Kevin's Watch

For you die hard classic Star Wars fans I give you cause to pull the last of your hair out. I should include a link to the hair club for men.
www.cinescape.com/0/editorial.asp?aff_i ... j_id=42455

I've gotten over it. Lucas is basically dragging Star Wars into the digital age of moviemaking, with old time SW fans kicking and screaming along the way. With digital technology, Lucas has the means to constantly rethink and reshape his movies. I can understand how that can be very liberating for a filmmaker or any creative artist. Lucas has said there is no such thing as a "finished" film, and he clearly is not afraid to prove that point, purists be damned. He can and will tweak not just Star Wars, but all of his films, I'm sure.

I'm a purist in the sense that I saw the original SW films as a kid and so I'll always love the originals. But I also appreciate cutting edge film technology, so it's great to have a guy like Lucas who constantly pushes technical standards. If it weren't for Lucas's relentless pursuit of perfection in film reproduction over the years, I wonder if today's movies would look and sound as good as they do. ILM aside, it's hard to name a feature film today that hasn't used the services of Skywalker Sound or hasn't been "THX-mastered."

Filmmakers are marching into the brave new world of 21st century cinema, and George Lucas is the pied piper leading them onward, grey hairs and all. Power to him.

I wonder - the actors who played the Emperor in TESB and Anakin in ROTJ - how do they feel about not being in the movies any longer? I'd be pissed off.

I agree, dlbpharmd. Did Lucas have to make them an "offer they couldn't refuse?" And what might that offer have been? Money? Or "You'll never work in this town again?"

But they probably weren't working much, anyway.

I think their annoyance level depends on how much they thought they contributed to the films.

Interesting bit of trivia you may or may not know about the Emperor's hologram scene in TESB: He was played by an old woman wearing prosthetic makeup, with chimpanzee eyes superimposed in post-production into darkened eye sockets in order to create the unsettling image. Clive Revill provided the voice. So it was a two-person job.

At any rate, I can't picture those two somewhere jumping up and down in indignation. I wonder if that old woman is even alive. I know nothing about Mr. Revill either.

Hey, they haven't been completely wiped from history. They're still around in the VHS universe.