ep2 doesn't just look bad, it looks really bad

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sivelio
I hate to say it, but based on the trailer I just saw with LOOTR, ep2 looks like disaster. Everyone in the theater received the trailer with shocked silence and several murmers of "My god that looks bad" and "What were they thinking casting that jailbait looking kid as Anakin". This reaction is in complete contrast to the ep1 reception--cheers and hollers-- and even Return of the Jedi (The first movie I ever saw at 4 years old). Since I'm a huge fan of the series it was pretty painful to watch the laughably stilted acting of Hayden Christenson ("It's all Obi Wan's fault!!" was received by jeers and laughter from the entire theater) and the over-earnest operatic singing that accompanyed the trailer
(by the way, is there a single recent fantasy movie that can resist using Wagner-style choral singing to spoonfeed the "epic" theme
of the movie to the audience? Lucas never relied on such gimmicks in eps 1-3--the epic theme spoke for itself.) Even if it meant waiting another year for the movie I'd be in favor of recasting Anakin--but of course that's impossible now. In any case, a viewing of that toy commercial, ep1, and this recent trailer leads one to this sad conclusion: the director of classics like "American Graffiti" and "Star Wars" is dead.

yerssot
Then you are one of the first that doesn't had comment on EpI!!!
A lot of discussions about Jake Lloyd, the story, etc.

And that epic music thing... Duel of the Fates is created, and from what I've heared it will slowly transform into another music piece that is used in the original trilogy.

Hey, Hayden is unknown here, and so is the movie, give him and the movie a fair shot!

And don't think that EpI is also a succes for selling toys! There are a lot of toys that are from before the movie!

Ushgarak
Hmm. Your point about choral soundtracks isn't completely off the ball, but it doesn't matter if something has been done before, onlt if it is done WELL, as A New Hope well demonstrated- totally unoriginal story, brilliant film.

Duel of the Fates is a stunning piece of music and it works perfectly.

And you may say the audience you were with found it crap; well, the audience I was with loved it. Some love, some hate... it's thew way with ALL films.

We will wait and see, anyway.

Ratcat
I love it when you get a troll like this. Let's judge a film on 60 seconds of jumpled footage, why not?

Sure, you're entitled to you opinion, but I have seen far too many posts like this, on many different boards, where people join, make some big, inflamatory statement about how crappy Episode-II will be and then disappear, never to be seen again.

Maybe you will post again, whatever.

For my money I will base my opinion on what I see on screen come May 16th. Anything prior to that date would just be rumour and speculation... smile

master harmax
Relax guys - let's not lose it over nothing - it's gonna be a pretty kick-ass StarWars movie when it releases on the 16th of May ...
like Ushgarak said you can't please everyone anyway. All said and done, Lucas hasn't seriously let us down yet - and that includes TPM.
So wait till 16th May and enjoy -
(except I'll have to wait for almost 2 months more because AOTC releases in India only on July 5th) sad

mah
hayden christensen showed good acting in the trailer.
+everything else looked good.

Ratcat
I mistakenly deleted you post when attempting to delete a dumplicate post from master harmax. I have managed to retrieve the contents and reproduced them below.

Let me assure you that this had NOTHING to do with the content of the post and EVERYTHING to do with my stupidity. embarrasment

mah
if the trailers are made to make expectations low, then I really look forward to AOTC.

Ratcat
And no a response...
I wouldn't agree. A trailer is there to tantilise and tease. It could be argued that it failed in this, but I think the general consensus is that it achieved this. Certainly I have seen both cinema trailers in theaters and the reaction described above is the complete opposite of the onbe I witnessed.

This is merely a matter of experience and has nothing to do with differing opinions. Just look at the evidence.
A clearly bashing post - Calls to recast Anakin, on what basis, 15 seconds of dialogue. Every person coming off of that set from production to actors alike has said how good Hayden is and this guy wants a recast on the basis of 15 seconds...
One post only - Never a good sign. If this person wanted to discuss Star Wars then they would do so, not make one post that appears designed to start a bun fight and then leave. Maybe they will come back, but I very much doubt it.
An empty profile - Get in quick then leave.
OTT quotes - Do they reallly sound like the quotes of a regular audience? Well not to me.

