Funny Pics II: The Revenge

[pinecone]

12 hours ago, Logan.1179 said:

Seems a bit harsh... 

 

Our AI overlords are wise! Fie! Fie on Ohio!...;)

[Cygnia]

Having lived here now for 20+ years...yes, yes it should.

[Hugh Neilson]

8 hours ago, Bazza said:

It is continuous story in three parts, so a triptych. A triptych is most commonly understood to be a trilogy. As three films grouped together, the first three Star Wars films are indeed a trilogy as they are three films connected with a shared cast of characters, story elements, contexts, mythology, etc. Story wise, I maintain that the original Star Wars film released in 1977 stands alone, and Empire & Jedi, form a duology. One reason for this is that there is no mention of Hoth. Two retcons is the reveal that Luke & Leia are sisters, and the reveal that Vader is Luke’s dad. These elements were completely missing, and not hinted at either in the first film, therefore Empire & Jedi is not a continuation to Star Wars 1977. Rogue One was supposed to segue into Star Wars 1977, so together form a diptych. 

 

One also has to look at what Lucas was working with.  How successful was sci-fi in the movies at the time?  Not very.  So scripting Star Wars as Part I of III would have left a very unsatisying result had it not succeeded, and ESB and RoTJ never filmed. That unsatisfying result may, in fact, have reduced the success of the movie, resulting in no sequels.  By the greenlight of ESB, it was a much safer bet that the third movie would be (or already was) a go.

 

Could the familial relationship have been decided in the writing of ESB?  Sure - it was not hinted at in SW. Could it have been planned all along, and deliberately not foreshadowed due to the likeliness that subsequent movies would never be made?  I think so.  Should Obi-Wan have started with "well, Luke, Vader is your Dad, he went to the Dark Side - but you should train as a Jedi and kill him."?  WTF was "Old Ben" doing on Tattoine in the first place?  How did he know about Luke, to live there from Luke's infancy and keep an eye on him?  Should we just pop out "hey, you've got a sister too - she got raised as royalty and you got to be a dirt farmer".  Maybe today we'd raise a fuss that they guy gets to be the Jedi Knight and the girl gets relegated to Pretty Princess, but 40+ years ago, that was simply the way things worked - Leia handling a blaster and throttling Jabba was a pretty big combat role for the female lead, and Mon Mothma leading the Rebels was another odd role for a female.

 

I would call Rogue 1 a true prequel.  We knew a lot of people died to get those Death Star plans, but they were just faceless, nameless NPCs in the backstory. Until someone decided we could make a good story out of what went before, and (for once...) studio execs did not interfere and weaken the result ("whaddaya mean, they all die?  How the **** do we make a sequel???  Get 'em off that planet before the end!!!")  Just like I suspect Lucas had a lot of creative control over SW, since it's just another Sci Fi movie we'll run for a couple of weeks and then bump down to the kiddie weekend matinees.

8 hours ago, Bazza said:

It is continuous story in three parts, so a triptych. A triptych is most commonly understood to be a trilogy. As three films grouped together, the first three Star Wars films are indeed a trilogy as they are three films connected with a shared cast of characters, story elements, contexts, mythology, etc. Story wise, I maintain that the original Star Wars film released in 1977 stands alone, and Empire & Jedi, form a duology. One reason for this is that there is no mention of Hoth. Two retcons is the reveal that Luke & Leia are sisters, and the reveal that Vader is Luke’s dad. These elements were completely missing, and not hinted at either in the first film, therefore Empire & Jedi is not a continuation to Star Wars 1977. Rogue One was supposed to segue into Star Wars 1977, so together form a diptych. 

 

One also has to look at what Lucas was working with.  How successful was sci-fi in the movies at the time?  Not very.  So scripting Star Wars as Part I of III would have left a very unsatisying result had it not succeeded, and ESB and RoTJ never filmed. That unsatisfying result may, in fact, have reduced the success of the movie, resulting in no sequels.  By the greenlight of ESB, it was a much safer bet that the third movie would be (or already was) a go.

 

Could the familial relationship have been decided in the writing of ESB?  Sure - it was not hinted at in SW. Could it have been planned all along, and deliberately not foreshadowed due to the likeliness that subsequent movies would never be made?  I think so.  Should Obi-Wan have started with "well, Luke, Vader is your Dad, he went to the Dark Side - but you should train as a Jedi and kill him."?  WTF was "Old Ben" doing on Tattoine in the first place?  How did he know about Luke, to live there from Luke's infancy and keep an eye on him?  Should we just pop out "hey, you've got a sister too - she got raised as royalty and you got to be a dirt farmer".  Maybe today we'd raise a fuss that they guy gets to be the Jedi Knight and the girl gets relegated to Pretty Princess, but 40+ years ago, that was simply the way things worked - Leia handling a blaster and throttling Jabba was a pretty big combat role for the female lead, and Mon Mothma leading the Rebels was another odd role for a female.

