Airplane, Empire Strikes Back, & Pink Panther get Honored...

[GeorgeC]

http://www.thewrap.com/movies/article/a ... c-registry

The films Airplane, The Exorcist, The Pink Panther, and The Empire Strikes Back were all announced as being named to the National Film Registery for preservation because of "significant cultural, historical, or aesthetic reasons" [sic].

It's about darn time for all those films!

There were two films on that list made in the 1990s and while I have nothing against them being on the list the other four I mentioned SHOULD have been on earlier Registry lists!

It seems appropriate that the four films were finally given their due.... They've withstood the ravages of time and are still as entertaining as they were on their original release dates. They're all excellent films for their genres and recently primary creative forces in their making have died...

Leslie Nielsen from Airplane, and the directors of TESB and The Pink Panther, Irvin Kershner and Blake Edwards respectively, have all passed away with the past month leaving significant film catalogues behind them.

However, what was announced for the Registry this Tuesday are probably the signature films for all three men. What a way to be remembered!

[Ben]

Sadly, that's probably also what caused someone to "remember" those films!

[Dusterian]

Yea, I gotta say...it feels almost kind of...bad that the people died just before their films made it. Almost like a slap in the face. Oh, you died just before you could find out how important we thought of your films! Oops!

I also wanna know...why is Airplane considered list worthy? That's the funny movie about planes, right? With the woman who gets slapped by a long line of people?

Also, are all the Star Wars films on there? Why aren't all of them on there, if not?

[Dacey]

"Empire" is widely considered the best of the SW films. Hence it being included.

"Airplane" is widely considered one of the funniest movies ever made. Hence it being included.

And I highly doubt it was intended as a "slap in the face" to include them.

[Ben]

And all the Star Wars films do not belong on that list.

[Dusterian]

Ben, did you mean to say "films" instead of "fans"?

I could understand them not putting on "bad" sequels like the Godfather III (most people think it's just not good), but all Star Wars films were good, it should be completed, if only because all of them together were one big collective exciting event for all time.

[Ben]

Yep, "films"...thanks for the catch, which has been changed.

No, not all the SW films were good. Was just watching Attack Of The Clones again yesterday - after thinking it was the best of the prequels and may even have ranked equal or higher than Jedi - and was just reminded how much the prequels, even a "good" one, really did miss the boat. The writing is poor, and Hayden Christiensen (sp?) is awful, awful, awful. No wonder he hasn't been cast in anything worthwhile since.

Star Wars is already on the list, far as I recall. And it belongs there as the very good one-off film that it was originally intended to be. Since Empire ranks equal or higher to it, there's no wonder why it's also made the cut, but I can't see Episode VI: The Great Muppet Caper making it, for the very reasons that joke title brings up.

And there are far more worthy films to be preserved before the prequels should be allowed anywhere near the others in such an archive, just like I wouldn't suggest some of the later Panther films should be in their too, despite being hugely entertaining (closest one to being essential is probably A Shot In The Dark).

[GeorgeC]

The Empire Strikes Back is still by far the best Star Wars film and I think we have Irvin Kersher, Gary Kurtz, and Lawrence Kasdan to thank for that.

Sure, both Hamill and Harrison did their best acting of the trilogy in that film, too, but I think it was much better overall on the actors having an "actor's director" for the film instead of George Lucas. (Kershner was offered the 'Big Seat' for Jedi but turned it down for reasons that I mentioned in another post... He didn't feel he could top his work on Empire.) There are scenes in that film where there's no verbal communication... It's just looks that communicate feelings between these people... They're no longer the comic book characters they were in the original Star Wars. I noticed this in the Rebel hangar bay just before Luke leaves the Falcon for his snowspeeder. I also believed in the love between Leia and Han far more than the love-struck Anakin 'Stalker' in Episode II. That 'romance' business in Ep II really creeped me out the first time I saw that film. I thought, "Stalker! Stalker!" at the time. Empire was just by far the most mature and layered film of the six in the series.

And yeah, it's very true that Star Wars was written to be a 'one-off' film in case it bombed. The fact of the matter is that the original Star Wars script was large enough for three films and was cut down into the version that was used for filming. Most of the major plot points in that megascript survived through the Original Trilogy.

What Lucas has never appreciated IMHO was that the compromises he had to make resulted in far greater creativity than what was seen in the Prequel Trilogy where he had access to more advanced technology. My personal standpoint still remains that the design work and a lot of the camera work and old effects were better in the Original Trilogy.

Lucas was so depressed during the making of Star Wars that he expected it to bomb. Alec Guinness believed in his vision; Alan Ladd, Jr. backed Lucas through all the difficulties in film production and cost over-runs.

[Ben]

Okay...let's settle this! There was never a "mega-Star Wars script" enough to fill three films. Lucas had written SW and had a lot of "material" ideas left over, but this was mostly just background stuff and not even prequel background stuff, it was just extra material for the first SW film.

Vader was never Luke's father until the at least the third draft of Empire's script, so that simple fact blows everything about always wanting to go back and tell Luke's Dad's story, that there were nine films, etc, out into space. It's a bunch of codswallop.

