ATTACK OF THE PREQUELS!!!

[Guest Kurgan]

From what I've read and heard, Lucas always said that it was going to be a 9 part saga, but when the prequels started, then he said it would only be six (no "sequels" taking place after Jedi).

 

Rumors were that the others were in rough draft form, but in reality he had only a basic outline of the prequels, and only a few rough 'ideas' for the sequels. Back in the day, the classic trilogy was going to be "one movie" but he realized it would be too long and the budget too prohibitive, plus he had no idea if the first one would even do well enough to warrant making others.

 

Well maybe one of George's descendants will take on the legacy.. ?

 

Kurgan

[The Wanderer]

This is something someone I know wrote on another message board, VERY interesting read...

 

 

...Yeah, it's a dumb title and so was "The Phantom Menace," and so was "The

adventures of Annikin Starkiller in the Star Wars, from the Journal of the

Whills," and so was "THX11382EBElectronicLabyrinth," and, well, [****] it, so

was "American Graffiti." And "Return of the Jedi" wasn't half as good as the

non-castrated title, "Revenge of the Jedi."

 

So ****ing what? Lucas has never been able to name a movie properly. Who

cares? I'm just grateful, and have always been, that "The adventures of Luke

Starkiller in the Star Wars, from the Journal of the Whills" is too long to

fit on a theater marquee, and was hence shortened. I know you probably think

I made that title up.

 

It's become annoyingly fashionable of late to bash George Lucas. It's easy to

do, any idiot can do it, and you know what? After Lucas finally screwed up a

bit with The Phantom Menace, the idiots are finally making fun of him in

droves. That doesn't make them any less idiotic.

 

I'm not a man to side with popular opinion, or follow the latest fad. If

something's popular, I tend to run the other way.

 

So let's have it out right here.

 

Shut up, the first two Star Wars are still better movies than you will ever

make.

 

If you think you can do better, please do, because many have thought they can

do better and have failed.

 

Count George Lucas among the failed for the rest of the Star Wars flicks, but

then most franchises die after the first 2 flicks and Phantom Menace is still

better-made than any Trek flick ever was.

 

Now, the normal post can end here for you guys who don't like 10-page posts.

I will now post my true feelings about Star Wars, good and bad. This could

take a while.

 

Anyone who grew up with Star Wars and followed Lucas knows he's not the

sharpest tack in the clear plastic box, we've always known that. Most

biographers refer to him as "basically illiterate," and his childlike

fascination with car racing and inability to complete a script by himself

that makes any sense whatsoever have left him basically an intensely quet,

angry, repressed, visually creative man who clearly had one good movie in

him.

 

That movie was "American Graffiti."

 

You'll not I didn't say "Star Wars."

 

No really, watch it. Most people give Lucas nearly all of the credit for this

low-budget California b-flick. For writing it, for directing it, for making

it work. It's charming and from the heart, and every character is a geek

clearly based on Lucas himself, and if you don't catch that about it you'll

never get the jokes in this stupid overlong movie I did, so hey.

 

Lucas' first feature, THX, has the style and lack of substance of a USC

student film. After spending some time at USC, I finally understood the film

as an allegory. That doesn't make it any better than it is - a cold,

technical piece of crap.

 

Star Wars, as planned, was gonna be just as cold and technical as THX.

Another goddamn future story, more damn robots, an incomprehensible plot ...

Lucas wrote 5 entirely different screenplays all called something like "The

adventures of Annikin Starkiller in the Star Wars, from the Journal of the

Whills." I read them all ages ago and none of them make a lick of sense. They

are also very similar to The Phantom Menace.

 

Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck were called in to organize some of Lucas'

better ideas into a logical order [and, uh, spell check], and a sort of

script was written for The Star Wars that made a little more sense ... though

the shooting script is also as boring as The Phantom Menace, lacking in

genuinely likeable characters and ruining key moments by attributing them to

hooey like "The Kyber Crystal" rather than any sort of actual human emotion

[Luke Starkiller blows up that dang Death Star by rubbing a crystal in his

crotch. Great.] ... Actually it's not much of a script, but it makes sense.

 

What follows is my own possibly flawed interpretation of things. Read if you

like.

