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After the dust has settled. The long-term impact of the prequels.

#16 User is offline   Bond Icon

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Posted 20 August 2007 - 11:35 AM

QUOTE (jariten @ Aug 20 2007, 10:13 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
p.s You're being too quick in saying "the dust has settled" too. We need to wait to see what impact, if any, Star Wars still has on those who grew up with the PT.


I grew up with the PT, so Star Wars had a big impact on me.

I remember one of the first commercials for TPM, back when they were promoting it as Episode I; I think it involved those battle droids on their flyer thingies in the Naboo swamps. I was confused as hell, but, DAMN, if it didn't look cool! biggrin.gif

I am, unfortunately, one of those who never got to see the OT in their original venues: on the big screen. The first time I saw all three, I rented them back in '97 (so I saw them in their pristine, original forms). Over the next two years, I became obsessed with the movies. A buddy of mine had a box set of them, so I borrowed them and used to watch them over and over and over again. I can still recall that beautiful scroll coming up my screen one dark night: so damn beautiful. crying.gif

In '99, I ate all the merchandising up; there was Star Wars in the theatres! I can barely remember seeing TPM at the movies, but I know I liked it. smile.gif

I have a better memory of AOTC, especially all the hype leading up to it; at one point, I was told that the frontman from Savage Garden was going to play Boba Fett, and that the Millenium Falcon was Anakin's original ship, being called that way because the Sith were "swooping down after a thousand years". rolleyes.gif

Well, after all that, there was a contest going on a local radio station: they'd play a soundbite of R2-D2 and you had to guess which character it was; if you guessed correctly, you'd get two tickets to the Wednesday preview showing of AOTC. My mother caught it during the day, and when I got home from school, I was greeted with two shiny black tickets. biggrin.gif

So, I went to the showing, and it was packed. Although I think I might have gone to the toilet shortly after the Count Dooku/Death Star scene, it was just so damn exciting to be the first! happy.gif

Three years passed. Having been a lurker on theforce.net, and having seen the Clone Wars cartoon show in its entireity, I knew most of what would happen in the movie before it came out, but it still gave me chills to hear that drumbeat... and then, ZOOM, that martial fanfare kicks in, and we drop down into the battle. DAMN, I almost got motion sickness from that... laugh.gif

Though some scenes were crap, and others were just meh, I liked the movie. Heck, I even laughed a couple of days later, when some cad on theforce.net boards posted some list that included stupid baby faces to go along with the hairbrush scene! I laughed it off, dismissed it as some juvenile wanker, and went back to lurking. Of course, if I had known it was Chefelf's Reasons to Hate list, well... blushing.gif

So, there it is: what do you think? blush.gif
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#17 User is offline   blueoceans Icon

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Posted 20 August 2007 - 02:05 PM

QUOTE (Just your average movie goer @ Aug 17 2007, 08:49 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Well, the prequel trilogy is finished and has been now for a while. Now, that all that hype is dying away,


The hype of Star Wars isnt dying away. It didnt die away after ROTJ, and it still lives on even after ROTS. True, if Lucas were to continue the saga and give us VII, it more than likely would be released next summer, being that the traditional 3 yr time gap would have elapsed.

Lucas is still making money off of SW dvds, video games, toys, and other related merchandising,.and he always will. The Force will always live on,..so much that,.regardless of whatever Lucas tries to prohibit in the meantime, you can pretty much guarantee that VII, VIII, & IX will get made just as soon as the studios can secure necessary rights in their possession.
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Posted 20 August 2007 - 02:20 PM

QUOTE (Just your average movie goer @ Aug 17 2007, 08:49 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
As for the prequels themselves, they weren't a cultural phenomen like 'Star Wars' was. They were a fad like Pokemon was. Don't believe me? Consider this - the original 'Star Wars' trilogy was played on television every year when I was growing up and the nights these movies were on were stay-at-home nights.


youre totally dismissing the technology of some of those hey-days. I assume somewhere in there, youre referencing years prior to say,.1985,.when a good majority of people didnt own VCRs, or were just getting their first VCR around that time.

