I’m going to say something that may shock you: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace is not a good movie. But let’s set aside for the moment any talk of the film’s qualities with respect to writing, acting and so on. Instead let’s focus solely on one aspect: the lightsaber battles.
Some might argue that the film’s climactic fight between Darth Maul and the team of Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan is the highlight of the movie. But this video, The (Totally) Phantom Menace, suggests that there is a curious principle at work in that fight. It’s almost like the participants were all trained in some arcane martial art that prioritizes the avoidance of injury. Or, as this helpful video suggests: “swing like a drunkard.” Read More »
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Last month I received a cryptic e-mail inviting me to a private screening of a new Star Wars film edited by Topher Grace — which is funny because I had no idea there was a new Star Wars film in the works, with or without Grace’s involvement. I was told the screening was a secret private event arranged only for friends only and was asked not to talk about it beforehand. The event was held somewhere in the Hollywood area in a a screening room filled with filmmakers, editors, actors, actresses and only a few press friends. I was told I could blog about it afterwards if I wanted, so here goes…
For those of you who don’t know, Topher Grace is a film geek. He loves the Star Wars films, the Back to the Future movies and all the same signature titles of any film geek who grew up in the 1980s. He recently became interested in the editing process and wanted to learn more about the art form. Instead of cutting a short film, he wanted to use something he was more familiar with.
His idea was to edit the Star Wars prequels into one movie, as they would provide him a lot of footage to work with. He used footage from all three prequels, a couple cuts from the original trilogy, some music from The Clone Wars television series, and even a dialogue bit from Anthony Daniels’ (C-3PO) audio book recordings. He even created a new opening text crawl to set up his version of the story.
The result is an 85-minute movie titled Star Wars: Episode III.5: The Editor Strikes Back. It should be noted that the Star Wars prequel trilogy is almost 7 hours in total length, and the shortest film (Episode 1) is more than 51 minutes longer than Grace’s fan cut. What this means is a lot of footage ended up on the editing room floor, and a lot of creative choices were made in the editing process. And the result? Topher Grace’s Star Wars film is probably the best possible edit of the Star Wars prequels given the footage released and available.
Whats most shocking is that with only 85 minutes of footage, Topher was able to completely tell the main narrative of Anakin Skywalker’s road from Jedi to the Sith. While I know the missing pieces and could even fill in the blanks in my head as the film raced past, none of those points were really needed. Whats better is that the character motivations are even more clear and identifiable, a real character arc not bogged down by podraces, galactic senates, Jar Jar Binks, politics or most of the needless parts of the Star Wars prequels. It not only clarifies the story, but makes the film a lot more action-packed.
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George Lucas typically gets credit for visualizing the Star Wars universe, and in turn creating the image of popular science fiction that is so pervasive today. But in truth, much of what became Star Wars was truly visualized by conceptual artist Ralph McQuarrie, whose pre-production paintings defined the look of many major characters in Star Wars, and specified the general look of the film’s many worlds. McQuarrie also contributed to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Cocoon (for which he won an Oscar), E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and more.
Sadly, Ralph McQuarrie passed away yesterday at the age of 82. George Lucas wrote a eulogy for his friend and co-conspirator in Star Wars, which you can read after the break. Read More »
This is almost too much fun. Jason Geyer, a writer for Action Figure Insider, has posted a huge gallery of rejected Star Wars merchandise. How did he come upon these hidden gems? Simple, he helped to create them. In the late Nineties, he and a co-worker were two of the largest Star Wars fans working at a promotional merchandise company who had Pepsi as one of their clients. You’ll probably remember that Pepsi and Star Wars had a massive marketing campaign beginning with Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and while only a few products actually got made, the list of ones that didn’t is far more exciting and impressive. Can you say Floating Landspeeder Can Koozie?
After the jump, we’ve got ten of our favorites as well as a link to a page where you can see about six times the number shown here. Read More »
Each year some of the commercials from the biggest brands during the Super Bowl are directed by big name filmmakers (remember Ridley Scott‘s classic Apple “1984″ Super Bowl ad). The 2012 Super Bowl commercials feature spots directed by Todd Phillips, Bobby Farrelly, David Gordon Green, Miguel Arteta, Noam Murro, Craig Gillespie, Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., Joe Pytka, Jake Scott, Fredick Bond, Peter Berg and others. After the jump I’ve collected 18 of the tv spots directed by big screen talent, breaking down who directed what.
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Movie fans probably don’t remember much about last year’s Super Bowl (the Packers beat the Steelers 31-25) but they’d be hard-pressed to forget last year’s Volkswagen commercial. It featured a young boy dressed as Darth Vader, using the Force to command a Volkswagen Passat. For about 15 minutes, the kid was a national celebrity and the 49 million YouTube views and counting solidify the Star Wars-themed spot as the most talked about of 2011.
This year, the German auto manufacturer is back and while the bulk of their 2012 spot centers on dog getting into shape to chase down a VW Beetle, the self-referential climax can only be described as “The Dog Strikes Back.” After the jump, check out the extended version of the commercial that’ll appear this Sunday during the Super Bowl. Read More »
Let’s take a break from the flood of Sundance news and all the Oscar talk to look at one of the weirder indie projects out there: the crowd-assembled Star Wars remake. Star Wars Uncut is a project that started over two years ago when Casey Pugh invited Star Wars fans to do their own recreations of specific scenes from the 1977 film Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Fifteen seconds at a time, fans made their own version of the ’77 film, the most special of all editions.
You might have seen the first assembled release of Star Wars Uncut, but the entirety of the film has been re-edited into a more seamless whole, and it is the sort of weird, unpredictable ride that only the internet can provide. This movie is the internet, really, or at many of the internet’s most common obsessions, all filtered through Star Wars. (Itself an internet obsession, of course.)
Despite the fact that fragments of scenes were created one bit at a time, in a wide variety of styles and with technique that ranges from ‘inspired’ (Darth Vader’s breathing represented by a bottle of Johnny Walker Black that fills and drains) to the ‘cute but clueless,’ (quite a lot of it) there is a surprising uniformity here, and the assembled whole is more watchable than you’d expect. this one is a slightly more artfully assembled version that flows much better. Check it out below. Read More »
Posted on Thursday, January 19th, 2012 by Angie Han
If you ask me, Volkswagen’s “The Force” was hands-down the best commercial of Super Bowl 2011. And seeing as the ad topped YouTube’s list of the most-watched ads of 2011 as well as AdWeek’s list of the best commercials of the year, I suspect I’m not the only one who thought so. It’s no wonder, then, that Volkswagen is looking to return to familiar territory in this year’s Super Bowl slot — or that they’re going out of their way to make sure you know it.
The car company has just posted a teaser for its upcoming ad, which combines two of the Internet’s favorite things: Star Wars and adorable animals. If this isn’t tailor-made for going viral, I don’t know what is. We don’t normally post commercials for commercials on /Film (well, okay, sometimes we do), but I’m going to make an exception for this one just because it put a big smile on my face. Watch it after the jump.
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