josh wrote:Blackadder23 wrote:
In any event, a director is supposed to catch these things and get everyone on the same page. But those movies didn't have a director; they had George Lucas.
I recall hearing of an interview with Lucas where he stated he never corrected actor pronunciations. He claimed it was a big galaxy, and dialects differed everywhere. He let actors say whatever they wanted. I know all the 90s videogames had varied pronunciations. Coruscant was pronounced
Koruskant. As long as you said something remotely close to how it was written, Lucas didn't care.
I think 3PO should've "translated" every "mispronunciation" like a passive-aggressive pronunciation nazi.
That sounds a lot like the argument Lucas made that the prequels were nonsensical garbage (I'm paraphrasing a bit) because they were written for ten year olds. Because of course ten year olds care a lot about poorly-defined trade disputes and five dull scenes in a row of people sitting around in rooms talking.
I know plenty of people with different dialects, including some who have English as a second language, and they still manage to pronounce
the names of friends and acquaintances approximately the same. Thus I do not buy that Leia and Lando would pronounce Han Solo's first name very differently, or that Padme's handmaiden/doppelganger* and husband would pronounce her name very differently (which they do - I made sure I hadn't eaten recently and forced myself to check). These are close companions who would have learned their friend's preferred pronunciation (whatever it is). So I'm not buying this post facto rationalization at all.
Lucas is a lazy, sloppy director who nevertheless managed to direct two great films:
American Graffiti and the original (i.e., real)
Star Wars. He also was involved with a few other films (such as
Raiders of the Lost Ark) which turned out great despite having his slimy paws on them in some capacity. Other films that feature his involvement have ranged from poor (
Howard the Duck) to risible (
Crystal Skull) to Geneva Convention violation (the prequels). This is pretty much the track record I would expect from a producer with no sense of proportion, a director too lazy and sloppy to get his actors on the same page, and a writer who makes Bulwer-Lytton look like Faulkner-Hemingway.
(I really like your C3PO idea, and certainly would have accepted it as a substitute for Lucas actually getting off his ass and doing his job as director. But of course including it would have required Lucas to have a sense of humor and a sense of proportion, for which... see above.)
* - An idiotic plot point with no real rationale or purpose in the story**. Vintage Lucas, in other words.
** - I expect someone is going to say, "It was in case the Federation of Hideously Embarrassing Asian Stereotypes*** stopped the ship." I'm very sure the FOHEAS would have said, "You're dressed like the Queen, so you're under arrest. Everyone else is free to go." Then again, Padme was stupid enough to marry Anakin, so maybe she
would have been stupid enough to believe that. Objection withdrawn.
*** - I suppose Lucas would recycle the "different dialects" argument here as well. Fair enough. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the greedy aliens who relied on robotics sounded Asian, the greedy alien with the large nose sounded Semitic, and the idiot tripping over his own feet had what sounded like a third grader's idea of a Jamaican accent (nor was this last one limited to Jar-Jar - the Gun-Gun**** Chief, or whatever the hell he was, had a somewhat more dignified version of a third grader's idea of a Jamaican accent).
**** - I'm aware that it's spelled "Gungan" (because that's so much
less stupid). At the time that
Phantom Menace was originally perpetrated, Lucas stated that the name of this obnoxious species was inspired by his two year old***** child saying "Gun-Gun" (apropos of exactly what, I'm not sure). I decided to adopt this spelling to honor the clearly more talented idea person in the family.
***** - Had the child been ten, he or she would have qualified to serve as a focus group for the films. Actually, I think that happened anyway.
