Talk of a NEW Star Wars movie...

[DC]

OK, this may be nothing, may come to nothing or simply be a bluff to get people talking, but AICN have a story where a brand new Star Wars movie is mentioned.

 

There's A New STAR WARS Film Coming??

 

 

Merrick here...

 

 

Thomas Dolby, who co-authored the mesmerizing theme song to HOWARD THE DUCK back in 1986...

 

[YOUTUBE]vvVYgTfqcKA[/YOUTUBE]

 

...has an noteworthy entry on his blog. We're specifically talking about Dolby's December 5 entry, which can be found HERE.

 

Buried unceremoniously beneath a mound of text chronicling his visit to California, Dolby refers to a new STAR WARS movie. It's so fast you could easily miss it:

My host is friend and former collaborator Paul Sebastien, who over the years has worked for Xbox, Playstation, and now LucasArts. Last night he was telling me a little about the forthcoming Star Wars-related TV show, movie and online games—very cool indeed.

[EDIT]

...it sounds like Mr Lucas has got his head into a good place. I met him several times when I was working on a movie in the 80s called [name suppressed to protect credibility!] and he’s a decent chap, but I could have done without the last three SW movies.

We've heard about the TV series both ongoing and forthcoming, and already know there will be more games. But a new movie? Is he talking about a TV project (whether new - or related to the already announced series & whatnot)? Or, is he discussing something different?

 

Presuming Thomas intended to say "movie"...

 

Sure didn't like The Prequels much at all (SITH wasn't too bad, although it didn't exactly warm my loins). This said, I've really been enjoying catching up with THE CLONE WARS television series. It's certainly uneven...and I really despise that Lucas feels slavishly compelled to soften his action by injecting broad comedy into heated adventure sequences. But, in the end, THE CLONE WARS represents STAR WARS, told differently, and with more ingenuity and vibrance than the franchise's recent big screen entries (standard DVD and Blu-Ray sets HERE). Proves there's still life in the old mare after all.

 

If the Lucas that allowed THE CLONE WARS to happen brings us another STAR WARS film - with the same open-minded approach to storytelling? I might be interested. Will the new movie be a stand alone set in the STAR WARS universe, perhaps? Possibly intended to introduce us to another subset of the franchise? We'll see.

 

The probability of STAR WARS' return to theater screens has always seemed a foregone conclusion. But...unless I missed something...this is the first time we've heard anything pointed about it happening. Back in October, Lucas folk denied that new STAR WARS movies were being planned (HERE). So, unless Dolby misspoke, or is bat-shit crazy, I'm wondering what's changed since then? AVATAR, maybe? Perhaps George now wants a digital/3-D tale of his own? Guess none of this is that big a mystery, really. We've all seen the Whim of George in action before; the winds shift in the blink of an eye.

 

A tip of the hat to Talkbacker Paulseta, who posted about this in yesterday's AVATAR song Talkback (HERE) - where nobody listened.

 

 

 

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Credit: Aint It Cool News

[Guest Saz]

I know they are doing a load of TV series about the lesser known characters, but another film?

 

Gah!

[Guest Dante Spears]

First it was that god awful CGI movie and now this? Another movie?

[dsrchris]

Step away from the franchise, George. You're doing more damage than good!

 

I don't even know why I'm bothered, already having pretty much all my love of Star Wars mercilessly pumped from my body by the Lucasarts Merch Machine. There was a time I would of been excited, but now I just feel a bit numb to it.

[Guest Chriscare]

First it was that god awful CGI movie and now this? Another movie?

 

I really enjoyed the CGI movie, better than all the prequels that's for sure.

[Guest Phil]

I'm sure I read somewhere that Lucas's grand plan was always to create 3 trilogies, one dealing with Vader's rise, one dealing with his rule and fall, and the third dealing with the after-effects, so this doesn't really surprise me.

[dsrchris]

Oh yeah, the resurgence of the Jedi and all that gumph.

 

That's a whole bunch of graphic novels about it, I read a couple and it weren't too bad. Dunno if it's worth making films out of though?

 

Wasn't it originally supposed to be a 9-part saturday morning kids show at some point? I vaguely recall some special features on something or another mentioning it.

[DC]

Wasn't it originally supposed to be a 9-part saturday morning kids show at some point? I vaguely recall some special features on something or another mentioning it.

