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Carl - Well, here is another thing, going into the whole Special Edition, because he’s still working on them…
Moriarty- (full of sarcasm) Oh, no, he’s not… no… he’s not… no. You lie!
Carl - I think we’ll see the movies on DVD before we get those versions to be honest with you…
Moriarty - What we are hearing now is we’ll get the SPECIAL EDITIONS next fall, fourth quarter next year. That’s what I’m hearing anyway….
Everyone getting excited again, talking at once… all with their rumors of when they have heard that the DVD’s are coming out.
Darth Tardy - That would bring it right up to Episode III.
Carl - It’s going to be similar to the Indy DVDs, three movies and a fourth disc of extras. And people will complain, but trust me, there is more stuff coming out later.
Moriarty - Oh yeah, this will be the stopgap. Here are your Special Editions…
Darth Tardy - “For the last time… AGAIN.”
FrostySkywalker - I’m not trying to say this in a negative way, but he is a mastermind of getting money out of the fans.
Everyone at once.
Obi-Swan - Well, he’s got mine.
Moriarty - Dude, he’s no different than Disney. It’s the perfect example of how you manage your marketing.
Carl - You have to be careful with that, though, because the truth is if he really wanted to milk fans out of money the way that everyone says he does, we would have five different versions of the DVDs already.
FrostySkywalker - That’s true. We’re going to get them next year, next Christmas, next fall or whatever, and then he can put out the Ultimate Box Set a year or two after Episode III.
Moriarty - He’ll wait for ’07, the thirtieth anniversary, I’m sure.
Carl - He’s going to tweak the films again.
Mxyzlptlk - What about the Vader-Obi-Wan duel from ANH?
Carl - Well, we talked about that yesterday [at the Lucasfilm DVD event for INDY], about the rumor of the CGI fixes and that. That’s one of the things where I’m like, go ahead and do CGI fixes to that scene. It’s going to look terrible, anyway. These two geriatrics pawing at each other. And the lightsabers look horrible, too… fix that damn effect!
Everyone agreeing that its okay to fix the lightsabers… all at once realizing that it’s a good idea.
Obi-Swan - I was thinking this when I was watching the Special Editions the other day, they should have never done the Special Editions for ESB and ROTJ. They should have put all their time and money into the SE of the first film.
JedtheHutt - That was the original plan actually.
Carl- What is his name at ILM? The head of the CG creature crew? Rob Coleman. I hear that he is privately pushing George to fix the Episode I Yoda, which I am 100% in agreement with. Because if you see the Episode II Yoda and then go back and then look at that one from Episode I… it’s like Mongoloid Yoda… terrible.
Moriarty – Or, as we like to call him, “Crack Yoda”.
Mxyzlptlk - Episode II Yoda is great.
FrostySkywalker - I recently went back and watched Episodes I & II, and EPISODE I looks like animation that I could do on my computer at home now compared with II.
Carl - A lot of it is because it was shot on 35mm film, though…
FrostySkywalker - Whatever the reason is, what I am saying is…
Moriarty - It’s a real uncomfortable marriage of optical and digital…
FrostySkywalker - Would it be that bad if he went back and remade Episode I?
Darth Tardy - I would like a Special Edition of Episode I…
Carl - Would it be that bad if Episode I never happened and Episode II was Episode I?
Darth Tardy - That is what my roommate says, that a lot of fans are never going to include Episode I. It’s just going to be II-VI.
Moriarty - If he really wanted to be experimental, like the way he was with his early sequels, it would have been a lot of fun if he had just made Episode III. Like right off the bat, just said, “Yeah, Episode I & II, they happened, and I know what they are, but you really don’t need to see them, so here’s III.” After all, the duel is the only thing everyone has been waiting for anyway.
Carl - The story of Episode III is what we’ve always thought the entire prequel trilogy was to be about. It’s all happening in this last movie.
Darth Tardy – It’s what it’s all about.
