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OT: An Open Letter To George Lucas
I found this on the Maxocg forums. Thought it was kind of interesting.
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Re: OT: An Open Letter To George Lucas
That's pretty harsh.
Given, of course, Lucas has become business-minded (as many successful artists do) I don't really think that these three new movies were made only to line the pockets of a man who, really, had more money than God from the get-go. EVERYONE wanted more Star Wars. Lord knows I did. Everyone wanted him to make them, and he said he was going to, and he did. The problem, however, was that he was completey unable. He lost what made the Trilogy incredible. There's an old quote that basically attests to the fact that truly moving art is born of pain and struggle. Lucas is a well-established industry god. He's not trying to prove anything to anyone any more. He's not working within a budget with a team of only what he can afford being stifled by the technology of the day that he had to struggle to work around. He doesn't have any of those pressures or hardships any more. He can squeeze out a half-assed script and turn three movies into a uninteractive video game because, basically, he's all alone. Who's to tell him otherwise? There's never a time where he has to revert to a creative camera angle in some back-studio set that's carefully painted to give the impression that they're in a space ship - he says the word and a multimillion-dollar team of 3D artists makes him any starship he could ever want. Everything in this universe takes the path of least resistance. It's why planets are round, it's why water collects at the lowest point, and it's why the new trilogy sucked balls - Lucas didn't have anything to prove, he had nothing to give us. I wouldn't be too quick to blame the man, though. If anything it's sad. HE can't do it. The creator of Star Wars can't revive his creation. It's gone. |
Re: OT: An Open Letter To George Lucas
Dear Fanboy,
Considering how much of my merchandise you've already bought, I couldn't care less if you never spend another penny on the Star Wars franchise. In other words, so long and thanks for all the cash. Sincerely, George Lucas http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif |
Re: OT: An Open Letter To George Lucas
Oh ouch !!!
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Re: OT: An Open Letter To George Lucas
R O T F L M A O - Great One!
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I know, I know, a moronic point to make, but I'm tired and felt like typing something. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif |
Re: OT: An Open Letter To George Lucas
OK, get onto your favourite torrent site, and download "Changes", which is episode two of season two of "Spaced". That sums up a great many people's feelings about the Phantom Menace right there. Watch it, p:ss yourself laughing at what I consider the funniest thiry minutes ever committed to film, change your underwear and then go buy both series on DVD (currently just six quid for them both here *). I promise you'll never regret it.
*Yes, I get a referal payment if anyone buys from that link, but it's a good deal and believe me I would be recommending it anyway: Spaced is my all time favourite TV program of all time ever. Please buy it, not because I get a few pence, but because it's sheer genius and I want everyone to laugh as much as I do every time I watch it. |
Re: OT: An Open Letter To George Lucas
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If you haven't heard of it the show stars and was made by the same guy who stars and made Shaun of the Dead. |
Re: OT: An Open Letter To George Lucas
I don't get why people are so pissy about the new trilogy, I liked it, I had fun, it was a good enough movie, just like the OT. The only real difference was it had about 30 years of hype that it could never live up to where the original kinda came outa nowhere with new visual FX technuques that stunned audiences. The OT was just as cheesey(alien swing band, glowy light swords, aerodynamically retarded fighters, man-bear-thing called of all things "wookie"), poorly acted(I mean come on carrie looks lude'd up in every scene, harrison was practically phoning it in, and I'm sorry, I like the guy's voice acting but hammill is not good in movies) and had as much bad turns of phrase as the new(in whiney "aww I wanted to go to the toshi station and pick up some power converters"). Also I'd say the sand people, jawas and ewoks are about as insensitive to certain ethnic and handicapped groups as as jar jar.
Star Wars has always been a large budget cutting edge FX film with a cheesey space epic story line, Jarena was right, everyone asked for it, they begged for it. They got it it wasn't good enough. I think being that the original star wars was worked out to stand on it's own more or less helped it, helped it become a phenomanon in it's own right, and peopleshould consider themselves lucky that the guy still has an interest in telling more of the story after about 30 years. If anyone else was in GL's shoes, they'd do the exact same thing, with all the matketing, editing and exploitation, anyone who says otherwise is a liar. |
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I would have been with you, except that EPIII blew me away. I and II were disappointing, but III was awesome. To each his own I guess...
