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Post by Scott on Jul 1, 2020 11:06:29 GMT -5
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Post by GRWelsh on Jul 1, 2020 11:42:59 GMT -5
For years, Ray and Brian Rzeszotarski both claimed there was a scene they remembered from the original theatrical release of STAR WARS, which they never saw again. I'm not sure if this scene was it or not, or if their memories are incorrect. From what I can find online, this did happen with EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and Lucas added in extra scenes towards the end of the movie between the initial release and wider release. But I can't find any other evidence that it happened with the first STAR WARS movie.
I just had a long conversation about STAR WARS with my sister. Her family has Disney+ so they just binged on everything STAR WARS and she was complaining about everything she didn't like. I'm like her STAR WARS therapist. She wants to rewrite it after watching the sequels again. I told her everybody does, and she needs to just let it go and repeat the mantra: "Help me, Dave Filoni. You're my only hope."
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 1, 2020 14:42:08 GMT -5
Thats the scene that was in the comics before Leia is captured and he has a Gilligan hat. It was on that weird STAR WARS BEHIND THE SCENES pc disc that I had along with the Anchorhead scene. I think Lucas altered things so much that its hard to keep track for example there is a section of a scene at Kenobi's house that is not the original but a different take so it flows different from how I had memorized it. I'm totally off SW so this is like hanging out with friends doing acid weed... "No, thanks, I'll just comment from the bleachers.."
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Post by GRWelsh on Jul 1, 2020 14:47:18 GMT -5
Same here. I told my sister this morning I'm done with SW. I'm no longer mad and to me the sequels are bad fan fiction with a big production budget -- that's all they are. I still haven't seen Episode IX and I just don't care to. However, I'll always bee a fan of the original trilogy and I'm open the possibility of a Filoni/Favreau renaissance or something similar.
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 1, 2020 15:53:22 GMT -5
Is there any franchise that I'm still interested as much as I used to be about Star Wars? I don't think so. I used to like Marvel a lot but I think I'm at 2nd prequel movie stage since the Thanos payoff didn't deliver "new" known antagonists. Jurassic Park come on you gotta pull through!  |
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Post by GRWelsh on Jul 1, 2020 16:12:09 GMT -5
The idea of being a fan of a franchise is a bit misguided. A franchise is only good as long as its creative output is consistent and of high quality. The creative output is only as good as who is working on it at the time. It can't all be inspired, and everything has to falter eventually. Art and production lines are ultimately antithetical. True art doesn't care about your stinking deadlines and profit margins. Ptooey! Marvel Studios has had a longer run than I thought possible without any real duds... Even THOR: THE DARK WORLD is at least okay. Marvel's had some mediocre villains, though, and Thanos needed to be a strong villain and he knocked it out of the park which along with Robert Downey Jr. breathing life into B-list hero Iron Man is the core of what made the overall arc so successful. I never could have predicted it.
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 1, 2020 16:22:30 GMT -5
I love Star Wars but its the same feeling for a teenaged lost love. I can't talk to her so why have I still been talking to Star Wars..? <<<5AM phone at Lucas' house...>>>> "Put R2D2 on the phone..."
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Post by Scott on Jul 1, 2020 18:02:38 GMT -5
How can you not make a good Star Wars movie 9 times in a row? It’s like a drunk or a little kid playing miniature golf and missing the hole from 6 inches away, nine times in a row. You’re really doing something wrong. The last trilogy was just a jarring mess. The lack of consistency or flow from movie to movie wrecked it. I’ve watched them all, but the force is no longer strong in me.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jul 1, 2020 18:29:09 GMT -5
The sequels got so bad they made me less critical of the prequels. I still think the prequels are heavily flawed, but Episode III was an improvement over the previous two. It had a suitably grandiose Greek tragedy atmosphere to it. Anakin was horribly miscast, both times, and Padme and Yoda were written terribly, but Palpatine was an awesome villain in the prequels. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn and Count Dooku were all solid characters and well acted. ROGUE ONE was the least offensive of the newer movies, but missing a strong protagonist and the rest of the cast was pretty forgettable. The sequels had a good cast but no plan and disrespected the iconic characters. SOLO missed the point that people liked Han Solo because of Harrison Ford, not because Han Solo was particularly interesting -- he had one arc: scoundrel to hero, and in SOLO it was obvious they didn't know what to do with that. They need to stop making these fan fiction movies that fill in gaps or tie into trivia from previous movies and do their own thing.
