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filkertomI'd like to thank George Lucas.
George, you have completely cured me of a dread condition. I no longer feel compelled to give you money.
Revenge of the Sith comes out on DVD today. I couldn't give a shit. I am way more interested in the special edition of George Pal's War of the Worlds and Jake "The Snake" Roberts: Pick Your Poison than I ever will be in that sad, pathetic, overwrought special-effects fest you tried to pass off as epic space fantasy earlier this year.
I understand you want to (paraphrasing here) "get back to making small films again", or somesuch. Art films. Films that mean something, as if Star Wars -- sorry, Episode IV: A New Hope didn't mean something. I suppose I wish you well. But I don't think you'll be able to do it.
Because, if you had any in you, you've had twenty-eight fucking years to do so.
So, thanks, George. The money's a little tight, and you made it easier for me to Do The Right Thing.
George, you have completely cured me of a dread condition. I no longer feel compelled to give you money.
Revenge of the Sith comes out on DVD today. I couldn't give a shit. I am way more interested in the special edition of George Pal's War of the Worlds and Jake "The Snake" Roberts: Pick Your Poison than I ever will be in that sad, pathetic, overwrought special-effects fest you tried to pass off as epic space fantasy earlier this year.
I understand you want to (paraphrasing here) "get back to making small films again", or somesuch. Art films. Films that mean something, as if Star Wars -- sorry, Episode IV: A New Hope didn't mean something. I suppose I wish you well. But I don't think you'll be able to do it.
Because, if you had any in you, you've had twenty-eight fucking years to do so.
So, thanks, George. The money's a little tight, and you made it easier for me to Do The Right Thing.
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Date: 2005-11-01 09:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-01 12:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-01 12:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-01 01:19 pm (UTC)Hmmm, I could get it and try and edit an all Amidalla gone wild version using the 3 films.
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Date: 2005-11-01 12:16 pm (UTC)I think my wife said it best: Lucas doesn't direct actors; he directs pixels. Unfortunately, that's the direction most American science fiction media has gone -- emphasis on FX, never mind the storyline.
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Date: 2005-11-01 01:08 pm (UTC)You must have given it longer than *I* did because I really did almost feel betrayed after Ep 1. Ugh! The only reason I didn't mind watching it the one time I rented it because the kids nagged me was to watch Qui Gon (who dies, alas) and to watch Darth Maul (who is too pretty to be a bad guy darn it! and note he dies too sigh) Oh and Anakin's Mom who was the best acting in the whole movie and guess what!? She dies too. Yep.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I am HAPPY to have holes in my collection (though admittedly I was so disgusted that i haven't even seen 3 yet. I sort of intend to, someday.) I want a nice DVD set of 4,5,6 (which I have on video) and am content to stop there and pretend the other three never happened. BLECH!
(I know I know, get off the fence mew and say what you really mean)
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Date: 2005-11-10 06:23 am (UTC)In that, that was turned me off to episode I and drove me away from II and III: the lack of a really HUMAN protagonist. It may have been the story of Luke Skywalker coming into his heritage, but the Trilogy would have been boring in the extreme without people like Han Solo around -- people with genuine human mtoviations, people who broke the rules and made their own, people who lived on the human level rather than the cosmic. Luke may have fought for a grand ideal, but Han fought for himself, for his friends, and for love. And he was more truly ALIVE than anyone else in the trilogy, and that brought out the best in the people around him.
Still, it says something really nasty about a legendary film series when someone writes a semi-satiric fan remake recasting characters from a completely unrelated series into the roles and tells a better story than Lucas did.
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Date: 2005-11-10 12:13 pm (UTC)It's probably a testement to Guiness' acting more than to Lucas' writing but I loved Obi Wan from the minute I met him. You get this real sense of "there's a lot of history here we aren't seeing, I bet he has some *good* stories to tell!" Too bad you don't really get to see that when you meet his younger self. It really could have been good!
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Date: 2005-11-01 01:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-01 01:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-01 04:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-01 01:45 pm (UTC)Thank you
She's woke me up enough times, a little payback is good
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Date: 2005-11-01 02:46 pm (UTC)He could have done something amazing! He could have gotten ANY writer in the world, he could have gotten ANY director in the world to make ep 1, 2 and/or 3.
Ingmar Bergman would have come out of retirement to direct a Star Wars film. The TEAM of writers who would have crawled naked to Skywalker Ranch to work on the script would have made an interesting sight.
