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zombie84

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21-Nov-2005
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12-Jan-2024
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Post
#301150
Topic
How did you envision the prequels?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/301150/action/topic#301150
Time
Yeah, theres not really a sort of list of what Lucas talked about regarding the prequels, you sort of have to read through the whole book. But really, there isn't a whole lot--it was all general statements. Theres a republic with Jedi, Kenobi discovers and trains Anakin, Palpatine was a senator and becomes the head of the Republic, a Clone war occurs, Palpatine lures Anakin to the darkside and betrays the Jedi who are somehow wiped out, Kenobi and Anakin fight on a volcano where Anakin gets burned up and becomes Vader, Kenobi works with Bail Organa to hide Anakin's wife and twin children, and somewhere in all of that there would be something called the Clone Wars.

Really, thats all we knew. The only additional specifics is in relation to the Clone War--not Mandolorians but "Imperial Shocktroopers." These were super-troopers of a distant origin, of which Boba Fett was a part of, who fought a war called the Clone War, which the Jedi were involved in, but were defeated by the Jedi.

But any of that was subject to change, as can be seen by the Clone War. The above "Shocktrooper" info was revealed in Bantha Tracks, and around the same time LFL also published that the stormtroopers were clones--so perhaps the Clone Wars were to be that the Imperial Shocktroopers tried to invade the Republic, the Republic created a clone army that was led by the Jedi, and when the war was over Palpatine used these as his stormtroopers. This was all invented around 1979 or so--before this Lucas hadn't developed the Clone War at all, other than it was a long-ago battle which the Jedi were involved in. In fact, one idea from 1977 stated that Lando was a clone survivor from the war, and came from a planet of clones.
Post
#301110
Topic
The Beginning: Making 'Episode I': A comedy masterpiece
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/301110/action/topic#301110
Time
I was ready to love Terminator 3--I went to that theater excited as hell. I didn't expect it to live up to either two originals because I know that those are so above-average that its an unrealistic expectation. But when the credits rolled and i left the theater I realised that the film fucking sucked just because it fucking sucked. Okay, some nice action scenes, and a pretty neat last 10 minutes. But you know what--Wing Commander has redeemable qualities like this. Battlefield Earth has some interesting effects and a cool action scene. Scary Movie 4 has a few jokes I laughed at. Every movie has something good in it, something worth watching. When you get a pool of talent--Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, designer Doug Chiang and Gavin Boucquet, the best special effects wizards in existance, John Williams and hell, even George Lucas--of course there will be elements, scenes and moments that are watchable, good or even excellent. But the reason that people think Wing Commander sucked, Terminator 3 was poor and Phantom Menace was poor was because, for whatever good elements in there, they were swallowed up by ten times as many bad elements. Thats what matters.

And this excuse of "fans were waiting to hate" is total bullshit to excuse poor filmmaking. Lord of the Rings got more successful with each film, and this had almost as much expectation--and more, IMO, challenges to overcome. But LOTR, while not perfect, was done pretty well, and people also embraced Harry Potter and Chronicles of Narnia--films that are light and whimsical like TPM, appealing to young kids. But people and critics praised them because they were done well. Theres this myth that people wanted to hate TPM--but that makes absolutely no sense. Why the hell would Star Wars fans seek out to dislike what was such a good story?? Yes, the expectations were high, but if the movie was at least done half-way well people would have liked it. Look at ROTS--its not exactly great, its probably worse than ROTJ, but fans are willing to give a little, and this film was embraced by most people as worthwhile and had almost no backlash except by select fans. Phantom Menace was slagged because it wasn't just "not great" but because it was outright bad. It had terrible writing, terrible directing, and even the acting was kind of dull. Sure, the music and effects and costumes and designs were good, but thats just because Lucas had a bunch of talented people around him that he paid to make the film for him. The emotional core of the film--the writing, conveyed by directing and made material by the acting--was a hollow failure for the most part, even if there are some moments that succeed.
Post
#301080
Topic
How did you envision the prequels?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/301080/action/topic#301080
Time
Originally posted by: see you auntie
I've got no criticism apart from a couple of spelling errors.


