f13.net

Article here. (http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2012/10/30/disney-star-wars-lucasfilm/1669739/)


So this is gonna be rather strange and turns Disney into an even bigger powerhouse.  With Marvel and the Star Wars franchise, it's safe to say that Disney now owns two of the biggest IP's anyone could ever want.

I only assume can me we are going to see a lot more Star Wars in the future.  I'm also wondering if this will be good or bad for SWTOR.

Edit:  My bad Episode 7 of Star Wars comes out 2015.

"The latest part of the Star Wars saga, Star Wars Episode 7 is targeted for a 2015 release."

Not really sure how to feel about that. I'll wait and see whether the sale means Lucas retires and lets someone competent who isn't a complete fuckstick take control.

The neckbeards will bristle with rage if Episodes 7-9 invalidate a bunch of EU canon (which seems hard to not do.)

The chances of getting any of the Ep. 3-6 main cast to come back, besides maybe Hamill and C-3PO, is slim to none.

They'll still buy two copies each, and a collectors edition.

How the fuck did I miss episode 7 being announced?   Last I'd heard anything the Live Action stuff he was looking at doing was nixed because Clone Wars was so damn popular with the kids.   Are we sure EP7 is actual live action?  To Google I go.

I'm (VERY) cautiously optimistic. It's hard to imagine someone torpedoing the franchise harder than Lucas has been for years now.

If they take a page from the better Marvel flicks and insist Lucas sit in the exec producer position and let people actually in touch with moviemaking drive the bus, SW fans could really be in for a good time.

However, I'm sure Lucas has plenty of shit tricks hidden in his chin to ruin everyone's fun.

I am actually cautiously optimistic about this, especially since Lucas himself is only in a "creative consultant" role for the new movies, which is only a step or two above not being involved at all.

I wonder what this will mean for Lucasarts.

Is it just me or does $4.1 billion seem cheap?

The thought of an Episode 7 directed by Joss Whedon is an interesting one (though he'll be a bit busy with Avengers 2). I wonder if Flabba the Hutt actually got anything in the deal that allows him to veto director/screenplay decisions.

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/40386/Macros/jumping.jpg)

I had that thought too re: cheapness.

Ugh, Whedon. No thank you.

I read somewhere that Lucasarts is part of the deal.


As for 4 billion being cheap, I think Lucas just wants to cash out.  4 billion is also what they spent on Marvel if I remember right. 

A couple things to note.  That makes Avengers 2, Justice League and Star Wars 7 in 2015.

Also, a slim possibility of a Pixar run Day of the Tentacle movie or Grim Fandango? :O

Also, Disney purchased Marvel for $4.24B. So, yeah, cheap. Unless we missed a digit somewhere.

I dunno, $4 billion is still a ton of money, and I think that it, overall, it a pretty fair assessment of the worth of what basically boils down to a single movie production company and the Star Wars IP.

I imagine we're mostly desensitized to dollar values in the billions from other stuff in the news over the past decade or so.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203335504578089092063718614.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection

mindblown.jpg

Four billion sounds cheap.  I thought he'd never sell either.

Sounds like some serious business!

Imagine the value of all the current Star Wars memorabilia if Disney's first action is to vault this thing for 20-30 years.

Don't forget Ant-Man, The next Hulk, Avatar 2, and possibly the Batman reboot.

I tried to see if he's done anything I've liked. The answer was not much.

However, He was a co-writer on Speed. If he directs about a Starship that explodes if it drops out of hyperspace, I think we'll be fine.

Don't care about this at all. But as I said on Facebook, looks like we'll be getting the Star Wars that we used to know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJlbPXZEpRE

I doubt we'd get a Batman movie the same year as Justice League. I expect the relaunch to happen out of the JL movie.

So who DO we want to direct SW 7?

Fuck it , give me Nolan!

I don't think it should be Whedon, as much as a fan I am. Not the right fit.

I'd really like to see Peter Jackson let loose on Star Wars, although it won't happen.  I'd wouldn't mind seeing Raimi or Cameron at the wheel either.

Disney seems unlikely to repeat Jar Jar Binks.  Their kiddie stuff usually has adult appeal.

So?  That'll be the best part!

Unfortunately I'm willing to bet it will validate most if not all of it instead.

Nor should it be Abrams.  Was discussing this at work, we're not sure there's a really good fit out there these days.

I really don't know if I can trust Raimi anymore. I duno how I would feel about Cameron. Peter Jackson, I could get behind though. That would be an interesting loss for WB.

"The studio that brought you the Star Wars franchise is worth only four Instagrams." (http://twitter.com/mikeyil/status/263373322773987328)

What makes you say that?  Raimi has still been going strong up to this point, imo.  He brought us Spartacus!

I personally don't really trust Jackson much these days, but Star Wars just might be a good fit for his style of movie making.  But yeah, almost certainly wont happen.

The whole Evil Dead thing has me a bit... :/ Plus, Spider Man 3... though that arguably had a lot to do with Sony sticking their dick in the middle of that.

Why don't you trust Jackson?

You know what, give it to a Japanese director to complete the circle.  :why_so_serious:

Edit: You know what? Brad Bird. Done. That's who I'd want, I think.

Hey maybe Disney will be able to save the Star War franchi~ahahahahaha I couldn't say it

Seriously.  Who cares at this point.

Edit: actually, what would be funnier is starting the rumor that they will reboot and thus re-film the whole franchise.   Well, it could happen (no it won't).  :why_so_serious:

My current expectations for movies have slumped so low these days that I'd settle for a star wars movie without jar-jar or other childish crap, bourne-style camerazoom and star trek 10-style lensflare. :oh_i_see:

I have a very bad feeling about this.

Disney™ Star Wars® VII: Jar Jar Jaahahaha

I wonder if Clone Wars will get yanked from Cartoon Network and moved to one of the Disney channels. 

Also, LEGO...

Because...? No change to the Lego tie-ins. They do Star Wars and they also do Toy Story, Avengers and Pirates of the Caribbean.

I actually think this is a good thing.

Pixar Star Wars has promise.

With how Disney has handled the Marvel stuff, I am a bit optimistic at having their hands on Star Wars.  It's better than Lucas having his go at it again.  And you are worrying about Disney putting "kiddy" stuff in, but remember it was Lucas that gave us Jar Jar.

That seems very possible, they have that DXD channel with Avengers and Tron going. Clone Wars would be another big draw to it probably.

Imagine if Steve Jobs (Disney's largest shareholder due to their purchase of Pixar) was still around. Pixar began as a Lucasfilm spin-off, majority-owned by Steve Jobs, before his return to Apple. I don't know if he was a Star Wars fan, but I reckon he'd make them do it right.

They would be better off refilming 1-3 and finally giving the Nerds permission to say that 1-3 were utter shit. The relief dollars as Nerds gratefully throw dollars at them to  erase the pain from their memories would be worth billions.

Yeah, my experience with disney (which, admittedly, was quite a few years ago) was predominantly okay movies with musical skits thrown in. And annoying as the musical skits were, they did not make me think I would've felt insulted even if I were 7, which Lucas actually managed to do with Jar-Jar. I'll remain cautiously optimistic.

Things I'd like to see:

Pixar make a movie based on insert-old-lucasats-game-here. I don't care which one.

A space-combat game like Xwing or Tie Fighter! Mouse controlled though (in..ALL senses of the word) might not bring back the magic.


I don't have high hopes for any movies - it'll probably be a straight to DVD cartoon movie when they say one every 2-3 years. If they are live action the chance of the franchise being bleed for all it's worth is as good as EA taking over a gaming studio. Though a complete remake of the prequels by getting JJ Abram's might work.

I dunno, the prequels invalidated a bunch of canon, too, and nobody gives a shit, as far as I can tell.  I think I have a "Star Wars Encyclopedia" floating around from when I was a kid that talks about how bravely the republic soldiers fought against an evil army of clones in the Clone Wars, among other things (like the origins of the Death Star or C-3PO).

If I were in charge, I'd just KotOR the thing and set it a hundred years after Return of the Jedi, to explain the lack of Mark Hamill and co. and just avoid the soap opera "and then they all get married and their kids have adventures" shit altogether.

Article I read states Lucas will still be a creative consultant on the upcoming films so his stink will still infest the project, hopefully its minimal though

Sorry. I meant to imply that (as others have stated) the 4B pricetag seems low for the boost that a Disney channel will get from Clone Wars longterm PLUS whatever the a annual lego liscensing comes to.

Comedy Option: Muppet Star Wars.

I'd actually pay to see that.

Was just about to post this.

I'm moderately interested in seeing what they do with Star Wars.  That's an IP that should be relatively fuck up proof. 

More interesting, to me, are the possibilities with Indiana Jones. 

Fuck the rat. That is all.

By now the pertinent fanboy thought on the matter is that there's really nothing to lose with this transition. Disney could just 1. continue murdering the franchise as utterly as Lucas was, or they might 2. make a decent new star wars movie or show or something and breathe some life into the IP. The only thing that's changed is that there's now a chance of improvement. That's pretty much it.  None of the standard "Boy I hope Disney doesn't fuck up X by doing Y like they seem to do often" worries apply because Lucas has solidly fucked every X with a worse Y than Disney has ever had. A given pertinent Y is "goofy sidekicks For Kids™" of which they have never managed anything within orders of magnitude of Jar Jar, etc

 :headscratch:

There are so few ways to mismanage the franchise hard enough that anybody thinks you were worse for it than Lucas at this point.

HOWEVER, once cautious optimism sets in, that standpoint will change with the newfound fan demand that disney reach a certain level of not fucking the IP up as bad as Lucas did, but still .. it's a franchise with few ways to go but up.

The best thing is to pretend nothing after The Empire Strikes Back ever happened.

For myself, I prefer the very first film anyway.

I thought episode 7-9 was a bad idea until you posted this.

Animated episode VII created by Pixar in conjuction with ILM; Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, Wall-E) or Brad Bird (Ratatouille, The Incredibles) directing; screenplay by Lasseter and one of those two directors. I would watch it.

I just can't imagine another Star Wars film being anything other than unmitigated crap at this point.  But it'll probably still make money, so what the fuck do I know.

Can we finally get Star Wars properly on dvd and bluray? They can do whatever in the future if they justgive us that?

I don't get why people think disney will "ruin" star wars. You mean, more than it already has been?

Also, this will not be a clone wars movie and certainly not straight to dvd. You do not pay 4b dollars to make straight to dvd movies.

If they wanna do the small shit on the side, they own the ip now and they certainly will but you don't shell out that kind of money for the small shit.

Also, fuck yes numtini. We can now get unmolested star wars ep 4-5-6 on dvd and disney will make a killing selling it....which I have no doubt they will.

This news is disappointing inasmuch as it means that the Star Wars corpse will not be allowed to quietly decompose with whatever dignity it has left.

Disney is the fucking worst when it comes to DVDs. They use a "limited release" cycle with their major titles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Vault

I'm hoping you mean this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YztgdsnvsU).

That's about it. I don't even blame Lucas like a lot of people do. He's lost what little touch he had a long ass time ago. (Started during ROTJ, most likely) The smartest thing he could do is retire and hand SW down to a new generation of filmmakers. His major mistake was not realizing it until now.

I'll need to hear a lot more news to comment on any supposed new movies. Between now and then is far too much hollywood shenanigans to slog through. For now, I'll go with the safe internet messageboard opinion of "It'll suck!"  :grin:

That fact does not change the question posed. And, really, it's never been hard to get a copy of the Blu-Ray/DVD in modern times. We've been going through and collecting all the Disney flicks on Blu-Ray as they come out.

Ah! I see you've worked with Disney before, my friend!  (This is a common catchphrase I've heard from those who have. More on that later.)


Yes, not only limited release but incremental 'improvements' to drive new/ additional sales.   People mocked Lucas for putting out Star Wars in so many iterations. Look in to how many iterations of Cinderella or Snow White there have been from VHS-times forward.  That's with the "Disney Vault" treatment. If it had been out for continual release all those years we'd see more iterations than that.

Plus, Lucas is put to shame by Disney's direct-to-video and post-release merchandising fetish.  This is a marketing juggernaut that makes Lucas look like an amateur by comparison. Episode 7 is only the beginning.  


One of our clients at work is Disney, we do a lot of their boutique retail and outlet retail stores.  (Disney NYC? That's us.)  My office buddy is the project lead for all their stores, which is an interesting insight in to the other side of the mouse.   His brother is in Hollywood and has a good friend in a director at LucasFilm (who evidently works on the "Star Wars Animated project" which I assume is Clone Wars)  Upon hearing the news the brother sent an e-mail to the LucasFilm guy saying, "Hey, good luck with the Mouse!"    The reply was, "Fuck you, Gates!"  They seem to be thrilled.

On the other hand, this is apparently good news for the folks at LucasFilm as they will apparently now get union benefits.  Something Lucas had denied them all this time and with few options in that part of Northern California, meant they were all kind of stuck.

Holy shit, Disney buying Star Wars AND a new movie!  Fairly optimistic about this; Disney is on a roll.  There are still tons of stories to tell in that universe, you just need a good writer like ESB had Lawrence Kasdan.  I admit I don't watch Clone Wars though I've heard it's good.

Look, I'm an original fanboy, saw SW at the Cine Capri in Phoenix AZ when it released, BUT any mystic cachet it had was dispelled by the recent movies.  

Corporations like to make money and this franchise can still rake it in.

If you have worked in the entertainment industry there are only two camps:
1) those of us who loathe Disney either from working there or having friends who have and been fucked by the Rat.
and 2) Those who either work for Disney and love it and all of it's mega strict rules on appearance/lifestyle or have a lifelong dream of working for Disney.

I worked with one of the stars of the Lion King "spectacular" at WDW one summer. She loved working there and she was super cool, but she admitted that you had to buy fully into the corporate culture to survive as it is frankly pretty much like being in a cult in many ways.

I take back my nolan nomination and second the brad bird one.

My first trip to the USA was as an IT journalist, to report from a conference at the Swan and Dolphin hotels in the middle of Disney World, Florida.

With two other Australian journalists, I went out to a 1950s-themed bar in Disney territory. It was well populated and there were some amazing dance moves going on. Two hot blonde girls left the dance floor and chatted us up, but it was very fake.

Gradually it became apparent that we were the only three customers. Everyone else was a Disney employee, working.

I don't know where you heard that rumor about LucasFilm union benefits, but I know for sure that they have IATSE folks working there, one of my ex-roommates was a TA there and had to join. Eventually he was promoted out of that position to a software job that was non-union but developers aren't union anywhere AFAIK.

That matches what I've heard over the years, Chimpy.  About 15 years and 3 forums ago I knew a girl who did Cinderella at one of the parks. She was loathe to share even that much for fear of losing her job because they're so restrictive on what you can and can't say/ show as a "Main Character."

Still, if it's what you're in to it's apparently a fantastic employer.

Muppet Star Wars already exists.

(http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/muppets_sw.jpg)

Hamil is still around.
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/wut_mark_hamil.jpg)

Also:
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/vader_teacups.gif)
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/vader_dumbo_ride.gif)

I did at first, then I remembered that I just don't give a flying fuck about Star Wars anymore.  The prequels destroyed the whole franchise for me. 

While we're on the subject if you haven't watched the Red Letter Media reviews of the Star Wars prequels yet what the fuck is wrong with you block out a couple hours and do this shit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI

A girl I knew played as Jasmine but she said she loved it.  She was the same way in regards to being secretive about her work.

The Brad Bird suggestion is fucking genius. Let's hope it occurs to someone at Disney.

The Nerdgasm about including things from the EU has begun. I was watching with growing horror as someone on a chat channel in Star Trek OL was enthusing about how it would be cool to see "WorldBreakers" in action. And then started enthusing about how effective they were if you read about them. Oh and someone telling everyone how "Lucas always intended to make Episodes 7 - 9 you know!"

I think I might dig out my copy of TESB and cry.

It will make unbelievable fucktons of money. 

I never even saw Episode III, the first two were so bad, but I'd totally give this a chance.

I wonder what Disney is gonna do with the Indiana Jones IP.

Nathan Fillion.

Out of the prequels Episode III is the "good" one so you basically saw 1 so-so and 1 shitty movie for nothing if you skipped it. That said the Clone Wars cartoon series is making Lucas look like a moron by actually making Anakin look like an interesting character.


