Slashdot Mirror
The Secret History of Star Wars
lennier writes "How exactly did George Lucas develop the script for the first Star Wars? Why were the prequels so uneven when the originals were so good? Did he really have a masterplan for six, nine, or even twelve episodes, and why did the official Lucasfilm position keep changing? And just how big an influence were the films of Akira Kurosawa on the whole saga? Michael Kaminski's The Secret History of Star Wars, Third Edition is a free, thoroughly unauthorized, e-book that brings together a huge amount of literary detective work to sort fact from legend and reveal how the story really evolved. Download it or have your nerd credentials revoked."
A movie that has permeated practically every culture on the planet--Jedi is a religion in some countries; when people cup their hands over their mouth and slowly and loudly breath, people recognize it as a Vader impression; and its success made ILM, Skywalker Sound, Harrison Ford, Lucas Arts, Lucasfilm, THX, and the list goes on.
You may not like the movie, but to say it's "just a movie" is like saying "the Bible is just a book"--perhaps in some literal sense it's "a book," but it's one that has shaped the course of human history.
Indeed. It seems as if there is a narrow range of ages that found the original spellbinding, and I was just a few years too old. I recall seeing in in the theater when it came out and, naturally being blown away by the special effects. The audience first gasped and then cheered in the opening sequence where the ship flies overhead. But it was a fairly average movie otherwise, utterly predictable, and is still even watching it now. But guys a few years younger - sat, 10-14 years old - were absolutely transfixed and immediately started memorizing every detail. I was 17 and drove my own car to see it.
From what I consider an objective standpoint, btw, the prequels were every bit as good story and acting-wise as the originals. Everybody hates Jar-Jar but I don't see the various cutesy robots and critters in the originals to be a lot better, and the Ewoks beat the universe part was, is, and always will be embarrassing.
Brett
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hidden_Fortress
and you have the two bumbling fools, the noble princess, and the hero trekking across hostile territory, doing various good deeds and engaging in various skirmishes. the scope of the movie and the plot are completely different, but you can immediately understand why this movie was the jumping off point for the picaresque characters of C3PO and R2D2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picaresque_novel
C3PO and R2D2, using their point of view, is really the most risky and rewarding aspect of star wars. now, i don't think lucas would ever admit it, but i think he was trying to conjure up the same sort of picaresque magic twice... with the character jar jar binks
except that character was a terrible failure, while C3PO and R2D2 are universally loved. i don't claim to understand why one worked and the other didn't, but clearly jar jar falls flat as a humours bumbling low life antidote to the otherwise deadly serious proceedings, while the two robots rocked in the same sort of role
which brings me to a final thought: movie magic isn't easy. i think a lot of fanboys need to cut lucas a break. he gave us star wars. did you forget that? ok, he fumbled with the final 3 movies. but holding him in scorn for that, while completely forgetting the first 3, is totally unfair of you. if, in your mind, you can't rise above your own frustrated expectations of the latter 3 movies to still cherish the guy for the first 3, you really are taking star wars way too seriously
oops
did i just suggest someone might take star wars too seriously? yikes, gotta run and hide now, i just awoke the rabid partisan fanboy beasts...
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Why were the prequels so uneven when the originals were so good?
... shall I go on? you know them.
because those prequels are actually sequels. You know, they were actually made *after* the originals. Like all sequels, they are attempts to milk the cash cow created by the original franchise, i.e. ensure money will be made on the sequels just by vertue of the movie's name. And in many cases, the moviemaker thinks the name alone is enough, and forgets to make the sequel original or exciting because he has cold feets he didn't have when he made the first incarnation.
Examples of good movies with bad sequels:
Matrix
Rambo
Rocky
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I think the author of the "nerd credentials" statement should have his nerd credentials revoked, if he ever had them at all. Star wars is Dorky, not nerdy. Nerds like math, dorks like D&D. Completely different. Nerds get girlfriends due to their thirst for all knowledge and experiences, while dorks grab onto obscure games and facts, because its something that makes them difficult to quickly judge and allows them to feel superior in a field. I am a nerd, perhaps a king or duke of their kind, but I am not a dork.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
why on earth jar-jar was allowed more than 3 seconds of screen time?
Lucas should have taken advantage of the JJ hatred and turned him into an accident-prone character who gets his tongue caught in food processors, gets hit by meteorites or low-flying ships, etc.; sort of like the intergalactic Wiley Coyote. People would cheer everytime he got it.
Table-ized A.I.
Oh, and there's a military laser project named after it. Are people willing to give their life, or alter their concept of what life is about in the most sacred way, because of it? I'd say that's what "religion" means, and enough people call themselves Jedi to make it a religion. to say that it has "shaped the course of human history" is a bit over the top. Not going to debate that one, but I don't think that's what GP said: You may not like the movie, but to say it's "just a movie" is like saying "the Bible is just a book"--perhaps in some literal sense it's "a book," but it's one that has shaped the course of human history. So that "shaped the course of human history" is about the Bible, and why it shouldn't just be called "a book". There are other reasons that Star Wars should not just be called "a movie"...
