General Star Wars Thread

Apparently, Lucas says that "Han didn't shoot first, after all" now.

Place your bets, how long 'till he backs down on that statement. With another re-release of episode IV. Again.

Huh. Interesting, as I read he was forced to make that change by the ratings people*

.

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."

which wouldn't be much of an issue if the man didn't rerelease every movie twice per decade.

Either way, this is the one issue that never particularly bothered me. The edit where Greedo shoots first is actually pretty cool, as Han just casually dodges a laser to the face, without even changing his facial expression.

I have it on good*

authority that in the special 3D edition of A New Hope, the dialogue between Jabba and Han is changed.

Jabba: "Why did you fry poor Greedo?" Han: "He shot first!"

But I think Lucas is just fucking with people now, honestly.

edited 10th Feb '12 5:05:21 PM by Prowler

Now? he always has.

Okay, further fucking with people.

You honestly think George Lucas edits his work to deliberately insult fans?

edited 10th Feb '12 5:15:00 PM by HamburgerTime

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."

No, but at this point I think he's gotten some enjoyment out of watching his fans go ape every time something new is added, knowing that they'll give him more money regardless.

Which pisses me off because he had fuck all to do with the original trilogy, most of the directing work was done by someone else entirely (I forget the name).

Err... he directed ANH, dude. The one everybody praises?

Incidentally, the guy you're probably thinking of is Gary Kurtz, who convinced Lucas to make his Saga not for children but rather for everyone. While this probably resulted in better products, attributing the OT's success entirely to him is a logical fallacy.

edited 10th Feb '12 5:22:07 PM by HamburgerTime

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."

I'm a bit more fond of Empire, myself, but I see your point.

The thing is, though, I'm OK with the series' being released, maybe even remastered in High Definition, but when you start adding or taking things from the movies that were just fine with/without, it loses a good deal of its appeal. Like James Rolfe said, most of the new CG shots in the movies seem very odd and out of place, considering everything else is almost entirely devoid of CG.

Now, I'm well aware that certain things can't be translated into higher resolutions or better formats without being changed, that much I understand, but, for example, what was the need of replacing Anakin's ghost at the end of Return of the Jedi with that door face Hayden Christensen? Or to change the pitch in Vader's "NO!" at the end of that movie? Or adding a CG Jabba? Some of these changes just don't seem appropriate.

Then again, I might be nitpicking a bit. The movies are still great on their own right, regardless of the changes. That really says something about a series'.

edited 10th Feb '12 5:27:24 PM by ThatOneGuyNamedX

Oh, we can all have our preferences as to which movie was better (my favorite is ROTJ), but ANH is still the one most consistently praised; the only place I know of where you can find ANH-bashing is /tv/, and they hate everything that doesn't have scantily-clad jailbait girls they can choke the chicken to. To say this near-universal praise had nothing to do with Lucas, even though he wrote and directed it, is willful blindness.

But I agree with you on the CGI. Somehow the puppets always looked more like what real aliens would look like to me...

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."

Perhaps, I might have been a bit too fast to judge Mr. Lucas in that regard, but that doesn't mean the guy has milked the franchise dry so far, and he's to blame for many of the changes (necessary or not) that the series' has undergone so far. For better or worse.

Well obviously Greedo was meant to shoot first, its why the novelization, the shooting script, and the comic adaptation feature Han shooting first, to make it such a delightful surprise for everyone when Greedo shoots first in the actual film. Sure, it certainly seems like Han did, but filmgoers are so often wrong.

Its these kind of audience mistakes that led to Orson Welles complaining years later about people assuming Rosebud in Citizen Kane was the sled and not the nickname of Kane's mustache as he intended and why Ralph Bakshi had to endlessly explain that his animated Lord of the Rings ended in the middle of the story to symbolically represent the danger of trusting midgets with important tasks.

Its just a shame Lucas forgot to correct this mistake/misinterpretation in the initial edit, or in the re-released versions shown in the theaters in the 80s, or its initial release on home video, or later release on home video. But thank goodness we had the Special Edition to correct this gross misinterpretation.

Still waiting for a Legion of Losers movie...

Lucas's biggest sin, I think, is trying to supplant the OT with the PT in popular culture. Now, I'll be the first to say I enjoyed the PT, but that doesn't mean I'm blind to their MST3K-quality aspects nor the fact that the OT is leagues better. And because the OT is leagues better, I think it should be the portion of the Saga foremost in the public eye.

...so, did anyone here get Book of Sith?

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."

You know, I didn't dislike Episode One as much as I hated Episode 2.

AOTC is my least favorite as well. I'd hesitate to call it a bad film, but it's certainly a cheesy film with some... dubious morality in places. To be fair, Lucas has been a good sport about the whole Romantic Plot Tumor thing, and the film has enough upsides to be watchable (Zam, the Battle of Geonosis, Ewan MacGregor, and the villains).

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."

I just can't tolerate Christensen's acting here. My main issue is the character of Darth Vader, whom I grew up thinking to be a truly Bad Ass villain, being reduced to a dude who at one point yells "I WILL BE THE BEST JEDI EVER" (or something to that effect, I forget) while moping about how everyone is keeping them down, they're all jealous and whatnot.

