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Star Wars: Young Han Solo

Started by Bad Ambassador, June 21, 2017, 11:40:57 AM

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Glebe


SteveDave

Clint Howard will be in this apparently.

Shit Good Nose

Course he will - legal requirement for a Ron Howard film.

Rance will probably be shoehorned in somewhere as well I expect.

Head Gardener



biggytitbo


Glebe


Twit 2

Just a wailing shitting baby for 2 hours.

Glebe

'Solo' Locks In Key 'Star Wars' Veteran (EXCLUSIVE).

That's kind of unusual, Williams contributing a new theme and that.

Not to be unkind but 85-year-old John Williams is nothing to get excited about. If we are being honest.

Quote from: biggytitbo on August 23, 2017, 10:22:35 PM
Stop messing about!

I'm sure I've seen you make this joke about about Michael Kenneth Williams a couple of times before.

Anyway, someone has already inserted Kenneth Williams into Star Wars:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCeg9AyFWVw


popcorn

Quote from: phantom_power on June 27, 2017, 09:19:14 AM
"I love you" "I know" - Not in the script, but turned out to be the most iconic line of the film, if not the series.

Quoting this months later to say, helpfully, that surely this is less famous and iconic than "I am your father" or "Use the Force" or "May the Force be with you" or "The Force is strong with this one".

asids

Quote from: popcorn on December 31, 2017, 02:11:40 PM
Quoting this months later to say, helpfully, that surely this is less famous and iconic than "I am your father" or "Use the Force" or "May the Force be with you" or "The Force is strong with this one".

But surely the most famous is this?

mothman

The reputation of the Prequel Trilogy might have been salvaged (or easier to salvage, anyway) if they'd gotten a decent actor in for Anakin in II and III: discuss.

Dr Rock

Quote from: mothman on December 31, 2017, 02:51:03 PM
The reputation of the Prequel Trilogy might have been salvaged (or easier to salvage, anyway) if they'd gotten a decent actor in for Anakin in II and III: discuss.

Totally agree. And he would need better lines too, but those two things would make a world of difference.  They should have cast someone who either gave off the right vibes, or could act appropriately, and written him saying things that made you believe he had the seeds of Darth Vader in him. They didn't.

Probably sucked and bummed his way into the role, knowing what we now know about Hollywood.

bgmnts

Quote from: mothman on December 31, 2017, 02:51:03 PM
The reputation of the Prequel Trilogy might have been salvaged (or easier to salvage, anyway) if they'd gotten a decent actor in for Anakin in II and III: discuss.

Terrible writing was more egregious than Hayden Kristensoson.

I'm really excited for this Han Solo film.

I think Hayden gave the performance George wanted. Anakin's whiny voice is not Hayden's natural speaking voice. If there had been a better actor in the role, I suspect they would have been directed to do something similiar.

mothman

I just never envisaged Anakin Skywalker as a whiny little bitch. That his motives for going to the Dark Side came from more than just petulance. I just think maybe an actor with a little more gravitas might have made more of the terrible scripts. who knows?

The prequels may get more of a reappraisal in our Brexit world: all those evil trade federations, faceless bureaucracies etc...

From John Baxter's biography of Lucas, offering some insight into his handling of actors:

QuoteNobody rated the film, or Lucas, very highly. 'We all thought it was rubbish,' said Anthony Daniels. Peter Mayhew agreed: 'We had no idea what was going on. When they said, "The spaceship is going through an asteroid field," nobody knew what that visualized like. We were told to do this, stand there. It was difficult to realize what it all meant.' Fisher complained of Lucas's monotonously repeated direction, 'Faster and more intense.' When he lost his voice, she suggested he have two small blackboards lettered 'Faster' and 'More intense,' and simply hold up one, or both together.

Fisher mocked her role as the one woman in a universe of men –'The only girl in this sort of adolescent boy's fantasy.' Tauntingly, she said, 'How about a big cooking scene? Baking some space food. Or how about me sewing my costume back together? A shopping scene, maybe, on a mall planet. Give me a girlfriend and we'll talk about how cute Han is.' Lucas wasn't amused; this was serious. As a joke, Hamill began playing Luke in the hushed tones and affectless style of Lucas himself, and was rewarded with a rare beam of approval. He'd finally realized what everyone else knew all along: Luke was Lucas, just as Darth Vader was his father and the universe a scaled-up Modesto.

Half the time, the actors spoke their lines to blank walls, or at clipboards held by grips on the other side of the set – remote-control acting, increasingly common as special effects invaded the film business. Fisher recalls, 'I watched my planet blow up as a blackboard with a circle drawn on, and a bored Englishman holding it up.' A BBC journalist came to interview Ford: 'I walked off the set at lunchtime,' Ford remembers, 'and he said, "What's this picture about?" And I sat there with this microphone in my face and realized I don't know what the fucking picture was about.'

mothman

Though Family Guy nicking the Blue Harvest title might not necessarily rule it out, I think if anyone ever makes a dramedy about the making of Star Wars, it should probably be called "Faster and More Intense."

idunnosomename

Quote from: Default to the negative on December 31, 2017, 03:25:36 PM
From John Baxter's biography of Lucas, offering some insight into his handling of actors:

It shows that for Star Wars, he was a visionary. He was directing everyone perfectly to this end product that none of them had a fucking clue about.

