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It simply doesn't mean anything to me that there's a Lucas seal of approval on some event happening 'out there' in the 'Star Wars Universe'™. I loved that 'they died' story so much because it seemed really crazy to me that someone would ask Lucas about the characters as if to get from his mouth the official word. GreenBuckanneer claims to reject Thulsa's comment about 'licensed imagineers' but isn't that story the ultimate proof that this is exactly the case? Authority emanates from Lucas, and the buck always stops there. That said, I think Thulsa can go further. Because isn't it true that the divine word of Lucasfilm grants a sort of very minimal status to fan works? I think it's totally appropriate to make these comments about prophets and so on -- this is even winked at by the use of 'canon' -- but I think focusing on the comicbooks and so on against the creativity of fans seems weird because it seems to me like the creativity of the fans is actually the real problem. It seems less like a creative line of flight possibly giving you the opportunity to break from the hold of Star Wars than the strongest way to tie yourself into the fold. (I don't know, as if Star Wars was more Protestant than Catholic or something.) Guy A. Person posted:I think you're missing the point since even rephrased you are still saying the same thing. The point is that C-3PO has certain elements (his gold plating, his fancy accent, his timid behavior before his masters, admonishing the brasher R2-D2), that were put in by the creators of the film to serve a narrative purpose. Yeah that was pretty much where I'm going. The problem isn't that anyone thinks C-3PO exists -- I assume we all know he doesn't -- but that they nonetheless talk about him as if he did exist. I think there is something to the point about him being manufactured that actually enhances SMG's point, though, in the sense that C-3PO moved through two phases in the films (self-conscious servitude followed by false, subversive servitude) with an implicit earlier phase where he was (presumably) designed for honest total servitude. Maxwell Lord posted:C-3P0 was originally going to talk like a used car salesman, until they decided Daniels' performance worked. Presumably his obsequiousness would have been more obvious that way, though I guess in the later movies the character shifted because he was written with that voice in mind. Sort of, but in a more complicated way. The used car salesman of legend is a liar who exploits one or both of the buyer's ignorance or the buyer's discomfort at calling bullshit. As in, either you don't know the proper price, technical details, etc., or you do but feel uncomfortable accusing him of bullshitting you. The car salesman is not subservient to the people he sells to, but feigns it and uses that excessive subservience to exploit the buyer's discomfort. I was initially going to say here that the wide-spread prejudice against droids seen in the films breaks this down, but then I realised the obvious point that people aren't too keen on used car salesmen either, yet they still don't call the bluff. So I guess I'd just say it'd be a lot more difficult to pull the arc off because these characters are the kinds of people that dominate through excessive subservience as a matter of course, and do so for a bad cause. Butlers are simply subservient as a matter of course. That said, it's not uncommon for the most subservient butler characters to be subversive in some way, even if through over-punctilious butlering (like that famous example by Sartre of the waiter taken to the nth). But it's also common for butler characters to be subservient through their mocking 'undermining.' If anyone remembers that show The Nanny the butler was exaggeratedly subservient, but would make barbed comments and so on that, far from distancing him from the family, tied him further into it (I think he even ended up marrying the woman who was the usual target of his comments). Kieselguhr Kid fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Dec 4, 2012 |
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Dec 4, 2012 02:16
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There is, of course, Jeffery from Fresh Prince who was the most wry character on the show.
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Dec 4, 2012 02:34
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Also, Batman's Alfred 
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Dec 4, 2012 09:33
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Strange Matter posted:Fett is also demonstrably one of the least noble characters in any of the movies. At least Greedo gets in Han's face about the bounty. Boba Fett pretends to be a piece of space junk, tracks Han to Cloud City and has the Empire do all the hard work for him to capture Han. I prefer to think of Boba Fett as being the space equivalent of a 1930's Private Investigator, along with perpetual internal monologue. He walked into my office as though he'd been here a thousand times. Black legs leading up to his glittering chest and a cloak as dark as the depths of space. It was impossible to read the eyes that law hidden behind that stern mask yet I still shifted a little in my seat, feeling his stare push through me. "I want you to find a smuggler for me." he said. Ordinarily I'd have joked if any smuggler would do, but not with him. The creaking of his gloves as he flexed his fingers told me this wasn't a Sith to be joked with... quote:I remember before the prequels that I was subscribed to this Club Star Wars magazine which was pretty rad. Each edition came with this sort of choose your own adventure RPG book that you could play along with, and I remember reading that the Mandalorians were supposed to be a faction during the Clone Wars that fought against the Jedi. This, to me, puts a more interesting spin on Boba Fett. Either he's the last vestige of a dead civilization surviving purely out of spite, or he's appropriated the symbols of that society for the purpose of making himself scarier. Both of those are better than what we got, and presenting the Mandalorians that way would actually have enhanced Fett's presence in Empire and Jedi. Make them the villains of the Clone Wars or something, and then when Fett shows up in their armor in Empire and he's the only one left it actually has some pay off. I worked on the PS2/PSP/Wii versions of the Force Unleashed. Not perfect games, but one of the things I really enjoyed was the giant mandalorian basilisk we had in the game. Called the HTFU and commanded by the mustache adorned Chop'aa. It's a reference only Australians will get. Senor Tron fucked around with this message at 12:04 on Dec 4, 2012 |
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Dec 4, 2012 12:02
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Senor Tron posted:I worked on the PS2/PSP/Wii versions of the Force Unleashed. Not perfect games, but one of the things I really enjoyed was the giant mandalorian basilisk we had in the game. Called the HTFU and commanded by the mustache adorned Chop'aa. It's a reference only Australians will get. And YLLS regulars.
