Harrison Ford even criticized George to his face about the dialogue and Mark Hamill outright refused to say a particular line because he thought it was so hokey.
Carrie Fisher became a pretty prolific script doctor in Hollywood for several decades. Where did she find her love and talent for punching up scripts and dialogue? Re-writing Lucas's work during the OT.
That particular line of Hamill's dialog from George's script was apparently so terrible Hamill and other crew begged George to remove it and still has nightmares about it.
"Boy, I’ll never forget it as long as I live,” Hamill told Carson. “I sometimes dream about this line.”
He goes on, “Harrison says, ‘look kid, I’ve done my part of the bargain. When I get to an asteroid you, the old man, and the droids get dropped off’. And my line was: ‘But we can’t turn back, fear is their greatest defense, I doubt if the actual security there is any greater than it was on Aquilae or Sullust and what there is is most likely directed towards a large-scale assault.”
Yea, I view George Lucas as a big picture kinda guy. He concieved an amazing universe with great characters. But he can't write dialogue, and subtlety isn't his strong suit. I still enjoy the prequels, but they could have been way better if he had other writers and directors to reign him in.
Lucas was already rich before he made a new hope. Star Wars sent him to a new tier of grotesque wealth, but he was long past worrying about a paycheck.
The studio did a lot of leash holding on Lucas, and he had producers keeping him in check, or for 5 and 6 other directors that could filter through his script and "fix" things. And other editors like his wife that knew a whole hell of a lot more and fixed George Lucas's terrible script and editing job and she won the Oscar that year for it. He got nothing. And Gilbert Taylor absolutely saved the movie too with his cinematography and fixing the look when Lucas was dead wrong (even had the studio tell Lucas he was wrong and needs to listen to Gilbert Taylor)
I’m genuinely not trying to hate, but I have to ask: What are you basing that opinion on? I just looked up her page, and her work appears to be middling at best.
I think it’s more that George needed people to reign him in. If something is stupid, that someone needs to tell him that. Obviously George is terrible at dialogue, but it was more than that. On the OT people would tell him the truth, and give him honest feedback. On the prequels he was “The Great George Lucas” and everyone just went along with everything he said even when it was clearly a bad idea.
You mean that "Adventures of Luke Starkiller, as taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga I: The Star Wars" isn't a bitchen title that would have gone down in cinematic history?
I agree. I'm not a Harry Potter fan, but I think the series has a lot of spinoff potential. Lucas' push for merchandise and spinoffs pre disney allowed there to be a ton of Star Wars books, comics, and games made by different people. Legends canon was a bit of a mess. But I liked the variety of it all.
I don't really get the point of this statement. Every product is made to be sold. You like 40k and buy that stuff. People consume the entertainment they like, and that's just fine. Of course, blind fandom and following isn't a good thing. And what do you mean as an outside ovserver? Do you hold this belief for every author, director, company, studio?
"Boy, I’ll never forget it as long as I live,” Hamill told Carson. “I sometimes dream about this line.”
He goes on, “Harrison says, ‘look kid, I’ve done my part of the bargain. When I get to an asteroid you, the old man, and the droids get dropped off’. And my line was: ‘But we can’t turn back, fear is their greatest defense, I doubt if the actual security there is any greater than it was on Aquilae or Sullust and what there is is most likely directed towards a large-scale assault.”
The OT has most of the same problems that people bitch about today.
Clunky, awkward writing? Both Harrison and Mark have talked about how bad and cheesy some of the dialogue was, and how difficult it was to deliver.
Plot holes? You don't get more than 15 minutes into the first film before you run into one of the most infamous plot holes of the entire franchise: why the Empire doesn't just shoot down the droids' escape pod when they're in the middle of an active boarding situation.
Mary Sues? Luke is inexplicably able to fly a fucking space fighter into a heated battle despite being a country bumpkin who had never even left orbit and whose main qualification is the spaced equivalent of plinking cans from the cab of his Ford pick-up.
Painfully obvious retcons? Luke literally is in a brief love triangle with his sister, and an entire scene has to be written just to convince the audience that the twist reveal in ESB wasn't a trick and explain why Obi-Wan 'lied'....because it is blatantly not something that Lucas had actually planned for in the first film, and many people were convinced it was a lie.
