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According to a non-authoritive source, some Earnings:
Star Wars: $460 million
Empire: $290 million
Return: $309 million
Phantom: $431 million
Clones: $310 million

Or, believe IMDB (worldwide numbers):
Star Wars -- $513mil in-theater + $779mil rental = $1,292 million
Empire -- $529mil in-theater + $557mil rental = $1,086 million
Return -- $391mil in-theater + $472mil rental = $863 million
Phantom -- $925mil in-theater + $403mil rental = $1,328 million
Clones -- $634mil in-theater, rental not available

This isn't taking into account VHS / DVD / LaserDisc sales, nor the fact that the first series have been around much longer.

If one believes that earnings are a sign of popularity, and popularity is the inverse of suckage, then the original is clearly superior to either sequel, but gets it's ass kicked by either prequel.

Clerks: The Animated Series

Clerks

Sean Connery.

The thing that was great, too me, about the first three movies was the innovative and realistic galaxy that was created. I loved how everything was dirty and ships would break down or get stuck. Han Solo was a smuggler driven by money (in the begining at least) and he fired first at Guedo. Darth Vader and the Emperor were menacing and the music was incredible.

The prequels were un-inspired vanilla squeaky clean space movies. The characters were flat and Lucas can't direct a movie to save his life. Natalie Portman was great in Léon, Cold Mountain and Heat. As with most young actors though, she needs a good director to make her shine. Even Samuel L. Jackson's performance was weak. Samuel L. Freaking Jackson for christ's sake. I think it is very telling that they wrapped up shooting the 3rd prequel ahead of schedule ....

Lucas: "Take 1, Action"
Actors give half-ass performance
Lucas: "Cut. That looks good to me."
Lucas knob polisher: "Yes Heir Lucas, that looked great."
Lucas: "Ok, that's a wrap."

Well, call me crazy, but how can surfing on lava not save a movie?

Apparently, you haven't seen Treasure Planet .

Baseball is filled with random reinforcers which contributes to the superstitious behaviour. You have ppl, doing all of these nervous ticks, spitting, scratching, hand signals, random fights, wiggling around at the plate and mound, and apparently the numbers at the bottom of the screen have affected you and others as well.

Ah, but the new Harry Potter is directed by Alfonso Cuarón who is actually a good director and definitely better than Chris Columbus who directed the other two. I'm sure I don't need mention how much better Cuarón is than Lucas.

Ah, but the new Harry Potter is directed by Alfonso Cuarón who is actually a good director and definitely better than Chris Columbus who directed the other two. I'm sure I don't need mention how much better Cuarón is than Lucas.

Seven Samurai in space? I give you Battle Beyond the Stars!

"changes such as ripping off Akira Kurosawa". Already done. Check out The Hidden Fortress.

"baseball, baseball game, ball - a ball game played with a bat and ball between two teams of 9 players; teams take turns at bat trying to score run; "he played baseball in high school"; "there was a baseball game on every empy lot"; "there was a desire for National League ball in the area"; "play ball!"

Ok.. If you don't know what baseball is, raise your hand and Tommy will come over and hit you on the head with a tackhammer because you are a RETARD!

People don't care about your old-style sports like baseball or basketball..
We want BASEketball! :)

Soylent Green is People!?

Movie

It's as valid as defining the distance between home and work as "10 minutes in my car travelling at a constant 60 mph".

I don't know about you but to me CGI doesn't look real. The movements, textures, and impacts are always too perfect.

And therefore, not perfect. The mind boggles! If I were an android, smoke would be coming out of my realistic fleshy ears. Also, my name would be Norman.

Han Solo will probably show up as a junior officer on some Republic ship and he'll end up going AWOL after being sentenced to death for refusing to follow some outlandishly brutal order from Palpatine.

Han Solo will probably show up as a junior officer on some Republic ship and he'll end up going AWOL after being sentenced to death for refusing to follow some outlandishly brutal order from Palpatine.

"3 by my count, but close"

Not to put too fine a point on it:

THE. DIALOGUE. STUNK.

Just listen to what the characters are actually saying next time you watch I or II through. I'll give you Hayden Christensen can't act, but when you look at what everybody has to work with you can almost forgive Ewan McGregor and the rest.

Not to put too fine a point on it:

THE. DIALOGUE. STUNK.