You know, I was about to say something sarcastic but after Indy 4 I think a reboot with Nathan Fillion has nowhere to go but up.

You need to watch it so as to then watch the Red Letter Media demolition of it, and final explanation of What Went Wrong and how Mistakes Were Made.

Someone needs to make a red letter review edit without the fuckstupid psychopath gimmick bits. They are RLM's jar jar binks.

Nah. The Plinkett stuff is hilarious.

Just a side note, I think those that say 'Stars Wars died with ESB' are pretentious douches. You saw ROTJ and you loved it. now you just wanna look like one of the cool kids.

If nothing else, this will revitalize the vader pics subforum. (and/or extend it to 'vader/mickey mouse pics')

(http://8.mshcdn.com/wp-content/gallery/star-wars-disney-memes/mickey-suns-640.jpg)

more (http://mashable.com/2012/10/30/star-wars-disney-mashups/)

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/40386/Smileys/plinkett_1.png) Just for that you ain't gettin a pizza roll.

Aside from anything else it is good to see f13 never changes and can complete a page every 4 hours on any star wars related topic.

This has 3 years to run before the first Disney star wars, we should really have thread length predictions recorded for posterity.

I'd probably had run for my life at that point.

This thread needs more WUA.

I think I hate you.  Whoever they cast will be a let down now.

I lied - it was just a hokey excuse to use that phrase. This whole story makes me feel like doing a little dance. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXp8T097vjc)

God, please let them stay a zillion miles away from the EU and its horrible "Oh, the Emperor wasn't really dead" and "Hey, look the Death Star, you remember that? We have a weapon that kills suns! Solar systems!" and then the torture-No Force aliens and all that.

I'd be perfectly happy with some basic "young Jedis who are related to the original characters trying to restore peace and justice to the galaxy VS. gangsters, bounty hunters and Dark Jedi" with some kind of McGuffin to drive the plot.

Quote from Iger:


The reason for this was explained on the NPR story this morning.  Disney would have to negotiate any rights and release with Paramount who also owns part of Indy.  While LucasFilm has  allowed Disney to use Indy for one of their park attractions, movie rights are a different matter.

Also in the NPR story was confirmation that you've only seen the tip of the iceberg on Star Wars merchandise. Per the Disney press release:

Not likely.  Someone from Disney also cited the "17,00 characters and thousands of universes" as part of the property to "create more stories in."   The best you can hope for is some better stewardship of the story part of the franchise so it doesn't get so damn convoluted since that's something Disney's pretty good at.

(Story here; will be a transcript by the end of the day) http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=164011470&m=163975105

Any corporate shill discussing possibilities presented by the EU material clearly hasn't read it.

Happily it is so bad that it is inconceivable anyone would try to film it.

Agreed. It's funny sometimes but completely distracting for a lot of the time.

Interesting to see that Disney's strategy is now to buy all the IP. Next up: WB buys Star Trek from Colombia. (That's off the top of my head - I'm sure someone will be along shortly to point out some exisitng relationship I'm unaware of.)

I doubt it will survive intact anyway, as Episode 7, 8 and 9 is guaranteed to invalidate such huge chunks of it as to make it irrelevant.  If they did ANY DD at all said exec was more likely saying, "Hey there's all these concepts and back-stories ready to be cherry picked."

But yeah, filming anything other than the Zahn books would be laughable, and parts of the Zahn books ARE laughable.  I thought they were great when I was 17, but I've flipped through them again since.. not nearly as cool given the changes to sci-fi in the last 20 years.

Jar-jar v0.1 says, "Wrong."

(http://blog.stackoverflow.com/wp-content/uploads/ewok-closeup.jpg)
It helps that the actor isn't as wooden.

Re: Nathan. I'd like to see him as Han or possibly another smuggler type. The single thing that the prequels lost was the ensemble feel of the original trilogy, and the humor (for adults, not kiddie bullshit humor).

Re: EU. After the 7,8,9 trilogy, Disney wants to push the franchise out every 2-3 years. While I hate waiting to see this until I'm OLD, I hope they bring on Zahn and do the Thrawn trilogy. Actually, it would probably be cooler than the 7,8,9 thing at this point. fake edit - Merusk, while the written book has some pretty laughable stuff, I read it for the first time a year or two ago and it still holds up as a first read, it's not high sci-fi or anything, but it would be a great basis for a trilogy of movies. It would be quite easy to inject the modern sci-fi jazz into the movie.

Asked about this again this morning.  Matt's brother works on the production side of things and was talking about writers, producers, etc. Which makes sense to me since Lucas himself was kicked out of the Director's guild for the SW opening credits, so I can't imagine he'd want to feed them dollars.

Hey, I liked Ewoks. As I've gotten older, yeah, it's raised more problems for me but as a kid they were great and I bought they could help take-down the Empire because, hey, Vietnam and there was a lot more lore around them when I was in 4th grade.  Like one Ewok is supposed to be as strong as 4-5 human males.  Makes the "sticks and stones" thing less jarring.

Sky: I'll have to give them a good read again.  However, a significant plot point is nearly invalidated in Jorrus C'both because the Clone Wars weren't what we all thought they were in the 80's & 90's.

You're dead to me.

Can't say I like Ewoks or hate them..(mind you I did go see the Ewok movie when it came out) but I still love Return of the Jedi. The vast majority of you saw RotJ when you were most likely under 15 and I'm betting you loved it too. Sorry I still think the whole 'oh Ewoks are so uncool' , 'ESB is for the cool kids' act is still pretentious.

 

It's ok, I'm after the "Ewok Line," it's allowed.

http://www.cinemablend.com/television/Ewok-Line-Explained-By-Barney-Stinson-How-I-Met-Your-Mother-35922.html

Look, I can see them evacuating the few decent characters from the EU like people getting on the last choppers out of Saigon, but the plotlines are either dumb reprisals of the movies, convoluted fanservice, or just plain bollocks. Thrawn, Mara Jade, maybe a couple of others.

If they really need an arc beyond good guys v. bad guys, something focused on the reestablishment and reinvention of the Jedi, opposed by a hidden alliance of Sith, gangsters, bounty hunters and neo-Imperial shitheads with maybe an aged Master Luke Skywalker making a brief appearance and croaking it in the first flick. I really think they cannot get away with a recasting of the originals to take up the story right after ROTJ. Star Trek worked because most of the characters were more "types" with less of a narrative arc.

The real trick will be to come up with an iconic bad guy like Maul or Vader.

You need to watch Clone Wars. (Not themovie but the CGI series.) They do all this very well and it's "only" a kid's cartoon.   The only thing they lack is a good iconic bad guy because Count Poop was running things at the time.

I was a junior in high school. I was not only disappointed by RotJ, but I was shocked. It seemed to me that ESB was a more mature film than SW and going directly to what was essentially a kiddy movie was a stunner. It wasn't just the ewoks though, it was the mystical mumbo jumbo thing with Jedi being equated with being emotionless and the idiotic deathbed repentance.

I wanted Revenge of the Jedi. I still do.

I dunno, the end of Jedi is pretty good IMO. The whole temptation, anger, evil thing during the confrontation with the emperor was pretty good. Also you get to see Ewoks get shot and killed IIRC which I thought was pretty good.

Yeah, growing up as a child born after the movies came out, everybody I knew considered RoTJ by far the best one.  Once I got older, Empire overtook it for me personally, but I still think RoTJ is just about as perfect an action flick and story ending as you can get.

And how can you possibly hate Ewoks!

I'm the odd man out here, but I actually really like the prequels. 

The prequels could've been good if they just recast Annikan and Padme and took out all the CGI garbage, filmed it on real sets.

RotJ had some good parts, certainly. The scene with Han and Leia when the troopers have them cornered at the door and she reverses the 'I love you' line is one of the best in the trilogy (and shows just how poor the Annikan/Padme wooden travesty is). But on the hole, the ewok thing sinks it. It's our generation's Jar-Jar, and that's the end of it.

I do disagree with Numtini on the redemption of Annikan Skywalker, it's really the point of the whole mythos. Although I also like the interpretation of the mythos being the adventures or the droid hero R2D2 as told by his companions.

5,4,6,3,2,1

Ok well maybe we can tolerate some ewok love but this is going way over the line!

Not even good actors can redeem horribly shitty writing (I don't think Portman's a bad actor). It's funny, the one thing I think Lucas got right was the reason that Annikan goes bad, ie his love for Padme, that idea was actually believable to me. It was just the complete and utter failure of execution of that idea that was the problem..:P

I forgot to mention the removal of all the filler nonsense. The pod race, the factory chase scene, the gladiator arena, etc. So much wasted time on nonsense. The commentary on the DVD for whichever prequel it was with the 'flying R2' droid factory chase scene said that it was added because the film was getting too plot-heavy and needed an action scene. Ye gods.

Further forgot to mention bringing on a real producer and director. Kirsch made Empire a great character-based movie.

Episode 3. "But you aren't sand, Padme!" Nuff said.

The books are worse. I am not joking or forgetting how bad 2 & 3 were.

I was going to post the same thing, eldaec.  They really, really, really blow.

Imagine all of Anakin's charm and guile with the ladies transposed on to a Luke who bounces from woman to woman in the span of a few months. Falling in Love with them all but never really mourning them.   That is the EU before I stopped reading in the late 90's.   Tack-on the Force-immune Yuzhen Vong (which in the SW universe should be like being immune to the forces of Gravity and Time) and the bizarre spins I've only seen hinted at since and it gets soooo much worse.

ed: Luke's love life. http://scifi.about.com/od/starwarscharacters/tp/SWAR_lukes-black-book.htm

Hopefully an Episode 7 would wipe out so much of that as to make many, many people rage.

I honestly think the world could be improved by a wave of heart attacks and strokes caused by a massive bout of Star Wars nerd rage.

Yeah, this. I started watching it, and the movie criticism bits were good, but the haw haw I have a girl in my basement shit drove me away.

We were the same. We had fierce debates over which was better -- Star Wars or Empire -- but none of us thought Return was the best of the three.

Just in case you forgot about it:

(http://i.imgur.com/jqC2a.gif)

I remember movie critics trying to talk themselves into believing that Ep III was actually a good film and redeemed the prequel trilogy. Movie critics can be idiots.

This is how I feel about the prequels. A lot of people bitch about this or that nitpicky thing. (Politics, my space opera? Oh noes that's never been done before.  :uhrr:) The problem is the scripts were lazy and the films were shot lazy. (shot, Reverse-Shot) Even Jar Jar wasn't necessarily a bad idea. Just a poorly executed one.

What we* need is a Trooper version of Band of Brothers.


*By we I mean me.

(http://www.nexuszero.net/Img/clone_wars.gif)

There's a lot of people who really legitimately like the prequels, but if you care at all about cinema they just have to be written off as the Lumpenproletariat of film-goers. They will subsist on pretty much anything as long as you give them whatever particular shiny they are after, be it lightsabers or exploding transformer robots or a goofy cgi marmaduke or an 'ambitious' Allien prequel or Adam Sandler, so your only job is to keep them away from franchises or ideas you really actually care about.

Per movie critics: the prequels were actually a seminal look into, of all things, the major failings of Ebert as a critic. He has some notorious blind spots that you can use to make him really goofily admire a really atrociously bad film, and the prequels filled ALL of them with shiny ebert candy and got three and a half stars for their trouble. (They would go on to pull the same stunt on him for Crystal Skull).

Guybrush Threepwood on the big screen?

Are you saying those films intentionally included shit that Ebert would have a favorable impression towards, or that they just happened to have that stuff?

 :tinfoil:

(http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/272/014/e6a.jpg) (http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/272014-do-want-do-not-want)

Chinese bootleggers make everything better.

I chalk it up as being an accident of Lucas' extremely shitty and haphazard approach to writing and direction and 'creative involvement' — it just results in "the kind of movie ebert is completely gobfuckingly unable to recognize as terrible" that other terrible movies (like The Last Airbender) do not possess, which results in ebert wholly pillorying them.

It is really difficult to describe more coherently, because Ebert is ultimately an incredibly super-weird dude sometimes, as we learned that one time he figured out he like totally understood video games, maaan.

I'll forgo the fancy words and just call them 12 year olds. ie my son who actually likes the prequels. (fairly sure he is adopted) Outside of that I've never met anyone who actually liked them.

They're mediocre kiddy movies. Where they really collapse into a screaming heap of wretchedness is when you try to make any sort of coherent connection between them and the original.

"Can't remember ever owning a droid..."

We had that. Except it was called "Pirates of the Caribbean".

 I know a dude, a full grown dude with two kids and a literal white picket fence, who cried at the emotional intensity of "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!" and thought the prequel trilogy was just the most epic amazing thing ever.

Iunno dude was starting to go odd at the time, so

There's a three book EU novel series where the plot is that Boba Fett shoots and explodes the Sarlacc until it vomits him up, some other survivors patch him up, then he goes and does bounty hunter-y things with a sort of protege who occasionally is considered dispensable.  I'd give Star Wars: Training Day a shot.

Alternatively:

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4f/Dark_Forces_box_cover.jpg)


Luke does sort of mildly evil shit throughout the movie.  It's not just the last scene.

Most peoples problems that I know is that the scripts were shitty and the filmmaking was lazy. I have never known someone whos main complaint about the politics being the bad thing.

What the fuck does that line about Jar Jar even mean? The concept of a comic relief character is not necessarily bad? Yes... the fucking point is that it WAS TERRIBLY executed. That's the exact point.

You just don't understand The Force.   :oh_i_see:

Well, stuff like the politics were a bad thing, because they were the underpinning structure of the conflict that the movie is intended to dramatically resolve, and yet it cannot be made to make sense even from the very onset — a point which I think can hardly be made better than that drawling shitty pretend-old dude Plinkett as he legitimately tries to make sense of the trade dispute in Ep. I or the political threat of Palpatine in Ep. III. It is all just legitimately bad in its own right, it just ceases to matter even remotely as much as it would have, had the rest of the movie been well done at all.

Whereas what we get is that the major problems with tone, pacing, acting, framing, and dialogue at a very basic level of filmmaking were all so pressingly poorly done that "whether or not the trade dispute makes sense to viewers in establishing the central conflict of the movie" ends up not mattering at all; it's simply buried way back behind core issues that eclipse it.

Never mind Pixar, I want to see a traditional Disney version of Loom. It would be perfect for that story.

http://simpsonswiki.net/wiki/Cosmic_Wars:_The_Gathering_Shadow

Phantom menace is actually salvageable. The phantom edit version is hugely superior, if anakin had been padme's contemporary you'd be almost there. 2 and 3 are just hopeless.

2 and 3 I actually didn't mind as much.  For me, the prequels were fine when it was Obi-Wan hitting shit with a lightsaber, and they turned to shit whenever it was Anakin and Padme talking at each other.  Since ep.1 was almost all Anakin and his amazing wunderkind powers as awkwardly portrayed by a child actor, I hated it way more than the other two.  Hell, Yoda's lightsaber fight was pretty awesome, I thought.  But then, that's what Star Wars has basically always been about to me, space ships blowing shit up and people fighting with laser swords.  Fun action/adventure movies.  I never really got much into the books because they all lacked that, and I loved the games because that's essentially all they are.

They should just reboot it all. Worked for Batman. :)

I still think the Decieved trailer for SW:TOR was the best Star Wars movie of the last few decades. Maybe Disney should hire those guys...

Speaking of Plinkett, this was Mike Stoklasa's Halloween costume.

(http://i.imgur.com/Mr5Py.jpg)

Definitely yes.

I'm actually excited by this. Warts and all I still love the Star Wars universe. And as much as that includes the EU stuff, they're welcome to reboot all of it, including ESB, if that's what it takes to get a new generation into it. Nothing should be so sacred that a superior reboot is unthinkable. I cite Batman Begins and JJ Abrams Star Trek.

And yea, Nathan Fillion as either Han Solo reboot or Dash Rendar in a Shadows of the Empire story leading into RoTJ. I also wouldn't mind if they grabbed some plot points from Timothy Zahns second EU series that introduced the Yuuzhan Vong, even if they did an accelerated timeline thing between Admiral Thrawn almost taking down the Republic, through Palleon picking up the pieces, to ending with the extra-galactic Force-less threat that then kicks into another trilogy. The age of Ford, Hamil, et al all works out there.

