pacino wrote:I think everything I hated about Abrams' Star Trek is actually perfect for Star Wars. I think they found the perfect director for it.

PTOITWCFTPP wrote:That was a fun read. In short, #$!&@ Phantom Menace

Squire wrote:1. I actually didn't hate Phantom Menace as much as I despised Attack of the Clones (which I think is one of the worst scripts of all-time). The worst things about the prequels was that it reminded you that while Lucas had a great story, he was an awful writer (IMO).

2. I think the J.J. Abrams version 7 is going to be pretty great. I thought the re-booted Star Treks were pretty dang good and Star Wars has always had a better majesty to them (in large part to the John Williams score).

Since selling Lucasfilm Ltd. to Disney three years ago in a jaw-dropping $4 billion deal (which included handing over “Star Wars,” Indiana Jones, all of it), Lucas has had no connection to the new film, despite initial reports that he would play a consulting role. He says that Disney “decided they didn’t like” the stories he’d outlined for the sequels. It became clear to him that his baby was going its own way, and at light speed. Disney is now building two huge “Star Wars” theme parks and has additional movie projects — besides Episodes VIII and IX — in the works.

“I call it like a divorce,” Lucas says candidly. He always knew that at some point he’d have to part with “Star Wars” in order for the franchise to go on living.

“There is no such thing as working over someone’s shoulder,” he says. “You’re either the dictator or you’re not. And to do that would never work, so I said ‘I’m going to get divorced.’ . . . I knew that I couldn’t be involved. All I’d do is make them miserable. I’d make myself miserable. It would probably ruin a vision — J.J. has a vision, and it’s his vision.”

As recently as a couple weeks ago, with fans going ape over tidbits and new trailers for “The Force Awakens,” Lucas had still not seen the film. Not a frame.

He expected that he would soon see it here at the ranch (“I’ve got the best theater in the world,” he notes), perhaps even with Abrams and Lucasfilm Ltd. President Kathleen Kennedy (a longtime Lucas collaborator) in the room, watching him watch it. What then?

“Now I’m faced with this awkward reality, which is fine,” Lucas says. Extending the metaphor, he says it’s like when a grown child gets married. “I gotta go to the wedding. My ex will be there, my new wife will be there, but I’m going to have to take a very deep breath and be a good person and sit through it and just enjoy the moment, because it is what it is and it’s a conscious decision that I made.”

In the new version, it is Greedo who shoots first, by a split second. Deeply offended fans saw it as sacrilege; Lucas will probably go to his grave defending it. When Han shot first, he says, it ran counter to “Star Wars’ ” principles.

“Han Solo was going to marry Leia, and you look back and say, ‘Should he be a cold-blooded killer?’ ” Lucas asks. “Because I was thinking mythologically — should he be a cowboy, should he be John Wayne? And I said, ‘Yeah, he should be John Wayne.’ And when you’re John Wayne, you don’t shoot people [first] — you let them have the first shot. It’s a mythological reality that we hope our society pays attention to.”

Gimpy wrote:Han went from a savvy rogue who could sense danger lurking and successfully defended himself to a guy who got insanely lucky that the idiot in front of him missed a shot from one foot away. Between that and blindly knocking Boba Fett into the Sarlacc by accident, he's pretty much Mr Magoo.

Bucky wrote:they were shooting a Star Wars Fan Film in Yunk over the weekend

STAR WARS: PRECIOUS CARGO

not sure if this will work, but here are some FB pics from the shoot

(I especially like the one of the costumed character in Dunkin' Donuts)