Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Pre-release)

Re: Star Wars Episode VII

gizmo said:
While I'm not so much into the design don't forget that in the Cantina you had, just off the top of my head,a mouse creature,a bat creature and a wolf creature. Also there is Bossk who is reptilian and the Gamorrean guards in ROTJ and fish like admiral Akbar. Not to mention the big dog likeness of Chewy just to name a few.

Yep, no disagreements with that , the Cantina imported animal head props from every spare production they could because they had not made enough and those they had done were very poor in some cases. BUT they made also had some brilliantly convincing ones as well, such as the Bantha, Taun Taun ,Rancor and the Dewback. Creature design is a tricky thing to handle , too much like a contemporay living animal and its easy to spot, too far away from ie tenticle faces , it looks false.
Chewy, Akbar, the Guards, Bib Fortunea worked because they had features that incorporated aspects you'd expect but didn't dominate the face. If Chewys nose had been three times the size you'd have gone "whaattttttt the" but instead they got the proportions right, as they mostly did on all the creatures (but not all).
"Pig head" disappoints me because its obviously a giant alien pig- its supposed to be a food animal ,but because they've made it look like a mutant pig and earth like that feels very lazy. I lost interest in it the moment I saw it, unlike other creatures they have done before. And by making it physical large and real enough to be moved by men, it looks clumsy and wrongly skeletoned and like a throw back to those very crap monsters from "At the Earths Core" or "The Land or "People that Time forgot." Go have a look at the Youtube clips and you'll see the similarities.
In those two pictures it looks like a rather obviously unconvincing CGI'd alien pig monster. Its a fake .Totally .The rest is OK, not brilliant, but if somebody had not said they were taken from Star Wars VII I'd have had problems identifying what production they were from. But its just one set, and the market in the video was great so I'm not particulary worried.
But I just don't like that alien pig!!!!!!! Its like something taken Star Trek where you would expect earth like animals made giant and adapted for other planets but not Star Wars.
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Re: Star Wars Episode VII

I dunno what others are seeing but it's not what I'm seeing. To me these set photos look more 'Star Wars like' than the prequels ever did.
In the OT most, if not all alien species were earth based creatures. To me the prequels didn't have the originals feel because they had too many Close Encounters of the Third Kind type aliens like the ones that created the clones.

Bring on the Giant Pigs I say.
Love what I'm seeing


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Re: Star Wars Episode VII

sw-7-32-480w.jpg

That Sign reads "WARNING" in Aurebesh, followed by some number. Though someone can't spell as there's a glyph for "ng" (Nen) which should have been used instead of "Nern" and "Grek" :D
 
Re: Star Wars Episode VII

Its the giant Tatooine chickens they've got the Jedi riding in the next set of exclusive photos that work best for me. And the Space Goats. Its not a descent sci fi film if you haven't got Space Goats in it.

In case people are kind of wondering about those photos I should make it really clear that I believe the giant creature in two pictures is a CGI'd fake ,put in there either to sell the photos to gullible news people or to cover up something else. I'm just not buying into the whole feel of this "exclusive". If it's a proper leak from on set then who ever did it WITHOUT permisssion is going to get sued upto their eyeballs, given all the people happily waving at the lens. Its not going to be too difficult to find out who it was is it? If the pictures get taken down then maybe I'm wrong.
 
Re: Star Wars Episode VII

I literally got goosebumps from looking through those pictures. All of those pictures- the color palette, the props, the buildings, and the costumes- looked very throwback to the OT. The set looks great and definitely has the REAL Star Wars feel.
 
Re: Star Wars Episode VII

Redtogusa said:
To me these set photos look more 'Star Wars like' than the prequels ever did.
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Really? These pics immediately reminded me if TPM. There's more design to them than ANH's wonderfully simplistic sets, much like TPM. And the costumes are practically identical to prequel-Tattoine attire.
 
Re: Star Wars Episode VII

IGeez you guys, I read all your comments before looking at the photos and I was expecting about the worst thing in history.
I think everything looks great! Totally love the building and prop design, the costumes look very decidedly "uncle Owen" as far as I'm concerned, and even the pig creature gets a pass from me. I also want to point out that that huge plume of wind-blown black smoke looks very familiar...

It's becoming increasingly clear to me just how futile these producers are working. All everyone bitches about is practical, no CGI, practical, and these guys go and build a whole freaking practical set and now all we're hearing is "no, it's not Star Wars, it's not good enough". I'm getting a little exhausted by the constant nit-picking, personally. Maybe we could build better sets and costumes, it is what this forum is about after all, but seriously, we asked them for practical FX and that's what we've gotten. And yet still the negativity.

