walking_carpet

Twisters theory is actually pretty cool :)

tarkin probably have had more governing responsibilities. but as far as hidden power and, more importantly, from a cinematic perspective vader was the main villain.  Forget the force powers, the scary breathing and all the merchandising - He almost single-handedly took down the entire rebel assault on the death star (perhaps this was the first clue that anakin and vader were the same person). 

lucas in his 2004 DVD commentaries saying "vader was never supposed to be powerful villain, he was a pathetic character" disgusted me beyond belief.  i wasn't fooled (nor surprised) by this at all and knew right away that lucas' real reason for saying this was because he knew he botched the ressurection scene in episode III and was pre-emptively trying to spin it; knowing full well it was anticipated to be the climactic moment in the entire PT.  Its no different than all his other "well, it wasn't supposed to be this, it was meant to be that way all along" talking points.  lets see how many interviews prior to 1995 did lucas say "vader is a pathetic character! he's lame!! loser! limp! wimp!!".  and no, tragic is NOT the same as pathetic.

sadly, apologists on TFN bought into it and started turning over rocks trying to find things in the OT to justify it.  I mean, for cripes sake, he's a giant guy dressed in black and the camera shows a CLOESUP of him lifting someone off of the ground! lucas doesn't do multi-facted characters with ambiguities.  When you want a pathetic character, do you really want james frickin earl jones to do the voice!? 

In the end, I still liked the resurrection scene cuz...well, even lucas cant ruin vader.  and when that helmet came on - that was the kiler shot.  But as reports from sneak previews were pouring in about how bad this scene was, it didn't surprise me at all.  and lucas again blabbing on "he's pathetic! he's pathetic!!  nobody likes him!! palpatine is bummed out he has a broken down sidekick!! its supposed to be like this!! i had it planned exactly like this in 1977!!!"  um, yeah sure.  palpatine was so disspointed that he smiled when vader broke from his restraints.

[/rant over]  (do people still say '/rant over' ?)

anyway, was still cool seeing tarkin in episode III.  but the fact that he was just a cameo i think strengthens the argument that the empire ws palpatine first, vader second.

Harmy said:

Nope. 1995 was probably the last time he gave a rats ass about his fans.

 lol, well - if you want to be technical, he never gave a rats ass - he only cared for our credit cards from 1977 - 2005.

but, its actually good he's slowly but surely dropping all bogus pretense of everything he passed himself off to be.  he got his hundreds of millions, f### everyone else. 

hopefully while he's still with us, he stop playing the artist card and just come out with it and say "you betcher ass im a selfish lazy ass and just threw this together cuz I wanted to cash in!! i never in my entire life cared one iota about writing/directing/acting/photography/storytelling/characters (thats the real reason studio suits hate me).  I'll throw in a red tails here and a tucker there,  but im into franchising, not filmmaking.  Newsweek had it exactly right - i took my money and laughed all the way back to skywalker ranch."

not sure if this has been mentioned, but  I was at costco and they only had the saga box set available - not the seperate trilogy sets.

and I just thought of something: in the 1992 VHS release and the 1995 widescreen 'faces' release, there is a thank-you note from lucas to all the fans for enjoying star wars all these years.  In the 1995 release he even says 'and enjoy future star wars adventures to come"

does the blu-ray have a thank-you note from lucas?  i don't think I saw it on the box-set.  and I don't think I've heard anyone mention anything.

hmm...dunno, maybe - the banthas were elephants, but i thought they designed them pretty well.

lol, im replaying this video over again - just getting a kick out of how they pulled this off.  and i can't really see the legs until the :45 mark.

Adium said:

Yeah, the only part of the documentary I totally disagreed with was the ending. "We love you George, we still love you. blah blah blah"

 

aw man, that sucks.  thats essentially why he can get away with anything.  If those blu rays sold only 100k copies as opposed to 1 million and the feedback specifcally cited the lack of OOT, you betchurass lucas would have relented.

i dunno - i guess the documentary is not what i thought it would be.  and people are entitled to feel however they feel.  if they love him, they love him.  he's non grata to me until he at least fully admits that the whole 'original vision/saga/PT' was a complete crock and the whole PT enterprise was your garden vareity cash-grab and he lied thru his teeth to the fans AND the cast/crew.

Bingowings said:

This is pretty cool.

