the crimes of george lucas ('90s on)

Rejoice!

https://scontent.fsnc1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpt1/v/t1.0-9/11254700_10156239974985604_6867695534067385105_n.jpg?oh=37c430aafebed5d66d9e8d7f23fa7c76&oe=56D15ABF

we don't really have an 80s crimes thread but i didn't want to even further spam up the Star Wars 7 thread with this after i realized how much i'd typed up. anyway maybe relevant here as a foreshadowing of 90s/00s crimes. these are quotes from cinefex #13 (july 1983). as a preliminary let me just note that richard marquand, the director of return of the jedi is mentioned by one interviewee on the second page ("George has a lot of chips riding on this one. He's over in England now working with Richard Marquand, and will probably stay there until the picture is finished shooting") whereas "George" comes up a lot. a lot.. highlights:

Richard Edlund, 10 November 1982: A recent development is that George has decided that there are too many effects shots - which is tending to slow the picture down. So he's in the process of restructuring a few of the sequences, and there's a possibility that we're going to get a cutback in the number of shots we have to do. After all, a lot of the ILM material - especially with the spaceships - is really environmental establishment. Granted, you're seeing events take place that are necessary to the story - but a lot of them are not and, really, your attention should be focused on the actors. That's what George has in mind. I don't think he'll be cutting any sequences outright - just paring them down a bit and getting rid of some of the extraneous shots that are slowing things down. frankly, we're not unhappy to see that he's making fewer shots for us to do.

Ken Ralston, 22 November 1982: Basically what George wants is mayhem - cutting back and forth between the space battle and the ground battle and what's going on in the Deathstar. And he's building the pace throughout the whole thing by cutting from action to action. It never stops. George has just finished a major restructuring of the effects sequences - cutting some things, adding others - so we're in kind of an upheaval at the moment. He wants areal feeling of grandeur and awe, and he's trying to get a much bigger sense to the size of these things. So the complexity of the shots is far greater than anything I've ever done. (...)

In the latest purge, I had thirty-six shots cut - which sounds like a lot, but then I had some other miscellaneous space stuff added. Unfortunately, some of the shots George cut were about ninety percent completed, which hurts. He also cut some others that I was just in love with - and I'm now fighting to get a couple of them back in, just because they're really neat shots and I'd like to see them in the show. one is an A-wing being chased by a TIE-ship. (...) It's one of those shots that even when you first see it storyboarded, you know it'll probably be a real beauty. And it was coming along real nicely. As you watched it, you'd get a real feeling of upward motion. Everybody liked it. But it got tossed. So now I'm pleading with George to put it back in. Of course, George works from a different point of view. He wants to keep the story from getting so convoluted and confusing that by the end of the film you don't know what you've seen. And I have a feeling he cut that particular shot because the one right after it is of Admiral Ackbar - who's kind of a squid-head creature that Phil designed - and he said a line that was totally pointless. So George was trying to cut back and tossed them both.

Richard Edlund, 16 December 1982: The rebel attack on the Deathstar is coming along (...) The workload is enormous. (...) It turns out that all the cuts and changes George was making didn't turn out to be much of an advantage to us in terms of time. A lot of shots were cut, but about a hundred more were added, so the overall number didn't really go down. The current tally on the whole picture, I think, is more than five hundred shots. I don't know how we're goign to do it, but I'm sure we'll manage somehow.

Ken Ralston, 17 January 1983: This place is a nuthouse. It never stops. (...) We're also doing a lot of changing around on some of the shots, which is partially a result of George's recut and also of the way the whole project was approached. In the very beginning, George decided to turn Joe Johnston [yes, that Joe Johnston] and George Jenson and all the storyboard guys loose and just have them come up with all kinds of ideas. He didn't want any sequences - no specifics. He wanted big extravaganza shots and small shots. He wanted spaceships doing all kinds of things. Then he took all of this unrelated stuff and made sequences out of it, even though there was no inherent continuity and each board was different from the next. Then the storyboard artists went back to work and began refining the sequences. The problem was that we had to start working with those original storyboards, and unfortunately, there wasn't enough information then to really do the shots right - which is coming back to haunt us now.