 

Something happened, on-set. This shy young man who had nearly ruined his

career with his first movie, and saved it with his low-budget second, and was

trying to save it again with a bigger-budget film, began to lose his cool. He

was having trouble making the onscreen world and sets look non-cheesy and as

real and cool as the ideas in his head for the past few years had been. He

was disappointed with everything, and the cast was laughing at him behind his

back -- eventually they laughed at him to his face. [Watch Harrison Ford

closely in the now-rare 1978 "Making of Star Wars" tape -- he's a riot as he

registers his disgust for Lucas -- after a billion flubbed takes of a running

shot where a mike was in frame, he says "print it and burn it." He also

points his blaster and says "bang ... uh ... bang."] ... It was not a

well-run production, nobody liked the director, and the cast started to screw

around ... something which brought them closer to each other as a team ... in

Lucas they had someone to hate, a villain, a Vader, to play off of. The

shooting began to take on an air of panic and desperation, and Lucas, never

happy with the way anything looked, was always trying to stretch what they

had, reuse the same hallways over and over. Harrison Ford refused to say his

lines as written, and changed or mumbled many of them -- he would spend some

serious time in the ADR booth later, one reason his acting sounds so

high-pitched and unconvincing in much of the film.

 

The movie got shot, maybe not well, but it got shot. An edit was done of it,

and, um, well ....

 

This is hard to explain here without the appropriate video footage. I would

highly recommend picking up the "Star Wars: Behind the Magic" cd-rom on Ebay

or wherever, it has the Cantina scene from the original edit of the movie, as

well as the Biggs scenes, which will illustrate my point perfectly. If you're

a fan of Star Wars, as most people were before the fourth one came out and it

became unfashionable, it's an eye-opener --

 

You're watching a movie you know is one of your favorite movies of all time.

 

And it isn't working at all.

 

I mean, there are no bootlegs of the original cut of Star Wars out there.

Thanks to certain USC privileges I have I have seen more of it and heard more

of it than most people have.

 

Basically, from piecing together what footage and knowledge I have of it I

make this deduction --

 

The original edit of Star Wars sucked ass.

 

Today it would be a mild 70s curiosity, along the lines of Logan's Run, that

sort of thing.

 

Not only is it overlong and boring, it is badly acted as hell, full of scenes

that go on for minutes without a cut [like that scene of Biggs and Luke just

drinking beer and shooting the **** for like 10 minutes], there are no good

aliens in it, no good space effects, LOTS of BAD rear projection, a lead

villain with the dopiest British-couch-potato voice you've ever heard [every

Darth Vader line would get a laugh if they used Dave Prowse's voice, I saw

the footage, and no I don't have a copy] ... I mean, it's got some very nice

isolated moments in it, but it wouldn't play at all today, it would be

something of a joke. It might have played okay then, but it woulda gotten bad

or disinterested reviews.

 

This is when the really amazing thing happens, which is the editing of Star

Wars, I mean, not the first cut editing, the real editing, the shaping of the

version we know and love.

 

This is when George Lucas gets angry with a half-realized version of his

movie, and pushes the special effects guys to do better work until they hate

him. John Dykstra went and created space photography as good as "2001"'s,

only FAST and with ACTION in it, a feat of pure entertainment, and would hate

Lucas pretty much forever.

 

He pushes to have the b-roll of the Cantina scene reshot to suddenly include

some wicked-cool monster masks that weren't in the original footage. Greedo

is reshot to not look so stupid.

 

Meanwhile, Ben Burtt is creating the greatest sound effects job ever put on

film. R2-D2 is perhaps the most likeable character in the film, and that's

all Ben right there. Ditto Chewie, ditto everything. The **** he came up with

is so amazing and appropriate it's disturbing.

 

Meanwhile meanwhile, George and his wife Marcia Griffin [a MASTER editor who

worked on 'Taxi Driver'] suddenly decide they don't like their own movie that

much. Egged on by Marcia, the team deletes reels and reels of superfluous

stuff, and cuts the whole thing FAST. Not fast, but FAST. FAST FAST. The kind

of fast you dream about, the kind of fast that works. Not too fast, not too

chaotic, but just right.

 

All the rear projection stuff gets canned. Imagine that, cutting ALL the

effects that don't work. Several lead characters in the film are cut out

entirely for the sin of sucking ass, from Luke's buddy Biggs to a chubby

Scottish fellow named Jabba, cut because he couldn't act very well [Lucas

joked at the time that he'd replace the guy with a special effect if he

could].

 

Voices are redubbed all over the place, Vader especially but Han on down to

Aunt Beru. The entire character ADRed until Lucas likes the performance.

 

Meanwhile again, John Williams is listening to Holst and Wagner, taking notes

for things to steal, and writing some sort of music, I guess you've heard it?

 

Imagine Star Wars without ... STAR WARS. I mean, really. Music that's not

always original but is worth the price of admission alone.

