Lucas is an intelligent guy, and the rough draft that was written for Phantom Menace is amazing.
So what really went wrong?
Can we blame the studio execs?
>>63177127
Blame all his friends for abandoning him.
He asked kasdan to do rewrites but he turned down the offer and told Lucas he should do it all himself
He asked Ron Howard and Robert Zemekis to direct but they declined
>>63177127
Post the rough draft
He is the studio exec.
He is the studio.
Nobody told him no.
>inb4 that one autist from /v/ calls "shill"
>>63177127
He went too far in a few places.
He chose a whiny faggot to play Anakin
>>63177153
Source? I've never heard this, he always comes across as being very possessive of his movies in interviews
>>63177228
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/110807/20151125/ron-howard-robert-zemeckis-steven-spielberg-turned-down-directing-the-star-wars-prequels.htm
>>63177153
>all his friends for abandoning him.
Nah
Lucas is to blame
he trusted cgi too much
>>63177244
>Speilberg and Zemekis could've made Star Wars movies and that'll never happen now
Can this be a "how to make the prequels better" thread? I like reading what you guys post...
If the prequels stayed closer to the original concepts laid out in the OT, they would have been great. They should have portrayed Anakin and Obiwan as equals. Both adults andgood friends.The pay off of Anakin turning to the dark side was made weaker by the fact that he was never really on the light side.
Also if they toned down the fan service and didn't let the fanbase influence the plot. Anakin didn't need to be Jesus. We know Darth was important to us, but he wasn't to the story. We didn't need 3P0 at all if he didn't fit. We didn't need Chewie, or copious amounts of Yoda. We didn't even need Tattooine until the end of RotS.
ep 1 was a great movie
>>63177127
>Lucas is an intelligent guy
Lucas is a pretty good "ideas" guy, a brilliant businessman and an 'ok' director. He is not a good writer, he can't direct actors and he loves to make bad decisions.
I'm sure his original rough drafts for all the prequels are pretty great, but the problem is when he started narrowing things down he chose the wrong actors, wrote the wrong dialog, focused on the wrong aspects of the story and bet on all the wrong horses when it came to how to implement his new film-making technology. He really needed to be the producer and have half the writing credits. He needed a strong director, a 2nd writer to do the script, and someone with a backbone at ILM to tell him that doing everything as CGI was going to date the films and make for a poor viewing experience.
There were no studio execs, Fox distributed, but like ESB and RotJ Lucas had full control.
>>63177312
They still can when Disney remakes the prequels once the seven movies planned run their course.
In all honesty, I would've had Anakin be a teenager, but like a cocky Han Solo rogue style that would in a way emulate Han (inb4 poetry). Have him and his mom be like poor people under the oppressive hutts living in like a shanty town (think the Bronx in space), and have the podrace be a sort of way to prove his worth. Have his dad be dead but he always promised him to take care of his mother, making it even more painful to leave but his mom encourages him
>>63177341
Tommy Vercettie is an innocent man!
Wrong casting and bad acting pushed by George Lucas' dialogues.
Liam Neeson and Samuel Jackson are completely out of place. Jake Lloyd/Hayden Christensen, probably the worst casting decision for a character ever, plus Natalie Portman's hideous acting.
>>63177370
This is terrible, no.
>>63177127
>So what really went wrong?
He made a lot of bad decisions, starting with ignoring the advice of all of his friends and casting Anakin as a 9 year old kid instead of as a 15-16 year old as originally intended. He basically made one bad call after another and wasted an entire 3rd of the trilogy on a film that is at best tangentially related to what is going on in Episode II / III which made those two films feel really rushed when it came to anakin turning to the Dark Side because that whole storyline started in Episode II.
>>63177127
>Lucas is an intelligent guy.
Go and read The Secret History of Star Wars.
Other way around. Studio shit all over his ideas for episodes 4-6.
He says the edits to those films, and the prequel trilogy, are closer to his vision of star wars.
>>63177370
It would've been better to have Anakin as a teenager with wisdom beyond his years.
His character would need to show an aptitude for intuition, at least in Phantom Meance.
There needed to be more scenes in the movies were Anakin is shown to be something more than what he is.
The Podrace doesn't get this across at all, and the pilot scene feels accidental and adventurous in tone.
There is nothing in the movies that shows off Anakin in anyway to be above anyone in the Jedi Order.
>>63177538
This. Plus Obi Wan in A New Hope speaks of Anakin as if he was a close friend. An equal. A man he grew up with. The prequels show Anakin to be an unlikable teenager and Obi Wan to be constantly cleaning up his bullshit.
>>63177127
Who's to blame other than Lucas for shooting everything in shot reserve shot?
Who's to blame other than Lucas for Midochlorians, "The prohecy," and the "chosen one?"