Whent he sequences got changed around, it affected a lot of what we'd already begun shooting. A shot that was twentieth in the space battle sequence might now be in the fiftieth position, so the shot that came before it - maybe a TIE-ship flying around and blowing up - is now a cruiser with an X-wing. So George would say: "Okay, then, drop the TIE-ship elementa nd wahtever other elements don't make sense anymore, and we'll stick in these ships." So we're constantly finding ourselves going back adn replacing certain elemetns in a shot with other elements in order to maintain continuity from shot to shot. (...)

George is asking for some incredible stuff - a lot of which involves adding things to scenes that, from an effects standpoint, weren't shot right in the first place. (...) George wanted to put a chickenwalker into this one hand-held shot that was moving all around - which meant hand-drawn roto mattes and plotting the camera moves so that the background elements and foreground elements would all lock into that plate. Horrendous stuff! There'll be a bunch of stormtroopers lying dead on the ground and he'll want all but two of them painted out. Then, over on the side, we'll put in some trees to hide this prop that doesn't make sense anymore. Some bikers are sitting in the scene; but you can see the supports on their bikes, so you have to paint the supports out and maybe add some other bikers flying around. It's just unbelievable some of the things George is asking for. And what's even more unbelievable is we're doing it - at least in a lot of cases. We're trying anyway. But even George Lucas can't always have everything.

you can exactly why lucas greeted CGI with such enthusiasm (uncritical enthuasiasm, you might say)

Richard Edlund, 10 November 1982: A recent development is that George has decided that there are too many effects shots - which is tending to slow the picture down. So he's in the process of restructuring a few of the sequences, and there's a possibility that we're going to get a cutback in the number of shots we have to do. After all, a lot of the ILM material - especially with the spaceships - is really environmental establishment. Granted, you're seeing events take place that are necessary to the story - but a lot of them are not and, really, your attention should be focused on the actors. That's what George has in mind. I don't think he'll be cutting any sequences outright - just paring them down a bit and getting rid of some of the extraneous shots that are slowing things down. frankly, we're not unhappy to see that he's making fewer shots for us to do.

you also might say that lucas "fixed" this issue in the "special editions"--by including all the effects that were too time-consuming to incorporate into the original versions (and then some)

yeah. clearly there was some kind of productive friction between what he wanted, and what his effects team could deliver, which (as in most cinefex issues btw) ends up yielding these great sequences as the team has to figure out how the fuck to do something with the time, money, space and equipment they have. "well we could do it this way but then our hands would be tied if we later needed to..." or "with go-motion, there's always a problem getting the lighting to match" or whatever.

there are other control-freak director issues where you get that same push and pull but it sounds a little healthier. the one on the terminator is great. but the thing is that you also get the sense that lucas does understand these effects and how they're done, both from having done star wars and just from how much they relate to basic things a director has to deal with like lighting and lenses and frames per second of film and stuff. and yet he still is already trying to get these people to work like computer-editing. here's another good bit i missed:

Dennis Muren, 1 February 1983: ... Not all of it's real simple, though. We're doing some pretty complex stuff. From the tons of plate material we shot, George is picking shots and saying: "Let's stick a walker back in there." So we'll shoot the walker, and the roto department will make sort of a matte of some ferns or something in the foreground that'll cut off the walker's feet and make it as though it's back in the shot somewhere. Plus we're also putting walkers into a lot of the shots that aren't locked off. Whenever we do that, we have to plot the movement in the plate and then incorporate it into our motion control program for the puppet. We had a couple incredibly long pan shots - like 90 degrees - and we'd look at them and say: "Nobody would do a shot like that. We'd be crazy to try a shot like that." But then we'd project up the plate, plot the thing out a frame at a time through the camera, and then play it back with the motion control on our model move - and it works! That's what makes this work so exciting. (...) But then another one that George picked after that was where it's locked off and you start panning to the left. On that one, he wanted the walker coming right toward the camera - so if it's drifting at all, you'll see it. We did that once; but it still needs to be a little bit tighter, so we're going to redo it. (...) We have another horrendous shot that George insists that he wants. It's right after one of the walkers has been blown up. You see its head flying apart in a high-speed closeup, and then we cut to a shot of it standing there - with its head gone - and some ewoks in the foreground turn around and look back at it. The problem is that the only shot George could find where the ewoks stop running and turn to look back has a tilt on it. The walker's supposedly been hit and blown up, so it can't rock. It just has to stand there, smoking. So our tilt has to match exactly. We can't cover it up by having the walker moving around. We'll be starting on that one within the next couple of days."

