I think my earliest 'Star Wars' memory that I have was from 'Return of the Jedi.' I distinctly remember the scene with the rancor under Jabba's Palace.
I feel like, as an industry, we've gotten too dependent on source material originated in other mediums.
When you have a movie that has big stars in it... like, Will Smith does a great job in 'I Am Legend,' and it's a magnetic performance, but he's always Will Smith. That's not his fault. That's not anyone's fault. He's the center of it, and he's a movie star. But when you see something like 'Jurassic Park,' Sam Neill is Alan Grant.
When I saw 'Jurassic Park' as a kid, that was the first time I thought about making movies for a living.
For screenwriting, when you're writing, you're talking to hundreds - hundreds of people who might be interpreting what you're saying. When you're writing a comic book, you're really only talking to the artist.
I grew up in the '80s, and you had these original, big-budget sci-fi adventure things all the time, not based on any source material - you'd have 'Gremlins,' 'Back to the Future,' 'E.T.' 'Ghostbusters,' the list goes on and on. I would love it so much if 'Pacific Rim' was but the first in a new wave of that sort of thing.