Or back in time to KOTOR. I could see, err, "some business interest" in that  :oh_i_see:

Oh yes, full on geek mode here.

Shut up about Star Wars.  Nathan Fillion = Indiana Jones.  MAKE IT HAPPEN!

Fuck that. His crew of awfuls would tag along with him and I don't want any part of that shit.

Besides, he'd make a better Nathan Drake.

Actually, fuckit, I don't care if Nathan Fillion comes anywhere near any of these properties as I simply haven't cared about any of them since the 80s (or ever in the case of Star Wars).

I do watch it. It's good. Doesn't mean the EU novels post-ROTJ are anything but poop.

I hate the way he talks, the way he walks into stuff and steps on cowshit etc, but what makes me want to literally strangle someone (Lucas) is the "durr I'll just accidentally open this ammo truck's rear door and somehow the ammo'll run down-hill and win the battle single-handedly" scene, as if the entire defending army is a bunch of chucklefucks and jar-jar is, by accident, the best fighter there ... and of course that the attacking army is worse than jar-jar.

Why, god, why?

You won't find me disagreeing there.  Then again they ARE aimed at the Teen market.

Which, in the end, is what makes me laugh about all this.  The market any of it is aimed at doesn't give two shits. My son and nephews all enjoy it in different ways.  It's only sad old farts who somehow think that it diminishes their childhoods that get really up in arms.  Fan that I still am I don't begrudge any of it because it's not meant for me.

I'm always amazed how often that's lost in this day and age.

Leads to a senator seat and contributes to instigating the war, that's why.

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/star_wars_dancer.png)

Regarding Ewoks, I actually remember the first time seeing ROTJ at 19 at a friends house, and thinking they were completely lame. Its not the battle scene actually that did it, it was the scene that everyone erases from their memory with C3PO telling the story with R2D2 providing sound effects. That made me cringe.

ROTJ started off decent, got really REALLY crap in the middle, and then turned really good at the end. TESB is about as pitch perfect as you can wish for in a movie, which pretty much shows that Lucas had nothing to do with it.

Jabba's Palace is about the best Star Wars has to offer, in my opinion. 

The Ewok Line strikes again!  Really, the more I hear from people the more I realize the HIMYM writers were actually on to something there.

I am post-line, and would have had no issue if ewoks if they weren't on screen at the same time as a much cooler space battle. All I could think at the time was that every second of ewok was a second we weren't watching spaceships pew pew or light sabres.

I think someone has a secret shame in his CD collection

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ec/Caravan_bg.jpeg)  

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ad/Ilm-ewok2.jpg)

I wonder why no-one ever mentions those as star wars films...

Thats a lame cop out. Pixar films are aimed at kids and adults love them. Why? Because they are great films. I'm quietly confident that in a few years or so my son will look back at the prequels and go 'wow were they crap'. Especially after we go see the Brad Bird directed SW VII! (ok ok one can hope)

They are poop, they will always be poop and trying to make excuses for them will not change that.

Pixar are kids films that understand adults watch them too and focused on catering to both audiences.  Like the old Loony Tunes.   I'm sure many of us have fond memories of the Transformers and GI Joe cartoons, too.   They're utter shit, however.  Complete and utter shit with zero redeeming value.  I've watched them since they're on HUB and thought, "Why the fuck did I ever enjoy this."   However, my son enjoys them.  Why? He's the market and I'm not.

Great art can do both markets and provide both with something they want.  The prequels are not great art, but they are successful at what they attempted.  Capturing a target market that is not 40 year old guys with 30 year old childhoods they're trying to protect. 

They were never for you, I or anyone on this board. They were meant to introduce a money-maker to a new generation to get them as hooked as we were so in THEIR teens and 20s they'd buy all the merchandised crap that we look at and say, "No way I'm buying an R2-D2 hoodie.  I could never wear that in to the office." I'd say it worked pretty damn well.

Queue obligatory Penny Arcade strip.

Wookie life day V.2.

But that in itself is the problem. The first two movies had none of the muppet-ification intended to kid-ify things. I was 7 when Star Wars came out and it was awesome. Turns out kids like space ships and lasers and don't need to be dumbed down to.

I don't disagree with that at all.  I understand being disappointed, frustrated and even a little pissed that things shifted.  They didn't have to, but they did.  In the end the problem is the creator, not the created.  Which is why I'm a little happy the property and company have shifted hands to folks who actually understand that.  Folks who - I HOPE - will have some passion behind the project besides "What will get the kids buying." (While understanding they'll also have that motivation.)  Passion that was visible in the first two movies and a good portion of the 3rd but was gone from the prequels.

I'm not defending the prequels as anything but jaded crap aimed at getting kids to have their parents buy them stuff. As you said, Sky; It didn't have to be, but it was. 

Now they are reporting that Lucas plans to spend the entire four billion on philanthropy, using it to benefit education.

What the hell! How am I supposed to continue hating a guy that spends four billion dollars on actually doing something good for the world?

He's far more likely to spend it on his end-of-the-world bunker.

Just remember Jar Jar..

He's already been spending a ton of money on education and public good.  The George Lucas educational fund is one of the mentioned sponsors on NPR in both the morning and evening news shows.

Did ILM get split off or is that part of the deal? Seems like it would be at least as desirable as the IP.

It's part of the deal. Same with Skywalker Sound, LucasArts, etc.

He's a great guy who makes shitty movies. Happens.

On the subject of Star Wars being for kids. Why in the mighty fuck is Anakin slaughtering children and force choking his pregnant wife? When did child murder and domestic abuse become selling points for merchandising?  :uhrr: No, Lucas just made some rather poor movies, and then backpeddled the fuck with the excuse that "It's for kids!"

They were obviously for kids from the start. The first movie happens before all that other stuff, and is the kiddiest movie that ever kidded.

The comment I was responding to was "Even Jar Jar wasn't necessarily a bad idea. Just a poorly executed one."

That is a weird comment. Of course it's shitty. The idea of a character for comic relief IS fine. A bumbler IS fine... it's just that Jar Jar WAS SHITTY.

The Transformers Prime show is pretty darn good though!

I took a cursory look back at all the stuff I watched as a kid and good god almighty was it all complete and utter garbage. I couldn't even make it through a single episode of Inspector Gadget. And today's kids have shit like phineas and ferb and between the lions and gravity falls and those lucky little dirtbags will be way more cultured than us damn it it's not fair

Don't forget Avatar.

Found myself watching Phineas and Ferb the other day, my son walks in (who at 12 is just WAY to cool for this stuff now) and says 'Dad why are you watching a kids show?'

bah.  I got my revenge the other day though when I caught him watching some Avatar and I asked him the same question. (Mind you I promptly sat down and watched the rest with him).

Looney Tunes is still awesome. Not that it was made when we were kids, I guess.

Fuck that. I watch that show by myself, it's that damn awesome. My kids know if they want to watch tv with me and that babys on, the channels not changing.

That was at the time when they were still writing it for all audiences. Something that very few "toons" carried on past the 80s. About the best examples that DID was Animaniacs.

I think you've got it wrong.  Animaniacs represented the first cartoon to return to trying to appease all audiences.  Before that you have Hanna-Barbara of the 60's and 70's, the 80s Toy Commercials and that was a wasteland of "Kids only" crap.

I didn't mean to actually include the 80s as an example of RICHNESS. I meant that it was absent in the 80s. I should have said "in the 80s" or "during" instead of "past the".

Can I wait till we're up to 10 pages before I chime in with 'I don't give a fuck?'

Wake me when they've made the next abortion that I have to 'Be There' for.

Also, this thread needs more Nutsack telling us that because the films made money, they were good.

At this rate you'd only need to wait about an hour or two.

Jar Jar would have been fine if he wasn't such a character portrayed in such a blatantly racist manner. 

Which just makes the claim even more bizarre. I can only assume Lucas had gone full Howard Huges at some point.

See also Anakin accidentally flying into space and blowing up the control ship.


Hey, I actually liked that scene.  (Although I don't think the idea was that R2 was doing sound effects; I thought 3PO was able to make arbitrary sounds because he's a protocol droid and communication is the one thing he's really good at.)  

I also liked the original "jub jub" song and celebration at the end, before the Special Edition changed the music and spliced in a bunch of CGI footage from other planets that we had never seen before and didn't give a crap about.

The battle scene still makes me cringe, though, because it's excessively cutesy and slapsticky and to me doesn't fit the tone of everything else going on in the movie at that time.

Yeah I'm with Samwise, the story scene is cool. The incredibly conveniently placed log traps smashing military hardware, not so much.

The 90s were basically a renaissance for cartoons. Between the fun and goofy like Animaniacs or the 'Serious' stuff like Batman TAS, good times that never really stopped. Writing, Acting, Animation, all went way way up for the most part.

Even as a 12-year old, I thought something was hinky about that whole "Ewoks bitchslap the Empire" thing. I liked the movie, especially the hoverbike scenes but the older I've gotten, the less I've liked the entire sequence with the Ewoks, to the point where I just hate them now.

I didn't have much of a problem with Jar-Jar honestly. He's all the stupidity of the Ewoks condensed into one giant-sized turd, but having already established that armies can be defeated by fucking sticks despite all the pew-pew, his role as savior of the Gunguns didn't grate me. No, what grated on me was Lil' Anakin accidentally piloting a goddamn starship into a battle and blowing up the one womprat-sized weak spot on the fleet controlling the army of droids. Take every fucking bit of Minikin out of that movie and it's ROTJ with much better swordfights (Obi-Won/Qui-Gon/Maul swordfight still best action scene in the entire 6-movie arc).

Also, There was a surge in Japanese animation coming to the states in the early 90s.  Places like Suncoast all of a sudden started having whole sections of anime of all kinds of stripes and people started realizing, this shit can be good!

Most of course, was really really bad  :why_so_serious:


There was a window there where they would shovel ANY and EVERY god damn anime in existence over here.

A lot was horrible, yeah, but it sold because it was mostly ecchi shit.  Also, you didn't have much in the way of resources to look up what you were buying so you just guesstimated based on the box art.  Thank god for the Internet.  Although it's still mostly ecchi shit, but oh well.

I rememeber getting Macross Plus and Orguss 2 around that time. I had a Suncoast membership and everything!  :heart:

In their defense, 80's cartoons were under some pretty crazy scrutiny. The cartoons of the 90's didn't have to contend with enforced PSAs and all that "Get along gang" bullcrap.

I still rather like the G1 Transformers cartoon.  :-P A lot of it was nonsense, but there's a few episodes that stuck with me as quite good. And the voice acting was top notch.

I think comparing those cartoons with Pixar is a false equivalency. The former are TV shows designed for one audience. The latter (studio) makes transgenerational films becuase they know the parents are trapped there with their kids.

Phineas & Ferb and to a degree Penguins of Madagascar are not only an example of a transgenerational show that drives co-viewing at home (becuase home viewing continnues to rise while movies, not so much), it targets more directly the Dad in the family, in part because we're way beyond 80s-era cartoons that still perpetuated 50s-era household archetypes.

As to Star Wars, I don't re-watch the original trilogy because I remember being 7 seeing them for the first time. I watch them, and the original Indiana Jones, because they hold up well. I see old special effects in the same way I saw early shaky-cam footage: you did what you could with the tools you had. I no more mock bad rotoscoping than I mock the obviously-not-filmed-live scene where Santa is talking to the Macy's Day Parade crowd in the original (only!) Miracle on 34th Street.

The new trilogy were not good. They had good parts, and one can apologize for some other parts, but they fail the watch-over-and-over requirement of timeless classics that the original still has.

I am not going to comment on any of the SW movie stuff (yet!), but if you are talking about cartoons that cater to both young and old, then you have to include Adventure Time and The Regular Show.  In fact, those would be the top two, IMO.  Both of them are pants-wettingly hysterical for both kids and adults.  Not for my wife, though, who is completely broken as a human being.

(http://youoffendmeyouoffendmyfamily.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/transformers03.gif)

yoink

That one's so old I would have guessed you had it already.   We should compare notes sometime, though my collection has fallen off over the last 2 years since they don't work in Outlook.

I didn't start actually collecting pictures until a couple years ago.  After I realized the true value of DropBox.  Most of my older pictures are apparently from Hexen.

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/chaos.gif)(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/golem.gif)(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/wizard.GIF)(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/ovin.gif)

I have a lot more of that.

gonna make a lot of people mad but Avatar is shit.

Not going to make me mad... I usually feel sorry for the stupid. ZING. (I kid.)

I tried watching it after my younger relatives and their friends went nuts over it and it was boring. Just boring. Milquetoast American animu blah.*

Thankfully I hear the new season was really bad and the fans are all heartbroken so at least it'll be donewith for good after this.

*note: this isn't really indirect praise of anime from GLORIOUS NIPPON; I haven't really liked any new anime series for years at this point. Probably just because I'm getting old; I used to be able to ironically enjoy terrible series and movies/ovas.

I wouldn't say that.  Anime has been by and large a total disappointment for years.  There is the occasional gem, but mostly it's bland crap.  And the gems are probably only shiny in comparison to the rest.

I will say that hte first time I saw it years back I didn't like it. I revisited at the behest of a friend last year and when I gave it an honest chance, was pretty blown away.

Also, most of the people I know that like Avatar really enjoyed the new season.

All that being said, of course there are always going to be people who don't like something. I am definitely not saying you are WRONG... but you are. (Again, I kid.)

This one always bothered me.  Not because I know it was when Spike rescued Hound from being trapped under water and that it has nothing to do with Robot/Human Sodomy, but more because Hounds hands are small enough to massage Spikes back.

When, in fact, they could hold Spike in one hand and crush him like a grape.

Also, human managing to pull boulder off of Robots foot to free him underwater was fucking retarded since he's a fucking ROBOT and if he couldn't move it, you certainly couldn't Meatbag.

I thought Avatar was pretty awesome, but it took a lot of cadging. Like, I watched the first eight episodes or so going "why the fuck am I watching this obviously for kids cartoon?"

Then there was this sort of point where that ended and my fucking friends had me hooked on a nickelodeon cartoon for children. Fuckers.

Also as far as I know reception of the latest season has been pretty good; people were just disappointed in the abrupt ending. It's certainly going to continue being produced.

I think Last Airbender is pretty much one of the best cartoons ever made, in terms of story and writing.  The first couple of episodes were a little weak, but once they start messing around in the Earth Kingdom you can start seeing all the character arcs getting set up and it just keeps building momentum from there on.  Everything ends up paying off, too.  The whole series was constructed really well.

The latest incarnation (Legend of Korra) was pretty disappointing to me, since it failed at most of what Last Airbender did well.  Shrug.  Luckily it was far enough removed from the original series that it didn't sully my memories of it, which is more than we can say for Lucas and his relentless drive to ruin things.

Ratings were through the roof, and they were pretty quickly signed on for a third season.

The only complaint I heard about the most recent season was that it ended too fast/abruptly.  That's not much of a complaint.

I heard complaints about it being poorly written and nonsensical and greatly disappointing compared to the first.

You can read through our thread on The Legend of Korra (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=22001.0). The first season definitely suffered from Nickelodeon's inexplicable decision only to buy only a 12 episode "miniseries" rather than a full 26 episode season despite the success of Avatar. Things were much more rushed in Korra compared to Avatar. Still was a good show, though. They've since purchased the other 14 episodes to make a complete 26 episode block and they purchased another 26 episode on top of that (52 episodes in total).

I've heard it wasn't even supposed to be 12 episodes at first, just some direct to video thing.

which is just fucking mind boggling. Considering how TV/movie execs love nothing more than cashing in on an existing brand wtf were they thinking? (Korra Season 1 definitely ended too quick)

Most of the fans I see bitching about Korra are the kind of obsessives who get hung up on Spock and Uhura being lovers in the new Star Trek or whatever--because it wasn't exactly the thing they've become intensely attached to and possessive of, they hate it. The show creators have had a marvelous history of poking fun at those fans both in the original show and in Legend of Korra (while also doing some clever, subtle fanservice of various kinds). I think the major issue was, as folks have said, the odd pacing, especially at the end. The worldbuilding was great, the character development excellent and the basic season arc was interesting.

