Star Wars: The Complete Saga (1977-2005)

[ChainsawJedi]

Originally Posted by octagon

Fine, allow me to rephrase.

Do you believe it's impossible for poor storytellers to sell a shit load of movie tickets?

Consistently? Film after film after film?

Given that George Lucas isn't a poor storyteller, pray tell where you think you're going with this.

[blonde_devil]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

Hardly. He called a spade a spade. It was directed at a certain group of loudly braying donkeys...who to this day STILL won't stop bringing up their hatred of the new films in anything and everything STAR TREK related (just look at Facebook).

Into Darkness was a poor Space Seed/Wrath of Khan rip-off = spade.

[ChainsawJedi]

Originally Posted by blonde_devil

And I think that is the big difference - people who are too insecure(or too arrogant) will fight right away while others are curious why you don't like it. They may not change what they are doing but they will at least listen. I love watching Kitchen Nightmares because people fight right away when Gordon tells them their food sucks - they are going out of business and yet they say "not everyone hates it" as a reason to keep doing the same thing.

Lucas was successful but he was also lucky. The story he told isn't a new one but he was able to present it in a way people hadn't seen before and was able to grab the audience. He was lucky because any number of things could have caused Star Wars to be a horrible movie - look at the early effects they were trying! But he was smart and was able to craft a successful movie, then trilogy of movies, then 3 good and 3 movies so you have to give him credit for that.

As for Spears, she is in an industry where being a good singer isn't really a benefit so even if she can sing decently, she will never actually be given the opportunity to do that. Pop music doesn't want good singers, they want a gimmick they can sell. That's why the same "controvercy" that sells Miley Cyrus albums sold Madonna's albums, sold ... albums - it is a factory and they just need the newest flavor to sell (sounds kind of like movies too, doesn't it).

Well, those people wouldn't call Gordon Ramsay in unless their business was in trouble so they must, at some level, have accepted that they're doing something wrong. Arrogance is blaming everyone else for your failures (like the comedian who says that they were on great form at last night's gig but the audience didn't laugh).

I think Lucas has more humility than he's given credit for. Just because he didn't test screen The Phantom Menace to a bunch of thirty-somethings doesn't mean he thinks he knows best; he showed it his industry friends, people who work in the business, people who have proven to be successful in the business. And they told him it didn't work, that the three-way sequence at the end was too abitrary. And he went back and he revised it.

Lucas operates outside the industry. He's a maverick. If he was part of the machine - the same one that churns out the Miley Cyruses of this world - then he wouldn't make films like Revenge Of The Sith.

I work in the entertainment industry (it doesn't matter at this point which aspect so I won't say) and everyone knows in my business that talent is only ever part of the story. Luck, hard work and determination are essential parts of the equation. So, if Lucas was lucky at the start, that's still only a part of the story.

[rickah88]

Oh boy the Star Wars thread is firing up again!

[octagon]

Originally Posted by ChainsawJedi

Consistently? Film after film after film?

Given that George Lucas isn't a poor storyteller, pray tell where you think you're going with this.

Obviously I was say that selling a shitload of movie tickets doesn't necessarily say much about whether or not one is a poor storyteller.

(I mean, that was obvious, wasn't it?)

As for whether Lucas specifically is a poor storyteller, eh, I would probably say mediocre rather than poor and even then I would qualify it somewhat.

He peaked as both a writer and director with American Grafitti and Star Wars. His visual sense and his sense of an overall 'big picture' remained solid but the nuts and bolts of storytelling (dialogue in particular) seemed to get more and more muddled as the years went on.

So if by storyteller one means 'somebody who can come up with cool stories' then yeah, he arguably still had his moments. But when it comes to actually telling the story...writing it down, putting it together in a coherent, compelling form...ehhhhhhhhh, I dunno, I think his best years are going on forty years behind him.

[Thomas Guycott]

Originally Posted by rickah88

Oh boy the Star Wars thread is firing up again!

This discussion was due for a rebound anyway.

[MifuneFan]

[blonde_devil]

Originally Posted by ChainsawJedi

Well, those people wouldn't call Gordon Ramsay in unless their business was in trouble so they must, at some level, have accepted that they're doing something wrong. Arrogance is blaming everyone else for your failures (like the comedian who says that they were on great form at last night's gig but the audience didn't laugh).

I think Lucas has more humility than he's given credit for. Just because he didn't test screen The Phantom Menace to a bunch of thirty-somethings doesn't mean he thinks he knows best; he showed it his industry friends, people who work in the business, people who have proven to be successful in the business. And they told him it didn't work, that the three-way sequence at the end was too abitrary. And he went back and he revised it.

