Star Wars 7 shit talk

i've never watched the "special editions" but the few clips i've seen are really appalling. it's incredible that lucas did that to his films.

to his film, and two other director's films! though from my reading i get the sense he had a really huge (and heavy-handed, minutia-oriented) involvement in jedi.

i do wonder what the DGA thought of that.... i guess lucas is the uncontested "auteur" of the star wars films.

Well, Marquand was dead by the time the Special Editions came out, but Lucas took a bullet for Kersh, so he was probably fine with whatever:

To preserve the dramatic opening sequences of his films, Lucas wanted the screen credits to come at the end of the films. While this practice has become more common over the years, this was a highly unusual choice at the time. The Writers and Directors Guilds of America had no problem allowing it on Star Wars, back in 1977, because the writer-director credit (George Lucas) matched the company name, but when Lucas did the same thing for the sequel it became an issue because Lucas had his last name on the start of the film (Lucasfilm), while the director and the writers had theirs on the end. They fined him over $250,000 and attempted to pull Empire out of theaters. The DGA also attacked Kershner; to protect his director, Lucas paid all the fines to the guilds. Due to the controversy, he left the Directors and Writers Guilds, and the Motion Picture Association.[15]

interesting!

directors often make really meddling producers, coppola being probably the most egregious example. but i guess Lucas owns (or rather, owned) the I.P. to star wars which makes it more complicated.

it's hard to tell exactly because mainly i'm just going off this issue of cinefex composed of interviews throughout the making of jedi. those are always super super interesting to read. and the interviewees are constantly mentioning "george" and things he wanted to do, or changed his mind about, or had planned but cut later on due to budget reasons. i don't think "richard" is mentioned more than once, if that. of course, it could be that lucas "only" meddled in the effects sequences, which of course is what the people are getting interviewed about.

but there was at least one specific bit that seemed to already directly foresage the lucas of the special editions and phantom menace, let me see if i can find it...

that reminds me of one of the "making-of" bonus features on one of the DVD sets of the "Deadwood" TV show. one the one hand you have this sad-looking episode director nominally in charge and then you have ShowRunner David Milch throwing his weight around, actually calling shots (and barking instructions to the camera operator)....

I imagine the successful auteur writer-showrunner is the most powerful person on any set, TV or film. But even then, Milch is a notorious force of nature.

although i do wonder if some of that was for the benefit of the cameras.

being a director on series TV (unless it's premium cable, i suppose) would seem to be a /lot/ less rewarding than directing films.

man, some great stuff in that cinefex. got carried away typing, realized how much of it there was, and posted to the 'crimes of george lucas' thread. huzzah.

isn't it gen thought that Kershner and Marquand handled the boring stuff GL didnt want to handle, ie the actors?

although i do wonder if some of that was for the benefit of the cameras.

I doubt it, Michael Mann had to ban him from the set of Luck at one point

xpost yeah that was definitely my conclusion reading the cinefex stuff. considering lucas's absolute ineptitude with the actor scenes in the prequels, and the godawful scripts, it seems like the one thing that might have rescued those movies to at least competence would have been finding another solid, nuts-and-bolts director to film everything but the puppet and CGI parts. john frankenheimer or somebody. obv lucas's ego was not going to let that happen in 1997.

interestingly, george miller split the direction of "beyond thunderdome" with george ogilvie in precisely that way... ogilvie handled the less logistically challenging scenes and worked closely with the actors; miller dealt with the elaborate effects shots, action sequences, and art direction...

Star Wars is pulpy with not a lot of non-plot character interaction, but once people starting relating to characters the other directors (esp. Kershner, with the minor slapstick points mentioned above and the little character interactions) really had to do the fleshing-out.

The prequel films were amazingly bad, to the point where Anakin is basically saying "But master, I thought we had to follow orders" with the most wooden sarcasm possible. And that was basically the only joke, reused, for three movies

it was like watching a very unfortunate colony of autistic children who had taught each other emotional expression :(

yeah i like to say that in the prequels it's the live-action stuff, not the CGI, that falls into the uncanny valley :(

isn't it gen thought that Kershner and Marquand handled the boring stuff GL didnt want to handle, ie the actors?

― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius)

Marquand must have been concentrating on Salacious Crumb's drool then

love that dude

he didn't direct many movies

Jar Jar was a great character who was failed by the story.

