Star Wars Episodes 1, 2, & 3

[Ironwood]

But that gets right back to the shifting genres that were discussed some posts ago :

The Original Star Wars was pretty much a packaged Swords and Sorcery thing.  It was a fantasy.  Less to do with Sci Fi than you might otherwise have thought.  Having a family 'strong in the force' was simply a way of saying 'Voldemort comes from a long line of Wizards'.  It means less than nothing and is entirely mystical.

Having 'My Father has a huge, long and throbbing biology, which makes him strong in the force' just opens it up to Triforcer saying 'hey, wait, why aren't the Southern States harvesting Force using a team of deep south gungans who can sing 'I get No Kick from Champagne' ?

It matters.

[Cyrrex]

I'm pretty close to the top of that list, more than likely.  I won't defend any of it too hard though.  I could care less about George Lucas' canon, because quite frankly...I think I know SW canon better than he does.  Millions of people probably do at this point, including many people on this very board.  It helps that I am a master at suspending disbelief (you have to be with this stuff) and can fill in all the logical gaps in my head.  The best parts of Star Wars, for me, have little to do with whatever George did.

Are we talking about the EU? Because I like my Zahn and my KOTOR as much as any good nerd, but let's not act like there isn't plenty of utterly preposterous shit in there, even if you discount kiddie-book insanity like Triclops and little Kenny Palpatine.

I guess I am talking ALSO about the EU.  Everything, really.  Of course much of it is utterly preposterous....it's all preposterous, some bits moreso than others.  I suppose I am just good at ignoring the worst parts.  For example, arguing that Midichlorians is a retarded concept is valid.  It was a seriously big mistake, but I look past it without giving it a second thought.

[HaemishM]

I agree with Ab. As far as the plot went he could have just said "woah, I sense massive force in this little kid" and "woah, I get a strange feeling that he is important when about him, maybe it's to do with that hokey prophecy yanno?", which makes it pretty  .

The biggest problem with the prequel series is that the 1st movie (which was the best of the 3) did not add anything to the narrative that couldn't have been taken care of better in the first fifteen minutes of the second one. Virgin birth? Midichlorians? Not only were they retarded concepts as presented, they weren't necessary. But that entire lost narrative time in the first movie could have been used to add more clone wars stuff, and more time to the whole transformation of Anakin from an innocent who wants to do good to ultimate bad guy. Not having that breathing room to show the transformation is what really sunk the 3rd movie, because Anakin's switch flip from earnest to asshole felt so forced and rushed.

It should have been Qui-Gon chooses a new apprentice who is very strong with the Force (no midis, no virgin birth, no useless mommy character) despite already having a padawan in Obi-Won. There, BAM, we're done with the setup. He could fall in love with Amidala while being assigned to protect her. First movie's idiotic kid saves planet shit could have been completely removed, and now we have 3 whole movies to set up and show the Clone Wars and the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker.

But then I'm just spewing nerdrage.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Anakin never should have been a kid in the first movie. Lucas just wanted a youngster for the amg cute/innocent vibe but I think it hurt more than it helped.  First of all the whole too young to train thing that yoda spouted....wtf? do jedi need to be taken out of the womb?  If anakin had just started around 15-16 and been in his angsty teen years to begin with the whole transition would have made a LOT more sense.  It would have also given the second two movies more time to work on explaining things. 

[Cyrrex]

Anakin never should have been a kid in the first movie. Lucas just wanted a youngster for the amg cute/innocent vibe but I think it hurt more than it helped.  First of all the whole too young to train thing that yoda spouted....wtf? do jedi need to be taken out of the womb?  If anakin had just started around 15-16 and been in his angsty teen years to begin with the whole transition would have made a LOT more sense.  It would have also given the second two movies more time to work on explaining things. 

Well, they are taken as toddlers at the latest, so 10 year-old Anakin (or whatever) was a pretty unusual case.  Too much time to develop attachment, and whatnot.  And that's where I stop, before I begin spouting too much nerditude.

[NowhereMan]

Lucas needs to go back and edit the soundtrack for the Trench run scen in IV to have Vader going, "His Midichlorian levels are OVER 9000!!"

[Sir T]

The Empire Strikes Back made Star wars legend. Everyone went "WOW" with the first star wars, but Empire introduced a lot of Zen Mystical stuff that resonated with the audience and made the thing a lot deeper. It was fast passed, it was dark, and the good guys got their ass kicked hard. If you yanked out Empire then the regard for the films would be incomprehensible, but it includes the parts that made it a ledgend. It was also the one that Lucas had the least to do with, which makes me think the guy was a fat idiot that got lucky. Also, the third one proved that he should not be let near a script.