In fact, and even before 1985, not too many people had VCRs in their home=or had hardly any VHS films in their home. From what I recall, the VCR didnt really come down in price to where most could afford it, until the latter part of the 1980's.

So where am I going with all this, people were at the mercy of whatever movies HBO or Showtime wanted to play. Those less fortunate, without cable tv had to endure watching SW OT films on over-the-air broadcast TV,.and were subjected to countless commercial interruptions, and it was even worse if they didnt have a VCR to record it, or if they did have a VCR, tried to figure out how to make their "complex" VCR record a program. .yeah,.a lot of people were confused by VCRs back in those days,.."VCR PLUS"..anyone?? http://en.wikipedia....scheduling_code

so, yes, i can remember days of perusing thru the tv guide and seeing that big name films being featured on tv then telling all my friends..."Star wars is going to be on NBC this friday night at 8pm..you coming to my house to watch it or what??"...ahhh...those were the days.
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Posted 20 August 2007 - 02:59 PM

Goodness, that sounds like fun... smile.gif

Wish it'd happen more nowadays, though. sad.gif
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#20 User is offline   Just your average movie goer Icon

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Posted 20 August 2007 - 08:10 PM

You're right about that last part - but Civilian already raised that point earlier in the thread, remember?

QUOTE
youre totally dismissing the technology of some of those hey-days. I assume somewhere in there, youre referencing years prior to say,.1985,.when a good majority of people didnt own VCRs, or were just getting their first VCR around that time.


However, when I think about the time periods, Star Wars was still a stay at home night in the early 90s where I was growing up. And yes, everyone had VCRs. But people loved to watch the movies when they were on, as they knew everyone else would be watching them at the same time, and then they'd meet up the next day and talk about how great they were.

The thing that really killed the Star Wars TV nights around my neck of the woods was the airing of the special editions in the place of the original cuts. Nothing breaks the spell quite like an intrusive CGI Jabba scene.


Regarding my comments that the dust has settled and the hype is dying away, I'm simply saying that the last of the prequels has been out of the cinema for some time now and most of us have already had all our prequel rants (or raves in your case, Jariten). We've got all that stuff out of our systems and as a year (or two?) has passed, we can look back at it all from an objective distance.

QUOTE
Lucas is still making money off of SW dvds, video games, toys, and other related merchandising,.and he always will.


Oh, I agree. Trust me, I'm not worried about the well-being of Lucas' merchandising machine. Like I've said already, this thread is concerned with the original movies and how they've been affected by everything that happened.

QUOTE
Now those types of stories a dime a dozen, and not only movies, but TV and the internet has also recreated the 'Star Wars' feeling so many times its long since past the point of routine.


I'm afraid I have to disagree there, Jariten. Adventure stories may be a dime a dozen - but they're almost never any good. We haven't had one single film to rival, say, Raiders of the Lost Ark for instance. Instead we get awful things like National Treasure and The Mummy films. And as for movies like Star Wars, I've been keeping my eye open for such movies for many long years and they've never come along. The only films that brought back that Star Wars feeling for me were The Lord of the Rings movies.

QUOTE
One thing that the PT unarguably revived was that real, tangible feeling that cinema- I mean the actual act of going out to the theatre- could be fun again (regardless of what you thought of TPM, you can't deny that the world was gripped).


I'll give you that. I even had fun watching Episode II - not because of the movie though. What happened was some guy was laughing along with the painful Threepio one-liners and I started looking around the cinema with an baffled exp​ression on my face, trying to work out where this guy was - and then I realised my brothers were doing exactly the same thing. We laughed at Yoda fighting Count Dooku though... because, well, you just have to.

QUOTE
We need to wait to see what impact, if any, Star Wars still has on those who grew up with the PT.


I'd be curious to see that. It would be nice if they finally saw the original movies for what they were and treated them with a little more respect. That'd be good.

