And you of course realize that Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck made significant dialogue contributions to the ANH script? And as for ROTJ, compare these credits:

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: Written by Lawrence Kasdan from a story by George Lucas

RETURN OF THE JEDI: By Lawrence Kasdan and George Lucas

Now, which one is considered the better film again?

(Note: I'm aware Leigh Brackett also got a writing credit on ESB, though her draft was considered unsuitable and apparently none of it survived Kasdan's rewrite.)

You people really are going off the deep end here. Lucas wrote the first, had a few touch-ups, Lawrence Kasdan wrote on ESB, with Lucas pitching in. For ROTJ, Lucas got more involved. That´s still the same people over and over again.

My 2.00 cents? It´s all because of Ewoks.

I have to agree with CoGro on this - Anakin's turn in the book is completely believable and Palpatine does an ace mind fuck on him, to the point where he doesn't know who to believe. He creates a fog of lies, dragging Anakin into a web of suspicion, distrust and confusion to the point where he starts to see friend as foe. There is of course much less exposition in the screenplay, and many of the points Palpatine makes are condensed. I've been reading the novel and then checking the screenplay to see how they match up and i've decided that the whole deal will be sealed by the acting. Hayden must come across as being consumed by inner torment, confusion, moodiness and despair.

The points are there in the screenplay - Palpatine accusing the Jedi of being overtly secretive, undemocratic and keeping secrets from Anakin. Palpatine slyly telling Anakin that Obi-Wan's judgement may be clouded by a certain female senator. Palpatine accusing the Jedi of plotting to take over the senate and seize power from him. The Jedi instructing Anakin to spy on one of his most trusted friends. Palpatine feeding Anakin's ego. Palpatine egging on Anakin to murder Dooku and then justifying it to Anakin to make him feel better. Palpatine putting Anakin on the council, to bring him into conflict with the Jedi. Palpatine promising Anakin that they can restore order to the galaxy. Finally of course planting 'that' seed. The ability to cheat death. Sidious reads Anakin's needs and insecurites like a book and does an absolute fucking number on him.

In the novel you get pages and pages of Anakin's inner thoughts and more expository dialogue. In the movie it's going to come down to the mood of the scenes - lighting, music, acting, set design and pacing. If it's nailed we'll have a fucking great movie on our hands.

Alright folks. Tried to be nice about it. I screwed up the name. So what. My point was that Lucas realized that he didn't have a filmable script and turned it over to others to fix. You say that they only added Solo's lines? Well that there made a huge difference. You can go on defending him all you want, but Lucas can't write anymore. He just can't. No matter how flashy ROTS will be, nothing will cover that up. To satisfy the 12 year olds here, I'll take a break and come back in May to defend my position and say I told you so. Sadly, there will be many of you who will still say that it "r00lz" till the day you die. I will also be the first one to come back and say, "kick me in the ass" if I'm wrong. I don't think I am, but we'll see what happens.

Oh look, the argument is rejected and so he results to insults (12-year-olds?). I live in America too.

So, care to explain the nice little Jonathan Hales/AOTC co-writer bit away?

Significant dialogue contributions? I'm curious, which lines are theirs and which ones are from Lucas? (Or which lines did they change?)

I thought this scene got cut. Swear I read that somewhere.

You might as well have come in here, shit yourself, and wiped it on your face and beat someone to the punch.

Alright, I've been skimming this thread b/c the one thing I don't want to be spoiled about is the screenplay, I'm not going to read it. What little I don't know would be spoiled...but most of the opinions I read so far in this thread were discouraging and quite negative, but they all sounded rather bias and whiny.

So, I have a favor, can someone who is not a huge whiny nitpicky bitch weigh in? Is the dialogue seriously no good? Is the script a letdown?

Suddenly, I'm afraid....

I can't understand the position that states 'I'm on a spoiler forum but don't wanna read the screenplay' - where do you think the damn spoilers are coming from?

There's a huge difference between knowing the events of the film and having read how the scenes unfold, who says what, how drama is created, etc. etc. Obviously. The screenplay is the single closest thing to the film you can get. Personally, I don't want to get that close.

I'll bet most of you wear stormtrooper costumes in public, don't you? You sad, sad people. Two words: Blow me. I'm outta here.

That's five words, assfuck.

I'm already missing you.

