Discussion DEADLINE: No More ‘Star Wars’ 3D Prequel Releases; Lucasfilm Passes To Focus On New Trilogy

frame-by-frame rotoscoping per object

 

Jeez.
I understand being nostalgic for "seeing the films on the big screen again" but it's just not the same as it use to be. I'm all for having less of a motivation to go to the movies now because I can't stand going to the theaters. I would have been reluctant to see AOTC 3D in the theater, and might not have seen Revenge of the Sith.
It's time for STAR WARS to back away for a while--it's only two years--and I hope they do away with the TV marathons every holiday too.

 

I figured this would happen. Disney made a big deal of publicly blowing sunshine at George, but the further we get from when the deal was done, the more Disney will do their own thing with Star Wars. Which they should - George badly bungled the prequels, and besides, if he didn't want someone else to do their thing with Star Wars, he shouldn't have sold it.

So what will House of Mouse do with Star Wars? My guesses include these - For the OT: a "clean" theatrical release OT DVD and Blu-ray set; a Special Edition of the Special Editions on DVD/Blu-ray with the effects cleaned up, the deleted scenes included, and the new music in RoTJ, but the plot changes (Greedo shot first, Vader's "Noooooooooo" as he throws Palps into the pit) reversed; and a release of the Star Wars Holiday Special and Ewok Adventures on DVD/Blu-ray. For the PT, basically nothing: They'll keep pressing DVDs and Blu-rays and selling the movies digitally, but won't put another penny into them. I expect Clone Wars to last one more season, or maybe two at the outside, and after that, I think Disney will retain whoever of the staff they like to do a new animated show, in-house, for Disney XD - I'm thinking one in the ST timeframe, or perhaps KOTOR, and/or maybe even an Indiana Jones series (or maybe even all of the above). That's in addition to the live-action TV series, which I think we actually will see. I expect more of the gaming to be brought in-house; I especially expect (and hope for) future Kingdom Hearts games to include Marvel and Star Wars characters. Other than that, I expect Disney to focus on the future; I expect the Star Wars franchise to look a lot like the Marvel/Avengers franchise - an indefinite number of movies over an indefinite timeframe by an indefinite number of directors, which include plenty of side stories. I expect Joe Johnston will get his Boba Fett movie. I expect that some kid who's in film school right now will be directing new Star Wars franchise movies 30 years from now.

That's a lot of stuff, and included in it is a lot of stuff that George swore he'd never do. But George doesn't own Star Wars anymore.

 

If someone wants to watch SW on a big screen...theaters do rent space out. Make an event of it.

Actually, in my observation, there's usually at least 5 theaters within a 90 mile radius that have monthly SW viewings.

 

The Star Wars website says the 3D installments are POSTPONED, not cancelled.

Until they are officially NEVER happening, we should not hastily say that we won't get them.

 

I have never really seen the point of releasing them in 3D. TPM 3D was okay I guess, but they should focus on Episode VII.

 

I think this is great news.

If you're that desperate to see the existing movies in 3D, most 3D TVs can do it on the fly. PowerDVD can do it too.

It's not like they're going back to original film elements to do this conversion. It's after-the-fact post processing. Who cares?

Much better they focus on new material than milking the old movies.

 

Totally agree. For something like Avatar it made a difference, but I hate having the headwear and having a darker image that compromises the image quality. And most 3D movies are converted to 3D after filming; for something shot in 3D like the Hobbit I may still consider it, but overall, PASS.

 

The OT was a cultural touchstone that defined a generation.

The PT was one of many quasi-successful big event franchises, along with The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, et al. It was also the most eagerly awaited and most bitterly disappointing letdown. No movie will ever fail to live up to expectations and disappoint the way TPM did again.

Different orders of magnitude.

 

The great news is that they weren't cancelled.

Who are you to dictate how people should watch a 3D movie? Just because you don't want to see them in theaters, doesn't mean others have to share your sentiment.

I care, and many others do as well. And apparently you also care, otherwise you would be indifferent to this.

Milking old movies (people pay to watch what they like, what's exactly the problem?) or showing them to a new generation who never saw them in theaters (and to fans of the movies as well)?

 

Fixed.

 

Out with the old, in with the new. Glad to hear it. Plus, the 3D fad, in itself being an actual fad, didn't contribute any added enjoyment to The Phantom Menace anyway.

 

TPM was the most anticipated movie of all time. And the biggest disappointment.

