Star Wars: The Complete Saga (1977-2005)

[stvn1974]

Yeah, Attack Of The Clones is a crime against cinema.

[steel_breeze]

Originally Posted by stvn1974

Yeah, Attack Of The Clones is a crime against cinema.

And thus the Gospel Truth is written, for Your Word is the Final Word.

[Rodney-2187]

The AotC factory scene and the platform jumping in RotS always make me think of the old Mario Bros games. I'd love to see those scenes with that game music as the score. Would be hilarious.

[WestMan]

Attack of the Clones is a crime against cinema if it is a crime to be one of the best Star Wars battles of all time.

Arena battle and Dooku vs. Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Yoda is absolutely awesome.

[thegoat]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

I do subscribe to that notion of taking VFX as a product of their time, as I can happily be entertained by the old King Kong (which, incidentally, has the same kind of hilariously tin-eared dialogue delivered terribly as the prequels do) or War of the Worlds (love them wires) but there's something so utterly fake and transparent (in terms of it being a non-physical effect) about bad CG that it always look more dated to me than any of the effects in the films mentioned above. I'll take fingerprints in the plasticine or wires holding up the models over poorly-done CG any day of the week.

I think a good bit of it comes down to preference as well as how it's used. As chip said above, there's a certain charm to practical effects that CG doesn't have, but I suppose the opposite can be true too. While practical effects are more tangible, they can also be limiting to the rest of the shot. I'll generally take a somewhat cartoony Spiderman crawling up a wall with dynamic camera movements and a moving New York backdrop over goofy looking puppets like Max Reebo (as much as I love the guy)

[Blu Myers]

Originally Posted by steel_breeze

I couldn't disagree more. I love the look of AOTC; it's one of the reasons I hold the extremely unpopular opinion that it's the best of the prequels. To me, everything you're calling "weak CG" is beautiful and painterly. Not "realistic" per se, but it all looks like production illustrations come to life; as if the movie and the "Art of the Movie" are one in the same. I feel the same way about the LOTR movies; at their best, they look "painterly" as well, but in the style of Alan Lee and John Howe. To my eyes, there are few sights as breathtakingly gorgeous as the Star Destroyers taking flight at the end of AOTC.

While I don't love AotC as much as you, it is nice to see an opinion that is against the norm regarding this movie. I remember seeing it in the theater and when Yoda walks out to face Dooku the crowd erupted. It was such a cool experience. There are aspects of AotC that I do find pretty enjoyable, but the romance portion is so cringe worthy.

[chip75]

Originally Posted by kemcha

Fox Studios simply isn't going to give up the rights to those few films that they continue to own into perpetuity.

Fox doesn't own Star Wars. Lucasfilm do. Fox only have distribution rights. Which mean Lucasfilm Ltd. can do what they like. When they like. But they have to give a cut to Fox.

Originally Posted by kemcha

I suspect that Fox isn't going to allow Disney to get anywhere near the first Star Wars film so it's doubtful that a complete series boxed set will ever be released. The only kind of deal I can see happening is if Fox and Disney work out a deal where 20th Century Fox continues to distribute the first six films but under a distribution agreement with Disney.

See above. In 2020 Fox lose the theatrical and home video distribution rights to Episodes I, II, III, V, and VI (Lucasfilm already have non-theatrical distribution rights for those five pictures). They will only keep theatrical, home video and non theatrical rights to Star Wars. We've already seen releases under Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox (there was a box set out last year), which includes Star Wars.

All the Star Wars materials are in Lucasfilm's hands. Not Fox's.

[HeavyHitter]

Originally Posted by steel_breeze

I couldn't disagree more. I love the look of AOTC; it's one of the reasons I hold the extremely unpopular opinion that it's the best of the prequels. To me, everything you're calling "weak CG" is beautiful and painterly. Not "realistic" per se, but it all looks like production illustrations come to life; as if the movie and the "Art of the Movie" are one in the same. I feel the same way about the LOTR movies; at their best, they look "painterly" as well, but in the style of Alan Lee and John Howe. To my eyes, there are few sights as breathtakingly gorgeous as the Star Destroyers taking flight at the end of AOTC.

To each his own. But I'll reserves the words "beautiful and painterly" to scenes like Cloud City in the unaltered ESB. That is what I consider true art.