Who's to blame other than Lucas for having 95% of the aliens CGI? I remember going in revenge expecting all the same shit yet I still noticed how great and terrifying the Muun (the guy who Obi Wan talked to right before he fought Grevious) because he was the only alien that's all makeup and prostetics.
>>63177127
>Can we blame the studio execs?
What studio execs?
>>63177127
At least the prequels had original ideas.
>>63177666
Actually a good point, thanks Satan
>>63177666
The differences between the OT and Ep. VII look right, the jarring as fuck leap in design between the prequel shit and the OT designs is terrible. The Prequel designs should be clunkier, less refined versions of what you see in the OT. Instead they are busy as fuck, over-designed and only barely relate to what I guess they evolved into.
>>63177622
>Munn
He's a Pau'an, and they're my favorite Prequel race
>>63177887
>The Prequel designs should be clunkier, less refined versions of what you see in the OT.
You completely missed the point of the films.
The designs are meant to become more clunky, less refined as the empire becomes more utilitarian and the rebels start relying on scraps and only what they can get their hands on.
The ship designs in the prequels were fine, it was set designs like Couresant that felt way too different. Also some of the costumes were too different.
>>63177370
this post makes actual tpm look like esb
>>63177127
>Lucas is an intelligent guy
>>63177332
I think the "Jesus" crap was to avoid having to deal with anakins father while also not paintng anakins mother as a slut.
>>63177352
>muh CGI
significant amounts of the prequels were done with scale models and other practical techniques
>>63178108
>not a single clone trooper uniform was made
>>63178106
We didn't need to see Anakin's parents at all though.
>>63178155
Considering stars wars has always been about family, i think it's kind of an important part of the story.
>>63178106
sheev was the father
>>63178141
And yet the AT-TE was a miniature model as was Mustafar.
I'm not saying there weren't questionable uses of CGI, but a significant portion of the PT was practical. Besides, Lucas has always been known for going heavy on greenscreen and bluescreen. Carrie Fisher said something to that effect that it was difficult to act when such great portions of the set were bluescreened in
>>63178187
Then how come we didn't see Han Solo's parents
>>63177666
>original
More like psuedo original. Its just the old ideas pushed through a what-if-it-was-a-prototype filter.
>>63177613
I know it's supplemental and some consider it not canon but the clone wars cartoon series really developed their relationship and makes the entire "war" thing seems like a bigger deal.
>>63178298
You must be twelve
>>63178298
It's kinda sad that they had to make a six season show, with more planned that were never released, to cover up the oversights in the prequels. It was a good cartoon though.
>>63178187
Not really? Yeah Luke's dad is important and Leia turns out to be his sister, and those are integral parts of the movies, but I wouldn't say they're portraying "Family" as the main point of the series. That'd be like saying Hair is important to the series since alot of characters have it.
>>63178055
>The designs are meant to become more clunky, less refined as the empire becomes more utilitarian and the rebels start relying on scraps and only what they can get their hands on.
Interesting idea, and you get points for coming up with something new but I wholeheartedly disagree. The clunky utilitarian 'old and used' look was the star wars aesthetic. The prequels bucked that aesthetic in an attempt to set themselves apart with all those new shiny designs, which is fine for things like naboo fighters. But when you're trying to establish a credible design lineage you don't go from w/e that thing is to a TIE fighter. Lucas put those designs in place to sell more toys, he needed things that looked radically different with just a hint of familiarity to tie it all together. He was not interested in telling some kind of story of corruption and stagnation in design under a totalitarian regime.
Besides we already had legends-EU designs that fit those spots and they worked just as well if not better. Victory class star destroyers, z-95 head hunters, etc... There was no TIE precursor because the TIE originated with the Empire when their design ethos changed from protecting important valuable pilots to "oh well we have millions of these disposable assholes here's the honda civic of space"
>>63178311
There's one solid episode for every 3 or four inconsequential/outright dumb ones.
>>63177127
Mostly because:
1. GL wrote the entire screenplay himself instead of hiring a screenwriter to help him out.
2. GL got lazy and overreliant on CGI
3. Prequels are stupid anyway. It couldn't have been that much better even with a quality scriptwriter and director.
>>63178108
A significant amount of Episode I was done on sets and with miniatures and people-in-costume aliens because that was the peak of special effects at the time. Episode II / III were shot almost entirely on small green screen sets, most of the creatures were CGI, and those films are aging faster than Episode I or even the goddamn originals.
The "muh CGI" thing is an overused criticism sure, but the execution of Episodes II and III is just flat out bad and a lot of it has to do with Lucas trying to obtain a uniform look to his visuals by going with as much CGI as he possibly could. He could have easily had people in clone trooper armor but he actively decided against it because it would clash with the CGI troopers in the background.
>>63178298
>>63178311
>>63178321
The CGI clone wars series effectively fixes all the shit that was wrong with the execution of Episodes II and III and makes you care about the clone wars, the plotting of Sidious, makes Dooku a real villain, fleshes out Grevious, and turns Anakin into an actual character.