Yeah thanks for pointing that out, the transcription wasn't typed up by me and I didn't realise how many typos were in it.

The biggest strength about this early draft is that Obi Wan is in the Qui Gon role. Its Obi Wan who uncovers the invasion, rescues the queen, meets Anakin, decides to train him, wins his freedom and presents him to the Jedi council. Kenobi has a strong relationship with Anakin as a father figure, he has a strong relationship with Padme, and he also is more developed as a character. He's in his thirties, a full Jedi, bold in many ways but also a good role model. It would have strengthened the series so much because it has a trickle-down effect into all the character relationships and into the next films, which also meant that AOTC could have been free to take more time developing characters since there was no more introductions needed. You can see in the dialog exerpts that the dialog is no better than the final film, and of course Palpatine's whole arc is non-existant--he just shows up at the end and says "hey look I'm supreme chancellor now!" But as a first draft these things obviously could have been worked out and developed, and its great the way Jar Jar is semi-normal and actually becomes a real warrior in the end battle--a character arc, look at that. Theres also some neat bits like Theed city actually being assaulted and us seeing the people suffering, and I like the way we actually witness Anakin being accepted into the Jedi at the end.
The movie is still a bit dissapointing, but only in a "well thats not as good as the OT" way instead of "what the hell was that piece of shit?". I think if Lucas gave this draft to a real writer that could have made the characters real, the plot more interesting and the drama a bit more hevfty that the film could have surpassed ROTJ.
Post
#301066
Topic
Demonoid Dead...
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/301066/action/topic#301066
Time
Originally posted by: Darth Chaltab
I'm a bit weird in that morally I don't think it's right to download music that I don't already own in some way


That strikes me as kind of silly. I mean you don't pay for the radio, and back in the day a lot of people would make cassette recording of their favourite songs from the radio (remember doing that? I do!)--downloading to me is not a whole lot different. A lot of musicians make their music available for free nowadays. Its really only the big record labels that are all up in moral arms--and the entire reason is because its the record executives who get profit from CD sales. They screw most of their clients and keep most of the profit for themselves, which is why it is at the pressure of major recor label executives that the RIAA and such started taking action. In fact, in Canada when blank media (CD's, cassettes) came out, the Canadian recording association put a small fee (ie 2 cents per CD) on all recordable media in order to protect against losses, so really we already have paid them the licencing fees; I remember this was a big deal way back when because their greed ended up giving users a legal loophole but I don't know if they changed this.

Post
#301061
Topic
Original theatrical subtitles....
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/301061/action/topic#301061
Time
I think it was HTF that said they were Laserdisk rips. EOD wasn't edited in-house by Lucasfilm, as is common for DVD and any kind of product really it was outsourced to a third-party who put it together, as far as I am aware. I believe they made their own rips from their own Laserdisks, and because EOD is anamorphic all the non-anamorphic sources they used had to just be converted. I don't have any concrete proof of this, but this to me seems believable. The EOD footage doesn't look at all like its directly from a film source--the only clip is the 1977 crawl, which loooks entirely different than the rest of the "final film" footage, with scratches and marks and an altogether different look--a look which matches all the outtakes/raw footage from the 35mm dailies. So IMO the only "final film" clip thats not from a Laserdisk source is the original crawl, which obviously would have to be the case.
Post
#301056
Topic
Demonoid Dead...
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/301056/action/topic#301056
Time
Originally posted by: Johnboy3434
Originally posted by: Arnie.d
Yes, this P2P is really killing the music industry:
Two University of London researchers found no direct link between use of songs downloaded off P2P networks and the sale of CDs, but found that heavy P2P users are more likely to go out and buy CDs (LINK).


*raises eyebrow*

There's got to be a catch. It's too good to be true. This would be like my high school teachers saying the best way to avoid an STD is to have more wanton sex. In other words: I'm certainly not complaining, but it just doesn't seem logical.


