BTS JW Rinzler's 'Making of Return of the Jedi'

Even though I know there's already a thread devoted to this video I'm going to post the whole 30 minutes of the Yoda death scene footage someone found on a laserdisc used to demonstrate the Editdroid that some fan found on eBay. I think it's relevant to what we're talking about. Not only do you see appreciate Frank Oz' work is you see that there's a line about Yoda saying he was the one who kept Obi-Wan from telling Luke about his father. You can also see that Rinzler reporting about George insisting that Richard Marquand shoot a lot of coverage so he could have more choices editing was correct, because this scene was shot from every possible angle! You can also see that Marquand was definitely directing. Not only that but you hear him off camera telling both Frank Oz and Mark Hamill when, where and how to move!

 

yeah , I know who Kazanjan is and I know who Robert Watts is , they've both had successes and failures like anyone else , however all the talk about them isn't going to prove your point . So I'll ask again - how do you know Kurtz wasn't there in any official capacity ?

As for what Kurtz could've contributed to the production : He was the Producer on the first 2 Star Wars films , I'll say that again 'cos it's quite an achievement - He was Producer on the first 2 Star wars films . I mean do I really have to spell out all that that entails ?

 

and when did Gary Kurtz 'bad-mouth' Lucas ? It must have been pretty serious to get you all riled up like that .


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Yet, Lucas has no problem talking about the fanbase of OOT fans that he despises all the time. There is no director who is that outspoken about a part of his fanbase like Lucas is. And before you say that no fanbase is that critical of a director like Lucas, I always bring up the utter hatred by fans of Godfather III, and how Coppola handled it differently then Lucas. Fans hated Godfather III with a passion, and the critics and fans savaged his daughter for playing the role of Michael Corleone's daughter, saying she was a terrible actress and made a bad movie even worse. Not once on the Godfather DVD did Coppola take a shot at the fans for being critical, but talked about how he understands fans did not love the movie, and he has many regrets about it, and one of the reasons he made it was he was having financial problems at the time and it was an easy paycheck. Unlike Lucas who gives a big F-U to the OOT fans who grew up with those versions of the movies and made SW what it is today.

 

First, much of what you say is based on the assumption that the PT would be done in the same/similar style as the OT.
That is by no means a given.

Lucas has said in the past that the PT would be different than the OT, more focused on politics and such things. The overall outcome is also very different, the good guys loose and the bad guys wins and one of the primary characters turns to evil. Since Anakin will be turned to evil, his journey doesn't have to be the same as Luke's. Since it is his fall that is to be the focus then you can start him off at an older age.

It is also not a given that Anakin would be the focus. The focus could instead have been on Obi-Wan, his friendship with Anakin, how he tries to train him, fails at that and in the end how he is forced to fight his former pupil and friend. Anakin would be important, no question, but he might not be the focus.
So then the PT + OT is how Obi-Wan failed with Anakin but succeeded with Luke.
Here you can have Anakin and Obi-Wan quite close in age but Obi-Wan has to be a bit older. He is still Anakins teacher/mentor and they are also good friends. That could be one of the problems, that Obi-Wan ignores problems or flaws with Anakin due to their close friendship. And things he should have reported to others, he keeps silent about.

Before Anakin and Vader were merged, Lucas did talk about possible prequel films and there the focus seemed to be Obi-Wan, how he was a friend to Luke's father, trained Vader, how Vader betrayed Luke's father and the fight between him and Obi-Wan.
And when RotJ was made, Anakin was indeed older than he is now. If Ian was cast in order to be the emperor in the PT films, then it is likely that Lucas would have thought about Anakin age as well.
So all things considered, Lucas did seem to plan for a PT with an older Anakin but later he changed his mind.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

Which IMO is not really that big a revelation, given Yoda explained the rationale of the decision in the released film.

 

See, you're saying that in comparison, Lucas slammed SW fans in his DVD commentaries for not liking the prequels which I've never heard about. He basically had the same attitude as Coppola did where he knows the older fans prefer the original trilogy. He also knew before he made them that the expectations of fans were going to be huge and the movie he was making wasn't going to please everybody. He never said anything like "Oh they're stupid for hating Jar Jar." or anything like that. He never went "Michael Bay" on fans. If he did there definitely be a huge uproar about it! Now if you want to hear him apologize for the prequels, it's not going to happen. He made the movies he wanted to make. If you interpret that as him giving "a big F-U" that's your problem. Coppola was also lucky the internet didn't exist when Godfather III came out because as bad as the response was then, it would have been a hundred times worse with the internet! Coppola could be civil because the reaction from the press was relatively civil and he didn't hear directly from fans and if he met them they wouldn't insult him or his daughter to his face. If he had to read what fans with anonymity had to say at the time I doubt he would be so understanding.

Yes, but he also let the budget of the previous movie get out of hand which is why he wasn't asked to be producer on Return of the Jedi. Creatively, he contributed next to nothing to their success so why would they need him back? Kurtz now is distancing him far away from JEDI, because of it's reputation as the worst of the three and is taking no credit for it whatsoever, so I'm not going to give it to him.