With the right lighting and it could be pretty convincing even without CGI trickery.

that was great!!  aw man - they shoulda done something like that for ROTS.  would have been more time consuming, of course - but if anything - i think that footage proves something like grevious could have easily been an OT character (unless the materials are really light weight fiberglass or foam that didn't really exist in 1983, not sure).

lol, where's jar jar?

anyway, so this is being released in both 3d and 2d?

Lucas has a sycophantic fan-base but im not sure anyone would have an incentive to see this in 2d after releasing the blu-rays.  does fox have some sort of distribution clause that every 3d movie needs a 2d version?

I haven't paid much attention, but it appears to me that LFL hasn't really released much info on this or provided any behind the scenes sneek peaks.  During the 1997 SE, there was plenty of footage provided.  Even the IMAX release had an article detailing the setup work involved in making AOTC into an IMAX film. 

That trailer is kinda hard to read - it starts off by strongly suggesting all 6 films will be released but then focuses solely on TPM and makes no reference as to when the other films will be released.  I was always dubious on the whole 'one film a year' thing.  Looks like they didnt want to risk oversaturation of all things Star Wars,  but 6 years is an eternity in technology time.

 @doubleofive - great anecdote! yeah, it seems lucas' half-assed and laughably disingenious attempt to convince everyone that he's really an art-house/experimental/auteur cinema filmmaker hasn't worked out and people still see that he's in the franchise business.  always was, always will be.

in ESB theres a funny scene:

3PO - captain solo, might i have a word with you please?

Han Solo - what do you want?

3PO- Princess Leia has been trying to contact you on the communicator -

Solo - I turned it off, I don;t want to talk to her

3PO- Oh....well, Princess Leia is wondering about master luke, he hasn't come back yet...she doesn't know where he is -

Solo - I don't know where he is!

3PO - Nobody knows where he is!

is there anything like this in the PT? this kind of clever banter between 2 characters?!  maybe the first few minutes between anakin and obi-wans on grevious's ship? good god, almost all of TPM, the movie is -

one character saying something

panaka saying he disagrees or feels it won't work

first character say to trust their judgment.

its such a joke.  by the time we get to ROTS, the dialog isn't as gag inducing,  but its just there to move the plot along.  thats all the characters do.  RLM made a joke of how none of the characters in TPM are memorable.  Whats even worse is - except anakin and palpatine - so much of the dialog is interchangeable for the different characters, it wouldn;t have mattered who said what.  Lucas refused to take any effort and time into creating characters.

Darth Bizarro said:

I just watched it finally.

I think the one major point that the documentary fails on is that it seems to really lack clarification of the "Bonus Disk" issue.  No real time is spent clarifying to the average person why the 2006 DVD is an insufficient release.  So the ill-informed who watch the documentary will still look at it and say "why are they still complaining, they have the original versions to watch if they want."  They do touch upon the issue, but not nearly enough considering how critical the issue is to the whole argument.

 i haven't seen this yet but if thats true, then its a huge dissapointment.  that 2006 debacle - and the MTV interview - was the greatest indictment of lucas' childishness and fraudulence.

Also disappointing that Dale Pollack doesn't have much coverage.  When he came out with that book, lucas screamed bloody murder and claimed it was all full of lies.  It basically tells us what we all now know:  lucas cannot write, cannot direct, storytelling and editing skills are ridiculously overblown, thin-skinned, didn't care if ESB ended up being a lousy movie(even before it went over-budget), craves merchandising revenue streams above everything else.  Problem was, this was 25 years ago and lucas still needed to cultivate a sycophantic fan-base and personality cult.  So the truth about him (and the PT) needed to be kept secret.  Hence all the subsequent propaganda that followed.  There's a good reason why almost no one from the OT cast and crew was surprised at how the PT turned out.  dismayed, perhaps - but not surprised.

then again, this doc is supposed to be more about the fans, so maybe it would have digressed.

ARParr said:

 

 

My name's Adam & I used to run StarWarsFan.org & Prequel Watch from 1997 through 2005.  

 dang...talk about bringing back memories.  those were cool sites;  had some great editorials :)

curious about your book.  look forward to hearing more about it.  hope its a successful release

georgec said:

Maybe I'm just a hater and don't understand Lucas' brilliance as a director.

very few creative shots in the PT, especially TPM.  :(

his brilliance is non-existent.  And even before the PT,  lucas was not highly thought of as a director within the filmmaking community. 

during AOTC, mccallum said that he found a cool crane for lucas to use.  he said lucas doesn't like crane shots. 

reason being?  "too cumbersome" 

!!!

 i mean, for f*** sake.  he's a 'visual' filmmaker and doesn't want to have overhead shots!?  when I read that, all those horror stories regarding the 1977 shoot of star wars lost resonance and it just drove home the point that lucas simply wants to put minimal effort into making these movies (too his credit, he did end up using the crane).

