Disney buys Lucasfilm for $4bn, new Star Wars movie in 2015

[frunk]

1-Doom
2-Raiders
3-Crusade
.
.
.
.
.
67-Crystal Skull

IMHO

And I have had hourlong arguments about Doom. I'll just say one thing about why I think it's the best of the lot: since that gong is hit it is possibly the most frantic rollercoaster of escapist vintage adventure ever done. It has rough edges, but the thing just doesn't fucking stop throwing stuff at you: Chinese mobsters, magic stones, monkey brains,dark exotic cults, hidden temples, bugs, mine wagons, dangling bridges... it's the quintessential 80s movie. Raiders is great, but it doesn't have that exhilarating pace to it, in my opinion.

1.  Two of the most annoying sidekicks in the history of cinema until Lucas outdid himself with Jar-Jar.
2.  Flat out preposterous and stupid action scenes, like sledding down the himalayas in an inflatable life raft dropped from a crashing plane.

The pace doesn't help when you insult the intelligence and then annoy to distraction the audience almost from the beginning.  It's even worse when Raiders did so well on both these points.

[Syt]

Of course the real order is:

Raiders
.
.
.
Crusade/Crystal Skull
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Doom

[Phillip V]

Lucas biographer says that new films will be about Luke Sywalker in his 30's and 40's.

http://www.metro.co.uk/film/916644-star-wars-7-could-feature-middle-aged-luke-says-lucas-biographer

Headline says "could", not "will."

Read the text/interview, not the headline.

[The Brain]

Only immature adults give a fuck about Star Wars or Indy.

I love Starship Troopers but it doesn't matter at all to me that they've made a bunch of crappy sequels.

[celedhring]

I really don't get the crystal skull hate. It was pretty decent. Certainly not the attrocity the star wars prequels were. And since it was a sequel it didn't really shit on the canon the way the prequels did either.

I recall the girl I went to see it with only knew of Indianna Jones as the crappy TV show and had never seen the originals.

Skull is "bearable" until they reach the temple at the end. Then you have the entire last act of the movie where Indy does absolutely nothing and even the villains just kill themselves with their lust for power; something which ruled the first time in Raiders but here it just felt like an unimaginative rehash.

[The Minsky Moment]

You see Disney as the Disney we had when we were kids.  The Disney Hour and such.  The Rob Roy movies, the Davy Crockett shows.
You fail to grasp how it's a financial company, a holding, with multiple divisions, each with their own creative vision (or lack of if you are cynical).

Disney is there to grab the profits from all the IP.  They're not there for Lucas Vision, or for anyone else's vision.

Bingo.

Making movies is expensive but where is the revenue to come from?  DVDs don't sell like they used to and people to go to the movies as often as in the golden age.  There is competition for attention from the cable players and youtube.  Star power is no longer a consistent draw and the A-list carries a heavy cost.  If a studio is going to pile big bucks into a blockbuster special effects extranvangza it wants to make sure it gets it back and the days of just casting Arnold and counting the money are over.

Big media players in this business like Disney are looking for relative predictability and opportunities to diversify and extend the media stream.  Buying portfolios of IP and brands that are familiar and can be exploited over and over in different media fills that need.  Disney learned that trick long ago with its own brands (Mickey Mouse doesn't demand $20M and argue with the director) and is just applying that same model to properties others initially developed.   They will continue to develop new properties of course, just incrementally, cautiously , and always with an eye to franchise possibilities and retail spin-off (a combination which favors animation over live).

[celedhring]

Having a - modest - experience dealing with Hollywood, I can say I have seen few people more risk-adverse than a studio executive. Everything you pitch them has to be connected with something similar that has worked in the past. The "Jaws meets Wuthering Heights" jokes are actually more on the money than people think.

The problem is that with more and more competing entertainment, prices have been driven up, as you have to create bigger and bigger "events" to get people out of their home cinemas, and margins are down. Twenty years ago a regular movie was expected to be profitable on its US release alone; now that's a miracle and the reliance on foreign BO and ancillary markets is bigger than ever. That's the reason why 20 years ago films took more gambles, while we are now flooded with recycled material: adaptations from successful properties of other media, remakes and sequels.