As far as the reception to Episode-I against Episode-II, he appears to be comparing the opening night of TPM where a theater full of costumed fans went nots to a trailer viewed by the general public, who probably weren't even expecting to see it.

sand person no. 10
i remember when the austin powers 2 trailer came out at the same time as the ep1 trailer, it used similar music and some bloke saying "thirty years ago a dynasty was started and now its back" sumut like that. I used to get really excited thinking it was ep1 trailer, this continued to happen for about 2 months. what a fool. confused

yerssot
Darth Yogi, my standards are not high at all, I gave my opinion on something that I think that is rediculous!
I agree witih EVERYTHING ratcat said! A TEASER is to TEASE the public!

The only thing I don't like about AOTC for NOW, is the cgi Yoda, his sabre color and some story parts, but I'm not making a thread about it, demanding they'll fire the guy who made the cgi Yoda!
I have a lot of respect for their work

jedi212guy
The new Austn Powers trailer really sucks IMHO.

darthyogi

mah
I was not dissapointed but I'll say what I think anyways.

The trailers has been pretty slow-moving, a low pace to the whole thing. Some might say that this makes it less exciting, that it doesn't create a 'wow!'. IMO though, this was perfect. This makes for an interesting story, with anakin and padmes realationship building and anakins temper growing. meanwhile it also has lightsabre-fights and everything, but focuses more on the 'forbidden love'. the trailers are quite dark, which I like and the pictures realeased and the whole thing seems to have a good star-wars 'feeling' to it.

I'm as excited as I want to be, can't wait for May to show up.

Ushgarak
Did you not like my reply either, DY?

Ratcat
Maybe... Personally I was far more impressed with the AOTC trailers than I was with either of the trailers for TPM.

If you go back and look at them now they are rather bland, people were giving them a lot more credit in 98/99 because they were the first new Star Wars in 15 years. Still, it is hard to farely assess them anyway as we have already seen the film.

I stand by my assessment of the original purpose of the poster though.

Incident;y, if I had wanted to simply stifle his opinion I would have locked, or worse deleted the thread. smile

Ratcat
This I don't understand. How can you say they were low pace?
Jango/Obi-Wan Fight
Obi through the window
Coruscant Chase
Asteroid Chase
Sea Whales leaping from the ocean
These were high speed, excitng things. Sure there were some slow bits, but the main teaser (Forbidden Love) had 20% more clips in it than the TM teaser did. I would say the highs and lows match were well spaced, IMHO...

mah
true, but the focus has been on this being a dull romantic drama, and not that action-ish.

Ratcat
I suppose so, but the more we learn, the more I think that the 'Romantic tone' will be an undertone, not a major overtone.

sivelio
Alright, first of all I didn't make inflammatory statements and "disappear"--I just don't go online that much. The theater reaction I reported accords with other people's and if this is indeed some kind of low-ball strategy of Lucas' not to raise expectations then, well, enough said: he knows he's got a film that will disappoint fans and, short of having just a black screen
with Vader breathing, there's no way to hide it. Of course, the visuals, effects, etc. were beautiful as usual--I never disputed that. (The single cheer from the audience I was with in NYC came when Boba Fett was shown). When I deride this movie, I'm speaking as a fan who wants it to be as great as eps4-6 and not
as some "troll" just trying to start an argument. It seems, though, that Lucas the creator has been replaced by Lucas the businessman (you can't tell me that a character like Jar Jar isn't
totally market-driven --toys, happy meals, etc.). We shouldn't
censor criticism with namecalling since it's still possible to save
ep3 (and even ep2--still in post-production). Obviously, I'm counting the days until it comes out like everyone, but I think that has less to do with the quality of the movie then with the fact that "Star Wars" has become a kind of contemporary mythology
which even the greatest sequel couldn't possibly live up to (imagine the reaction to a sequel to "Hamlet"wink.

Ushgarak
Hamlet is hardly a mythology. True mythologies are added to all the time- like King Arthur and so on.

