A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Is Disney destroying Star Wars over George Lucas royalties? Whatever gave you that idea? Look. As a  Star Wars  fan who has seen every  Star Wars  film (including the animated  Star Wars: The Clone Wars  movie from 2008) in theaters, there is nothing more mind-bogglingly annoying than other fans who come up with silly theories such as  The Walt Disney Company is destroying  Star Wars  so George Lucas can’t earn royalties. First of all, just because a vocal and persistent minority of the fandom has obsessively jumped on the  Disney ruined Star Wars  bandwagon for any of  x  reasons does not mean that theories such as this one are valid, much less based on reality. The Internet is crawling with toxic fans who hate the Sequel Trilogy - especially  The Last Jedi  - for a plethora of cinematic sins, real or (mostly) imagined, including: J.J. Abrams ignored the Expanded Universe Too many SJW tropes and mino...

Photo Credit: Alex Diaz-Granados What would it take to recreate the Star Wars sequels based on the Star Wars Expanded Universe rather than the new Canon? For this to occur, you would need to be living in a totally different universe, one where: George and Marcia Lucas had never gotten divorced, thereby creating an environment in which a less stressed-out Lucas would not have taken a hiatus from making  Star Wars  films Lucas personally oversaw the Expanded Universe and gave it co-equal canon status to the films The EU was consistently good and written by a core of authors who could work with Lucasfilm - and George himself - and not have any tonal or narrative dissonance The EU authors would not bring any of their non- Star Wars  “eccentricities” or import weird versions of crossover stuff from other franchises ( Star Trek ) thinly disguised as  Star Wars Luke Skywalker would not become a ridiculously overpowered demigod whose portrayal differs from one a...

1977 poster promoting Star Wars. © 1977 20th Century Fox Film Corporation On Quora, Marielle Jenna asks: What is the name of the first Star Wars movie of the Original Trilogy? My reply: Officially,   the name of the first  Star Wars  movie of the Original Trilogy is  Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope. Originally, though, 20th Century Fox released writer-director George Lucas’s now-iconic space fantasy adventure on May 25, 1977 as  Star Wars. The studio, which financed, marketed, and released the film (indeed, owning the rights in perpetuity, although that’s now a moot point since The Walt Disney Company now owns Fox  and  Lucasfilm) allegedly refused to allow Lucas to include the  Episode IV: A New Hope  subtitle in the main titles sequence. Per Lucas’s account in the director’s commentary, Fox executives feared that audiences would be put off by seeing an “Episode IV” subtitle at a time when no other  Star Wars  ...

Is Star Wars: Episode IX just an excuse for Disney to make a bunch of money? All things being equal, all movies (except those small movies made solely by independent “artsy” production companies that hardly anyone sees), are made with the goal of making someone - usually a studio and its stockholders - “a bunch of money.” That’s why  movie studios  exist: they invest (read “risk”) millions of dollars in a movie - in this case,  Star Wars - Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker -  with a certain expectation of making a profit. The Walt Disney Company and its film division, Walt Disney Motion Picture Studios, are of course also making  Star Wars - Episode IX  to fulfill George Lucas’s on-again, off-again aspiration of creating a three-Trilogy Skywalker Saga, plus they have to finish the story that Lucasfilm began with 2015’s  The Force Awakens  and continued in  The Last Jedi.  Everyone involved in the creation of  Star Wars...

If the Star Wars series was remastered with every lightsaber choreography redesigned and dialogues given more attention, would it be profitable for the company making it? What? Hell, no! First of all, what you’re suggesting is not technically a  remastering.  What you are really saying here is  Why doesn’t Lucasfilm simply remake the entire pre-2015  Star Wars  series with new choreography and improved dialogue. Why on Earth would you suggest such a thing? I mean, just because a technically adept fan made his own version of  Star Wars  Scene 38 with computer animation software to make the iconic lightsaber duel between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader more dynamic, and just because fans raised on video games and the faster, more intense lightsaber fights of the Prequels think it’s  amazeballs,  it does not mean that the vast majority of  Star Wars  fans   want a remake that “improves” the lightsaber duels or the di...

In the classic Hildenbrandt Bros. Star Wars poster, Luke's lightsaber is yellow. © 20th Century Fox Film Corp.  In Quora, Sam Lee asks: I f Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber was green, how did it turn blue in Star Wars: The Force Awakens? My reply: It seems, my friend, that you need a little refresher course in  Star Wars  History 101. Recall, please, that Luke Skywalker used two lightsabers as a young Jedi-to-be in the Original  Star Wars  Trilogy ( Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back,  and  Return of the Jedi. The first lightsaber Luke possessed was originally his father Anakin’s; it was retrieved from the ashy ground of Mustafar by Obi-Wan Kenobi after his fateful first duel with the newly minted “Darth Vader,” the Sith identity Skywalker  pere  adopted when he was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force. Obi-Wan kept his former Padawan’s “laser sword” hidden away for 19 years during his exile on Tatooine, waiting till Fate - or th...

