f13.net

Free download of Episode 3 trailer here. (http://www.worldofepic.net/ep3.mov)

I have to see it -- like the instinct to look at a car wreck.

I have never seen a live-action film look more like a fucking animated film than on that trailer. /meh Looks interesting, and I'll see it for completeness sake, but after the CGI-overkill that was AOTC, I don't have high expectations.

The trailer is great. As in, they took the only good parts of the movie and put them in. So basically this is Mr. Lucas' way of not making me spend $7.

Meh, the lightsaber duels in the prequels make everything from the originals look extraordinarily tame.

Anakin's skill in the duel with Dooku, combined with Obi-Wan's l33t sab3r sk1llZ in both films means that the showdown between the two in Episode 4 should have been among the best parts of the film, if not the entire series. Instead, it serves as the worst lightsaber battle in the series.

Unless Lucas intends to go back in and redo all the original Obi-Wan duel with CGI....but I'm not so sure pulling a Yoda with Sir Alec Guniess is such a hot idea.

Bring the noise.
Cheers.............

Looks solid, and I've been waiting for this one since the original idea of the prequals came out. It may suck, but not because of story line or lack of action. In the others the plot was very very weak because they've basically been saving up all the backstory for this one movie. They have so much to cover it's hard to imagine where they will leave off at the end.

Hopefully Darth Vader won't be such a whiney kid this time around.

I love 4-6 too much to not see 3, despite the suckage of 1 and 2.  I'm a total fanboi of this series, and am gonna be there.

Hope it doesn't suck :(

Right now it'd be a really bad move.  Another decade or so and it might be feasible.

I just figure Obi-Wan had gotten old, hadn't been practicing, and wanted Vader to cut him down anyway so he could retire and be a blue glowy.

But that doesn't account for how "crappy" Luke's saber skills look during an era (V and VI) when he should be at the height of his Jedi superbadassness.

Luke didnt exactly get years of Academy-level training like the Jedi in Episodes 1-3.

He got basically one session of training on board the Falcon. Yoda instructed him verbally, but didnt exactly demonstrate any lightsaber skills to Luke. He was getting too old.

Luke didnt stay with Yoda that long. They didnt have the training facilities there.

I can see Luke managing with use of the Force and such, but his training wasnt nearly on par with the others.

Heh, don't try to debate it with fic references.  The swordplay sucked because they didn't have Grade A choreographers to do the legwork.

i would actually have to go with the whole "out of practice", "not fully trained" arguement.

I mean, how long do you think it had been since either Vader or Obi-wan had dueled ANYONE with a saber.  I dont imagine either spent serious time keeping in practice.  Vader had no one to fight, and Obi-wan had pretty much retired.

They didn't *need* choreographers because the duels were not the point of the movie -- they were just part of it. No one complained about the light saber duels when the films were originally released. We were too awed by feeling that we had actually flown down the canyon trenches of the death star....

I'm happy to see one of the most over-blown and over-valued space opera franchises being spectacularly demolished by its creator. That will help open space for new stories rather than endless re-arrangements of tired ideas by a clearly talentless hack.

Not to mention an idea-thief.  I wonder if Akira Kurosawa rolled in his grave when Lucas made the new movies?

The first two movies have been about 220 minutes of 'wha?' with 10 minute of 'boo-yah!' on the end.  I don't see any reason why III will be any different.  I'll see it because I've seen the first two.

I didn't see any shots of Natalie in a bikini.  Feeling grumpy.

Yeah, he was definitely the weak link, but if Shattered Glass is any indication, I'd say he's grown up as an actor.



Do you realize how many times Yojimbo has been ripped off? Just about every director steals something from Kurosawa. That's like criticizing someone for stealing from Shakespeare (which ironically, Kurosawa did a little of himself).

Star Wars sucks. You bastards better not start a thread when they release a 6 movie box set.

Fucking beasts.

True, but I bet you're going to see it anyways, aren't you?

I saw the trailer. That was all the good parts. I stood in line for episode 1 tickets. I still taste the urine.

Dream on.

(There was an image of a banstick here for $9.95. It was transparent. They fucked up.)

Cheaper than a movie ticket and a diet coke.

More powerful than the force.

I think the suckness has neither to do with the actors, nor their age.  You did see Natalie Portman in "The Professional", didn't you?  She was what, 12, when she did that movie?  Compare that to her shitty performance in the Star Wars films.  I think we can blame Lucas.

