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Episode II In Trouble?
abde writes: "A story on AICN reports about an Episode 2 rough cut recently screened at ILM. Quotes producer Rick McCallum as saying, 'At times, you have to face the truth of what you didn't get and what you hoped for.' Rumors from inside sources say that Lucas is 'stressing' about reworking the film ... personally, I think it indicates awareness at ILM that the fans are expecting Empire Strikes Back quality to this second prequel -- and that awareness will surely motivate."
Shit, I'd settle for Star Wars quality.
But if you're not gonna up the quality, just spice in a scene with AT-AT's foot turning Jar-Jar Binks into a fine pink film, and I'll pay $8 just to see that.
C'mon, George. Just splice it in. You know the animators at ILM have probably already rendered the scene in their spare time.
the trailer looks OK..Looks kinda similiar to Episode 1, but hey it's tough being creative. Check it out http://www.adcritic.com/content/star-wars-episode- 2.html
The basic sleazeware produced in a drunken fury by a bunch of UCBerkeley grad students was still the core of BIND. --PV
From AICN:
"There are whispers that Spielberg is coming on board to help with the editing and story. It's a total shambles! Everyone wants another Empire Strikes Back......the team is aware of this, but we're a long way off."
I think it's unlikely, but if such a far fetched thing were true - that Lucas would swallow his pride and hand EP2 to Spielberg - I have a better suggestion. Get Gary Kurtz (Co-producer of SW and Empire) and Brian Daily (ghost writer for SW and Empire) back on for this movie and salvage what is available.
Anyone who has read, or tried to read, drafts 1,2, or 3 of The Star Wars knows Lucas can't write. Brian Daley adapted what he saw and wrote the forth draft of The Star Wars (or A New Hope as it's called nowadays). Lucas has such low confidence in his writing skills he had Carrie Fisher read EP1 and offer suggestions on how to punch up the dialogue.
For EP1, Lucas surrounded himself with 'yes-men'. Gary Kurtz was the only person who would challenge Lucas during the making of SW and Empire. On Empire, Lucas didn't go to Norway and didn't spend much time at Pinewood Studios. When Irvin Kershner needed a solution to a problem, he didn't turn to Lucas, he went to Kurtz. As a result, much of Empire was made without Lucas' direct involvement. Lucas supposedly went ballistic at the slower pace of some scenes and the more adult direction Empire took when he saw rushes.
A wedge was thrust between Lucas and Kurtz when Empire went over budget. Lucas needed three million to finish production, and he was forced to go to 20th Century Fox to get the money. Empire had been an independent film until that point. Lucas blamed Kurtz for taking the film over budget, and never forgave him. Kurtz wasn't asked to participate in the making of Jedi.
There's a great book "The Making of The Empire Strikes Back" that casts light on the personal conflicts involved in making that film. A good read in you're a Star Wars nut. It really drives home the fact that Empire turned out to be a great movie in spite of Lucas, not because of him.
In Kurtz's final interview for the book, the author asks his what he thought of Jedi, and Kurtz lets go with both barrels. Jedi is nothing like the sequel that was planed when they were making Empire. Anybody who thinks Lucas has a master plan for a "Saga" will quickly realize how that claim is so untrue.
Because A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back were so limited (especially ANH!), Lucas had to constantly fake- have you ever read an analysis of the shower scene in Psycho? The knife never actually touches Janet Leigh- it's a brutal onslaught of quick violent cuts that convey the _feel_ of a horrific attack more than a fully 'realistic' and straight filming of such an attack, no matter how harrowingly acted. Well, the first Star Wars films were like that- here's a shot of Imperial Walkers slowly arriving and BAM here's a reaction shot of a guy in a snowspeeder that does NOT also include the Walkers seen through the window, in fact the background is a snowy blur- and BAM we're attacking a Walker and all the other Walkers are NOT shown in wide-angle. The 'lens' of directorial field of view is always portrait- hell, in ANH it's like a telephoto or something, you _never_ get anything resembling a Phantom Menace cast of thousands battle scene. Speed of motion through the frame is high but most importantly FOV is radically confined to just the elements that make the shot. That's ANH and Empire in a nutshell- I _just_ watched Empire (original version!) coincidentally and am very confident in saying that.
For Phantom Menace, Lucas is on record for what he was trying to get- he wanted the scope, those cast of thousands shots, massively wide-angle stuff, and he got it- pulled it off really well. However, that's not what the franchise was built on- Star Wars is about space opera, hokey/thrilling operatic emotional stories that are in your face and don't let up, with cinematography that is just as aggressive. Phantom Menace backs way off- and that's why it fails to continue the tradition. (It still kicks ass over most kid movies though).
Granted, that's a particularly brutal way to mock TPM: the good bits in it are often stage-setting for more serious drama ahead, such as the marvellous Palpatine. But it's all just too damn light- rotten opera. If Anakin _knew_ what was to happen to him (compare to Luke, abandoning his studies despite the _dire_ warnings of both Obi-Wan and Yoda, and going off to save his friends _knowing_ his mentors swear it will be a disaster) then there would be some drama. Having Jedi fussing and expressing great forebodings about the kid is _not_ the same: they are spearcarriers, they are not the protagonist no matter how well they act. If Obi-Wan was meant to be the big hero of the series, there would be some chance of drama as he suffers genuine conflict in TPM- but he's not! Anakin is to be the hero! So it's a total mess, as most people have instinctively recognised.
I hope he does better in Ep 2, I really do. The thing is, Lucas has a chance to top anything he's done in the series so far, in showing the fall of Anakin, giving him real, brutal conflicts and pain and trapping him into a corner where Anakin's basically good instincts turn him to evil by leading him to do bad things out of fear and grief. It really could be fantastic drama in the space opera style.
Lucas could also do buttloads of special effects, cute characters, and fumble things so that Anakin's fall becomes simply a matter of him being victimised by mean nasty evil folk, and I am afraid Lucas may do just that.
The litmus test is this: when all is said and done, if we feel sorry for Anakin, just plain sorry for him, Lucas has failed. But if we feel shaken and sick at heart, because we see that it could be us making those choices and _choosing_ the dark side- Lucas will have succeeded.
Good luck, George :)
"At times, you have to face the truth of what you didn't get and what you hoped for," McCallum said. "The second stage is that you're amazed by all the things you did get that you didn't even think you got. And then the third stage is that you see certain things are infinitely better than you could have even imagined."
"It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory." (W. Edwards Deming)
Based on interviews I've read with filmmakers, it's a normal part of the process to stress out about what you're producing. Steven Spielberg once said that during the filming of portions of Raiders of the Lost Ark, he thought he was creating the worst movie ever made. If a director like Spielberg can feel that way about a movie like Raiders, it's not a surprise that Lucas might have some second thoughts here and there. I'm betting that it'll turn out fine; Lucas has great instincts.