Star Wars Underground (Live Action Series)

[Admiral_Young]

Rick McCallum talks about the live action series which gets a working title finally. I have to admit that I'm interested if this ever happens.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/01...itle-description-from-producer-rick-mccallum/

 

[scnj]

I hope the show is more inspired than the title.

 

[Mr Light]

I thought it was "Underworld"?

 

[Saul]

How old we gonna be when this gets made. We have to wait for the television industry to change to make sure it gets good ratings and we have to wait until the technology gets good enough to make this look like the moves. (Prequels unfortunately it seems).

 

[Disruptor]

How old will be?

Ewan McGregor will be able to play an elderly Obi-Wan without age make-up.

 

[Hyperspace05]

Is this a JOKE???

A crime drama in the SW universe? Ugh.

 

[Garak]

McCallum describes the show as “complex”, “dark” and “adult

Just like the prequels!

What a joke Star Wars has become, I hope this thing never gets off the ground.

 

[Satyrquaze]

Huh. Lucas can't figure out how to bring in a weekly live-action TV series, heavy on special effects for under $5 million an episode?

He couldn't, oh I don't know... talk to producers of the all series' that have been doing since the late 80's? I realize that the technology has changed (partly due to Lucas' own successes), but has it really gotten that much more expensive? If that's the case, he has only himself to blame.

 

[JD]

Honestly, after seeing what they've done on shows like BSG, Farscape, and Sanctuary, I really don't see where it would be that hard to find a way to do the stuff they want to do.
I honestly do hope the show gets made eventually, because I really think that with the Clone Wars Lucas has proven that he can do good stuff, if he lets other people do the heavy lifting.

 

[TheBrew]

There is probably a big cost difference between CGI ships and full CGI characters. The Cylons (at least the robots) didn't exactly look that great in BSG.

 

[JD]

I guess. I really think at times Lucas gets a little to obsessed with pushing the technology and being innovative.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Oh, they looked fine - because there was a story to wrap around them.

The future of science fiction/fantasy stories, as such, is in television. Commercial movie making is just about completely subsumed now by the event, the sensory spectacle, and story can really only emerge in very low budget fare. The trade-off is always going to be that things will not look as completely convincing on television as in theatrical film, because if the studios could turn that trick on that kind of budget they would never spend what they do on Transformers or Thor or Green Lantern...or Abrams's Star Trek movies.

Cameron is an exception to the foregoing only because his box office track record supports the courage of his convictions about how to make a movie. Skiffy nerds can bitch all they want about the familiarity of story elements in Avatar, but that movie is nonetheless built around characters and a story, not something that features a storyline primarily as an armature to hang set pieces on.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Did he actually say "It's never been about making shit-loads of money"?

 

[Saul]

Why not bring back model ships and have effects resemble the original movies to tie closer to them.

 

[davejames]

If they really DID focus on underworld characters like the badass smugglers, criminals, and bounty hunters we saw in the OT, I'd be all for it.

But knowing Lucas, it's probably going to be more along the lines of the dull and preachy prequels, with an emphasis on boring trade disputes, tedius negotiations, and corrupt polititians.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

If the technological and budgetary problems are mostly due to CG characters, then they should simply change the designs of those characters. It'll save some money, and as an added bonus, it'll actually look like Star Wars.

The handling of this has seemed crazy to me. The look of the original trilogy wouldn't be very difficult to duplicate on a modern TV budget. Even with all new characters, if the setting involves the Empire and the classic stormtroopers stomping everywhere, fans will eat it up.

I just don't understand why they put so much focus into that one aspect. Instead of pushing boundaries on a technical level to the point that it endangers your show, why not be innovative in terms of storytelling? They have the opportunity to do a long-form space opera/fantasy in a way that's never really been done before, but they're stuck on whether they can include CG characters that aren't all that appealing to begin with.

Is anyone really going to be disappointed if the show doesn't include Gungans and Toydarians?

 

[Temis the Vorta]

While they're waiting for some mythical day when you can do a movie-looking show on a TV budget while the entire TV industry is headed the other direction, they should just continue with The Clone Wars to bridge the ROTS-ANH gap with further animated adventures of Ahsoka Tano.

After the fall of the Republic, the galaxy will be chaotic and full of colorful criminal characters, so that part of the story works. They're trying to reinvent the wheel while they've actually got a wheel that's working for them.

They could push the storytelling more in a complex grownup direction without losing the kids in the audience. Without the simple war-story episodes, that would be inevitable anyway.