Lucas wrote a fun B-movie that was always intended as one film. If it had been moderately successful he may have left it at that. But it was so huge that he wanted to make sequels, and so that it didn't look like making it for money, this whole "nine film" thing was invented. His masterstroke in the first one was that he had Vader's ship spin out of control, so that he could bring him back (just in case). But it was Kasdan who came up with Vader as Dad in the third or fourth draft (which was still even called "Star Wars II" then), and Kershner that put his foot down and made an actual movie as opposed to a basic sequel.

By the time of III/VI, Lucas had total control, as we know with the leaving of Kurtz. There was no reason that the ending couldn't have been set with a bunch of Chewbacca's Wookies helping the gang out - indeed it would have been much BETTER to have seen one of the trilogy's best loved character's home world and build up his background more - but Lucas saw the money to be made in a new bunch of toys. There's not even any reason why the Ewoks couldn't have been baby Wookies, but by then the money had taken over and the art was dying.

[GeorgeC]

Don't know who's right here, Ben.

Don't even want to really get into an argument about it...

BUT, most of the Lucas books and even the recent "Making of" Mega-books said there was a huge script for the first film and that it DID get broken down.

This is so long ago that there's a mythology that's built up even about the filmmaking. It's hard to separate fact-from-fiction when most of the history is authorized by LucasFilm... and those guys are known to be "storybuilders."

Granted, I never bought --
a) the business of introducing Joseph Campbell's theories and books to make Star Wars seem more sophisticated than it really was; THAT I felt was an invention AFTER the fact to bolster whatever dim feelings Lucas had of the project;
b) the Vader father business -- Lucas definitely see-sawed back and forth on that; it wasn't nailed down until they literally shot the lightsaber duel finale for Empire;

and I am inclined to think that
c) Lucas definitely resented Kershner to a point during the making of Empire...
The story goes that he did offer Kershner the director's chair for ROTJ but that Kershner declined... Whether it was Kershner not feeling ROTJ couldn't top Empire OR he wisely declined because he didn't want to antagonize Lucas inadvertently, I don't know... I do know that a weaker director directed ROTJ and that Lucas was on the set most of the time during ROTJ production and that Marquand felt intimidated by Lucas' presence. Lucas in effect co-directed ROTJ.


Reading the Empire "Making of" book, one gets the sense that Prowse was left out of the loop on much of the script because the guy was a talker. He said too much about some of the plot and the filmmakers were not about to let him spoil the 'big surprise' in the movie by giving him the lines that James Earl Jones was going to speak. I really get the sense that his feelings about being left out of the 'big surprise' and his own ego were his downfall more than anything he claims Lucas did to him over the years. Prowse just hasn't learned to let go of his past personal disappointments and notions of being wronged by somebody else. Most everybody else in the Star Wars cast has moved on or come to grips with the Star Wars legacy like it or not...

[Ben]

most of the Lucas books

Well, there ya go right there. The Lucas books, which say everything that George wants us to know. As someone who knows someone with not only the first (finished) draft of "Star Wars" and the second (first Kasdan draft) of "Empire" and has seen them, I kinda put stock into my own eyes.

And I know Dave Prowse too, through other people. He hasn't been too clever about how he handled his SW association. It started on the first film when he says he didn't know his lines were going to be dubbed. On the second one, he didn't observe the strict secrecy, and so wasn't fed the correct lines. For once, fair enough on Lucas' side. What really nailed it for Dave was that he was always promised that when the helmet came off at the end of Jedi, he'd be seen. But a later re-shoot saw him replaced with Sebastian Shaw...again, unknown to Dave, but again he hadn't taken the non-disclosure in his contract seriously.

This was Lucas' way of having the final say, and instead of getting along with him and joining the sycophantic club like Anthony Daniels, Prowse has forever more complained about his treatment. In many ways, Dave only has himself to blame, and even if Lucas didn't always play fair, he was signing the checks and asked no-one to blab. It's not hard, is it? The situation now (again, as someone who was organising an Elstree SW event for later this year) is that LucasFilm will not endorse or support any event to which Dave Prowse is invited/will attend. As such, we can't get him to come to the event, which is now on hold anyway. That's just the way it is.

BTW, Lucas "co-directed" both sequels. The directors only worked on the sets. Once the footage went into post-production, it was George who was calling the shots. It's true that he got a "weaker" director in for Jedi since Kershner had been so frank in standing up to him on set, but once both those films went into post, they were in the hands of George again. And since then, the 1997 and 2004 editions have solely been Lucas' work.

[GeorgeC]

If only Lucas had let the original theatrical edits stand instead of putting in so much extra unnecessary @^#@%#@!

I loved the original edit of Empire. It was the closest to perfection of all the SW films... The things that got added in 1997 (I haven't watched the 2004 edition) were just all unnecessary. The Wampa scenes cut from the original 1979 shoots didn't work so why bother trying to redo some of that mess again? Same with the Vader shutttle scene on Cloud City. Just not needed at all! For that matter, the 1997 Star Wars SE had all kinds of extraneous and frankly distracting junk added all over the place... especially in the streets of Mos Eisley!

