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Star Wars Episode III : Birth Of The Empire
lemmen writes "According the Brtish tabloid The Sun, Star Wars III will carry the name 'Birth Of The Empire'. This will be announced soon according the article. Also it describes one of the highlights of the movie: 'A thrilling lightsabre clash between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker while surfing on lava.' Can't wait till May 15th 2005!" Thanks to reader ExoticMandibles, another quality news source: Teen Hollywood. Update: 05/20 05:47 GMT by T :
Gokey writes with a correction: "StarWars.com indicates that the movie is released May 19th, 2005 (exactly
one year from now) not May 15th, 2005."
Its "news" coming from a tabloid. How much credibility should I give it?
I would trust Maxim more...but that is only because I have a subscription to it.
-Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
Just the like the ludicrous "pod race" in Ep. I, and the (admittedly cute) hovering-Yoda saber fight in II, the only possible rational justification is videogame possibilities. Just like scenes where people and robots get tossed by-complete-coincidence onto moving conveyor belts with stamping machinery ...
Remember, A-B-B-A-up will let you kick-flip your lava board; B-B-A-B-down-up does a stalefish grab.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
The Star Wars franchise 'jumped the shark' with the Ewoks dancing at the end of EP 6.
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." - Thomas Jefferson
This is not surprising, but it is depressing. I know that every one of you reading this comment has seen the Luke vs. Vader lightsaber fight in Ep6. It was classic, I would almost call it artful. The lighting, the music, the overall mood was just fantatsic moviemaking.
So what do we have to follow this up? Fighting on lava surf boards? That's just stupid. I wish I could say it more eloquently, but it's just. plain. stupid. The original movies exhibited a certain amount of class, but now it's just drivel. I cannot possibly get excited or emotionally involved in a battle when I'm laughing at the implausability of the entire affair. It's the same reason that the huge battle at the end of Ep2 sucked so hard: there was too much going on, it was too fancy, and it was there just for the sake of coolness.
Minimalist direction and set design can convey so much more emotion and plot than overblown, busy looking CG riddled garbage. Of course I'll see this movie, but I'm going into it knowing I'll be laughing at, rather than actually caring for, the characters.
I'm not angry at George Lucas, he has a right to make the movie he saw in his head. I just rather pity him. Growing old should make someone more mature, not less.
modern movies seem obsessed with being "cooler" than everything that has gone before.
Case in point
Matrix - Kung Fu in a virtual world
Matrix Reloaded - Kung Fu in a virtual world with mythical beasts
Matrix Revolutions - Kung Fu in a virtual worldwith mythical beasts that walked on the celing and not the floor.
It's like Star Wars is running out of ideas so the franchise is going for big and flashy over anything worth watching. This is why I am predicting that there will be a battle involving the largest armies ever concieved, and this time, there will either be a two lightsabred enemy or more than one bad guy at once. Just so this film can be "Bigger, More Destructive, Better" than the last one.
Which is a shame, because these new films are in serious danger of ruining the original films (which I love) just by association....
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Give me the old minatures any day.
Forget the miniatures. I've seen a little about the making of Predator vs. Alien and they use technology for them, but that technology is to make them real. They are very cool big robots each controlled by a team of people.
I don't know about you but to me CGI doesn't look real. The movements, textures, and impacts are always too perfect. Even if the try to make them imperfect, they are perfectly imperfect.
Really THAT funny? I guess I'm one of the last remaining people that love the Star Wars saga for it's story, and not just the fact that it was the best Sci-Fi/Adventure series from my childhood. I wonder how many 80 year-olds rolled their eyes when Star Wars came out because it wasn't Metropolis.
I'm excited to see the last movie, becuase it's the reason the prequels were made in the first place. It's the reason any of us were excited to see the Phantom Menace. It's the reason why everyone, including PM-haters, went to see Attack of the Clones. However, even though I liked the first 2 prequels, I admit this last one will have to be nothing short of great. If it fails, the whole prequel trilogy fails.
Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang, was a serious film which pondered the man/machine rift using the best film technology had to offer at the time. In the 1920s it was absolutely at the forefront of film special effects, yet the effects didn't overshadow a then highly original story and screenplay. Star Wars was simply a western shot in space with high end special effects of the era. Comparing the first Star Wars to Metropolis does Lang and his film a terrible disservice IMO. You would do better to compare 2001 with Metropolis since they both cover similar ground of dehumanization in subservience to machines and the cycle of birth and death - both for individuals and societies at large. Lucas never offered such serious themes in his work, it's strictly entertainment. --M
Poor editing, actually.
If you look on the ep1 DVD's deleted scenes, you'll see a scene where Qui Gon is talking with Anakin in Mos Eisley, and one of the flying camera droids that Darth Maul had released when he got on the planet creeps up on them. Qui Gon senses its presence, and in a very cool Jedi move turns around, takes out his lightsaber and destroys the drone in one swift motion. then turns to Anakin and, aware that they have been found, says something like "We must hurry!" and they run off to the ship. Upon their hasty arrival, Darth Maul catches up with them, and they fight (the deleted scene ends when he says they must hurry).
But that scene was cut, so the following scenes do not make sense:
That is now a useless scene because they don't do anything. He releases them...and that's the last we hear of them (I think we see one zipping along once in the background, but that's all).
Why are they running? How did Darth Maul know the ship was there?
So, he cut an important scene that linked two other scenes (therefore crucial to the flow) and showcased super cool lightsaber action and force powers (what we are there to see!), all because of "time constraints". But he felt it necesary to leave in the same chapter the scenes of:
That is bad storytelling. If you have time constraints, you cut the scenes that have no relevance to the story and no impact on the flow, not the ones that are both cool and integral to the story.
You can't take the sky from me...
I remember being probably around 5 or 6 when I watched the star wars movies. I liked them then, and I can't wait until the first trilogy is released on DVD September. That said, I was pretty young and couldn't really make an opinion over "Wow that's cool!" and couldn't appreciate the fine details in the first 3 movies. I haven't watched them in a while either so the memories of them are vague at best.
Getting to the question at hand, what about episodes 1 and 2 turned you off? I enjoyed them on their own merits rather than comparing them to the first trilogy (because it was easy for me, read above), and although there were some things like a planet with a core of water that was unrealistic, Star Wars in general is unrealistic.
Of course, there is the Jar Jar Binks factor. Personally I bet Lucas regretted that character, I know I sure would.
Some talk about a Jedi falling 100 feet and landing on a flying car and how that is unrealistic, others talk about the set rules of physics that seem to be ignored in I and II, others about destroying the "wise sage" that was Yoda, and also the demystifying of the force with science. I'm sure there is more, which I hope you'd inform me of.
One thing I'd like to say is that episode II to me seemed to show the golden age of the Jedi coming to an end. I can see how certain things in the first 2 or 3 episodes could be different from the last 3, such as the jumping from 100 feet thing.
Anyway, I'd like to hear your responses as I've been wondering why people seem to rag on the new SW movies a bit.
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it