cut forward fifteen years and it's behind-the-scenes footage of lucas in a chair, over the shoulder of two people at computers clicking their mice, sipping his starbucks cup and asking of they can make the spaceship more round, and add some things buzzing around in the background, and take out the crowd in the front but add some people walking in from stage left, etc. no problem, mr. lucas.

We have another horrendous shot that George insists that he wants. It's right after one of the walkers has been blown up. You see its head flying apart in a high-speed closeup, and then we cut to a shot of it standing there - with its head gone - and some ewoks in the foreground turn around and look back at it. The problem is that the only shot George could find where the ewoks stop running and turn to look back has a tilt on it. The walker's supposedly been hit and blown up, so it can't rock. It just has to stand there, smoking. So our tilt has to match exactly.

unexpected happy ending: have never forgotten this shot

But then another one that George picked after that was where it's locked off and you start panning to the left. On that one, he wanted the walker coming right toward the camera

or this one i think!

would kill for a reel of whatever the fuck george cut out though. pointless commentary by ackbar, you say??

as opposed to all the ackbar commentary that made it in?

He didn't want any sequences - no specifics. He wanted big extravaganza shots and small shots. He wanted spaceships doing all kinds of things. Then he took all of this unrelated stuff and made sequences out of it, even though there was no inherent continuity and each board was different from the next. Then the storyboard artists went back to work and began refining the sequences. The problem was that we had to start working with those original storyboards, and unfortunately, there wasn't enough information then to really do the shots right

Can we change the thread title to 'the dick moves of george lucas'

man there are 3,000 posts in this thread huh

never forget darth icky

lucas on why he didn't return to direct the new movie:

You go to make a movie and all you do is get criticized, and people try to make decisions about what you’re going to do before you do it.

Y’know, it’s not much fun, and you can’t experiment; you can’t do anything. You have to do it a certain way. I don’t like that, I never did. I started out in experimental films, and I want to go back to experimental films, but of course no one wants to see experimental films.

if only this poor multibillionaire, whose star wars features were mostly-self-funded, could find a way to make the films he really wants to make :(

lol at the idea that george lucas wants to make experimental films
bigger lol at the idea that ANY film by george lucas wouldn't draw some interest... red tails aside. marketing for that was so confused.

I wonder, when he says that no one wants to see experimental films, if his complaint is actually that an experimental film, even one made by George Lucas, is unlikely to be widely distributed by a major studio or gross hundreds of millions of dollars.

George Lucas and Michael Bay, just prisoners of an unjust system

I'm thinking he could probably put THX-1139 on YouTube, there might be a deal there.

its almost as if the movie going public has been dumbed down from decades of Star Wars-inspired SFX crap

I think I posted it on another thread, but there was an interview where he made some comments about the corrupt nature of the studio system, racism in casting, and his opting out of different organizations that were fairly on-point, but then he had to keep harping on about how he was above these problems and blamed the lack of success of Red Tails on the system. He couldn't understand why a George Lucas product was not successful.

bigger lol at the idea that ANY film by george lucas wouldn't draw some interest...

Ahem

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9b/Strange_Magic_poster.jpg

oh yeah, did that happen?

Easy, you deserved love.

i honestly never heard of it!

Lucas had been working on developing the project for 15 years before production began. Touchstone Pictures released Strange Magic on January 23, 2015[4] and became a critical and commercial failure. The film's opening weekend box office debut of $5.5 million is one of the worst ever for a film opening at 3,000+ theaters.

On the film's plot, director Gary Rydstrom stated, "We pitched it as a Beauty and the Beast story where the Beast doesn't change."

