At this point, we might as well just say the Star Wars universe is tightly wrapped up in hypertime and be done with it.
Uhmmm…you do realize that this is George Lucas we’re talking about, right? He won’t even allow Han to shoot first, and he edited out the scenes of Imperial soldiers being shot so as not to offend anyone’s sensibilities. Plus he’s a piss poor director and a mediocre writer. What exactly is it that gives you this hope for a good movie?
I’d rather see a traditionally “good-guy” actor - Patrick Stewart, or Bruce Boxleitner.
The only time it was ever supposed to be green was in RotJ. But watch the DVD release of A New Hope. In the scene on the Falcon where he’s training against the remote, the blade is green in a few shots. This is presumably just one of the many editing mistakes in the DVDs, and my comments implying it was meant to be canonical were meant sarcastically. But it’s definitely there.
Yes, I realize we’re talking about George Lucas, and I am hoping for a good movie. My hope is that it will be the “Empire” of this trilogy, because that’s what’s needed to make a six-story series have a good narrative arc. My point is that if he does fuck it up spectacularly, it won’t be because he takes it in the direction of a tragedy, it’ll be because it’s too feel-good.
As far as Lucas being a poor director and a mediocre writer, I have mixed feelings about that. I think he’s a decent screen-writer and a brilliant storyteller. This is mostly because I appreciate what he’s trying to do with the series. It’s fairy-tale, and it’s homage to the films that enthralled him as a child and later as a film student.
If you judge the movies against the same metric that you’d use to judge the films of Scorcese or Polanski, then yeah, they’re pitifully shallow and cartoonish. But they’re very successfully executed films in the sense that they are perfect fairy tales and modern mythology.
I’m breaking my personal vow not to post in a “Star Wars” thread. But, really, Titanic in space? I’m not planning on seeing it, but will look forward to your reports.
In reply to Larry Mudd, who said that the Star Wars films are “perfect fairy tales and modern mythology.” - Well, maybe for you, but I don’t happen to think so. Yes, they were inspired by myths and tales, but calling them “perfect fairy tales and modern mythology” is to buy into their own hype. It’s what their marketing people want you to think.
No, but the Sith Lord was destroyed and Anakin Skywalker was redeemed. End of story arc.
Yes, he drops it, and then you see a long shot of Obi Wan swooping in and catching it.
How about Ron Jeremy, just to make it interesting?
You might think so, but my opinion in that respect is coloured somewhat by my lifelong interest along those lines.
I’m a guy who has two-and-a-half six-foot bookshelves lined with collected fairy stories and folk tales, plus a dozen books of commentary on the subject (and isn’t ashamed to admit it 
), and nearly everything that Joseph Campbell ever published taking up another shelf.
This is my bailiwick. My hobby-horse. My forte. Whatever yawannacallit. ‘Obsession’ would work, I suppose.
Lucas’ films are clever in some subtle ways. His stuff is is comparable to Lewis Carroll in that it can be appreciated on different levels. At a glance, it’s novel, fanciful and amusing, but there’s a lot of fun to be had deconstructing it, too. (Tarantino is one of the few writers who is on par with him for that sort of stuff.)
It’s not easy to do well, and attempts in that direction are are often spectacularly crap. (cf. Battlestar Galactica, for an obvious comparison.)
I dont care who they cast in that role as long as the (rumored) TV series doesnt suck. Of course, if it’s handled by Fox, it’ll probably be cancelled mid-season.
BTW, I heard Lucas will re-release all six episodes in 3-D beginning 2007 (one episode per year). Is this another rumor?
That’s technically impossible, isn’t it, for any movie that wasn’t filmed with 3-D cameras in the first place?
Found a brief report about the 3-D Star Wars project on digitalbits.com. (http://www.thedigitalbits.com/mytwocentsa100.html#star3d)
Apparently, Lucas is serious about it. Not a rumor, then.
NO!!!
That might mean he would come back. :eek:
Not really. Boggling, but not impossible.
I’ve been playing with a variety of 3D processes for a couple of decades, and about five years ago I worked out a way to convert any 2D image into an anaglyphic 3D pic just using Adobe Photoshop. (Usually in about an hour.)
It involves basically tracing the image and manually supplying information about each pixel’s position along the Z axis, which is then used to generate a second image by pushing pixels around based on that information. Of course, some manual touch up is required for the background which ought to be revealed when objects in the foreground are shifted significantly.
Getting from there to doing 24 frames per second for a feature length film is quite a ways, but certainly not impossible, if you have the resources.
Software along the lines of the program that Richard Linklater’s development group produced for Waking Life and the upcoming A Scanner Darkly, which takes spline-based artist input for key frames, traced over the original film frame, and then automatically adjusts those splines to match subsequent frames, could be used to automate the process substantially. Once you’ve defined all the objects in the scene, the software can fill in the in-between frames. You might need to treat the background in scenes where the camera is panning or turning a bit differently – in effect creating a stitched panorama. And I’m pretty sure that no matter how well the software works, you’d have to pay an army of grunts to finesse each frame. (Though I can easily see how working with motion pictures would actually reduce one of the most labour-intensive parts of my still picture process – filling in those revealed background bits could be done algorithmically, using pixel information from adjacent frames, where those parts of the background aren’t covered up.)
I have done some experiments with making 3D conversions from moving pictures… Although they were super ghetto low-tech. (They only work when the camera is dollying over a relatively static scene, moving along the X axis only, and perfectly parallel with the horizon.) 
The geek in me is thrilled that this software is being developed. I’m glad that somebody’s interested.
The usual reaction I get when I show people the stuff I’ve worked on is, “Uh, that works pretty well, but, uh, why?”
Well, because it’s 3D. Duh!
Only a few months ago, I opined:
Star Wars? In 3D? Hell, yeah!
How about Fiddler on the Roof?
“If I were a Je-di…Dododododododododododo!..
I would use my lightsaber for good! If I were a J-e-di!”
I went to see Ep 2 with a friend of mine. Whenever Jar-Jar was on screen, he’d be saying “Burst into flames! Burst into Flames!”
An hour and 43 minutes of Jar-Jar being tortured to death, followed by 2 minutes exposition by Obi Wan explaining that while all this was going on, the Republic collapsed, Palpatine became Emperor, and Anakin became Darth Vader. Yeah, I’d pay to see that movie.
Yeah, he wouldn’t need Industrial Light and Magic design a light saber for him.
I would love to see Lucas himself make a cameo in one of these films. Something small - subtle. An extra in the background, visible just briefly as he is decapitated during one of the battle scenes.
What?