I don't think most fans would have minded IF the retouches to the original films had been restricted to cleaning, getting rid of scratches and pinholes, and erasing the matte lines that became obvious in some effects scenes. When you go about adding new, unnecessary scenes and just wreck the pace of the films in places, that's when people like me go upset.

I saw only two of three SE's in 1997. That was enough for me... and I still haven't sat through Jedi 1997 or the 2004 cuts. This Blu ray set upcoming is just another unnecessary tweak as the 3D editions (which I WON'T pay to sit through...!) are going to be.

[Dusterian]

First, I only meant that the first three Star Wars films should be on the registry. Because it is all of those together that are historically and culturally signifigant, which is why you get on the registry. I also think more Disney films need to get on there, but that's for another time to talk about.

I did not mean that I think the awful prequels should get on the list at all! Our culture and history would like to forget them! Well, not of all of us, but enough of us! I'm just kidding about that, of course.

Also, I heard that Darth Vader means Dark Father, or at least that "vader" is Dutch for father, so that makes me think they really did intend for Darth Vader to always be Luke's daddy. But I also heard someone say he was called that because he was to be "the father of the Force". Is there any evidence for that? I also heard the Darth came from "Dark Lord of Sith". True?

I also heard that Anakin was previously a totally seperate character from Darth Vader that wasn't used (and was even killed by Darth Vader? That was mentioned in the movie? How does that makes sense?!) and so he luckily got to use Anakin as Drath Vader's past self later! How convenient... And apparently his last name was starkiller? I'm just guessing Ben must know the answers here!

[Ben]

All the Darths are named (mostly) after antagonistic words (like in-vade, in-sidious, etc), though it doesn't work for all (in-Maul!?). But that was the thinking, apparently, at least at one point.

Anakin Starkiller was a completely different character to Darth Vader. It was only when Kasdan made Vader Luke's Dad that he became the one and the same, hence the paper-over-the-cracks line that Obi-Wan delivers, which is "true, from a certain point of view" (also good to remember that Lucas killed off Ben in the first one for a big dramatic moment, only to regret it later in the sequel, for which the Force was then bent - again supposedly by Kasdan - so that Jedis could come "back").

There's lots of conjecture out there on all the names and such. The important thing to remember is that it was all made up without much background. Most of what we "know" or has been reported on SW has come after the fact, when the mythos suddenly needed "explaining" and had many deep and meaningful points forced upon it. It is, at the end of the day, just a lot of highly entertaining mumbo-jumbo baloney!

[GeorgeC]

To muddy up the waters more, and this is going way back to The Art of Star Wars book (1979) and Star Wars: the Annotated Screenplays, Starkiller was really a predecessor of Luke and even the original "Luke Skywalker" wasn't Luke in the sense we know him.

At one point Luke was a girl! Sketches of "Leia" in early development also feature her with a hairstyle similar to Luke's in the films. There's a sketch of "girl Luke" sitting next to a lightsaber-wielding Han Solo(!) on p. 68 of The Art of Star Wars. This is not a mislabel; this is what a period book says! This is not stuff made up 10 or 20 years after the fact...

Likewise, the idea of a duel between "Luke" and Darth Vader goes back to a preproduction painting by Ralph McQuarrie of "Luke" fighting Vader in the hallway of what became the Rebel Blockade runnner (Tantive IV) in the opening scenes of Star Wars. That "Luke" character was originally called Starkiller, too. His first name I think alternated between Deak and Anakin depending on the draft of the story.

Anyhow, obviously that duel didn't make it into the first film but it's such a popular Star Wars image that it's been reprinted multiple times. It's also been made into a Japanese high-quality plastic statue that was released within the past 3 years. There was a series of paintings from Star Wars released on glossy paper around 1978-1979 and "The Duel" was among those the reprinted paintings. It's also been released through Ralph McQuarrie's webstore (eBay) once or twice as a litho and was probably reprinted on the card set released in 1997 that hi-lited McQuarrie's Star Wars artwork.

Too bad that more of McQuarrie's development artwork was never released in a quality mass-market book aside from "The Art of" Episodes IV-VI Trades and the one or two sketchbooks released for the last two films in the original Trilogy. It really highlights character and story development that both made it into the films and got cut out.

McQuarrie did release a book of his painting and concept art a few years back but it was a private thing and you had to order it online. It was over $100 just for the regular edition and there not many of those printed along with the scarce signed and/or numbered versions.


Most recently, the Starkiller name was resurrrected for the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed series of games. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starkiller It's the codename for the main character of The Apprentice whose true identity is Galen Marek, son of two of the Jedi who survived Order 66.

Marek's father was killed by Vader during the Jedi extermination hunts carried out between Episodes III and IV. Vader found a very young Galen Marak in his father's hut on Kashyykk (the Wookie home planet) and took him back to his command center to train in the ways of the Dark Side of the Force.