Shrek is a 2001 American computer-animated fantasy-comedy film produced by PDI/DreamWorks, released by DreamWorks Pictures

(sry for spoilers)

These little things look so apologetic:

http://socialmoms.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Disney-StrangeMagic-EditorialFeatureImage-20150430-FINAL-634x380.jpg

Strange Magic was horribly marketed, and by all accounts it was also a horrible movie. I sincerely wonder what the heck Lucas has in mind when he thinks "I've got an experimental film in me, waiting to be made."

Star Wars was pretty experimental, in the strictest sense of the word.

"American Graffiti"s nonstop rock 'n roll soundtrack was pretty radical in '73 too

the miniature/special effects shots in Star Wars were pretty out there for the time

to the point where a ton of other films used Industrial Light and Magic for their films, including Star Trek

then there's the diverging branch where ILM continued into the computer animation era but also managed to spin off Pixar

THX, too.

None of which of course is a reason why he should take up the reins again.

that strange magic rabbit is creepy as fuck

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/george-lucas-on-why-he-is-done-directing-star-wars/

oh, OTHER people don't get why the movies are entertaining

tbh it's pretty funny that he framed it as a drama about family problems when his editor for the films people actually liked was his ex-wife

Is his ex-wife, was his wife.

"When you break up with somebody, the first rule is no phone calls. The second rule, you don't go over to their house and drive by to see what they're doing," he said laughing. "The third one is you don't show up at their coffee shop and say you are going to burn it... You just say 'Nope, gone, history, I'm moving forward.'"

I feel like there's a story George wants to tell here. But like the rest of his stories, we're better off without.

That's a meme that really needs to die. Marcia Lucas was one of three credited editors on Star Wars, and wasn't even the primary editor; Paul Hirsch was. She wasn't credited at all on Empire; Hirsch was the only credited editor. And on Jedi she was again one of three credited editors.

In fact Hirsch and Richard Chew edited the great majority of Star Wars, aided by an uncredited George Lucas; Marcia worked mostly on the Death Star battle which, admittedly, she turned from an incoherent mess into something great.

Nonetheless, it's another brick in a very, very stupid wall which is supposed to support the idea that Lucas had nothing to do with the success of the OT.

Perhaps by editor I mean to say "she told George his ideas were bad over dinner"

Your familiarity with the word 'credited' leads me to suspect you are familiar with its dark side 'uncredited'?

More seriously have you seen the article upthread about her contributions? It seems fairly convincing that she was working on Empire.

Bah iPhone-caused xp

Someone who could share opinions with him versus a room full of people who can't tell him to his face that "Darth Icky" is a bad idea

Since I used the word "uncredited," yes, I'm fairly obviously familiar with it. Which is why I said Marcia wasn't credited on Empire, not that she didn't work on it.

we can be pedants, or we can meditate on the pure badness of "Darth Icky"

Yeah, that's the iPhone - Safari doesn't show you what's been posted since you started writing a response.

It's a pretty small wall though - out of a thousand people, would you reckon there'd be even one who could put together a coherent argument that George Lucas was incidental to Star Wars? I'd be surprised if you got fifty who know who Marcia Lucas is.

Maybe Michael Kaminski is largely overstating her role, and maybe the only reason for that is to diminish George's role (though I don't think the book does that). But I'm not sure that the owner of one of the largest franchises in history as the rebels and someone who's given one interview in 32 years as the Empire really works :)

But we can all agree on Icky.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJBzJF_-cBA

http://upl.stack.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/ickey-shuffle-o-2.gif

GEORGE NOOOOO

I'm sure there will be nothing about family or any family-related drama in this movie. All spaceships shooting at stuff.

how many hours of nonstop spaceships shooting at stuff and lightsaber battles sans any backstory whatsoever would this have to be before opening night crowds walked out? Nine? Ten?

just saw this Phantom Menace deleted scene for the first time. i laughed.

so a jedi friend of theirs dies in front of them, and they spend time whimsically pondering their next action

FAMILY

I'm still wound up by the idea George Lucas thinks he has a better grasp on plotting characters with relationships and families than the people who now own Star Wars

George Lucas is now reminding me of the guy who graduated last year but still hangs around the high school a lot. LET IT GO, GEORGE.

attending a party at his ranch in a few weeks, anyone got any questions they want me to ask him

already got "When is the sequel to Red Tails coming out????!???" covered

how about an animated reboot of howard the duck?

ooh good idea

Ask him what exactly has stopped one of the most successful directors/producers of all-time, who basically owns his own movie studio, from making those "smaller, more experimental films" he's been yammering about for the past 30 years.