I meant I liked Salacious Crumb

he also didn't direct many movies

he fed off other directors' scraps

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51A0Z9VJJHL.jpg

the biopic was great though

http://www.starwars.com/news/salacious-crumb-cakes

LEARN HOW TO MAKE THE MOST FIENDISH SNACK IN THE OUTER RIM!

interestingly, george miller split the direction of "beyond thunderdome" with george ogilvie in precisely that way... ogilvie handled the less logistically challenging scenes and worked closely with the actors; miller dealt with the elaborate effects shots, action sequences, and art direction...

this was less by initial design than desperation though - Miller had dropped out almost completely after Kennedy's death, and was persuaded back to shoot the fighty and chasey bits

I'm watching Empire again and it's striking how Han's "game" with Leia is made up entirely of sneering and mockery. Lines that in the script you'd probably read as a combination of teasing and straight come-ons become these seething, aggressive taunts

The original PUA

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/912eHUS3DrL._UX385_.jpg

never heard of negging, tracer?

someone please photoshop a fedora onto han solo

I don't know, it seems beyond that, he's really PISSED at her constantly

here you go

http://www.solarnavigator.net/films_movies_actors/actors_films_images/harrison_ford_indy_indiana_jones_fedora_hat_leather_jacket.jpg

oh ... duh

loooooooool

Case closed

I'm also noticing how much blue collar FIXIT WORK people our heroes are always doing (I guess Leia's more middle management).. all the shenanigans with getting the Falcon flight-ready, Luke jerry-rigging a power supply for R2 on Dagobah. I read somewhere that directors love heist movies because heists echo what movie sets are like - partners in crime, each with their own speciality, trying to coordinate a million moving parts to realize a vision. I also get the feeling in movies like Empire, and Alien, that our heroes know how to fix stuff, and enjoy tinkering with stuff, because ultimately that's what filmmakers like to do too. And the farther directors get from the actual makin' stuff with their hands, and the bigger the disparity between the shop floor and the decision makers, the less you see heroes of these films who know to use a hydro spanner when they need to.

Number None be like "I can arrange that!"

i always thought the blue collar fixit work was a natural extension of lucas' interest in american grafitti-style hot-rod culture - the millennium falcon is han and chewie's bitchin' customised ride

I think it's also a genre trope. Space Opera heroes are always having to be their own crew chief, because radioing Houston to fix it and/or dying adrift are just not great storytelling.

Chewie fixing up 3PO too

I wonder if Star Dads all give their boys the same lecture when they get their learner's permit (for spaceflight, for owning robots, you know. I assume there are massive, galaxy-wide safety and occupational certification standards and enforcement apparatus; perhaps the breakdown of essential DMV services is part of why the place is all still fucked up 30 years after the Emperor's death?). "If you're gonna DRIVE one then you're gonna know how to FIX one! Here, catch! Do you know what that is? That's right, a hydro spanner! Do you know what it's for? No? Watch and learn!"

Harrison Ford was doing actual carpentry work when they had him stand in for Han

shit i'm sayin

i really think we ought to raise the starpiloting age to 18 folks. especially with all the distractions available in those cockpits: holograms, etc.

Exactly. When Luke turns off his targeting computer it's clear he's just not done the hours under Instrument Flight Rules - should have been a clear disqualification for an X-Wing combat pilot

I rewatched "Looper" recently and, while I like it overall as a sort of pulpy B-pic with a glossy budget, I noticed that Rian Johnson's visual sense is straight out of TV. It's pretty much establishing shot >> a medium shot >> close ups close ups and more close ups with very little other than meat n' potatoes story elements taking up the frame. No sense of visual elegance. Reminds me stylistically of the latest "Mission:Impossible" film (visually basic) in comparison with what Brad Bird came up with for "Ghost Protocol". The one thing that can be said for Abrams is that he can often create compelling compositions and set pieces - even if much of the time they're nothing more than emulations of old Spielbergian tropes. But I'm fine with these kind of tropes in a SW film. I hope Johnson'll switch up his approach for the next films in this series.

R2 also fixes shit on the X-Wing though. I always thought that was a weird conceit, but cool anyway -- that the x-wing has this little plug-and-play hole for a droid. Why wouldn't you just build whatever functionality the droid has into the x-wing?

well R2D2 serves another role, in making luke likable -- the role that might be served, in another film, by a loyal dog. and i can imagine that the very idea of a self-fixing plane is a kind of artificial intelligence that wasn't quite on many people's minds in the 1970s. a kind of human surrogate (droid) as handyman probably seemed more realistic, or at least more relatable.

if you are stuck somewhere on a planet the little droid can pop out and repair the underside of your x-wing while chatting w/you

he's twice as interesting as Dak was on Hoth, and that dude lasted about five minutes