Future of Star Wars (Episode VII in 2015)

[Terra]

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business...for-4-billion/

Personally, I'm optimistic. Disney owns Marvel too, and the Avengers film was a great adaption.

Thoughts? (Be civil )

[PhantomPhan]

I'm really excited of the idea of Star Wars episodes VII, VIII and IX. I think Disney will treat the franchisewith respect and not screw it up like many people seem to think will happen - perhaps they should be told Avengers Assemble is a Disney film.

[Terra]

Disney brought Marvel out of its slump. Disney will probably let creative input fall to whoever's doing it, and allow for a big budget.

George Lucas has also stepped down, becoming just a creative consultant, or something like that.

[RobM]

Well, the three prequels were awful - absolutely so awful, so utterly bad, so completely shit that I don't even need to go into it - so I don't hold out that much optimism whatsoever.

Its fun to blame Lucas, but the reality is that despite his control-freakery and totalitarianism dozens, if not hundreds of people were perfectly happy to allow terrible movies to be made in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars.

I note how disney have been less interested in the new film, and infinately more interested in the franchise - the TV series, all the games, the hundreds of franchised books and the dozens of animated shorts, animated full movies etc etc. Personally I'd be more interested in those.

I don't really feel much excitement about it, all the fun of star wars was erased half-a-decade ago with the fucking awful prequels and Disneys bean-counters will almost certainly be telling people that there's moar money to be made in god-awful cash-ins in the same style as the prequels and all the hundreds of subsequent associated media than going back to making something in theme with the original 70s stuff.

Then again, the franchise wouldn't have a net worth billions of dollars if a majority of people didn't *prefer* the prequels and I'm well aware I'm now in a minority.

[Terra]

I kinda liked the prequels, even though there were CGI orgasms. I kinda liked I (mostly due to Maul), II was meh. My least favorite of all 6. III was okay, but only because I saw it as an action/sci-fi film. I strongly prefer the original trilogy over the prequels, however.

[Collegeboy]

There have already been dozens of books, games, shows, etc based on Star Wars that were not done by Lucas, so just because SW won't be done directly by him anymore is moot to me. If they do right, Disney won't do any worse than the others. I would rather, however, that they do something with different characters, rather than keep getting bogged down in dealing with the Skywalker crew. The galaxy and the Empire, even its remnant after ROTJ, is huge. No way that Luke and Co. were the only people fighting the Empire. I think this would be a good starting point to create a new group of heroes to start a SW franchise with.

[Circe]

I'm more of a Star Trek fan....but even that franchise has gone astray over the decades. Can we say 'Deep Space Nine' anyone ? Ok, I'll grant that Quark and Odo were fun, and Major Kira was a total cutie.....but jeeez that series was so damn dull it made cotton look sharp. V.V

But as for the original Star Wars ? It was a classic story about a boy swept up into an adventure against a black knight and his army of darkness. There was some magic, a ghost, some fast steeds, sword fights, and a princess. A nice little faery tale for most to enjoy. Hell, I forgot to mention the loyal doggie (R2D2).

^^

[Dave_Mire]

Does this mean Episode 7 will be done by Pixar?

[Madcat]

Its fun to blame Lucas, but the reality is that despite his control-freakery and totalitarianism dozens, if not hundreds of people were perfectly happy to allow terrible movies to be made in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Uh, the only person who was at all responsible for, and was entirely green-lighting, the prequel films was George Lucas. Those are Lucasfilms from start to finish (with distribution handled by 20th Century Fox) and, despite their reputations, they made boatloads of money (EP1 cost $115m to make, grossed $506m worldwide, EP2 cost $115m to make, grossed $650m worldwide, EP3 cost $113m to make, grossed $848m worldwide). That said, the difference between the prequel trilogy and the original trilogy is that, in the original trilogy, Lucas had a team of other writers, editors, even directors in some cases, telling him what did and didn't work, storywise, plotwise, scene-wise, etc. In the prequels? None of these other agencies were involved.

With Disney now at the helm? Well... I remain cautiously optimistic. After all, Disney also owns Pixar and Marvel, and has been apparently perfectly happy to let those studios do what they do best, and both of them have done rather well in making greatly entertaining films without Disney's stable of characters showing up, or being too "kiddiefied".