Perhaps you're right.

Just want to add here too: These films aren't gonna work like the originals, I think, because they're lacking the whole Campbell-mythology-archetype bent. It's not necessarily that Lucas sucks (and maybe he does). It's just that it's impossible to incorporate those things that made the original work into a story like this one. This new trilogy is tragedy wrapped around a intricate political backstory (but granted, even that isn't done well).

It's made Star Wars suck, but I'm not totally hatin' on it either...Qui-Gon, Obi, Jango, and Palpatine are cool. Some of the action scenes are really good. These aren't going to make up for lack of a good story, a poor central character, or Jar-Jar, but I'll give the last one a chance, I guess. It's only one more (or so I think (http://comingsoon.net/news/topnews.php?id=6318)).

YES.

Crappy as in you don't go "OOOH shiny"  not so crappy when viewed by folks with any training in actual long pieces of sharp deadly metals.

The fights for the first 3 episodes were coordinated by professional sword choreographers.  The prequels were by hollywood fight coordinators with an eye for flair influenced by 30 years of martial arts and action films.

The explainations of "Luke was half trained" and "Ben was old, Vader is half machine" are only there to gloss-over this discrepency between the styles of Shallowood (sorry, Hollywood) of 30 years prior and today.  Would anyone have gone to watch EP1 or EP2 if they had more realistic swordplay vs the flash that works well in trailers?  Sure, but not as many and the grouses would have been louder.

We live in a time when "Fast and the Furious" and "XXX" are considered to be great movies by youth culture.  If the original Star Wars were released today (even if you filmed it with modern techniques) it'd be a joke that wouldn't even make 4 million.

  I've watched EP1&2 and the OT enough now to see they're actually preddy damn similar. In terms of dialogue, pacing, depth of character and a slew of other things that EP1&2 are panned for while the OT is praised they're identical.

  Too many people are just glossing over the "suck" (relative term here. "suck" compared to current movies.) factor of the OT with cherished memories and the fact that it was a completly new thing for its time.  But since GL hasn't moved forward and matured along with the genre and the audience, the new trillogy seems hackneyed, stilted and shitty.

I gotta go with Merusk here (at least part way) Lukes fights with Vader are far more 'realistic' than the fights from EP 1 and 2 (from a stand point of you want to kill someone with a long sharp thing while protecting yourself from the same).  Sure the Qui-Gon, Obi, Darth Maul fight looks better but its all chinese opera theatrics, in the end its just not as satisfying, at least to me.

I think Lucas explains on the DVD's that his original idea (which he eventually gave up on) for the saber fights was to mimic Japanese sword fighting (i.e. two-handed), and that the lightsaber was equivalent to swinging a 50 lb sword. I guess he could explain it away as Obi getting old or whatever, but then look at Dooku..He's like one of the three musketeers or something.

There's a simple reason for the crappiness of the Ep 4 saber battle...there were only two lightsabers duelists left in the entire galaxy (not counting all the EU Jedi that were hidden in every other street) and they hadn't fought for decades.  When you kill all the Jedi in the galaxy except two you have to accept that your saber skills may thereafter suffer.

I remember hearing a while back that Lucas had a fit over Irvin Kershner having Vader hold the lightsaber with one hand.

Then on the dvd's, he goes on about how it was just a progression.

No. Just no!

I don't know if any of the fights were "realistic".  A lightsaber should be able to stab just as well as it can hack.  It's easier to get a stab in, past the guard of an opponent, yet I can recall no thrusts in any of the movies.  The moves I remember seem to be telegraphed hacks and slashes that could be easily defended against.

50 pound any kind of melee weapon == wielder loses.  Sorry, but that's just the way it is.  Katanas don't weight 50 pounds, not even close to that, and lightsabers are not mimicking 50 pound weapons.

Obviously, he is not referring to Japanese swords but to the English broadswords and Scottish claymores which were extremely cumbersome.  50 pounds might be an exaggeration but there are quite a few swords that require two hands to swing.

It's an urban legend that medieval weapons weighed 50+ lbs.  Its STEEL people, it has a certain density and the medieval smiths wern't able to get around such nifty phyiscal effects such as Specific Gravity and Molecular Bonding.

Think along the lines of 5 lbs being extraordinarily heavy. Try swinging a 5 lb piece of steel around for 30 seconds and you will see that 5 lbs is plenty heavy.

