Lets talk all things Star Wars

[Riceball]

The ideas thing is very true and to be fair to Lucas, every ideas man is going to be like this. No one has 100% good/great ideas and it probably is more of an 8-2 split of objectively bad to good before taking into account opinion that makes “good” even lower.

And to be fair to Lucas, i do think he recognized this weakness which is why he asked prominent directors like Spielberg to direct the prequels. In addition to their expertise in directing and dialogue which would have covered his own weaknesses, he would have a trusted talented individuals to bounce ideas off of. I do think we tend to think of the top creatives as “mythological geniuses” who came up with so-and-so invention completely on their own (Steve Jobs, John Lennon, etc) when in reality they did have people to bounce ideas off of.

i do think Lucas is still bittersweet about Star Wars. On the one hand, its not his problem anymore and he doesnt have to incur fan wrath for things they dont like and he ensures his employees and family still make money. On the other, Star Wars is his baby. It was what made his career and is still all him. Althoigh Indiana Jones is his other top IP, that one is arguably co-developed with Spielberg and is not “all Lucas” in that sense. Well, no meed to feel too sorry for him since he is still a cinematic legend with wealth that will last beyond his lifetime.

I'd argue that with the PT George had lost those people who he could bounce ideas off of and tell him when they were *****. The PT felt more like they were all George's ideas bounced only off of people who would definitely not tell him that his ideas were *****. This was because he either hired nothing but yes men/women or they were too in awe of him and honestly thought he could do no wrong and that no idea from George could be a bad idea.

 

[Axlotl]

I think George bought into his own hype and thought he was some kind of King Midas. Didn't he film the first draft of Phantom Menace?

 

[HeartBlade]

I'd argue that with the PT George had lost those people who he could bounce ideas off of and tell him when they were *****. The PT felt more like they were all George's ideas bounced only off of people who would definitely not tell him that his ideas were *****. This was because he either hired nothing but yes men/women or they were too in awe of him and honestly thought he could do no wrong and that no idea from George could be a bad idea.

I saw I didnt really complete my train of thought there. Lucas did ask prominent directors to direct the prequels because he didnt want to and asked Spielberg, Zemeckis, and Ron Howard who all said no which forced Lucas to direct them himself.

i dont know if he forcibly surrounded himself with yes men/women or not but that was the result with people just saying yes to all of his ideas which resulted in episode 1 being a pretty bad trashfire that even Lucas acknowledged after watching (i think he mentions that he went “too far in some places” and he cant just take things out).

Kind of the best one i can find even though it has red media voice over.

Didnt mean to imply that Lucas got feedback on the prequels but the contrary, that he was kind of forced to go in with no one to say no to his bad ideas which is why the prequels suck as films even though there are gems in there. You can see that Episode one basically magnified the issues of RotJ, notably the multiple conclusions, and Lucas gets a little better with 2 and 3 but he is not good at show not tell exposition and character development which hurts PT. Its telling by the fact that people praise the clone wars because it actually shows and develops the relationship between Obi Wan and Anakin, actually showing Obi Wan as both a teacher and a brother and that the two were actually on good terms and trusted each other.

I do think that as a result, PT is “better” if viewers consume explanatory material beyond the movies since they do alot pf the character building and heavy lifting that the movies fail to do.

 

[Psab keel]

It was my understanding that when George pulled his membership to the Directors Guild after they slighted him for Empire's opening sequence (Empire of Dreams talks about this) so he was no longer able to hire certain directors which could have done the Prequels. So it was just as much a political issue with the film industry as much as it was his friends not wanting the responsibility to reinvigorate the franchise with a new trilogy and risk their careers in the process. Or given the way Lucas worked with Marquand on Jedi, they didn't want to risk damaging their friendship with George because they knew he was going to back seat direct? This is just a theory but it could explain their motivations to try and stay away from the project.

As far as having good ideas and having lots of ideas filtered through trusted peers, I think any good writer worth their salt is willing to work with people who will challenge them creatively, even if it means being frank with them about if something is any good or not. I mean George does strike me as being collaborative in a sense, but his need to control every aspect of his work was kind of to his detriment when it's clear people were afraid to speak more candidly to him because of his status. The guy was paying for these movies out of his own pocket, using resources and businesses he built from the ground up to do it all so it would certainly be intimidating to try and voice any dissenting opinions when you're up against that kind of legend. For better or worse he was the final author of those movies and their success or failure was solely on him because it was his uncompromised vision.