Oh I've definitely heard Kurtz in every recent interview about Star Wars basically say his absence as exec producer on Jedi is the reason it's not as great as the previous two movies and also criticizing the prequels and accusing them of being driven by merchandising. Maybe those are his actual feelings about it but it also seems he's also telling the disillusioned SW fans what they want to hear.

 

have you got any quotes of him bad-mouthing Lucas ?


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NM

 

I wouldn't call it badmouthing but he is definitely not stopping or dimissing the "Kurtz Theory". Personally I believe in the "Marcia theory". From an IGN interview.

Now that last quote of Lucas can be interpreted in a lot of ways. I don't think he thought he shouldn't have put that much work making Empire good but lamenting that the franchise could be so successful despite that effort. The prequels bore that out. They were despised by fans and still made millions of dollars! Anyway Kurtz lost me when he criticized Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Kurtz also mentions Godfather Part III and Sofia Coppola too. Getting back to that, Coppola might have been stung by the criticism afterwards but he didn't have to constantly hear how much it sucks from people. They usually bring up how great the first two Godfather movies are along with Apocalypse Now. They choose to mostly ignore the GF III. Most Rocky fans hate Rocky V but they won't talk about it mostly will talk about how great the earlier movies are, especially the first one is. Star Wars is different where it's just non-stop bitching about the prequels. Even when they talk about the original trilogy and how great it is they have to also mention how the prequels suck in comparison. And this went on even before Episode I even premiered. In 1997 a now-defunct magazine called Sci-Fi Universe decided to How did they choose to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Star Wars? They chose to do a cover story called "50 Reasons Return of the Jedi Sucks". You can look up the list online. Now there are some legitimate gripes but for the most part it was all nitpicking. You could do the same for the other two movies. What irks me is that instead of celebrating this amazing movie that changed their lives they instead decided to focus on the negative and complain and it's always been that way.

 

Does the book say anything about the people in purple who are seen with Palpatine?

 

Qui-gon existed I think by 95, but his role and age were much different. He was supposed to be a Jedi that joined Obi-wan either on Tatooine or on Coruscant, and wasn't there from the start. If I remember, I think Dark Horse Comics added the timeline graph in 95 or 96. At that point, the Clone Wars was going to be two years, instead of three. Need to look back at the individual issues at the time.

Yep. He had to correct that later on when he went to do "The Hand Of Thrawn" duology.

This is the most that Lucas has ever said. I don't have sources for where the first two quotes came from. They were given to me by another individual.

"Right or wrong this is my movie, this is my decision, and this is my creative vision, and if people don't like it, they don't have to see it."

--George Lucas

"The thing about science-fiction fans and "Star Wars" fans is they're very independent-thinking people. They all think outside the box, but they all have very strong ideas about what should happen, and they think it should be their way, which is fine, except I'm making the movies, so I should have it my way."

--George Lucas

"...some of the people had a hard time with the reason that Anakin goes bad. Somebody asked whether somebody could kill Anakin's best friend, so that he really gets angry. They wanted a real betrayal, such as, "You tried to kill me so now I'm going to try and kill you." They didn't seem to understand the fact that Anakin is simply greedy. There is no revenge. The revenge of the Sith is Palpatine. It doesn't have much to do with Darth Vader; he's a pawn in the whole scheme....

So I had to ask myself, what was I trying to say and didn't I say it? Did it just get missed or it is it not there? I had to look at it very hard. I had to ask myself, Is this how the audience is going to react? Fortunately, Steven confirmed that most of everything was working. So I may lose a certain demographic - maybe, maybe not. But I had to make a decision, and I decided that I'm not going to alter the film to make it more commercial or marketable. I have to be true to my vision, which is 30 years old, but I have to be true to it."

--George Lucas, The Making of ROTS, page 188.

"Oh, it always hurts. It hurts a great deal. But part of making movies is you get attacked, and sometimes in very personal ways," says Lucas. "The point is, like if you paint your house white and somebody comes over, 'Well that should be a green house.' Well, fine, but I wanted to paint it white. I don’t think there was anything wrong with painting it white. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me for painting it white. Maybe it should be a green house, but I didn’t want it to be a green house. I wanted it to be a white house.”

--George Lucas, 60 Minutes Interview 2005.

Wearing a particular T-shirt isn't nearly the same as flipping his **** like other directors have been known to do.

They're just his advisers.

 

On page 47 there is concept art by Nilo Rodis-Jamero of Jerjerrod, who, despite being titled "Grand Moff" in previous drafts, here (associated with the revised rough draft) appears either alien or otherwise mutated, and in robes (as opposed to in uniform like Tarkin). This looks like what would become the Imperial advisors (the purple people you're talking about). They seem like an outgrowth/remnant of the larger role for Jerjerrod in the early versions of the story. His place in the story seems to interface directly with the Emperor too, sort of like a competitor to Vader. He calls the Emperor "my Master."

