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Star Wars in 3D starting 2012 (Update: AOTC and ROTS cancelled)


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Across the Stars isn't Luke's theme in reverse. Luke's theme in reverse sounds like...well, like a pretty decent knockoff of Luke's theme. :P Across the Stars in reverse doesn't fare as well. It loses any melodic coherence that way.

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Going over my head? The Prequels? I don't think so...

Maybe the music suffers because they have the name Star Wars tagged onto it, and that it was composed by John Williams. Which comes with certain expectations.

When I want to listen to Star Wars music, I simply don't go for them.

Then that's where we differ.

I'd love to differ myself as well.

McNeely's Shadows of the Empire is an enjoyable work of a talented composer who knows well his skill, but it's unfair to put it against Williams' Star Wars scores (both OT and the prequels). McNeely was given almost carte blanche to write a symphonic piece somewhat reminiscent of Williams' style and that should sound like a film score. These are some very hard limitations for a composer, I think. However, he tried to go his own route and produced a fancy and somewhat impersonal piece of work. There's surely orchestral grandeur and a penchant for a big canvas, but several things sound constricted and unnaturally forced to sound too much "like Williams". There are also straight lifts from Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Walton and even Goldsmith, but I don't blame him too much for that, as he probably thought it would be nice to pick from most of the same sources Williams used for his Star Wars scores. The end result is a piece that lacks personality or true brilliance. Sure, he knows how to get out a golden sound from the orchestra, but this isn't enough imho. McNeely himself expressed some disappointment toward this work, as he would have loved to have more time to write it (the piece was composed in 3 weeks, from what I remember) and handle several things differently. I'm sure he was aware he was swimming in somewhat sacred waters and probably didn't want to be put in comparison with Williams and some of the most well-known and loved film scores of all time.

I also think it's unfair to think he got a more "star wars-y" sound than Williams did in the prequel scores. TPM, AOTC and ROTS are three beautiful pieces of work made by a composer who was somewhat forced to look back at his own past. Williams was well aware that a comparison with his older work would have been made and he did his best to emulate his own style. We can like it or not of course, but it's surely not tired or lazy music. I personally like it very much, because it's exciting for me to see a composer returning to old threads after a long time and listen how he evolved in certain departments and how some other things instead sound very much the same. Also, its perception has a lot to do with the films for which the music was composed. We all know the prequels are infinitely inferior movies than the OT, so probably the music suffers as a consequence in the view of many. Even the brilliance of Williams' artistry couldn't save these movies.

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Across the Stars isn't Luke's theme in reverse. Luke's theme in reverse sounds like...well, like a pretty decent knockoff of Luke's theme. :P Across the Stars in reverse doesn't fare as well. It loses any melodic coherence that way.

True. Which is why Across the Stars is so brilliant - it is reminiscent of Luke's theme in an almost subliminal way, but it's not like John just turned the sheet music upside down and said, "play." That, as Richard implied, would be easy enough for any composer to do.

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If anything, they both prove Williams is still willing to stretch his creative muscles. It's not like these films offered him to much to work with. I'm not talking about the stories/worlds/aliens, but rather the pacing, editing, writing, sound mix and stuff. It was destined to be a failure from a get go. It's not like he could score these bland pictures against them.

If you gave him the rough outline for the prequels and asked to compose pure music, it would have easily eclipsed SOTE. Of this, I am sure.

Karol

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Also, regarding whether the prequels sound like the originals - of course they don't. Nearly every score Williams has ever written is pretty firmly grounded in his stylistic tendencies of the time period in which it was written. No matter what he was scoring, we weren't going to get something that sounded like it was straight out of the early 80s, because it wasn't the early 80s. What we did get was three new scores that reinterpret the Star Wars sound in Williams' styles of the late 90s and 2000s. (I'd say TPM was pretty strongly rooted in the 90s, ROTS was pretty strongly rooted in the 2000s, and AOTC was somewhere in between, which does make sense.) For some people, those styles are less appealing, which I can relate to...I like them, but Williams was writing some truly phenomenal material around 1980. But what we got was about as close to the Star Wars sound as you could possibly expect from the same composer 20 years later.

(And of course, there is no single original Star Wars sound...ANH sounds quite different from ESB and ROTJ, which have more in common but are still very stylistically distinct.)

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on a similar note, i still think williams tried to write kotcs as if the film had been done not many years after LC, lets say in the middle 90's. I dont think the adventures of mutt relation to hook's lost boys chase is entirely coincidentical.

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I think we're putting too much preconception on these things--while it's without doubt that Williams consciously referred to his own musical legacy and maybe estabilished some kind of planning, I think the end result is much more the product of how he responded to the films one at a time.

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There's only one passage that's similar between the two, Luke, and it's the sort of construct I could imagine Williams quasi-accidentally using more than once in a similar way. KOTCS is very much a score of the 2000s, despite the fact that it reuses themes from the 80s. I'd argue that it was less successful at translating "the" Indy sound than the prequels were at translating "the" Star Wars sound.

But now we're getting REALLY off-topic. :P

EDIT: Nicely said, Maurizio.

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are f*cking talking about the prequels scores as failures?

How does one acquire that way of thinking?

That's not exactly what I meant. All I said is that Williams worked on a material that he was given to him. And one thing it didn't offer is the kind of opportunity to create something on the scale of his big masterpieces of old. It's not that there wasn't any new worlds, creatures or characters and so on. It's more about the way these films were made. It's an endless exposition, with dialogue-heavy scenes, flat characters, and sfx heavy action. The only places where music has any space to breathe are 20-second transition shots. I'm not saying I don't enjoy these scores, but most people say they are boring, to some degree. And these are the reasons why.

