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I can't see how this can fail to be an improvement. Once you hit rock bottom, anything becomes possible.
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Oct 30, 2012 22:26
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dotalchemy posted:From the perspective of an employee at Lucas, I'm pleased to see that not much changed internally at either Pixar or Marvel following their acquisition by Disney. If anything, this should bring more work and more opportunities for us internally. According to Disney's press release, quote:[...]the present intent is for Lucasfilm employees to remain in their current locations. If that's consistent with how they've done it at Pixar, Marvel, and all their other big acquisitions, then good.
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Oct 30, 2012 22:39
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If they use the cream of the EU as inspiration that would be fine.
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Oct 30, 2012 23:52
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Glitterbomber posted:Shouldn't they be happy because it means more armor to sell? There are fears that Disney will start applying their extremely restrictive policy on derivative works, replacing Lucasfilm's extremely permissive policy.
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Oct 31, 2012 00:15
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One way to interpret it is that there is only the Force, and there are those who pervert it by using it for evil. A transcendent, all-powerful, universal energy, uniting all things in spirit, from which those attuned to it can draw great power, but wholly passive. It seems to have a benevolent will of its own, but it only guides those who listen to it, rather than imposing that will upon the universe. Han was right in that nothing mystical controls his destiny (unless he allows it to, like the Jedi). The unfortunate but necessary consequence - the dark side - of the passivity of the Force is that its power can be abused and made to contravene itself. So there you have it. Quasi-Taoist fantasy theodicy in space.
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Nov 5, 2012 12:47
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Anakin fulfilled the prophecy when he destroyed the last two Sith, leaving only one Jedi behind, who had received the teachings without being corrupted by the decadence of the Order (which Anakin previously also destroyed).
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Nov 5, 2012 13:04
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Young Freud posted:Yeah, let's not forget that one of the Jedi's favorite sayings is that the "Only the Sith deal in absolutes". By making such a generalized and absolute statement, the Jedi are also on the same side of that coin. Indeed. More generally, the Jedi at the time of the prequels were dogmatic, aggressive, and arrogant, willfully serving the temporal politics of the Republic as their first duty. They had lost sight of their teachings, and although they weren't going around killing babies or cackling about how awesome hate is, they nevertheless used the Force mainly for things other than pursuing the harmony that the Force leads them to, and that's of the dark side. RLM made a very nice point of how Obi-Wan and Yoda made diametrically opposed philosophical assertions in the prequels and the originals, but I think a better filmmaker might have more clearly expressed that the whole point was that they returned to the right path in penitence after the experience of escaping the purges made them realize the error of their ways. Or something like that.
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Nov 5, 2012 13:22
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It may be worth noting that you can have darkness without light, but not vice versa. The Jedi Order wrongly conflated love with attachment; even a lay interest in the generalized eastern mysticism that inspired the Force is sufficient to identify the fallacy in that assumption. Just another way they strayed from their own teachings.
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Nov 5, 2012 13:54
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RoughDraft2.0 posted:I disagree with trying to resurrect Vader. His character arc is complete. He's a ghost, meaning it would be a new guy in the suit, which makes no sense whatsoever: Vader's appearance was functional, designed to support his decaying body. What, someone else is gonna get dropped in lava? Think of it this way: Nobody in the galaxy knows who Darth Vader really was, except for Luke and Leia. To everyone else, he was just the terrifying mystic knight, the zealous and tyrannical right hand of the Emperor. Some new villain gets a set of replica armor and poses as a resurrected Vader, and to the citizens of the galaxy, ignorant of the power of the Force, think that is plausible and scary. Luke, a crazy old washed-up Jedi, is the only one who knows that it can't really be Vader, and he's investigating. A new hero gets caught up in this mess somehow, and Luke serves as his mentor, then dies, leaving nobody else but the new trilogy's protagonist to inherit the increasingly relevant mystery of who's impersonating the Dark Lord.
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Nov 20, 2012 19:04
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I would much rather have a John Carter or a Tron Legacy than a Phantom Menace.
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Nov 25, 2012 02:46
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Avatar isn't a series, and The Matrix didn't remain good. One important question to ask was the last time an original film series, of any genre, was founded. Cinema has a long tradition of adaptation.
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Nov 28, 2012 19:19
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A series that's big enough for me to care what's going to happen, but original enough for me to not know in advance, is exactly what I hope they can produce.
