Underrated bit from Star Wars: Luke already knows Ben Kenobi. Instead of a tedious sequence of Luke slowly getting to know and trust this old hermit weirdo, they already have a rapport. It saves time and it helps sell how much they grow to care about each other and the huge leaps of faith they make for each other later in the movie.
Star Wars (the original) is unbelievably good at economy of storytelling. So much happens so quickly but the audience is never lost and every beat lands perfectly.
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I've said this for years. Amazing economy in the script. Beautiful script and story telling. I don't know why idiots always say "the dialog was so stupid and the lines barely deliverable", other than they are parroting Harrison Ford maybe, who delivered the weakest performance of the cast and I think just wants to believe it wasn't his fault.
It's pretty nuts how comprehensive a look we get into the universe of Star Wars within the first movie, but it never feels like the audience is saddled with an infodump. Between Vader's walk-and-talk with the Imperial officer in the first ten minutes and the roundtable on the Death Star, the audience is fed information that perfectly establishes A) who the bad guys are, B) who the good guys are, and C) what each side wants. Doing this is incredibly important for getting the audience invested in the movie's eventual outcome.
But the exposition never crosses into "As you know" territory. It all feels completely organic and contextual.
These are good points, gentlemen. My god, actual discussion of the art and craft of filmmaking on Sup Forums. There is hope yet.
And he was a good friend
Was literally about to post this. What the heck?
silence, nerd
Now roll for your female inmate waifu for the 10th time today.
Alright, now say why Empire was good.
...
They've clearly been chasing that effect ever since. With the Phantom Menace you feel as if George is taking a massive shit on your chest with these dry-as-fuck Senate forums and discussion of galactic trade routes, whereas The Force Awakens swings to the opposite side of the spectrum and tells you so little that you feel like there's not an actual continuity going on.
Maybe they'll nail it down some day.
Just compare it to TFA. TFA rips off iconic scenes without knowing why they're so iconic in the first place. Take the cantina scene, in ANH it shows off the diversity of the galaxy while showing that shady bars are a constant of society. TFA just throws in the scene for a quick reference.
Honestly, I watched the movie a dozen times as a kid and still never knew what they were talking about. Maybe I was retarded or adhd, but I always tuned out. It wasn't until i was an adult until I actually paid attention.
I don't think it even matters anyway
George didn't go far enough. I wanted more discussion on the economic policy of the republic. What he did was too middle ground and not far enough to be interesting.
Agreed. It is utterly bizarre how equal and opposite the prequel trilogy and TFA are. The PT fails on a character level and TFA fails on a plot/narrative level. Maybe The Last Jedi will meet in the middle?
At least the PT had some legitimate creativity and didn't rely entirely on nostalgia for the original trilogy (just mostly).
Source? I miss always seeing him
>tfw Lucas used classic and mythological storytelling archetypes that are shared cross culturally
>tfw people think star wars is simply space ships and lasers
this is what disney doesn't seem to get
if I can quote myself here...
There's absolutely nothing wrong with the dialog in Star Wars- it's quite well written and has a timeless (still not dated, unlike some of the hairstyles), almost classical, feel to it- nor the acting, which ranges from entirely adequate on the part of the extras to superb on the part of a couple of the older principals. Far from embarrassing themselves, the young novice actors playing the leads appear very well chosen for their roles, and seem quite comfortable delivering their dialog. The only actor whose delivery sometimes seems off, and who even acts stoned in one scene, is Harrison Ford. He's the weakest performer in the film, and knows it, so of course he's spent the last 35 years going on about how "undeliverable" the dialog was (nobody else seems to have had any delivery problems) and in particular likes to go on about "I've been from one side of this galaxy to the other..." like it was some sort of Greek tongue twister. It wasn't, Harrison, it was a short, flippant remark deliverable with some condescension that doesn't need to be Exhibit A in your case against the script. Geez I'd hate to see you try to deliver dialog in a Shakespeare in the Park.
and again, if I may be so bold...
The funny thing is: the first movie (Star Wars- 1977) isextremelywell directed, in my humble opinion. George Lucas directed it- not Irvin Kirchner, not Richard Marquand, not anybody but George Lucas. It might have driven him to a nervous breakdown (no secret) in the end but it sure resulted in one hell of a film for the viewer. Very well directed (yes, credit to his excellent cinematographer and all involved behind the camera) with great panache in the swipes and cuts, excellent pacing, framing, the whole shebang (an aside: I don't know if George Miller consciously copied Lucas' style in "The Road Warrior", but it is very reminiscent). Additionally- Lucas, in a pinch, along with his wife (yes, and Richard Chew) proved to be miracle workers in the editing department. His one two punch with the directing, then editing, showed off the "universe" (which could easily have just been plain weird if not presented properly) Lucas dreamed up to the world in the best possible light, and created a franchise that will last for generations.
1/2
George Lucaswasa great director- I just think the labor of love that was Star Wars was too much for him to willingly undergo again so he became an "idea" guy, and handed the directing of the two sequels off to others- and never anybody who brought anything special as far as style. I love all the elements of Star Wars, and there were plenty right there in the first effort, but the need to create ever more "ideas/characters/aliens" to fill an ever-growing universe eventually showed its limits (this 27th Jedi knight here is unique in that he looks just like Yoda but he has a really long neck). I think by the time he directed the prequels he had spent too many decades out of the director’s chair and too much time dreaming up all the minutia of the much expanded Star Wars universe, along with too much time involved in the technical aspects of film making (the sound and special effects) to have much left of the young hot-shot director who made such well directed, "George Lucas" style (fun, engaging, accessible, doesn't take itself too seriously), films as "American Graffiti" and "Star Wars". Kind of a shame. I do hope the 3 "prequels" are eventually successfully edited down to a better 2 to 3 hours and something on par with his earlier achievement can be salvaged.
2/2
How the hell does TFA succeed at the character level?
I don't disagree. I can get down with some super direct exposition a la Dune, as long as it serves to create a unique and sophisticated setting that makes me feel immersed something alien and downright byzantine. The PT didn't do that, possibly because it kept cutting back to Jar Jar stepping in dog doo or gratuitous lightsaber antics.
Also a good point. I couldn't bring myself to give a shit about any of the characters or their struggles in the prequels, which made the world building almost entirely pointless. Whereas I thought characters like Finn and Kylo were quite well done, but the entire movie coasted on the assumption that ragtag group of Rebels = good and Imperial aesthetic = bad without saying anything else about the context.
>Star Wars (the original) is unbelievably good at economy of storytelling
I always appreciated that too OP, but 5 minutes into the Empire Strikes Back when we see the same probe droid crash to the surface of Hoth in two different shots (watch it again if you don't remember this being repeated) I knew this economy of storytelling was gone.
>there are people on Sup Forums that aren't retarded
Holy shit
To be honest I wouldn't say either one "succeeds" where the other fails, but they certainly do it better than their counterpart. The PT's world building is interesting, but very dry, very overdone, and very badly incorporated into each movie's narrative. TFA's characters are much more expressive and likeable than the PT's are, but they're kind of flat and they don't grow in any way that matters.
Probably because ESB didn't have to be desperately cut and re-edited to make it watchable
>TFA just throws in the scene for a quick reference
Where the fuck are they anyway? A pirate castle? What the fuck are they all doing there, are they all pirates? Are they known lawbreakers, or pirates with hearts of gold? Why does no one give a fuck when the castle is completely destroyed
CHECKED
quints!
thanks user, I am an idiot-savant when it comes to analyzing Star Wars, but just a plain idiot with everythig else
TFA was made for you.
>a couple of good writers take the autistic ramblings of George Lucas and turn it into one of the greatest cultural phenomenons of all time
Was the OT a miracle Sup Forums?
who were these couple of good writers?
>His one two punch with the directing, then editing, showed off the "universe" (which could easily have just been plain weird if not presented properly) Lucas dreamed up to the world in the best possible light, and created a franchise that will last for generations.
I half agree, half disagree on this point.
While it is absolutely true that Lucas dreamed up a wondefully diverse and fascinating universe for Star Wars, I would argue that NOT being able to see it all is what made it so compelling in the first place.
