Why fans make better Star Wars movies than George Lucas

Meest · Post by **Meest** » 2005-05-09 06:27pm

hypernova wrote:Revelations although a fan flick had a heck of a lot of work put into it. i believe it took them 2 years to make.

But would you pay to see it? A good enough film to me is something people are willing to pay to see. Or put it this way, if it was on a public access tv station would you change channels to watch it over standard television show.

hypernova · Post by **hypernova** » 2005-05-09 06:58pm

to the first yes but not much
to the secound...your asking a starwars fan here, obviusly yes

Molyneux · Post by **Molyneux** » 2005-05-09 07:09pm

Lord Poe wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:Let's put it this way: if AOTC was a fan-made movie, even the most negative fans would be raving about it rocked their world and suffered from only a few cringe-inducing romantic dialogue scenes. Hell, its effects could be half as good and the bad romantic dialogue twice as bad, but the fans would still praise it to the high heavens if it was made by a fan. But when GL makes it, those same fans consider it to be utter shit and then go on long rants about GL's personality flaws and creative shortcomings.
I'm doing makeup on a SW fanfilm right now. Everyone's dedicated, has the costumes, the drive to make a SW film, swing those lightsabers...

But give me a fucking break. The second LotR movie was so fucking bad, IMHO, I don't plan on ever seeing the last one. AOTC was simply incredible. OOooh, one or two scenes were bad, so the whole movie is shit? So fucking what? I dare any of you to sit through ALL of "Bullitt", and tell me the boring scenes between the car chases were just as exciting to sit through.

Or how about Superman 2? Come on, that had crappy scenes all through it. But its still a cool Superman movie for the scenes that did work.

Actually, Return of the King was pretty damn cool; much better than TTT (although I did enjoy that as well), and quite possibly the best three hours I've ever spent in a movie theater (not counting, y'know, Sin City or Kung Fu Hustle or The Incredibles).

Revelations was good; the CGI was freakin' great, and the acting was more than passable. Maybe not Oscar material, but well worth watching - and the story was pretty damn good, too.

Knife · Post by **Knife** » 2005-05-09 07:10pm

Hmmm, spent the day putting torrent and java script on my computer to down load the damn thing. After like 2 hours of downloading *36 minutes for the movie itself* I was dissapointed.

The acting sucked, the plot was silly, and it really didn't add much to the SW universe. The CGI was kind of neat but I think Knight Quest did a better job of editing it together and making you give a damn about the characters.

Noble Ire · Post by **Noble Ire** » 2005-05-09 07:48pm

Yeah, Knightquest was a much better film. All this one had going for it was CGI.

Bob the Gunslinger · Post by **Bob the Gunslinger** » 2005-05-09 09:59pm

Slartibartfast wrote:[quote="Bob the Gunslinger]
Probably has to do with the difference between a $20,000 budget and a $20,000,000 budget.

Oh yeah, because independent movies tend to cost 20 million dollars... NOT! What are you some kind of wiseguy?[/quote]

Every independent film I've ever seen with "real actors" and scripts has cost more than a million dollars at least. Take a look at the costs for most of the independent films that have opened nationwide in theaters, and you'll see that they have tremendous budgets compared to fan films.

In fact, I can only think of two independent films that had budgets smaller than $1mil: The Blair Witch Project and that Open Water movie or whatever it was called. Are you saying that you think those films are greatly superior to SW fanfilms?

Bob the Gunslinger · Post by **Bob the Gunslinger** » 2005-05-09 09:59pm

Anarchist Bunny wrote:
Thats no mountain, thats a molehill. *he was really blathering about this in the chat*

What do you mean? And what chat?

Anarchist Bunny · Post by **Anarchist Bunny** » 2005-05-09 10:04pm

Bob the Gunslinger wrote:
Anarchist Bunny wrote:
Thats no mountain, thats a molehill. *he was really blathering about this in the chat*
What do you mean? And what chat?

The SDN Aim chat("SDnet"), he was ranting about how you said indie films cost millions to make.

Bob the Gunslinger · Post by **Bob the Gunslinger** » 2005-05-09 11:17pm

I'm pretty sure they do...the good ones, anyway. If he can prove that they don't, he should post in the thread. I'd concede if I saw proof.

So... do people talk about me behind my back in the chatroom often, or am I know just getting paranoid about it?

>.>
<.<
>.>

The Cleric · Post by **The Cleric** » 2005-05-10 01:16am

Geonosians designing the Death Star. And the Kaminoins. That's all I have to say about AOtC.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2005-05-10 01:44am

Oh Christ. People bitch about the stilted romantic dialogue in Clones, but somehow gloss over Revelations' god-awful writing and acting in general? The romance in Clones can at least be explained away by pointing out that Anakin and Padmé are a couple of prudes with zero romantic experience. Revelations has no such benefits. Honestly, for that scene in the cave where they opened the Holocron, everyone just forgets that they're enemies for a few minutes? The Goth-Wank chick doesn't want to put the good guys in restraints or anything like that?

It was okay for a fan film, but there's no way I'd pay money to see it.

Lord Poe · Post by **Lord Poe** » 2005-05-10 02:05am

Bob the Gunslinger wrote:In fact, I can only think of two independent films that had budgets smaller than $1mil: The Blair Witch Project and that Open Water movie or whatever it was called. Are you saying that you think those films are greatly superior to SW fanfilms?

Are you seriously saying that SW fanfilms are better than "The Blair Witch Project"?

VT-16 · Post by **VT-16** » 2005-05-10 06:48am

Geonosians designing the Death Star. And the Kaminoins. That's all I have to say about AOtC.