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Nov 28, 2012 21:07
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Perhaps the mistake explained by idiocy was the decision to create a film that is superficially heroic while being set in a morally compromised universe dominated by the deception of a malevolent mastermind.
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Nov 28, 2012 23:34
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Even so, my belief that the films' pop artifice is 'deliberate' is a minor point in my conclusion, not a major premise. Well, either he failed to make the film he hoped to, or he succeeded in making it but failed to anticipate that audiences would hate it. (A wealth of evidence renders the third possibility, that he did not intend for audiences to like it, extremely far-fetched.) Bongo Bill fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Nov 29, 2012 |
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Nov 29, 2012 00:07
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It's as difficult to actually enjoy viewing the prequels with that interpretation as it is with a more heroic one, which I find the most convincing evidence of incompetence in their production. That message may be defensible in it but it didn't exactly sell it.
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Nov 30, 2012 04:44
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Both the prequels as they exist in reality and the hypothetical "good prequels" from an alternate universe are faced with the problem of needing to end with the triumph of evil, which in turn means explaining the downfall of good. It's quite important that the Jedi are corrupt, the Senate ineffectual, the Republic decadent, and Palpatine both smart and lucky. Thematic consistency and audience appeal demand that both use the visual shorthand of uniforms for distinguishing the sides, and showing that the Jedi falsely believe themselves spiritual is a great way to characterize them. In one universe, it was decided that having them all dress like hermits was an efficient way to address both these needs; while no such error was committed in the other. This is just a small example, of course; a more general case is found in the thematic difference between showing that the Jedi have lost touch with their mysticism and justifying their weakened faith by depicting the Force as not very mystical at all. What these examples have in common is that they undermine the logic of the films' predecessors. This is of course an extremely important thing to avoid when the goal is to create not a satire or refutation but a complementary work. A reading of the prequels as po-faced satire is indeed consistent with some of the more disliked parts of them, but I can't think of anybody, regardless of their interest level in Wookieepedia, who would have preferred a satire, even a better satire than the one you saw, over the straight tragedy that everybody (including Lucas himself) expected. Bongo Bill fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Nov 30, 2012 |
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Nov 30, 2012 16:29
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The problem is, you say things like this:SuperMechagodzilla posted:While not great films, the true appeal of the Star Wars prequels is that they're Plan 9 From Outer Space on a multi-million-dollar budget. Most people have simply not progressed to the point that their disdain has grown into ironic appreciation, let alone the enlightened level of sincere appreciation. Plan 9 is in the canon of truly great films - and the Star Wars prequels are its spiritual successors, for better or worse. Plan 9 From Outer Space requires a fairly unnatural reading to make enjoyable; call that reading "enlightened" or "ironic" or just plain "wrong," you must admit that it's very different from the mindset under which many people really loved the original trilogy. Who wants a successor to Plan 9 when they could have a successor to Star Wars? Should a new Star Wars movie really reveal the folly of liking the old ones? Does the mere fact of their separation in time mean that it's inappropriate to criticize them for failing to maintain tonal and thematic consistency (as "episodes" are they not in fact best interpreted as parts of a whole)? Maybe if they had been released under a different title nobody would care.
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Dec 1, 2012 03:21
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:They made a whole movie canonizing this reading of Plan 9. If you need another movie to explain a movie....
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Dec 1, 2012 05:03
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:You don't "need" the movie Ed Wood but it's neither a shame that they made it, nor does the position it takes seems far-fetched or illegitimate. I agree it's a legitimate reading, and concede it's not more far-fetched than the conventional and superficial readings according to which it's plain poo poo. The difference is that viewing Star Wars on that low level should still be enjoyable.