Maybe he has! He just doesn't like the bit where you show them to people.

I'll ask to see some. Preferably in his "greatest movie theater in the world"

ok, i like the idea that george lucas has become an inverse howard hughes, holed up in his mansion, endlessly filming movies for nobody but himself. there could be dozens of these smaller, more experimental films. hundreds, even. no guesses on the jars of urine though.

ask him if he ever goes back to Modesto

can someone tell george lucas why not?!?

Find out his thoughts on individual building meter data, duh

^^^^^^^^^^^

Will there be a special edition release of the holiday special?

jar jars of urine

excellent Kasdan interview here

"I had just taken six months to write RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK from scratch. I handed it in, and George said, ‘do you want to write EMPIRE STRIKES BACK?’ Literally, he threw it on the desk and asked me to write EMPIRE. He said, ‘We’re in big trouble. Leigh Brackett [who wrote the first draft] has passed away. They’re building sets in England. And I don’t have a script.’ I said, ‘Maybe you ought to read RAIDERS first.’ He said, ‘I’m going to read it tonight, and if I don’t like it I’ll call you back tomorrow and take back this offer.. “George said to me, ‘Darth Vader is Luke’s father.’ And I said, ‘No shit?’ "

http://www.wired.com/2015/11/lawrence-kasdan-qa/

haha

George once said to me, “oh, Ben is not a Jedi master.” I said, “what?” And he said, “yeah, he’s not really a master. A master is this and this.” And I said, “you’re out of your mind.”

so a jedi friend of theirs dies in front of them, and they spend time whimsically pondering their next action

the thing is it could have been a deliciously bond-esque scene, baseball signs and everything, if directed with any urgency whatsoever

he forgot to say "faster and more intense"

I don't think anyone necessarily said the dude was incidental to the first three, but rather that he had fairly strong collaborative feedback control system, if you will, surrounding him that was able to edit and select and shape the random neural firing out of his brain into something better.

Actors on his first film would supplement or override his direction. DePalma reportedly cut down and reshape for the opening crawl. His wife and others literally edited the stuff. Guys like Gary Kurtz were there to call him on his shit and get in fights over it if need be(and who acrimoniously quit during the pre-production of Jedi).

Ask him what exactly has stopped one of the most successful directors/producers of all-time, who basically owns his own movie studio, from making those "smaller, more experimental films" he's been yammering about for the past 30 years.

― Your Favorite Album in the Cutout Bin, Monday, November 30, 2015 5:39 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you've heard of nathaniel dorsky, right?

have you ever seen nathaniel dorsky and george lucas in the same room?

i didn't think so....

"deliciously bond-esque" is not a good match for these films (or any films) though.

Skywalker Ranch is p odd. Japanese-style architecture, "attendants" waiting to direct you to your destination at every several hundred feet, a statue of yoda in the courtyard, tons of old original movie posters, and original Mucha of Sandra Bernhard (this was probably the thing I was most interested in). His private movie theater was showing "White Christmas", nice velvet seats.

George did not appear to hold forth on the many experimental films he has under development

wonder how much movie memorabilia will be relocated to that new museum complex in chicago

I'm sure he's got a bajillion things stashed away - we didn't see any norman rockwell stuff, for example, and I know he's got a lot of that. And there was actually very little Star Wars material. The ranch itself is used strictly for private events and is not open to the public, so I assume most of what goes on there is related to his philanthropic activities and rich people wine parties and things like that.

a former colleague was a registrar for the Skywalker ranch/ Lucas collection- the SW archive is apparently very, very extensive.