Hmm, ANOTHER person who thinks that GL is just market dreiven. This is arrant nonsense; how do you explain all the things he has done that has HARMED his profit figures in favour of storyline?

In any case, I think your conclusions are hasty.

sivelio
Well, I'm not going to debate the definition of "mythology"--this isn't a semiotics website--but "Lucas takes chances with storylines"?!! Lucas always claims that these are stories that've been told a thousand times for thousands of years and that he got this idea from Joseph Campbell and Jung so, no, he definately doesn't take chances with storylines but that's sort of the point.
Actually, the one surprisong thing he's doing with ep2 is casting an unknown like Christenson over jailbait Tiger Beat pinups like Ryan Phillipe and Leonardo DiCAprio who tried out for the role, so I'll give him that. Then he invites NSYNC into the movie. But, because of the fan's reaction and the threat of mass projectile vomitting in the theater he--thank god--drops the idea. But the fact that he wanted them in there in the first place is pretty scary--if that decision wasn't market driven then I'm the pope.

Ushgarak
Sigh... you're not making yourself look any better, you know.

There is noe vidence that GL invited NSYNC into the movie- it appears to have been Rick McCallum's doing. And they are NOT out the movie yet, that was a false story. And if theyt DO go out, it will be NOTHING to do with the fans! If GL follwed what the fans said like that, Jar-Jar would be dead as a doornail and the film would be wall-to-wall sith and Boba Fett (who, incidentally, was not the man in the trailer).

And who said anything about him taking chances with storylines? What I said was that George Lucas takes decisions that harm potential profit. GL simply is NOT acting like a man ddriven solely by profit motive. You can think he has become soft, skewed or rubbish in the years between trilogies, but there is simply NO backing that I can see that says he is just in it for the money.

IF he was in it for the money, he would have made the tv series and continuous film franchise that all the execs were after him to make. He'd give his movies cool names and stop using characters that people find irritating- like an 8 year old Anakin, or Jar-Jar.

I could go on for ages- but in short, if he was only doing it for the moeny, he would ONLY make that which people wanted to see!

But he doesn't. Time and time again he has proven that GL has an obsession with HIS storyline, and knackers to what everyone else thinks- for good or ill it is HIS and no-one is going to mess with it.

Now, it is possible that this meas there will be a crap story. I have no problem with you raising that probability, as many have before.

But I honestly urge you to think again on the market-driven thing. Just because a man is rich does not mean he is money obsessed. Please, take a closer look; hate the man if you have to but saying that he places the money above the story is a terrible thing to say about a creative person like him.

yerssot
Indeed!
We only have 6 movies, no series, no constant adds (at least here) etc.

Perhaps you were in a theater full of trekkies, I don't care, I know one thing: It's an adventure/sf/action/romantic/... movie, and personnally, I think it's going to end second place in my fav sw list (after ESB)

sivelio
hmm, I hadn't realized that NSYNC is still in the movie. I think it would be great if, when the band is shown, the camera moves into slow motion closeups of their faces for a full minute and then maybe a musical number: "the force is in me...the force is in you..ooobaby" --that should definately attract the preteen girl set that usually stays away from SW movies. Sheer genius on GL's part....
Seriously, I love GL.

bigsef2
ick yerss!!!! a theater full of trekkies?!?! Dont even say something like that!!!!

Ushgarak
We ALL love GL.

What he HAS done with AOTC, thank God, is get someone else in to write the dialogue- which has ALWAYS been GL's weakness, as he happily admits.

yerssot
The Dark Side is growing evil face

Come on whinies! IF you see them, (they're in it for less then 3 seconds, in two scenes) it will be with luck

bigsef2
Yeah, i dont like the principle of them being in the movie, but I dont even know what they look like anyways. All I hope is that they dont have ear-rings and goatees in the movie. ;-)

yerssot
You don't like the idea, but you don't know how they look like?
What about all the other cameos?

ToMacco
Going back to the trailer; I think that Lucas showed the romantic side of the film for the fans who were bitching that too much happened in TPM (I'm one of them). He is showing that II will slow down at points, and be more like the OT.

