Star Wars: Original/Prequel Trilogies & General Thread

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hearthesilence
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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#476 Post by hearthesilence » Fri Apr 13, 2018 5:25 pm

That's such bullshit. We all know Independence Day was the real inspiration.

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jindianajonz
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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#477 Post by jindianajonz » Fri May 25, 2018 2:15 pm

Dr Amicus wrote:
Wed May 16, 2018 4:50 am
This is one of the strange aspects of the new spin-off media now under Disney - most of it is (I believe) canon, along with Clone Wars (which dates from pre-Disney ownership days). Apparently the explanation for C3P0's red arm is in one of the comics.

The only one of the these I've read / watched so far is Rebels - I'm about 2/3rds through the third series and it's a lot of fun. As usual though the droid is the most fun character.
When Disney bought LucasFilm, they declared all the old extended universe stuff non-canon (pretty much necessary, since keeping it would put too many constraints on new films), with, IIRC, the Clone Wars cartoon being the cutoff point of being the first canon material. All the books, comics, shows, etc since then have been canon.

As much as I enjoyed the first season of rebels, each season after felt like a step down (as opposed to Clone Wars that only got better from it's rather poor opening season). I only watched a couple episodes of Season 3, though I should probably give it another shot. The first season was a lot of fun, though- like Firefly set in the Star Wars universe.

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zedz
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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#478 Post by zedz » Sun May 27, 2018 5:52 pm

Mr Sausage wrote:
Sat May 26, 2018 8:50 pm
hanshotfirst1138 wrote:Love or loathe George Lucas, he did what was once stylistically new. This whole Disney-era feels either like it's simply repackaging old ideas
Repackaging old ideas is all George Lucas did. Even when he attempted to make Star Wars appear profound, he had to admit to reusing something so time-worn that Joseph Cambell could call it a monomyth. And that's just Lucas' high-faluting version. He otherwise stole from samurai movies, Buck Rogers serials, and a whole galaxy of pulp novels. Star Wars has always been derivative, a repackaging of familiar ideas, deliberately so. We're just removed enough in time to forget that. It's some kind of irony that the same people who adore Star Wars and Indiana Jones are giving J.J. Abrams a hard time for mining the nostalgias.
I've noted this several times before, but Lucas wasn't even creative enough to steal from multiple sources. 90% of the characters and mythos of the original Star Wars films were stolen directly from Jack Kirby's Fourth World comics from a few years earlier in the 1970s. It's shockingly transparent:

Mark Moonrider = Luke Skywalker
Beautiful Dreamer = Princess Leia
Serifan (the space cowboy) = Han Solo
Big Bear = Chewbacca
Vykin the Black = Lando Calrissian (eventually - Lucas wasn't bold enough to have a black character in the first film)

Darkseid (pronounced "dark side") = Darth Vader
The Source (universal spiritual energy that can be used for good or ill) = The Force
Apokalips (artificial planet where Darkseid is based) = the Death Star

And the big twist where Darth Vader's arch-nemesis (who uses the Source for good) turns out to be his estranged son? That's from the comics as well.

All that hifalutin Joseph Campbell nonsense was invented by Lucas after the fact to provide special pleading for his plagiarism of the most ripped-off artist of the 20th century. Poor Jack Kirby's intellectual property is literally worth billions of dollars today.

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#479 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sun May 27, 2018 8:00 pm

Lots of imagery (and ideas) in Star Wars was "borrowed" from Alexander Nevsky -- and as far as I can find out, Lucas has never mentioned this as a source (while crediting Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress, which strikes me as far less of an influence).

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solaris72
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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#480 Post by solaris72 » Sun May 27, 2018 11:30 pm

zedz wrote:
Sun May 27, 2018 5:52 pm
I've noted this several times before, but Lucas wasn't even creative enough to steal from multiple sources. 90% of the characters and mythos of the original Star Wars films were stolen directly from Jack Kirby's Fourth World comics from a few years earlier in the 1970s. It's shockingly transparent:

Mark Moonrider = Luke Skywalker
Beautiful Dreamer = Princess Leia
Serifan (the space cowboy) = Han Solo
Big Bear = Chewbacca
Vykin the Black = Lando Calrissian (eventually - Lucas wasn't bold enough to have a black character in the first film)

Darkseid (pronounced "dark side") = Darth Vader
The Source (universal spiritual energy that can be used for good or ill) = The Force
Apokalips (artificial planet where Darkseid is based) = the Death Star

And the big twist where Darth Vader's arch-nemesis (who uses the Source for good) turns out to be his estranged son? That's from the comics as well.