Actually, that's one thing that really bothers me about a lot of the young people who love the prequels - they hate the original movies and make crude comments about them at every chance. Yet, Lucas made the prequels with these people in mind. So now we have a new fan base, who love Episodes I, II and III but hate Episodes IV, V and VI ... and we have an existing fan base that hates Episodes I, II and III and loves Episodes IV and V. To be honest, Jariten, apart from yourself, I've found very few people who like both trilogies.

However, I guess time will tell. If nothing else, the games are guaranteed to keep the Star Wars name alive and well for a good many years to come.

QUOTE
The first time I saw all three, I rented them back in '97 (so I saw them in their pristine, original forms).


Sounds like you got in just in time, Bond.

Also, that was an interesting comment you raised about the Millenium Falcon. Wouldn't that have been awful if that had been Anakin's ship? I hadn't heard that particular rumour before the film. It sounds like something a fan-boy would make up unless maybe... just, maybe... someone told Lucas it was a bad idea and he listened for once.

Anyway, you sound like you qualify for the prequel generation age-group. Perhaps, a few years down the line, with the benefit of hindsight, you can tell us all what kind of effect the prequels had on you.

QUOTE
so, yes, i can remember days of perusing thru the tv guide and seeing that big name films being featured on tv then telling all my friends..."Star wars is going to be on NBC this friday night at 8pm..you coming to my house to watch it or what??"...ahhh...those were the days.


Ah, those were the days indeed, Blue Oceans. happy.gif

This post has been edited by Just your average movie goer: 20 August 2007 - 08:13 PM

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Posted 20 August 2007 - 09:35 PM

I was riding home for Thanksgiving weekend in 1987, and while staying at the Holiday Inn, after a nice swim, The Empire Strikes Back was on broadcast tv.
Which was great, and a real treat at the time. But then again, I was of the day where GL re-released TESB (unaffected by change) every 14 months or so. It hadn't made it to laserdisc yet, and it was only on the big screen. I saw it 22 times.

When SW was to come to the TV eventually, even that was news. Took a few years more to happen, and I believe CBS had the rights. I don't remember the SW and ESB VHS back then. We did rent JEDI in 1986. Also, at the time, the surround sound of home theater and laserdisc was coming on strong, and many of it's fans cited Star Wars as the best example of how great their systems were.

Threepio's one-liners. It was awful long before that, but who could leave yet? It was pretty sad. And yes, we'd seen worse already.
Then the next week or so, Entertainment Weekly ran a bit on Chefelf's reasons to hate TPM webpage.

Has the dust settled? Have you settled? When was the moment you personally gave up hope on Star Wars? I hope it was meaningful, because it'll never happen again.
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#22 User is offline   jariten Icon

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Posted 20 August 2007 - 09:37 PM

Hey, I liked the first Mummy movie!

You say that most of these types of films aren't any good- of course you're right, but you're also approaching these films with a level of subjective knowledge that a kid (who these types of things, and SW esp. are aimed at) wouldn't have.

To a kid nowadays, there are millions of 'Star Wars' type action/adventure stories, back then (no video, no internet) it was Star Wars or nothing.
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Posted 20 August 2007 - 10:43 PM

QUOTE (jariten @ Aug 20 2007, 09:37 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
To a kid nowadays, there are millions of 'Star Wars' type action/adventure stories, back then (no video, no internet) it was Star Wars or nothing.

Agreed. When I first heard of Star Trek, I thought it was a ripoff. biggrin.gif
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Posted 20 August 2007 - 10:50 PM

Yeah, I suppose the first Mummy movie was all right. You don't get immersed in it like you do with Raiders but it doesn't pretend to be anything but a bit of fun.

Actually, you've got me with your point about the kid's perspective - especially with regards to choice. That's quite true. It's not the same as it was for us when we pondered such difficult decisions as "Hmm... The Search For Spock or The Empire Strikes Back?"