Almost. He had the idea from the old Flash Gordon serials and wanted to do a cinema version of them, but each episode being a full-length movie. It's why all the films have the text-crawl at the beginning (it's supposed to mimic the recapping of the previous episode(s) in the serial) and the orignal movie starts with us in the middle of the action.

 

The story of what Lucas came up with and when has changed so much since the original movie, it's hard to know fully what was retconned/altered and what he first came up with, but what is generally accepted is that Star Wars was originally going to be a stand-alone movie and the first completed script reflected this.

 

After negotiating the rights to any follow ups (and, ingeniously, the rights to any and all merchandising - before Star Wars, there was no real movie tie-ins on the scale we see today, so the studio felt ol' George was crazy to want to create, of all things, toys based on a B-movie that was sure to flop), Lucas decided, instead of having Star Wars be the beginning of his tale, it would be the first part of the middle of the overarching story. To help him in writing Star Wars, he created elaborate backstories (a trait a lot of top actors and directors share) for his characters.

 

When it came time to write The Empire Strikes Back, originally going to be known simply as Episode II, he had the brainwave of renaming the first film Episode IV, allowing him, if he chose, to return to the ideas and backstories he'd created with a trilogy of prequels (while also knowing his now huge fanbase and the fact they would demand to know where Episodes I-III were and when they were going to be made) and also adding the minor wrinkle of Darth Vader being Luke's father (he was to have killed Luke's father in the first draft, but Lucas, after tinkering again, this was the hook his entire story needed).

 

Before that could happen, though, there were noises that Lucasfilm were in the process of writing Episodes VII-IX, but George got divorced in 1987, costing him a fortune, and the plans where shelved. Today, the director denies continually there having ever been any plans for a sequel trilogy, despite there being official statements and documents stating this to be the case (Lucas himself mentioned there being a total of nine films to tell the entire story in the foreword of one of the Star Wars novels - I can't remember the title, Splinter of the Eye or something like that).

 

14yrs after Return of the Jedi was released, filming began on the prequels (with the first, The Phantom Menace, being released after another two years). Talk of the next two movies eventually gave way to discussing the possibility of the mooted last three films in the series, but George Lucas has made reference to Episodes I-VI telling the whole story for over a decade now, so Episodes VII-IX simply became unfulfilled fantasies.

 

It took from 1997 until 2005, a period of eight (almost) continuous years to get the prequels made. Lucas is now 65yrs old, if he started today, he'll easily be 66 before filming could begin. From various interviews/quotes, he's said that he doesn't have the desire to return to his universe for that length of time again and that he'd be reluctant to let someone else direct them (even though he didn't direct Empire or Jedi).

 

If this is a new movie, it could be a feature-length pilot for the upcoming live-action Star Wars TV show or a stand-alone Star Wars movie (even a sequel to Return of the Jedi), but I'd be very surprised if it is the first in a trilogy of sequels.

[Guest Dante Spears]

And like them or hate them Episodes I-VI really tell a complete story which VI wraps up quite nicely. If they did add another trilogy it would really be redundant and just opening up a new story that would need to be concluded in 3 movies. Star Wars it's Anakin Skywalker's life - and it'd be quite redundant to continue the life story of a dead guy.

 

Also we'd be subject to even more prequel-esque disasters if a sequel trilogy ever came out.

 

Also considering the subject is Star Wars i totally want Lucasfilms to suck it up and release the Holiday Special on DVD.

[Guest Saz]

When it came time to write The Empire Strikes Back, originally going to be known simply as Episode II, he had the brainwave of renaming the first film Episode IV, allowing him, if he chose, to return to the ideas and backstories he'd created with a trilogy of prequels (while also knowing his now huge fanbase and the fact they would demand to know where Episodes I-III were and when they were going to be made) and also adding the minor wrinkle of Darth Vader being Luke's father (he was to have killed Luke's father in the first draft, but Lucas, after tinkering again, this was the hook his entire story needed).

 

Not sure where you got this fact from, but it's rubbish, he wrote the first starwars story which was "the adventures of Mace Windu", this was the full story of Mace Windu (AKA anakin skywalker) it turned into starwars, which has always had chapter 4 written into it as a part of the movie. Lucas was taking a risk with Star wars and so was Fox, so there was absolutely no plan whatsoever of a continuation, it was just Lucas using that point in the story to sell to the public. 1 -3 unfortunately was written and rewritten to death prior to it's cinema conception, so unfortunately ended up being sh*t.

