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Lucas calls them laser swords.
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Jan 30, 2013 17:30
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euphronius posted:Lucas calls them laser swords. I think he's just being obtuse. If you can't parse the themes from Star Wars on your own you probably just shouldn't be consuming media in the first place.
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Jan 30, 2013 17:38
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Mechafunkzilla posted:I think he's just being obtuse. If you can't parse the themes from Star Wars on your own you probably just shouldn't be consuming media in the first place.
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Jan 30, 2013 17:43
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Longbaugh01 posted:Which makes sense, but begs the question: How do you encapsulate 30+ years of in-universe history in a concise manner? As long as the original cast have minor roles it could be workable, they could fullfil a similar role to Obi Wan. Episode IV never really had exposition dumps instead it used visual cues and plausible in-universe conversations to give you an awareness of the past. A good example would be the brief conversation in the Death Star boardroom where Tarkin explains the Senate has been disolved. Another guy points out the Emperor has used the Senate previously to maintain his power and then a third guy boasts about how force users are dying out. This gives us a significant chunk of what the prequels tried to tell us in a single scene.
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Jan 30, 2013 19:31
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Note that space battles, 'the force', laser swords, and specific characters are not listed as necessary. Like the game where you played a bounty hunter or whatever? Sold like dogshit. It might as well be called Not Star Wars if it doesn't contain at least those two elements. euphronius posted:Lucas calls them laser swords. Lucas is also shown himself to be a rich moron, your point? GreenBuckanneer fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Jan 30, 2013 |
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Jan 30, 2013 19:53
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ReV VAdAUL posted:This gives us a significant chunk of what the prequels tried to tell us in a single scene. And then Vader chokes a bitch. And it has Peter Cushing in it. Great scene.
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Jan 30, 2013 20:31
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GreenBuckanneer posted:It's gonna be a really boring film without these two and frankly anything labeled as Star Wars that doesn't contain jedi in it doesn't really sell. Lucas made it all up. How can he be wrong about his own creation? Lightsabers don't exist. Lucas is using real world terms (they are swords made of lasers) to refer to something that is called, in universe, a Lightsaber. It's like getting pissed off that A Princess of Mars isn't named A Princess of Barsoom, like it's supposed to be. DirtyRobot posted:I think the truly dialectical reading of the film (in the Zizekian sense) would say that the space battles, the force, and laser swords, are all, in fact, not just the "stupid appearance," but integral to everything you list. I.e., you're offering the ingenious correction, but the dialectical move is to realize that the correction was always already there as part of the appearance. In short, it matters that the various themes you list are being negotiated or played with through the lens of a romance fantasy space battle coming-of-age story with quasi-mystical magic philosophy and laser swords etc etc etc. Just like it matters that in Alien the sex imagery is in the form of the radically "alien." The Star Wars trilogy is about America during the Carter administration. It's about the oil embargo, inflation, the decline of the auto industry, and it's about class. I'm not one to default to every film or what have you being about class, it's blatant here. The good guys are all mechanics and farmers with junky spaceships and the bad guys are posh British aristocrats. The Star Wars trilogy is about the lower classes overthrowing the upper classes for the crime of remaining prosperous while the world decayed around them. Darth Vader is a special case; he's the Fear of a Black Planet given flesh. The all white brigade with their buddy Lando defeat him by turning him into a white guy. America's slavery-dominated past is whitewashed and becomes a kind old grandpa, then kicks it before he has time to talk about the good old whipping days. Note all the references to an earlier, more civilized age; Obi-Wan's storied past isn't some sort of colonial era in space with duelists bearing swords, it's the fifties; the Clone Wars are World War II and the decay we see in evidence in the film is the decay from the Populuxe fifties and the promise of the retrofuture to the then present when Luke couldn't afford to gas up his space hot rod and everything was more expensive. Luke himself is a juvenile delinquent from the bad side of town. America became the Empire after losing in Vietnam; the Emperor is Kissinger. The prequels are similarly rooted in their times; Episode I is sort of floppy and directionless, as Clinton-era America was, but by Episode II the films are firmly about the Bush administration, which is why the connection between Episode I and II is a jumbled mess and the second two films feel like the proper story of the trilogy compressed across two films while the nominal first is just sort of there and its sequels all but ignore it. The new films are either going to be an attempt to capture the feel of the 70's or something that properly reflects the times. The handling of the edits to the original trilogy is a special case. Lucas deliberately set out to destroy them, and not in the bumbling haphazard way that fans desperately want to believe. The message of the edits is the ruination of his creation by marketing, hence the digitally inserted toys covering up iconic scenes (quite literally, in one case; the dinosaur rear end that covers the Mos Eisley scene? There's a toy of that thing) and Darth Vader's pink lightsaber. There's been something like six or eight edits including the Blu-Rays and Darth Vader's lightsaber has on purpose been made pink in all of them. Curiously, Mace Windu, a Real Black Man, has a lightsaber that's the same hue, but clearly much darker and more pronounced. He also doesn't act like the Angry Black Man stereotype nerds going to see the movie expected to see, either. Thulsa Doom fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Jan 30, 2013 |
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Jan 30, 2013 21:07
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Thulsa Doom posted:Lucas made it all up. How can he be wrong about his own creation? I don't believe any creators of a thing are infallible for their choices or decisions related to a thing. Said another way: Some choices are just wrong. No one's perfect.
