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Bustin' on ROTJ Yes, it IS a good film.

#16 Guest_Guest_*

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Posted 13 March 2004 - 11:13 AM

"Many people view ROTJ with their beer goggles on... or better, their childhood goggles and your argument for He-Man is an example of this. I loved ROTJ as a kid, but when I got to about 17 or 18 years old, when the SE came out (and before I had read the 50 reasons), something changed. The other films still rocked hardcore, but ROTJ was filled with cute stupidity aimed for children: "

I used to love shows like He-Man and Thundercats as well as Knight Rider when I was a kid. I watched these shows now and realize that they are not really as good as i thought when I saw them as a young boy. They were really just nostalgia from my childhood. I am a film student now, and have watched movies like Casablanca, Momento, French Connection and Rashomon. Movies i would never have liked as a kid. With all that, I still watch movies of my youth like ROTJ, Batman and Ghostbusters and you know what...THEY STILL ARE GREAT MOVIES and would have enjoyed them regardless of my age. Movies like ROTJ were well done movies that went beyond toy-lines and appealling kids, they were great storytelling and filmmaking. Star Wars was so unique because it was a film that showed us that you can use special effects, toy promotions and still tell a great story. {Done long before LOTR!!}

I watch a movie like ROTJ and compare it to a movie like Ran and realize that both have qualities of great filmmaking. I am 24 years old and will probably still marvel at ROTJ the same way for it's unique aspects. Ferris, take it from me, there is A LOT you can learn about filmmaking from watching ROTJ!!!! This is from a person that has watched and enjoyed Rashamon!!!
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#17 Guest_Mike Mac-Film Student_*

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Posted 13 March 2004 - 11:14 AM

By the way the above post is from me (as if you didn't know tongue.gif )
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#18 Guest_Guest_*

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Posted 13 March 2004 - 11:27 AM

QUOTE
Not to pick on a dead guy, but has anybody explored Marquand's body of work beyond ROTJ? Not terribly positive. I mean, aside from ROTJ and Eye of the Needle (7.0/10.0), his few shitty films rank at best a 6.5 and all the way down to 2.1. Pretty pathetic."



I'll take the late Richard Marquand over George Lucas anyday. {Live or Dead.LOL biggrin.gif}

My apologies to

I'm not sure but I think you may be exagerating Richard Marquand's body of work. BTW I don't think Larry Kasdan's body of work is any different. You can check me on that, tho.
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#19 User is offline   civilian_number_two Icon

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Posted 13 March 2004 - 03:56 PM

Wow, there's an awful lot of stuff here. I want to post my two cents, but at the same time I know I've already said everything I might want to add. Maybe I'll make a point-form list. But I will clear up one point:

I don't believe that JEDI is in the same box with TPM. After I saw JEDI, I promised myself that STAR WARS was over for me, that I wouldn't see any more SW movies. Then 16 years later I saw TPM. I haven't seen AOTC. So JEDI bugged me enought to make me want to give up on the movies, but TPM was bad enough to make me keep that vow.

VWing: I don't agree that the heroes treated the Ewoks wth the respect due a tribe of noble savages. They condescended to them and created a false god out of 3P0. It was dumb and silly, in a ROAD TO MOROCCO sort of way. But that business was never what bothered me. Luke and Han blasted their way out of the Death Star, which is about as ridiculous as anything. Sure, Vader and Tarkin "let them escape," but all of the individual troops and pilots that went after thm certainly woulnd't have had those orders. "Go chase those guys, but make sure you get yourselves killed." So the Ewok battle isn't the thing. It's just:

1) there's nothing new in Vader's fight with Luke, and it leans pretty heavily on the ridiculous and completely illogcal "If you ever get angry, you will become irretrievably evil." That's it. The whole scene has one point, and at 14 every time they came back to the fight, I was sure it was going to end, since there wasn't anywhere for it to go but to have Vader illogically step in and help Luke. Waiting for that to happen took *forever*
2) Vader's redemption for saving his own son brings to mind all the thousands of Jedi and billions of civilians he's responsible for. It also reminds me that if he's redeemable, what's the big deal if Luke gets a little angry? The whole Vader/Luke conflict is STUPID.
3) Death Star 2.
4) Boba Fett.
5) Flesh-and-blood Obi-Wan. What could be more ridiculous than this shimmery ghot taking a seat and talking to Luke like they're in a room together? Even as an irreligious little kid, I had to wonder "don't these sprits go somewhere when they die? Or is Luke going to be haunted by these bastards the rest of his life?"
6) Yoda's death is stupid and random. Luke shows up, he dies. That's about as clever as the "speak one line, then die" device of about two hundred other stupid movies, and it reaises the question "Would Yoda have dies had Luke just ever shown up?" It's just a case of lucas wanting someone to die in the film, to give it "emotional resonance," but then he has that person die happy, of old age, and it's no big deal.
7) "From a certain point of view." Refusing to admit that Ben lied to Luke was Lucas's biggest failing. Ben had an opportunity to be a human being here. Instead he pulled a Lucas: "What I said back then, was what i meant t say, what I had always meant to say, and it ws 100% correct and true. Also, Greedo was alsways supposed to have shot first."
8) Leia is Luke's sister. And you planned that all along, as well? Give me a break.

