Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Star Wars - Episode III thread

There has been a lot of noise lately from the Star Wars camp. Being a huge fan, I thought that I migth start a thread where we could discuss some of the "goings on" in the galaxy far, far away.

To start - what do you guys think of the new title : "Revenge of the Sith"?

Personally, I think that the title is cool - reminiscent of ROTJ.

Also - how many of you will buy the DVDs when they come out on September 21?

Any comments on the new changes that are going to be made? Any thoughts about how the soundtrack will sound, or the video will look?

I'd like to hear some of your thoughts on these issues.

I can't get into all the pre movie hype, but wake me in May when it comes out and I'll go see it.

i am half-and-half on this movie.. we obviously know exactly whats got to happen to set up the original star wars, so there isnt a lot of suspense there.. i have no doubt that george lucas will pull out all the stops and make this the most extravagent one yet.. but, does he really need to?? to be honest, the last movie relied WAY TOO much on graphics, and the story just kinda stunk.. it was a huge disappointment to me.

i like the title, no probs with that.

i will wait on the dvds til they are all avail.. in 2-3 years they will come out with a 6-8 disc set of the whole series, for $200 bucks, and i will go buy it..

sound will be good, lucas always is.. much like spielberg..

i will go see the movie at the theater, no doubt.. i just hope i am not let down like i was with the clones.

bigjohn

I'm really looking forward to the Original Trilogy release in September. I'll admit that I'm disappointed that only the Special Editions will be available, but I'll take anything I can get at this point. I'll get off on the improved picture and sound, and skip past the cheesy Jabba scene in Ep. IV and ridiculous musical number in Ep. VI if I have to.

I have low expectations for Return of the Sith, given my disappointments in Eps. I and II. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised, though!

I just long for the days when George Lucas didn't have the all tools he says he needed to make the movies the way that he wanted to. The prequel trilogy is apparently Star Wars as he wants it. Personally, I didn't mind when he had to make up for lack of visual effects with trivial things like "plot", "character development" and "actors". *end rant*

I agree. It's very like Return of the Jedi. I'm guessing that is intentional. George Lucas can do what ever he likes with the movies. They are his. But, being a star wars geek I have been disappointed in the prequels. Jar Jar being the epitome of where I think GL went wrong!
But, I will see it in the theaters and I will purchase the Episodes 4,5,6 on DVD the day they come out. Yep. I'm George's B***H.
Episode 4 was the very first movie I saw.

jr

I think the new movie title sounds just as lame as the title of the next Harry Potter book. The first time I heard it on the news I kept going what?...what?

Well I have to admit that eventually I will have all the movies. It's sort of like some strange addiction, you watch and enjoy two movies of the series and then for whatever reason you have to buy the rest of the set even though you know it's nothing more than overhyped over directed digital doo-doo.

On a more postive note I get down on my knees ever ynight and give thanks to god that Lucas had absolutely nothing at all to do with The Lord of the Rings.

Ford! What happened to your avatar? I like the way the headlights twinkled

Since that megalomaniac Lucas is once again calling all the shots, my guess is that it will be just as disappointing and lifeless as Episodes I and II.

I can't wait for the original trilogy, despite GL's intent to rewrite history. HAN, NOT GREEDO, SHOOTS FIRST!

Are you sure that "Sith" isn't a typo?

I have to agree 100% with BigJohn. I will see it in the theatres but I certainly won't be sleeping out for tickets or anything fanatical like that. Episode 2 was thouroughly dissapointing because I had heard prior to seeing it that it was supposed to be darker and more plot driven like ESB - but in reality couldn't hold a candle.

I likely won't buy the DVDs until there is a complete Ep 1-6 available either - but I'll likely buy both versions of Ep 1-3.

I was reading this morning that they fixed the Jabba sequence in ANH (IV). They used The Phantom Menace CG Jabba in its stead.

And Gredo still shoots first, but they revisited the scene, made Han's movements more fluid, and it appeaers that they shoot at the same time.

