the crimes of george lucas ('90s on)

Star Wars was originally slated for release in Christmas 1976; however, delays pushed the film's release to summer 1977. Already anxious about meeting his deadline, Lucas was shocked when editor John Jympson's first cut of the film was a "complete disaster". According to an article in Star Wars Insider #41 by David West Reynolds, this first edit of Star Wars contained about 30-40% different footage from the final version. This included scenes that have never been seen elsewhere along with alternate takes of existing scenes. After attempting to persuade Jympson to cut the film his way, Lucas replaced him with Paul Hirsch and Richard Chew. He also allowed his then-wife Marcia Lucas to aid the editing process while she was cutting the film New York, New York with Lucas's friend Martin Scorsese.

there's a bunch of stuff about Marcia being critical to the editing process in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls iirc

"Star Wars may be the first feature film serial made up of consecutive stories."

I find this funny because I think of The Empire Strikes Back as the canonical (and first?) example of "Make one film - it does well - declare it a trilogy and end the second with TO BE CONTINUED". Not as bad as the Matrix's "Make the second film twice as long and cut it in half somewhere", but still definitely a thing.

Also I had assumed that the Part IV was initially the same sort of thing as "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away", a cheap way to give depth to the backdrop using the Magic of Words.

The Star Wars website used to have (er, ten years ago) a collection of "behind the scenes" recollections of the casts for the films - pretty much all the Empire ones are "And then Kershner thought of something or let one of the ad-libs (like "I know"!) stick and everything was better".

Empire is amazing and awesome, but i bet there were some moviegoers back in the day that thought "I am your father" was an irredeemably silly shark jump moment.

literally no one thought this

Yeah you are probably right. But Lucas had similar fears about Yoda.

I was interested in why Obi-Wan lied, and his weak-ass plea in Jedi ("he killed the SPIRIT of Anakin") kinda ended things for me

haha imagine if the prequel trilogy had actually existed

"Why did he lie to me?"
"Apparently he chopped yr dad's arms and logs off, then let lava wash over him"
"... oh"

Poor Ewan. They made Obi Wan as dull as dishwater in the prequels.

I was interested in why Obi-Wan lied, and his weak-ass plea in Jedi ("he killed the SPIRIT of Anakin") kinda ended things for me

"what i told you was true... from a certain point of view" is iirc how obi wan's totally lame explanation to luke begins.

And Lucas kinda lampshades it in Revenge of the Sith:

YODA: Destroy the Sith, we must.

OBI-WAN: Send me to kill the Emperor. I will not kill Anakin.

YODA: To fight this Lord Sidious, strong enough, you are not.

OBI-WAN: He is like my brother ... I cannot do it.

YODA: Twisted by the dark side, young Skywalker has become. The boy you trained, gone he is . . . Consumed by Darth Vader.

Empire is amazing and awesome, but i bet there were some moviegoers back in the day that thought "I am your father" was an irredeemably silly shark jump moment.

HI DERE.

I may be the only person on ILX who has consistently thought that all the SW films outside of the very first non-special Star Wars were complete horseshit.

they really missed a great opportunity to humanize Kenobi with his explanation of why he lied.

interesting, i grew up seeing the 'episode iv' in the beginning and just always assumed it was in the original theatrical release

― Gukbe a lady tonight (some dude), Monday, January 23, 2012 5:58 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

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this completely changes my understanding of the universe

One of the bits that ML helped was her suggestion that George changed how he was editing it. I can't remember the line, but the difference in approach is between cutting to the action vs cutting to the dialogue. Marcia had him switch it up and the film improved by leaps and bounds.

The Red Letter Media/Plinkett vid on RotS really gets into how lazy/shitty he's gotten as a director, and how him wanting to shoot everything on green screen cramped a lot. It really is worth watching.

Shooting everything on green screen & computer compositing is also how they made early 90s computer game cinematics. Check out Luke Skywalker in something that's basically a primordial version of the prequels style:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpxItq_r7to

lolololol correct

i played those games growing up and was like "...................."

then i saw the prequels and was like ".................."

