General Star Wars discussion

Montana Smith

Active member
kongisking said:
Screw chilled monkey brains, I'd rather have Gungan brains! :rolleyes:

Gungan brains are okay if you're on a diet.

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Henry W Jones

New member
Brooke Logan said:
How can something as cute as Jar-Jar deserve a bad fate?:( :D

Like they say...... one persons garbage is another persons treasure. Cute to you. Annoyance to others :p

How can something as awesome as Star Wars deserve a bad fate of a character like Jar Jar?
 
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Brooke Logan

New member
I've only seen Phantom Menace once or twice, but I know Jar-Jar didn't offend me. I also though didn't think his character was that important to the point he could ruin the film. I was more interested in Anakin, Padme, etc., because they have to do with the original trilogy or are directly part of it.

So if the film was ruined, it would be because their characters weren't portrayed right imo.

It just surprises me that a lot of people feel Jar-Jar was the ruination of that movie.
 

kongisking

Active member
Brooke Logan said:
I've only seen Phantom Menace once or twice, but I know Jar-Jar didn't offend me. I also though didn't think his character was that important to the point he could ruin the film. I was more interested in Anakin, Padme, etc., because they have to do with the original trilogy or are directly part of it.

So if the film was ruined, it would be because their characters weren't portrayed right imo.

It just surprises me that a lot of people feel Jar-Jar was the ruination of that movie.

Speaking as a person who, like you, never really found Jar Jar too awfully annoying at first, I hate to say that with every year I grow older, I find my patience for him slipping drastically.
 

Henry W Jones

New member
Brooke Logan said:
I've only seen Phantom Menace once or twice, but I know Jar-Jar didn't offend me. I also though didn't think his character was that important to the point he could ruin the film. I was more interested in Anakin, Padme, etc., because they have to do with the original trilogy or are directly part of it.

So if the film was ruined, it would be because their characters weren't portrayed right imo.

It just surprises me that a lot of people feel Jar-Jar was the ruination of that movie.

His character is very pivotal to the prequel storyline. Padme gives him her powers as senator in her absence and he is tricked by Palpatine to give him complete power over the senate. People who grew up in the 80's with the original trilogy tend to find the prequels a bit childish in comparison and Jar Jar is a ridiculous character only there to appeal to children. Star Wars doesn't need slap stick characters to appeal to kids. I loved ANH when I saw it at 3 years old.

kongisking said:
Speaking as a person who, like you, never really found Jar Jar too awfully annoying at first, I hate to say that with every year I grow older, I find my patience for him slipping drastically.

I am actually the opposite of that, the prequels have grown on me over time and I find Jar Jar more acceptable the more I watch it. I figure I can't change the films, so I might as well enjoy them for what they are. And they are entertaining while not great works.
 

HenryJunior

New member
I was in the age group Jar Jar was aimed at when EP:I came out and even then I found him annoying.

I can appreciate the role he had in the following movies, but that appreciation is at about the same level as me being glad R2-D2 can ALWAYS hot-wire you through a mechanical door.
 

Brooke Logan

New member
Have you seen the show that has been aired on the Bio network about Star Wars? In that, they talk about what kind of character Jar-Jar is supposed to be/represent. That documentary made his presence sound a little less silly.
 

The_Raiders

Well-known member
HenryJunior said:
I was in the age group Jar Jar was aimed at when EP:I came out and even then I found him annoying.

Same here. Luckily for me, I was first introduced to Star Wars with the original trilogy, so when I saw Phantom Menace, I found Jar Jar pretty irritating. As others have said, each year my appreciation for the prequel trilogy diminishes more and more. Especially since the Clone Wars came out.
 
Sandcrawler Building by Aedas for Lucasfilm

Lucasfilm, created by George Lucas in 1971 in San Francisco is responsible for such box office hits as Indiana Jones, American Graffiti and most of all the Star Wars franchise. Lucasfilm is proud of their film legacy and have grown to develop new film technology, special effects and computer animation in addition to their hit movies. Especially proud of their Star Wars history, Lucasfilm is constructing a new office building in the image of the Star Wars Sandcrawler.

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The office building made of glass and steel will take on the guise of the Star Wars mining vehicle and will be built as a collaborative effort between Aedas architectural firm and Fusionopolis. The Sandcrawler building would house Lucasfilm, LucasArts, an animation team, and a 100-seat movie theater. No word on when a completed building is expected.

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With all the talk of bootlegging...

...here's a nice little rippoff:

R2-D2 suitcase: May the Force be with your carry-on



You can get the C-3PO experience without the shiny gold body carapace and stiff joints if you pick up an R2-D2 rolling suitcase from Salvador Bachiller.

The suitcase is actually called the AZ-2028 Robot Trolley 60, leaving me to wonder if George Lucas' lawyers are about to earn their retainers again. If you want to hurry up and get your order in, the suitcase will cost you $120.

The rigid case comes with a combination lock, extendable handle, and four polycarbonate wheels. Unfortunately, it doesn't project holograms or make cool beep and boop noises.


