And regarding the later comments about JarJar. I know alot of people hated the Ewoks, but I could handle them. Jar Jar I actually DESPISED. He was pointless, stupid and annoying x 10000000000.
Finally re: Maul, aside from Vader, Maul was the coolest villain in the SW films imho.
Cool, I believe ya, even though I could have sworn in the past that you said ANH was your favorite.
I'm glad to know that Maul was a cooler villian than Boba Fett, Tarkin, Storm Troopers, Jabba, and above all, The Emperor. I like Maul better than everyone of those guys there, except for the Emperor. Palpatine had far more character development than Maul, so did Dooku, but Maul was cooler. The PT was cool, like Maul, but lacked that rich development that made the OT so special, so I'll have to go with the Emperor over Maul in terms of story and character development.
Score one for the prequels though with Maul. lol However, my one major dislike about ROTS...I despise Greivous the same way you despise Jar Jar. Talk about pointless characters, Grievous tops the list in my opinion. Be very amazed when I say, I actually like Jar Jar better than I like Grievous.
Nah ANH started my love for SW but ESB has always been my fav.
Yeah not a fan of Grievous OR Dooku myself. And naturally Palps had more character development etc. He had 6 movies to accomplish that. I always thought Boba Fett was overrated x 100. Jabba........no biggie there as far as villainy in my opinion.
Boba was iconic in looks and short presence. No more than that. And he made a bigger impression by his vry brief appearance than Dooku and Grievous. That does say something.
But true: he was hardly a character. Just a one dimensional thug, who only got a few shots scenes which added to his mystery. It made people wonder who the heck this cool guy with the Wookie scalps was. Grievous also raises questions but of another kind: what the heck is he all about?????
Maul was allright, but he was more design than character. Plus the few lines that he has also raise question: "At last we'll reveal ourselves to the Jedi, at last we'll have revenge..." What does that mean? From the movies we still have no idea what the "Revenge of the Sith" was all about. You need EU to understand that and even understand Maul to be anything other that a one dimensional thug. And that's where the PT and Maul fall short IMHO.
About Maul, what i got from the movies was simply the fact the Jedi had wiped out the sith a thousand years ago, and now Sidious and Maul have risen to take revenge for the sith being wiped out.
As for Boba, i personaly think it would be cooler if the braids on his outfit were jedi braids. (They never say what they are in the movies at all so it could be possible) and if he had been present to help anakin assault the jedi temple would of been cool. and he could of disinigrated the jedi. This would of made vaders "No disintagrations" line mean more.
That was a line that never needed to mean more. There's always been a strange obsession with that line.
Boba was a character more popular than had been foreseen. GL has commented that if he had appreciated that, he would have given him a better death. Still, there you go.
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"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
Up until a few nights ago, I hadn't watched TPM all the way through in probably 6 years, and AOTC, a good 3 at least. I figured, now that I've aged some more and the prequels are a bit older, perhaps I'll give Episode 1 and 2 another watch and see if my opinions of them change. Maybe now that the craze and hype is all over with I'll be able to better acknowledge all the problems with them, rather than still being high off the Star Wars adrenaline that I found from 2002-2006.
Honestly, I can understand some of the frustrations with the films, but my thoughts still stand. They don't need to be compared to the originals because these films were not trying to be them. They were simply a backstory documentation of the events leading up the originals.
Whether or not Prequels were necessary is open to individual interpretation, but the fact is we have them, and while they could have been better, they're not as bad as what they're made out to be. I actually enjoyed TPM more the other night, then I did when I was kid and I think some of the best scenes in the prequels come straight out of that film. The Anakin/Padme love story is not "unwatchable" as many make it out to be. Different than Han and Leia for sure, but whatever.....the waterfall scene, dinner scene, fireplace scene, I really think people are just looking for reasons to complain.
Would we have rather gone that absolute most horrid route, and have Anakin whip out a guitar and sings to his love like some high school jocks do? Should he have read Padme a poem? Better yet, he could have impressed her with a brand new swift looking land speeder like high schoolers do with their trucks. Yes, there have been better executed romance stories in cinema...for sure, but I do find these scenes not hard to watch in the least. I'm completely fine with them. All in All...TPM is a film with better production values...though I find AOTC to be more interesting to watch. It has a tone unlike any other Star Wars film. Most people find that to be a bad thing. I on the other hand, love it.