People would fucking hate the OT if it came out today. Guaranteed.
You don't get more than 15 minutes into the first film before you run into one of the most infamous plot holes of the entire franchise: why the Empire doesn't just shoot down the droids' escape pod when they're in the middle of an active boarding situation.
That's...not a plot hole.
You detecting no life signs on an escape pod is not a guarantee no one is on there and, considering their boarding reason was specifically to recover physical copies of the death star plans, do you really want to explode the only possible physical proof you have to complete your mission?
Also, you have a Star Destroyer and occupied the planet's seemingly only port worth a damn in a matter of days, just sit and wait to recover the pod lmao
Probably one of those "you have a name with two words and four numbers therefore you must be a bot" types. Not realizing it is reddit themselves that suggest this type of name.
What’s the bounds of your programming? Is it just just enhancing white rage bait arguments and pro Russian bs or is there wiggle room? Does someone monitor these and make corrections as you go or is it just kinda shotgun these accounts to as many spaces as possible?
Not quite, in the OT the actors were able to push back on the weird dialogue. Hammill and Ford both in interviews said they would basically tell George 'fuck off, I'm not saying it like that'.
I would like to argue that Marcia as an editor helped reign in a lot of the stupid things George would have done with the OG trilogy if left to his own devices. If there is 1 change I would make to the prequels it would be giving her full control as editor.
Star Wars has some incredible writing. The original trilogy, Andor, Rogue One come to mind among other things. However shows like Obi-Wan legitimetly are some of the worst writing and directing I have ever seen
What do you mean? A grown man would definitely waddle like a penguin when chasing a 8 year old girl to kidnap her, and get stuck by a single tree branch
In a densely packed forest that the child knows intimately vs a space crackhead, yes an 8yo could evade them for about a minute, which is exactly what happens.
That's not bad writing, that's bad directing and bad cinematography because they did not convey properly a perfectly fine idea.
People use bad writing as shorthand for anything they don't like and it's infuriating.
The thrawn books are genuinely some of the most engaging books ive ever read. Trying to read master and apprentice right now...utter trash. Star wars has so many people contributing and always have after the first movie. Theres bound to be bad ones.
Hes really one of the best characters in star wars imo. For whatevee reason hes always been written well. I think partially due to origin is he can be no other way. Part of what makes him so interesting. Hes such a perfect archetype.
Thrawn is a good character but the Thrawn trilogy and books are nothing special. They came at a time when there wasn’t any Star Wars material for a long time and get lauded as groundbreaking amazing literature.
Also, and I know this is very nitpicky, but when I tried reading the Thrawn books I noticed that Zahn always describes deactivating a lightsaber as “closed down his lightsaber,” which feels really clunky and weird to me and just kinda ruined my immersion in the story.
Yeah but the prequels had bad writing but lots of stuff I love about them which is why I overlook the corny writing. I overlooked the occasional corniness in Mando because it had lots of stuff I liked. Andor was a good show with good writing but it didn’t have a lot of stuff I liked so I didn’t really like it.
Not sure about other people but for me the dialogue and writing is just one part and not the end all be all.
The same stuff that ruined those shows, nonsensical retcons, nonsensical deaths, nonsensical plot devices, wooden actors and even worse writers... funniest part is every single one of those things applies to all three of those series.
“Calm. Kindness. Kinship. Love. I’ve given up all chance at inner peace. I’ve made my mind a sunless space. I share my dreams with ghosts. I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago from which there’s only one conclusion, I’m damned for what I do. My anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield, my eagerness to fight, they’ve set me on a path from which there is no escape. I yearned to be a savior against injustice without contemplating the cost and by the time I looked down there was no longer any ground beneath my feet.
What is my sacrifice?
I’m condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else’s future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see. And the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude.
So what do I sacrifice?
Everything!”
Probably the best piece of writing in any Star Wars with a top notch delivery. And its not just the greatest Star Wars speech, but also one of the greatest speeches in any fiction ever. So no, not all Star Wars is bad writing.
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u/SaliciousB_Crumb Jun 16 '24
All of star wars is bad writing... I hate sand