 

Oh, and those wipes. Those marvelous Kurosawa wipes. The later Star Wars

flicks used them as simple, lame, unconvincing scene bridges, but in the

first Star Wars they have an emotional sweep to them that follows one shot to

the next like ballet. [Have I mentioned the wipes in Phantom Menace are a

flat, boring, ****ing joke?]

 

This is why I like Star Wars so much to this day. You can say what you like

about the acting .. Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing are the only ones who

turn in a halfway complete character. The rest are inconsistent at best,

annoying at worst. Though it's hard not to like Vader's voice, and Han Solo's

general attitude when he's not being irritating.

 

But I stand by my statement that Star Wars, the original, is the best-edited

motion picture of all time.

 

It's a best-parts-of-our-movie video. It's a party on the screen. It WORKS,

goddamnit, and to this day I'm still trying to figure out why.

 

It's one of my favorite movies of all time.

 

I DARE you to do better. No really, I dare you. I dare you to create a movie

more fun and visually inventive and downright dazzling as Star Wars.

 

It's ****ing hard, and many have ruined their careers trying.

 

Then again, those Wachowski brothers did pretty well of late with a movie

whose chop-sockey of cinematic genres seemed not only fun and fast and cool

but rather familiar to these eyes.

 

So it happens. But you need a miracle. In the editing room, I mean. A lot of

Sci-fi movies are made in post, let's face it.

 

George Lucas himself, with his extreme lack of talent at anything other than

coming up with new worlds to hang out in, wasn't able to create a movie more

visually dazzling than Star Wars until 1999, when he created the jaw-dropping

"The Phantom Menace."

 

Ah, but Garrett, you're saying, "The Phantom Menace was an overlong,

badly-acted piece of total horse **** by a man waaaaay past a prime which was

apparently never there to begin with. I would rather watch [insert bad thing

here] than that."

 

Ah, and you're right, because here's the trick, I'll spell it out on a handy

sheet for you.

 

Star Wars = young filmmaker with something to prove makes best-edited movie

ever and surprises everyone

Phantom Menace = old filmmaker with nothing to prove makes worst-edited movie

ever and surprises no one

 

Worst edited movie ever, you say, Garrett? What the plog? I mean, clearly the

Phantom Menace had bad acting and an incomprehensible plot and MANY more

problems than something as niggly and technical as editing and ..... um

...... wait ....... I'm guessing this ties into your earlier overlong ramble

somehow, but I don't like the insinuation you're making.

 

That's right pucky, I blame the EDITING and nothing else here. So there. It

wasn't a well-shot movie, sure, but visually it was the most spectacular of

the year in many ways, and I note that the two characters who bring the film

down most, Anakin and Jar Jar, are EXACTLY the sort of characters that a

younger Lucas would have redubbed entirely.

 

The raw material was there to keep the audience interested, I believe. Not as

much as the real Star Wars, but certainly enough to justify a 4th entry in

the saga.

 

So, a while back, as an experiment, I took out the TPM video and my old hi-8

deck and started to look for uncecessary scenes and plotlines and bad pacing

and redundancies and annoying bits and bits that went nowhere etc ....

 

Well, within 15 minutes my hi-8 deck was covered in vomit.

 

My GOD, even John Williams' music was used incorrectly.

 

For my own amusement, I grabbed an 8mm tape and created an edit of the movie

where I only left in things I thought were entertaining or vaguely necessary

to what plot this film had.

 

An hour of the film suddenly disappeared.

 

My cut was 1 hour 18 minutes, and that was the first, loose, rough cut by a

guy well-known at the time for letting his movies run on twice as long as

they should.

 

I was now completely convinced that with access to an ADR team and the

original rough footage [for I now needed to spice up/lengthen certain scenes,

add proper wipes and reinput the music], even *I*, an amateur loser, could

have made Phantom Menace work.

 

Well, obviously I don't have that, but a few friends have seen my first work

tape, and enjoyed it greatly.

 

I mean, the point isn't to make a movie so incredibly cold and

technically-beautiful that it appears to have no flaws [like 2001] ... the

fun is to shoot a movie warts-and-all and then hit it with a hammer until the

audience starts liking it.

 

I checked the credits for Charles Martin Smith, the editor of Episode I. His

only previous feature editing credit was a forgotten Janeane Garofalo vehicle

called "The Matchmaker."

 

**** Charles Martin Smith.

 

I have said this entire thing before, and I'll say it again --

 

I don't think George Lucas is a particularly gifted filmmaker, he's very

gifted in many areas especially as an idea man, and can deliver a film.