 

I would call Rogue 1 a true prequel.  We knew a lot of people died to get those Death Star plans, but they were just faceless, nameless NPCs in the backstory. Until someone decided we could make a good story out of what went before, and (for once...) studio execs did not interfere and weaken the result ("whaddaya mean, they all die?  How the **** do we make a sequel???  Get 'em off that planet before the end!!!")  If you watched Rogue 1 and had never seen the original SW trilogy, how much sense would it have made?  Who's this engine of destruction that shows up near the end?

 

Similarly, I suspect Lucas had a lot of creative control over SW, since it's just another Sci Fi movie we'll run for a couple of weeks and then bump down to the kiddie weekend matinees.

[Ternaugh]

45 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Similarly, I suspect Lucas had a lot of creative control over SW, since it's just another Sci Fi movie we'll run for a couple of weeks and then bump down to the kiddie weekend matinees.

 

Star Wars was shopped around to various studios before landing at 20th Century Fox, and was generally expected to perform as well as other Sci-Fi films of the era. The biggest Sci-Fi film of 1976 was MGM's Logan's Run, which made $25 million on a $9 million budget. Star Wars reportedly had an original budget of $10 million, but ended up at $11 million when released. Original plans were in the works for a modest follow-up film if the movie performed as expected, which would have been based upon the story that ended up in the novel, Splinter of the Mind's Eye by Alan Dean Foster (who was also the ghost-writer on the Star Wars novelization). It probably would have had a budget around $8 million, instead of the $30.5 million that ESB had.

[Duke Bushido]

13 hours ago, Bazza said:

Agree with LL.

 

Furthermore, the film is complete, ie there a a climax and a coda (ceremony) to it. If it were the only film produced in that non-existent series, the subtitle: “episode 4 a new hope” would be contextless. 

 

 

It wasnt until six or seven years ago that I encountered someone else who proudly made this claim, but when I first saw that movie-  my uncle Neil and I went to see it-  there was no "a New Hope" subtitle.  It straight wasn't there.

 

That particular movie went around again-  I want to say it was about 14 months later- I saw it again a year and a season later, and it wasnt being discounted as a second run, but billed on the marquis as "returning due to popular demand."

 

I won't lie:  I thought it was goofy as all get out the first time around (so did Neil).  It looked like live action Japanese cartoons I saw when my father was stationed there briefly.  I went back to see it for two reasons:  the special effects were _amazing_.  I mean, all I really had to compare it to was Star Trek and a handful of black and white drive-in movies.  SFX-wise, there was just no comparison, and I was quite exited to see the effects and to hear the beautifully-matched and blended sound effects (even the wrong-feeling but well-done spaceship sounds).

 

There was a young lady who wanted to see it.

 

If it wasn't for the second one, I doubt I would have gone back.  But go back I did, and for just a moment, I thought I was watching a diffeent movie:

 

The "Episode IV: A New Hope" and the much longer crawler made me think "what?  They made another one of these weird movies?  No!  They made three more!  Who does that?!"

 

And then we watched the exact same movie, and I never thought anout it again until I read an interview in... Was it Starlog?  I think so, but I read every sci-to magazine I could,get my hands on, which meant none of them with regularity-  where Lucas claimed he had always planned an over-arcing series of _four_ movies, and gave some crazy (bat-crap crazy!) justification for releasing the last (LAST) one first that, when distilled, translated to "the others arent as good (he got that right) so we couldnt get funding so we made this one to get fans and money to make the first three that tell the story of Luke Skywalker and how he became the chosen one or some,such nonsense.

 

Eventually, we ended up with nine movies telling the story of C3P0 being abused by three generarions of Skywalkers.

 

And about a year after the release of Empir Strikes Back, I learned to shut up about it because apparently I was in the only audience that had seen Star Wars without the Episode 4 title or that long "historical info dump" crawler (the one I saw literally just set up the opening scene the way Pan might do at the opening of a greek tragedy).

 

It wasnt until I was sitting with niece and nephew (who I promised to take do the movies, and they picked freakin' Star Wars....) In a re-lit theater, waiting for the rest of the crowd to leave that I met someone else who had seen the first one with the same opening I had originally seen.

 

As is my habit, I was trying to make fun of myself and my annoyance at the situation.  "This is the third time I have seen this movie!  I have been suckered!  Horribly,suckered!"  (This would happen again when my own kids wanted to see whatever incarnation featured "starkiller base":  I would once again pay real money to watch the same damn "badguys put all their eggs in a barely-mobile superstition and good guys blow it up with an ecclectic selection of antique spaxeships and the HERO discovers their natural aptitude for the force- essentially the same damned move I have already bought six tickets to over the years.  Crap!

