonder what happened to Lucas in the 90’s. He really has a great track record of contradicting himself.
It also kind of ironic on how he used the PT to show off all the CGI while he did all he could to not show off the practical stuff. It’s almost as if it was done on purpose.

“Almost”?

Well it’s still technically there, and you can see it if you look closely enough. And he did after all pay for it. Kind of a weird thing to do if you never planned to use it. And he did gradually use less of it for each PT film that he made.

DominicCobb said:

It’s funny because Lucas talks in From Star Wars to Jedi about how sci-fi directors always make the mistake of spending film time showing off the amazing sets and locations they’ve created just because they’ve spent a lot of time actually making them, but really they should be getting on with the story and letting the setting speak for itself. This mantra is definitely followed in the OT and TFA but not at all in the PT.

You know the more I read stuff like this I start to wonder what happened to Lucas in the 90’s. He really has a great track record of contradicting himself.
It also kind of ironic on how he used the PT to show off all the CGI while he did all he could to not show off the practical stuff. It’s almost as if it was done on purpose.

SilverWook said:

ZkinandBonez said:

SilverWook said:

We had not one, but two droids working as bounty hunters in ESB. Their clients must consider them sentient, or else why pay a droid to do your dirty work?

Why would you need to consider something sentient to make it do your dirty work?
(I’m not necessarily disagreeing, but I thought that was a weird statement.)

You don’t pay your computer to do it’s job. I don’t think IG-88 and 4-LOM are in it for the kicks. 😉

Fair point. I guess in the underworld they don’t care who, or what, you are as long as you get the job done.

Also I’m pretty sure all the bounty hunters in ESB was mostly just meant to look cool and intimidating in their few seconds of screen time.

SilverWook said:

We had not one, but two droids working as bounty hunters in ESB. Their clients must consider them sentient, or else why pay a droid to do your dirty work?

Why would you need to consider something sentient to make it do your dirty work?
(I’m not necessarily disagreeing, but I thought that was a weird statement.)

I’m more intrigued by the Empire being willing to actually pay a droid money to kills someone. I guess they have their own assassin droids, but apparently IG-88 and 4LOM must have quite a reputation. (Is 4LOM Zuckuss’ property? Or is their entire backstory in the EU only?).
The again the Imperial didn’t seem to like bounty hunters in general, so it might have something to do with Vader. He is half-droid after all. And if you’re willing to retcon he’s had droid friends before.

As for IG-88’s non Imperial clients, I haven’t a clue. Come to think of it, why does a killing-machine need money in the first place?
I think I’m over-thinking this.

Dek Rollins said:

A connected question about the SWU:
Do droids dream of electric sheep?

Well R2 does sleep in ANH.

SilverWook said:
As for feeling pain, Artoo screams when he’s hurt. And then there’s the infamous droid torture scene in ROTJ.

R2 and 3PO, being the two droids we have to relate to the most, does have the most human-like qualities among the droids in the SWU. The same goes for him “screaming” in pain, it’s meant to make the audience worry about his safety by humanizing him, I doubt it has some big in-universe explanation.

This film analysis video brings up a lot of these subjects, including slavery, and greatly emphasizes their “human” qualities and its relation to the overall plot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9KPXRcfeaw

Bingowings said:

There was a lot more green screen and CGI work used in TFA than is generally noticed but the characters are more compelling (even if the plot isn’t). And the integration is more subtle (most of the time).

Stylistically though you could take a good fanedit of the PT and ran TFA next they would sit quite well next together as 21st Century films.

The only real impediment would be the digital camera work on Ep2 and Ep3.

I agree.
(It would be nice though to get to see the PT with less CGI and digital colour-grading added to all the miniatures.)
Also shooting TFA on film did a lot in my opinion to help cover up a lot of the CGI (digital has improved a lot since the PT obviously, but I still think it helped). Just the fact that the actors, as well as what is actually practical, stood more out as real. This is why TPM works best for me (among the PT) despite the terrible writing and annoying characters, it just feels more real than AOTC and ROTS because of the way it was shot and the more obvious practical effects. TFA of course knocks all the PT films out of the park, despite being full of CGI (maybe even more than TPM?), because, as you said, the characters are much more compelling and likable.

John Doom said:

Poor grading decisions may had affected their on-screen look too (too much contrast, picture too dim, cyan and magenta over-saturated…)

That was another I possibility I considered as well. Poor colour grading on practical effects, and films in general, is one of my biggest complaints about films made in the past two decades. It just makes everything look so fake.

Bingowings said:

The point I’m making is if you aren’t compelled by what the characters are doing you look at where they are doing it more.
There a plenty of duffly composed shots in the OT but you don’t notice so much because the characters and what they are doing is compelling enough to let them slide.
Very few people notice the sometimes rather nifty designs and sets in terrible movies.

Sure, I get what you’re saying. But I’m the kind of person who tends to pay attention to the special effects while watching a movie and I had never even assumed that there were so much practical in the PT. Like I previously mentioned, I did notice a lot in TPM, but I’ve always assumed that the effects AOTC and ROTS were almost entirely CGI.
But yes, plot has a huge impact on what you notice, as well as what you manage to overlook.