People who regularly use P2P networking are exposed to artists that they would never be exposed to otherwise, and their musical worldview opens considerably. P2P brings more new music to people. A lot of people who use P2P use it as a sort of search engine or browsing tool for new kinds of music because they are really into music, and not just because they are cheap. In my experience this couldn't be truer--were it not for P2P I would have half the CD collection I currently have.

The catch is that major labels and artists get hit. Britney Spears suffers, Justin Timberlake suffers and most Top-10 artists suffer. Most people who download their music don't buy their CD's, go to their concerts, or support them financially in any way. But these people are the least harmed by this process because the record labels still make hundreds of millions of dollars and these artists' music is on the radio for free anyway. So, sort of ironically, there is very little harm actually done, preportionally speaking. On the other hand, bands that have more serious followings--a lot of rock bands for example--have downloaders go out and buy their CD's because listeners want more than just the singles and because there is a more personal relationship that entails supporting the band. Non-radio bands, which, lets face it, comprises about 50% of the music in cyberspace, suffer virtually no loses at all, because the only way people hear their music is often through P2P and internet radio, thus even if only 1 out of every 20 downloaders buys something from them, thats still a gain because they wouldn't have had that single purchase anyway. These artists don't make any money from CD sales anyway--in fact no artists really does. CD sales benefit mostly the record label. Thus, when someone downloads a song or an album and discovers a new band they like, they are likely to go to their concerts, and thats where the vast, vast majority or artist income comes from. So, while in a worst case scenario they may lose some CD sales to downloading it actually becomes a huge, huge gain because the amount of new listeners and fans they inherit more than makes up for the difference.

And again, I'm quite certain that CD sales have increased exponentially since P2P became common. This I credit directly to P2P, for exposing people to more music and for making music in general more popular.
Post
#301052
Topic
35mpg by 2020
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/301052/action/topic#301052
Time
I don't think any new cars will be totally gas-powered in 2020 anyways. Hybrids will hopefully allow us to get at least 50 MPG or else we'll essentially be forced to use totally alternate-fuel-source vehicles, never mind hybrids, because the mathematics of number of vehicles, amount of oil in the world, and cost of running your car simply won't add up.
Post
#301037
Topic
Demonoid Dead...
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/301037/action/topic#301037
Time
Originally posted by: Arnie.d
Yes, this P2P is really killing the music industry:
Two University of London researchers found no direct link between use of songs downloaded off P2P networks and the sale of CDs, but found that heavy P2P users are more likely to go out and buy CDs (LINK).

A bit off topic but THIS is why you don't want that fucking DRM shit!


Thank god someone scientificly studied this. In fact, I believe that CD sales have preportionally increased since 1999 when P2P really started.
Post
#301016
Topic
How did you envision the prequels?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/301016/action/topic#301016
Time
Originally posted by: xhonzi
Wow, thanks for sharing.

Where is the rest of this book? And is the rest of the 1st draft of TPM also less screwed up than the movie?

xhonzi



Coincidentally, I just posted an article on the rough draft of TPM.


The Beginning - A Look at the Rough Draft of Episode I

To answer your question, yes, its much less screwed up than the film. Definitly imperfect but I would have rather had this version filmed than what we got.
Post
#300976
Topic
How did you envision the prequels?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/300976/action/topic#300976
Time
Originally posted by: Major fatal Moebius
Well, I don't know about you guys, but over the years, now being a little older, wiser, I've learned to appreciate the prequel trilogy a whole lot more than I used to. There's just too much greatness in it to blatantly ignore or scoff at. The OT and PT are two totally different creations (yet, with similar themes and interesting philosophical ideas), accept that and you'll find there's plenty of great stuff to be found in the prequels.

That said, while I'm very fond of The phantom menace and Revenge of the sith now I still can't totally get into Attack of the clones.


