A new, amazing, thorough and hilarious critique of The Phantom Menace - Page 13

I finally got around to watching the reviews in their entirety. From a comedic standpoint, they're gold, but nowhere near as insightful as I'd been led to believe. 

 

 

 

Machete Order...I kinda like it...wait, what's missing from there...

Yeah, but if you go to the link, he's got a bit more of a convincing argument than just, "LOL, skip the first one." Worth the read.

The watching of ANH, TESB, then the prequels and the ROTJ isn't a new idea, but the writer makes some good points on why it works and how it can actually strengthen the narrative of ROTJ (especially where it seems that Luke is coming dangerously close to going down a similar path as Anakin did)

I agree though that TPM can pretty much be completely skipped with virtually no impact on the rest of the story.

After GL dies, I wonder how long it will be till they remake IV, V, and VI.

The one weird part was where he said, "If you don't watch the prequels first, you won't know who the young punk is with Obi-Wan and Yoda." Oh, no, no, no. Under no circumstance should one be watching the special, Haydenized Jedi! And then there's no issue.

The number of years is less than zero, because remaking them is what Lucas has been doing for the past 15 years.

A more interesting question is after GL dies will his heirs allow someone like RAH to properly restore and archive the three films that changed film history?

My money is that Lucas will have an iron-clad will which will forbid the originals from ever seeing the light of day, just so he can stick it to the OOT fans even from the grave.

I'm not a lawyer, but I doubt that a clause like that in Lucas' Will can legally preclude a release of the originals. I would imagine the decision would go to whoever is running Lucasfilm at that point. Of course, there is the question of honoring his wishes, but one could hope LucasFilm's other Senior Managers considered Lucas Mad for not offering a quality release of the originals, the multitude of silly changes to the OT and the way he handled the Prequels.

Wow - start the collection fund Sam, I'm in!

The idea of someone re-editing another person's movie makes me sick. I don't care if it's the best or worst movie ever made, no one should deface someone's else work.

I can't imagine that there would be much support if someone took a print of a painting and added or subtracted what they wanted or if a person added or subtracted a couple chapters to a book so why is it OK for movies to be 'fixed' by someone else? I just read The Girl Who Played With Fire and overall, it was fairly boring because it took hundreds of pages to get going and was hundreds of pages too long and is in desperate need of being trimmed down. However, the book is the book so I have no right at all to chop out what I don't like and the same basic thing goes for every piece of art ever created.

I guess I can't just draw a straight line in the sand and say "this is ok" or "this is not ok". Artistic reinterpretation happens all of the time. Cover songs by bands happens at many concerts, and most that I've heard are marginally faithful to the original. So in principal I have no problem with someone re-editing or re-interpreting someone else's work. One great example in art: the oldest known copy of La Jaconde (Mona Lisa) is, of course at its very base, a copy. But it sheds light on what La Jaconde may have looked like in its original form, not after hundreds of years of exposure to the elements (which is what we see in The Louvre). The oldest copy was painted at the same time (maybe even in the same studio by one of Leonardo's students) and had been protected from the elements for all of these years. So even copies can have value.

That's the beauty of art: you can like it or not like it. Someone could take a stab at re-editing the Godfather. Would I like it? I don't know, I'd have to see it, but chances are it wouldn't be better than the original. But I wouldn't say that someone attempting it would "make me sick". It's not like Grace is trying to take credit for these movies. Nor is he trying to make money from it. Rather he's trying to learn the craft by editing an admittedly very flawed set of films. In fact one could argue that's one of the best ways to learn, take something that's as flawed as the PT and see if you can make something watchable from it. Nothing wrong with that.

It's easy. If you didn't make the work, you don't get to change it. If Topher Grace wrote and shot his own versions of the prequels (as long as he's not profiting, he would be in no legal trouble for making fan films), I'd find it odd but that's not the same as taking other people's work and just doing whatever he wants with it.

As for cover songs, there's no parallel here. The musical equivalent of this would be like if I took a song and remixed or re-recorded some parts or shortened it to suit my tastes.

Sure, that's an interesting way to learn (especially since it's three huge scale movies that have problems) but once you're showing it to people like it's an improvement, you've crossed a line. He might not actually have said that it was an improvement but it's implied because no one re-edits someone else's movie and says "Look how bad I made it." No matter how skillful of an editor he is, I find it hard to believe there's a way to edit nearly 7 hours of movie into 85 minutes and have it actually tell a story. It'll be like the recap shows that they used to play before Lost season premieres where it's essentially a highlight reel that jogs your memory of what you've already seen and imparts the minimum amount of information rather than functioning as a real movie.

People do remix or re-record all of the time, so I don't get how you say there's no parallel.

And in fact, in music, they make money off of it, whereas Grace not only didn't make any money from it, but only showed it to a select group of people as opposed to covered music which can be sold and distributed for profit.

If it's okay in music, I don't see how it can't be okay in this instance. Like it or don't like it, that's up to each person.

Admittedly, I don't listen to much music that lends itself to a remix but I assume that remixes are done by people approved by the original artist. In other words, it's done with the approval of or in conjunction with the people who made the song. If there's lots of music out there remixed without any permission or involvement of the artist, I'd look at it in the same way as I look at this- someone deciding to take someone else's work and tinker with it.

I'm not a lawyer so perhaps I don't. However, I don't find this objectionable because of any legal reason and copyright isn't the issue here so you can save the Wikipedia links. I find it objectionable because I think it's wrong for someone to take someone else's work and change it to their preferences.

Original permission not needed: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/290/must-you-get-permission-to-record-someone-elses-song
It's called a Mechanical License: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_license

It's "good etiquette" to get the original artists' permission (especially if you don't want to burn bridges in the industry) but not required.

OK but what does any of that have to do with my thinking that someone changing another person's work is terrible? I don't really care about the legality of it. If I wrote a book or made a movie or recorded a song or painted a picture, I can pretty much guarantee that it would be terrible and would benefit from a talented person's touch but that doesn't mean that they should just come along and change my work.

You can feel how you like about it, no skin off my nose. Your original post made it sound more like this is something that shouldn't ever be done, and came across less as an opinion that you have and more of a prohibition. Then in subsequent posts it morphed into questions of copyright law, legality and morality issues, etc. and the findings were that Topher doing this violated none of those.

I'm certainly not suggesting that a law be enacted but to me, the idea of changing another person's work is so out of line that I'm shocked that anyone would defend it.

In my mind, Orson Welles could rise from the grave and fix Plan 9 From Outer Space and I bet it'd be better but I'd much rather see Ed Wood's version.

And our point in the posts following yours has been that whether it be music, art, movies, etc. that it's already been part of established practice and doesn't need defending. And Topher hasn't stepped out of the bounds of normalcy by doing what he did, especially given that he made zero money from it, limited exposure to just a select few people, and was doing it for educational purposes.

It's one thing to be inspired by or pay homage to another person's work but it's another thing entirely to take another person's work and 'fix' it. To me, that's so creatively bankrupt that it's the opposite of art. I can only hope that artists continue to make their own work with or without inspiration from what came before and don't resort to drawing all over another person's work and try to call it 'art'.