In one interview during TPM, Lucas claimed that he always wanted to go back to directing and blamed the media (as usual) for making it sound like he hates directing.   Suffice it is to say, after the viewing the results of the PT- lucas does hate directing.

CO said:

It was pretty painful to watch as Lucas was only there to promote the 3-D movies, as that was the only thing he said. 

 he never does anything without having a good reason.  at least he's lost his pathetic faux anti-establishment grandstanding and is fully embracing that he's in the franchise business first and foremost.

i saw TPM over the weekend.  was curious since i kept hearing that this had the most improvement over its DVD counterpart but it was agressively scrubbed.  

I mentioned on another thread I was interested in learning if TPM would still be more pleasing than the other PT movies because of the look.  If I were to guess, I would have to say 'no'. 

while the EE is gone for the most part, the DNR is laughable.  And I normally don't notice this kind of stuff as well as other home theatre enthusiasts.  The scene of TC-14 welcoming qui-gon and obi-wan is so blatant.  Its hilarious watching the first scene in the Jedi temple.  It looks like new CGI yoda is real with details and the actors and the set are all CGI!!

So as far as the 'film-look', this movie is a shadow of what it once was.  Its not identical to AOTC or ROTS, but it looks nothing like I saw it in the theatre. it would be easier to find out what shots still retain original grain and color as opposed to whats been scrubbed and washed.

yes, its true that TPM has never looked better on home video.  and im sure apologists are going to say that DNR on TPM is ok because its at the discretion of the 'artist'.  But this is yet another piece of ever-growing evidence that lucas' sensibilities are identical to that of a suit and not the artist he likes to call himself.  I never saw patton or predator.  perhaps TPM is not as bad as those movies, but i don't think its acceptable.

so AOTC has that utterly stupid re-edit of the yoda/dooku duel and TPM now has a sterile look to it.  If I was a big enough fan of these movies, this would really disappoint me.

georgec said:

Anybody see South Park last night?

There was a scene where Randy stepped out of his house and screamed, "Noooo!" They used the audio from ROTS!

funny but needs tweaking.  the camera needs to slowly zoom out and hang over randy.

Although it didn't bother me as much as most peoplem maybe this will take the sting out of what was a real sore spot in ROTS.

kinda the same way anti-jar jar sentiment died down after that now famous scene of comic-book guy sleeping with his jar jar doll.

Mr. Bungle said:

none said:

Spike TV Scream Awards - October 18, 2011

via: theforce.net

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/george-lucas-makes-surprise-appearance-249019

I really could have fun captioning this, but will politely abstain.

from the article

--

Lucas, who apparently went off teleprompter, then said, "Thank you for honoring Darth Vader tonight. And just wait till you see him on the big screen in 3D next February."

--

good and bad (mostly bad) one thing you can say about lucas is he never does these things without having a good reason.  so now we know the real reason for him being there. 

interesting though - i thought just TPM was being released next feb?  are all movies going to be released in one year like in 1997?  or could be he just was talking about star wars in 3d in general.

Davnes007 said:

I stand corrected.  It's still a shitty scene, though.

No argument there.

 this was one of the very few non-action scenes that had some creating filmmaking by having the camera follow mace as he is entering the chamber and witnessing the proceedings along with yoda.  99% of the time, its just usually a 2 or 3 people walking very slowly - one person says something, another responds (usually disagreeing) and then the first person offers one final comment before the scene closes.  RLM exposed this beautifully.  In any other movie, it probably would not be noticed, but because so much of the PT is sterile and without any creativity, it sticks out.

so it starts off as an interesting scene - the problem i have now is that theres a logical flaw:

before, Organa said the senate would never vote for a clone army (which in itself is a plothole but thats another topic) and Palpatines aid says with emrgency powers, he can bypass the senate.

