walking_carpet

TheBoost said:

I saw this flick during my little hiatus from this site.

whoo-hoo! first zombie, now boost is back!

 Thought I'd share my thoughts.

Didn't like it.

I don't think much of the anger directed at Lucas is fair.

If someone is a weirdo who collects 75 different Darth Vader dolls, or feels he's supposed to, and is angry about it, that's not Lucas's fault. Nor is it his fault if you obsessively collect the EU and don't like it.

If the Prequals aren't to your liking, well, that IS Lucas's fault, but it's not a personal thing. Lots of filmmakers are disapointing sometimes. You don't see "People vs. Ed Burns" for how boring his movies all were.

If the concept of midichlorians offends you somehow, that is also technically Lucas's fault, but again, how pissed can you be about a fictional virus thing?

I don't like that what I see as the only real gripes against Lucas (suppression of the OT, his documented untruths) is grouped in with a lot of (for lack of a better word) silliness.

i haven't seen this movie so I don't know if it was addressed but a huge part of disgust, speaking for myself, are the untruths - documented and undocumented (but extremely obvious).

lucas did not have a PT visualized in his mind dating back to 1980 and he was not honest about this.  There was no PT and everything was made up, many times on the fly.

He also kept hammering the talking point about story and characters when the evidence shows he couldn't care less about this. 

combined that with the fact that he didn't put a serious effort in writing and directing and also his refusal to release the OOT - including library of congress. 

If at least the OOT issues are minimally addressed in the movie, than thats a huge dissapointment. 

Actual concern for film preservation and cultural heritage shouldn't be mixed with asshats singing "George Lucas Raped My Childhood."

um... you're joking about that last part right?  is this true?  there is actually a song called this?

zombie84 said:

I'm more curious to see how critics re-evaluated the film a decade later, but these samples seem to be basically saying the same thing as the negative-moderates of 1999. I guess we'll see how this develops.

 you mean TPM won't age gracefully and be re-discovered like blade runner!??!?  thats what the apologists said in 2000!! on a serious note, my guess is the reviews probably won't have the kind of malice in 1999 but highly unlikely they will be positive. they will make historical references to the fallout and of course include the 'raped childhood' meme - the ratio of people that have actually said this in 1999 versus those that just merely quote it by now is 1:1000000.

Tobar said:

2-10-12

 loved these guys takedown of the prequels and absolutely discrediting lucas as a 'visual' filmmaker and 'mythic' storyteller.  but im not sure what they can say at this point that wouldn't be considered 'piling on' or singling out.

hopefully, they will add a couple cents regarding the unavailibility of the OOT.

a part of me wants to see them instead yell at james cameron for focusing on 3d titanic instead of spending time remastering The Abyss for Blu ray

i normally don't like to use anecdotal evidence, but at a superbowl party with a sharp 65' screen, we saw the commercial for the movie.  nobody booed or gave it a bronx cheer but a couple guys said 'with this big tv, why bother seeing it in the theatre? don't need the 3d".  the battleship and gi joe movies got more jeers.  surprisingly, not much enthusiasm for John Carter (man, did that commercial remind me of AOTC).

i mentioned earlier that the recent blu ray releases may put a damper on attendance - another factor is with big tvs becoming mainstream, maybe people won't care to go?

i wonder if we are going to reach a tipping point for cosumers preferring to watch movies at home because the flatscreens are large enough? ticket sales were down from 2010 to 2011 - but that was because of avatar.

anyways, i don't know what opening weekend grosses will be, but overall running I say absolute rock bottom $12 million and no more than $35 million.  Im using the lion king and BATB releases as a guide.

damn, im tired.  time for bed

georgec said:

Mike O said:

I wonder how much this would have to make in proportion to how much it cost to create the 3-D version? I'm betting it'll do gangbusters because all things Star Wars do, but it'll be interesting to see.

I'm also curious about what Lucasfilm may define as financial success for TPM in 3D, and what they expect to earn if they want to move forward confidently with the other movies.

