IN YOUR FACE Be With You (or, May The Force Poke You In The Eye)

[filkertom]

Numerous sources link to the news that George "I Want To Do Small Films For Awhile" Lucas is re-releasing the Star Wars flicks in 3D, starting with Ep 1: The Pantene Menace in 2012, which I'm sure was foretold in the Maian calendar. maiac, could you verify...?

My buddy hughcasey hopes that at least shots like the opening of Ep 4 (you know, Princess Leia's ship being chased by the Star Destroyer that just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger until we realize we've never seen anything like this before) will look awesome.

Sorry, Hugh. They won't.

Partly because there's really no way to make that shot more awesome... but mostly because the films weren't filmed in 3D. Which means they're going to use The Process. You remember -- the one that everybody ripped Clash of the Titans and The Last Airbender for using. The one that actually makes the film uglier rather than cooler.

It is yet another attempt to jack money out of our wallets on the Same Old Shit. And, bluntly, I hope it fails. I hope he loses big time. Because it's not innovative or anything. He's trying to create a demand, based on a techie gimmick and on the original product's name recognition, where I don't think there is one, based on the failure of that techie gimmick and on the original product's quality. He's going to spackle bad 3D onto six movies not filmed in 3D, starting with one of the worst, most boring movies in the history of SF films, and following up with two more before he gets to an actual good movie.

Five bucks says he pulls the plug before Ep 4 is released, due to "unexpectedly low demand" on the part of the public, or somesuch. I should have the fiver -- I'm not going to see any of the movies.

Comments

[annathepiper]

I am so very much not going to see these and I wish he'd QUIT IT ALREADY before he destroys my last remaining vestiges of interest in Star Wars fandom. I say this as the girl who played Han Solo for two and a half years on Star Wars MUSH, too!

[mythochromos]

As @garywhitta put it on Twitter, I'd rather they add a second dimension to the characters in 1-3 than add a third dimension to the image.

[stormsdotter.livejournal.com]

I hope this attempt falls flat on its ass and Lucas *looses* a lot of money.

I was ambivalent about Episode I: Anakin was annoying and JarJar should have been thrown under a bus, but Qui Gon and Darth Maul saved it from being a complete failure. Of course, those were the two characters who didn't survive.

I saw Episodes 2 and 3 on opening night in the theater, and I have vowed never to see them again.

My name is Anakin, and I hate Star Wars.

[crwilley.livejournal.com]

mostly because the films weren't filmed in 3D. Which means they're going to use The Process. You remember -- the one that everybody ripped Clash of the Titans and The Last Airbender for using. The one that actually makes the film uglier rather than cooler.

This. This is why I will not see them. At all. The kind of surreal look more or less worked when they retrofitted 3D onto Alice in Wonderland (and even then it kind of didn't - I remember a lot of stuff at the edges of the screen looked weirdly blurred), but there is no amount of computer power that will make post-production 3D actually look good.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

But hey, now we can watch Han Solo do a backflip and stand upsidedown on one hand while waiting for Greedo to fire and miss -- you know, like Lucas originally wanted to film but couldn't for "technical" reasons. No, wait, that was the REAL "star wars trilogy" and he's talking about doing this with his retreaded "Star Wars 90210 trilogy". Nevermind.

I won't buy this. I won't even watch it. I have little interest in 3D movies overall. If you make a sucky movie and do it in 3D, it's still a sucky movie -- it just has more depth of suckiness than as a regular movie. If you make a good movie with a good story, people will see it whether it's 3D, 2D, Black and white, or shadow puppets cast on the wall. Granted it's hard to do shadow puppets with 5.1 surround sound, but some of us love a challenge.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

When done correctly, 3D is, you'll pardon the expression, almost invisible. Toy Story 3 did not try to gosh-wow you with Amazing Three Dee Effexx0rz. All it did was make the whole thing look more real, which made it much easier to get into the film and accept it. Gorgeous flick, but first and foremost a good flick, that used its gimmickry to the best possible effexx0rz.

[mouser.livejournal.com]

I think maybe George misunderstood when we said "The movies lack depth"

Whatever.

The space scenes are actually fairly easy to make 3D because you can just CG replace them. I actually have little objection to that; I'm probably one of the few that thought EP4 became better when they redid it (except for Han shooting first).


ALL the scenes that they can't completely CGI will suck, though. There are HUGELY expensive ways to redo the scenes, but they wont.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I think maybe George misunderstood when we said "The movies lack depth"

[snerk]

I dunno about the "fairly easy to make 3D because you can just CG replace them". A lot of the original trilogy was model work. And there was a lot of model work. Ep 4 added a lot of stuff, but I dunno about a lot of those interior Death Star shots (e.g., Obi-Wan disabling the tractor beam, the entire sequence of Leia's escape [firefight down the corridor, into the garbage chute flyboy, swing across on the rope -- man, am I glad I have Star Wars Lego: The Original Trilogy sitting here waiting to be installed]).

[thistlethorn.livejournal.com]

Oh, *yawn*. Thankfully, I still have my first, $100.00 (bought used!) Star Wars videotape, the original movie, no add-on special effects, no nothin'. Pure Star Wars.

