This is true to an extent. But there was mention somewhere, I can't remember I read it or if I saw it on a documentary, but the companies that would help supply stuff for movie companies to make props, would be like 'oh Star Wars?! Charge them an arm and a leg!'. So Lucas DID use that name so they wouldn't be charged an arm and a leg, but it was so they wouldn't be ripped off and then they could make the most out of their money towards the film.

I would love to see the source of this theory. It seems absolutely ridiculous that any company working with Lucasfilm in the two or three years before JEDI's release would believe that it was anything other than a STAR WARS movie, especially after RAIDERS had already been released in '81, and that the BLUE HARVEST logo seen on crew shirts and stationery clearly uses the STAR WARS font.

Seems like kind of a half-assed secrecy front anyway. If BLUE HARVEST had been carried out in the exact same manner with the internet up and running as we know it today, people would have seen right through it immediately.

An aside: Warners seemed really big on secret code titles in the years after BLUE HARVEST. THE COLOR PURPLE was shot as MOON SONG, BATMAN RETURNS was shot as DICTEL, BATMAN FOREVER was shot as BLINKO, MATRIX RELOADED was BURLY MAN, etc. Anyone know of any others?

Definitively? No. But of course, we couldn't establish it definitively either way under any circumstances. Anyone participating in a discussion comparing the relative popularities of the Ewoks and Jar Jar and trying to find the similarities and differences between the two is just theorizing based on the available information. There is no correct answer that could ever be reached. Any point in this conversation could be followed with the caveat that it doesn't establish anything definitively.

Given the average person's lack of any inclination to stay and read a film's credits, though, I feel comfortable hypothesizing, like anyone else in this thread, that the Ewoks' name-recognition can less likely be attributed to a few words of text buried in the film's exceedingly long end credits than to the commercials, toys, cartoons, cereals, magazine articles, interviews, fast food tie-ins, and Underoos that bore their name.

It was on the documentary on the fourth disc of last year's DVD release. The big honking documentary that I can't remember the name of. According to that doc, when they went to start filming ROTJ, when they went to rent equipment or locations or whatever, when people found out it was the next SW movie, their asking prices for things went through the roof. So George created "Blue Harvest" as the name of the movie to counteract that. I think they said also that it didn't help much with secrecy as far as the fans go, but can't remember for sure.

Bingo.

Oh, that documentary. I had a hard time getting through it. I usually love STAR WARS documentaries, like FROM STAR WARS TO JEDI: THE MAKING OF A SAGA, and all the older Making Ofs, but this one felt so slick and marketed and revisionist and made by committee, it kind of disgusted me...which sucked, because I loved all the new behind-the-scenes footage. I guess I just have a hard time believing anything coming from Lucasfilm these days. But fair enough.

I believe that when Gremlins was shooting, it was know as This Boy's Life...

Wrong, but close to right. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND was known as WATCH THE SKIES and E.T: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL was known as A BOY'S LIFE. The GREMLINS connection (other than being executive-produced by Spielberg) is that both of these alternate titles appear on the marquee of the town's movie theater in the early section of GREMLINS as an in-joke.

Yeah, but those are both cases of a film simply changing it's title after production. Nobody would have been any more excited to see "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" or "Gremlins" vs. their original titles because they weren't sequels and they were original stories. Off the top of my head, I can remember that "Dogma" was produced as "Bearclaw" and the "X-Files" movie was produced as "Blackwood".

I think Superman Returns' "code name" (if you can even call it that) right now is "Red Sun".

Is the new release of the Star Wars Trilogy still coming out?

Amazon had it up for order briefly, but then they took it down and have had it listed as not currently available for more than a week.

DVDEmpire still has it listed as coming on 12/6.

Sorry but that's not true at all. All you have to do is look at the title pages of the original scripts, dated before filming of both films began. I collect vintage scripts and neither one originally sported their alternate title. Some people might not remember this but there was a time when Steven Spielberg had the kind of rockstar following that would fanatically track the production of his films, so by publicly releasing the real title but shooting under the false one would provide at least some measure of security.

What you're talking about is what happened with RETURN OF THE JEDI (formerly "Revenge of the Jedi") or STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (formerly "The Vengence of Khan.")

Can't agree with that at all.

What can't you agree with? What is there about the geography of Geonosis that is so mind-boggling that it just HAD to be done with CGI? All the mountains, etc. could have been done with models, matte paintings and other practical effects (a large area was simply painted red on an early "X-Files" episode so that it would match another location's geography and Lucas's budget was much larger), and while it probably wouldn't have looked as good using practical effects in 1983 as it did using CGI in 2002 but it would have been better than saying "hey, let's just go to a forest and call it good". Just imagine "Jedi" with the DSII orbiting a Geonosis-like planet (which was just an off-hand example in the first place) that's inhabited by anything BUT Ewoks. Right there you'd solve a huge chunk of the problems in that film.

