Star Wars: The Complete Saga (1977-2005)

[klauswhereareyou]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Gimme a break. Kurtz was a lax producer whose failure to control the overruns on Empire nearly cost Lucas the ownership of the film and the franchise. Carrie Fisher said the dude stood around taking photographs all day, there's your 'hands on' producer. Man, I gotta keep away from dat Kurtz Kool-Aid™.

And how exactly is receiving the Academy Award for Best Editing not giving someone enough credit? Even for a Star Wars thread, that's some fresh bullshit right there. Marcia Lucas divorced George and got on with her life, if she'd carried on in the biz then I'm sure we'd have heard a lot more about her prior exploits. She was also one of the editors on Jedi, BTW, so even with her incredibly amazing Academy Award winning talent she wasn't able to pull that one out of the fire...

I'd say that the editing of the several different plot threads during the last act of Jedi works much better than the editing of the last acts of any of the prequels.

[Geoff D]

IMO the finale of Phantom Menace does an even better job because it juggles 4 different storylines. That whole movie is like a megamix of Star Wars and Jedi anyway.

Besides, I laid it on thick in reference to Elvis' obvious dislike of the movie: "Just look how Jedi turned out without Kurtz!". I guess we'll just forget how badass the speeder bike chase was edited, and the end battle, as you say. (Just don't mention the sail barge assault, it's a dreadful scene).

[IndyMLVC]

Originally Posted by Elvis

And Gary Kurtz was just as important to the success of the first two films as Lucas. Lucas had to be reigned in several times by Kurtz! Just look how Jedi turned out without Kurtz! Sorry but Lucas is WAY WAY overrated when it comes to credit. People like Marcia his ex wife do not get enough credit especially for that academy winning editing job. It's so pathetic!

Really? I read the "making of" books. I don't remember much about Marcia's contribution being mentioned.

[klauswhereareyou]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

IMO the finale of Phantom Menace does an even better job because it juggles 4 different storylines. That whole movie is like a megamix of Star Wars and Jedi anyway.

Besides, I laid it on thick in reference to Elvis' obvious dislike of the movie: "Just look how Jedi turned out without Kurtz!". I guess we'll just forget how badass the speeder bike chase was edited, and the end battle, as you say. (Just don't mention the sail barge assault, it's a dreadful scene).

Apparently that has to do with the fact that Marquand did such a crap job directing those scenes.

[octagon]

Originally Posted by klauswhereareyou

Apparently that has to do with the fact that Marquand did such a crap job directing those scenes.

There's more than enough blame to go around.

I love Mark Hamill but when he's one of the best things in your movie you know you've got problems.

[Elvis]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

IMO the finale of Phantom Menace does an even better job because it juggles 4 different storylines. That whole movie is like a megamix of Star Wars and Jedi anyway.

Besides, I laid it on thick in reference to Elvis' obvious dislike of the movie: "Just look how Jedi turned out without Kurtz!". I guess we'll just forget how badass the speeder bike chase was edited, and the end battle, as you say. (Just don't mention the sail barge assault, it's a dreadful scene).

woah...how did you infer that? Jedi was NOT on the same level as the first two. I still love the film, much better than the mess that is the PT. And you are so wrong about Kurtz (Saved George's ass several times with the first film), in fact you couldnt be more wrong if you were a blind man throwing at a dart board. Think you better go back and get the whole story, not just one side of the story.

[Geoff D]

Oh, so you were praising the movie when you said "Just look how Jedi turned out without Kurtz!"? Gotcha. And I've read plenty on the subject, not just the blinkered opinions of people like Michael Kaminski or Kurtz' own self-aggrandising interviews. Whenever I hear him talking about how his involvement with Star Wars I'm reminded of Ron Burgundy: "I'm kind of a big deal".

And if Kurtz saved George's ass several times with the first film, he damned near took it away from him lock, stock and barrel with his incompetence on the second one. So I guess that evens itself out then, huh?

[Elvis]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Oh, so you were praising the movie when you said "Just look how Jedi turned out without Kurtz!"? Gotcha. And I've read plenty on the subject, not just the blinkered opinions of people like Michael Kaminski or Kurtz' self-aggrandising interviews.

And if Kurtz saved George's ass several times with the first film, he damned near took it away from him lock, stock and barrel with his incompetence on the second one. So I guess that evens itself out then, huh?

Howard G. Kazanjian who had a better rapport with Lucas was a YES man. Kurtz challenged him creatively....also not all the overruns were Kurtz fault on TESB. Snowstorms killed production several times and couldn be shot indoors. Just look at the YES man on the PT...

[Geoff D]

I'll give you the snowstorms. Not even the living God that is Gary Kurtz could avert that. But instead of trying to make savings in the schedule and speeding things up when they got to London, the production slowed down even more to the point where the banks threatened to take over the production. Without Lucas' supervision Kurtz was happy to let the movie meander along as if he was still on the studio's dime. He wasn't.