The interesting thing about the more recent films is he had total control. Christopher Lee in his autobiography states that he directed it tightly and that "he knew what he wanted" (i.e. the wooden acting was the way he wanted everyone to act) and he talked about a scene where he left his face totally blank as there was a lot of wind blowing in his face and he could not do any expressions, and Ron Howard, who was on set, started raving that he had everything in his expression. The implication was he didn't think much of the film, to put it mildly.

I thought the recent 3 films were piles of dung. And apparently the clown that played Anakin was in a film previously where he put in a good performance, but he acted the way he did in the film because Lucas wanted him to act like that. Think about that for a while.

[UnSub]

If you look at some of the other films the actors on the prequels were in, they can be quite good. But they weren't in Star Wars. I always took that Lucas was a bad director of people from the way he ended up making Ewan MacGregor look bored rather than any other emotion.

[Margalis]

Tha acting in the movies was terrible across the board so pinning it on the actors seems unfair. Liam Neeson was ok I guess, but that's literally it in 3 movies. For fuck's sake they even turned Yoda into a bad actor.

The three movies were supposed to be about Anakin's turn to the dark side but as Haemish points out that felt rushed, which is a pretty amazing feat. (3 movies!) If you have 6 hours and the best you can do to communicate the turn is a bad dream montage you've failed in spectacular fashion.

In the end the reason Anakin turned evil is finally revealed as "just because." I wonder if the script reads something like "flash forward 2 more weeks, now he's all evil and shit for some reason TBD later."

[NowhereMan]

Episode 1 was entirely about selling toys and getting kids excited over the new franchise. That's it, if you think it was about advancing the story of Darth Vader or even the downfall of the Old Republic you'd be wrong because all that fucking happens in the whole two hours as far as that goes is the introduction of characters.

[Tebonas]

I'm still bitter that the "more civilized age" was about 30 years before Luke met Obi Wan.

Thats what destroyed the magic of 4-6 for me. Even more than the Midichlorians. Those mystical Jedi knights and that famed Force that might or might not exist? 18 years ago they were commonplace. Now nobody knows about them anymore? Bullshit.

[Quinton]

Indeed.  I was expecting that the prequels would go a bit further back -- instead they're close enough that we get younger versions of some of the players from 4-6 and R2 and C3PO.  It just feels kinda lazy to me.

[Ironwood]

Which was my problem with it.  Shoehorning old chars in there.  Especially the two fucking droids.

You know, the ones Obi Wan didn't know in the future films. 

 

[Quinton]

Perhaps Lucas will assemble an Extra-Special-Mega-Edition of the original trilogy, to adjust them further to fit with the sequels.  Greedo shooting first and random CGI critters inserted into the original films piss you off?  You ain't seen nothing yet!

I'm still angry he couldn't just do a nice DVD transfer without fucking with the originals.  grr.

[Khaldun]

The thing that annoys me here is that I feel like I could take the isolated interesting elements of the prequels and make them a great story.

1. Arrogant powerful youngster who thinks he knows best, easily seduced into evil, too proud to admit that he's on the wrong side once he ends up there. Fine. Can be done well in 2 movies.
2. Complacent, overcomplicated, overbureaucratic democracy unready to defend itself against a Napoleonic plotter; the few people aware of the danger can't get everyone else to pay attention. Fine. Could be interesting even as pulp fiction: plots within plots, the decent people don't know who to trust, etc.
3. Zen buddhist monks who are too fucking detached and too arrogant about their own nobility, too used to winning, unaware of how isolated and ethereal they've become, how dogmatic their beliefs about love and life are. Think of the subplot in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, with Yun-Fat Chow and Michelle Yeoh: two Jedi-like people who are getting old and realizing that their dogmatic views about their spiritual obligations have kept them from finding the love they were meant to love. Do some of that shit, it's a classic. Think Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory--the drunken priest who realizes that being a holy person is not the opposite of being a fallen person, but that doing good only matters when you're alive like everyone else is alive, not off in some isolated monastery. This could have been fucking perfect, and added a whole new subtext to the original trilogy: Obi-Wan gives the future over to Luke because it's time for a new kind of Jedi, because the Jedi were played out.

Just make Lucas the art director: he's not half-bad when it comes to visual styling. Keep him away from the script, the actors, everything else, and let someone else play out those themes with a big heaping injection of pulpy action, and you've got some decent shit brewing.

There is an alternate universe somewhere where these didn't suck.