Someone else mentioned that the wire fences and labeled gate look very much like a ranch of some type. My theory is that one of our new protagonists will come from a "farm boy" background of a different variety than Luke. The predictable point would be to have him use his skill during the climax of the film ("Ride a ___? You're talking to the right guy!") but hopefully the film will not be so typical.
 
Re: Star Wars Episode VII

Lutso said:
It's becoming increasingly clear to me just how futile these producers are working. All everyone bitches about is practical, no CGI, practical, and these guys go and build a whole freaking practical set and now all we're hearing is "no, it's not Star Wars, it's not good enough". I'm getting a little exhausted by the constant nit-picking, personally. Maybe we could build better sets and costumes, it is what this forum is about after all, but seriously, we asked them for practical FX and that's what we've gotten. And yet still the negativity.
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I'm with ya on that one!

I can't remember where I heard it, but someone somewhere said "Star Wars fans are the absolute worst fans because such a big part of their identity is hating what they love." And I'm sure that's been said a variety of different ways... because it's kinda true. I've said it before and I'll say it again, no matter how amazing this film is and no matter how great it is, there will still be people out there who hate it regardless. It could look identical to the OT and someone would still pick it apart somehow.

If there's one thing that bugs me about SW fans, that's it.
 
Re: Star Wars Episode VII

If Ep VII is exactly like the OT, it wouldn't be good enough because there was not enough creativity. If it's the even the slightest bit different. it won't be good enough because they weren't faithful to the original concept. There's no winning this battle. By the way, could we possibly wait until the first bootleg copy is leaked online before we start condemning it? Or least until it's in post production.
 
Re: Star Wars Episode VII

Look, there is nothing unusual about this with any film series, its just unfortunate that Star Wars really started it all nearly four decades ago and has generations of people in this huge fanbase and therefore a range of differing opinions is not unexpected. Also, after ANH TESB was a sequel which hugely improved on just about every aspect of the first and stunned everyone,including most of the critics. And that was impossible to do again, as ROTJ unfortunately proved. The arguements over the Ewoks and the second Death Star went on forever! Mostly kids and women loved them, but the hardcore wanted to declare an open EWOK hunting season!! And thats as true today as nearly thirty years ago, I know people who still feel ROTJ was a huge missed opportunity. But incomparison to the prequels ,well we won't even go there.
So this film is going to tread over some very tricky ground. Parts of it will please alot of people, parts won't. Giant pig monsters will get a pass from some, others will want them BBQ'd. Debate over this is a generally healthy thing. Overall the pics didn't look bad to me, but they were missing some very familar SW elements like droids and other aliens and I preffered the market shot in the video to the pics, same as I preffered Jabbas palace to an Ewok village in ROTJ. Its not negative to express a preference, but it is boringly repetitive to find nothing good in anything the film does at all. Personally I think we will get a great Star Wars movie. But will it be TESB great, well I doubt it. But as mostly good as ROTJ, very probably. But nothing will ever manage to recapture match the magic of ANH for me, because I can never be the same person who watched that for the very first time such along time ago.
 
Re: Star Wars Episode VII

cayman shen said:
Some kind of ranch with that raised structure and the fence? Anyway, I LOVE what I'm seeing.
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Yep, and the design is taken directly from the Ralph McQuarrie concept art at Jabba's Palace...

Those photos to my eyes are unmistakably Tatooine. Say what some may about its ubiquity in Star Wars, I'm glad to see Tatooine again.
 
Re: Star Wars Episode VII

I'm gonna offer a piece of advice right now:

Stop. Following. The. News.

Seriously. All the pre-release hype...just unplug from it. don't let your expectations be set. Other than stuff like casting decisions, I keep myself in a media blackout for these films. It doesn't always help me enjoy the film, but at least I don't think "Oh man! This is gonna be AWESOME!" and then end up disappointed when it wasn't. I maintain that folks should approach these films with equal measures of skepticism and optimism. It's fine to hope it's good, but recognize that the world is simply...different...from how it was in the days of the OT and its immediate aftermath. The Star Wars of 2015 will not be the Star Wars of 1980, nor even the Star Wars of 2005. This will be something else entirely, with the same name and some of the same characters.

JJ's probably the best guy to bring these films to the big screen other than, maybe, Joss Whedon, but even so, it will not be the same as it was in the good ol' days.

So, my advice is to unplug or pick and choose what you tune into, don't obsessively focus on every little detail in advance, and just see the film with as fresh a set of eyes as you can.
 
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