Little Miss Sunshine Screenwriter Gets Nod For Star Wars: Episode VII 321
The screenwriter of Toy Story 3, and Little Miss Sunshine, Michael Arndt is writing the script for Star Wars: Episode VII according to Lucasfilm. From the article: "...The new movie has just entered pre-production and is slated to be released in 2015. It was announced just last month as Disney acquired Lucasfilm, but there’s still no word on what the major plot points of the new chapter will entail. However, Vulture reports that 'the studio’s brass want to bring back the three central characters of the original Star Wars: a much older Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Han Solo. No deals are in place with any of the original actors, though our source did say it had high ambition to sign up Mark Hamill, and EW recently reported that Harrison Ford was open to the idea of returning.'"
Re:First (Score:3, Interesting)
They need to go back to Alan Dean Foster.
Re:Hamill? (Score:3, Interesting)
Episodes I through III.
IV through VI were masterpieces, but given recent events it had very little to do with George Lucas, whatever George likes to think.
Star Wars has a script? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's propably going to center around their kids. Oh wow. The stuff way, way before the Republic would be much more interesting.
Star Wars: Jar-Jar Hugs U.
Pass.
Re:Find a new series (Score:2, Interesting)
This is stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
The time to make post-ROTJ sequels was the 80's. The tech ain't advanced enough to fit your vision, Lucas? Really? The original trilogy looked just fine. Might have been ok to wait until the 90's for the sequels. Now? If the original actors are in the background, fine, but as central leads in a brand new adventure? Do you realize how awful Ford looked in the Crystal Skullfucking and realize he'll be years older than that by the time this turd is pinched off?
Oh, right. Nobody cares about quality.
Damn it, every time I think I've finally let go and am no longer caring what they do to the franchise, they come up with some fresh, new obscenity that has me going Joe Pesci.
Re:Find a new series (Score:4, Interesting)
Making Anakin/Vader a whiny bitch ruined the first 3. It ruined the entire character, just as making Han shoot second ruined that character.
Science can explain a lot and not ruin it, poor writing however can ruin any movie.
Disney will only go further in making sure these movies have no real conflict and that the characters are all two dimensional set pieces. I expect JarJar to be back in a big way.
Re:There goes... (Score:4, Interesting)
New stories don't, by default, throw out the expanded universe. The characters in the Expanded Universe are approximately the age of the actors, and efforts have even been made by the EU authors to make Luke kinda beat up and looking like Mark Hamill (whether consciously hoping he might one day reprise the role, or just unconsciously making him look like his template.) The biggest obstacle to using the three original actors in a film that takes the EU into account is Carrie Fisher. She'd need to get in shape (not that's she's hideously fat or anything, just not Jedi Knight fit.) Last I saw Hamill and Ford they could believably play an aging Luke and Han in the EU assuming lots of special effects for Luke's more athletic capabilities (but that would be required no matter what).
Going against the /. grain (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm actually for this, if they incorporate a story involving Hammil, Fisher, & Ford. I feel it needs that, just as Leonard Nimoy added to the the revisioned Star Trek.
Re:High Ambition (Score:5, Interesting)
You are right about this one. I recently listened to a podcast with Kevin Smith [smodcast.com] interviewing Mark Hamill and the Star Wars franchise is more of a blip in his career path.
He has a lot more going for him than just being typecast as Luke. He was doing voiceover before Star Wars as well as after. And he's really good. Listen to the podcast for proof.
Re:Hamill? (Score:5, Interesting)
Star Wars I-VI were never masterpieces. They were all Special Effect Eye Candy with some story put in place to explain the special effects.
Ep IV. Boy from humble roots is found out to be special. Taught by a mentor, mentor dies boy takes his place.
Lets use space ships and laser swords.
Ep. V. Boy struggles new role, finds a better mentor who trained him harder. Tracks down bad guy and finds that bad guys isn't all evil.
Lets use some futuristic sets, and more ground technology and new puppetry techniques.
Ep. VI Boy now tries to turn bad guy into a good guy. Bad Guy has a true evil mentor keeping his feelings twisted. Buy turns bad guy into good guy. The Evil Mentor is destroyed all loose ends are wrapped up.
We want to make a lot of different types of aliens.
Ep I - III
We want to show off all this cool CGI that we can now do. Lets try the same story ideas but make sure he goes on the path where the Boy ends up the bad guy.
My biggest complaint about Ep I-III isn't Jar-Jar or the other special effect gags. That is common in Star Wars, even the fact that the plot wasn't that good. The problem was Skywalker was never a character we would like. Ep. I he was too young. Ep. II he was just too annoying, we didn't really feel like we wanted him to win. Ep. III they started out better than they made him bad way too easy.
Re:High Ambition (Score:4, Interesting)
Ford became the big star, but Hamill and Fisher both built successful careers, even if not A list acting careers. Star Wars involved about seven years of their lives thirty years ago.
Re:Disney made Kill Bill (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hamill? (Score:4, Interesting)
The Yoda fight scene is one of the reasons I so deeply despise II. Yoda was a short, old, green, limpy fella. He symbolized precisely that being a great jedi master wasn't about fighting. Then they make him fight. And like some sort of cross between a midget Hulk, Super Meat Boy and cocaine. Using a fucking short lightsaber. The thing is weightless, so why would he choose something so short? Just to increase his already considerable handicap? I mean, Dooku only had to keep pointing his saber directly at yoda. It gets to the point where you can obviously realize that the FX team had trouble getting Yoda close to his arthritic opponent. Yoda almost never gets close to a position from which he can do any damage, because he has no reach. He's just spinning quite far from Dooku, which is about as dangerous as a tiny top with sharp edges. It's was too sad to see when it came out, now it's too funny.
Re:Disney made Kill Bill (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hamill? (Score:4, Interesting)
That line in ESB is one of the most ambiguous in the series at this point.
From what I've read, when that line was originally written for ESB, Leia was not yet planned to be Luke's sister (hence the kiss). Luke's sister was actually an unnamed person being trained across the galaxy in the ways of the Jedi. Deus ex machina at its best.
By the time ROTJ came out, Leia was planned to be his sister, so they neatly tied the loose end created by the ESB line with Yoda's dying words of, "There is another...Sky...walk...er". There we go. Done. The line in ESB was apparently Yoda cluing Obi-Wan in on the sibling ties between Luke and Leia, that way Kenobi could know about it for ROTJ and explain it to Luke.
Except that the new episodes had to go and spoil that idea. Because in the new episodes, we see that Obi-Wan not only has full knowledge of Leia's existence. He was there for her birth and saw her handed off to the Organas who would take her to Alderaan. As such, he certainly knows of her identity and her ties to Luke, so it makes no sense that Yoda would have to explain that again in ESB.
As a result, it starts to look like Yoda's ESB line is actually a reference to Anakin instead, perhaps to his hope that Anakin can still fulfill that whole prophecy about bringing balance to the Force. It isn't Yoda telling Obi-Wan about Leia, but rather reminding Obi-Wan that Anakin can still play a role in things, which is borne out in ROTJ when Vader does so.
All of that said, I find it far more likely that the line is just an indication that they were flying by the seat of their pants and didn't plan things through in advance, and that they've now retconned the line (along with a whole lot else) to hell.