Although what stays with kids as they grow up is another thing entirely. I suppose if I was a little kid today, it could very well be possible that I would like the prequels... but whether I liked them after I grew up would be another story. For example (and still keeping to Star Wars), most people who know me on this forum are well aware of the disdain in which I hold Return of the Jedi. However, when I was a kid, I loved it - so clearly, it didn't grow up with me. Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back on the otherhand did and that leads me to think that there's something quite special about them - as opposed to general adventure film fare.

QUOTE
I was of the day where GL re-released TESB (unaffected by change) every 14 months or so. It hadn't made it to laserdisc yet, and it was only on the big screen. I saw it 22 times.


That's interesting. Only on the big screen? Now, you've got me wondering when my family finally got the Star Wars trilogy on VHS... I think it must have been in the late eighties.

Still, it must have been cool to see The Empire Strikes Back at the cinema multiple times. For me, it was just two times when they released the special editions at the cinema. Thankfully, the initial changes made to The Empire Strikes Back weren't too bad.

Actually, that's something that cinemas could probably do to make a night out at the movies seem more attractive - rehash some of the old classics that everyone loves. Make a special night out of it. Put Lawrence of Arabia on and include the intermission just as it was originally, letting everyone mingle and have beverages during the break. They could make the cinema a social outing again. These days, going to the cinema is more like something you think of while you're having lunch around a shopping centre with a multiplex.

QUOTE
I believe CBS had the rights


Yeah, that's right. It's a FOX division. On the videos, they always showed CBS-FOX before the 20th Century Fox logo appeared and the movie started.

QUOTE
Has the dust settled? Have you settled? When was the moment you personally gave up hope on Star Wars? I hope it was meaningful, because it'll never happen again.


Given up hope? Goodness, no. I love Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back and I will continue to watch them again and again into the future - and share them with anyone who's interested. (I'll even watch snippets of Return of the Jedi - but not the whole film)

I just think that the wider public is forgetting these movies and particularly, the important role they played in cinema history. I think these films should be preserved and cherished in the hall of classics and passed on to future generations.

My fear is that the prequels and the altered versions may have damaged their reputation by association.
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Posted 21 August 2007 - 12:14 AM

Wow, there's a lot in these messages! I don't know how you did it MG, but you seem to have revived the old days of this forum. Maybe all someone had to dow as say "STAR WARS" after all.

I agree that THE MUMMY is good, but it had a 90s tongue-in-cheekness about it. Maybe that's the fate of everything post-BUFFY, but there was this whole not-quite-earnestness about it, lilke at any moment Hope and Crosbie would show up and play patty-cake with the Mummy before dropping dumb topical humour and singing a song or two. While JEDI had that to an extent, the other two STAR WARS movies didn't, and RAIDERS had none of that at all. I don't know if you all remember the terrible RAIDERS ripoff, KING SOLOMON'S MINES (more based on RAIDERS than on its literary progenitor), but it had all these gags and dumb action - it was just embarrassing. IMO, most of the action films nowadays have more in common with KSM than with RAIDERS (anyone seen SAHARA?) That's what to me made THE MATRIX stand out: corny or not, it took itself completely seriously.

As before, I disagree entirely with jariten wrt the kid's perspective. I see a lot of kids' movies, and I know which are good and which are pandering crap. At least, I think my point of view isn't prejudiced by my age. I have, I think, a pretty good sense of what is genuine fun and what is crap. Like, I really enjoyed JUMANJI and knew that TPM was garbage.