I didn't read the screenplay because I want to be a little surprised and not totally spoiled. In the screenplay does it reveal who says, "I have a bad feeling about this."?

I don't get the motivation of geekzapoppin. Why the fuck would you register on a message board just to a bash a movie you haven't even seen yet and a script you probably haven't even read. To me, this is a troll of the worst kind.

I also don't get the negativism surrounding this script. I loved it. The pacing seemed right, the dialogue was a significant improvement on the other prequels and the story captured my attention.

Dare I say it, but this script rivalled some of the efforts in the OT which also had clunking dialogue in patches but countered that with great dialogue in the key scenes. I felt this was also the case with the ROTS screenplay. Yes there were parts which did feel clunky and cheesy, but in the scenes that mattered i.e. seducing of Anakin by Palpatine and the confrontation scenes between Anakin-Padme and Anakin-Obi-Wan the dialogue was top notch.

Besides I think some people need to leave their 25 year expectations on the door and just enjoy these movies for what they are.

Right on point. I mean, who honestly is the bigger geek, Star Wars fans talking online about movies they love, or some loser with enough time to go register at a message board in the futile attempt at somehow raising his self esteem by calling other people geeks. I like Star Wars, I'm a geek. But if some random person comes on and points that out, they are far worse than a geek.

Right on Manny,

I've been gone for a week or so... somebody catch me up just in case I missed anything.

How many Lucas sucks?
How many childhood rapings (henceforth to be know as Neverlandings)?
How many prequel sucks?
How many III sucks balls?

btw - I've read the script and thought the thing was fucking fantastic as it perfectly fits the story Lucas is trying to tell. My only complaint is the missing "love is the answer to the darkness" line in the script; but, the Making of book specifically mentions Anakin's "Help me, Master" being filmed and that isn't in the script. So, the script may not be 100% up to date with the filmed version.

Can't wait for the film.

I guarantee that a script and a movie, not done by Lucas but half as good, would be hailed as better than anything done by George. People are so hung up on this 'Lucas is a bad writer/filmmaker' garbage that it blinds them to seeing things objectively. I'm sure people could say the same about PT supporters, but there's so much shit I've already read about how the movie sucks and how the story doesn't work from people who haven't even seen the fucken movie yet! I mean, jesus, if that isn't a sign of true ignorance, I don't know what is.

I thought he said he was leaving in his third post. He lied.

Mental problems?

If I remember correctly, the Making of book also says that while "Help me, Master" was filmed, Lucas told McGregor that it had been cut to give Anakin no moment of redemption.

Yes, the Making Of says that they cut the "Help me".

I guess that would have taken the edge off of vader's bad boy image a bit wouldn't it. Do you think it was also dropped because it wouldn't have been very jedi like to leave the lil fecker to go nice and crispy instead of helping him after he called out for help?

I haven't had the opportunity to read the ROTS screenplay yet, because I foolishly decided that I would pay for it, but neither ContentLink nor Amazon UK have been able to deliver the thing in days (whatever loss of money Del Rey incurs from the bootlegging and piracy of this thing is richly deserved). So I can't speak to the quality or lack thereof with regard to the dialogue in the script. But what I've always thought about lines in the SW series is that when they appear to suffer from cheesiness, it usually has more to do with the delivery and the direction, not the dialogue itself. Carrie Fisher made the line above work (at least if you disregard her ridiculous accent) because she understood how it was supposed to work. Nearly all of the lines delivered by Guinness, McDiarmid, JEJ, Cushing, Lee, Neeson or any of the older actors work because they got the overly theatrical style that Lucas was aiming for. But the younger actors, especially those in the PT, don't always seem to get it, and for whatever reason, Lucas hasn't made his wants clear to them. There are so many lines in the PT where the actor's inflection is either so flat or so wrong that the point is completely missed. Ahmed Best, Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen are most guilty in this regard, though McGregor has a few problems as well.

It seems odd to me that Lucas can write this stuff but apparently has very little ear for it. It's almost as though he's working from the script of someone else that he doesn't like very much.

In the Making of Book, while filming a scene, Hayden and Lucas are discussing a particular line and Hayden says something along of these lines to Lucas, "You understand my reason for trying to go monotone."

Then him and lucas go back and forth about how this scene requires a little more emotion (can't remember the exact scene).