Mxyzlptlk - And that story is going to be good, I cannot wait…
Darth Tardy - He always said that he didn’t have the stories for the first ones, and that is why he started with IV-V-VI.
Carl - Well, he didn’t have the screenplays…
Darth Tardy – I know, he always said, “They’re more political”…
Carl - He just had the concepts somewhere jotted down.
Darth Tardy - I have it somewhere, it’s in the Bantha Tracks somewhere, it’s in print…
Carl - Well, he’s even let it slip what the third trilogy was going to be about…
Darth Tardy - … it’s all just boring political…
Carl - … which actually ties into Episode III, but he’s probably going to completely throw that all out because he is not doing them.
FrostySkywalker - Wait, he’s actually mentioned…
Carl – Originally, there was a secondary character… there was a character in Episode III and something happens to that character and he’s gone, and he does not return until Episode VII…
JedtheHutt - That’s right… I remember that…
Carl - … and he becomes a main character of the last trilogy. And a lot of… a lot of the inside speculation was that it was a clone of Anakin. They find out that there was this clone of Anakin and they have to get to him, both the remnants of the Empire and the New Republic. The key is to find out if he’s the “good” Anakin or the “bad” Anakin.
Moriarty - Ah.
Carl - And the whole crux of the last trilogy was sixty-year-old Luke trying to set up the new Jedi Order, his temptation with the Dark Side, and this new Anakin clone ultimately saving Luke from the Dark Side.
Darth Tardy - Wow… that is totally different than…
Moriarty - But that is never going to happen.
Carl - No.
Darth Tardy - Gary Kurtz did this interview right after Episode I came out…
Moriarty - That would be great… but…
Darth Tardy - We’ve talked about this before…
Moriarty - (referring to AOTC playing on the screen behind the group) Now he is going to be back? Is he going to help build Vader?
Hellboy - Wat Tambor?
Darth Tardy - We’ve talked about it at other meetings, but Gary Kurtz talked about it, that VII, VII, IX were going to take place right after JEDI… and Vader was supposed to… he did want to change…
Carl - But you have to take what Kurtz said with a grain of salt… a lot of Kurtz’s stuff is ideas that he had that he probably never said anything to Lucas about.
Darth Tardy - There was one thing for sure that he was right about, when Vader said that he wanted Luke to join him and they could destroy the Emperor, that is gone by the ROTJ that we get, that’s gone. He doesn’t… that Vader in JEDI. He’s all “I do this and we can’t do that,” but he is so sick with the moment that this is his son, and they can rule the galaxy together, and they destroy the Emperor… that’s gone. That’s clearly missing.
Carl - Lucas himself has said in past interviews that, “The character who survives Episode III and his adventures” is what the third trilogy was about. That’s always been pretty interesting to me. But now it’s all about Anakin and Luke’s arc…
Darth Tardy - … but originally Leia wasn’t Anakin’s sister.
Moriarty - But that would still make it the whole thing about Anakin…
Obi-Swan - It would.
(It should be noted here, that sarah and JedtheHutt whisper to each other that the council had wandered way too far from what they were there to discuss. But they’re the pickier members of the group, so who cares.)
Carl - Because ultimately it would be Anakin who saves the day at the very end of I guess Episode IX and kill the Dark Side or whatever it is once and for all. Then the whole saga really would be about Anakin. Hopefully there will be a way to do that in the EU some day.
JedtheHutt - Has there been any more speculation what the EU character is going to be in Episode III?
Mxyzlptlk – It’s minor.
Darth Tardy - Is there an EU character in Episode III?
Carl - It’s so small, no one has even seen anything, heard anything. I thought for sure it was going to be that Asajj Ventress…
Darth Tardy - Mara Jade?
Moriarty - But Bai Ling is not playing…
Carl - No. She’s a senator.
Moriarty - She’s a senator.
Suddenly there is a lot of fanboy chatter all over each other with the thought of a Mara Jade.
