The "treatment of Luke"

I found a thread on Medium about Arndt's ideas! I saw a lot of concept art for TFA and Death Star II was in there! It was more about how Luke detracted from the new characters they were trying to push, so they had to find a way to oust him. I would argue that it wouldn't have been a bad thing to have Luke take centre for a while, he was the hero of the OT. The new characters could have grown organically, perhaps from students in his class etc that we see develop and root for over time.

I appreciate the reminder - I would also like to see the other poster be reminded, too. Antagonism is usually preceded by tone or the way someone is spoken to...that's why I said what I said

 

It's hard to fill in the gaps between Christopher Reeves Superman turning into Metro Man at his worst without doing a whole story on it.

I said it before, it's a serious screwed either way situation. The only way they could have gotten around the problem of Luke is by just not having Luke at all, which brings its own problems.

Basically, you're always going to get it wrong with doing a sequel story that tries to not be focused on the holy trio.

Every version that was attempted by everyone failed to avoid a problem. Take a look at Lucas' version. It would have caused The People versus George Lucas Part 2.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

That's a variant of Arndt's treatment. It didn't work. Once you focus on Luke you can't shift and say it's actually about these other people.

You can't tell the story of St. Matthew's kid by focusing on Jesus Christ.

The biggest "mistake" that anyone made was making a sequel.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Totally agree! They should have been front and centre. Though they tried to have a legacy character have each film? Han with TFA, Luke with Last Jedi and then obviously it couldn't pan out with Carrie. I'd argue you have to start with them. No one cares about St Matthew as much as Jesus and no one ever will...there's a reason for that.

It's tough - it's trying to grapple with a now mythical character and have them work within a story. TLJ alludes that that - Luke has a few meta moments with his own myth. Luke is Star Wars. I don't think a sequel should have been made without actually thinking like you're playing with a religion here, writing the updated version of the new testament almost.

Maybe it was just an impossible situation.

 

It is impossible. No one fully agrees on Star Wars' narrative direction. No one.

Marcia Lucas saw the prequels and cried to herself in the parking lot over what George had done.

The best way to look at Star Wars, in my view, is to look at it the same way I did when I was a kid who discovered what movies were when Han Solo showed up in Indiana Jones. From that moment on I wanted to know everything about why someone put something the way they did and how.

That is, they're truly best when looked at as art made by artists who did what they did for a reason.

Whether we like their work or not, we don't tend to look at paintings and say how they should be done instead. We like it or not.
That's consuming.

And if we want, we can better see the painting by asking why it is as it is. That's appreciating.

There are those who hang around galas and talk about how the art is wrong. Those are critics. They hold an arcane knowledge of how artistic expression should not be done.
So far as I can tell, I gather that it shouldn't be expressive. It should be what the critic wants.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

My biggest issues with the ST are decisions made from the start. It's Empire 2.0. There's really no growth in the New Republic. No Coruscant. The OT characters are overused. The root of all these choices are Disney. When you think about it though these are pragmatic choices. The prequels weren't received well. So Disney directed them to lean on what worked in the past and avoid the prequels. Were they wrong? People loved The Force Awakens. It was a huge hit despite being a retread of the OT and the fact they had Han Solo die at the hands of his son. It was such a fantastic Star Wars thrill ride people overlooked that and ignored that it set up Luke as walking away from everything and abandoning his friends.

The ST is a reaction to the PT. Disney couldn't afford to take a huge risk with the sequels. I'm pretty sure fans would have have hated Lucas's story. For the most part the ST did well until Fisher passed away and there was no way to fix the hole that left in the story. The best part of the sequels are they set up some really good characters in Rey/Finn/Poe/BB-8. Star Wars will be different going forward and that's okay.

 

I would have rather liked to have seen two things in the sequels; a 'role reversal' where the New Republic faced a threat from a rebel group who had sprung from survivors of the Imperial forces, and an end to the Jedi/Sith conflict by creating a new organisation similar to the Grey Jedi, where the dark and light sides of the Force found harmony and there were no more 'ultimate good' v 'ultimate evil' battles. In short, I wanted Force users to evolve. I honestly thought that was the direction they were going to go in post TLJ, but instead they simply rehashed ROTJ with a good dose of Avengers/Raiders of the Lost Ark rip offs thrown in.

TROS reminded me a lot of the final Game of Thrones series which seemed to rush things as if the creators just wanted to get it over and done with and move on to other things.

 

Interesting post, @DailyPlunge! I agree with your take on TFA. It was clear then, but it's even more clear now, that JJ and Kasdan were so laser-focused on 'rebooting' a boxoffice hit, that the world-building and "historical" ramifications of their screenplay were secondary. They didn't fully recognize and appreciate at the time how their film -- and the next two -- would become part of a grand, over-arching history that would forever influence future SW story arcs. The approach that Favreau and Filoni have taken to treat the GFFA as a real world with distinct cultures and history has only highlighted the weakness of the STs as canon.