He needed to go back to right after Star Wars (screw the Ep4 thing) when we was quoted in "Time" saying ".. I've found I'm not cut out to be a director. I'll just do the stories and let them direct". WHY couldn't he have remembered that??
Sometimes I think...
Date: 2005-11-01 04:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-01 02:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-01 02:51 pm (UTC)-=ShoEboX=-
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Date: 2005-11-01 04:05 pm (UTC)In Lucas's case, he isn't hungry anymore so he doesn't have to wow the audiences like he did in 77. This is a perfect example of how success can ruin one's career.
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Date: 2005-11-01 05:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-01 06:32 pm (UTC)*The first, of course, was Roddy Piper
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Date: 2005-11-01 06:44 pm (UTC)I'll just skip the SW 1/2/3 garbage and go watch Hell Comes To Frogtown again. Now THAT is a fine film. [/laughter] Well, it's fun, and that's what really matters, right? :)
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Date: 2005-11-01 06:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-01 07:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-01 10:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2005-11-01 10:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-02 07:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-01 07:16 pm (UTC)Also, did anybody check out Cartoon Network's "Clone Wars"? Even prequel-haters liked that series.
I guess I go with the general Tolkein-theory. In my opinion, Tolkein was a terrible writer. I can't stand to read his books. They just dragged on and on without anything important happening for entire chapters. But I loved the movies. That's because even though Tolkein had a great imagination and a fantastic story going, he told it badly. In the same sense, Lucas has a lot of great ideas and concepts for his Star Wars movies, but he's a lousy writer/director, which is why his best Star Wars films were done when he had help from other writers and directors.
Since he took on the prequels by himself, his lack of skill in the areas of writing and directing was more apparent than before. However, the stories themselves, what happens between the characters, and the aspects of his universe are still great in my opinion (well, except for the Gungans).
And honestly, some things that piss off some people are just ridiculous. For example, Anakin's "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" Yeah, it was stupid. However, if you look back on "Empire", Luke has an even stupider sounding "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" but no one ever complains about that. Probably because they are too occupied with the fact that Vader is Luke's father at the time. They were focusing more on the good parts and less on the cheesy parts (and there were a lot).
To sum up, I think people's main problems with the prequels and many sequels (the Matrix sequels for example) is that they build up expectations that aren't realized. And how could they be? If you went into Star Wars as children expecting to be blown away like you may have been with the prequels, you probably wouldn't have been. For me, everything sort of came all at once, so I didn't have a blanket of anticipation wrapped around Episode I, I just wanted to go see it. And I loved it. As I got older, certain things irked me that didn't before, but I could still appreciate the parts that amazed me.
Sorry that took so long, but my view is just rather complicated to explain.
Haphazardly....
Date: 2005-11-01 07:36 pm (UTC)We might have some fightin' words re: Tolkien as a writer. He is certainly not an easy read, something of an acquired taste. The Hobbit is easier to get into than LOTR, and I consider that a damn near perfect book.
And, yeah, Clone Wars is good stuff. As Anne put it, there's more of what Star Wars is about in the first five minutes of that than in all of Episodes I and II.
Re: Haphazardly....
Date: 2005-11-01 09:01 pm (UTC)Re: Haphazardly....
Date: 2005-11-02 07:44 am (UTC)Re: Haphazardly....
Date: 2005-11-02 02:43 pm (UTC)Re: Haphazardly....
Date: 2005-11-02 04:04 pm (UTC)Re: Haphazardly....
Date: 2005-11-02 06:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-10 06:29 am (UTC)Still, was there really a creative need for thr prequel trilogy? What the fans imagined when they thought of how the decent man who had been Luke's father became the moral monster Darth Vader must have been far more compelling than what Lucas came up with -- and it didn't have midochlorians, pod racing or Jar Jar Binks.
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Date: 2005-11-10 06:36 am (UTC)And the reason Lucas came up with for Anakin turning was better than what most people could probably come up with.
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Date: 2005-11-02 03:25 am (UTC)And abso-fraggin-lutely right! George coulda done a hell of a lot better job with the storytelling--and your post reminded me of the first words out of my mouth when the credits rolled at the end of ROTS:
Well, that's it. It's over...
I'm with atalantapendrag. Is there a release date for the Serenity DVD yet?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-02 07:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-02 09:00 am (UTC)I am so with you. I haven't seen any of the prequel movies, I don't want to see the prequel movies, and for that matter, I want the original 1977 Star Wars as I saw it in the theater (and THX-1138 unaltered, too). Han shot first, dammit.