Related stories
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For some reason, the lining looks like a bunch of crossed bones. Maybe that's a statement about the body count over the course of the "Star Wars" movies. Maybe the designer just thought it would look cool.
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Some snippets from the Binary Bonsai. The full article can be found here.


George Lucas Stole Chewbacca, But It's Okay

...

Ralph McQuarrie: ?George also gave me a drawing he liked from a 1930s illustrator of science fiction that showed a big, apelike, furry beast with a row of female breasts down its chest. So I took the breasts off and added a bandolier and ammunition and weapons, and changed its face so it looked somewhat more like the final character, and I left it at that.? (6)

As is obvious from the following side-by-side comparison, the illustration McQuarrie is referring to wasn?t decades old, but months, being none other than this one by Dune legend John Schoenherr, from the July 1975 issue of Analog:


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Hmmm.

The drawing, as the cover below, was for a Hugo-nominated novelette by George R.R. Martin which: ?[?] deals with the ?realities of a very rigid society conflicting with what looks like a pushover primitive tribal society; and we find out where the strength really lies. It?s called ?And Seven Times Never Kill Man? (red. drawing its title from a Jungle Book poem by Rudyard Kipling).? (10). I haven?t found a copy of the story yet, but from the sound of it, the story itself is pretty familiar to the Star Wars universe.

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And as if that wasn?t enough, in another interview around the same time as the 2004 StarWars.com interview McQuarrie actually ends up contradicting himself:


Ralph McQuarrie: ?We had an old 30?s illustration showing a hairy ape-like creature that George kinda liked.? ? ?We started out with the idea of him looking sort of like a lemur, and then I did one creature that had breasts down the front of him. I removed the breasts because it wasn?t to be a female, and I put a bandolier on there and gave him a weapon.? (2)

Here a clarification is in order, as several sources have pointed excitedly back to this post and summarizing this as: ?Lucas told McQuarrie it was from the 30?s!?. There is no indication anywhere of that being the case. McQuarrie refers to it as being from the 30?s or from a 30?s illustrator, that is all.

While it is remotely possible that McQuarrie drew a wookiee with six breasts, unless kept in a vault in the exceptionally well-stocked Lucasfilm Archives, for fear of even more direct comparisons with Schoenherr?s work (it?s hard to get any more direct than the above I?d say), a 1975 drawing of a female wookiee would truly be a find!

In reality it?s more likely that McQuarrie over the years simply forgot the sequence and origins of things. Both of the contradicting statements are from interviews released in 2004; the featurette interview having possibly been done in 2003 or even 2002, and it?s possible that McQuarrie remembered in the interim more details of the creation.

Whatever the case, it?s hard to say what prompted the visual do-over. Perhaps Lucas ? who devoured sci-fi books, comics, pulp magazines and spectacle action movies ad nauseum trawling for ideas ? came across the magazine and simply found it a more compelling look. Most likely, he wanted to soften up the design now that Wookiees would no longer play their old role of barbarian jungle creatures, as Han Solo turned from being a green-skinned alien, an underground operative, in the first draft, to a human ?free lance tough guy for hire? in the second:


George Lucas: ?[Han Solo] did start out as a monster or a strange alien character, but I finally settled on him being human so that there?d be more relationship between [Luke, Leia and Han]. That?s where Chewbacca came in as the kind of alien sidekick.? ? ?My original inspiration for Chewbacca was my dog Indiana. She was the one that sat there with me as I was writing the script all the time. She?d ride with me in the car as a co-pilot. And as she?d sit in the car, she?d be as tall as I am. She?s an Alaskan malamute, she?s very big. I thought that was a funny image.? (2)

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This anecdote?s probably true, though it fails to mention that Chewbacca was first an alien tribal prince on a jungle world, until the second draft, where the whole wookiee subplot has been excised, leaving a ?creature? vacuum to be filled, which is why he then became the first-mate to Han Solo. Strictly speaking Lucas isn?t bending the truth (his use of the word ?originally? is a bit far-fetched perhaps), but in the absence of the full history of the character, his anecdote might seem a plausible enough explanation.

As an aside, it?s interesting to note that Lucas rarely talks about bushbaby Chewie, perhaps because he knows that if he starts down that road, he might have to try and bridge the gap from that to the post-Schoenherr Chewie, which he can?t do without admitting that it was essentially borrowed wholesale.

Regardless Lucas obviously found the Schoenherr creatures a good match, and the influence is obvious; down to the crossbow come bowcaster (which seemingly has no design iterations to speak of, having probably been done ad hoc by the prop department). Aspects of it changed for the final film, as we?ll see shortly, but it?s clear that with the exception of a single surviving bandolier, Chewbaccas design from here on out was clearly based on Schoenherrs work.

...

[2] The Characters of Star Wars from the original trilogy DVD Boxset. Lucasfilm, 2004.

...

[6] Ron Magid, Ralph McQuarrie on Designing Star Wars. The official Star Wars website, September 20, 2004.

...

[10] Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, Volume 95, Davis Publications, 1975.
 
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