Chen G.

By that logic, you could cut the original and just watch The Empire Strikes Back... The plot of the classic trilogy doesn't really start until a good halfway into Empire. Its only there that a bigger conflict with the Emperor is set-up: "Only a fully-trained Jedi knight, with the Force as his ally, could conquer Vader and his Emperor." Both trilogies, to varying extent, have this presentation of a prelude, plus a more closely-knit duology of films. In both cases, its probably the result of a lack of forethought on the part of Lucas, although for different reasons.

I guess for some here (and I very much approve) Star Wars had reached such super-saturation that any new project needs to have its raison d'etre aruged about.

I actually wrote a lengthy essay arguing to the opposite in that particular case... But I feel like the Star Wars case is very different.

I feel like its much, much, MUCH more detrimental in Star Wars, and while the prequels do give some stuff back, I feel like in that case the scales are tipped way too far in the direction of detracting from the original film, as opposed to enriching it.

Although I'm sure Lucas had a lot of input into this book - and especially the prologue - the book was principally the work of Alan Dean Foster and was only credited to Lucas to keep the appearance of the single visionary. In fact, the requirement to have the book credited to Lucas deterred his first choice of writer, Dan Glut. All the "Whills" stuff is from Lucas' early drafts. Its basically his version of Burroughs' "Girdley Wave." None of which is to go against your basic argument, of course. Oh, and just one more thing I can't resist: This is supposed to be in the background of the movie: The whole idea is that the Emperor is the lackey of the Imperial officers and, specifically, Tarkin, not the other way around. Tarkin's line "regional governors now have direct control over their territories" was obviously mean to be read more smug than it does in the film, being that Tarkin is a regional governor.

I mean, we're given all sorts of reasons to feel sorry for the guy: he's the bastard of the family and subsequently had been passed on for the throne, the frequent allusions to "Weibes wonne und werth" certainly seem to suggest to me grief for the loss of a mother, and clearly his relationship with his father is highly disfunctional, and in act one he tells Siegfried he can't partake of the blood brotherhood because "cold and stubborn, scarcely does my blood stir / my cheeks never to reden." And yet, its clear Gunther's ("Thine alone was wisdom, never was a brotherly quarrel better settled!") or Alberich's ("Are you not cunning? Bold, and wise?") effusive praise of Hagen are not said in cynicism. In general, I think Wagner had sympathy for his antagonists: I've heard Fasolt (surely the "antagonist" of scene 2 of Rheingold) described as "the only nice person in the Ring." And there's Telramund in Lohengrin (not so much Ortrud), Venus in Le Tannhauser, Klingsor in Parsifal and perhaps even Melot in Tristan. Even Hunding, who lends himself to being a cackling bad guy, does earnestly seek vegenance for his slain kinsmen, and at the very least is shown to be a man of principles and the product of the (obviously very twisted) social norms of the world in which he lives.

I mean, if we're meant to take Alberich and Hagen as antisemitic caricatures...then caricatures they sure ain't. Its very clear to me that Wagner has sympathy for Alberich: in the first scene of Rheingold, its not that Alberich is this lascivious predator and the Rhinedaughters are just innocent little girls. Wagner has then tease him in a very, very mean way to motivate his actions and have the audience gain some measure of sympathy for him, and certainly that's also the case with Wotan wrestling the Ring from him. That's not the action of a raving antisemite seeking to ridicule and demonise the Jewish "other." And that's perhaps even more the case with Hagen. Act Two, scene one is one of my favourite scenes in The Ring (and one I feel no staging had done full justice to) because Wagner is so incredibly succesfull at evoking the audience's pity for his two antagonists, and I think the whole irony of the scene turns on the fact that, yes, Alberich in his own disfunctional way DOES love Hagen, and he ends-up losing him to his own "curse." There's even a kind of twisted nobility to the music in Hagen's "Ihr freien Söhne, frohe Gesellen," which is repeated in that scene. Again, scarcely something an antisemite would write for a character he would concieve as Jewish. Its his comic villains - Mime and Beckmesser - who are more open to accusations of antisemitism. I don't really see it with Mime, and I only kinda, sorta see it with Beckmesser, maybe.

Sure, I'm just saying if you're a DP who also directs, you're sure to be very opinionated on directorial issues, and depending on the director and the project that can get you into trouble...

Yes! That was the explanation in the companion! That its just one of the more sensationalist aspects Wagner ported from the mythology. With the music, its undeniably effective in the theatre, though! We're not going to succesfully disentangle the complex subject of Wagner's antisemitism here, but I personally see no antisemitism in the Ring. I might see it in Meistersingers, but even there I'm not sold, in spite of Barry Millington's pointing out of the comparison between Walther's "Fanget An" to Grimm's "Jew among the thorns."

