[barend]

He is the Janitor!



on tuesdays...

[Just your average movie goer]

Love it.

[Despondent]

I wish I knew overall what percentage of SW fans are of our general opinions?

General Opinions: "what say you, General Solo?"

General Solo: "As I can only speak for myself, they suck. What say you, General Cal Ripken?"

Lando: "that's Calrissian. understandable. I've said they suck every day for over twenty years now. General Tomfoolery?"

CGI wizard: "Oh, that's my cue. We're going to have some cool stuff out the windows here, so look alive, people."

Chewie: "Wail"

Lucas (General Crap:) "Cut! it's a wrap! shit's in the can. (sigh) predictable. my third dump of the day never does seem to measure up"

[Vwing]

I'm really hoping III does poorly, but I really, really doubt it will. Lucas has already covered his bases by saying that the third film never does well (citing ROTJ as an example).

Well if he's using that, he's wrong, because I think ROTJ made much more money than ESB and almost as much as the original (maybe even more I'm not sure). It was an unbelieveable success. I don't think he is saying that however. He's saying he doesn't think this will do well because it is a much darker film than any of the other SW movies, and he is not expecting people to see it more than once because it will be so dark. That's why, I believe.

[Just your average movie goer]

Perhaps in the long term (really long term - like ten or twenty years), most people will probably come to hate the prequels. These movies are very popular now, this is true. But they are only a few years old at this point and the last of them is still yet to be released.

That means so far, there is still lots of hype supporting them - there is also huge amounts of promotion and merchandising so that's part of the reason why they are so popular now.

But in the long run, I think their popularity will fade... especially as the idiots who like them now will come to release that repeatedly watching this films is awful and stop punishing themselves.

I hope that in the long run, the original trilogy will stand the test of time... but I have a feeling that Lucas' decision to never release the untainted versions on DVD will affect this.

With the quality of our video cassettes slowly dying from repeated viewings... while only the awful Special Editions are on DVD and shown on television, these movies are in danger of disappearing too.

Lucas gave us something really wonderful and now he is trying his hardest to take it away from us forever.

Lucas giveth then Lucas taketh away.

What an asshole.

[CowboyCurtis]

^^^^
That was me.


Every alien is now CGI and we are not seeing many aliens of species that we saw in the old movies. Now we get Gungans and mutated mosquitoes (Watto) and strange four-armed critters who work in diners - and diners instead of weird cantinas.

Agreed, altho, I think a diner could've been done well. I think that's the true problem here. If Lucas did the cantina today, it'd look too much like the diner, too clean, too "airy" or lifeless.

I think if Lucas really wanted to do a diner well, he could've. It's his "lack of vision" that ruins it. The diner should've been spottier, grimier... a place you really wouldn't want to eat it. A place that should've been run down. Heck, even the script called for these details and they weren't implemented.

This goes for the "sports bar," too, and the street scene outside. The script describes it as being run down, filled with litter. Again, everything looked clean and airy, and just too new. Coruscant is how old? Where is the "seedy" part of town?

[Just your average movie goer]

I agree. As long as Lucas continues to treat SW like some great big project made out of clay, we will NEVER have the definitive vision, the PROPER vision of SW.

I, too, hope, in time that all those who like the PT's now and gush just out of god-knows-why reason (pig-headed-ness? Contrariness?) do realize what a squalid mess it has become.

I'm ready to just turn my back on all of this. I guess, there are other things which I could invest my time.

Cowboy, I couldn't agree more. I'm ready to turn away too if things keep going so far south - with no hope of ever getting the untainted original movies on DVD.


Thank you for your agreement about the appearance of these movies. It was interesting that apparently the script called for a dirtier look. I didn't know that.

So either CGI dirt and grime is impossible... or Lucas is just plain lazy sometimes.

[CowboyCurtis]

I know Jordan is tired of us repeating ourselves (sorry, Jordan), but I think one of the things Lucas really needed to do is to go back to the old ways, and I think a lot of film-makers should consider, is to go back to basics.

Film on a big, real set, a set which actors can react to, emote from, be drawn into. A true radical film-maker today would not be the one who would "push the envelope" on CGI technology, but one who would go back to more archaic means of making a movie.

Though Coppola's "Dracula" was a stinker, I still appreciated the "hard" efforts to film it.

I use to buy the old Cinefantastiques and Starlogs, and it was fascinating to read about the "blood, sweat & tears" the designers, set-builders, make-up artists, wire-operators, model-makers, etc., etc. would go through to perfect the craft and pull off a half-way decent film, trying to make it real as possible.