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Yeah, Episode III was awesome. Episode I and II... eh, II has too much mushy love stuff. I was okay, but the ending battle kind of sucked.
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Re: OT: An Open Letter To George Lucas
EP III had very bad timing issues. Little things that just annoyed me too no end. The flow and timing was off and bits of it seemed contrived and way too unimaginative for my tastes. Overall the movie is better than EP I or II but falls way way short of EP VI. EP IV was the best, V was awsome, VI was ok but better than EP I.
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Re: OT: An Open Letter To George Lucas
It connected episodes I-II, and episodes IV through VI. Plus that battle at the end was really, really cool.
And IV is better than V? Come on! V had the hoth battle, and of course the "I am your father!" stuff. Plus Luke gets jedi training, gets a lightsaber, and the lightsaber battle in Episode V was much better than IV. Plus the escape from Bespin was cool. |
Re: OT: An Open Letter To George Lucas
I really like the visuals of Star Wars and all the ships and stuff, but the actual movies themselves have always been less than stellar by other merits like acting or dialogue etc.
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Re: OT: An Open Letter To George Lucas
The thing that George Lucas accomplished, which is rarely (and unfairly) not mentioned is that he was really the first person to write and direct a SciFi movie that tried to treat its story seriously, instead of the 3 decades of "look what I can do!" and "ohhh, a shiney spaceship!".
His dialog is lacking, but the story is really good and imaginative. What else has spawned so many spin off books, cartoons and video games? Maybe its not Great, but its the Greatest there is. |
Re: OT: An Open Letter To George Lucas
Another thing to consider is how much money he has put back into developing new technologies for the industry, which has certainly improved the movie-going experience for all.
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Re: OT: An Open Letter To George Lucas
As someone who saw the original SW trilogy in the theatres, I can certainly sympathize with Fanboy's sentiment. Lucas lost whatever creative urges he had a long time ago. After waiting 16 years from ROTJ to Menace, i was disappointed. Maybe if he had hooked up with Gary Kurtz again, maybe a halfway decent plot would have come up. Instead, he did what most modern directors of films do, rely on special effects to carry the plot. Unfortunately, it didn't work in TPM. At least he heard some fans and toned down Jar Jar for the rest of the trilogy. And he should have gotten Lawrence Kasdan (?) to write the love scenes, since he did such a great job of it in Empire Strkes Back. Also, he should have reread his notes before he wrote the screenplay for Revenge, since there were a couple of continuity errors. Unless people on Tattooine age more rapidly than elsewhere, there should have been another 10 year gap between episodes III and IV.
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Re: OT: An Open Letter To George Lucas
I like IV better than V, but wouldn't say either is necessarily better. IV is more of a complete story unto itself, while IV is a bit more like filler between the start and end of a trilogy, and the "training with a dull muppet who talks backwards" has never entertained me much. Getting lost in the snow wasn't very entertaining either, and was as dull for me as the whiney Luke parts at the start of IV. But I also think IV is better than the rest because it includes more non-hero combattants and shows their experience of dying in fear as they fight the forces of the Empire. E.g., the rebel troops on the blockade runner, and the fighter pilots dying one by one trying to attack the Death Star. That kind of thing isn't there as much in V and VI, but in I, II, and III it is almost entirely absent.