[Guest Dante Spears]

Theres about a thousand different stories about Star Wars Origins. From what I've read Mace Windu was never the original character - it was Anakin Starkiller who was seemingly both a Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi

I know Episode 4 was at one time episode 1, and when he began working on The Empire Strikes Back there were a lot more sequels planned. The original film was just Star Wars, not episode 1, suggesting that it was originally a stand alone with the potential for sequels.

....and I'll just quote from Wikipedia (It has sources!)

...producer Gary Kurtz described an early outline for a nine film series. He stated that the original plan for Return of the Jedi was for Han Solo to die and Leia to become "Queen" of her people. Leia was not originally planned to be Luke's sister. "Episode VII" was to focus on Luke Skywalker's life as a Jedi, while "Episode VIII" marked the appearance of Luke's sister (which was not Leia), and "Episode IX" was to be the first appearance of the Emperor. [15] In a later Film Threat interview, he stated that the idea for a third Star Wars trilogy "was very vague. It was Luke's journey really up to becoming sort of the premiere Jedi knight in the Obi-Wan Kenobi mold and his ultimate confrontation with the emperor. That was the outline of it and all that happens." [16]

Edited December 12, 2009 by Dante Spears

[DC]

Not sure where you got this fact from, but it's rubbish, he wrote the first starwars story which was "the adventures of Mace Windu", this was the full story of Mace Windu (AKA anakin skywalker) it turned into starwars, which has always had chapter 4 written into it as a part of the movie. Lucas was taking a risk with Star wars and so was Fox, so there was absolutely no plan whatsoever of a continuation, it was just Lucas using that point in the story to sell to the public. 1 -3 unfortunately was written and rewritten to death prior to it's cinema conception, so unfortunately ended up being sh*t.

The part in bold is incorrect. The original story was to be a single-movie tale called The Star Wars and, even after Lucas started altering things and decided to have the story expanded, Episode IV and the "A New Hope" subtitle weren't added until long after the first movie's release. In fact, they weren't added until after The Empire Stike's Back was had been released - Empire coming out in 1980 with the Episode V heading (which prompted all the discussions about what happened to episodes II-IV) and then, a year later, the original movie being re-released with the Episode IV added, giving us the reason for the second movie being the fifth, chronologically, in the series.

 

Certain character names were thought up, some were used, some were discarded and others (like Mace Windu, who was originally known as Mace Windy and would have been a voice-over narrator in Star Wars) were brought back for the prequels.

 

On p185 of Icons: Intimate Portraits by Denise Worrell, Lucas says, after Return of the Jedi had been released, "There was never a script complete that had the entire story as it exists now... As the stories unfolded, I would take certain ideas and save them[...] I kept taking out all the good parts, and I just kept telling myself I would make other movies someday."

 

In The Secret History of Star Wars, only the second draft of the script contained any additional scenes or dialogue to the final shooting script... and it was only two scenes (the asteroid field chase and the Ewok battle) that later appeared in the sequels, simply being ideas discarded and then brought back rather than written specifically for follow-up movies.

 

George Lucas has contradicted himself many times over the years in regards to what he came up with originally and what was retconned/added at later dates, so, as was said earlier, it's hard to say exactly what all the facts truly are.

[Guest Saz]

Theres about a thousand different stories about Star Wars Origins. From what I've read Mace Windu was never the original character - it was Anakin Starkiller who was seemingly both a Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi

I know Episode 4 was at one time episode 1, and when he began working on The Empire Strikes Back there were a lot more sequels planned. The original film was just Star Wars, not episode 1, suggesting that it was originally a stand alone with the potential for sequels.

....and I'll just quote from Wikipedia (It has sources!)

 

Never use wikipedia as a definite source, Lucas changed his mind about what was true a long time ago. He said there'd never be the first three chapters done and look what a mess he made from that.

 

The part in bold is incorrect. The original story was to be a single-movie tale called The Star Wars and, even after Lucas started altering things and decided to have the story expanded, Episode IV and the "A New Hope" subtitle weren't added until long after the first movie's release.