And don't try any crap about how they didn't have steel.  The fucking Romans in 80 BC had steel for thier swords and armor.

As for thrusting attacks not being used in ep 5 and 6 go watch the fucking movie again.  Luke uses several lunges, one in particular when he THRUSTS his saber at Vader after Vader figures out about Leia.

As Murgos said, even the larger swords rarely broke 5-6 pounds, if it was intended for actual use.  There have been found a few ceremonial, 'pretty' swords found that weighed as much as 10 or 12 pounds, but they were intended to look pretty, not to be wielded any length of time in actual combat.

A 50 pound weapon would be pretty much unusable.  The mass of it would give it so much momentum when in motion, you'd have to be inhumanly strong to manipulate it.  Maybe someone in the strength class of pro body builders could have some use of it, but it'd still be cumbersome, 2-handed for sure, and it might as well be a giant club for all the finesse you'd be able to manage.

Alkiera

What Murgos says. A claymore weighs 8-10 pounds, including hilt. It is a weapon of terror typically swung in arcs over the wielder's head. When it connects, its basically over for the wielder, since the inertia is so great. The warrior will pick themselves up and use a dagger at close quarters. Scots typically used the basket hilt broadsword, which is a relatively crude straight blade a little under 3 feet in length and weighing around 5 pounds. It is not in any way a fencing weapon, and the idea is to kill the opponents fast. My right arm is still much stronger than my left after years of weekly training for re-enactment and stage fighting. Modern fencing sabres weigh at most one pound, having lost most of their original weight (~3 pounds) for speed. The weight that Lucas appears to have settled on for the light saber appears to be close to the arming sword, an early civilian dueling weapon that weighed nearly four pounds.

Yeah.  Most people also think warhammers and battle axes look a whole lot bigger than they actually are.

How much can a sword made out of LIGHT really weigh? One ounce?

But you are forgeting about the super heating of the air and creation of oxygen plasma which would increase the drag coeficient.



/is kidding, can't believe this is a topic of discussion

Well, that's an interesting question. Assuming that the "blade" weighs next to nothing, you still have to calculate what the balance point and fulcrum of the lever is. In order to use sword-like moves with all those counter-balancing hip movements, it's going to have an interesting looking hilt.

As with Niven's Ringworld, it's best just to suspend your disbelief.

Stop being a fag.

What the fuck does that mean?  What warranted that sort of response?  I don't know what's wrong with your mind lately, but give it fucking rest or take drugs or something.

I'm surprised you all took it that seriously. I mean, you are talking about the weight, balance, and physics of a sword. As an apology I offer you this:

(http://ontodynamics.net/images/Quantum%20Physics/NM06_04_Sword.JPG)

It is one of the results on a GIS for "Sword Physics."

Edit: I'm not sure what it means. It may have something to do with time travel. Or Rocket Science. Or some other horribly high-falutin science that I have no business googling.

Shush!  You're breaking my mind!

I didn't mean to say that the lightsaber itself weighed 50 lbs. I just that know Lucas said (as far as the original trilogy goes) that controlling the swing of a lightsaber required both hands on the hilt and all of one's strength. He threw out that number, was probably going overboard, but you get the idea -- He originally didn't intend them to be the light, easily manueverable weapons they are in the later movies.

Congratulations, I've become geekier just by reading this thread.

Hey, you think you have it bad? I've already post 3 times here and I'm not even a fan of Star Wars.

I think we are approaching the molecular density of a collapsed star in geekiness quotient with this thread.

To derail for just a bit:

Episode III: The Game (http://www.lucasarts.com/ep3/)

Chance that this could be a decent title? or Yet-another-title-lucasarts-has-fucked-up?

For some reason, I find the graphic on the main page to be disgustingly blocky/lowrez.  Anyone else getting a similar vibe?

Your too funny.

Thanks for the spoiler alert on that trailer.

For anyone else, that hasnt seen it yet: Spoiler alert. I have a feeling many of those scenes are taken directly from the movie.

Of course, it's a light-saber, not a light-'sword', and we all know that a saber is a cavalry weapon.  So this raises the question, what the fuck were the jedi riding when they were invented?  I'm guessing Hutts.  Hutts with wings.

Cavalry in the galaxy Star Wars takes place in might mean something more along the lines of a pilot. Such as when starships in movies are considered part of a "Naval fleet".

