Star Wars Television Series Moving Forward

merg717 writes "George Lucas has confirmed that work has begun on a live-action Star Wars television series. This is the companion piece to the Clone Wars animated series, focusing on entirely new characters outside of the frame of the six movies. 'Lucas joked that the series would be about "the life of robots" but wouldn't let any details slip about the true premise. The "extended universe" of "Star Wars" has come to life already in Lucas-sanctioned novels, comics and games that chronicle the history of the Jedi and tell the tales of bit players in the films, such as the bounty hunters from "The Empire Strikes Back."'"

Comments

Re:Cue cynicism in 3 . . . 2 . . .(1)

[Frosty Piss]

...the franchise needs to be given a rest...

Like many people in the "entertainment" world, George Lucas is a megalomaniac, and needs constant "action" to feel personally validated. At a certain point these guys didn't really need any more money, but a fate worse than being poor again would be to fade into the past. These people live exclusively in the Here and Now, the past is death.

Expect lots of gratuitous cameos

[DrXym]

Young Indiana Jones used horrible contrivances to get Indy to meet various famous historical figures. Expect any Star Wars TV series to do the same with characters from the movies. Oh and lots of phony CGI.

It's not all crap

[PlatyPaul]

As was briefly touched on in TFS, the stories of the bounty hunters from ESB actually make for an interesting read. Skip all of the "Expanded" crap, and take a look here:

Tales of the Bounty Hunters
ISBN-10: 0553568167
ISBN-13: 978-0553568165

"No Luke" FTW

[Interl0per]

Not that I don't love the iconic characters from the OT, but this is exactly what I've been hoping to see in live action. If Star Wars Revelations is any indication, these kinds of stories could be done on a modest budget with talented and under utilized actors that could elicit the fan response of a Han Solo -ish character while staying low-key enough to allow viewers to be swept up into the absolutely huge and mysterious setting. I think it would be an absolute blast to throw some of the Empire's more obscure minions into the spotlight as a foil to some rebellious or independent spacers on the fringe (a la "Firefly"), similar to some of the plots in the old animated "Star Wars: Droids" from the 80s.

Battlestar Galactica

[SpectreBlofeld]

Battlestar Galactica has proven that it's possible to create cinema-quality special effects and atmosphere on a TV show budget these days.

Unfortunately for Lucasarts, anything they're likely to produce probably won't turn out half as good as Battlestar - which is kind of ironic considering that the original Battlestar Galactica really began as a Star Wars ripoff (or at least was discounted as such by critics at the time).

Really, though, BSG really beat the Star Wars prequel at their own game - the vintage tech and mannerisms give the Battlestar Galactica universe the old-school, 'epic' feel that the original SW trilogy had and the prequels lacked.

The kid in me really wants to see some Star Wars in the flavor of the original trilogy, though. Perhaps being constrained to a TV budget will actually help it meet that end - real props instead of 100% CGI backgrounds and 50% CGI characters; plot-and-character-driven instead of flashy lightsaber battles, etc.

Re:Battlestar Galactica

[jollyreaper]

Battlestar Galactica has proven that it's possible to create cinema-quality special effects and atmosphere on a TV show budget these days. Visually, I'll have to agree with you. The whole bit about having to use wired phones and paper printouts on computers is a bit silly but the overall look of the show is polished and competent. The space CGI is breathtaking. The actors also managed to portray themselves and deliver lines with convincing aplomb. But, and this is key, BSG demonstrates that you still need writers and a frickin' plan to avoid going off into stupid land. As has already been demonstrated, the Cylons did not have a plan because the writers themselves never knew what it was. You don't start writing a murder mystery without having already worked the crime out in your head so you can lay the proper clues leading up to the killer. Work without a plan and you wind up with surprise Cylon sleeper agents listening to Bob Dylan on their toaster ipods.

Unfortunately for Lucasarts, anything they're likely to produce probably won't turn out half as good as Battlestar - which is kind of ironic considering that the original Battlestar Galactica really began as a Star Wars ripoff (or at least was discounted as such by critics at the time). That's the funny thing. The best stories come when one or more people say "Damnit, I've got a tale that needs to be told. Who do I have to beat over the head to make this happen?" The worst stories tend to happen when a suit says "It's about time to crank another one off, I want some money." Sometimes the suit can find someone with a story worth telling and put them in charge but not often. The suits don't care.