And frankly, it's too early to tell. We've had the Bible for at least a millennium or two. We've only been able to make movies for a little over a century -- and only in color, with sound, for about half that time.
It's simply physically impossible for a movie to have had as much of a chance to become as world-changing (for better or worse) as the Bible is -- it's simply had more time.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Unlike those plastic action figures that emerged to commercialize the world forever, 'Star Wars' was an organically fallible piece much more in common with 'American Graffiti' than the blockbuster c--- that has dominated the last 30 years. I was a kid in the seats in 1977 and what captured my heart at the time was the gritty broken chaotic mess of the first film. Droids break, spaceships fragment, bizzare languages permeate every scene, plans go spectacularly awry. Even a kid could see that this was life. Spielberg used to capture this spirit in those wonderful scenes where everybody is talking at once; dialog that doesn't translate to the international export market. We all know, the true sequel of Star Wars is 'Firefly.' ---537
Alternate definition: Someone who argues about the definition of nerd credentials on /. and is modded up for it, generally has nerd credentials. Welcome, o' nerdy brother!
I think Star Wars is only dorky if you dress up for it. But perhaps that is my unfair prejudice against cosplay. To the "don't knock it until you've tried it crowd" -- no thanks!
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
And don't even mention the bible. It's a bigger piece of cruft than all versions of windows multiplied together.
If you like it or not, the bible (or any other religious book) is still a piece if human history. Just because someone (ok, I think too it's bad, but:) thinks that something is bad does not revoke it's status as history.
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
Oh god, the Nerd/Dork/Geek argument. We always went with nerds being unwashed, antisocial geniuses who small vaguely like cheese, and somehow manage to reference Yoda, and differential equations in every utterance. Dorks are just like nerds, but dumber. And geeks are the swashbuckling generalists who get all the chicks (er...) because they have some modicum of social skills, while still knowing their swallows apart.
By your jargon though, there still is a deep relation between nerds and dorks, since both of them are "systems" people. D&D is just another complex system to play with, just like math, code, and circuits. As is, oddly, the various nerd friendly mythologies. Both groups, by your classification, are equally likely to get the chicks... Not very. Neither math nor D&D impress many of the chicks I know.
So where does arguing over the semantics of nerdery put one?
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Oh come on, anyone who tries these little classifications... come on, face it, we're all nerds, we're all geeks, I don't really know anyone who uses the term dork any more, so perhaps that speaks volumes as to your status?
You can be a geek or a nerd or anything you like AND still have social skills...
I prefer the term geek for myself, but hey, don't get too bogged down with terms for god's sake, we all pursue things of a cerebral nature, be they maths, be they D&D, you getting so uppity with possibly being called not a nerd because you don't like Star Wars... that just shows you're just as big of a dick as the jocks who look down on all nerds and geeks and dorks, you're just refining down your scorning of people into finer subgroups.
That doesn't make you any better than the jocks, and in fact probably just a hypocrite.
Learn to be comfortable in yourself and don't mind what bucket you get thrown in this week, it doesn't matter... if you're happy with who you are and with your friends and family who gives two rat's fused arses what people call you?
One of George Bush's favorite movies is supposed to be High Noon, a 1952 Western starring Gary Cooper. It's about a town marshal awaiting the arrival of a gang of criminals, coming to take revenge, who are arriving on the noon train. The townspeople are cowardly and don't want to stand up, but Cooper's character stands resolute even when everyone else tries to talk him out of it, and everyone else turns their back on him and abandons him. It's a morality tale about standing your ground and sticking to your principles when you're right, regardless of what other people think. And there's a lot to be said for that... but you could also imagine that someone watching that movie might find inspiration to stick to their ground and stand by their principles, even when they're *dead wrong*. For instance, if you were the President of the United States of America. It's not hard to picture Bush in his office, as the entire nation is telling him to change course in Iraq, imagining that he's the lead character in High Noon, steadfast, doing the right and moral thing even as the cowards around him try to tell him to alter course... who says movies can't alter the course of history?
Oscar Wilde once quipped, "Life imitates art, far more than art imitates life". After "Top Gun" was released, enlistment in the Navy soared. Shows like "CSI" have resulted in huge enrollment in criminology and forensics courses. Goethe's novel "Sorrows of Young Werther" ends with the suicide of its lovelorn protagonist, and was followed by a rash of suicides across Europe. Interrogators in Iraq try methods they've seen on "24" because they haven't received adequate instruction from the army. The novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" helped fuel the tensions that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands in the American Civil War. Our behavior is to a very large degree shaped by our role models, and we can either imitate real people like our parents, teachers, or celebrities, or fictional characters in novels, TV, and film.
