General Star Wars Thread

Sleepy Beauty. He never really looked half-asleep to me more like he sounded half-asleep.

But yeah if they had gone with the original ponytail look for Revenge of the Sith he would've looked like a pretty girl.

I just don't get his appeal. Then again, some people say the same about me thinking Chris Hemsworth is a perfect 10.

I've come to respect him over the last few years (because of some of his comments), and I think that he was put into a nigh-impossible situation with those films.

What comments?

He's really not that bad of an actor... when he has some decently-written dialogue, and a director who gives better instructions than "faster and more intense."

@Adrich Well one's a beef muffin and the other is a real life bishonen.

Hayden's not a bad actor. He just has a horribly boring voice. The way he talks as Anakin is the way he talks irl.

His physical acting was on point though.

Yeah, Hayden's made a lot of comments over the years that pretty much spell out the fact that George Lucas is just a shitty director now.

Hayden with a ponytail looks really friggin' anime-ish. Kinda reminds me of Duo Maxwell. I kinda like that.

Though he could just be covering his own ass for all we know. I mean, possibly.

Or more accurately George Lucas is a shitty actor director. It's a running flaw in directors, which is why the position of Actor Director props up in movies from time to time, someone trained to deal with actors and get the best out of them.

Re: The Han Solo prequel, the further afield you start from where we meet him in the original film, the more time you have to spend getting back to that spot. You could have young Han Solo be a completely different person, but then, other than having a name to hang the film on, what's point? And, starting further from the character we know means you need to give the audience more of a hook to connect the two with ... meaning all you have is an actor doing his worst (or best) Harrison Ford impersonation.

This is pretty much the same criticism that the prequel trilogy gets hit with: We already know where Darth Vader's going. Now, there were a lot of character development potential plot points that were missed, but Lucas also had an entire trilogy to work with. I don't see trying to cram "Why isn't Han Solo the character we know from ANH and TFA" and "Look! Now Han Solo's the character you know again!" into the same film leaves much room for anything interesting, narratively speaking.

On the other hand, there's lot's of interesting things that can happen as a smuggler, because, y'know, life of crime and all that. _What_ he's willing (and unwilling) to smuggle, and why, and whether he sees a bigger picture to it all or not — there's a lot to delve into, just on that premise. So why throw a perfectly good character background away?

Nah, general consensus seems to agree with what Hayden's been saying for a while now. The guy's had some good performances in the past.

"So why throw a perfectly good character background away?"

Because it's boring; I can't really simplify it any further. Han spends the entire rest of his life being a smuggler or a rebel, but a scoundrel in general. His brief military career in the Imperial Navy is the one unique aspect of his background, and the one time he comes anywhere close to leading a lawful life. Why throw that away? There's way more to that than any two-bit story about him running contraband. Any story about him smuggling is interchangeable with another story about him smuggling.

What I hope they explicitly avoid is trying to tie it so closely to ANH that it ends with him walking into the cantina. Don't end with him being ANH-Han; make it end years before that ever comes into play. Make it end when he's right out of the Navy, his prospects ruined, and his future uncertain.

edited 11th Mar '16 7:55:05 PM by CrimsonZephyr

For the very first Star Wars movie, Lucas was a small-time indie director who hit the bullseye. Then he hired Irvin Kershner for ESB and Richard Marquand for ROTJ. But for the prequels, he began to believe his own press and took back the reins himself. And everybody was so in awe of the Great God Lucas that nobody had the balls to step up and tell him flat-out: "George, that sucks/that's a stupid idea."

The only interesting aspect to Han being at all related to the Empire is that it contrasts with the character as we know him in the original trilogy. And that's it. It's the scoundrel that the audience expects, not the Imperial. And being a scoundrel — regardless of what side of the law he's on — is pretty much the basis of Han Solo's character.