Lucas operates outside the industry. He's a maverick. If he was part of the machine - the same one that churns out the Miley Cyruses of this world - then he wouldn't make films like Revenge Of The Sith.

I work in the entertainment industry (it doesn't matter at this point which aspect so I won't say) and everyone knows in my business that talent is only ever part of the story. Luck, hard work and determination are essential parts of the equation. So, if Lucas was lucky at the start, that's still only a part of the story.

oh, exactly. Hope it didn't come across as I was bashing Lucas as it wasn't my intent. I think it took guts to do what he did with Star Wars. and I agree, luck is only part of it which is why so many directors have a hit film and then can't seem to ever do it again. Lucas has talent - my parents don't like Star Wars but love American Grafitti so you can't call him a one-hit wonder. Talent is needed but you need that luck to get your shot. I respect him a lot more than people who do work in the machine and get praised for putting out the same garbage time after time.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by octagon

He peaked as both a writer and director with American Grafitti and Star Wars. His visual sense and his sense of an overall 'big picture' remained solid but the nuts and bolts of storytelling (dialogue in particular) seemed to get more and more muddled as the years went on.

Empire and Raiders bear a lot of his imprint. People never give him credit for either. It's always Kasdan/Kershner or Spielberg in their eyes. But they would certainly be not the great films they were without Lucas' heavy involvement.

It's mainly the mentality of the hardcore. They grade the OT as an "A". Trouble is the prequel trilogy is a "B", and to them anything less than an "A" might as well be a "F", even though to everyone else it's still pretty good.

[JayFank]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

Empire and Raiders bear a lot of his imprint. People never give him credit for either. It's always Kasdan/Kershner or Spielberg in their eyes. But they would certainly be not the great films they were without Lucas' heavy involvement.

It's mainly the mentality of the hardcore. They grade the OT as an "A". Trouble is the prequel trilogy is a "B", and to them anything less than an "A" might as well be a "F", even though to everyone else it's still pretty good.

The Prequel Trilogy is hardly a B, maybe a C- at best.

[HeavyHitter]

Originally Posted by JayFank

The Prequel Trilogy is hardly a B, maybe a C- at best.

Agreed.

[Bluyoda]

Just watched Episode III on BD again tonight.
It's truly magnificent.

Oh yeah, the Prequels are worse than Bantha poodoo, and the OT, at least TESB was the best thing that ever happened to humankind.

It's not even beating a dead horse anymore. There is not even a corpse left at this point.
You guy sare beating ashes at best.

[blonde_devil]

Originally Posted by JayFank

The Prequel Trilogy is hardly a B, maybe a C- at best.

Have to agree. He got too wrapped up in the technology and in trying to surprise people instead of telling the story people knew/expected. Again, not saying he had to do everything exactly as people wanted but he did a lot of things that contradict the original movies or just didn't make any sense(the ship at the end of Revenge not being the same one as at the beginning of Star Wars?).

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by cb1

I do, the Lowes 70mm in Paramus, NJ Day one. we cut school from North Arlington,NJ and took the bus to the Paramus mall and walked about a mile to the theater.

This place was huge, only had one screen. I miss those days.....

Me too. I saw "Star Wars" at the Loews Astor Plaza (1530 seats) 70mm single screen theatre on west 44th street in Manhattan, but long after opening day. In those days, when popular movies might play at a theatre for months, one could do that. I actually saw "Close Encounters..." in 70mm at the Ziegfeld before I saw "Star Wars", even though it was released after. I'm pretty sure I saw "The Empire Strikes Back" at the Loews Orpheum Twin where the larger theatre had 1025 seats and the upstairs had 599 seats. Even though that theatre was a bit smaller than the Astor Plaza, I thought the overall presentation quality was better.

The Astor Plaza closed in August, 2004 and is now a concert venue. The Ziegfeld is still open in all its single-screen 1150-seat glory, but its presentation quality is not what it once was, when they would often add extra equipment and would realign the system before every premiere. While they still have curtains, they don't bother opening and closing them as they once did.

It's a totally different experience when you watch a popcorn movie with a thousand or more other people. People who have only attended movies in which a 300-seat theatre is considered "large" these days don't know what that was like. Back in the day, a 500 seat theatre in a major city was considered an "art house".

And before the Star Wars era, 3000-seat theaters were common during the Roadshow era and before. There were 139 theaters in the U.S. with more than 2800 seats. 29 of those were in New York City.

In New Jersey, the Loews Majestic, Stanley and Jersey were all large theaters with the Stanley and Jersey having 4332 and 3187 seats, respectively. The Warner in Atlantic City had 4189 seats. The Fabian in Patterson had 3263 and the one in Hoboken had 3036 seats. The Capitol in Passaic, which became a concert hall before it burned down in 1990, had 3211 seats and the Ritz in Elizabeth had 2806 seats.

