Questions about George Lucas & Star Wars

UK unions in the 1970s were abysmally bad. They drove lucas nuts during filming. He certainly didnt choose UK for it’s unions. he wanted to film outside of hollywood because he despised the system.

Indeed. Courtesy of that recently discovered (for me) goldmine of Star Wars info (The Secret History of Star Wars):

Star Wars had a hectic shoot in 1976. This wasn’t anything like the low-budget pictures George had made before–this was a big, expensive epic, shot in north Africa and on giant U.K. soundstages. George was often miserable and homesick, and his inability to connect to strangers left the foreign crews hostile to him. Marcia went with him to Tunisia, but the months in England during pre-production were lonesome; he wrote Marcia letters all the time, and kept a picture of her taped to the inside of his briefcase. Eventually Marcia moved there, renting a cottage for them in Hampstead; while they were away in Tunisia, burglers broke in and stole his video equipment.

When Lucas returned home, he was exhausted and disappointed in his film; Marcia had to rush him to the Marin General Hospital because of stress-induced chest pains not long after they got back. Lucas had hired a U.K. union editor–John Jympson–to cut the film while they were in England, but when Lucas had seen the rough cut he was horrified; the film was dull and without any of the kinetic energy he had envisioned. Jympson was fired, and Marcia took his place, starting over from scratch with George once they were back in California, working in the Parkhouse carriage house which was converted into an editing building.

That rigngs true, but I also thought the manacles and other bonds were a visual metaphor for Palpatine cementing ownership of his new apprentice.

When the facemask comes down, sealing him in, it’s also locking him into his prison. The messianic figure receives his cross to bear, Faust realizes the consequences of dealing with Mephistopheles. I don’t think the suit is where he belongs, but it’s what he deserved. During Episodes 4, 5, and the earlier parts of 6, he has grown to accept it.

I think the only reason they cast a blond-haired blue-eyed kid as a young Darth Vader was so he would have that visual genetic similarity to Luke Skywalker. As for the angst and so on of leaving his mother, the first chance he gets to travel on his own, he looks her up. When he finds that she’s dying he massacres the savages that kidnapped her, then makes a pact with the devil so that his secret wife won’t die. If Angst translates as “Little Fear”, I think the character displayed plenty of that…if not in one movie, then over the course of the three movies. But of course many of the Original Trilogy characters, especially Han and Leia, only show growth over the course of their three movies.

To me, the biggest missed chance the prequels had (aside from certain plotting, acting, directorial, and conceptual choices, of course) was the transformation of the Separatist side (venal and treacherous, even if the Episode 3 opening crawl says there are “heroes on both sides”) into the Rebellion (the Good Guys). There was a deleted scene in Episode III that had Jimmy Smits and cronies declaring independence, or whatever, but even if it had made it into the finished movie, it didn’t go far enough. I wanted to see a declaration of principles, for these renegade senators to stick their necks out and say why they were suddenly joining the wrong side of the Clone War. The time for plotting and skulking was done (except for Yoda and Ben hiding in exile), it was time to draw lines in the sand. They’d say the next trilogy — the Original Trilogy — would be all about the clash of good vs. evil, not evil’s seduction of good. But I guess more exposition wasn’t needed, and Organa’s ride/the Blockade Runner showing up in Episode 4 did the the heavy lifting to show where the Rebellion sprang from.

When he first goes into his suit it’s after he’s made the change to the dark side. That’s why I think it’s where he belongs at that point. I still think it would have played better if it had been like a race car driver settling into his seat behind the wheel before a race. Now shit’s about to get real, which sets up the Darth Vader we see later. Instead he’s presented in a comical fashion. When you combine the annoying kid of Ep 1 with the whiner of Ep 2, then see him stumbling around in Ep 3, it really undercuts his character.

…that Vader immediately breaks free of? Yeah, no. Frankenstein’s Monster all the way.

Keep in mind that the scene was originally shot with his hands manacled down by his waist. (The teaser trailer showed this pose.) Lucas had ILM move the hands up towards the top of the table with CG later.

Oh, I think there’s a case to be made that the suit itself is a symbol of hs servitude to Palpatine, especially since the context of his presence in the suit being the first thing that happened to him after being brought low and left for dead by Obi-Wan. It’s an obvious re-birth (as is the Frankenstien monster reanimation) juxtaposed with the actual birth of the twins, but it also retroactively closes the circle from RotJ when Anakin/Vader’s humanity re-emerges only when the suit is compromised and we can again see his face. Making him a sealed jar of evil, if you will.

