Why Did Lucas Make the STAR WARS Prequels?

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Vidiot, May 11, 2020.

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  1. PTgraphics

    PTgraphics Senior Member

    My kids really like the prequels. I saw them all in the movies when released. I just can’t get past the horrible wooden and stoic acting and dialogue.
     
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  2. The Hermit

    The Hermit Wavin' that magick glowstick since 1976


    Y'know what? You're both right... watch what you want, enjoy it, never let anyone tell you otherwise.

    And never vent online after you've had a rotten day and a few beers as compensation... my apologies, guys and gals.

    Maybe I'll take a break from posting for a while... take it easy everyone, and if I don't see y'all again, tell 'em I was nothing and regret nothing everything.

    :tiphat:
     
    Last edited: May 16, 2020
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  3. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    I had heard that Lucas went away from a Wookiee planet because they couldn't paint Wookiees as technologically backward because we already knew Chewie as smart and sophisticated. Maybe GL could've found a way to explain that Chewie was an exception and the rest of the Wookiees were ignorant, but that would've been more trouble than it's worth.

    Also, it's much much easier to find 20-30 small actors than 20-30 very tall actors. Unless they raided the NBA and shot in the off-season! :D
     
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  4. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    Knowing Hollywood and knowing toys ain't the same thing.

    1995 was the big year for "Star Wars" toys. As MekkaGH noted, that's when action figures hit the shelves again, and that line did very well.

    It also did very well for GL because of Kenner's stupidity. As related in the excellent doc "Toys That Made Us", Kenner got the rights to "Star Wars" toys in the 70s in a deal that gave Kenner 95 percent of the profits - and they could've kept the rights forever, IIRC, if they just had sent a token fee to Lucas during those "down years".

    They didn't, so when Kenner renegotiated in the 90s, they got much less favorable terms!
     
  5. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    I didn't care for "People" - thought it was too much about fanboy complaints and not especially objective:

    The People Vs. George Lucas (2010)
     
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  6. CraigBic

    CraigBic Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Zealand
    It could be worth revisiting, there is a lot of venting from fans but I seem to relate to what more of them have to say these days. Though I enjoyed the prequels in theaters upon re-watching them I've started to notice that they kind of walk all over the original trilogy at times and that's not too different from some of the complaints that this new crop of prequel and clone wars fans have about the sequel trilogy. It's also important to separate the filmmakers from the subjects they interview. I think the Gary Kurtz interview is pretty interesting as well.
     
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  7. Mr. Gnome

    Mr. Gnome Forum Resident

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    I think part of the issue some older gen. Star Wars fans have is that Star Wars is no longer theirs. Whether they want to admit it or not, the prequels expanded the universe to an extent that most of them don’t even realize. I’d bet most of you don’t even know there are 7 forms of lightsaber combat.
     
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  8. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    [​IMG]
     
  9. David Campbell

    David Campbell Forum Resident

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    Luray, Virginia
    The prequels, especially Episode 1,were definitely kids movies. Apparently, the original conception of Anakin Skywalker was that he was going to be early to mid teens when we first meet him. However just before casting he changed his mind and Anakin went from a 14-17 year old teen to an 8 year old. I suspect because George thought little kids should have a character to identify with. Add in Jar Jar as an overtly goofy character,its pretty clear what George was aiming for. For the older fans then it was a perplexing decision, but ultimately it likely worked on some level.
    I think that sentence alone accounts not only for the Fan backlash over the prequels but the sequels as well. The realization a franchise that they thought and felt was for them is suddenly no longer catering to them. It's a realization of mortality on some deep level and some people find that hard to fathom or comprehend. So they lash out at those damn newbies and the SJW's for taking away their Star Wars.

    Again not speaking about everyone,but the Fandom Menace and similar fan factions.
     
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  10. markreed

    markreed Forum Resident

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    Imber
    Good point, and one that sometimes gets forgotten. Star Wars belongs to the world now and will never go back in the box. There was a huge number of computer games and tiein books to keep interest, so it wasn't just toys. I'd grow out of toys by 1997, but charging around a badly rendered world full of blocky stormtroopers I had to kill in Dark Forces was paradise. I really liked the prequels (apart from the Midichlorian element), and found the sequel trilogy was narratively incoherent. The animated Clone Wars in 2003 is often overlooked, and is a must-watch alongside the prequels.
     
  11. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    In the "Making of Phantom Menace" documentary, George admits he originally wanted the character of Anakin to be 12 or 13, which explains how he might know how to pilot a land speeder and how to build a robot. But he deliberately decided to drop his age to 8, because he felt separating the kid from his mother would now be more traumatic and would affect him more. If the kid was 13 and was told, "hey, we're taking you off to train to be a Jedi," he'd say, "so long, ma, see ya!" and be right out the door.

    Lucas also showed the final three candidates for the kid: one was very good looking (not far from Mark Hamill), one had great acting experience and was best in the tests (child actor Michael Angarano), but the third was quirky and inconsistent. Lucas opted to take the last one instead (Jake Lloyd), which I think was ultimately not a good choice. I felt bad for the kid, because the entire weight of the film was on his shoulders.