There's plenty that can happen as a smuggler — like I said, it becomes less about how you smuggle (though that's interesting) and more about why you're smuggling, what you're smuggling and who you're smuggling for. There's already a built in cadre of characters available for story-telling (the Hutts, Greedo, Boba Fett if you want him) that themselves can provide interesting plot hooks. And the fact that, yeah, you could be just another guy trying to make a living by any means necessary.

the thing is become just a random aventure of han solo without luke or leia, so...what is the point? what you said would make just a crappy version of firefly and make Han solo the Wolverine of Star wars "Now looking him having his own aventure without nagging princes and farm boy!"

Basically this. If you're going to make a movie about Han Solo, at least make it as unique as possible. Save his everyday smuggling adventures for comics and other media, a medium where the repetitiveness and lack of imagination works well.

I agree. If the movie is to be Han's life before he meets Luke and Leia, then there ought to be something to his life that isn't the same as it was when he met Luke. This is almost certainly going to be an origin story, and since Han starts ANH as a rogue who already embodies smugglerhood so well we already know that aspect of him. He needs something to have originated from, and Han doesn't seem the type for a "coming of age in crime" story a la Goodfellas or [insert pirate movie]. He's more like Jack Sparrow (or vise versa, but you get the idea).

That said, a movie featuring smuggler Han bouncing from shifty situation to situation on a grand smuggling adventure doesn't sound like a bad idea, it's just not the movie they should make for Han's primary solo outing. That sort of thing is better suited for if the Han movie gets a sequel, or perhaps a movie set between episodes VI and VIII.

It's coming...

@Lucas believing his own press: He didn't. He only did the movies because no one else wanted to "take his baby from him". He wanted to do other movies and projects while some of his director friends made amazing movies in his universe.

George has never been all that good at writing dialogue or working with actors. Harrison Ford famously saying "you can write thus **** George, but you can't speak it" or something like that. And he'd sometimes improve dialogue on the spot, and it was usually better than what was written on the page.

It's just that, for whatever reason, the OT actors were able to SELL it better than the PT ones were. Which is even more odd since, while I love them, I don't think that Carrie Fisher or Mark Hamill are really better actors overall than say, Natalie Portman or Sam Jackson, or Liam Neeson are.

And you need only look at the BTS on the PT home releases to see that George just doesn't work with his actors all that well. He's got great talent in other areas, but I've never found the nitty gritty of directing to be one of them. At best, he's been adequate in that regard.

It could very well be that George just doesn't have an ear for how the dialogue sounds. That's why he writes dialogue like "Going to Bosshi station to pick up some power converters." and "Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova." and why he doesn't understand the reason actors find it so difficult to say.

But while he isn't very good with words, he is excellent with staging and camera placement, which is not just spectacle but just as important as dialogue in telling a story. Very rarely do the actions on the screen feel forced or manipulative, even the times when he pulls off the fancy shots it comes across more like documentary footage instead of meticulously prepared action shots.

Tosche station.

Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher have all gone on record and stated that they would rework and improvise a huge chunk of dialogue during filming.

edited 12th Mar '16 10:49:31 AM by higherbrainpattern

And the prequel actors didn't, which is the problem.

Not that everything about the prequel dialogue was terrible. Qui-Gon's dialogue was pretty good for a calm and wise monk, and while Obi-Wan's dialogue was often stupid on paper, Ewan McGregor sold it perfectly.

Didn't Harrison improvise the whole "I love you, I know" line himself? Perhaps the reason why it worked better in the OT was because he had other people (like Gary Kurtz and Lawrence Kasdan, and Irvin Kirshner, etc) to help filter and refine his ideas. Whereas in the PT, he tried to micromanage everything and wrote the scripts himself.

As for his directing, I found American Graffiti and ANH to be pretty good. But it's telling for me that I found both ESB and ROTJ, neither of which he did himself, to be better directed films overall. Lucas's primary strength is as an ideas man. But it works best when he has other people around to help refine and filter his ideas. Because he is an ideas man in both the best and worst sense of the word. He has LOTS of them, and wants to use as many as he can, which is admirable in many ways. But, like all big ideas man, not all of his ideas will be good, that's just the nature or things. Which is where those other people become really important.