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Author Topic: I'm a Star Wars  (Read 40863 times)

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Mothra

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Re: I'm a Star Wars
« Reply #200 on: February 29, 2012, 02:37:22 PM »

Also at some point I'm probably goign to buy CG Clone Wars (TV series) on Blu-Ray whenever Amazon does their "Discounting shit selling DVDs & BDs to get rid of them" thing.
Is the CG Movie any good?

I have yet to catch any part of the CG series that was not unforgivingly mediocre. It is actually really really true to the feel of the prequels, in that it makes all of the same mistakes over and over, all the time.

Granted, I have only seen three episodes, but it is very strongly a kid's show, in the truest sense of the title.
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Ziiro

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Re: I'm a Star Wars
« Reply #201 on: February 29, 2012, 02:40:56 PM »

The only episode in the series I can really suggest is the final episode of the first season. (S1E22 Hostage Crisis) It's pretty watchable. Mostly because Cad Bane is pretty okay and Ashoka isn't involved in the episode.
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Defenestration

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Re: I'm a Star Wars
« Reply #202 on: February 29, 2012, 03:09:13 PM »

Also at some point I'm probably goign to buy CG Clone Wars (TV series) on Blu-Ray whenever Amazon does their "Discounting shit selling DVDs & BDs to get rid of them" thing.
Is the CG Movie any good?

It was one of the only two movies I've ever seen that I've walked out on. And I sat through Biodome.
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Mongrel

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Re: I'm a Star Wars
« Reply #203 on: February 29, 2012, 07:11:37 PM »

Alright alright, I'll bite. What was the other one?
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Defenestration

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Re: I'm a Star Wars
« Reply #204 on: February 29, 2012, 08:00:13 PM »

Battlefield Earth.
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Thad

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Re: I'm a Star Wars
« Reply #205 on: March 01, 2012, 06:58:34 AM »

Okay, so skip the movie.  What's a good place to start?  Season 2?
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Mothra

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Re: I'm a Star Wars
« Reply #206 on: March 01, 2012, 07:10:45 AM »

Thad do not subject yourself to the Clone Wars CG cartoon
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Thad

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Re: I'm a Star Wars
« Reply #207 on: March 01, 2012, 07:48:13 AM »

The one I saw was pretty okay if largely forgettable.  Dini wrote it.

Maybe I'll just go through the writer credits for names I like and watch those.



EDIT: Okay.  Per Wikipedia:

S01E09, "Cloak of Darkness" -- Dini; this is the one I've seen.
S02E01, "Holocron Heist" -- Dini again, with Scott Murphy & Henry Gilroy
S02E09, "Grievous Intrigue" -- Ben Edlund (creator of The Tick/frequent Whedon collaborator)
S02E13, "Voyage of Temptation" -- Dini/Murphy/Gilroy again
S04E01, "Water War" -- Jose Molina (writer for Firefly)
S04E02, "Gungan Attack" -- Molina
S04E03, "Prisoners" -- Molina

Those are the names that jump out at me at a quick glance.  Could be there are more writers in there whose work I would know even if I don't recognize their names.  But I'm definitely willing to give the Dini/Edlund/Molina stuff a shot.
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Thad

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Re: I'm a Star Wars
« Reply #208 on: March 03, 2012, 09:53:18 PM »

Watched a few!

S02E09, "Grievous Intrigue" -- Ben Edlund (creator of The Tick/frequent Whedon collaborator)

Watched this one first.

I watched it with certain expectations of Edlund, and on those terms I was disappointed.  The SWU is rife with fodder for Edlund's kind of offbeat stories (picture an episode revolving around the Mos Eisley Cantina), but instead this episode was purely by-the-numbers, and the dialogue wasn't even particularly punchy.

Where it DID impress me was in the visuals.  This is, hands-down, the best-looking CG TV series I have ever seen.  The vehicles, Droids, and aliens all look fantastic (and the humans look decent), and the action scenes were beautifully-done.  I don't know how detailed Edlund's script was, but if he actually wrote out the fight choreography then it WAS a great script even if there wasn't much to the plot or dialogue.  And if director Giancarlo Volpe did all that, then he's the one who deserves the praise.

It leads into the following episode, "The Deserter", by Carl Ellsworth.  The file I grabbed included both episodes, and I'm glad it did, because this one actually IS quite well-written.