Carl - When I heard that someone was going to have lightsabers that was not a Jedi, I thought, hmm… but it’s not her.
Mxyzlptlk – It’s Grievous.
Hellboy - Maybe its Admiral Thrawn.
JedtheHutt - Yeah, that is what I am thinking. We’re going to see an Ensign Thrawn or something.
Obi-Swan - And Durge isn’t in the movie at all, is he?
Various “no’s.”
Obi-Swan - Really? Because… you know, its funny, when I first saw that drawing, from I guess it was that comic…
Carl - I don’t even want him in the cartoon, but he’s in the cartoon…
Obi-Swan - He reminded me of Darth Vader. He sort of had the same helmet, and I thought, you know, that would be sort of the first glimpse of…
Carl - To me it look like something out of Transformers Armada. Awful.
Moriarty – It’s very much an action figure design, I’ll agree with that. It looks like it came off of the drawing board of an action figure designer, not a film set.
Carl - It did not come from directly from Lucasfilm, the design.
Moriarty - But now he’s in THE CLONE WARS. Quick show of hands… who has seen a Clone Wars episode?
About half of the people present raise their hands.
Darth Tardy - Is it out already?
Sarah - No, November 7th.
Moriarty - OK, so we saw four hands, and the verdict?
JedtheHutt - Symphony!
Sarah – It’s amazing.
Darth Tardy - How did you see it?
Sarah - Well, they showed the first episode at ComicCon…
A few lucky members start talking about other episodes they had managed to see through various channels, all of which expressed how great they thought the cartoons were as far as animation and story. The subject of the music came up…and someone says, “But they are using John Williams’s music.”
Carl - They may come up with a new theme, or may not, but really, we’re talking about twenty three-minute shorts, which obviously they are going to put on DVD as one sixty-minute cartoon.
Moriarty - And they’re saying that the best way to experience them is with Hyperspace? That you’re going to be able to get commentary?
Carl – Yeah, you’ll be able to get commentary with Tartakovsky.
Moriarty - OK. Let’s go. Does anyone know dates? When does it start?
Sarah - Um, yeah, November 7th.
Hellboy - Who’s going to put that out then eventually? Is it going to be a Warner release thing then?
As usually, everyone voices their opinion at once, with the consensus being that it’s a Warner release since its Cartoon Network, and a few comments to which website would have more, Cartoon Network or Hyperspace, with the opinion that they’d both have content but Hyperspace was again where it was at.
Moriarty - At what point will it all have aired?
Sarah - Well, aren’t they showing the first ten now through February and then the second ten next year?
Carl - I think they’re setting it up so the DVD comes out right before Episode III.
Hellboy - The interesting thing is that Lucas has an intense, INTENSE hatred for Warner Brothers that dates back to THX. Hates them.
Obi-Swan - Wouldn’t it make more sense to have all the cartoons come out on DVD before Christmas of next year?
Carl - It could be Christmas.
Moriarty - But Christmas next year is the SE DVDs…
FrostySkywalker - Those are coming out more in the fall.
Carl - I’ve heard from too many people that it’s September for the SE DVDs.
Lots of jokes made about DVD, companies that make DVDs, and something about the upcoming ALIEN QUADRILOGY. Off-the record.
Carl - I’ll go back to the SE again, you know. The tweaking already irks people, but I’ve got this itch to scratch myself after watching the prequels. The end of JEDI isn’t going to do it for me after the prequels, with the geriatric Obi-Wan, with Anakin and Yoda. I’m almost inclined to just go ahead and put Hayden and Ewan there and have Qui-Gon there…
Moriarty - And I would then just start dropping hundreds of Jedi in. Like all the Jedi should come back then. It should be RETURN OF THE JEDI plural, not just one. It should be like, “Okay, it’s safe for us again. We can all come back.”