All that Jar-Jar merchandise had to go into a landfill somewhere

I can only imagine it's paved over somewhere in the desert, to be excavated by Jar Jar revisionists in 30 years

http://yourpopfilter.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/jar-jar-binks-candy-tongue.jpg

that's the most poignant candy dispenser I've ever seen

Xpost The gist of the Chicago Museum iirc is not really to house movie memorabilia but his vast collection of fine art. Be shocked if it doesn't at least have a Star Wars wing. I recall when they built this nice new aquarium in Camden, New Jersey and thought it was a good idea to focus on local fish. After a year of low attendance, out came the sharks and shiny fish.

no idea if this has prev seen light of day

https://twitter.com/pareene/status/676539201471586307

goddamn it.

yeah it's from the Making Of book that came out in 2013

but yeah, the level of detail even then is pretty crazy

http://www.designboom.com/architecture/mad-architects-george-lucas-museum-of-narrative-art-approved-chicago-11-02-2015/ (from nov)

ha, re that story conversation: was rereading chunks of the secret history of star wars yesterday and laughing at how frequently lucas' early conception of the emperor was described as a "nixonian bureaucrat" (not a phrase that makes a whole lot of sense but tevs)--like, i wish!

do you mean Emperor Cos Dashit?

lol yes i do

I learned a new term this weekend:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder%27s_syndrome

can't argue that

you need new blood, otherwise you end up doing things the exact same way forever while the world rolls on around you

you also run the risk that the people who were so instrumental had one good idea and don't realize you can't work off that forever

https://vine.co/v/ibhuE1UO6WD

XD

Around when episode 1 came out, I saw an interview with Lucas on Canadian TV* where he said he was a monarchist. Anyone remember seeing this? I can't find it online. (*note: around 40% of Canadian TV is from the US so I don't know where it came from.)

what if it was a weird canada-only interview where he misunderstood the relationship to the queen and was trying to ingratiate himself

http://www.clickhole.com/theysaidwhat/find-out-what-george-lucas-john-cena-and-helen-mir-3755?utm_campaign=default&utm_medium=ShareTools&utm_source=facebook

"Mm." - George Lucas

?utm_campaign=default&utm_medium=ShareTools&utm_source=facebook

thinking about jedis and luke: how lame is it that for the prequels, apart from all the other blandifications of the jedi (huge centralized bureaucracy rather than a bunch of independent guardians of peace and justice, etc etc), he insisted on giving them all obi-wan's desert robes from the first film, rather than luke's BADASS black outfit from ROTJ? it had always just been obvious to me: the jedi are returning, and this is what they wear. vader's look is like a corrupted jedi outfit, dark side, cool. ugggghghhhhhhhhh.

Good point, but Yoda wore beige robes in the OT as well. It's inconsistent.

As did Ghost Anakin (OG version).

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/3S2auEHR4rg/hqdefault.jpg

Luke dresses differently because he is different, at least until he confronts Vader and the Emperor. The first thing we see him do in ROTJ is force-choke one of Jabba's guards, which is decidedly not a light-side thing to do.

That black outfit made a big impact on me as a kid (also loved the Luke in black/stormtroopers in white imagery).

yeah okay good point with the force ghosts. but still, man, you imagine a world where the jedis are still around, fighting the CLONE WARS, and idk it always seemed more like black-outfit luke being awesome on the ROTJ poster. maybe this is just because of ROTJ's fumbling script failing to establish what luke's actual moral arc is in that film. but i lived for years with a pretty clear, kick-ass vision in my head and then it was just a bunch of sluggish people shuffling around in robes insisting that it was inappropriate for them to do anything or act on any information.

the cloak and robes are a jedi order thing, we just don't really see jedi outside the order in any of the prequels because they're such an orthodoxy

that's why the jedi fell, all that restrictive, inflexible orthodoxy that forced them to wear bad clothes

We did have at least one non-robed Jedi in the prequels:

http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/23700000/Jedi-Master-star-wars-jedi-23758068-397-500.jpg

And this dude dressed more like a Tolkein LARPer

https://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/scale_small/0/8572/338543-ki_adi_mundi.jpg

Here we have the Met Gala version of Jedi robes.

https://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/14/149056/4448465-barriss+offee.jpg

Many, many years ago, on this thread, DJP in a previous life said this:

You know, they could have played the Ewoks exactly as they did and no one would have complained if they'd added scenes with them eating the fallen Stormtrooper clones.