The original trilogy is like looking at the sea through the porthole of a submarine. The audience is being shown something very specific for the sake of the narrative, but the implication is that SO MUCH MORE is just beyond our line of sight. All the crazy races and droids that are only shown for a briefest moment. References to people, places and things we will never see. Hell, even the force lightning that the Emperor uses at the end of ROTJ is SO incredibly suggestive. What CAN'T the Force do?
And not seeing those things plants ideas and fosters imagination so much more than actually seeing those things ever could. The unfortunate biproduct of Star Wars into a "generations-spanning franchise" is that all of those neat little bits have been mined for stories. Everything has been quantified, recorded and catalogued. What once was a huge, fantastical world is now boring and overdone. And Star Wars lost a lot of its charm as a result. That's how I feel anyway.
The Death Star round-table is an great example of feeding you info without a massive lore dump.
We know it's a new Empire that's removed former Republic Democratic rule, and that it's galaxy spanning.
We need nothing more than this because we know what that entails.
*good editors
what I should of said
Lucas was told his first few drafts were shit until he wrote what had all of the content used to make the original movie written, which was still a clusterfuck mess. But somehow the editors were gods and took all the nonsense that he had filmed and warped it into something amazing
It had enough good people working on it to make it a memorable space opera.
Well said honestly
What the fuck is this thread
...
good post
Things are much more interesting when we just get small glimpses into bigger, more fantastical worlds.
I like the Dark Crystal and Howl's Moving Castle a lot for these reasons
>when your wife wins an Oscar from your magnum opus but you don't
I agree, and see where you're coming from, and probably reached that point in my feelings about the SW universe when the Force was explained away as a miticlorian infection in your blood rather than, as I was naive enough to like to believe since childhood, an unfaltering, focused, uninhibited belief in yourself like the ultimate expression of "mind over matter".
...
...
George forgot that his movies were a fantasy later on into his strange case of alzheimer's where he forgets all the major points of his own creations and assumed that because his creation took place in space and had space ships and lazer guns, that it was a sci-fi, and started picking out the things that made it fantasy and tried to give them sci-fi explanations
I read that his wife at the time was primarily responsible for formatting things into the standard hero arc. There's a 4th or 7th draft, or whatever # it was, floating around the internet, and it's almost incomprehensibly unstructured for storytelling. Even if it wasn't his wife (I think it was), someone came along and took all the character names, location, and overall tone, and made an actual plot that a normal person could follow.
Yes, he was so fucking great at showing things, but sucks (at least now he does) at explaining things. We truly have seen the "man behind the curtain" and the facade is gone. Maybe we should have known it would ultimately end this way once we saw "The Star Wars Holiday Special"?
Hmmm, is she the ex who made off with a boat-load of money in a divorce settlement? If so- she deserves every penny of it.
>a woman saved Star Wars
>women are now destroying Star Wars
it's like potrey
>lets take the fantasy out of my fantasy
>all the magic from the OT now has a really bad sci-fi explanation
>Han doesn't shoot first like a selfish murdering outlaw, that would give him too much of a character arc, he shoots in self defense now
>Luke will now yell after falling after the duel with Vader, like he fell on accident instead of him jumping to rebel against his evil father by saying "I'd rather die than join you"
>Jabba will get his tail stepped on and be a silly cartoon character instead of a scary space gangster now
>Yoda will now flail around with a lightsaber, who cares if the original point of his character was to show that the force was something beyond the physical because someone so small could do so much
what the fuck is wrong with this retard
>after he pulled billions for it
Lucas' revenge
I read an article about her on the Untold History of Star Wars and it's pretty bizarre. She was one of the best editors in Hollywood (she edited for Scorsese), but after Star Wars she just wanted to retire, settle down and have a kid with George. But George was a workaholic and always seemed preoccupied with the next thing, whether it was Empire, or Skywalker Ranch, or Return of the Jedi, or ILM. Eventually she left him for some other guy and had a family with him.
all 100% true and a total head-shaker for the real fans
For fucks sake women, at the very least let a man finish his trilogy first
I tried explaining this to a comic club I'm a member of and I think I hobbled my argument really hard when I said, "I think I might understand Star Wars better than George Lucas does".
I gotta say good for her, she did her bit to get his dream off the ground. Staying for life with an autist like George is too much to ask of anybody.
*taps George on the shoulder during*
>George, it's already happened once. . . I'm done.
How long until Ridley Scott goes full Lucas?
>When you try to set up your film company to produce sequels to the breakout independent phenomenon you accidentally created so that it can run as an autonomous moneymaking concern by other people so you can spend time with your wife and start a family, but Kasdan and co. fuck everything up so you end up spending just as much time on set as if you were directing the fucking films yourself and when you're finally done you return home to discover your wife has started an affair with the carpenter you hired to build a nursery for your future children, spend the next 20 years in a depressive haze of medication, finally are persuaded to make more Star Wars films so you approach your industry pals like Spielberg and Coppola to help you because you haven't so much as looked at a camera or typewriter in two decades, but they decline because they think you should be the one "behind the wheel" writing and directing by yourself and you end up with a yes-man leech of a producer in the form of Rick McCallum who persuades you to go with your first draft of each script with no editing or rewriting and to make the films as cheaply as possible by abusing the concept of a digital backlot so the entire project ends up being a disaster and then a fat Polack failed film student makes a hilarious YouTube video overstating how bad those films were so you have to sell your greatest creation to the Disney corporation
George... had a hard life.
This meme is so pointless. It's been stretched to the point where it implies that anything Ben didn't address in his short little speech is some overblown EU fanfiction. The fact that he didn't talk about it proves absolutely nothing, and you have no point. Delete that and get some better copypasta.
>just realizing this
How underage are most posters on this board?
Haven't you seen Alien Covenant?
He's completely surpassed Lucas at this point. Guy needs to retire.
his career is a rollercoaster, but at least he has the sense to acknowledge that the "director's"/alternate cut of alien is merely a curiosity to a couple of shift units
only other lucas-y thing of his that comes to mind is the color grading of the blade runner final cut. personally i think it works
>there will never be anything like the Star Wars OT again
>most of us probably didn't get to see them in the theater
tfw
youtube.com
apologize
>TFA rips off iconic scenes without knowing why they're so iconic in the first place.
THIS.
And does them all so unbelievably worse. One of the most jarring things that ripped me out of the movie is when JJ would steal a shot or sequence from ANH, without understanding it at all, and reminding me how much better Lucas shot them.
Christ, that Trench Run sequence. I felt like writing Lucas an apology letter for all the shit I've ever talked about him.
Oh look, another person who didn't listen to Qui Gon's medicholorian speech in TPM and hates the concept because Plinkett told him to.
HA HA HA HA HA
I take it all back. George, you poor son-of-a-bitch billionaire, you truly are the supreme gentleman, and the greatest film-maker of all time, now and a long long time ago.
It doesn't matter whether he should've or shouldn't have addressed the issue in his speech to Luke. Part of the humor of the meme is that he's telling him completely inconsequential information as though it has some relevance or importance, or that it was part of the good old days. In this case the primary point is to highlight the discrepancies between the Jedi's power levels in the original trilogy vs the prequels. It is also critiquing the degradation of the role of the Jedi, from reserved, wise peacekeepers to invincible action heroes.
yeah i heard the whole stupid unnecessary thing kid
George Lucas' life is an abject lesson in how money can't buy you happiness.
>tfw you find out that he sold Lucasfilm just so that all the employees would still have jobs
Even if you say they're just attracted to the force like parasites and are not the actual cause of it, demystifying the Force so the protagonists could take a blood count and precisely quantify someone's ability for practically no real purpose other than a throwaway "visual" of Anakin's relative power is stupid. You could achieve the same thing by someone just saying that he's powerful, Yoda probably being the best choice since the audience will recognize him as someone with authority on the matter - or by actually showcasing some of his ability, maybe in a way that mirrors a character's powers from the OT.
Fucking this
The more you see the more limited you realise the universe is, the same droids, same ships, same aliens everywhere
You clearly didn't because you seem to think midichlorians are a blood stream infection that causes the force. You're literally making up lore.
