User Profile: miker71 - Original Trilogy

Post: #296845
Topic: My subtextual homage to Star Wars and its prequels (fan film)
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/296845/action/topic#296845
Time: 7-Sep-2007 7:29 AM — Edited 28-Feb-2021 9:23 AM

Back in 2004 I directed a micro-budget feature length mock-u-drama about a pornographer trying to make a science-fiction film called “Attack of the Clowns” (the title seemed original at the time of writing). Since Star Wars is virtually wholly responsible for my career as a moviemaker, there are many many subtextual references to the original trilogy and the prequels. Someone even spotted the TIE fighter effect I mixed in. Anyhow, if you’re on a certain wavelength with me, have 84 minutes to kill over broadband then you can watch/download and rate my effort on googlevision:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2915663469678392663
Hope you have fun!

There’s a couple of reviews, too:
http://talkingmoviezzz.com/view_review.php?id=234
http://www.filmshed.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=17&Itemid=142

Post: #296844
Topic: George Lucas jealous of Irvin Kershner's Star Wars?
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/296844/action/topic#296844
Time: 7-Sep-2007 7:01 AM

Empire has my favourite sequences, and I probably saw it at the right age for the first time (I would've been 9 or 10). For ages it was my "favourite" SW movie. However, a few years ago I went to the back-to-back screening of SW 1,2,4,5,6 (3 was not released at the time) at London Waterloo IMAX, and I have to say ... Star Wars (I rarely call it ANH) stuck in my mind as absolutely the best one. It's well rounded, well paced, and highly engaging. Empire, though still containing my favourite sequences, just seems to drag on and on in Dagobah and Bespin. However the AT AT attack and asteroid field scene still rate as (probably) my all time favourite sequences in ANY movie (the car chases in Ronin come close). The prequels - well up there on the IMAX screen the actors performances in a studio vacuum came across as just that. The interaction with real sets serves to humanise the original trilogy in my eyes. Also the gags in the prequels really piss me off, Jar Jar, R2's jets, rubbish acting from fine actors ... it all gets up my nose. Even the sound effects seem largely recycled/reprocessed from the original trilogy. Let me put it this way ... with each successive release of a Star Wars film during my childhood Lucas genuinely presented me with a spectacle I had never before seen in my life. With the prequels I just felt the envelope was nowhere pushed it was just signed, sealed and delivered. When making Star Wars, the team drew a lot of inspiration from the past in the methodologies and tools (eg Vistavision, John Mollo), the prequels are just baked to a "New and improved formula, half the fat!" which we all know is marketing speak for "we made it with cheaper ingredients and didn't really stretch ourselves creatively". I'm not knocking the work that went into the prequels - the CGI stuff is genuinely impressive, but then so was Jurassic Park in, what, 1994. Some of the political subtext of the prequels I felt had potential, but was ruined by bad acting/directing and the stupid gags and characters. Anyhow, as Lucas himself proclaims over and over "it's just a movie".

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