Lucas' Folly?

Now that there, my friend. That's just plain rude.

 

In what way is being bored stiff with bio technical mumbo-jumbo being rude? I find reading that stuff like reading Shakespeare. It's just babble to me, so it sends me to sleep.

 

Wow. I don't know which is more surprising. The fact that somebody's proud to admit they don't know Shakespeare, or that they call midichlorians Shakespearean. Whodathunkit?

 

Astonishing.

 

Don't get me wrong, the Shakespearian plays are great, the stories that is, some of which are based around true historical happenings (Richard III and Henry V, for example), but the lingo just has my head spinning I'm afraid. Much better if they translated them into modern English, then I'd be able to enjoy them.

 

*ahem*

There was a problem with the forum in that it wouldn't let me edit my post, so the edit time expired on me. I was well aware of the faux pas.

So basically, it becomes less absurd depending on who does the writing, and not the actual outcome of the actual writing? Interesting...

Ummm, yes it does. It's on the same level in that it doesn't change the nature of the Force, but rather in how it is percieved. If not more so. The spiritual nature of the Force is compromised for the sake of a "scientific" explanation. The Force was always a mystical deviation from the otherwise science fiction that is Star Wars. It was the anti-thesis to the technology the characters had become dependent on, that there was a small sect of nearly extinct people who could get by in the Galaxy not with technology, but with something higher, really resonated. Now the connection to the Force can be measured with a machine a Jedi happens to carry in his pocket.

The connection to the Force no longer depends on the individual's discipline, and how seriously they take their training, but how many bicrobes they have in their blood. The Force connection is now statistical, there are numbers involved when before it was a matter of faith. As it stands, you can have all the faith in the Galaxy, but if you don't have enough bacteria in your blood, you can't be a Jedi.

To me, that's worse than what happened to Gwen Stacy. At least in that case, it gave further reason for the Goblin to kill her than to just torment Peter Parker, and torture him with a love that was basically used and abandoned by his greatest foe, only to be thrown off a bridge. See? The same rationalizations that can be used to defend Lucas can be used elsewhere.

 

Lucas should have written the first draft and let professional writers do the rest. Lucas hates writing - and boy does it show on the big screen.

 

As you said Palp.

 

As silly as it was, Maximum Clonage was the storyline that got me interested in Spiderman comics! I still think its a interesting if absurd storyline.

That's it, zombie, I don't know how I'm going to do it, but somehow I'll get you banned for that!!


Anyway, as long as a story's original creator is behind its changes and redefinitions, bizzare and flabergasting as they may be, I can accept them, and get behind them.

Boy, not me. You mentioned X-Files in there. IMO, that show went downhill, I don't care who was at the helm, creator or no, it was noise-diving. Roddenbery's truth vision of Star Trek ruined the show, IMO, and so forth.

I'll grant you, it's more annoying when another writer does it, because it becomes so unnecessary. I don't think per quality it matters, but per annoyance factor having another writer come in and mess things up is more annoying, but also easier to ignore.


Oh, and by the way, the introduction of midichlorians as a biological foundation of the Jedi's connection to the Force does not, in any way, compare with turning Gwen Stacy into a slut. Plain and ever lovin' simple.

Bug again, after Maximum Clonage should we even care?


Actually the first hint was in the concept that the Jedi could be made "all but exctinct" In ANH. If it wasn't biological, and instead was only a matter of training, that would just not be possible.

Ah, that's an easy one. If everyone with the training had been killed, who would be left to pass on the knowledge? As of ANH, it could have gone either way.


To me, that's worse than what happened to Gwen Stacy. At least in that case, it gave further reason for the Goblin to kill her than to just torment Peter Parker

**Reaches for ban button**

 

*cough*

Ummm...I was simply making a point...*looks around*

 

So, what if Lucas wrote it into the script that Han was a the brother of Salacious Crumb? What if Lucas wrote it into the script that Palpatine got married to Luke? What if Lucas wrote it into the script where Leia revealed that she was really an Ewok in disguise? What if Lucas wrote it into the script where Vader had a dance and made luuuv to IG-88?

Would you back all these "bizzare and flabergasting" decisions by Lucas for scripting?

 

About JMS/B5 and SW PT,

I do think that the B5 story has some similarities to SW.

You have a democracy that become a dictatorship.

You have an ancient darkness coming back after a 1000 years.

You have an enemy that works from within, using other people to do their work.

You have characters that fall to the "dark side", ex. Anakin, Dooku, Londo.

You also have such characters turn away from the dark path and do the right thing while paying a high prize for that.

You have things starting out quite good but then bad things start to happen and darkness is falling and then things gets really bad but in the end an alliance of light is able to prevail aginst the darkness.

You also have terrible weapons like the DS or the Vorlon/Shadow planetkillers.


One thing that I find that JMS does very well is building of characters and having well developed relations both between characters but also between races/goverments/races etc. There is a lot of backstory to most things so you know alot of the Narn/Centari backstory so you can understand why the characters do what they do and so on.