All that hifalutin Joseph Campbell nonsense was invented by Lucas after the fact to provide special pleading for his plagiarism of the most ripped-off artist of the 20th century. Poor Jack Kirby's intellectual property is literally worth billions of dollars today.
Calling Kirby "the most ripped-off artist of the 20th century" and saying that his work is the source for "90% of the characters and mythos of the original Star Wars films" is an exaggeration to say the least. I see, for example, very little in common between 'Mark Moonrider' and Luke Skywalker (named Starkiller up until a few months into principal photography); the name "Skywalker" comes from Chippewa legend. And the Death Star is not where Darth Vader was based, and Leia was not (unlike "Beautiful Dreamer") able to create 3D illusions from images in others' minds, nor was she nonverbal. As with a lot of popular narratives a wide net was cast. (Alien, for another instance, also had a very wide range of identifiable influences.) Identifiable influences on Star Wars certainly include Dune, Metropolis, westerns (not just the very obvious Ford influence but also B-westerns, e.g. Tusken raiders = Tuscon Raiders), Eisenstein (as Michael Kerpan notes), golden age science fiction writers e.g. Edmond Hamilton, WWII movies, and of course Kurosawa. And certainly Joseph Campbell, multiple contemporaries of Lucas have attested to this. (And calling Joseph Campbell "hifalutin" is absurd in and of itself.) And further, one would be remiss in not identifying both Luke and Han as, in part, being characters extrapolated out of the milieu of Lucas' own American Graffiti.

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zedz
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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#481 Post by zedz » Sun May 27, 2018 11:59 pm

solaris72 wrote:
Sun May 27, 2018 11:30 pm
I see, for example, very little in common between 'Mark Moonrider' and Luke Skywalker
Seriously? You think there's no similarity between Moon+Rider and Star+Walker? The character is ripped off from Orion, but that name, and the general make-up of the core band of heroes in the movie and the Forever People is like a smoking gun. This is why it doesn't pay to argue with fanboys, I guess. I'll bow out and leave you to your circle jerk.
(And calling Joseph Campbell "hifalutin" is absurd in and of itself.)
Read more carefully: I'm referring to Lucas putting an academic gloss on his 'low' culture thievery.

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reaky
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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#482 Post by reaky » Mon May 28, 2018 5:07 am

You haven’t mentioned Lucas’ biggest swipe from Kirby. In all but colour palate, Darth Vader is Dr Doom.

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Aunt Peg
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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#483 Post by Aunt Peg » Mon May 28, 2018 5:39 am

Found the response I was looking for elsewhere.
Last edited by Aunt Peg on Mon May 28, 2018 9:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

Zot!
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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#484 Post by Zot! » Mon May 28, 2018 8:08 am

reaky wrote:
Mon May 28, 2018 5:07 am
You haven’t mentioned Lucas’ biggest swipe from Kirby. In all but colour palate, Darth Vader is Dr Doom.
Not a fan of Lucas, but I feel like I remember him being upfront about enough of his influences, and how both Star Wars and Indiana Jones are a pastiche. Still, I think the point stands that a copy of that pastiche is a going to have to try extra hard to justify it's existence.

The weirder side of Lucas for me is figuring out what his contribution to what we remember about these movies actually is. The two films of his I've seen most recently were American Graffiti, and Strange Magic. The first surprised me as a very competent proto-Linklater (talking about heavy influence), whereas Strange Magic (what I could tolerate) was as bad as reputed. Trying to reconcile these two things against the same creator is really puzzling, much like the direction his most famous franchise took.

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reaky
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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#485 Post by reaky » Mon May 28, 2018 8:45 am

Well, Walter Murch could almost be considered the co-author of THX 1138, and had a lot to do with the shape of American Graffiti (structuring around the radio broadcast).

