Star Wars: For All Your PT, OT, ST, & AT-AT/ST Needs

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

Yes, of course, back when he did that he was still making ANH, he just wanted to make a movie and needed the effects. I mean, name a heavily VFX movie from 1980-2000 which didn't get some/all effects from ILM.

No disagreement.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

3 minutes ago, Werthead said:

There may be something in that Star Wars was very explicitly planned with sequels in mind that would continue story elements from the first film that were deliberately left hanging. That was less common at the time.

Lucas spent years developing that story before he ever shot frame of film. Future film makers who tackle that franchise should take note.

It's interesting that the latest series of Bond films have become much more serialized.

[polishgenius]

I feel like the main thing Star Wars did was not what it did as a movie or, entirely, what it influenced, but that it more-or-less created geek culture as we know it now, or at least solidified it as a money-making market creators could aim at. Like I know other things were around- LotR already existed by then of course, D&D had started a little while prior, the other films Wert mentioned were making SF more 'acceptable' - but SW seems like it was the first thing to create a really massive, active, community based around a franchise and its spinoffs and marketing tie-ins.

LotR despite being as big a phenomenon didn't have the same effect because,  it was a fairly static franchise, there wasn't much merch and although there were more works coming out with Christopher's involvement they obviously did not have the same appeal. Even in terms of its influence on genre, most of the fantasies we associate as 'Tolkienite' that created fantasy as we think of it now were post Star-Wars and in many cases (David Eddings in particular but to smaller extents almost anything with 'village boy with mysterious past saves the world' vibes) came as much from SW as LotR.

[Vaughn]

I was going to post that if Marvel had the drive/financing/ambition, the MCU could have taken the place of Star Wars in popular culture in terms of mass culture if they'd started in the late 70s but that raised the more interesting (to me) issue that I think a lot of Marvel characters have much more creative 'superhero' abilities compared to SW force users so the effects just weren't there. It's kind of funny how basic Force abilities are.

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Sequels were nothing new: James Bond was ten films in, Planet of the Apes was five films down and already complete and even Jaws 2 was in production when Star Wars came out. Superman 1 and 2 were already planned as back-to-back films before Star Wars was released.

There may be something in that Star Wars was very explicitly planned with sequels in mind that would continue story elements from the first film that were deliberately left hanging. That was less common at the time.

Only James Bond was planned that way. And it was based on a bookseries. James Bond was also incredibly unique at the time, and remains something kind of unique - a series that has continued for what, 60 years now? 

Again, Star Wars as a planned set of multiple items was pretty new. Nowadays it's common, with the Star Wars idea of 'first introduce cool things, then have 2 and 3 be a two part planned trilogy' as an even more common pattern - but back in the 1970s standalones were the absolute rule with very few exceptions. 

Furthermore, Star Wars did something most other properties as a rule didn't do (with again the vague exception of James Bond) - it created a franchise. It created not just the movie but the tie-ins - the comics, the toys, the video games, the books. The marketing in Star Wars was something that just didn't exist until Star Wars came around and created it. Again, nowadays this is the norm, especially for anything that involves kids. But in 1977? There was nothing like it. 

[Vaughn]

I don't think Empire was planned already when ANH came out, was it?

[Kalbear]

13 minutes ago, Vaughn said:

I don't think Empire was planned already when ANH came out, was it?

Empire itself? No, it was that weird Mind's Eye thing, IIRC. But sequels of some nature were planned for Star Wars. A general outline of the universe and where things were going was planned. Hell, Darth Vader being Luke's father wasn't planned, Leia being his sister didn't happen until RotJ, etc. Lots of things weren't planned as far as plots go.

But this being something that could keep going? A shared universe of various things? All of that was part of Lucas' vision. 

[Werthead]

8 minutes ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

Empire itself? No, it was that weird Mind's Eye thing, IIRC. But sequels of some nature were planned for Star Wars. A general outline of the universe and where things were going was planned. Hell, Darth Vader being Luke's father wasn't planned, Leia being his sister didn't happen until RotJ, etc. Lots of things weren't planned as far as plots go.

