Empire Strikes Back Director Irvin Kershner Dies at 87

bigredradio writes "Empire Strikes Back director Irvin Kershner died at his home in Paris after suffering from illness, his goddaughter Adriana Santini confirmed to the AFP Monday. He was 87."

Comments

Sad day

[Bobnova]

A sad day, that was the best movie of the series IMO. Too bad he didn't do more of them.

Re:Sad day

[EricTheRed]

They always go in threes. First LN, now IK. Who's #3?

Sir Maurice Wilkes - one of the early programming pioneers of the 1940's?

From The National Museum Of Computing, Bletchley Park twitter feed: http://twitter.com/#!/tnmoc/status/9283716039843841

Sad news that today Sir Maurice Wilkes passed away, aged 97. Here he was on a visit last year to #TNMOC http://ow.ly/3gUD2

Re:Sad day

[ultranova]

The sequel was harder, though, like most sequels, and was directed by someone who wasn't the overall visionary - someone who hadn't thought up the movie for his entire life beforehand.

Which is precisely why Empire Strikes Back ended up better: it's far easier to see and correct the flaws in someone else's vision than your own. That's why editors exist.

Re:Sad day

[Enderandrew]

Honestly, I think Brian Singer has a hard-on for 70's sci-fi and could make new Star Wars films that look and feel like the original trilogy.

The prequels look too clean and modern in contrast.

Last I heard, Singer walked away from Logan's Run and wanted to do a new reboot on Battlestar Galactica, ignoring the new SyFy iteration, and stay closer to the original series.

You could set a new trilogy 20-30 years in the future with Luke as the old master now. Harrison Ford has repeatedly said he would never go back to Star Wars, but I think you might talk him into a single scene cameo that explains why he is largely out of the picture.

If you got Timothy Zahn to work with Lucas on stories/scripts, I think the fans would buy in.

Re:Sad day

[mcgrew]

You should submiut that as a /. front page story. Far more relevant than Nielson's death.

Re:Sad day

[MightyMartian]

Episode V was the best because Lucas was as far from the process as possible. Lucas may be a visionary, but he also has the extraordinary tendency to poison that vision.

I can only imagine how good Episode III would have been if someone like Kirshner had been driving the car.

Re:Sad day

[u17]

O_O these things always come in threes. wonder who's next

It's the mice. Their reversed aging is sucking the life out of humans!

Re:Sad day

[FatdogHaiku]

They always go in threes. First LN, now IK. Who's #3?

Justin Bieber?

Based on historical evidence, we as a planet do not have that kind of luck...

Re:Sad day

[ebuck]

Maybe he can go before he decides to redo the series again. Next time hell probably adding yoda and storm trooper teletubbies, and Han won't shoot at all, the bartender will intercede.

Re:Sad day

[gustgr]

You, sir, have gone too far. You take that back, and take it now.

Re:Sad day

[catbutt]

As much as I wince at some of the worst scenes throughout the prequels, it always saddens me to see people slam on Lucas so much. Kirschner did a fine job directing ESB, but come on....Lucas is the visionary behind the whole thing and deserves a lot of credit for the amazingly rich world he built.

May the Force...

[lag10]

be with him.

Re:May the Force...

[TED Vinson]

Lucasfilm has announced the December release of a 'new director's cut' of The Empire Strikes Back in which Mr. Kirshner will make a cameo appearance as a 'Force ghost' to honor his contribution. This is the perfect, must-have gift for Star Wars fans everywhere.

Lucasfim has also announced the January 2011 release of a 'special, revised director's cut' of The Empire Strikes Back in which the Kirchner Force ghost will be played by Hayden Christensen...

I hope that this experience

[Haedrian]

Will make him more powerful than ever.

I felt a great disturbance in the Force

[tedgyz]

as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

Coincidence?

[tverbeek]

I just added Forbidden Planet to my Netflix queue, and noticed Empire was one of the "more like this...." features. Spooky. Was this because it also featured the work of a just-deceased person? Or did God just order up the same movie, and decided that he wanted "more like this" and took Kershner too? If it's the latter, then Bill Shatner and/or Leondard Nimoy may be in trouble, because The Search for Spock was suggested next to Empire; and Rod Taylor of the 1960 The Time Machine (also suggested to me) is getting on in years, and might want to be extra careful for a while as well.

and NSNA

[Srsen]

He also directed the understated and underrated (IMO) Never Say Never Again.

Re:RIP

[imakemusic]

Wikipedia is your friend.

Some friend! It keeps asking me for money!

Stephen King??

[mfnickster]

Stephen King, dead at 63

I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Horror/Sci Fi writer Stephen King was found dead in his Maine home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.

Re:Stephen King??

[danieltdp]

Is it true? Can't find any news on internet about it.

One of the last guys to tell George to stuff it...

[GPLDAN]

Solid article on Kershner and his push-pull relationship with Lucas:


http://www.salon.com/entertainment/col/srag/1999/05/13/kershner

Kershner was too ill to accept Lucas' offer to direct Phantom Menace. One wonders what his sensibilities for human drama and actual tension would have done to that cartoon.

Sad news?

[Burning1]

Sad news that today Sir Maurice Wilkes passed away, aged 97

We're talking about a pioneer who accomplished a lot in his life, and lived to the age of 97, right? While I'm sure no one's happy to see him go, I can't possibly imagine how this is sad news.

Sounds like he lived life the way it was meant to be lived. Celebrate that.

Re:Read below

[hal2814]

"Yes yes, Alec Guinness was known. Okay, but from WHAT exactly?"

Off the top of my head, The Ladykillers, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and Doctor Zhivago. Alec Guinness was WELL known before he became Kenobi. It's a testament to the popularity of Star Wars that Alec Guiness isn't known primarily as Colonel Nicholson (the part he won a Best Actor for). Peter Cushing was also a very well-known actor before Star Wars, maybe more so than Guinness.

Re:RIP

[GodfatherofSoul]

Sounds like a typical friend to me!

Re:Read below

[h4rm0ny]

The actors SURELY could have acted better. Why couldn't any of the newbies pull an Alec Guinnes or Harrison Ford?

I'm going to take issue with you on just this one point. There was some very good talent in those films, in particular Ewan McGregor who clearly put a fair amount of work into making his performance consistent with Alec Guinness's. Natalie Portman has never set me ablaze with awe with a role, but she's certainly a more than competent actress. I'm even willing to believe that Hayden Christensen would be decent with competent directing. And as to Ian McDiarmid - well, what more could be said? But how much can you do with a line like: "I'm haunted by the kiss that you should never have given me. My heart is beating... hoping that kiss will not become a scar."

Once you have a reasonable amount of experience acting, you've well-learned how much effect the director has. You can take it from one of my own recent experiences, that when the director is against you, it can be almost impossible to put in a credible performance. In those prequels, you could practically see the director throttling their performances. The difference between "Noooooo!" working and being a joke, is only partly the performance of the actor himself, and far more in the build up, the scene setting, the pacing, credibility and interaction with those around him.