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Star Wars Sequel Trilogy Rumors
Stop reading if you're spoiler paranoid. ChazeFroy writes "The actor who played Chewbacca in the original Star Wars trilogy, Peter Mayhew, will be in Episode III. Of course, this has been previously reported and comes as no surprise. However, TheForce is reporting that Mayhew's contract contains a stipulation that he must also appear in Episodes 7, 8, and 9. This was first reported in the British movie magazine Hot Dog, whose December issue with this news just hit US newstands."
Or there will be hell to pay. Nothing else was worth reading.
I am a science fantasy fan
If Episode III isn't incredible, Mr. Lucas can forget about any other Episodes.
Episode VI, I and II have all been mediocre, so why would anyone even bother seeing episode III much less VII, VIII, or IX?
My other sig is extremely clever...
I have to say, as much as I love Star Wars, I will have to seriously think about even going to see Episode 3. I'm not terribly hopeful. 3 more movies just doesn't fill me with any joy any more. From a worldwide love to a worldwide joke. Now -that's- a screwup.
IMNAAA (not an acting agent), but isn't this just the sort of thing that gets tossed into lower-paid actor's contracts when a studio is simply hedging its bets? I like the 'bacca as well as the next dude, but he is probably paid less than, say Harrison Ford, on average. It seems likely to me that it wouldn't cost the studio much (if anything) to obligate him in this regard.
Now, if the face-time Ep. 6 folks (Ford, Fisher, Hamilton, et al.) start getting signed into contracts like this then we would be talking.
I wouldn't take stock in this. How old is George Lucas now, 55 60? It takes him roughly 8-10 years a trilogy. He'ld be in a wheelchair by the time he finished the next ones if he even lived that long. I would think he wants to move on and do other things. And who would play all the original roles. All the main actors have not aged well and it would be very shitty to not have Mark Hammil reprise his role as Luke Skywalker or Harrison Ford play Han Solo.
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
No, no books yet. But back in the day Lucas always claimed that this was a nine part story.
The never ending "Police Academy" holocost
A goal is a dream with a deadline
I don't understand it. Surely any of the actors playing a character whose face is hidden and voice isn't used (i.e. Chewbacca, R2D2, or Darth Vader) is completely dispensable. Why is it such a big deal to keep Peter Mahew? The only qualification for someone replacing him would be height!
I can only hope that Lucas will at some point realize that special effects cannot save a bad story. Especially when everything is in gharish cartooney colors.
If it's not on fire, it's a software problem.
"The actor who played Chewbacca in the original Star Wars trilogy, Peter Mayhew, will be in Episode III. Of course, this has been previously reported and comes as no surprise. However, TheForce is reporting that Mayhew's contract contains a stipulation that he must also appear in Episodes 7, 8, and 9.
Why bother with him then? If ever a character could be played by someone else it would be Chewbacca! No recognizable voice, or face, or anything. Just a 6'6" guy in a wookie costume with sound effects added in after the fact. I don't mean to be rude to Mr. Mayhew, but what leveridge does he have?
Star Wars movies are becoming like a horrific accident scene. Terrifying and excruciatingly painful, yet we feel compelled to watch. I'd like to do a survey:
1. What percentage of geeks expect to see EpIII?
2. Of those going to see EpIII, what percentage expect it to be anything other than a suckfest?
Anticipated answers:
1. 95%
2. 1%
If GL makes VII-IX, you KNOW everyone is going to go. How can he pass up the chance to make that much money on what amounts to another 9 years of playing with cool toys without any need to work on boring stuff like sympathetic characters or realistic dialog?
dinner: it's what's for beer
So Lucas may do another trilogy. Good on him. But hang on....Slashdot readers dissaprove! "He's just trying to gouge us, he's destroyed my fond childhood memories", etc, etc, lather, rinse, repeat.
Pull your heads out of your asses. If you don't like the movies, don't go see them. Star Wars belongs to Lucas. He created it, he owns the empire, and if he wants to film himself slinging handfulls of his own shit at a Slashdot logo, and call it Episode 7, he can.
I doubt we'll ever see those movies, but I'd like to see them get made. And I wont cry on the Internet that they're not the same as the original trilogy. Which kind of makes sense, being that the original trilogy is two decades old. People change, the industry changes, ideas change, technologies change. Get over it. Go watch Lord of the Rings again if you want purity. More than likely, some of you whining peckerwoods will be watching Yet Another Tentacle Rape Hentai flick.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
You're still right, but I'd like to clarify something... Ep 1 had a budget of $115,000,000. Ep 2 had a budget of $120,000,000. Not exactly chump change. They were both extremely profitable, but you should factor the cost of making movies of this magnitude.