But this being something that could keep going? A shared universe of various things? All of that was part of Lucas' vision. 

Yup. Lucas had a vague vision of a bigger story. What that vision actually was, changed every five minutes (even the number of episodes, from 6 to 9 to 12 depending on the day) and completely new ideas came out of left field. Gary Kurtz actually quit the franchise in disgust because he thought Lucas "sold out" by not doing the original "dark" plan for Episode VI - where Han dies and the Falcon is destroyed, Vader is killed but the Emperor and the Empire survive - in favour of doing stuff he could make toys out of (the Ewoks were supposed by a Wookie slave uprising, and there wasn't a second Death Star in favour of a direct assault on Coruscant).

Some ideas Lucas came up with very early on stuck though, like Obi-Wan wounding Vader (not then Anakin) in a fight on a lava planet (I think called Mustafar even at that point).

On the sequel thing, it's also worth noting that although sequels had been a thing for a while, there was generally a steep drop-off in them. The idea of a sequel making more money or even "almost as much" money as the original was new (ESB and RotJ made less money than ANH, but the drop-off wasn't as big as it had been in earlier film franchises).

Although it is worth noting the shared universe - the Expanded Universe - didn't really exist. The Marvel Comics and the very small number of novels released in the 1970s and 1980s were not regarded as canon at all. The Expanded Universe didn't really kick in until Heir to the Empire was released in 1991 (though some of the preceding books were retconned into it later on, and they used the 1987 West End Games RPG as a source reference which also retroactively made it canon).

[Ran]

You basically have two films and two filmmakers that create the entire "blockbuster event" era of Hollywood,  -- Steven Spielberg with Jaws, and especially George Lucas with Star Wars because of the coordination of marketing and merchandise. There's a directly line between those two films and pretty much every blockbuster ever made, right through to the MCU.

 And yeah, as others say, Alien started filming specifically because of Star Wars, per O'Bannon -- Fox wanted to do some sort of a "spaceship film" and his script was the only thing they had on their desks that fit the bill. 

 

[Kalbear]

What's funny to me is that other than Indiana Jones - which Lucas was a part of - Spielberg really didn't show any real interest in doing franchises. He'd start one (ish) and then let others do it, but he was fine just beginning it and moving on, often with significantly lower quality. The biggest one like that is Jurassic Park obviously, but Jaws also fits the bill. Otherwise Spielberg was almost never interested in doing more than one movie, and that one movie was almost always self-contained without much in the way of future hooks. 

Spielberg was definitely the main starter of the blockbuster. I think that's inarguable given what Jaws was like. 

[Ran]

2 minutes ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

Spielberg was definitely the main starter of the blockbuster. I think that's inarguable given what Jaws was like. 

It depends on how you look at it.

Star Wars was sold with Lucas attached to direct in 1973, the same year the Jaws rights were purchased and Spielberg was signed to direct. No one knew what kind of hit Jaws would be, and the degree to which Jaws's success led to an increase in support and budget for Star Wars isn't very clear to me. Lucas originally conceived it as an $8 million film, which was like twice the budget Jaws eventually ended up with. And then the studio actually tried to get him down to $5 million, barely more than Jaws for a film with a lot more budget requirements in terms of sets and effects, so they weren't necessarily thinking they had another blockbuster on their hands.

So, yeah, Jaws was the first modern blockbuster, but it feels like it took Star Wars to blow the door wide open, and to make studios realize there was a lot more money-making potential in films than they had realized. Which, funnily, leads us to the convergence in Alien, a film made because of Star Wars making science fiction films hot... but which was pitched to studios as "Jaws in space". Best of both worlds.

