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Topic:
George Lucas wusses out, cuts Jar Jar's lines
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CJedi72
Registered:
Sep '05
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Date Posted:
1/18/06 6:23pm
Subject:
RE: George Lucas wusses out, cuts Jar Jar's lines
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Droid posted:
CJedi72 posted:
I can do Kevin Bacon meets Jango Fett:
Kevin Bacon was in A Few Good Men with Tom Cruise who was in
Eyes Wide Shut with Nicole Kidman who was in Moulin Rouge with
Ewan McGregor who was in AOTC with Jango Fett
Ewan McGregor was in Eyes Wide Shut? I'll have to add that to my Netflix Quere 
No Tom Cruise was in Eyes Wide Shut with Nicole Kidman
and Ewan McGregor was in Moulin Rouge with Nicole Kidman
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CJedi72
Registered:
Sep '05
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Date Posted:
1/18/06 6:34pm
Subject:
RE: George Lucas wusses out, cuts Jar Jar's lines
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[quote=Go-Mer-Tonic]
Feel free to assume he is a liar. Just wake me up when you have something more to go on aside from assumptions. At least I am bringing up what Lucas actually says about it.
Lets not go down the rode of what Lucas has said, and say that is the law, cause he constantly contradicts himself, so I stopped listening a long time ago:
He said when asked about the OT DVD coming out in early 2000's: "We won't release the OT on DVD til after Episode III hits the movies." Let see it came out Sept 2004 with an Episode III featurette about Darth Vader, could that be a change of heart to promote the upcoming movie to older fans?
From Vanity Fair Article May 2005, George Lucas, "I really didn't even see the OT has the story of Anakin Skywalker til years after ROTJ." But now it was always the story of Anakin Skywalker, the rise and the fall and the redemption. The OT was always about Luke Skywalker, and the redemption of Darth Vader was in the story in ROTJ, and that was still the minor story too Luke Skywalker. Lucas started changing the story to being totally about Anakin when he started doing the PT to sell it as one cohesive unit, that is why the original Star Wars sticks out like a sore thumb now when watching it 1-6, cause none of that stuff was in there, it was a standalone movie.
"I sometimes envision Star Wars as 12 episodes, no 9 episodes, no 6 episodes." You can find those various quotes from Lucas in the early 80's in any interview he gave. Now it was the media that trumped that up, and he never said anything like it. If he would just say, at one time I wanted to do 9 episodes, but didn't want SW to rule my life, so I paired it down to 6. End of story, but no, it's the medias fault.
I can go on and on of Lucas contradictions, and that is why I don't use quotes on what he says as the law, because he says whatever he wants at the time, and gets mad at the press when they fabricate things.
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Go-Mer-Tonic
Registered:
Aug '99
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Date Posted:
1/18/06 6:58pm
Subject:
RE: George Lucas wusses out, cuts Jar Jar's lines
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Lucas may seem contradictory to you, but as far as I know he's usually a pretty honest guy. At the time he was asked about the classic trilogy on DVD, his plan was to wait until he was finished messing around with them, then release the "Archival Edition". After numerous fan pettitions telling Lucas that we wanted to buy the SE's on DVD now and the Archival Version later, and his own advisors telling him there might not be a DVD market to release in by the time he is finished with the prequels, he changed his mind, and it was well within his rights to do so. He didn't lie about it.
I would love to see a transcript of the Vanity Fair article you quote from for context of what he said, but it's clear from his early drafts of the origial Star Wars that the story was always about a father and his children.
Lucas was toying around with having 9 maybe even 12 episodes, but it never went beyond, "I could do 9 or even 12 episodes". The media ran with that and a lot of people assumed he had 9 or 12 movies planned out in his head. When he came up with the story, he might have been thinking he would do a third trilogy, but he never came up with anything beyond Episode 6. It's possible he could have stretched things out into 9 films, but somewhere between ESB and ROTJ it dawned on him that he wouldn't live long enough to make 12 movies, and that he didn't want to be doing Star Wars for the rest of his life, so he tied his story up in episode 6. So the story has come full circle, and there isn't more story to tell in an "episode 7". They would have to start up an entirely new storyline.
He is just trying to explain that the show is technically over in ROTJ, and that all the speculation about what the third or even fourth chapters might have been is stuff he never came up with.
Lucas may say whatever he wants, but I think a lot of us only hear whatever we want to hear. A lot of the "contradictions" people bring up about the things Lucas says turn out to be pure misunderstandings.