EMPIRE represented a serious shift in style for the STAR WARS series. SW had been light, and goofy, like a Flash Gordon serial. EMPIRE added strong character conflicts and a stunning, dramatic conclusion. JEDI dropped all pretension and went right back to the light humour. As a teenager, I felt pampered and condescended to. I felt like Lucas didn't know what to do with the serious stiry he'd set up, so he settled just on making "another one of those," and he filled it with light humour and simple little conflicts. It suffered most by simply not knowing what to do with the "Vader is Luke's father" business. Lucas had Vader redeemed because he didn't want his audiences to feel the weight of Luke killing his own father, because the alternative best route involved Luke dying as well, tragically, romantically, for his friends and the life of the Rebellion. Lucas copped out, and added the Leia nonsense for no good reason, other than that it added a "twist;" I guess he felt he needed to surprise us like he did with EMPIRE. He just didn't know what to do ith it, and it is honestly the most ridiculous plot element in any of the films. Stupider than the love powder in WILLOW; stupider than the name "Dooku." Just stupid, stupid, stupid.
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).
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#20 User is offline   Vwing Icon

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Posted 13 March 2004 - 05:05 PM

Well since I've already argued these points, I don't really feel like arguing them again. As for Kenobi talking with Luke, I'm sorry, it's no better or worse than him standing there in shimmery form in Dagobah. He has the same form, he demonstrates the same humanity despite being dead. So he sits down in Luke's vision of him to make Luke feel more comfortable, so what? And as for the "certain point of view" line, you know what, it does make sense. From every point of view. Do you think he wanted Luke to know that his father was an evil sith lord who killed all of the Jedi? Hell, do you think Ben himself wanted to admit this to himself? He wanted to remember the good about Anakin, and separated it from the bad. He also wanted to protect Luke from this knowledge so that he could defeat Vader, as I believe he told Luke later in the conversation. But going back, remember, Ben separated the good Anakin and evil Vader. He didn't want to think of Anakin as a sith lord, and you know what, he was right that they were 2 different people. Darth Vader was a menacing villain, who exuded coolness. Anakin Skywalker is a whiny little shit.

Star Wars fan: George? Why didn't you tell me that Anakin was such an asshole when he was a Jedi? You led me to believe in the OT that Anakin was a cool guy.
Lucas: When Anakin was in our imaginations instead of in the form of Hayden Christensen, he was a very cool guy. When I took over, I made him an asshole. So what I told you was true. From a certain point of view.
Star Wars fan: A certain point of view?
Lucas: You see, fan, when I first went into this business, I did it for pure love of the craft. When I first started making movies, I was amazed by how much money came with them. I thought I could make movies for money without sacrificing my reputation, just like Master Spielberg. I was wrong. Therefore, the character you know as Anakin Skywalker ceased to be cool and became a whiny brat.
Star Wars fan: Go fuck yourself *shoots in head*

That doesn't read as well as it should have. Oh well.
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#21 User is offline   Mike Mac from NYU Icon

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Posted 13 March 2004 - 06:12 PM

I am sorry Civilan Two- It occurs to me that your perception of Star Wars is WAAAAYYY the opposite of mine and many others. I gave up arguing, when you brought up the idea of killing of Luke Skywalker.{Which in my opinion is akin to killing Frodo or Aragorn in LOTR} Your disappointment in ROTJ is due to your expectations of the movie being differnet, that I realize. The same goes for Ferris Weil. Hence, we agree to disagree. When, I get the strength, I will argue your points. wink.gif
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#22 User is offline   JamesEightBitStar Icon

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Posted 13 March 2004 - 06:43 PM

QUOTE (Ferris Wiel @ Mar 13 2004, 09:12 AM)
QUOTE (JamesEightBitStar @ Mar 13 2004, 04:12 AM)
I used to argue with a guy over He-Man who had a similar arguement--he always tried to say it was bad, his reason being "Its based on a toy."  and I said "So what?  It's still a damn good show."  If you want to argue the movie, argue the movie ITSELF, not some points outside of it that only tenuously relate to the issue at hand.

