George Lucas keeps on making Star Wars better (Sarcasm)

[Animus]

This guy who worked on the prequels said it was terrible working on those films. Basically why the movies turned out shit is because no one would tell Lucas what they really thought about his ideas, and were "yes men" and ass kissers. Which makes sense.

[Cliff]

I haven't seen The Hidden Fortress myself, so I can't make a definitive statement there. This article on Wikipedia describes the evolution of the Star Wars script in some detail, acknowledging where it borrows from from Kurosawa and how it diverged over time before eventually being made:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wa...IV:_A_New_Hope
Googling around, there certainly seems to be some debate about the relationship between the two.
You stated that the story was not Lucas's - I inferred from that a claim that it was unoriginal.
You didn't respond to my point that one author can base a work on that of another and still claim it as his own. Do you disagree with that?

[RacerX]

Nerd fight! Nerd fight!

[Cliff]

Nerd!? Oh no! I thought I was one of the cool kids...

[Endrik]

I haven't seen The Hidden Fortress myself, so I can't make a definitive statement there.

You got it!

You didn't respond to my point that one author can base a work on that of another and still claim it as his own. Do you disagree with that?

One can use the premise of already existing story and make something new out of it but if you follow already existing narrative pretty much step-by-step then the story is not yours. And it's not even important, a story is literature, many great films are adaptions of someone else's work, Kurosawa himself has made films based on the works of Shakespeare. Now the important thing is how you are going use the story in an audio-visual format. Kurosawa made films based on Shakespeare his own because of highly original visual language which is the most important thing in an visual art form, a film is supposed to be closest to painting and photography not literature to have any originality. Star Wars is just an illustrated story with expensive special effects, the story is told like its done in most motion pictures, heavily relied on literary devices, take away all the flashy stuff and it doesn't tell us anything visually, it rolls out like a book which is screened out for the public.

[Accept2]

There are some scenes that appear in both movies, such as the samurai sword fight surrounded by the bad guys/obi Darth fighting surrounded by the storm troopers; the 2 thieves walking thru the desert/r2 and the queer guy walking thru the desert; the medal ceremony at the end in both. I havent seen both in a long time, but I am sure there are more than just those 3.............

[RacerX]

http://hollywoodhumiliation.blogspot...ress-myth.html

[Endrik]

fanboy bullshit which is evident if anyone actually watches and compares the two

[Cliff]

highly original visual language which is the most important thing in an visual art form, a film is supposed to be closest to painting and photography not literature to have any originality. Star Wars is just an illustrated story with expensive special effects

You state this as fact, but it's clearly a matter of opinion. Film has a time element to it, allowing for cause and effect, for the unfolding of events, which painting does not. It could be argued that it owes more to theatre than the painting. Whether the story aspect or the visual aspect is more important is a matter of personal preference, and some films emphasize one over the other. You stress the importance of the image, yet dismiss a large part of the images of Star Wars as 'expensive visual effects', as if this is in itself were a bad thing - again, a matter of taste. The special effects in Star Wars allowed new images to be created that had never been seen before in film.

[Snoogans]

Well, I liked Jar Jar Binks!

(Ducks to avoid incoming)

[Endrik]

You state this as fact, but it's clearly a matter of opinion. Film has a time element to it, allowing for cause and effect, for the unfolding of events, which painting does not. It could be argued that it owes more to theatre than the painting. Whether the story aspect or the visual aspect is more important is a matter of personal preference, and some films emphasize one over the other. You stress the importance of the image, yet dismiss a large part of the images of Star Wars as 'expensive visual effects', as if this is in itself were a bad thing - again, a matter of taste. The special effects in Star Wars allowed new images to be created that had never been seen before in film.

Yes time effect, that's why it's called a motion picture. And no it does not owe it to theatre, acting and mise en scène are theatre influences in cinema. Movement comes from visual arts and optical effects. Impressionist paintings are movements in a single frame. Thaumatrope has two frames. Actual realistic movement was made with flip books, phenakistoscope, zoopraxiscope, chronophotography etc.
Remember all the very very early films since 1888 Louis Le Prince's "Roundhay Garden Scene" were mostly documentary style. First fiction films with acting were made about 10 years later by Georges Méliès who also did the first sci-fi flick, special effects and many many other things.
Film is a visual medium, a lot of the people who were involved in filmmaking had painting or photography backgrounds. For example Luis Buñuel was one surrealist among many but unlike his colleague Salvador Dalí, he picked up a film camera instead of a paint brush.
Basically film is a moving painting or a photo, you watch it as you'd watch "The Wedding at Cana" by Veronese or whatever. Everything is told in the picture itself. That is visual language.

Putting the emphasis on narrative, plot and other literature constructs means that the visual language is not really strong within the visual medium. The reason why films were made to be more like books was to please large masses. It was carefully calculated how to use standard book narratives in films so they would appeal to a lot of people. Such type of film-making was popularized by D.W. Griffith with his incredibly racist and naive "The Birth of a Nation" made in 1915. It's the first blockbuster in the history and a corner stone for mainstream and mostly Hollywood film-making. Most films made today are basically "The Birth of a Nation"s only set in different time and with different characters. Thanks to this kind of film-making, the medium had a low reputation for a long time, often called a cheap entertainment for dumb proletariat or something like that. Of course there were those who used the literature elements and visual language equally, like Hitchcock for example. In the 60's Alain Resnais, Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman took the visual language further than anyone else, basically abandoning all literature elements, just to make their films more like...well... films.

And no, the visual effects in Star Wars weren't a bad thing. But effects are effects. What was lacking was good visual language. I do not hate the film. To me it's a little better than mediocre flick, technically there's nothing wrong with it, just some really stupid characters there lower my opinion of course.
And what I mean by "effects are effects" I don't mean special effects per se but visual elements that have more superficial quality. I try to explain. Luchino Visconti had assistants Franco Zeffierelli and Francesco Rosi who later became film directors themselves. They studied from Visconti like Visconti studied from Jean Renoir. Now Visconti had the very best people working on his films, absolutely the best cinematographers, Nino Rota made the scores etc. In 1963 he made a film called "Il Gattopardo" which was very influential in how to capture landscapes in colour photography, he popularized the epic, scenic pictures of Italy in film-making. Yet every frame had a meaning behind it. Now what Zeffirelli did was take all Visconti's connections, his cinematographers, Nino Rota etc. and made a bunch of Shakespeare, biblical and opera adaptions aiming mostly for foreign audiences. His films look pretty due the great technical crew but are extremely superficial, they are like the tourist post cards of Italy, all the pretty scenes are made for the sake of it. I guess he was too busy being a homosexual loverboy for Visconti and didn't learn much about how to express something sincere unlike Francesco Rosi who became an extremely good director, his every scene had incredible amounts of tensity, his films have some of the best visual language I've ever seen.

In Star Wars' case what's important is that Kurosawa's role in the film is much bigger due the lack of Lucas' visual language, he's just retelling another man's story in a different context. As far as story tellings and things go I'm ok with it, but within a film medium that's not enough to me.
A sci-fi flick that set the foundation for modern special effects was "2001: A Space Odyssey", now that is mostly about visual language, some years later Tarkovski made "Solaris" which is perhaps even more.

[Devotee]

Endrik, what did you think of The Cell?

[Endrik]

Endrik, what did you think of The Cell?

The J-Lo flick? Don't remember much about it, sorry.

[Animus]

Endrik, what did you think of The Cell?

Awesome visually. Reminded me of Odd Nerdrum paintings but on film.

[RacerX]

Yes I am racist and naive

TL, DR