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Star Wars
If you thought thought Titanic was the biggest movie of the nineties, think again. Star Wars Episode 1 "The Phantom Menace" had obtained legendary proportion even before it was completed. In the USA, Star Wars fans were buying tickets just to watch the trailer. Millions of people downloaded the trailer from the Internet and on opening night, people were paying hundreds of Dollars just to get a ticket on the black market. Now "The Phantom Menace" is landing in South Africa. "The new episode 1,starts 30 years before episode 4 which was the original Star Wars," explains writer/director George Lucas. "Ever since the success of Star Wars One, I decided I would go back and tell the tory of how everybody got there. "For me was the most revealing part of making this movie was when we first started filming in the desert in Tunisia. I looked at the desert and thought. 'I'm back'. The characters were standing there. It was Star Wars, and we were back there. It was exactly the same. It was as if twenty years had never elapsed - it was amazing."
"The films are modules," says Producer Rick McCallum, "they are designed to ultimately be seen as one big twelve hour film. There are sections and chapters that actually express the story of a family, and it takes the family through one generation on to another generation and ultimate redemption in the final generation." Liam Neeson, starring as "Qui-Gon Jinn"comments: "With the success Star Wars has had, I have a background for my character. The new movie's characters all have elements that have been taken from from various cultures throughout the world." George Lucas has proved, with the 'Star Wars' and the 'Indiana Jones' trilogies, that he is a superb director. But he is more than that - he works off a history of old movie forms, and he's become a consummate manipulator of tomorrow's special effects.
Samuel L Jackson plays "Mace Windu": "I remember going to the very first screening of Star Wars in New York City. I was at the first showing, and I saw it al lot of times: I am a huge fan of the series! So, the first day was pretty awesome for me, to walk onto a set, and look around at all the people, and the costumes, and suddenly I find myself sitting next to Yoda! The impact of the moment was everything I thought the Star Wars experience would be. It never stops. You never get used to it." Lukas dazzles film goers with the varied alien life forms, but sometimes endows them with a klutzy muppet speech that is sometimes unintelligible.
Critics world wide have had mixed reaction: some say the movie sacrifices humanity for special
effects, but somehow, I don't think that's going to stop people flocking to the movies or from buying the
merchandise. The Star Wars experience only comes along every twenty years, so we might as well sit
back and enjoy the ride!
Contacts
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If, to Alfred Hitchcock, actors were cattle, to George Lucas they are pixels - visual elements that can be digitally manipulated in computerized post-production.
But… he is on the set for the first time in 22 years doing the Action and Cut thing. Can he pull it off? There is fabulous attention to detail and performance which seems morphed to arid perfection, but seems strangely unattended by humans.
