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Post by Scott on Oct 31, 2012 7:24:35 GMT -5
So Disney now owns Star Wars. I’ve read a lot of negative comments about this, but I think it’s good news. Lucas sucks, He’s sucked for almost 30 years. Disney can’t make it any worse. There’s a better chance the original theatrical releases of the first trilogy will be available again; Han can shoot first again. They might hire an actor who can actually act to play the main character. 30+ years ago in Bantha Tracks, the official Star Wars Fan Club news letter, Lucas said there would be nine movies, three before the original trilogy, and three after. Now we will get nine movies, or more. Even if they’re not the three sequels Lucas originally had in mind, so what? I won’t know what I’m missing. A mix of pirates of the Caribbean and Iron Man/The Avengers would do the franchise some good.
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Post by GRWelsh on Oct 31, 2012 7:58:49 GMT -5
I also don't see the Disney takeover of Star Wars as a bad thing. They aren't really that incompatible when you think about it. Mickey Mouse isn't that out of place in an Ewok village. Goofy and Jar-Jar Binks can clumsily meet and trip over each other. Yoda and Jiminy Cricket can exchange wise and knowing glances.
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Post by Scott on Oct 31, 2012 8:05:00 GMT -5
Disney bought Lucasfilm, so Indiana Jones is theirs now too. Episode VII (the first of a planned trilogy has a 2015 release) is a sequal to the original trilogy, and will pick up with the original characters after Return of the Jedi.
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Post by geneweigel on Oct 31, 2012 9:16:27 GMT -5
They just transitioned the Marvel franchise over and that was pretty good but sometimes the corporations make religious radicals seem like the smart ones in comparison. Fortunately, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee were light years ahead of the PC pack and put a lot of thought into characters that gives them a lot to work with. Unfortunately, 40 years later the Marvel comic books haven't introduced much notability and the best are the "return of" stories.
That said, in regards to STAR WARS, what about the prequels? Couldn't they have been potential sequels? Lets imagine them as sequels. SHUDDER. When I watched COWBOYS AND ALIENS and my wife kept cursing Ford out as a bad actor every time he appeared on screen (she's no "jedi"!), it definitely said something about needing a Han Solo recharge for him. I feel sorry for Mark Hamill. I recently saw a website poking fun of his lowbrow Hollywood liberal political views in one of those TMZ type videos and its sad to see THAT being his only notable in-person contribution to his fans (he reprised the Joker voice that he did in the BATMAN cartoon in ARKHAM CITY the video game which was very good). But its like you want these people to succeed no matter what. A couple of months back I saw Carrie Fisher on the TODAY show and she had just lost a lot of weight and somewhere in the back of my mind I heard a voice echo "SHES BEAUTIFUL..." and it totally brought me back then I recalled the Anakin story with Natalie Portman's wooden anti-Leia... SHUDDER
Disney MUST divorce that shit.
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Post by GRWelsh on Oct 31, 2012 9:49:20 GMT -5
I don't want to say George Lucas sucks, because he did after all create the franchise we all love which I think outweighs anything bad he creates later on within it. But I did not like much about the prequels. And I think someone else being in charge has a lot of potential to be a great thing.
I'm looking forward to Episode VII! I have high hopes again!
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Post by geneweigel on Oct 31, 2012 11:00:43 GMT -5
As far as sci fi adventure its a Frankenstein of so many ideas that its scared creative types away we've either gotten straight takes of prior properties (Flash Gordon, etc.) or reckless disasters (Fifth Element, etc.) in the science fiction adventure genre.
I think Lucas needs to apologize directly to me with a letter signed in his own blood for me to not be very skeptical of even a tangential participation on his part.
That said, a "New Hope" is better than nothing.
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Post by geneweigel on Oct 31, 2012 11:02:12 GMT -5
Sorry, I know AVATAR was a sci-fi adventure but it was wrong on a lot of levels. Featuring giant Ewoks as the stars.