I really didn't like Episode I that much, but I'm absalutly sure that "II" will be better, and will make "I" better at the same time.

mah
yeah. that's wise said.

yerssot
*in Nute Gunrays voice*
You must be mistaken

ToMacco
I'm ususually right about things smokin'

yerssot
when is that?

master harmax
I've been out of it for a couple of days, but I wanted to say :

1. Lucas is definitely nor market driven and he does not have the commercial thing in mind when making a Star Wars movie - he will tell HIS story HIS way with the attitude - those of you liked it and spent a happy 2.5 hours transported into another universe you found so interesting you would like to visit that place again and again, thank you ... those who found the whole thing sucked and whose expectations were dissapointed - sorry I wasted your time.
I don't think characters like Jar Jar were born out of commercial motive. Personally I liked JarJar a lot - sorry but count me with one of the woosees.

2. A lot of people may have loved the trailer and an equal number of people may have found it boring and unhappening - and its gonna be the same for the movie - a lot of people will like and praise it - a lot of people will hate and pan it, because not everybody's looking for the same thing in a movie, and especially a Star Wars movie - so lets not worry about this - For myself, I'm looking forward to seeing the subtle stuff ( the romantic thing, internal conflicts of the characters etc.) - somehow a continuous package of slam-bam, thank you Mr.Sith, your'e not as fast with your lightsabre as Mr.Jedi, but in any case Jango will kick all your asses, and my, how well you pilot that speeder Anakin, would be shallow and superficial. But that's just me.
Ultimately, if you liked the movie, and it moved you and got you in your gut, ( and I think thats going to be the case with the majority on this forum ), then that's all there is to it - even if the most highly respected movie critic in the world tells you that this movie sucks, HIS considered opinion doesn't make him right that the movie sucked - because YOU were blown by it, and therefore as far as you are concerned it's a great movie - in matters of art, no ONE opinion is totally right - there are too many people with different perspectives - one of my best friends hated TPM - I loved it - neither of us is wrong - we both are right from our individual perspectives ( with apologies to Einstein ). For that matter, a lot of my favourite movies have been panned by critics and/or haven't become great commercial successes - that doesn't matter to me because from my point of view it IS a great movie.
So as far as AOTC is concerned some will love it some won't - both will be right and both will be wrong - it will be a GREAT movie and at the same time it will be a BAD movie simultaneously ( with apologies to all quantum physicists and zen masters ).

So lets stop fighting ( with apologies to John Lennon and John Coltrane ); the movie opens on the 16th of May; a lot of folks ( like me )await with breathless anticipation ; a lot of people, disillusioned by the trailers and spoilers expect the worst;
it's cool; this is just the natural order of things; the way of the force.

P.S. : this is just my personal subjective opinion - out of 5, I think this will turn out to be one of the two best Star Wars films; and Ep.3, approx. 3 years from now, will probably be the best out of 6; it's gonna be really dark, deep and profound, and all that without apologies.

King Jedi
At last! Someone talking sense.

Ushgarak
There's been plenty of sense talked.

yerssot
you only need to look harder

Ratcat
Personally I was blown away by the trailers, more so with each successive one.

That said, and despite everything I know about this movie, its plot and how it has been made, I will still decline to judge the final movie until I have seen it.

To do anything else would be to be making an extremely uninformed and arrogant assumption. That is something I can not do....

Julie
I like the trailers so far......they do a really good job of making me anxious to see the movie. I think people enjoy complaining. Look on the bright side, if people are expecting a bad movie, they'll be blown away when they see a really good movie. Expectations for TPM seemed to be so high that no movie made thus far in Hist would ever be able to live up to. If AOTC is condemned now maybe it'll shock the world on May 16th.........

We only have 4 months to wait and see.........

Ushgarak
I don't think so, somehow. I think a lot of people are in a 'hate Star Wars no matter what' state of mind, doubly so those who think that GL has somehow 'betrayed' his vision or his fans. Even if the movie is great they will see everything in it in a negative light.

You know the odd thing? Aside from the advance trailers, TPM was not actually hyped anywhere near as much as people seemed to think. Which is to say it had a LOT of publicity, but not significantly more than any other major movie.

