Star Wars TV - live action VS animated

[Mach5]

Sorry, it doesn't really matter how many characters or worlds from the OT make their way into the show-- the main story still revolves around a war between a bunch of Jedis, Sith, Separatists, and Clones that I couldn't care less about.

Yes, the same war that Ben Kenobi spoke of in Star Wars (1977).

 

[Avon]

so they wanted to make a live action show that would end up costing as much as a movie. why didn't they just turn it into a movie then? i doubt it would lose money. or would that mean lucas would've had to direct it? no one wants that.

 

[23skidoo]

They've been talking about a live-action series for a decade. They might as well call it Star Wars Forever (shout out to Duke Nukem fans).

I don't see why a Star Wars series would be that much more expensive than something like Galactica or V. Or even Doctor Who. You've got people doing CGI for nothing on YouTube, and greenscreen is getting cheaper and better all the time - they could film the show in a warehouse with virtual sets.

I think the way to go is to forget about rolling the dice on a 22-episode season and follow the lead of Torchwood and focus on giving us a kick-ass 10-hour miniseries. It's been 31 years since Shogun aired and people still talk about how that became "event TV" that people made time to watch for a week. Ditto Roots. Torchwood's five-night Children of Earth was one of the most acclaimed SF events of 2009, even outshining its parent program. A Star Wars miniseries would be a huge win for whatever network aired it, cable or mainstream.

Alex

 

[Mach5]

They've been talking about a live-action series for a decade. They might as well call it Star Wars Forever (shout out to Duke Nukem fans).

I don't see why a Star Wars series would be that much more expensive than something like Galactica or V.

Both BSG and V are roughly 85% drama and 15% action. In Star Wars, that ratio needs to be at least 50:50, or even in favour of action. SFX-heavy action.

And as good as those space battles may have looked in BSG, that simply isn't good enough for Star Wars, IMO.

 

[Dac]

They've been talking about a live-action series for a decade. They might as well call it Star Wars Forever (shout out to Duke Nukem fans).

I don't see why a Star Wars series would be that much more expensive than something like Galactica or V.

Both BSG and V are roughly 85% drama and 15% action. In Star Wars, that ratio needs to be at least 50:50, or even in favour of action. SFX-heavy action.

And as good as those space battles may have looked in BSG, that simply isn't good enough for Star Wars, IMO.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oShM7Bcml0w


I don't care what you say, that (especially past the 2 minute mark) look down right astonishing on Blu Ray.

Add to the mix that great action needs great drama behind it to make it meaningful. There was so much going on in that Resurrection ship battle that goes beyond Galactic and Pegasus 'effing up some Cylons. Thats why you ask any BSG fan, and they'd probably cite that as one of the most exciting space battles of the show.

Plus, any Star Wars Live Action TV should would be taking place during "the dark times", where there was no large scale conflict taking place. In terms of space battles, the most i'd expect would be a small smuggling ship running from an imperial cruiser akin to the falcon leaving Tatooine during ANH. That was conveyed with the falcon listing lazily to the left. Nowdays, it can spiral to the left far cheaper than that.

While the 50:50 mix of action and story is fantastic for the Clone Wars cartoon, for a long running TV show week in week out with real actors, your gonna need to tone that down, firstly for the aforementioned budgeting reasons thats keeping this show in development hell, and secondly because you need to care about whats going on with these people to keep people interested for more than one or two eps. Movies like the prequels made money because they were flashy, and for 2 hours you can sit your butt down and watch pretty things blow up.

For 10, 12, or even 26 hours of TV a year, your gonna need more than "Mesa in big poodo" to keep the viewers interested.

 

[Mach5]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oShM7Bcml0w

Good Lord, that overuse of camera shakes almost made me sea sick at times.

I don't want that shit in my Star Wars

It looked good in those two or three scenes in AOTC though, but that's the trick, not overdoing it.

While the 50:50 mix of action and story is fantastic for the Clone Wars cartoon, for a long running TV show week in week out

I don't think Star Wars should have more than 10-12 episodes per season (Think "Rome", "Deadwood" or "Tudors").

with real actors, your gonna need to tone that down, firstly for the aforementioned budgeting reasons thats keeping this show in development hell, and secondly because you need to care about whats going on with these people to keep people interested for more than one or two eps. Movies like the prequels made money because they were flashy, and for 2 hours you can sit your butt down and watch pretty things blow up.

True. But it can't be all talk and no play. That just wouldn't be Star Wars.