 

I...think that maybe they will in the future use actors and de age them by CGI; that way you get the original actors but 'rejuvenated'.

 

If there were such an example, its future existence would not need to be considered.

All that remains at current is refinement.
It's like being at the advent of the light bulb and holding that there won't be electrification of cities in the future because electricity is simply too incapable of being produced well enough to do more than limited employments.

If a technology avenue exists, it will be refined.

George Lucas practically spearheaded almost the entire cinematic toolset we know today by embracing such thinking.
Avid, editing software for movies, was the first digital film editor. Lucas.
Pixar, initiated with Lucas' CGI front.
CGI itself starts as we know it with Lucas.
Dolby Surround.
The Volume/Stagecraft
Fully digital characters...

The list keeps going.
Imagine Lucas sat there and thought it just didn't look well enough yet, so it just won't happen. Imagine if people just didn't try to push technology and refine it.

Well, then, yes. It would never happen.

Cheers,
Jayson

--- Double Post Merged, Dec 30, 2022, Original Post Date: Dec 30, 2022 ---

We're already doing that. A lot. A hell of a lot. The newest gig in vfx is basically a replacement of certain jobs makeup used to do.

Look at Tom Cruse in a movie from the last couple years. Look at him outside of those movies. VFX chin and neck fat removal is regular.


So regular folks don't notice it. When folks notice, even if flawless, is when it's impossible.

The Irishman deaged its whole main cast. Everyone noticed.

The biggest problem with deaging isn't doing it. It's when the deaging exceeds common knowledge of the actor's age range that it adds an automatic layer of scrutiny by the brain.

Effects only work because the brain lets go and ignores their existence. They're not in direct focus. When the brain focuses on effects because of contextual knowledge (e.g., knowing an actor's age and look) you can do nearly the most flawless effect you want, it won't matter.

In fact, it's easier to give a familiarly known lie than a more believable one. People will stop hawkeyeing at practical effects and physical masks right now much faster than anything CGI. It's actually easier to "fool" someone with practical at the moment simply because so many brains are habituated to accept that lie as an honest version of reality.

But yeah. Deaging has its own job title and departments in the industry these days.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I didn't say actors will be replaced.
Although, there's plenty of actors who would happily take a check for likeness rights and take a back seat while a stand-in gets their face plopped over them ala Bruce Willis' recent ad in Russia.

I stated that fully digital recreations of actors for when they are not otherwise available will happen. It already is happening. All I'm actually stating is that it will happen more.

And yes, The Irishman did it, and yes it had its flaws. That won't stop anything. It's leagues better than Scorpion Dwayne Johnson from two decades ago.

As to who wants this kind of stuff? Lucas. He's the main person who pushed this into the mind of the industry in the first place. He was talking about it all the way back in the 80's to Spielberg during the Jones days. It's why there's a stained-glass nemesis in the Young Sherlock Holmes.

If Lucas hadn't wanted to pioneer that front of making digital actors, that wouldn't exist. It wouldn't because that division of ILM wouldn't exist, and arguably ILM itself wouldn't exist. Lucas always wanted a "movie in a box" that he could just control and get back what he wanted from. He hated all the restrictions of reality and wanted them alleviated. He's basically spent his whole business career expanding on that premise.

So, my answer for who wants digital actors is Lucas. And now, a ton of the industry does. They're already employing deepfakes and deaging everywhere. And, again, even actors are digging it.

The amount of "Oh look it's my twin but different" movies that came out this past year is voluminously more than any other year prior.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Pablo Hidalgo has mentioned a few times that TFA and TROS were really Bad Robot films with the help of Lucasfilm. JJ's team didn't really work that closely with Filoni and company. In fact, it was revealed after TFA, that Rian Johnson fleshed out the political backstory that was used in Bloodline. Whatever one thinks of TLJ, Johnson spent months at Lucasfilm with Filoni and the Lucasfilm team.

The biggest lesson from Lucasfilm's perspective is finding talented people who are going to work with Lucasfilm instead of just using Lucasfilm toolbox. They've done this very well with the TV series.

I don't think it takes a large imagination to see the future demand for films with reproductions of Groucho Marx/John Wayne/Clint Eastwood/Harrison Ford. The tech is almost there... heck, a 73 year old Sigourney Weaver plays a teenage Avatar in the newest sequel. It doesn't seem like a controversial opinion to suggest that actors could be replaced in certain situations in the future.

 

I don't give a d**** how anyone uses it.
It's a brand of consumer goods that sometimes allows artists to be expressive through it as they choose.

Fine by me. I don't see any value to culture keeping. There's no such thing as, "true Star Wars" to me in some absolute sense.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Or perhaps not making it twenty years ago.

 

Mark Hamill wasn't 'replaced.' He was as much a part of Luke's portrayal in Mando and TBOBF as Andy Sirkis was to Gollum's depiction in Peter Jackson's LOTR films.