There’s also an element of thematic linkage between the trilogies with Palpatine’s “testing” Anakin for apprenticeship potential by ordering him to kill a defeated Dooku and the circle being broken by Luke refusing to kill a defeated Vader (a choice that also showed up in The Force Unleashed, guess it’s a Sith job application). The saga wasn’t totally devoid of moments of parallellism and symbology.

Of course opinions may vary, but I learned in school that there are very few truly wrong answers in film criticism, everybody gets to toss out their shovelfull.

DJscman - Wow! I can’t wait to re-watch the prequel movies with the things you stated in mind. I’ve had a glass half-full attitude towards the series since Episode 2 (the only thing I didn’t like about Ep.1 was the kid that played Anakin - didn’t think he was a good actor). So thank you as you’ve really turned my thinking around and given me a great new perspective.

It’s not that the prequels lack interesting ideas, it’s that as a viewing experience they’re utterly devoid of warmth, humor, energy, pacing, or anything that might make you actually want to sit through them.

The only spontaneous, human moment I can find in all three films is McGregor’s Obi-Wan bouncing like an angry boxer behind that red energy shield right before he fights Maul.

Now, all that said, I saw The Phantom Menace in theaters twelve times.

I saw it twice in the theaters. It is the only one of the prequels that actually entertained me. And the only one that did have some warmth and energy.

I’ve never gotten the backlash against Metachlorins, or whatever they’re called. Like Djscman, I always held the view that it was just a way of showing how different things were in the old republic era, and I personally never saw a contradiction between having a blood test for something and that something being a magical force. Star Wars always struck me as more fantasy than Science fiction, and having a blood test for the Force didn’t change that balance for me.

I’ve heard some people complain that midichlorians make the Force entirely into a biological phenomenon, but that’s not quite right: Qui-Gon describes that they provide communication with the Force, which remains something external.

Besides the previously mentioned idea that Midichlorians mean that Vader is less of a Jedi after dismemberment, I’ve always theorized that maybe they were introduced to lay the groundwork for an explanation of why they wouldn’t be able to clone Jedi (in the movies).

I hated midichlorians just for the idea that the Force needed to be explained. It didn’t, so there was no story purpose for it, maiking them an indicator that the script wasn’t as tight as it should have been. The audience would have bought any justification Qui-Gon had for deeming Anakin to be a force prodigy, up to and including “I can sense it.” So why bother with force bacteria that will never be mentioned again?

Then again, they are far from the biggest gripe I had with TPM. Anakin’s virgin birth? No symbolism there, no reason to develop that plot thread, just toss it off in passing.

However, the idea that midichlorians is a reason why Jedi can’t be cloned is a great, yet unused, story justification for midichlorians to be in the canon. You deserve a no-prize.

Well, it’s glancingly alluded to in RotS, if you view things “from a certain point of view,” although in an earlier draft Palpatine explicitly stated that he was Anakin’s father, so to speak.

Sorry to keep linking this site, but: Loading...

Sidious/Palpatine: “I used the power of the force to will the midichlorians to start the cell divisions that created you.”

Such POETRY George.

It was for the final lightsaber fight, wasn’t it? I went four times primarily for that.

Probably in part. I was also fascinated by how bad it was, plus I was young and aimless and it was playing around the clock. I would often find myself in a 1am screening after leaving bars.

Midichlorians were clearly Lucas’s spin on mitochondria. IIRC, there were some interesting discoveries about mitochondria (and in particular their symbiotic relationship with human cells) back in the `90s, which Lucas apparently decided to riff on. Personally I chose to retroactively see it as a reference to Parasite Eve, even though that’s highly unlikely. :)

Wow. I saw it in the theater exactly once (at the Uptown in DC, which has a great screen). It was quiet for a moment as the credits rolled, then I could hear the guy sitting behind me muttering “what… the… fuck…”

That summed up my feelings, too.

Yeah spot on, the ideas are all there, the light -> dark theme is great (that’s why we wanted to see it, after all); it’s the execution that’s pants.

For me the high spots are Palpatine and the young Sir Alec Guiness. Palpatine alone is almost worth the ticket price - played throughout with such gusto and hammy relish. Same for McGregor, he’s the only other actor who seems to be actually enjoying himself (“whee, look at me, I’m in Star Wars with ma lightsaber!!!”).