What struck me as odd, was how Hayden was talking about his intentional decision to try to deliver all his lines monotone (the ACTUAL quote he said makes this clearer). And as he said this, Lucas responded naturally, and I got the sense like they'd had this discussion many times before.

So it may be partly Lucas's decision to push Hayden towards the monotone delivery (or at least he agrees with what he's done). Personally, I think there are some moments, particularly while watching the OT, that JEJ seems to sound so much like Hayden (or vice-versa really).

I'm not a Hayden hater though, so his delivery doesn't bother me as it does some, but it's interesting the way it's intentional, and how I got the impression that's the way it was intended from the get-go.

Of course whether you like the decision or not is up to you.

Right, and I got that Hayden was consciously attempting to sound more like JEJ than, say, Jake Lloyd.

But I'm talking about bits like his introductory scene in AOTC with McGregor, and his line "I rescued you from that nightmare, Master," which should quite clearly have been spoken as "I rescued you from that nightmare, Master." Stuff where he clearly didn't seem to understand where the emphasis should be. It's like he's giving the line reading without having actually heard what McGregor said before him, and it pulls you right out of what should have been simple conversational dialogue.

Never really thought of that before. That sequence in particular always seemed just slightly "off" to me. Thanks for the explanation.

This is why the pre-release of so much material -- the novel, the screenplay, etc. -- strikes me as odd. Because while reading this stuff, you get a preconception of how it'll sound on screen, and a lot of times it doesn't happen that way. There are lines in TPM that I hadn't even realized were spoken until I read them in the comic, and I was sort of surprised to go back to the movie and see that they were there (McGregor muttering "you overdid it" when Qui-Gon knocks out Jar Jar, for instance). It seems strange to me that Lucas, who puts so much emphasis on editing, and who after all has written the words, allows for takes and cuts that completely screw up the timing on a lot of this stuff.

But then regardless what you think of his rationale behind changing the Greedo scene, you still have to admit that the new editing there looks like shit. There are definitely times when the "this is good enough" attitude that he's frequently accused of does raise its ugly head.

Here's the passage from the Making of book that jpeters430 described, for those who are interested. The scene is the one where Anakin goes to talk to Padme after the Jedi Temple massacre:



BTW, I heartily recommend the Making of book. It actually goes fairly in depth into Lucas' thought process in various scenes.

Thanks for finding that quote. I was way to lazy to actually look it up, plus I had no idea what page it was on.

And yeah, if any of you suckers haven't picked up the making of book. Highly, highly recommended. If you dig the behind the scenes stuff, you won't be disappointed.

The whole journal entry approach really gives it a feel like your there as the events are unfolding. It's great (and sometimes quite frightening) to see all the different directions the movie could have gone in. The insight into the thought process of everyone from Lucas to McCallum to the Artists and Sound guys and editors . . . great stuff.

I don't know why people think that there is some arbitrary objective scale on which acting can be measured. It's pretty much all opinion, so statements like "if you're not a female fan" are frustrating. I for one thought Hayden did a great job in AOTC, and I'm not a female, nor do I blindly say acting in SW is great. Natalie was the iffy one of the two. Hayden was perfectly fine. At least in my book. Only bad acting in the prequels has come from Natalie or Jake.

I´ll give her the benefit of doubt in this one, since she was playing a cold monarch. That doesn´t excuse most of the love scenes in AOTC, though.

That's true, but to be fair, Jake did get in one good look at Qui-Gon on the landing platform when arriving to meet Valorum. Chilly...

But isn't that like saying that any scene where the Jedi get attacked by the clones will feel out of place and will be just there to show the planet? I mean, you need to establish where Yoda is and how he doesn't die. And of course it'll be a cool 30-60 seconds to see Chewie. I'd rather it be short and sweet than long and overdone.

Wait, honestly, it's only a fucking minute? How long are the other montages? I always pictured the montages being quick than settling down for a good 3 minutes or so with Yoda and the Wookies. I'm going have to side with Joe H, that this could be a poor decision.

lol. Well, I'm sure it's more than a minute.

Not to be a nitpicker but the line is "You fell into that nightmare Master, and I rescued you." I thought the delivery was fine myself. I find Ewan's response a little more odd. Or maybe it's just his wig.

Exactly, if Lucas spent too long on Kashyyyk, the whole montage wouldn't feel very balanced and it would throw off the feeling of a galaxy-wide war.

Of course too short won't work, but too long can be just as bad.