 

Wow, way to miss the point! The point being if, for some reason you are dying to see the PT (or any of the Star Wars films, or any other film for that matter) you can do it in the comfort of your own home. It's not anything special, it can be done on the fly. Why agonize over it?

I have a 3D TV. Two of them, actually. About 30 3D Blu-Rays. And two 3D cable channels. And players/HTPCs that can do 3D conversion on the fly.

You aren't missing anything. If you want it, watch it converted to 3D on the fly.

 

Again, just because it's not anything special for you, it can't be for anybody else?

Well, nobody (except those on CVI) has seen AotC and RotS conversion. How can you say I'm not missing anything? You could only make that judgment after you've compared them, and even then, people can disagree.

 

I saw the Hobbit, 3D; 48fps. It was my first 3d movie because it was supposed to be the best of the best. My feeling was "meh." the 3d actually took away from the movie in the outdoor scenes, and the only reason for the HFR was to enhace the 3d. I think 3d will die down because there isn't a solid market for it, and HFR will follow.

Now for Star Wars:
I'm very glad to hear that disney is pulling out resorses from the 3d-re-release-cash-grab; and re-allocating them to a NEW story in SW:7.

 

In my opinion, the entire Star Wars 3D enterprise was a mistake from the very start.

First, it was a mistake because Lucas chose to do a 3D conversion on the saga in the first place, when the market for 3D films is shaky and how well they do is still entirely dependent on the quality of the film itself, not the conversion. And they work best when they're EVENTS. Avatar, like it or lump it, was an event, and that's why the 3D worked to bring in audiences. But that isn't business that can be done constantly, for every film, and the jury is still out on 3D films in general release, even now; the only agreement there is seems to be that the studios seem bound and determined to MAKE 3D a permanent part of the film-going experience whether we want it or not, and the only reason that is so, I assume, is to restore a little of the income the theater industry has lost fair and square to other entertainment markets over decades.

Second, it was a mistake because he insisted on opening with TPM; monetarily and critically speaking, the smart move was to go with ANH first because everyone knows that one, then the rest of the OT, and THEN do the PT in 3D. But because he insisted on going chronologically instead, the take simply wasn't as good as it would have been had it been a 3D ANH. Of COURSE what happened after that happened. One can cite statistics about what the 3D release actually brought in and all that, but that's all old news, numerical nonsense, and it means nothing to ordinary people. To me, the true test of whether the 3D TPM worked or not is how they behaved with the succeeding films. The original intent was to release one 3D Star Wars film per year; but after the release of TPM-3D, that plan got changed to releasing both Episodes II and III within a week of each other to get them out of the way, and even then, it was said outright in all the trade magazines, by people who were in touch with people in the know, that the specific intent was to get them the hell over and done with so they could get to the films casual fans or non-fans were probably more likely to want to watch: in other words, the OT. They said it; not me.

You may say that's going overboard, but they said what they said, and they said it for a solid business reason: disposable income is harder to come by now, even for people without responsibilities, and especially when we're talking about paying for one or more people to see a 3D release in what I presume to be a good theater. Some of you here on this thread, those of you who are die-hard fans of Star Wars, probably paid the money to see TPM-3D without question, but in a world where pocket change is scarce and other forms of entertainment are legion, how many ordinary joes were going to see it? Seriously? They may - I repeat, MAY - have attracted an audience, but even then it was even money when most people had copies of the films already in 2D. And, not surprisingly, they asked why, in a rotten economy, they should bother spending that much to see a movie they already had on the shelf. Just because it was in 3D? People see in 3D every day; nothing special about it. The only thing that would have made it special was if it had truly been an EVENT and had been marketed with all the publicity of an event. Maybe ANH could have done that, simply for nostalgia value, though in this economy there's not even a guarantee of that; but what about TPM at any point after 1999 made seeing it again an event?

And now that there is going to be new trilogy, of COURSE they made the smart business decision and canned the releases of films few wanted to pay to watch again. The entire project loomed to me as proof that LFL had nothing left to say or do. Remember that feeling before the ST announcement that LFL was pretty much a dead horse, one that might have had a future publishing books and comics based on films they ONCE did, one living off of past glories while decaying to ruin behind the scenes, but one with no real filmmaking future? THAT feeling? The one that dissipated immediately upon the announcement of a Sequel Trilogy? Sure you do. Well, Disney didn't like that feeling either and pinched off the entire bad idea here and now. They very correctly believed in going FORWARD, not in staying behind and living in the past and HOPING the one-dimensional PT is liked better in three dimensions than it was in two.

