PT Lawrence Kasdan's take on the PT

There's an interview with Lawrence Kasdan in the LA Times about getting back to Star Wars. In this interview he also discusses his view of the PT.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainmen...star-wars-lawrence-kasdan-20151206-story.html

Some quotes:

Just jump over the prequels for a second, where George was doing what George was doing and fulfilling his own desires.

The story [in the prequels] does not interfere. We only have to deal with the first trilogy so we didn't have to deal with it much. They obviously have a certain feel, and that was not the feel we wanted this one to have. This is much more related to "A New Hope" and "Empire".

And with the canon — everyone refers to the canon, but it has zero meaning to me. I don't know what the canon is. I cannot get that straight.

This article to me illustrates that Star Wars is so much more than a single man imposing his vision.

 

Yes, Star Wars is much more than Kasdan's limited vision.

 

I agree. It's more than anybody's limited vision. It's not about canon or ownership.

 

Can't be bothered to read. Does the article ask him why he's not done a decent film since 1993?

You can kind of understand them not needing to bother with the PT given it's like 50 years since TPM... But poor, poor Return of the Jedi.

These comments are making me wonder whether they are retconning ROTJ... Could Palpy actually turn up at some point in this trilogy, alive and well and living in the Outer Rim?

 

Hey, Wyatt Earp was a masterpiece.

 

I agree, why don't they ever mention Rotj? Its a great film and its been mostly been ignored by the TFA crew. Apparently only ANH and ESB exists? I hope they don't retcon RotJ.

 

I'm a fan of Lucas's existing six part Saga so I'm as concerned with this ANH and ESB obsession that they seem to have from the POV of what I means for ROTJ as I am for what it means for Episode I-III, probably more so actually because I see the effect of all this on the Prequels as being largely "neutral" (basically in story terms the PT will just be "parked" , ignored, etc) where-as you can see the real possibility that they are going to rip up everything we saw in ROTJ and retcon it.

 

I don't think anything is going to be retconned. He's referring to the feel of the movies. I think they feel ROTJ neatly tied up the OT (maybe a little too neatly), and that's that. The OT is to the ST, what the PT is to the OT, namely backstory. It provides some historical context, but in the end the story stands on it's own with a beginning, a middle and an end.

 

That's BS. Abrams said in the recent interview with Howard Stern that they have a guy at Lucasfim that's responsible for all the canon bookkeeping, so to speak, and that he was often writing him emails on whether something fits within the overall canon.

 

One gets the sense from this interview that there is SW and then there is ESB, and then the rest is just EU. Which is too bad. I think all of the films are thematically and visually rich. While others dislike the tonal dissonance between the two trilogies - the elegant machinery against the used, lived-in industrial universe, the studied acting and declarative language against the carny ebullience and percussive beats of the rapid-fire dialogue, digital against analog - I find the rich, contrasty feel of the story to be immensely satisfying.


Of course it is clear that the TFA people are attempting to distance themselves from the PT and ROTJ - by general consensus "Inferior" or even flat out "bad" movies - and return to the swashbuckling magic of the original Star Wars. Perhaps they will succeed. And although they are taking an incredibly conservative approach by basically just rebooting ANH, you can't really blame them: Disney paid $4 billion for the rights to SW and there is no way they are going to attempt something too visionary or too boundary-pushing. There is too much at stake financially.

 

Thing is though... If I wanted to watch a Star Wars (ANH) and Empire Strikes Back again I'll just watch Star Wars (ANH) and Empire Strikes Back...

The people behind TFA are beginning to come across a bit like silly Elvis impersonators... And my take on those has always been why shell out good money to see some inferior impersonator rehashing Elvis's greatest hits when I can stay at home and watch the amazing "68 Comeback Special"?

Seems to be the same with The Force Awakens. I'll just stay at home this Christmas and watch ANH and ESB. Will I be missing much?

 

Yes, but ANH and ESB have very different tonalities. One is a slam-bang space opera, a hero's journey, a rousing tour-de-force (pun intended) that recycles Saturday matinee tropes and then transforms them through popular moviemaking of the first order (pun not intended). The other is moodier and more visionary, reaching into the recesses of despair and exploring the underlying nature of the Force. One thing these two films share - apart from the obvious - is that they are, by general consensus, classics of contemporary mainstream cinema. Critics and fans are more divided about the relative worth of the other four films in the sextet.


So while Kasdan may be saying one thing, he is implying another.

 

Kasdan doesn't really seemed to have an opinion of the Prequel movies. It seems as if he doesn't want to discuss it. But if I must be honest, it doesn't really matter to me.

 

I'll watch it. In fact, I fully expect to enjoy it. I wish they were more audacious with some of their ideas rather than giving us Death Star III (four, if you count the droid control ship in TPM, which blatantly echoes ANH), Tarkin II, and various other inescapable parallels that I cannot divulge without going into spoiler territory, but hey, Disney has $4 billion at stake here. I don't expect them to reinvent the wheel.

 

How did the droid ship in "The Phantom Menace" echo the Death Star?

 

Blowing up a spherical device, that gives the bad guys the advantage.

 

It's about the guy who imagined/created it.

That's a great analogy.

 

Wow, I hadn't realized ANH and TESB are the only "good" SW movies.

 

Not anymore it isn't...

 

But...

 

Yup . ROTJ did not happen , SW E I-III are crazy lucid awful dreams of a Wampa and what the hell is EU anyway ????!!!! ( sarcasm)

 

It's good thing we have Kasdan to set the record straight at last! *heavy sarcasm*

 

I think the only thing TFA lacks is ... you guessed it GARY KURTZ ( plays Star Wars Theme )
Ok , that's enough .

 

More like 70!

Really? I've never heard of such a thing!

 

Exactly, it's about the current owners giving young filmmakers the chance to give us their own interpretation of Star Wars, without being restricted by a single man's vision.