[Gold Ranger]

I grew up with the Original Trilogy and I prefer the aspects of each Set of Trilogies over other acpects.
+1 PT - Better Story
+1 PT - Better Action

+1 OT - Better/Believable Effects
+1 OT - Better Trilogy Resolution
+1 OT - Better Suspence (though this is only because we know what happens to the majority of the Characters before we saw the PT)

But all in all, all 6 movies are at a very re-watchable Grade B!

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by ChainsawJedi

Lucas has proven himself (the millions who flocked to see the prequels can't all have been wrong - no more wrong than the millions who flocked to see the original films all those years ago anyway). Abrams, however, has yet to show what he can do with Star Wars.

I think that's because people are invested in the series so even after disliking Chapter 1 immensely, I went to see II and III because I still wanted to see how it all ended(or all began), in spite of the obvious flaws. And while I thought Chapter II still sucked, I liked III better than most people.

I think you would agree that regardless of how much business the films did, majority opinion of both the masses and the professional critics is that the PT overall wasn't very good. But you know that Episode VII is going to do gangbuster business if only because people will want to see what Disney has done with Lucas' legacy (although see my note in the next paragraph). But if they fail, I think Episode VIII will tank.

There's one other factor and that is today, the web mob can make or break a movie even before it opens. That's what happened to "The Lone Ranger" and "John Carter". I saw "The Lone Ranger" the other day and I was surprised to see that it actually wasn't that bad and neither was "John Carter". But Disney had to take huge write downs on both of them. If the web mob decides that Episode VII is going to suck simply because it's Disney, that film will also tank and we won't see another Star Wars film for 20 years unless it's one with a "direct to video" budget.

Originally Posted by Deathbymonkeys

I think it's funny everyone I work with is under 25 and they all love the prequels. Every last one like Jar Jar Binks too.

Lucas made some mistakes here and there but so did Jackson.

I think those people who didn't see the originals first had a different set of expectations. But I also think that those who saw the OT when originally released (or soon after) built up a level of expectation that would have been impossible to meet by any director, even a good one. The fact is that when the OT was released, while the structure of the myth was not new, Star Wars itself was new and quite different than anything we had seen on the screen before. Before Star Wars, with the possible exception of 2001, there had never been a high budget special effects movie where the director had the freedom to work outside the studio environment. Therefore we saw production values in Star Wars that we had never seen before combined with how we imagined great adventure serials to be, but never actually were, due to their low budgets.

Originally Posted by blonde_devil

That is true but you can't write-off opinions and things said on the internet just because they are on the internet. When people complained about Star Trek Into Darkness, Bob Orci made the statement about there is a reason why he writes for a living and they don't. That becomes the standard statement with internet opinions - it is on the internet so it doesn't matter even if what they are saying is valid and well written. The internet makes it easier to share those opinions but they have always been out there. But it is very true that people will say things with their keyboard that they will never say in real life and that is the downside of it.

You're correct, but I would maintain that a large majority of opinion on the internet is crap. People have come to believe that all opinions are equal, but all opinions are not equal. Those who can make persuasive arguments based on intelligent analysis combined with a knowledge of literature, film history, myth, etc. can and do make better arguments than people who like to say "I hate Jar Jar and George sucks."

In the political arena, two different people can both hate capitalism. One argues how capitalism increases the gap between rich and poor, how it eliminates jobs for the middle-class, how it destroys local businesses and how it makes the quality of products worse (whether he's correct or not). The other protests at some international trade meeting, throws a trashcan through the window of retailers and banks and sets cars on fire. Much internet criticism is people doing the latter instead of the former. There's a big difference between them.

It doesn't take a Freud to figure out that many people get an ego boost out of putting others down and the more successful the person they're putting down, the bigger the ego boost. And they probably think that's okay because they see the so-called professional press doing exactly the same thing. First they build someone up and they they knock them down. It sells clicks and papers.

Originally Posted by ChainsawJedi

Just calling it how I see it. You think the RedLetterMedias of this world would be able to go about their business carrying on the way do online without getting smacked in the mouth? Tell me, what colour is the sky above the world on which you live?

I'm actually not bothered by RedLetterMedia because while his attitude is (purposely) snide, he actually does quite a bit of plot analysis to back up his arguments and I found him to be right far more than he's wrong. That's a lot more than the people who come on here do who simply state, "The PT gets a C at best". I'd prefer to smack in the mouth anyone who comes on here and responds to someone beginning a sentence with the word "Dude".

