I don't believe in New Years Resolutions as such, but there are a list of things I must address before we get too far into the year of our LORD... 2008! (My dad warned me about this.)
For a few weeks now, I have been meaning to start building a website for a film industry friend of mine. Admittedly, I have a little too much on my plate right now. Time management I am pretty good at but there comes a point where some peas have to be brushed off the plate. And I love peas.
I talk or reference the CBC a bit too much... made the mistake late last night of watching a few minutes of The Hour. George Stroumboulopoulos really does have to be replaced. I have commented about this before. The show itself is a fine idea but The Corp must fine tune. Fine tune, please.
Thanks to all the folk who have commented on my THE PREQUELIZER posting from a few days ago. Earlier I mentioned that if you want to see divisiveness, just talk about film criticism. Now I modify that to include criticism about the Star Wars prequel films.
Passion is in fashion. And when you knock down Episodes 1 - 3, you get a perpetual motion machine happening.
Those so-called prequel films should be put to good use: All elements from the infamous three -- that includes original films, tapes, audio recordings, and so on -- should be bundled up and dropped into a shipping harbour to serve as a sort of blockship.
I knew there was a good use for that junk. Saves dumping it in landfill... although that is just as efficient.
... and I just dig that Eddie Wood dialogue! (The difference is Plan 9 From Outer Space is a very watchable film. It's a good thing Lucas did not know about "solarbonite". Imagine.)
I'm just kiddin' around. Good for you if you derive pleasure from The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revekldnglga.....
3 comments:
(I tried to correct a typo after the last post of this. I'll just leave the rest of the errors in.)
What is left to say about the Star Wars prequels that hasn't been said before? Usually I don't get drawn into the discussion anymore unless I take the bait of some inexactitude. Are they pure garbage? I may wish they had been. George Lucas hired all the right people except for his own jobs. When some of us needed to be inspired by the moral of "believe in your crazy ideas even when nobody else gets it" we had biographies like Skywalking to read. But the man who married his editor and built the first trilogy overshadows the divorced Lucas with fifty percent of his wealth gone still building Skywalker Ranch an all the spin-off services that kept Lucasfilm afloat through less successful projects like The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and Radioland Murders. Now budding filmmakers have a cautionary tale about what can go wrong when God writes a screenplay.
I loved Bill Moyers interviewing Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth series when I finally saw it. I wonder whose idea it was to hold the interviews in a library at Skywalker Ranch itself, which looks much like any other reading room nice as it is, to create the perfect social context in which to mention the Star Wars films and George Lucas' master storyteller status. But I had not actually seen those interviews until 2000 by which time it had a hollow ring. The Phantom Menace got Lucasfilm Limited firmly into the black, but imagine what it could have done if it had lived up to the Star Wars brand name.
Excesive creature cut-aways aside, Return of the Jedi delivered the goods for me. It wasn't a dip like Godfather III was to its own saga (Godfather III being quite a watchable film, to be fair, it "pulls you right back in.) But Episode I: The Phantom Menace was not the first letdown. Radioland Murders was a manic mess of mugging, and before that there had been an award-winning TV Movie The Ewok Adventure and its less putrid sequel (if you like your Ewoks with a dash of Wilfred Brimpley). I have a slight compusive disorder, so like many fans I set about rewriting The Phantom Menace as Lucas should have done it and I'll never get those hours and hours and hours back.
Attack of the Clones could have gone from a three star movie to four out of five if the editors and writers followed the rule of entering a scene as late as possible and leaving as early as possible. Unfortunately, Lucas had already entered the Star Wars universe at the proper time - where the 1977 film begins. I at least appreciated that Attack was darker in spirit and not so kiddie-proofed. That might have colored my reaction. More recently I watched part of it in a video equipment store - Jango Fett and young Boba walking to Obi Wan with a long-necked creature present - and it just seemed so direct-to-video.
Revenge of the Sith played great for me first time I saw it. The action scenes again went on a little too long, but at least the dialogue director this time allowed Hayden and Natalie to toss away some of their lines with fake laughs instead of waxen sincerety. The film contains a dubious accomplishment: a surprise for even the most ardent fans steeped in Star Wars lore, like myself. This may be a spoiler, I warn you. I e-mailed a childhood friend some dialogue Princess Leia had with Luke in Return of the Jedi about her mother being, "very beautiful and kind, but sad" which suggested that she lived with her for awhile. Well, surprise!! She lives long enough to name her infants Luke and Leia. It's the most touching and moving continuity error of all time, and the most avoidable.