(http://tfwiki.net/w2/images2/c/c4/MakeHoistHuffer.jpg)

Or Devastaor fitting inside Astrotrain's shuttle mode, when Devastaor towers over him in robot mode. Meh. It was a quirk of a quirky toy line where scale was really wonky because Transforming into a jet fighter and then an aircraft carrier is truly insane.

(http://tfwiki.net/w2/images2/4/44/G1_Broadside_toy.jpg)

Yea, trying to find any kind of consistency in a G1 Transformer cartoon is a lost cause.

I was just annoyed with how the thing was so spontaneously just *whoomp* holy shit guys we gotta wrap everything up with a bow on top and we have uhhh like half an episode SHIT GO

Kinda just a failing of the network pacing there, but we'll see where it goes now that they get a full season again.

So according to Collider, Matthew Vaughn is up for the Star Wars 7 director's seat.  It's believed this is why he dropped out of the next X-Men movie.

I'm very OK with that.  Hope they get a good script.  Please no Zahn books, I tried to read them and it didn't feel like Star Wars.  The only SW book I completed was "The Courtship of Princess Leia"?  I think it's called.  Fairly good. 

No, has to be a new script, if they want to stick Mara Jade in I guess that's fine.  Luke could use a good kiss.

Rumor posted on MTV Geek is that Disney are now eyeing up Hasbro, which makes all the Trasnformers posts a little more on-topic! (http://www.seibertron.com/energonpub/images/smilies/smiley-autobot.png)

http://geek-news.mtv.com/2012/11/05/disney-buying-hasbro/

Disney will own ALL the childhoods!

Looking forward to a Disney Dungeons & Dragons movie. :why_so_serious:

Well lets face it, the only way to go is up.

Though I thought the second DND movie was ok for straight to video fare. At least it felt like a DND party quest.

Did we not cover the bit where Lucas said he'd outlined the events of Episode 7,8,9 and has already met with Hamill and Fisher about them? He's put his treatments in the safe hands of Kathy Kennedy - we can only hope she puts them in her nearest trash compactor.

Random thoughts:

1. I saw ROTJ in the theater and thought it sucked. It's a bad movie - full stop. The individual plot points are stupid, the overall plot is stupid, the Ewoks are stupid, most of what it does is just more poorly executed versions of things that had been done previously. (For example the big space battle has zero emotional weight compared to the space battle in the original Star Wars.) It also set the unfortunate tone for all Star Wars related crap that followed.

2. New trilogy is all garbage and could not be saved without being totally redone from scratch - new approach to cinematography, new philosophy of shot composition and CGI integration, entirely new script, new direction, new plot. Nothing about the new movies was even halfway decent. Let me put it this way - the three movies are ostensibly about Anakin becoming evil, but the explanation for why he becomes evil is a 2-minute dream-sequence montage that makes zero sense.

3. Transformers G1 is good. A lot of cartoons around that time period were good, but a lot were also total crap. As a kid you probably weren't very discerning.

4. I hope for the new movie they just go off in a new direction barely related to the previous films. I mean what more is there to do that is in direct continuity - the Emperor comes back to life and builds a third death star? They really need to ditch the continuity porn that helped sink the prequels and focus on just making a good movie. Throw in some lightsabers and people will see it even if it's not all that connected to the previous 6 films. If anything people might welcome a break.

The story of how Anakin turned out to be Darth Vader was super boring and the further adventures of Luke and his annoying bratty children would be even more boring - no questions are begging to be answered, no mysteries to be unraveled. Introduce an entirely new threat or something - maybe pull an every-Blizzard-plot-ever and have Jedi and Sith team up to fight some external force and learn to complement each other and balance the force blah blah blah.

But they made money, so you're wrong.

*sigh*  I miss him.

If we're being fussy it is actually two separate brief montages in different films neither of which make any sense or have any connection to the plot. I think you're forgetting the bizarre mom gets tortured for no reason scene in the second one.

Of course it had a reason. It was to show Anakin's lack of control and anger and doing a non-jedi, dark side driven act of killing all the sandpeople like animals. The fact that it had nothing to do with the main storyline and the fact that Anakin only found out about it through a lazy, hamfisted plot-device of a dream is neither here nor there. As Lucas would no doubt tell you "I used exactly the same plot device in ESB when Luke left his training after having a vision about his friends so I wanted to mirror that here."

 :oh_i_see:

There are ways to make a character turn evil that don't come off as just patently ridiculous. As it stands, Anakin turns to the Dark Side because he believes he can save his wife from death. It makes no sense at all.

A more organic way is to make a character face increasingly opposing pressure from the authority on the good. In this case, Anakin during the clone wars could be faced with making more and more decisions that run counter to the Jedi code in order to win battles. The Jedi Order's beliefs are in many ways completely obtuse. A logical General would have a hard time operating in a war the way that the Jedi would want. Eventually, anybody can lose faith in the system itself and fall into a pattern of anything to win.

Instead we get a hamfisted love story instead of a slow descent into the madness of war, orchestrated by the galaxy's best puppetmaster.

Lucas can't explain the motivations of his characters and he's the guy who created them, blergh

Luke had a good reason for leaving early; he didn't want his friends to die.

Anakin; "Hmm, some Sith lord from like a billion years ago could supposedly save people from death in some way? And you don't know how to do what he did but maybe together we could figure it out after a billion years of no one knowing how to do what he did? Sure, I'll kill some children for you!"

There were all kinds of little bits of ideas in the prequels that would have made sense. The jedi were idiots and you could easily have done the corrupt and out of touch oligarchs thing. The Republic political system clearly was broken and you could have done a more sincere "we need some order" military coup sort of thing. Then you have Anakin slowly making choices that draw him in with the sith and oppose the Republic and Jedi. This is the kind of thing that draws real people into hate groups.

Instead you got adolescent angst and anger and BOOM SITHLORD, let's go kill the kiddos.

HF is open to playing Solo again! Wow, unexpected.

If there is a new D&D movie and it doesn't star Falconhoof, it's a fail.

And so unnecessary. The idea that Luke, Leia and Han will have some significant part of the new trilogy is a disappointment.

Hopefully it's not much more than cameos so there is a small tie to the Original Trilogy, but otherwise isn't about them.

Like Luke is headmaster at the school where our Jedi hero attends but isn't related to any of them.  We see Chewbacca caring for the old and frail Solo couple who chase kids off their lawn.  R2's dome is used as a candy dish.  Or latrine.  That sort of thing.

I have a feeling that they would find a way to get the droids in.  As long as someone else is writing it, I would be fine with that.  Honestly, my kids cracked the fuck up over Threepio's antics in all the movies.  Hopefully they would also be able to get Anthony Daniels to stop overdoing it.

I am so much more worried about Disney buying Hasbro right now.

I don't want my Magic cards to $0 overnight.

It's like poetry, it rhymes.  (https://dl.dropbox.com/u/40386/Smileys/george.png)

I liked the final confrontation between Vader, Luke and the Emperor. Han's rescue was pretty aweseome. The Ewoks... enh. I can take 'em or leave 'em.
I thought it was a fine way to wrap up the OT, but it did feel like the time when Lucas was starting to forget everything FF Coppola told him about making movies.

Why would this happen?

I suppose everything has it's price, but didn't Hasbro just make their own TV station for their cartoon properties? HUB or whatever?

Cause he thinks Disney will meddle with the game causing people to stop playing or change the format so the cards are no longer "collectible".

Card inflation is my guess.

If that were to happen I would think that it would make his collection more valuable, not less.  

You can do that yourself!

(http://i-cdn.apartmenttherapy.com/uimages/chicago/20071218r2d21.jpg)

I hope they make go old man lunatic and turn him into a crazy person that dies at the end of episode 7 thus revealing a bigger "evil".  Whatever that is.

I can't think of a way right now how you kill Han Solo in the first episode either that doesn't make it feel retarded.

You drop a moon on Chewbacca and leave Han in Mos Eisley cantina drinking himself to death.

Greedo's son shoots first.

Han will look older, Falcon will look newer, movie will own.

There's no particular reason 7-9 have to use the same characters; there's DEFINITELY no reason they'd have to use the same actors.

Just be creative.

For instance, Hamill can now be a Yoda-like mentor to a new Jedi.  Won't even require much makeup.

They don't have to use old characters, but I'd be very surprised if R2 and C3PO aren't in the centre of things, and pretty surprised if at least 1 of the 3 original leads isn't in there in some capacity.

Leia in some political role or Luke as a Jedi council guy could work fine, even if just in the first act, stood there with a giant yellow exclamation mark over their heads.

They're going to have to hire a really damned good fitness trainer.

(http://cdn-images.hollywood.com/cms/294x255/386314.jpg)

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Mark_Hamill_2010.jpg/220px-Mark_Hamill_2010.jpg)

VII: An Old Hope

A New Hip

It's going to be about Jar Jar's grandchildren anyway.

Just CGI the motherfuckers. That's what all this has been leading up to anyway.  :awesome_for_real:

Now I definitely see the family resemblance, though.

I enjoy the prequels for Senator Palpatine and Christopher Lee. And there are some nice visuals in them.

I hope the newquels are used to explain the inconsistencies between the prequels and original series. That'd be great!  :grin:

I would add that I thought Obi-Wan was great in the prequels.

i liek chocolate milk

Ewan MacGregor was an excellent casting for the role. 

Look as good, they do not.

They could make cameos as Hutts. 

Too much Rancor in this thread.

Not really...  Granted, game-quality is nowhere near cinema-quality, but look at how Miranda in Mass Effect 2 looks almost exactly like her voice actress.  I think we're a lot closer than we think to virtual actors being possible.

According to Mark Millar, Matthew Vaughn isn't able to direct SW since he's got like 3 movies shooting one after another.

She doesn't look almost exactly like her actress.  She looks good for a video game character, but it is not particularly difficult to tell which shots of the character are from the game and which are shots of the actress (at least in close ups) which is the kind of quality we'd need for virtual actors to be feasible.  I haven't seen anything that approaches that.

Compare a close-up of Miranda to something like Aki from the Final Fantasy movie, and realize that Aki was slammed for being too unrealistic, and you'll get an indication of how far we've still got to go.

Meh, the problems aren't with modeling, they're with animation.

Yeah, there is that too... especially if this is going to be some weird mix of CG and live action, like the prequels were.

Star Wars VII may have found it's writer. (http://www.vulture.com/2012/11/star-wars-episode-vii-may-have-found-its-writer.html)

Brad Bird out of the three of those, please.

Unless Spielberg can summon something of his career from the late 70s/early 80s.

I wouldn't count on this as that's Lucas' thing.  Dude is fascinated with CGI and that's unfortunate but as he's not directing anymore, who cares.  

ed:  One thing that will change, unfortunately, is the intro and iconic scrolling text.  That got Lucas fined and by the directors guild, later causing him to quit.  Despite how iconic it is, I don't see any names willing to deal with that these days.

It's just a fine. Lots of films do it these days (Nolan has done it on all his Batmans).

It really won't. Lucas wasn't fined for the crawl, he was fined for omitting the name of the director (hence why it was the DGA that fined him).  But even those guidelines for opening credits are pretty much obsolete now and there have been plenty of films which have title-only or even no opening credits whatsoever. Most Chris Nolan films are title-only (Batman Begins had no credits until the end) as were Spielberg's War of the Worlds and Abrams' Star Trek.

FAKE EDIT: Abagadro said it more succintly as usual.

Also: Michael Arndt wrote Little Miss Sunshine which is one of my favourite screenplays ever. Haven't read the one for Toy Story 3 but loved the film.  :drill:

Seem to remember Spielberg having opined that he'd love to do a Star Wars.

Arndt is a really good choice for writer though.

I would have no problem with Spielberg doing it myself yeah.

Spielberg said no.

I can't really imagine a well-established director wanting to do a Star Wars movie with the stench of the prequels still clinging to the brand.  The odds of being The Guy That Saved Star Wars are low; the odds of being The Last Guy To Fuck Star Wars's Corpse are high.

Dude, I'd sign up for it in a heartbeat if everyone else was too afraid to. I'd be like "The fuck I know about directing, anyway, but like I can do worse than mr. A Camera, B Camera, Sitting on a Couch, Sitting and Talking, ..

You could have said same about batman. Or about the screenwriter position. Or about Harrison Ford.

They won't have a hard time finding an established director. People like doing big projects.

Spielberg simply won't do it out of respect for his friend, nothing odd about that.  I'm sure there's a line from hollywood to somewhere in Kentucky of directors wanting a piece of this.

Kevin Smith is the logical choice.

Kenneth Branagh.  The spacespeare stuff was the best part of Thor and would mesh well with Star Wars.

I love Kevin's films for what they are, but thankfully he's retired from directing so this won't be a possibility.

Kevin fell off big time basically the instant he discovered weed, which believe it or not was pretty late in his life relative to how old he is now.

He (and Joe Rogan) pretty much have smoked themselves retarded over the last 10 years or so and it honestly kinda shows.

Oddly, yeah.

Which (for bonus points) can be experienced live in his podcast (Smodcast). You really can hear the fun and talent drain out of him while his sanity slips from episode to episode until you can't bear it any longer. This should really be mandatory hearing for drug awareness classes.

Yeah, pretty much. It starts with Kevin and Co. snarking and bullshitting and it's genuinely funny. Now it's literally half-there pot talk and unironic personal endorsements for Fleshlight.

He also spends half the podcast bragging about how he's MORE creative and productive since he started smoking weed.

Which a lot of other hardcore pot smokers take to heart. And ignore that all of his best work was before he started getting stoned all the time.

Is he still married? I remember one interview where he was saying how his wife was bemused that he was stoned all time, and then thinking, "Is that her view, or your view?".

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Please to keep Spielberg the fuck away from anything I give two shits about these days. He's becoming a literal parody of himself and has Lucas's "I can do no wrong" arrogance when it comes to his own work.

As for Kevin Smith, I think Red State was pretty goddamn awesome as his next-to-last directorial outing, and Cop Out showed he could do action a lot better than he thought (yes, the script was utter shit but he didn't write it). I can't say the pot smoking has helped or hurt him since I don't follow podcasts. I'd love to see him WRITE (or at least co-write) the Star Wars movies with someone else to un-Smith his dialog (because his dialog wouldn't fit the story) but not direct.

Smith dialogue is the only thing he does well really; not much else. He makes characters that are fun to listen to banter...but it's pretty specific types of banter- sex, pop culture, etc.

I mean, you have seen his Batman comic right?

Post Jedi Star Wars as directed by Kevin Smith would I fucking guarantee, have a scene where Luke is sitting around drinking or smoking space weed, bitching at Obiwan for not letting him know Leia was his sister. Then Obiwan would ask Luke if he would've hit it anyway, then Luke would admit "yeah" and they'd laugh. And Chewie/Han gay jokes everywhere, probably with a "spoon for warmth" anecdote about the time the Falcon's Life Support partially failed and the temperature controls turned off.

And it would still be better than 1-3...

This.

I was always a huge KS fan. Listened to about 5 podcasts before I gave up. He is a fucking moron now. He is either A) always high, B) suffering from some sort of pot-induced permanent damage, or C) all of the above. It is really a pity- he was a genuinely funny and interesting cat back in the day.

Kevin Smith hasn't changed. He is the dude now that he always was. The difference is the amount of light available to inspect him with.

I disagree. Go watch/listen to the first A Night With Kevin Smith- he talks to a college crowd for 4 hours telling stories, answering questions, etc. It is really really funny and interesting. Then go and listen to a couple of his recent podcasts. His energy level, his recall, his ability to string together a coherent thought- all gone.

Holy shit, I just tried to listen to one of those smodcasts. What the fuck, dude?

Kevin smith is still there, jsut under a haze of pot. it really is hard to listen to him now, its not permanent though because I know of a lot of weed smokers that clear up once they quit, they never realize how deep underwater they were until they come out.

Weed is a hell of a drug?  It's quite sad to listen now, as the "A Night With Kevin Smith" series shows he was able to be quit entertaining and now... well he's just another stoner sitting around giggling at his own bad jokes and inner thoughts that no one else but other stoners can hear or care about.

Keeping with the Kevin Smith derail: I was not aware that he has turned into a huge stoner, but knowing all of the stuff he did over the years to help Mewes get his life back in order after smoking/snorting/shooting it all away it seems really odd that he would have gone down that road.

