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Harrison Ford Turned Down Han Solo Role
eldavojohn writes "It's being widely reported that Harrison Ford turned down a £20 million deal to play Han Solo once again in a George Lucas spin off of Star Wars. The source of this information seems to be a tabloid called bangshowbiz. Harrison was approached by Lucas with two roles but instead opted for the same amount to play Indiana Jones for the fourth time. Could the spin off centered on the rugged Han Solo save the Star Wars franchise from its prequels or would it have been another mediocre release disappointing demanding fans?"
Good for him, at least he knows his limits and marketablity. Now for a few Hundred posts on 'how old he is', and 'he'll sprain his back' or more such silliness.
"Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchet
I don't want to see Han Solo's great character trashed by a bad script and the over-use of special effects.
Lucas helped kill my vision of the star wars universe with the prequals, I will never watch another Star Wars thing he does again.
The film will be made, with Ford or without.
There's NO WAY that anything Lucas or anyone else did would ever satisfy the "demanding fans" - the die-hards saw the originals when they were 8-12 years old, a long time ago. Their *memories* of seeing it the first time are far better than the movies actually were, so when 25 years later movies of the same general quality come out, of course they are disappointed. I was old enough to see them all with some degree of objectivity, and the originals weren't all that better than the prequels. The main thing that struck me about the originals were the effects, which were so much better than anything you had ever seen (aside from maybe 2001: A Space Odyssey). That Imperial Star destroyer coming in over the camera in the opening shot literally drew gasps from the audience. Very impressive compared to what came before, like Star Trek/Lost In Space, etc. That sort of "dazzle factor" is never going to be seen again from effects, and although the prequels effects were MUCH better than the originals, they didn't stand out. Take that away and all you have are some pretty predictable stories that anyone who watched B-movie Westerns would recognize.
There's no way that the grown-up fans are ever going to be satisfied the way they were when they were 11 years old.
Brett
"Could the spin off centered on the rugged Han Solo save the Star Wars franchise from its prequels or would it have been another mediocre release disappointing demanding fans?"
I was seven years old when the first one came out. By the time he made the third one, it was obvious that the franchise sucked. Anyone who stuck around after that is not that demanding.
I think anyone who watched three more crappy movies and *still* expected something good to come of it should just check "jedi" on their census form.
So /. is now a third rate knock off of a third rate rumor web site?
What Lucas project is in the works that needs an older Solo? B.S.
But, the bigger thing is, why is /. doing entertainment rumor?
Since when are Star Wars rumors not nerdy enough to go on
As a
(all said while pointing at Solo, Leia, and Fett action figures on the bookshelf)
Yeah, Han in carbonite, Leia in slave bikini, and Boba Fett.
I mean... looking at IMDB... the Tom Clancy movies, Air Force One (Worst Idea Ever), The Fugitive, Firewall, K-19... the guy's become a grim automaton. Some of those movies were decent, but his characters were pretty much the same in every damn one. Anyway, let's hope that IJ4 breaks the long grey-brown streak.
to Bruce Campbell. C'mon, you know you want it. Hail to the king, baby.
Swi
He turned down the part because he wants to try and do good work, he's not interested in resurrecting an old character just for a cash grab
... ?
Indiana Jones 4
You know what, I actually would like to see the spin-off Star Wars with Ford. Unlike you crazy fans, I enjoy light fantasy/sci-fi movies for what they are.
The dialog and some plot lines in the prequels surely were very odd at times, but Lucas has enough feedback to know better now. He learned from Jar Jar-s feedback in the first one.
The problem here stems from insane fans with impossible to meet standards. I personally like Star Wars, like the sound track, most of the characters, and mostly, I enjoy exploring huge fantasy worlds executed in incredible detail and imagination, which is something we rarely see in movies, even for the sheer amount of people and effects required to make them a reality.
The rest is just fan snobbery.
Erm... this is a RTFA moment. The source is British, hence the usage of quid...
He'd take the role nowadays only if Han's wife or family were threatened by terrorists.
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With the dollar declining, I'd rather get paid in pounds. :)
Therein lies the danger. Star Wars I, II, and III suggest that Star Wars IV was just a stroke of luck for Lucas. He is a poor storyteller and could easily cast Ford into the wrong kind of story. Ford's career would then end in a wimper. Of course, I would waste my $10 on Star War VII.