So Jar jar proposes emergency powers - and the entire senate falls in line and goes along with it!?!? if the senate would not approve the army, why would they go along with emergency powers knowing that palpatine would then order an army right then and there!?

the whole clone plot of AOTC falls flat on its face long before this scene.  And maybe its nitpicking compared to the more glaring flaws of the PT.  But with PT apologists raving in awe over the "machiavellen", "intrigue","slieght of hand" plots, it needs to be pointed out that palpatine can only do this because everyone around him is dumber than a bag of rocks and acts completely illogical. and not just illogical given the circumstances, but also against their own emotions.

LMAO, on another board, someone said that the poster looked like one of the crap episode I books that flooded every target and walgreens in 1999.

turns out to be pretty on the mark:

the first change that made me cringe was greedo.  the first change i found unacceptable and disastrous was the stupid re-cutting of ESB.  However, this was the first change that wanted me to forget the SEs and go back to the originals.

It doesn't make sense.  It proves beyond any doubt lucas is making everything up as he goes. and hayden looks like he got away with murder.

If the idea was to have him reflect anakin when he was not on the dark side, then it still should have been shaw - thats how he looked when he came back from the dark side! the way lucas has it now indicates that your physical likeness is frozen in time, and thats ridiculous. not to mention lame storytelling.  then again, lucas explains next to nothing regarding the ways of the force in the PT.

I remember on one forum, some apologist insisted it made sense and basically regurgitated what lucas said. i kept thinking -'no, it doesn't make sense,  you just found a way to rationalize it. and anything can be rationalized'.  wonder if he is still hoping that one day lucas will insert jimmy smits into ANH freaking out because he sees the death star ready to blow him away.  :(

generalfrevious said:

Second, I think Hollywood has entered an irreversible decline and American cinema is dead. It's like all the good movies ended with the 20th century and they studio heads focused on making shlock.

gonna get yelled at for going off topic but had to comment on this:

I don't know how much US films have declined.  The quality of the 1970s was pretty unique and may not happen again.  But I still think things are much better than the 80s (im sure we've all heard of the 'miramaxing' of hollywood that happened in early 90s).  However, one thing i've noticed for sure is that it seems foreign films are rapidly catching up with american films - at least those that are made by the big Studios. 

I've always been kinda curious about foreign movies cuz I like anime and james bond movies.  but starting with crouching tiger, hidden dragon in 2000- im seeing more quality foreign movies. 

I thought pan's labryinth was the best film released that year.  Amelie was better than a lot of movies.  Last year I saw a movie 'Black Book'  - and it was one of the best movies ive seen in a while (and not just because carice van houten is a babe).

 a lot of recent horror fims are remakes of superior japanese horror movies.  My sister says the spanish version of vanilla sky is better than the tom cruise movie.  and some of my friends are telling me the chinese version of Departed is better than scorsese's movie :(

what if foreign movies end up becoming better than US the way people look at domestic/imports for beer/wine/cars/clothes ?

When the academy expanded the best picture field from 5 to 10, my sister said they should do away with the best foreign film category and just open the Best Picture to any movie regardless of nation.

had to remind her that Life is beautiful was nominated for best picture and still lost ;p  which still pisses her off the same way i get mad Star Wars lost to Annie Hall :D

Anyway, to get back on topic. i mentioned this on the other thread, but my guess is that TPM could = same gross as that clone wars movie that came out a couple years ago, which is a lot less than Lion King.

what a lousy poster.  Im not expecting all posters to look like the SW 1977 One-Sheet, but this reeks of laziness.  The gold special edition poster was cool.  So was the IMAX AOTC poster.

This is coming right on the heels of blu ray - i gotta believe that would dampen any motivation to pay a premium to see this in 3d for a lot of people. 

I also agree with the idea that lucas is trying to blackmail people into seeing TPM by saying he won't convert other episodes if TPM bombs. it'll be interesting to see if he reiterates this as we come closer to the date.

Hard to tell how successful this will be - im wondering if that IMAX release of AOTC is a good comparison?   That made $8 million in 2002 dollars < 100 screens.  unlike other campaigns - there was no hiding that it was strictly a novelty; the IMAX AOTC was a pretty fun experience (if there is one takeaway from AOTC for me, at least the theatrical runs were fun interesting experiences with the crowds and different types of theatres).

if I were to guess, I would say sales far less than Lion King 3D, but = clone wars.  And that would be enough to cover the costs.

darth_ender said:

The line I don't like is...