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Dec 1, 2012 05:09
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Fans don't know what they want, and what they think they want in any specific terms is usually a terrible or at least completely inapplicable idea. This holds true both for the highly obsessive fans and casual audiences, as well as anybody else who chooses to buy into the fiction. A good movie succeeds by giving the audiences what they actually want; a talented filmmaker can recognize what it was that the fans wanted about other movies, and, if he wishes, make more of it. The march of technology, socioeconomic shifts, changes in culture, or even changes to the author's place in that culture aren't so rapid or powerful as to render the fundamental appeal of Star Wars obsolete. And that's why the prequels didn't have to be the way they were, and why it's not in vain to hope for Episode 7 and beyond to be like the original trilogy. Bongo Bill fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Dec 2, 2012 |
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Dec 2, 2012 07:30
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We shouldn't confuse a lack of moral ambiguity with a lack of moral complexity. The reason we care about the characters (the reason they are entertaining) is because we see them struggling, in their various ways, to be good. This characterizes Han Solo's decision to return to Yavin, Lando's release of Chewbacca and Leia, Luke's decision to throw himself down the vent, and Vader's betrayal of the Emperor; it lends tension to Luke and Han arguing over whether to rescue the princess, Luke leaving Dagobah, Lando handing Han over to Vader, even Luke giving the droids to Jabba. The moral theme pervading the original trilogy is about the difficulty of choosing good over evil. This is different from many other "intellectual" moral dilemmas in fiction, which are more about the difficulty of distinguishing between good and evil - a theme which is an awkward complement at best to heroic action, as the prequel trilogy arguably demonstrated (among its other sins). We shouldn't think that for a story to question its own apparent moral foundation is the best or only intelligent way for it to address morally charged themes.
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Jan 30, 2013 06:16
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It doesn't take a dumb viewer to enjoy a dumb movie.
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Jan 30, 2013 07:11
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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 prequel trilogy is an interesting failure, in that they are significantly less entertaining than their predecessors in (what I pompously assume to be) a reasonably intuitive, common, literal viewing, aware of but not preoccupied with subtext. I sometimes like to think about the themes of the entire series as if the prequels had succeeded: if its characters were more defined and likeable, if the script had been clearer and less dull, if the direction given the actors had been as energetic as that given the animation, if it had made the dramatic irony a bit more obvious (if a viewer's first impression is that the story is wrong, not the character, then it is possible the story itself is at fault), if it had just come together better. I'm not certain if these completely imaginary movies would be easier or harder to interpret as a refutation of the original trilogy, but in my imagination they are more like the originals in that I like watching them more than I like interpreting them.
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Feb 3, 2013 11:54
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feedmyleg posted:An Imperial buddy cop movie would be amazing. Just make it a side-quel to A New Hope and have it be the two Imperial Detectives who were given the case to track down 3PO and R2. What, like Troops?
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Feb 6, 2013 03:22
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The Dark Side as a theme doesn't apply only to Force-using characters. It just refers to the temptation to get what you want quickly and easily by doing something you know to be wrong. You don't need an apocalyptic threat to make a compelling story out of that, though having higher stakes can certainly help increase the drama. Whatever new thing drives the overarching conflict doesn't need to be bigger or more hopeless than what came before. The only thing that was actually at stake in The Empire Strikes Back, after all, was what the audience cares most about - the heroes themselves. The rebellion might have been doomed and the galaxy permanently hosed if Vader had succeeded in corrupting Luke, but what we care about is not the rebellion but Luke himself. There'll surely be new heroes, however, and it'd be an obvious and easily-avoided bad decision to have new heroes do nothing more than mop up after old problems, except insofar as all new problems grow from old solutions. Set it up so that the only way to escape defeat is with a desperate struggle against overwhelming odds made possible by some character's climactic decision to resist evil rather than capitulate. The villain's place in the galactic balance of power doesn't matter nearly as much as the villain's connection to the hero.
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Feb 20, 2013 00:03
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Thrawn's not evil enough to be a huge villain, but I think if just the character were adapted, he'd have enough style to be a good secondary villain - filling the role of a Tarkin, a Boba Fett, a Jabba, a (dare I say it) Dooku or Grievous.
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Feb 20, 2013 01:19
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It would be easy to retcon that. Just say Obi-Wan was lying again.
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Feb 20, 2013 02:21
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DFu4ever posted:I remember "The Mule" being a mysterious, but very overt threat. Wasn't he in command of a huge fleet or something? His whole gimmick was that he existed outside the reach of psychohistory, and thus the Foundation people couldn't figure him out. I have no idea if I am remembering this right. The Mule was a mutant - a single individual that couldn't be predicted by psychohistory, which dealt with anticipating the aggregated behavior of society. His mutation specifically made him a telepath, able to irresistibly if crudely control others' emotions. He used this ability to make people fanatically loyal to him, enabling him to amass political power on a tremendous scale using means that Hari Seldon could never have anticipated. In the end, what stopped him was the Second Foundation, who had developed psychology to such an advanced degree that it was also compared to a kind of mind control, albeit a subtler one. Once the Mule was overcome (by one of their own unwitting agents) they returned to their original task, which was enforcing the Seldon Plan, and the big mystery of the next novel was "If the Mule completely disrupted the Plan, then why is it still so eerily accurate?"
