Star Wars: The Force Awakens [** SPOILERS FROM POST 4472 ONWARD **]

Adamantium

pixelburp wrote: »

When I was growing up through the 80s, while I didn't care for the Ewoks and thought them a bit silly, I didn't actively hate them. I still don't hate them if I'm honest; I'm old enough now to appreciate the technicalities of why they're a bit of a tonal shift from the previous 2 films, and yes their presence as a merchandise too was cynical if irrelevant nowadays, but they don't completely derail the movie. Yeah they're blatantly cute carnivores with a thirst for stormtropper blood, but I can look past that.

Taken in isolation, divorced from the dark complexities of Empire's internal battle within its characters, Return of the Jedi is fun. Flawed yes, but fun; its set-pieces were pretty damn good to keep a person entertained and excited: while the battle on Endor was a bit daft, the speeder chase was exciting; the epic battle in orbit is still a thrill-ride and the franchise's best space battle imo; the entire sequence set in Jabba's palace and on his barge are fantastic. It has its moments.

I can almost look past all the Ewok stuff (which I'm guilty of enjoying, love the forest setting), because the moments that do work are the best in the series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRvAAYjmqkE

I remember as kid, THIS ENDING , been one of the most vivid resolute "happy, yet bittersweet" movie ending ever. Yeah it's a stretch to believe that the Empire cam crumbling down because of two higher ups were offed. Yet I LOVE the idea, that it would give people courage and make them celebrate and come out on the streets in defiance, causing revolutions everywhere. Symbolically, in minds,The Empire died on that day, their days were over.

Some of the EU said it was the infinite power of the dark side that a lot all the government and troops stayed in line, that when the Emperor died, the brainwashing in a sense from this godlike magician disappeared and the populace essentially woke up. I like that mythological explanation

This song makes me miss the originals, It was the end, as far to the future as we would ever see as far as we were concerned until....now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd7Wh4vrVyk

Tony EH

pixelburp wrote: »

When I was growing up through the 80s, while I didn't care for the Ewoks and thought them a bit silly, I didn't actively hate them. I still don't hate them if I'm honest; I'm old enough now to appreciate the technicalities of why they're a bit of a tonal shift from the previous 2 films, and yes their presence as a merchandise too was cynical if irrelevant nowadays, but they don't completely derail the movie. Yeah they're blatantly cute carnivores with a thirst for stormtropper blood, but I can look past that.

Taken in isolation, divorced from the dark complexities of Empire's internal battle within its characters, Return of the Jedi is fun. Flawed yes, but fun; its set-pieces were pretty damn good to keep a person entertained and excited: while the battle on Endor was a bit daft, the speeder chase was exciting; the epic battle in orbit is still a thrill-ride and the franchise's best space battle imo; the entire sequence set in Jabba's palace and on his barge are fantastic. It has its moments.

How much cooler would Jedi have been if it were wookies instead of teddy bears. I could easily buy into a terrible defeat for the Empire at the hands of wookies. But Teddys? No, that's just stupid. At least in its original form, the Battle of Endor remains a local victory and not the idiotic galaxy wide collapse that the "special" edition portrays.

Saying that, I actually don't hate 'Return of the Jedi' (in its original cut), in fact, the first half of the film with Jabba includes some of the series best scenes and features one of the best bad guys ever (Jabba), who is a triumph of puppetry and nobody can argue with the amazing model effects in the final space battle.

But it's easily the worst of the OT, by a long shot and the teddys have a huge part to play in that.

I don't blame Gary Kurtz for walking away from the show to be honest.

Zubeneschamali

Adamantium wrote: »

This song makes me miss the originals,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd7Wh4vrVyk

That song wasn't in the originals.

Here is the original Ewok jubjub song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBrLHMCTDAA

thegreengoblin

A few rumours to keep us all amused/intrigued. I'm not sure I'm into the idea of Ventress appearing in it as she's already had a good run in The Clone Wars.

http://www.starburstmagazine.com/movie-news/8572-movie-news-lupita-nyongo-to-play-asajj-ventress-star-wars-episode-vi-subtitle-revealed

Adamantium

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

That song wasn't in the originals.

Here is the original Ewok jubjub song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBrLHMCTDAA

Yeah I know but I prefer the new one (just for the song). Shoot me

david75

theres something magical about ROTJ, possibly brought by Endor, and all the beautiful matte paintings..and the soundtrack..

Adamantium

Mr Freeze wrote: »

Toy's, it was all about the toys.

From what Kurtz says in that article, they make 3 times more on merchandise anyways, and that seemed to be the goal of the 3rd film, and the prequels.

Mr Freeze

I don't hate the Ewoks either. I grew up watching the OT over and over.

I still like RotJ, I love the battle in the Death Star and the fleet battles surrounding it. I always found the Ewoks beating up the Stromtroopers a bit hard to swallow though.

norrie rugger

the Ewoks were not what i hated. It was the fact that they were able to take on the storm troopers at all was the issue that I hated. I know that the troopers could not hit the broadside of a barn but one at-at alone would have been enough

edit: the at-st should have been enough FFS

norrie rugger

i think though that this was much more than a local loss though.
Emperor gone
Darth good
and probably most crushing to the empire is the loss of the second death star

Tony EH

Bur we're supposed to talking about a galaxy wide empire here. An organisation that has built two massive death stars, capable of destroying whole worlds. They can build thousands of Star Destroyers, recruited millions of men and women and have spanned said galaxy, to teh point where they've reached remote shitholes like Tatooine.

Just because the first and second in command are dead and they've lost their new toy over some remote moon in the middle of nowhere, wouldn't mean that it was all over.

Not by a long shot.

That's like the British Empire calling it a day, if Queen Victoria and Benjamin Disraeli died.

norrie rugger

this was an empire newly built. It was built on fear of the emperor and Vader.
The loss of those two would cause fractures in non core worlds, or worlds not fully under control.
People seem to think that everyone in the empire was evil most would just have been getting on with life, even in the military.
The death star was new tech so it would stand to reason that the expenditure was massive

norrie rugger

also the British empire had succession rules on death of leaders. More apt would be the collapse of the Macedonian empire of Alexander after his death

Adamantium

Here was more in line what they were originally planning for before Kurtz left:

The plan was that Han would come out of the carbonite but then die a heroic sacrifice sort of death on Endor - something Ford wanted, too. Luke would barely survive the taxing battle with Vader and Palpatine and nearly fall to the dark side himself. At the end, evil would be overcome but, Leia would be left alone, without Han, trying to piece together the broken republic, struggling to do so. She'd ask Luke to stay and help, but he'd ignore her plea and basically almost wordlessly jump into a ship and have a sort of lone ranger moment, flying off into the sunset to leave his struggling sister alone, the last Jedi. "The man with no name"

This was what the writers envisioned off the back of ESB, and the script at that point didn't involve the cute Ewok battle or anything, but something more war-like. Lucas wanted a full-blown happy ending - the Ewok party we got - and also didn't want to kill Han, so it all fell apart.

Hamill wanted a buzz cut and facial scars to show he had seen some ****.

That's pretty bittersweet ending and movie. Powerful perhaps, but not sure i would have gone down.

OU812

Of all the cgi Lucas did & it didn't cross his mind to elongate the ewoks into wookies...

pixelburp

Yeah, I've read the original script treatment before, and am I the only one who hated it? Sure, what was filmed, particularly the Special Edition versions with CGI celebrations, was overly happy and twee in places, but the original version feels poor while sitting at the opposite side of the spectrum; way too bloody grim and miserable. There's a happy medium somewhere and neither achieved it methinks

Tony EH

norrie rugger wrote: »

this was an empire newly built. It was built on fear of the emperor and Vader.
The loss of those two would cause fractures in non core worlds, or worlds not fully under control.
People seem to think that everyone in the empire was evil most would just have been getting on with life, even in the military.
The death star was new tech so it would stand to reason that the expenditure was massive

It's an Empire that's been built over nearly 20 years. The Emperor was its head, but largely absent in many areas of its control. Like all area spanning empires, it's head remains largely nominal.

Also, Vader was Governor Tarkin's pet in the first film and subject to a chain of command like everyone else.

Sure, the loss of the Emperor and Vader is a big blow to the Empire, but in entities such as that, there are always people ready to step into those shoes.

The idea that the Empire would simply collapse because they were brown bread is absurd. That's why the original ending of 'Return of the Jedi' looks and feels better. The special ending is ridiculous.

Lastly, I've never really got the feeling that the Empire was that evil. Sure, they subjugated worlds and set about bringing "order" to the galaxy in their own mold, but, in the original films, their "evil" wasn't as front and centre. They way I looked at it was that the majority of worlds under the Empire seemed to simply get on with it and were neither for or against the Empire or the Rebellion.

But, that was the great thing about the OT. It was deliberately left vague, so you could add in a lot of the detail yourself.

norrie rugger

20 years is nothing in relation to the thousands of years of the republic.

The vagueness is actually one of the things that i dislike lol

Zubeneschamali

Adamantium wrote: »

Hamill wanted a buzz cut and facial scars to show he had seen some ****.

Say what? Hamill has and had a bunch of facial scars because he crashed his bike before ESB. That's what the whole Yeti scene is for - to explain his face.

Radiosonde

norrie rugger wrote: »

20 years is nothing in relation to the thousands of years of the republic.

This is yet another thing that really bothered me about the prequels. I'd always assumed that when Obi-Wan talked about the Jedi maintaining order for a thousand generations, and about light sabers being a more elegant weapon from another time, he meant a time long before he was born - that he and Luke's father had belonged to a Jedi order long passed its glory days. That the grey, withered emperor we see in ROTJ might have already lived and reigned hundreds of years.

But no, everything was dandy until 10 years before Luke was born, and the Emperor only became unquestioned ruler around the time of his birth. So basically the apparently-insurmountable Empire of the OT was a 20 year blip.

Adamantium

You know what would been enormously ballsy for Disney and Abrams?

Throw the prequels and clone wars into the non canon "Legends" banner they founded recently for the old EU. Yeah the idea of the Empire only been around for 20 years makes next to no sense, a bit weak impact wise. And all Jedi and Sith is deemed an ancient religion that people hardly believe in only 20 or so years? Was there a USB databank erasion, a book burning? Is there not stories of crap being levitated, a massive Jedi Temple at the heart of the government?

Seriously the prequels deserve to be there in that bin, but because its Lucas own "sacred" writing, they can't.

If you were watch A New Hope for the first time, you get the impression that the Empire for all intents and purposes was around for at least 50-100 years. I got that impression when I first watched them, not having watched any prequels. People could hardly remember a time before it

ziedth

It's funny I'm a pretty big star wars fan and the length of the empires rule and how being a Jedi is all but forgotten in 20 years since the prequels came out never actually occurred to me till I read this thread. It's ridiculous.

norrie rugger

That's Lucas for you

Adamantium

It was like he didn't even try to get them to match up except in superficial ways, then you had talented old EU writers trying to write rings around Lucas and his "first draft will do" writing style, to get things to connect up in the periods in between both trilogies and the Clone wars show. It was all dictated by him, forced to write in his implausible timeline. A waste of talent.

I loved the sense of desolation and lonliness in the original trilogy that the Era of the Jedi was loooong time ago and it's a miracle that these magicians/wizards (Yoda and Obi Wan) were IT. There was no back up. A quirky, possibly mad relic. Their magic was dead in this decaying grungy universe, if he anybody would even believe them, They looked out of place.

The best analogy would be Game of Thrones and how the age of magic was centuries ago (

peaceful Valryia and Dragons, living in the shadow of the ruins

)


A lot of the wonder has been restored simply by not knowing what comes next, now they can plow fertile soil and hopefully come up with something captivating.

xper

Adamantium wrote: »

You know what would been enormously ballsy for Disney and Abrams?