If we're talking old-school He-Man, then yeah, HE was right. The show was inane. Just like SuperFriends. If you can actually say that He-Man was a quality show then that invalidates your arguments about ROTJ at least a little in my eyes. I have read articles on X-E by Matt, who, incidentally, loved the show and still does, and even he in full apologetics mode cannot reconcile the problems with the show and many of its more stupid elements.
--FW


Well that's okay, because in my eyes your arguements were pretty invalidated to begin with. Now, yes we were talking about the old show. Why? Is the new show any different in this regard? Last I saw of the new He-Man series, it was doing the same thing the Prequels did--trying to have as many tie-ins to the old show as humanly possible, even going so far as to dedicate an entire season to the stupid Snake Men. Most of the plotlines are just repeats of the old show, to boot.

I think the problem with you is that you let other people make up your mind for you. First with ROTJ you argue that it's bad because there's a list that says so. Now you're doing it with He-Man.

This post has been edited by JamesEightBitStar: 13 March 2004 - 07:09 PM

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#23 User is offline   civilian_number_two Icon

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Posted 13 March 2004 - 07:50 PM

QUOTE (Vwing @ Mar 13 2004, 05:05 PM)
And as for the "certain point of view" line, you know what, it does make sense.  From every point of view.  Do you think he wanted Luke to know that his father was an evil sith lord who killed all of the Jedi?  Hell, do you think Ben himself wanted to admit this to himself?  He wanted to remember the good about Anakin, and separated it from the bad.  He also wanted to protect Luke from this knowledge so that he could defeat Vader, as I believe he told Luke later in the conversation.  But going back, remember, Ben separated the good Anakin and evil Vader.  He didn't want to think of Anakin as a sith lord, and you know what, he was right that they were 2 different people.  Darth Vader was a menacing villain, who exuded coolness.  Anakin Skywalker is a whiny little shit. 

Anikin is not a whiny little shit in ROTJ.

Anyway, I don't know what to make of your reply. I have to assume you don't know what I'm upset with, which is cool. We're different people; we're going to see different things. So I'll tell you what I *think* you're saying. I think you're saying that either:

A ) Ben willfully lied to Luke to protect him from the truth; or
B ) Ben unconsciously lid to himself.

When called on it, Ben told Luke that what he had said was true "from a certain point of view." He didn't either:

a ) acknowledge that he had lied to Luke; or
b ) admit that he had performed some sort or self-inflicted Orwellian double-think.

He just asserted that what he had said was NOT a lie, just that Luke had lacked the imagination to see through the haze of copnscious or unconscious deception.

Of course, none of this "Ben wanted to protect the memory of his dead friend" even brings Yoda into it. At 900 years or so old, he'd have seen men born and men die. Being a freaking Zen master, I think he would have had the calm presence to accept the truth, and to tell Luke all about it. Either:

I ) he colluded with Ben in a plan to keep the truth from Luke; or
II ) he never told Luke because George actually planned better things for JEDI, and then either chickened out or couldn't get them to work and be sinultaneously bankable and kid-friendly.

A MUCH BETTER way to go with the whole revelation might have been:
i ) to have Ben confess that he was a bad teacher, and to admit that he had lied out of a desire to protect luke from the truth (Yoda admits that they'd never exected Vader to tell Luke, essentially admitting that he was in on a knowing deception); or
ii ) not have Obi-Wan in the movie at all. It would be easier to write dialogue of the sort where Yoda said "Ready you were not to know this much. Vader was clever to use this against you, Unexpected this was..." or some such thing, all the while admitting that Luke ahd been decieved and that Yoda and Ben really had no idea what to do about the possibility of Luke learing the truth about his father. I think having Yoda die (and then disappear altogether, unlike Ben, who seems to get to hang around and talk non-stop, and show up while Luke's geting a piece, or pulling it in the shower. It's so embarrassing!) and leaving the exposition to Spectre of Ben (SoB) was silly, but not a deal-breaker. It's just what the exposition turned out to be that was the real let-down.

----

Here's something else you haven't touched on.

In EMPIRE, Yoda and SoB are talking about ho Luke is "our only hope" and Yoda says "No. There is another." WOW! Did all us kids look forward to seeing a new Jedi hero! We all figured this new hero would take over from Luke and be the star of the third trilogy. Someone Yoda knew about, but Ben didn't! A whole new character! A WHOLE NEW DIRECTION!