I know it is not fair to compare a TV series with a film series as JMS has much more time to develop things and work in many layers but one thing that bugged me with the PT was that it had many interesting concepts and characters but thet were often not developed enough.
It had a more complex story than the OT but a complex story also needs to be developed more.

Ex Dooku had lots of potential, a former Jedi that turns, why, what was his reason? The corruption in the senate, we are just told that the senate is corrupt but how exatly? Is it the big companies like the TF, that have brided senators? If so why would those same companies want to break away from the republic?

Why are the senate so quick to hand away all power to Palpatine and turn on a dime against the jedi?

Or that Jedi train from birth, how does that work? Are the children give with the parents consent or are they simply taken? That idea has lots of dramtic potential.

Or the conflict between the gungans and the naboo, all we get in the film is that these two sort of disslike each other but nothing very much. So the conflict lacks drama and thus when the gungans decide to help it is not very emotional. If you had developed this abit more, like the gungans were the original inhabitans but have been pushed out by the humans and they in turn treat the gungans as little more than animals and that there have been alot of bad blood between them. That makes the gungans choice more dramatic.

In closing I think that JMS and GL might not have worked that well together becasue JMS might have wanted more freedom than what GL might have been prepared to give him but it would have been interesting to see.

Regards
Nordom

 

That's the reason why I found the Bab 5 trilogy to be more the Star Wars that could have been if it weren't for Lucas going down the "mass marketing to kiddies" route; making the story more tame, basic and puerile in order to make the trilogy more friendly to the infants. If he'd kept the story at the same age level as ESB, been more meticulous and more caring about the movies, rather than treating them as some kind of mass marketing gold mine, then we would've had a story that would've been akin the Bab 5 trilogy, the Star Wars Trilogy that Kurtz outlined that Lucas wanted to do in the first place. It seems though, rather than going for it as he originally intended to do, he simply lost interest and became sloppy with the "Ohh, it'll have to do," mentality that Kurtz mentioned in his interview. I do honestly believe that he had most of the ideas for the 9 episode story that Kurtz talked about, because Kershner also stated that Lucas once enthusiastically went over the details with him when he was interviewing him to direct ESB. So this 9 episode idea hasn't just been mentioned by a supposed "bitter" Kurtz. It's also been quoted by Lucas' old film teacher Irvin Kershner!

Hey, I?ve just found a really neat i

 

Very good points and thoughts, X-Wing-Ace!

The OT shows so much more closeness and warmth of the characters, more true feelings like friendship,love and happiness. I always like to watch the scene, wenn Luke jumps out of the x-wing after blowing up the death star and they all laugh and show their happiness - it is such a wonderful scene and so well done by the actors.
The characters of the OT are - for me - more authentic (okay, I have to exclude of this point the Ewoks, which I do not like at all ...).

 

Why do a lot people feel that once Lucas had created a storyline, he had to stick to it, no matter what? I'm sorry, but I don't buy it. That doesn't happen with writers very often. They will more or less stick to an original storyline, but you can be certain that sooner or later, changes will be made. I know what I'm talking about. Sometimes, the story requires change. For example - ROTJ.

In ROTJ, Obi-Wan told Luke that Owen Lars was his brother. Thinking about it, this comment did not make any sense to me. Especially since Owen seemed to react even more to Luke's questions about Anakin than Luke's comments that Threepio and Artoo belonged to Obi-Wan. And the old Jedi Knight's reaction to Owen's death seemed very mute in compare to his reaction to the destruction of Alderaan. I can understand why Lucas had changed all of this in AOTC, making Anakin and Owen - step-brothers.

Also in ROTJ, Leia had told Luke that she remembered images of Padme, when she was a little girl. This has led fans to believe that Padme had been with Leia for a few years before dying at a young age. Thinking about it, this scenario did not make any sense. I simply could not see Padme splitting her children and staying with only one of them. I saw the following scenarios:

1) Padme split the twins and keeps her distance from both of them until her death.

2) Padme keeps both of the twins and hide from Sidious on a distant planet, until her death.

3) Padme dies and someone else (Yoda, Obi-Wan and Bail) split the kids up.

Apparently, Lucas chose #3.

 

Why do a lot people feel that once Lucas had created a storyline, he had to stick to it, no matter what? I'm sorry, but I don't buy it.

With good reason. Had he stuck with it, Splinter in the Mind's Eye, not ESB, would have been the second movie. Only one person I know thinks this would have been a good thing.


So, what if Lucas wrote it into the script that Han was a the brother of Salacious Crumb? What if Lucas wrote it into the script that Palpatine got married to Luke? What if Lucas wrote it into the script where Leia revealed that she was really an Ewok in disguise?

That wasn't me who said I would be OK with it. If I put it in italics (like I have your quote here) it came from someone else.


I do think that the B5 story has some similarities to SW. You have a democracy that become a dictatorship. You have an ancient darkness coming back after a 1000 years. You have an enemy that works from within, using other people to do their work. You have characters that fall to the "dark side", ex. Anakin, Dooku, Londo.