Let's not forget that the 2008 Clone Wars movie was a complete bomb, critically and commercially (35mil domestic). And that was a brand new piece of work meant to segue into the tv series.

TPM has already been seen by many people, so if I had to guess I'd say that even fewer people would be interested in seeing it again. That doesn't include newbies, though 3.5 years isn't a huge separation to consider new age groups from 2008.

The box office numbers indicate that 3D is dying down as well.

But, who knows how TPM 3D will do? It could win the weekend, or it could also bomb. The wild card is how many self-loathing SW fans will drag themselves to the theaters to give Lucas more money because "it's Star Wars."

 not sure i can agree clone wars movie was commercial bomb.  it only cost around $10 million.  and it was just a primer for the tv show - which has had a steady, if not sizable, following among the apologists and little kids born after ROTS.   in the glory years, anything star wars would transcend its niche (check out the ratings for the holiday special), but those days are long over.

Baronlando said:

Ok, he's not going to move away from a huge franchise because people are mean on the internet. Seriously, what the fuck, let's be realistic.

 well...if we are to take lucas' comments literally, he said people are yelling at him. nothing about making mean posts on the internet

so which one of you guys have been going over to san rafeal, standing outside his house and yelling at him?  either that or publicly heckling him at his many 'interviews' ?

georgec said:

The story of George Lucas' career is a psychologists' wet dream. You see all the effects of people lauding him and giving him credit on the way he did business after Empire. He heard people saying how great he is so often that he began to believe it, and afterwards anybody who disagreed was cast aside. It's so simple in the cause/effect yet so intriguing.

Then you have the unwavering Lucas defenders who defy all logic and facts to salvage his image and prove people wrong because they don't "get" him or something like that.

 he has a core sycophancy and personality cult second only perhaps to joseph stalin.

Harmy said:

@georgec: Oh, man that interview always cracks me up. That is exactly Goerge Lucas of today, he wants it to be a white house and no matter how many people who know what they're talking about tell him it should be a green house, he's gonna paint it white. When George was writing the script for the original SW, he'd show it to his friends and they'd tell him, George this and this is crap, you have to rewrite it and he listened to them and that's why SW was such a success, he didn't yet become arrogant and he was willing to listen to other people's opinion.

 its a pitiful analogy anyways.  or more apt comparison is a white house that was painted by having an 8 year old just throwing cans of paint at the house.  lucas wants to play the artist card to excuse garbage storytelling, garbage characters, garbage dialog, garbage action sequences and garbage cgi.

lucas abhors hard work.  His claims his idea of artistic freedom is being allowed to do whatever he wants to carry out his vision.  what he really means is NOT having to do anything he doesn't feel like doing - as long as it makes money.

hmm...true. i guess I think of the Ben-Hurs, David lean movies, Irwin Allen and dino delaurentis - but those were the exceptions.

ronin was great! loved that movie.

lol, when you talk about actors perks it reminds me of a rumor I heard that jack nicholson nowadays doesn't want to make movies that interfere with Lakers home games BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!!!

i never saw cleopatra but Ive also heard that it was perceived as a bomb but did make money.  OTOH, heaven's gate truly was a bomb. 

its funny you mention that a cleopatra-like movie would be $900 million today.  Avatar cost $400 million in producing and promotion, I wonder if we'll see the first $1 Billion dollar movie soon?

another thing I am intrigued about is what role agents play.  In sports, we know scott boras can singlehandely influence an entire team.  15 years ago, the NBA was a players league and agents like david falk had considerable power.  you don't hear to much about movie agents.

that is a good point - you cant just account for inflation.  lol, it says score/music $100000. I think John Willams' fee is a little higher than that now :P

but it does seem like in the last 10 years, movie budgets have been skyrocketing and im not sure why.  most big budget studio movies are shot overseas to cut costs and use cheaper labor, right?  so why so expensive?

methinks there is a movie bubble - like oil bubbles, stock market bubbles and real estate bubble.