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Feb 21, 2013 19:02
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psychohistory
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api call girl posted:If I remember my reading of the books from like 15-20 years ago, wasn't it the case that robots (the 3 laws of robotics robots) were secretly manipulating events to match? That's what happens in Foundation and Earth, but Foundation's Edge happened before any of that. Bongo Bill fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Feb 21, 2013 |
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Feb 21, 2013 20:55
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computer parts posted:Foundation's Edge is the one with Gaia, which was a third party in the whole Foundation/Second Foundation fight. Yes. However, that book is also the first one in which the reader is shown more than a small amount of what the Second Foundation's deal is.
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Feb 21, 2013 22:20
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Sarcastro posted:Isn't this what the prequels already did? There were zillions of Jedi, and only two Sith. An apprentice turns from Jedi to Sith and kills all but two Jedi. Boom - balance. Anakin kills the last Sith master and then dies without taking a Sith apprentice, eradicating (for a while) the chaos embodied by the corruption that is the Dark Side. That's the balance he brought.
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Feb 23, 2013 00:35
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Yoda being a skilled fighter in the prequels is consistent with the interpretation that Yoda was basically wrong all the time in the prequels, and only attained enlightenment during his exile. Dooku using Force Lightning, as well as Palpatine fighting with a lightsaber, are dumb (unless paratext is invoked).
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Feb 24, 2013 22:20
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Would it be fair to say that George Lucas typically has a different opinion than his audience regarding which qualities of his movies are the ones that most determine whether they'll be enjoyed? Additional attention from other talents helped close that gap once, and hopefully that can now happen again.
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Feb 25, 2013 22:46
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Obi-Wan said of that time period, "Before the dark times. Before the Empire." The Empire was so recently established that the Emperor had only just abolished the Senate at the time that sentence was uttered.
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Feb 26, 2013 02:06
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jivjov posted:Vader uses one regularly though. And isn't he explicitly called out as a Dark Lord of the Sith in the OT? The word "Sith" never appears in the original trilogy. Darth Vader was an evil - fallen - Jedi.
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Feb 26, 2013 02:14
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Alchenar posted:That's just standard fantasy genre 'the good guys hope for the best, and it happens because they live in a universe with a good/evil narrative' stuff. Just the opposite - the villains place as much faith in the Force as Yoda does. The Emperor just thinks that the power of hate, not of love, is the proper thing to believe in - and given that it has enabled him to take over the Galaxy, is he far wrong? Darth Vader says things like "The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant compared to the power of the Force," and chokes people for calling it a bunch of parlor tricks. His faith is mysterious and unshakeable ("You don't know the power of the Dark Side. I must obey my master."), and is the source of his implacable menace, since it delivers him from hesitation and doubt. In the end it is only overcome by Luke, who, since their previous encounter, has acquired an even greater faith of his own. Even the prequels carry this message on. Anakin is corrupted by appeals to his faith in the Force, tempted by the promise that it has the power to save Padme. He blames himself for his mother's murder because he believes the Force gave him the ability to accomplish anything, even save her; later, he chokes the Death Star's commander because he implied that his failure to secure the plans was due to a limit of the Force. His betrayal of the Jedi Order is at least rationalized by the idea that their teachings are false ("From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!"). There's a parallel here: Anakin is described as a virgin birth, or, put another way, the Force itself is his father; he and Luke are both motivated to attain their respective destinies by their faith in their fathers.
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Feb 28, 2013 10:52
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Those were all very narrow victories. They were costly defeats for the Empire, but none of them happened because of being overwhelmed.
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Mar 14, 2013 05:15
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Wubbles posted:So, why was Luke just handed a fighter ship and made a commander like a minute after he met with the Rebels? He wasn't made a commander at that time, but he was already a trained pilot, and those are rare enough in the perpetually understaffed Rebellion.
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Mar 14, 2013 06:02
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Yoda having once been preoccupied with worldly affairs and unenlightened is not a bad idea, and depicting him as a formidable warrior in the prequels is a good way to express that concept (though the way he fought was also silly). What it actually contradicts is his characterization elsewhere in the prequels, where he's still shown to be serene and spiritual.
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Apr 1, 2013 00:34
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