Movies in theatres: one thing commonly forgotten is that the first three STAR WARS movies were shot and released in 70mm. The image quality was outstanding, but the cost was that they would play in limited theatres, since 70mm prints were more than twice the cost and the projectors were uncommon. It was literally a big deal to see a film in 70mm, not just for the image, but also the sound quality (with an optical soundtrack, the bigger the print, the more room for the soundtrack). Now that film prints just have a guide track and the actual sound is digital and comes on a CD, the print size has no effect on the sound quality, except in archaic theatres. I remember the effect of seeing EMPIRE nine times at the Stanley theatre in Vancouver. I also saw a rerelease of 2001 (didn't get it, but I was 12), as well as LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, with the full intermission and everything. I missed SPARTACUS when it played, and was bummed since I'd seen it, cropped, on television. .... Anyway, where I was going with all of this nostalgia is that Lucas decided to release his PT in digital theatres where possible (it turned out not to be possible), and filmed them almost entirely with digital cameras. While trying to be cutting edge, he went from making one triolgy with the best technology available, and made his followup with technology so emergent it looked shoddier than the stoip-motion it was meant to replace. Actual human beings looked like cartoon characters amid too much CGI and over-processed colour and contrast. In fact, the only thing I can think of that looked as bad as TPM, in terms of merging live action with CGI was GLADIATOR.

I guess I don't have a conclusion with the above rant; while 70mm soundtracks were superior to digital recordings, the theatrical sound systems now are way better. Even my fondest memories of EMPIRE at the Stanley have nothing on the awesome sound mix of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.

Naturally, I agree with anything that anyone says about the special editions of the OT being compromised. My opinion with altered versions of films is that the filmmaker should always make the original cut available. Even the recut TOUCH OF EVIL, made to Orson Welles's original specs before the studio recut and clearly superior, should never completely replace the theatrical release. Both should always be available.

Man, I don't know where I'm going with any of this. What a silly man I am.
"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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Posted 21 August 2007 - 01:25 AM

Well, Touch of Evil is a special case. It's not an old, fat, stubborn director saying, "I want a green house and they want a white house", it's an unacknowledged auteur crying out, "No, don't ruin my MASTERPIECE!!!" unsure.gif
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#27 User is offline   Just your average movie goer Icon

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Posted 21 August 2007 - 02:59 AM

Hey, good to see some life back in the old forums indeed.

Regarding your action films, I think the King Solomon's Mines point sounds about right. I've never seen it thankfully - but I heard quite a lot about what a poor imitator it was. I also know about Sahara. Again, I haven't seen it but the box put me off. One the one hand, it had review excerpts comparing it Raiders of the Lost Ark while on the other hand, it had pictures of CGI boats and unrealistic explosions that looked like they came straight from Tomb Raider.

With Jariten's point about kid's perspectives, I don't agree with the argument he made ages ago on these forums that we can excuse the prequel's general lameness because they are kid's films. But I can see how kids, not knowing what's out there could be suckered in by some of this stuff. They enjoy a lot of mediocre rubbish, I think, as they've got a better tolerance for it (i.e. lower standards). I watched a fair amount of rubbish when I was a kid without complaining. I remember really liking Inspector Gadget for instance. Then when I was a teenager, I saw it on the TV one afternoon and was shocked to discover how crap it truly was. However, I should also qualify what I said before by saying that they do recognise really good quality when they see it.

So yeah, if I saw the prequels as a kid, there would be a possibility (however unlikely) that I could probably like them. But I doubt I would like them with anywhere near the amount of love I had - and still have - for Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. So, just because you can see complete crap to kids doesn't mean you should. I imagine all those kids who gobbled up Pokemon aren't going to thank their parents when they grow up and discover who deprived and stunted their imaginations are. Whereas a lot of the people who grew up on the original Star Wars were very creative. Think about all the people who got into film-making and writing. Hell, I've even heard stories of people who joined the air-force mainly because they were inspired by the X-Wing sequences in Star Wars (then again, people joined the air-force because of Top Gun so I probably should have left that last one out mellow.gif ). However, despite the fact that it is technically possible that I might like the prequels if I saw them as a kid, I think I can say with absolute certainty that I wouldn't be crazy about them the way I was about the original Star Wars movies. They'd be three fun nights at the cinema, possibly with three follow-up rental nights but I don't think I would watch them any more afterwards. Whereas with the original Star Wars trilogy, I lost count of how many times I've watched it years ago.