[DaveSumm]

32 minutes ago, Werthead said:

the original "dark" plan for Episode VI - where Han dies and the Falcon is destroyed, Vader is killed but the Emperor and the Empire survive - in favour of doing stuff he could make toys out of (the Ewoks were supposed by a Wookie slave uprising, and there wasn't a second Death Star in favour of a direct assault on Coruscant).

Holy fuck that sounds so much better than RotJ. And would’ve given us WAY more to work with for sequels. I do enjoy watching RotJ, but on paper it really is pretty weak. Act One: undo a plot point that only existed in case Harrison Ford didn’t come back. Act Two: Ewoks. Act Three: Luke goes back to face Vader, exactly as he did in Empire. Rest of the cast: remakes A New Hope.

JJ gets a lot of stick for inexplicably resurrecting the Emperor, but I do struggle to think of what else would bind these films together as a complete work. It’s an insidious problem with the sequels from the outset: are they really sequels? Or just some stuff that happens later? Did the six films need sequels? To address what?

[Lord Varys]

The entire 'used look' of Alien was influenced by Star Wars, no matter when exactly the movie was contracted.

Spielberg did do his share for the blackbuster industry with Jaws, but if you actually look how at Lucas' direct or indirect influence on the process of film-making, especially in but not limited to movies relying heavily on VXF, then you really cannot overestimate the man's impact.

I mean, it is not exactly akin to the invention of sound fim or moving cameras and the like, but it comes pretty close to that. Even back for ANH they first use computers to synchronize shots as to better repeat them (for all those VFX shots in the Death Star trench). All that had a great influence on how you do this kind of thing, and that was before they properly could use CGI.

46 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Yup. Lucas had a vague vision of a bigger story. What that vision actually was, changed every five minutes (even the number of episodes, from 6 to 9 to 12 depending on the day) and completely new ideas came out of left field. Gary Kurtz actually quit the franchise in disgust because he thought Lucas "sold out" by not doing the original "dark" plan for Episode VI - where Han dies and the Falcon is destroyed, Vader is killed but the Emperor and the Empire survive - in favour of doing stuff he could make toys out of (the Ewoks were supposed by a Wookie slave uprising, and there wasn't a second Death Star in favour of a direct assault on Coruscant).

Yeah, that was when Leia wasn't Luke's sister yet, and the later movies would revolve around them looking for her, and training her, and all that, Curiously enough, the Emperor would only return for the final movie, which means it was probably better that those movies weren't made.

I think the Death Stars (plural) were always supposed to be in the orbit of Had Abbadon (Lucas' original name of the capital of the Empire), but they decided not to use that because they couldn't properly depict the city planet properly. Palpatine weirdly rambling on about 'the sactuary moon' in ROTJ is a remnant of the old plot where one of Had Abbadon's moons - which later became the forest moon of Endor - was supposed to be a sanctuary moon with nature intact, kind of like a reservation. And the Wookiees would have been living there like the Ewoks did in the end. Could have been better with Wookiees instead of Ewoks and, especially, with Coruscant showing up in ROTJ.

46 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Some ideas Lucas came up with very early on stuck though, like Obi-Wan wounding Vader (not then Anakin) in a fight on a lava planet (I think called Mustafar even at that point).

Yes, that goes back to a story conference talk in 1980 or so, I think. The core scene - Obi-Wan confronting 'Mrs. Skywalker' about what her husband had become also made it directly into ROTS as 'the scene which (was supposed to) expain(s) everything', namely Obi-Wan confronting Padmé about Anakin before she goes to Mustafar.

Palpatine being a guy who played a nice guy to get elected and stuff was also always there. It is also mentioned there. The idea that people were giving up democracy rather than there being a coup was also always there.

It is rather intriguing, by the way, that as per the novelization of 'Willow' which I read recently, Queen Bavmorda is basically a female version of Palpatine - a young sorceress vying with Fin Raziel for the attention of the prince of Tir Asleen, who hides her ambition for power behind a pleasant demeanor until she has amassed enough power to become a tyrant. This goes right down to the original concept of Palpatine's physical corruption. Bavmorda is supposed to look regal with a certain grace and beauty, but at the end of the story - when she goes through the ritual to destroy the magical savior child - she decays physically due to the evil of the magic she works. You can even see that happening in the movie, although it is not nearly as prominent as with Palpatine in ROTJ.