one of my favorite action movies in recent years is Hanna (soairse ronan is going to win 5 academy awards when all said and done).  The budget was $30 million.  there is hardly any cgi except maybe matte paintings and what not.  Green Lantern cost $200 million!!  and they knew it was going to be bad so they spent another $100 million in marketing/promotion.  was it really because of animated cgi, which requires a more specialized skill ?

wondering if the fact that with the proliferation of theatres in NA and overseas markets, home video rentals and sales - its much harder for a movie to truly bomb and this has caused an inverse effect that studio producers can raise costs as much as they want.

the hier to the empire books was a pretty big deal when they first came out. first new star wars story in years and an actual novel!

never got around to reading it :( but it was the public attention to this novel that made me revisit SW and realize it was still awesome after all these years while other childhood interests (he man, transformers) kinda went away.

i should read it now.  of course it wont be as compelling as the OT - but I am confidenct the storytelling, characters and overall world will be much better than PT.

its too bad most of EU is lousy, bloated, diluted and oversaturated.  Howard Roffman from LF licensing said in 1997 that they wanted to avoid that cuz they knew there could be too much of a good thing.  Guess its another example of someone from LFL telling us what we wanted to hear.

But i remember the Tales of the Jedi comic and that was good.  I also read that KOTOR blows PT away, but i don't have video games.

there is a video game trailer i was hoping to find on youtube but its not there.  Its hard to describe. I think it was around 2000-2002, it was for star wars galaxies.  The commercial starts off with several scenes from the game, set to the music when we first realize ben kenobi is obi-wan in SW.  there was one scene with a young girl running across a grassy field,  the music at this exact moment was the same force theme when obi-wan says "i haven't gone by the name of obiwan so before you were born.  and it absolutely captivated me in a way i wanted TPM.   not long after, i was shaking my head wondering why it was a commercial for a star wars game was more moving to me than one of the actual movies !?

someday I'll find the commercial.  lol, maybe it won't hold up as well but i'll never forget that moment when that girl was running across the field.

zombie84 said:

His rather advanced state of knowledge about all of this alone shows that he does keep tabs on all of these things.

 you said a lot of things in your last couple posts that I agree with and have also said at one point.  But this deserves special mention. For someone who claims to not care or pay attention to what critics say, lucas seems quite knowledgeable of what they (people who criticize the movies) are saying.  im not sure if even nixon was as thinned-skinned.

and in the docs and books, he is blathers about critics, movie goers feelings, box office returns, 'marketers', 'studio suits'.  of course, most of the time he is doing it to pre-emptively frame an argument for the apologists and also to test the sycophancy of his followers.

so he says 'everyone' yells at him and calls him a terrible person. well lucas, you are profoundly childish, lazy and you lie just about everytime you open your mouth.  not really traits you'd find in someone thats on the level.

Bingowings said:

Out of curiosity have accolades like the Academy Awards (R) both actual and nominations ever been used on SE promotional materials (and I include the SEs for THX-1138 etc here)?

If the award winning elements aren't in the presentation surely evoking them would breach some trades description law?

 don't recall ever seeing the oscars on any of the vhs releases prior to 1997.

probably cuz it was not necessary.  pretty obvious that all three of the OOT movies won oscars for best viz, sound, etc. 

whats not as funny is that many casual movie goers wrongly assume the PT won oscars, when ROTS wasnt even nominated for visual effects (god, I lmao when that happened).

your question goes with my earlier suggestion that if lucas insists the films were 'rough cuts' the oscars and nominations should be vacated.  and all box office grosses start from 1997 onward. 

zombie84 said:

  at a highball $30 million Lucasfilm actually might have a hard time turning a profit unless this is another 1997-level box office surprise. And it won't be. No one cares about Episode I like they did the original, and even though there are millions of prequel fans out there, I sincerely doubt there are enough to make this a huge blockbuster again.

 hi zombie,

any idea what kind of distribution deal lucas got for this?  for the 1999 running of episode I - knowing damn well how anticipated it was - he was able to get something crazy like 10 weeks minimum at the main screening room, 90% of ticket grosses, etc.

rest in peace.

and thanks for all the contributions to cinema and home video.