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Post by Scott on Jul 1, 2020 20:20:41 GMT -5
I was a member of the Star Wars Fan Club, around 1980. Their newsletter was called Bantha Tracks. That was the first time I heard of Lucas's plans for a 9 part saga, and plans for prequels. In one of them, the Darth Vader lava duel was mentioned. So finally seeing that after all those years was pretty cool. I agree with the positives you mentioned, but for the most part they were terrible. The sequels and stand-alones were kind of meandering and/or weak, I didn't really hate them, but the prequels were just terrible.
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 1, 2020 22:07:13 GMT -5
I agree with the prequels being better even the Jarjar stuff seems better produced but it's just poorly assembled. The new stuff (I only watched 2) is on many levels "off". I haven't watched the Disney show yet either but it's all entered into Nightmare on Elm Street sequel feel now.
The only thing SW that I saved was movie adaptation comics and some old 77-83 behind the scenes books the rest it just needed to go. As I was tossing I stopped and looked at how disappointing the ewoks (figures) were then dumped all of it. I honestly was geared up for years (77-87) on the awe of it but the rpg years kind of shifted the "everything SW" mentality and Shatner Trek became the MVP until "GENERATIONS" movie wrapped that up. My SW fandom reached an undead status but I refused to admit it I guess. Video games helped keep it barely alive.
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 2, 2020 9:46:16 GMT -5
Its weird sometimes when you think about the era when the originals were out and the people around.
Both my godmother's nephew and my cousin Bill (RIP?) were 2 years younger than I and were from very proud, protected and introverted families and they were strict Star Wars. No Star Trek, no Godzilla and definitely zero sci-fi lit. One went extreme D&D (Bill) and the other was one of these ultra-light players ("Dome the Gnome"). Both had precise comic interests. Wouldn't even look at each other if they were in the same room.
Their interest in me was all about the toys (And they insisted that I get more "GI Joe Real American Hero".). My brother was closer to their ages but he had early psychopathic tendencies (con artist) so they avoided him like the plague. You had to be rugged to deal with my brother.
In contrast, my friend Eddie was closer than those clowns and had zero interest in Star Wars. Liked comics, D&D, fantasy lit,often he would say back then that I was "Into Star Wars" and if he had anything SW related he would immediately give it to me.
My godmother's daughter had girl's SW toys. Plush R2D2, all Harrison Ford related items, and the "Barbie-sized" figures.
The kids next door to me had the "Death Star" but were not allowed to bring anything "big" out on the street so only the small figs.
My dad kept saying, since my interest in toys had been renewed by Star Wars, that I "shouldn't be playing with dolls!".
Old gray haired people kept comparing SW to Flash Gordon until Empire came out.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jul 2, 2020 10:53:14 GMT -5
The Flash Gordon comparison was a good one, since STAR WARS was intentionally an homage to those old serials starting in the middle of the action and you as the viewer just have to catch up. Even in the 1977-1983 golden age I knew not everything STAR WARS was great. I knew the Christmas Special was sort of cringy, even though everybody gave it a pass because variety shows were the norm. I loved RETURN OF THE JEDI but truthfully if you take out all of the scenes with Luke, Vader and the Emperor what is left is not very good. Leia was softer and Han was domesticated. The second DEATH STAR was self-derivative and lazy. I'm not an Ewok-hater but the idea of them being able to beat up on the Empire is just silly, it looks like a SW parody done with muppets. And then those made for TV Ewok movies weren't good. I had no interest in the Ewoks and Droids cartoons. You could see the seeds for "Young Ani" and Jar-Jar all the way back then with the kiddified shift in focus. Lucas said STAR WARS was always meant for for kids, but in my opinion he made the mistake of thinking kids want to watch kids on the big screen. They generally don't.
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 2, 2020 12:06:32 GMT -5
The atmosphere that Summer for the ROTJ movie played into a hot Summer feel (Jabba) and maybe heading into woodsy terrain (Ewoks). I remember seeing it for the 3d time outside the city in a drive-in near Saratoga, New York with the whole family (I can't recall what the 2nd feature was though.)being all sweaty then heading back through the woods. So it really plugged into that somehow despite the bulk of unconvincing antagonists even the stormtroopers seemed to be on vacation.