 

Anyway, upon making the comment, an older guy (roughly twenty years older than me at the time) who was sitting two rows ahead and playing thw same waiting game said "I know!  I know!  This is the second time,I have fallen for it!"

 

Well, at least there werent any teddy bears this time-

 

Laughter, and then "Ahh... My kids liked the teddy bears...."

 

And we talked briefly about previous movies, and I learned that he, too, had seen the original movie without any claims to being part of a sequel, and concluded that your ability to be a successful conman was tied directly to how poorly-developed your chin was....

 

 

At any rate, there is just too much contradiction, too much that makes little sense (including most of Lucas' excuses) that there was _ever_ even a gleam of sequels and prequels until dumptrucks of cash started showing up.

 

 

[Hugh Neilson]

Lucas envisioned SW as being the modern reincarnation of the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials.  That's where the original crawler came from, I believe.  I could see him wanting Episode IV or some such, being rejected by the studios, and then having it added back in when they realized it would set up a sequel or two.

 

Here we go:  https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Opening_crawl

Quote

 

When originally released in 1977, the first film was simply titled Star Wars, as Lucas was not certain if he would follow the film with a sequel (and 20th Century Fox felt that alluding to a nonexistent "previous episode" would be too confusing). Following The Empire Strikes Back, the film was re-released on April 10, 1981, with the subtitle Episode IV A New Hope. The original version, without the subtitle, was not released, outside of the 1982 Laserdisc version, on home video until the 2006 limited-edition DVDs.

The content of the opening crawl itself, as originally written by George Lucas, was initially different during the production of the first film, and contained the following:

It is a period of civil wars in the galaxy. A brave alliance of underground freedom fighters has challenged the tyranny and oppression of the awesome GALACTIC EMPIRE. Striking from a fortress hidden among the billion stars of the galaxy, rebel spaceships have won their first victory in a battle with the powerful Imperial Starfleet. The EMPIRE fears that another defeat could bring a thousand more solar systems into the rebellion, and Imperial control over the galaxy would be lost forever. To crush the rebellion once and for all, the EMPIRE is constructing a sinister new battle station. Powerful enough to destroy an entire planet, its completion spells certain doom for the champions of freedom.

The crawl used in the film itself was a revised version by Brian DePalma and then–film critic Jay Cocks.

 

 

Not sure I would call Rogue 1 "the Rebellion's first victory" the ANH crawl makes it out to be

 

Quote

It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.

 

During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.

 

and clearly the decision to design and build the Death Star must have come first.  But I doubt any creator sees an extensive creation reach its end under their precise initial vision.  Arthur Weaselly wasn't supposed to live through the Harry Potter series, for example.  In any design of a fantasy world, some backstory must exist in the creator's mind, whether it is ever shared, or whether it evolves later.  The idea that the initial plan was to have Wookies on Endor, but they were so cool Lucas had to squeeze them in earlier in case there were no sequels?  I can buy that when the result was a replacement of very merchandisable teddy bears...

 

 

[Duke Bushido]

Thanks,,Hugh.

 

I was beginning to think I had slipped into some alternate universe where Star Wars was _always_ "Episode 4".

 

 

[Old Man]

3 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Lucas envisioned SW as being the modern reincarnation of the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials.  That's where the original crawler came from, I believe.  I could see him wanting Episode IV or some such, being rejected by the studios, and then having it added back in when they realized it would set up a sequel or two.

 

Many successful films are well-produced homages to previous genres.  Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon/Kill Bill are the best examples I can think of.

[Hugh Neilson]

Star Wars VII - IX are essentially homages to Star Wars IV - VI.  How well-produced they are is, of course, a matter of some debate.

[mattingly]

[slikmar]

2 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Star Wars XII - IX are essentially homages to Star Wars IV - VI.  How well-produced they are is, of course, a matter of some debate.

Where do I find episodes x-xii? or are they as bad as i-iii? (I don't hate vii and ix as much as most as I went in liking the homage to iv and vi. Viii on the other hand can be removed from to the same plane of existence as Highlander 2.

[mattingly]

Who wore it better?

 

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

[Bazza]

Well that is different. 
 

(still writing replies re SW stuff). 

[Cancer]

There really ought to be a Florida connection in that, but I don't see one.

[Bazza]

Why women live more than men -- a series. 

 

subtitle: accidents waiting to happen.

 

[Bazza]

[Bazza]

[Bazza]

[Bazza]

 

[Bazza]

[Bazza]

 

 

 

[Bazza]

 

 

[Bazza]

[Bazza]