Star Wars II Trailer Online 585
Jager writes: "You can download the new starwars trailer here. Enjoy." Seemed to me as if Lucas was worried about the "love story" emphasis in the previous teasers, and wanted to make sure people knew there would be plenty of zapping and slashing.
cartoon (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't look real. Something about the models, miniture sets and mock-ups of Hoth and other planets in the first three movies had a texture to them that made them more believeable. Also the camera didn't fly all over the place constantly.
Looks like another pod race type scene (a big CGI jack off session that has nothing to contribute to a story) and a lot more characters that you won't care about (but hey, if Lucas throws 300 new characters in he can sell figures of them all to people that have to buy every single one.
This crap almost makes you feel like becoming a Trekkie (shudder). At least they come up with an interesting story and leave the visuals as a compliment to it.
D
Re:/.'ed (Score:2, Insightful)
OR you could just go to http://starwars.apple.com/ep2/clone_war/ [apple.com] and watch it work?
-Ando
Very unimpressed (Score:1, Insightful)
I was really unimpressed with the trailer; it seemed like they devised one of the most generic plots possible, threw some famous people at it, and bought themselves some expensive, but rather unimaginative, CGI. The result is fodder for the masses and the die-hard fans, with a perfect marketing opportunity for McDonalds tie-ins.
Lucas and his ilk really had the chance to take the high road here with these new Star Wars movies, and use his energy to create something imaginative, unique, and compelling. Instead he cranked out more fodder, really for nothing more than to continue milking money out of the franchise. Looks like it's continuing.
Disappointing.
Re:To Those Who Complain. (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone marvelled at the CGI in Toy Story, but it was the characters, the laughs and the plot that made it a success. Compare to FF.
...$ for Ep2 vs. anti-MPAA not the only issue... (Score:5, Insightful)
- Lucas's movies from the 70's are the primary reason (debatably equal with Spielberg's movies) for the "blockbuster-centric" state of the movie industry today. (i.e. opening weekend-oriented, with receipts fading fast even for popular films, therefore "hyper-able" films with a fast return get the most attention). ergo, supporting a new Lucas film is consistent _not only_ with generally supporting the MPAA, but also with supporting the "big (and not necessarily smart, therefore often stupid) movies advertised with big $$" business model which the major studios are so slavishly following.
(hey! lucas started a tsunami of crap! he's indirectly responsible for tomb raider! lucas is bad!)
- OTOH, Lucas is in the ultra-elite group of filmmakers who is beholden to _none_ of the movie studios (i.e. MPAA). He doesn't _have_ to create "big blockbusters", this is the kind of movie he _wants_ to make. Lucas even has the clout to create his own distribution company (in addition to Lucasfilm's production end), ala the Spielberg/Geffen/Katzenberg Dreamworks, were he interested.
(hmm... lucas is powerful! but independent... therefore good?)
- Lucas has, in fact, been using his clout to push digital production _and_ display techniques (which would be going faster were it not for distributor/theater overgrowth and mismanagement... which is a side result of the "blockbuster mentality, but I digress...). Aesthetic questions of "digital film" aside), these techniques can dramtically lower distribution costs while increasing theater flexibility, and thereby create new opportunities for distribution and showing of "non-blockbuster" films (independent or otherwise low(er) budget)...
(yay! Lucas is good! he's undoing what he hath wrought! and doing cool digitial stuff! Lucas is good!)
- Lucas's narratives tend to reflect a rather benevolently feudal/fascist view of the world, in which an elite group (Jedi) rules over/provides protection to the general classes; he has furthermore stated his preference for "benevolent dictator" style organization for his businesses (Lucasfilm/ILM/etc.), as well as indicating that his films are very specifically his own (versus "for the fans")... this idealized feudalism is further reflected in his deity-like relationship with his (legions of) fans. i.e. Lucas' s "independent" streak is very much a part of a tendency towards complete control over his work.
(boo! Lucas is anti-democratic... but he's an artist, so it's OK... but he does this in business, too... and see how he treats his fans... but we love him! Lucas is, uh, is...)
Anyway, Lucas's position in Hollywood/business practices/audience relations/artistic bent are very much an integrated and consistent (but still complex) thing - at least to the point that it's hard to reduce it to pure "good" or "bad". Let's just call Lucas a unique, smart, lucky bastard and focus on more concrete matters.
Just something to chew on.
Dissapointing post (Score:5, Insightful)
C'mon people, please come up with new reasons for not liking the prequels. Do we have to constantly read about "continue milking money out of the franchise" ?
The movie looks like fun, big battles, cool characters, etc. If you've seen previous star wars films you know what to expect. Just saying , "it's not creative" enough amounts to saying nothing. What do you want ? I really doubt that you could come up with anything more creative that the visuals and excitement in those few minutes of the trailer.
Oh BTW, your post is not "creative". Did I already mention that ?
Re:Very unimpressed (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead he cranked out more fodder, really for nothing more than to continue milking money out of the franchise. Looks like it's continuing.