(SIDE NOTE) - Apparently, first agressors were supposed to all die in Lucas' vision of Star Wars. Initially, Han was going to die in Return of the Jedi - killed by a bounty hunter who catches up to him and kills him out of revenge. Then, after the character became so beloved, he changed his mind. It bothered him taht Han was the initial agressor in the cantina, so he changed it. Then, bam! Greedo shoots first becomes the rallying cry for Star Wars purists (of which I am not) and opponents of post facto tinkering.

In addition - you've probably heard rumors that Hayden Christiansen will appear in Ep. 6, next to Obi Wan. Well, it's true. They edited out the guy who plays the older Obi Wan and pasted Hayden's face onto his. George claims that you take the last form that you were in as a Jedi when you die - and since Anakin was Hayden (at 25 or so), the change was an obvious way to tie together the two trilogies.

OH, OH, also - Timuera Morrison - the actor who played Jango Fett - yeah, he redubbed all of Boba Fett's dialogue as well as every clone/storm trooper's dialogue too, for consistency.

OK, my Star Wars geekhood must come out...

Have to agree w/ most of the posters, the last 2 "prequels" (man, I hate that word) were pretty disappointing. I will, however, get the DVD Trilogy in September. Hopefully, the PQ will be better than the Indiana Jones DVDs that came out...I was disappointed w/ that.

I'm not a rabid fan, never camped out for a movie, don't attend comicon or the fantasy shows. But I have read almost all the related Star Wars novels (none of direct movie-based books). Stories by Timothy Zahn and Michael Stackpole have been quite good and keep the Star Wars Universe interesting. Though my daughter has made it difficult to keep up the reading lately... The books are much more interesting than any of the new movies.

Don't know if anyone caught the tour years ago, but there was a cross country Star Wars tour where they brought around all the props from the first 3 movies. The Darth Vader costume was cool, the chest plate was made from cheap radio shack parts but back then it looked high tech. They had models of the Death Star, Millenium Falcon, concept drawings, costumes, etc. VERY cool to see it all live.

OT: I liked JK Rowlings recent comment about a rumor of her writing a prequel to the Harry Potter novels. Basically she said, "There will be no other books. This is not Star Wars."

I saw the Star Tours at the Smithsonian here in D.C. a long time ago. It was really neat to see catcher's gear painted white and used as leg armor for the sodliers. And the star destroyers were just cannibalized aircraft carrier models. Really neat stuff. And the speeders used in the forest of Endor in ROTJ were made out of lawn mower parts. It all looks very high tech on screen, but up close, it had a certain independent feel and spirit to it. It looked like they went to a junk yard (or their garages), and pulled stuff out and said, hey, this would make a cool gun, or whatever.

This might be what it missing from the newer flicks. There is so much hype that LFL has to go to great extremes to make things interesting. I think that the movies are too micro managed, worrying about whether a character's gun looks right or whether his vehicle is cool enough, etc., and whether the digital eyelashes are real enough instead of whether we like what the guns, and vehicles and characters are doing, saying, shooting, etc.

As much as I love the Star Wars movies (even the latest ones), I have to admit that the CG is a little out of hand. Note that on this latest film, which will take place on five different planets, at least, they did no on location shooting. That means taht all of the environments (100%) will be made from a computer.

When one guy sits in front a computer for 500 hours looking at one scene getting it perfect, sometimes it is too perfect. The parts that I loved about the old Star Wars movies was the fact that the robots DIDN'T work. They mostly stood there, or moved very statically, etc. Now, they move so fluidly as to be unbelievable. I'd prefer practical robots that didn't work to CG ones that did really cool stuff any day of the week. It added to the charm, IMO

Speak of the devil (or Sith!):

Atom Films

I was so rabid a SW fan before Episode I came out that I actually thought it kicked ass. Reality finnaly kicked me in the head (OUCH) after seeing Episode II. I walked out of the theater and was SO PISSED OFF at how much it sucked. I then realized how Ep1 wasn't really all that great either.