I think VI could be as good for me as IV and V if it was a little less straightforward, and if there were fewer cute/unbelievable muppets, like the Jabba's orcs, and of course the kiddy-panderingly out of place and ridiculously victorious Ewoks. If the Ewoks were much less campfire-teddy-bear-like and more alien and believable, and Palpetine's "entire legion of my best troops" were shown as actually competant and even frighteningly effective, but out-foxed somehow far more convincing than the slapstick log tricks etc., it could have been as good as the IV and V. But although I've ranted on this before, the prequels are IMO so inferior that they inspire me to rail against them again. The Phantom Menace: Has some good points, but way too many really bad points, at least for my tastes. Alec Guiness as Obi-Wan was of course excellent, but even the actors used could have been directed to show some degree of caution, concern, and smarts, instead of just being "yawn, we're Jedi so we just auto-parry everything and never get concerned by even ridiculous odds. We don't need to use tactics or cunning or anything. Out CGI powers of fakeness are |337. Ho hum are we there yet?" The Gungans and Jar Jar are just insanely embarrassing on so many levels I won't even try to explain. The pod race was a great example of how to make something extremely unconvincing and so impossible to relate to that there is no tension involved. 9-year-old Annakin being Mr. Unkillable Unconcerned Uber Warrior certainly makes him a great candidate for the prequel Jedi, but it just triple-underlines for me the complete error of having totally unconcerned heroes who should be in danger but aren't, and don't even pretend to be concerned. It just detonates any disbelief I might have left, as well as my interest and ability to do anything but balk and scream at the utter waste of resources. I thought Clones (II) was better than TPM (I), but had the same fake-o lack of concern problems, and more fake-o unbelievable CGI and action scenes. R2D2 with levitation jets? Part of R2D2's character used to be his logical and amusing mobility problems - the mini jets letting him levitate and zip around in some sort of 3D platform-jumping computer game sequence on an assembly line with lava... AAAAAAAAGH! Then Natalie Portman and the Annakin Teen actor in the arena situation, their acting was the opposite of what I was talking about with the rebels in near-death situations in episode IV, and thanks to the CGI, it's not even convincing that they are there, either. That and the amazing CGI overindulgence of over-busy chaotic hyper-fast scenes with action everywhere and no one needing to ever take a second to figure out what the heck is going on around them - it's just like it's all choreographed and no one gets disoriented at all. Utterly unbelievable. I did like the fight with Christopher Lee, and even Yoda, and the surface combat was spectacular and at least more believable than the arena chaos. I think TPM (III) was overall sort of good, and better than I and II, but again could have been ENORMOUSLY better with not much more application of taste, logic, acting, script, etc. I thought the preview I saw a year or two before III came out hinted at a far more interesting film that III actually was. Annakin's conversion to Vader could (should) have been much more dramatically interesting, convincing, and sympathetic. It could have been about the Jedi actually denying Annakin's right to be a Jedi and to be with Padme. And perhaps this and maybe other real dilemmas could have caused Annakin to rebel and betray the Jedi, causing him to get sliced and diced (a part I did like in III), and then secretly rebuilt as Vader by Palpatine, and then we could have seen Vader participate in Palpatine's attack on the Jedi, and we could see Vader taking revenge on the Jedi in nice wicked battle scenes where we could watch the Jedi getting terrified and overpowered, and not just backstabbed. Of course, III also suffered from the incompetant CGI problems where physics, reaction times, and rationality are disregarded and hand-waved in the interest of making hyper-extreme action that just reminded me of 6-year-old boys playing with toys and getting way carried away. Particularly the scene where they try to kill Obi Wan on whatever planet that is with the holes in the ground and silly amounts of kinetic excess are involved. The stuff going on mainly in the background of the opening space battle over Coruscant though was one of my favorite parts - really nice. I don't believe in air-to-air sabotage droid missiles, though, or the crash-landing-the-battleship-on-manual parts. |
Re: OT: An Open Letter To George Lucas
I'm with Fanboy, the guy who wrote the letter in the first post.
But I'd go even farther than he did. Even among the 3 movies of the original trilogy, there was a step downhill trend. Star Wars itself was dynamite; I saw it in the theatre when it was new and loved it. The next two were a letdown. And the last one, with that incredibly stupid "ewok battle", where they trip the walkers with ropes, oh FFS, that was such trash. And I'm old enough to remember THX1138, as well. I saw that when it was new also http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif |
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Re: OT: An Open Letter To George Lucas
[image]http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/09/22[/image]
Penny arcade is teh cool. |
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