Let me take this opportunity to say this: Thank god that Peter Jackson filmed all three LOtR at once. Read why before you mod me offtopic:
Lucas had a dream. He made Star Wars. It was... a little campy, in retrospect, but rollicking fun nonetheless.
Years pass.
Lucas made The Empire Strikes Back. It was much more serious. Darker. There's Dagobah and stuff. The sets, the effects, the tone all change. Why? Because Lucas now had better technology, and a different expectation to film for.
Years pass.
Lucas made Return of the Jedi. It was serious, yet fluffy. Dark, yet light. Wonderful effects, of course, now that years have passed. But again, the tone had shifted to become completely different. It reflected years of hindsight and expectations that affected the original artistic vision.
And it's only getting worse with the prequels.
Which is why I'm glad Peter Jackson shot all three LOtR films in one big go. Sure, the CGI is going to still be cranked out for a while. Editing can be affected by time. But overall, he has the chance to make a coherent hole of the trilogy, which is something I don't feel Lucas has been able to do with the time he's had. As Prufrock would say, time for a hundred visions and revisions...
Yawn.. can't we have something really spectacular? (Score:4, Insightful)
When are we going to see films that really capture the true scale of the energy levels we're going to be flinging around? I don't want to see ships throwing primary coloured blobs at each other, I want to see them fling high yield nukes, antimatter weapons that light up the sky and threaten to melt any surface nearby, I want to see missiles that fill space with incandescent plasma that fades before being blown appart as it's lanced by otherwise invisible beams of radiation.
I want to see acceleration an issue; I want to see people who couldn't get to a chair to scream in agony as they get crushed down by high G forces or get torn to bits by decompressions, not a few panels exploding and some lame shaking.
I want to see ground troops frying acres of land as they desperately try to kill an enemy, I want to see them blowing shit up with gauss guns and worryingly powerful antimatter devices, or proper ray guns where you only see what's reflected off dust and things they're melting/frying (and which cause the atmosphere to explode like lightning). Screw phasers.
I want to see believable universes, filled with Humans for a change; no humanoid "aliens" who happen to act like certain stereotypes (aliens will, of course, get a look in, but not as human analogs ffs); there's huge scope for different cultures, technologies, types of people and things people will become (from tweaked to entirely redesigned) that you get with humans alone without having to think up Unlikely Stereotypical Alien-with-ridged-forehead-and-attitude-problem 31338.
Of course, it's not going to happen.. tried and tested paper thin plots and people and a few shiny special effects is just too damn easy to throw together and make money out of.
<fume>
Re:Dissapointing post (Score:3, Insightful)
Here are a few of mine.
-JJB
-Pod Race kinda cool, but a lot of eye candy filler contributes nothing to story.
-Final battle, a bunch of the worst characters ever created lobbing big blue bouncy balls at CGI driods on the Windows XP desktop.
-Samual Jackson, love him but he is No Jedi
-Yoda ain't even good
-Anikan, baaaddd actor; glad he's gone at least
-The Force is bajillions of tiny creatures living inside all of us. Hahahahaha *choke*
People dislike Ep1/2 cause it's chic... (Score:3, Insightful)
high tech past != low tech future (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course the plot seems generic, there are movies and storylines that they have to follow.
They never really showed any other sith for the Jedi to fight. I am sure that they created one, but didn't share that information in the trailers. The only part that I found to be bland in the thing was Yoda's dialogue. I never really understood why someone so old and wise couldn't speak elementary english. But I guess you can't teach an old dog new tricks.
A real problem is that with the high-tech past, how does the future become so mundane in just a generation? They need to do a lot of explaining in the next two movies to show why and how they got from point A to point B, but enough of this off topic rant!
Re:Yawn.. can't we have something really spectacul (Score:4, Insightful)
singular craft : mass production (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally, I think it's a neat idea, but I agree with you--he didn't think it all the way through and it looks wierd. How come the technology in the ep. 1 is no less advanced, if not more advanced? Maybe what he should've done is make eps. 1-3 with the exact same moviemaking technology that he used in the 70's, except when he needed a shot that was impossible to do without CG, he should've done some CGI, except make it look like animatronics or puppets, rather than real life. For some reason, I find it a lot easier to suspend my disbelief in eps. 4-6, even though the effects in ep. 1 supposedly look more realistic.
Re:I suppose that you're unfamiliar with mythology (Score:3, Insightful)
Marketing concerns ? A trilogy about how the main character becomes the main villian. A prequel instead of a sequel (which is what most fans originally wanted). A movie about a separatist movement inside of a galactic republic ?
You must be a marketroid if you attribute that to marketing zombies !
Re:Very unimpressed (Score:3, Insightful)
Lucas has ALWAYS been one for new moviemaking toys. On one hand this is a good thing: he alone is responsible for getting ILM and the realm of realistic model-based special effects off the ground back in the Dark Ages of SFX. The same is true more recently for digital film. Hell, Kubrick used to shoot all of his films in mono because he was disgusted at the variance in theater quality. Thanks to Lucas, this may not be a problem in the very near future with digital projection.