Meanwhile, as an afterthought, Lucasfilm hired the Samurai Jack director to crank out "Clone Wars" animations and pretty much kept their noses out of it. Communication between both camps was a problem in fact. But after seeing the two volumes of "Clone Wars" animations it is almost maddening how much more fun it is than the prequel features. The same can be said for clips from the related videogames, where the real money is with LucasArts.
There is a good chance Indiana Jones IV will be lots of fun, but mainly because of Spielberg. There might not be as much quality control on the Lucas end. But I wouldn't want to attack him. Coppola is seduced by ambiguity and Lucas is seduced by money and responsibility to his empire. Whether there is hubris in either case and recent work of a given filmmaker might not be well-received, I feel bad slamming someone who made even one great movie let alone a handful.
Lucas is a producer, in his DNA, a business man. But he is not unlike many producers who make bad films by hiring themselves as writer or director, while genuinely good writers or directors have to become producers by default. He has supported a lot of talented people, so I wouldn't want to crap on him. It just goes to show that even someone very smart and influential can have a bitch of a time crafting a decent story.
The Star Wars Holiday Special was one thing, no more Canon than the Donny and Marie show Luke/Leia skit (ironically the one show that got it right, at least casting wise). I try not to think about the prequels, and it's alarming to think that instead of disregarding that timeline, there are full novels about medichlorians and Padme and Anakin and Jar Jar. I might pick up one of those hardcovers just to bash myself in the head with it. Instead of being an unfinished symphony, Star Wars is broken.
Just found this clip from a Vanity Fair online interview with George Lucas, relating to Indy IV but touching upon the prequals.
Excuse the paste; It may or may not be clear who is talking, the interviewer or Lucas. But it likely will. As for the difference between the prequels and the Original Trilogy. . . My God! Is it really just a matter of being 10 in the late seventies as opposed to 10 in the late nineties?
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How did you feel about the reception to Revenge of the Sith? And did you complete the story to your satisfaction?
I’m happy that the whole thing is finished, finally, so that was very satisfying, to have it complete and in one piece. It was a great sense of completion. I was happy with how it turned out—as well as I could have hoped. The reception is always lukewarm for those movies, so that’s not new.
There were a lot of great reviews mixed in.
I notice that people only remember all the good reviews. The only one that got better reviews than that and moved the needle slightly toward good reviews was Empire. That was the least successful of the movies.
In box office?
Yes. The most successful, in terms of worldwide box office, was Phantom Menace. So that’s the number one. [Laughs.]
Kids prefer the prequel trilogy.
People who are over 40 love [Episodes] IV, V, and VI and hate I, II, and III. Younger people like I, II, and III and don’t like IV, V, and VI, or they like I, II, and III better and think IV, V, and VI are kind of boring and slow. And of course the older people say, “Oh, I, II, and III—it’s too jittery, too fast, too complicated, it’s too digital,” or whatever they want to say. But definitely one generation has grabbed hold of one of them, and the other generation has grabbed hold of the next one. One of the key characters that helped us realize what was going on was Jar Jar Binks, because the kids that are under 10 years old, he’s one of their favorite characters. For people over 40, they cannot stand him—it’s a hate thing. You know, they’ve always been for 12-year-olds, and that’s never changed. People don’t want to think of it that way. They want to think those films are for grown-ups. Even though they were 10 years old when they saw it, it’s still very important to them, so, for them, it’s a grown-up movie, as opposed to a kids’ movie. The pre–Jar Jar Binks was 3PO. Everybody hated 3PO. I mean, it was like they couldn’t stand him. It really had to do with his character. They don’t like his character, and they don’t like Jar Jar Binks—but they’re not designed to be likeable characters.
They’re comic relief.
Well, they’re comic relief, and they’re kind of annoying, but they’re designed to be like that.
They try to put the brakes on the action.
Yeah. Lethal Weapon, I know a lot of people who don’t like Joe Pesci in the Lethal Weapon movies—I love Joe Pesci, I think he was a great asset to that movie, but he’s not a very likeable character. People don’t realize that things are done for a lot of different reasons. But, hey, in the end, I’m very happy with it, and that’s what I care about.
I like the change in tone between the two trilogies. The second trilogy is dense.
It’s also about young people. I knew I was in trouble when I started that, when I started with a 10-year-old. If I was working with a studio, that would never happen. But that’s the story, and I’m going to tell the story. A lot of people look at it and say, “Those things are no-brainers. They’re always going to make money,” but at the time it was 50-50 whether it was going to be what it turned out to be, which was successful, or More American Graffiti, which was not successful. You just never know. Making an assumption that a film is going to be a giant hit is a dangerous assumption.
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