Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Movie Writing, the George Lucas Way

So, after seeing the Star Wars: Clone Wars film (though "film" is probably too generous a description), I think I deserve millions of dollars since I think I can write a Star Wars movie just as good as George Lucas can. Here's a brief outline of how such a film, if doing it how George Lucas does films, would go:

-Opening Crawl, accompanied by triumphant music and goofy names (or, in the case of Clone Wars, a goofy narrator SPEAKING the opening crawl in contrast to the rest of the series), making the goofier names even goofier-sounding when they're actually spoken out loud.

-CRASH BOOM POW DIE! Action sequence!

-Brief, talky expositional scene. "Actors" should be as bland as possible when speaking. Faces should convey no emotion whatsoever.

-CRASH BOOM POW DIE! Action sequence!

-Longer talky expositional scene. "Actors" should be as bland as possible when speaking. Faces should convey no emotion whatsoever.

-Brief talky expositional scene. "Actors" should speak their dialogue with a tone of voice that implies they really want to get the scene done with because they've got Baseball tickets. Be sure to mention a "disturbance" at least once.

-CRASH BOOM POW DIE! Action sequence!

-Repeat steps 2-7 at least six times. Sprinkle in droid humor when appropriate (or when it's most inappropriate).

-CRASH BOOM POW YOU'RE BREAKING MY HEART! Action sequence with forced dialogue that's supposed to be emotional but doesn't convey any emotion whatsoever!

-Characters standing dramatically. Triumphant music and end credits!

Movie producers, feel free to contact me on appropriate payment methods so I can begin writing my own science fiction epic.

AFTERWORD: Anakin's padawan, Ahsoka Tano, was actually quite badass. Only redeemable trait of the whole thing, IMHO. ‎

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

My mother has been driving me up the wall to go see this (she actually thought the prequels were good for something besides staring at Ewan MacGregor's handsomeness). I called it immediately as made for TV & promoted to movie, and thus not worth the money. No amount of persuasion can convince her to change her mind. But like I said, she liked the 'romance' in the prequels.

Lewis Lovhaug said...

How about this persuasion: there is no romance in the movie. There's actually a legitimate friendship built between Annakin and Ahsoka as time goes on (whereas the friendship between Annakin and Obi Wan continues to feel forced even when it's just voice actors). Padme and Annakin exchange significant looks, but no romance at all there.

Anonymous said...

Trust me Lewis you are far from the first one to have that idea. Actually Star Wars has inspired so much of my own work i have taken to calling it my Hate Muse. It inspires me because i hate it!

Star Wars has really went down hill, Lucas made a wonderful thing back in '77, '80 and '83 then spent the last twenty years finding ways to kill it.

Evilkritter said...

For what it is worth, I liked the prequels.

*Dives into cover*

Screech The Mighty said...

You know why I watched this movie?

Because there are clone troopers in it, and clone troopers kick ass.

That's not enough to save season 2 of the TV show, though...

John Pannozzi said...

Lucas didn't write the movie. Blame Henry Gilroy, Steven Melching, and Scott Murphy.

And I hear that the TV series that this film is basically the pilot to is actually pretty good. Even our old pal Paul Dini wrote some episodes that were well received, and they even managed to make Jar-Bar Binks tolerable.