Besides, it was in relation to the point some people made about his prequel scores being inferior to McNeely's SOTE. Which is ridiculous for the two are entirely different forms of music. The only they have in common is that they're both orchestral and have Star Wars title on them.

Karol

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Right, you bunch of nancy-boy, twonk, Manchester United-supporting JWfan-ers, let's get back on topic before we all die of boredom!

Will I be going to see the "SW" films in 3D? Of course I will. Why? because I am a complete twat, and I want to give Mr. Lucas all my disposable income!

There is a more serious reason, however.

There is enough crap cinema around at the moment, with or without 3D, which is why I have been mostly going to see re-releases, club viewings, etc. Whatever we might think of the "SW" saga, any film, or series of films, which is able to be shown again on the big screen, should IMO, be supported. So few "older" films are offered a second chance to be viewed as they should be, that any chance to see these films at the cinema should be well and truly grabbed by the balls.

I'm sure that we all know what to expect as we take our seats, and wait for the words "Episode Whatever" to appear on the screen. Whether we like what we see, is, of course, up to us. In any given situation, our personal taste will be the final arbiter. If you don't want to see them then I am sure that you won't go. I'm not going to argue for or against these films, but I will always defend the presentation of films which I think deserve to be seen outside of a late-night showing on Channel 4.

For these films to even be considered for a re-release is, as far as I am concerned, a welcome event. Of course, the fact that they are "SW" films, and that they are in 3D probably has something to do with it... My only sadness is that more films are not given the same consideration.

When we take a look at the films that are around today (and will be around next year) I think that the "SW" films will provide audiences with an opportunity to re-connect with a story told on a grand scale, with some of the most amazing production values for film ever witnessed. I, for one can't wait for the Battle Of Hoth, and The Asteroid Field sequences to astound me once again - 3D, or no 3D.

We all have one year to decide whether we will see them or not. I will see them, not just because it is "SW", but also because they will be at the cinema, where they belong.

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Some parts of the jungle chase, yeah. The good parts. ;)

Yeah the first 40 seconds of the cue as it appears on the CD.

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  • 2 months later...
So, in regards to Star Wars 3D, which begins on February 10 when Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace will get a 3D re-release, Lucas explains that they’ve been honing the process for years but it wasn’t until recently that the technology caught up. He’s been saying that, over and over again, for a long time. The films would be released when the technology is ready and it’s now ready. When it comes to post-conversion itself, he says the difference between his film and others is that he has people who were on the sets and helped make the original films assisting in the post-conversion, which bring a whole new level of expertise to the process. Having seen a 3D post-converted version of the opening shot of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith some years ago, I fully believe that.

http://www.slashfilm.com/george-lucas-talks-3d-star-wars-explains-live-action-tv-series-delay/

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  • 1 month later...

Well now, according to Rick McCallum, if Phantom Menace underperforms, they won't release the other 5 films in 3D

http://www.slashfilm.com/3d-star-wars-conversions-the-phantom-menace/

Discuss!

This means that 3D conversion is a cost-prohibitive venture even for billionaire tycoons like Lucas. Frankly, I don't care that much. There's nothing in the world that would convince me to pay a ticket to see again this mess of a movie, 3D or not.

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I'm pretty ambivalent about this whole venture. As much as I love the idea of 3D movies, the fact of the matter is that they're rarely executed to my liking, and I'm starting to think that the only context in which I truly approve of them is an immersive one, where you're supposed to be having a literal experience, and the 3D movie is a tool for putting you into this other world. For good reason, most or all normal films don't try to do this...it really only happens in theme parks and so forth. But even then, it's still usually not quite to my liking...I rode the new Star Tours last week, and while the Dolby 3D technology is very impressive, I was disappointed by how they set up the shots. I think the camera lens was too wide, the backgrounds weren't distant enough, and the foreground elements seemed to have been pushed too close to the screen in order to maximize the difference between them and the background elements. For someone as stereoscopically attentive as me, it was disappointingly unrealistic.

But again, the Dolby 3D technology is actually really great. Better than the polarization-based techniques that have been popular in recent years, and obviously light years better than the horrible anaglyph technology. If they started making computer monitors with this technique, they'd look better than the shutter-based mechanisms currently in use, too.

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Speaking of 3D, check out this chart of every 3D film ever made

http://bitcast-r.v1.iad1.bitgravity.com/slashfilm/wp/wp-content/images/3D-Movie-Timeline-Medium.jpg

It's interesting how cyclical its all been

Great chart, Jason, thanks. I was surprised to see it's an official diagram from Sony - you'd think they'd be more quiet about it to the general public that 3D has failed as often as it has. In any case, I hope this cycle comes to a quick halt as well :)

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but that chart does show that it is not going to stop, but expand in the future.

The 'peaks' are greater in every cycle.

Note the second peak could be thinner if they put the film in another arrangement, and the 2000's peak as twice as wide if it was put as that second peak.

In the next years there will be another bottleneck and then a new way of creating 3d will be invented and boom another big peak.

And the mayority 2000's films are mainstream. That was not the case in previous decades.

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  • 3 months later...

I'm surprised you had the time to notice the actual content of the poster. I had to turn my eyes away immediately at its immense ugliness. Aren't these guys supposed to be professionals?

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yeah the postser is horrendous

They should have made a lenticular (for the '3D' effect) original struzan poster...

The original poster is a masterpiece.

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