True, but these are general and vague concepts that appear in many stories.


That's the reason why I found the Bab 5 trilogy to be more the Star Wars that could have been if it weren't for Lucas going down the "mass marketing to kiddies" route; making the story more tame, basic and puerile in order to make the trilogy more friendly to the infants.

To the infants? Let's not be overly dramatic. Plus, remember, GL made ROTS PG-13.

 

Regardless, Lucas has ended up with the greatest 6 film storyline in the history of cinema.

That's a far cry from folly.

 

I've been following this thread, but didn't feel I had anything to add, so I kept out, but I'd like to say -

Well put.

-Krystal

 

No doubt all stories go through minor changes, but not constant complete face lifts as the Star Wars films did. I think JMS said that about 80-85% of what he always wanted for Bab 5 got on the screen, with only some backdoors placed here and there in order to deal with unforeseen real world circumstances like an actor leaving. The last percentage of the story that didn't make it to the screen did so because of budget constraints, not because he ever lost sight of his original vision. The rest of Bab 5, the main part hit the screens EXACTLY how he first planned it. The only rewrites were, as I said, if something happened that was out of his control, like Claudia Christian leaving, or because of Andrea Thompson leaving. And then he'd always had alternate scripts ready for such an event. Star Wars, on the other hand, was constantly being rewritten and characters changed till, in the end we had a lot of continuity errors and cardboard cutout characters.

If Lucas had kept to his original 9 episode story, with minor changes here and there, as JMS did with Bab 5, then we would have had a more well rounded (much better continuity), more mature and better thought out saga. Why do most of the actual actors dislike the PT, the very films in which they starred in? Ewan MacGregor (a very cool guy and great actor! ) for one was quoted as saying whilst squirming in his seat and becoming very embarrassed, that he loved the OT and that they?re classics, but the PT were "just the ones I was in".

Sorry, I misread it...

He made it PG-13 only through frying Anakin, which was on the cards from the very beginning. But the rest of it being PG material? Comical spider droids? Comical rubber lizards? R2 having slapstick fights with battle droids? General "Hunchback" Greivous doing his Peter Sellers impressions? Palpatine doing Dick Dastardly impressions?

How many 6 film trilogies do you know of? Go on, name them.

 

That's a good point. In the history of storytelling, there have never been any six episode trilogies-- No six film trilogies, no six play trilogies, no six opera trilogies, no six concept-album trilogies, no six-season television show trilogies and so on. There have also been no six novel trilogies, although there has been one trilogy I know of made up of five books.

All kidding aside, though. Star Wars does represent the best film series ever made, in my opinion. Sure, each film individually has moments which count as a little half-baked, but taken as a whole serial narrative, I believe it is easily one of the greatest stories ever told, and absolutely the greatest one ever created for the cinema.

 

The last percentage of the story that didn't make it to the screen did so because of budget constraints, not because he ever lost sight of his original vision.

He may never have purposefully deviated, but his story did deviate to a signficant degree: Sinclar was not suppose to leave and the season 5 we got was not the planned season 5 (season 4 was suppose to stretch into two seasons).


But the rest of it being PG material?

Having the hero decide to go evil and start killing children and then strangle his pregeant wife isn't exactly Dinsey.


Comical spider droids? Comical rubber lizards? R2 having slapstick fights with battle droids? General "Hunchback" Greivous doing his Peter Sellers impressions?

What spider droids, what comical rubber lizards (what ruuber anything, for that matter)? And "Peter Sellers"?

 

I agree that it is the greatest story of our lifetime. I find it hard to understand people who come to a SW fan site and bash said movies. Love them or not, like them or not, they were not made by us and we should be kind to the person who created it all...and without his inspiration we wouldn't even be here, talking about such miniscle nonsense.

 

Yes, but he only wrote Sinclair out of the story because he was a spent character; nowhere for him to go in the main story. He realised that after making season 1. But that wasn't something that would damage continuity in any way. On the contrary, I thought that making him the mysterious "Valen" was a stroke of pure genius!

The murder of the kids was implied. You never saw it actually happen. And the strangulation was no worse that that shown in ANH or ESB. Only the subject made the use of The Grip seem worse. But that shouldn't make a difference to the certification of the film. A strangled person is a strangled person.

The ones that try to take Anakin's fighter apart at the beginning of the movie. If you were to watch the ANH Death Star battle alongside this battle, then you'd see what kind of farce it is.

The one Obi-Wan rode whilst chasing Grievous (I normally twitch off here!)

Sorry, but I had to laugh, as I do every time I see the so-called "scary" villain General Grievous!

Ahh, I just like ANH and ESB. In fact, ESB (the original Kershner version) is still my No. 1 film of all time! I just slag off all the direr that came after ESB. That's why I'm here, 'cause I'm a fan of the first two Star Wars films (when Lucas listened to other people other than himself) and films in general.

 

What of Lord of the Rings?