Ford made the right decision.
Maybe a remake of Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers ... something he loved as a child . . .
And destroy it.
KFG
If there is only one shot, how can someone shoot first?
Music is everybody's possession.
It's only publishers who think that people own it.
Fuck Beta
~John Lenno
It is amusing that the parent to this post was modded "Informative" and not "Funny".
I had this discussion with a friend of mine, and we came to the conclusion that the best way would be to watch 4 5 1 2 3 6.
My reasoning is that if you watch the prequels first it ruins many plot points (ie Leia and Luke are brothers, Vader is Luke's father, etc.). However if watched 4 5 1 2 3 6, the prequels serve as a cool flashback, fleshing out the characters, and drawing out the conclusion to the cliffhangers left by Empire. Or you could just watch the original 4 5 6, and ignore the terrible prequels. Either way...... May the force be with you.
That's partially true, but the prequels *DO* objectively SUCK waayyyyyy more than the originals. Remember the original 3 movies were re-released a couple years *before* any of the prequels came out? I went back and saw the re-released originals as an adult, and yeah, you're right...they really weren't the same watching them as an adult.
However, they were still FAR FAR FAR FAR BETTER than any of the prequels, with their wooden acting. As far as the special effects, the technology of the special effects used on the prequels may be better than that of the originals, but the actual use of the technology (you know, imagination, etc) was way inferior. The special effects in the prequels was just shamelessly piled on, without any art to it. Take the battle scenes for instance. It's all just a bunch of random chaos, with lasers shooting every which way, and stuff blowing up all over the place, and the camera doesn't stay on one shot for more than 50 milliseconds until it switches over to some other scene, making it impossible to really follow the flow of the battle. You basically just sit there, completely overwhelmed, and it's only after the battle is done that you finally figure out what the hell just happened. There's no tension, just confusion. Special effects just for the sake of special effects is crap. You can't just pile it on endlessly and hope it will automagically coalesce into something wonderful. More is not always better.
Hell it even allows the musical score to shine much brighter. Most of that huge fight scene is done almost entirely without dialog, hinging instead on the tone of the music.
I'll agree with you on the other parts - those were just silly. But that one shouldn't be changed. Ever.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
weren't episodes 1-3 written before 4-6? i don't think storytelling is the problem. i think the problem was anakin skywalker and jar-jar binks. in all other respects, the newer movies were decent. firstly, a story centered around a little kid is naturally not as interesting (for most 16+ audiences) as an older character--which is why episode I, while a decent movie, doesn't live up to episode IV-VI. And then there's that douchebag who plays anakin in episodes I & II. He's just a shitty actor. I mean, c'mon, Natalie Portman, Samuel L. Jackson, and Ewan McGregor were all in the cast, and they hire a lamo for the leading role. Throw in Jar-jar binks and the whole franchise is ruined forever...
That's interesting. Does that mean Ford gets money when people use artists' renditions of his face for the covers of the EU novels? Because that happens quite a lot.
qntm.org
First of all, did you hear that he's playing Indiana Jones instead? It's in the same link. So it's not like he refused SW to go play some peaceful suburban father with 2.5 kids role.
Second, we don't know the details there. It could be simply that the Indiana Jones role paid better.
Third, after what George Lucas did to Episodes 1 to 3, can you really blame him? I mean, it's ok to bitch and moan about it as a fan, but he's the one who gets it on his CV and maybe conscience. Maybe he's good at knowing a dud when he sees one. Or maybe, especially given the choices of roles as a good guy, he doesn't want to star in Lucas's recent moral relativism (and revisionism) lectures.
SW started as a simple kids' story, a SF version of a mix of fantasy and swashbucklers and WW2 carrier battles. Brave knights with magic swords against clear super-villains. (You'd be hard pressed to paint blowing up a planet they already knew was not a rebellion planet, just to make an example, as a moral grey zone.) The rebels are good, the Empire is evil, and it tells you so right in the opening text. Even when the good guys tell a little lie (e.g., Ben saying that Luke's father is dead), it's with the best intentions, and even when the evil guys tell the truth, you know it's just scheming to some evil end. Follow your heart, do the right thing, don't let old farts tell you what to do (even if it's Yoda), don't fall for the excuses and promises of the dark side. And, oh, trust your own skills, not some targetting computer gizmo.