[Slyfeind]

Which was my problem with it.  Shoehorning old chars in there.  Especially the two fucking droids.

You know, the ones Obi Wan didn't know in the future films. 

 

This is weird. Even as a seven year old boy I could see past the incredibly obvious recognization between R2 and Obi-Wan. I was literally wondering for decades why he lied about not knowing R2, all because of the OMG SKYWALKER THEME BLARING when Obi-Wan said hello to R2.

[Venkman]

And we've come full circle. Anyone who thinks this is nerdraging about not properly respecting EU material is missing the point. They could shit all over that as long as they told a good story and made a good movie. A better story permits retconning. Yea, there'd still be pissed people, but it's a much smaller group which cares about the nuance even convention-goers would miss.

But we didn't get that here. I love SW. I'm on that Top 10 list of giving money to the franchise. I also have a very high tolerance for things that would piss off other people (I loved Transformers and enjoyed the sequel). But when you have a franchise this old, you look for respect for the prior material, which I can easily narrow to just the first three movies (regardless of their original, redub1 or redub2 state). I found that respect lacking.

And that is why I was disappointed.

[Ratman_tf]

Well, they are taken as toddlers at the latest, so 10 year-old Anakin (or whatever) was a pretty unusual case.  Too much time to develop attachment, and whatnot.  And that's where I stop, before I begin spouting too much nerditude.

This part bugged me a lot. It's the literalism of the prequels that galls my nerdbone. I felt like Yoda in Empire was just reluctant and a bit stubborn to train Luke. The "Too old" was a lame excuse and he knew it. He was caving in finally. Then Lucas years later reveals that it's literal truth, and Jedi start their training as fetuses, which sucks for the mother. Lightsaber training in the womb gives some fierce gas.

[Abagadro]

Then Lucas years later reveals that it's literal truth, and Jedi start their training as fetuses, which sucks for the mother. Lightsaber training in the womb gives some fierce gas.

I wish I could quit you.

[HaemishM]

If there was ever any doubt that George Lucas hates every fucking one of you little bastards, I give you Dancing with the Star Wars 2008.

I cannot look away.

[Cyrrex]

lol omg...that is seriously messed up. 

[Khaldun]

I need to go find a carwreck where someone is bleeding out their life on a lonely highway so I can watch that for a couple of minutes, to have a wholesome experience by comparison with looking at that.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Don't we ban grief linkers?

 

[NowhereMan]

Better than the prequels

Also, the future of the franchise!

[Khaldun]

"Utter Trash: 4th Best in Series!"
 

[DraconianOne]

I cannot look away.

Nor could I. Especially when it turns out there's Dancing with the Star Wars Stars 2009 doing it 90s style.

Ossum. Onna stick.

[Sir T]

As far as I am concerned This is the only Star wars prequel worth anything (Was made before the official prequels so quit with the nerdrage)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa7a_RelkS8

 

[HaemishM]

Especially when it turns out there's Dancing with the Star Wars Stars 2009 doing it 90s style.

Do you ever think that those dancers have to medicate themselves heavily to be able to go home and sleep at night with that horror weighing on their minds every day? At least most of the dancers are wearing masks so the shame on their faces is hidden. But the MC's? They are just marking time until the day they swallow the barrel.

[Merusk]

Why.. .why do you all link these horrible horrible things in attempts to hurt our fragile minds.  The horror.  The horror.

[WindupAtheist]

Wha... I don't... who goes to that? What do they do when they're not watching failed actors humiliate themselves? What the fuck? Anymore I think we should nerve gas pretty much everyone who's worn a costume outside of Halloween.

[NowhereMan]

I'm guessing the answer to those questions and more is 'kids' and 'Disneyworld'(/Universal Pictures, whaterver it is). Kids love horrible, horrible things for the most part plus combining star wars and dancing is probably one of the few things that you can get young boys and young girls to want to watch.

[Trippy]

Don't we ban grief linkers?

 

He warned us, though.

[Ratman_tf]

Wha... I don't... who goes to that? What do they do when they're not watching failed actors humiliate themselves? What the fuck? Anymore I think we should nerve gas pretty much everyone who's worn a costume outside of Halloween.

I'm not sure If I'd want to lose the hawt cosplayers in the nerdocaust. 

[Merusk]

I had the same thought, but then realized they're such a very small subset of the over-all total I was ok with it.

[Slyfeind]

Yaay yaay! ^_^ Go Chewie, go Chewie! Those videos make me happy! How can anyone doubt SWG's emphasis on entertainers? EVERYBODY in Star Wars can rock out!