STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS - Blu-Ray Thoughts

[DavidBanner]

BTW Eric Paddon will be pleased to know that the catchphrase is used - but it's justified this time.

[AndyDursin]

While I don't agree that the movie "stinks" by any means, this L.A. Times editorial does, admittedly, hit on a lot of points we've raised here over the last few months:

Abrams seems to follow the precept that the surest way to keep from putting a foot wrong is to walk only within the footprints of one's predecessors. As has been noted by a few reviewers who braved the intimidating weight of "Star Wars: the Phenomenon" to write critical pans, the new movie obsequiously replicates the formula of the original -- its set pieces, rhythm, pacing, even dialogue -- almost without advancing the story at all. It's a mark of Disney's own caretaker mentality that not only is a Jar Jar Binks-level blunder absent from "The Force Awakens," but so is surprise or even much suspense. One has to be a pretty inattentive viewer to be surprised or shocked by either the big reveal in the story (no spoilers!) or its denouement.

Abrams' big advance is said to be supplanting the whiter-than-white protagonists of the original "Star Wars" with a young woman and a black male. This hardly is a cinematic breakthrough, as other moviemakers who understand the demands of a gender- and culturally diverse audience have been doing it for years. But as a "rebooting," the term ubiquitously applied to "The Force Awakens," it feels entirely market-oriented, the way the Tide logo gets periodically redesigned to look fresh or the trademark figures of Betty Crocker and the Gerber Foods baby are redrawn to stay "modern." But redesigning logos and brand icons is a technique drawn from Madison Avenue, not traditional moviemaking...

...Modern blockbusters are not enjoyable the way the original "Star Wars" was, because they come at you as artifacts of high finance. Sitting in the theater at "Avatar," I felt like I was being pounded into submission by a giant hedge fund. Watching "The Force Awakens," I felt as though I was being shown a trailer for the next four movies in the series. Except that trailers aren't normally two hours long and you don't have to pay $12.50 to see them.

"The Force Awakens" will reinforce even more strongly a blockbuster, sequel-oriented style of moviemaking and marketing that has sapped Hollywood of its creative energies. Why be creative when that will merely interfere with merchandising, and when recycling is more dependably profitable?

It was said of George Lucas that he originally envisioned "Star Wars" as the first of a trilogy, which became reimagined as a series of three trilogies, and ended with two. Now we're at seven films, and anyone who thinks "Star Wars" will end at nine features doesn't know their Disney. The company, you see, is not really a movie studio, but an entertainment conglomerate. For Disney, "Star Wars" will be the gift that keeps giving. You, the consumer, are the mark who keeps paying.

"Star Wars" sequels, prequels, and requels are destined to be part of moviemaking into the infinite future. One can envision Hollywood eventually turning out only two products: "Star Wars" movies and James Bond movies, each periodically "rebooted" for a new generation of customers by casting the latest new young stars in new costumes facing the same old perils and uttering the same old quips, with every other vestige of creative originality relegated to the void and forgotten.

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik ... olumn.html

[DavidBanner]

I don't normally agree with a lot of Michael Hiltzik says, but his column here is mostly correct. Of course, his snide tone throughout is pretty hard to take - you can't miss the sneer he has even about the original Star Wars. (He gives it a backhand slap along the way - he derides the new movie for being what it is, and then derides the 1977 movie for not being an artistic film either. And he seems obsessed with the money figures rather than on looking at the actual movie itself much of the time.) But he's correct that the new movies are not being driven by Lucas' personal vision for the stories anymore. This is all about merchandising and dollars now.

[Eric W.]

http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news ... h-20151230

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/g ... k_20151230

Wowsers. Out comes the public dissent from George Lucas.

Here's a pithy line to remember:

“I sold them to the white slavers that take these things."

[AndyDursin]

I just don't understand Lucas on a lot of levels. He's angry or at least disappointed with Disney -- I get that -- but to me it's like he didn't think through the sale of his company to them. At least, it's looking increasingly like that.

He could have kept ownership of Lucasfilm and hired Kathleen Kennedy himself to run the company -- and then hired Abrams or whoever to make these films while still owning his baby. Why he didn't do that, I don't know. Sure he made billions -- but he could've also made billions making these sequels himself, retaining merch, licensing the characters for theme parks...did he really need all the money that fast, that quickly? It's like he's having buyer's remorse. Like he didn't realize how easy it was going to be to get fanboys all excited -- "really, all I need to do is remake the first movie?" lol.