*reads through 3 pages of this thread*

Nope, never mind.  There's not a line in the whole film that wasn't already taken.  In three pages, you managed to cover them all.  Thanks a lot, guys.

 how bout some bad shmi dialog:

"you have brought hope to those who have none"  - lol, the whole pod race was so silly and contrived, i felt more elation when daniel-san won the karate title. but im not sure mr. miyagi would over exaggerate his victory like this.  of course, it woulda helped if lucas actually showed a sense of urgency and illustrated the hopelessness.  but sadly, qui-gon & co little detour to tatooine comes off as a mere pit stop to grab lunch on a way to a road trip than a race across space to plead galatic leaders to end a brutal occupation. :(

"you cannot stop the change. anymore than you can stop the suns from setting"  luckily her granddaughter was smart enough to just say "hes got to follow his own path, no one can choose it for him."

poor pernilla  :(

I thought the OOT was confirmed to be in a LoC protected vault - just not available for vewiing?

Anyway, Harmy's work changed things for me.   Things turned around with the RLM reviews because they completely discredited Lucas and the PT and confirmed what I've felt for years.  But it didn't make it easier to accept that the OOT was not available and Lucas was going to continue to play with his toys.

Once Harmy came out with his de-specialized editions, i've been feeling much better and was able to enjoy as if it were the good old days again. 

I'll always be disgusted at what has happened to the once proud saga formerly known as star wars,  but I can also shake my head and laugh at it as well.

in a perfect world, I would have:

1) the OOT in pristine, remastered HD - immortalized for a thousand generations.

2)A confession from lucas that his whole 'original vision' nonsense was a crock and everything from 1983 -2005 was one giant 3 card monte (playing not only the fans, but also the PT cast and crew)

3)The PT's legacy ends up like that Beware the Octopus movie Booth mentioned. 

the second point may not happen, but thats just a formality.  It would just confirm what we all know.  Most important thing is OOT.  and I think within next 10 years is a good shot.  In the mean time,  OOT in 720p is the centerpiece to my movie collection

I thought they specifically had him cut in half to leave no doubt about his death and to quash any hopes of seeing him again?

georgec said:

It's at ~1 minute into this clip. The interviewer tries to say the PT is good and Ewan shrugs it off. I guess Ewan is a h8r!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z08pO0nDCPA

 thanks

so he singles out the 3rd one.  certainly a far cry from 1997. and he doesn't even remember the name of the planet !?!?!? :.(..  and listen to the audience laugh as he says "well, those are the ones i did"

and he volunteered his opinion on this!!!!  he wasn't even asked what he thought of the PT vs the OT.  :(

TK-949 said:

The only cool thing about that scene was the sounddesign.

yeah, when i went to check out receivers and speakers, I would bring the dvd with me as a test.

A lot of people don't like this scene for various reasons:

-rehash of ESB (lucas covers his ass by talking about poems and stanzas and apologists fall for it)

-jango did everything to blow up the ship and it still didn't blow up

-the seismic charges

I think the real problem was it was yet another meaningless action sequence - there was no real change in plot before or after.  at least in the droid factory scene, it led to anakin and padme being captured.  at least it was more fun than TPMs horrifc planet core sequence.

anyway, so many lines of dialog are bad its hard to come up with one :( 

i'll go with padme:

"perhaps with merely your presence, the mysteries surrounding this threat will be revealed.  Now if you'll excuse me, I will retire"

it shows that even when the dialog isn't gag inducing, it still sucks. 

how about just saying "maybe you'll catch the assassin in the act and that'll be the end of it" !? 

its hard to classify the dialog between just rotten dialog and dialog thats illogical.  for example, when mace asks obi-wan if he thinks the cloners are part of the plot, obi-wan say "no master, there appears to be no motive"  WTF!?  padme is part of the OPPOSITION to create an army!!  they would have every motive in the world to kill her!!  or when padme asks anakin "whats wrong, ani?"  um...his mom just got killed? 

for a fun drinking game, count how many times the word "archive" is used..or "my young apprentice/padawan".  Poor Ewan was right- the greatest acclaimation you can give to Alec Guinness is that beyond all his great roles, he managed to create a memorable performance in spite of lucas' destructive incompetance.

based on zombies book, jonathan hales was brought on to co-write the script but there was so little time left, its unlikely he changed much.  so he was either put in a position to fail, or this was a PR move in light of TPMs backlash.

:(