[imsounoriginal]

Originally Posted by steel_breeze

I couldn't disagree more. I love the look of AOTC; it's one of the reasons I hold the extremely unpopular opinion that it's the best of the prequels. To me, everything you're calling "weak CG" is beautiful and painterly. Not "realistic" per se, but it all looks like production illustrations come to life; as if the movie and the "Art of the Movie" are one in the same. I feel the same way about the LOTR movies; at their best, they look "painterly" as well, but in the style of Alan Lee and John Howe. To my eyes, there are few sights as breathtakingly gorgeous as the Star Destroyers taking flight at the end of AOTC.

It's my least favorite of the PT but I do still like it overall. There's more good than bad. Nice to read some positive thoughts about it.

Re: the earlier convo about the droid factory sequence -- yeah, I could live without that. Mainly so the movie can get to the arena faster; from that point on, the movie doesn't let up and I love every minute of it. All we need is for Anakin and Padme to get captured, not all the running around and head-swapping and droid-flying.

[Caseyscott]

Originally Posted by HeavyHitter

To each his own. But I'll reserves the words "beautiful and painterly" to scenes like Cloud City in the unaltered ESB. That is what I consider true art.

It helps that The Empire Strikes Back uses proper design principles while composing shots and The Attack of the Clones in most instances utilizes an overload of useless information which of course has the opposite effect.

[steel_breeze]

Originally Posted by HeavyHitter

To each his own. But I'll reserves the words "beautiful and painterly" to scenes like Cloud City in the unaltered ESB. That is what I consider true art.

And I can certainly get behind that. I may be defending my minority opinion that AOTC is my favorite prequel, but NONE of the prequels can touch the Original Trilogy. That's in a league of its own. Cloud City is indeed gorgeous -- particularly the shot when the Falcon maneuvers up beneath the dangling Luke. However, I think the single most gorgeous shot in all of STAR WARS is the Executor approaching Hoth, flanked by two Star Destroyers and two TIE Fighters. Perfection.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by thegoat

I very much agree with this. I do think it's a shame that CG artists often don't get credit for their creative efforts and get a lot of flack for it. As a term, CG is often thrown around with disdain as if the animators are cheap hacks with no artistic sensibility. Really though, the problem people have with CG comes from filmmakers and studios who choose green screen backdrops and animation when it's not appropriate for the sake of cost or convenience. I don't think anybody would have been happy if Lucas used mostly hand drawn animation to created Geonosis either, no matter how good the animation was. It also would have looked pretty silly if all the droids were puppets or stop motion in this day and age

For another example, I don't see anybody talking about how embarrassingly bad the CGI was in early Pixar films. You can't tell me that, objectively, the animation even in the droid factory sequence looked less realistic than a lot of the animation in Finding Nemo or Monster's Inc, but it gets trashed anyway because the sequence was extraneous, didn't flow well, featured some poor compositing, and so on.

People always bring up early CG in and of itself but it's as I said earlier about the Geonosis battle: when something is told using entirely the same animated technique then that becomes part of its charm, you can't see the joins because everything is a join so the mind is able to accept it more readily. But when actual hooman beans are stuffed into the midst of it then there's only a certain level of 'reality' that the mind will accept.

BUT I don't mean accepting the 'reality' of the designs themselves as they can be as crazy as you like, I mean accepting the 'reality' of whether it looks like those people are really there or not and the two digitally-shot prequels fall badly short in that regard, whereas the film-based anamorphic acquisition of Phantom Menace meant that ILM had to work a lot harder to blend their CG creations with the distortion of the lenses, the film grain and so on. There are also far more practical locations used in that film than the other two which amps up the realism factor.

Originally Posted by steel_breeze

Agreed. I'd be content if it were the ONLY prequel, quite frankly. To me, it is the single-most satisfying cross-section of time: the waning days of the Old Republic, when Palpatine is manipulating "absolute power" over the senate; Anakin is young to enough to make us think "wow, that's a young Darth Vader", yet old enough that he's no longer saying "yippee"; it shows the origin and beginning battle of the Clone Wars, which we've heard so much about; and it's the ONLY movie that shows the one thing I day-dreamed most when I was a kid in the 80's: an army of Jedi fighting side by side with their lightsabers.

Granted, the romance storyline is freaking TERRIBLE. And I'm not exactly dying to see a spin-off where younger Obi-Wan is pals with Dex the Diner Cook... but the rest satisfies my "pre-New-Hope" curiosities without making me wince through Anakin's turn to the dark side... which, in my opinion, is the absolute low-point of the prequels... followed closely by formerly-badass Padme dying of a broken heart.

