The Lost Film That Accompanied Empire Strikes Back 195
An anonymous reader writes "'Alien' and 'Star Wars' art director Roger Christian was given £25,000 by George Lucas in 1979 to make a 25-minute medieval B-feature called 'Black Angel.' This spiritual tale of a knight on a strange quest was inspired by Christian's near-fatal fever when he fell ill in Mexico making 'Lucky Lady.' 'Black Angel' made a huge impression, not least because it shared the dark tone of 'Empire Strikes Back.' John Boorman showed it to the crew of 'Excalibur' as a template for how he wanted his film to look, and 'Black Angel' went on to influence films such as 'Dragonslayer' and 'Legend' throughout the 1980s and beyond. But it has not been seen by anyone since 'Empire' finished its theatrical run. Two weeks ago Roger Christian unearthed a print of a film that was thought lost forever, and in this interview he talks about 'Black Angel,' and provides the only picture from the film that has ever hit the Internet."
Similar to Lucas' Car Crash (Score:4, Interesting)
This spiritual tale of a knight on a strange quest was inspired by Christian's near-fatal fever when he fell ill in Mexico ...
That is oddly similar to the car crash that Lucas experienced shortly before graduating high school in his Autobianchi Bianchina on June 12, 1962. It was a bad wreck that I guess was highly improbable for him to survive. He was going to be a mechanic and race cars until that accident. He is also said to have conceived the idea for "the Force" as it would grow (by assimilation of aspects of some Eastern spiritual philosophies) into the "hokey religions and ancient weapons" of Star Wars. Proof that near death experiences have a very profound effect on people.
I'd provide a citation but I remember reading that off the back of a Topps Galaxy Star Wars card when I was a kid.
and ... (Score:2, Insightful)
"While James Cameron was on a trip to Italy he became very ill with high fever. One night he had a terrible nightmare about a huge robot with red-glowing eyes that was trying to kill him."
Re:and ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I once had a fever dream that I would be up-ranked to +5 Insightful after making a meaningless self-referential post as an AC on Slashdot.
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Your Jedi mind-tricks don't work on us!
Oh, uh... oh, geez.
The Force is strong with this one.
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Too bad you ended up getting the points as an AC. Bummer.
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And the Cylons were born. It was the Cylons, right?
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Man, these guys have wild dreams and become billionaire filmmakers.
In my dreams, I have to take an exam that I didn't study for, and I'm naked, and then I fall from a high place. That's it.
No wonder I ain't never did shit.
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Re:and ... (Score:4, Funny)
Don't forget that George McFly had no dreams of becoming a successful writer until he had a near-death experience with Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan!
Re:and ... (Score:5, Funny)
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"While James Cameron was on a trip to Italy he became very ill with high fever. One night he had a terrible nightmare about a huge robot with red-glowing eyes that was trying to kill him."
Weird that he skipped the red-glowing eyes. But I guess that would've made it too blatantly obvious from the very beginning that Kate Winslet was the evil robot.
Re:Similar to Lucas' Car Crash (Score:5, Funny)
This is Slashdot. That is a citation!
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Let me put it on Wikipeda, using this as a citation!
The Alternate Reality Alliance
— “Changing reality, one edit at a time!”
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You have to research things to make up stuff, now?
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I just did some research, and I found out that you don't have to do research to make stuff up.
On another note, this guy just walked by my house, and there was a 20' tall cedar tree growing out of his ear.
cheers,
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Proof that near death experiences have a very profound effect on people.
Rubbish. That's confirmation bias. I bet there are lots of people who had near death experiences that just shrugged it off and didn't change a thing.
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Pretty much. Rolled my '72 Nova down I-90, about 50 miles east of Cle Elum. People that stopped said it rolled sideways several times and then flipped end for end. I just remember it suddenly pulling left in to the median and then there was a crowd of people around the car as the firemen pried open the drivers door. Other than a bump on the head and a scratch on one finger, I was perfectly fine. The roof of the car was crushed down to where the was just a few inches of opening where the windows were, except
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I have a bunch of those cards from back then. I should dig them out of storage. I also have some Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, Space 1999 and a lot of baseball and football cards from the 70's. Would be cool to show to my daughter.
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"Proof that near death experiences have a very profound effect on people. "
no, it's not. thanks for trying to play.
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I read the basic outline of this story in Pollock's Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas [amazon.com]. The accident clearly had an effect on his life -- he was in the hospital for months with a collapsed lung -- and at the time he was a D student, he was about to fail out of senior year and not get a diploma. He was passed out of high school mainly because his teachers took pity on him after th
Oh Just Release It to the Public Already! (Score:5, Insightful)
But do your other plans for the Black Angel story make you think twice about releasing it?