It's obvious that you don't know this, but matte paintings were used in the Geonosis sequences. The Geonosian arena is a very large miniature. But the actual clone attack on Geonosis would be a nightmare to try and pull off with miniatures. The only miniatures used in that entire sequence was the tall spire that Yoda's ship first passes by as it enters the battle.

Besides, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the sequence as it is now.

It was 1983. Lucas used what he could. The film looks great to me. Jedi is a very good, very enjoyable film in my opinion and a fitting end to the trilogy. Perhaps the weakest of the three, but still very good. If you didn't like Jedi, no amount of discussion or wishing is going to change that.

But there's no "clone attack" in "Return of the Jedi". I only suggested a Geonosis-like environment (or anything else) would have been better for "Return of the Jedi", I didn't suggest that all the events that occured there in "Attack of the Clones" should have occured in "Return of the Jedi", too. I'm saying that Lucas could have come up with several superior alternatives to a "Forest Moon", which resulted in Endor being the most uninspired locale in the entire saga. Thanks for proving my point, though. Lucas could have done something like Geonosis with 1983-era special effects, he just chose to be cheap and lazy and film in a forest in California.

Desert.

Jungle.

Industrial.

Ice.

Clouds.

Swamp.

What major Earth environment was left that would provide a natural setting for the ground battle at the end of JEDI? Creating a non-Earth environment for Endor with miniatures and matte paintings using 1983 technology would have been a disaster, especially for the amount of story that had to be told. If you think the Prequel's reliance on slapping actors in front of green screens resulted in unengaged performances and a lack of realism, imagine how bad it would have been back then. It would have been worse than Han and Lando in the Rebel Cruiser's docking bay. Besides, the forest setting provided the film with a spectacular obstacle course for the speeder bike chase.

Why are trees less original or more "lazy and cheap" than sand or snow?

Because sand and snow aren't lifeforms that immediately tell you that you're watching something occuring on Earth. In a saga where the actions take you from exotic planet to exotic planet, I'm not impressed when a huge part of the climactic resolution takes place among a bunch of boring trees. It's uninspired and, like I said, it's flat-out lazy. Dagobah has an alien quality to it and Naboo has interesting architecture (not to mention the whole underwater city) but there's nothing on Endor that makes it look remotely alien. It's the worst planet in the series by far.

All the locales it the OT are places that are resonant with Earth locations, juts taken up a notch. Snow, City, Desert, Jungle/Swamp. The choice of forest is natural. Plus it was Lucas's idea that the Wookies (which were later turned in Ewoks) lived on a forest planet. Plus the location add some tension to the high speed bike chase with natural obstacles.

As Terrell said, like the prequels, there are RotJ "haters" that noone will ever be able to convert. I love RotJ, it brings me back to 6th grade each time I see it. Perfect film? No, but it is a fun picture.

Massive redwood trees might be boring to you but again, as I've already pointed out before, they're perfectly exotic to those living in the inner city, or out in the desert, etc. If anything, Naboo is a "lazy" planet because much of that architecture is actually existing Italian and Spanish locations, and what was created on soundstages is merely a stylistic continuation of that very Earthbound architecture. And Kamino is even more "lazy" because it's just a stormy ocean planet.

At least Endor was like nothing seen in the STAR WARS movies before. Geonosis is simply too similar to Tattooine to really stand-out on its own. And Kashyyyk is basically Endor with a beach. The only thing that's really "lazy" here is your argument.

"Those living in the inner city" have surely seen redwood trees in movies and on television. It's not as if a tree is something that's ever going to be foreign or alien to them. As for the architecture of Naboo, they used existing locations but they were heavily augmented with special effects, something that wasn't done with "Endor".

And they have surely seen desert and snow, at the very least on TV. Why are these locales "alien" and a forest is not?

Why people try to inject real world logic into these films, they just come bad. Sit back, enjoy the pretty trees and sand and snow and don't think this is Yuma or Washington and relax.

I thought this thread was about the new dvd set coming out?

:)

I don't think I proved your point, and no, there's no way Lucas could replicate a Geonosian type environment in 1983.

You've got to be joking? They absolutely do tell you that you're watching something on earth. There's absolutely nothing more inherently alien in snow and sand, than there is in a redwood forest.