What did Lucas do with this in JEDI? The "other" is another SKYWALKER, and she happens to be someone we already know. Like Yoda had to tell Ben about that! According to the new backstory, Ben was responsible for hiding her and everything! How could he possibly say "That boy is our only hope" ???

This is the most unforgivable aspect of JEDI. Worse than the second Death Star. Leia being Luke's suster is a huge symbolic shrugging of Lucas's mighty shoulders, an exaggerated surrender of his lofty nine-film plan. For this reason alone, if for no other, ROTK was a huge disappointment.


PS: I know what you're thinking. since Leia never actualy does become a Jedi, what Ben said was true, "from a certain point of view." =0

This post has been edited by civilian_number_two: 13 March 2004 - 07:50 PM

"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).
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#24 User is offline   Vwing Icon

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Posted 13 March 2004 - 08:36 PM

Well first of all, the 2nd part of my post, including the Anakin is a little shit, was supposed to be mean-spirited humor aimed at the prequels, getting off-topic for a bit. Sorry bout that.

And as for the "there is another" line, I have to tell you the truth, I didn't expect a new character. I have to say I half-expected Leia. I didn't think she was Luke's sister, but I did expect her to be the other hope, specifically at the end of ESB where she's able to hear Luke through the Force. So obviously I can't really argue this with you since I was never in the same position as you on this. When Leia was revealed as Luke's sister, I didn't even think of it as some huge revelation. I just thought it was taking the "there is another" line one step further. And in the end it plays a part in Luke very nearly succumbing to the Dark Side (another aspect I disagree with you on, I like the no shades of gray where if you succumb to anger for whatever reasons you start a path to the dark side, since anger fuels power to harm, which is a dark side). So I can't speak for you and your friends who were anxiously awaiting a whole new character, because I never experienced that feeling.

I do agree with you on one thing though. I did think that Lord of the Rings: Return of the King was a huge disappointment. Watch your J's and K's smile.gif
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#25 User is offline   Mike Mac from NYU Icon

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Posted 13 March 2004 - 09:03 PM

[/QUOTE]In EMPIRE, Yoda and SoB are talking about ho Luke is "our only hope" and Yoda says "No. There is another." WOW! Did all us kids look forward to seeing a new Jedi hero! We all figured this new hero would take over from Luke and be the star of the third trilogy. Someone Yoda knew about, but Ben didn't! A whole new character! A WHOLE NEW DIRECTION![QUOTE]

Man was I right about you civilian!!! You definitely had unique expectations and impressions from ESB. Did you really think that Luke was going to be replaced by a NEW Jedi Knight????? Boy, Lucas cliffhanger on ESB did a number on you.

Okay, lets follow your concept idea. A new Jedi knight hero with no relation to the Anakin Skywalker clan. First problem. The Jedi are alleged to be extinct, wiped out by Vader and the emperor. The only reason Luke and Leia are alive is that the Emperor did not know they existed. Ben is alive, but Vader knew that the possibility of Obi-Wan living was something that might happen. Yoda is alive, so it is somewhat possible that some Jedi is hiding around. OK I'll buy that. But I assume he is untrained and a youth as to why Yoda and Ben consider Luke the first alternative to this other Jedi. So this is a fledgling Youth. How is he trained by Yoda, when during the time Luke is away planning to rescue Han. At what point in the movie are you going to introduce the character to us the audience? During cutscenes in the Han's rescue. How are you going to introduce him? Have him being trained by Yoda on Dagobah? We already saw this in ESB, it's a redundant scene? How is he introduced to the other members of the story. On Dagobah? How are you going to interact Luke with this character? If this character is going to replace Luke, he's got to be a pretty well-developed character whom the audience is going to accept as Luke's replacement.

So in essence you are going to have to spend screen time to build and develop a new primary character. That's fine, just consider this though.. In the 3rd and final film you HAVE to explain these plotlines:

1. Han's predicament {he's encased in carbonite}
2. Introduction of Jabba the Hutt
3. Luke must meet Yoda again {on Dagobah I might add}
4. Triangle between Luke and Leia must be explored and concluded {a long on-going plot}
5. Emperor must be introduced and his fate must be decided
6. Luke must confront Vader and finish that conflict
7. Resolution of the war between the Alliance and the Empire { whole war scenes}
8. Luke must ascend to being a Jedi Knight
9. The storty must end and have the feeling of an ending

Let's add a 9th plotline, a new main character must be developed and introduced to his. All this in one final 2:10 minute movie. All must be done cleanly and conclude the story. You up to that, civilian.

