PT George Lucas expanded interview with Charlie Rose

At least it was used in a different way (the early drafts had 2 Death Stars which would have been pretty cool).
TFA reuses both DS1 and DS2.

The TF ship wasn't a superweapon. And yes there're differences between Anakin's actions and Luke's. That's why it's mirroring and not just copy pasting.

 

You just proved the point that they are very similar with your pictures. You do realize the x wings and ties weren't exactly the same as before right? They have the exact same upgrades and slight alternations in the designs above. Some of which you included from way over 30 years. Look at the pictures you did that fit into the 30 year timeline. You proved my point yourself

 

The thing about the Death Star 2 is that it was used in a very differetnt way to the original. It was more of an elaborate trap set by Palpatine.

And what about all the new stuff? The massive space battle with Capital ships. The land battle with the Shield generator. A lightsaber battle happening simultaneously. Flying through the tight superstructure.

A lot of new things were done in ROTJ with the Death Star.

Compare to TFA. We have another Trench Run. Another shield Generator. Another lightsaber battle happeneing at the same time.

Even TPM had major differences. The Trade Federation battleship isn't a superweapon, it controls the army. Anakin flies through the occupied hangar. Thr ground battle is a distraction.

 

And I will disagree totally with this.
The main reason why I liked TFA more than the PT is the characters.
And the reason isn't that they are way more complex in TFA or that they are incredibly deep or highly original characters with tons of depth. I cared more because I became more invested in them.
The PT characters, with a few exceptions, I found dull, stiff and wooden, so much so that they could be mistaken for Ents.

To me, a storyteller has to "hook" the audience, make them interested in what is going on and wanting to see what happens next.
The two most common ways are story or characters or both.
Either the story itself is interesting enough that you want to go on. Or you are invested in the characters and want to see what happens to them.
If you, the audience don't care about either, why would want to continue with the story?
Maybe out of sense of completeness but it is unlikely that you will rate this very highly if you carry on just for that reason.

The TFA characters "hooked" me, I became invested in them, I wanted to see what happened to them and felt with them. That made the film good, not the story, which yes borrows more than a little from ANH.
Had I been this invested in the PT characters, I would probably have loved those films.
But I wasn't and so I don't. They are not bad films but I was only mildly interested in what was going on. Again partly because it seemed that the characters in the films didn't much care either.
So it was a rather passive experience. A "Well that was ok, I guess.."

The PT films certainly has interesting ideas but the execution, which to me matters more, was mixed.
As some have said "A great idea does not a story make."
I can give Lucas props for having creative ideas and wanting to try new things but again execution matters.

Take the Hobbit films, PJ made a lot more changes than in the LotR films and added his own stuff.
That didn't go down all that well with the critics and the audience.

And I disagree with this as well.
If all you need is to copy ANH then the movie Eragon, which borrows from ANH even more than TFA does, would have been a huge hit. But it wasn't.

The films "A Fistful of Dollars" and "Last Man Standing" are both remakes/copies/inspired by Yojimbo but the former is held in much higher regard than the latter.
Seven Samurai has been copied/remade/inspired many times but not all are viewed as equally good.
The Magnificent Seven is a copy but still viewed as a good film while The Seven Magnificent Gladiators is not.

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I don't know if it was in this thread but someone mentioned Terminator and Terminator 2.
Look at those films and compare plot, story beats, action set pieces and character moments.
You will find they are very similar.
Plot. "Evil Terminator is sent back in time to kill a Connor to wipe out the enemy of Sky Net."
"A good protector is also sent back in time."
Character moments "The Connor that is targeted develops feelings for the protector." Not the same feelings sure and under different circumstances.
Action set pieces, after the initial shoot out between Evil Terminator and good protector, there is a chase scene that ends with the evil Terminator crashing it's car/truck.
The end battle is set inside a factory type of environment and evil Terminator is destroyed by a man made device/machine. The good protector also "dies".
Both films start with Arnold Terminator arriving and uses violence to get clothes. Not as much sure but still.

