OK, now that's just plain funny.
Posted on 05/04/2005 7:14:23 AM PDT by dead
Ask George Lucas about his hopes for the closing instalment of Star Wars, Revenge of the Sith, and he replies that he expects it to fail.
In an interview with TIME magazine, Lucas says that like everyone who makes movies, he is "always convinced the next one will be a flop".
"So right now I’m thinking it probably won’t make any money and will be considered a failure."
But in spite of his fears, he concedes he is very satisfied with the final product. "I think it turned out as well as I could have hoped, and at the same time I'm very glad that I finished it."
Others may be less glad the saga has finally come to an end. In the first published review of Revenge of the Sith, filmmaker, Kevin Smith described the film as "so satisfyingly tragic, you'll think you're watching 'Othello' or 'Hamlet'".
"This is the 'Star Wars' prequel the haters have been bitching for since 'Menace' came out, and if they don't cop to that when they finally see it, they're lying," added the maker of Clerks, Chasing Amy and Jersey Girl.
Despite the staunch enthusiasm of fans of the original Star Wars, Lucas said he never really entertained the fact that there would ever be more than one film. "I expected it to take me a year, year and a half to make, and then I expected to move on to other things."
Lucas considers the Star Wars storytelling format very stylised, and "very much in opposition to what my natural inclinations are".
He now hopes to explore more abstract forms of filmmaking that interested him in his days at film school. "It's vaguely in the land of music videos, I guess, but I don't even know how to describe them. I know they won't be mainstream movies. I'm sure they'll be just as criticized as Star Wars films are," he said.
Lucas also has a hankering to work in television principally to shift away from doing anything that may considered "important". He said television offered the chance to do "really great work" without all of the "megillah" that surrounds film.
Revenge of the Sith is being released around the world on May 19.
No, I was 13, and I went to the theater with my Dad when the movie first came out -- within the first week or 2 of its original release. And it said "Episode IV" -- which we could make no sense of at the time.
OK, now that's just plain funny.
which is one of the reasons for casting Hayden. Lucas wanted to show that that trait was passed on to his son.
Lucas strayed from the format that made the original Star Wars a huge success: the mythic storyline that, by his own admission, he adopted from the work of Joseph Campbell. Campbell tapped into the "hard wired" mythos of every culture around the world and wrote the archetypal story, based on concepts such as the trickster, the mentor, the dark father, etc. Star Wars could not help but be a hit.
But when Lucas started playing up the individual elements that he thought would be popular, the franchise quickly descended into one marketing opportunity after another and bled the power out of the original myth.
You make it sound like the prequels were a failure.
#5 on the top 100 money making movies of all time: Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace - Lifetime Gross: $431.088 million
#17 Star Wars: Episode II - Attack Of The Clones - Lifetime Gross: $310.675 million
he leaves him to die on the shores of a lava lake. he probably just assumed that "it would work itself out", much like the bobs assumed fixing the payroll glitch would mean milton would show himself the door in Office Space.
It got significantly worse with the release of the "deluxe" version of Star Wars in '97. Man, was that awful. No cleaning up of the special effects, just a bunch of computerized cartoon characters thrown in. Oh yeah, and that stupid expanding ring coming out of nowhere when Alderaan and the Death Star were destroyed.
he also borrowed heavily from Hidden Fortress and The Seven Samurai. Wired Magazine's most recent issue traces the influences of other films on star wars in a sidebar article about lucas, who was the cover story.
Even that's doubtful. My family just watched the original. My seven year old was impressed. My ten year old thought most of it was laughable.
I have to admit, I was completely blown away in 1977, when I was 15. I have a different perspective, seeing it today, especially the "Force" mumbo jumbo. Otherwise, it's a fun adventure flick.
I know, I can't wait for that fight scene either. I think a lot of my excitement comes from my 9 y.o.'s anticipation!
Ya know, I thought that was different when I watched the "new" version.
Just found this, you'll get a kick out of it.....
there are bits and pieces of the fight scene available at the site i mentioned a few posts above. someone got the XBOX game and ripped the cutscenes to mpegs. there is also a clip from an MTV sneak preview. Wal-Mart has an exclusive sneak Preview tomorrow night, in their stores across the country.
The biggest problem with the first trilogy is the director. Lucas has managed to take decent to good performances by the cast and twist them into nothing. The whole love bit in TPM would have been good if he had just let the actors do their job. There is a bit of hope in this one since he called in Spielberg to help with some parts. The book was good, but so were the other books.
Sith happens.
It certainly had its good points, although it was a little on the juvenile side compared to the first movie (though nothing like what came after). Lines like "I don't know where you get your delusions, laser-brain" and "Laugh it up, fuzzball!" are just straight out of Saturday morning fare. But it was an entertaining film, without a doubt.
But where's Mr T?
The world wide gross for Star Wars movies equals the American gross, so take your numbers and double them. $650 million for a flop will sooth the tears caused by critical reviews.
And that has...what to do with his appearance in Episode IV? There's nothing in the original movie that was suggestive of that, nothing in the plot that even remotely hinged upon it. Like I said, totally insulting to the audience's intelligence. It's just thrown in there so the kiddies could say "Aw, cool!"
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