Rant 316 11/11/12 Subject: Star wars 7: The Empires shameless cash-in

Rant number 316

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, there was a saga. To start with, that saga was made up of 3 films - and things were pretty sweet. There was lightsabers, pyow pyows a plenty, a dude with a really deep voice and a funky black helmet and a small green man with a speaking disorder.

People loved it - I loved it. There was cool space fights, and toys and stuff. It was awesome.

Then, years later - it was decided that they should make some more movies from within the saga. Due to some slightly quirky marketing in the first place - they had started with the story of film number 4 - which meant they needed to make the first 3 stories.

And make them they did - although in truth they were far from great. They had droids that appeared to be made out of marzipan and fell apart at the first sign of trouble. They had an irritating Rastafarian alien - who is universally hated. They had a superfluous amount of CGI scenes - with little rhyme nor reason and they had some bad acting, bad dialogue and general badness...

None the less, they made them - they surely did.

And after that, they sat back and looked at the 6 films they had made (some great, some crap) and they felt so satisfied that they released about a hundred iterations - with lots of remastering, special features and more CGI than George Lucas than shake a suitably large tree at.

But then - someone thought: I bet we can milk some more money out of this thing -

and they did. Not withstanding the Star Wars Christmas Special (and yes, that really exists,) and the Ewoks spin-off they needed a modern day spin off to milk some more money from the franchise.

So recently - they came up with 'The Clone Wars' film and subsequent TV series (which I haven't watched - so I can't tell you if its good or bad or indifferent. It's probably a bit crap though.)

You'd think that this would do as far as money milking goes.

But its not over it seems. Not by a long shot.

Disney you see - have handed over the cash for the whole franchise and are going to be carrying on with number 7 (and doubtless 8 & 9) and any number of cash ins.

Why can't they leave something great alone. Have they no fucking original ideas at all?

Its most irritating. I just hope that Disney know what they're getting themselves into!

Rant over.

Rant 224 11/8/12 Subject: Dragging it out

Rant number 224

JRR Tolkien was a pretty groovy guy. He was super clever, super imaginative and created his own world 'Middle' Earth, full of his own mythology.

He wrote a few books in total, but of course famously he wrote The Lord of the Rings & the Hobbit.

Which is kind of what the topic is about today.

Great stories that are well known and well loved are lucrative ground for the Hollywood types. Even the ones from New Zealand.

I am of course referring to Peter Jackson. Slightly short, heavily bearded, he created a very respectable film adaptation of the Lord of the Rings, changing the way that films are released for ever.

In the past you see, films were released as one 'picture'. Rarely of course did they stretch more than around 3 hours, but anything more than that became a sequel. The Godfather for example, is a long film - that had two sequels. It was the status quo then, but it's not the same now.

You see, the Lord of the Rings was released as one story - stretched across 3, 3 hour plus films. Now I know thats how the books are also presented however, as a film goes - its a bit cheeky.

You see, watching even one film these days is expensive. Watching 3 of them in place of one, makes things rather pricy indeed!

The same can be said of the Harry Potter films (although personally, I couldn't care less.) The latter couple were split into 2, doubling revenue without doubling the costs of making the movie.

Good business, but not really fair!

So now, getting back to my previous statement, the crux of things. They've announced that the upcoming move of the Hobbit will be dragged across not just two, but three films. Now, I love the book- but it's not exactly that long a story really. It probably really comes in at around half the length of one of the 6 books that makes up The Lord of the Rings. Is there any need to drag it out as long as all that?

I don't mind if they are doing it to keep the integrity of the story in tact of course, but if it means Peter Jackson is going to be meddling again. I don't fancy paying for 3 movies worth!

Do it properly, don't just make it long!

Rant over.