-----signature-----
"...that’s not my job, to make people like my movies. They either like them or they don’t. That’s completely out of my hands.” -Lucas
"At least I will have finished what I set out to do, and at least they will have been good to me." -Lucas
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CJedi72
Registered:
Sep '05
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Date Posted:
1/18/06 7:31pm
Subject:
RE: George Lucas wusses out, cuts Jar Jar's lines
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[quote=Go-Mer-Tonic]
I would love to see a transcript of the Vanity Fair article you quote from for context of what he said, but it's clear from his early drafts of the origial Star Wars that the story was always about a father and his children.
I actually had the magazine last may, but threw it out, but I will find it somewhere on the internet, because he did say it in the article, I was very suprised. But if I can find it, will you admit that he never had this grand plan of the saga of Anakin Skywalker?
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Go-Mer-Tonic
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Aug '99
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Date Posted:
1/18/06 9:31pm
Subject:
RE: George Lucas wusses out, cuts Jar Jar's lines
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I'll have to see what he says first.
-----signature-----
"...that’s not my job, to make people like my movies. They either like them or they don’t. That’s completely out of my hands.” -Lucas
"At least I will have finished what I set out to do, and at least they will have been good to me." -Lucas
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darth-sinister
Title: Manager Emeritus
Registered:
Jun '01
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Date Posted:
1/18/06 11:26pm
Subject:
RE: George Lucas wusses out, cuts Jar Jar's lines
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CJedi72 posted:
I think I am going to start pulling my hair out! He filmed them 4-6,1-3, and didn't create Yoda til ESB. So if you go by any logic, he can't be in Episode IV, cause he wasn't invented yet!
No, I go by the logic of watching it in numerical order. In which case, Yoda disappears for twenty three years.
CJedi72 posted:
Adjust for Inflation Box Office:
ESB 628 million
ROTJ 601 million
The only reason it made a bit less than ROTJ did was because tickets prices were lower in 1980 than they were in 1983, but when you adjust them for inflation, it did make more.
Tiny little secret. TESB was released at least three times. 1980. 1982. 1997. Might be off on the second year. ROTS only had the one theatrical release. Same with ANH and ROTJ, which had several releases. TPM had one major release and a charity screening. AOTC had it's intially release and then the IMAX one.
CJedi72 posted:
And Lucas saying that ROTS wouldn't make big money is what he does to lower expectation before each movie. Lucas said right before Spiderman came out in 2002, "I am not in this for the horserace." Cause there were grumblings that Spiderman may beat AOTC, and it did by 100 million. But when TPM came out, I never heard a word from Lucas about 'the horserace' because it was the #1 movie, and the most anticipated movie of all-time. Lucas always lowers expectations just in case, and in 2002 was the one year that SW got beat at the box office.
Lucas said that ROTS would make the least amount as far back as 1996, possibly even further. So it had nothing to do with the box office of TPM or the threat of Spider-Man, which in 1996, was still in a legal mess.
In 1974, there was a father who had two children and a Jedi turned Sith, who is redeemed by one of the children. By the time the story evolved into ANH itself, there were two siblings and Lucas was strongly toying with the idea of Vader being Luke's father. In the third draft, Vader says that he when he feels the Force in Luke, he comments that he should know him. That he's very familiar to him. Lucas rarely talks about the Starkiller story unless it's germane (sp) to the discussion. Such as it was for the bonus disc on the OT DVD set.
-----signature-----
Stewie: "Oh, this is an even bigger jackpot than when the Emperor
came up with the formula for great Star Wars dialouge."
Palpatine: "Something, something, something. Dark side.
Something, something, something complete."
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CJedi72
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Date Posted:
1/19/06 3:23am
Subject:
RE: George Lucas wusses out, cuts Jar Jar's lines
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Go-Mer-Tonic posted:
I'll have to see what he says first.
This is the exact paragraph I found on the internet taken from Vanity Fair May 2005 when Lucas was promoting ROTS.
Taken as a whole, the six Star Wars movies form the biography of Darth Vader—something Lucas claims he wasn't consciously aware of "until 1988." It's strange to think that this filmmaker with a popcorn reputation has spent 33 years telling the story of a failed, pathetic monster who isn't redeemed until his last few breaths. Revenge of the Sith, dark as it may be, is likely to end on a note of hope, however: little Luke and Leia being spirited away from their dark father to the safety of their separate adoptive parents. Their work against the Empire will eventually bring Darth Vader back to humanity, back to his Anakin state, something Lucas underscored by digitally dropping in Christensen's mug on the Anakin spirit that nods approvingly to Luke in the finale of his most recently revised version of Return of the Jedi, released last year on DVD
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jasperjones
Registered:
Oct '01
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Date Posted:
1/19/06 4:59am
Subject:
RE: George Lucas wusses out, cuts Jar Jar's lines
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Lucas is as human as the rest of us and accordingly changes his mind as much as the next man, hence is tendancy to not even be sure of what he wants until the re-shoots.