[RobM]

Originally Posted by Madcat

Uh, the only person who was at all responsible for, and was entirely green-lighting, the prequel films was George Lucas.

Nope.
These films have producers, assistant directors - large amounts of second unit directing that Lucas entirely devolved to unsupervised people because he didn't want to leave the comfort of his green-screen sound-stage - and the digital effects were obviously made by computer techies unless you want to claim that Lucas could be responsible for several hundred thousand man-hours of animation too.

The films were seen by more than a dozen test audiences (who were vetted against being the type to spread spoilers, but not their political disloyalty) all of whom said the film was confusing and questionable.
Distribution executives at Fox, senior partners, commissioners and others were all exchanging regular messages complaining that they utterly dreaded release and openly discussed using their catchment clauses to enforce refilming of the ending and reediting the second act.
Their own messages concluded that it'd make the same amount of money now as it would if it was fixed, so they just ran with it.

I never said it wasn't his fault the film that was made was shit, I said that none of the people who could have stopped it even tried because they were either too much in awe of Lucas or blinded by the large sums of money they were going to make.
There were hundreds of people who were prepared to let that first ship sail and go straight into the rocks. It wasn't until the third prequel that Lucas was carefully part-shelved.
That was the real crime, they had the power, the ability and the responsibility to step up and voice concerns.

I don't know why they waited so long, they didn't hesitate for A New Hope. It's fairly well known that the original edit of the film was concluded as one of the worst, tentionless films ever seen. Lucas was pulled and the original film editers were re-instated (after Lucas fired them and had done it himself) along with a special trouble-shooting team. Some segements were even refilmed by second-unit directors with Lucas fuming at the sidelines while the film was 'made good.'

The distributer had every bit as much legal authority over the prequels as it did before, the only difference between the two periods was that with the cult of star wars firmly established it didn't matter than the fourth film was terrible.

That said, the difference between the prequel trilogy and the original trilogy is that, in the original trilogy, Lucas had a team of other writers, editors, even directors in some cases, telling him what did and didn't work, storywise, plotwise, scene-wise, etc. In the prequels? None of these other agencies were involved.

Thats a very bland, generalising and disingenuous statement. Highly questionable and I think wrong. Its got a few points different from what I said that I'd highlight.

Lucas was not forced to work with the teams until the later films both times. For A New Hope the only people he was forced to listen to was the set-builders. He was so ambitious and pushed the boat so far out to sea that had to invent new techniques every week. The old films were state of the craftsmans art and by listing editors and other directors you've totally missed that films of the late 70s were won-or-lost largely on the strength of their infrastructure.

He was forced to film scenes certain way in Ep4 not because a hollywood suit made him, but because there was no other way of filming it. Practical effects especially had to be left to highly experianced men to film because Lucas is completely untechnical; although he sort of knew what he wanted from effects he was incapable of deciding how it was done - he just recieved the tape masters a few months later from the second-unit guys. Hell, large parts of it were filmed by sub-contracted firms in places like the UK entirely without directoral oversight from anyone.

Argueably there were more 'fingers on the film' with all the many different elements he pulled together in the prequels - but absolutely nobody did anything except cover their own backs and let Lucas take the whole of the blame.

When it comes to the prequels, he had to rely even more significantly on other directors and editers than he EVER did with the old ones. Huge swathes of the CGI were made without his supervision. Some of what people agree are the best scenes in the films - the long, sweeping shots or the tight, clever blocked images - are actually BETWEEN the two panels of storyboarding Lucas and are good because he didn't touch them and the other directors and editers made them good.
Example: The long, sweeping shot at the start of Sith.
The original storyboard had the end of the text... then straight into the funny stuff with Obi-wan having droids on his fighter. That whole shot was concieved, filmed, edited and produced without Lucas even knowing.
He was only really concerned with his talking segements, he actually considered everything between the talking scenes to be largely beneath him.

To restate; I've never argued that Lucas wasn't a highly questionable director who has a track-record of control-freakery that puts his crappy ideas at the fore-front and ruining films. I'm stating that there were plenty of people who could have stopped him and didn't because they were satisified that the films were good enough to make them their billions.