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Jan 30, 2013 21:10
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Star Wars is essentially about class struggle and the need for revolutionary politics. The prequel sort of underlines this regarding the utter failure (and ultimate corruption) of liberalism. edit: And calling Lucas dumb is pretty absurd. The story first told on this forum about his Q&A will forever be proof to me on that. Danger fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Jan 30, 2013 |
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Jan 30, 2013 21:43
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I always thought the lightsabers were sabers, made of light
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Jan 30, 2013 21:57
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scary ghost dog posted:I always thought the lightsabers were sabers, made of light It's pretty clear that they're lasers made out of sword.
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Jan 30, 2013 22:06
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Lucas is often the smartest motherfucker in the room. The prequels were so smart that they went over people's heads completely. The secret is that Lucas is evil - and you shouldn't confuse evil with stupidity.
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Jan 30, 2013 22:22
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Lucas is often the smartest motherfucker in the room. The prequels were so smart that they went over people's heads completely. It's no secret.
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Jan 30, 2013 22:27
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Here is what Star Wars needs in order to be 'Star Wars' (in the sense of the original film): And with that, it finally comes crashing into focus for me. How the hell have I never considered the significance of those images? I'm ecstatic.
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Jan 30, 2013 22:32
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Aorist posted:And with that, it finally comes crashing into focus for me. How the hell have I never considered the significance of those images? I'm ecstatic. I'm still confused by what that means, and why it's important. SuperMechagodzilla posted:But then, consider the amount of screen-time the laser sword gets in Star Wars - and compare that with how much time is spent on the nuanced interactions with (and between) ethnic aliens and homosexual robots. The latter must take up at least half the runtime. But part of this is that the lightsabers in ANH were intentionally rationed for reasons such as effects, budget, and straight-out avoidance of overuse.
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Jan 30, 2013 22:41
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Lucas is often the smartest motherfucker in the room. The prequels were so smart that they went over people's heads completely.
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Jan 30, 2013 22:44
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Longbaugh01 posted:I'm still confused by what that means, and why it's important. Eh, material conditions affect the production of every text, but (generally) you still read the text you've got, not the one that might have happened. Authors, directors, poets, cinematographers, all adapt. Dickens wrote under tight deadlines and in a restrictive serial format that no doubt affected what he wrote. Milton had to deal with the fact that he was blind, and "wrote" Paradise Lost under dictation -- surely that affected that text at least slightly as well. Things like that affect the texts, but the texts remain open to reading as-is. Lots of films are great partly because of material constraints of some sort, which are less visible after the production, or where considered very early on, so no one knew about them (i.e., a director thought, "Hey, I'll do this," but five second later realized that was impossible. "Bummer, but I'll do this *genius things* instead."). The people behind films don't have to simply "overcome" material conditions, as if their goal is solely to produce the same movie despite the given material condition; rather they work with them, shape the text according to the options that are available to them. To take the idea further, even Shakespeare comes to us as a series of play scripts he wrote down which generally don't feature things that are impossible to put on stage, but maybe he really would've done something cool, since he was actually that type of guy who really might have (rather than a Aristotelian type Greek tragedy writer, who would've thought every play should take up no time except what you saw on stage, and should have nothing weird, like a film with no editing, as it were. Shakespeare loved playing with that.)
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Jan 30, 2013 23:18
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Aorist posted:And with that, it finally comes crashing into focus for me. How the hell have I never considered the significance of those images? I'm ecstatic. The death star detention block is a long hallway stretching out into infinity. They escape by jumping out of the tunnel and into the pool of garbage. Luke is spying on some sand people with his binoculars. One of them suddenly jumps up into the frame, having taken advantage of Luke's tunnel vision. Vader adjust the knobs on his targeting computer while barreling through the infinitely long death star trench. Han Solo suddenly appears in his blind spot, and knocks him into the star-field. It's really the only sensible explanation for the converging death star lasers. Longbaugh01 posted:I'm still confused by what that means, and why it's important. "The world of visual perspective is one of unified and homogeneous space. Such a world is alien to the resonating diversity of spoken words. So language was the last art to accept the visual logic of Gutenberg technology, and the first to rebound in the electric age." -Marshall McLuhan "Use the force, Luke. Let go." -Obiwan's disembodied voice SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Jan 30, 2013 |
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Jan 30, 2013 23:37
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I see! (Wait. I meant "I feel!" Thanks for the explanation.)
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Jan 31, 2013 00:38
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Danger posted:
What was this?
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Jan 31, 2013 02:30
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Popcorn posted:What was this? "They died."
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Jan 31, 2013 02:42
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Popcorn posted:What was this? Some guy asked Lucas what happened to Luke & co after the OT. He replied, "They died."
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Jan 31, 2013 02:53
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Danger posted:Star Wars is essentially about class struggle and the need for revolutionary politics. The prequel sort of underlines this regarding the utter failure (and ultimate corruption) of liberalism. Not to be facetious but how does the extremely aggressive merchandising tie into such a message?
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Jan 31, 2013 03:42
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ReV VAdAUL posted:Not to be facetious but how does the extremely aggressive merchandising tie into such a message? Either cosmic irony or Lucas was economically savvy. Actually it's both.
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Jan 31, 2013 03:54
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Everything he's done since is rife with messages indicating his distaste for the merchandising. If anything, he probably regrets it.
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Jan 31, 2013 03:57
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ReV VAdAUL posted:Not to be facetious but how does the extremely aggressive merchandising tie into such a message? If anything the merchandising is simply an appropriation of the film and shouldn't influence any singular reading of the text. That's not to say it shouldn't be considered, but the radical message in Star Wars is pretty apparent within the film regardless of toys being sold. I can't say that Lucas has any sort of enthusiasm for this appropriation either. In fact, he seems to disdain it. For instance: "They died".
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Jan 31, 2013 04:01
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My speculation/theory based on what I've read about the history suggests Lucas grew disillusioned the instant block-long lines started forming to see A New Hope, but allowed himself to stay trapped in the phenomenon until...well maybe now.
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Jan 31, 2013 04:48
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Thulsa Doom posted:Everything he's done since is rife with messages indicating his distaste for the merchandising. If anything, he probably regrets it. There was plenty of bad merchandising for the prequels.
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Jan 31, 2013 05:58
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ten dollar bitcoin posted:There was plenty of bad merchandising for the prequels. I think we've agreed the man is evil. He may hate merchandising, he may hate modern film marketing and targeting, he may hate the audience for liking his films in a way he doesn't personally agree with, but loves money. He loves great gooey gobs of money and I understand that.
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Jan 31, 2013 06:10
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Thulsa Doom posted:Everything he's done since is rife with messages indicating his distaste for the merchandising. If anything, he probably regrets it. I'm sure Lucas is totally broken up about the bed full of a slurry of finely shredded thousand-dollar bills and colloidal silver he sleeps on every night. (Hint: Lucas negotiated an enormous percentage of the merchandising rights for the Star Wars franchise that would be considered completely merciless by modern standards. He was extremely forward-thinking in that respect and totally foresaw the rise of merchandising as a powerful financial concern all its own, not just a little deal on the side.) McSpanky fucked around with this message at 07:52 on Jan 31, 2013 |
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Jan 31, 2013 07:50
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Popcorn posted:What was this? Since the original is such a wonderful post, here it is in its entirety: quote:How does George Lucas crush someone's soul in two words?
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Jan 31, 2013 08:30
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amusinginquiry posted:Since the original is such a wonderful post, here it is in its entirety:
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Jan 31, 2013 14:10
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McSpanky posted:I'm sure Lucas is totally broken up about the bed full of a slurry of finely shredded thousand-dollar bills and colloidal silver he sleeps on every night. This is the thing, doing stuff like writing Carrie Fisher's contract (and likely everyone else's) so she didn't own the rights to her likeness is clear forward thinking on very aggressive merchandising. I agree with Danger's reading of Star Wars as largely radical which makes the contrast with the aggressive marketing so strange to me. This article about a Star Wars computer game showing the Empire to have very strong parallels with modern US foreign policy for instance has always rung very true to me: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/column/108452-tie-fighter-a-post-911-parable/ The uproar it caused was hilarious. One could read the original trilogy as an allegory for Lucas' opinion of the studio system and that with the films' success he found being rich and powerful was ok thanks. The prequel's critique of the corrupt and ineffective nature of liberalism would seem to invalidate that though. A rich liberal attacking Bush was nothing special but the outcome of the prequels leads to a suggestion radical politics, not liberal refrom, were the necessary response to the outcome of Bush. Danger posted:I can't say that Lucas has any sort of enthusiasm for this appropriation either. In fact, he seems to disdain it. For instance: "They died". I can't say I agree with this. From the beginning and consistently throughout the six Star Wars films Lucas has used a license he until recently had near total control of to pursue pretty much all possible merchandising opportunities. A guy with a disdain for appropriation of the film's message probably wouldn't have allowed the use of Yoda, probably the most anti-materialist character in the films, to sell mobile phone contracts in 2011. Which makes the contradiction all the more jarring.
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Jan 31, 2013 14:21
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Dolphin posted:I don't get it, why is being an rear end in a top hat to an enamored fan an example of Lucas being "the smartest guy in the room?" SMG is the one who claimed Lucas is the smartest guy in the room. If you go back and read his posts on the prequels (some of them in this thread) it gives you a better idea of why he thinks so. Basically that he is casting himself as the Empire who controls all this stuff and makes it terrible while the Rebels are the people pirating the original untouched movies and fighting back against this garbage. That is terribly paraphrased and summarized so you should definitely look for his actual posts. Danger was the one who said that this interview proved he wasn't dumb. That's a pretty low bar so he will probably have to explain why himself, but it does seem like a pretty calculated way to gently caress with someone who loves your movies.
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Jan 31, 2013 17:29
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Guy A. Person posted:SMG is the one who claimed Lucas is the smartest guy in the room. If you go back and read his posts on the prequels (some of them in this thread) it gives you a better idea of why he thinks so. Basically that he is casting himself as the Empire who controls all this stuff and makes it terrible while the Rebels are the people pirating the original untouched movies and fighting back against this garbage. That is terribly paraphrased and summarized so you should definitely look for his actual posts. I think the distinction is made here that that manchild doesn't love the movie as an act of creation, he loves the movie for what it depicts. A True Artist might get incensed about this. Whether or not you think this applies to Lucas, well.
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Jan 31, 2013 17:58
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That "They died" reply is hilarious, and if someone sincerely was emotionally bothered by it, some time with Mr. Psychologist may be in order. It's pretty clearly very dry humor on his part, but even if it isn't, you can imagine it as the aggregation of being asked that same question for 20 years straight. But let's assume it was completely sincere. Does someone's love of Star Trek become diminished when Shatner goes on SNL and tells fans to "get a life"? What about when Sean Connery professed to "hate" what Bond had done to his career, and the annoyances it created? These are fictitious characters that exist independently of the resentment their caretakers may profess to have. Alec Guinness was extremely bothered by how enraptured people had become by Star Wars and once told a child (who told the actor he had seen the movie dozens of times) that if he wanted to do Mr. Guinness a favor, to never see the movie again; Harrison Ford is incredibly dismissive of Han Solo. Being a fan and going through the grind of making these things will result in two completely different perspectives. It is not Lucas's job to baby people who clearly have a bit too much invested in a fake world. I love Star Wars, and there's nothing any of its actors or filmmakers could say to change that. It would be nice if they shared the audience's enthusiasm, but that's not always the case. As for the merchandising: I would agree it's been absolutely shameless, but it's hard to dismiss the billions it's generated that Lucas has funneled directly into charitable causes. If a loving Yoda mobile phone ad means some kid gets medical help, then let that little green troll have at it. I think that trumps betraying the fictional morals of a fictional character.
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Jan 31, 2013 18:00
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RoughDraft2.0 posted:That "They died" reply is hilarious, and if someone sincerely was emotionally bothered by it, some time with Mr. Psychologist may be in order. It's pretty clearly very dry humor on his part, but even if it isn't, you can imagine it as the aggregation of being asked that same question for 20 years straight. Poor George Lucas though, his fans aren't exactly the fans that he wanted for his many billion dollar franchise, that must be terrible.
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Jan 31, 2013 18:50
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It's a very Zen answer. The questioner already had his answer; it was in the question. They had more adventures. Lucas' reply pointed out the folly of asking him, as if he were the curator of historical documents. He was inviting that guy to use his imagination instead of relying on someone else to do it for him. If you meet Yoda on the road, kill him.
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Jan 31, 2013 20:15
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Thulsa Doom posted:It's a very Zen answer. The questioner already had his answer; it was in the question. They had more adventures. Lucas' reply pointed out the folly of asking him, as if he were the curator of historical documents. He was inviting that guy to use his imagination instead of relying on someone else to do it for him. If that was his intention there's a far better way to express it. "You tell me."
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Jan 31, 2013 21:01
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That story is the epitome of shitthatdidnthappen.txt and I wish that people would stop beating their laser swords over it.
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Jan 31, 2013 21:04
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