― suddenly, everything was dark and smelly (HI DERE), Thursday, July 16, 2009 12:35 PM

And now the dream is true, kinda.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/leia-tries-to-stop-ewoks-from-consuming-human-flesh-in-1819977244

This is glorious.

star wars prequels: most embarrassing and hacky attempt at fan-service and plot resolution

seeing this thread revive and its title provoked different thoughts than usual

Also: never forget how Lucas, Spielberg, and Kasdan initially conceptualized Marion Ravenwood in early brainstorming sessions for RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. pic.twitter.com/JiQUOwBrWT

— Kate Hagen (@thathagengrrl) April 4, 2018

jesus christ

And her saying "i was a *child*" is still in the movie!

there was a pdf of the whole conversation doing the rounds a while back and there’s some pretty gross stuff in there iirc

Mmhm yeah, it's being taken apart on Twitter line by line as we speak

https://moedred.livejournal.com/2009/03/04/

"it was wrong and you knew it!"

Turned out a number of friends hadn't heard about that before so I'm glad it is making the rounds again.

spielberg was a big fan of the racism as i recall

1978 was before the '90s iirc

https://i.imgur.com/lVWMYk8.png

you think that's bad? this thread came into being in 2009

"He should have a mentor in this. Somebody you never see, but he refers to from time to time, somebody you want to see. The man who taught him everything. The man who gave him whatever power he has now. Maybe some supreme archeologist who's maybe ninety years old like Max Von Sydow, and is dying now."

Maybe they're just really bad at estimating ages.

"when they open the Ark all the animals should come out, marching together as couples, and they move slowly through the crowd of Nazis, devouring them or masticating them or crushing them, whatever power they possess will be unleashed. Indy and Marion will be untied by a pair of raccoons, since they're good with their hands or rather paws."

The 70s was a real weird time for a lot of age-of-consent pushing, huh

I'm pretty sure this has come up on ILX before, possibly on a thread not about crimes from the '90s

hey man if you want to create a “crimes of george lucas (pre 1990)” thread, have at it

Imagine sic in a book group; someone saying 'on page 50', and he's like 'actually, if you include the publisher's imprint and title page THAT'S PAGE 54!'

the naive days when we thought the worst of george’s crimes were creating prequels and re-editing decades-old films

As far as I've seen, these are the first specifics George Lucas has shared about what his vision of Episodes 7-9 would have been. This comes from @insighteditions awesome companion book to "James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction series" on AMC: pic.twitter.com/Wtlw8zlrqv

— Livio Ramondelli (@LivioRamondelli) June 12, 2018

wow george, that really would have been something.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/32/Micronauts-1.jpg/250px-Micronauts-1.jpg

I think Lucas was only able to make the prequels because he didn't work consistently enough after SW for the world to realize how bad his ideas are.

Like I'm convinced that a Lucas who was productive through the '80s and '90s would've decisively burned up all of his capital a la Shyamalan.

If the Force is powered by the Whills, the Sith must be powered by the Whonts.

I read that post hearing the voice from Patton Oswalt's routine about time-travelling to kill Lucas pre-prequels.

lmao ‘this story would have been shit and everyone would have hated it but at least it would have been complete’

“I regret not getting to stink up that public restroom like I intended to”

the best creative ethos

http://500daysasunder.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/screen-shot-2012-10-11-at-2-05-27-pm-e1349978764535.png?w=694
what you talking about, whills?

tbf to lucas though at least he had a new idea for the series even if it was terrible - i don’t get much of a sense that disney have much interest in doing something innovative

gee really

dunno what could've given you that impression, was it the trailer for Tim Burton's live action Dumbo?