I think it's totally natural that he would listen to public opinion and be affected by that. I think the trouble iwth TPM is that he'd had a 20 year break and his films had become incredibly lauded. Originally the OT had recieved good and bad reviews. The SE's recvieved rave reviews across the board. The people that griped were the "hard-core fan-base". The man doesn't seem to be the most in touch guy in the world and I think he started to believe the hype. Everybody wanted him to nail the prequels and really believed hw would succeed. Listen to any of the early interviews with the actors, or read the early script reviews. The web heads all loved the script. Hell, Frank Darabont was given the script to have a look at and told GL he wouldn't change a thing ( i wish he had).
My point is, with the OT, GL had bottled lightning for some people. The characters were great for some. Someone made a point earlier about not everybody loving SW first time aroun and they were exactly right. There will have been people that hated Yoda, 3PO, probably even R2 but back then they just got on with their lives. With the prequels, everyone with an internet connection feels the need to vent their spleens daily about how JarJar sucked and the web-sites are a higher volume extention of that. The media picks that up and runs with it.
With JarJar, I remember during the very early days reading about him and thinking, sounds odd, but when has GL been wrong before ( I was young enough to fall in love with all the characters before critical faculties set in)? I really think people just didn't see Lucas dropping the ball. A lot of the movie was to be found in post, especially re JarJar, and people, just had faith in the master story-teller that it would work, himself included. I think so much of his concentration was focussed on whether or not the character would be convincing enough that he failed to realize that probably the last thing SW needed was a loony tunes character.
Watch the TPM doc. You can see GL's realiztion after watching an early cut that he probably went too far. Up to this point he's been surrounded by people telling him how great it will be and generally agreeing with him, because the last thing you're gonna do is argue with GL about the first SW film in 20 years, and then suddenly the movie comes out and JarJar is widley reviled and the obvious target for critics of the movie. You're damn right he toned him down for the sequels. Only a fool wouldn't.
Unfortunately the film did so well at the box office that he could hide behind his, it's just the critics and fan-boys that don't get me, excuse. Had the film tanked he may have realized that perhaps hiring a decent script-writer would have been a good idea.
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Go-Mer-Tonic
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Aug '99
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Date Posted:
1/19/06 7:10am
Subject:
RE: George Lucas wusses out, cuts Jar Jar's lines
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Maybe you should watch the beginning doccumentary again and pay close attention to the part where he says he might have gone "too far". He was talking about how quickly he had cut some scenes together. He felt it ended up moving too fast for a first time viewer to be able to understand what was going on, but to a certain extent, he had to keep it the way it was because thats how he made it.
Lucas was absolutely -not- surrounded by "yes men". Rob Colman (lead animator on Jar-Jar) pleaded with George to let him tone Jar-Jar's antics down, but Lucas wouldn't budge.
And again I could see the assumption that Lucas changed his course with Jar-Jar based on the negative reaction if only the movie hadn't chimed in at 2nd highest grossing film world wide (at the time). When your movie makes that kind of bank, it's a lot easier to assume the detractors didn't know as much as you did. Since Lucas is known for his "I wan't to do it my way" determination, why would he suddenly listen to a group of people he doesn't agree with artistically (as evidence by the fact that -he- thinks Jar-Jar was a great character)?
The answer is he wouldn't. And Lucas has said this time and time again to several different interviewers who have asked him what he thinks of the anti Jar-Jar sentiment. He says he knew they wouldn't like Jar-Jar but that he wasn't trying to please those people. He was trying to please the people who ended up enjoying what he did, and there were enough of them in the end, that the people who didn't simply weren't his concern.
He's hiding behind the people who like Jar-Jar and The Phantom Menace at large, just as he hid behind the people who loved the Ewoks and Return of the Jedi.
Why would he ever try to change what he's trying to do for people who obviously don't appreciate the same things he does? The only reason I can come up with is if his films didn't do so well at the box office.
-----signature-----
"...that’s not my job, to make people like my movies. They either like them or they don’t. That’s completely out of my hands.” -Lucas
"At least I will have finished what I set out to do, and at least they will have been good to me." -Lucas
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Go-Mer-Tonic
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Date Posted:
1/19/06 8:42am
Subject:
RE: George Lucas wusses out, cuts Jar Jar's lines
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CJedi72, I do agree that Lucas didn't realize that the classic trilogy had really been more about Vader than Luke while he was making it. As mentioned in the preceeding part of the article, it was Joseph Campbell who pointed it out to him.