But the feeling for it got a life of its own amongst the fans, and it was them... which is to say us... who created the over-hype, not GL.

SilentMike
What about Natalie Portman in the last trailer she was so hot. I have been beyond excited to see this movie since I saw her in that trailer. Damned if the movie sucks or does not suck I don't care; I think I'll get plenty out of it just watching her for two hours. Nuff said, anybody who agrees give me a shout out.

Ratcat
I think you're spot on there. In fact I would go as far as to say I think that LFL may even have contributed a little to the negativity in an effort to avoid the fate that TPM suffered from.

finti
what no JAR JAR then big grin

Ratcat
You know what I mean.

TPM was actually a good movie, but due to the hype it recieved prior to release it left a lot of people feeling let down.

King Jedi
Exactly. So expect this place to be filled with the Lucas haters after May 16th. You could take a very good guess at what they'll be complaining about already.

yerssot
*orders a new plastic lightsabre*
I'm prepared!

King Jedi
"That won't be enough Sir!"

yerssot
I want droiddekas here at once!

Ratcat
Bring em on!

master harmax
Yeah bring em on - Ush is right - a lot of people are in a hate star wars mode because they didn't get to see what THEY wanted to see in TPM - and I'm prepared to take 'em on in this space after July 5th - Star Wars only releases in India on that date.

. sad sad mad

But apropos another thread, my VERBAL dueling skills are at least 18/20 - and I've got this double bladed sabre and all so I'm ready - anyways for the rest of us, we're gonna have great fun with this movie.

yerssot
I'll practice some more English, so if they don't invent real lightsabres in time, I can chopp them with words

You're right R!
Bring them on, I prefer a straight fight!

King Jedi
Where as I prefer to sneak up behind them and hit them over the head when they're not watching. big grin

yerssot
Ok, I attack them and when they aren't watching you hit them on the head smile

queeq
Actually, I don't think TPM is that great. It really isn't but how can we really discuss this. I mean, we're all fans and stuff.
I don't feel Lucas betrayed, I just don't understand how he could make a lesser film when he has no limitations at all.
And it worries me about the next two films. If AOTC would be like TPM, I have great worries about the PT. But so far it looks great and I think AOTC will be great. Come May 16.

Ratcat
You're right on that point, but if you keep it relative then, in my opinion, TPM was a better movie that ROTJ, it was comparable with ANH but not as good as ESB.

master harmax
TPM was a nice movie dudes - it could have been better, that's true - but at the same time it did have it's cool moments - I liked it better than ROTJ, but in terms of the vibe something was lacking in it, that makes me rate ESB ahead of it - but still it was a pretty damn good movie, man.

master harmax
TPM was a nice movie dudes - it could have been better, that's true - but at the same time it did have it's cool moments - I liked it better than ROTJ, but in terms of the vibe something was lacking in it, that makes me rate ESB ahead of it - but still it was a pretty damn good movie, man.

Where the heck is Sivelio anyways - I think yerssot and king jedi scared him off - its cool Sivelio - they aren't really jedi, they're just pretending - neither of them can handle a lightsabre to save their lives. smokin'

queeq
I think TPM was too subtle on too many counts. That's why there is a feeling missing. And personally I prefer ROTJ simply because of the scenes with Luke, Vader and Palpy. These scenes have so much more emotion and drama in them than the entire 120+ minutes of TPM.

Julie
Will anyone be brave enough to put AOTC down in these forums?

Ushgarak
Plenty. And a lot of them will have a mighty high opinion of themsleves, bravely declaring that they are the first with the guts to put AOTC down when actually loads of others have done it already.

Julie
Agreed. Good point. Some might even write things they don't believe just for the heck of it.

Ratcat
If it turns out to be rubbish then I will happily say so, but unlike some I would NEVER be arogant enough as to say it is bad when I haven't seen it yet.

All these over presuming morons, who are saying it sucks and they haven't seen it, are clearly without even a basic clue. Just how arrogant are they?

yerssot
can there first be one here before we begin firing?

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