Harrison Ford Turned Down Han Solo Role 472
eldavojohn writes "It's being widely reported that Harrison Ford turned down a £20 million deal to play Han Solo once again in a George Lucas spin off of Star Wars. The source of this information seems to be a tabloid called bangshowbiz. Harrison was approached by Lucas with two roles but instead opted for the same amount to play Indiana Jones for the fourth time. Could the spin off centered on the rugged Han Solo save the Star Wars franchise from its prequels or would it have been another mediocre release disappointing demanding fans?"
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank god he declined (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want to see Han Solo's great character trashed by a bad script and the over-use of special effects.
Lucas helped kill my vision of the star wars universe with the prequals, I will never watch another Star Wars thing he does again.
Dont rejoice (Score:2, Insightful)
Demanding fans? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no way that the grown-up fans are ever going to be satisfied the way they were when they were 11 years old.
Brett
oh please. (Score:1, Insightful)
I was seven years old when the first one came out. By the time he made the third one, it was obvious that the franchise sucked. Anyone who stuck around after that is not that demanding.
I think anyone who watched three more crappy movies and *still* expected something good to come of it should just check "jedi" on their census form.
Re:Demanding fans? (Score:1, Insightful)
Everyone likes to think that they have the market cornered on objectivity. It's simply not true. If you honestly think the changes that happen to you form the ages of 8-33 aren't much like the changes you'll go through from 33-58 you're just kidding yourself.
And I'm not even a Star Wars fan and I can clearly see the difference.
Re:Ain't it Slashed News (Score:2, Insightful)
So /. is now a third rate knock off of a third rate rumor web site?
What Lucas project is in the works that needs an older Solo? B.S.
But, the bigger thing is, why is /. doing entertainment rumor?
Since when are Star Wars rumors not nerdy enough to go on
As a
(all said while pointing at Solo, Leia, and Fett action figures on the bookshelf)
Yeah, Han in carbonite, Leia in slave bikini, and Boba Fett.
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
You realize he does want to play Indiana Jones again, don't you? Indiana Jones is no less youthful or athletic than Han Solo. If he can do one, he can equally well do the other!
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Demanding fans? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but Ford is boring now too (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean... looking at IMDB... the Tom Clancy movies, Air Force One (Worst Idea Ever), The Fugitive, Firewall, K-19... the guy's become a grim automaton. Some of those movies were decent, but his characters were pretty much the same in every damn one. Anyway, let's hope that IJ4 breaks the long grey-brown streak.
IJ4 should hand off the Indy role (Score:2, Insightful)
Swi
Re:Demanding fans? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:George Lucas has lost credibility (Score:4, Insightful)
Indiana Jones 4
You know what, I actually would like to see the spin-off Star Wars with Ford. Unlike you crazy fans, I enjoy light fantasy/sci-fi movies for what they are.
The dialog and some plot lines in the prequels surely were very odd at times, but Lucas has enough feedback to know better now. He learned from Jar Jar-s feedback in the first one.
The problem here stems from insane fans with impossible to meet standards. I personally like Star Wars, like the sound track, most of the characters, and mostly, I enjoy exploring huge fantasy worlds executed in incredible detail and imagination, which is something we rarely see in movies, even for the sheer amount of people and effects required to make them a reality.
The rest is just fan snobbery.
Re:$ not £! (Score:3, Insightful)
For those unfamiliar with modern Harrison Ford... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:$ not £! (Score:3, Insightful)
The Real Problem: Harrison Ford or George Lucas? (Score:5, Insightful)
Therein lies the danger. Star Wars I, II, and III suggest that Star Wars IV was just a stroke of luck for Lucas. He is a poor storyteller and could easily cast Ford into the wrong kind of story. Ford's career would then end in a wimper. Of course, I would waste my $10 on Star War VII.
Ford made the right decision.
Re:George Lucas has lost credibility (Score:3, Insightful)
And destroy it.
KFG
Re:HAN SHOT FIRST (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:HAN SHOT FIRST (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Demanding fans? (Score:2, Insightful)
I was a grown up when Star Wars was released. I'd voted, I could buy whiskey and smokes. When Return of the Jedi was released I was old enough to have a child I could converse with.
Despite all the Ewok jokes I've told over the years I liked them a lot; still do, and even though I gasped at the Imperial star cruiser going overhead it wasn't because of the effects. They were good movies. Well filmed, well written and well acted. Funny. Just because something follows a formula doesn't mean it's bad. There's nothing in Shakespeare that isn't utterly formulaic.
I felt betrayed within the opening sequence of Episode "One," because it was, well . .
I'm not an effects junky, nor an action fan. I liked Sense and Sensibility. I don't understand people who think Chinatown is too long. Never Cry Wolf and Walkabout are two of my all time favorite movies despite the fact that "nothing" happens in either of them and there is a distinct paucity of special effects.
The original Star Wars trilogy was good stuff. Still is. Episode "One" sucked so hard I've basically never watched anything Star Wars that's come since.
KFG
Re:Demanding fans? (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. I got the exact same amazing rush, for the same kinds of reasons, from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies. George Lucas should look at those movies and feel utterly ashamed.