Do you know something? I'm wrestling with this. I was talking about it yesterday. I still get letters, still get emails, there are threads on the IMDB going on and on about it - people guessing the story and how much it affected their mindsbut I just wonder if I brought it out now, thirty years later
I haven't seen it in thirty years myself, but I wonder if its imitators have devalued it a little, the way seven years of The X-Files made Silence Of The Lambs look dated
Exactly.
It might look like a copy of the films and TV that it inspired, which have been in circulation ever since.
I assure you that I am quite capable of appreciating Kurosawa's Yojimbo and Sanjuro despite the fact that I had already seen Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy which massively borrows from them. I'm certain you were able to appreciate The Hidden Fortress after making the Star Wars Trilogy as well. So why do you doubt my ability to appreciate Black Angel?
... even if it's just a reason for people to brag that they've seen one of the original fantasy films ... even if it's just a chance for me to one up another person in conversation and promote my anti-social tendencies ... why wouldn't you release it in someway for the general public to digest in their homes?
I mean, if you choose not to release it then you have no intent to capitalize off of it and you should release it online via Veoh or YouTube or some video hosting site. Wouldn't the popularity and enjoyment from the film reward you in some way -- with it being your first film that you labored over?
I mean, even if it's just film snobs to appreciate it
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Re:Oh Just Release It to the Public Already! (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally I'm wondering how Silence of the Lambs looks dated because of X-Files. Or at all for that matter.
Re:Oh Just Release It to the Public Already! (Score:4, Informative)
I think the idea is that the X-Files borrowed some of the cinematic tricks which Silence of the Lambs used to make it so creepy. Granted, that's not the example I would have chosen, but I think it's a real problem in trying to introduce people to some kinds of art. If part of what was impressive about them at the time was that they were ground-breaking, and the ground that they broke is now well trodden, then new viewers are unlikely to be impressed.
Re:Oh Just Release It to the Public Already! (Score:5, Insightful)
A better example might be people seeing the French Connection and complaining that the car chase is too much of a cliche in a cop movie. (When they aren't aware that the French Connection is the *reason* every cop movie made since has a car chase.)
Re:Oh Just Release It to the Public Already! (Score:5, Interesting)
A better example might be people seeing the French Connection and complaining that the car chase is too much of a cliche in a cop movie. (When they aren't aware that the French Connection is the *reason* every cop movie made since has a car chase.)
I think Bullitt has more of a claim to fame as the *reason* every cop movie made has a car chase. Friedkin himself says that it was the Bullitt car chase that inspired him to try to outdo it in the French Connection.
Whether he succeeded in doing so is a matter approximately as well-settled as the question of emacs vs. vi.
Re:Oh Just Release It to the Public Already! (Score:5, Funny)
Some of us that get 15 new mod points everyday just get tired of moderating. Myself, I like to mod every Bruce Perens post funny, just to keep him wondering.
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why wouldn't you release it in someway for the general public to digest in their homes?
1. The currency of hollywood is revenue. Art has nothing to do with it. I know, I know, tons will differ. But the artists are employed because of the revenue created, not the other way around. Showing things for free is a universally bad thing if he wants to stay in the industry.
2. Getting distribution is not simple or cheap. It would be a great deal of money to get started. Probably his own.
3. The executive side o
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He might not want to release it because if everything since borrows so much from it, it would look cliche. What if they discovered the first "Boy meets girl" drama from 467 BC and re-released it? The plot certainly wouldn't be as novel to a modern audience. And they would probably call it "Twilight."
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Star Wars and the Hidden fortress really have nothing in common.
Plus I did see the film in the theater, and if it is released, suddenly thousand or people will be claiming to have seen it in a theater~
That said, yes please release it.
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I can't believe this is a serious suggestion. A professional artist isn't going to want his film on youtube unless he has no choice. It isn't exactly known for being the haven of known artists, more like the myspace of videos. I also can't imagine that he needs his ego stroked, but who knows.
Um, it makes a lot more sense to put videos on YouTube. Why? Because A) You aren't paying for the bandwidth B) People are on YouTube, I can guarantee you there are more users of YouTube than any other video site out there.
I don't understand how you can be so certain that you _deserve_ access to someone's artwork. I sure hope that last paragraph wasn't serious, because none of those are even remotely decent reasons to release something.