    These are examples of some of the creative choices that led Phantom Menace to be what it turned out to be.

    Actually, I don't care, because it's just a movie.

    I didn't hate the sequels as much as some did, but I did roll my eyes at parts of them here and there (like hairy space horses galloping on Imperial battleships). But I didn't dislike them as much as I did the prequels. I could stand to see them one more time.

    As I said... it's just a movie. Not worth getting that upset about.
     
  12. Mr. Gnome

    Mr. Gnome Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Because the sequels were about nostalgic fan pandering and you know that’s why you liked the sequels. Let’s also not pretend for a minute that the sequel trilogy had a more cohesive, more coherent, better written story. The sequels aesthetically felt less like Star Wars than the prequels even though people got their panties in a bunch there too. As if it takes too much common sense to realize the prequels take place before and during the fall of a grand, technologically advanced grand republic and the originals take place after its collapse on the outskirts of most civilization.

    and because you mentioned this:

     
  13. Mr. Gnome

    Mr. Gnome Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    There is so much to the Star Wars Universe now that to shrink it and pretend that it begins and ends with the unaltered original trilogy is just plain ignorance. Like you said with all the literature, the Clone Wars animated series, the films barely scratch the surface.
     
  14. Michel_LeGrisbi

    Michel_LeGrisbi Far-Gone Accumulator ™

    to show the success of the originals was because group effort not a single vision

     
  15. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    The video is ignorant. If you want to know the real inside story of how editing made and changed Star Wars, read Paul Hirsch's book:

    [​IMG]

    https://www.amazon.com/Long-Time-Cutting-Room-Away-ebook/dp/B07QNDVLX3

    Paul goes into extraordinary detail on how Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back were edited, who was involved, who was responsible, and what George Lucas' involvement was. My take is that Lucas himself is a brilliant editor with great instincts, and no one person really "saved" the movie. Marcia Lucas was only on the film for 2-3 weeks (because she was working on other projects).
     
  16. Michel_LeGrisbi

    Michel_LeGrisbi Far-Gone Accumulator ™


    thanks for pointing this out, i'll look it up
     
  17. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

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    Hollywood, USA
    I thought I knew an awful lot of stuff about Star Wars (particularly on the post-production side), but I learned a lot from what Hirsch had to say... up to and including the fact that Lucas was extremely cheap and would only give him 1/8th of a point (!!!) in Empire Strikes Back.
     
  18. mpayan

    mpayan A Tad Rolled Off

    Is this knowledge common among younger generation fans?
     
  19. CraigBic

    CraigBic Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Zealand
    I think really, in this case, it's a separation of fans who read the comics/books etc vs fans who just love the movies. Though these days you've got the "lore youtubers" who will do all the reading for you and then make videos about the details they just read. Stuff like "Why Dooku didn't like dual-wielding lightsabers" or "How often does Yoda read books" kind of stuff.
    I remember there was one video that explained that the reason the fight in new hope looks plain compared to what you see in the prequels is that actually they were having this huge mega force mind-meld fight which you couldn't see!
     
  20. Slackhurst Broadcasting

    Slackhurst Broadcasting Forum Resident

    Location:
    Liverpool
    How much would that be likely to have amounted to, over the years? Wouldn't a little piece of Star Wars be more than a big piece of most movies?
     
  21. Mr. Gnome

    Mr. Gnome Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Yes it is. It’s the younger generation that knows all about it. That’s how I learned about. From one of my students who’s a huge Star Wars fan.
     
  22. Mr. Gnome

    Mr. Gnome Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    But the point is, the Star Wars Universe has expanded so much due to that. Much of the lore takes place within in the prequel era and without it you lose much of your lore. Arguably, the prequels turned Star Wars from being a trilogy with a little bit of fan fiction on the side to an expansive Star Wars Universe in which comics, books, animated series, and video games all exist to expand it.
     
  23. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Hirsch talks about it in the book. I think union editors made something like $4000 a week (plus OT) for a 1980s feature at this level, and he was on it for probably 6 months. My guess is that he made several hundred thousand dollars over the year, but he had been given 1/2 point in some of the DePalma films he did, which was closer to the usual deal.

    Hirsch almost didn't take the deal on Empire because of being annoyed with the paltry 1/8th of a point, but Marcia Lucas called him up and chided him because she'd known him for years and knew a) he was perfect for the project and b) he needed the work.
     
  24. mpayan

    mpayan A Tad Rolled Off

    Right, one student. But do you understand that its a limited percentage of maybe hard core young SW *nerds and not the common among young SW fans? Or is it common?

    (*No knock against being a young SW nerd. Im an old SW nerd)
     
  25. Mr. Gnome

    Mr. Gnome Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    It’s common.

    Plus it’s common sense that self-proclaimed Star Wars fans whose entire fandom is wrapped around the theatrical versions of the original trilogy have a very limited knowledge of the Star Wars universe as a whole. They’re stuck in 1983 whereas the universe itself has expanded to depths that they can’t even imagine, or want to. There being 7 forms of lightsaber combat doesn’t even scratch the surface.
     
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