I still say that the reason the original Star Wars worked was because Lucas had no way of knowing whether he had a winner or a loser on is hands, so he just went ahead and made a movie and hoped for the best. By the time Return of the Jedi came around, SW had been afflicted with the same curse that has prevented Trek successors from ever being as much fun as TOS: it had become a franchise and a cultural phenomenon.
Why he thought he had to go back and change the original vision (you know, the one that made him a zillionaire), I'll never know.
I know the impact 'THX-1138' had on me when I first saw it. Very '1984', very disturbing, very thought-provoking.
You can't see it that way any more. Lucas decided he needed to change the ending, so that now it has all the impact of a small, fluffy pillow.
George Lucas used to be a film-maker. That's the real tragedy here. He really was good, once upon a time. His career, sadly, has been self-sabotaged by unforgivable second-guessing.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-02 02:51 pm (UTC)Next, I just want to say this simply. Lucas changed the movies for two reasons:
1) Because he didn't like them as they were and wanted to do other things with them. He didn't care if he'd piss off the fans in doing that, it's what he wanted to do. And y'know what? He had balls for doing it.
2) To bring Star Wars (and perhaps THX too) to another generation, and although most of the old generation don't like the remakes, an entirely different generation has fallen in love with them the way you fell in love with the originals.
You have the right to hate them and go right ahead, but I thought I'd let you know why he thought he had to go back and change the OT.
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Date: 2005-11-02 03:36 pm (UTC)But in so doing, he changed the movies, in more than a merely cosmetic way. Why not allow us the option to have it the original way if we so prefer? I'd own the DVD if the original version were on there.
I can understand wanting to clean up bad graphics (most notoriously, "this is my TIE fighter, and this is the box it came in"), but changing important character and story details (Han shot first, and THX-1138 ended very differently and far more meaningfully) is my complaint.
What cost younger fans, if he lops off the ones that made him a star in the first place? It's the fans my age and thereabouts that made Lucas a very famous, very wealthy man. And to those of us who fell in love with the original movies, and with his genuinely brilliant earlier work, he's giving us the metaphorical finger. We deserve at least the choice.
And thanks on the icon compliment--I've seen TMBG oh, eight or nine times now. The only performer I've seen that has more fun on stage than the Johns was Weird Al. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-02 07:03 pm (UTC)Maybe he ought to give people the choice. Still, there is the VHS version out there. Nevertheless, most of the story details in Star Wars that are changed are insignificant at best. The biggest one I can think of is having Hayden play ghost Anakin in Jedi, because it sort of screws over the guy who played the original human Anakin. But then again, having that guy play the ghost in the first place screwed over James Earl Jones and the guy in the costume, so I don't see it as a huge loss.
Are there really enough changes in the story to make you feel screwed over?
And I've never been to a TMBG concert before, although I've always wanted to. I do, however, have 200-ish of their songs (many are alternate versions, but still...).
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-09 04:12 pm (UTC)The Han-shot-first thing is different for a number of reasons, the most prominent of which is that Lucas can't possibly say it wasn't intended, as it was not only in his movie but in his novelization of his movie. And what it did for the character was amazing: We simply weren't used to having good guys shooting first, shooting sneaky. The cred that scene lent to Han as being a dangerous guy was damn near infinite.
But...
But somewhere along the way, in the same fashion that had Wolverine not kill anyone for a long time because Heroes Don't Do That -- never mind that that was pretty much all he was created and trained to do -- Lucas decided that Han was a hero, heroes don't shoot first, ergo, Han didn't shoot first. And the alteration of that scene is as clumsy as the logic behind a bounty hunter living on the grey edge of the law not doing anything he can to get the drop on an armed foe who intends to turn him in to an angry mob boss for a reward.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-09 06:18 pm (UTC)I dunno, I feel silly debating over something as trivial as a few frames of a 2-hour-long movie. Han shoots a lot of other people first later on in the movies anyway. He shoots Vader first. It doesn't work, but he does it. He picks off Vader's companions during the Death Star scene. Just because one scene where he kills someone is slightly altered doesn't change his entire persona.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-09 09:31 pm (UTC)Translation: The only reason Han didn't shoot first is because Lucas isn't that good a writer.
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Date: 2005-11-09 09:38 pm (UTC)