[The Brain]

Having a - modest - experience dealing with Hollywood, I can say I have seen few people more risk-adverse than a studio executive. Everything you pitch them has to be connected with something similar that has worked in the past. The "Jaws meets Wuthering Heights" jokes are actually more on the money than people think.

The problem is that with more and more competing entertainment, prices have been driven up, as you have to create bigger and bigger "events" to get people out of their home cinemas, and margins are down. Twenty years ago a regular movie was expected to be profitable on its US release alone; now that's a miracle and the reliance on foreign BO and ancillary markets is bigger than ever. That's the reason why 20 years ago films took more gambles, while we are now flooded with recycled material: adaptations from successful properties of other media, remakes and sequels.

Porn Valley doesn't count.

[celedhring]

Damn.

[Queequeg]

I know you are trolling the fanboys a bit  , but you do have a point - and it isn't limited to Star Wars. In general, the adult public is not willing to draw any boundaries any more between what they liked as kids, and what they continue to like as adults - to the point where the biggest thing in movies is sequels and "reboots" of stuff people in earlier decades would have considered, basically, kid's stuff - like comic book superheros. Nowadays. it mostly isn't kids going to see that stuff, but adults.

Hopefully this process will stop with stuff boys liked as adolescents, or we can look forward in the future to reboots of Thomas the Tank Engine, the Broadway Musical. 

Not that I dislike stuff like Star Wars and comic superheros (when well done). It's just a bit odd, is all.

I think there's a big difference between adult men watching Thundercats and me watching Princess Mononoke or Star Wars.  The first was terrible in the first place and nostalgia shouldn't make a damn bit of difference.   The other two are roundly excellent, and nostalgia may be a part of my enjoyment but it's not all of it. 

Star Wars and Empire are just, flat out, two of the best adventure films of all time.  They've aged incredibly well, especially considering how quickly some of the 70s looked dated. 

[Queequeg]

Of course the real order is:
Raiders
Crusade/Crystal Skull
Doom

Crusade has the best screenplay in action-adventure history.  No way it's comparable to that alien piece of shit. 

[celedhring]

Of course the real order is:
Raiders
Crusade/Crystal Skull
Doom

Crusade has the best screenplay in action-adventure history.  No way it's comparable to that alien piece of shit.

Pretty sure large chunks of Crusade were actually improvised. Connery reportedly ignored the script most of the time. He's brilliant in it, mind! And the tank sequence when they head to the temple Spielberg made up on the fly... sometimes lightning just strikes, I guess.

[Neil]

I think there's a big difference between adult men watching Thundercats and me watching Princess Mononoke or Star Wars.  The first was terrible in the first place and nostalgia shouldn't make a damn bit of difference.   The other two are roundly excellent, and nostalgia may be a part of my enjoyment but it's not all of it. 

No, there really isn't.  Stop trying to be special.  Your tastes are not objective.

[Queequeg]

I think there's a big difference between adult men watching Thundercats and me watching Princess Mononoke or Star Wars.  The first was terrible in the first place and nostalgia shouldn't make a damn bit of difference.   The other two are roundly excellent, and nostalgia may be a part of my enjoyment but it's not all of it. 

No, there really isn't.  Stop trying to be special.  Your tastes are not objective.

You are seriously comparing Thundercats to Princess Mononoke?

[Neil]

I think there's a big difference between adult men watching Thundercats and me watching Princess Mononoke or Star Wars.  The first was terrible in the first place and nostalgia shouldn't make a damn bit of difference.   The other two are roundly excellent, and nostalgia may be a part of my enjoyment but it's not all of it. 

No, there really isn't.  Stop trying to be special.  Your tastes are not objective.

You are seriously comparing Thundercats to Princess Mononoke?

Of course not.  One was a TV show.