However, I'll give Jariten a little slack this time round because he's right that I'm approaching films like The Mummy with an adult's views - and I honestly don't know what I'd really think about them if I was seeing them for the first time as a kid. I think I would like them but I wouldn't be fanatical about them. Although mostly, I'm giving him a bit of slack this time because I was re-reading some old threads that resurfaced recently and I realised I wasn't always very nice to him.

Actually, Jariten, if you read this (and it looks like you probably will), I've gotta say that despite your strong difference of opinion on the prequels, you've always been nice company. I can't say the same for the host of Lucas apologists that have posted here over the last couple of years - but you've always kept things civil. smile.gif

And Civilian, I like your point about the difference in technology being used. Perhaps if Lucas was really so keen to use CGI, then he should have waited a few years until it was a tried and tested technology. Still though, I prefer the use of real sets and costumes wherever possible. Even with the best CGI efforts, it's still hard to make what's real and what's CGI look like they're inhabiting the same space. Even with the incredible effort on Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, there were times when it didn't quite work - and that's supposed to be the best CGI animated character ever. Also, I think you'd get more out of your actors if they had something to work with as well. Often with CGI characters, characters acted by real people talk to them while looking past their shoulder and things like that. Lastly, excessive CGI makes for the most boring behind-the-scenes features imaginable. With traditional movies, you get the actors saying things like "That was pretty tough, filming in the middle of Tunisia but it was a really amazing experience." With CGI movies, you get to listen to dull people saying prattle like "Well, we used this new software from Microsoft that allowed us to make an axis on which we could frame this object..."

I know which featurette I'd rather watch.

Actually, getting off topic slightly (which I think is okay, since I started the thread), I think the difference in the technology used was going to be a problem right from the beginning. Even with the best efforts, it is very difficult to recapture the look and feel of something you have previously created. I know from experience. I used to make comics when I was a teenager and occasionally, I'd want to remove a panel and glue in a new one - and I remember just how damn difficult it was to make something that matched the style of the older ones around it. Even my best efforts never pulled it off. And I think that was a huge problem with the prequels from the outset - capturing the look and feel of the original films. Of course though, Lucas copped out of the challenge completely by not even trying - the lazy git.

And don't worry, Civilian. You're not a silly man. I've made a few posts like that myself.
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Posted 21 August 2007 - 04:54 AM

Sorry for double-posting again. Firstly, another apology - this time for a couple of typos in the last post. There is a 'see' that should be 'sell' and there is a 'who' that should be 'how'. Anyway, hopefully, it's not too difficult to figure out what the typo-affected sentences meant.

However, the main reason for the double post was that I actually did put my some proper thought into the question as to whether I would like the prequels if I saw them as a kid... because for some reason, I suddenly found the question intriguing... and actually, and I think I'm being very honest, I think I still wouldn't like them.

I'd probably get excited by the lightsabre duel from The Phantom Menace and maybe the space battle at the start of Revenge of the Sith and the duel between Obi Wan and Anakin at the end of the movie - but that would probably be about it. I think if I were a kid, after seeing the prequels, I would probably get into all those new Jedi games and maybe things like Republic Commando but thinking about carefully, I think I did differentiate between different kid's films.
I didn't like E.T. for instance and that was a close contemporary to the Star Wars trilogy. I didn't find Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade anywhere near as much fun as Raiders of the Lost Ark - and I missed Marion Ravenwood when I watched it just as much as I'd miss her if I watched it now. I wasn't able to see that they changed the characters of Sallah and Marcus (the latter being turned into a bumbling fool) as I did when I watched it years later... but I still noticed the difference.

Also, with Star Wars, I remembered something else about it - another reason why it has stayed with me all these years. And because of that same reason, I will still watch the end of Return of the Jedi and endure that celebration scene in the ewok village (but without listening to the Yub Yub song). I really liked the characters. Luke, Han, Chewie, Leia, Threepio and Artoo feel like friends. They really do - it's almost as if they are real people in my life. And in a way, that's not too far from the truth. I've grown up with them and I like spending time with them. Same with Indiana Jones. He's a good friend too. I mean, he's a friend I'd chastise for letting go of Marion, but he's a friend nonetheless (and as long as I don't watch the sequels, he didn't let go of her). But even if I was a kid now, the characters from the prequels would never be my friends. I wouldn't want to let Anakin or Jar Jar into my life. I might let the young Obi Wan Kenobi in - but no-one else.

