PT Anakin Podracer flag cut from TFA

Its really quite simple why he did this he didn't want PT easter eggs in the film but yet the OT imagery and easter eggs are just fine.

 

I keep saying this. She is ancient she could have gotten it before the empire took over.

 

I'm interested about what happened behind the scenes. I don't imagine that JJ was involved in a small detail like sticking flags on Maz's castle. Artists probably drew up concept art of Maz's castle, and he said: "That's cool. Go with that." Then, the CGI/model makers (don't know if the castle was CGI or a model, though it should be a model cause practical effects are so much better!!!) designed it with little accoutrements like flags, buttresses, columns, minarets and stuff like that.

My bet is that one of those guys on the Maz castle team was a Saga Fan and decided that the flags should represent all the insignia used in the entire Saga. Then, at some point, JJ looked at the flags and he said: "Hey, how'd you come up with all those designs for the flags?" At that point, it was revealed that podracing flags had slipped into his film, and possible because he was petty, he decided that the podracing flags should be replaced. It could also be a control freak thing. Some directors are total control freaks. But I doubt it since he left the Boba Fett flag and other Easter Egg flags. That implies to me that he's not merely being a control freak or that he's just against Easter Eggs but instead that he has true animosity towards the PT.

 

DarthNerdling this is what i'm talking about. where do you get off assuming jj is petty? or decided that the pt stuff had to go because the pt is awful. oh and jj is a control freak. you're just making stuff up. where do you get this stuff from? way to be biased without an actual reason.

how is this allowed on the board?

 

It's called a DISCUSSION.

Inappropriate.

You also read Darth Nerdling incorrectly. He specifically just asserted two things:

i) "Some directors are total control freaks". I took this to mean that he thinks it wouldn't be anything unusual -- i.e., nothing JJ-specific (and therefore not a personal attack) -- if Abrams were one.

ii) "But I doubt it since he left the Boba Fett flag and other Easter Egg flags". Meaning, Darth Nerdling discounted the possibility that JJ is a control freak, and wasn't actually calling him one.

You're right that there's a different accusation being made, however:

iii) "He has true animosity towards the PT".

Which, frankly, if you study all the evidence, he might well do.

I can't see what makes it an outrageous claim.

And, clearly, Darth Nerdling did not just assert this "without an actual reason", as you just falsely claimed.

I intend to add more to this discussion later. Assuming you don't get your way and cause the thread to be closed for a second time.

 

don't worry i'm done here. it's too much. this board is toxic.

 

Because its his opinion. Why would he not be allowed to say that he thinks JJ is petty? Because you like JJ? Guess what you cant tell us what to say its a forum so we are suppose to discuss stuff on it pertaining to the topic. But you seem to think that we cant discuss this stuff if you disagree with it. Leave the thread then if you cant deal with the fact that free will is a thing.

 

See you next week!

 

On the face of it this seems a remarkably petty move by Abrams. I suppose it's possible he was acting more out of fear of being associated with the much maligned Phantom Menace than out of personal pettiness, but that's the most charitable reading of this I can come up with. It's hard to take his reasoning at face value as it simply doesn't appear to make any sense - how does a barely noticeable flag insignia in the background somehow "make it all about podracers"? Now, if he had said he removed it for aesthetic reasons (such as the design drawing the eye too much or something) that I would find more believable, as that's the director's prerogative. But his response seems to indicate that he removed it more because he wasn't willing to allow even the smallest of prequel Easter eggs into his movie. Also his prerogative, but very petty indeed.

 

Cmon the evidence clearly shows he has an anti PT bias.

 

I honestly just think he over thought this and decided to make it public.

I'm fine with the flags not being there as Star Awakens is a double agent(as said by Pyro) but it's a bit over announcing it it by making "we didn't want it to make it about podracing" as when you think about it, it doesn't make too much sense.

 

I think it's a bit like those religious people who pathologically see homosexuality and (more so in the past) sexual deviancy everywhere.

If something is on your brain, when you claim it isn't, that means something is really on your brain.