Just listen to what the characters are actually saying next time you watch I or II through. I'll give you Hayden Christensen can't act, but when you look at what everybody has to work with you can almost forgive Ewan McGregor and the rest.

With apologies to one of my favorite movies of all time, not to mention the Beach Boys, here's a joke that maybe 10 of you will get:

*********

If everybody had a surfboard
And lightsabers too
Then everybody'd be surfing
On volcanic goo
'Cuz Anakin is totally bitchin'
When he's stopping Jedi missions
And it's neat dueling l33t when you're on hot magma all day

First wave! Don't get tired.
Second wave! Slash higher.
Third wave! You're on fire!

Jedi surfin! (it's all right)

Waxin' down our surfboards
Charging up our swords
Tell Yoda we're surfin'
Good side has me bored
I've got a surfboard on my speeder
For when the waves are 15 meters
And we're cool with the duel till volcano erupts us away ...

I wish they all could be double-sided, wish they all could be double-sided, wish they all could be double-sided swords ...

McGuinness who? There was no "McGuinness" in Star Wars, at least not in a lead role.

Perhaps you are referring to Sir Alec Guinness?

Star Wars was simply a western...

It's an Eastern (or tries to be.) C.f. The Hidden Fortress

lucas created a lot, what you define as noncreative is exactly what creativity is: mixing and matching previous cultural artifacts into new and novel combinations for great entertainment effect

in other words, your forensic analysis of lucas's influences are dead on, but that simply illusrates how creative he is: to mix and match such disparate influences into something wholly fresh and enthralling

you seem to think creativity happens in a vacuum

ALL stories, written by ANYONE can be found to have similarities to previous stories, as all stories are simply variations on the hero myth and have the same story arc of crisis leading to resolution

i mean, according to your definition, shakespeare or homer deserve credit for all books and movies made in western culture for the past couple of hundred years... um, no

study joseph campbell and his groundbreaking work with myths, especially the hero with a thousand faces to see what i mean

lucas is incredibly creative: watch his early film thx-1138 and do a forensic analysis of the science fiction and cultural critique roots of that movie... it doesn't take away from lucas's creativity to find his sources of inspiration

no, the problem with lucas is that he hit his audience dead on in the first few films: older children and young teenagers, in the spirit of tintin: genuinely evil forces and genuine mortal risk at work against a young hero with colorful friends and enemies in a colorful universe

however, for whatever bizarre reason, with jar jar and surfing lava, lucas somehow thinks that YOUNGER children should be courted instead of staying with his sweet spot of older children/ young teenagers... i mean c'mon jar jar is nothing but a teletubbie character: lucas has gotten the age wrong when he seeks to be kid-frinedly- he's aiming at too low of an age, and losing the sweet spot that his star wars universe appeals to

on a side note, this whole delving into the forensic analysis of predecessors to creative works gets at the problem with corporations claiming intellectual property creep further and further into the public domain: micky mouse not lapsing into it, or the whole debale with the grey album: at some point, by claiming excessive ownership on what is essentially our shared human culture, corporations are stifling innovation, not helping it, by keeping works locked up in a vault where no one can freely dip into and remix from them...

in such a too near future world where corporations and their hordes of lawyers exert too much of an influence on cultural ownership, a lawyer can come along just as you did in your parent post, and claim ownership of star wars based on previous works, and stifle star wars before it ever got out of the script pile

on other words, in the future of increasing dubious and aggressive cultural ownership practices by large corporations, we would never have seen star wars... that's the kind of stifling of innovation we are dealing with in the whole ip battle ;-(

I suppose the only consolation is that it could have been worse

Could have been worse? I'm actually impressed at how good it is (compared to the others). It's actually a great title. Too bad it's a ripoff of what is considered one of the best movies of all time: The Birth of a Nation (D. W. Griffith, 1915 -- #44 on the AFI's top 100 list)

• Tatooine is Dune:
  • The sand people are the fremen.
  • Jaba is Leto II, the god emperor of Dune.
  • The Sarlac is Shai-Hulud, the great worm.
  
  
• Corruscant is Trantor: The galactic capital, situated near the center of the galaxy, its entire land-mass and a good portion of its ocean covered in one gigantic multi-layered city.
  
  
• The storytelling is Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress".
  
  
• Han Solo is a space-cowboy (picture him with a cowboy hat...there you go), and Chewbaca is his indian life-partner.
  