On the other hand, this dependance on glitzy looks has the adverse effect, at least on his films, of relieving focus on story. Yeah they look great. Yeah they'll sell lots of toys. Back in the 70's, they sold Star Wars to the masses. Now, in our CG-inundated world, audiences need more than this. As an example, someone posted earlier just to this effect, about wanting more impressive weapons instead of what was in the trailer. I agree. .
Why are you dissapointed? (Score:3, Insightful)
In the first Star Wars movie, Lucas got moving out of the gate pretty good. The characters were interesting, the plot was interesting, and the universe he created had so many fascinating possibilities. Empire Stikes Back was his pinnacle though. That movie managed to really develop the characters and it wasn't afraid to take a darker tone.
From there though we've got Return of the Jedi where you can already sense his falling into an obsession with special effects over substance. You can also see his sell out to the toy merchants with the ewoks getting involved. Although I will say, one thing Lucas has always done well is come up with excellent bad guys. The emperor just seethed evil and the whole scene of turning Luke still gets to me when I watch. You know the scene, the dramatic operatic sounding music. Luke shouting DAARRRRTTTHHHH, and just totally losing it. Still though, mostly a special effects and toy selling fest.
This brings us to episode one. Total obsession with special effects and eye candy. Once again, good job on the bad guy in Darth Maul, but the sell out aspect of the movie is huge. Jar Jar... If only he would have died in the first 5 minutes, the movie would have been much better.
So, why should we get our hopes up about Episode 2? We should expect more of the same, a supremely cool bad guy, lots of nifty special effects, and lots of nice tie ins to sell toys to the kids. It'll be a fun movie, but it's not going to take the high road in any way shape or form. If you want that, go see LOTR again
Re:I suppose that you're unfamiliar with mythology (Score:3, Insightful)
Folks, fiction ain't technology. There are no new ideas in the world of plot and characterization. Depending on how finely you slice it, there are only a dozen or so possible plots that make sense to Western minds. You can twiddle with the setting, juggle the characters around a bit, but all you will ever do is create a variation on one of a handful of dreadfully familiar themes. What distinguishes good fiction (and art in general) from bad is the author's mastery of his technique. How many blues songs are based on minor variations of the same twelve-step chord progression? Most of them, both good and bad.
Milking the franchise? I suppose that's what Sophocles was doing with his Oedipus trilogy which is, IMHO, the ultimate source of the Darth Vader/Luke Skywalker/Obi Wan Kenobi subplot. I wonder if we can have a nice thread now about how Oedipus at Colonus was much less imaginative than Oedipus Tyranneus.
Re:I suppose that you're unfamiliar with mythology (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, Campbell drew on Robert Graves [robertgraves.org], who himself drew on Sir James Frazer [bartleby.com] and W.B. Yeats [bartleby.com] and so on...
Campbell, Graves as well as very many other mythographers before them recognised that, in Graves' words, "There was one story, and one story only". The study of myth is often just an attempt to relocate its sources. These sources aren't only in literature. They're in all manner of unexplainable things: nature, science, psychology, dream, etc. They all fuel our imaginations and, given that we've not really changed that much over time (we're just a bit better at explaining things and hence, behaving 'rationaly').
One great appeal of the original Star Wars trilogy is that was so faithful to the pattern of proto-myths described by Campbell, Graves and others. The Phantom Menace though, seems more concerned with being faithful to the orginal trilogy than any of the more unversal mythological legends. It's probably why they feel more shallow, more commercial and less about those things that matter to all of us.
No big loss though. The eye candy is great. Most of us will enjoy it. There will be other story tellers who will captivate us with wickedly spun tales.
C3PO (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:To Those Who Complain. (Score:5, Insightful)
The pod race that you all drool over is nothing more than "Days of Thunder" with different pictures (and hey, did that film ever suck!) - nice speed effects, but nothing interesting happening to make you worry about the character. The ground battle scene sucked by taking place on a manicured lawn and the simple question "if they have bombs, why don't they get other better weapons?". The storming-the-palace scenes sucked by the "oh hey, they all suddenly get guns with ropes on, yeah right" bit. And the space bit was just "Home Alone" - kid lucks out with slapstick to save the day. Never mind the totally irrelevant fish-chasing-the-submarine sequence.
The only new and interesting thing in the whole film was the Jedi fight scenes - they finally worked out how a Jedi (who can use the Force to jump and stuff) would be able to fight.
Grab.
Re:Dissapointing post (Score:1, Insightful)
GalaxyQuest and the "Crushers" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Another DiVX 5 mirror and codec link (Score:2, Insightful)
This DiVX download link is to the spyware version that includes Gator.
Even after uninstalling, Gator will still persist.
Re:Still doesn't work (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:To Those Who Complain. (Score:1, Insightful)
ESB, the 'dark' movies that everyone raves about also has a monster on an airless asteroid (wonder what it eats) and our heros walking inside it with just face masks on - while its mouth is open to the vacuum of space.
The Star War's movies are just for FUN. They aren't meant to be serious and logical. They are meant to entertain kids.
If the next movie looks cool, and entertains me and my kids for two hours then it has succeeeded!