Re:Thank god he declined (Score:2, Insightful)
What? The Ewoks weren't enough to kill your vision? That's what did it for me, and I was only 9 years old at the time. Even as a kid, I thought those stupid little cutesy furry creatures were just unbearably lame.
The Ewoks should've been a sign that the prequels were gonna suck, if you ask me.
Re:Dont rejoice (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, I'm hoping Natalie's in the next Indiana Jones. With Spielberg's direction I think this could actually go somewhere. And Lucas has always been and seems to be still good at creating good characters, and arguably made excellent choices with the actors used. It's just that something seems to go wrong when he's actually directing. Spielberg may be able to take this vision and make another excellent film.
Re:Should newbies watch 1-6, or 4-6 then 1-3? (Score:3, Insightful)
My reasoning is that if you watch the prequels first it ruins many plot points (ie Leia and Luke are brothers, Vader is Luke's father, etc.). However if watched 4 5 1 2 3 6, the prequels serve as a cool flashback, fleshing out the characters, and drawing out the conclusion to the cliffhangers left by Empire. Or you could just watch the original 4 5 6, and ignore the terrible prequels. Either way...... May the force be with you.
Re:Demanding fans? (Score:3, Insightful)
Poul Anderson
H Beam Piper
James Schmitz
James Blish
Keith Laumer
You can find damned near everything in the Star Wars films in astounding/Analog SF magazine from the 1950's and 60's, down to scenes where firefighter spaceships spray down a crippled starship burning from quick reentry and combat damage, or one man fighter sized ships hunt each other through an asteroid field with one of them using planar polarized explosive mines. You can find most (maybe 80%) of the SFish ideas in Star Wars just by reading only the Analog published stories of only those five authors above.
Just offhand, I have never heard George Lucas mention any of those five authors, nor Analog magazine. They have always been counted as second tier, behind the really big names like Clarke and Asimov, and they were all midlist or worse as money-making went. Piper committed suicide out of dire poverty and checks that stayed 'in the mail' too long. Laumer could only afford to write for the first 10 years of his carreer because of a government pension. Anderson was the only one who lived long enough after Star Wars to see any real profits from the rising interest in SF. Maybe Lucas has mentioned some of these sources and I missed it, but until I see Lucas give some real credit where it is most definitely due, I'm not impressed.
Baloney! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's partially true, but the prequels *DO* objectively SUCK waayyyyyy more than the originals. Remember the original 3 movies were re-released a couple years *before* any of the prequels came out? I went back and saw the re-released originals as an adult, and yeah, you're right...they really weren't the same watching them as an adult.
However, they were still FAR FAR FAR FAR BETTER than any of the prequels, with their wooden acting. As far as the special effects, the technology of the special effects used on the prequels may be better than that of the originals, but the actual use of the technology (you know, imagination, etc) was way inferior. The special effects in the prequels was just shamelessly piled on, without any art to it. Take the battle scenes for instance. It's all just a bunch of random chaos, with lasers shooting every which way, and stuff blowing up all over the place, and the camera doesn't stay on one shot for more than 50 milliseconds until it switches over to some other scene, making it impossible to really follow the flow of the battle. You basically just sit there, completely overwhelmed, and it's only after the battle is done that you finally figure out what the hell just happened. There's no tension, just confusion. Special effects just for the sake of special effects is crap. You can't just pile it on endlessly and hope it will automagically coalesce into something wonderful. More is not always better.
Re:Demanding fans? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:George Lucas has lost credibility (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell it even allows the musical score to shine much brighter. Most of that huge fight scene is done almost entirely without dialog, hinging instead on the tone of the music.
I'll agree with you on the other parts - those were just silly. But that one shouldn't be changed. Ever.
Re:The Real Problem: Harrison Ford or George Lucas (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Would they have to pay to do that? (Score:3, Insightful)
So he's playing Indiana Jones instead (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, we don't know the details there. It could be simply that the Indiana Jones role paid better.
Third, after what George Lucas did to Episodes 1 to 3, can you really blame him? I mean, it's ok to bitch and moan about it as a fan, but he's the one who gets it on his CV and maybe conscience. Maybe he's good at knowing a dud when he sees one. Or maybe, especially given the choices of roles as a good guy, he doesn't want to star in Lucas's recent moral relativism (and revisionism) lectures.
SW started as a simple kids' story, a SF version of a mix of fantasy and swashbucklers and WW2 carrier battles. Brave knights with magic swords against clear super-villains. (You'd be hard pressed to paint blowing up a planet they already knew was not a rebellion planet, just to make an example, as a moral grey zone.) The rebels are good, the Empire is evil, and it tells you so right in the opening text. Even when the good guys tell a little lie (e.g., Ben saying that Luke's father is dead), it's with the best intentions, and even when the evil guys tell the truth, you know it's just scheming to some evil end. Follow your heart, do the right thing, don't let old farts tell you what to do (even if it's Yoda), don't fall for the excuses and promises of the dark side. And, oh, trust your own skills, not some targetting computer gizmo.
Not entirely applicable to RL, but it's a simple (or simplified) story, that's easy to digest and entertaining.