I think that's the price of his success though because he was suddenly bankrolling large companies and it was just as much about keeping these people employed which prompted the sale to Disney. It was a totally different ballgame when he was a nobody just trying to make films. That's typically the case with lots of successful artists as they age. When they get bigger their art can suffer because they have to consider the business and not just the message of their work anymore. Just like a person has to take into consideration the needs of their family before they do something for themselves alone. It's the same principle. It's not always a bad thing and I'm not suggesting that parents can't also still have convictions but there are sacrifices that have to be made and often it means putting aside your own wants to help provide for those you care about. Star Wars, whether poorly received by the fans and critics, did make a lot of money and kept a lot of people employed so they counted on George to really give it his all.

 

[simping4asoka]

So I've been wanting to create this thread for sometime. Basically if anyone wants to. Come talk Star Wars. Doesn't matter if it's about the movies, TV shows, games, books, Legends or Canon. If it's Star Wars, then let's talk about. If there's something you love, let's talk about it. Something you hate, let's talk. Waiting for the paint to dry on your gorgeous V2, come and talk!

favo movie or show

 

[Joek3rr]

favo movie or show

Apologies for the delayed reply!

"A New Hope" (97 Special Edition) is without a doubt my favorite Star Wars film or show. Now I think that "The Empire Strikes Back" or "The Last Jedi" are technically better films.( And Irving Kershner is underrated) But it's hard to beat the nostalgia I have for that first film. It was my first film, and my first Star Wars film I saw. I was 3 going on 4, it had huge impact on my life.

 

[Axlotl]

Apologies for the delayed reply!

"A New Hope" (97 Special Edition) is without a doubt my favorite Star Wars film or show. Now I think that "The Empire Strikes Back" or "The Last Jedi" are technically better films.( And Irving Kershner is underrated) But it's hard to beat the nostalgia I have for that first film. It was my first film, and my first Star Wars film I saw. I was 3 going on 4, it had huge impact on my life.

Why the Special Addition?

 

[Joek3rr]

Why the Special Addition?

I guess because that was one playing in theaters when my parents took me.

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

There was a lot of nice stuff added to the Special Edition, I'll give you that. Unfortunately, there were at least as many elements that didn't work, IMO. Greedo (y'all know what I mean), the Jabba scene, the ronto photobomb, the elimination of the wolfman, the loss of all those glorious physical X-Wing models with a whole bunch of copy-pasted CG Red 2s... Not to mention the things that actually needed fixing that George didn't touch.

I still wibble back and forth. For all that, the new space battle is so much more dynamic, the Falcon leaving Mos Eisley is so much more dynamic, and even that little bit of the scene with Biggs, Red Leader, and Luke on Yavin IV was nice to finally see.

 

[batguy]

The special editions have caused so much needless squabbling . . . it's just depressing. This stuff looks so easily solvable to me.

Star Wars, ET, Indy . . . the public's position is "PLEASE GOD leave our beloved old movies alone!" and it's a defensive position. We don't want shoddy altered editions to permanently replace the original versions. We should never have been facing that choice in the first place.

It's easy to do some polling and figure out what most of the fans want. It's easy to make it. It's easy to include an original version of the movie in the package along with the new one. Etc.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

I also liked some of the SEs. The thing that I still scratch my head over is why they didn't add the B-Wings and more fighters to the ROTJ battle? That would have made a heck of a lot more sense than some of the goofy things, like the new Jabba song (or FF time). The only thing I can think of is the Rebels went "Well the first time we attacked the Death Star they were stupid and only threw a handful of fighters at us. Let's plan for them doing the same so we'll only send like 10 fighters against that thing."

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

I mentioned some time prior, but the B-Wing thing is one of my big gripes about that battle. We see them flying to the launch point and jumping into hyperspace. We see them deploying their S-foils as the fleet approaches the Death Star II. We see them veer off when the shield turns out to still be up... And that's it. Since there were apparently problems with the miniatures that made working with them difficult, several planned sequences were scrubbed, even though bits remain in the finished film (the one star destroyer exploding in the background of one shot was part of the sequence depicted in that one publicity photo, for instance). Despite some of the more recent fiction that's come out, I always felt like they worked best as the rest of Gold Group, since it made no sense to me that Gold Group consisted only of the Millennium Falcon, especially when Lando called for Red and Gold Groups to follow him in and the only ships we saw with him were from Red.

