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That Toy Story mash is probably the best Dark Knight mash-up I've seen (although I'm fond of the handful of really good ones that use footage from Batman: The Animated Series). The best recent trailer mash is still 'The Incredible Quantum Of Solace'. Besides from obscenely good lip matching, it works as a balls-to-the wall action trailer that The Incredibles never received.

I'm less impressed with the Star Trek/Star Wars thing. Much of the footage is just random action beats, and the trailer cheats by inter-cutting Anakin and Luke at random intervals (as if they're both Kirk). Besides, it's pretty obvious that Abrams is simply just playing in the same Joeseph Campbell-ian waters that Lucas and the Wakowski Bros. used.

That's not a bad Toy Story 2 mash-up, but this one is untouchable:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1qihwMN0JM

Mr Potato Head as Morgan Freeman was very funny.

"...JJ Abram is trying to steal Star Wars..."

Considering that Mr. Lucas is doing nothing with it, someone should take it over.

isn't lucas currently planning a tv series, like a 'fill in the blanks' between 'sith' and 'star wars: ep. 4'? please dear god, let someone else actually do the writing

One of the great mysteries in the history of the world is: How did George Lucas create Star Wars? I know, you often hear people resolve that same mystery with Empire Strikes Back by pointing out that Lucas was barely involved with that movie creatively. A talented person wrote it, a talented person directed it, etc.

But even if it never reaches the lofty heights of Empire, the original Star Wars was still a top-notch movie. And I've never seen anything to suggest that Lucas wasn't the primary creative force behind it. How did that happen? Given everything we now know about his level of intellect and imagination, how did he make such a smart, imaginative movie?

Scholars have devoted decades to discovering how the primitive ancient inhabitants of England built Stonehenge. Now they need to tackle a real mystery.

Unnecessary snark, Mr. Petch. Aside from being factually wrong (or do you honestly think Lucas was "barely involved" creatively with the first sequel to the biggest movie of his life?), you're writing as if Star Wars is the only good thing George Lucas ever did. The man wrote and directed American Graffiti (which is still pretty fantastic), and was heavily involved creatively with Raiders of the Lost Ark. That's a pretty kick-ass eight years from '73-'81.

I'm no big defender of the Star Wars prequels (or Return of the Jedi for that matter), but you can see that the ideas and imagination were still there. To me, George Lucas has the Paul McCartney problem: he needs the right collaborator to pull back his cheeseball tendencies. John Lennon could do that, but once Paul was running his own show, the syrupy indulgence came out. Does that make McCartney any less brilliant, or does it invalidate his Beatles work, or does it mean he's a hack who was only saved by John Lennon's brilliance? No. (For the record, I feel the same about Lennon's post-Beatles work - goofy sunshine and bitchy cynicism needed each other).

Empire and Raiders were great because Lucas was working with people he trusted and listened to: Spielberg, obviously, but also Irvin Kershner (who had taught Lucas at USC) and Lawrence Kasdan. After that, it was either Lucas writing and directing on his own (the prequels) or overseeing a director without the clout or personal relationship to say "Bad idea, George" (Richard Marquand, for example). It's not a lack of imagination, intellect, or talent; it's simply "No restraining collaborator = unchecked hokey-ness."

None of this explains Crystal Skull, of course. No idea how that happened.

Brandon, it's not snark. It's genuine and total puzzlement. Every time I come across any of the post-Empire Star Wars movies on TV, I can't watch with my mouth closed. My jaw drops a little further with every line, not merely because they're bad movies -- there are plenty of bad movies out there -- but because with every insipid bit of dialogue I think that it was written by the same guy who wrote "I find your lack of faith disturbing."

Yeah, I thought about American Graffiti, but I didn't attach too much significance to it. Partly that's because it doesn't make that much of an impression on me -- it's good, but not great. And partly it's because Lucas is telling and embellishing stories from his adolescence here, and these semi-autobiographical works seem to bring out the inspiration in a lot of people. In other words, American Graffiti is nice, but it's not something I look at and say "creative genius."

You probably know more about Lucas's contribution to Raiders than I do, but from reading the wikipedia page about it, it looks like it was written in meetings attended by several other undeniably talented people. I can easily imagine in that situation that the talents would discretely work the no-talent's ideas out of the script. The ideas specifically attributed to Lucas in that article are either insignificant (the monkey giving the Nazi salute) or terrible ones that didn't make the movie (Jones as a Bondsian playboy).

Where I totally disagree with you is where you say that "the ideas and imagination were still there" in the post-Empire movies. Sure there's imagination on the part of the set designers, the character designers, and the CGI artists. But the writer and director? I don't see it. The plots are uniformly awful -- boring and nonsensical. The characters are wooden. The acting is embarrassing (and Lucas as director must shoulder some/much of the blame there). And the dialogue is absolutely cringeworthy. I don't think it's hyperbole to say that these are the kinds of movies Ed Wood would have made if he had a 200 million dollar budget.