Not entirely applicable to RL, but it's a simple (or simplified) story, that's easy to digest and entertaining.
And it's not _that_ far off the mark either. While RL situations are a lot less black-and-white, it's not as impossible to have some principles as some people try to tell you. Just because neither side is pure black or white, it doesn't mean there's no difference. If one side is only 75% right and the other 75% wrong, it still doesn't mean that they're perfectly equivalent and it doesn't matter which you choose. Moral relativism is a subject very dear to both philosophers (since that's their job) and sociopaths (who just love muddying the waters and justifying any evil they do), but RL isn't _that_ relative. Just because some details varied across time and space, doesn't mean that the entire concepts of good and evil are purely arbitrary and irrelevant. But I digress.
So a long time after Episode 6, Lucas seems to have decided to undo that whole simplicity. Most of what Episodes 1 to 3 do isn't as much about showing you the history of it, as about trying to undo the good-vs-evil theme of the original trilogy. It's a lecture in how, see, the good guys weren't really good, they were just some self-serving self-indulgent caste, and, see, the evil guys weren't evil as such, they were really just another point of view and at most a bit mis-guided. And Vader (you know, the same guy who supervised blowing up a planet full of innocents) didn't as much fall to the dark side by some act of selfish evil, but was just yet another guy who thought he's doing the right thing, if in a bit of a mis-guided way. Etc.
It's been about rewriting the SW universe in more profound ways than "Han shot first." The whole "A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack" got kicked into the garbage bin, for example, and that was a far more central idea than Han shooting first.
It's not just the bad acting and bad scripting and bad directing and Jar Jar that make the prequels hard to swallow, it's also that it's a moral ambiguity lesson with some special effects and badly acted/scripted/directed at that. Once the whole monomyth structure and clear cut sides fly out the window, it becomes a lot harder to empathise with the heroes or follow why did they have to do this and that. Or to what (justifiable) end.
Contrast Episode 4 where it followed a logical and archetypal structure to destroy the evil Death Star, to Episode 1 where the grand achievement is finding Anakin
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
weren't episodes 1-3 written before 4-6?
Probably not written. He may have had a vague idea of the general story, but he wouldn't have made such incoherences : Obi'wan doesn't know C3PO or R2D2 in 'New Hope', he doesn't know that Luke has a sister before Yoda tells him. Also, the six episodes just "don't work" together. The "I am your father", which is quite a dramatic climax in the original serie doesn't work anymore if you watch Starwars in the correct order.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Are you are referring to that little exchange between Obi-Wan's ghost and Yoda in ESB right after Luke left Dagobah?
Ben: That boy is our last hope.
Yoda: No. There is another.
I figure that a way to reconcile that with Ben's knowledge from ROTS would be to assume that Ben knew about Leia, but for one reason or another, he simply didn't feel that she would be up to the task of becoming a Jedi and overthrowing Vader and the Emperor.
Now, how about when the Obi-Wan ghost appeared to Luke on Hoth and told him to go to Dagobah though?
Ben: You will go to the Dagobah system. There you will learn from Yoda, the Jedi Master who instructed me.
I think that was a rather big oversight on the part of Lucas, considering the Jedi Master who instructed Ben was Qui-Gonn, not Yoda. That one might be a little more difficult to explain away.
This space unintentionally left blank.
Obi obviously had his memory erased in Anchorhead. Why else wouldn't he remember Artoo?
-Peter
Oh man I love this stuff. Everytime I watch a movie and something doesn't make sense, I can allways stir it around until it does. (At least for me.) C3po and R2d2: Maybe Obiwan just didn't care about the robots much. He knew them, but they weren't really important to him. Or maybe he didn't want to say he knew them, because if he could tie himself to the robots, it might (Through Crazy whiney Questions) lead to Obiwan admitting that Vader is Lukes Father. Yodi: Well, Yoda instructed him a number of times in the 2rd & 3rd one. Maybe what he meant was not that yoda trained him. But Yoda was a source of Wisdom when he had a question. Of course there could have been some training in between 1 and 2 as the is some time in between. And I agree with you on Leia. Maybe Ben just didn't know that she may be of any use.
Indoctrinate : to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments Educate : to develop mentally, morally, or aestheti
Huh? What about Liam Neeson? Natalie Portman? And Trainspotting Star Ewan McGregor? All pretty big stars.