I know the real-world reason, though. He just wanted to do a twentieth-anniversary restoration and re-release of Star Wars, taking the opportunity, when scanning and digitally repairing the negatives, to "fix" the things he had been unhappy with. But Fox said "If you want to do that one, you have to do all three." So everyone's time and energy ended up split between the entire OT instead of being concentrated on the one film, and it shows in all of them. If they'd had the time and manpower focused, for instance, they would have re-created digital versions of all of the fighters at Yavin, not just copy-pasted one X-Wing and one Y-Wing. I definitely give George the hairy eyeball, though, that he apparently felt it was more important to pad out the stuff in Jabba's palace and give us blinking Ewoks than fix the damn space battle....

 

[Axlotl]

That's my issue with the Special Additions. He didn't fix anything that needed fixed, he just threw in a bunch of junk that does nothing to service the story, and in fact often sabotages it by distracting from the focus of the scene or breaking the fourth wall entirely.

 

[Somerset]

What do you all think of the "Star Wars Revisited" edits that Adywan has been working on over the years. "What the special editions could have been" I think is the tagline.

I watched ANH and ESB when they respectively came out and liked them, but haven't seen them since. I remember there being lots of neat background additions and small tweaks to some of special effects that were quite good in addition to some of the colour corrections.

Edit: a quick scroll down the blog and it looks like he's trying to insert some B-wings into RotJ Star Wars Revisited News

 

[Laspector]

I consider Adywan's ANH to be my definitive special edition. In fact, it is pretty much the only version of ANH I ever watch anymore. I would say I agree with about 98% of what he did with that movie. He actually fixed things that needed fixing. There are a few things he did I don't agree with, but I still consider it 100 times better than George's special editions.

However, once he got to ESB, he fell into the exact same pit George fell in. By then, he was just changing things just for the sake of changing them. Adywan's ESB is fun for a watch, just to see what he did, but after that IMHO it falls short. It is just too much.

 

[Psab keel]

I'll take actual film restorations like the Team Negative One efforts over fan edits or Special Editions any day. Why people obsess over "fixing" these movies is beyond me. There isn't a single movie or series of movie that has been "restored" to death like Star Wars and I think it's been to its detriment.

No matter how well executed the updated effects are they never mesh right with 40 plus year old footage. It's just a fact. It's one thing to fix worn out negatives or color correct them or some other technical fix that preserves the film in its original state for posterity, but any additions or subtractions in the form of new scenes, even just some fly by effects shot just takes me right out of the movie because it wasn't there in the original cut of the film and never looks the same, no matter how well executed. These things are just distractions at best, as much as the effects might look spectacular, they just don't belong.

Instead of focusing so much effort and money trying to remix an existing story, why can't fans put all that incredible talent towards creating their own story? Surely all that labor could be poured into building some other world where they call the shots instead of having to manipulate someone else's work?

It's one thing to replicate items from your favorite properties because it doesn't effect the story of those movies. Surely it's something else entirely to think that a fan or even George himself could "improve" upon the past. If its own creator couldn't get it right, then how could an outsider do better? The SE has bred this idea that the past needs revision rather than moving on. Its one thing to honor the past or be inspired by it, but it's another thing entirely to try and relive it over and over. George just couldn't walk away from his creation. Why fans fall into the same mentality is something I'll never understand. Just because the creator could never recapture his own magic doesn't mean fans should make the same choice. If anything they should learn from his mistakes and be inspired to be creative beyond what their heroes could accomplish. I would much rather see a fan of these movies, or any other property from that generation, create something new.

If I had the kind of resources and talent to do the kind of work that Adywan or any other fan like them I wouldn't even bother with Star Wars. I'd be off making movies that had nothing to do with it and building my own worlds. Why limit yourself?

Star Wars was always meant to be the jumping off point, not the ends themselves. It was created to inspire people to do more, yet what it's done is trap most of us in its dazzle.

 

[Axlotl]

It's not just you.

Psab edited his post, and now my post doesn't make sense.

 

[Solo4114]

De-specialized for me, thanks.

 

[Psab keel]

Sorry Axlotl! I originally said that it was just me that felt this way. Clearly I'm not alone.

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

Psab edited his post, and now my post doesn't make sense.

Oh -- oh that's some irony, there. What was that about trying to improve the past...?