Really, though, BSG really beat the Star Wars prequel at their own game - the vintage tech and mannerisms give the Battlestar Galactica universe the old-school, 'epic' feel that the original SW trilogy had and the prequels lacked. The worst kind of writing is where characters feel like they're jerked along through a plot because of what's written on paper. The best kind of writing lets you feel like everything has already happened for real, true and human reasons and the writer is just letting you in on what happened, recording it as it occurred. The same goes for directing. The nuTrilogy looked like unconvincing cheesy greenscreen because it was unconvincing cheesy greenscreen and the actors just couldn't sell it as anything but. Compare this with actors in a theater who can convince you anything is happening when standing on a frickin' stage. It's not a failure or limitation of the craft, it's a failure of the director to make the magic happen.

The kid in me really wants to see some Star Wars in the flavor of the original trilogy, though. Perhaps being constrained to a TV budget will actually help it meet that end - real props instead of 100% CGI backgrounds and 50% CGI characters; plot-and-character-driven instead of flashy lightsaber battles, etc. The only thing that could save a new Star Wars project is if you could get someone with a big brassy set of balls in charge, like a Joss or a JMS, give them the budget and authority to make it happen, stand back and let them go to work. But that's not going to happen. What you're going to get is a Lucas or a that idiot from Paramount whose name I'm blocking out who ran Trek into the ground after Rodenberry died, you'll just get some talentless hack or minion of Satan like Uwe Boll involved and it will turn into another festering, rotting, diseased pile of sludge with the Star Wars label affixed to it like an olive on a toothpick poking out of the top of a turd sandwich. Bon appetit, bitches.

The Right Solution

[TheRhino]

McCallum is interviewing writers for the live-action series. Here's a tip for you, Rick: Stop the interviews. Hire Timothy Zahn as the head writer. Then hire any combination of Michael Stackpole, A.C. Crispin, Kevin Anderson, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch as his staff. There. Done. Let Lucas cast the vision, but leave the rest up to Zahn and his team. And for the director, get Joss Whedon. Seriously. I can't stress this enough. He would do it exactly right.

Re:Cue cynicism in 3 . . . 2 . . .(1)

[bigstrat2003]

Oh, ok, I must've misread. My bad.

For the record, I really did find the prequels interesting. The plot of the original movies is, in my opinion, incredibly boring and cliche, what saves them is their great setting, and great action scenes. In the prequels, on the other hand, there was a story I could actually really get into, and wrap myself around: the slow descent of someone who was innocent and good into evil. It really caught me. Of course, the amazing battle scenes didn't hurt either.

Re:Cry some more

[oatworm]

Enormous Plot Holes? (The Jedi are mysterious, subtle, mystical monks in 4, 5, 6, and 1 and target practice in 2 and 3.) It's not like Episodes 4-6 were light on the plot holes, either. "Empire" is almost completely isolated from Episode 4 - suddenly, Leia goes from cute girl that Luke kisses to being his sister while Vader goes from being a completely mysterious bad guy that has some relation with Obi-Wan and killed Luke's father to being Luke's father. Oh, and, apparently, the Empire has enough resources lying around to not only ward off an insurrection but build a second moon-sized Death Star? Perhaps if they just spent the money on doubling their Star Destroyers, they wouldn't need to keep fighting the Rebellion off with big, highly destructive targets.

Inverse Ninja Effect? (Two Sith vs hundreds of Jedi.) In the prequels, the Sith were the Ninjas. They won, remember? That was the entire point - they came from seemingly nowhere and completely overwhelemed the forces of good, in much the same way that the forces of good did that to them in Episodes 4-6.

One and Two Dimensional Characters? At least Boba Fett got a dimension this time around. Han Solo wasn't terribly well developed, either, if you stop and think about it. He's a swashbuckler with heart of gold; that's about it. Luke and Darth Vader were probably the only characters fleshed out beyond a "Write a short paragraph about the character" point, which makes sense since they were the focal characters.

Insipid Romance? At least nobody kissed their sister this time around. The only reason the Han-Leia romance was even remotely bearable is that Harrison Ford is really, really good at what he does. Besides, how insipid are most romances in the real world, anyways?

Huge CGI sets which swallow the cast? Umm... Lucas basically invented CGI to pull off the original trilogy. By the standards of the time, the original trilogy had an overwhelming amount of special effects, too.

Look, don't get me wrong - I'm not a huge fan of the prequels, either. The problem with prequels, especially with ones with as much time between the original movies and the prequels, is that it's very difficult to make it look like the past is really the "past". If you don't get what I'm taking about, compare the polish of your average "Enterprise" episode with TOS. When you're dealing with sci-fi, you can't really do that. Besides, I'm not sure the prequels were all that necessary. But, that's just my take.