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 2, 2020 12:09:16 GMT -5
GEORGE LUCAS'
JEDI
VACATION
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foster1941
Warlock
Duke of California, Earl of Los Angeles, Knight Bachelor
Posts: 476
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Post by foster1941 on Jul 2, 2020 14:31:11 GMT -5
I was super-super-obsessed with Star Wars starting with the release of ESB (I was a couple years too young for the first one to have made an impression on its first release (I was 2 years old in the summer of '77) but of course became obsessed with it too and saw it in re-relesse many, many times). I had the LPs where Roscoe Lee Browne described the story of the movies with music and sound effects and memorized both of them word for word. I snuck a cassette recorder into the theater and recorded the audio. I had all the toys and books and comics and tchotchkes (beach towels, lunch boxes, etc.). I joined the official fan club and read the Bantha Tracks newsletter and gorged myself on every possible rumor about "Revenge of the Jedi" and made up elaborate fan-fiction versions of what I thought was going to happen. By the time it was released in the summer of '83 the hype and anticipation was almost unbearable for me - I'd been pretty much literally thinking about nothing but Star Wars for 3 full years (not quite true - I also loved Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T. and Star Trek II, but Star Wars was definitely #1). I saw it opening night with my dad - we went and waited in line. And yeah, it was disappointing. I loved the part with Luke and Vader and the Emperor, but even at age 8 I felt the Jabba stuff and especially the Ewoks were cheesy and kiddified, that Han Solo was wasted, that the second Death Star was kind of lame, and that Leia being Luke's sister came out of nowhere and didn't make sense. I didn't like all the muppets. I didn't like the anticlimactic death of Boba Fett and how so many of the cool toy figures (that I'd already had for a couple months and made up stories about) basically appeared in a couple shots each and didn't do anything (red-caped Imperial Guards, I'm looking at you). It was my first media-disillusionment, my first lesson that things aren't going to live up to your expectations. My Star Wars mania cooled pretty quickly after that, and within a year I'd found another outlet for my obsessive fandom (and set myself up for a whole other wave of disillusionment) in D&D, and the rest is history...
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 2, 2020 16:27:54 GMT -5
I think the big hype was on the pre-film round one 1983 Jabba related action figures particularly Gamorrean guard, Klaatu, Ree-Yees, Squidhead and Weequay, which some seemed plugged in to the then D&D hype, but in the film they were rubber masked lame throwaways. I was at least picturing the human-faced ones (Klaatu and Weequay) to have talking parts. By the time "Nikto" came on the scene in 1984 the expectation was "round out the collection". They did focus on the vampiric-seeming Bib Fortuna but they never even included him as a video game obstacle because he was so knock over.
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Post by Scott on Jul 2, 2020 18:54:38 GMT -5
Bossk and IG 88 had a flicker of screen time, but I loved those figures.
Boba Fett's death was one of the worst things Lucas did. Just terrible. I should have known not to get excited about the prequels after all the foreshadowing in RotJ.
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Post by Zenopus on Jul 4, 2020 22:44:03 GMT -5
The headline of that article is misleading; if you look at the text, it says they are adding the scene to the Extras on D+. But it's actually been there for at least 6 months; I watched it - for the first time ever - back in January, IIRC. And I think it was just transferred there from the Blu-Ray (not sure about this since I don't have that). On D+, it's actually two separate "extras" (scenes): A short one with Luke and the Treadwheel droid by the moisture vaporator where he watches the battle with the macrobinoculars, and a longer one in "town" where he rushes to tell his friends and finds Biggs is back visiting. I had been waiting to see these scenes since ~1979 or so as there were photo stills from of each of them in my Star Wars Storybook. Due to this, and the fact the second scene is so good, it's perhaps the most rewarding cut scene I've ever watched. It's just pure joy to see a young Mark Hamill fully in character as Luke again. And the actor playing Biggs is fantastic as well; the scene really fleshes out his character and sets up his later scenes. Just a great character moment that doesn't rely on any special effects and thus holds up as well as any other dialog-driven scene in the movie. I hated all of the changes for the special edition (other than enhancing the colors), so I'd prefer that they never add these scenes to the actual movie, although I wouldn't be opposed to some kind of "shuffle option" that let you watch the movie with them added in place, just to study where they were intended to go in the cut. Each of the Star Wars movies has extras on D+. Among other things, Empire has the lost captured-Wampa subplot, and ROTJ has a scene where Luke sends the droids to Jabba, and the sandstorm when they are leaving Tatooine after defeating Jabba. But nothing is as awesome as that Biggs scene. |
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