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Dec 4, 2012 15:50
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I don't think the EU is entirely irredeemable. I mean, I was a kid in the 80s, I played with Star Wars action figures and watched the Ewok movies and I don't think my imagination suffered for it. Playing around with side characters and new stories in an established universe may be more limited than creating something entirely new, but it can be good light exercise. Like I said, the problem is that the true spirit is hard to capture and sometimes people miss the point and you end up with force-immune Giger biotech alien religious fanatics. But at the same time I loved the roleplaying game's introduction of the Charon, who are death spiders from beyond the galaxy, so sometimes playing around with established material can yield interesting results.
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Dec 4, 2012 16:36
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GreenBuckanneer posted:I like you man. If it was just up to lucas we'd only ever have 1-6 and no explanation or better stories. What explanation do we need? At some point it's all Ripperology where the complexity of the knowledge is infinite but the scope is fixed. The movies are all complete texts; they should stand on their own.
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Dec 4, 2012 16:43
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What do folks here think of the KOTOR games, KOTOR 2 in particular? A friend gave a copy of the second game to me and I've heard really good things about it, but I have to ask how (for you guys at least) it falls into Expanded Universe Needless Explanation territory.
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Dec 4, 2012 18:13
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I don't see a problem with the EU as a concept. "Originality > Derivation" is axiomatic at best, and I don't really see a difference between someone being creative within a frame work like "Star Wars", and someone creating a whole new universe/franchise/whatever. The trouble with a lot of EU material is that it's uninteresting and uninspired, and find + replacing all the Star Wars reference with new words would not suddenly make a bad Star Wars story into a good original story.
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Dec 4, 2012 18:26
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Hbomberguy posted:What do folks here think of the KOTOR games, KOTOR 2 in particular? A friend gave a copy of the second game to me and I've heard really good things about it, but I have to ask how (for you guys at least) it falls into Expanded Universe Needless Explanation territory. The game itself is fairly horrendous and monotonous (as is the original KOTOR, don't let people lie to you) but the writing is top notch although still inferior to other Obsidian games.
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Dec 4, 2012 18:28
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Hbomberguy posted:What do folks here think of the KOTOR games, KOTOR 2 in particular? A friend gave a copy of the second game to me and I've heard really good things about it, but I have to ask how (for you guys at least) it falls into Expanded Universe Needless Explanation territory. KOTOR 1 is a pretty generic original trilogy ripoff story, but I thought it was a lot of fun. KOTOR 2 is really well written and a good examination of the Star Wars universe as a whole. Hundu is right though, the gameplay for both games is pretty bad. EDIT: I don't agree with Hundu about the writing in KOTOR 2 not being as high quality as other Obsidian games. I thought the writing was far better than in Neverwinter Nights 2. CPFortest fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Dec 4, 2012 |
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Dec 4, 2012 19:07
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The game itself is pretty buggy. Both as a consequence of Lucasarts forcing them into releasing in less than a year and Obsidian being Obsidian. That said, it remains one of the best ruminations on Star Wars and the implications of the Force. A bit of context, prior to writing the game Chris Avellone of Planescape: Torment fame said he read through every bit of Star Wars EU. It reportedly left him only a little "drain bamaged."
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Dec 4, 2012 19:23
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CPFortest posted:KOTOR 1 is a pretty generic original trilogy ripoff story, but I thought it was a lot of fun. KOTOR 2 is really well written and a good examination of the Star Wars universe as a whole. Hundu is right though, the gameplay for both games is pretty bad. There's no way it's as good as Mask of the Betrayer. NW2 sucks, I agree.
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Dec 4, 2012 19:27
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:There's no way it's as good as Mask of the Betrayer. NW2 sucks, I agree. That's true, Mask of the Betrayer is head and shoulders above every Obsidian game except for Fallout New Vegas.
