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Chen G.

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Everything posted by Chen G.

  1. I do like certain things about the Special Edition: certainly, Lucas' attempts to "open up" the world of the films is often quite succesfull: the new wideshot of Ben's hovel, to a lesser extent the entrance to Mos Eisley, CERTAINLY the windows in Cloud City (they're all over McQuarrie's artwork) and the victory celebration montage in Return of the Jedi. The Jabba scene I could do without (although Marcia, who wanted to keep it in, does have a good point in that Han's entrance in the shot is pretty good), although I find the way they cut around it in the original edit to be a little klutzy. And, in the original Star Wars, there's some attempt to tone down what little violence there is in the film: its in getting Greedo to shoot at Han, but its also in other, little things: Lucas didn't like that a couple of imperial officers, who unlike the Troppers have their faces visible, are shot dead on-camera, so in some (but not all) of the shots he decided to snipe out a few frames that show the last blast hit them.
  2. Well, I mean, EE Smith’s Lensmen series has a drug called Thionite that’s clearly an antecedent to certain elements of Herbert’s Spice, and Lucas was seemingly aware of it because in all the early drafts, Beru makes “Thanta sauce.” But certainly when the films mention Spice, Lucas is referencing Dune, and he wanted his audience to notice, too. Then again, at no point in the storytelling does Spice come into the story, so it’s fairly inconsequential. There’s other stuff from Dune: Crawlers, Moisture farms, Bedouin-like sand people (Vader was originally envisioned as Bedouin-like, as well), probably the siege on Naboo in Episode I, Ornithopters in Episode III, the increasingly Machiavelian trappings of the prequel trilogy, to some extent the "Chosen One" narrative, etc...
  3. I think Braveheart is the greater score to the incomparably greater film (and I love Titanic), and while I think it’s also a great film to captivate normies, it was never ever going to be anything nearly as popular as Titanic and the song it spawned. Not ever.
  4. Its funny how "brooding" Shore's oeuvre is, isn't it? Listening to him talking, you wouldn't think that would be his specialty.
  5. That right there is the power of James Cameron! He makes movies for normies first and foremost! As well one should. I think its strikingly dangerous for art to crawl up its own posterior.
  6. Not to over-intelectualise a joke, but when Lucas talks about "non-character, non-narrative tone poems" he's talking about stuff like these two shorts of his:
  7. Graffiti is good but does nothing for me. THX-1138...nah.
  8. Not to hijack the thread at all, but...cough... Nevermind, what I was getting at is...cough...cough...Morfydd Clark's Galadriel...cough...
  9. Ironically, I think Star Wars is now the third big comic-book superhero franchise. Not because its literally based on a comic-book (although many of Star Wars' antecedents - John Carter and Lensmen, most notable - are very comic-book like, and certainly their heroes are kind of proto-superheroes) but because with all those spinoffs its gradually turning more quixotic and picaresque...like a comic book. And certainly the Jedi had been superheroes since 1999, if not since 1983.
  10. Sure, but its also a matter of taste. I've developed an extreme distaste for this kind of filmmaking, and honestly can't wait for it to go the way of the dodo.
  11. Look, I hate, loath, despise The Rise of Skywalker. Its a comic-book movie in the worst possible sense without being based on a comic-book. But it has A LOT less of the kind of winking-and-nodding to the camera that Marvel movies practically live on. I'm developing a topical allergy to that kind of cinema.
  12. I have to say, all these comparisons to Marvel as a kind of more favourable example, are kind of panging at me. Yes, Star Wars is very uneven, unbalanced and, especially under Disney, suffers the most terrible inflation of content. But - a few flourishes from Rian Johnson notwithstanding - at least Star Wars is always earnest. Its not very serious a lot of the time, but at least its played straight, which is more than could be said for the Cutesie Kiddie CrapTM known as Marvel... Those movies have all the intensity of watching Teletubbies on the big-screen.
  13. To me, Legend is the quintessential Ridley Scott turkey: a film of such lustrous pictorial beauty as to dazzle the eye, but all in the service of a screenplay so stupid, that it was either written by guinea pig rather than a human, or it was written by a human and one just didn't use the right definition for what encompasses "human"...
  14. It has. Also with all the spinoffs properties: at first glance, the idea of films between-the-films like Rogue One seemed like a pretty succesfull idea. But now, there's so much content shoved in between the "story" entries...its like a feast that's 80% entremets and 20% actual food.
  15. Right. I personally believe Lucas would have never given us a sequel trilogy: I think its scarcely a coincidence that virtually all the details that have come out on his treatment, concern themselves with Episode VII, and not with VIII and IX. Lucas was never one to plan ahead in much detail, and I see little reason to assume it would be any different here.
  16. I'd put less faith into all the stories about how his sequel trilogy was going to revolve around the microscopic world of the Midichlorians and/or the crime world of the New Republic under Darth Maul...both are from AFTER The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi had been released, and smack to me of apocrypha. But the basic premise -- young girl from a backwaters planet, with sidekick in tow, undertake a quest to find the reclusive Luke Skywalker, while being menaced by pirates and a masked "Jedi killer" and their overlord, and with the son of Han and Leia being thrown somewhere into the mix - does read quite close in premise to The Force Awakens, to me.
  17. Oh, I agree. But he still approved the idea of it, was party to the public announcement of it, roped the old cast in, and helped write and design it: there's more of Lucas' outline in the finished film than some people give credit: https://medium.com/@Oozer3993/george-lucas-episode-vii-c272563cc3ba
  18. A-propos the Rey film, which is clearly Episode X in all but name.... Its incredible that we had a series of film, which for all intents and purposes ended pretty definitively in 1983, then had a kind of victory lap in 2005. AND THEN somebody (George Walton Lucas Junior) said: "Well, you know what, that wasn't the end" and Disney proceeded to drag out three more films, ending on the most pathetic whimper of all time, AND NOW they're effectivelly saying: Hang go, actually that still wasn't the end: now THIS is the end." Its like a farce.
  19. And Vader (Lucas' original idea was he and Ben would return in the flesh at the end). The infatuation with Bettelheim (actually, with Disney) only went so far: even the Ewok films have a body count...
  20. Yes. I don't think George asked him, frankly: it was just Ford's own personal fancy. But Kasdan, in the story conferences and in one of his drafts, activelly lobbied to kill-of Lando. Lucas considered it, but ultimately didn't let it pass. He was really getting into Bettelheim's book at the time and became enamoured with the idea of the fairytale happy ending and "everyone lives happily ever after and nothing bad ever happens to anyone."
  21. Lando. The character Kasdan tried to kill off was Lando, not Han. And yes, the story is Lucas'. He wrote two drafts of it - pretty close to the finished film - before even inviting Kasdan for a story conference. But in terms of the mise-en-scene, I'm pretty sure he let Marquand at the very least deal with the day-by-day logistics of it.
  22. Yes, all the evidence is Lucas was pretty hands-on on Return of the Jedi. But I think this description is exaggerated: if the film was really directed-from-the-back-seat by Lucas (which Marquand, as well as his DP, denied), it would have a more Lucas-like sensibility than it does. Lucas still needed a competent director who knew how to work with actors, and how to block a scene and edit a movie.
  23. Pffft! For those kinds of conversations, you open with "Das ist Karfreitagszauber, herr" or "Wintersturme wichen den wonnemond" (depending on your voice type) and then you get to Williams.
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