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Star Wars is better than everything


Jay

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Yeah, its a "you guys, I know I seem like a big commercial filmmaker, but I'm actually an artsy-fartsy guy at heart! Really, I am!" 

 

To date, Lucas had repeated his "my next film will be an experimental arthouse film" in 1973 ("after American Graffiti"), 1974 ("after Star Wars"), 1978 ("after the trilogy"), 1983, 2005, 2008 ("after the Clone Wars"), 2012, 2014 and 2015, and its always a "I haven't done it yet, but..."

 

As with anything Lucas says, its pure bollocks. I've even seen an interview where he said his friends are giving him a hard time for all these false promises, so its clear his lies aren't just confined to the public's ear. Actually, I wouldn't even believe that, had it not been for Walter Murch saying:

 

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If you look at what happened to George, his oft-stated ‘What I’m going to do next is small, experimental films’ … well, he’s never done that.

 

And, of course, just recently we had Lucas denying he intended to use extant music for Star Wars, even though Williams said that was the case in Star Wars' liner notes in 1977. Trusting a word out of Lucas' mouth is incredibly naive.

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That's his buisness.

 

Its the deception that's the issue here. It borders on the pathological.

 

I'm sure if you fact-checked Spielberg or Cameron there would be occasional half-truths here and there, but nothing on the scale of Lucas.

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Ironic that he was one of the major figures against colorisation etc. of movies in the 80s...

 

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The destruction of our film heritage, which is the focus of concern today, is only the tip of the iceberg. American law does not protect our painters, sculptors, recording artists, authors, or filmmakers from having their lifework distorted, and their reputation ruined. If something is not done now to clearly state the moral rights of artists, current and future technologies will alter, mutilate, and destroy for future generations the subtle human truths and highest human feeling that talented individuals within our society have created.

 

People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians, and if the laws of the United States continue to condone this behavior, history will surely classify us as a barbaric society. The preservation of our cultural heritage may not seem to be as politically sensitive an issue as “when life begins” or “when it should be appropriately terminated,” but it is important because it goes to the heart of what sets mankind apart.

 

These current defacements are just the beginning. Today, engineers with their computers can add color to black-and-white movies, change the soundtrack, speed up the pace, and add or subtract material to the philosophical tastes of the copyright holder. Tomorrow, more advanced technology will be able to replace actors with “fresher faces,” or alter dialogue and change the movement of the actor’s lips to match. It will soon be possible to create a new “original” negative with whatever changes or alterations the copyright holder of the moment desires. The copyright holders, so far, have not been completely diligent in preserving the original negatives of films they control. In order to reconstruct old negatives, many archivists have had to go to Eastern bloc countries where American films have been better preserved.

In the future it will become even easier for old negatives to become lost and be “replaced” by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten.

 

Then 5-10 years later, when the true restorations really started with the help of his pals Spielberg and Scorcese among others, he was already hard at work on just this technology to do exactly all this to destroy his own films.

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Yeah. Here's Lucas in the interview with Nolan bullshitting about how he wasn't lingering on his special effects in a pursuit of Cinema Verite realism, all the while adding over a minute of footage to the Special Edition purely to show-off Mos Eisley.

 

But to my mind, the move from "Star Wars" to "Episode IV: A New Hope" in 1981 is as egregious as any other change ever made to the film. Not least because, in an attempt to prove that it was in-keeping with his original intent, Lucas actually doctored a version of his own screenplay which (a) carries the Episode IV: A New Hope title, (b) is conformed to the final film and (c) reimagines Jabba as an alien - none of these things is true of the actual script, which is (a) titled "Star Wars", (b) is obviously different to the finished film and (c) describes Jabba as a human.

 

Its sheer forgery, and if that isn't evidence enough to not believe a word out of Lucas' mouth, I don't know what is.

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On 9/20/2020 at 3:05 AM, Chen G. said:

Because in the original Star Wars the fall of the Republic was clearly set much, much further in the past.

 

Naw, you exaggerate. It clearly happened no more than a generation ago.

  • “A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father. Now the Jedi are all but extinct.”
  • “General Kenobi, years ago you served my father in the Clone Wars. Now he begs you to help him in his struggle against the Empire.”
  • “The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I've just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away.”
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I don’t see it.

 

Luke had to have been conceived about 20 years ago. (All his friends just went off to the Academy last year.)

Darth Vader betrayed and murdered Luke’s father sometime after that.

Then Darth Vader hunted down the Jedi.

Now the Jedi are all but extinct.

The last remnants of the Republic have just been swept away.

 

The only thing that could taken place 30+ years ago is the Clone Wars, when Ben and Skywalker Sr. served together under Leia’s father. That I do believe.

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Huh, I never thought about that before.  In the actual first SW movie, it is even actually stated that the Clone Wars and Anakin killing Luke's father were concurrent events, or even related at all?

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Nope. Couldn't Anakin have turned into Vader, hunted down the Jedi, *then* had kids sometime? Even Palpatine fucks. Then he could have become more machine than man in those 19 years. It's not exactly the best dramatic storytelling but it was only meant to be some throwaway backstory at first.

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2 hours ago, Jay said:

Huh, I never thought about that before.  In the actual first SW movie, it is even actually stated that the Clone Wars and Anakin killing Luke's father were concurrent events, or even related at all?

 

Nope.

 

9 minutes ago, Holko said:

Nope. Couldn't Anakin have turned into Vader, hunted down the Jedi, *then* had kids sometime? Even Palpatine fucks. Then he could have become more machine than man in those 19 years. It's not exactly the best dramatic storytelling but it was only meant to be some throwaway backstory at first.

 

Agreed, but SW77 doesn’t hint that Vader is Luke’s father, rather that he killed Luke’s father.