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Dec 4, 2012 19:36
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Guy A. Person posted:I think you're missing the point since even rephrased you are still saying the same thing. The point is that C-3PO has certain elements (his gold plating, his fancy accent, his timid behavior before his masters, admonishing the brasher R2-D2), that were put in by the creators of the film to serve a narrative purpose. The point he was making is that SMG was talking about two things: the gold on C-3PO, and C-3PO's choice in the matter. The former exists but the latter doesn't. That doesn't mean C-3PO's color doesn't have important symbolic value, or that it doesn't influence him as a character, but there's no point in pretending agency exists where there's clearly none. If anything, his lack of agency in being created as a big gaudy gold trinket is a big part of his development.
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Dec 4, 2012 21:23
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SpaceMost posted:I don't see a problem with the EU as a concept. "Originality > Derivation" is axiomatic at best, and I don't really see a difference between someone being creative within a frame work like "Star Wars", and someone creating a whole new universe/franchise/whatever. Even with it being nearly a decade since I picked up a Star Wars book, I can still remember that the EU loved to recycle concepts and repaint them. Especially on the quoting side of things. Nobody wants to know the odds of any risky plan, and it goes without saying that every planet has a bar or some other locale that's a "wretched hive of scum and villainy". The list goes on and on. Of course, on the flipside when someone actually comes up with something new it's stuff like Han Solo's daughter having orgies with bugs. I could see myself maybe checking some EU stuff out if these new movies result in it being rebooted. And hopefully they'll hire competent writers this time around, but obviously that's quite the rarity in the field of licensed fiction so while I'm making unreasonable demands I'd also like a house made of gold and a rocket car.
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Dec 4, 2012 22:07
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GreenBuckanneer posted:I like you man. If it was just up to lucas we'd only ever have 1-6 and no explanation or better stories. Every prequel is better than every EU book/comic. The dialogue in the Thrawn books would make George Lucas cringe.
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Dec 4, 2012 22:26
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Friendly Factory posted:Every prequel is better than every EU book/comic. The dialogue in the Thrawn books would make George Lucas cringe. I swear, every time a character said, "Point" in those books, I died a little inside.
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Dec 4, 2012 22:27
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C'baoth was like the retarded cousin of Yoda in terms of grammar
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Dec 4, 2012 22:54
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Mu Zeta posted:C'baoth was like the retarded cousin of Yoda in terms of grammar I thought it was funny that since Yoda was so unnatural looking in all three prequels, that he talked like a caricature of himself as well.
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Dec 4, 2012 23:00
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SpaceMost posted:I don't see a problem with the EU as a concept. "Originality > Derivation" is axiomatic at best, and I don't really see a difference between someone being creative within a frame work like "Star Wars", and someone creating a whole new universe/franchise/whatever. The difference is the Star Wars "universe" as George Lucas created it isn't a fully realized framework for fiction, rather it is purposefully designed to support the narratives and themes of his movies. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the same stories and characters seem to get recycled through the EU. They're literally all it was built for. He wasn't Tolkien, creating a language and then writing a novel to utilize it.
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Dec 5, 2012 00:13
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CPFortest posted:I swear, every time a character said, "Point" in those books, I died a little inside. I hated how almost every conversation between Han and Chewie went something like this: Chewie: "Rawwr raar raaaaaawr rar rar rar rraawr" Han: "What's that Chewie? You think that we should replace the power coupling so that we can do X before Y and then escape? Good thinking!" Or over-quoting lines like "Never tell me the odds!" or "I've got a bad feeling about this!" EDIT: oops: beaten. Heh.
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Dec 5, 2012 04:18
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The thing about the EU is that it some what supports the original plan Lucas had for Star Wars. His plan was to have different film makers make new movies showing their different take on the universe. He never planned on making all of them himself, but rather wanted to set up a universe for other creative minds to add to the tapestry. Obviously, that didn't happen (yet), but the EU takes that concept and runs with it, having different creative minds come in and tell a story with the characters and galaxy he created. Granted, it often doesn't work. There's plenty of bad stories in the EU. But there's enough entertaining works that I don't see how someone could say it shouldn't exist. If you don't find it entertaining, ignore it. I ignore the stories I don't like (which is an ever growing list). Let those who enjoy it continue enjoying it. It's not like I never read any other books because I was reading Star Wars, so I still experience original works of fiction. It's a giant universe Lucas created, but he doesn't have to be the final arbiter of what stories can come from it.
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Dec 5, 2012 15:00
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CPFortest posted:I thought it was funny that since Yoda was so unnatural looking in all three prequels, that he talked like a caricature of himself as well. Yoda looked fine after the they got rid of the waxy corpse puppet in TPM and just made him all-digital.
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Dec 7, 2012 23:10
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Madurai posted:Yoda looked fine after the they got rid of the waxy corpse puppet in TPM and just made him all-digital. In Episode III maybe, but the Yoda model looked loving awful in Episode II. It doesn't matter since the CG Yoda never worked for me anyways.