Let's look at this "new Jedi". What is his point in the story? All you essentially tell me is that his only purpose is to represent the Jedi and replace the main character of Luke. How does he enhance the other characters, what are his motivations. Does he have an antagonistic relation with Luke at the beginning or a sibling relationship. Do the other characters mesh or accept him? More importantly, does the audience accept him? Luke was a charcter that was endeared by the audience. They saw him grow up, they saw him be a hero, they were saddened when they saw him lose his hand. Now, you want to kill this character and tell the audience that thie "new Luke" is going to take over and breed the Jedi. If this character is not made likeable enough in the plot, I could see audiences DESPISING this "New Jedi".

To me this new character would simply be an unnessary character to the trilogy, unless you built him up into one. His presence could also ruin the chemistry between the trio of Han, Luke and Leia. Remember even though Lando is introduced, he only briefly appears with the trio. mostly when he is around, Luke or Han is absent from the scene. And Lando is not a major charcater either, just a supporting one.

So do you really think you can resolve those 10 plot points into one 2:10 film. It' not possible. You first would have to throw out the whole ROTJ plot and start from scratch. Then you would have to make a choice: 1. lengthen the film to 3 or 4 hours 2. create a fourth film. That is the only way you could have these ideas be cohesive.

Keep this in mind though. Harrison Ford is becoming a star in the early 1980s, he will demand more money for a fourth film. So you either have to kill his character off or recast him. The other members of the cast would also ask for more money, you may have to recast them. If a movie is too long, you may have a boring movie that drones on forever and loses the audiences interest. If you create a fourth film, I can almost guarantee you that the fourth film would be lackluster {remember your core audience from 1979-1983 is growing up by the year, You're fourth movie would at best come out in 1986) Not to mention the cost of the fourth movie would be twice the amount of the last one,{no CGI effects available in 1984} so would the movie studios want to produce another Star Wars film. These are problems to consider.

Civilian, if you can come up with a movie concept that's better than ROTJ, let me know. Put your entire concept for the third {or fourth film} and let me see if it is doable as a screenplay. biggrin.gif
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#26 User is offline   civilian_number_two Icon

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Posted 13 March 2004 - 09:21 PM

QUOTE (Vwing @ Mar 13 2004, 08:36 PM)
I do agree with you on one thing though. I did think that Lord of the Rings: Return of the King was a huge disappointment. Watch your J's and K's smile.gif

Whoops. I won't go back and modify that, since then you post won't be funny. All the same, I thought ROTK was great, and I look forward to the even longer version.

QUOTE
And as for the "there is another" line, I have to tell you the truth, I didn't expect a new character. I have to say I half-expected Leia.


I am gobsmacked. I don't know what to say. You "half-expected" Leia? What does that mean? Either you expected her, and were therefore not surprised, or you didn't expect her at all, but when you heard that, you thought "Ok, that makes sense." "Half-expected" i don't get at all? You expected her, but at the same time, you expected something else?

Well whatever. You don't think she was a big break with credibility. I do. After all, what did she do that rendered her so "hopeful," in terms of Jedi prowess and all that? She could hear Luke at the end of EMPIRE? That was *Luke's* power, not hers! Going back and deciding that this meant she was a Jedi is total nonsense! Like, if those are the rules, if not just *anybody* can hear the psychic messages sent by Jedi, then why dd Luke even try to send to her? Did he *know* she was going to be able to receive the message? Or was he just clutching at straws? Anyway, when he all relaxed and convalescing, why didn't he say "When Yoda taught me that trick, he told me only Force-sensitives could receive messages. So you're Force-sensitive, are you? How long has that been going on? Can you do any tricks?" Nope, nothing of the sort. Just a tacit acceptance that you can do that with the Force, and then the later-movie backwards rewrite that that meant that Leia must have been a Jedi, with the nonsensical doublethink that even though these are the rules, Luke nonetheless never suspected it. What crack. not exactly as stupid as the Vulcan soul-transfer in ST III, or the "Spock has a brother" Laurel-and-Hardy-inspired humour of ST V, but way unworthy of a series that has EMPIRE in it.

Getting back to the meat of it, according to Yoda's rules, she is "too old to begin the training!" So what, he was going to get her to do the flipping out and wailing and slashing and be all Vader-killing? Give me a break.