Now I am not calling T2 a bad film or Cameron a hack. I like both films but they are very similar.
But the audience didn't seem to mind as T2 was a huge hit and remains highly rated even today.
There are differences sure, mood most especially as the first film is more of a horror/thriller film with the latter being more action packed and filled more more jokes.

The point I am making is that copying/remaking/being inspired by older films is NOT new.
What matters is often how well the new film is made. If it is made poorly, like Eragon, then BO and reviews tend to reflect that. If made well, like in T2, then BO and reviews reflect that too.

This is questionable. Back before RotJ and even after, Lucas did talk about a ST. He even said he had 20-30 pages outlines of EP 7, 8 and 9. Of course many years later he retracted that and claimed he never intended to make the ST and that is was all an invention by the media.

From what I have read, after ESB and while making RotJ, Lucas became burned out on SW, plus he was going through a divorce at the time. So I think he ditched some stuff intended for the ST and wanted to tie up everything neatly. For ex Leia being the "other". Which certainly wasn't the original plan. But it seems that he hadn't totally given up on films set after RotJ.

@Mindless Monster

As I wrote above, there a plenty of films that have copied/been remakes/been inspired by other films. See above for some examples. Should "Fistful of Dollars" be deemed as crap because it is just Yojimbo set in the old West? And people that like that film are morons who don't know any better?

Or take Gladiator and compare with "The Fall of the Roman Empire." There are a lot of similarities there.

To me, it all comes down how well something is made.
Take food. You have a simple dish, just Meat and Potatoes. But the ingredients are of the highest quality and it is seasoned and cooked to perfection. Vs a very complicated dish with 47 different ingredients, take hours to make and uses very complex tools. But this dish is rather poorly made.
I would think that most would like the former better. One might appreciate the effort made with the second one but the fact that it didn't taste very well still matters.

Both Star Trek TMP and Interstellar are inspired by 2001. But the former is seen as a rather slow and plodding film, often called "The Slow motion Picture" or "The Motionless Picture." The latter is held in higher regard.
You are under no obligation to agree but I think that if people like a film, find the quality good or even great, then they don't much mind a certain reuse of material.
If the film is poorly made, then those issues become more important.
Now you might say that is a double standard but again take food. If you eat say Pasta Carbonara, and get a very well made dish of that and praise it. And then you get a poorly made one and say it tastes awful. The fact that they are the same dish doesn't change that to you, one was better made than the other.

Final thoughts.
I think people are going a little overboard with things like "Hollywood/the studios are now just repating old things and are not trying new things."
First, this is hardly new. Sequels have been around since the 70's if not longer. And in many cases those sequels are just the first film again but bigger, louder and faster.
Take the 80's, you have how many Rocky films, Rambo films, Police Academy films?
Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street?

Second, I can think of quite a few very creative films of the last few years. Pan's Labyrinth, Kick-Ass, Kingsman, Fury Road, Pacific Rim, Hellboy 2, Inception, Wall-E, Frozen, Stardust.

Or take some of the Marvel/Disney films like Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy.
If you had said in the 90's that those would get made into films and do very well, you would have been laughed at.

Or take Man of Steel. That film changed quite a few things about Superman. To be sure there are a lot of hatred directed against that film but I overall liked it and didn't mind that they tried some new things with the character.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

The Death Star is a fortification in space, a created man-made 'world' inspired by such as Arthur C Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama, the trench run itself lifted from 1955 movie The Dambusters. Nothing is actually ever new...not really.

So...to get back to the interview...which is what this thread is about, right? Lucas has made a great deal of money from making prequels and sequels; essentially selling his later movies off the back of his earlier ones.Other studios and directors have made many movies which are other than prequels and sequels.