Well, then, why do we hear the sword's music, then? It always seemed very clear to me that - apart from the power that Alberich, who had renounced love, to rule over the Nibelungs - the Ring in Wagner's cycle has no power whatsoever: it doesn't help Alberich outwit Loge nor repel Wotan when he grabs it from him, doesn't help Fasolt when he's assailed by Fafner, the latter when he's assailed by Siegfried, doesn't help Brunnhilde when the brainwashed Siegfried assails her, nor Siegfried from being tricked and then slain by Hagen, etc... The various people seem to project unto the Ring their own inner desires: Wotan - who seeks after power - sees just that in the Ring; Fricka, who wants to keep Wotan from roming, sees the Ring as a way to achieve that; Donner, who's clearly the warlike God, sees it as a source of might; Fafner, who cares only for self-preservation, sees it as a source of immortality; and Brunnhilde sees it as Siegfried's love token... And, of course, the irony is - in all those cases - it doesn't work: even Alberich, who definitely exerts power to force the Nibelungs to horde gold, certainly doesn't seem happy or content when he has the Ring. Most of the things he later invokes in his curse (which I also think has no real power) are already true of him, too. I don't have the Ring of the Nibelung companion to hand to see Millington and Spencer have an explanation for that beat. But, then, its not like Gotterdamerung is without strenous plot contrivances, grunts in the direction of the forgetfullness potion.

I mean, the dead Siegfried inexplicably raises his hand at the end of Gotterdamerung... We Wagnerians don't question it.

Well, that guy was also a director, so...

Well, in the prose draft of Parsifal, Titurel is ressurected...

Quite. Now, I know the comeback will be “well, technically they don’t blow up those planets wholesale!” But frankly that blowing up of Jedha looks far more cataclysmic than the blowing up of Aldeeran, insofar as we see the effect FROM THE PLANET SURFACE. Definitely undermines the impact in the original.

Yeah, but then we got Rogue One, Solo, Obi Wan etc... Imagine watching all that stuff and then seeing the original for the first time: Vader's entrance? Meh. Seen him plenty for that to maintain its drama. The Droids wandering through the dunes? Meh, we've seen endless amounts of far-more-impressively-framed desert shots AND we know Tatooine so its no longer about the Droids venturing into the unknown. The cantina? Pfft, we've seen more weird aliens than stars in the sky. The Death Star blowing up Leia's home? Pfft, please! We've seen the Death Star blow up several planets by this point. The lightsaber battle? Pfft, we've seen people - including Vader and Obi Wan - slash and jump and throw objects at each other, so these two geezers gently poking at each other? NEXT! etc... You get my point.

He did A LOT of Tolkien-based pieces, not just this Lord of the Rings piece. He did a large number of Silmarillion pieces. Haven't heard a note of any of it.

I think that's very, very likely. A kid in 2024 is much more likely to first encounter a contemporary Star Wars show or a recent Star Wars film or couple of films, and much less likely to first hit upon the original, 1977 film, especially seeing as how its nestled into the midst of the whole thing as "Episode IV." There's nothing to say that's the original: its just one of the episodes. And, if that's the case, I do think it will take the edge off of the original film when kids DO get to it eventually. Its a much quainter film - it was made for far less money, and with less means - its more light on its feet, much more referential of then-fashionable pop-culture works, and all those qualities really work for the film in isolation, but when viewed after having seen a good helping of the larger "saga", all that stuff make it feel out-of-place, quaint and kind of underwhelming. Tatooine was probably pretty darn cool in 1977. But if you've seen Episode I (which I think had a far better location scout for Tunisia) and other entries into the expanded series that take place on Tatooine or on other desert planets (Jakku, Geonosis) and which far greater means to showcase the vastness of the desert (not to mention films depicting the antecedents of Tatooine: Barsoom and Arrakis), then the shots of the desert in the 1977 film lose a lot of their grandeur and mystique. Certainly, after all the frenetic lightsaber action in the other entries, the brawl between Old Ben and Vader comes across far lamer than it did in 1977. Probably the best essay written on the film has this to say on the matter:

No, although the composer in question is something of a Wagnerian: he wrote a very nice review of one of my favourite Tristans: https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2014/feb14/Wagner_Tristan_100057.htm

I leave you people alone for a little bit, and y'all go off and talk about Star Trek!

I saw Gladiator again this sunday. Such a great motion picture! And so without need of a sequel!

Thanks for sharing, but that's not new (although I suppose its nice to have a confirmation with the state New Line is in these days). Rohirrim had been delayed to the holidays a while back, due to the actor's strike.

All this arabic in the movie is pretty funny to me. And its Lisan A-Ghaib - "Tongue from the Without."

Forgot to respond to this, but no offence taken here. I enjoy the discussion and its good to have opposition to one's thesis.

I think the kind of "connections" this guy makes are so academically "musicologistic" as to be practically nonexistent: