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.
Episode II was a failure. I have hopes for this next one, even though they're using the same (poor) actors in the lead roles.
That's simply not true. I had a friend who was a Sci-Fi buff who also liked "American Graffiti" and he gave me the book "Star Wars" to read about a year before the movie even came out. When it was released, back then the movie was just released in NY and LA. It was my senior year of high school, and we had to wait a couple of months before it came to Canton, Ohio. (They didn't release movies nationally on one day back then, much less globally).
The movie was NOT called "Episode IV" originally. Those of us who watched it many times in the theaters noticed the change when they made it. Lucas announced that the movie would be followed by two sequels, then three prequels, and then three more sequels.
In the original book, "Biggs" was a much more important character who was with Luke on Tatooine and was killed by Darth Vader during Luke's final run on the Death Star. Wedge wimped out before Biggs bought it.
George Lucas is either a clueless imbicile or a lying sack of faux-humility sh*t.
For some reason, I lean toward the latter.
And I recall hearing (back then) that there were actually 9 episodes in total. That "Star Wars" was the first episode of 3 trilogies.
Mark
Right, I read the original book. There was a lot more Biggs. The "rogue squadron" series of books features Biggs' cousin, Gavin as a major player. I also read a book about Han Solo that I think Lucas wrote from back in the day as well.
I was corrected in a couple posts after yours.
faux humility.
No reread my post.
We know from the first movie that Kenobi and Vader knew each other and had quite a history. There's not much in that movie which suggests that Chewbacca had any involvement in any of this.
Surely you are a mature adult and not taking this thread all that serious?
A little way into filming, she decided she sounded ridiculous, plus it wasn't making her any more regal-sounding. She figured that at 19, she might as well play up her youth to put herself in stark contrast with Peter Cushing (who, let's face it, has an accent that puts her effort to shame). So she ditched the accent.
Thanks for the info! You'd think they would have take care of that when they did the final sound cuts. So what's Natalie Portman's excuse? ;-)
Mr. Lucas doesn't have to worry about my $10. I've never seen the original.
wrongo, it was always entitled STAR WARS: Epispde IV A New Hope. Although the subtitle A New Hope never appeared on an promo materials, it always appeared in the openning crawl, leading to speculation by viewers that if this was episode 4 then there must be a 1,2, and 3 and with Vader alive at the end of A New Hope you just knew that #5 was coming.
You're asking the wrong question.
Better to ask, "What's God's excuse for having created Natalie Portman?"
Thank you sir for the information. I remember the re-release (but I thought it shortly before rather than after TESB). TESB was released as Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, and I remember the entertainment pages commenting that SW fans might wonder about the "Episode V" when this was clearly only Star Wars II. It was after that that SW was re-released as Episode IV. Thanks for finding and referencing an article.
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