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Post by Scott on Oct 31, 2012 11:03:02 GMT -5
I knew John Carter would not be a good John Carter movie as soon as I saw Disney was involved. There was no way they'd put there name on something with the amount of blood and nakedness required. I did hope for a good sci fi movie with some Barsoom elements that I might recognize. But the movie ended up terrible. Star Wars is something I think Disney could pull off.
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Post by Scott on Oct 31, 2012 11:04:39 GMT -5
He (Lucas) is still going to be a consultant, and they are using his ideas as the basis for the new trilogy.
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Post by geneweigel on Oct 31, 2012 11:40:01 GMT -5
I knew John Carter would not be a good John Carter movie as soon as I saw Disney was involved. There was no way they'd put there name on something with the amount of blood and nakedness required. I did hope for a good sci fi movie with some Barsoom elements that I might recognize. But the movie ended up terrible. Star Wars is something I think Disney could pull off. I was still hyped to see that after I got 6 or 7 "don't bother" type reviews from friends. I knew when Taylor said it wasn't that great because he was "John Cartered out" before I met him in 1984. I didn't like the wimpy looking tharks. Too gungan, they should have been " original film Chewbacca-ized" at least.
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Post by geneweigel on Oct 31, 2012 11:41:14 GMT -5
He (Lucas) is still going to be a consultant, and they are using his ideas as the basis for the new trilogy. Yeah, lets hope its the film school part of his mind!
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Post by Scott on Oct 31, 2012 12:02:18 GMT -5
I knew John Carter would not be a good John Carter movie as soon as I saw Disney was involved. There was no way they'd put there name on something with the amount of blood and nakedness required. I did hope for a good sci fi movie with some Barsoom elements that I might recognize. But the movie ended up terrible. Star Wars is something I think Disney could pull off. I was still hyped to see that after I got 6 or 7 "don't bother" type reviews from friends. I knew when Taylor said it wasn't that great because he was "John Cartered out" before I met him in 1984. I didn't like the wimpy looking tharks. Too gungan, they should have been " original film Chewbacca-ized" at least. The story was thin and all over the place. Another complaint I had, which I also had for the newer Star Wars trilogy, was that everything looked too shiny and new. Even the ruins looked shiny and new. Barsoom was a ruined dying world, and the movie didn't capture that vibe at all.
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Post by geneweigel on Oct 31, 2012 12:05:46 GMT -5
I was still hyped to see that after I got 6 or 7 "don't bother" type reviews from friends. I knew when Taylor said it wasn't that great because he was "John Cartered out" before I met him in 1984. I didn't like the wimpy looking tharks. Too gungan, they should have been " original film Chewbacca-ized" at least. The story was thin and all over the place. Another complaint I had, which I also had for the newer Star Wars trilogy, was that everything looked too shiny and new. Even the ruins looked shiny and new. Barsoom was a ruined dying world, and the movie didn't capture that vibe at all. It reminded me of endless bad D&D campaign cities that I went to...
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Post by GRWelsh on Oct 31, 2012 14:06:02 GMT -5
He (Lucas) is still going to be a consultant, and they are using his ideas as the basis for the new trilogy. That sounds ideal... that sounds like... "Empire Strikes Back"! Story by George Lucas Script by somebody else Directed by somebody else
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Falconer
Enchanter
Knight Bachelor
AD&D, Middle-earth, Star Trek TOS
Posts: 330
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Post by Falconer on Oct 31, 2012 15:36:28 GMT -5
I think it’s sad that they ever had to make a franchise out of it. Imagine if it were only just the one movie Star Wars, and they never touched it since. Same with Raiders of the Lost Ark. Each just sort of came out of nowhere to stand as masterpieces of the imagination. Unfortunately, the original genius perfection is muted by the surrounding noise. Maybe it would have been fine if they each had just one really excellent sequel each (Empire, Last Crusade), and that was it. Or maybe if Star Wars and Raiders just stood as 2/3 of a “Lucas pulp trilogy” — without any ties to each other, mind you, other than being inspired by the film serials of the 30s and 40s.
