Official STAR WARS Saga Discussion Thread: Part 5 (2 Viewers)

[Dave Moritz]

Josh Steinberg said: ↑
Why did you think it would?

Fox owns A New Hope in perpetuity. Fox has physical media distribution on the original six movies until 2019 or 2020.

If it does ever happen, it won't happen until complete rights for five of the six titles revert to Disney. Once that happens, they'll probably reach out to Fox for a deal on the original film. Why would Disney start negotiating now for all six titles when they get five of them free and clear in a couple year?

While it is the 40th Anniversary and it would have been nice I did not expect it. Like Josh was saying Fox owns the original six but to my knowledge the first movie they will own forever unless they chose to sell it off. Not sure why Fox would loose the original second and third movie because in my opinion they should retain the original trilogy forever. But why would Fox want to give up there only slice of Star Wars? It is also my opinion that Lucas did this to make sure there would be little chance of the original 77 theatrical being included with a set after Disney got the rights to Episodes 1-3 and 5-6. I am sure Fox will not sell off the original unless it is an insane amount of money. I wouldn't be surprised if Fox holds onto the original and refuses to sell. I wonder if there is some way Fox can keep the rights to episode 5 & 6.

I would love to hear from Fox about what happens to the rights and if they would be open to going in with Disney for a complete Star Wars set in the future. The original Star Wars is the one movie I want above everything else on 4K UHD! Since it is not going to happen during the 40th Anniversary I have to wonder if we will have to wait till the 50th Anniversary?

I saw something on facebook with Harrison Ford and there being a contest where I think you have to make a donation to be entered into a chance to win a roll on the Han Solo movie and then getting a tour of Skywalker ranch and maybe a opening night viewing of Han Solo's movie.

 

[Wayne_j]

FOX would loose 5 & 6 because Lucas got sequel rights in his Star Wars contract and financed those two movies himself.

 

[Sam Favate]

Ewan McGregor tells EW once again today that he'd be happy to do a Star Wars Obi-Wan movie.

http://ew.com/movies/2017/04/18/ewa.../?xid=entertainment-weekly_socialflow_twitter

 

[SamT]

How bad it would look if they announce it's a Boba Fett movie!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

How bad it would look if they announce it's a Boba Fett movie!

I fully expect that's what it'll be. Didn't they already announce that years ago when they announced the Rogue One and Han Solo movies? It's entirely redundant because Boba Fett's story is told in Episode II, but for some reason, people really seem to like the character.

 

[TravisR]

I fully expect that's what it'll be. Didn't they already announce that years ago when they announced the Rogue One and Han Solo movies? It's entirely redundant because Boba Fett's story is told in Episode II, but for some reason, people really seem to like the character.

What was the movie that Josh Trank (or whatever the name of the Fantastic Four guy is) was working on before he got canned?

 

[Josh Steinberg]

What was the movie that Josh Trank (or whatever the name of the Fantastic Four guy is) was working on before he got canned?

They never said, but I assumed it was either the Boba Fett or Han Solo one - he was canned before they announced Lord and Miller for Solo. But I suspect Boba Fett was probably the one they were courting him for.

 

[SamT]

Yes he was working on a Boba Fett movie. Ewan McGregor is not getting younger and he is willing to do it. I think it's a no-brainer to do an Obi-Wan movie.

But recently they said that for the Stand-Alone movies they want to have new characters and not to use the classic characters. So I don't know when that will happen.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

But recently they said that for the Stand-Alone movies they want to have new characters and not to use the classic characters.

I wouldn't worry too much about that. Their first stand-alone was a Darth Vader/Death Star movie where they were so invested in the idea of giving us something we had seen before that they did a digital performance for one of the deceased leads.

The next spinoff is a Han Solo origin story.

Whatever they're saying about new characters, the results don't match the rhetoric.

 

[TravisR]

I wouldn't worry too much about that. Their first stand-alone was a Darth Vader/Death Star movie where they were so invested in the idea of giving us something we had seen before that they did a digital performance for one of the deceased leads.

The next spinoff is a Han Solo origin story.

Whatever they're saying about new characters, the results don't match the rhetoric.