Had TPM-3D truly been a success, LFL would have stuck with the original plan. They would never have tossed away the others so casually. Instead, they buried the project so well that by the time this announcement cancelling the other two PT-3D releases was made, I had frankly already forgotten about the whole thing. And now I intend to forget it again; as far as I'm concerned, and, apparently, as far as most people were concerned, the entire idea was never anything but forgettable.

 

Right, because you are aware ANH changed summer movies forever. With the exception of the Apes films there were very few sequel series. That changed with Star Wars, but by the end of the 80s there was nothing "special" about Star Wars anymore, sequels were commonplace in the industry. You had multiple successful sequels to the Rocky films, Star Trek, Back to the Future, Batman, etc. By the time the PT came around movie franchises were the studios bread and butter. So to compare the impact of Hollywood summer films from 1977 (when the notion of a "popcorn" summer film was practically foreign) to movies released over 20 years later is disingenuous at best.

To dismiss the Prequels simply because you, and a very vocal but small minority of the fanbase, don't like them would be a disaster for Disney. So let me get this logic... we dismiss a trilogy of films which amassed some $2.6 billion dollars in revenue worldwide because you and a group of angry nerds don't like them. They are sooo embarrassing that Disney is now rumored to be picking up the Clone Wars, a direct spin off of the of the horrific Prequels. Yeah go ahead and dismiss the Prequels which brought Star Wars to a whole new generation. That's really smart.

Glad some of you guys aren't in charge at Disney.

Yancy

 

Maybe a minority on these boards for the past 5-10 years. But in all my time meeting fans at cons, talking with fans in various aspects of the movie industry, I have never ever, ever, met a person (IRL) who liked the PT when it was said and done, unless they were born after 1997.

Now if you like the PT, that is fine, I am glad. But don't belittle others' opinion just because it is different than yours.


Now that said:

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaa..... oh ahhhhh, that was good.
Disney/LFL is backing down on the PT 3d release, not because its the PT, but because it's 3d.

 

Really, you never met me, or a number of my friends who grew up on the OT (born in the 60s) then. Please don't make blanket generalizations of fans.

And really, belittling??? Just talk to the legions of PT fans who have had to suffer from not stop haranguing, belittling and frankly verbal abuse by so-called Star Wars fans (and frankly if you engage in that kind of behavior you're not a fan.. you're an as$#@le). Sorry, but calling someone's blanket statements about the societal impact of a film "disingenuous" is hardly "belittling."

By the way as not to confuse people, I'm a fan of the Saga. Here's my preferred list of the films:

ROTS
TESB
ANH
TPM (this often swaps with ANH depending on mood)
AOTC
ROTJ (far worse than anything George did in the Prequels IMHO.. too rushed)


Yancy

 

And I have never met a single person, young or old, IRL who didn't like the prequels. Never experienced a nonsensical overreaction to Jar Jar in person. We should compare our foursquare check-ins.

 

So from the end of ROTJ to around 1999 SW was not as popular as it it today. It was even dead up until the SE were released. Now look at SW and how popular it is today? Yeah that crappy PT really killed the franchise didn't it?? Disney is not that stupid to dismiss the PT.
As for people saying it's no big deal that the PT 3D are postponed or canceled, well it is to me because I was looking forward to taking my boys to see them. My older son who is 7 never experienced ROTS or AOTC on the big screen and ROTS is his favorite movie as is mine so will be disappointed.

I also can't wait to see all the OT only people quickly dismiss the ST in a few years... JJ /Disney ruined my retirement... haha sorry I had to say it...

 

I just read this article on the BBC News website. It says: "Lucasfilm confirmed that Star Wars: Episode II - Attack Of The Clones and Episode III - Revenge of the Sith would be delayed." - Delayed rather than not released. I'm quite happy about this. I'd rather they focused on Episode VII.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-21243143

 

J.J. Abrams raped my adulthood.


Yancy

 

I am really tired of the Prequel vs Original argument...it's been almost 14 years since TPM was released, time to give it a rest. People that were so deeply hurt because 3 movies didn't meet their adult expectations need to do some serious soul searching. I have now seen two generations become Star Wars fans because of the Prequels and The Clone Wars, that's all that really matters. Through this they discover the originals. Star Wars is NOT just for us first generation fans. I'm guessing many people here don't remember the "dark times" from 1985 to 1991 when Star Wars was pretty much dead and all we head were the WEG sourcebooks to read?