And it's not _that_ far off the mark either. While RL situations are a lot less black-and-white, it's not as impossible to have some principles as some people try to tell you. Just because neither side is pure black or white, it doesn't mean there's no difference. If one side is only 75% right and the other 75% wrong, it still doesn't mean that they're perfectly equivalent and it doesn't matter which you choose. Moral relativism is a subject very dear to both philosophers (since that's their job) and sociopaths (who just love muddying the waters and justifying any evil they do), but RL isn't _that_ relative. Just because some details varied across time and space, doesn't mean that the entire concepts of good and evil are purely arbitrary and irrelevant. But I digress.
So a long time after Episode 6, Lucas seems to have decided to undo that whole simplicity. Most of what Episodes 1 to 3 do isn't as much about showing you the history of it, as about trying to undo the good-vs-evil theme of the original trilogy. It's a lecture in how, see, the good guys weren't really good, they were just some self-serving self-indulgent caste, and, see, the evil guys weren't evil as such, they were really just another point of view and at most a bit mis-guided. And Vader (you know, the same guy who supervised blowing up a planet full of innocents) didn't as much fall to the dark side by some act of selfish evil, but was just yet another guy who thought he's doing the right thing, if in a bit of a mis-guided way. Etc.
It's been about rewriting the SW universe in more profound ways than "Han shot first." The whole "A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack" got kicked into the garbage bin, for example, and that was a far more central idea than Han shooting first.
It's not just the bad acting and bad scripting and bad directing and Jar Jar that make the prequels hard to swallow, it's also that it's a moral ambiguity lesson with some special effects and badly acted/scripted/directed at that. Once the whole monomyth structure and clear cut sides fly out the window, it becomes a lot harder to empathise with the heroes or follow why did they have to do this and that. Or to what (justifiable) end.
Contrast Episode 4 where it followed a logical and archetypal structure to destroy the evil Death Star, to Episode 1 where the grand achievement is finding Anakin
Re:The Real Problem: Harrison Ford or George Lucas (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably not written. He may have had a vague idea of the general story, but he wouldn't have made such incoherences : Obi'wan doesn't know C3PO or R2D2 in 'New Hope', he doesn't know that Luke has a sister before Yoda tells him. Also, the six episodes just "don't work" together. The "I am your father", which is quite a dramatic climax in the original serie doesn't work anymore if you watch Starwars in the correct order.
Re:The Real Problem: Harrison Ford or George Lucas (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you are referring to that little exchange between Obi-Wan's ghost and Yoda in ESB right after Luke left Dagobah?
Ben: That boy is our last hope.
Yoda: No. There is another.
I figure that a way to reconcile that with Ben's knowledge from ROTS would be to assume that Ben knew about Leia, but for one reason or another, he simply didn't feel that she would be up to the task of becoming a Jedi and overthrowing Vader and the Emperor.
Now, how about when the Obi-Wan ghost appeared to Luke on Hoth and told him to go to Dagobah though?
Ben: You will go to the Dagobah system. There you will learn from Yoda, the Jedi Master who instructed me.
I think that was a rather big oversight on the part of Lucas, considering the Jedi Master who instructed Ben was Qui-Gonn, not Yoda. That one might be a little more difficult to explain away.
Re:Good (Score:2, Insightful)
Indiana Jones? Now, that's a character that can go on a number of different adventures. Each movie is relatively self-contained. Come to think of it, Indiana Jones is really the James Bond for the US. Sean Patrick Flannery's Young Indy was very well done.
As for why Harrison would want to be Indy instead of Solo, well, it probably has a lot to do that it's Spielberg directing him, and not Lucas. Carrie Fisher was interviewed a while back (the exact place escapes me), and stated very plainly that Lucas believes he doesn't need actors to tell his story. He can get anyone and make it work.
Natalie Portman is a great actress, I love her in a lot of different roles. But somehow, Lucas made her, Samuel L. Jackson, Hayden Christensen (who I actually like in other roles), fucking Saruman, and everyone else appear flat, wooden, and/or whiny.
Who the fuck would choose to work under that, when they can pick Spielberg and be guaranteed a good showing? Even his "failures" usually come out "the actors did well," as was said about Minority Report.
Re:The Real Problem: Harrison Ford or George Lucas (Score:2, Insightful)
-Peter
Re:The Real Problem: Harrison Ford or George Lucas (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So he's playing Indiana Jones instead (Score:2, Insightful)
Moral ambiguity by itself isn't hard to understand, it's how the real world is after all. Tons of movies work with it. However as you pointed out, how Lucas did it wasn't the best implementation.
Re:Good (Score:2, Insightful)
"When modding, I work around deficiencies in the moderation system."
There, fixed that for ya.
Re:Am I the only one who is skeptical here? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good (Score:2, Insightful)
How, by introducing other deficiencies? Funny used to be worth Karma. It's not by a bug or an oversight that it no longer is. Some people adjust the bonus upward for insightful and downward for funny. Modding funny as insightful breaks that useful feature.
The purpose of moderation is to improve the discussion, not to "reward" the poster. By modding incorrectly you lessen the discussion.