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R2 Woke Up Because........


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I honestly didn't mind Temple of Doom. Was definitely not a great movie, and is oddly more dated than the original, but I didn't have a single abortion while watching it.

 

That said, I didn't go apoplectic over Crystal Skull, either, though I acknowledge it's a pretty disappointing movie when held up to the first and third installments.

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I can understand why people dismiss Temple of Doom. Pretty easy to say "Willie? Short Round? Done."

 

But I do think it's the best of the Indy prequel/sequels. Sure it's a flawed movie, but all three movies after Raiders are flawed in their own way. Temple of Doom stands out from the other two since it's the only one with a still youngish Harrison Ford, a willingness to push the franchise beyond the Raiders template, and Spielberg still completely engaged and arguably at the most confident point of his career (considering his last two movies were E.T. and Raiders).

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Nope. Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz Did an uncredited pass at the script. If you look at early drafts you'll see scripts that are very clunky and full of poor dialog, very similar to the PT. the jump from the third draft to the fourth (which was what was shot) was an insanely better movie.

 

If I remember correctly, Huyck and Katz only worked with Lucas on a revised fourth draft in the months leading into production. The original fourth draft from Lucas was already pretty close to the shooting script.

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The "official" story changes frequently. Most say that they gave George notes, and he employed some, but ignored most of them. Others say that they basically just did a dialog pass, but that the structure was still George's doing.

 

Huyck has said in several interviews in the last decade or so that they did a complete rewrite.

 

Really, the most telling evidence is if you go an read the drafts. Most all of them are online. The shift between the third and fourth drafts is day and night. Obviously, it's all George's ideas and concepts, but a cogent story and dialog far less stilted come from out of nowhere. It's a huge shift.

 

I tend to believe Huyck given that Lucas never wrote anything again until the PT.

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I tend to believe Huyck given that Lucas never wrote anything again until the PT.

For me, the biggest tell is that the dialogue early on has the same feel and rhythm of American Graffiti. But then later, I noticed that Huyck and Katz are credited on the American Graffiti screenplay, too... so then we go back to the prequels being similar to earlier drafts, etc. for clues.

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Really, the most telling evidence is if you go an read the drafts. Most all of them are online.

 

Yeah, the drafts are online. The basic story along with a rather large chunk of the dialogue is in that third draft. And, as I said, the original 4th draft is from Lucas. I don't think that particular draft is available online, but it had already dropped many of the remaining extraneous elements from the 3rd draft in favor of continuing the simplifying and streamlining process that the 3rd draft had begun.

 

Also, for what it's worth, there are annotated screenplays that seek to give credit to Huyck and Katz for what their specific dialogue contributions. Starwarz.com, which is probably the best place to find the original scripts, has a version which credits them with the dialogue marked in asterisks.

 

 

 

Huyck has said in several interviews in the last decade or so that they did a complete rewrite.

 

Which interview was that?

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Really, the most telling evidence is if you go an read the drafts. Most all of them are online.

Yeah, the drafts are online. The basic story along with a rather large chunk of the dialogue is in that third draft. And, as I said, the original 4th draft is from Lucas. I don't think that particular draft is available online, but it had already dropped many of the remaining extraneous elements from the 3rd draft in favor of continuing the simplifying and streamlining process that the 3rd draft had begun.

 

Also, for what it's worth, there are annotated screenplays that seek to give credit to Huyck and Katz for what their specific dialogue contributions. Starwarz.com, which is probably the best place to find the original scripts, has a version which credits them with the dialogue marked in asterisks.

 

 

 

Huyck has said in several interviews in the last decade or so that they did a complete rewrite.

Which interview was that?

 

Yes-- I know all about starwarz-- those are the drafts I mean. And they are giving the official explanation in their write up, that Lucas rejected most of Huyck and Katz's ideas after they consulted.

 

The Annotated Screenplays book (published by Lucasfilm) has the first "official" version I spoke of:

 

Says Uncle George: "Dialogue has never been my strong point, and so I talked to Willard and Gloria and asked them to do a quick dialogue polish. I gave them the fourth draft of the script, and they just improved the dialogue where they felt they could make a contribution. Then I took their changes, and sometimes I rewrote some of their lines. Some of their dialogue of course changed again when we started shooting. Some of it survived; some of it didn’t. They did about thirty percent of the dialogue."

 

Which points to them doing just a dialog pass.

 

I appreciate your pathological need to refute every little thing I say, so you'll be thrilled to know that now that I go looking for it I can't find the piece on Huyck where he said that. It may have actually been a Gary Kurtz interview, which admittedly may be shaded by the fact that Kurtz and Lucas are in hate with each other.

 

At the end of the day though-- like Pong says-- he had help. There is a crazy jump in quality in the drafts that is more than just structural. It actually has soul in that fourth draft. When Lucas himself says he hates to write, and is documented having anxiety attacks trying to write the original Star Wars my basic point remains-- if Lucas presents his story, concepts, and ideas to a skilled writer, the end result is always multiple times over better than what he does on his own.

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The issue with Sifo-Dyas was that it was a thread they picked up, gave a very minute explanation and then dropped entirely. One line about him in ROTS would have solved it. Just, again, a simple acknowledgment that there was a mystery that they hadn't figured out would have been enough. It was a thread that was needless. It would've actually had way more of an impact to use Qui-Gon's name.

 

I really have. Whenever I've talked to anyone who has recently seen the movies who isn't a big fan. Fans tend to overlook things because we know the story. We all knew the story pretty well even before the prequels came out, so we knew where it was going. People who don't need to have their hands held a little more, but Lucas wasn't interested in that. It's not a big deal, really, but it probably would've been better had it been Qui-Gon and the clones were ordered after he died. Then there's a connection to TPM and no mystery about whether or not he had actually done it.

 

I like your idea of making the connection to TPM. Then there's Driver's point that Qui Gon's role should have been Obi Wan. That would've worked out much better overall. TPM should've had Obi Wan and another Jedi going to settle the Naboo dispute. Not on a master-padawan level, just two Jedi who are already fully trained and have been sent on this mission. Obi Wan should've been the one spewing all those lines about the living Force (thus setting him up as the one who learns how to live on as a Force ghost in the OT) and been the renegade Jedi defying the council. The other Jedi should've been Sifo Dyas. The movie could've played out the same and Sifo Dyas would've been the one killed by Maul in the end.

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