That and the fact that he can't follow a simple order like "Protect that really important VIP, and don't go anywhere". He ended up being whiny, incompetent and all around unlikable.

Christensen is the weak link in my book, too. I found his Anakin totally unsympathetic; the OT made him out to have been a paragon who rebelled, but it turns out he was actually the Jedi equivalent of Superboy-Prime.

That said, I think the PT was basically destined to be at least somewhat disappointing, because we all had a picture in our heads of how it went down and that picture would nine times out of ten be better for the individual person who thought it up than what we got. This was the same reason, incidentally, that Russell T Davies refused to show the Last Great Time War.

edited 10th Feb '12 7:35:18 PM by HamburgerTime

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."

There are a ton of ways the PT could've been better, and most of them strike me as reasonably simple narrative logic.

For instance, in the PT, we cycle between Darth Maul, Count Dooku and General Grievous as supporting villains. That's no good. A consistent villain helps empower a story because it means the audience has personal investment in the outcome already. The OT did well with this via Darth Vader. The PT ought to have kept Darth Maul as the villainous agent throughout all of the three films. Obi-Wan would be invested in taking him down, too, and this desire would provide a foil to his Jedi teachings — and via this, he could fail as a teacher to Anakin, providing an example of justified vengeance, setting Anakin down the path to the Dark Side while Obi-Wan himself remains controlled.

One change and the whole storyline comes together a lot more naturally.

Apart from that, the PT needed to be less political and get to the point quicker. As Red Letter Media points out, Episode I doesn't really have a main character. What I think it ought to have been is Obi-Wan's story, primarily, moreso than about Anakin. Ewan's an awesome actor and possibly the perfect young Obi-Wan, so they wasted an opportunity in throwinn so much emphasis on Anakin. Instead, Anakin ought to have been observed only from Obi-Wan's perspective, and the PT could've been his story of failure.

This would make the OT a foil to the PT, as Obi-Wan could then redeem himself via Luke's success and Vader's reconciliation with his son.

A few other things that might have been worth exploration:

• The story begins after Anakin's induction into the Jedi Order.
• Episode II is the fall of Anakin and where he becomes Darth Vader, while Episode III is the beginning of the Rebellion and Obi-Wan temporarily takes on the role of freedom fighter, and one of the last of the Jedi.
• Anakin never had a proper romance; his physical desires got the best of him and he slept with a senator, and never stuck around to face responsibility for the children. The Organa family adopts one, and the other is spirited away by Obi-Wan after their potential is discovered.
• The last battle in the PT between Anakin and Obi-Wan could involve an Anakin that is already heavily robotic.

edited 11th Feb '12 2:23:07 AM by MadassAlex

Swordsman Troper — Reclaiming The Blade — Watch

Honestly, AOTC should have been episode I, or should have been combined with TPM. Let's be honest, most of AOTC and TPM are simply needless padding.

"I'll show you fear, there is no hell, only darkness." My twitter

The films would have been better off without the Sith. Their status diminishes both Vader and the Emperor as characters, doubly so when the writing insists on red lightsabers, the Darth name, and of course apprenticeship to Palpatine. Congrats, you taken away a bunch of the uniqueness of the franchise's most famous villain. I'm just surprised they didn't have the Vader suit minus helmet be standard Sith attire.

edited 11th Feb '12 2:52:03 AM by BorneAgain

Still waiting for a Legion of Losers movie...

Actually, that point could've been used to great effect. What if the Vader suit (or elements of it) were relics from the past? There could be a shot of it some secret lair of Palpatine's, broken and damaged, with no mention of any previous owner.

There would be the implication that Anakin inherited some great, unnamed evil without taking any of the menace away from Vader personally.

Then again, that could go horribly as well.

Swordsman Troper — Reclaiming The Blade — Watch

Can't we talk about anything, anything other than OT vs. PT?

That's why I tried to change the subject to Book of Sith back there.

edited 11th Feb '12 8:31:26 AM by HamburgerTime

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."

While not elaborated upon, I do think a lot of the Vader suit is rooted or inspired by Sith history. Most any story set during the earlier Sith Wars usually involved a character hampered by a mask and armor, which has some similarity to Vader.

The Phantom Menace had a perfectly serviceable story, but I think it would have benefitted from stronger pacing, the podrace was exciting as well as the initial confrontation between Qui-Gon and Maul but the majority of the middle section was a lot of exposition and talking. And while his presense was certainly a big deal for the Jedi, Darth Maul didn't have a whole lot to do with the main story of Naboo's occupation and the corruption of the Galactic Senate. He certainly shakes things up when he appears (cue Duel of the Fates) but he really didn't seem to be an active threat.

Attack of the Clones has a similar problem with the middle section, but that's mostly because of placing so much emphasis on the romance rather then having it come naturally from the story. Once they left Naboo and went on their own story to Tatooine and Geonosis their growing affection was significantly more believable, compare the "I hate sand" speech to their kiss before entering the colliseum (not that it is much better, but certainly not nearly as forced).

I can't help but wonder whether older fans, the ones who've been yelling "Ruined FOREVER" over the last 10-15 years, aren't as mad about the franchise as they are about the idea that somebody outside their demographic is enjoying the franchise too.

edited 12th Feb '12 10:20:23 AM by Premonition45