Why not? What benefit does the world get by not having the art shown? Same thing with literature. You don't -gain- anything from keeping things hidden. Even if something is complete crap by one person's standards, it may provide a lot of insight and entertainment to some people. Look a
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Um, it makes a lot more sense to put videos on YouTube. Why? Because A) You aren't paying for the bandwidth B) People are on YouTube, I can guarantee you there are more users of YouTube than any other video site out there.
Obviously he doesn't feel the need to find viewers of his films, they are seeking him out. So to release it into a proper channel, such as it's own website, would give it far more respect than youtubing it. As an artist, I wouldn't want a film released to theaters, before a Star Wars feature no less, shown on a site famous for baseballs to the crotch. (I realize there are legitimate artists on youtube, but again like I said originally, those artists are seeking out viewers.)
Why not? ... Same thing with literature. You don't -gain- anything from keeping things hidden. Even if something is complete crap by one person's standards, it may provide a lot of insight and entertainment to some people. Look at Franz Kafka (author of The Metamorphosis) would we have gained anything by having all of his works burned as he requested?
YOU do not get to decide what I,
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Perhaps because once the copyright runs out, that artwork will be public domain? At that point, if it's lost, either because it can't be found again or has degraded too much, the public will be cheated of the work it now supposedly owns.
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You've got a good point, but you and me and everyone we know will be dead by then, so I have a hard time getting worked up about it.
I blame our Congresswhores.
Digital Dark Age (Score:4, Insightful)
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Every scene ends with a wipe? (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean, if his _Battlefield Earth_ is anything to go by..
Also, did he hold the camera straight?
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Really? What was the distribution on this? (Score:3, Interesting)
I saw TESB the first week it was in theaters (I think it was like day 5). I distinctly remember the theater, the standing in line wrapping around the building in downtown DC for like an hour, and I think I can even picture the interior of the theater, but I do not remember this film. Perhaps it was just too weird for me, but somehow I'd think that it would've been talked about amongst my friends and such.
So was this included with all prints, or just selected theaters in selected cities?
UK / Canada only (Score:4, Informative)
Okay, checking on IMDB it seems like this was only released in the UK and Canada. So my memory of, Christ, 30-year-old movie experiences, is not yet faulty.
Ditto (Score:2)
I saw TESB first night (at midnight, thank you) in Southern Maine, and I don't recall anything about this 'short'.
And I was checking the room, and had to stay to the first reel.
So where indeed was 'Black Angel' shown? Not out in the woods, I can tell ya.
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It sounds like you saw TESB at the Uptown
Lol. Good guess, but no. Saw it a few miles north, across from WTTG. Not sure that theater's even still there (can't find it on Street View, looks like a furniture store now). [Ha! Found it! "KB Cinema." [cinematreasures.org] And the link even describes TESB, complete with the line. :) ]
I used to love the Uptown (saw reissues of 2001 and the "director's cut" Blade Runner there, among other films), but now it's just too far to go. And the last couple times I'd been there I had bad experiences -- for one, the doors to the lobby op
Forget Angel and Empire (Score:2)
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Black Angel - The Series. (Score:5, Funny)
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No you wouldn't.
It would be on Fox, and they'd show them in a random order, and then pull the show and put up repeats of American Idol.
Whedon's Angel would then get shoved into the Sunday midnight slot, then cancelled after 5 episodes. Three years later, you'll buy the series for $25 at Walmart.
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... would then get shoved into the Sunday midnight slot, then cancelled after 5 episodes. Three years later, you'll buy the series for $25 at Walmart.
Not that we're bitter...
I'm kind of torn on the whole Firefly fiasco, on one hand the best SciFi TV show of all time died in childbirth, on the other hand we have an absolutely amazing work of art: one seasons worth of episodes that are unsullied by the eventual shark-jumping that would have eventually happened.
Though I would LOVE to know where Whedon intended to go with Shepard Book.
Re:Shepard Book (Score:2)
Yeah, one of the more disappointing aspects of them canning the series was the fact that some story lines didn't get completely evolved, and Book was a great character.
I really don't know why shows like this do get canceled, when there is such utter derivative crap on TV - actually come to think of it almost everything I see on TV these days is utter derivative low-budget crap...
When they added all those other channels, the amount of money available for TV show production remained a constant I guess, so now
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It's ROI.
Shows like Survivor, American Idol, and other "reality" shows garner huge ratings, big advert revenue, and supplementary streams with the $1-per-vote call-ins. They cost less than shows with CG and writing and make more. You can't sell against that.