Captain Rex of the Clone Army is wounded trying to chase down Grievous; he's taken in by a Twi'ilek woman and her two children.  One of the children comments that he looks like Daddy, and sure enough Daddy turns out to be a Clone Trooper who deserted.  And so we wind up with an episode that really plays the clone angle nicely, with two characters who share the same DNA and are very much alike but have made very different decisions.  It explores the nature of heroism, courage, and loyalty, and you guys know I'm a sucker for that kind of story.  I thought it was a legitimately great half-hour of television; Ellsworth's only written one other episode ("Bounty Hunters") but I'm going to be sure to give it a look too.

S02E01, "Holocron Heist" -- Dini again, with Scott Murphy & Henry Gilroy

This one was pretty by-the-numbers too.  On the whole I'd say it was better-written than "Grievous Intrigue" but not as visually interesting.  It DOES return to what's probably my favorite location from the prequel trilogy, the Archives.  It's a pretty good Ahsoka episode, and it's the first time I've seen Cad Bane (apparently it's his second appearance).  I quite like his character design, and he's voiced by Corey Burton.

On the whole, yes, my takeaway is that this is a pretty good series, and I will be watching more of it.
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Büge

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Re: I'm a Star Wars
« Reply #209 on: March 10, 2012, 06:17:29 AM »

http://www.slashfilm.com/topher-grace-edited-star-wars-prequels-85minute-movie/

Too bad it'll never get released, but it's an interesting demonstration on just how bloated the prequels were.
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Mongrel

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Re: I'm a Star Wars
« Reply #210 on: March 10, 2012, 09:54:55 AM »

I'd say that writer at least provided enough detail to allow someone to try and recreate it.
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Thad

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Re: I'm a Star Wars
« Reply #211 on: March 10, 2012, 10:38:05 AM »

Wow, that sounds fantastic.  I downloaded The Phantom Edit and intend to check it out at some point, but dang, going straight for the Darth Maul fight at the end of the movie is something I hadn't even thought of that makes SO.  MUCH.  SENSE.

Actually it's pretty much taking the "Skip Episode I" argument to its logical conclusion.

Grace sounds like a sharp guy.  (And apparently an even bigger Star Wars nerd than Eric Foreman.)  This news makes me think that I would very much like to see him work on an original property instead of elaborate fanfic -- maybe these edits will get investors' attention and he'll get to do just that.  If not as director, then at least having a role in the editing room.

It would be a less-stupid investment then hiring him to play Venom, anyway.
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TA

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Re: I'm a Star Wars
« Reply #212 on: March 10, 2012, 10:51:54 AM »

Be nice if he'd just, like, "accidentally" leak a series of timestamps so you could recreate the exact cut from DVDs.
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Brentai

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Re: I'm a Star Wars
« Reply #213 on: March 10, 2012, 11:21:24 AM »

Interesting idea, although from the description of it I'd definitely cut it another way.  He seems to have relegated Vader back to his position as A Dude who is kind of just a part of the entire rise and fall of the rebellion, rather than being the Galactic Messiah that the Emperor has based his whole 40+ year plan around (tangent: if Vader's supposed to be so important and powerful, why is the Emperor so keen on trading down to his goofy-ass son in the OT?)  Still though, I think most people would like to see the supposed friendship of Anakin and Obi-Wan, and the heroic point from which Anakin fell.  Unless you're editing very carefully, Ep 2+3 isn't going to give you that; you just get a condensed shot of Douche Anakin, and now it's just more Star Wars with Vader Vadering it up all over the galaxy with a side of durr Padme.

So my goals for an edit would be:

1. Focus the story as much on Obi-Wan, because for fuck's sakes we need a protagonist here and Darth Vader is not it.
2. Show as much of the relationship between Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon as is relevant to the OT.  When he's not making people wonder if he's drunk, Qui-Gon is one of the few Jedi who seem to understand the spirit of the whole Force thing, often clashing with the council as a result.  Which ties in with:
3. Try to make as obvious as possible how systemically corrupt the Senate and the Jedi Council are.  The hints are there, but they're so buried under the fluff that it makes their resulting decisions seem like the result of utter stupidity rather than just a broken ideology.  In particular I'd find a way to directly contrast Qui-Gon's belief that the Jedi are not meant to be war generals with the reality of the situation.
4. Show as much of Anakin being an innocent little kid as possible.  Yes, he's annoying.  That's the point.  If you show the "pure" Anakin enough then it becomes easier to swallow that the guy who you later see being kind of a stalkery creep is really a good guy and a great friend to Obi-Wan, you know, off camera.
5. Treat the romance between Anakin and Padme as a thing that happens offscreen.  If possible, keep Padme entirely offscreen after the timeskip; the audience gets to imagine that Anakin is having this weird relationship with an older schoolboy crush off-camera, and that Padme's duplicitous nature (this is the girl with the whole pointless decoy thing going on, remember) is driving him kind of nuts.
6. Keep the clone angle, and de-humanize the clones.  The fact that they're essentially robots under the command of a puppet master is kind of important to the story, and the Jedi shrugging and going "Oh, an army of soulless genetic automatons, yeah there's nothing wrong with using these" really shows how off the deep end they are.
7. Can't think of anything else right now.  I'm sure there's a ton.
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Brentai

