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

[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...

I hope that this experience

[Haedrian]

Will make him more powerful than ever.

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.

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.

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.