Of course, the PT is filled with terrific images, has some nice action scenes and is overflowing with thematic meaning and layered construction. In this regard its worth at least thinking about for a few moments. But a poorly constructed plot, terribly written characters and a rather hollow emotional core cannot be ignored--the films, as dramatic vehicles, which is what they are supposed to be, not intellectual exercises for us to analyse, are failures. But they are fascinating failures. Because even "bad" films have a lot of good elements in them. The sequels to The Matrix are very similar in their relation to the original that the prequels have--the two Matrix sequels have incredible images, some terrific action scenes and are overflowing with layered construction and thematic meaning. But the characters were poorly written through much of it, and the plot badly constructed--I think both of these are much stronger than what Lucas often accomplished, but they are not successes as emotional and dramatic vehicles.

I don't think the prequels should be written off, but I don't think any of here really did--we watched them, discussed them, watched them again, analysed them and discussed them some more. That is far more from fair, and so when we continue to criticise them I don't think its as simple as us not giving them their due. The successes that the films have within them--some clever subplotting, interesting thematic construction, etc--can only entertain you so far without having an emotional or dramatic core to hook us with. Thats why we continue to love the OT but continue to criticise the PT.

Post
#300961
Topic
How did you envision the prequels?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/300961/action/topic#300961
Time
Originally posted by: xhonzi
Is anyone else having a math problem with the prequel trilogy...?

This is something that has been bugging me in trying to understand the prequel/original trilogy timeline...

Excatly how old are Anakin and Obiwan in the 2 trilogies?

I'd say from the OT that Anakin is 50ish (Shaw was 77 during Jedi filming) and Obiwan is maybe 60ish (Sir Alec was 62 during the filming of ANH). Sine Luke is 18-20 at most, the PT can only be 21 years earlier than the OT... which would place Anakin at 29 and Obiwan at 39, obviously not the ages they were in the PT. Anakin is, again, 20 at most at the end of RotS so that makes him 41 at most in ANH...

Do you know what I mean? How old do you think they should have been in the PT?

xhonzi


As was pointed out, I attempted to actually track this in a book i wrote. Sometimes the guessing game can get a bit dodgy but a general sense, if not a specific pinpointing, can be achieved.

What I discovered is that there are three timelines.

The first is in Star Wars from 1977. Here Annikin and Vader are two seperate people--and hence very different in age. Obi Wan is about 75, and since Annikin was his childhood friend from Tatooine he would be very close to that as well; pegging Annikin's specific age here is a bit difficult but the 70-75 range is most accurate. For the purposes of illustration let's just say it was the same as Obi Wan. Vader on the other hand was "a young Jedi" as Obi Wan call him, his mere student, and would have been around 20 or so at the time he was Obi Wan's student, thus at the time of Star Wars he is about 40 years old.

TIMELINE ONE
Obi Wan: 75
Annikin: 75
Vader: 40

The second timeline was created with the combination of Annikin and Vader for ESB, though the story elements were not concretely desided until ROTJ. In this one the elderly Annikin had to be somehow reconciled with the young student Vader. For whatever reason, perhaps to better show that Vader was Luke's father by portraying him as an old man and not someone in middle age, Lucas decided to go with Annikin's age, but for some reason dropped it down a decade to 65. Thus at the time of Star Wars he would be 62.

TIMELINE TWO
Obi Wan: 75
Vader: 62

The third timeline was created for the prequels. Because Lucas now had to reconcile the older Annikin with the student Vader in concrete, literal terms, he could not have a 50-year-old student apprentice to Obi Wan, and hence had Anakin go with the original age of Vader, that is roughly twenty at the time of his turn to the darkside. But Lucas also decided to set his discovery up as being in his childhood, not adolescence as it originally was. The first draft of TPM had things sort of consistent age-wise with the first timeline, in that Anakin was 12 and Obi Wan was an older, full Jedi knight who discovers him, and with the film occuring thirty years before Star Wars and not twenty, that meant that Anakin/Vader would still be roughly 40 and Obi Wan in his seventies during Star Wars. Lucas' second draft completely changed this--Anakin was made 9, not a big change, but Obi Wan was made into a student and in fact it wasn't even he but his master who finds Anakin. Lucas kept Obi Wan as old as an apprentice could possibly be--I think it might actually have been 27 years old.

So with the third timeline created for Episode I Vader is once again 40-ish at the time of Star Wars but Obi Wan only 57 or so--not even a legal senior citizen. This made it even more bizarre when Vader is unmasked and portrayed by a 77-year-old man in ROTJ. Whatever.