Mewes was on heroin.  I dunno if it's strictly comparable.

Marijuana is not a drug. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_dzDb5v744)

The latest scientific data (2012 (http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-adolescent-pot-mental-deficits.html)) is that pot is only capable of inflicting measurable damage on an adolescent brain.  Really, I think he just likes getting high a lot, combined with the ridiculously long half-life of cannabis.

With all the shit disney has their tenticles on now, I just have to ask: What crazy, fun worlds could we possibly see in the next Kingdom Hearts Game?  Sora meets the Avengers?  Gummie Block Xwing strafing runs on the Deathstar?

Well... (http://firewireblog.com/2012/11/03/the-best-disney-star-wars-mashups-memes/)

(http://larryfire.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/star-wars-disney-memes.jpg?w=450)

win!

Reach for the sky? (cept he shot first..:P)

Marijuana certainly doesn't hurt creativity. I've known way too many musicians and artists who create amazing stuff while high. And from personal experience I can play the hell out of the guitar while stoned, I'll sit and play for three hours straight no problem...but that's more about my adhd and zero attention span. Now I just play some written classical stuff, being straight sucks :) I haven't smoked in years and my creative output took a nose-dive. Less crap but way less gold, too. I might play for a half hour instead of all day.

That said.

Marijuana is not conducive to conversations that non-stoned people have to listen to.

It's entirely possible it's like ritalin in that it helps some people while hindering others.  Brain chemistry is complicated.

I've known a lot of musicians who think they sound great stoned. For a couple of them it's even true.

To nerd this conversation up: when I used to p'n'p RPG, my group had to implement a no-mull rule because two or three guys used to get progressively more stoned and just couldn't follow what was going on. Even worse were the days when the GM would get stoned. 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3667682/Music/Maggot%20Brain.mp3

apparently disney is presenting tenative plans to give the star wars universe an Avengers treatment, where individual characters get their own movies (hi, kyle katarn??) and possibly wrapped up in combo movies. So like, two or three a year at some point.

Well.. that's dumb.

It works for Avengers (and comics) because they're character-driven stories and have been since their origins.  To me, SW has always been about the bigger story, not the individual journey.  You care about the ensemble while identifying with an individual or two.

Who knows, maybe it'll work but I've got my skeptic hat on.

Need non-stoned version to prove anything.  :-P

If they do a Jolee Bindo, I'm in.

Maybe they'll set Star Wars on earth and give all the heroes superpowers.  :uhrr: AVEN GURRS MAED MONIES! COPY DAT!

you could easily have a character driven star wars. and apparently this will kick in only after the main sequel trilogy is underway, so

There isn't one. I don't have the focus to play that accurately and creatively for that period of time anymore. 99% of what I play now are 1-3 minute written pieces.

Really? You didn't think Star Wars was about Han Solo's redemption in coming to the aid of his friends and Luke Skywalker's coming of age? Instead it was I don't know, a commentary on how terrorism can be justified against cyborg oppressors, and an analysis of competing fascist and monarchist political structures or something?

Watching Star Wars you care about the plight of the generic hippies of the rebellion about as much as you care about the generic American bystanders in Thor.

The basic concept of multiple character and story threads that promise to crossover in future movies makes a lot of sense if you want to build a sustainable machine for printing money and simultaneously not have it dependent on individual directors/writers not fucking it up.

What I think will be interesting will be whether or not they include the more well known EU characters (even if they make up new stories and/or backgrounds for these people), or if they decide to create all new characters and run with them instead.  I mean, many fans know characters like Mara Jade, Thrawn, Kyle Katarn, Dash Rendar or even a Jaden Korr, so picking some of these might come with some added interest.  Or turn others off entirely, I don't know.

On the other hand, they can make up new characters that nobody currently identifies with.  I think they will struggle a bit if they do this too much.  Nobody wants to see the adventures of Fred Solo, Han's bastard son from Ord Mantell.  Nobody cares about Agatha Ackbar or that her father once led a fleet into a trap.  Too many people know who Princess Leia's children are supposed to be for them to invent new ones for her.  Or do they dare?

If I were them, I would borrow names from the current mythology.  Re-tool the stories that don't translate well (or are just plain bad) and change the canon as needed.  But try to keep the more identifiable characters primarily intact.

That said, I am a huge nerd.  I will eat up whatever shit they choose to serve me.

We covered it a few pages back but all the non-canon sources are irredeemably terrible. They are so bad as to be unfilmable.

I wouldn't rule out them name dropping as a fanboy wink, but no competent writer would go near that stinking pile for central characters or stories. And nobody who knows who the fuck admiral Thrawn is will fail to show up for this movie no matter how much of the non-canon bullshit they ignore.

Plus I would guess the first couple of these films will tell a much 'smaller' story than the other films. I'd expect the focus to be on a new character coming of age to save a small part of the world from something less than galactic domination of the sith. Even if the EU was not uniformly awful, it always wants to out-epic itself to the point of absurdity - I doubt much/any of it would even fit into Arndt's story.

I'm not arguing the merit of any of the EU stories, only the identifiability of a few of the characters.  Put more bluntly, I would much prefer to see a movie with, say, Mara Jade, if it keeps the essence of her character/personality somewhat intact.  To hell with the backstory, whip something up that fits better or works better with the medium.  For better or worse, I have some idea of who Mara Jade is and would be more interested in seeing that in film.  Alternatively, I don't know who Jett Flamestar is, nor do I care about his continuing struggles against Hapan Pirates.  Or somesuch.

They are only identifiable by people who are already guaranteed to see the movie, and only liked by people guaranteed to both see the movie in IMAX and certain to buy every edition of the DVD.

Hmm, maybe.  I'm just thinking out loud anyway.  I'll be eating up whatever shit they serve.

Lucasfilm's Kathleen Kennedy has said she wants two-three films a year (not necessarily SW I gather) and that it will be Episode VII and will be a sequel to Return of the Jedi.  The plan is to return to the characters of the first trilogy.

As long as they keep Damon Lindelof away from it I'll be happy.

I'd be totally cool with that.  Kinda hoping that they don't try to force the original three back into key roles.  I don't really need to see Harrison Ford attempting (and failing) to recapture his swashbuckling youth.  I saw Crystal Skull, and cringed all the way through.  And Mark Hamill looks more like the Emperor or Yoda than himself.  Carrie Fisher....no longer hot, or something.   In other words, if these sequels are meant to be places some 30 years later in the timeline, keep these guys in the background and far away from the action.

Of course, if they choose to make the sequels more or less immediately following Jedi, then they need to recast them completely.  Give them some kind of symbolic cameo appearance. 

Don't let Lucas hear you say that or he'll stone you to death with Joseph Campbell hardcovers.

Actually, Fatal Alliance would film /really/ well. Some phenomenal action scenes in that.

Bane might translate well, too. I wonder how tied Karpyshyn's hands were for the Revan novel, because it really, really sucked. Bane wasn't horrible, decent pulp reading (which is all SW is anyway, it's funny some think it's ever been anything but pulp). I think the Thrawn stuff would work great after a screenplay treatment was worked up.

I think the Thrawn stuff appeals to people who fetishize the military porn aspect of Star Wars. I haven't actually read the books, but that's what I gather from the reviews and the interwebz screaming.
I like the mythic worldbuilding aspect of Star Wars, and have been utterly dissapointed by what EU I have read, which does seem to try and outdo the original movies to the point of absurdity.

In a set of sequels or whatever, I'd really like a return to the style of the very first movie, when people like Marcia Lucas/Griffin, FF Coppola, Irvin Kirshner, etc. were there to tell Lucas how to make a movie that doesn't suck.

They should just restart the franchise like they did with star trek instead of trying to shoehorn stuff in perfectly to please the nerds.

Also, I guarantee those nerds will take greater offence if the new movie changes the colour of Mara Jade's lightsabre or the depth of Kyle Katarn's beard than if they get left out altogether.

The whole mess is one gigantic third rail.

I think hiring Micheal Arndt is a signal Disney are trying to do exactly this.

Expect a simpler story, fewer characters, mostly about some guy coming of age with a minimum of unnecessary baggage.

I'm not expecting any galactic politics or pointless attempts to build on trivial plot threads from other films or books.

Hell, ANH had a bunch of guys sitting at a table talking about galactic politics.

(http://mythinspace.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/dsconference.jpg?w=450)

It's just that it didn't suck.

And that was some of the best that the movie had to offer. 

I agree, because that's where Lucas really derailed hard with the prequels. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R66FvPTj2Yw Kirsch had so much to do with why they were good, along with the strong ensemble cast that was allowed to act as an ensemble. The end of the clip about re-shooting the Bespin scene could apply to every scene with Aniken and Padme.

Brad Bird isn't directing the next Star Wars movie (https://twitter.com/BradBirdA113/status/269981749478584320)

bum

They actually don't suck as far as storytelling goes, and they're an interesting concept with both a genius Admiral as well as his Second who goes on to do other things in later series.

You guys can mock the EU stuff, and I'll be with you for most of it. But between Dark Empire, Shadows of the Empire and I, Jedi, there's more than enough characters to pull an Avengers approach to Star Wars for the next 10 years easily. There's stuff in the EU that has become more canon than midichlorians, but not so specifically defined to tie creative hands.

The main reasons to pull from existing works are.
A. Built in audience.
2. Strength of the material.

LULZ in both cases.

Can we get back to making fun of Lucas?

Thrawn didn't appeal to any sort of military fetishist and I don't even know what you're talking about with that point. How the hell do you fetishize the military of fucking Star Wars?

Are you talking about the 501st?  If so you're wildly missing the point of why they dress-up.  They're not WW2 reneactors fetishizing the Nazis or Civil War reneactors cheering on the possible 2nd coming of The South. I know a few of *those* guys and they're genuinely scary.

No, the 501st chose a very clear icon of Star Wars to dress-up and be geeky as; the Storm Trooper.  Dress up as a rebel trooper, who'll recognize you?  The Stormtrooper outfit is the Star Trek uniform for Star Wars geeks. It's really that simple.  Maybe they could have chosen an X-wing pilot uniform, but growing up, most guys I knew wanted a ST outfit, not an orange jumpsuit.

No, Thrawn was embraced because he was a great villain.  Where Vader/ The Emperor were menacing and brutal, Thrawn was cunning and methodical.  Plotting, laying traps, feints, whith a plan that made sense instead of being the overt-the-top hand-wringing maniac so many other "super genius" villains have been outlined as.


Han Solo is the name given to a greater archtype.  He's a sketch in a larger morality play, just as Luke, Obi Wan and the rest are.   They've been developed over the last 35 years to much more, but go back to the original movie and they are minor pieces in the greater story.  Even in Empire they were still fairly stereotypical and had only just begun to develop in to individual characters.  Greatly because of Kirchner's allowance of the actors to do so. 

Watching Star Wars I cared about the story of the Rebellion vs the Empire, played out by these set pieces. Yes, the greater story was about human spirit vs technology. Why do you think the Stormtroopers wore masks and Vader was a cyborg?  Vader redeems himself by accepting his human side again and destroys the puppetmaster.  Luke realizes he's becoming his father when he looks at his machine hand.

Yeah, it wasn't just laser swords and explosions and a generic space cowboy banging his space babe.  If it was, the prequels would have been better movies because they were as formulaic.

Define "too many people". I honestly don't think there are that many compared to the total set of "people who will go to see the movies". Moreover, if they use the names of the children from the EU, then suddenly they've got the entire baggage of the EU's shitty, shitty plotlines to worry about--if you're going to use the names, many will reckon, why not use the stories or at least the main character arcs?

They should just write as if the EU books had never been written. Inevitably they'll probably borrow a few elements here and there simply because there are only so many ways the story can go after the Emperor gets blown up and Darth Vader dies, but that will just be convergent evolution.

Best-case scenario for me is a story that concentrates on the struggle to re-establish the Jedi Order, and set them against a sort of "legion of super-villains"--some sort of sinister alliance between crime lords, ex-Imperial warlords, Dark Jedi, bounty hunters, Mandalorians etc. all of whom are determined not to see the Jedi reborn.  You could do a fun first film just around recruiting new Jedi, maybe with an aged Luke being determined not to repeat the remoteness and Zen detachment that got the Jedi into such trouble before. That would inevitably touch on a few of the sort of "scarred Jedi" or "Grey Side" Jedi-types that the EU has offered up at times.

Oh, people manage.

(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nK1Fp-WcI7A/TEWrL03KFDI/AAAAAAAAAMI/eDubQh8vlqA/s1600/star-wars-propaganda-20100301-135405.jpg)

(http://static.neatorama.com/images/2010-07/star-wars-pin-up-posters.jpg)

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7d/Swtiefightercd.jpg)

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4d/Star_Wars_-_Republic_Commando_Coverart.png)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tBM2ZfncoU

Revan sucked because the writing was bad. Hands tied or no, throwing plot out the window as irrelevant, the actual prose was crappy. You can't build a house with no foundation.

One of my all time favorite games. 

(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51JC7SE315L._SL500_AA300_.jpg)

From the Hollywood Reporter:  Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg are officially signed to write and produce installments of the new STAR WARS trilogy. It's not yet known which episodes they will write, or which they'll produce, but they're definitely on board.


Kasdan is the guy that wrote Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Although, he also wrote Dreamcatcher.

 :drill: :drill: :drill:


 :ye_gods: :ye_gods: :ye_gods:

Holy shit!  Kasdan also wrote one of my favorite westerns, Silverado and The Big Chill.  Wow, this shit just got turned up to 11!

So everyone is excited about a guy that hasn't written a good screenplay in 30 years is writing the new Star Wars?  :why_so_serious:

You're crushing my spirit.

The story for the Shadows of the Empire game was good as I recall, and he wrote the script there.

(http://i.imgur.com/pdapV.png)

I threw up in my mouth, then it over-vomitted onto my keyboard.

I'd kill you Thrawn but I have to kill myself first.  :ye_gods:

Oh the humanity.

That might be the worst picture I have ever seen. Its down right creepy.

Seriously, in a thread about star wars you thought it wise to challenge f13 to come up with dodgy image macros?

What if Sky reads that post?

that was ...  brilliant!

horrible, scary, preposterous, seizure-inducing, grotesque, insane, frightening, ludicrous, unlikely, and morbidly funny.

but brilliant

So, apparently JJ Abrams will be directing the next Star Wars movie (http://ca.ign.com/articles/2013/01/24/jj-abrams-to-direct-star-wars-episode-vii?utm_campaign=ign+main+twitter&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social)

Edit: Changed the URL

Oh great, lensflare from lightsabres too. :oh_i_see:

So...  Luke and crew are going to crash land and get marooned on a planet?

 :mob:

Lame. So Lame. So everyone but Abrams, Nolan and Whedon are garbage or over-the-hill?

Disney doesn't want to take any chances and Abrams is a Star Wars nerd.  I don't blame him one bit.  Just as long as those shitbird writers from Lost stay the fuck away. Looking at YOU Lindellof.

So he gets both legendary sci-fi franchises.  It's good to be the king.

Do we get to call him Jar Jar Abrams now?   :awesome_for_real:

And infact Lindelof is a HUGE star wars fan who littered (well, maybe not "littered" but there were many) the show (lost) with references to the saga, so here you go :P

Well with Tatooine's two suns that'll be double the lens flare. Can't wait to see what retcons are put in this time... Leia and Chewie getting it on?

The writer is Michael Arndt who wrote "Little Miss Sunshine" and "Toy Story 3"

Bring it on. This IP begs for the same kind of story-telling reboot he gave Trek. And he's a known quantity.

Him or Joss Whedon, I'd have been equally happy with either.

Fucking awesome.

Man, I'm just tickled by this. Considering he's a master at making things at the very least - watchable - and considering five of the six Star Wars movies range from nerd boner bullshit to completely unwatchable trash, this is just the best news.

I want a ST/SW crossover movie. The torrent of nerd tears would never end.

Oh man Darniaq, I would've been REAL happy with Joss Whedon, then I could've ignored it and immediately known what kind of shit it would've been.

That's almost better than JJ Abrams.

King of the Nerds.

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/39720/animated%20gifs/UA8Gf.gif)

 :headscratch:

New tv show...I dunno, thought it was a timely quip.