Carl - Or you could have, out of respect for Alec Guinness and Sebastian Shaw, have them there and then Luke looks and they turn into their prequel form and then Qui-Gon shows up. And people are going to be like, “Well, Luke doesn’t know who Qui-Gon is.” Well, who cares, we know who Qui-Gon is… that is the whole point. I want closure!
Moriarty - And really, would you rather look like Ewan McGregor or Alec Guinness if you could choose your form?
Carl - Well, Episode III... it’s both of them. He really does look like a young Alec.
FrostySkywalker - I was going to say that this all goes together with what exactly is the reason why some of them disappear… because if it’s something that has to be spoken to each other, like I have to tell you to be able to reappear down the road, then it only makes sense for a few people.
Carl - I just think that it would be some closure if they turned into their old forms before they fell, before Anakin fell, before Obi-Wan made the mistake, and Qui-Gon set the whole chain of events in motion by taking on Anakin. That would just make so much more sense to me in the whole scheme of things.
Darth Tardy - Yoda would have hair. He would… or… who knows what Yoda would look like at age fifty. (laughter)
Hellboy – It’s asking a lot… what’s done is done.
Carl - To me...
Moriarty - Wait a minute. Since when has Lucas said, “what is done is done”?! He’s the guy who created this idea of liquid filmmaking, and “what is done is done” should not be in his vocabulary.
Which leads to discussion of what was changed and touched up in the Indiana Jones DVDs, which covered how things like touched up boulders, snake reflections, cleaned up prints etc, are really things that no one can complain about… the 14 optical fixes. Basically, the movies look amazing from what has shown to the public so far.
Mr.Beaks - So my question is, is there ever going to be a point while Lucas is alive, where he says, “We’re done”?
Carl - I actually think he is getting there, to be honest. I think the prequel thing, and now what people are calling the “Archival Editions”, are his way of saying, “Let’s wrap this thing up for once and for all.” He really does want to go off and do completely different, other, experimental… I actually see him making some very, off-center, experimental things with Ewan McGregor and actors like that. Stuff that is going to completely split him apart from that diehard STAR WARS fan base once and for all. At heart, Lucas… he’s become this very commercial filmmaker in the past 23 years, but at heart he is the guy who made that original THX-1138. He was the eccentric, experimental filmmaker in that whole USC group of guys. He was the one who was going out and doing these weird, non-linear things, and I really believe that deep down, that is his filmmaking soul. He wants to wrap up this stuff and get… he enjoys the popcorn films and the film history like the serials and all that stuff, but I think he wants to get that stuff out of his system as well.
Carl - I wish he would have done Radioland Murders the way he originally intended it to, that he would have directed that. It would have been much darker.
Moriarty - Well, it would have been great because ’99 was his return to filmmaking, and if he would’ve done RED TAILS, which was long rumored, instead of a STAR WARS film, it would have been the same year that Malick did THIN RED LINE and the same year that Spielberg did SAVING PRIVATE RYAN…
JedtheHutt - That was ’98.
Moriarty - It would have been the same general time, and it would have been nice to see him throw down his war movie at the same time as those other guys.
Carl - Well, remember, originally Lucas was going to do APOCALYPSE NOW…
Moriarty - Yeah, he’s always…he sort of did.
Carl - I am sure it would have been just as dark if he would have done it.
Moriarty - When you watch MORE AMERICAN GRAFFITI, all the Terry the Toad stuff was him, and that is his APOCALYPSE NOW. I mean, it’s the way he wanted to shoot it, and it’s very… it’s shot 16mm, so all the stuff he had planned, he sort of got out of his system there.
Obi-Swan - And then he could have gone on and made another movie, and just waited, and gone on and made the next film, which would have been 2005, which would have been Episode III.
Moriarty - Just Episode III.
Obi-Swan - That’s it.
Moriarty and Carl Cunningham talking at once.