What I objected to about the interview was Lucas portraying himself as some sort of martyr and crusader for the 'art' of movie-making, as if he has been fighting the system all these years.... and still making billions. It is the hypocrisy that I find, well...amusing more than anything - especially that people go along with it. He sold his 'child' to Disney and now he's a bit miffed that they didn't do what he would have done...so he calls them 'white slavers' (and obviously this is an acceptable humerous 'aside', whereas Pegg suggesting Lucas has killed his 'children' is offensive and disgusting....).

And..I'll say it again. Some ofd us didn't like the prequels; not because we can't 'get' them or want 'empty-headed' entertainment but because...we didn't find them to be particularly good movies. We weren't engaged by them.

 

And you ignore the ones that showed a difference. There was about thirty years between the bi-plane and the WWII plane, a vast difference. There's no reason that the First Order and the Resistance wouldn't have new fighters, other than they just wanted to be lazy. The ships should be evolving even further.





To...



To something like the K-Wing.



Not that design exactly, but it should be a noticeable evolution.

Just like there should be for the troopers.



To



To something like this.




Something that distinguishes them from the Empire. Make the First Order truly a new threat the same way that the Confederacy was different from the Empire.

 

Samuel Vimes and pretty much everyone else over here again in the PT section - quick summary :

None of the percieved faults matter in TFA, wether or not they occur in other films, or the PT because --- the PT was cr@p.

Good films - give faults a pass. Bad films - nit pick them to death. PT = bad films, therefore....

It always boils down to this in the end. Why are some people here again? Oh yeah because we have to be constantly told this. If you like the PT and you criticise TFA, we'll just remind you again how cr@p the PT is and as such how any faults in those actually matter.

Some people just cannot accept that some peope love these films, enjoy the characters, don't find them flat wooden, to full of CGI etc etc. Nor do they understand that 99.9% of PT fans like the OT equally and therefore along with some others are not happy with how TFA has followed on from that.

Forget the bl@@dy prequels. That this would be better than those was a given wasn't it? Is it a 100% satisfying sequal to the OT? I'm not so sure. Thats all. I don't even need to think about any of the PT films to consider this.

 

darth-sinister

Excellent post my friend. There should have been a design evolution during the 30 years from ROTJ to TFA just as there was from the 30 years of TPM to ANH.

It was silly and lazy and we've flagged it up a LOT on this forum over the past 2-3 years... But it's what Disney wanted so all we can do hope for something more original in VIII.

 

^^^^^ Exactly, and although people like to paint George as a buffoon, that's exactly what he would have done. Looked and studied history books and aircfraft design and considered the sociology of design. It's obvious to anyone sympathetic to his work. It's seen in the 'wedgie them out' AOTC BTS video how this is an important part of Star Wars.

There isn't even the equivalent of a 'wedgie them out' in TFA.

 

Well...actually, the thread was originally about the interview with Lucas...then it turned into a 'The TFA is just a re-make of ANH and Lucas was innovative' trope (because Lucas said Disney are 'white slavers' and like all other film studios apart from his own they just sell to the mindless millions who don't appreciate art...or something like that)....which some have responded to.

 

Lucas isn't against sequels and prequels. What he is against are the studios who do it more for the profits, rather than the love of the story. Take "Fantastic Four". The very first movie, made in 1992, only existed because the studio wanted to hold onto the rights to the film, because they weren't ready to make it yet. So Roger Corman is hired to make a low budget film so that the rights could be retained, but he is unaware that the film will be shelved and never get a formal release. Fast forward to 2003 and Fox decides to push the film forward and it comes out in 2005. A big budget film that's done properly. It does well enough to get a sequel which comes out two years later, but bombs as it was not as well done. Fine. A few years later, in order to retain the rights to the film series, Fox greenlights a film and is aware that it is not a good film. But rather than pull the plug, they force re-shoots and cut a number of scenes. The film comes out this summer and bombs. Now, the studio wants to hold onto the rights and make another film despite it tanking badly.

That's studio logic. That's the type of thing Lucas didn't like and rebelled against.

