The non-toy Star Wars discussion thread

[GoktimusPrime]

As I'm sure most of you know, when George Lucas was pitching his script for Star Wars during the mid 1970s to movie studios, he was repeatedly knocked back and rejected until he was finally accepted by 20th Century Fox (and even then a lot of execs had their doubts).

So I stumbled across these today - they're letters of rejection for Star Wars!
Rejection letter from United Artists
Rejection letter from Universal Studios
Man... I bet the people who made those decisions must've been kicking themselves for the last 33 years!

"There seems to be too much cost involved for this kind of juvenile story......A risky project — one I would not do." - United Artists (1975)

"The question, in the end, is how much faith we have in Mr Lucas’s ability to pull it all off." - Universal Studios (1975)

[Hursticon]

Wow!
Personally Goki, if the supposed 'think-tanks' at these particular studios weren't lining up to a homeless shelter after the release of Episode IV, then they should've been!

IMO United Artists didn't want to pick it up because they were already working on Logan's Run and probably couldn't afford to pick Star Wars up even if they wanted to especially since they followed that up with the original Carrie.

Universal Studios... I don't know why they didn't pick it up if they liked it so much? I mean, considering the garbage they were putting out at the time, the only truly decent, but hell awesome!, movie they put out between 74 and 76 was Jaws - so I guess they wanted to pursue a quote 'more wholesome' brand of entertainment at the time.

This sort of reminds me of the story John Cleese divulged on the Graham Norton Show with regards to the original pitch (1:14) for Faulty Towers.

[SharkyMcShark]

There was a lot of skepticism at the time of the release of the first movie - remember, it initially had a very limited release. The movie had gone over budget, taken longer than had been allotted for filming and a lot of the cast (especially Harrison Ford and Alec Guiness) didn't buy into the premise at all, or have much faith in it. Ford basically thought he was just making a kids movie.

Further to that at the time there wasn't really that large a market for movies as fantastical as Star Wars - in the post Vietnam War era gritty grungy dark realistic movies were very much par for the course.

[5FDP]

How different would our lives have been if these movies were never made... every movie, script, and actor have all been reversed engineered by studying Episode 4 (or rather episode 1- that's what we call it because let's face it, episodes 1 -3 sucked hairy Ewok balls)

[Hursticon]

How different would our lives have been if these movies were never made... every movie, script, and actor have all been reversed engineered by studying Episode 4 (or rather episode 1- that's what we call it because let's face it, episodes 1 -3 sucked hairy Ewok balls)

Hmm...

In all honesty, I quite liked Phantom Menace, Attack of The Clones & Revenge of The Sith.
That being said though, A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back & Return of The Jedi are above and beyond superior movies and I agree 5FDP, our lives would be so dramatically different if Star Wars had never got off the ground.

In actuality, if Star Wars had never been made then that would've inadvertently affected the G1 Transformers Cartoon! - Because a lot of the sound effects were actually drawn from the Star Wars movies.

[GoktimusPrime]

Sir Alec Guiness always hated Star Wars. Unlike Ewan MacGregor who, after being told by Lucas that he was accepted for the role of Obiwan, hung up the phone and victoriously yelled, "I'M OBI-F***ING-WAN KENOBI!!"

[GoktimusPrime]

RIP Bob Anderson

[GoktimusPrime]

From here

- much like Star Wars Episode 3 is actually quite an entertaining movie when you skip all the boring plot and romance bits.

I found Revenge of the Sith to be the best of the Prequel Trilogy; while the movie is long (they all are), I can't think of any scenes that were dragged out too long (like say the Pod Race in Ep 1) or failed to contribute to the plot and was just wasting screen time (like say 90% of Jar Jar Binks' appearances). Attack of the Clones had that really long and awkwardly done romance thing (and romance isn't bad if it's done well, like say the romance between Leia and Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back; but the romance between Anakin and Padmé was just awkward) -- Hayden Christiansen just can't do romance -- but Lucas came to accept this criticism and the romance in RotS was much shorter than in AotC. Yes, it was just as cringeworthy, but it was important to have it to show that Anakin was still very strongly in love/emotionally attached to Padmé because it's this emotional bond that ultimately leads to his fall to the Dark Side. But the scene was brief -- it served its purpose, then moved on.

I'll give Lucas credit where it's due, yes, he made mistakes in the prequels, but he took the criticism on board and showed signs of improving on them in each successive movie.
e.g.

+ In TPM he was criticised for Jar Jar Binks who just wasted screen time. In AotC Jar Jar Binks appeared very briefly, and his appearances contributed directly to the plot. No more rude table manners, falling about or sniffing farts -- he appeared with Padmé in the beginning and was reunited with Obi-Wan and Anakin, then he was later manipulated by Palpatine and helped him create the Empire (or at least its foundations ). In RotS Jar Jar only appears once -- at Padmé's funeral procession. And he had 0 dialogue.

+ AotC was criticised for the badly done romance between Anakin and Padmé - this was significantly reduced in RotS and was more directly relevant to the plot.

+ AotC also had the worst light sabre choreography in all the SW films ... very showy, swingy, fancy... and unrealistically ridiculous. Like Yoda hopping about while barely taking a swipe at Dooku (what a waste of energy/effort!). This was greatly improved in RotS... in Kasshhyyyk (sp?) when Yoda jumps, he beheads the Clone Troopers with one swift cut. When fighting Palpatine, every leap/strike made contact with Palpatine's blade. He wasn't pouncing just for the sake of pouncing like on Geonosis (which was so damn stupid). The fighting form of Obi-Wan and Anakin was much better too -- their showdown on the Invisible Hand was way more enjoyable to watch than the Geonosian showdown. TPM still had the best sabre fights IMO, but that may have been because they had Ray Park (Darth Maul) - a martial arts practitioner - to help.

+ The Pod Race was criticised as being way too long and boring. It would've been better if done as one lap. This was somewhat improved in the Coruscant chase scene (thought parts of that are kinda implausible); but in RotS there are no overtly drawn out and pointless chasing/racing scenes, rather they were incorporated into the story/action which made them more exciting and helped to progress the plot rather than stalling it (e.g. Obiwan/Anakin trying to get aboard the Invisible Hand, Obi-Wan chasing Grievous)

I actually found Revenge of the Sith to be better made than A New Hope, I rate it as my third favourite Star Wars movie after Return of the Jedi and The Empire Strikes Back.

[VERT]

Totally with you on all points Gok. Well said. In My mind all six are just one movie with different chapters. I cant say I hate any cause its all part on the one movie. But I do love certain chapters...Acts more than others

[GoktimusPrime]

Regardless of the flaws in his films, Lucas at least _tries_ to tell a good story with his films (which are Eps 1, 2, 3 and 4 -- eps 5 and 6 were directed by Irvin Kershner and Richard Marquand respectively); and as you said, they're treated as different chapters within the same story. Lucas makes mistakes, but he takes them onboard and makes an effort to improve on some of them. While Lucas uses loads of special effects, he's ultimately still trying to use them as a tool to tell a story, rather than making stories to tell special effects.

...which is more than what I can say for Michael Bay's work on Transformers.