 

Actually, the reason there was no chapter in the first is because Lucas was taking a big risk with the whole venture and didn't know how successful the film was going to be, he'd been denied by so many studios at the time that he felt it wise just to try out part of the story as one movie. I also know that Alec Guinness (because I watched an interview with him a while back when I was in my early teens)said that he was in on all of the plans as he took royalties from the films instead of a fixed sum, it was his agreement to get him to star in the films as Lucas said he needed a credible actor, that he knew all along that Darth Vader was Luke's father and if you look in the scene where he's asked by Luke about Anakin, he tried to make it look like it was an awkward moment for Obi-wan, because he had to protect Luke. If you watch that moment, you'll see it, as though he knows he's about to lie to him.

 

George Lucas has contradicted himself many times over the years in regards to what he came up with originally and what was retconned/added at later dates, so, as was said earlier, it's hard to say exactly what all the facts truly are.

 

That's true, I sure don't know what the current rhetoric regarding Lucas's creation is. It changes with his whim, a bit like the bloody canon!

[Guest Dante Spears]

Never use wikipedia as a definite source, Lucas changed his mind about what was true a long time ago. He said there'd never be the first three chapters done and look what a mess he made from that.

What are you my teacher? :lol I said it links/referncesb to other sources, hence why I did use it.

[Guest Saz]

This is the reason why you should never trust wikipedia:

 

The Tory party was today caught red-handed trying to manipulate Wikipedia to embarrass Gordon Brown.

 

A party official amended the online encyclopedia within minutes of Prime Minister's Questions in the Commons to back up an attack by David Cameron on Mr Brown.

 

Mr Cameron ridiculed Mr Brown's recent comparison of himself to the artist Titian, saying: "You told us the other day you were like Titian aged 90. The fact is Titian died at 86!"

 

But there is doubt over the painter's exact age and four minutes after PMQs, a Tory official changed the Wikipedia entry on Titian to make him younger.

 

The Evening Standard has discovered that the address of the manipulator was listed as "Conservative Central Office".

 

A party source said: "We don't approve of members of staff changing Wikipedia. In this case it was an over-eager member of staff trying to put right an incorrect entry in Wikipedia."

 

The Prime Minister had said during the recent Davos summit that his own experience of handling global economic crises reminded him of Titian who painted until he was 90 and said: "I'm finally beginning to learn how to paint."

 

This one was caught, I wonder how many other people have edited Wiki to suit their needs?

[Guest Jimmy Redman]

What I'm getting from this is that George Lucas took Dante's side in this discussion and edited his Wiki page to help him out.

[Paul]

Wiki is surprisingly well moderated though. Though I rarely use wiki to prove a point (unless its a throwaway nothing one :lol) unless I can check the sources myself.

[DC]

Wiki is moderated very well, almost to too well at times. Sure, some things slip through, but, on the whole, it's a good starting point for information (especially as, for a lot of things, there needs to be an outside citation/source to support it).

[Guest Dante Spears]

I really enjoyed the CGI movie, better than all the prequels that's for sure.

It might have been reasonable if it didn't resemble a two hour intro cut scene.

 

Alright some reasons:

- The aforementioned cut scene problem

- The writing is bad.

- Obi Wan's lines are particularly painful. The VA they got did manage to copy Ewan McGregor's voice but with all the emotion cut out

- Characters have an annoying habit of soliloquizing their thoughs and what they are going to do.

- Padme's appearance is just completely pointless and should have either been written in as a full character or not at all.

- "Great, you woke the baby"

- "R-Twoey"

- C-3P0 should NEVER save the day

- Just Ziro the Hutt in general. A Hutt should not be an effeminate, tattoo'd, English speaking club owner in the heart of Coruscant

- Ziro the Hutt should never have been written in, his subplot is just pointless and add NOTHING to the movie.

- While we are on Hutts, the most ruthless mobster in the Galaxy who never shows any sort of emotion except his own shallow pleasure should NOT be a family man.

- Anakin is the only human character who actually resembles a human being.

- Ashoka's character of beloved, light-heart student essentially demands she either die or turn evil. And by doing neither (Especially when the movie promotes and foreshadows her death) the film just feels...weird, like they changed direction midway.

- The Music seems to be somewhere between Prince of Persia and Final Fantasy 12

- I just don't like movies that are released as movies that are intended to jump start a tv series

Edited December 17, 2009 by Dante Spears

[Guest Saz]

I watch the cartoon series religiously and it's pretty damn exciting, Anakin's just shown a little bit of the dark side by torturing a prisoner to find out information to save his padawan.

 

Yeah, the CGI movie was a bit Twee (lek :D ) but the series has really kicked off well, it's just a pity the episodes are so short, but hey! It'll make a great box set!