And that, to me, is a mystery. All filmmakers have high points and low points in their careers, but I'm unaware of any others who have gone from near genius to complete and sustained incompetence over the course of a single movie.

On Raiders, the original story conference with Lucas, Spielberg and Kasdan has been floating around the net for the past few days. Mystery Man on Film has an excellent write-up, along with a link to the complete transcript:

http://mysterymanonfilm.blogspot.com/2009/03/raiders-story-conference.html

Lucas was very much involved, turns out. Not having read the actual transcript yet, from the excerpts in the report he may have even been THE idea man on this one.

My point was, if there had been a story meeting like this, with talent that Lucas respected and listened to, the prequels would have been very different, maybe even great.

I'm not a fantastic writer, but if I'm sitting in a room with a guy, and he tells me about a story in which a minor-league local rep engineers a silent coup of the democracy, puppeteers a manufactured war (literally - fought mostly by built-from-scratch proxies), then uses that war to whip the populace into enough of a patriotic fervor that he can dismantle the democracy itself, all carried out with robots, clones, spaceships and samurais with superpowers... even if I've never heard of Star Wars before, I'm gonna get a little excited.

Even the foundation of the Anakin/Vader story works - one of the aforementioned samurai can't abide the emotionless credo of his order, falls in love with a girl, and out of anger, guilt and worry for his secret love, he turns on the clan and kills them all, becoming the strongman for the leader of the rival clan.

There's a gem of a story hidden beneath the wooden acting, ham-handed dialogue, plodding pace and overall Jar-Jar-ness of it all. Maybe only two movies' worth when you strip the garbage, but it's all there. I just wish he would've handed it over to a couple of closers.

One more thought, on American Graffiti: opinions are subjective, obviously, but if you think semi-autobiographical coming of age stories are somehow easier, I'm not sure you've seen enough bad ones. Or read enough college student screenplays. "Write what you know" is maybe the worst conventional wisdom I've ever heard.

Gyaaahhh, I just defended the prequels! I feel unclean.

Don't feel unclean Brandon, the prequels, judged on their own merits are actually pretty terrific action adventure films. The plots are actually more interesting, more complex, and darker than the original trilogy. In a way, Lucas was demystifying the mythology of the original films, similar to what was done in the Matrix sequels.

Mixing Star Trek with Star Wars is something that should've been done a long time ago. If that's what this new Star Trek is, hell yeah.

Re: 'mixing Star Trek with Star Wars' - God no. Why would someone want that? This isn't two good things that go better together, this is 'you mixed your peanut butter with my sushi'. One is a spectacle-based mythic fantasy construction, the other is a character-based sci-fi extrapolation. Boosting the fantasy/myth/Skywalkerishness of Star Trek is exactly the wrong way to take the material (unless what you're interested is making money).

"Star Trek plus Star Wars":

It's been done -- twice -- by Joss Whedon, to great effect, on TV and on the big screen. Whedon took the Rebellion against Empire mythos, made Han Solo the key player, and re-imagined the Federation as the Alliance, a liberal fascist utopia that actually crushed the Rebellion. "All of them...better worlds."

What George Lucas did to his Han Solo is a travesty and a tragedy, but the less said about that the better.

I'd argue that there was very little Star Trek in Firefly.

"Boosting the fantasy/myth/Skywalkerishness of Star Trek is exactly the wrong way to take the material (unless what you're interested is making money)."

Hasn't there been enough Star Trek movies that have been pretty much the same? Is it so wrong to try something different?

Fair enough, but I'd say there's a big difference between 'trying something different' and 'ignoring and undermining what it was about the original material that made it special in the first place' which is what it looks like Abrams is doing - remolding Star Trek to make it into something blandly similar to all other mega-franchise Hollywood properties.

But if it's done right, isn't "remolding" a testament to the durability of the original characters? Look how many variations on James Bond we've had - some didn't work, but even among the ones that did, there are quite a few different takes. They all still feel like Bond, though. Ditto for Batman (Adam West doesn't feel any less like Batman to me than Christian Bale or Michael Keaton), or even Dracula.

If it does wind up "blandly similar to all other mega-franchise Hollywood properties," then bring on the boos. But I remain foolishly optimistic.

I too, have some optimism, but only because I am hoping, perhaps foolishly, that there is some essence to Star Trek that not even Abrams can destroy. At the same time, Trek has been well served by outsiders before (Nicholas Meyer), so maybe it will be again.

huge 'firefly' fan here

and for fuck's sake karl urban is gonna knock 'em dead in trek babies with his 'bones', who cares about the rest? (well, i suppose somebody cares, but not me)

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