He's long admitted that there is an irony in all that. That in order to have the creative freedom and the financial means to make "Star Wars", he had to become a studio and market a ton of merchandise to pay for it. But at the end of the day, he didn't have to answer to Fox. He just happened to be fortunate enough that we helped him to realize this.

He's probably miffed because he was told one thing and Iger did something different. If Iger had been upfront in saying that he didn't like what he had in mind, Lucas might not have sold his company. Or at the very least figure something else out. If he was told that he could be part of the creative process as a courtesy and when he attempts to, he's told to hit the bricks, he'd have every right to be upset.

 

only one kenobi Yeah yeah - I know. But it still spirals down into another PT bash in the PT section --- again. It's particuarly annoying because the rehash thing is universally mentioned accross the spectrum of fandom - and probably the only really thing that seams to hurt people - but now by magic - with enough slieght it has become another thing to bash the PT with -- again !

 

T2 had similar aspects. But it took it in a very different direction thematically, story, relationship and character wise. There's similar action set pieces, but that doesn't define the story. That's the difference. Of course also with a movie like Terminator one of the only ways you can continue the story is by using a very similar plot. They didn't have to go in the direction they did with this. It's not indicative and it doesn't define the story of Star Wars.

God bless you! God bless everyone!

 

Lucas was still an independent filmmaker. Rich, but still independent. He didn't answer to the board of directors and shareholders the way Disney does. He could take some risks and he did. Think about TESB - is that really a sequel to the highest grossing move of all time that a studio would do? Hell, no. Open ending? Are you kidding me? They would try for SW 2.0 which is exactly what Lucas didn't do and what, ironically, Disney did after getting the franchise. And don't tell me it's because the prequels sucked. Disney could get away with anything as long as it didn't have slapstick or some Lucas's notorious cringeworthy dialogue. Instead they copied practically everything from the OT (and even bits of the prequels and EU) and didn't even bother to evolve the visuals. Lucas borrowed from many different sources and changed it to fit the universe. JJ borrowed only from Star Wars (plus some very obvious Nazi references). That's why is lazy and unoriginal and a cash grab the way the three Hobbit movies were (or even worse).

 

See, I get that. However, and I think I speak for many here, we were too distracted by what we believe was uninspired storytelling to be engaged in the character's journey. So really it's just the exact opposite. I've seen enough "engaging" characters in Marvel films that they eventually all blend together. The hook for me and others and what really separates Star Wars is the story. Characters can be as charming as apple pie, but they still need a story. For you and many others it was enough to follow these plucky characters down an admittedly familiar road, but for me and a small percentage of others we wanted an interesting place to go, and not a dead end road.

 

Prequel bashing in a prequel forum with repeated lines from Redlettermedia. Guess no corner of the interweb is safe for prequel discussion :/

 

Alas, poor A-Wing, son of Delta-7. Vanquisher of Executors, now forgotten for its lack of marketing pull on an executive's Excel spreadsheet next to its X-Wing sibling. Now without progeny.

I mourn for the potential futuristic NR/Resistance Letter-Wings that never evolved beyond Doug Chiang's sketchbook.

 

That misses the point of what the FO is. People that think that the Empire was the right course of action. Change the Tie's and Stormtroopers up a bit but they have to keep the aesthetic. Maybe give them the Chiss claw-craft.

The bolded. Give me the Vong any day of the week. And with the Sith deluge after that, the Vong truly are a breath of fresh air. EU fans don't look so dumb now, do we?
The Imperial Remnant was a nice touch in the EU imo.

 

George's critics: a crowd of opinionated armchair quarterbacks who have accomplished nothing. Arms poised, stones ready for throwing.

