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Episode VII: 'The Force Awakens' Discussion Thread


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Again, a movie of this scale and reverence scripted and shot in a year's time. The Mouse can afford the time, the Mouse can afford the care...but the Mouse is a greedy, lazy Mouse.

 

Playing the "Big, greedy, multi-million dollar corporate entity" card is weak sauce. Sorry.

 

Yep, Disney is a huge, successful company that makes a lot of money. And (despite some people's best efforts) that is still allowed here in America. A company is allowed to grow and be successful. A company is also allowed to buy one of your favorite childhood properties and try to make money off of it just as the original owner did with the prequels and, yes, even the OT.

 

Further, a company this successful has to know what it's doing. They would not have made it that far otherwise. That being the case, why would making SW7 a careless, lazy rush job (as you suggest) ever be their business strategy? For a quick money grab? They HAVE the money already. The rights to the franchise aren't going anywhere. What they also have is a huge fan base who 95% of are still butt hurt over three movies over a decade old. On however small a level, Disney has something to prove to them, some winning over to do. That part is my personal opinion. You may or may not agree with that. What is not an opinion is the fact that this movie is the launching pad (for better or worse) for endless sequels, spin offs, and sequels of spin offs from this year until the end of time. Why would they ever go "lazy" on this of all movies?

 

Again, don't confuse this for me crowning SW7 a good movie before I've seen it. I just don't buy into Big Company = Bad Movie.

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Again, don't confuse this for me crowning SW7 a good movie before I've seen it. I just don't buy into Big Company = Bad Movie.

 

No, but they can certainly afford more time, care, and exploration/experimentation. The fast-tracking will always make me wonder just how much better things could be. But we all know this is because they wanted to get it out before Harrison Ford dies.

 

Anyone else remember this teaser:

I remember people being excited by this, too.

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But we all know this is because they wanted to get it out before Harrison Ford dies.

 

lol, ya never know just how true that may be...

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Again, a movie of this scale and reverence scripted and shot in a year's time. The Mouse can afford the time, the Mouse can afford the care...but the Mouse is a greedy, lazy Mouse.

 

But I thought this whole process started back in the latter half of 2012. That's roughly three years of development and production, the same amount of time that was spent making the other films, or am I wrong about that?

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Yep, the story treatments for the sequels from Lucas were part of the sale to Disney. So the basic framework was started in 2012 & the movie comes out in 2015. About a 3 year period. Seeing as the original film took 4 years from Lucas starting the original draft in early 1973 to release on May 25, 1977, it's a 1 year difference in overall production time.

 

From start of filming to release it's actually going to be a longer timeframe than the original. March 1976-May 1977 compared to May 2014-December 2015.

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Yep, the story treatments for the sequels from Lucas were part of the sale to Disney. So the basic framework was started in 2012 & the movie comes out in 2015. About a 3 year period. Seeing as the original film took 4 years from Lucas starting the original draft in early 1973 to release on May 25, 1977, it's a 1 year difference in overall production time.

 

From start of filming to release it's actually going to be a longer timeframe than the original. March 1976-May 1977 compared to May 2014-December 2015.

 

Hey, enough with all these facts. Feat wants reasons for Star Wars sucks and you're not helping @smilepunch@

 

Still, there's no denying it's only a matter of time before the Grim Reaper is at Ford's door. I mean, look! His hair is grey now! It could be a matter of months. Hurry, Disney, rush two more SW movies into production! Time is short!

 

Next week SW 7 will suck for a different reason... @fett@

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Yep, the story treatments for the sequels from Lucas were part of the sale to Disney. So the basic framework was started in 2012 & the movie comes out in 2015. About a 3 year period. Seeing as the original film took 4 years from Lucas starting the original draft in early 1973 to release on May 25, 1977, it's a 1 year difference in overall production time.

 

From start of filming to release it's actually going to be a longer timeframe than the original. March 1976-May 1977 compared to May 2014-December 2015.

 

And we know that anything from George Lucas aside from intellectual property survived how at this point? Already writing that "making of" eh, Rinzler?

 

I've played out a million post-Jedi story scenarios with action figures in the past 30 years. I bet I could scribble a dozen half-assed story treatments on a legal pad just like Georgie Boy by the end of the weekend, if that's the case.

 

 

Next week SW 7 will suck for a different reason... @fett@

 

Dont you mean "another" reason? Eagerly awaiting news of Boba Fett's survival...

 

0016e9f6276eed7e0127b169dc2c3ac36f1d71d601b37a757cd5ebb25741aaa8.jpg

 

 

http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/04/30/shadows-of-the-empires-outrider-confirmed-as-star-wars-canon

The Outrider ship is canon, but story and characters are not. Disney will be releasing the original theatrical versions, but the special edition is still canon?