Throw the prequels and clone wars into the non canon "Legends" banner they founded recently for the old EU. ...

Oh you may get your wish eventually. I'd say the timeline to switch from sequels/standalone films to the inevitable reboot has been kicked around Disney's meeting rooms a few times already. 2025 would be my guess.

Adamantium

xper wrote: »

Oh you may get your wish eventually. I'd say the timeline to switch from sequels/standalone films to the inevitable reboot has been kicked around Disney's meeting rooms a few times already. 2025 would be my guess.

Could be amazing, if they do reboot in the distant future. But once again, I'd rather they just bin it as a template and move on.
John Williams turned up and made it them a Star Wars trilogy, it is like 75% of what was worth looking at, amazing moments and operatic images and music beats in Revenge of the Sith, in the last hour which was balls to the wall fantastic in spite of all the clunky, workman like writing, dialogue. It's almost like what I imagined it would be, except when they're talking!

I know people took offence to, but the children in terror in the temple looking for rescue and an elder, only for them to see Vader turn his saber turn on has still stuck with me, "Bloody hell, that's darker than I thought it was going to be".

That and him, followed by the clone troopers marching up the steps to the temple into the light. Amazing sensory/emotional moments and even iconic. Like a tragic opera. But a monkey could have done them right, which makes me think how much better they could have been in the hands of somebody else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEDq34Ah2UA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5SkNrWSk5M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8jxqyyWWw0

Falthyron

Adamantium wrote: »

You know what would been enormously ballsy for Disney and Abrams?

Throw the prequels and clone wars into the non canon "Legends" banner they founded recently for the old EU. Yeah the idea of the Empire only been around for 20 years makes next to no sense, a bit weak impact wise. And all Jedi and Sith is deemed an ancient religion that people hardly believe in only 20 or so years? Was there a USB databank erasion, a book burning? Is there not stories of crap being levitated, a massive Jedi Temple at the heart of the government?

Seriously the prequels deserve to be there in that bin, but because its Lucas own "sacred" writing, they can't.

If you were watch A New Hope for the first time, you get the impression that the Empire for all intents and purposes was around for at least 50-100 years. I got that impression when I first watched them, not having watched any prequels. People could hardly remember a time before it

I agree with you about the feeling that the Empire was around for 100 years or so, but it wouldn't really make sense for Obi Wan knowing about the force, being trained as a Jedi, and knowing so much about the pre-Empire times. I suppose you could say that was a flaw for Lucas' first Star Wars movie; he made it feel like the Empire was around for centuries (or a very long time at least) and yet here is this man in his 60s who knows about the galaxy before the 'dark times' and knows about the 'ancient' order of Jedi.

I think it was the remoteness of Tatooine that made it feel like the Empire was around for a very long time. People getting on with their lives, seemingly unaffected by it, that it appeared to be normalised, something that has been a way of life for a century.

If Disney really wanted to get fans on their side they would announce blu-ray releases for the original trilogy, unchanged. I wonder was that a part of Lucas' agreement to sell his company: 5.5billion and a sworn agreement to never release the originals. :pac:

McLoughlin

Falthyron wrote: »

If Disney really wanted to get fans on their side they would announce blu-ray releases for the original trilogy, unchanged. I wonder was that a part of Lucas' agreement to sell his company: 5.5billion and a sworn agreement to never release the originals. :pac:

Its more likely that 3D versions of the movies will be released on blu ray to lead into the new movies

xper

Adamantium wrote: »

What's Rob Stark doing in the middle of that poster?
:pac:

Radiosonde

McLoughlin wrote: »

Its more likely that 3D versions of the movies will be released on blu ray to lead into the new movies

Disney suspended the release of the 3D-ified saga in cinemas, why would they release a 3D Blu-Ray? For all their faults, they are a company with a long history and a lot of treasured classics on the books who surely know how to handle a legacy. I'm sure when they get around to it they'll release properly remastered versions of the non-special edition OT.