Book's past wouldn't have ever been revealed. He gave up his past life and forgave himself. The guy he used to be was dead and there was no need to speak of him.
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I feel the same way about that and Defying Gravity [wikipedia.org] - $35 for complete series (1 season) - sigh.
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Oh thank god. I was worried it was going to be a movie starring Martin Lawrence as a wise-cracking [blank] who dies but gets sent back to earth so that he can [blank] while continuing to crack wise.
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I think you meant...
Joss Whedon's new urban spin-off of Angel with Samuel L. Jackson as the vampire cursed with soul...
:D
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That would be a hell of a lot better then his Jedi character.
Roots? (Score:2)
A spiritual work set in the middle ages with amazing cinematography and music, Black Angel took the gritty medieval realism of Monty Python And The Holy Grail and returned it to its roots in Mallory, Tennyson and Kurosawa.
I don't know - here's the Holy Grail returned to another root....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luVjkTEIoJc [youtube.com]
Space epic.... coincidence? I think not!
I don't believe it! (Score:2, Interesting)
Finally, I find this by chance and find the name of the short film I've been trying to find out about for the last 30 years...
And it's not available to buy... *sigh*
Re:Star Wars (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you really skim that fast? This is about a completely different movie that just happens to have been made by the same art director. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that they put out copies of this it looks really interesting.
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I think he's just making a general comment on Star Wars in a thread tangentially related.
And his bridge probably misses its troll.
Re:Star Wars (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the interest in Star Wars movies anyway?
Secondly, with regards to:
It would be interesting to see a James Bond like movie in space setting
Finally, you can turn in your geek card at the door on your way out. Thanks for playing.
Re:Star Wars (Score:4, Insightful)
I hope you're right, but it appears the mods have gone to lunch, because as of right now it's moderated: "(Score:1, Insightful)"
today is a sad day for
Why doesn't he just finish off the rest of us and post how stupid star trek is
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....Why doesn't he just finish off the rest of us and post how stupid star trek is
That has to be posted?
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Phasers > Blasters.
'nuff said.
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Because of the sound, right?!?!?
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I disagree. I'd rather have Han's blaster than any era trek phaser.
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FYI, sopssa uses alts to moderate his own posts.
Everyone knows that people tend to up-mod posts that have already been up-modded; he uses this to his advantage.
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This lapse is actually probably understandable since most of us have tried to forget that we ever watched that particular movie. It would be nice to see a more credible Bond movie with a space theme that doesn't devolve to a cheap version of Barbarella.
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It would be nice to see a more credible Bond movie with a space theme that doesn't devolve to a cheap version of Barbarella.
Moonraker had probably 4-5 times the budget of Barbarella, actually. :)
But I know what you meant. Just wanted to snark.
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Yeah but Outland was sooo much better than Moonraker.
But not than Barbarella.
"Do you want to come and play with me? For someone like you I charge nothing. You're very pretty, Pretty-Pretty"
"My name isn't pretty-pretty, it's Barbarella."
Even the dialogues leave Moonraker in the dust.
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...is likely to get you flogged and/or hung.
You will surely get hanged. Alas, none of us here are, or ever will be, hung.
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First, this is slashdot, a website for nerds. Posting a question like:
What's the interest in Star Wars movies anyway?
...is likely to get you flogged and/or hung.
Randal [imdb.com], is that you?
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James Bond like movie in space setting
You mean Moonraker?
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We don't really live like that, do we?
Welcome to the genre known as SciFi/Fantasy ... where you can escape from your gravity bound simple life and dream ...
... or at least it did for me when I was a youth.
Take your coat off and stay awhile, it's amazingly liberating when your imagination puts you in a rebel starfighter going up against insane odds trying to take down the big bad evil empire with the ability to wield a sabre of light while controlling the very concepts of physics
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And some of us never grow up and thus we still enjoy such things and remain eternally youthful... and I guess eternally hopeful as well.
I always suspected you eldavojohn too were likewise eternally young from your many posts.
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What's the interest in Star Wars movies anyway? Star Wars in general mixes mostly Holy Roman Empire time with the arenas, races and idea behind jedi's with future living in space. We don't really live like that, do we? I don't personally understand the geeks fanware behind it either, it's more like soap opera in space. It would be interesting to see a James Bond like movie in space setting, because at least then
At this point? Nostalgia, mostly. Keep in mind that when it came out, there was literally nothing else like it.