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Re: I'm a Star Wars
« Reply #214 on: March 10, 2012, 11:24:20 AM »

Oh, oh, I know:

7. Make it so that Anakin's fall isn't Palpatine's plan from the start, it just sort of happens.  Easiest way to do this: Keep the beheading of Christopher Lee, but remove Palpatine goading Anakin into doing it.  All of a sudden the situation goes from "Everything has gone exactly as I planned" to "Uh, wow... well I guess just lost another apprentice.  Hey, who IS this guy anyway?"
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Bongo Bill

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Re: I'm a Star Wars
« Reply #215 on: March 10, 2012, 11:30:48 AM »

I wonder if it would be too jarring to splice in footage from either incarnation of Clone Wars, in order to better establish that some people ever actually thought Anakin was a hero.
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Thad

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Re: I'm a Star Wars
« Reply #216 on: March 10, 2012, 11:47:36 AM »

Be nice if he'd just, like, "accidentally" leak a series of timestamps so you could recreate the exact cut from DVDs.

Sounds like it's more complicated than that -- there's a mention of some Anthony Daniels audiobooks -- but what the hell, we're talking Star Wars nerds here; somebody would do it.

Interesting idea, although from the description of it I'd definitely cut it another way.  He seems to have relegated Vader back to his position as A Dude who is kind of just a part of the entire rise and fall of the rebellion, rather than being the Galactic Messiah that the Emperor has based his whole 40+ year plan around (tangent: if Vader's supposed to be so important and powerful, why is the Emperor so keen on trading down to his goofy-ass son in the OT?)

Because he's figured out the same thing everyone else has: the Messiah isn't Vader, it's Luke.  Vader brought balance to the Force -- by fathering a son.

4. Show as much of Anakin being an innocent little kid as possible.  Yes, he's annoying.  That's the point.  If you show the "pure" Anakin enough then it becomes easier to swallow that the guy who you later see being kind of a stalkery creep is really a good guy and a great friend to Obi-Wan, you know, off camera.

I don't think there's much of a way to do that, though.  Mmmmmaybe if you do a Phantom Edit and cut most of his dialogue anyway and just leave him quiet.

The Yippee! stuff doesn't make him more relatable, it makes him LESS relatable.  And it doesn't lend itself toward the "YOU WERE MY BROTHER!" bit at all.

5. Treat the romance between Anakin and Padme as a thing that happens offscreen.  If possible, keep Padme entirely offscreen after the timeskip; the audience gets to imagine that Anakin is having this weird relationship with an older schoolboy crush off-camera, and that Padme's duplicitous nature (this is the girl with the whole pointless decoy thing going on, remember) is driving him kind of nuts.

I haven't seen the deleted scene they're talking about but my default assumption is that it is even worse than the stuff they kept.  I've already said the best version of Episode II is the one that cuts most of that crap out, so I'm inclined to mostly agree here.

She's goddamn Natalie Portman.  He wants to have sex with her.  No further explanation is required.

6. Keep the clone angle, and de-humanize the clones.  The fact that they're essentially robots under the command of a puppet master is kind of important to the story, and the Jedi shrugging and going "Oh, an army of soulless genetic automatons, yeah there's nothing wrong with using these" really shows how off the deep end they are.

I don't think anything extra needs to be done with the Trilogy to accomplish this goal.  The Clones are already identical cannon fodder.  It's the series that humanizes them; the movies do not.

7. Make it so that Anakin's fall isn't Palpatine's plan from the start, it just sort of happens.  Easiest way to do this: Keep the beheading of Christopher Lee, but remove Palpatine goading Anakin into doing it.  All of a sudden the situation goes from "Everything has gone exactly as I planned" to "Uh, wow... well I guess just lost another apprentice.  Hey, who IS this guy anyway?"