Aw, I liked WIng Commander III.

Still, games in the mid-90s were lousy with FMV crap. If you want a giggle, check out the cast for Privateer 2.

Yeah, give me the stilted cartoon opening animations of Wing Commander II any day.

i liked wing commander 3 a lot, i have been trying to torrent it for 1+ years

just saying

interesting. kinda.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbymgP6B324

Gog.com might have it

i'm not a huge star wars fan but there are some basic competencies of staging, shooting, editing even in that rough cut clip that seem to have almost disappeared by the time of the prequels. what the fuck happened to george lucas?

btw that recent NYT profile re. red tails made me angry b/c lucas was saying stuff like "we're going to make a big dumb naive WWII movie just like they used to." and he referred to flying leathernecks which will not perfect is by no means dumb and naive. lucas really doesn't have a very sophisticated or even accurate understanding of film history -- something i'd credit even spielberg with. lucas obviously had some kind of genius at some point but it's really obvious that for whatever reasons it's just flushed away now. i'm sure whatever 'experimental' films he plans on making now won't be any better than those godawful films coppola has been making lately.

I still have WC3 on cd, I think. Came on 4 discs, and I got the bonus edition that came in a film can from some guy on rec.arts.tv.mst3k.

http://i.imgur.com/UBsN0.jpg

a huge image for a huge crime

http://chzmemebase.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/internet-memes-disappointed-yoda.gif

there's another one of those Vodafone posters near my house and i swear it makes zero sense; i mean even less than that one. literally no connection whatsoever to Star Wars / Yoda at all.

That's why it's so zany! Star Wars characters being zany!

Yoda rhymes with Voda GEDDIT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-9EYFJ4Clo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ntDYjS0Y3w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69ftWNg97U

i've never seen so many 'dislikes' over 'likes' on a TV or film clip ever before.

From the Graun:

"LucasFilm are now promoting the rerelease with what it describes as a "kids featurette" (for which read: patronising trailer for those under the age of 10). If any sign were needed of the extent to which Lucas et al have come to resemble an eternally cash-hungry giant sarlacc in a barren desert of creativity, it is here. Hosted in the style of a McDonald's Happy Meal advert by an exuberant voiceover man who sounds like a harried parent trying to persuade a recalcitrant sprog to eat their dinner, it appears to have emanated from somewhere in the seventh layer of Hades.. "

read that as "an eternally cash-hungry giant garlic"

maybe that's the "art film" george lucas keeps promising to make?

That trailer is fucking excruciating.

That HAS to be bad on purpose.

from the YT comments: "George Lucas confirmed for master troll". The ongoing treatment of Star Wars IS like some kind of grand wheeze, perpetrated entirely and wilfully at the expense of anyone who liked it originally.

Well, Star Wars basically was a giant exercise in trolling from day one. I mean "Wookies"? "Han Solo"?

Yes, we wouldn't have any of this trouble if the long ago space pirates were all called Steve.

xp

Perhaps, but none of the original trilogy ever felt truly cynical and *shit* like this does, at least it doesn't to me. Yes, the names are all daft but there aren't any characters as poisonous as Binks or the trade federation bosses or Watoo. The biggest piece of "for kids" pandering was the Ewoks and even they are preferable to those army droid fucks.

Yes but remember if Lucas had his way in the 70's C3PO would have been like a used car salesman. We were just lucky he didn't have 100% control at the time.

The Ewoks are light years better than anything in the new trilogy.

but Lucas has always had full control of the merchandising did he not?

I can picture an alternate world where we grew up with this cool C3PO who was like the metal version of Rudy Russo, and someone going "Ew, Lucas originally wanted him to be this poncey A/R butler type dude."

Irwin Kershner mentioned that they changed C3PO's style for Empire b/c they needed comic relief somewhere and he was the only option left.

He was pretty much comic relief in Star Wars though?

Different vibe in SW. He talked his way thru situations and was a bit craftier in his few scenes