TIMELINE THREE

Obi Wan: 57
Anakin: 42

The above ages I believe are what I ended up with but I am just going off memory. Its in the chapter "The Beginning...Again" in the book, near the end of the chapter.
Post
#300891
Topic
Young Indiana Jones Chronicles DVDs
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/300891/action/topic#300891
Time
Originally posted by: ADigitalMan
Getting eight feature-length telefilms with roughly two hours of bonus material for each one ... that's like $12.50 per episode at retail.

I know that, objectively speaking, its actually quite decent. DVD has in some ways spoiled us--I mean if you take a look at stuff like Battlestar Galactica, you get each hour-long episode with commentary and deleted scenes for like $3.00 or so. The problem is that the Young Indy set is very pricey relative to the market which, as far as companies being greedy, cheap, lazy, or whatever other accusation, is really the aspect that matters.

1) Like Ronnie Mervis the diamond importer says, "Nobody pays retail, why should you." Amazon's opening week on Vol. 1 was 48% off the MSRP.


Yes, I had been thinking of doing this. Its still annoying that Lucasfilm has fixed the price in retail so high, and not just because I want to save money, because I also believe its a half-decent show that actually might have taught viewers about history, but now hardly anyone will get to see all the work they put into the sets. I'm sorry but a sale sticker with $90.99 is way too much when I saw this thing sitting beside the new Rome Season 2 set with its $64.99 sticker and much better quality content.
Post
#300876
Topic
Young Indiana Jones Chronicles DVDs
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/300876/action/topic#300876
Time
Well, indeed Star Trek season sets are way overpriced. I don't think you should ever pay over $60 or $70 for any type of set, unless its something like the John Ford at Fox collection that has 200 disks, or the Seinfeld Complete Series or whatever.

I can see these being reduced to half the current price but without the docs--again, robbing the set of half of its value. The docs are a big draw, they are professionally researched and very education, and well made, and its great that each episode has a specific documentary on the subject within the episode. But anything over $70 is outrageous, and this is the sale price. Here in Canada its normal retail price is $100.00, more in some places. If they want to appeal to either demographic--ie fans of the series, or parents and teachers seeking educational entertainment--then it needs to be within reasonable grasp of each, and $90 on sale is about 25% too high. The surprising thing is that this is a relatively forgotten show with a small fanbase--theres not a huge built-in audience like Star Trek. A lot of people would be curious to check it out, especially in light of Indy IV, and it really looks like a cool set but I'm really astounded at how overpriced it is. Its a complete waste.
Post
#300860
Topic
Young Indiana Jones Chronicles DVDs
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/300860/action/topic#300860
Time
You know these would great if they werent 90 FUCKING DOLLARS! I mean seriously--90 bucks? Okay, sure, they made a full-length documentary for each episode, but theres only 13 of them, and no additional extras beyond DVD-ROM stuff. $90?? If it was $40 or $50 I would pick it up, because I liked the show and I liked that they are taking an educational stance. But honestly--WHO is actually going to be buying these things when they are almost 100 bucks? LFL has made a serious, grave mistake here, and all that work they put into this--three or four years worth--is going to go down the drain. A shame.
Post
#300746
Topic
Family Guy to kick off season with 1 hour Star Wars spoof
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/300746/action/topic#300746
Time
Originally posted by: Johnny Ringo
wow, they really are going all out on the packaging. I too found the episode a bit flat and would be hard pressed to buy it. If they were to include a montage of all the star wars parody clips to date and some other extra content i might reconsider. It all just seems a bit much for a two part episode - I mean wont this show up as part of the season box set proper anyway?


One should think so. As I don't buy the seasons I will gladly pick this up--but most Family Guy fans will be getting the season set, so theoretically you should get this sometime late next year. I guess they are appealing mainly to SW fans who don't necessarily buy the seasons--and yikes look at that packaging! Is this thing being made by Lucasfilm? Seems quite excessive for something so small--I mean the episode is cute as a nice little tribute but its really nothing more.