There's a part of me that appreciates the fact that he didn't exploit the series because he didn't want to just retell the same story all over again. So there were no Star Wars movies after 1983 while I was growing up even though there was a huge appetite for them until 1999...he left money on the table there because he didn't feel he had a story to tell. I actually do admire that, especially in today's remake/sequel world.

But now it's like he's irritated that Disney is just doing what he could've done all those years, and that's just squeeze the property for all its worth and release a movie a year (on a side note, I'm sure it pains him watching Abrams recycle -- literally recycle -- all of his themes and concepts from 1977 and do little else, while making billions of dollars and get all the applause for it).

That's the Disney way, we're seeing it with Marvel and it's going to be the same scenario with Star Wars. There's never going to be an endgame, there's never going to be a stop -- these are films borne out of release dates first and stories second. But how he didn't know that ahead of time...it's just plain weird. Did nobody talk him out of it, or at least try? It's so strange...

My guess is we'll see Lucas become even more critical of Disney and these films as time goes on. I bet he really didn't like what Abrams did at all, from a creative (or lack thereof) standpoint, and he'll become less inclined to bite his tongue as time goes on. And I also bet he'll say it was a mistake to sell the property too.

[Paul MacLean]

Yeah, I agree, I too find myself asking "does George Lucas need the money that badly?"

I wonder if Disney suckered him in with a verbal -- but not contractual -- "assurance" he'd be be kept aboard in an advisory capacity and retain some level of creative input (and the right veto decisions he didn't agree with).

Then again it's possible he has some other epic idea up his sleeve and needs $4 billion to underwrite it.

[AndyDursin]

Then again it's possible he has some other epic idea up his sleeve and needs $4 billion to underwrite it.

RED TAILS 2?? lol

I love it when guys like Lucas and Coppola talk about "going back to their roots" by making "experimental" films. The difference between them is Lucas hasn't done it, but Coppola has -- making movies that about a dozen people around the world care to watch. lol

Not exactly where either these '70s groundbreaking directors thought they would be in 2015, that's for sure.

[mkaroly]

Maybe Disney will do the right thing and release Episodes 4-6 in their original, non-revisionist editions....that'll make Lucas complain something fierce! Do it Disney!!! PLEASE do it!!!!!! Lol...

[DavidBanner]

A couple of quick notes.

Lucas' comments about the new movie are really not all that angry - if you look at the context of what he was saying. His basic point is that he sold away his kids into the Disney corporate machine. We've all talked about it here, and none of us has any illusions that Disney sees this as anything other than a gigantic promotional opportunity. From what I've seen, Lucas was frankly tired of whatever hours he's been working over the last decade since he made the last Star Wars and was happy to be offered that kind of money to NOT have to make any more movies. I doubt anyone would try to talk him out of being paid 4 billion dollars, and he was certainly happy to take their money when they gave it to them.

We should also remember that Lucas was the one who hired Kathleen Kennedy - he announced this with her before the sale to Disney happened. I do think that she was hired specifically to run the company as a subdivision of Disney, but it was Lucas who picked her - likely at Spielberg's recommendation if you know her history.

I don't think Lucas was interested in making billions and billions more than he already makes. At this point, his thoughts about the story of Star Wars aren't really about the money. He's just looking at the notion of telling a new story, or at least a different one. From his comments, it's clear that Disney waved that kind of thing aside to make a movie "for the fans" - meaning that they weren't about to do anything other than what their focus groups told them the fans wanted. Lucas, for understandable reasons, felt this was all a big copout. He's not wrong. We'll just have to see if the new Lucasfilm has anything more interesting to say with the upcoming 5 movies, or if we're just going to see the same ideas run through over and over again. We've all been skeptical about this, because the Star Wars universe of stories is much smaller than the Marvel universe - there aren't the thousands of issues of comic books with piles of stories developed over decades to draw upon. The Star Wars universe doesn't have a Thor "Surtur" story or an X-Men "Days of Future Past" story to pull up. Granted, there are the expanded universe novels, but most of those were repetitive of the same beats from the movies, and all that material has been tossed into the near fan-fiction label of "Legends".

Regarding where the masters of the 70s wound up, I would only say that Coppola and his daughter are certainly aiming a LOT smaller with their movies. Coppola seems to me to be a lot happier just running his vineyards now, so it's not like he's in the money problems he had during the 80s or 90s anymore. I'm more surprised at the quiet ends of other filmmakers who were once on top of the heap in the 70s - like Brian DePalma, for one. There's a career that just dried up, and he didn't even get the financial success that the other guys had. And I won't even go into the sad ends of careers like Burt Reynolds...