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Post by GRWelsh on Oct 31, 2012 16:07:54 GMT -5
I don't mind that they made franchises out of these movies. The serials that inspired them were franchises, after all. I just wish the some of the installments were better.
It's almost like the later Star Wars and Indy movies were trying to take inspiration from the early installments of their own franchises, rather than the pulp serials they were originally inspired by... Maybe that's where they went wrong, they became too deliberately nostalgic and self-referential. "Look it's the old series you know and love! Your old friends, together again! Really, it is!" But then you see it, and it's like the film-makers were so worried about packing the screen full of shiny CGI and dropping in all the right names and little reference details that they forgot to actually hire a professional script-writer.
But at the end of the day, I'd rather get more Star Wars that is potentially bad -- than no more Star Wars ever!
Because... I think it is possible for someone else to take the helm and do it right.
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Post by geneweigel on Oct 31, 2012 16:31:11 GMT -5
If you cut through all of the bad turns, its the novels that made STAR WARS bad. It just showed that a large pile of dumb money was out there enough to make a prequel trilogy but going way back I can recall the emptiness of SPLINTER OF THE MIND'S EYE. It was the first really crappy take on STAR WARS and the SOLO one's weren't as bad but close enough to say they sucked. What was the name of that crappy "pastiche-bot" on the Falcon? "NOT-FILM-WORTHY-TRON"?
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Post by GRWelsh on Nov 1, 2012 9:40:56 GMT -5
Yeah, lets hope its the film school part of his mind! I sometimes wonder if "Film School/1970's" George Lucas and "modern" George Lucas could meet, if they would hate each other and fight over artisitic vision. The two face each other. "I've got a bad feeling about this," they both say in unison, and chuckle. Dialogue is something they have in common. But the good will does not last very long and the meeting ends with: "Join with me, young George. Together at Disney we can make more wealth than you can imagine." "I don't know. I can imagine quite a bit." "You must join with me... it is your destiny!" "You can't tell me what to do! You are NOT MY FATHER!" young George screams.
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Post by geneweigel on Feb 4, 2013 23:23:55 GMT -5
Does anyone even want to mention the JJ Abrams aspect? Its frightening, I'll give it that. Is this better or worse than EPISODE I PHANTOM MENACE? PHANTOM had super slick bad locales (Homogenized Tatooine, plus a Space Venice as well as Space Penthouses) and instantly vaporized their biggest asset (Vader). If they tie together the prequels anymore with the originals that'll be scary: Han Solo meets the Gungans for Ewok hugs. GAAHHH!!! I think Abrams is grounded in Spielberg flunky land like all those GOONIES/GREMLINS crap of the eighties so he'll be arriving in RETURN OF THE JEDI style methinks. Is that so bad? Maybe it'll be an an alternate reality like STAR TREK. Anything is better than that bland PREQUEL UNIVERSE or the even more repetitious and unimaginative EXPANDED UNIVERSE novel crap priorly. with cookie cutter Skywalkeroids and international coffee flavored aliens.
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Post by GRWelsh on Feb 5, 2013 9:10:46 GMT -5
The only thing J. J. Abrams has done that I really liked was the first season of LOST, which I thought was great. We shall not speak of the series' ending. I thought STAR TREK would have been a pretty decent movie if it had just been a science fiction movie without any ties to STAR TREK, although it still had plot issues. The intro with Kirk's father dying wasn't bad.
The sad truth is I don't think Abrams can do much worse than the Star Wars prequels.
Actually, with Abrams as the director, Lucas as consultant, and someone else writing the script, and a story perhaps lifting elements from the "Thrawn" trilogy, I think Episodes VII-IX have a lot of potential. Especially if they get back to the beat-up, used universe and some colorful yet dastardly characters.
With Star Wars, I'm like a baseball fan in Spring. I'm hopeful again, no matter how bad the team did last year...
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