sort of.  but i never bought into it - even before 1999.  it was also well known that ToD is comprised of many things abandoned during Raiders.

there are so many stories, accolades and anecdotes that are, at best groslly embellished,  but in most cases totally bogus.  was really hoping lucas' recent stunts as making himself the self-annointed leader and trail blazer of 'black cinema' would finally blow it all open and cause a thorough revision to discredit all of it.

doubleofive said:

Zombie, article idea:

Lucas seems to go through relationship phases as his movies go through phases. Maybe there is a pattern that can be mapped out. Divorce = Temple of Doom, kids=prequels, Mellody Hobson=movie featuring blacks...

 interesting idea but i wouldn't think there is correlation.  lucas likes to use his divorce for ToD because it makes yet another cute story.  but he would have made more IJ and SW movies with or without his divorce and kids.

so they finally have jar jar in a commercial.  as for the content, [shrug] well, if you're gonna go kiddie,  go all the way-- to the most extreme you can.  its humorous that this ad is targeting kids that not only missed the OT, but also the SE AND the entire PT.   babies are all that is left;   gotta keep targeting that next generation; the current one has a tendency to...well,  grow up.   bwaaaaahahahaahahaaha

still have a few problems with trailer -

"hurry qui-gon, you'll miss the celebration"  !??!

-  um,  isn't that a little...inappropriate?

nm

Baronlando said:

7FN said:

We could mention the many reasons that have - over the past decade - given rise to the current bad feeling between George and many of his fans.

I think there should be only ever be ONE thing to publicly hold against GL at this point, the OT. The other stuff is just matters of taste and we should 't be mixing that in with a concrete, legit issue.

 +1

Bobby Jay said:

walking_carpet said:

i want to see a chewie commercial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ridcfwsYr4Q

Is this what you had in mind?

 woo-hoo!!!!!!!!

i dunno...was a funny twist at the end, but i think the abundance of sw commercials is getting to be excessive in recent weeks.  too much of a good thing and no sense of occasion.  maybe it cant be helped cuz of the 3d movie.  its becomig like that whole betty white thing that started off as funny but now will be like an 'I love the 2011s' epsiode

shouldn't chewie be next to the astronaut with the 70s sideburns ;)

come to think of it...all these commercials are vader and r2 and yoda.  how about one with chewie?  everyone likes chewbacca.  lucas himself said his favorite toy was a chewie coffe mug.

i want to see a chewie commercial.

georgec said:

I just saw this supposed spoiler at AICN. The writer trusts the source, and AICN is usually on top of spy info.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/53166

My interest level remains close to absolute zero.

 im not so sure I believe it either...if only because the time period between ROTS and ANH was off limits for everything else because the show was going to take place aound this time.

another thing Im not sure I believe is the idea that 50 scripts have already been made.  no one makes that many scripts before a show is cast, let alone green-lit.  so much can change depending on the actors, growth of story lines, etc.

darth_ender said:

darth_ender said:

That is the right scene with the wrong audio.  It was cut from the original film, then used in the Star Wars Holiday Special with new dubbing, which is what you have in that video there.  I will try to find the right audio for you.

 Found it (obviously flipped):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG3tGmUeZA4

 thanks

hmm....that is interesting.  normally i view cuts as 'out of sight out of mind'..but i sometimes make exceptions for character development (even if the guy was only in the movie for like a minute)

certainly doesn't care much for tarkin.  then again, maybe he was just trying to curry favor with vader.

[guffaws] man..now everytime i see that scene with tarkin scoffing at his suggestion for evacuation, im gonna picture in my mind that guy thinking "suit yourself, asshole" and then taking the ship for himself!! bwaahahahahaha 

darth_ender said:

Finally watching the Bast/Vader scene last week without HS dubbing, and that is actually a really cool scene.  It undermines Tarkin's authority to a great degree, and really would have affected my perspective had it been included in the final film.

 hmm...you mean this scene? not sure how it shows undermining - unless it just means vader is ignoring a request from tarkin to call off the search and he went ahead anyways

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nuHNBY9vMg