Regarding the original theatrical versions of the original Star Wars trilogy, I do think Lucasfilm will release those on HD, but it won't be in the manner that the fans keep shouting about. It is unlikely in the extreme that Lucasfilm or Disney will expend the funds to do reconstructions of these movies to restore them to their original release condition. It is a lot more likely that they can take existing prints or other archive copies of the original cuts and do cheaper 2K scans. Then they could issue those editions as bonus features in a new box set of Lucas' SEs and the other movies, or something along those lines. I tend to doubt we'll see that until after 2020 for multiple obvious reasons. And I don't think Lucas would complain about the older versions being included.

[mkaroly]

Regarding the original theatrical versions of the original Star Wars trilogy, I do think Lucasfilm will release those on HD, but it won't be in the manner that the fans keep shouting about. It is unlikely in the extreme that Lucasfilm or Disney will expend the funds to do reconstructions of these movies to restore them to their original release condition. It is a lot more likely that they can take existing prints or other archive copies of the original cuts and do cheaper 2K scans. Then they could issue those editions as bonus features in a new box set of Lucas' SEs and the other movies, or something along those lines. I tend to doubt we'll see that until after 2020 for multiple obvious reasons. And I don't think Lucas would complain about the older versions being included.

After this movie they will have plenty of funds to go back and restore everything. I think Lucas would complain because he was so adamant about making those revisionist changes in the first place and being very unapologetic about it. At any rate, I would love to have the original films (Han shooting first, no obnoxious "NOOOO!" at the climactic scene of JEDI, etc.) on HD; I have the laserdiscs but no way of transferring them to DVD, so I am kind of stuck.

[DavidBanner]

Disney already had billions and billions of dollars before the new Star Wars movie made some money, and Lucasfilm was also well-funded to do any restoration they wished to undertake. (Apologies to Carl Sagan) The issue isn't whether they have funds. The issue is whether they're willing to spend that much coin to do a complete restoration and reconstruction of 30 year old material, when they already have the newer versions in better shape. They could easily just spend a much smaller amount and give everyone a quick 2K scan of an IP. (Keep in mind that even the 2K scan is going to reveal a bunch of details you probably don't want to see - all the matte boxes in the moving FX shots, harsh lines on the matte paintings, and all sorts of other goodies you wouldn't want to notice.)

This will all come down to business and dollars and cents. Disney will do a release that will allow them to combine the younger fans with the older fans. Easiest way there is to do a Blade Runner style release with both versions. (or even all 4 versions...)

I also would recommend chasing down copies of the 2006 single movie DVD releases of the original trilogy movies. Those came with a 2nd disc each, holding the laserdisc "Faces" version of each movie. Sadly not anamorphically encoded and only with basic stereo sound. But it would allow you to play them on DVD. I've done it, zooming in on the image and multiplexing the speakers, but it's definitely not the same.

Lucas gave an embarrassing statement today, in which he hurriedly apologized for saying anything to displease Bob Iger. It's a darn good thing I wasn't drinking anything when I read it.

[mkaroly]

I also would recommend chasing down copies of the 2006 single movie DVD releases of the original trilogy movies. Those came with a 2nd disc each, holding the laserdisc "Faces" version of each movie. Sadly not anamorphically encoded and only with basic stereo sound. But it would allow you to play them on DVD. I've done it, zooming in on the image and multiplexing the speakers, but it's definitely not the same.

I think it would be cheaper for me to just wait and buy them "new" when Disney decides to release them (if they ever do).

[AndyDursin]

I also would recommend chasing down copies of the 2006 single movie DVD releases of the original trilogy movies. Those came with a 2nd disc each, holding the laserdisc "Faces" version of each movie. Sadly not anamorphically encoded and only with basic stereo sound. But it would allow you to play them on DVD. I've done it, zooming in on the image and multiplexing the speakers, but it's definitely not the same.

You would be better off tracking down the "De-Specialized" versions some fan did which you can find online, they play back in 1080p and have about 6 different audio mixes from different sources. Very impressive work for a fan edit and much better than watching the DVDs (which were basically the laserdisc transfers like you indicated).

Lucas gave an embarrassing statement today, in which he hurriedly apologized for saying anything to displease Bob Iger. It's a darn good thing I wasn't drinking anything when I read it.

It was hysterical. I wonder if he signed some sort of agreement during the sale and Disney's lawyers gave George a call this morning.

[Monterey Jack]

"Whaaaahhh, someone else made a Star Wars movie that everyone liked more than my prequels, whaaaaahhhh!!!!"

That's all I'm hearing from Lucas' side...sour grapes.

[AndyDursin]

LOL saw this on Twitter:

In the special edition of George Lucas' Charlie Rose interview, Rose says ‘white slavers’ first