There I think Lucas should have given Palpatine some kind of magical Sith ritual for ROTS to make him look ugly rather than going with that weird reflected lightning stuff.

Anakin being Vader was something he came up with when they made TESB.

20 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

Holy fuck that sounds so much better than RotJ. And would’ve given us WAY more to work with for sequels. I do enjoy watching RotJ, but on paper it really is pretty weak. Act One: undo a plot point that only existed in case Harrison Ford didn’t come back. Act Two: Ewoks. Act Three: Luke goes back to face Vader, exactly as he did in Empire. Rest of the cast: remakes A New Hope.

Yes, the OT doesn't have much good plot or ingenious thinking, although for the personal confrontation stuff I prefer ROTJ over ANH anytime. That movie basically dies after Ben's death. Afterwards, things are just boring as hell.

But it is in part due to limitations in what they can do that Death Star plot is rehashed. Originally, the DS was not supposed to be in ANH as per Lucas' earlier treatment of the story.

20 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

JJ gets a lot of stick for inexplicably resurrecting the Emperor, but I do struggle to think of what else would bind these films together as a complete work. It’s an insidious problem with the sequels from the outset: are they really sequels? Or just some stuff that happens later? Did the six films need sequels? To address what?

Well, the treatment Lucas gives for his ST idea introduce a bunch of new themes - no new Empire but rather remnants of the old Empire (which makes sense and is what the EU also did). The new big villains are Sith-controlled crime syndicates which makes as sense in the aftermath of a galactic civil war and a decade-long dictatorship.

And then, as I said in the old thread, any movie series making Leia the main character and big hero is fine with me - she didn't shine particularly bright in the OT, but her being a politician would mean she could have been the one to usher into the new era. It could have made this a worthy new story, were we could have gotten new elements and some old ones.

What we got instead was a disjointed mess rehashing the old story. The Jedi didn't properly return, there was no Republic, and the Empire continued under a different name and, in the end, under the command of the same big bad.

The very fact that neither Leia nor Han did get any new roles in those movies shows how completely unoriginal they were. Their story didn't continue. They remained the rebel general and the smuggler for hire. And Luke was just a huge waste of time.

[Ran]

 

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And would’ve given us WAY more to work with for sequels. I do enjoy watching RotJ, but on paper it really is pretty weak. Act One: undo a plot point that only existed in case Harrison Ford didn’t come back.

Well, if you knew why things were written as they were, sure. But from the perspective of pure narrative structure, Han frozen in carbonite is a terrific cliffhanger to motivate the opening of the next film. There's no immediate, obvious action that suggests itself from Luke learning that Vader is his father, but Han in carbonite in the hands of a galactic crime boss -- oh yeah.

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Act Two: Ewoks.

They're cannibals! 

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Act Three: Luke goes back to face Vader, exactly as he did in Empire.

In Empire he went to rescue his friends, not to confront Vader, and then in confronting Vader he attempted to defeat him. In Return of the Jedi, he actually sought Vader out with the intention of turning him back to the light side of the Force. Thematically and in terms of character progression, these are very different, IMO. Luke's entire story in RotJ is way more mature.

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JJ gets a lot of stick for inexplicably resurrecting the Emperor, but I do struggle to think of what else would bind these films together as a complete work.

I'd think the struggle of Leia to secure the future of the New Republic on the one hand and Luke's efforts to repopulate the Jedi Order on the other hand would dovetail nicely together to create a through-line in the Skywalker story, since their father was instrumental in bringing down both the Old Republic and the Jedi Order. 

Timothy Zahn understood it. But of course, he could set it just a few years after the movies, whereas Disney had a big gap they had to deal with and a strong desire not to recast the main actors, so he had a sizable advantage.