Originally Posted by stvn1974

Sorry, if you are an artist or entertainer and you put something out there for the masses to pay money for you need to expect criticism and not whine about it when it comes. Lucas deserves every bit of hate he has received over the years. As far as Orci, you can give a bunch of apes some Mad Libs and they could come up with a better story than Star Trek Into Darkness.

No, Lucas (or almost any other creator) does not deserve hate. He only deserves criticism or to be ignored. I don't hate most current pop artists, I simply just ignore them all because I'm not interested in their work. From my perspective, although I would have been happier if they hadn't recycled Khan at all and done something original instead, I thought STID (hey, it sounds like a disease) was actually pretty good. There were some surprises in the plotting and I wasn't expecting any at all, but maybe I had low expectations. And I'm no Trekkie even though I enjoyed the various series, so if they ignore the original canon, I don't have a problem. The one thing I never again need to see in my life is a big physical battle with some crazed, loudmouth individual (of late with a resonant, distinctive voice) who wants to either control the universe or destroy it. It's simply not credible storytelling and one more example of why the limitations of TV budgets made the ST TV series better quality than most of the movies.

Originally Posted by ChainsawJedi

I once spoke with a very successful musician about the amount of negative press they receive despite having sold a lot of records and selling out big concerts. They said that if they were in a room with ten people, eight of whom were fans, they'd be much more interested in speaking with the two non-fans. I think that said a lot about the essential insecurity in any artist. No matter how successful you are, you still listen when people criticise your work.

I think it says quite the opposite. Wanting to speak to the people who criticize you says that you're secure enough in your work that you're willing to hear from those who disagree and that your ego isn't getting in the way of helping you grow. At least Spielberg once admitted that he needed better writing.

Originally Posted by octagon

As for whether Lucas specifically is a poor storyteller, eh, I would probably say mediocre rather than poor and even then I would qualify it somewhat.

He peaked as both a writer and director with American Grafitti and Star Wars. His visual sense and his sense of an overall 'big picture' remained solid but the nuts and bolts of storytelling (dialogue in particular) seemed to get more and more muddled as the years went on.

So if by storyteller one means 'somebody who can come up with cool stories' then yeah, he arguably still had his moments. But when it comes to actually telling the story...writing it down, putting it together in a coherent, compelling form...ehhhhhhhhh, I dunno, I think his best years are going on forty years behind him.

I agree with that. All storytellers have to write for an audience. You can respect your audience and write a sophisticated story and the best writers can also write a story that can be interpreted at many levels so that different audiences can enjoy it differently. For example, "Groundhog Day" can be a funny story about a guy who wakes up in the same day every day or it can be a story based upon esoteric philosophy and reincarnation. "The Godfather" can be a story about violent gangsters or it can be a mediation on corporate America or it can be a Shakespearean tragedy.

IMO, the OT appealed to everyone simply because it was good old-fashioned fun with very high production values and while the myth was an old story, the presentation was something we had never seen before and it was different than typical Hollywood films of the era.

But once we got to the PT, there were too many things that would only appeal to one audience. So on one hand, you had the little boy Skywalker and Jar Jar, but on the other, you had a convoluted story about the trade federation and politics that many adults had trouble following, as well as incredible logical gaps and plot elements that violated the OT as if Lucas didn't think the fans would notice. So IMO, it didn't really gel. And on top of that, even if you think Lucas was a great storyteller, he was a lousy director of actors and an incredibly bad writer of dialogue. That all combined to make at least two lousy films. And I think that a lot of this had to do with Lucas wanting to maintain control and his focus on special effects and digital filmmaking at the same time that he was still running Lucasfilm. As a result, the writing and performances suffered. The PT is a case where a high quality studio producer might have actually made the films better.

As much flack as Christensen and Portman have taken for their performances, they have been quite good in other films. That tells me that the writing and direction was at fault. There isn't an actress in the world who could have given a reading of "Oh, Ani, I don't know you anymore" without getting laughs.

[crazyBLUE]

Originally Posted by HD Goofnut

This thread has had more downward spirals than a strand of DNA.

I just looked ~ And about 7,000 removed posts

[BusterC417]

I just finished watching the OT, and loved it. Now I want to pick up the other trilogy, but it's not on sale anymore.......

[Mandalorian]

Originally Posted by HD Goofnut

This thread has had more downward spirals than a strand of DNA.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by KaineKinetic

What about the Owen/Beru conversation...
Beru: "He got too much of his father in him."
Owen: "That's what I'm afraid of."

That there seems to set up the Vader is really Anakin as well...

It works really well in the context of the saga, yeah, but as with the twins plot device it's just dumb ****ing luck that Lucas was able to retcon his own series while he was still making it.