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#486 Post by All the Best People » Mon May 28, 2018 2:54 pm

Lucas' best successes always came with strong collaborators. As pointed out above, Murch on THX and to some extent American Graffiti, the Huycks on American Graffiti and somewhat on Star Wars (they did an uncredited dialogue pass, and a good number of the better and more memorable lines are theirs), Kasdan and Kershner on Empire (remember, Lucas actually opposed "I know" until it was a hit at a preview screening) and Kasdan on Return of the Jedi (where reportedly Lucas had more influence on the director than he did with Kershner on the preceding film), and of course Spielberg on the Dr. Jones films. One of the big causes of the failures of the so-called prequels is that he didn't have a collaborator who could shore up his weaknesses in story structure and characterization.

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#487 Post by Big Ben » Mon May 28, 2018 8:23 pm

I agree about Lucas. He has a lot of really great ideas but he needs to have them run through a filter and managed. Without that we get things like the prequels were a lot of interesting possibilities are overridden by poor dialogue and characters. The love/hate cult status of him baffles me. Without a good team I imagine A New Hope would have been laughed off as pulp nonsense. And seeing Lucas' first drafts it absolutely could have been that way.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#488 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue May 29, 2018 9:53 am

Zot! wrote:Still, I think the point stands that a copy of that pastiche is a going to have to try extra hard to justify it's existence.
It's the opposite. Truly new things have to try hard to justify their disruption and unfamiliarity. One of the advantages of working in familiar traditions is that you can assume the audience already accepts much of what you're doing, requiring a lot less work to convince them to stay.

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#489 Post by bunuelian » Wed May 30, 2018 11:55 am

A few years back I worked in the same complex as the Lucas headquarters in the Presidio. They allowed everyone in the complex to use their (very nice) cafeteria for lunches. The whole place was decorated with Lucas's personal collection of vintage film posters, many of which I imagine are astonishingly valuable (for example, an original, large format L'Avventura poster, and an original Japanese Rashomon). I liked to think that these posters reflected Lucas's depth of film knowledge and appreciation, even though the work coming out of the place was far from the mark. At the time a lot of the Lucas crew was wearing Crystal Skull gear everywhere they went.

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#490 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Jun 22, 2018 1:58 pm


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Luke M
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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#491 Post by Luke M » Fri Jun 22, 2018 2:07 pm

I applaud Lucas for coming up with an original story and I do think there were some interesting ideas in the prequels, but that idea is bad.

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#492 Post by black&huge » Fri Jun 22, 2018 2:18 pm

Midichlorians still sounds like an STD

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#493 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Jun 22, 2018 3:10 pm

"I'm afraid Young Padawan that I may have passed on a bad case of midichlorians. You may want to get tested if you do not want to end up like Jar-Jar"

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#494 Post by swo17 » Fri Jun 22, 2018 4:07 pm

Mini-Luke Skywalker in Osmosis Jones 2 WOULD HAVE STAYED TRUE TO WHO HE WAS

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movielocke
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Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#495 Post by movielocke » Fri Jun 22, 2018 5:48 pm

What is fascinating about the implications also makes me believe it was never the original plan, it was his plan for the prequels and sequels.

Because this idea doesn’t grow naturally out of the first three films or any of their source material. Rather if we look at the implications of such a reversal we see it is a bitter and probably justified attack on the nature of secondary world fandom, it is meant to disabuse the audience of their fandom.

because in-story it is literally telling characters it’s all a delusion, they’ve been lied to, nothing is special, you’ve just been elaborately manipulated to believe in made up hocus pocus (you don’t actually control) by people profiting in your belief in specialness. You’re not even in control of your own will or consciousness, those are illusions as well. That level of disenchantment would be pretty shattering to most fans because it is systematically destroying the belief structures they’ve erected.

It actually fits in with a lot of student work and thx in terms of the cynicism. But I don’t think it is the original idea, rather it was his idea to be rid of Star Wars definitively and the people who liked it.