  
• The story itself is "Young peasant saves beautifull princess from dark knight's fortress with help of old sorcerer and comic-relief sidekicks", cookie-cutter fairy tale storyline.
  

Hah! I knew it was true! Conspiracy Brother had it right all along!

Lucas has, in effect, created a temporal paradox.
If he is somehow stopped from making this movie, then Anakin will never turn into Darth Vader, and the Empire will never be born.
If there is no Empire and no Vader, then the original trilogy could have never existed, thereby negating two things:
1. Lucas' immense wealth (as well the wealth of Hammil and the fame of Ford).
2. The need for the prequels.

If there is no need for the prequels, 2 things will happen due to that:
1. There will have been no prequels, so /.ers will nothing to bitch about.
2. No more Natalie Portman, so /.ers will have nothing to troll about.

So... this movie has to be made, the alternative being something along the lines of `mv /dev/existence /dev/null`

And all this time I thought that the Catholics would be the ones to negate the creation...

On that note, who's up for goin to Hollywood with me to stop this movie from being made?
I figure we've got 8 days...

Don't forget this one.

Clearly you haven't seen Black Samauri. Any movie with ninja voodoo midgets (I am not joking) sporting 10 gallon hats and swinging from vines and an entire fight scene which is completely voiced over so that characters are only speaking when their mouths aren't facing the camera deserves your respect.

I was thinking more along the lines of this one since it's slightly more relavant (even made the cover in this case).

Either way, it's completely moronic.

he studied classic cinema to come up with this idea

For awhile everyone thought it was going to be called "The Creeping Fear".

Actually, if it's as good as The Creeping Terror I'll HAVE to go see it.

Creeping Terror is THE unintentionally funniest movie ever made. God knows we need one of those now. As it is, Birth of the Empire sounds too much like a comment on current politics and the Patriot Act.

Yeah, a surfing scene is always a great way to spice up a sequel.

It's hard for me to take seriously a company with a name so close to Initech...

There are reasons why a game publisher might not want a website to post its screenshots with others, but I wonder if there might just be an error in the linked article.

In independent games, the question of quality-by-association comes up when a company approaches a developer with a request to include its game in a CD compilation. One side of the argument is that the presence of a title on a shovelware compilation can detract from its perceived quality -- your game might appear among a hundred Sokoban clones, or in an extreme case, you might see children's software next to more adult software. So, it is conceivable that publishers might have considered association with this website (archived here) a bad thing.

But I don't buy it. Entire conferences are devoted to publicity, and as they say, no publicity is bad publicity. (To wit, I'd talk up my postman about my software if I thought it'd help. He's a nice guy; we talk about other things.) The only tidbit that screams copyright violation as I understand it is this: Of this collection, several hundred were allegedly found to have been taken from magazines and overseas game sites...

However, I do not understand the end of that sentence: ...without the permission of the game publisher, a violation of Japanese copyright law.

To my knowledge, it is not illegal in the States to take and post a screenshot of a movie or game to the Web; my understanding Japanese intellectual property laws is limited, but given the number of Japanese film/gaming sites that do this, I don't believe that game publishers have any say over what screenshots are presented. I think 1Up may have meant this, instead:

without the permission of the website's publisher, a violation of Japanese copyright law.
_________________________
I long for the day when Google stops asking me, "Did you mean: inigo rage"

Though the header files, etc, are nice if you're a VC++ whiz, any two-bit Visual Basic 6 hacker like myself has had access to the iTunes COM objects for quite some time.

Not only do you not need the SDK, aside from the sample code (strangely written in jscript of all things), the SDK is nearly worthless for VB6 hackers. All you had to do was open a new project in the VB6 IDE, select Project==References from the menus, and select iTunes 1.0 Type Library (the file is iTunes.exe no less).

Voila. Instant COM compliant objects waiting for you to hack0rz. Hit F2 and search for iTunesLib and the documentation's already there (no SDK required) as well.

If this SDK makes you aware you can hack iTunes, then great. But don't wait to download it to start hacking. Install iTunes, open VB6's IDE, and get a move on!

To stick in a horrible Wizard of Oz (but thankfully not a Zardoz reference, I suppose), you've been wearing the ruby red slippers (or whatever) the whole time. "There's no place like ~. There's no place like ~."