Disney stopped being concerned with innovation about 15 years ago

lol sparkle motion

would rather see microbe wars than Star Wars The Regurgitated Jedi

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/022/940/mockingspongebobbb.jpg

So if I'm connecting the dots correctly, Lucas's original idea for episode VII was tweaked to remove all SW references and ultimately filmed as

http://oneguyrambling.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/216033.1020.A-202x300.jpg

When Is Someone Gonna Make A Sci-Fi Show Or Movie Without Any People In Them?

i mean the original draft for star wars was called journal of the whills or something, right? but if those microbiotic creatures are supposedly operate differently than us, what use would they have for journals?

they weren't microbes then
the great thing about those embryonic SW versions is how they are really just these collections of cool evocative names and titles with the actual story and character matter unstable as fuck. i love that.

It was triumph not journals iirc

It's almost, almost, as if Lucas considers storytelling to be the least important element of telling a story.

which can be totally awesome! if only he had the boldness to make truly ornamental/ambient SF in that mode

I agree! I wish he could've realized his strengths and played to them more.

just edit the prequel trilogy to just the cutscenes and i think you'd have it.

"This is the story of Mace Windy, a revered Jedi-bendu of Ophuchi, as related to us by C.J. Thorpe, padawan learner to the famed Jedi."

Cool and evocative names, eh?

"ophuchi" sounds like something you'd hear this guy blabbering

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/56/Cornholion_in_Holy_Cornholio.jpg/250px-Cornholion_in_Holy_Cornholio.jpg

I assume it's a fuckup of Ophiuchi, an actual constellation

lol wins

padawan learner to the famed Jedi

this is a cool turn of phrase

just found out about this:

On the set of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Lucas shared his ideas with animation director Rob Coleman, when Coleman arrived for his first day. As Chris Taylor relates in his fantastic book How Star Wars Conquered the Universe, Lucas told Coleman “his ultimate framing device.” Taylor writes:

“The entire story of Star Wars is actually being recounted to the keeper of the Journal of the Whills—remember that?—a hundred years after the events of Return of the Jedi by none other than R2-D2.”

i do not remember that btw

lmao

r2d2 just beepin' and bloopin' for hours at a time to some low-level functionary who needs to keep stopping him because his wrist is getting tired from writing in the journal with a space fountain pen

Is r2d2 a reliable narrator? This now makes me suspicious of the endless # of scenes where r2d2 slides up and coolly saves the day while everyone else is panicking like idiots...

It would certainly explain the gratuitous number of hardcore droid-on-droid scenes so liberally sprinkled throughout the series.

lol journal of the whills only mentioned in a couple of novelizations

Only too late does the journal keeper realize R2 was Darth Sidious all along

https://media.giphy.com/media/Z8uqXqZaNT4n6/giphy.gif

Damn it, should have double-checked that gif

nah that gif seems v thread-appropriate tbh

That cup is where he keeps his whill

Not directly SW related but this is the most relevant thread I can find: The redlettermedia review of the latest Marvel movie calls Brie Larson a virtue-signalling, sexist, racist bitch for saying that most movie critics are white men. The critics of the Plinkett reviews were right -- they are awful people.

Not surprised.

Few phrases are as inadvertently self-descriptive as 'virtue-signalling' (see also: 'social justice warrior' as a pejorative). Like when you start to casually malign aspirational behavior I think you technically qualify for villain status.

I have zero reason to watch the narrative video version of clickbait that passes for commentary on youtube

a few years ago I watched a few short clips doing that sort of thing and it was entertaining as a one-off novelty but everything's gone down the path of "this movie is a failure because it has a political agenda" or "top ten plot holes!" where a plot hole is anything that has an implied offscreen action that wasn't spoon-fed to the viewers

I just saw a 'May the Fourth be With You' sign in the window of a funeral directors.

xp: it is the world's worst promotional tie-in product ever; a giant lollipop shaped like a tongue in a case shaped like Jar-Jar's head with a plunger on the back you have to push in to make it open, meaning that eating the lollipop requires french-kissing a Jar-Jar Binks toy

― Gandalf’s Gobble Melt (DJP), Tuesday, 30 October 2012 21:58 (eight years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I have a still-unopened one of these buried somewhere in a pile of junk in my house, because when I saw that thing it was just too hilarious for me not to purchase it

― Gandalf’s Gobble Melt (DJP), Tuesday, 30 October 2012 21:58 (eight years ago)

^^^ you're not the only one... (NSFW obviously)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-drxdYedUU