However it is a terrible idea because unless you are embedding “disenchantment of the world” themes into your story from the beginning, simply slapping a disenchantment on at the end never actually works out well, it just spawns scorn and backlash. Imagine the outrage if Rowling had decided that harry “won” by destroying all magic, and thus since Voldemort was magical he died too. Well that’s a good idea if the story has been building to that idea, but the story had been developing in world solutions to dealing with the primary antagonist, so it that suddenly happened it would be a big out of nowhere betrayal of the audience.

Tolkien in the other hand, implies from the beginning (talking about how it’s the last days of the third age etc) that this is a story of how all magic left the world (in a sense Frodo is destroying magic in destroying he one ring). Lewis shoe horns it in with the last two books being about the beginning and ending of his world, but narnia ends with an eschaton, not a disenchantment. Pullman on the other hand, builds his series towards disenchantment from the first pages, so the ending of magic is a naturally developing outcome.

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#496 Post by RIP Film » Sat Jun 30, 2018 12:59 pm

MoonlitKnight wrote:
Sat Jun 30, 2018 12:00 pm
As I've been saying ad nauseum over the last 3 years, the basic story/concepts/design were NOT the core problem with the prequels; rather, the execution of them was. I only wish Lucas had been able to get the legitimate help he needed with the screenwriting and directing them.
I agree with that, however I didn't see it as a matter of Lucas not having help but his own creative isolationism. His attitude made it seem as if he was just making these movies for himself, which is especially conceited when you have a franchise that is recognized worldwide and so ingrained in popular culture: is it really yours at that point?

But yes the original vision for the prequels was honorable. I loved the idea of these movies taking on a childlike perspective, giving an almost an Old Testament larger than life quality to the Jedi, the movies almost come across as oral tales passed on but put to film... well that is until the actors speak. Like you said the execution was botched, thanks to Lucas wanting to do everything, or people not questioning him enough, who knows. But I do see glimpses of what these movies could have been here and there, mostly when it's just Ewan McGreggor or Liam Neeson on screen.

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Brian C
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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#497 Post by Brian C » Sat Jun 30, 2018 2:35 pm

RIP Film wrote:His attitude made it seem as if he was just making these movies for himself, which is especially conceited when you have a franchise that is recognized worldwide and so ingrained in popular culture: is it really yours at that point?
Yes. Or, at least as much as it’s anyone else’s.

Who else’s is it? Yours? Talk about conceited.

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#498 Post by RIP Film » Sat Jun 30, 2018 2:58 pm

Brian C wrote:
Sat Jun 30, 2018 2:35 pm
RIP Film wrote:His attitude made it seem as if he was just making these movies for himself, which is especially conceited when you have a franchise that is recognized worldwide and so ingrained in popular culture: is it really yours at that point?
Yes. Or, at least as much as it’s anyone else’s.

Who else’s is it? Yours? Talk about conceited.
What an odd post. I’m saying some works of fiction grow beyond their creator, and the wise thing to do is surround oneself with talent when tackling collective expectations... which ironically, is sort of what he did with the first trilogy.

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#499 Post by MoonlitKnight » Sat Jun 30, 2018 9:46 pm

RIP Film wrote:
Sat Jun 30, 2018 2:58 pm
I’m saying some works of fiction grow beyond their creator, and the wise thing to do is surround oneself with talent when tackling collective expectations... which ironically, is sort of what he did with the first trilogy.
To be fair, from various tidbits I've read/heard over the years, Lucas did try to get other outside talent to direct and write the prequels. The original plan was apparently to have Ron Howard direct TPM, Robert Zemeckis AOTC, and Steven Spielberg ROTS, with Frank Darabont writing (or co-writing) all three scripts. But they all turned him down, evidently claiming the task would be too daunting (though I'm sure Hollywood politics also played a role in their decisions), and that he should really just shake off the rust and do them himself. And we all know how that turned out...

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Re: Star Wars Franchise (1977-∞)

#500 Post by Kirkinson » Thu Jul 19, 2018 5:58 pm

Disney is bringing back the Clone Wars animated series for a 7th season (which was actually already in production when the show was canceled four years ago) on their upcoming streaming service. I wouldn't be surprised if this is at least partly an effort to assuage some of the angrier elements of the fandom, who generally seem to hold the series in high regard.

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