Then the prequels I don't he had much of a clue where it was all going.

I will always maintain that The Phantom Menace is a competent, albeit not very good film. The other two are bad films.

mjwilson

I thought Star Wars was g generally thought to have been a disaster until the editors got to work on it? "Directing everyone perfectly " seems a bit strong.

Dr Rock

Much of Star Wars appeal is the universe created for it, the look of the spaceships, 'laser swords' etc, and though that's not all Lucas's work, he hired the right guys and approved the right things, and realised this was important to get right, which he did. He obviously knew the 'hero's journey' was the template to use, and the basic story is that, with or without editing. Its success or failure can't all be down to re-editing.

Kelvin

Quote from: mjwilson on January 01, 2018, 12:19:54 PM
I thought Star Wars was g generally thought to have been a disaster until the editors got to work on it?

I don't see how that can possibly be true. You can't edit together one of the most important and beloved films of all time with no decent raw material. Surely the basic building blocks existed, but were shaped into something far better in editing.

I mean, it's obvious from the beginning that he can't direct actors, but he also understands the fundamental of story-telling in the original film. He clearly knew what shots to film, how to direct comedy beats, how to shoot emotional beats, how to shoot action, how to make an audience connect with his characters and world. He understood that, and built up a network of people who also understood that. It's just provably false that this was entirely down to good editing and art design. You don't direct one of the most important films of all time by fluke. 

edit: Dr Rock got there first.

mjwilson

Yeah maybe I went a bit far calling it a "disaster" before the editing, maybe "a mess" is more what I meant.

Quote from: Kelvin on January 01, 2018, 12:37:17 PM
It's just provably false that this was entirely down to good editing and art design. You don't direct one of the most important films of all time by fluke.

Yeah I wouldn't want to claim it was *entirely* down to good editing or to try and take away all credit from Lucas.

Gwen Taylor on ITV

Quote from: Kelvin on January 01, 2018, 12:37:17 PMYou don't direct one of the most important films of all time by fluke.

Important yes because of how it began the idea of merchandising tie-in with films and changed Hollywood Sci-fi forever from slow-paced, thoughtful metaphorical dramas to exciting, cowboys and Indians in space.

But I don't think anyone could argue that the film's success was in anyway down to Lucas being a superior director or a good dialogue writer.

Alec Guiness sums it up quite well in this interview: when he first read the script, he didn't think anything of the dialogue itself but the story itself was a page turner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IxN0N35skE

Kelvin

I just think that's an incredibly unfair assessment of the original films. They aren't just films that redefined merchandising. They're massively beloved films, that impacted pop culture like almost no other.

And I never suggested that their success was down to their dialogue or direction. I just think he had a clear, singular vision that overcame it's limitations and was greater than the sum of its parts. The direction wasn't remarkable, clearly, but it's certainly competent and functional enough to not get in the way of what the film does well.

Dr Rock

He may not have been good at giving instructions to the actors but otherwise I don't know if anyone can accuse him of being a poor director (not that anyone here has said that, but it gets said). Editing will have played a part, but from opening invasion of the stormtroopers on the rebel ship, then Vader's appearance, the scene where the uppity officer gets force choked, the droids wandering through Tatooine, the Cantina bar to the trash compactor scene to so many other scenes, there was obviously enough raw footage that had been very well-directed to edit into shape. I think the idea that the film got rescued in the edit has taken on more weight than it deserves. He's got limitations as a director it seems that's clear, but he obviously doesn't suck at it either.

kidsick5000

The first film has an advantage in that it essentially follows the same plot as a fairy tale, which given world affairs at the time, escapism for all the family could not come soon enough (there's also a possible link there as to why Last Jedi has had the backlash)

Yes, it's a lightning strike. Everything came together and everyone involved put everything into it. The set and model work is exemplary. It has three acting heavyweights in Guinness, Cushing and James Earl jones to do the heavy lifting the young cast can't.
But Lucas shot a damn good looking film. This probably comes from his training in cinematography.
It's not all just a crib from Kurosawa. There are beautiful frames in that first film. And not just for a fantasy film – though as proved by the 1,001 knock-offs, few come close to capturing the look shown in Star Wars.

Sadly, little of that director survived in the prequels.

Mister Six

Quote from: mjwilson on January 01, 2018, 12:19:54 PM
I thought Star Wars was g generally thought to have been a disaster until the editors got to work on it? "Directing everyone perfectly " seems a bit strong.

Even the finished product is fucking gash, to be honest. Look at the awkward cuts to Threepio and R2 during the trash compactor scene, or the way Kenobi just stands there like a fucking plum while Luke walks to the land speeder when he's giving up on his quest (and apparently how Ben stood around doing nothing, waiting for him to return even though he shouldn't know Luke's aunt and uncle are dead), or the interminable sequences with aliens that don't speak English, waddling about chittering to each other.

The editor (who was Lucas's wife IIRC) won an Oscar for her work on other films, so I assume she had absolute garbage to work with.

Relatedly, A New Hope is fucking shit.

Custard

It's not though, is it. It's great