 

[Whofan]

Regarding animation quality, those promos for the upcoming Old Republic game do look very good and much more realistic-looking than "Clone Wars". (In fact, the whole "Sith/Old Republic Era" of Star Wars is sort of "What fans wanted out of the prequels") Of course though, those were mainly 5 minute promos and/or cutscenes (The game engine is somewhat less refined) and I've heard that they cost a ton to make, helping to push the game way over budget....

 

[Mach5]

and much more realistic-looking than "Clone Wars"

The Clone Wars aren't supposed to look even remotely realistic.

I didn’t want it to look like Beowulf, which we could have done, I didn’t want it to look like The Incredibles, when you are doing animation, you have a cast of characters and everyone knows what they look like, you really do have to come up with a very sophisticated and dynamic caricature of those characters.

 

[Dac]

Good Lord, that overuse of camera shakes almost made me sea sick at times.

I don't want that shit in my Star Wars

I wasn't suggesting everything in SW should wobble as much as NuBSG. It suited NuBSG, but your right, it doesnt suit Star Wars.

Looking beyond the camerawork, the visual effects themselves are just as good as anything in the prequels quality wise.

I don't think Star Wars should have more than 10-12 episodes per season (Think "Rome", "Deadwood" or "Tudors").

That's still 10 hours of story. About as much as the whole Saga put together.

True. But it can't be all talk and no play. That just wouldn't be Star Wars.

Never said it shouldnt. Im just saying 20-30 minutes of spaceships zooming around is gonna get old unless you have a point to it all, which would be kinda hard to get to if you gotta have a half hour action beat every week. "Event" episodes were something big happens, sure, but keep the action subdued. Chase scenes, espionage, gun fights, smuggling runs and then perhaps the occasional spaceship fight between a hero ship and a few baddies, sure. But I want to connect with the characters in a way I connected with Han, Luke and Leia except get to know them better, see them stumble more than once, and see them win small victories. Very much akin to Firefly when I put it like that, but Firefly itself was pretty much perfect, so that gets no complaints from me.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

PT universe, OT universe... What are you talking about? There's only one Star Wars universe, like it or not (it's not like Trek where we have sh#tloads of quantum universes and whatnot). Had you seen more than just a few episodes, you'd notice that a lot of OT aesthetic has been gradually introduced into the show, like Republic cruisers' interiors which look almost exactly like Imperial star destroyers' from TESB and ROTJ. Hell, they even threw in some of Ralph McQuarrie's old unused OT concept art.

Sorry, it doesn't really matter how many characters or worlds from the OT make their way into the show-- the main story still revolves around a war between a bunch of Jedis, Sith, Separatists, and Clones that I couldn't care less about.

The war is stupid, granted. It was a terrible idea to build the whole prequel story around a contrived war where we can't root for either side because one is evil and the other is clueless (well, both are laregly clueless, really.) If it makes any difference, TCW has shoehorned in some Separtists who have legitimate grievances against the Republic, and also done some work showing the Republic as worth having grievances against - mainly through corruption, ineptitude and maybe just the sheer impossibility of one governing body on Coruscant trying to wrangle control over a whole galaxy.

If you further assume that the "legit" Separatists started the war and the trade federation baddies and Sith just jumped on the bandwagon to exploit the situation, then you could see the war as more tragic than stupid, with two sides having legitimate points of view but it all goes wrong when the bad guys butt in.

I even have a retcon to defend the indefensible: the good guys making clones for cannon fodder! Remember, this is a different culture, and our own values don't necessarily apply. We've already seen in the Star Wars galaxy that apparently sentient robots with real emotions are treated not much better than inanimate objects, so it could be that human clones are regarded as being intermediate between natural born humans and other natural species on the one hand, and droids on the other.

That kind of heirarchy of value among sentient beings seems repulsive to us, but it's also understanable in a society where there are many forms of sentient beings. The Star Wars folks could point an accusing finger at the humans of Planet Earth, who treat their fellow sentient Earthlings - the cetaceans - badly, sometimes slaughtering them for fuel and food, and refusing to see them as equals.

But the main way TCW has redeemed the Clone War is by making it a story of individual personalities who are worth rooting for, even if they are participating in a galactic farce of a war.

It's been 31 years since Shogun aired and people still talk about how that became "event TV" that people made time to watch for a week. Ditto Roots. Torchwood's five-night Children of Earth was one of the most acclaimed SF events of 2009, even outshining its parent program. A Star Wars miniseries would be a huge win for whatever network aired it, cable or mainstream.

