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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?"
George Lucas, on the other hand, has lost a tonnes of credibility with the Star Wars prequels. As Brent Spiner said, "it took him twenty years to come up with something lousey". George's quickness to return to the Star Wars well is more evidence that he has become a sell-out of the highest order.
George should forget about Star Wars spin-offs, go back to his roots and start a new project. Maybe a remake of Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers ... something he loved as a child.
boxlight
often the best of the books featured han solo as a major story, so george did have a good idea, but the execution would have sucked. maybe harrison ford could have directed it, too....
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It seems to be a trend where the original creators of giantly popular franchise kill them for me later on as well - for instance, JK Rowling did the same with her last Harry Potter book describing the once wonderful characters snogging all the time (rolls eyes).
I wish copyright was shorter just so the creators could have some competition for once for their own creation (in terms of audience following) and making the best thing about it.
It's very true that, objectively, the originals weren't Timeless Cinema or anything and that it's quite impossible to compete with folks' nostalgic perception of the movies.
HOWEVER... Star Wars was also the first time anyone had done the space opera for which everyone had been pining since, I dunno, Jules Verne finally came to fruition with grandeur. 2001 was great, but it was semi-mystical hard sci-fi. It wasn't the cowboy movie in outer space that spoke to the munchkin in everyone. Except Brett, perhaps.
I am the one true god. However, as an atheist, I don't believe in myself. I guess I have a self-esteem problem.
If they did an entirely CG Han Solo, would they have to pay Harrison Ford anything? I mean it would be "Ford's likeness", but the "Han Character" is what they would be depicting...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
This is what they ended up doing for X-Men 3 on Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen for their 20+ year prior shot. It's actually pretty impressive what they were able to accomplish digitally, check it out: http://www.fxguide.com/article357.html . A little bit different if you had to do it for an entire movie, but the technology is getting there.
Why waste $100 Million just to disappoint the fans in 2 years, when you can disappoint the fans right away for free.
No its about an older Jones who has risen to be dean of the school of archeology at his university. He now has become an M like character and sends his grad student Shortround on missions. Think Bruce Wayne in Batman Beyond.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
A lot of discussion here about the quality of the movies on several levels. That being told, I withhold my judgment on the series as a whole. However, my girlfriend has expressed interest in watching the films.
As someone who has never seen them, should she watch IV through VI, then I, II, and III, or should she watch them in series?
And so, should I pull out my original release VHS tapes of IV-VI and have her watch them in their original glory, or should she watch the new DVD releases?
R2D2 is supposed to bleep and bloop, not tell people to bite his shiny metal ass.
Though I admit Bender would probably have made the prequels better.
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j-pimp wrote:
This could be a good model for the next movie. Although much older, Bruce Wayne was an important part of Batman Beyond and his reason for giving up the Batman role was logically given. Also, his character and past provided story possibilities (see the episode Meltdown) for the series. Although no longer in the field, his assistance was invaluable to Terry McGuiness (the new Batman), and he is still an interesting character.
The article summary is slightly wrong, incidentally (so what else is new?). Ford has already played Indy a fourth time (in the "bookends" wraparound segments for a Young Indy two-parter, "Young Indiana Jones and the Mystery of the Blues"). For that matter, he's also played Han Solo four times already, too (the second time being in The Star Wars Holiday Special).
I know this will mark me as a pariah in the Slashdot community, but I for one loved each and every one of the Star Wars movies. Yes, Anakin was a whiney dork. But he was supposed to be a flawed character. Thats why he became Darth Vader. Yes, Jar-Jar and the Ewoks were hokey...but the kids loved them. I remember...I was in 3rd grade when VI came out, and I loved the Ewoks. These movies aren't the sole property of Sci-Fi geeks. They're meant to entertain everyone -- including 10 year-old boys, grandmothers and parents.
While I'm on the subject of sci-fi fans trashing everything but the original, I liked Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise. I liked ST:ToS when I was a kid, but its pretty darned dumb now, and Shatner is an even worse actor than Hayden Christensen.
I like the new Battlestar Galactica WAY better than the old one.
I didn't even think Waterworld was *that* bad. I mean...it wasn't great, but it was good enough to watch on cable.
So when we're sitting around talking about people ruining their careers, and movies not being that great...remember that Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Ewan Macregor, et al -- are all enjoying great success right now because a LOT of people really liked those movies.
Basically, Lucas spent most of the filming in California doing exec producer-y stuff, while Kirshner and the actors were holed up in Pinewood actually shooting the movie. Kirshner was also doing his own editing on-set and, occasionally, sending reels over to Lucas to show him what he was doing.
Reportedly, Lucas *hated* how Kirshner was directing it. For example, he was absolutely livid about Vader fighting Luke one-handed at the end. At the time, he thought lightsaber fights should be very rigid, like Ken-do. (see: ANH's duel) Thankfully, he changed his mind about that one or else we wouldn't have the duel at the end of TPM.
But the biggest example is that he'd gotten a copy of the first half-hour of the movie, minus effects work - basically the whole Hoth sequence. And he hated it. Now, he and Kirshner have almost opposite directing styles in terms of camera work. Lucas locks the camera down, moves it at little as possible, and creates movement in editing. Kirshner moves the camera a lot and edits as little as possible. Both of these styles can be effective, but Lucas, SuperEditor, didn't know this.
Instead, he attempted to edit Kirshner's footage with his own cutting style. And the result was, according to everyone who saw it, absolutely wretched. (as one would imagine) And they spent much of the rest of filming begging him not to recut it. In the end, IIRC, the issue became moot because they just didn't have TIME for a recut.
So, basically, the best SW film is the one that Lucas had the least direct involvement with. And it's exactly because of ESB that he ended up getting a weak, easily-controlled director for ROTJ and camped out on set all but directing it from the backseat. (now, story wise, ROTJ had huge problems anyway and as written would never be as good as the others, but that's another matter...)
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Yeah, I thought about the Yoda thing too. The only way to resolve it is if Ben meant that Yoda was one of his Jedi Masters. Truthfully all the Jedi Masters train Jedi not their own in small ways. So if the dialogue was tweaked:
Ben: You will go to the Dagobah system. There you will learn from Yoda, a Jedi Master who instructed me.
I think also, Lucas tries to smooth this out at the end of Episode III by having Yoda show Ben how to communicate with the dead.
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