Still, the fact that they were that profitable despite the fact that I and everyone I know thinks that they're an affront to the quality of the original trilogy tells me something important (though hardly a new idea): fans of the original trilogy are no longer the target audience of the Star Wars franchise.
Lucas isn't pleasing us these days because he's not trying to please us. And at those numbers, I can hardly blame him. Empire Strikes Back, my personal favorite, had grossed $290,158,751 as of May '97 (source). If Episode 2 grosses more in one year than Episode 5 grossed in seventeen, the old formula is a hard sell.
...but how do the prequels rape the fond memories of your childhood? I mean, sure episode 1 sucks - but episode 4 and 5 are still hella good.
Unless you mean the prequels made you realize how lame the series already was by episode 6. How hokey episode 4 was, and how the pinnacle of the series was directed and largely rewritten by people other than Lucas. That could understandably rob you of fond memories. Of course, just watching them again older and wiser would probably have done that.
I could also understand the anger if you were referring to the Greedo-shooting-first destruction of the original series called the 'Special Editions'. But you're not.
my pet theory is that the special editions, and episodes 1, and 2 are precisely the kinds of movies Lucas wanted to make from the beginning.
episode iv represented his first shot, and doubtlessly had piles of constructive criticism and rewrites. then it was proven a cash cow, and the sequel was given to a different director and featured much more rewriting. (largely hailed as the pinnacle of starwars). Then Lucas got control back, and turned out Jedi.
After more time and money, he skull-f#cked the original trilogy with the special editions. then came episode 1 and the truth was unavoidable. episode 2 was salt on a gaping wound.
Without actual creative criticism, Lucas just doesn't churn out the movies we always thought he wanted to make.
It's like the Wachowskis. They probably rewrote the first Matrix a dozen times and were making huge changes even to the shooting script. But who's going to slow down the process of making sequels to a cash cow by saying 'Whoa, guys - you've got some pacing issues that need to be fixed here, and some lame ass dialogue'?
No-one in Hollywood.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Why would he do this? The whole point of a story is it has a beginning, a middle and an end. The original trilogy had that. Okay, so the beginning was a bit ropey: this ship appears from nowhere and starts blasting, and there's these two droids that we know little about.
But that's how stories often work best - they throw you in at the deep end so it's exciting and you have to think and work out what's going on. Okay, the prequels fill out the early story a bit for the hardcore fans, but nobody in their right minds, new to the series, would sit through 6+ hours of dross just to understand what the secret plans R2 had were, or to have the "I am your father" surprise ruined for them.
But while the prequels just made the series a bit worse, the sequels would be awful. Even if you think the beginning of the middle trilogy requires some fleshing out, the end is very good. It's a final, definitive end: the bad guy is dead and the galaxy is on the road towards stability. But for gods' sake, we don't need to see it get there. Star Wars became a parody of itself a long time ago, and that's a crying shame because before it was spoilt it was very, very good.
I've wasted four hours of my life on I and II: I suppose I'll waste two more on the off-chance that Boba Fett does something cool, or that Jar-Jar meets a spectacularly bloody end, but that's it. No more. If III is of the same quality as I and II I can't believe Lucas has the nerve even to bring it out, now that LoTR has shown us what can be done with the SF/fantasy epic genre.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Would require re-doing 1-3, and at least in my mind 6. The ewoks were an abomination, and represented a massive sell-out to "childrens" movies.
He was right on with the first two, a G movie for all audiences, with enough plot and depth for older audiences, yet enough cool stuff to captivate children, as well as a reasonably straightforward plot arch (ala Joseph Campbell).
So many mistakes were made in the making of the first two (and I'd wager third) that it's hard to even pretend it's the same series. What makes it the most comical is that with tweaks to each of those stories they could have been grand. My favorite example is Anakin slaughtering all of the Raiders after finding his mother seconds before her dying (way out in the realm of possibility). More realistic would have been to have him sneak in, rescue her, only to have her get shot and then die in his arms and have him return with his rage to wipe them out.
I'm certain that thoughts like mine have been bouncing around Star Wars fans heads. Without copyright being what it is now, enterprising producers would be able to try and correct these wrongs inside of the fans lifetimes (at least with the founders copyright).