My only conclusion to all the SW suckage is that when Lucas writes/directs it WILL suck. I believe I heard before that Lucas directed EpIV (and I/II) but not V and VI. If this is indeed true it would truely explain a lot. Digging deeper, what has Lucas actually done that was really great? I'd credit Speilberg on Indiana series... donno

I'm just pissed cause Empire and even Return of the Jedi were really damn cool. A New Hope did a good job on setting up the story. The story thru I and II has been good, its just the delivery is horrid. I didn't think anything could be worse than Jar Jar till I saw that *chemistry* between Ani and the Princess.

/agrivated

I'm with you 100% on this one, inane.

I guess that I should have expected this thread to degenerate into a discussion of our frustrations over the prequels thus far. I am guilty of this too.

It's strange how our sense of nostalgia (which I once saw defined as an irrational longing for the past) gets so upset when LFL (Lucas Film Ltd.) changes stuff. I wonder what it would be like to be 12 or 13 again, and see all six movies for the first time. I wonder if we don't expect too much from these movies (which were all pretty light, as far as acting and dialogue went) now that we've been exposed to so much great action/sci-fi/adventure. I wonder if we long to be transported to a simpler time when debating Boba Fett's origin actually meant something, only to be let down when the genre fails to satisfy this need.

I guess, my question is, do we expect too much from these movies? Are we being too hard on them? Or are they really the tripe that people say they are? I don't think that I can answer that question, being a fan of the series. I almost block out the bad parts and only focus on what I like about the series. Those others who don't like the new movies, I think, in large part, are unfairly harsh on them. I wonder what a kid with a fresh perspective would think about these flicks.

1. Yes, the hard core fans do expect to much.

2. I think episodes 4-6 are built up in everyone's mind to be so much better then they really were. Yes, they were good movies, but I don't think most of you would like them as much if you watching them now for the first time and only knew about the hype behind them without having seem them for yourself when you were younger.

Capn & Zarak,

I'm with you guys on this. I think we all forget the fact that the originals were released about 25 years ago. In my case, I was still picking my nose (not that I'd ever do that now ) and had just gotten over my infatuation with Smurfs (man, that opens me up for some abuse). When I saw Star Wars, I was hooked....it was the most amazing thing that I had ever seen....nothing would ever compare. That's the key right there...nothing will ever compare with that feeling we all had when we heard Darth Vader for the first time. Twenty-five plus years have passed and we now live in the age of the Matrix and LOTR. Is it any surprise that we can't get that same rush we got from the original Star Wars movies?....it's like being a junkie racing to get back to that original rush. When I put myself back in the mind of an 5 or 10 year old, I think about what I would have thought when seeing Episode I and II......"OH MY GOD!!!! This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen!!!!! Nothing will ever compare!!!!" Perhaps we secretly miss those innocent and exciting days....I know I do.

I think there is some merit to the age thing, but even if we were only 5, 10, 15, 20 years old when we first saw Star Wars, that movie(s) was pretty revolutionary. I'd say you have to place them (4-6) in time as classics, maybe not in the same way as a flick like Gone with the wind, but in some fashion I'd say its amoung those.

Thus why not expect the prequels to be quality movies. They just don't come close to that. Either Lucas is pulling the biggest Hollywood prank ever and making these suck or he's just lost any talent he ever had.

First off, Inane, congrats on the speaker contest. Very cool!

I also agree w/ the age thing. Perhaps we've all been desensitized by all the technology and CG, all of that didn't exist in the mid-70's. Back then sci fi movies were pretty crude, so the slightest technology from Radio Shack looked cool. I'm sure some of the younger kids probably like the new trilogy better than the first one, just cause it looks cooler.

Here's the worst "age" reality check that I got related to Star Wars. I was talking about Star Wars w/ some coworkers, including one who is in his mid/late 20's. It came up that the first time he watched Star Wars was on VHS at his daycare. DOH! Obviously, he was not one of the many of us in San Francisco who stood in the line around the block to watch it at the Coronet on Van Ness...