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Topher Grace Screens Star Wars Prequel Re-edit
silentbrad writes "/Film (as well as IGN and A.V. Club) reports about Topher Grace's fan re-edit of the Star Wars prequel trilogy into a single, 85-minute film titled Star Wars: Episode III.5: The Editor Strikes Back.' Quoting /Film: 'His idea was to edit the Star Wars prequels into one movie, as they would provide him a lot of footage to work with. He used footage from all three prequels, a couple cuts from the original trilogy, some music from The Clone Wars television series, and even a dialogue bit from Anthony Daniels' (C-3PO) audio book recordings. He even created a new opening text crawl to set up his version of the story.' It continues with what stayed and what was cut. It's just too bad it was a one-time-only screening."
Video or it didn't happen.
Without Being Prevented From Doing So By Lucas
would have been the name of the Star Wars movie about an alternate reality where the prequels were substantially better.
The enemies of Democracy are
Yeah, an 11 gallon drum of crud and a dropper full of water -- a significantly higher concentration of water.
P.S. don't mistake "better" for "good". :)
The enemies of Democracy are
He can't release it or George will sue him into oblivion. We'll never get to see it. So why even tell us it exists?
Nothing can save that sugar-coated ending on the park bench with the Oracle and the children and the sunset.... It's like someone stole the movie I was watching and slipped in Micheal Jackson's 'Moonwalker' movie.
Matrix 2 and 3 are better forgotten. The first movie stands better alone.
If the problem with the prequels were length or pacing then editing them down would help. The problem though is that the screenplay is so weak in characters. If you don't value the friendship or love story, then you can't feel the emotional pay offs to any degree. Editing alone definitely can't fix that. It pretty much needs a top to bottom rewrite.
Film editing is a profession that requires both talent and experience. He's developing his abilities towards that goal, and if he can 'polish the turd', so to speak, he'll be able to demonstrate his talent. He could end up doing what he wants for a living.
Basically what I'm trying to say we all know you're not curing cancer, getting us into space, or solving world hunger, so just sit down and shut up.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
To be fair, the original script had them using humans as CPUs, tapping their brains for processing power... which is at least plausible. Some genius decided this was too complicated for American audiences to understand and thus it was switched to the "humans as power generators" nonsense.
So I just tell myself that's what the machines are REALLY using the humans for, and the "humans as batteries" crap is just Morpheus's woefully ignorant pet theory. It kinda works if you squint real hard.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
The ONLY way the Matrix trilogy could be saved is if the fan theory was true and Neo never left the Matrix. then instead of some lame electro jesus it would be a royal mindfuck where the machines, realizing that a percentage would never accept the construct, created a much worse "real world" to give them something they could believe.
Can you imagine if one of the machines popped into Zion at the end of the third and simply told them" you are suffering and living like this because this is what you wanted. You poisoned the planet so badly during the war it is simply unfit for life. We first tried to give you paradise, that failed. We then tried to give you the height of your civilization, but you rejected it, so we had only the choice of creating this "hell world" or killing you and we chose what we thought would be more humane. sorry if it doesn't make you happy but this is all you would accept, a world of suffering".
Now THAT would have been a truly awesome ending that would have left you seriously wondering about big questions like whether man could accept a true paradise. as for the prequels? I'd say Plinkett nailed it and anybody who hasn't watched these videos really needs to. he points out thing I never noticed...but my brain did, like how lazy Lucas had gotten with the "over over two shot" like on soap operas, just so he could do everything in front of green screens. he points out in great detail the incredible fail that is the prequels, how they even butcher their own mythology just so Lucas can throw more shit at the screen and do more CGI. BTW watch his review of the last indy flick and you'll find out how big a hack Lucas really is. Did you know he wanted to set indy 3 in a fricking haunted house? You listen to what his original ideas for indy and Star Wars were and you think "ZOMFG, what is he insane?" and then you realize the ONLY reason he ever made anything good was people willing to stand up and say "George that just doesn't work" but now he's so rich nobody will stand up to him and this is what happens.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
There were lots of good "Bits" of 2 and 3. Like the first Smith fight in the park, or the highway chase, or the zion fight. The Hovercraft race-against-time chase down the narrow passage. The Merovingian scenes. They had the potential to be really good. But for some reason they weren't.
The problem is that they spent *far* too long on these bits with nothing to break them up. If they weren't fighting for ages, they were talking your ears off. I remember feeling like my eyes were about to start bleeding during that first Smith fight (partly due to the bad CGI). The Zion fight focused on the mech walkers too much and not enough on the foot soldiers, or the drama behind it. It was all action, for the full duration.
The fight scenes were all fighting, and no plot progression, and plot progression happened in massive info dumps.
Remember in the first film where Neo first takes on two agents on top of the building? That was an awesome scene and lasted one minute. It progressed the plot by making you realise Neo IS the One, and it was pretty awesome to watch. The climactic lobby fight scene was 3 minutes long and showed what exactly was possible in the Matrix. The subway fight was 4 and showed Neo going toe-to-toe with Smith for the first time. Between each of these was somewhat of a breather to let the audience relax. The film was well paced between fights and dialogue.
Now take Reloaded. The mid-film vs Smith scene in lasted over five minutes, was mostly blurry, bad CGI and did sod all to move the plot forward. The Architect on the other hand was EIGHT minutes long, 'moving the plot forward' is an understatement, as it pretty much WAS the plot, and such a large dump of information was boring as fuck. If they weren't relentlessly chaining fights they were droning on and on incessantly.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
Not a single damn actor in that movie did well. After watching the prequels I had to go peruse some of Natalie Portman's other films. Because I had thought she was a good actor, but was starting to doubt it. Turns out that yes, indeed, she has acting chops. But there's only so much an actor can do with a terrible script, nothing but a green screen to act against, and a director who isn't happy until the actor does exactly what he wants and what he wants is retarded.
Same with Ewan McGregor. To a lesser extent Liam Neeson, Samuel Jackson, and Christopher Lee, but that's because they had less screentime to erase memories of other things they've done.
So, I don't recall seeing Hayden Christiansen in anything else, but my default assumption is that he can probably act but looked horrible in those movies just like everyone else did.
You're right, in general everyone did badly. I have seen examples of good acting against a green screen, so I don't think that's the reason. (Or at least, the whole reason.) I think "what the director wants is retarded" is closer to the mark.
I saw Hayden in "Jumper", a movie that didn't totally suck, and he was a bit stiff in that, but not nearly as bad as he was in the SW movies. This could be because he had a better director.
A good director can drag good performances out of a bad actor. (Example, Barry Lyndon (1975)) A bad director can drag bad performance out of nearly anyone.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Apparently there's a rule on slashdot where I only run across underrated insightful comments on days I don't have mod points.