What made the show prohibitively expensive? I know the show had a bunch of special effects, but it didn't seem like it had more than any other show revolving around a spaceship. Also, I'd be interested to know what the costs were compared to say, Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica.
It was a million an episode. That's about what Star Trek: TNG cost, but TNG had the advantage of never not being in syndication. By way of comparison, Terra Nova cost about $4m an episode... and Game Of Thrones (Season 1) came in at around $900k/episode. BSG? About $1.4m per episode. Which isn't quite a fair comparison, because the economics of HBO are a little different. Nonetheless, Firefly was a network show, and it needed to make network numbers. NCIS costs around $2.5m per episode, but it also delivers 8 million viewers on a bad night. Firefly never got above 5. It would have had more of a shot on cable than it did on network. Problem being, Fox didn't run it on FX, while NBC chickened out and ran Battlestar on SyFy. There were some serious issues of mismanagement with it all. There often are with Fox (which is rapidly becoming The Gordon Ramsay Network). It would have been different on CBS or NBC, and would have been exactly the same on ABC. Kind of a shame. It's about the only Whedon thing I can stand.
It was stupid expensive and nobody watched it. Primarily because it sucked. "Oh, shit! We're about to be eaten by a dinosaur and we can't run! What will we do?" -COMMERCIAL- "Boy, we sure are lucky that dinosaur got bored and left while we were during commercial; let's waste some time on some super-thin bullshit human interest b-story, shall we?"
I agree 100% with rules 2-4. However, I get why so much of episodes 2 and 3 took place in the Senate and in the capital. It's backstory. We are being shown why the rebels fled to the frontier in the first place, and how it is that Palpatine becomes the Emperor. There's no way to take over a government from the frontier. So on that point I give Lucas a free pass. As for the gay little cute characters, we all better get used to it. There's no way Disney makes SW less cute than Lucasfilms. They already have a Star Wars-Mickey Mouse store in Disney World (I swear to god I was there for a conference--no other reason!). It's downhill from here.
I would really love a brutally dark atmosphere for the other films that maintains the fantastical spirit of the Star Wars Universe. Being absolutely realistic to what it means to live in such harsh worlds and endless creatures, but being fast and loose of the physics and gunfire. It's possible to strike a good balance, and I can see Abrams wanting to go for that, and Disney being absolutely opposed in every way. So here's hoping we don't get a confused mess of something glorious like most of TESB and the pod-racing in episode one or the award ceremony in ANH attempting to fill the same scene.
I recommend you check out the Star Wars comics published by Dark Horse, there's lots of that stuff going on!I would really love a brutally dark atmosphere for the other films that maintains the fantastical spirit of the Star Wars Universe. Being absolutely realistic to what it means to live in such harsh worlds and endless creatures, but being fast and loose of the physics and gunfire.
I have the original run of The Tales of the Jedi series from back in the 90's (with the cool foil covers and all) but I'll have to look into what the have now. I just went and checked out the Dark Horse catalogs and, not even including the digital catalog, just the hard copies they have for sale, there are 18 pages with 56 per page. Damn. Some of these look fantastic, at least art-wise.
Oh, the art is a whole lot better. The stories are much more cohesive and work well to bring a greater sense of that universe. I just plowed through a bunch of the latest series. I'd highly recommend them if you're into comics and Star Wars for sure.
...yeah, but who fucking cares? Backstory is something writers put in because they think they need it and audiences hate because they don't. You want backstory? "He fought with your father in the clone wars." DONE. Tolkien put this one to bed succinctly when someone asked him what lay beyond the "distant mountains of Mordor." I don't know the quote exactly, but he essentially said "if I told you, you'd ask what lay beyond that. Know that I know what lies beyond the distant mountains of Mordor, and that is enough." STAR WARS owes its existence to Kurasawa, who basically made Imperial westerns. We're talking Edo-era Japan... yet Kurosawa never once went to Edo.However, I get why so much of episodes 2 and 3 took place in the Senate and in the capital. It's backstory. We are being shown why the rebels fled to the frontier in the first place, and how it is that Palpatine becomes the Emperor. There's no way to take over a government from the frontier
By backstory I mean all of eps 1-3 are backstory for 4-6. Are you saying that 1-3 shouldn't exist? That's definitely a valid thought, IMO. I didn't mind them (well, 2 and 3 anyway), but they aren't in a class with 4-6. I wouldn't feel we were missing out if they didn't exist. And I'm such a sucker that I'll see the (guaranteed to be shitty) Disney Star Wars, too, even though I'm really uninterested.
No, I'm saying that you know so precious, precious little about how our characters became relevant to the overall arc, and because you know so very, very little about how we got to where we are, that the choices Lucas could have made were virtually unlimited. There's no reason 1-3 had to have ANYTHING to do with Luke Skywalker, Obi Wan, or any of the rest of them in anything but the most glancing of ways. It would have been better, in fact. Luke Skywalker matters because he was Everyman. Empire works because holy shit he's Darth Vader's kid. Jedi starts to come apart because it's all in the family... and then the first three basically say "the Skywalkers have always been at the middle of the goddamn universe and everyone else is a prole." Star Wars 1-3 could have had Emperor Palpatine's rise as a back story, Darth Vader as a glancing afterthought and SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT at the core. But that would require imagination, which George Lucas kind of ran out of in '83.Are you saying that 1-3 shouldn't exist?
I get what you're saying. On a related note, I never understood why they tried so hard, torturously hard, to connect so many unconnected characters. Why, why the fuck, why in the name of all that is holy, did Yoda somehow know Chewbacca (in ep 1, I believe). You're right that George ran out of good ideas. I guess he was playing to the "omg I recognize them" crowd for the cheapest of thrills. Chewy has nothing to do with anything besides the millenium falcon.
Ever watched the Star Wars Christmas Special? I saw it when it aired. Until the advent of the Internet I thought I'd imagined it. It's a terrible, horrible, bizarre thing but it starts out by hanging out with the Chewbacca family. That was before Empire. That was 5 years before Jedi. Yet back then, you could see the impending crazy that was Lucas. In retrospect it's obvious, but at the time it was presumed that Lucas had nothing to do with it and the craziness was all network. Not so much.
I expect that it'll draw from elements of the Star Wars comics published by Dark Horse, which greatly expands the universe and deals with a lot of the stuff mentioned in the open letter. Plenty of cool shit happens in cities in those comics, but not in the Senate. I could say that I have watched the Clone Wars cartoons and cartoon movie and read all those comics because my nephew loves that shit and it's fun to talk to him about (which is true), but instead I will say that I am essentially unemployed and love Star Wars. As they will undoubtedly be big productions, I suspect though that whatever movies come out will not be aimed directly at the existing fanbase, but at drawing the most people into the theater, which is a shame.