He had his outline for what would happen in the prequels regarding Vader and Anakin. At one point he wasn't sure they were going to be the same guy, but the story of the fallen Jedi was always there.
Lucas says that when he set out to create a modern myth consciously, he found things very difficult, but when he just wrote his story without concsiously trying to place mythological aspects he found that a lot of them just grew spontaneously out of what he was doing.
He felt the story started to almost write itself after a while, so it's no suprise that he would not realize where fate had taken things until after he had finished the classic trilogy.
I still don't see this as a lie or contradiction. Because even if he had only noticed that after ROTJ, it was something that had always been there in the classic trilogy. So the story -has- always really been about Anakin, it just didn't hit Lucas until the half way point.
-----signature-----
"...that’s not my job, to make people like my movies. They either like them or they don’t. That’s completely out of my hands.” -Lucas
"At least I will have finished what I set out to do, and at least they will have been good to me." -Lucas
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jasperjones
Registered:
Oct '01
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Date Posted:
1/19/06 8:55am
Subject:
RE: George Lucas wusses out, cuts Jar Jar's lines
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LOL, I think we're going to gave to agree to disagree, Gomer. I genuinely believe that GL did tone down JJ as he would have been a fool not to. Box office was great for TPM. Imagine less JJ damaging the hype? Who do the fans like? Boba Fett. We'll Have more of him then. It's pretty obvious, and he himself has admitted this, that a lot of the PT he was making up as he went, which is natural for any writer. Enough people hate one of your creations and you're not going to want to use him so much. I don't see what's so wrong with that anyway. I think it shows GL in a good light to be honest.
I'm afraid I also disagree with you on the TPM doc. I've watched it enough times and my interpretation is that he realizes it's not quite what he was hoping for, but that's just my POV, and as we know in the gffa that's all important.
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Go-Mer-Tonic
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Date Posted:
1/19/06 9:01am
Subject:
RE: George Lucas wusses out, cuts Jar Jar's lines
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When it comes to what Lucas is trying to say, isn't his POV meaningful at all? Seriously re-watch it without assuming what it means, and listen to what he actually says.
The whole saga was fleshed out as he went. The classic trilogy is no different. But he did have his outline that he came up with while making ANH.
-----signature-----
"...that’s not my job, to make people like my movies. They either like them or they don’t. That’s completely out of my hands.” -Lucas
"At least I will have finished what I set out to do, and at least they will have been good to me." -Lucas
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jasperjones
Registered:
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Date Posted:
1/19/06 9:12am
Subject:
RE: George Lucas wusses out, cuts Jar Jar's lines
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I have watched it. I honestly believe that's what he means.
You're right about the OT being fleshed out as he went, but it was a much more collaborative effort. He had all the time in the world to sit down and get each of the scripts for the prequels sorted before he started filming. I'm sorry but I wish he'd spent as long as it took to get them as good as he could before he started filming anything, with the best writers he could get his hands on. But that's just my opinion.
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Go-Mer-Tonic
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Date Posted:
1/19/06 9:28am
Subject:
RE: George Lucas wusses out, cuts Jar Jar's lines
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Why do you think he is talking about Jar-Jar in that bit?
-----signature-----
"...that’s not my job, to make people like my movies. They either like them or they don’t. That’s completely out of my hands.” -Lucas
"At least I will have finished what I set out to do, and at least they will have been good to me." -Lucas
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darth-sinister
Title: Manager Emeritus
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Jun '01
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Date Posted:
1/19/06 11:31am
Subject:
RE: George Lucas wusses out, cuts Jar Jar's lines
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Boba Fett was always going to be in the PT, so he's not in the film to appease the Fett fans. He's there because going back to the making of TESB, Boba Fett had a part in the PT. His original story was that he was part of a group of warriors known as the Shock Troopers and that he had ties to the Stormtroopers of the OT. Fett in ANH and ROTJ is for the fans more than anything. Lucas also said that Boba Fett was going to be in ROTS, but then couldn't make it work so he's not there. Just the Jango Fett clones.
There is nothing to prove that he reduced Jar Jar's part, because of fan backlash. Just assumptions and you know what happens when you assume.
-----signature-----
Stewie: "Oh, this is an even bigger jackpot than when the Emperor
came up with the formula for great Star Wars dialouge."
Palpatine: "Something, something, something. Dark side.
Something, something, something complete."
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