I can understand Disney and thus LFL initially wanting to go for some safe bets when dealing with something that they paid $4 billion for. Now that they're on more solid ground and have seen that people want more Star Wars, I hope they take some 'chances' on movies with new characters. While I'm sure they hope to sequelize young Han Solo, how many more movies can they do with existing characters? From the prequels, almost everyone is dead so they've got Obi-Wan and while I hope it doesn't happen, maybe Yoda (let the mystery be, Disney). From the original trilogy, they've got Han Solo, Lando and apparently Boba Fett. I don't see Darth Vader sustaining a movie by himself. I'd love to see them go crazy and do a movie on obscure characters like Figrin D'an and The Modal Nodes (look it up) but I'm probably in a small minority there.

 

[Sam Favate]

I'd love to see them go crazy and do a movie on obscure characters like Figrin D'an and The Modal Nodes (look it up) but I'm probably in a small minority there.

You're not alone. My son (he's 8) has been clamoring for a Max Rebo movie for a couple of years now. He has this whole story planned where Jar Jar wants to join the band as a singer. He says that events have Max Rebo and his band on the run from the Hutt gangsters and bounty hunters.

 

[SamT]

Disney Will Never Alter or Restore Original Star Wars Trilogy

 

[TravisR]

For old time SW fans, a book called 'Star Wars: The Classic Newspaper Comics- Volume One' came out today. It compiles all the daily and Sunday newspaper comic strips from March 11, 1979 to October 5, 1980 by Russ Manning. Like the first few years of the old Marvel comics run, these stories are enjoyably wacky and show how wild Star Wars was when it first came out. The stories get more serious and better with Volume Two (featuring art by the legendary Al Williamson and written by Archie Goodwin) which is scheduled to come out in January.

 

[TravisR]

Today is the 39 anniversary of this poster

 

[Sam Favate]

Updated for today (from StarWars.com):

 

[Sam Favate]

This is a piece I wrote for today. I thought I'd share it here.
---
Forty Years of Star Wars

Whenever it comes up, I am often asked how it is that I came to see Star Wars so many times in the theater. (Thirty-two viewings from 1977-1979, not counting the 1981, 1982 and 1997 re-releases, or home viewings.) The funny thing is: It didn’t start out that way. In the summer of 1977, I didn’t want to go to the movies. I remember telling my mother that movies were usually boring, and mostly kid stuff.

Looking back, I was right. Most of the pop culture I enjoyed in those days was old. There was nothing current that was fresh or exciting. My favorite movies at the time were probably the Planet of the Apes movies, which ran from 1968-1973 (the last two of which weren’t very good), so I was only seeing them in second-run theaters. My favorite TV shows were Star Trek and Batman, both of which were more than 10 years old at that point. I liked comic books, but every reader at the time knew they’d missed the good stuff, which came from the early-to-mid ‘60s (and which were available as reprints). Music? I liked Elton John, but, again, the good stuff was from the ‘60s: The Beatles, the Beach Boys, and so on.

What was being made to appeal to kids was really kid stuff. Movies like Escape to Witch Mountain, which starred a couple of cute kids, and Benji, which starred cute kids and a cute dog. On TV, The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman often featured child guest-stars, and even when they didn’t, there was always a sweet moral to the story that even as a 10-year-old made me gag. (Nothing wrong with stories having a message, but in those days, everything was simplistic and saccharine.) Even cartoons lacked adventure. The Super Friends - a collection of comic-book characters - was intentionally devoid of even a hint of violence, as an appeasement to the parents groups that protested the earlier cartoons of the ‘60s (which were so not violent by today’s standards.) If you were 10, the Super Friends were lame. So in the summer of ‘77, I was content to watch 10-year-old TV programs (in reruns), read 10-year-old comics and wait for the 4:30 Movie on Channel 7 to run “Apes Week,” so I could enjoy those old movies again.

But then I started to hear more about Star Wars. Marvel, my favorite comic book company, published Star Wars comics, which I enjoyed. So I became interested in seeing it, even if I didn’t believe movies had anything to offer a kid my age.

And then - holy shit! - it was amazing. It was everything a 10-year-old kid could want. The robots were cute, but not cloying. The heroes didn’t have life lessons to teach the kids; they weren’t perfect characters, which seemed more like real life. The villains weren’t simply mustache-twirlers either; they adhered to a stricter way of life that they wanted to impose on everyone (the allusions to the Nazis were obvious, even to a kid). This looked something like the movie I would have made if I had any concept of how to make a movie.