Honestly, after seeing what they've done on shows like BSG, Farscape, and Sanctuary, I really don't see where it would be that hard to find a way to do the stuff they want to do.

None of those would really be up to the visual standards of the PT, especially not Sanctuary, which I can't stand to watch partly because it looks so awful. BSG had writing and acting to compensate for the skimpy production budget, which they did a good job of disguising.

Star Wars simply can't be made without amazing looking planets and amazing looking critters around every corner. Lucas is right to assume that's an essential part of the franchise. Right now, the only way they can afford to do it is via animation. Even with better writing (the more grown-up episodes of The Clone Wars), a new series needs to feel like it fits in with the established universe.

But knowing Lucas, it's probably going to be more along the lines of the dull and preachy prequels, with an emphasis on boring trade disputes, tedius negotiations, and corrupt polititians.

He just needs to put Dave Filoni in charge of the Department of Making Star Wars Not Suck. My main hesitation about this new live-action series is his lack of involvement. Lucas needs someone who won't just be a yes-man to every idiotic idea he comes up with.

 

[Reverend]

Why not bring back model ships and have effects resemble the original movies to tie closer to them.

Perhaps because shooting models is MORE expensive than cg? TV sci-fi only made the switch *after* 'Babylon 5' proved that the technology was ready (or rather they made it ready) to do twice what motion control could do at half the price.

If the technological and budgetary problems are mostly due to CG characters, then they should simply change the designs of those characters. It'll save some money, and as an added bonus, it'll actually look like Star Wars.

The handling of this has seemed crazy to me. The look of the original trilogy wouldn't be very difficult to duplicate on a modern TV budget. Even with all new characters, if the setting involves the Empire and the classic stormtroopers stomping everywhere, fans will eat it up.

I just don't understand why they put so much focus into that one aspect. Instead of pushing boundaries on a technical level to the point that it endangers your show, why not be innovative in terms of storytelling? They have the opportunity to do a long-form space opera/fantasy in a way that's never really been done before, but they're stuck on whether they can include CG characters that aren't all that appealing to begin with.

Is anyone really going to be disappointed if the show doesn't include Gungans and Toydarians?

It's just the kind of filmmaker Lucas is. Despite his assertions that he's at his core a storyteller, in reality he's a gadget freak who loves his toys. Unfortunately he's forgotten that getting the best out of limited resources is often what made his early films great.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

Well, look at Clone Wars. It's pretty well done; the best part of the prequel era, in my opinion.

But imagine if Lucas were to create a follow-up animated show using the same designs, featuring the further adventures of Luke, Leia, and Han. I would definitely watch that, and I can't imagine I'd be alone.

Lucas would barely have to pitch it to Cartoon Network.

"Hey, you guys interested in a Luke/Leia/Han show?"

"Sending the contract now."

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Yeah, Luke/Leia/Han, I'm there in half a heartbeat. There's a lot of story untold in the time (years?) between the movies. Luke's character growth for instance, largely happens off-screen. He's a greenhorn in ANH, on a quest to learn what it means to be a Jedi in ESB and there's a huge change that happens before ROTJ, when he suddenly appears pretty much as a mature Jedi. I'd love to see the process of that transformation someday. Plus, what happens post-ROTJ?

What made the OT great is the ingenious way Lucas went back to the old space-opera traditions of breezy epic adventure, but provided a new element derived from the New Age ideas springing up in the 70s, combining Buddhist and eco-hippie concepts to create a mythology around the Jedi and the Force.

The fact that he didn't have a huge budget to play with was a limiting factor. It certainly wasn't what made Star Wars so memorable. Plenty of sci fi movies and TV series have come and gone that were made on a shoestring.

Star Wars is just like Star Trek in that the key to success is to recognize what makes them unique, and then build stories around that unique identity. Without that, you end up with empty mush, which we've seen from both franchises.

I just saw McCallum's interview. The part where he discusses the problems in the TV industry is interesting. He's definitely right that the whole form of TV is now in flux, and everyone is grasping around for a solution. Here's something that he might want to look at as a potential model (but again, probably works best with animation): Yahoo's Electric City concept.

Since a big part of this concept is social media/fandom creating buzz around the concept and becoming a virtuous cycle (I guess), it would make more sense to try this with an existing franchise like Star Trek or Star Wars vs trying to bootstrap a whole new one, where it might fail because the content is not grabby enough, and then the form will be blamed unfairly for the failure.