Posted on 10/30/2012 6:40:23 PM PDT by Nachum
Disney now owns Pixar, The Muppets, Marvel Comics and Star Wars.
If Obama is elected to a second term, how long before we see an antitrust lawsuit a la Clinton’s Microsoft debacle?
Lucas took an exciting premise and turned it into a maudlin soap opera. Changing Darth Vader into Luke’s father (and Leia into his sister) was the beginning of long sereies of disastrous buzzkills.
There’s already a whole canon of books. Leia and Han have twins, a boy and a girl, and the Jedi school starts over with Luke.
I didn't like it because it featured a series of defeats for the good guys and the ending left you hanging.
The reviewer for Commentary also panned the film. He wondered why Darth Vader was alive in the second episode when he had apparently been blown up and presumably killed in the first. He apparently missed Darth Vader's escape. That scene is so brief that you'll miss it if you choose that moment to blink your eye.
“At the time, it disappointed many, but when viewed in context with the others, many consider it to be the best episode.”
I’ll never forget seeing “The Empire Strikes Back” the night it was released with my dad. I was 6 years old. I cried the entire way home after seeing it ... not cause I thought it was terrible ... I simply thought that Han Solo was dead and they’d never save him :-).
I think ESB is the best of all of them too. I actually prefer watching it on an old CED Videodisc I have that my dad bought. I still need to see it on BluRay though ;-).
I found Episode II “Attack of the Clones” to be so terrible that I *wanted* the Jedi to be slaughtered by the end of it ... a bunch of doped-up-on-midichlorian, self-righteous, pompus asses. Liberals with lightsabers and gay, dynamic poses ... that’s all they were :-P. At least Yoda figured it all out when he marooned himself on Dagobah :-).
The person that posted that “Return of the Jedi” should have had tens of thousands of Ewoks is 100% right! Only a few teddy bears here and there made it look silly, but thousands of those things on screen would have made it far more interesting. I had never considered that!
That Ewok stuff really distracted from the awesome space combat scene with Lando flying the Millennium Falcon and Admiral “It’s a trap!” Ackbar ... not to mention the Luke/Vader duel :-).
I doubt any sequels are going to live up to expectations. I really wish they’d make spinoffs that take place in the same universe. I can’t see them being worse than the prequels, but I doubt they’ll out do the originals ... those main characters in the original trilogy had damn near perfect synergy. With the right directors/writers, who knows though ... I think JJ Abrams did an amazing job with Star Trek ... anything’s possible.
On another note, I’d love to see them get a new actor to play Indiana Jones and have him screw with the Soviets in the late 40s :-). I know “Crystal Skull” was well hated, but they did mention that he made it to the rank of Colonel spying on the Russians :-).
It had a racist theme - and that was the redeeming part.
The original trilogy was aimed at the high school and college market. The second trilogy was aimed at the elementary school market.
More please! :)
The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie by far. The reason it’s the best is because it’s the one that Lucas had the least to do with. He let a better director direct it, and better writers write the script.
The prequels are terrible because Lucas had total control. There was apparently no one around willing or able to tell him how stupid and ridiculous his ideas had become.
Actually the third prequel is much better than the first two. However, that’s not saying much since the first two are complete pieces of excrement.
The third one is mediocre; watchable, but with still with the stench of Lucas all over it.
I actually think Lucas did a mostly great job in casting the prequels. I don’t blame Portman and Christensen at all, because they had nothing to work with. You need a decent script or a good director; they had neither. Can you imagine trying to breath life into Lucas’ horrible dialogue, under his terrible direction?
I think it was critic Richard Roeper who put it best when he said some directors can take mediocre actors and get great performances out of them, but Lucas takes great actors and makes them look mediocre.
What absolutely killed the prequels for me, was all the CGI. The realism of the originals vs cartoons.
I also waited in those crowds because my girlfriend wanted to see it. I thought it was stupid then and nothing has changed my mind about it since. I've only seen bits and pieces of a couple of the other movies and even those few minutes were wasted moments of my life. My girlfriend's roommate and her boyfriend were totally smitten by it tho and I guess the franchise hasn't suffered much due to the lack of my business.
Star Tours in Walt Disney World was pretty cool when it first came out but other rides have passed it by with better special effects. They recently updated it into a 3D adventure but I didn't think it had the impact of the first one. I imagine there will be more themed rides coming to Disney now that they own it.
Yeah, that was yet another bad decision by Lucas.
I am stoked to see the last three Star Wars movies getting made. It was put out years ago that the whole story would be nine films - the fist three, three prequels and three sequels.
I’m guessing that the next three movies will chronicle the adventures of the next generation of the Skywalker family, another intrigue and action-packed Galactic political upheaval, and some final reconciliation of the Sith and the Jedi, bringing balance to the Force.
I hope that the Disney folks don’t change it into another socialist indoctrination vehicle. In the Star Wars series so far, the good guys were fighting for liberty and the bad guys fighting to impose an all-powerful dictatorial government. I’m guessing they won’t be able to resist making the happy ending an utopian communal society of some sort, unless the story was already locked in when the contracts were signed.
Perhaps they will at least insist on getting some gay characters written in, so they merchandise a bunch of latex toy products.
You prove my point, they’re bipedal gerbils. They’re food for everything else in the woods. What’s so great about them?
I think Lucas really got obsessed with the “moichandising” starting with Return of the Jedi. He always had merchandise in the back of his mind, but it never seemed to be the impetus for the characters he created, just an extra bonus that could come from them. He liked the idea of a Chewbacca mug and and R2-D2 cookie jar, but those ideas clearly popped into his head after the creation of the characters, and weren’t the reason why they were created.
That was true until we got the Ewoks, transparently given teddy-bear designs that were intended from their conception to be sold in toy stores. Then in the next movie, 16 years later, we got Jar Jar. Again, this was a character transparently made to appeal to very young children, undoubtedly for the express purpose of selling toys.
I think Lucas dialed that attitude back a bit after Episode I merchandise did not sell as well as expected, much like the Ewoks never became the merchandising bonanza Lucas expected (I think they were quickly usurped by Cabbage Patch Kids dolls). Jar Jar’s part was of course scaled way back in the next two movies. Revenge of the Sith seemed to be getting back to the way the original movie became marketable, with weird, spooky villains and big, bold, sci-fi hardware, instead of cutesy, childish characters.
I think every Stars Wars movie since then was something they made up on the fly, rather than a calculated decision.
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