It energized me, and made me interested in film. And what a great time to be interested in film - the 1970s were full of great movies, and even as a kid, I found a lot I wanted to see. I went from reluctantly seeing a couple of movies a year to demanding to see movies every week. I became a regular reader of the New York Times Arts & Leisure section, which introduced me to the concept of film criticism. I started reading Starlog magazine, which introduced the previous decades of worthwhile science fiction films, television and books. I read Time magazine, initially hoping to catch Star Wars references, but finding more and more that caught my interest. I taught myself to type, since I had a lot of thoughts I wanted to get on to paper.

It wasn’t just an awakening for me. Everything changed. All of a sudden, the next two years had more movies to see than there would be time. Some were copycats, yes, but the art form had been elevated from the kid stuff that was there before Star Wars. Like so many kids my age, I couldn’t get enough, although there was a feeling that all these other things were just there to tide us over until the sequel came out. It was promised in three years, which seems an eternity when you’re 10.

Every chance I got, I went to the theater to see Star Wars. Of course, there was no such thing as home video back then - there wasn’t even the concept of home video. Movies existed in the theaters for the length of their run. That was it. After it left the theater, you might see it in an edited form on television in three years or so. After that, it would likely be forgotten. Only cultural milestones (of which Star Wars was not yet one) like The Wizard of Oz were shown every year. I couldn’t imagine seeing that happen to Star Wars, so - like millions of other kids my age - we went back and back and back and back for as long as the theater ran it. To my good fortune, a theater near my aunt’s house showed Star Wars for an entire year, through the summer of 1978, at which time the movie enjoyed its first official re-release and played in many other places. The following summer of 1979, it was re-released again. I racked up viewings whenever I could, often sitting through two shows a day (and - shhh! - paying for one).

Not every kid loved it. I can remember wearing a Darth Vader t-shirt to a classmate’s birthday party and being relentlessly mocked for it. Sure, it was an obsession, but as it turns out, it was a much better one than what occupied some of my school mates, some of whom began using drugs and/or drinking alcohol at age 10. I had no interest in either. Today, the oldest friend I have is due to a mutual interest in Star Wars when we were 10.

Forty years later, there have been a total of eight Star Wars movies (nine if you count an animated film), two cartoon series, countless books, and even more countless imitators and movies inspired by the original. I’ve enjoyed them all (some more than others). In some ways, Star Wars has become like a religion - it has mythology, it has a belief system, and it has ritual practices. (Despite rumors to the contrary, I’ve never been that deeply involved.) Soon it will have a theme park and a themed hotel, and the movies will continue to be made. Far from being another forgotten film, Star Wars will outlast all of us.

It’s unlikely we’d have this pop culture-saturated world, with multiple movies a year trying to break a billion dollars, if not for Star Wars. If that first movie proved or taught me anything, it’s that no culture has to feel stagnant and that there are always fresh, exciting voices to hear if we’re willing.

----

 

[TravisR]

Probably most of my youngest childhood memories involve Star Wars. My literal earliest memory is of seeing Darth Vader in the carbon freezing chamber as they froze Han in The Empire Strikes Back and either hiding or maybe falling asleep below the theater seat. That must have been the 1982 re-release because I'm not old enough to really have a memory of the 1980 release. I also have a distinct memory of my dad surprising me and my mother with tickets to see Return Of The Jedi on a school night (!). I'm assuming that was the 1985 re-release because I remember bragging about it the next day to my friends at school. Needless to say, playing with Star Wars toys in my backyard was a huge and wonderful part of my childhood too.

During the pop culture rebound of Star Wars in the early 90's, I was in junior high and high school and the SW movies were cool again and many people that had grown up with those movies- not just the nerds- had gotten back into them again. It was the beginning of a golden age (which has continued on to today) when you could wear a Star Wars T-shirt without fear of a wedgie.

Today, the oldest friend I have is due to a mutual interest in Star Wars when we were 10.

Me and one of my oldest friends started our friendship over Star Wars. We had a mutual friend who introduced us and knew we'd get along because we all liked Star Wars. When I got a job at the video store that he was already working at, I duped out my Star Wars laserdiscs (among other movies) onto VHS so there'd always be a copy of SW to watch. I've known the guy for nearly 20 years and Star Wars is still a frequent topic of our discussions.

 

[SamT]

Star Wars 40th with Marcia Lucas and Duwayne Dunham

 

[SamT]

 

[TravisR]

^ In a similar vein, I saw this a few days ago and it's so silly that it made me laugh.