It's good that the series ended where it did. because Lucas was really in a corner at that point. He had to make a tough decision. Either:

q ) have Leia be a Jedi knight, and embarrass everyone on earth when Carrie Fischer tried to learn karate; or
r ) have Leia give birth to Jedi babies, thereby pissing off female STAR WARS fans worldwide with the implication that her big contribution to Jedihood was to have babies like a good woman.

I don't know how you and your friends weren't anticipating what the next three films were going to be about, since right after Lucas announced that he was going to make nine stories, that's all anyone I knew was doing. And we all agreed that they couldn't hold off on the big Vader-Luke showdown for four films, so we were all expecting a big change in tone. Add to which Lucas pretty much said that when he announced that the trilogies were each going to be stand-alone stories, with the droids as the connecting characters. So forgive me if we took Lucas's word for it, and expected a new hero for the next trilogy.

Lucas got lazy and tied everything up in a cute little bundle.

Lucas fucked up and lied. Accept it.
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).
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#27 User is offline   Mike Mac from NYU Icon

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Posted 13 March 2004 - 10:08 PM

QUOTE
Lucas got lazy and tied everything up in a cute little bundle.

Lucas fucked up and lied. Accept it.


No dice, civilian. Remember ESB? Luke hanging from an air vent. He "thought calls" Leia! of all people. And only Leia is the person who not only knows his thoughts but can find out where he is. This was a hint that Leia was the "other one". It also shows that Lucas INTENDED for Leia to be the other Jedi. Know why would Luke call out to Leia of all people until subconciously on some level he knew she was his sister. There was already that feeling between them that they could not be lovers, and that relationship was different. Examples of this are littered in ESB and the beginning of ROTJ. Sorry civilian if Lucas, fooled you into thinking that there would be another Jedi knight.laugh.gif " See my previous post for more info
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#28 User is offline   civilian_number_two Icon

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Posted 13 March 2004 - 10:57 PM

QUOTE (Mike Mac from NYU @ Mar 13 2004, 10:08 PM)
QUOTE
Lucas got lazy and tied everything up in a cute little bundle.

Lucas fucked up and lied. Accept it.


No dice, civilian. Remember ESB? Luke hanging from an air vent. He "thought calls" Leia! of all people. And only Leia is the person who not only knows his thoughts but can find out where he is. This was a hint that Leia was the "other one". It also shows that Lucas INTENDED for Leia to be the other Jedi. Know why would Luke call out to Leia of all people until subconciously on some level he knew she was his sister. There was already that feeling between them that they could not be lovers, and that relationship was different. Examples of this are littered in ESB and the beginning of ROTJ. Sorry civilian if Lucas, fooled you into thinking that there would be another Jedi knight.laugh.gif " See my previous post for more info

I'm a gonna ansa yo posts in revess odah, of thass ok by yoo boss

Luke "thought calls" to Leias and she receives it. Yes; I saw the movie when I was twelve years old. Thing is, this CAN'T be a clue that she is the "other" foretold by Yoda, since neither Leia nor Luke think it's even the least bit odd that they can do this.

Consider this: You're watching a movie, and then a character does a completely absurd thing, like send a thought across space to another person, and the other person receives it. You figure this is a big deal, and that it deserves some explanation. Then, nowhere in the movie is it ever explained or even questioned by any character. Luke doesn't think it's odd that Leia can hear his thoughts. He never suspects that she may be Force-sensitive, or his sister, or another Jedi knight. SO... you, the viewer, are made to revise your opinion. You have to figure that maybe there was nothing unusual about this at all. When Luke learned this trick, he must have learned that it was a thing Jedi could do. Leia, being royalty and well-read, probably knew this was something Jedi could do. So when they don't even question the event, you figure it had to be something that is possible in their universe. Not exactly mundane, but not unique, either. the chracters all but tell you "don't worry about this; it's not unusual."

Now: the sequel comes along, and someone says "Well, you should have known that Leia was something special; remember how she could hear Luke's thoughts?" You gotta feel cheated. I know I did, and I was only a teenager. Sure, I said, it seemed unusual to me at first, but when the characters went along with it ... ah, fuck you, Lucas! You're making this up as you go along! If it was such a big fucking clue, then Luke and Leia should have suspected something, you hack!

I'll give you another example: In DIE HARD II, there's a set of bad special ops guys wh pretend to be shooting at some bad terrorists. Thing is, they are all shooting blanks. They give one of these guns to Bruce Willis, the cop, and he shoots away with it. There's an extended firefight, and then the terrorists get away. Bruce later learns that he had been firing blanks. As a viewer, I felt cheated, since of course, the time for him to have known he was firing blanks was when he was actually firing them! That there were no bullets ripping apart the walls of the church he was shooting at, the windows didn't break, and nobody was hit. Just because the camera didn't make this explicit to me doesn't mean that that Mr Bruce Willis wouldn't have noticed. It's not supposed to have been the first time he ever fired a gun!

