Star Wars Underground (Live Action Series)

To many digital characters is part of the problem, um can you like use make and costumes mixed in?

 

Bollocks. That has NOTHING to do with it one way or the other. Rubber masks and muppets do not a good story make. If the writing isn't there then no amount of window dressing will make any difference whatsoever.

Eh....I don't know. As a weekly series, it'd need some kind of overarching story hook to make things interesting. There's plenty of expanded universe material featuring those characters that's just bloody awful because there's no point or direction to go in. Besides Zahn trilogy, most of the early novels were just lazy and not really about anything besides "our heroes do a lot of running around and get shot at by stormtroopers while a cardboard villain shakes their fist at them from inside the latest superweapon." It wasn't until the last decade or so that they started to introduce long term plot lines and some semblance of narrative oversight.

I think Lucas has a point when he says the story ends with RotJ. Anakin is redeemed, the Sith are gone and the Ewoks get a lifetimes supply of roasted stormtrooper meat. The End.

If that universe is to continue in any coherent way past that point then it should be set much later and with a new set of characters with (most importantly) a new story to tell.

 

It is called Underworld...my mistake. I believe expense and technological incapability have been cited as the two main reasons why this hasn't happened yet or why it won't. I'd still love to read these scripts. It was rumoured a couple of years ago that Kevin Smith wrote one. Or at least was asked.

 

I definitely want to see this show made. I just hope its better than the prequels were.

 

Give us a sequel to The Clone Wars animated series, but set it during the time of the OT with Luke/Han/Leia. That's what most fans what. It'll be cheap too since it is animated.

 

Agreed. That time period is just dying to be explored, and it would be a blast to follow those fun, dynamic characters again.

Hell, it's a thrill just getting a brief cameo from a random OT alien in the current show. I can only imagine how stoked people would be to see an entire series set in that time period. They could probably air that on a broadcast network and it would get big numbers.

 

Heh, that already sounds a lot more fun than the prequels.

 

Unless it's like Clone Wars, where new episodes get made, regardless of the ratings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Clone_Wars_(2008_TV_series)

 

I think a 2-hour pilot will be of higher quality than the series. I would not be surprised if Lucas was very hands on for the pilot and then backed way off like how David Lynch was with 'Twin Peaks' season 1. After 6 episodes he stopped.
I also think the pilot will be a lot better than the clone wars movie.
I would expect them to shoot and finish the pilot in stereoscopic 3D and release in the cinema. This is the same reason I think the next Star Trek series will do it too:

jefferiestubes8 wrote:
What if they did the pilot in 3-D for a 2-week digital projection-only cinema engagement and the TV series in standard 2D ?
from this thread:

next Trek series pilot in cinemas as double feature from Paramount?
http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=106739&highlight=pilot

 

I've never read the novels, but I'm not expecting them to use the novels necessarily. For my money, I think the way to go is a direction that the novels haven't taken (that I've ever heard of, although I guess elements of the following have appeared in various forms), namely that the ingrateful idiots of the restored Republic decide to outlaw the Jedi to forestall any more "issues" with the dark side, which sets Luke in opposition to the establishment.

Leia refuses to have anything to do with being a Force user and keeps her connection to Luke (and therefore Vader) a secret because it's political suicide if it gets out. She refuses Luke's attempts to train her as a Jedi, even in secret, which makes her vulnerable to the dark side...

I think the key to the story would be to keep the conflict within the main characters, not "the good guys" against some external foe, which would be too generic. Any space opera can be about the good guys vs invaders from beyond the galaxy. Star Wars needs to keep the core conflict internal to at least one of the main characters.

Yeah I would never discount the silly fun factor! The core conflict needs to be some big epic light side of the Force vs dark side thing, but revolving around that, there can be any number of side conflicts.

I don't think the story needs to end there at all, but I side with the philosophy that the dark side (and the light side) is a physical attribute of the cosmos that can never be eradicated. It's like gravity - it just is, and everyone needs to come to terms with it. Ignoring it is the worst option.

From that perspective, when Jedi and Sith fight, they're both wrong in a way. Both sides refuse to acknowledge that what the cosmos really wants is balance, not domination of one side over the other. But humans (and humanoids) resist that notion furiously, so they never learn. Star Wars is a farcical tragedy of beings who cannot come to terms with the true nature of reality.

 

Well given that the story of Star Wars was (according to Lucas) the story of the rise, fall and redemption of Anakin Skywalker, then yes, I'd say you do have to end it there. The dude's dead. Game over. Finito. He is a former Dark Lord. Hence my saying that to tell a new story, it'd have to be...well, a *new story*, no?