As a team, Kurtz and Lucas were great together. When they were apart, not so much.

[Elvis]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

I'll give you the snowstorms. Not even the living God that is Gary Kurtz could avert that. But instead of trying to make savings in the schedule and speeding things up when they got to London, the production slowed down even more to the point where the banks threatened to take over the production. Without Lucas' supervision Kurtz was happy to let the movie meander along as if he was still on the studio's dime. He wasn't.

As a team, Kurtz and Lucas were great together. When they were apart, not so much.

I will agree with that for sure.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by Elvis

And you are so wrong about Kurtz (Saved George's ass several times with the first film)

I'm curious: how and what did Kurtz do, besides secure financing? Otherwise he didn't creatively "save" George on SW.


Even Spielberg talks about how he's just a hired gun on the Indiana Jones films and it's "George's story & vision".

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by dfeito

You are 100% right. It really annoys me when people claim Lucas is the "artist" of these movies. No he's not. He's the artist of a new hope, and only the producer and financier on the rest of the OT movies. This is the equivalent of Universal recutting American Graffiti without Lucas's consent cause they financed it. I'm sure Lucas would not be ok with that

Can't buy your argument. The story, conception and look of ESB and ROTJ was Lucas'. A line producer (as opposed to an executive producer) takes an active role in every aspect of a movie except directing the actors on the floor of the set. Lucas was involved in approving creatures, special effects, costumes, set design, etc. Lucas was also involved in the editing. While normally, the director is considered to be the "auteur", that was clearly not the case in those two Star Wars films. Having said that, the directing was clearly better in those two films, especially ESB, than it was in the films that Lucas personally directed.

That doesn't mean you can't criticize all the changes in the special editions and various home releases, but only from an intellectual and artistic standpoint - not from a "rights" standpoint.

Also, in defense Ted Turner: at the time he colorized films, the idiot marketplace at the time in large part did not accept b&w films. Therefore, the colorization made those films financially viable, which in turn, paid for the preservation of the original films and eventually, the restoration of many of them. Turner did not destroy the originals - it's not like he destroyed the b&w negatives or prints after creating the colorized versions (unlike Lucas, who claims that the original versions of the OT no longer exist, even though not everyone believes that).

And as the marketplace got more sophisticated, it rejected the colorized versions (although a few still pop up on TV every once in a while). So today we have a tremendous library of classic WB, RKO and MGM films that look better than they have at any time since their original release, and most of that is thanks to Turner. Remember, it was Turner who bought and sold MGM several times, but was smart enough to keep the library.

Personally, with a few exceptions (force ghosts, "nooooo", a few others), I think objections to the changes are way, way overblown. 95% of the changes were either fixing bad opticals or adding more objects to scenes (which I think were unnecessary, but didn't really do any harm). I have far more objections to plot holes and inconsistencies in the PT then I do to changes in the OT. And even in the OT, I never bought that the character that Sebastian Shaw played when revealed could have been Anakin Skywalker, even before the PTs were produced. It was too "Wizard of Oz" for someone who had been responsible for so much terror and death.

[Kryptonic]

I'll just let Geoff handle the arguments in here from now on. Good show, man.

[balthazar_bee]

http://www.r-word.org/

[wormraper]

Originally Posted by balthazar_bee

http://www.r-word.org/

someone needs to see dodgeball

[IndyMLVC]

Originally Posted by wormraper

someone needs to see dodgeball

I'd rather watch a Special Edition.

And THAT'S saying somethin'.

[rickah88]

Originally Posted by balthazar_bee

http://www.r-word.org/

Well said.
I can't stand when that word is used in such an insensitive and thoughtless way.

[wormraper]

Originally Posted by IndyMLVC

I'd rather watch a Special Edition.

And THAT'S saying somethin'.

[Rambaldi47]

I think the whole "save Han" storyline was rushed. Putting Jabba on Tatooine was lazy writing too. IMO, it would've worked better if they spent less time on the Ewoks and fleshed out a better Jabba sequence, possibly having Jabba on Nal Hutta or any other planet besides Tatooine, and having Boba Fett either not die or die in a blaze of glory. The Vader/Emperor stuff was great, but having another Death Star seemed lazy to me.

[klauswhereareyou]

Originally Posted by Rambaldi47

I think the whole "save Han" storyline was rushed. Putting Jabba on Tatooine was lazy writing too. IMO, it would've worked better if they spent less time on the Ewoks and fleshed out a better Jabba sequence, possibly having Jabba on Nal Hutta or any other planet besides Tatooine, and having Boba Fett either not die or die in a blaze of glory. The Vader/Emperor stuff was great, but having another Death Star seemed lazy to me.

Rescuing Han could've been a whole other movie in itself.