However, Jariten's quite right about the choice kid's have today. It seems there's a lot more out there these days and you've got some really great stuff to choose from. Some of it, a kid would have to wait a few years to see, such as The Lord of the Rings (which is M-Rated in Australia and rightly so) but you do have a bit more choice. I think most kids would love Jurassic Park or Batman - possibly even Batman Forever (but not, I think, Batman and Robin). Also, there are a lot of great kid's cartoons out there. Shrek is a great example but there's some really good traditional animation as well. I saw one I really enjoyed a lot recently called Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas with voices by Brad Pitt, Michelle Pfieffer and Catherine Zeta Jones. It was excellent - and honestly, it was something that both kids and adults could enjoy. Aladdin also stands up very well after all these years too.

So, yeah, given all of the great kids movies that are out now, I guess it would be less likely for a single film (or film trilogy) to make as broad a cultural impact as the original Star Wars films did.

Still though, even with all that to contend with, I still think those movies would have left a pretty big impression on the youth of today.
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Posted 21 August 2007 - 10:19 AM

I'd like to add another thing we've said before about Lucas's use of CGI technology. He cut corners. He had characters allegedly in moving vehicles and he didn't bother to make their hair move. He had characters talking to one another who didn't look like they were on the same place. He wasn't cutting edge. Anything bad I mihgt have to say about LOTR has nothing to do with its effects.

Another thing he did, and Jackson is guilty of this too, is he played around with the CGI where unnecessary, just because he could. Jar-Jar's ridiculous dive into the ocean in TPM is the best example I can think of, but there's that "bigger fish" sequence as well. This did not have the effect of making me excited about CGI; it drew attention to itself and felt wankish.

There have been very stylish films made using human actors and CGI, SIN CITY being the best example. I also liked SKY CAPTAIN, but understand if nobody else did (it wasn't special). Then there have been occasionally sloppy efforts that still looked better than the PT: The MUMMY series, THE FIFTH ELEMENT, I, ROBOT. Thgey all seemed to know that sometimes you still need to build the occasional set and still put actors in costume from time to time. Even the CGI backdrops in LOTR were frequently based on actual smaller-scale models, and the principal background performers were human.

This has little to do with whether I'd have liked the films as a kid. I hold that the opening hour of STAR WARS is not boring, but the opening 90 minutes of TPM is (the last 30 minutes is not boring, but not esciting either). As a kid I might have liked the chariot race, but as a kid I would have griped that it was just a direct ripoff of BEN HUR. As a kid I had no idea what "homage" was. As an adult now I do, but don't think it had any place in that film; it was just shoehorned in to give us action in the first act, like the car chase in THE ROCK. Done better, and properly motivated, it could have been the climax of a better movie (it was; see BEN HUR!). IN TPM however I thought it was boring and silly. As a kid I might not have, but would have turned on it as I grew older, like I turned on the "Rescue of Han" sequence from JEDI (although that only required a second viewing a few months later).
"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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Posted 21 August 2007 - 11:19 AM

I love the OT, but I always notice these glaring little errors in certain parts. unsure.gif

For example:

*In ROTJ, Luke swings his saber around so close and so many times, we should see some limbs flying -- but they don't. blink.gif
*In TESB, Luke walks into a dark room on Cloud City; the next moment, he's being propelled upwards out of a grate! What the hell happened? angry.gif
*In ANH, we get our most glaring inconsistency of all: Ponda Baba's blaster-clutching arm is lying on the floor with blood seeping out, but when we go frame-by-frame on two earlier shots, who should be holding the blaster but Dr. Evazan? ohmy.gif

I really do like it, but these sorts of things put me off certain parts. sad.gif
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