Lucas To Redo Star Wars In 3-D 593
Warlock7 writes "You might have thought that it was going to all be over on May 19 with the release of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Well, not so fast. It seems that George Lucas is planning to re-re-release the Star Wars films in a new 3-D format. There are also several other directors that are interested in this new technology and they are trying to get theaters to install new technology to allow the showing of their films in the new 3-D format [req free reg]."
Star Wars Forever? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know anybody that is foolish enough to believe that this was over. As long as there is an interest and the opportunity to make some money, it isn't going to be over. Many folks thought that Star Wars would end in the 70s. It is still around decades later and still making a profit. You don't get rid of a profitable interest.
If the entertainment factor is there, I'll go see more. Will the market of 'Star Wars Enthusiasts' allow more movies to be made? Will we see different plots in the future? Will we see more 'enhanced' versions? I'd think probably. They may suck, but I would bet that we are not done with 'Star Wars' for quite a while. I hope that what comes out is good.
When are we going to get sick of it?
Um ok. (Score:1, Insightful)
This might actually be interesting. (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, what other "brilliant re-edits" will we be subjected to for the re-re-re-release?
What do the theaters have to do? (Score:1, Insightful)
just like with the blu-ray vs. Hd-dvd wars...... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Please Say It Ain't So (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Please Say It Ain't So (Score:3, Insightful)
wow, when a person redoes a film of his, and you call that "rape", either you had a very bad childhood or you are very, very weak minded. or maybe you do not understand the definition of rape. i do not think redoing a movie in a way you do not like constitutes rape.
"Please.... please stop hurting us"
if you do not watch the new releases, it won't affect you. if you stay on the meds, you will be differentiate betweem reality and fiction.
Re:Please Say It Ain't So (Score:4, Insightful)
DVD (Score:2, Insightful)
Besides, as far as I can tell, this new technology can't translate to DVD/any-other-form-of-consumer-owned-media, so do they really expect to make that much on theater sales alone? Lucas, of *anybody* in Hollywood, should be advocating a technology that will be easily transferrable into homes for years to come, not limited solely to theaters.
Re:Please Say It Ain't So (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately it's not the content holders that are the problem, it's the consumers that continue to buy it.
Re:9 Episodes... (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole "Episode IV" thing didn't even come about until the theatrical re-release of Star Wars about 18 months after the initial one.
Lucas likes to pretend he's had this grand vision all along from day one, but the plot inconsistancies and herky-jerky flow of the story looks more like incoherent post-facto ramblings than it does "planned".
Re:For the love of God, just stop (Score:3, Insightful)
Let the guy do whatever he wants to do.
Here's another idea (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a BUSINESS (Score:2, Insightful)
Lucas was a creative guy with an idea that worked. It became a business. I think Lucas is a far better business man than he is a creative man. Judge this by the success of the franchise and merchandising compared to the quality of the written dialog.
Without a moral judgement on purity of art, etc... Lucas is simply doing what any shrewd business owner does... Market the franchise. Find ways to resell an old product in new packaging, and keep the money flowing in.
Finally, Lucas can reissue Star Wars! (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's really a beautiful system, and one of the reasons I'm promoting it today is I'm extremely anxious to reissue that old group of films I did so long ago in a galaxy far away," Lucas said.
Well, you know, it has been almost eight years since the original trilogy was rereleased in theaters, and six months since the DVDs came out. Of course Lucas is anxious to reissue the movies - the public has pretty much forgotten about them in this fast-paced world. Lucas needs to bring the movies back to the forefront of the public consciousness, because they haven't been there in months.
Seriously, though, does Lucas think he's kidding anybody anymore? It's so obvious that his vision isn't artistic, it's financial. He sees a way to keep making a mint with a minimum of effort, and every new film-oriented technology allows him to release Star Wars according to his "original vision," which was somehow compromised in every previous release.
Re:3D Jar-Jar (Score:2, Insightful)
"Your fwiends can not helwp you now!"
Dream well young bitswapper!
Re:Star Wars Forever? (Score:2, Insightful)
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http://www.rightcoaster.com [rightcoaster.com]
Anybody here rtfa? (Score:1, Insightful)
The original post talks about George re-releasing Star Wars in 3D, but there's more to the story than that. Where are the 'purists' begging Peter Jackson to not redo LOTR?
Simply put, this is a story about some new means of 3D projection in which George is only one of the heavyweights who would like to see this move forward. So why does it matter that he'd like to put his movies in 3D? I could see if he was talking about axing 2D formats, but at the moment that would be mere speculation and nothing worthy of generating this knee-jerk reaction...
Re:Why Stop? (Score:0, Insightful)
Stop whining (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is it Safe? (Score:3, Insightful)
3D to 2D to 3D (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok, that'll probably require some re-rendering which I'm sure they have stuff away someplace, but without two camera angles I'm curious how you're supposed to see perspective. Maybe they do it with some re-shading, frame-by-frame, like the colorizing process.
The thing is, the boogerhead could just re-run all the films, as they are, during the summer and they'd pack theaters anyway.
Re:Please Say It Ain't So (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Please Say It Ain't So (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Please Say It Ain't So (Score:3, Insightful)
> shitty effects. Now, I love cheesey sci-fi series,
> but how did star wars change the movie industry
> forever? What, it made sci-fi more acceptable?