And starting with Phantom Menace? *even bigger yawn* I couldn't even be bothered to see that one once after hearing about it. Much less endless releases and re-tooled re-releases. ("Tool" being the operative word in that sentence.)

[mouser.livejournal.com]

Tom, I said the SPACE SCENES would be fairly easy to replace.

Anything that's got an actor in it? OUCH! I grant that the backgrounds can be cropped and replaced (like they did with the re-release) but making the actors 3D? I imagine it's doable, but you'd have to create 3D models of the right depth to make it work.

You'd basically be doing twice the work of just making one movie.


And now, for your daily dose of nightmare: JAR JAR in 3D!!!

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not sure how they could pull that off - especially for things like That One Star Destroyer Shot - without actually redoing each scene completely from scratch. Obviously Lucas won't (aside from maybe a few token shots like that one), so yeah.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Hm. You're probably correct about the space scenes, come to think of it -- they already modeled that stuff out the wazoo for the SpecialEds.

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

I have not yet seen a 3D film which convinces me that it's anything more than a gimmick. This is probably more a sign that I'm not watching the right films than a sign that 3D is a waste of time and money.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

I've seen plenty of analysis that 3D is going to die quickly. It's basically just a gimmick to get the people who bought their new HDTVs early on to go out and buy a whole new generation of HDTVs.

I gave up on Lucas years ago. I don't really go to movies in the theater anymore, but I bought episode I the day it came out on DVD. And was badly disappointed. Then I bought episode II, thinking "well, maybe he just needed to get his shit together." I honestly didn't even bother seeing episode III until about 2 years after it came out on DVD, and I didn't buy it then, I just downloaded a crappy pirated copy, watched it, and wanted those 2 hours back.

I'm afraid I have to totally agree with this guy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI

[jeffr23.livejournal.com]

Presumably, there are archive disks somehwere at ILM or skywalker ranch with all of the computer models for the special effects, and in those models would be all of the depth information required to do a full-on, non-postprocess 3D version of all of the CGI stuff. Which is most of the prequel movies right there.

The problem is that they may not have that for the actors or the practical sets (from the films that actually used practical sets. And who knows, they may just digitally model them att this time.). So there might be some real weirdness where all of the humans (and a few muppets) are postprocess and stuck in a single frame while everything else around them is in good 3D.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Anne aimed me to that earlier this year, and I love love love it.

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

You know, I've been watching the new season of Clone Wars on Cartoon Network and it's not half bad. I wish he'd put his creative effort in that direction--with some better writers (hint, hint), it could be stellar.

Tom T.

[shadowofsummer.livejournal.com]

The owner of a movie theater swore to me five years ago that 3D was going to make a huge comeback and that George Lucas was eventually going to re-release the Star Wars flicks in 3D.

I didn't believe him at the time. I'm glad I didn't put money on it.

[thistlethorn.livejournal.com]

And now, for your daily dose of nightmare: JAR JAR in 3D!!!

AAAAGH! *runs screaming*

Now that is one scary-ass thought. Happy Halloween to you, too!

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

There does seem to be a big push to get 3D television off the ground here the last year or two. Granted, as another commentator said, it may be a fad devised by marketing to sell HD sets, but it may end up being the real deal.

I do not say that Lucas isn't chasing what looks like easy money- hell, I knew he was only interested in the folding green back when I was EIGHT. But it may be that he's jumping at this particular money because he's betting on coming technology or trends, and wants to make sure Lucasfilm is at the front of the line with content for the new medium.

[robin-june.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of wondering if he hasn't been listening to the pundits who are saying that any movie that isn't in 3D will be lost in ancient history as far as future audiences are concerned. He might be trying to keep up with the relevance to newbies.

[tomreedtoon.livejournal.com]

It would be too easy to just toss out the snark. But I, for one, would like to utter a silent sob for the pathetic fate of George Lucas.

Here was a guy whose nerdish first film, a take on 1984 made as a student, got a theatrical release. Then he did a story based on his own youth as a car-driving cruiser in Modesto, California. And then he did a pastiche of Jack Kirby's New Gods comics and it became a worldwide sensation.

And then his creativity died.

He became too much of a techie. I remember reading about his "EditDroid" film/video editing system, a massive console using videodisks for edit storage, that was obsolete a year after he announced it. Only 24 were made, and Lucas never edited a movie on it, only his Young Indiana Jones TV series.

I won't recount his misfires and failures in film, post-Star Wars; you all know them. But at one point he said he wanted to make abstract, non-narrative movies. It suggests that he didn't want to deal with humanity much any more. And he never got up the energy to make those movies.

In fact, there's one classic film character whose life resembles Lucas's. Does the name Charles Foster Kane ring a familiar bell?

[capt-video.livejournal.com]

I can only hope 3D dies quickly... my husband loves the effect and I am utterly incapable of watching films in 3D. The combination of my coke-bottle glasses, the 3D glasses and (I suspect) my astigmatism, means I get none of the effect, just eyestrain, neck pain and a massive migraine!

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

After the fiasco that was 1-3 I can't even watch 4-6 anymore.

It's just to painful to see Darth Vader come through the door of the Rebel Cruiser and picture him going "Do Not Want!" about Ama "I died of the broken heart, screw my kids" dala.

I'm going to stop there.

[jss]

Ditto completely except for the husband.