Now, to read about how CGI artists push buttons and use scanning techniques, rendering, blah, blah, blah, is utterly boring. I'm sorry. Despite all of this, the wolfman in "Van Helsing" looks no more real than Scooby Doo. While the werewolves from The Howling or American Werewolf In London seem more real because they're in real space.

I guess, wave bye-bye to the days of when film-making was actually interessting... until the producers get a big clue.

[Just your average movie goer]

For sure, and I don't care if we're retreading stuff that's been said before. It doesn't hurt to go over it again.

Filming on a big set with as much tangible stuff as possible is the way to go for at least two reasons I can think of straight up -

1. It makes the actors' jobs easier and by interacting with more tangible things, they will give a better performance. And honestly if you were an actor, would you rather be shooting in front of blue screens all day by yourself with George Lucas? Or would you rather be in New Zealand, visiting amazing locations and interacting with lots of people?

2. Stuff that's really generally looks more realistic than stuff that's not. The aliens in the Mos Eisley cantina look a lot more realistic than the CGI aliens in the prequels. George Lucas may not be happy with them but as a viewer, I can see that these things are there. CGIs on the whole (or ALWAYS if they are in the hands of Lucasfilm) OBVIOUSLY LOOK TACKED ON.

It's a very simple concept and I wish George Lucas could learn it...

Repeat after me, George... The more tangible things, the better.

Got it?

[Jordan]

I'm not upset about it. But We are clawing at the bottom of the bucket now. The new movie, which will for sure suck, can pump fresh new complaints into this forum. I'm sure we could juggle with them for about 1 year before we start repeating ourselves.

What will happen after that? We may have to resort to the novels. But I doubt that's going to happen since a lot of people here enjoy reading them. Not me of course.

I tried reading one novel that was set in the Tatooine Cantena. It was horibble. The cantena is everyone's favorite scene for some reason, so they made a book out of it.

[Just your average movie goer]

Jordan, I recommend that all Star Wars fans read Timothy Zahn's trilogy:

Heir to the Empire
Dark Force Rising
The Last Command

Then apart from the odd exception here and there, you should steer well clear of the others. It all goes downhill pretty fast.

[CowboyCurtis]

Zahn's books are pretty good, and I find every book after that to be complete hogwash, irreverent, or just simply corny!!! I'm tired of EVERY flippin' extraneous background character having some earth-shattering, profound connection to the rest of the entire universe!!! It's coincidental enough that first, Vader is Luke's father. I can accept that. Next, Leia is Luke's sister. Okay, even HARDER to swallow, but it's part of the mythos now, but when Skip Bordaax, the little alien flea sitting on Dr. Evazan's left arm was responsible for infecting the same trooper who developed dementia and allowed R2 and 3P0 to leave the control room on the Death Star is going a little too far. (I made that up, but boy, you could easily see it happening in the EU).

EU SUCKS!!!!

[barend]

I know Jordan is tired of us repeating ourselves (sorry, Jordan), but I think one of the things Lucas really needed to do is to go back to the old ways, and I think a lot of film-makers should consider, is to go back to basics.

Film on a big, real set, a set which actors can react to, emote from, be drawn into. A true radical film-maker today would not be the one who would "push the envelope" on CGI technology, but one who would go back to more archaic means of making a movie.

Though Coppola's "Dracula" was a stinker, I still appreciated the "hard" efforts to film it.

I use to buy the old Cinefantastiques and Starlogs, and it was fascinating to read about the "blood, sweat & tears" the designers, set-builders, make-up artists, wire-operators, model-makers, etc., etc. would go through to perfect the craft and pull off a half-way decent film, trying to make it real as possible.

Now, to read about how CGI artists push buttons and use scanning techniques, rendering, blah, blah, blah, is utterly boring. I'm sorry. Despite all of this, the wolfman in "Van Helsing" looks no more real than Scooby Doo. While the werewolves from The Howling or American Werewolf In London seem more real because they're in real space.

I guess, wave bye-bye to the days of when film-making was actually interessting... until the producers get a big clue.

as we say in Aus.
fucken oath!

movie making has gone from what it was to how it is, in exactly in the same way music went from Black Sabbath to Nickleback.

peopel who said movie making had died in the mid eighties really had no idea how much further cinema could sink (or stink).

i'm quite dissoulussioned with the CGI revolution. It started of great with the Abyss, Terminator 2, Stargate (the movie), and then we got TPM, AOTC, Matrix Reloaded,...

what the fuck happened, huh? aren't things supposed to get better. I thought technology improoves not the other way around. it's just silly...