Were you even ALIVE in the 70's have you ever even seen anything else besides StarWars and or it's decendants? ILM was a VAST improvement over the tech of that era. Those effects even stand up well today.
HELL, the same techniques are being used today that were pioneered for the OT. HELL, the same effects house is being used today for a great deal of the effects done today.
ILM, Pixar, EditDroid, SoundDroid, Renderman.
The next time you see a film start out with some silly desk lamps you can think Uncle George for pioneering the tech.
What George started and set free has flourished quite well actually.
Re:9 Episodes... (Score:5, Insightful)
Look up the original scripts for "Star Wars", it's pretty god-awful stuff. You can see some of the "ideas" there leaked into the later movies, but Star Wars was Fox's last ditch effort. Their shareholders were unloading ownership, because Star Wars was going to be the studio's last hurrah before they folded.
But it wasn't.
Lucas is not a visionary, not a brilliant writer or storyteller. He made some interesting but amateurish films in the 70's, and then struck gold once by pilfering the work of other directors and various uncreditted sci-fi authors, and piecing together an action-adventure movie. "Space opera" indeed.
The man is so incredibly uncreative, we don't have the proverbial walls closing in on the hero, we have REAL WALLS closing in the hero. We don't have Pitfall Harry swinging over the alligator pit on a rope while he's saving the girl, that ACTUALLY happens in the film. The only thing that DOESN'T happen is that Leia isn't tied up and placed on a set of train tracks by a moustached villain.
Lucas's ideas are so pedestrian, so cliched, so utterly devoid of originality or creativity. The GOOD GUYS WEAR WHITE (Luke), and the BAD GUYS WEAR BLACK (Vader). (Yeah I know, the stormtroopers break the rule, but I'll bet you dollars to donuts that they're only white so Vader stood out on film).
The fact that, other than Star Wars, every creative act he's been involved in has been an unmitigated piece of crap sort of supports this.
I love Star Wars too and I didn't even really HATE the two new films but George Lucas is not some genius storyteller.
The only thing I really respect about the man is that he refuses to get involved in the Hollywood labor unions, because he doesn't like having to put a bunch of credits and credentials BEFORE his movie.
Re:9 Episodes... (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean like Indiana Jones? Oh wait...
You are not making any sense (Score:4, Insightful)
You just contradict yourself and try to get out of it, but even you know you're not making any sense. Yes, the Stormtroopers were white so why are you making this stupid comment? And what's wrong with Vader having a black outfit.
Hey Luke wears black on ROTJ, and General Grievious is all white in Revenge of the Sith. What the hell are you talking about???
Re:Please Say It Ain't So (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:9 Episodes... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Please Say It Ain't So (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, for starters, yes it did make sci-fi more acceptable. (Or rather, acceptable again.) The then-current media scene (TV and movies) was an SF wasteland, all the good (and even mediocre) shows and movies died with the death of the Apollo program.
Lucas also introduced some pretty amazing (for the time) technologies: motion-control cameras, for example. Previous levels of shot composition were done with relatively fixed, flat shots. Take a look at "2001" again and see how flat everything looks. There's no parallax shift as things move relative to each other, and the composite shots are pretty simple.
For the time, the effects were anything but "shitty", they were bleeding edge state of the art. (Well, except perhaps the detonation of Dantooine, that was lame.)
Editing (in terms of number of different scenes, cuts, etc) was also brought to a new level -- remember, back then it was still done with reels of film, a viewer, and a razor blade, none of this "digitize the whole thing and feed it into an Avid (or equiv) non-linear editing suite". (As I recall, it was Lucas' wife who did much of the editing.)
There are also indirect effects -- Lucas invested the money he made off the first "Star Wars" in, among other things, THX sound technologies and Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) FX studios. The latter made some significant contributions to the field computer graphics.
Yes, "Star Wars" (before it was ever called "A New Hope") changed the movie industry forever.
Re:Please Say It Ain't So (Score:2, Insightful)
Other than that, just because you and aparently millions of others have deified Star Wars doesn't give you diddly squat as far as any kind of right or privelege to decide whether or not George Lucas is doing the right thing.
"Renig on their social contract"?? What contract is that? Lucas is a dude who created a beloved work, and who wants to "finish" it in the way that he as an artist envisioned it. That "vision" is his alone. You and all of these other nay-saying fans can bitch all you want, but because you're not the ones with the vision, you *really* have no entitlement to decide anything at all about these films.
I can't take it anymore. Stop whining. Stop blowing these issues out of proportion. George Lucas doesn't owe anybody anything. He's already payed you by making a series of great epic films.
Re:Please Say It Ain't So (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Here's another idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:3D to 2D to 3D (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:3D to 2D to 3D (Score:3, Insightful)
well for cinemark.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Star Wars Forever? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Apple // was the first computer I had ever done any serious programming in, and I positively _loved_ computer programming. However, I eventually came to realize that my feelings of being betrayed weren't about Apple, but they were entirely about my own feelings. This was my first computer, and like a first born child, it can be the hardest to eventually let go of.
And so eventually I moved on... and today I can still use many of the old programs I had then via an Apple ][ emulator, whenever I wax nostalgic, but that doesn't mean I want to write prorams for the emulator in Applesoft Basic or 6502 assembler again.
The moral of this anecdote?
Nothing is forever... people who hold onto the past must at some point either let it go and move on or be left behind. Lucas needs to learn this.