(wait, referring to Abrahms, not Schild)

I know you were referring to JJ, I just don't want people bringing up that fucking show.

Is it that bad? I've heard that it's just boring more than it is offensive.

It's just wretched. Everything about it. Offensively wretched actually.

His defense of that was pretty buyable. It started with basically "I totally overdid it. Like a million times" and went into "But you gotta understand, lensflare is this fucking thing we hate." and sorta talked about how much of a PITA lens-flare is when you don't want it, and how they have filters or whatever to prevent it now, and suddenly they can add it back in through effects but ONLY when they want it, so now they're not fighting to induce it just right when they want it and bitching when it shows up the wrong way.

He's not the first nor the last guy to go "Oh cool, I can do X now!" and then overdo it. :)

Still, pretty happy with this. The Star Trek reboot was great.

I'm looking forward to Fluke Starbucker getting big fat cartoony hands and then riding the Willy Wonka tubes.

JJ Abrams. Jesus fuck.

This does not displease me.  As Schild says at least he makes watchable films.

I can only hope he destroys much more of the EU with his movie than the Prequels did. I'd giggle so hard.

I'd be fine with a scene where there is a literal explosion of crappy canon, maybe shooting blasters in a store with Ep 1-3 discs on the shelves.

Hell, the LEGO mini-movies were already kicking Lucas.  One scene, LEGO Han shoots a bad guy as he is being charged, and someone in the back yells "Oh my goodness, Han shot first!"  Han: "Well of course I shot first, he was coming right at me!"

I want more of that.

This. It could have been a LOT fucking worse. I mean, shit, Lucas could have directed it.

Look, compared to the shit that Star Trek movies, in general, were the man is a master. If he can flip the bird at the general trend in Star Trek movies (half decent, half utter shit, and like two good ones out of 10) maybe he can do something about the Jar-Jarization of Star Wars.

Exactly.

I want entertainment that is good on a scale reserved for summer blockbuster fap. I don't need no December awards movie quality. But I also don't want Cannonball Run 2 want-my-90-minutes-back-either. And unless he's asleep or high during production, anything he does will be better than any of the prequels.

Don't care about the EU much either as long as he doesn't midichlorian retcon it.

I'm worried about what Disney will do to Star Wars.

The guy they have writing it, the highlight of his career apparently is writing Toy Story 3, a little kids movie. Drew Karpyshyn would have been a better pick, writing Star Wars novels made him a bestseller.

Disney also oozes censorship, you really think they'll show people being hacked to pieces by laser swords like the previous films? Look at The Avengers. Good movie, yes, but compared to past Marvel movies, it was very toned down.

Not to mention they'll probably ignore the extended universe canon and flood it with cameos of old characters.

If Disney wants to do anything good for Star Wars, they should remake the original trilogy identically to the former, except with modern graphics and cast(I've always thought Zac Efron looked a lot like a young Mark Hamil.)

You shut your mouth.

Do not want.

It has been a few pages since I said it:

Fuck the Rat.

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/huh.jpg)


(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/ballskick-wipeface.gif)

Toy Story 3 is not just some "kids movie."  It actually has a lot going for it, including a fair amount of depth and pathos. The moment when they all think they are going to get incinerated is actually pretty powerful.

Can't be said enough.  Seriously if you wanna shit on kids movie writers fine but Toy Story 3 was in it's own league.

I don't want anyone who's been in any way associated with the EU anywhere near the new movies.

Justin Beiber should have a bit roll as an Ewok.

(http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/327/5/b/jar_jar_bieber_by_kindgenius-d5lx7cf.png)

I missed this line. Karpyshyn is an absolutely awful author. He can write for games, but his novels are terrible terrible terrible.

I personally rather liked the Darth Bane stuff, and I know I'm not the only one.  But assuming I did agree with you, maybe being able to write for games makes him even better suited for writing movies anyway?  I guess we'll never know.

I'm happy with the JJA choice.  He made the Star Trek stuff good again, rather unexpectedly.  I think he'll do the same here. 

Hmmm.  Could be good.  Can't be worse than the prequels.  Really, really can't.

Don't make it into a challenge, he could make it just as bad as the prequels, and add lensflare.

The prequels were super double bad due to expectation.

This time, there is none.  Indeed, it's crashingly into the negative.

Anyone shitting on arndt for toy story or sunshine can fuck right off.

He is a properly disciplined writer who isn't likely to turn in 3 hours of flabby EU bullshit  and will hopefully complement and help limit JJA's fan service instincts.

Arndt is the guy giving me expectations for this film.

And anyone thinking an EU author should be involved in any way should know they have a bad opinion and should feel bad.

Drew fucking Karpyshyn. Jesus fucking Christ on a stick.

Still waiting for a confirmation of Muppets Star Wars

This must happen.

The highlight of Arndt's career was probably winning an Oscar, BAFTA and various other awards for his first produced feature length screenplay (Little Miss Sunshine) followed closely by getting a truck load of nominations for his second feature length screenplay (Toy Story 3). The Little Miss Sunshine screenplay in particular is one of my favourite screenoplays (and the movie was good too) - it is structurally great and the storytelling is superb.  As for Toy Story 3 being a kids movie - what do you think Star Wars was?

tl;dr - go sit on the naughty step and think about what you said.

As for Abrams, I liked Star Trek and MI3. Wasn't sold on Super 8 so much but more because of what it was trying to be rather than what it actually was. The direction was fine. Also, on recent form, where Abrams leads, Simon Pegg is likely to follow and that is not a bad thing either.  :awesome_for_real:

It already did (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YztgdsnvsU). And I'm sure folks of a certain age remember it from first time around.

Not quite what I had in mind, sadly.

I'm going to agree that Toy Story 3 is a kids movie, having never seen it, based on the fact that all Pixar movies are kids movies. People like to claim that Pixar movies have something for adults boredom, but I suspect watching the movies with their kids puts them in a brain-mush state.

That said if you can write a good kids movie you are still a good writer and it doesn't mean everything you write is going to be a kids movie. It could mean you are only good at that, but it could also mean you have fundamental writing skills and are versatile.

Of course the new Star Wars film is going to be garbage so it's all irrelevant anyway.  :awesome_for_real:

A reliable but boring choice, which is exactly what everyone expected. Personally I would have liked some new up-and-comer to have gotten it to do something potentially new and cool rather than a slick "let's save the franchise" modernization, but well if the screenplay is good JJ will make something watchable out of it.

All the Toy Stories are family movies. They are perfectly serviceable adventure stories without over-reliance on violence and swearing.

They are no more exclusively for kids than Indiana Jones or Spiderman. Or Star Wars.

But as you say, the key point is that they are good movies.

 :uhrr:

This quote is so misguided I'm wondering if it's a troll.  Considering I've seen 60 year old men cry at the end of Toy Story 3 (Christ it still makes me tear up) they are Definately not just kids movie.  See finding nemo, the incredibles and ratatouille.

I kinda hated the Incredibles, but Pixar does good movies for kids and the parent set.

Yeah, I would have preferred anyone who was directly involved with my favourite Pixar movies: The Incredibles (which was a bit boring halfway through, yeah), Ratatouille (best one, IMO), Wall-E and Finding Nemo  :heart:

Toy Story 3 is one of the best written movies out there, and Karpyshyn is a hack.

They let Andrew Stanton do live action sci fi.....and we got John Carter of Mars... :uhrr:

Said everything better and much more politely than I would have. Well done.


Correct.

Little Miss Sunshine was intolerable hipster dreck.

Super 8 was balls.

John Carter was good.

The writers are going to ruin this most likely. JJ seems to attract them like flies.

Since JJ turned Star Trek into Fantasy maybe he will turn Star Wars into SciFi?  Not bloody likely.

Well... Alan Arkin.

Meh...it was not all THAT bad.

The direction of John Carter wasn't the problem with it imo.

I liked everything about it except the lead.

I really enjoyed John Carter.  They advertised it completely the wrong way though.  The only issue was the ramp up to the movie because you can get confused about the 4-arm aliens and the human looking people.  For a moment I thought the human war stuff was happening in the past and John was in the present.

John Carter was ok, but not special or awesome, which is what I wanted. :(

And Dejah Thoris being a scientist, warrior and princess seemed like she had too many jobs.

Everything Heinlein knew about characters, he learned from ERB.  Seriously, I thought John Carter being the prototype for the 'Heinlein Boy Scout' was obvious even before he lampshaded it in Number Of The Beast.

--Dave

All of this. Yes, it's got to be good on its own merit, good enough to not be compared at all to the prequels. But it also has to be fun enough specifically to kids to bring in a much needed new generation to the IP, even if we're the ones buying our kids the tickets :-)

And yes, SW 7 can stay right away from the EU pap. That's always been just filler anyway. Some of it is relatively fun if you're really into Star Wars in the same way someone actually buys a Mass Effect or Dragon Age novel. But that's not an audience anywhere sufficiently large enough to target a movie. Some fun insider-knowledge stuff is fine if handled quickly, like the equivalent of Chekov pronouncing Vs would be some background bit of a blue skinned alien admiral or some shit.

Here's the thing, guys, you all are showing your age.

Hated as they are by the 27+ crowd, I've come across more than one 25 and under (who would have been 10 when they first came out) who thought the Prequels were perfectly serviceable movies.   I know plenty of kids through my own in the 15-and-under crowd who PREFER them to the originals.

So stew on that for a bit, regardless of what happens, and remember.  You're Not the target.  You haven't been for a long time.   A long time.

That's probably a similar effect to how I thought G.I. Joe and Smurfs was good when I was a kid.  Young people have low standards, old people complain a lot.

Doesn't mean I can't bitch about things.  :grin:

You know, I am still unwilling to believe this Abrams thing isn't just some bit of misinformation. He seemed rather adamant and I have trouble believing Paramount wouldn't throw a shit fit about it.

As for the rest of the comments going on, Pixar writers are good, Schild throws in random Joss hate, in other words, nothing to see her. :)

Personally, I would be VERY interested in a new trilogy that explores the very origin of the SW universe: Celestials, Rakata, discovery of the Force, foundation of the jedi order and the Republic, Sith Race, but I guess that is already too specific, not mainstream enough, and wouldn't appeal the masses (and maybe the long time fans, I don't know):

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_galactic_history

You know, they could cover about 11,000 years of story  :drill: :drill: :drill:  :why_so_serious:


The End.  :grin: :grin:

Unfortunately that's fringe stuff even in the context of EU. It's a lot of history, but I'll believe a Simarillion movie before I believe they'll talk about Killiks or anything covered in Knights of the Old Republic.


Same, except most of the ones I know thought they were merely servicable and, unfortunately, forgettable.

We all grew up with kids-only stuff that parents suffered through (Winnie the Pooh, Pete's Dragon, The Muppet Movie). We also had movies with transgenerational appeal like E.T (kids movies), Superman I (older kids movie), Raiders (something for everyone until they invented PG-13 for Temple of Doom, Back to the Future, Star Wars).

The kids-only movies have nostalgia appeal, but the others have a more cultural general appeal. It's only the sub-cultures that derived from origin content that gave rise to those movies (comics) or expanded universe content that resulted from those them(books) that have the belief the movies were specifically targeting them at a certain age.

I don't want to use the "timeless classic" usually reserved for movies that need that label to contextualize black and white or cultural sensibilities from a different time. But even the original Sabrina and Miracle on 34th Street stand up to time, probably because most of the people seeing them nowadays weren't alive at first airing, so they're intrinsically for everyone :-)

A film about the foundation of jedi set a long time ago would be fine - so long as they drop all the bullshit in the books (and games) and start again with a blank sheet of paper.

But they'd be stupid to go near anything that could be called a prequel till they have a normal and successful film in the can.

They were shit back then, too. :-P

Everything is shit. There's just people who haven't realized it yet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-GShbugITk

Getting people to cry is not the sign of a good or adult movie. 40-year old women cry watching Twilight or Marley and Me.

Pixar movies are full of juvenile jokes, trite messaging and a distinct lack of anything not remotely boring. And by that I don't mean I need a ton of action scenes, I mean I need something engaging on a level other than "an animated character made some googly eyes!"

As an adult I don't understand why anyone would choose to watch a Pixar movie of their own volition. I guess we can agree to disagree though. If it makes you feel better Pixar movies are probably better than LOTR movies at least. If nothing else they're over sooner.

The hipster "Everything popular is terrible" bullshit is reaching critical levels in this thread (and forum).

Yeah, the page and a half of people defending toy story from EU fans and Margalis was making me think that.

 :oh_i_see:

Also, quite a bit of popular stuff is in fact, really bad.

It's official now (http://starwars.com/news/star-wars-is-being-kick-started-with-dynamite-jj-abrams-to-direct-star-wars-episode-vii.html)

(http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18ckumca12e9rjpg/cmt-medium.jpg)

The X-wings need lensflare, too.

Margalis is too refined for popular culture.

Yet he keeps coming here.

Calling anyone who disagrees with you a hipster is the height of stupidity.


I like some popular things. I just don't blindly like all of them. When did not mindlessly liking schlock become a character flaw? So you guys all love Twilight I guess? 'Cause you know, only hipsters possess taste that in any way deviates from the mainstream.


Bingo. Though to be fair Pixar movies are fine at entertaining kids and not being offensive to adults. (Although I found the trite anti-consumerism message of Wall-E pretty offensive to my intelligence) I just don't see why an adult sans kids would watch them.

If people are trying to make me feel bad for not being into The Big Bang Theory and Hunger Games it's not going to work!

That sounds like the sort of thing a hipster would say!  :grin:

Pixar movies are popular because they are wildly hailed as good and in some cases great.  Not everything popular is quality, look at McDonalds however if you believe pixar movies are not good or don't see why an adult would watch them then you are in a very, very small minority.

So...you guys hate minorities?  :awesome_for_real:

Complain to Edgar Rice Burroughs.

It's like bitching that Doc Savage can do everything. It's the pulps, you know? Pulps may have bred nerd culture, but nerd culture doesn't seem to understand the logic of pulps.

Arguing about what is and isn't a hipster makes you a hipster.

I've only read the first story in the John Carter collection I've got. Was Dejah Thoris so multitalented in the other stories?

Kinda.

So was John Carter except for the scientist bit. Burroughs tended to go for characters who could do almost anything. Jane wasn't just a useless sack of helpless tits waiting for a rescue, and Dejah could pretty much fight her way out of shit right alongside John Carter. I don't think she was quite so much the scientist as in this one--the scientists in Burroughs were almost all White Martians--but she knew a lot about Barsoomian tech.

Another JC movie fan here.  Dunno why it failed.  Dejah Thoris haunts my dreams!  Also enjoyed the story and the Earth scenes are kind of a framing device.

Back to SW, just watched MI:3 Ghost Protocol with Brad Bird directing.  Fine popcorn action film.  Bird's talented, haven't seen Toy Story 3 yet.
Tom Cruise may be a wingnut, but he still brings his tremendous action hero chops. 

Because the first hour was a snorefest. The traci lords version was more exciting because I was wondering when she would show boobs.

True, but only if you buy into some defined quality scale.

Only when their beliefs and behaviour differ from the rest of ours.

I've read a few of his novels. I liked them.

And the guy would not be a New York Times bestselling author if everybody shared your poor opinion.


Yeah, up yours too, buddy.

George Lucas is retiring(with 4.5 billion bucks for selling Lucasfilm, and everybody giving him hell over the Prequel Trilogy, it's no wonder.)

Meaning the new Trilogy is no different than Expanded Universe material.


Something rated higher than PG, that's for sure.

Star Wars is full of pretty gruesome violence.

In The Phantom Menace, Darth Maul got cut in half at the waist and fell to his doom.

In Attack of the Clones, Mace Windu decapitated Jango Fett.

In Revenge of the Sith, Obi Wan cut off Anakin's legs and he got burned alive by a pool of lava. And they showed Anakin murdering children, along with every Jedi in the order being shot in the back by their own men.

Throughout the series in general, people are frequently being dismembered, electrocuted, impaled, strangled to death, and killed in other creative ways.

None of which is stuff that Disney would want shown in anything they have their mitts on. If you notice, Phil Coulson was the only person shown to die in the Avengers, and that was just a stabbing probably due to being written in before Disney got into it.