As for myself, I was born in '84, but the Star Wars trilogy was still the first time I ever saw a movie like that (5 years old...young enough to appreciate it, old enough to remember it). Going back and watching it now, for myself, it's mostly nostalgia...they're really campy, and the special effects aren't aging well at this point (although watching the THX version (NOT the version with the CGI
Re:Star Wars (Score:5, Insightful)
At this point? Nostalgia, mostly. Keep in mind that when it came out, there was literally nothing else like it.
In many ways, there's still nothing else like it. It is a whole universe, created from scratch. Not just an extrapolation of our own, and not just the pieces you need to see for the story. Humans are common, but not special in any particular way. They mix with aliens and robots completely, and deal with each other as equals. There are lots of places where a race is shown once, in a background character, and never seen again. Most movies wouldn't bother: It's just extra expense.
There's a feeling of history and depth to the movies (especially the original trilogy), that's nearly unique. You can write thousands of books about what else is happening in the universe, because it is a universe, and not just a setting for the story.
Re:Star Wars (Score:4, Insightful)
In many ways, there's still nothing else like it. It is a whole universe, created from scratch. Not just an extrapolation of our own, and not just the pieces you need to see for the story. Humans are common, but not special in any particular way. .... There are lots of places where a race is shown once, in a background character, and never seen again.
Lord of the Rings did it first, and better. Also, Ringworld, to some extent.
Note, about 95% of the population does not realize the LOTR series was a book for some decades before the recent movies. I've actually heard people refer to the LOTR books as being "novelizations of the movies". Um, no.
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Oh, lots of books have done it, and many have done it better.
Movies though... There are only a very few others that have even tried.
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you mean besides Star Trek, Alien, Lost in Space, Forbidden Planet, Cowboy Bebop, Godzilla, Mork and Mindy did it for crying out loud.
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I know you put Mork & Mindy in there for the laugh track, and it doesn't diminish Alien or Trek... but Star Wars was something else... it wasn't earth. They looked human, and the world was fully realized. There was stuff going on, even before the S.E.'s. It was grimy, dirty, and
Re:Star Wars (Score:5, Funny)
Those fuckin' hobbit movies were boring as hell. All it was, was a bunch of people walking. Three movies of people walking to a fucking volcano.
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_Anyone_ can create a whole universe from scratch. It is easy as hell. Making it interesting and coherent is the main challenge. A universe that is either interesting or coherent is pretty useless. By the standards of its time, Star Wars was astonishingly interesting, and relatively coherent (though the latter has dwindled with subsequent releases). LoTR has brilliant coherency, and is by popular opinion interesting too (though I can't generally see the attraction).
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Yeah, I always enjoyed authors who put effort into creating/detailing their own universe, I really enjoy Dune for the same reason. I'd also like to add the Foundation Series/LoR/Chronicles of Narnia.
I also supremely enjoyed the Red/Blue/Green Mars series.
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Well, if you are going to bring some books to the discussion, I would include Lucas' source material, the epics of Homer.
Oh come on ... The Simpsons was a decent show, but hardly an epic!
And, anyway, what's that got to do with books?
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I know that they aren't movies (at least, not yet ::shiver::) but the Elder Scrolls series, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age all contain just about everything you have talked about.
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There was this movie with this run down bar scene... oh, wait.
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". They mix with aliens and robots completely, and deal with each other as equals."
err.. No tey don't. Robots are slaves. Only the few enlightened people attempt to treat them as equals.
TO say it's not an extrapolation of our own universe is really just stupid.
Proof?
" Humans are common,"
If it is not an extrapolation, then why are there humans?
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Because the actors are human, of course. Same reason most of the Star Trek aliens looked like humans with odd makeup.
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"at least then" ... what?
Come on, why did you choke? It was about half naked, sultry space women who need to be rescued and / or turned as a double agent.
Right?
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Re:Star Wars (Score:5, Informative)
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What's the interest in Star Wars movies anyway? Star Wars in general mixes mostly Holy Roman Empire time with the arenas, races and idea behind jedi's with future living in space.
You seem to be mixing the Holy Roman Empire up with the Roman Empire as the Holy Roman Empire was most certainly not known for arenas and racing. As for the "and idea behind jedi's with future living in space.", I believe you're referring to the Jedi's being roughly equivalent to medieval knights in space. A more apt comparison w
Re:Star Wars (Score:5, Informative)
Sad that the editors of Slashdot had to claim it was a film that accompanied Empire Strikes Back when it was nothing even close to that. Crazy what they'll do for a few extra bucks in advertising views huh?
Que?
FTFA
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What if they replaced all the humans in the Star Wars movie with Jar-Jar aliens?