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Dec 7, 2012 23:45
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thrawn527 posted:The thing about the EU is that it some what supports the original plan Lucas had for Star Wars. Is this the same original plan as the one where he was going to make twelve movies, or the one where he was going to make nine movies? Or was this a different original plan?
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Dec 8, 2012 02:19
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Hbomberguy posted:Is this the same original plan as the one where he was going to make twelve movies, or the one where he was going to make nine movies? Or was this a different original plan? Fair point, I should have said "an" original plan. But the point is, at some point, while he was making A New Hope, this was his plan. And the EU fits with that. We all would have been better off if he had stuck with this plan, in the end.
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Dec 8, 2012 04:27
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The thing that honestly pisses me off about the whole 9-then-12-then-9-then-6 thing is the implication of journalistic dishonesty. There was an interview once with a magazine, I believe it was TIME, but I don't have the source at hand, in which Lucas definitively states he was planing 9 films for the Star Wars saga. In a later statement, he says that his plan is 6 movies, will always be 6 movies, and (here's the damning part) has never ever been anything other than 6 movies. By that logic, TIME magazine (or whoever it was) misquoted him, never made a retraction, and let misinformation spread. Now anyone who thinks about it for 3 seconds realizes that Lucas simply changed his mind, but it really just irks me, perhaps irrationally so.
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Dec 8, 2012 07:46
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Part of it is the misconception that "I have plans for ..." means "This is exactly what I will do given the opportunity." It's obvious Lucas' ideas for Star Wars kept changing, and even if he wasn't really clear on that, Lucasfilm wasn't really secretive either- they published an Annotated Screenplays book for the original trilogy that goes into great detail about all the radically different story elements that were being bandied about for each installment. Lucas had an idea of something he wanted to do but the nitty-gritty of it kept shifting.
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Dec 8, 2012 07:54
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Lucas always justifies changes to the original trilogy by saying he 'always' wanted it that way. You can't really take him at his there either, as a lot of the changes are too trivial for him to have been stewing over their absence for 30 years.
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Dec 8, 2012 10:04
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ten dollar bitcoin posted:Lucas always justifies changes to the original trilogy by saying he 'always' wanted it that way. You can't really take him at his there either, as a lot of the changes are too trivial for him to have been stewing over their absence for 30 years. The technology for having Vader yell NOOO as he threw the Emperor down the shaft was simply not there in 1983
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Dec 8, 2012 10:36
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ten dollar bitcoin posted:Lucas always justifies changes to the original trilogy by saying he 'always' wanted it that way. You can't really take him at his there either, as a lot of the changes are too trivial for him to have been stewing over their absence for 30 years. The changes are 'minor', but they cumulatively represent a tactic of retroactive authorship. Where the original films were, famously, collaborative efforts, the special editions and prequels transform them into a grotesque parody of 'author intent' - directly analogous to how the entire diegetic galaxy is controlled by a single evil genius. Lucas is, again, the emperor of the films - which have now been 'corrupted' by digital technologies (of the sort that would detect midichlorians, natch). As Ridley Scott does with Prometheus, Lucas is attacking the notion that the films 'merely depict' a teleological virtual universe of pure canon, and that their actual filmic qualities are arbitrary and irrelevant. Internet people, unfortunately, bought right into the 'retroactive authorship' joke - ignoring the text of the films to obsess pointlessly over Lucas' intent. They may presume an idiotic authorial intent, but it is a presumption of overriding authorial intent all the same.
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Dec 8, 2012 11:28
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Cellophane S posted:The technology for having Vader yell NOOO as he threw the Emperor down the shaft was simply not there in 1983 I love how he did it in 1997 for a different scene. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaXgK5HRBjk
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Dec 8, 2012 16:48
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JJ Abrams
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Jan 24, 2013 23:23
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Seems very dubious, I'd wait for some sort of announcement from Bad Robot or Disney.
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Jan 24, 2013 23:28
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 I don't know whether to be thrilled or terrified by this.
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Jan 24, 2013 23:28
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I almost called bullshit or repeated rumor with no substance. But hot drat. Color me excited.
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Jan 24, 2013 23:29
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Deadline is extremely reliable. For good measure, both Variety and The Hollywood Reporter are running with it.
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Jan 24, 2013 23:30
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Rageaholic Monkey posted:
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Jan 24, 2013 23:30
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Hezzy posted:Seems very dubious, I'd wait for some sort of announcement from Bad Robot or Disney. The first report of Michael Arndt writing was "a source with knowledge of the situation" telling Deadline. Now "a source with knowledge of the situation" is telling Deadline that JJ is directing. Seems pretty believable to me.
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Jan 24, 2013 23:31
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