See, that's an example of a case where the filmmaker cheats by making an "important clue" invisible by way of having no main character notice a really obvious thing.

NO FUCKING DICE, Mac.

"There was already that feeling that they could not be lovers..."

This is bullshit, Mr Rick McCallum. They made out in the hospital. Sure, Leia did it because she was into Han, but Luke was dumb enough to go along with it, because his feelings for Leia were still there, as they had been when he saw the hologram on Tatooine. I see no evidence in EMPIRE that Luke knew that he was not going to hook up with Leia, and if you were following the fan culture at the time, you'd know there was a going debate over whether Luke or Han was going to get the girl. In fact, if you listen to Harrison Ford talk about it, his main argument for his own character dying in JEDI was that "Luke was going to get the girl." Ford was upset with the way JEDI turned out, since he thought his character was cheated of a dramatic resolution. There are no clues in EMPIRE that Luke and Leia are siblings. They don't even look alike; strong evidence that Lucas hadn't planned out this connection is that he didn't even try to cast appropriately. I'm sure the sibling idea just came to him one day when he realized they both had the same first initial.

As for any clues at the start of JEDI. Are you insane? Of course Lucas can give us clues in the very same movie in which he reveals the thing! He had it all written before he started filming! Is this really a point you're trying to make?
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).
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#29 User is offline   civilian_number_two Icon

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Posted 13 March 2004 - 11:37 PM

QUOTE (Mike Mac from NYU @ Mar 13 2004, 09:03 PM)
Man was I right about you civilian!!! You definitely had unique expectations and impressions from ESB. Did you really think that Luke was going to be replaced by a NEW Jedi Knight????? Boy, Lucas cliffhanger on ESB did a number on you.

Not at all. This was a *common* belief in 1980, when Lucas announced that he was going to have three trilogies, bridged by the droids but each with a unique cast of characters. Luke, Leia and Han were not intended to be in episodes I-III, nor in Episodes VII-IX. R2 and 3P0 would be inall of them. Those last three episodes were going to need some other characters, I bet, and the common myth was that Lucas was going to introduce Yoda's "other" in that series.

I don't know how old you are, but your suggestion that a "fourth" movie with the same actors would have been undoable has nothing to do with Lucas's stated plans. He was talking about THREE MORE sequels (and three prequels), that is, two more trilogies with different heroes. You with me, now?

As for all your other comments, you obviously didn't get what I was trying to say. I was saying was that Lucas was foreshadowing another character who would come along and mean something to the Jedi knights. I figured this meant that he or she (a popular myth was that the new Jedi would be a woman, but my idea was that it woould be a much older man whom Yoda did not trust and therefore had kept out of things until it got desperate) would appear in Episode VII. I agree that this was dangerous, and that audiences might have despised the new Jedi. We all thought that Lucas would be taking a risk when he introduced a whole new set of characters and asked us to love them, but after EMPIRE kids all over he world were willing to trust that he could do it. the only reason we believed it would happen is that LUCAS SAID IT WOULD.

Anyway, much of your argument hinges on the idea that I thought Lucas would or should introduce this character in RETURN OF THE JEDI. so I'll say it agian: I never suggested that Lucas would or should introduce this character in RETURN OF THE JEDI.

In JEDI, Lucas went back on his word. He ended the series in one movie, announced that there would never be VII-IX, and made Leia the "other." Not only did this seem as random as bringing Spock back to life (after a fine death scene), it was flat, since as far as "last hopes" go, she was pretty lame. See, she didn't actually do anything. Nothing Han or Chewie or even Lando couldn't have done, that is. In the STAR WARS world, the dichotomy of Jedi and ordinary folk set itself up pretty quick, and Leia made no effort to bridge the gap. She didn't square off against Vader, she didn't lift anything with the power of her mind. Leia stayed among the mortals, while Luke went off into his separate story unaided by even so much as a secret sending. I mean, that could have stood for something, at least, if Luke and Leia could have communicated special information to one another during that last pair of battles, information that might have helped take out the shield or the emperor, or both. then at least there would have been a point to the otherwise-random Luke/Leia business. As it is, it's just tacked on.