A couple of little flags, and -- PODRACER MADNESS!!!

The next thing you know, podracers will be wanting to get married, and Jar Jar will be the officiator, with a big ol' knees-up on Endor.

"Not in my Star Wars", says Abrams.

 

IMO him announcing it further proves his dislike of the PT. I take him drawing attention to it as pretty much saying to the OT fans"Hey don't worry guys I took out any reference to the films you hate so much". At the end of the day is it huge issue? Not really but it shows how petty Abrams is.

 

I can think of more charitable readings, and I think Seagoat attempted a good one earlier...

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/anakin-podracer-flag-cut-from-tfa.50040442/page-3#post-53543593

...but, ah, not sure I quite buy into that take, myself.

What really strikes the mind's eye is the stabbing quality of that remark, in the original "Rolling Stone" article (via mikeximus ), in situ.

Because it happens to be situated, most assuredly, and intractably, inside an article that takes several oblique swipes at the prequels and Lucas' polarizing artistic decisions:


- Could Abrams recapture the magic that Lucas himself summoned only intermittently in his three digitized prequels, in between council-meeting scenes and wretched dialogue ("I don't like sand")?


- "The idea that we're hopefully reigniting the flame of passion toward this thing George Lucas created, it's very exciting," he says.


- He looks like he could still break your nose with a quick punch. He looks like he would shoot first.


- Boyega was seven when The Phantom Menace came out, and he didn't see it until a few years later. He thought it was all right, despite the "green guy jumping around." (sic)


(The baneful error in that last one is objective proof you should read everything you encounter with a critical eye).


Now, the article is written in a snappy, lively way, with a mirthful, urbane undercurrent. So none of those examples need be taken too seriously.

But still, they're there.

The article exudes a palpable sense that, now the saga is out of that silly George Lucas' hands -- or "gnomic" as the author ambiguously describes Lucas -- they can get on with returning to that zesty, humanistic spirit of Star Wars that everyone knows and loves. This, fans, is the Star Wars movie you have been looking for.

That sense is undergirded, even in relatively benign ways, by featuring amusingly glib, yet quasi-reverential, soft-touch interviews with the original three, the holy tripartite of the Star Wars saga: Ford, Hamill, Fisher. The author seems keen to stress the grainy, gruff humanity of the original principals -- as if commodifying their quirks much the same way memorable screen personalities, like, say, Jeff Goldblum, agree to appear in things like Apple product ads. This, of course, has the effect of further psychologically distancing TFA from the prequels: abstracting it away from the chilly autocracy of Lucas himself.

Though, it is also a backhanded compliment to Lucas, who did birth Star Wars and select those actors, after all, allowing them to play to their strengths, finding their characters, and helping him find (or at least refine) the story as he went.

So it's an entertaining piece, despite it essentially performing the function of an elaborate textual advert for Disney (contrast this, if you will, with Lucas' wonderfully candid Rolling Stone interview, post-release, for the original film: http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/the-wizard-of-star-wars-20120504 ).

And I certainly dig the personalities of the original three. Mark Hamill, in particular, sounds like a blast to hang out with -- totally unpretentious, witty, self-effacing, and a confessed (and very obvious) OCD nerd! And they all seem to have a very good grasp of each other.

Despite the digs at the prequels, it's a delightful read. But those digs are there, in my opinion, and hard to entirely ignore. I might otherwise think "BFD" about Abrams' podracer remark. In and of itself, it's fairly innocuous. But not so much with those jabs, let alone all the potshots taken at the prequels -- as Mike earlier said -- at the Celebration and Comic-Con gatherings last year.

And harder still, to look at it as just a cute, matter-of-fact exhortation for originality, on Abrams' part, I think, when you look at how profoundly unoriginal TFA is, and how much it leans on the iconography of the OT: not only to the point of allowing Boba Fett decals through, as noted by others, but also by recycling so many elements of the original films, including reducing dogfights to X-wings and TIE-Fighters (which none of the original films actually did).