That said the fact that you need 6 seasons of an animated children's show to patch all the fucking holes and straighten out all the bullshit and nonsense between those two movies is more damning than anything else. It's a fine show but it does more to highlight how terrible those films are than it does to redeem them.
>>63178459
>In other words a shitty kids tv show had to fix three of the biggest films in cinema history
And that's a good thing?
>>63178343
Actually the prequels design was inspired by the art, architecture and design of the time before WW2 (elegant, streamlined curves, colorful, art deco), just like the original trilogy drew inspiration for its designs from clunky, boxy grey vehicles of WW2. Selling toys was of course the general idea, but they could have taken it in any direction, and the design philosophy was a conscious choice.
>>63178505
You should read posts before you respond to them.
REMINDER
The only prequel on which Lucas actually shares the writing credit with anybody else is Attack of the Clones, and it's the worst one. The most cringey dialogue and the most poorly handled love story.
>>63178229
Solos family is chosen chewy is his only family
The natural role for a wan-looking Hayden Christensen is to have him play a variation of Troilus from 'Troilus and Cressida'... This seemed to be what Lucas was aiming at, but he just didn't appear to have the background in drama to select upon it as an influence.
Make Padme a cleverer, more teasing character and less of a "don't look at me like that" senatorial diva. Force Anakin to have to court her through a go-between Chaperone character, which would really add to the comedic possibilities of Episode II.
It might be hard to write this as a comedy when Anakin slays sand people partway through the movie, but by the time the Count loses control of his subjects, Anakin and Padme could have been reunited in a believable way.
>>63177185
Nah, I think it was just ambitious.
And he couldn't really cut anything out, because everything leads into the next thing.
A major problem is that it didn't need to be a trilogy. I and II are completely pointless, a better version of III would have been enough.
>>63179067
You do realize that George Lucas said that exact quote, right?
>>63179286
You do realize that was the point, right?If mine wasn't spot on, well I'm too tired to go quote hunting.
>before star wars
>man this guy ain't shit. We'll give him a chance though, maybe, this movie won't completely bomb
>after star wars success
>say yes to literally everything every time are you going to say no to a billionare who made the most revolutionary movies of all time? jesus christ don't be retarded just say YES
Basically this
>>63177887
The prequels are bad, but any time anyone suggests what they should've had in them, the suggestions are much, much worse.
>>63178384
A significant amount of any SW movie was done with green screen. What you think they built those sets and not just use paintings? Every huge hangar was a matte painting. Fuck, half of the people on that medal giving celebration in ANH were drawn by McQuarrie or somebody. They didn't build an entire swamp for ESB.
Most of the backgrounds in II & II were miniatures. CGI was for clones and flying ant people. I'm guessing cause it was hard to find actual flying at people and original stormtroopers always looked clumsy and you just know that these days the extras would be a bunch of neckbeards like those "hardened" criminals in Dark Knight Rises.
The one scene that was fully cgi was the factory conveyor belt, and that's cause it was a pick-up shot and they didn't have time to build the whole thing.
ILM used every tool in the box to get the result. It's not like Lucas just filmed a green drape for two hours and shipped it off and went for coffee.
>>63180094
>get a job at ILM
>spend weeks carving and gluing some rock for a 3 second shot of Ewan McGregor looking into the distance
>some faggot on the internet with an axe to grind against Lucas foams at the mouth it's all cgi
Unsolicited Prequel suggestions:
http://youtu.be/w1RHQQ0cXlo
Ewan McGregor obviously did it for the money and hated himself and everyone involved. Pretty much said as much in interviews.
>>63177532
So in reality, the studio kept Lucas in line and prevented him from doing stupid shit
>>63180124
>On that day, the Republic received a grim reminder
>>63178106
Couldn't the father have just died when he was too young to know him? If Anakin was older couldn't we just have ignored his family background? Obiwans parents are never mentioned, why should Anakins?
>>63180094
So what was it then? Did the colorist/editor fuck up? Are you saying R2 flying and shit was never supposed to happen?
>his ex-wife probably started calling him constantly to nag and belittle him during TPM production and George broke
>>63177127
>studio execs
there wasnt any
lucas had full creative control, he bankrolled it himself
Anyine help me find the theatrical version of the original trilogy, I want to get into starwars and I just dont think im finding the original ones
>>63180655
harmys despecialized
>>63177228
>he always comes across as being very possessive of his movies in interviews
That's probably the underlying reason why they turned him down. They knew that at this point in Lucas's career, they wouldn't really be writing or directing, due to his compulsive need for complete creative control.
It's so dense, every scene has so much going on.
The only thing George Lucas is "good" at is reading someone else's work and deciding which parts were good to steal.
>>63180655
Get The 2-disc DVD releases.