 

But Star Wars is still one of the great movies, and Phantom Menace isn't, and

it's his fault but not for the reasons most note. Sure, he shoulda hired a

real writer. Sure, he shoulda gotten better performances. But his real sin

was being satisfied with a rough-around-the-edges first cut of the film.

 

He's just old and not paying attention anymore. He doesn't have people like

the cast and his wife to tell him his movie sucks ass.

 

Meanwhile, Empire Stikes Back IS a well-made movie, and saves the entire

series for me. Actually, it's so well-made that watching it makes me shudder

and cry at my own inferiority, and curse the gods and fate, and then want to

make my own space movie in hopes it can turn out 1/10th as well as this dark,

brooding, technically-perfect sitcom-in-space did.

 

So it turns out Lucas rather doesn't like that movie since he didn't have

very much to do with it, in terms of writing or directing or being involved

with it onset at all.

 

He wasn't there to **** it up, basically, which is good because the cast had

seen the first movie as it played in theaters. I mean, they knew by then that

they had to work harder to live up to the legend. Y'know, Harrison, Carrie,

you actually have to give performances this time. Mark Hamill is still not

great here, but Frank Oz is perfect. And James Earl Jones hits the mark

again.

 

Jedi is a mess, a very fun mess and probably the most fun of the series for

kids, but it's a mess, and you shouldn't be surprised to note that Lucas

considers himself basically the author and director of this one, even though

he wasn't, he just interfered a lot ... again, we had a sort of director who

wasn't quite sure what he was doing I think, and the entire Jabba/desert

sequence is so badly shot it's painful, apart from a few special effects

inserts here and there. I mean, this bit hurts, the angles, the look, the

hair, the lighting, it's just so badly shot really. It seriously makes you

realize that Lucas did know where to put the camera. The acting is also a

mess apart from ... and it feels weird saying this ... Mark Hamill, in what

is probably his best screen performance ... one-note, but a good note, and

certainly a major improvement over the annoying Luke from the first flick.

And the good news is that the second half of the film, particularly scenes

with Ian McDiarmid as the Emperor, who's quite good, is much better shot than

the Jabba scenes, almost evoking the "Empire Strikes Back" feel at times,

though never quite making it. The Death Star x-wing run is also eye-poppingly

beautiful, light years ahead of the first film's great sequence ... it's too

bad that the good characters are in another sequence, and this run has to be

run by second-stringers like Lando and Wedge ... Lando and Han showing no

charisma whatsoever compared to their great work in Empire, and it doesn't

help that I hate Nien Numb. There are too many ****ing Muppets in this flick,

none with 1/80th the cool Yoda had. But the movie's fast as **** and a lot of

fun, so I can't slight it that much, even if I never did like that whole

"she's his sister!" thing, I'm with Gary Kurtz in saying that's a Lucas

copout. I mean, Han woulda gotten the girl anyway at this point, why ruin the

fun of the moment? Ah well, **** it. It was my favorite as a kid when I

didn't care about camera angles and wanted to see the good guys win and lots

of muppets and things, and it's still a damn fun movie, a fair sight better

than most of the crap that has passed for sci-fi since primeval man first

crawled out of the muck and said "Klaatu Barada N ... it's an N word, it's

definitely an N word .."

 

Attack of the Clones will be better than Phantom Menace, Droids, Ewoks, The

Ewok Adventure, Caravan of Courage, or the Star Wars Holiday Special. It will

be worse than The Adventures of Luke Starkiller in the ... I mean, Star Wars,

Star Wars 2 or Star Wars 3. And I look forward to doing a "test" reedit of it

when it comes out on video.

 

I expect I'll be able to cut an hour out again ....

 

[/QB]

[UberChild]

I think you guys should wait and see the new movie before condeming the whole prequel series... yes the pahntom menace was a bit boring, but it is the 1st in the series, there were soo many things that needed to be explained, to make the rest of the movies work, unfortunately all this knowledge, while necessary is a bit boring.. but now all that **** is out of the way, GL can move on to a much more exciting episode 2, we now know about all the basic characters, and as someone said, many of the secrets of the phantom menace, will not become clear untill the next 2 movies have been made, just like star wars.. if the 2nd movie sux.. fine bash GL and star wars as much as you want, but for now give them a chance...

[GonkH8er]

just a question. how long does it normally take to write 3,329 words?

[magnum1587246490]

Hehehe! And I thought that I was the only one that believe that SW movies (with the exception of ESB) are bad, bad movies... Don't get me wrong, they're my favourites as a spectator, but technically I think they could be a *lot* better

 

I have to agree with this guy respect the old removed footage... in Behind the Magic CD I could watch that HORRIBLE Biggs footage

 

I really hope that EP2 will be better than EP1... hey, the guy has the money, the technology (his team was one of the creators of it!), and he can reasonably expect to win tons of money ... I really hope...

