Slashdot Mirror
Star Wars TV Show
The lunatick writes "IESB and Theforce.net report a Star Wars TV show. Lucas will not direct it just produce it. Kevin Smith (Silent Bob, the clerks series) is named as a possible director."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
hmm... maybe they'll be smart and incorporate some of the excellent books written by timothy zahn as screenplays.
Kevin would have to be a moron to do it. No matter how good the tv series is it will be slammed as not as good as the original. Expecially if you expect 3-5 seasons worth of good stuff. There is no pleasing the star wars fans.
Bad idea. You want to run a franchise into the ground this is the way to do it.
I'd think Star Trek would have demonstrated that already...
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
I checked USA Today, Google News, and Yahoo News, and was not able to find the actual story in USA Today. Doesn't USA Today put everything on the web? Shouldn't a rumor like this be substantiated a little bit more?
Before everyone suggests this is a bad move I just want to say look at SG1. The original movie was at best 'ok' but thanks to the series the brand is highly valued.
The weekly treadmill is precisely what television is.
For further insight, consider "Star Trek V". It was the only movie (based on the original characters) to lose money. However, when "Star Trek V" was broadcast on television, the movie seemed okay, compared to the junk food on the other channels.
The only conceivable way for Star Wars on the boob tube to not deteriorate to the level of Star Trek is to develop plots requiring at least 3 episodes to tell. In other words, across a 21-week viewing season, Star Wars, the boob tube show, would essentially be aired as 7 movies, each movie being 3 hours in length.
For fate's sake, please try to get good actors and actresses.
But wasn't that the strength of the first trilogy (eps 4-6)? Because it started off half way through the story, with the saving the universe bit, it drew the audience into the world. They wanted to find out what was going on in this world the films so suddenly started off in.
The prequel trilogy was doomed to fail because the story they tell isn't that interesting really, it's only interesting as a backdrop to episodes 4-6. All you really need to know about the story line of episodes 1-3 is summarised in about ten minutes in episodes 4-6.
The movies make a big point of having little bits of the background world intrude into the films to create an interesting universe - the rubbish collecting gnome creatures in episode 4, all the aliens living their lives in the background. But, just like episodes 1-2(+3 probably), if you concentrate too much on that background, you realise it's not as interesting as it appeared from a distance.
It's the same with Lord of the Rings. There's a huge backstory to the trilogy, but by starting the main story (Frodo and the Fellowship etc.) in the middle of that, you create a whole interesting world the reader wants to read about without having to bother with laboriously explaining it.
Wait a minute guys, this is a TV SCI-FI SERIES we are talking about here. There is no problem with them making Star Wars into the next Babylon 5, and here's why:
What do you always get in a TV Sci-Fi series?
Cheesecake.
That's right, Cheesecake. The only compelling reason to watch sci-fi, and directors like to serve up big, heaping slices topped with insincere gravitas and skin tight costumes.
Jerri Ryan, that Vulcan from 'Enterprise', Erin Grey, Lt. Orora, Tasha Yar (I think that was her name), Debbie from Sealab, um... someone from Babylon 5, uh...
I actually don't watch that much TV, so I don't really know the whole list. I am certain there are some other people who can help fill in the details.
But you get the drift, and I, for one, cannot wait until the first time someone has to swing across a vast chasm.
Hoping to see Pam Anderson as a Grand Moff,
M
There is no pleasing the star wars fans.
You're absolutely right! How could the man who gave us Howard the Duck ever do wrong?
Sarcasm aside, Episodes I and II are dumbed-down versions of Star Wars. They were more about the special effects than about the story. I find it ridiculously simplistic that Senator Palpatine could so easily engineer the takeover of the Empire; are there no other senior politicians who are in this with him? And the acting is wooden; even Ewan McGregor, one of my favorite actors, stumbles through these movies like he's not quite sure how to handle the material. Given how gifted McGregor is, I have to assume that it's Lucas's direction and writing that are the problem.
Thr first trilogy was made in the late 70's/early 80's, before the tech revolution. For most of us, it pushed the boundaries of science fiction. Two decades later, the tech concepts of the prequels are ho-hum. Lucas really needed to hand these off to someone who had a little more of a vision than he did.
Can you imagine if Lucas had contracted the Wachowski Brothers to write and direct the prequels? Even the least favored movie in the Matrix trilogy blows away the Star Wars prequels.
The best of the five Star Wars movies, SW:TESB, was not directed by Lucas. I think that that speaks volumes.
You know guys, you could always not watch it.
That pretty much works for me when I don't want to see a TV show.
-sig removed for tax purposes-