 

Please tell me you are joking about star wars' best most original concept, is its story? Star Wars is an exact telling of the heroes journey. Wow some people will go to any lengths

 

Gotta say, I could never get into the post ROTJ EU because I dug the fairy tale ending of ROTJ. But... it sure as hell is more interesting than TFA. If I were into EU, I'd be seriously pissed right about now

 

It's not an original story, but an amalgamation of many others. And go to any lengths to what exactly? Look, you liked the film; great. I'm simply saying that having relatable characters isn't enough. Star Wars is timeless because it has both. I understand why people find the characters in the prequels to be stiff and unremarkable. I understand they were thirsting for characters that drew them in; characters that felt genuine and human, with a touch of humor and sarcasm to them. That seems to be where their priorities lie. My priorities lie in a Star Wars film expanding the story in a meaningful and interesting way. Characters aren't secondary, but an enthralling story to me is paramount.

 

You have no idea. Things were going to hell before the NEU/ST reboot but the X-Wing series, Thrawn trilogy, New Jedi Order series, Jedi Academy trilogy, Young Jedi Knights, I, Jedi, Corellian trilogy, The New Rebellion, the Han Solo trilogy, Dark Empire trilogy, Shadows of the Empire, etc. made the late 90's/2000's/early 2010's an amazing time to be a SW fan imo. That stuff is as much SW as the movies, if not more-so in some cases.
We covered so much. Comedy, horror, political thrillers, philosophical deep thought stuff, romance, war stories, character studies, many amazing characters, species, planets, groups, technology, and so on and so forth.
Even the bad stuff of Planet of Twilight/Children of the Jedi/Dark Nest trilogy/Legacy of the Force/Fate of the Jedi/Crucible had some good concepts to it.
So rebooting it was tough pill to swallow.
The 90's did get carried away the Imperial Warlords/other warlords and Dark Side users but it was nice campy fun.
The Vong were a breath of fresh air, even if the era was an emotional grinder. Everything was an emotional after that as well but it worked for that era.
The Sith flood after that worked at times but give us some more variety on the villains.
There were plenty of stories left to be told. Legacy comic era. Post Crucible to the Legacy comic era, NJO to DNT era, DNT to LOTF era, Sword of the Jedi, The Force Unleashed 3, Imperial Commando and so much more.
Heck, the NJO series could fit dozens of more books into the era. Some in the Lit forums was on their way to giving ideas for like another series and a half in the era.
Guess I have to fan-fic everything now.
The NJO series will be ST equivalent continuation of the Saga, no matter what anyone else says. And will add any AU Fanfic endings I like as well.
Will accept the ST as a possible continuation but won't be my number 1.
With everything from 1991 to 2003 (end of the NJO series) I got to care for almost everyone and everything from the EU and made the end of the NJO series so memorable. Everything was coming together and came together beautifully.
I care about the stuff in TFA but am uncertain how I will feel about the wrap-up in E9. Definitely going to have to read the NEU books and comics and hope I do care about everything.

 

From what I understand, Kylo Ren is basically a mix of Anakin and Jacen Solo except Jacen Solo's storyline seems better developed.

 

Except Jacen's fall comes from out of nowhere. Jacen in TUF to Jacen/Caedus in DNT and LOTF are way too different imo. Jacen did go on a Force hermitage trip that could have changed him but still seems way to out of left-field imo.
Okay. You can make the case in Traitor that Vergere is a complete piece of work and bent on screwing up Jacen but from what I see in that book, that is not the case.
Her methods are completely screwed up but her evil? No. Maybe I'm naive or way too idealistic but DNT/LOTF Jacen doesn't seem like what Vergere had in mind for him. She wanted a better galaxy and was above the whole Jedi vs Sith schism.
No matter what Lumiya tells us in Betrayal.
Biased source who wants to hurt Luke anyway.
Nephew falling to the Dark Side would hurt more than dead nephew.
There are plenty of things worse than death to paraphrase Dumbledore.
Maybe Lumiya did meet Vergere. And parts of what she said about Vergere's history was true.
But I think she didn't get Vergere's lessons. Vergere did help her and Lumiya ran with it for her own purposes.
Jacen/Caedus had moments of brilliance but by the end of LOTF it was too late. Way too different from book to book. 3 different authors alternating every book with different interpretations of Jacen/Caedus it wasn't even funny.