Having Luke and/or Leia go through essentially the same process would be just pointlessly retreading old ground. I'm not saying you shouldn't ever use those characters again, I'm saying that for the endeavour to be worthwhile then you need to have a story worth telling and "the further random adventures of Luke and pals" it's it.

 

There were heavy rumours prior to Celebration V(discussed on this board IIRC) which of course turned out to be false...that a new animated series featuring Han, Leia, and Luke was going to be announced and would be sequel taking place in the New Jedi Order era (I think) with Mark Hamil, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher reprising their roles. Instead we got the announcement of Seth Green's comedy series (which is still being developed I think).

 

Would anyone be put off if they weren't able to do a lot of digitally animated characters?

 

I honestly believe that the Clone Wars has the best format for a tv version of SW, if they could just get their head around the notion that cartoons don't have to be for kids. The Japanese figured that out years ago.

The important thing is the story, and anything that distracts from the story is bad. The great thing about the clone wars series is that it's 1 medium. There's no actors struggling to emote and react to things that aren't there and haven't even been designed yet, in front of a green screen.

I've had my own sci fi universe I've been developing for the past 10 years or so, and I've been spending the last few months working on developing my own 3d modelling skills. I believe that the approach taken in clone wars, using really quite simple models, with all the detail in the painting, allows a perfect vehicle for the story. Yes, it's lovely and it looks great to have amazingly complex 3d models with every bolt rendered on the ships and cgi armpit hair blowing in the wind on the characters, but human beings come fully equipped with their own imagination.

The story's the thing, and some of the best sci fi stories were told back in the 60's with next to no budget, and nobody cared. I for one would love to see a new SW series using the same clone wars approach, but aimed for adults. The clone wars has given us some of the most "realistic" uses of the force, without having to use wires or green screens. CGI lets you throw gravity and all the other laws of physics out the window, and everything's painted with the same brush so nothing looks out of place or added in afterwards. It also allows you to have your characters at any age you choose, young Han, old Han, it's all the same.

 

Of course, Rick McCallum says its the $5 Million an episode budget and too many CG characters thats putting them off, but we all know that's bullshit.

Honestly, what he says in the latter half of the interview about the state of Television at the moment, Nielsen ratings are a joke that everyone buys into and how no ones making any money anymore is far more likely the reason why they don't want to go ahead and make this show at the moment. He's right when he says they at least want to break even, and even that would be a gamble, even if it cost a million an episode it would be a gamble because TV is so far up shit creek no one knows whats going to happen.

 

Or at all, really. The Clone Wars has obviously run against previous Star Wars publications in a number of ways (the hitherto unheard of apprentice Anakin had being perhaps the most obvious), and I don't see why Lucas wouldn't continue that.

Well yes, but isn't that what we're talking about?

Episodes one through six is the story of Anakin Skywalker. One can make the argument that Star Wars: The Clone Wars is also part of that story since he's one of the protagonists, but is Anakin going to have anything to do with this live action series?

Because if he has nothing to do with it - or has a fairly small role - then it is not really 'the story of Anakin Skywalker'.

As for the announcement generally: ...I've been playing a fair bit of Star Wars: The Old Republic, and I do idly wonder how this sixty-episode series about the messy underworld of the Galactic Empire would compare to the messy underworld of the Imperial Agent story, and anyway I just can't muster any enthusiasm about this TV series anymore. Maybe when they finally have some footage in a trailer to shop around...

 

The Sith, by their very nature, always seek domination. They are incapable of doing anything else. That is what evil does. The Sith would have to be wiped out before they could stop dominating.

So therefore, I don't see how there could be true balance, since the Dark Side users - the Sith - must always fight, they must always attempt to wipe out their enemies. It's in their nature. The Jedi, being Light Side users, are of course capable of coexisting in balance, but the Dark Side is not.

 

How can someone be so completely oblivious as to the reasons for their own franchise's success?

 

Star Wars is an action adventure in outer space with mystical overtones. A show about the criminal underworld as the focal point sounds dull as dirt.

 

I'm really starting to think they should just stick to animation, Clone Wars has proven that people have obviously have no issues with animated SW as long as the stories are good. If they have so many scripts written, I don't see why they can't just use them and change the format to animation. And eve if it is darker and more adult oriented I don't see where that would be a problem either. DC appears to be having a fair amount of success with they're PG-13 DTV movies, so obviously the fan boy crowd has no problems with animated productions geared towards an older audience.