You really want us to drag out the utter shit that's billed as "New York Times bestselling authors"




And the utter shit that was Indy 4, which finally made the people defending him shut the hell up


That's what you call gruesome violence? The guy didn't even bleed. You might as well call Twilight violent. hey were ripping heads off in the final battlewith no blood seen as well. Afte rthe endless smooching and long eye contact.


See above

See above. And it was all shit.

Revenge of the Sith is the only PG-13 Star Wars movie. The same rating as all the Pirates of the Caribbean movies which were, you know - Disney.

Oh god, we've reached SirBrucing level in a Star Wars thread.

The prequels were kids movies. If they had some gore in them that doesn't make them not kids movies, it just means they have inappropriate content for a kids movie.

Every time the prequels come up the defense is "these movies aren't for you - they are for moronic toddlers."

I'm going to be pedantic and say they aren't kids movies, they are intended as whole family movies.

It anyway doesn't change the reasons around why they are so god awful. The 'They aren't for you' argument is just as dumb applied to Star Wars as when Kevin Smith tried it for his terrible movies.

Unlike the originals, which were for mature, sophisticated adults.  :grin:

The prequels have shit which would insult a 7 year old, and they have shit which isn't suitable for kids, i.e. it sucks for both audiences. vOv

By 'fell to his doom' you mean 'and then he got better', right?  Because the latter is exactly what happened if you include the EU.

Wait, what?

The Clone Wars animated series brought him back.

The EU is replete with soap opera-esque they-didn't-really-die. Heck, ccording to Dark Empire, Palpatine had more Spaarti chambers to keep rezing into more bodies than Voldemort had horcruxes.

In that vein they'd probably have made ESB PG-13 if the rating existed then. RoTJ was tamer.

The point still stands though that all of the Star Wars movies were family-with-kids movies. Yea sure an argument could be made that Toy Story, Wall-e and others were more kid-focused. But that probably only holds true if you say animation=kids.

Of course in that case, Appleseed disagrees :-)

I love how Lucas uses the "They're just for kids!" excuse when anyone has any criticism towards the prequels. Like they were direct to DVD Disney sequels.
Hm. Maybe Iago can show up in Episode VII?

Make no mistake, the next movies will not be geared towards young kids. They will want to cash in on the generation that watched the prequels, clone wars and have been subjected to star wars since then, which are now in mid/late teens.  An avengers type tone fits best, nothing "grimdark" but also not little orphan annie.

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/zoidberg_thread.jpg)

Wait wait wait.

You guys area all missing the important part.

SirT confessed to watching the last Twilight movie and paying enough attention to reference it.

When did Maul come back in the Clone Wars ?

I missed that ep.

Somewhere around Season 3.  They played it up quite a bit at the time.  He's got his own story line going on right now on Mandalore.  The son's stoked.

He's got these ridiculous quasi-Grievous legs going on, though.

So SirT is a Twihard. Good stuff.

Dark Forces, Jedi Knight one had a Sith that had no legs and flew about on a ring. 

That was totally fucking weird.

No, just hipsters.

I... welp, you just killed my desire to ever watch the Clone Wars series.

I like it.  It's...what it should have been.

That fight was pretty cool - felt good to strike a blow for Newton's third law.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GMNm0-0-Ko

/fin

Uggggh.

This was originally in some "What if?" Star Wars comic thing about ten years or so ago, where Maul came back with those weird robot legs and went around looking for revenge on Obi-Wan. I think he ended up going to Tatooine, killing Watto, and then he and Obi-Wan dueled and Obi-Wan killed him again.

It was fucking retarded, and I can't believe they actually made Crazy Legs Darth Maul a thing.

Season 4, episode 22. His brother, Savage Opress (voiced by Clancy motherfuckin' Brown) turned up in Season 3.

I like the Clone Wars cartoons. They entertain. They're also no sillier than fucking midichlorians so that's fine too. They take a huge node from the Clone Wars comics which were great. As for Maul having cybernetic legs... guess that makes him more machine than man. I wonder if that's ever happened in Star Wars before?

I liked what episoded I've watched, but I think it also suffers from rehashing the same old tropes because it's kind of locked in storytelling stasis. Anakin will tease about his dark side, but they'll never have him go over, because that doesn't happen until Sith. The Clone soldiers will have little bits where they question their loyalty, but never go balls out because they have to be loyal for Order 66. Etc.

The entire republic army not wiping out their commanders and anakin not turning into an incarnation of evil still leaves quite a bit of room for storytelling.

I have no problems with cybernetic legs. I question the actual bringing back part. Maul wasn't that great of a character. He was an obstacle for Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon. The only reason he got so popular is because he didn't have so much characterization. The mystery man, Boba Fett effect. People can imagine he's so much more badass than he actually is. What did Maul do in the movies? Run around, launch some probe thingies, chase after the heroes, manage to kill Qui-Gon and then get chopped up by Obi-Wan. He served his purpose in Episode I. Bringing him back is as silly fanwankery as bringing back Boba Fett, or the Emperor. :oh_i_see:

Oh, it does. I'm not totally knocking the series. I'm just saying that they're locked into certain tropes that will not resolve themselves because they're resolved in the third prequel. It's super easy for TV shows to go in soap opera circles in such situations. Like House, who was always dealing with being an ass, but never quite resolved it because that would make the character less interesting. After a while it gets stale.

Hard to tell a good story when you are bookended by garabage. Ahsoka Tano is the only interesting thing about CW and she makes no sense in the greater story.

Star Wars threads and Redheads.

 :ye_gods:

My problem with the cybernetic legs is not the man-machine or 'wtf Maul is back' aspect.  It's Star Wars, silly things like that can happen (although I would have thought the falling to the bottom of a pit thing would have killed if the "cut in half" thing didn't.)

No, my problem is the lame-looking design.  Which is why I specifically mentioned they were like Grievous' legs.

Not a fan.


She's never in the movies, so I keep waiting for her to die.  Apparently some EU-tard has written her in to a later novel so she's one of the Jedi who survive Order 66, though.  

I, on the other hand, keep hoping for a more canonical end to that particular line of thinking.  Like how "Stormtroopers aren't Clones" was officially axed and destroyed huge swaths of Kip Durron nonsense.

Yeahhhh, you kind of know which side of the Force HE falls on eh?

The same side as his master: Trample Subjugat

You joke but his other brother is called Feral. I kid you not. Still, I keep waiting for them to introduce General Grievous' sibling - Major Bodily Harm.  :grin:

I give Savage Opress a pass because Clancy motherfuckin Brown - but yeah, made me roll my eyes as much as much as the names of the Darths Sidious, Maul, Tyrannus and Plaugeis did.

From what I've seen of "The Clone Wars": Jar Jar Binks is still a disaster of a character.

They also had an episode where young Boba Fett hid among other young Jango Fett clones that were training as Clone Troopers in order to get a shot at Obi-Wan. I thought that was clever.

Anyway: JJ Abrams is a safe, safe choice for Disney who want to keep that Star Wars IP $$$ rolling in.

The Clone Wars is very uneven.  Some of it is really good, like much better than the prequels good.  But then a lot of it turns out like Chicken-Legs Maul and Sillyname Opress.

LOL Sorry, haven't seen it. Read the movie reviews though.  :grin:

Close enough Twihard

 :grin:

The Clone Wars is pretty good stuff. Way better than the bookends, even if as mentioned there can be no real progress of a timeline. But then, the Shadow of the Empire had the same problem but still told a good filler story. They both had the benefit of not trying to be too much, which gave them more freedom to be merely competent.

And that's often enough.

Holy fuck that's awful.

Oh hey, hi there forgotten img tags. *fixes post*

Yeah. There's just no universe in which that look doesn't change him from decent cool-looking villain to right twat on a pair of poultry sticks.

Those legs aren't bad.  I found a few discarded ideas.

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/MAUL/MAUL_American_Wheelchair.jpg)
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/MAUL/MAUL_segway.jpg)
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/MAUL/MAUL_twizy.jpg)

(http://i.imgur.com/MpMSm.jpg)

Disney canned the released of all the 3D versions of Star Wars as well.  Thankfully they shot that idea in the back and put it out of it's misery.

Who is that?

It's Mark Hamill (Luke). I can't find a linkable version of an image that shows the broken nose from the same angle, but it's him.

--Dave

There must be an opening for a photoshop artist.

I hadn't heard about this, but then googled and found a terribly-written article from yesterday saying this was the case.Source (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/disney-postpones-3d-release-star-416143) (The guy said "...released in February" like it was still 2012 and that's one of the least offenses.)

It makes little sense to me because Attack was supposed to be out in a few weeks, so it's got to be done already.  I guess 44mil domestic 59mil int'l wasn't enough to justify the costs of shipping?  I dunno.

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/MAUL/MAUL_wheelchair-tank.jpg)

Who'd win in a fight: Mech Maul or Tank Maul?

Chicken Walker Mech Maul or Man Walker Mech Maul?

There's a non-chicken versions?  We're gonna need a pro/con list to sort this.

While you work on that, here's some comedy relief.

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/MAUL/MAUL_muppet_studebaker.jpg)

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/MAUL/MAUL_Woody.png)

It's like a Fark photoshop thread.

I'll take that as a compliment.

I'm pretty sure Segway Maul would wtfpwn everyone else. I wonder if Yeg is building up his forces for a deathmatch against the vader pics subforum, though...

Spider legs Maul would be kind of cool in my opinion.

Before the chicken legs there were.... spider legs. Held together by the power of the Force

(http://www.mostwantedcollectibles.com/images/star_wars/GG_DarthMaulSpiderStatue.jpg)

WTF I don't even...I mean, how would he not chop off all of his legs?

And Yegolev, thanks for the laugh!

Also, that fake poster with Hamill in it.  That's actually sorta cool.  Too bad it isn't feasible.

Why would you give yourself some giant spider abdomen?

Early battery technology.

(http://i.imgur.com/cHJo3cc.jpg)

It's disney so we need some black hole photoshop.

I happen to have that DVD nearby, so I'll see if I can get some screens from it once I finish my current WIP.

I hope Disney releases the original trilogy as originally released on DVD.  I still have the damn trilogy on VHS because that is the only option.  If I am wrong, someone please steer me to a place I can buy the DVDs without Lucas' fucked up "enhancements".

You can't buy the original theatrical versions of the original trilogy on DVD or BluRay.

There are up-scaled laserdisk versions floating around the net, as well as the despecialized editions (http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Harmys-STAR-WARS-Despecialized-Edition-HD-REMASTERED-is-now-released/topic/12713/).

eBay or Amazon are your only hope of getting the Limited Edition DVD release from 2006. The ones with the covers that look like this:

(http://mimg.ugo.com/201005/43977/cuts/starwars_limitededitions_dvd_1_288x288.jpg)

The statement from LucasFilm has ever been that the original silver-oxide masters were destroyed by the processing required to produce the Special Editions because they had degraded so much.  No digital copies exist without the changes because....
 um...
uh...
 *shuffle*
Uh... Kyle overwrote them? Goddammit, Kyle.
Uh... nobody backed them up?
fethers?

That's funny because I own the box set of both the originals and the special editions on seperate discs.

I thought the last time they released the non-late 1990s "special edition" versions was on VHS and LaserDisc right before the theatrical release of said special editions.

(But I have not really paid attention to Star Wars since the Phantom Menace destroyed my will to live.)

As do I.  If I remember from when it was announced, they ripped those off of laserdisk and on to the DVDs so they are only 425TVL copies of a digital format. The calls for BluRay are people asking for higher-res (requiring a scan off of the original film masters which are 'destroyed') and with the same retouch & remastering treatment the SE got, which isn't going to happen. 

They went out of their way to make the DVD of the original crappy. Isn't it non-anomorphic letterboxed?

There was a digitally remastered 1995? VHS set that's absolutely fantastic. They redid and restored the effects with a very light hand and left the film alone other than leaving in the original sin of changing the crawl to add the "Episode IV" nonsense. I would kill for those on DVD. Don't tell me they did a full remaster of the film and never cut new negatives. That VHS set came out in full screen only and Lucas announced it had been mastered fullscreen 4x3 and therefore there would be no widescreen of that version ever. A year later after people bought them on his word, the widescreens came out so you got to pay again. Don't believe what Lucas says. The masters to the original or something equivalent are floating around somewhere.

Yeah the 1995 set was the THX edition.  It had the really striking packaging using the close-up of the faces.  (Vader/ Storm Trooper/ Yoda)
http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Strikes-Digitally-Remastered-Edition/dp/B001AWKDK4

Here's a really good comparison of the different ways the film has looked with each remaster.
http://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=2601599

You really start to see the heavy-handed sin of Orange & Teal color correction when they're side-by-side like that.


I have no real doubts that somewhere there still exists an untainted copy for true remastering of the originals (Hence my blustering excuse-making RP upthread)  That doesn't mean we'll ever get to see it, even with Lucas out of the picture.

I like that site. If only I had that kind of time. Glad someone does though :-)

To be fair to Lucasarts, it is sort of difficult to shoot a daytime desert scene without having some shade of yellow-orange and some share of blue in there.  :oh_i_see:

Sooo Yoda is getting a stand alone movie.  I'm not sure how I feel about this, it could be majorly awesome though, if it was young Yoda beating thie shit out of everyone for 2 hours.

Two hours of fortune cookie dialog, can they write?  How long can they put out a movie every two or three years, and will they stop before they've driven the franchise into the ground?  Are we ready for a Boba Fett feature?

--Dave

Only certain scenes were on in the desert, look at all those scenes, most closely at the flesh tones.  In the movie-censorship link, look at the color difference between the 1995 THX and the 2004 Digital. The Imperial officer with Vader is orange.

The silver in R2's dome is distinctly blue-tinged instead of silver-white down the page.  It's awful.

http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html

Joe Johnston, the director for Captain America, pitched a Boba Fett stand alone movie to Lucas.  Now that Disney owns all of this, I wonder if he'll get his shot.

Arg.  Just Don't.  Please.  For the Children.

What he said. I have no desire to see scores of fan wank movies focusing on single characters like Yoda. I might have bit on a Boba Fett standalone movie in my 20's but the prequels shit all over that character to the point where not one fuck would be given about such a project.

I'm sure a Jabba The Hutt movie would be ... interesting. :why_so_serious:

If they ARE going to do a Boba Fett movie, Johnston is a pretty good candidate. Hell, he basically made one before in Rocketeer.

What's not to like?

Han Solo and Boba Fett are getting treatments definitely.  Yoda is still a maybe or something.

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2013/02/06/star-wars-spin-offs-young-han-solo-movie-boba-fett/

I look forward to seeing Han make the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.   :oh_i_see:

(http://i.chzbgr.com/completestore/2010/5/7/129177272425190728.jpg)

At least the EU cleared that bit of Lucas nonsense up.

Goddamnit, a Yoda movie would be bad enough, but a fucking Han Solo movie? No. Just... goddamnit, NO. Han Solo is Harrison Fucking Ford. No one else has ever played the character. No one else ever SHOULD play that character. There's just somethings too iconic to be fucked with.

Do not want.

That actually sounds much more appealing to me than a Yoda movie.

Perfect example of the EU being garbage.

I...I'd almost see a Solo film if they cast it right and got the mood right.

I look forward to the Young Han Solo TV series.  :why_so_serious:

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/27/Sean_Patrick_Flanery,_The_Young_Indiana_Jones_Chronicles.jpg/150px-Sean_Patrick_Flanery,_The_Young_Indiana_Jones_Chronicles.jpg)

Hmm this sounds like a job for Shia LeBeouf!

You know, I can just imagine the flurry of yodaspeak which would accompany each yearly edition of the yoda movie (which you just know Disney would happily churn out until we puke if they got half a chance).

:shudder:

Because Disney totally does that with all their franchises.  :oh_i_see:

No. They just fucking ruined it along with Timothy Fucking Zahn and his fucking Hot Chocolate.

Depending on the casting I think it'll be just fine.  But what thread wouldn't be complete about you hipstering out on something.   :awesome_for_real:  I'll grant that it has the potentially of being pretty devent (not good) but a greater chance of being shit.