And the whole big revelation scene was super flat. Luke tells Leia, and then she tells Han, so now it's play ball time for Solo. That's the only purpose the revelation served. Later it comes up during Luke's fight with Vader, but it's not really important. It's really just more trash talk to make Luke fight. It's not exactly epic stuff; without the relationship, Vader could have threatened to kill Leia, and it would have had the same effect. God damn, it's why Luke went after Vader in the first place, in EMPIRE, sister or no sister.

Your throw-down challenge to write something better than JEDI is laughable. Or at least, it is in the way you word it. It sounds like you really believe that JEDI was the best movie that could possibly have been made at that time with that set of people. I don't now; maybe Lucas didn't know how to end the one trilogy while bridging the gap to the next. Maybe that's the problem with CLAIMING that you have nine stories laid out while really you are making them up as you go along (this is the same problem JK Rowling is having right now with HARRY POTTER). I believe I could write a more satisfying sequel to EMPIRE, and it would be one that would bridge the gap to a third trilogy. But that's not the point. It would never be the sequel Lucas might have written. It would be different and it would follow my idea of story. What I wanted was not for Lucas to make MY sequel, but for him to make the one he promised to make. And I guarantee you, if he has any balls, JEDI was not the sequel he had in mind when he made EMPIRE. He just backed out and scaled down, and it was a financial decision, not a creative one.
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).
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#30 User is offline   Vwing Icon

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Posted 13 March 2004 - 11:51 PM

Ok Civ, first of all, calm down. Second of all, half-expected is an exp​ression. Is it a gramatically wrong exp​ression? Not necessarily, because I used it to show that I had an inkling. I didn't outright expect it to be Leia, but I kinda expected it. I half-expected it. There, we have semantics aside.

Third of all, Leia doesn't realize that Luke is calling to her. She gets an image in her head, she knows where Luke is, she senses him. She doesn't know she's telepathically communicating with him, she just gets a subconscious feeling. He's too dazed to know exactly what's going on, and you know what, after you lose a hand, get it revealed to you that Vader is your father, fall nearly to your death and are hanging from a weather vane, the last thing on your mind would be "Why did the Falcon rescue me?" It just isn't so illogical as you're making it out to be.

As for Ford's character dying, you're fooling yourself if he really cared about a "dramatic resolution." He was tired. He was a star now, he was Indiana Jones, and he didn't like working on this Star Wars shit, and now he didn't need it. He wanted out, and he wanted Solo to die. And you know what? Having a character die to solve a love triangle is just as, no, more ridiculous than Luke and Leia being siblings. Especially a character who had to be rescued from death for a large part of the film.

Death is a copout. Death basically says to Leia, "You couldn't choose, so fate will." Now THAT would have been uncreative. That would have been bad. And besides, Leia made her choice. She loved Han. Period. She loved Luke too, but it was clearly not in the same way. She CHOSE Han. If Han dies, then she's left with Luke, who she really doesn't love in the same way, if you look at ESB. So it's also bad storywise. It just would have been stupid.

And you know what? Clues at the start of ROTJ are NOT bad examples. At least they start you thinking along the lines of "what if" in the movie, at least they don't just spring something on you. So clues at the beginning of the movie do still work, because they still set you up for the revelation. As far as I'm concerned, anything before the revelation is planning. Obviously if it was a completely ridiculous situation, like if it tried to set you up for how Luke was actually a woman, it wouldn't be planning. But in a situation like this, clues that lead you up to it are fair game when talking about the issue.

And I'm surprised that you contradicted yourself. Now you think Lucas had the script written out before he filmed? I thought that was an on-the-spot decision he made when it occurred to him during shooting smile.gif.

Oh, and thanks for ruining a part of Die Hard II for me.

P.S. For clarification, apparently you were writing a post the same time I was, this is in response to the first of the 2 posts you made. Oh and Mike, don't use the argument "well you couldn't do any better!" I hate that argument. It's like when a pitcher gives up 10 runs and has a horrible season and a guy in defense of him says, "Well you go out there and try to pitch to them!" We're not arguing that. Of course we couldn't do better then a professional, unless we worked at it for years and became one ourselves. They're SUPPOSED to do well, because they ARE professionals, that's their job. I don't care if Civ can or can't write a better sequel than Lucas. I don't know him too well, if he put his mind to it, maybe he could, maybe he couldn't. We're not arguing that. We're arguing that ROTJ is a very good movie relative to other movies, not to Civ's writing ability. Cause you know, anything's a great movie when compared to one that Civ would come up with smile.gif j/k.

This post has been edited by Vwing: 14 March 2004 - 12:27 AM

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