Also, when the third trailer appeared, with that flag shot, some used it to pounce on prequel fans as proof that TFA wasn't really dissing them, right in the middle of that disreputable marketing campaign. See, podracer flags? Only for this article to appear, three months later, where Abrams specifically disavows podracer flags -- the very next day after the trailer! Yet it would take a time for this to be reported. And when it is finally reported, it happens in an article taking some pretty direct shots at the prequels, making the localized, parochial quality of that remark all the less deniable.

Perversely, however, by referring to podracers, Abrams is using nomenclature specific to the prequels. So it's not an outright shunning. It can't be. There is, at the least, an acknowledgement that they exist, that podracers are a thing, and that, therefore, the prequels are a thing.

However much they try and press that box down, the Jack inside resists all the more, daring to keep popping back up.

 

Yes that is what I assumed is what happened as well. The visual effects people always slip things into movies that even directors/editors don't know are there. For example, potato's and sneakers as asteroids (ESB), Shaak as an asteroid in AOTC, X-wing and Tie Fighter in AOTC, etc etc were probably never seen, noticed or even known by Lucas. They were probably done by the visual effects team as Easter Eggs.

So I bet you are right that the flags originally weren't even a big deal to Abrams until he found out they were podracer flags. Well than he needed to be original, than he needed to do his own thing....?

 

Someone found Luke's severed hand with the accompanying lightsaber out in space......

 

Or the map to Skywalker, the Millenium Falcon, and Rey all being on Jakku at the same time...

But pod racing flags from a race that the chosen one... The Chosen One! took part in is too far of a stretch?

 

Not to mention Rey's insta-piloting skills, the handy availability of the Falcon itself as Rey and Finn are pelted by explosions on all sides, Rey besting a trained Dark Sider in a lightsaber duel, Finn's own proficiency with a lightsaber, the speed with which Han and Chewie find the Falcon, Rey able to speak both droid and Wookiee, Finn being able to break away from The First Order with a captured and tortured pilot, and then crash landing, without serious injury, after their stolen ship is badly damaged, Poe somehow making it back to the Resistance base with zero explanation for how he got there despite waking up as a wanted man from a crash site in a desert in the middle of the night, Han just happening to take Rey and Finn to the one place where Luke's old lightsaber is being secretly kept in a locked chest, Han manually dropping the Falcon through the atmosphere of Starkiller Base at lightspeed, Han, Finn, and Rey just happening to run into each other on a place as massive as Starkiller Base, Finn locating Captain Phasma and getting her to lower the shields with no resistance and no alarm sounding, the ground opening up between Kylo and Rey seconds after she overpowers him, Artoo waking up with the rest of the map intact in his databanks immediately after the successful mission to blow up Starkiller Base, Han and Kylo having a convenient moment of quiet time in a base on high alert and under heavy attack, the Resistance, AKA The Rebellion, fighting The First Order, AKA The Empire, and winning, with nothing more than X-wings, and The First Order responding with nothing other than TIE Fighters, The First Order able to utterly destroy the Republic, a galaxy-spanning government, with a "Hyperspace Laser", and this being viewable, instantaneously, across thousands of lightyears of space, etc., etc.

 

No, they didn't.

 

Yeah, don't you remember? It was that dude who was a part of a Dark Sider cult that was cloning Luke and Vader to conquer the Galaxy! Spiden I think his name was.

 

My only gripe about this removal is the fact they wanted to do something new!
But yet in the background on Jakku are Star Destroyers and ATAT's everywhere. (which I love)Every dang object from the OT
that was on the falcon was shown.. I don't have a big problem with it, just find it questionable that
they got rid of the PR flags that r kinda hard to see couple of them..!

 

JJ seems like a nice person but he needs to be kept the heck away from Star Wars IMO

 

This is silly Jeditraitor there is no need to defend every JJ decision - this one just cant be defended

Oh good grief dude. You don't get to decide which complaints are pitiful and which aren't and then call us grudge holders on top of it? Do we attack you for being positive about TFA?