I'm of open mind just because notlucas

I'd be all for Zachary Levi as Han Solo.   :awesome_for_real:

Nope Zach Efron.  :grin:

Why? After the cleanup, and in light of how hyperspace was made to work, it actually makes sense as a bragging point. Yea yea that wasn't the original intent and they were just looking for a cool word to use and all us geeks spent our teenage years bragging about how "parsec makes no sense because that's a unit to measure display not time" and then subsequently learned that parsec is actually both distance and time and really who the fuck gives a shit anyway?

The EU stuff will be retconned to shit if there's any intent on making a compelling story that weaves together the important narratives that'll hit the mass market audience. All that kessel run/maw cluster/research complex stuff will be rewritten.

It kinda has to be. Because Han Solo pre ANH was a drug runner for slavers. That's not gonna fly as a mass market movie  :oh_i_see:

Eh. The franchise was already largely in the ground from a storytelling standpoint. I'll worry about that in six years.

Back on page 4 of this thread EU-baiting was sort of fun.

Then they hired the director from Lost and Star Trek : Lens Flare, and the writer of Toy Story 3 and Little Miss Sunshine. If anyone honestly thinks these guys give a fuck about EU novels then I admire your ability to keep the faith.

I'm pretty sure all the stuff past RotJ is gonna be shitcanned in the Star Wars Disney era.

It's the thing I'm looking forward to most.

Because it's not a mistake. I quote the holy 4th edition revision of the screenplay, as published by Ballantine Books in 1979:

Emphasis mine.

http://starwarz.com/starkiller/2010/03/star-wars-public-version-of-fourth-draft/

And then the EU goes and overthinks a very simple line. Because that's what the EU does. There is nothing, NOTHING about Star Wars that doesn't get scrutinized by the EU, sucking any cool or fun out of it.
That Lucas himself goes in for the unnecessary retcon, I blame on his general decline in the time he made the prequels.

Yeah, never understood the confusion.  Ben was supposed to react to the parsec line and Guiness downplayed it.  But he did shoot Solo a 'ni**a please' glance.

As for the EU, I've read 'The Courtship of Princess Leia' and the first third of the Thrawn book and my opinion firmly is fuck the EU.

I'm shocked, shocked that Han Solo, murderer smuggler and thief, would LIE to a prospective client.

Agreed.



Already happened.  The prequels killed all of the "omg I am a freed Stormtrooper" backgrounds (Handwaving about there being recruits after the battle on Kashyyyk are the EU trying to shore itself up.  Lucas said they're all clones, maybe not ideal candidates because of politicization, but still clones.)  Maw Complex was killed by the AOTC and the end scene of ROTS.  The exposition on the Clone Wars has killed ALL of the Thrawn story, since - y'know - the Clone Wars refers to the use of them, not a war against replicants with a penchant for extra vowels in their names and there's no implication of "Force Madness" that require anti-force worms to create good clones.

Everything else deemed "canon" by the EU, from Cortosis to the Grey Force are eligible for being jettisoned.  They're not chasing the 30-50 geek crowd, they've got your money. They're after our kids who'll be the next 30 years of purchasing.

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/drum_solo.png)
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/han_brolo.png)


I think this thread is also doing this.

I must be the only person around who enjoyed the EU, at least at the beginning.  It started really going off the rails for me in later books like the YuzongVongwhatevertheywerenamed guys showed up.

You're also talking about an old and narrow window.  Zahn's books kicked-off the big-time EU in 1991. The first Vong book was in 1999.  An 8 year window that ended almost double that timeframe ago (14 years?! zomg.)

Sucks getting old, eh?


There is nothing the right geek can't kill the joy of.

I would be happy if Disney came out and said, "EU?  What the fuck is that?  Get the fuck out of here with that stupid fan shite.  Here's a Mickey T-Shirt."  Then, if they took it a step further and burned the copies of the prequels and never released them again and then instituted a buy back of the DVDs at double the cost of the original price, and then gave everyone a coupon for free popcorn to make up the price of the movie tickets... I'd ... well I don't know what I'd do, but that would be fucking hilarious.

No.  I loved Zhan's books and thought they were really well done (for what they were).

The others that came later were pretty meh, but I liked The Han Solo trilogy and could even stomach the Bounty Hunter Trilogy.

I stopped before the Vong and, frankly, I'm glad I did.  It all sounded like utter wank.  I think this is the problem - When these things gain critical mass, they just pull in any old writers and before you know it you're thinking that Kevin J Anderson is actually a writer and letting him touch pen or paper.  The Fucking Useless Cunt.

It was the same when they used to write the Star Trek novels.  Most of them were actually ok, especially those by Diane Duane, but there was an awful lot of Fan Wank from people who just wanted to write themselves into Star Trek or see shitty stories put in there.  See, Spocks Son, or Securty Guard Stanger or, worst of all, Stanger turning into a vampire.  God that one was FUCKING AWFUL.  And the Sackers.  God, the Sackers.  Jeeeesus.

Anyway.

You read something like that?  Dude.

Die. :mob:

I'd totally watch a Han Solo movie.

In any event, the whole thing fascinates me because it's probably one of the few cases ever where almost everyone is saying, "Hey, a big conglomerate bought up all the IP rights to a beloved cultural icon from its original creator. THANK GOD!"

The only EU stuff I've ever cared about is the Bioware stuff, but even if they break that in their 'real' continuity, it's not like it invalidates that stuff being good. I mean I already disregard the prequels, so who cares really?

Don't you judge me.

The Diane Duane ST novels were pretty good (for licensed fiction) and Cryptic lifted huge chunks of her Rihannsu/Romulan stuff for STO.

No, no, this is all still on-topic. See, according to this ST novel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_%28Star_Trek%29), they run into "a scruffy-looking spice smuggler" amongst others. (Said others including original-Apollo and original-Starbuck, the Fourth Doctor, the Second Doctor, and a whole bunch of TV & film cowboys). So therefore Star Trek and Star Wars share a continuity!  :grin:

Barbara Hambly.. also responsible for such Hack jobs as Children of the Jedi &  Planet of Twilight and the ridiculous Luke & "Ancient jedi spirit in another body" Callista romance.   :why_so_serious:

This sounds dangerously close to Riker/Solo fiction.

I'm sure there is Greebo/solo fiction out there too.

Greebo? The cat from the Discworld novels? That's some pretty far out slash there.  :why_so_serious:

Barbara Hambly can eat my suppurating ass.

This is what I'm talking about.  Hambly's just a gateway drug to harder substances, like Anderson.

Maverick was in there too. it was totally unabashed multi crosss-over fanfic. And the writer got paid for it. The main crossover was with some western TV show (aimed at families or women, not like John Wayne western. I keep wanting to say Seven Brides for Seven brothers, but that's a movie and I'm pretty sure not what it was).

John Ford wrote "The Final Reflection" which was so goddamn good that it single-handedly created the modern Klingon. (They were black space barbarians before. Everything you saw in TNG and after? Based on that shit). He also wrote "How Much for Just the Planet" which is hilarious.

Then there was, i believe, at least one triliogy of flat out Spock/Kirk slash that got published (that didn't DO anything, but it wasn't exactly subtle. It was brick to the face). Then at some point, probably around the time of ST IV and the green-lighting of TNG, they got a little more serious about it. A little bit.

How much for just the planet was rather delicious.

I liked The IDIC Epidemic, but it read like it was written in San Francisco or something.

I find Hambly to be far worse than Anderson.  But then, your hatred of Anderson is so extreme that it seems to send you into some kind of boiling, inexplicable rage that must soon result in a restraining order of some kind.  While I don't exactly love his stuff, I don't quite get it.  Also, it is likely that Vonda McIntyre (sp?) is worse than both of them put together, times 400. 

The only one I can find for her is Crystal Star, which I'm not sure I've read.  I'd have to be reminded of what the fuck it was about again.

She wrote The Entropy Effect, which I vaguely remember as being pish.

Anderson wrote the Jedi Academy stuff.  It was hackery of the highest order.

That is indeed the only one.  Considered by experts (well, me) to be the worst of the EU books by a great margin.  It's like the Maw Installation of Star Wars books....it sucks so hard that all memory of it just disappears.  I have to this day no idea what it was about.  Rumor on the street is that only Splinter of a Mind's Eye (or whatever) is slightly worse, and that is enough for me to never read that book.  I mean, as bad as Hambly's stuff was, at least I remember that shit to some extent.

Of course, opinions will vary.  I don't hate (nor love) KJA's stuff, for example.  I'm not even sure what about it makes people more ragey than other EU books.

I thought Splinter was kind of amusing, back when we had no idea what a sequel to Star Wars might actually look like. Basically it goes off in a direction where Luke and Leia aren't related and he's still chasing her romantically, and Darth Vader is just an evil badass.

The Crystal Star was indeed terrible. I'd have mentioned Vonda but it was such a worthless one-off that they never approached her for SW novels again.   

She actually was a ST novelist and the one that came-up with Sulu's first name.  I don't think it's coincidental that Star Trek novelists wrote some of the worst Star Wars books.  They share a genre, not much more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vonda_McIntyre

Wikipedia and Wookiepedia have the same threadbare plot summary. Telling you that this book sucked SO HARD that nobody can even be bothered to explain why.   

(Spoiler tags for Length, not because anyone cares about spoilers on this.)


Of course, Amazon has a much better synopsis that explains the problems - in the reviews.

We're deep in bubble-wizard territory now.  I'm going to have to bail.

This thread is starting to scare me.

The only EU book I ever read was Truce at Bakura and that was because I got it for free in a pile of random books from my local library in high school.

It was pretty terrible but my memory is vague. I remember there being a weapon called a "paddle beamer" or some shit that I couldn't wrap my head around and the badguys were ridiculous shit that wouldn't make it over the bar for a SWTOR update.

There are entirely too many nerds in this thread.

Well, it is a Star Wars thread, no matter how you turn it.  Nerd happens.

FTFY?

I wear a Stormtrooper jolly-roger shirt to the Gym.  I'm ok with that.

What is FTFY?  Fuck That For You?

lol. Fixed it For You. But your definition works too.

Crystal Star was one of the few books I ever stopped reading midway through. I'm usually pretty tolerant, which is why that stands out in my memory. The other one was the first book in L Ron Hubbard's whatever-decology thing. And that was before I knew anything about scientology.

I don't remember individual books too well, but kinda recall eras. I thought the Zahn trilogy with Thrawn was interesting, but has the same problem as the Simarillion in general: oh you know that period of history everyone in the world knows about? Welp, that was just a footnote to the next struggle/other part of the world/whatever the IP holders decided to subsequently license out to separate creators.

Shadow of the Empire served as a good setup to RotJ. The Yuuzhan Vong (and how it weaved with Zenoma Sekot) were an interesting concept, but by then the EU fascination with galactic politics (as a setup for the why-the-hell-do-we-care prequel political crap) was really driving things off the rails.

Seriously, what? I'm gonna guess there's a chunk of us in our teens and early 20s were reading this kind of stuff quite regularly. As if SW EU was any better or worse narrative than the D&D campaigns  or Piers Anthony :awesome_for_real:


AOTC establishing who designed the Death Star didn't seem to imply where it occured. Or maybe it did? The force madness thing makes sense, though afaik there's been no appearance of Spaarti cylinders (unless those too were retconned by a new source?).

But to your point, iirc the only sacrosanct EU material according to Lucasfilm are Mara Jade (though her origin and involvement is open season) and Chewbacca's death (though how and why I'm sure isn't).

The extended universe.... as bad as Scientology.


Maybe.

It's been decades since I read it, but I think the story where it was mentioned also had them talking to the scientists who invented it at the Maw.  They were a bunch of pacifists who invented it to destroy "abandoned planets" or some bullshit. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skl71urqKu0)

Without going into it, there is extensive information in the EU about the origins of the Death Star and also the people who created it.  I think it is the selfsame Kevin J Anderson who came up with most or all of it.  Needless to say, Lucas pretty much wiped it out in AotC and RotS.

(also, actual scientists were not pacifists exactly...rather, they were secluded and naive about what they were creating.  Which is a bit pants-on-head, obviously)

There was also the "Dreadnaught!" books, which featured quite possibly the most Mary Sue-est character to ever get published in official tie-ins. No, worse than whathername and her Boba Fett/Mandalorian fetish for SW.

What's weird about Hambly is I've read some of her other (non-Star Wars stuff) and other than having a real interest in younger chicks with older guys thing romantically, none of them are remotely as wretched as her Jedi stuff.

I'm thinking she just plays poorly with other people's characters and was hired entirely on "being a published author willing to write a Star Trek novel"

Hah, I've been thinking the same thing ever since the thread started talking about her.  I've never read any of the Star Wars books but I remember reading most of her stuff in the 80s and 90s and not hating it at all.
I lost track of her after that because she started writing in genres I wasn't interested in (Star Wars and StarTrek) but according to Wikipedia she's still churning out novels every year or so.  
The books I've read by her aren't even close to being as awful as anything by Kevin Anderson so I was surprised to hear that she's practically the definition of bad Star Wars writer.


edit: spelling is hard

I've only read bits and pieces of her fantasy. It's definitely more romance oriented and more and generally a bit dated, but given when it was written it was pretty innovative at the time. (Strong female characters, some urban fantasy --- even if it was modern person sent to magic world, and certainly not an Eddings/Brooks clone which for 70s and 80s fantasy was definitely different).

I don't remember the characterizations being all that bad, except all the 50+ 'wizard male leads' and the 20s-30s 'female lead' all had quite a bit in common, character wise. She branched out into some vampire stuff later, which I vaguely recall a friend of mine reading and happily exclaiming that it wasn't another goddamn Anne Rice clone. (This was around when she was big).

So, I dunno. Like I said, I guess she's just shit with sci-fi and other people's characters.

My 4-year old has never seen them, so I bought both trilogies on blu-ray yesterday and we've been spending the weekend parked in front of the tv having lightsaber battles and watching "Star Vader"

Even the wretched bits are awesome that way :grin:

Just wait until we actually have something to talk about.

Times like this I miss WUA.

You say that now, but wait until he's tearing through your gutter runners in Blood Bowl.

He's in shitposter heaven now. RIP WUA.

Lawrence Kasdan says no EU (http://badassdigest.com/2013/02/11/rip-star-wars-expanded-universe/)

I'm so confused who is writing what now. Just make an entertaining Star Wars movie please.

Ahahahahahahahaa!!!!

 :rock: :rock_hard: :hulk_rock: :roflcopter: :thumbs_up:  :Love_Letters:

Fan-fucking-tastic.

GOOD.

All I take away from that is 'new characters'.

Dude wrote ESB, ROTJ, The Big Chill and Silverado.  He gets a pass from me.

"Now I don't wanna kill you and you don't wanna die."

Kasdan being involved is the first postiive news about the new movies.

Not IMO. Plain fact.  :grin:

So what you're saying is, a man who hasn't done anything decent in the best part of 30 years is a good custodian of future Star Wars films. If that's the criteria you use, why are we so against George Lucas being involved again?

Because, quite honestly, French Kiss, Mumford, Darling Companion and, particularly, Dreamcatcher are some of the worst films I've ever had the misfortune to sit through. And that's pretty much all Kasdan has done in the last 20 years.

Maybe he's due.

Dreamcatcher is about the source material. The book is beyond weird, and that's on King, not the film. Even though the film changed the ending in a really stupid way.

I liked French Kiss. I have no idea how you can lump that into the "bad" category. It's mixed reception at worst. I would have used Wyatt Earp, which is frankly the worst Western movie I've ever seen.

Darling Companion shouldn't have been made. I'm not even sure how that story made it past a pitch meeting.

Haven't seen Wyatt Earp and French Kiss having a mixed reception at worst is not really a ringing endorsement. Phantom Menace had a mixed reception too.

 :why_so_serious:

It's almost like any writer/director can do some bad shit. Also, to be completely fair, Kasdan didn't write French Kiss. Since we're talking about a movie in which he will only be writing, I think that's important to point out and be fair about. Even shitty movies can have an okay/good script, weighed down by poor acting/poor directing/etc.

How do you have a problem with French Kiss? It was a funny, light, romcom.

Question for everyone: Can hipsters say words like "romcom"?

Answer: shut the fuck up about hipsters, it's gotten completely stupid.

It's ironic you see..   :oh_i_see:

Somehow "hipster" has come to mean "someone whos opinion I disagree with" these days, it seems.