Moriarty - No I & II would have been so experimental, it would have been great…
Carl - But it’s his Frankenstein’s monster…
Moriarty - Yeah, but it would have been a cool one… it would have been neat.
Mr.Beaks - I like what Carl Cunningham is saying about Star Wars being his Frankenstein monster. He has spent all this time from ’77 to now trying to get back to the point where he can make experimental films. But there is this sense of obligation, that he had to do something, and if he did the trilogies, and if he did the prequels, that he’d at least had to do them justice. And yet doing them justice, he’s not connected to the material the way that the fans are connected with the material…
Carl - … there is a detachment…
Mr.Beaks - There is the detachment, so now it’s gotten to the point where he’s like, “You know, all right, I’ll do the best I can. I don’t know if it will ever be good enough, but that is the trap that I have fallen into. At least I know at the end of this, I can go back and do something I really want to do.” And if that is the case, then really, all is forgiven. I can understand it.
Carl - That really looks like where it is going.
Hellboy - The obligation is financial also. He has this empire that has to run now, and that is the way it is. ILM has…
Carl - I have to admire him for that. He uses STAR WARS to finance these other things that otherwise would never get off the ground…
Hellboy - Yeah, they’re used for R&D and stuff like that, but they have to bill, I think it’s like $2-3 million per quarter just to keep everything going. So I think it’s a financial thing also, where it’s like, “Well, we’ve gotta do it.”
Carl - And plus also, he’s not a studio. He’s an independent filmmaker. So he has to have the licensing, the merchandising tie-ins, and all that. They wouldn’t exist if they didn’t have that stuff.
Hellboy - I mean, they don’t have a commercial division. They shut that down. They work on fewer and fewer films every year, because the talent pool is going everywhere…
Carl - … it’s been siphoned…
Moriarty - They have created and given some great talent a start over the years. Inevitably, it goes elsewhere after awhile.
Carl - What it is, it’s the proving ground for animators, and there is always a high turnover rate….
Hellboy - … well, there are guys who stay forever…
Carl - … like Muren…
Hellboy - Well, Dennis does that because he doesn’t have to do anything else. He’s never going to have to work again. He’s one of the largest landowners in Marin County.
Carl - Yeah. Yeah.
Hellboy - But when you leave, you leave on bad terms. Everybody that I know has left and they were in a position of, you know, not middle management, but creative whatever…
Carl - … well, there are a lot of assets…
Hellboy - But there is a cult of competition there that everyone is being pushed together…
Carl - … there is that, but it would be like working for Microsoft and going to Sun Systems or whatever. But there are also a lot of assets, physical assets, and then um, artistic assets. There is the Pixar thing, which has always been a great deal for Lucas. That he sold them to Jobs… part of the deal was that he sold them for a song, but…
Moriarty - But he gets all the R&D.
Carl - Yeah, they have to share all the stuff with him for free.
Moriarty - And they’ve pushed it harder than anybody in terms of character and in terms of being able to give life to things.
Carl - Right….
Moriarty - I think that was his masterstroke.
Carl - But ILM is always going to have a high turn-over rate because they don’t pay as much. But people are like, “Well, it’s ILM, and I can go work on this big-time project, cut my teeth on it, and then get the gig at…”
Moriarty - And you will. If you work at ILM, you’ll end up working on a HARRY POTTER, or a STAR WARS, or HULK, or whatever.
Hellboy - You just don’t want to be on, you know, THE MUMMY RETURNS.
Carl - That’s the other thing. People are always, like, “ILM stinks now”, but you have to understand the different levels of talent.
Hellboy - The A team, the B team, the C team…
Carl - If someone is going to ILM and saying “Do my effects, but I’ve only got five bucks,” then how great are they going to look?
Hellboy - And there are scheduling issues. They just don’t have time to do everything.
Moriarty - Rob Coleman can only work on so many things.
(Tape goes out here)
And that means it’s a perfect place to break. We’ll have more in a few days.
"Moriarty" out.