[Dante1587246514]

at first i was kinda pissed at episode 1 when i saw it but then i realised...if you watch starwars again with a critical eye they're pratically the same...episode 1 a lil more wooden but still the same...i think thats the way its gona be for the next 2 movies...and lets not forget that the target audience for starwars was and still is 15-20 year olds...so while george is senile he still is doin what he planned to do...and to whoever said he was making it up as he goes along do you know that episode 1 was penned a long time before "a new hope"?...

[acdcfanbill]

well, not in its entireity, just the jest of it i think, GL has been putting in details, im sure that Jar Jar wasnt a 25-30 yr old creation... at least i hope not... if i had a charcter bouncing around in my head that long, i might be senile too...

[Guest Kurgan]

So now the question is.. where can we get "Episode I.I: The Phantom Edit"? ; )

 

Maybe George will set things right with the DVD edition in October.

 

Oh well, wait and see I say...

[Dante1587246514]

hopefully not a directors edit...

 

but in saying that the script does look better for episode 2...and with all the criticsm that ol georgie is taking for both TPM and the name "Attack of the clones" you know he's not gona make the same mistakes again...unless he really is as dense as 4x4 plywood...oh and he has to kill off jar jar binks...i'd watch episode 2 for that alone...on another note if you watch the planet core scene in episode 1 when jar jars screaming and quigon gives a sort of vulcan neck rub...you'll hear ewan say "he over did it"...now was that really part of the script or simply bad editing?

[Guest Kurgan]

Yeah, originally he was supposed to say "THAT is for your whining, you little @#$&(*^$#!" and Obi and Qui Gon exchange high fives

[Dante1587246514]

lol!!!

[StormHammer]

Dante: Obi-Wan actually says "You over-did it," meaning that instead of Qui-Gon calming Jar-Jar he sent him to sleep. Pity he didn't kill the annoying aquatic ****.

 

As for the rest... To me TPM was just a rehash of ROTJ, and a poor one at that, and it doesn't help that ROTJ was the film I liked the least of the original trilogy. If you asked me if there was one memorable sequence from TPM, I'd have to say the lightsaber battle at the end. It was well-executed (if not totally predictable).

 

The name for Episode II is, well, plain bad. I'm beginning to think that GL is trying a bit too hard in turning Star Wars into the original B&W Flash Gordon serials from the 30s (and yes, I have seen them), and obviously attended the Roger Corman school of movie titles. Attack of The Killer Tomatos, anyone? Or Attack of the 50-foot Woman? Or Attack of the Crabs?

 

As for the content of Episode II - I've no doubt it will be aimed at 9-year olds like TPM was (why-else have a 9-year old kid flying a starfighter and nuking a space station - it's every kid's dream isn't it?).

 

I don't think they will ever recapture the essence of ESB, so I don't really expect much at all from these prequels. My eldest son (4 years old) enjoyed TPM, so I guess it managed to reach it's target audience. That's fine. It's just a roller-coaster ride anyway.

 

I can't see what the fuss is about, really. It's only a film, and it will either be a good film or a bad film, depending on your personal preference. I mean, how many of you are really going to boycott the film because of it's title, or some of it's content? Most of us are Star Wars junkies, so we'll probably end up watching the damned thing one way or another, and adding to Lucas's little money mountain anyway.

 

At the moment, I'm more interested in how The Lord Of The Rings is going to turn out, and whether that film can revitalise the fantasy film-making industry the way the original Star Wars did for the SF film-making industry way back in 1977. I mean, let's face it, if not for Star Wars, would we have seen Star Trek: The Motion Picture, or more importantly, Alien, Blade Runner (my favourite SF film), and some of those other films that appeared around the same time?

 

I just wish someone else would bite the bullet and make an SF film that could rival the long-term impact of Star Wars.

[acdcfanbill]

hmm, rival, i dunno, matrix 2&3 will prob be REALLY cool! have to wait till they are out to tell though... damn bastards pushed m2 back til '03 now.... ****!

[dazilla]

If u ask me, Rise of the Clones would have been MUCH better, if u insist on going with the clone idea.

[Guest Kurgan]

Star Wars Episode II: Killer Klones from Outer Space!

 

 

Well at least we can look forward to commercials calling it "Star Wars 2" or "Episode II."

 

Kurgan

[Ice Man1587246496]

Hehe! Maybe GL will make an Episode I "Special Edition" in ten to twenty years. I hope the eventually put the originals on DVD.