076_1634_01.MP4_.00_00_42_08.Still002-720x405.jpg

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Disney will be releasing the original theatrical versions,

 

"Nuf said!

 

The one thing any OT fan would want, the one thing George never intended on giving us. That's not worth a little love?

 

Who cares if movie canon is different from printed canon? How is that any different than how Marvel or DC handle things? Those two companies could not possibly tie every comic, novel, video game, and movie together. The history and mythos has become too vast over the many decades to even consider doing it. Star Wars will become just as big, if not by Disney's hand then by someone else's. They're not the evil "canon killer". SW growing to the point were this would become necessary was inevitable.

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Disney will be releasing the original theatrical versions,

 

"Nuf said!

 

The one thing any OT fan would want, the one thing George never intended on giving us. That's not worth a little love?

 

 

Yeah, that's great. But you know what would be the icing on the cake? Disney stepping up and declaring the Special Editions not canon.

I hope to see future multipack/saga editions include the theatrical releases in them and the Special Editions for purchase separate, not the other way around.

 

But that's not going to happen.

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Yeah, that's great. But you know what would be the icing on the cake? Disney stepping up and declaring the Special Editions not canon.

I hope to see future multipack/saga editions include the theatrical releases in them and the Special Editions for purchase separate, not the other way around.

 

But that's not going to happen.

 

What is so bad about the Special editions? I mean really, So Greedo shot first making Hans actions self defense instead of outright murder. Do you really think Disney would change that. Or Anakin being portrayed as a young man instead of an old man at the end of Jedi? Those are honestly the only two things I ever hear being whined about by fans. I really don't have a huge problem with either. Sure the Han thing is massively debatable.

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Yeah, that's great. But you know what would be the icing on the cake? Disney stepping up and declaring the Special Editions not canon.

 

I think it would be genius if, in Episode 7, Harrison Ford says the words, "I shot first". He can say it to anyone, in any circumstance, in any context, I don't care. They can make it as subtle as they want. Fans with a bee in their bonnet after all these years will catch it and be instantly satiated and the casual fan will miss it completely and just go on enjoying the movie. But it would act as an unofficial version of the declaration you are looking for.

 

Personally I could care less what Disney's stance is on the special editions is. I don't need an official declaration by them one way or another. I don't need a new owner to apologize for an old owner's actions. I'll take the original OT every time, but....hear me out....the special editions are by and large cosmetic changes. Windows in Cloud City, a beak on the Jabba's pit of doom, moving Dewbacks, don't require a denouncement from the current owner, IMO. Yes, Greedo shooting first, Hayden Anakin are egregious changes that I feel are complete BS. But at the end of the day, neither those or any other tweaks made by George changed SW overall message. The story itself was unaltered. Not the exact way I remember it watching as a kid (and that is part of the fun of SW for me, which is why I prefer the original OT) but the overall story is unchanged.

 

It would be very simple for them to just make a Blu-Ray that gives you the option of watching the original version or the special edition version all in one disk. Let the viewer decide what's "canon" in his or her living room. I don't see that happening,

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They'll always go for selling us 2 sets...always.

 

My biggest beef with the SE is the young ghost of Anakin and the lion king music.

 

But, I'm willing to forgive that if we could forget "no...no...NO!"

So utterly detestable. The definitive masterstroke of a false genius.

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Yahoo has it Abrams wanted to scatter the bones of Jar Jar across Tatooine as a joke but had second thoughts about it.

That further supports my assumption that Abrams is no fan of the prequels and that we're going to see very little to no reference to them going forward, or at the very least in this movie. Why else would he turn down Samuel L. Jackson to reprise his roll (aside from the fact that Mace Windu's return would make no sense)? Everyone wants Samuel L. Jackson in their movies, it seems.

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That further supports my assumption that Abrams is no fan of the prequels and that we're going to see very little to no reference to them going forward, or at the very least in this movie.

 

 

 

I'm sure it has plenty of flashy lightsaber duels and gimmicky villains.