I wonder what the other Star Wars-related episode is--i had heard they were going to do ESB as well. Personally i hope they don't, since it kinda takes the special-ness away from this tribute, and I'm not sure if I want a million Family Guy Star Wars episodes. But I guess it would still be funny.
Post
#300708
Topic
Ian McDiarmid's performance in the PT (also the OT) is memorable and absolutely enthralling
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/300708/action/topic#300708
Time
He was definitly the best thing about the series--until the last 30 minutes of ROTS when he became a maniacal clown of sorts. But otherwise he had the most believably portrayed part in the series. It's kind of a shame that his talents were tied up in these films and not in something that is more worthy of them. He's mostly a stage actor but i think the film world would benefit from more of him in it.
Post
#300684
Topic
Does the PT work as a fun & fluff comic book production?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/300684/action/topic#300684
Time
Originally posted by: see you auntie
Ok thanks for answering my questions.

I know the cameras that indie films use are nothing like those Lucas used. The camera cost would exceed their budget. My point was what you refered to in what digital has done for low budget film making.

In regards to your example Superman Returns and my example 300 (like I said I know nothing on the topic) I was under the impression that digital was choosen for filming because of extensive post production work/green screen, a myth you dispelled in your post chalking it up to producers and marketing. Which is why I though 300 may have been shot digitally.

HD was thought to be cheap because you didn't have to scan the film. In photographing blue/greenscreen on film you have to scan the film on a laser to get it into the computer to do the FX work, and that costs significant money. But back in 2001 the low-res of the Sony F900 actually caused much more many hours to get clean greenscreen extractions--on top of the fact that it was extraordinary expensive just to have the cameras on set. By the time ROTS came around things had improved, but it still would have been just as easy/expensive to do a film scan. Now, I believe--I hope--we've reached the point where there is actually a benefit to skipping the film scanning. But there is still the fact that when you add up the total costs its, at the least, equal the price to shoot on 35mm film and do a Digital Intermediate, and most the time its cheaper--and this is aside from the fact that its technically simpler and much more aesthetically pleasing. And again, there are severe limits to HD technology, such as slow-mo ramps. And the camera is always tethered by wires--you can't sever the camera and just have it be carried or mounted or flown around as you do with film, because the producers, DP, director and other personel can't watch it on the monitors--with film you can transmit wirelessly from the video tap, but you can't transmit an HD signial, so it limits your shots and your creativity.

With this in mind in your opinon why did Singer shoot SR digitally?


Because he liked the "clean" look. His original plan was to shoot it in 70mm. They got some 70mm panavision cameras and did tests. Then they got the Genesis HD cameras and did tests. Singer went with the Genesis.

The reason he did so--and this is purely my own inference--is purely because he liked the crisp, clean look. I think the reason he was attracted to 70mm in the first place was because it has similar qualities--it is super-detailed, and has that sharp, clean, almost grain-less look that HD has. HD takes those qualities and magnifies them.

But you'll notice in almost every case of a film being shot digitally it is the decision of the director, not the cinematographer. It was Lucas who wanted to shoot the prequels on digital tape--against the wishes of not only his DP but Sony and Panavision as well. They all didn't believe the technology was ready to put on the big screen in the high-quality that a blockbuster demanded. And they were right. Then Singer, Rodriguez and now Cameron--they are all directors who are more concerned with breaking new ground than about actual optics. No cinematographer has ever argued that HD should be shot in place of film.

Right now we are actually witnessing the birth of HD for motion picture dramas. The cameras that Star Wars and the early examples were shot on--those were cameras designed for news and documentaries. They were retrofitted for use in motion pictures, but that is not what their primary function is and was. The first real camera designed with motion pictures in mind was the Genesis, and thats why Superman Returns is leaps and bounds above anything that came before it (Scary Movie 4 actually was the first to be released). So if you think of that--in terms of cinema--as the first pinoneer, the way Lucas considered AOTC, then we are okay considering this is all prototype stuff. Give it twenty years and we might see 35mm film get replaced.