On a different note, there is a mention of some notes which may or may not predate Empire, on page 11. One of these is "girlfriend for Luke." Maybe this is all the detail Lucas had in mind when he told a questioner who asked about that topic, "you haven't seen the last three yet."

The timeline in Insider 25 has two years between Episodes II and III, but we know so little about how and when the story of the prequels in general was broken into chapters that it's hard to say if this was to be the Clone Wars or what. Similarly, I don't think we know when Qui-Gon was invented either. The most we know is that Qui-Gon seems to have been created as a mentor of Obi-Wan's who appears in the story once they reach the capital, and at some point the notion that he was younger than Obi-Wan was considered. There aren't dates on anything, I don't think. It would be really nice to be able to check out the notes and drafts of the prequels the way they presented them for the OT in the Making Ofs.

Really? I thought I saw that for Heir to the Empire, he just made up a date (which by sheer coincidence lines up with the prequels as they were eventually made). LFL gave him the 35-before-the-OT date for Dark Force Rising, and I thought that date remained in EU sources until ... hmm. Actually that's interesting... when did sources stop giving that as the date for the Clone Wars? Some of the old encyclopedias place that within their timeline even. When did EU people get told that that was going to be different?

 

Just checked some comics. The one from 1996 I looked at doesn't have a timeline at all, and the ones from 1998 just have a big gap in the timeline between ~4000 years before the films and ~5-10 years before.

 

Everything you've posted I've actually read before and I still don't see how that's an "F U" the fans. He acknowledges that the fans wanted Star Wars to be is different but he doesn't say they're wrong. To me it's more being true to his vision and not letting anybody else dictate what the prequels should be, whether it's the studio or the fans themselves. His biggest crime it seems is not giving the fans what they seem to want or trying to please them. If he had been really concerned on making fans happy and satisfied The Empire Strikes Back wouldn't be the way we it is. I've read so many opinions from the fans on what should have happened in the prequels and they're all different. He was never going to please everybody.

I know what you're talking about. The "Han shoots first" one. If he had worn that at a Star Wars convention or San Diego comic con then I would agree with you but he wore that one day on the set of "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull". That's where most people first saw it in a "making of" featurette and it's so quick that you had to get a screencap. I don't think he wore that thinking "This will really burn the Star Wars fans who happen to watch the "behind the scenes" footage of the Indiana Jones movie!

 

Behind the Magic has the same dates for the prequel films, and the Clone Wars are referred to very vaguely (no dates).

 

Everything you've posted I've actually read before and I still don't see how that's an "F U" the fans. Nowhere in those quotes do I even hear him insult fans, especially to the degree fans have insulted him. He only acknowledges that the fans wanted Star Wars to be is different but he doesn't say they're wrong. To me it's more being true to his vision and not letting anybody else dictate what the prequels should be, whether it's the studio or the fans themselves. His biggest crime it seems is not giving the fans what they seem to want or trying to please them. If he had been really concerned on making fans happy and satisfied The Empire Strikes Back wouldn't be the way we it is. I've read so many opinions from the fans on what should have happened in the prequels and they're all different. He was never going to please everybody.

I know what you're talking about. The "Han shoots first" one. If he had worn that at a Star Wars convention or San Diego comic con then I would agree with you but he wore that one day on the set of "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull". That's where most people first saw it in a "making of" featurette and it's so quick that you had to get a screencap. I don't think he wore that thinking "This will really burn the Star Wars fans who happen to watch the "behind the scenes" footage posted online of the new Indiana Jones movie!"

 

I don't have time to look through VOTF right now, but I had thought the earlier Clone Wars timeframe was still in effect in that book. I don't think Zahn knew what the PT timeline for the Clone Wars would be when he was writing the HOT duology.

 

Let's leave the Gary Kurtz issue out of this thread unless it relates to the book or whatever he might have done on ROTJ - likewise GL's supposed attitude towards the fans.

On another note, I'd strongly encourage some of the topics being discussed to be put into their own threads - Anakin's age, now the Clone Wars timeline. There's a couple of old threads related to the early concepts of the Clone Wars:

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/when-did-lucas-envision-what-the-clone-wars-was.50014131/
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/lando-kadar-and-the-clone-clans-king.30813951/

Not having a go at anyone, just think it might work better.

 

Reading the book one of the biggest contributions Richard Marquand made to the movie was insisting on making Nilo Rodis-Jamero, who had been assistant art director on TESB, the costume designer for ROTJ.

I wouldn't feel too bad for John Mollo btw, because he went on to do Ghandi and win a second Oscar! My favorite of ROTJ costumes(besides Leia's slave girl outfit) is the Imperial Dignitaries. Rodis-Jamero rom The Annotated Screenplays:

 

Something or someone is missing from this thread discussion: drg4.

 

Does the book explain how what exactly was meant by those references to Palpatine "transforming like Obi-Wan"?

 

Which references are those?

 

"In the end, the Emperor does exactly what Ben did; he can also transform himself. As Ben becomes the personification of the good side of the Force, the Emperor is the bad." - George Lucas

 

That sounds like it refers to ghosting. I'll look but I don't remember anything like that. Where is that quote from?