But I know I'm wayyyyy deep in the minority on my appreciation of AOTC.

I've long said that I LOVE the last couple of reels of Clones, it's amazing seeing the Jedi go to war (with the clever subversion of the blocking of the Hoth battle) and that shot of the Star Destroyers is indeed superb. It's just a shame that it's preceded by an hour and a half of some of the most appallingly stilted "storytelling" I've ever seen outside of an Ed Wood joint. And it doesn't help that it finishes with that REALLY weird scene of Ani and Padme getting married, where she's got this incredibly vacant look on her face like she's doped up on tranquillisers or something.

[steel_breeze]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

I've long said that I LOVE the last couple of reels of Clones, it's amazing seeing the Jedi go to war (with the clever subversion of the blocking of the Hoth battle) and that shot of the Star Destroyers is indeed superb. It's just a shame that it's preceded by an hour and a half of some of the most appallingly stilted "storytelling" I've ever seen outside of an Ed Wood joint. And it doesn't help that it finishes with that REALLY weird scene of Ani and Padme getting married, where she's got this incredibly vacant look on her face like she's doped up on tranquillisers or something.

Yup. <sigh> To piggy-back off your own genius quote from the other day: "Forget it, Geoff. It's Prequel-town." So much bad intercut with so much good. That's why I finally gave up and embraced it all. I honestly don't know if I joined the Dark Side or the Light... but I'm genuinely happier for it; at least until I come through these forums, lol.

[Geoff D]

Right, but I'm not contemplating throwing myself off a bridge every time I think about them, there's room for objective criticism without it turning into teH Preequelz suxxor1!!

I genuinely like Phantom Menace even if it is too disconnected from the main saga for my liking, Clones is half an hour of pure awesome swaddled in an hour and a bit of pure shite, and Sith (my favourite of the three) shows us prolonged glimpses of what these prequels COULD have been if George hadn't spent two whole movies clearing his pipes.

[kemcha]

Fox Studios actually does own the first Star Wars film. From the way I understand it, it was Fox Studios who financed and produced the movie so for all intents and purposes, they legally own all the rights to the first Star Wars movie. Hate to be the one to explain this, but unless Fox Studios 'sells" the rights of "Star Wars" to Disney, then there's nothing that Disney can do about it.

Lucasfilm, as the movie studio who produced the movie for 20th Century Fox, can improve, update or enhance the film but that it's up to 20th Century Fox what to do with the film once Lucasfilm finishes up its repeated restorations on that movie.

Originally Posted by chip75

Fox doesn't own Star Wars. Lucasfilm do. Fox only have distribution rights. Which mean Lucasfilm Ltd. can do what they like. When they like. But they have to give a cut to Fox.

I don't consider myself an insider either but I happen to know a lot about copyright law. Simply put, if Lucasfilm has produced a 4K restoration of the film, Disney cannot release that film since 20th Century Fox owns the rights to that film. Fans can stomp their feet and wish otherwise, but in the end, that film is owned by 20th Century Fox.

Think of 20th Century Fox like CBS/Paramount. Although Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek, it's CBS/Paramount who owns the rights to the Star Trek franchise. It's similar to the relationship with the first Star Wars film. The way I understand it, George Lucas did not fund that movie himself, it was 20th Century Fox that did. Lucasfilm, as a studio, maintains the restoration, editing, enhancing that movie but that it's 20th Century Fox who ultimately decides what they want to do with the film.

Originally Posted by zafisher94

I'm certainly no insider so I'm not 100% sure on this, but I believe that Fox doesn't really hold any power regarding A New Hope. I'm under the impression that Disney has control over how/when it is to be distributed, and Fox must acquiesce to their requests.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a lawyer and no expert but I'm fully aware of copyright law because I run an intellectual property website and forum community and it's something I forced myself to learn more about. It's just a balancing act being played out between Lucasfilm, 20th Century Fox and Disney. I imagine that if Disney decided they wanted to purchase the rights to the first Star Wars movie, that if Fox Studios were so tempted, that the purchase price would be astronomical because they now know the value of that film and that they could squeeze Disney for top dollar for the rights.

Whatever the outcome, it's all going to come down to a rights issue.