The next President of the United States is likely to be Barack Obama, born 1961. Star Wars was released in 1977- when he was 16. Odds are good he saw it then. Who can know what kind of effect the movie had on him as an impressionable teen? When that 3:00 A.M. phone call comes to tell him that the terrorists/Iranians/aliens have attacked America, how do you know he won't be imagining himself in an Incom X-wing, spoilers locked in attack position, with a trusty R-2 unit as copilot, barreling down a trench as laser bolts fly past?
Lucas was like Roddenberry, great ideas, but they need to let other more talented writers and such do the polishing of the raw stones into gems. When Gene was heavily involved in the early years of TNG, it was /terrible/, and I say this as a die hard trekkie. When his role was reduced, the show began to shine. all the facets of what Trek could be were able to be explored. And when untalented people got ahold of the franchise (most of Voyager, the first three seasons of Enterprise) it went into the toilet (Season 4 of ENT was genius, Manny Coto is one smart cookie). Same with Star Wars. I'm not a huge SW guy, but I liked the first three, and saw huge problems with the prequel set that a good editor and writer could have fixed very quickly.
Story wise, Episode 1 needed cut down to about 15 minutes of intro for Episode 2, which is now Episode 1. This is a common problem with movies and TV shows, in that too many writers think we need to be introed to our characters at the dawn of time. It's much better when we join the story already at a decent pace and get the background filled in along the way. This lets the viewer/reader get interested in what's happening without having to spend time in school learning about the history of our characters first. If we wanted school, we'd read a textbook. Also, kill the midichlorian crap, excise JarJar Binks. Midichlorians stole the wonder from The force and JarJar wasn't taht great a merchandising tool anyway, as I STILL see Ep1 crap at the local Big Lots.
Episode 3 is now Episode 2, except for the last 15 minutes or so. This should end when Kenobi leaves Whinykin, er, Anakin, truncated on the volcano. Ep3 picks up there and we spend the next 2 hours seeing the creation of Darth Vader and how he builds the Empire and WHY. Only knowing that can we truly appreciate him turning on the emperor in Ep6, and what it means for him to look on his son with is own eyes.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
I have a theory I call the Marx Brothers Syndrome and it works like this:
The Marx Brothers are old and boring today. A person having never seen them before will sit down in front of one of their classics and know all the jokes and nuances and just walk away.
If they were so great, why is this so?
It is because the were great, one of the greatest! Everyone in the business learned their tricks, copied their jokes, and expanded and improved on their dialog and themes. Now the Marx Brothers look diminished in comparison to what has developed after.
The same is true for Star Wars. It was great when it came out. It covered new ground. It did things that people had never seen before. In a lot of ways Star Wars was "dreadful." Today, I watch it and think Luke is such a whiner and C3PO shouldn't be an uptight english comic book character.
I think the episodes 1,2, and 3 suffered from the Marx Brothers Syndrome because the story, dialog, and "film making" of "Star Wars" has always been fairly flawed and needs to show us something new to allow us to overlook the weaknesses. Unfortunately, the cutting edge for special effects is irrelevant. Once you crossed over the "miniatures and props methodology" to CGI, improvements are now only incremental.
Star Wars fails because we already know it. We've seen it before in a thousand different ways since 1977. We already know the special effects. We have seen enough space opera, complete with bad dialog and acting, that there is almost nothing that would surprise us.
IMHO, Star Wars was ground breaking, but the space opera is as depleted a genre as the american western.
1. George Lucas is a terrible writer.
2. He wrote tons of different drafts for Star Wars, all universally awful, even the better parts he stole from better stories.
3. George Lucas had enough success to get $10 million to make a movie but he was nowhere close to being the Beard. He says "Fuck you, I'm George Lucas," they say "George who?" So he couldn't do everything his way, he had to listen to the input of others.
4. The genius of the whole Star Wars project is that Lucas served as a catalyst to bring hundreds of talented people together to make good movies. As Harrison Ford told him, "George, you can write lines like this but you sure as hell can't say them!" He hated, absolutely hated the way Empire turned out. But because he didn't have enough money to reshoot the material, he had to accept what he was given. And it was arguably the strongest of the original trilogy.
5. Because he had to listen to others, his best ideas were polished up to be brilliant, his worst ideas discarded, and good ideas from others were welded into the structure that is Star Wars. And it was good.
6. After all that success, the Beard is seen as having made it happen. And for the new trilogy, he felt he could do it on his own. And like the egotistical singer from a rock band who thinks the rest of the act is holding him back, he finds out in his solo career that he really doesn't have the chops to stand on his own. But in this case, the fanbase is so uncritical, so slavish, that he still has massive success even as he's shoveling steaming feces down their throats; they just smack their lips and beg for more.
That's Star Wars in a nutshell.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne