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Servetus posted:If that was his intention there's a far better way to express it. Come on, telling a guy to go write fan fiction isn't the answer.
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Jan 31, 2013 21:09
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Whether it happened or not, I take it as being an entertaining story because "they died" is the truth, whether you take it as them "dying" once the fictional story/universe ends, or as "of course they died" because everyone inevitably does. Whether or not he's being a dick is not the most fascinating aspect to me.
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Jan 31, 2013 21:36
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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. You're pretty socially loving stunted if you think after glowing praise from a fan all you get is "they died" instead of something softer like "they did some stuff and then they died, like everyone does" Basically, Lucas is a dildo. As for the actors, yeah they get all pissy when they are only ever remembered for one or two roles, but that's just how it is. Do you see George Takei get mad about it? No because he's not a jerk. GreenBuckanneer fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Jan 31, 2013 |
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Jan 31, 2013 21:55
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computer parts posted:Some guy asked Lucas what happened to Luke & co after the OT. If that story is indeed true, George Lucas is my new hero. That's hilarious.
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Jan 31, 2013 22:09
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While I'm sure it gets old to be asked about the same things over and over again, it takes a real prick to get snooty about it. I always love it when they interview some one-hit wonder or something on VH1 and they talk about how amazing it is that people still come up to them and quote a lyric 30 years later, and how humbled they are that they at least got to be famous for 15 minutes. That's how a non-prick views that type of thing.
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Feb 1, 2013 01:19
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Dolphin posted:Did they? How so? Just don't. I think he went to film school or something and now believes the prequels are super deep metaphors about blah blah blah
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Feb 1, 2013 07:52
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Friendly Factory posted:Just don't. I think he went to film school or something and now believes the prequels are super deep metaphors about blah blah blah ..."He went to film school or something"...? gently caress kind of anti-intellectualism is this supposed to be?
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Feb 1, 2013 08:47
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The greatest trick SMG ever performed was convincing people that pseudointellectual bullshit doesn't exist.
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Feb 1, 2013 09:40
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The actual best trick is, using just basic literacy, convincing dozens of people that I have an expensive film degree.
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Feb 1, 2013 12:14
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Friendly Factory posted:Just don't. I think he went to film school or something and now believes the prequels are super deep metaphors about blah blah blah hmm maybe these films mean something, oh wait they're part of the star wars franchise, never mind.
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Feb 1, 2013 12:24
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You can tell the prequels are good by the sort of people who hate them. They're really fantastic kitsch. My go-to example is when Yoda has a sword fight with an off-brand Count Dracula. And of course Yoda then appears on millions of Pepsi cans. Far from something to be ignored, the merchandising provides important context. Yoda is no longer a puppet. Yoda is on the side of Pepsi. Yoda fails miserably and slinks off in disgrace. References are made to Jurassic Park, The Matrix, Blade Runner, The Fifth Element... yet folks still manage to complain that the prequels don't resemble a film from the 1970s.
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Feb 1, 2013 13:19
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It's like poetry, it rhymes
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Feb 1, 2013 13:22
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I gather some would find SMG's criticism more palatable if, when he kills the author, he were to use as his murder weapon Hanlon's Razor. Indeed, if we're to understand that George Lucas had misgivings about the role success led him into, and, unconsciously resenting his fans for their part in turning him into what he once hated, produced a trilogy that implicitly attacks the audience's interest, taste, and expectations, then I struggle to understand why a member of that audience should be more satisfied with that interpretation than one in which, due to a lack of feedback, he simply overlooked the gap separating his vision from his writing and direction. Not that this has anything to do with what the new guy might do.
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Feb 1, 2013 14:33
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The prequels aren't good, they're terrible by every measure, both narratively and visually. They lack the visual creativity and energy of the originals. It's also pretty clear that Lucas either gave up or actively decided to gently caress with the audience after the poor reception of his miscalculations in Episode I. The other two have a much different feel. Lucas is aware that he has vocal fans who hate him, hate the special editions, and hate the prequels, yet continued to buy them and feed money into what was his merchandising and branding empire, and will continue to do so now that Disney owns it. Episodes II and III are riddled with this kind of disdain. Bongo Bill posted:I gather some would find SMG's criticism more palatable if, when he kills the author, he were to use as his murder weapon Hanlon's Razor. These things are in the prequels, but he didn't need to put them there consciously. Lucas is a fairly progressive guy. Star Wars had a lot of progressive themes, the prequels are openly anti-Bush and anti-Patriot Act, and no matter what you think of it or its marketing, he had an honest interest in getting an action movie made about an all Black fighter squadron. Somewhere, misogyny and bitterness emerged from his soul, and crawled into his art. There's a lot of personal struggle in the prequels. Anakin is Lucas; he's taken in when he's young, hyped up, fails to live up to expectations and gives in to pride and greed, all while being emasculated by (note that it's Padme that dubs him "Annie") and loving, then losing, a woman he doesn't really understand when an attempt to save his relationship with her, in the only way he knows how, fails. That's a personal story.
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Feb 1, 2013 16:47
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^^^ And I'm not sure I would call Lucas a misogynist. The man seems fairly progressive where human rights are concerned.penismightier posted:..."He went to film school or something"...? What I meant is that he's looking for complications where they don't exist. Even the prequels have a message, certainly, but that message isn't that they were made terrible intentionally in order to prove a point about the industry. Actual symbolism in the prequels is about how easy fascism can take hold, the horrors of science with the clones and other such stuff. Of course it did those poorly too, but that's another point. I'm not against film analysis, I just can't imagine someone being more off base than "George Lucas made the prequels bad intentionally". Friendly Factory fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Feb 1, 2013 |
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Feb 1, 2013 18:31
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Servetus posted:If that was his intention there's a far better way to express it. That's not nearly as funny, though.
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Feb 1, 2013 18:41
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:You can tell the prequels are good by the sort of people who hate them. Is this a roundabout way of saying the prequels are about how Coke is better than Pepsi? If so, then I agree.
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Feb 1, 2013 18:52
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Friendly Factory posted:^^^ And I'm not sure I would call Lucas a misogynist. The man seems fairly progressive where human rights are concerned. I don't think Lucas is a misogynist, but there is misogyny in the prequels. There's a distrust of relationships in general. Reliance on other people leads to disaster, and while on the surface the films seem to be making a point about the sterile and monk-like Jedi Order being somehow flawed, the reverse is true: Anakin falls because he did not remain celibate and formed attachments. The fascism stuff isn't even subtext, it's overt. The fascism of the Empire is reflective of Lucas' personal corruption from an artist to the head of a merchandising empire he'd disgusted with. He's disconcerted that he'll be remembered for Star Wars and for pioneering modern film merchandising and branding instead of philanthropy or the artistic qualities of his work. Everyone sees those behind-the-scenes bits as Lucas dominating the room, but I don't; he comes off as someone putting on airs of being this dominating auteur, surrounded by doe-eyed worshipers he despises. The prequels he made are, after all, a checklist of things that the audience demanded from him. Thulsa Doom fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Feb 2, 2013 |
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Feb 1, 2013 19:48
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I don't think the behind the scenes stuff needs to be a complicated scenario either. I don't think he was so feared that smart people around him didn't speak up. I also don't think he was pretending to be dominating. I think he was making a film he thought was going to be great and his employees were enamored with him. As much poo poo as I think Lucas deserves for the prequels, I would have probably done the same thing. The dude has a way with words and tells a good story. He's also the film industry equivalent of a hippie so having him explain how he saved the industry from itself in the 70s would be interesting.
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Feb 1, 2013 20:21
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It's always weird to read volumes of Lucas Lucas Lucas and only a handful of generalities concerning the actual films.
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Feb 1, 2013 23:24
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The creation of Star Wars is itself an unusual and compelling story. It's much like the development of Dune in that regard. There's a lot of drama (real or imagined) going on behind the production. On top of that, people who are deeply committed to being fans of a series like Star Wars start to feel a sense of ownership over it. Their appreciation of it becomes tied to their sense of self to some degree, whether they remember it fondly from childhood or they're members of that 501st thing. Cultural touchstones have a way of producing that kind of thought in people. It's the same urge that leads to rooting for a sports team.
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Feb 2, 2013 01:17
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Thulsa Doom posted:The creation of Star Wars is itself an unusual and compelling story. It's much like the development of Dune in that regard. There's a lot of drama (real or imagined) going on behind the production. Well, yeah. But, thanks to Internet osmosis, I have read shitloads of exhaustive opinionating on the topic of the films that in no way reflect what they're actually about. As an example, you could spend years reading internet commentary on Star Wars without ever learning that the love triangle exists - let alone the dynamics of it expressed in the quiet scene where Han casually asks Luke about his chances with a princess. Yeah, Han Solo is a lovable rogue or whatever, but check how Luke shoots him down unthinkingly, out of... jealousy? Dogmatic support of the rebellion? It's a weird moment that no-one ever talks about, just like the moment where Luke complains about the price of flying cars.
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Feb 2, 2013 06:53
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Star Wars fans would rather talk about spaceship specifications & nuance than characterisation or context. This is unsurprising.
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Feb 2, 2013 09:25
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:It's a weird moment that no-one ever talks about, just like the moment where Luke complains about the price of flying cars. How is this weird? I just took it as a little bit of worldbuilding.
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Feb 2, 2013 10:24
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well why not posted:Star Wars fans would rather talk about spaceship specifications & nuance than characterisation or context. This is unsurprising. It's easy to dismiss Star Wars fans that way, but I think it's important to let the full impact sink in. Many people have devoted their entire lives to Star Wars without ever figuring out what the force is. It's not too rare for them to actually accept the midichlorian explanation - which, in the film, is a clear sign that these Jedi are going to fail. Foreknowledge of their total failure serves as a big flashing sign that says 'take what the protagonists do with a grain of salt, please.' The message of the prequels is legitimately that evil will triumph because good is dumb. Queen Amidala, for example, wears gold bullshit and tolerates her boyfriend's genocidal tendencies because she's an honest-to-god liberal elitist. People like to quote her "this is democracy ends" line as proof of Lucas' liberal slant - but that presumes Amidala is sympathetic, when she's really an ineffectual racist who helped her equally-liberal buddy gain unlimited power in the name of protecting democracy. The prequels are patently against liberal democracy, in a way that's entirely in keeping with the original films. They simply depict everything the rebels in the original films were rebelling against. JohnSherman posted:I just took it as a little bit of worldbuilding. No. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 10:56 on Feb 2, 2013 |
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Feb 2, 2013 10:53
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Friendly Factory posted:The dude has a way with words and tells a good story. No he doesn't and his editing sucks too. Star Wars had a billion rewrites, most of them studio-mandated because he doesn't know how to tell a good story. His wife at the time saved the movie in editing. Marcia Lucas also edited Taxi Driver, to give you an idea of how good an editor she is. He wasn't involved in Empire Strikes Back (hey, that happens to be the best one!) as he was busy constructing his ranch. He co-wrote Jedi and it shows. The scenes where Luke confronts Vader and the emperor are clearly written by Lawrence Kasdan and the tone doesn't match anything else in the movie. I'm not just talking about the Ewoks, I also mean that convoluted escape from Jabba's palace and the way Han Solo became a bumbling fool. I can imagine why Kasdan passed on writing the prequels if it meant having to deal with Lucas again...
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Feb 2, 2013 11:30
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An excellent and well-formed refutation of his point. Your subtle nuance and well-phrased response really changed my opinion. Oh wait...you did none of that here. If you're gonna disagree with someone, you really should put some actual thought into it rather than just posting "no" like you're the only one here who can give factual responses and thus have no need to actually back them up. That line about a new Landspeeder coming out and the price of Luke's not being as high anymore absolutely functions as world-building. If you want to read into it more, sure that's fine, but it holds up just fine as a bit of fluff about how people on this dustbowl go car shopping just like the people here.
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Feb 2, 2013 13:43
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jivjov posted:An excellent and well-formed refutation of his point. Your subtle nuance and well-phrased response really changed my opinion. Oh wait...you did none of that here. If you're gonna disagree with someone, you really should put some actual thought into it rather than just posting "no" like you're the only one here who can give factual responses and thus have no need to actually back them up.
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Feb 2, 2013 14:41
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The guy who posted this telling SMG to put more thought into his posts is really funny.jivjov posted:Just to Star Wars is a series that has a significant, prominent group of it's fans model themselves after the series' evil, jackbooted, facist soldiers. If the new movies can inspire anything as funny as that I'll consider them a success. Alternatively, if J.J. Abrams goes to a Star Trek fan convention and tells someone that 'they died' I will also be satisfied. Shirkelton fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Feb 2, 2013 |
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Feb 2, 2013 15:31
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a little bit, the Dejarik table was featured in Episode IV, during the flight from Tatooine to Alderaan.
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:As an example, you could spend years reading internet commentary on Star Wars without ever learning that the love triangle exists - let alone the dynamics of it expressed in the quiet scene where Han casually asks Luke about his chances with a princess. Yeah, Han Solo is a lovable rogue or whatever, but check how Luke shoots him down unthinkingly, out of... jealousy? Dogmatic support of the rebellion? It's a weird moment that no-one ever talks about, just like the moment where Luke complains about the price of flying cars. That is one of the best scenes in ANH, and probably the entire trilogy. I watched that scene again a couple times recently, and it's pretty obvious that in it Han doesn't give a poo poo about the princess at that moment. What he's really doing is loving with Luke. Luke innocently reveals his interest to Han who picks up on it, and decides to just mess with him. Luke falls for the bait, and you see Han's highly amused reaction shot. These character moments are part of what makes that movie great, and I agree that they oftentimes get lost in-between grand themes and minutiae. Realizing this, it's also a big part of the reason I'm excited about Abrams as director: He's not bad at good and amusing character moments.
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Feb 2, 2013 15:53
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jivjov posted:That line about a new Landspeeder coming out and the price of Luke's not being as high anymore absolutely functions as world-building. If you want to read into it more, sure that's fine, but it holds up just fine as a bit of fluff about how people on this dustbowl go car shopping just like the people here. Luke contrasts with his father in fascinating ways. While Luke and Anakin share similar experiences with relative poverty and adversity, their choices differ due to the circumstances of their introduction to the Jedi order. Obi Wan gave Luke a choice to become a Jedi, a choice that Qui-Gon Jinn never offered Anakin. His forced adoption by the Jedi hindered Anakin's ability to prevent his mother's death, which led to him disdaining poverty and work and the institutions that he blamed for her poverty and death. Namely the Jedi order and the republic. Luke's aunt and uncles' death on the other hand, led to Luke hating the Empire and embracing the Jedi order and the Rebellion, but he retained his work ethic. Their parent's deaths paradoxically led to Luke and Anakin forming opposing political opinions. The difference between Luke and Leia's upbringings are salient; Amidala and Leia never discuss financial issues because they were both born into privilege. Ironically, their privilege prevents Leia and Amidala from adequately protecting themselves from dominant men, and they become victims due to their reliance on other people for protection and subsistence. They're essentially wards of the state. Luke on the other hand, has to earn his keep with his own sweat and blood, so he cares about the value of his flying car. You could say that Luke and Anakin, and Luke and Leia are metaphors for the plasticity of personhood; they share genes and heritage but their environments lead to them becoming different people. Dolphin fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Feb 2, 2013 |
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Feb 2, 2013 16:55
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jivjov posted:An excellent and well-formed refutation of his point. Your subtle nuance and well-phrased response really changed my opinion. Oh wait...you did none of that here. If you're gonna disagree with someone, you really should put some actual thought into it rather than just posting "no" like you're the only one here who can give factual responses and thus have no need to actually back them up. No. Stop to think, for a moment, how much of meaningless statement that is. It can be applied to literally anything. When C3P0, a shoddy robot wandering aimlessly on a barren planet, complains that "We seem to be made to suffer. It's our lot in life." it's not a theological metaphor. No, it's just a bit of 'world-building' that tells us robots get depressed sometimes. When Luke blows up the death star, it's not the climax of the movie. It's just a bit of 'world-building' that tells us that in he year 0 BBY (Before the Battle of Yavin) some guy fired a rocket at a laser gun and then the rocket hit the laser gun. It's just world-building, a bit of fluff. You can 'look deeper' by 'actually reading' but I am staying smart by not doing that. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Feb 2, 2013 |
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Feb 2, 2013 21:04
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:No. If you'll go back and look at my post, you'll notice that my point was that it works on multiple levels. To go back to the landspeeder example, it can be taken as fluff that "oh hey, the kid can't sell his car". Or you could take it out to "oh hey, this planet has a capitalistic system that works very similarly to earth's" or take it as a commentary on the transience of material possessions, or a dig against companies with planned obsolescence schemes. Or you can go for a whole on deconstruction like you did earlier in the thread. My criticism was not about the specific interpretation of that scene, it was about your haughty and petulant response to someone who chose to take it on a different level than you did.
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Feb 2, 2013 22:18
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:No. That's not an existentialist statement OR information about how robots work in the universe. It's part of C3PO's dramatic, self-pitying character.
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Feb 2, 2013 23:37
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Why is there this pervasive attitude that an element in a film can only have one meaning, and one meaning only? There can always be more than one reason something exists in a creative work.
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Feb 2, 2013 23:46
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Thulsa Doom posted:The prequels aren't good, they're terrible by every measure, both narratively and visually. They lack the visual creativity and energy of the originals. I gotta disagree with you here. Not so much that the prequels are good, because I'm not quite ready to argue that (although this thread and the last StarWars one have got me thinking I need to watch them again and put my nerd-baggage aside), but they are not terrible either. In a film, visuals are the largest part of the narrative. And the prequels are plenty creative; in terms of creature and set design they are more creative and diverse than the originals. What i would agree with is that the story itself is not enjoyable, at least in comparison with the old ones, but it is coherent and well told (I would say it's more ambitious and complex too). I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "energy", they definitely have a completely different tone than the originals - resigned and critical as opposed to hopeful and triumphant.
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Feb 3, 2013 00:36
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I don't have a stylstic problem with the prequels, I dislike that they trade so much off your knowledge of the older movies. They fail at being prequels. If you watch 1/2/3 first, the reveal at the end of Empire just seems overwrought and stupid, playing up a mystery that the audience already spent six hours figuring out. I suspect they're fine to new generations if watched in release order. Recent births didn't have twenty years of anticipation and watching Empire/Jedi over and over again to be let down. Instead what you're going to see is people born around 1991-1997 complaining about the new movies as much as people born between 1974-1986 complained about the prequels.
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Feb 3, 2013 00:51
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Jewel Repetition posted:That's not an existentialist statement OR information about how robots work in the universe. It's part of C3PO's dramatic, self-pitying character. You've just about got it. It is a philosophical stance - one that Lucas put in the mouth of a comically prissy character as a means of criticizing it. Of course, C3P0 was actually literally 'made to suffer', because he is a literal robot slave in the literal plot. The implicit argument that a person can defy fate and become more than 'just a machine' is part-and-parcel with the concept of the force and its ties to the film's overall radical politics. This is how things like plot, characterization and metaphor generate meaning when read in concert - and why it is not laudable or even defensible to deliberately ignore aspects of the text [e.g. jivjov's support of 'choosing not to read ("into it")'].
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Feb 3, 2013 01:54
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Craptacular! posted:They fail at being prequels. Prequels are achronological sequels, and should pretty much never be viewed first. Lucas' claim that the films are to be viewed in episode-order is part of his attack on the audience for their disdain towards history, in keeping with the retroactive authorship applied in the digital 'restoration' of the special editions. The special editions are ahistorical, continually updated to exist in an eternal present. Signs of their collaborative nature and the conditions of their production are progressively erased - on purpose. It's a troll, to put it succinctly. I don't like to bring intentionality into it, but the fact that Lucas' claims of adherence to an 'original plan' are obvious fibs provides important context.
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Feb 3, 2013 02:32
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:This is how things like plot, characterization and metaphor generate meaning when read in concert - and why it is not laudable or even defensible to deliberately ignore aspects of the text [e.g. jivjov's support of 'choosing not to read ("into it")']. I'm merely advocating it as an option, and a valid one at that. Its perfectly acceptable to enjoy a movie by way of looking at its superficial aspects. It is just as perfectly acceptable to deconstruct everything down to the lowest level.
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Feb 3, 2013 02:40
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