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On 9/24/2020 at 6:23 AM, Jay said:

In the actual first SW movie, it is even actually stated that the Clone Wars and Anakin killing Luke's father were concurrent events, or even related at all?

 

They couldn't have been. In Star Wars, Ben and Anakin (who were both natives of Tatooine, and contemporaries rather than master and student) volunteered to join the Clone Wars, which were clearly a relativelly localized conflict being that they had to go there: you can gather it happened in the vicinity of Aldeeran.

 

Then they became Jedi Knights, then Ben took on Vader, then the republic fell, then Vader betrayed them, then Anakin beget Luke (presumably in exile), and only then was he killed by Vader. Since Ben is in his 70s (in the post-prequel timeline he's barely 50), the Clone Wars could have been 40 or 50 years in the past, with the fall of the republic happening around 30 years prior to the events of Star Wars.

 

Also, the duel between Ben and Vader wasn't a thing back then: Vader wasn't even a burn victim - he was simply wearing a space-suit like the Stormtroopers. The script originally called for him to be without his helmet in the first scene with Tarkin, where he's described as drinking from a flask. But it looked cool so it stayed on, and the idea of it being life-support came up in post-production or in the aftermath of the film's release, when Vader became a much more popular character than his (relatively minor) role in the film would suggest.

 

On 9/24/2020 at 2:21 AM, Pellaeon said:

Luke had to have been conceived about 20 years ago.

 

Luke must have been concieved in exile when Vader was hunting for the remaining Jedi knights, AFTER the fall of the Republic. The idea that the Sith hunted down the Jedi knights is consistent across many iterations of the screenplay.

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Although George does make things up a lot, he's never been that closed about it. Here's an open letter he sent to the Lost team in 2010, admitting that he had no idea what he was doing:

 

stna804o0lv41.png

 

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Yeah, I came across that one recently.

 

George Lucas is very inconsistent: at one time, he says he wrote twelve “stories”, then he says he wrote six full screenplays (and added three more “after the success of Star Wars”), at another, he “just” wrote three. At another still, he just had “twelve page outlines.” At another, it’s just “notes.”


Beginning circa 1997 he started saying he never actually promised a sequel trilogy and that media misquoted and misconstrued what he said, and yet in one 2003 interview he again says he makes “nine two-hour films”. In 2005, he said it’s all one big film, and that there won’t be any more; then in 2015 he says “well, there are three more stories...”

 

Another way to look at it is through the timeframe. It varies, but generally Lucas maintained that the three trilogies will cover roughly 50-60 years. Then, in an interview in 1998, he said he’s only making two trilogies, but he still cites a 50-year timeframe, even though that’s clearly not the case anymore.

 

He’s just talking off his arse. Sometimes (very rarely) he’ll say the truth, sometimes he’ll say a lie, and sometimes he’ll tell another lie that’s inconsistent with the previous ones.

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The Empire Strikes Back is BACK in theaters this weekend.

 

Disney is putting it on 2,000 screens.  This is interesting to me for the box office stats.  If Empire can manage to be #1 this weekend in these depressed COVID times, it will have been #1 in 1980, 1981, 1982, 1997, and 2020!  Most impressive.

 

https://m.the-numbers.com/news/248140830-Theater-counts-The-Empire-Strikes-Back-returns-to-over-2-000-theaters

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  • 1 month later...

I haven't seen any of those - I'll have to check them out!

 

I used lo like the Robot Chicken Star Wars specials

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*sigh* Here we go again...

 

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George Lucas’ ‘Star Wars’ Sequel Trilogy Made Leia ‘the Chosen One’ and Darth Maul the Villain
Darth Maul was not only to be resurrected, but he was to become "the godfather of crime."

 

https://www.indiewire.com/2020/11/george-lucas-star-wars-sequel-trilogy-leia-darth-maul-1234598030/

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In all fairness, the Darth Talon thing has always been talked about every time we hear about Lucas's sequel plans. Lucas goes from fascination to fascination for things in the EU. I think that's why he went so heavy on Coruscant for the prequels, or he got super involved with the whole Starkiller thing.

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2 hours ago, Edmilson said:


I don’t think they were the ST plans that made up the treatments given to Disney. Those Maul plot lines got folded into the Clone Wars in the latter seasons so I think he’d abandoned that idea for the ST. 
 

I’d love to read those treatments. Probably more joy to be got from reading them than the bland forgettable ST anyway. 

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53 minutes ago, Bilbo said:

I’d love to read those treatments.

 

You'd imagine they'd be available, if they were real.

 

Its the same as Lucas' mythical, 250-page script that encompassed the entire Star Wars series - it does not exist.

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3 hours ago, Chen G. said:

 

You'd imagine they'd be available, if they were real.

 

Its the same as Lucas' mythical, 250-page script that encompassed the entire Star Wars series - it does not exist.


Why would they be available? Disney absolutely would never let those see the light of day. 

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They weren't averse to letting us know what Lucas' storyline would have been like, and even showing the artwork. I really don't think its much of an issue.

 

The real issue is those treatments don't exist. There's an only-partially complete Michael Arndt script for VII and that's it.

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4 hours ago, Bilbo said:


I don’t think they were the ST plans that made up the treatments given to Disney. Those Maul plot lines got folded into the Clone Wars in the latter seasons so I think he’d abandoned that idea for the ST. 
 

 

Or those TCW episodes were groundwork for that idea...

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
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“On ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ and ‘Return of the Jedi’ I tried to stay out of the way, but I couldn’t,” Lucas said. “I was there every day

 

More lies by George Lucas.

 

Both Irvin Kershner and Richard Marquand clearly state that Lucas didn't interfere with their directing of the films. The only ones hinting at such interference are Lucas and his hagiographies.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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