Saber also eludes to a Middle Eastern aspect, a desert aspect. The first planet ever visited in the Star Wars movies is a desert planet.

Holy crap I had to try hard to make that as geeky as I could. I'm nowhere near as good at it as some of you.

Middle eastern? wtf are you on...its a well known fact that the arabs are all about scimitars..dude Im gonna have to go off and link like half a dozen googled links just to prove my geek superiority now...

..

.

was that any good?

I was thinking scimitar.

*cry*

George Lucas laughs at you all while wearing a pair of Depends Undergarments and a hat made of money as he masturbates furiously on a pile of money to Ewok pr0n.

Now that would be a picture for the google image game.

Considering Lucas completely ripped off an old and buried japanese serial from Akira Kurosawa, the Lightsabre is a metaphor for a Katana (Daito or Shoto).

Replace the "Outerspace" motif with the ocean (where Islands take the place of planets).
Replace Correlian Smugglers with "Western" Smugglers/Pirates and the large Spaceships with Boats.
Replace the word "Jedi" with the word "Kensai" (japanese for "Sword Saint").
Replace a neurotic, gold droid and his wheeled trashcan companion; R2D2 with an affeminately gay Slave and his Monkey companion (who carries messages in a tiny barrel around his neck).
Replace The "Deathstar" with a bizarre, medieval-tank that can destroy castles with it's massive steam cannon.
Replace "speeders" with horses.
Replace "Yoda" the alien with "Yoda" the ancient, severely shriveled old wiseman.


I was oblivious to how much of a talentless hack Lucas was until Kurosawa died about a decade ago and all of this shows, movies and unfinished projects were shown at a local film festival and on the cable channel Bravo.   After seeing those films and realizing how similar they were to Star Wars, it really soured my views of film and the "creative" aspects of industries.   I'm trying to find if there's a DVD (or even VHS) version of those serials because the name was in Japanese (and forgotten since my japanese is rusty) and they were all subtitled.

Lucas would probably shit a brick if some irate Japanese director or producer decided to make an anime or something with that lost footage and proclaim it "Written and directed by Akira Kurosawa circa 1960."

*puts his retainer back in and affixes a piece of tape to his Glasses of Uber-Geekiness +10.*

A lot of the elements are in Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress. But that was a film and doesn't sound like that serial you are talking about, of which I am not familiar.

Considering how the Video Game is intended to be released a number of WEEKS before the movie, I cant really see how they would throw spoilers in there.
I get the feeling that the Game is going to be one of those "lets tell a little bit of the story leading up to the third movie" kind of things, much like the Animated Shorts were.

The fact that its release date is tied to a movie release date ensures the sucking.  I submit Enter the Matrix and Star Wars Battlefront as historical examples of games that sucked because (in part) they were rushed out the door to meet some external schedule.

Yeah, it's definantly Lucas's fault.  A young, misunderstood Darth Vader that misses his mummy -- to pussify one of the greatest villians ever, it's impossible to come up with something more effective than this.

Please tell me you've got a problem with the premise because of the horribly shitty way it was handled, and not because you didn't see it telegraphed from the first goddamned "Whee" in Episode 1 straight through the fucking Bison-fisted (It was too bad to even be Ham-fisted) foreshadowing attempt of the "Will I ever see you again" speech.

I sense much anger in you.

That's just his Midochlorians raging with the coming of puberty.

Edmund : Twenty-four hours is a long time in politics. Good day.

Pitt the Younger: There is just one thing before I go... (confidentially) I've got this
   sort of downy hair developing on my chest -- is that normal? Also, I get
   so lonely and confused. I've written a poem about it; maybe you'll under-
   stand. "Why do nice girls hate me? Why--

Edmund: Get out, you nausating adolescent! (shoos him out the door) Piss off!

It's freaking Star Wars. It's the last episode before we get to the original Star Wars film. Anyone who hasn't been intentionally avoiding that flick for the last 25 years or so has already seen it, and knows where the story has to go.

In that regard, Episode III is on a par with Titanic or Passion of the Christ. The "big surprise" of this film is the part that we've all known about for the better part of 3 decades or so.

Bring the noise.
Cheers..............

I was actually a Lucas apologist before I saw this:

http://chud.com/news/430

My problem with it is that he turned Darth Vader into a momma's boi.  His endless whining helped show that this was indeed the case.