I am soo sorry to actually know this:

CounterStrike the movie

The sign was there because there was a new Phantom Menace trailer playing before it, and they didn't want people watching the trailer and then getting their money back, not because the movie was terrible.

http://imdb.com/title/tt0131646/trivia

But aside from these celebs, you'll find video game voice actors succeeding in their own right. This is an older phenomenon in Japan, but rising to significance in the US as well.

Any player of Mafia will remember the voice of Don Salieri. In real life? George DiCenzo. Also playing Earnest Kelly in Vice City.

The character Ralph, played by Jeff Gurner, is also to be found in Max Payne and Manhunt.

John Doman, playing Don Morello, also did work in Manhunt and Midnight Club II.

Laura Maxwell, Michelle in Mafia, is also in Vice City, you'll see.

And that's just among the main characters. Most of the extras have acted in multiple games too.

But aside from these celebs, you'll find video game voice actors succeeding in their own right. This is an older phenomenon in Japan, but rising to significance in the US as well.

Any player of Mafia will remember the voice of Don Salieri. In real life? George DiCenzo. Also playing Earnest Kelly in Vice City.

The character Ralph, played by Jeff Gurner, is also to be found in Max Payne and Manhunt.

John Doman, playing Don Morello, also did work in Manhunt and Midnight Club II.

Laura Maxwell, Michelle in Mafia, is also in Vice City, you'll see.

And that's just among the main characters. Most of the extras have acted in multiple games too.

But aside from these celebs, you'll find video game voice actors succeeding in their own right. This is an older phenomenon in Japan, but rising to significance in the US as well.

Any player of Mafia will remember the voice of Don Salieri. In real life? George DiCenzo. Also playing Earnest Kelly in Vice City.

The character Ralph, played by Jeff Gurner, is also to be found in Max Payne and Manhunt.

John Doman, playing Don Morello, also did work in Manhunt and Midnight Club II.

Laura Maxwell, Michelle in Mafia, is also in Vice City, you'll see.

And that's just among the main characters. Most of the extras have acted in multiple games too.

But aside from these celebs, you'll find video game voice actors succeeding in their own right. This is an older phenomenon in Japan, but rising to significance in the US as well.

Any player of Mafia will remember the voice of Don Salieri. In real life? George DiCenzo. Also playing Earnest Kelly in Vice City.

The character Ralph, played by Jeff Gurner, is also to be found in Max Payne and Manhunt.

John Doman, playing Don Morello, also did work in Manhunt and Midnight Club II.

Laura Maxwell, Michelle in Mafia, is also in Vice City, you'll see.

And that's just among the main characters. Most of the extras have acted in multiple games too.

Soon, more blockbuster game franchises, such as "Halo" and "Doom," are expected to become the basis of movies.

They write this, as if it's the first time. No, sirreeee....

Anyone remember Wing Commander and Super Mario Bros?

Amazing that Hollywood haven't learned from this yet...

Soon, more blockbuster game franchises, such as "Halo" and "Doom," are expected to become the basis of movies.

They write this, as if it's the first time. No, sirreeee....

Anyone remember Wing Commander and Super Mario Bros?

Amazing that Hollywood haven't learned from this yet...

This is not the first time Hollywood marketing freaks thought up this alliance. Its just that things are now getting profitable.

Look at Tron; the video game out-grossed the movie.

Look at Krull; the video game was done before the movie!

Remember that the in the Early 80's the video game industry was viewed as "hot" and making lots of money. Cross overs seemed inevitable.

Then, we had the video game industry crash (thanks,ET!)

Now that the video game industry is back on top and making lots of money, its cross over time again.

Or better still, the My Dinner with Andre game -

"Dude, my introspection dominates your glib anecdotes!"

Ray Liotta .... Tommy Vercetti (voice)
William Fichtner .... Ken Rosenberg (voice) (as Bill Fichtner)
Tom Sizemore .... Sonny Forelli (voice)
Dennis Hopper .... Steve Scott (voice)
Burt Reynolds .... Avery Carrington (voice)
Robert Davi .... Colonel Juan Garcia Cortez (voice)
Gary Busey .... Phil Cassidy (voice)

To name a few from GTA:Vice City and I thought it made the game funnier.

I'd entirely suppressed this until now, but -- UPN already has done that show! Homeboys in Outer Space, with James Doohan in a minor role. It lasted slightly longer than that sit-com about slavery where the main character was Lincoln's wisecracking servant (can't remember the name of that one, or whether it was UPN or WB).