In Quora, someone asked: How much of Star Wars did George Lucas actually write? My reply: If you’re asking about the original screenplay for  Star Wars  (aka  Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope ), the film that begat the franchise, he wrote every one of the four drafts, most of them without a co-writer. However, whenever he showed the script to his peers (Brian De Palma, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola), they would critique his efforts (which is what Lucas wanted them to do) and suggest revisions or rewrites. Lucas, as fans have learned over the years, is a dedicated  filmmaker,  and a talented one at that. However, he is happier when he is in the editing room and shaping his movies, while the actual tasks of writing scripts and working with actors are simply not in his comfort zone. (That doesn’t mean he doesn’t like people; Lucas has a reputation for being a super nice person and generous to a fault. He’s just not into...

Do you think Disney has done a better job with Star Wars than Lucasfilm? Questions such as “Do you think Disney has done a better job with Star Wars than Lucasfilm?” reflect either willful ignorance or a misunderstanding of the corporate relationship between The Walt Disney Company (TWDC or “Disney”) and Lucasfilm Ltd., especially when it comes to the topic of  Star Wars. The relationship between TWDC and Lucasfilm is no different from that of Sony and Columbia Pictures or the “old” 20th Century Fox Film Corporation and Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox (and before that, News Corporation). TWDC is the “corporate parent,” while Lucasfilm is an editorially-independent production company with its own President. Lucasfilm, for the most part, has free rein to decide how to handle its two major franchises,  Star Wars,  and  Indiana Jones.  TWDC has the right to decide  when  and  how  movies are scheduled for production  and  ...

Superman was also released as a "Christmas movie" in 1978. It didn't change the "true meaning of Christmas." © 1978 DC Comics and Warner Bros.  Someone on Quora asks: Do you think that Disney's plan to release Star Wars movies around Christmas is to make the holiday about Star Wars instead of the true meaning of Christmas? Hardly. Traditionally, all of the major movie studios, including Paramount Pictures, Columbia, Universal, MGM, and Disney’s newest acquisition, 20th Century Fox, have  always  released major movies during the December holiday season. This is nothing new, and it’s not, as you suggest, a marketing strategy centered around one movie franchise. There are several reasons behind this strategy, but the biggest ones are: The holiday season is when most businesses usually make the most money Children and adolescents are on winter break The last quarter of the year (October, November, and December) is when most studios releas...

Is  The Rise of Skywalker  the last  Star Wars  movie? No. While  Star Wars - Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker  will bring the curtain down on the Skywalker Saga that began with 1977’s  Star Wars,  it is not going to be the  last  feature film set “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” To be sure, it is the swan song, as it were, of the film series that bears - for good or ill - the DNA of George Lucas’s  The Star Wars.  The Big Three - Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher have moved on: Harrison and Mark have had their characters killed off or transformed into Force ghosts, and Carrie died in late 2016, so her role in  The Rise of Skywalker  has been minimized into scenes that can make use of existing footage shot for  The Force Awakens  and (perhaps)  The Last Jedi.  And, as George himself once said, the only characters that are in the entire Skywalker Saga are C-3PO ...

Which Star Wars film do you feel has the best music? In all honesty, I don’t think there is a single  Star Wars  film that has the best music in the (so far) eight Saga episodes, the  Star Wars: The Clone Wars  feature film, and two Anthology films that have been released so far. (There is another Skywalker Saga film, Star Wars Episode IX due out in December; composer John Williams has stated that this will be his final score for the Star Wars movie series.) To me, the music of  Star Wars,  especially the “core” repertoire composed and conducted by John Williams, is a cycle of musical works that, like the operas of Richard Wagner’s The Ring Cycle, can be enjoyed as individual musical experiences but are all part of a greater whole. Now, if you were to ask me which is my  favorite  of the  Star Wars  scores for the films (the TV shows don’t count), I’d have to say it’s this one: That is the original soundtrack album released...

Ad for the 2015 Limited Edition Steelbooks of the Star Wars saga Blu-rays. © 2015 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) Seen on Quora today:  Do you like the  Star Wars  Prequels? Do I like the  Star Wars  Prequels? Sure. They’re not my  favorite  Episodes in the  Star Wars  Saga; that honor goes to the Original Trilogy. After all, I’m a Generation 1977 fan, albeit one who waffled about going to see  Star Wars  for  five months  during its original theatrical release. The movie premiered in Miami in late May of that year, and if it had only had modest success instead of becoming a phenomenon as it did, I probably would have missed it altogether. Luckily for me, in those last pre-home video days, hit movies sometimes had their runs extended, and  Star Wars  had an unusually long one - it was still in theaters in July of ’78 before 20th Century Fox finally s...