Star Wars Ep. 7 will be shot on film.

This is good. This is right. At least to make up for shooting the others in 2/3" 1080p
 
As long as Han shoots first, and jedis don't take out light sabers every panic attack. With George Lucas no longer making all the descesions without question from department heads, I have a new hope for stars wars. For what Disney paid, they can't mess this up as bad as Lucas did. They already choose to go back to film, which is probably really pissing off Lucas since he's such a anti film/pro digital guy. If only they can do models, animatronics and have real sets, like the original. That would be great.
 
Joncarr said:
As long as Han shoots first, and jedis don't take out light sabers every panic attack. With George Lucas no longer making all the descesions without question from department heads, I have a new hope for stars wars. For what Disney paid, they can't mess this up as bad as Lucas did. They already choose to go back to film, which is probably really pissing off Lucas since he's such a anti film/pro digital guy. If only they can do models, animatronics and have real sets, like the original. That would be great.
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LOL I hadn't even given that a thought...Lucas' reaction to the film announcement given his pioneering of digital capture. That's hilarious, and in a way sorta calms some of my fears about decisions being made with fear of Lucas.
 

I got the VHS Star Wars box set (the original) when i was 12. This is on it. This is the George Lucas I looked up to then and still do now. I don't understand how someone can lose such wisdom in 20 years, especially when it's on film.
 
roxics said:
I don't understand how someone can lose such wisdom
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The problem with Lucas 2.0 is not that he stopped caring about story. He still put story first. The problem is his taste had waned. Also, he collaborated less, which was a problem because his talent was never great.

In eighth grade, we had to pick a celebrity to dress up as and tell their story in front of the class. I picked George Lucas. This was before he came out with the prequels.

George Lucas didn't want to be a filmmaker until after high school. He wanted to race cars, but a bad accident spooked him. He later went on to study film at USC and won awards. But these were student film awards in the 1960s. The bar was low.

In the video you posted, George Lucas says:

"One of the fatal mistakes that almost every science-fiction film makes is they spend so much time on the settings. . . . Special effects are just a tool, a means of telling a story. People have a tendency to confuse them as an end to themselves."


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So, was he repenting of his student film THX 1138 4EB? Virtually a meditation on setting, it spends its entire fifteen minutes telling the following story: In an Orwellian future, a man runs down a hall. Guards try to stop him. He gets away.

American Graffitti may be his best film, but one of the actors later said that a few days passed before he knew the director spoke English.

In making Star Wars, Lucas was beset by problems throughout production. He had to make compromise after compromise, and revised the script over and over, mainly because the producers said his first idea was completely incoherent.

Lucas was so burnt out by the hardship of making Star Wars that he swore off directing. Empire was directed by Irvin Kirschner, Jedi by Richard Marquand. The very talented Lawrence Kasdan cowrote both. The point is that none of the first three films could be considered an auteur rendering straight from the mind of George Lucas. Instead they were vastly collaborative. It was Harrison Ford who came up with the idea to answer Princess Leia's "I love you" with simply "I know."

Lucas also was a very different person then. He was young and his films seemed aimed at teenagers and twentysomethings. And his taste was still sort of a beatnik, experimental, rebel filmmaker. And he wasn't unquestionable then. He had to scrape and beg and work hard to get his movies made.

Fast-forward 15 years. George Lucas is a billionaire. Everywhere he goes, people tell him how much they love what he did. Now the first thing that pops out of his head will get made, with no opposition. Also his tastes have changed. I don't know George Lucas, but looking purely at his decisions (Han Solo can't shoot first, the Force must be scientifically explained, the main character of Episode I is a young boy, surrounded by other silly characters) I am tempted to imagine that he was then writing mainly for small children, with some kind of fatherly guilt that he should try not to mislead them.
 
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Whatever medium the director wants to use to tell the story is fine with me. Digital, film, both can look great. It does make me relax that it won't be in the horrible Hobbit 48 fps that Jackson thought looked good, but actually looked like overly sharp video.
 
Well said. I have insisted in every conversation about the prequels that the main problem was Lucas' poor directing (scripting being a close second). You hear so many people complain about bad acting... It's not the actors that are the problem! Look at your talent: Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Liam Neeson. These people can act, but on set they will give the director what he wants. Haydan Christianson may not be an amazing actor, but he's not as poor as people insist. He gave Lucas the performance he asked for.

The original trilogy was primarily not directed by Lucas, and I firmly believe that with this problem fixed, along with collaborative script writing, Star Wars has potential for greatness once again.

I say all this not to hate on Lucas (who is a great man with amazing vision). But analyzing and seeing faults brings improvement and that's what everyone wants to see happen to Star Wars.
 
Gillvane said:
Whatever medium the director wants to use to tell the story is fine with me. Digital, film, both can look great. It does make me relax that it won't be in the horrible Hobbit 48 fps that Jackson thought looked good, but actually looked like overly sharp video.
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+1
 
TheReverend said:
I say all this not to hate on Lucas (who is a great man with amazing vision). But analyzing and seeing faults brings improvement and that's what everyone wants to see happen to Star Wars.
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I you're waiting for JJ and 'improvements' to bring back the dead you're in for a long wait. Star Wars was of its time and no one can bring back the magic people seem to expect from this reboot. At best you'll get a entertaining movie because of the nostalgic effect these movies have but judging JJ's body of work it'll make big money and be forgotten by the time you leave your seat to getting home. Better to wait for someone with vision and balls to make something new and unexpected, if thats still possible within the current formulaic compromised studio system of today.
 
In general, I would tend to aggree with ^
Star Wars is great because it was made a long time ago. It has a lot of great stuff, but also some flaws that nostalgia tends to erase. We are not nearly as forgiving with new stuff.

My biggest hope for the new one is that Michael Arndt is working on the script. That guy really knows what he's doing.
http://fora.tv/2007/02/15/Little_Miss_Sunshine_Shooting_Script

If the new Hunger Games movie is any good (unlike the previous one), I will get really really excited about the new Star Wars.
 
TheReverend said:
Look at your talent: Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Liam Neeson. These people can act, but on set they will give the director what he wants. Haydan Christianson may not be an amazing actor, but he's not as poor as people insist. He gave Lucas the performance he asked for.
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Totally agree. On the other hand, Ian McDiarmid gave a great performance in III despite the director...
 
We aren't as forgiving for the new stuff because it looks like crap and has a much weaker story at least in my opinion. Way too much CGI. The real locations and models used in Star Wars and Empire look much better. I am interested to see a better story and less CGI. At least a better story than the last three. Could easily get close to Return of the Jedi which is the worst of the original three. Mainly due to being imbalanced towards the humorous too much. But hoping for something decent. It is a pretty large galaxy to explore.
 
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