Interesting.  Don't know that I think weakening the Emperor as mastermind is the way to go, but it's got its advantages.

I wonder if it would be too jarring to splice in footage from either incarnation of Clone Wars, in order to better establish that some people ever actually thought Anakin was a hero.

It'd run a bit counter to the "get the whole thing under 90 minutes" goal.  And yeah, it'd be a bit jarring, though Kill Bill got away with it.
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Brentai

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Re: I'm a Star Wars
« Reply #217 on: March 10, 2012, 12:17:51 PM »

I wonder if it would be too jarring to splice in footage from either incarnation of Clone Wars, in order to better establish that some people ever actually thought Anakin was a hero.

Probably, but obfuscation really is your friend here: the audience has to assume that Anakin acts more or less the same all the time as he does onscreen.  If you expose more of his positive actions (which are admittedly rare but present in the movies) the audience can go ahead and believe that, pre-fall, he wasn't a huge jerk.

Which of course the opposite can be true too: Show too much of Anakin being a huge jerk and nothing else and it's reasonable to assume that he's just a huge jerk all the time.  That's a major reason why I think Kid Anakin is important.  If Teen Anakin was well-played then I'd say the Kid could be excised, but.

The Yippee! stuff doesn't make him more relatable, it makes him LESS relatable.

The point isn't really to make him relatable.  I don't even think he should be relatable.  He exists in the universe merely as an example of an idealist being trampled and turned by an innately broken system into a monster.  Making him a bit of a caricature of himself at the start helps, or at least, it's one of the better options given the source material.

Quote
And it doesn't lend itself toward the "YOU WERE MY BROTHER!" bit at all.

Sure it does.  Anakin is Obi-Wan's dippy, immature, excitable little brother, even as a teenager, and Obi-Wan cares for him as such.

Remember, it's Obi-Wan's story, not Anakin's.  He's the one who learns lessons and teaches them to the next generation.  Darth Vader just throws a guy down a hole.

Quote
7. Make it so that Anakin's fall isn't Palpatine's plan from the start, it just sort of happens.  Easiest way to do this: Keep the beheading of Christopher Lee, but remove Palpatine goading Anakin into doing it.  All of a sudden the situation goes from "Everything has gone exactly as I planned" to "Uh, wow... well I guess just lost another apprentice.  Hey, who IS this guy anyway?"

Interesting.  Don't know that I think weakening the Emperor as mastermind is the way to go, but it's got its advantages.

Arguable that it actually weakens him.  We see him quickly and subtly spinning various unfortuitous circumstances to his advantage.  To a lot of people, that's the sign of a really good strategist, and it fits with his M.O. in the later movies - the Death Star blowing up and Vader's increasing lack of competence become things he uses (or tries to) to his advantage.

It certainly makes him seem like like more of a credible threat in general than if we're to believe that his plans only come together when everything he gambles on just happen to go his way, and that the moment something unexpected happens he ends up getting thrown down a hole.

It'd run a bit counter to the "get the whole thing under 90 minutes" goal.

Assuming your goal is to make a movie and not just tell a better story.  Eh.
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Mongrel

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Re: I'm a Star Wars
« Reply #218 on: March 10, 2012, 12:30:27 PM »

I dunno, I think the Emperor-as-ultimate-puppetmaster is one of the few brights lights that survives everything else.

Yes, a man who can change on the fly is smarter than the one who just sets a ball rolling down a hill and hopes it runs one path over another.

But the smartest man of all is the guy who turned the hill into a damned pinball machine and oh look he controls all the levers wait how'd that happen.

Granted, that's almost one step off omnipotence, but that actually fits given A: It's Star Wars and B: It's really the only way it's credible that a single person operating in the shadows could overthrow a galaxy-spanning government.
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Disposable Ninja

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Re: I'm a Star Wars
« Reply #219 on: March 10, 2012, 02:01:28 PM »

Everybody has ideas for how they would've made the Prequels good. Personally, I would've liked to have seen a small faction within the Jedi Order actively attempt to sabotage Anakin Skywalker, and actually give him a reason to be distrustful of the Council. I'd draw more parallels between the two trilogies' stories, making the prequels sort of like if everything that happened in OT went horribly awry.

Also: no R2-D2 and C-3PO. Instead of them, I'd keep Jar Jar Binks. And instead of Jar-Jar Binks, I'd have a more grounded Greek Chorus/comic relief-type character. Like a surly former slave Twi'lek girl or something. That'd have been fun.
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