At this point I think I'll see Star Wars III at the dollar theater, and if it's better then a steaming pile I'll rent it and watch it on someone's surround sound setup.
No mention of whether James Earl Jones does the voice of Vader in any of the new/touched-up scenes. I get that it's Hayden in the un-masked scene...just as it wasn't James Earl Jones. But what about other scenes?
And...does James Earl Jones do the (masked) voice of Darth Vader in Ep III? Or will we not see Vader (as we see him in Ep IV) in Ep III? Perhaps just a mangled Anakin, or an early version of the Darth Vader mask.
Hmm..I remember reading long ago, either in a fan magazine or something (maybe the book version of Star Wars?) that Anakin became disfigured, requiring the mask & prostheses, when Obi Wan threw him into a volcano. I hope Lucas remembered that (if it was in the book or in any way "official").
My main gripe about Ep I-II was the lack of continuity with Ep IV-VI -- like Lucas had forgotten the "vision" he'd come up with originally (supposedly he'd sketched out ALL NINE episodes before filming Star Wars). I guess he's fixing it now by modifying Ep IV, V, and VI. Sigh. Better than nothing I suppose...
Ha! We'll never get original Star Wars DVDs. If we're lucky we might get that modified 20th aniversary crap (I'm not a fan of modified films), but it's debatable to call that lucky.
No more madness! Stop these horrid movies! Hope Fox'll make Firefly instead.
FIREFLY RULES!!!
As anyone who's read the Star Wars storyline as it continues past the 4/5/6, if Lucas uses these as a baseline for more movies, rejoice your ass off.
The stories (for the most part) have great depth, a wealth of plot scenarios to choose from (which might be the biggest stumble to what to make for sequels), and continue the stories of the principals through the next 30 years (kids, getting old, death, etc.). It actually makes the characters a helluva lot more believable.
Hats off to the editors who have made EVERY story that followed the movies tie into one another -- their consistency checks have got to be brain numbing, they're so thorough. That alone has made the stories a lot of fun to read.
And the authors include some well-known names in modern sci-fi, including James Luceno, Michael P. Kube-McDowell, and Michael Stackpole.
So, go read some dead tree, and see what kind of potential there is for three (or more!) sequels from Lucas. Let's just hope he uses some of the material available to him, instead of striking off on his own.
What does it mean to wake out of a dream
and be wearing someone else's shorts?
BNL, Born on a Pirate Ship (1998)
If there are any more SW films, Lucas will make them himself. By insisting on directing the prequel trilogy films despite critical and fan reactions, he's shown that he needs to keep that control. He's not going to give it up, especially to someone like Peter Jackson, who would impose his own vision on the project. And by his ability to get actual emotive performances out of his actors, Jackson would show the audience that he's clearly the better director. It's not bad for Lucas to be outdone in a separate film genre, but he won't let it happen in his own universe.
Lousy minor setbacks! This world sucks! -- Homer Simpson
Agreed.
The Jedi, on the other hand, strike me as really a bunch or arrogant elite who seem to not be doing a very good job of anything.Also agree, but are you saying this made Ep I/II bad? Granted, I and II had problems, but this is not one of them. Yes, the Jedi are a bunch of stuck-up, arrogant buttheads. That's one of the main points of the movie. We're likely to see this play out more in Ep III. Much of the Jedis' downfall is by their own hand. They got too used to their power and to the status quo to see more than a few inches in front of their face. You're supposed to doubt them at this point.
And Palpatine and Dooku have yet to do anything really horribly dispicable. It's hard to get worked up about these bad guys.I think that's one of the reasons why people have trouble with Ep I/II. We're essentially seeing the story out-of-sequence. We started in the middle of the story, where the battle lines were very clearly drawn, and everyone had already put on their white or black hats. In Ep I/II, this has not happened yet. The ones that become or pave the way for the great villians of the later movies have no choice but to act in secret. To me, Palpatine's machinations in the Senate echo the events of the rise of the Nazi party to power and Hitler's ascension to Chancellor (hell, even the title is the same!) in Germany circa the 1930s.
I sometimes wonder how people might have reacted had the movies been produced and released in the actual chronological order that the events happen. It might have garnered a different reaction. Yeah, the screenplays could have been better written, but I think the overall story still plays well, and would have played better in the proper sequence.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
Schnapple
We could end the film where somebody - get this - in a small spaceship flies up to the big enemy ship and - this idea is so good - blows it up from the inside using minimal fire power. Oh wait, we already did that three fucking times!
Karma: Nonnegative