None of those examples are good analogies to the state of modern American TV as a business. 31 years ago may as well be a billion years ago, and foreign countries' TV business structure doesn't apply to America's. A Star Wars series on a broadcast network could easily fail. It's hard getting and hanging onto an audience anymore. I wouldn't try a space opera series on a broadcast network, period, not even one with a famous brand name.

And forget miniseries, the format is dead, except for on premium cable, where their bigger budgets (because of subscription revenues) offset the expense of not being able to amortize your startup costs with an ongoing series. Which leads to the question whether we might see Star Wars on Showtime or HBO - I dunno. Doesn't seem like the right fit. Showtime and HBO are all about giving people high-toned stuff they can't get elsewhere, and Star Wars is the epitome of low-brow popular entertainment. Look at the topics of HBO miniseries - I just can't see Star Wars fitting in.

Both BSG and V are roughly 85% drama and 15% action. In Star Wars, that ratio needs to be at least 50:50, or even in favour of action. SFX-heavy action.

And as good as those space battles may have looked in BSG, that simply isn't good enough for Star Wars, IMO.

I gotta agree, And remember, BSG got skimpy ratings even by cable standards while V is heading for cancellation city. You're setting yourself up for failure by assuming the audience that went to the theater to see kick-ass action and endured bad writing and bad acting to get it would settle for even good writing and acting, if they were expecting the usual volume of action that is implied by the Star Wars brand, and got a lot of talking instead.

 

[Gaith]

PS. The Vatican's been trying to enforce its single, unalterable interpretation of a fictional continuity for almost two thousand years. Try asking them how that's going.

Albert Einstein (you know, that Jewish guy, a smart dude) once said he accepted the historical Jesus unquestionably.

Is this the part when you take him on too in some canon jihad?

I'd just be careful with that, a lot of quotes are erroneously attributed to Einstein.

Well, let's assume that it's true. Suppose Einstein said he unquestionably believed that there was an historical Jesus - thus all the divinity claims the Vatican makes about him, as well as all the stories in the gospels, are necessarily true?

Wut?

Tying it back to SW, Lucas is the Vatican, but he doesn't get the final say unless each of us lets him, and not each of us will.

Gaith, how does one become a member of the Star Wars Prequel Rejection Society???



It.......intrigues......me

Cool! Well, gee, I dunno... I may have founded the "official" Society, but in the interests of a big tent, all are welcome, and no hierarchies recognized. To quote my Society's introduction in the blog:

Anyway, anyone is welcome to join the SWPRS so long as they pledge to uphold the group’s motto: “Star Wars prequels? What name so?”, and summarily reject those same three films as well all other materials that reference them (yes, this includes the CG show, relevant post-1999 EU material and the Hayden appearance + Naboo parade from the 2004 RotJ dvd) from their personal Star Wars canons.

… And no, you don’t get to fan-edit your way into the SWPRS by selectively enforcing its Goldenrod rule, e.g., by saying “no way do I buy AotC, but I’ll let TPM slide because it had Keira Knightley.” The Society finds humor and potential targets for satire in everything but itself, because once you criticize us in any way, you stop being funny.

Example: in my SW fan canon, Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy is as valid as the OT. But since it isn't PT-related, other Society members are in no way required to share that view.

So, sounds like you may be a member already, in which case, cheers, and pass on the blog link if you like. And if you'd like to submit material for the blog, I'd be more than happy to look it over.

 

[AviTrek]

Looking beyond the camerawork, the visual effects themselves are just as good as anything in the prequels quality wise.

Quality is not the issue as much as quantity. BSG used CGI space battles very sparingly. They would have multiple episodes without any CGI to save money for future episodes with a little more CGI. Star Wars would have at least 10-20 minutes of CGI per episode, and knowing Lucas probably a lot more. Lucas assumed that he could do the CGI work cheaply enough to do the show on a TV budget, when what he really needed were scripts that called for less CGI to begin with.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

what he really needed were scripts that called for less CGI to begin with.

Which means creating a Star Wars series more dependent on the quality of writing and acting than ever before. Even Lucas is not that oblivious to his strengths and weaknesses.

Take TCW for instance: I enjoy the writing and acting, but I'm also grateful for the action and eye-candy that keeps me interested when the writing is a bit on the simplistic side, which frankly is often the case. Even better-than-average Star Wars needs the crutch of abundant action and eye candy, and on a TV budget that means animation.