[felice]

1 hour ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

Empire itself? No, it was that weird Mind's Eye thing, IIRC.

I think Splinter of the Mind's Eye was the low budget option, if they couldn't afford to do anything on a bigger scale, rather than ever being the primary plan. Obviously Star Wars turned out to be successful enough not to need to resort to the budget option.

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

ESB and RotJ made less money than ANH, but the drop-off wasn't as big as it had been in earlier film franchises

And with repeat viewings, ANH had the advantage of a head start, and a lot of people saw it again because of ESB. For a sequel to do better than the original is pretty darn tricky.

[Werthead]

10 minutes ago, felice said:

And with repeat viewings, ANH had the advantage of a head start, and a lot of people saw it again because of ESB. For a sequel to do better than the original is pretty darn tricky.

Yup, and it's worth noting that ANH stayed ahead of ESB and RotJ because of multiple re-releases through 1977, 78 and 79, as well as the official big re-release in 1980 ahead of ESB coming out (the 1980 version of ANH is when "Episode IV: A New Hope" got added to the title crawl). ESB and RotJ didn't get any re-releases at all, I think, before 1997. 

2 minutes ago, Mr Meeseeks said:

Kasdan is the one who came up with the idea of Vader as Luke’s father. Lucas had very little input into Empire.

That's not correct. George Lucas added the "twist" of Vader as Luke's father in the second draft of the script in March 1978, which he had to write himself after his original writer Leigh Brackett died. Lucas wrote the second, third and fourth drafts of the ESB script after Brackett's first draft.

Kasdan wasn't hired until a few months later. The bulk of the final film was there, Kasdan was more important for his dialogue touching-up, and Kershner permitted a lot of improv on set (such as the "I love you," "I know" bit that was improvised by Ford).

[Rippounet]

31 minutes ago, Ran said:

They're cannibals! 

Anthropophagous, if we want to be accurate.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

11 hours ago, Rhom said:

That was the real crime of TLJ in my book.  The decision to launch Solo in the May window right after the thud of TLJ robbed us of more Solo.  I really liked it and what they were setting up even if I didn't recognize the lead character as Han Solo.

The marketing was all messed up too. Ideally, a spring release needs a teaser by Thanksgiving and a full trailer in theaters by Christmas. The first teaser didn't come until the Super Bowl.

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

That's not correct. George Lucas added the "twist" of Vader as Luke's father in the second draft of the script in March 1978, which he had to write himself after his original writer Leigh Brackett died. Lucas wrote the second, third and fourth drafts of the ESB script after Brackett's first draft.

The Brackett draft was finally revealed to a broader public a couple of years back, and it was quite remarkable how much of the finished movie was in even then.

The improvisation stuff on set had little effect on the story as a whole ... although one has to say that things like Han's 'I know' really are what makes the stuff great. But that's basically just actors knowing what their characters are about.

What makes TESB a great movie is mainly the personal dynamics between the characters, the overall chase setting which creates a lot of tension, the Vader revelation, and, of course, the double cliffhanger for both Han, and a sense, the Luke-Vader dynamic.

ROTJ could hardly top that, considering it would close on a positive note and have to resolve all the earlier stuff. But still, the Luke-Vader-Emperor confrontation is great, as is the overall plan with its twists and turns.

I guess it would have been better with Wookiees instead of Ewoks, but that's just a question of taste.

Speaking about this - I just realized how much of super weapon rehash TROS was, with the Emperor making exactly the same mistake with Rey and her Resistance than he made with Luke and the Rebellion. People recycling the same plot so the very same character can plot the same thing? That's just stupid on so many levels.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

I wouldn't blame Terio or JJ. Between producers giving notes and staff writers making daily script changes, they had an army of people screwing that up.  Supposedly the whole process was very frustrating for them.  I don't think it's a coincidence that JJ went to WB and Terio has never spoken of it (to my knowledge).