Please note that I'm also basing this on a comment that was featured in an article I came across some time ago. In the article (I'll see if I can find the article), the writer of the article was asked by a reader if Fox would give up the rights to Marvel's Fantastic Four film franchise. The response was that Fox Studios has very few bankable film properties that they currently own.

The writer went on to say that 20th Century Fox won't give up the rights to X-Men and Fantastic Four because they are the only bankable properties that they retain. Fox Studios owns the rights to the X-Men and Fantastic Four franchise as well as Alien, Prometheus, Avatar and Predator not to mention the first Star Wars film. The studio financed these films and film franchises so per copyright law, they actually do own the rights to those films.

Right now, 20th Century Fox is suffering as a studio, they're not producing a lot of profitable movies right now so they have bargaining edge right now and that they have the law on their side as to their ownership of these films.

The production studios that produced these films for 20th Century Fox do remain responsible for improving, upgrading and editing these films for future releases like Lucasfilm and James Cameron's production company but that Lucasfilm and James Cameron don't retain the rights to those films, they retain only creative control of those films.

I've tried explaining this as best I could and I didn't bring this back up just for cause, but rather that other entertainment sites are rehashing this tired old argument. This has been dug back up by sites such as Blastr and Slashfilm, who can;t seem to give this issue a rest.

[Geoff D]

Guys, please don't ^

[steel_breeze]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

...and Sith (my favourite of the three) shows us prolonged glimpses of what these prequels COULD have been if George hadn't spent two whole movies clearing his pipes.

Yeah, I'm way out of step. SITH is by far my least favorite STAR WARS movie. That moment of Anakin's "turn" is so badly bobbled, I have a hard time forgiving it. It's what the whole prequel trilogy is about, and is so freaking terrible (in my opinion) and rushed... gack, it pains me every time -- far more than any wince-inducing romantic dialogue or Jar Jar shenanigans. If that "turn" sequence had been done better, I may never have gone through my ten years of utter Prequel denial and detestation.

[GeoffOliver]

Since Disney/Lucasfilm and Fox worked together to release the digital copies of the films (LF already owns the digital rights to 1-3, 5-6), I don't see why a deal can't be made to work together on a new Blu-ray as well, especially with so much money to be made for both companies.

[motorheadache95]

Originally Posted by steel_breeze

Yeah, I'm way out of step. SITH is by far my least favorite STAR WARS movie. That moment of Anakin's "turn" is so badly bobbled, I have a hard time forgiving it. It's what the whole prequel trilogy is about, and is so freaking terrible (in my opinion) and rushed... gack, it pains me every time -- far more than any wince-inducing romantic dialogue or Jar Jar shenanigans. If that "turn" sequence had been done better, I may never have gone through my ten years of utter Prequel denial and detestation.

I liked Sith more than you (for me it was the only decent prequel) but I agree on Anakin's turn-- it was so awkward and forced. Like one minute he's all "oh no, I helped kill Mace Windu, what have I done?" and then goes immediately into "I'm Darth Vader and I'm gonna kill kids and do every evil thing I'm told to do" mode.

And then every revelation falls flat, like Obi Was discovering Anakin's treachery and confronting him on Mustafar.

[chip75]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Guys, please don't ^

It's our solemn duty, Geoff D ...

Originally Posted by kemcha

I don't consider myself an insider either but I happen to know a lot about copyright law. Simply put, if Lucasfilm has produced a 4K restoration of the film, Disney cannot release that film since 20th Century Fox owns the rights to that film. Fans can stomp their feet and wish otherwise, but in the end, that film is owned by 20th Century Fox.

Distribution rights. Not copyright. There's a huge difference. Lucasfilm Ltd. can do what they like and 20th Century Fox get a percentage of the profits as they are the distributor.

There is no ownership issue. Everything is owned by Lucasfilm Ltd. and their parent company.

It's actually in Fox's best interest that Lucasfilm do rerelease and re-issue the films over the next 3 years, they're basically getting money for nothing (as the restoration costs will at Lucasfilm's expense) and with the original Star Wars, Fox will be getting a cut forever.

Remember that for the theatrical and home video releases Fox are in the exact same position currently as they are with Star Wars as they are with Episodes I-III and Episodes V and VI, but only until 2020. Then Fox's theatrical and home video distribution deal ends (they don't have non-theatrical distribution deals for those episodes at all, just Star Wars).

And we've already seen fruits of those deals, with a new box set last year and digital copies been released worldwide.