 

[Mach5]

but Firefly itself was pretty much perfect

Yeah, I guess that's why so many people liked it.

Well, let's assume that it's true. Suppose Einstein said he unquestionably believed that there was an historical Jesus - thus all the divinity claims the Vatican makes about him, as well as all the stories in the gospels, are necessarily true?

I'm sorry Gaith, you said "fictional continuity" which would imply that the entire story of Jesus Christ (as well as his person) is fictional.

I'll leave interpretations of that story to people who care.

Lucas is the Vatican, but he doesn't get the final say unless each of us lets him

LOL, yeah, tell yourself that. When Lucas produces something, 90% of people who bashed his previous work still pay money to see it. That's why none of the prequels failed commercially (ROTS even got great reception overall, like it or not), and that's why he'll keep doing whatever the fuck he wants. Because people keep buying his shit, plus the fact that he's the God in this universe that he himself created.

BTW, you really should check out his Daily Show appearance from, like, a year ago or something.

BSG got skimpy ratings even by cable standards

Heh, there's only so much forced drama and vomiting that audience can take, I guess.

Quality is not the issue as much as quantity.

I believe it is. "Camera" shakes create the illusion of reality (like someone actually filmed all that), but take that away and all you'll have left is TV-level CGI which IS noticeably less photorealistic than movie CGI.

 

[Gaith]

but Firefly itself was pretty much perfect

I'm sorry Gaith, you said "fictional continuity" which would imply that the entire story of Jesus Christ (as well as his person) is fictional.

Not at all. The fact that Julius Caesar and Marc Antony were real people doesn't mean HBO's Rome isn't a work of fiction, just as the fact that there probably was some bum named Jesus doesn't mean the New Testament is a collection of short fiction pieces. The point is, people will always have differing views of stories, and always will; to say that we must all of a sudden warp our views to fit Lucas' is... unnatural.

LOL, yeah, tell yourself that. When Lucas produces something, 90% of people who bashed his previous work still pay money to see it.

More fool us, but that still doesn't take away our freedom of imaginative thought.

BTW, you really should check out his Daily Show appearance from, like, a year ago or something.

Saw it, wasn't impressed. Most kids like Stewart's who grow up loving the PT will, I'm sure, someday see the light, and join the Prequel Rejection Society.

 

[Mach5]

Most kids like Stewart's who grow up loving the PT will, I'm sure, someday see the light, and join the Prequel Rejection Society.

I couldn't care less about his kids, Lucas' attitude was what I had in mind. The guy simply doesn't give a rat's ass about people like you, or even people like me, because his product sells.

 

[Gaith]

Hey, the guy wants to trash his legacy, that's his business, though I do think it's incredibly douchey of him not to fully restore and release the non-SE OT. And I wish he'd taken his work as an artist more seriously since the mid-90s, but you're right, that's up to him. He seems to think the PT will be vindicated when the PT generation matures, I think it won't; whatever.

It's you I'm most peeved with for telling people they can't believe/imagine what they want to believe/imagine. Leave that Geek Big Brother attitude at the forum door, if you please.

 

[Mach5]

I do think it's incredibly douchey of him not to fully restore and release the non-SE OT.

I still haven't given up hope on that.

It's you I'm most peeved with for telling people they can't believe/imagine what they want to believe/imagine.

Bullshit, I never said people shouldn't be free to imagine whatever the fuck they wan't. I only don't like it when they try to force their imaginary shit on others.

Leave that Geek Big Brother attitude at the forum door, if you please.

I refreshed the page and I still don't see your nickname turning green...

 

[Gaith]

I never said people shouldn't be free to imagine whatever the fuck they wan't. I only don't like it when they try to force their imaginary shit on others.

Really?

It's a shame they couldn't apply that same storytelling skill to the OT universe. There's a ton of compelling characters and planets there which are just DYING to be explored in a greater way someday (and I wouldn't even mind seeing some prequel stuff worked in occassionally either).

Unfortunately, I get the impression Lucas just isn't interested in that universe anymore.

PT universe, OT universe... What are you talking about? There's only one Star Wars universe, like it or not

It was pretty clear to me at least that davejames meant that the OT and PT are so different that there's a figurative rather than literal universe-sized boundary between them... and you pounced on him.

 

[Mach5]

davejames talked about the "two universes" like they were fact. He never mentioned anything like "my own SW universe" or "my personal continuity".

Try harder.