Midichlorians are an organize that is *drawn to* the force. They don't cause it, they aren't an infection, they're a fucking germ that can be used as a psychical indicator to get a vague reading of a person's connection to the force. It's a harmless little concept that doesn't impact the mysticism of the force in any way, but sheep like you have blown it up to be this huge thing that ruins star wars. Get over it.
>comics
>wanting to believe one of their own could be so clever
I understand if you don't like it as a concept
But if it ruins star wars for you like it did for then you're legitimately autistic
>overstating how bad those films were
stop with this meme. the prequels were unfiltered garbage. tfa was really really bad but don't pretend like it adds merit to the prequels.
here's you
it didn't ruin it for me, it was just another depressing milestone, and why don't you find something more worth crusading about then this minor point and while you're at it stop bringing this thread down to your "Plinkett says" level of discourse?
I don't know if it ruins Star Wars, but you could easily argue that it ruins the Force as a concept.
There are numerous times in the OT where people specifically call the Force a "religion". It's something that can't be seen or quantified or objective measured in any way. There are many people who don't even believe it's real. The only time the effects of the Force are ever shown are as a result of someone that believed in it first.
The idea that the Force (or the propensity for someone to use it) could be measured by a gadget on someone's hip pretty much flies in the face in what the Force is and everything it stands for.
Checked
>big fan since I saw SW at the Chinese in '77
>heartbroken at the potential that was possible vs what was actually delivered, and what will come
well said, better than I could have at this late hour, but since I'm being accused of being "legitimately autistic" by somebody who likes to bring "Plinkett told you to think that" into the discussion I think I better bow out. Great thread OP.
>How long
He deserved better
>The idea that the Force (or the propensity for someone to use it) could be measured by a gadget on someone's hip pretty much flies in the face in what the Force is and everything it stands for.
This argument never made sense to me.
So frustrating. The only way to fix it is to completely ignore the PT entirely. In our house, the prequels never happened.
It's like if someone built a God detector and said "Oh yeah guys, God's real". Belief just flew out the window because faith is based on what can't be proven.
Jedi are an enclave of religious monks, not specialists in a field of proven science.
>This argument never made sense to me.
it does to those of us who appreciated the magic that was inherent to the SW universe and didn't want it to devolve to ST:TNG levels of "Captain, if I just re-route the tachyon fields I may be able to repel their time displacement device!" pseudo-scientific sounding malarkey.
Imagine reading a fantasy novel and suddenly someone is able to quantify a wizards magical ability with a goddamn blood test.
He did, but I have a feeling when old gentle George is gone he will be remembered quite well.
Anakin never needed to be space Jesus.
>"your sad devotion to that ancient religion-"
>"hey you know we have actual scientific detectors that measure the force physically right"
>"what"
>"yeah i have one that i got from an old jedi master qui gon jin, you can check my force power level right now"
>Rick McCallum who persuades you to go with your first draft of each script with no editing or rewriting
Don't blame McCallum on that. He may have been the king of yes men, but even he is record about being annoyed that George wouldn't even finish the scripts until it was time to start filming.
user, have you ever ruminated on the distinct possibility that you, may in fact, be the one who is "legitimately autistic"?
Instead of choking his underlings, Vader engages them in rational discussion with his medichlorian tester.
Thank God George can't go back and make any more changes.
For all the boringness of the prequel trilogy, rewatching that scene where they mention disbanning the Senate carries a hell of a lot more weight.
...
It's pretty hilarious in hindsight how much Darth Vader rose in Gary Stu status from movie to movie.
>ANH: Serves as muscle for the Empire. A badass, but not a ton of real authority. A Governor is higher on the food chain.
>ESB + ROTJ: Second only to the Emperor
>PT: THE CHOSEN ONE/SPACE JESUS
>force detectors everywhere like metal detectors at airports
>Hey Jerry I think we got another Jedi here... Sir can you come with me for a moment?
you don't realize how stupid that sounds?
>because Plinkett told him to.
>implying I didn't already hold those beliefs before Plinkett.
>implying I don't use Plinkett as a educational video because he expresses my hatred better than I could in less time.
>implying I don't think his weird rape humor is actually funny