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from the Vanity Fair article:

 

“We were struggling to come up with a story,” Kasdan, 66, admitted. “There were elements that we would come up with and say, ‘Oh, that’s good! That’s strong!’ But it was not coming together.” With Abrams now part of the development team and the already tight summer 2015 release date looming ever closer, Michael Arndt was having difficulty finishing a script within the necessary time frame. “There was a ton of ideas and outlines, a lot of cards on the wall, a lot of writing on whiteboards,” Abrams said, but no screenplay. With pre-production chores already well under way in London, where much of the filmwould be shot at Pinewood Studios, Abrams and Kasdan took over the screen-writing process, starting more or less from scratch. “We said, Blank page. Page one. What do we desperately want to see?” Abrams told me. Though Abrams said both men had pet ideas from the development process they wanted to incorporate, and did, Kasdan made the process sound like more of a teardown: “We didn’t have anything,” Kasdan said. “There were a thousand people waiting for answers on things, and you couldn’t tell them anything except ‘Yeah, that guy’s in it.’ That was about it. That was really allwe knew.” This was in early November 2013, six months before filming was now scheduled to begin, in May of 2014. (This was when the release date was pushed back to December 2015.) By mid-January, Abrams and Kasdan had a draft, most of it hashed out in plein air conversations recorded on an iPhone as they walked and talked for hours at a time through cityscapes that changed according to the vagaries of Abrams’s schedule: first along the beach in Santa Monica, then through a freezing Central Park, in New York, and finally on the streets of London and Paris. One day, the two men spent eight hours at Les Deux Magots, the boisterous café on Boulevard Saint-Germain where patrons are jammed elbow-to-elbow and which is famous for having once been a hangout for the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir.“ We’re like yelling back and forth in this noise, saying, This should happen, that should happen, he can’t do that—and hoping no one’s there from Cinema Blend,” Kasdan said, referring to the movie- nerd gossip site, not a French film-crit journal. Fortunately, no one was eavesdropping, though if you are interested in spoilers you can find plenty online. The schedule got so tight that—as memorialized in a photo Kasdan showed me—he and Abrams were still hashing out story beats on the film’s London sound stage while extras in storm trooper gear were being drilled around them. At any rate, whatever Abrams and Kasdan came upwith apparently pleased everyone concerned—though everyone concerned may have had no choice but to be pleased at that point.

 

http://www.slideshare.net/tzafs/vanity-fair-june-2015-usa

 

 

Someone wanna put this in the timeline for me? Where did George's story treatment/ideas go? (Hint: rhymes with "brash fan")

I can't discount the ideas they came up with yet, but this does not put my mind at ease about this new era of Star Wars.

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I recall stories of the original Star Trek series where actors were handed scripts that were finished only minutes before filming was supposed to begin. That was a beloved series and you could say they operated on a tight schedule at times.

 

I'd also wager that since the dawn of movie making, there have been more than a few films that were on tight production schedules that turned out good.

 

I see what you're concerned about, though.

 

When they say they had trouble coming up with a story, that would be my problem too if I were writing new Star Wars. I was (maybe still am) of the belief that we don't need another Star Wars. The story has been told, it had a satisfying beginning, middle and end like all good stories do (we're talking OT, of course). But I also realized what this franchise was going to turn into after the sale to Disney: big corporations, tight schedules, endless movies, and merchandising, merchandising, merchandising. So, if we're honest about it, not MUCH different than how it's always been. On the plus side, I believe we have creators that care about the brand and that does count for something. No, it does not mean it's impossible for them to mess it up, but it counts for something. We'll see if it's good.

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I recall stories of the original Star Trek series where actors were handed scripts that were finished only minutes before filming was supposed to begin. That was a beloved series and you could say they operated on a tight schedule at times.

 

That's a big reach for comparison. Different beasts. Not just for sci-fi, but mediums. If you want to make a case with the Trek films, go for it.

 

I'd also wager that since the dawn of movie making, there have been more than a few films that were on tight production schedules that turned out good.

Ghostbusters and Batman 1989 had pretty much improvised/under the gun endings, but production at least started with a script. And for scope, scale, and expectations, you're going to be hard pressed to find an equal.

 

ISo, if we're honest about it, not MUCH different than how it's always been.

I am being honest for the sake of cautious optimism, but that is a cop-out

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I recall stories of the original Star Trek series where actors were handed scripts that were finished only minutes before filming was supposed to begin. That was a beloved series and you could say they operated on a tight schedule at times.

 

That's a big reach for comparison. Different beasts.

Not really. In both cases you have studios demanding a story put on film in X amount of time and creators who are under the gun and have to meet a deadline they wish they had more time for. If you'll excuse another "reach", that's happened with me at my job and probably to you at yours. Some people do their best work under pressure.

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Over on Yahoo,Kasdan hinted that even though he's not in this film,Lando might turn up in one of the other two movies.

I also read something where Kasdan claims they are not trying to make episode 7 "epic", that they want to keep it to a descent run time. I don't have the link anymore, you'll just have to take my word for it

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