Two interesting species added to the saga. I´m assuming that was your point?

Chris OFarrell · Post by **Chris OFarrell** » 2005-05-10 06:52am

Slartibartfast wrote:Well, to tell the truth, the only good part in Revelations was the space battle CGI, and it was good for a fan film.

At a guess you missed those holographic girls dancing in the bar early on

They along made the movie worth downloading

VT-16 · Post by **VT-16** » 2005-05-10 07:12am

I noticed similar holographic images in AOTC itself, only they were silhouettes.

Lord Revan · Post by **Lord Revan** » 2005-05-10 09:40am

The Cleric wrote:Geonosians designing the Death Star. And the Kaminoins. That's all I have to say about AOtC.

IIRC there's nothing in AOTC to say that the Geonosians designed the Death Star all by themselves (instead taking an existing Republic design and just building one).

Meest · Post by **Meest** » 2005-05-10 02:01pm

Napolean Dynamite was made for ~500k IIRC and Garden State was done for 2.5mil, two examples of films worth paying for at least once. Fanfilms fall into barely B films for me, there's good intentions but too many sacrifices and just not enough money/time to do what higher budget film makers can do on a dime. For extreme low budgets I always felt it was just better to make a kick ass 10min short than a half decent almost feature. For small films to be good, one thing they can do as good or better than any film is the acting and story, unless those are amazing the technical drawbacks are hard to overlook and not distract.

Mark S · Post by **Mark S** » 2005-05-10 02:26pm

After all the talk about this fanfilm, someone in real life even asked if I'd seen it, I pretty much had to download it and see for myself. What a fucking waste of time on everyone's part.

It's clear that they had the best intensions and a lot of love for the franchise, but that and 3 years to make it (or whatever the amount of time was) was not enough to pull off a watchable movie. Even a short one. The acting was terrible, the plot bordered on Mary-Sueish to me and whoever wrote it quite frankly didn't understand the universe they were dealing with. If those were suppose to be Jedi, they were the worst Jedi ever to make it past Yoda's boot to the curb. No wonder the Empire hadn't tracked them down yet, no one would think they were actually Jedi. And the CG that everyone says is one the best parts, while not bad for being done on someone's home pc, still looks like it was done on someone's home pc.

While I commend everyone involved for their efforts and time and intentions and think that they should keep it up and try to improve the next time, Revelations is not some glowing light in the dark of fanfilms. It is amateurish and it looks it. I know that's because it was made by amateurs but from what people were saying, I expected better. Don't sell me a shit sandwich and tell me it's roast beef.

THEHOOLIGANJEDI · Post by **THEHOOLIGANJEDI** » 2005-05-10 03:40pm

Darth Wong wrote:This guy suffers from the expectations vs outcomes problem. He has myriad expectations from new canon SW films and when they aren't met for whatever reason, he overreacts and says they're utter shit. Meanwhile, he doesn't really expect much from a fan-made film so when it is something other than utter shit, he proclaims that it's the Second Coming.

This is a very common mentality among disgruntled fans. All I can say is: get a fucking life. It's not George Lucas' fault that you have such rigid expectations from the films that you'll shit all over him if you don't get exactly what you imagined in your head.

There are smart ppl in the world!!

I gotta agree 100 %.

BTW what were some of your expectation when GL announced that he was making the Prequels? (General Question for all)

Back in 1995, that was when I became a Star Wars Fan so I was excited that there would be some more Star Wars, but my expectations weren't very high. I knew that what went one before the OT would be a good story to tell on film and that it was worth telling, but I also figured that it wasn't as strong as a story as the OT. Which would probably explain why I liked both TPM and AOTC a lot and in some cases it exceeded my expectations. It also really put me off from EU novels which to me were getting stupid to me as time progressed.

That's my take.

Bob the Gunslinger · Post by **Bob the Gunslinger** » 2005-05-10 03:42pm

Lord Poe wrote:
Bob the Gunslinger wrote:In fact, I can only think of two independent films that had budgets smaller than $1mil: The Blair Witch Project and that Open Water movie or whatever it was called. Are you saying that you think those films are greatly superior to SW fanfilms?
Are you seriously saying that SW fanfilms are better than "The Blair Witch Project"?

Well, I haven't seen most of the Fanfilms, but I'd say that I'd much prefer watching Troops or that one about George Lucas in college to seeing Blair Witch again. Heck, I'm a huge fan of TIEtanic and Lando Vs Godzilla, so I guess I'm just easy to impress.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2005-05-10 04:45pm

I find virtually all of them to be completely unwatchable, personally.

Isolder74 · Post by **Isolder74** » 2005-05-10 04:49pm

My favorite fan films are Troops and the collection at Star Wars Spoofs. I also like George Lucas in Love. The thing about fan films is there is the gold and the lead. Some are good others are just silly.

All in all they need to be taken with a grain of salt.

Utsanomiko · Post by **Utsanomiko** » 2005-05-10 07:26pm

Actually, I should boint out that my favorite SW 'fan films' are Kung-Fu Kenobi's Big Adventure and Godzilla Versus Disco Lando.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2005-05-11 09:59pm

hypernova wrote: the Prequels are as good as the origanals because GL cant do whatever he wanted, GL had free reign to do whatever he wanted with the films. when making a prequel you are extremely and heavily restrained to conforming the series to the sequels.

You got a lot of explaining to do. About that assertion, that is.

Adrian Tullberg · Post by **Adrian Tullberg** » 2005-05-14 01:22am

Check this out.