While ROTS is logistically the best of the three, having watched the first 2 again makes Episode III a bit more disappointing. I say this because as the last chapter, the big finale, the piece of the story we've all be waiting to see, while it was no doubt good, it had to be great, and I really feel like Grievous and the crap on Utapau drag the movie down from it's full potential. Utapau was wasted screen time when there should have been a growing conflict between Anakin and Obi-Wan.
Nevertheless, I still find ROTS to be an excellent film, probably better than the first 2, and I do enjoy watching it more than any of the original films, but Lucas once said that ROTS was "Titanic in space." I always think to myself, if infact ROTS was Titanic in space, this would have been the most epic sci-fi movie of all time. Unfortunately, it is just "really good" and not great.
To all you OT supporters out there, there's no doubt the OT is the superb trilogy. Having said that, nitpicking the prequels enough to the point of it being absurd that the general movie-goer can no longer enjoy a sci-fi movie by suspending their belief a tad, is a bit upsetting. The key thing is to let go and stop second-guesing every little tiny thing to this absolutely ridiculous level. People can't possibly have any idea how annyoing it is to read some of the criticisms of the PT. Rather than viewing these films as a whole and pointing out the ups and downs of the big picture, we decide every little thing must be questioned, analyzed, and disected to the point that of course it won't make sense anymore, and of course you won't be able to enjoy any of these films.
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I like George.
Last edited by Sith Master X on Jan 26th, 2011 at 12:55 AM
"Looking for reasons to complain"? I'm sorry, but those scenes were absolutely horrid. Hayden and Natalie have absolutely zero chemistry on screen. The it's the writing AND the acting of the love story that is rubbish.
I'd love to know what's so horrendous about this writing and acting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWnz...feature=related
I studied film and acting at school for 4 years and fail to see what makes that "unwatchable."
The writing there is so brilliant, in fact, almost as brilliant as "laser brain" "scruffy looking nerf herder" My hands are dirty...My hands are dirty too." Academy award winning stuff right there. lol
Yes there are other areas that are shaky, other loves stories that were better done, but I'm going to trust in my degree enough to identify that truely unwatchable scenes are more so this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9KyBdPeKHg as opposed to Padme and Anakin.
Actually I quite liked those scenes and I liked their chemistry. But then maybe its a chick thing. Aside from a couple rather horrid lines in ROTS between Anakin and Padme I have zero issue with their love story. I found it quite charming and believable.
I agree, in ROTS the whole "You're so beautiful" "It's only because I'm so in love..." "No no, it's because I'm so in love with you" is absolutely morbid and attrocious. How Lucas could have sat through that and not squirm is beyond me.
But otherwise, I have no issues with it either. In fact, people can call me gay all they want, I quite liked the fireplace scene with Anakin's "From the moment I met you, all those years ago.." I liked it a lot, and would prefer something of value like that as opposed to some horrendous dialogue like "So what do you say we skip dinner and head straight for dessert?"
"Oh Annie, are you gonna use the force?"
"I thought you'd never ask Padme."
That's my idea of an unwatchable scene....as opposed to "We'd be living a lie, one we couldn't keep even if we wanted to you. Could you Anakin, could you live like that?"
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I like George.
Last edited by Sith Master X on Jan 26th, 2011 at 03:35 AM
I've watched all three of them. They are very funny. They are also extremely nitpicking things that don't require someone to put that much time of their lives into, over something that is a movie made for entertainment and nothing more.
It's a movie. Not a mythology, not a religion, not a way of life, but movies that created an entire fanbase who then became very posessive of it, to the point of pretty much claiming ownership over everything GL does and if they don't like GL's idea of midichilorians, their entire childhoods have now been raped.
It's that type of stuff that gets me going. Red Letter Media makes valid points about certain things, and I agree with certain things he says, but the bulk of it to me is just simply nitpicking to the extreme. He's second guessing every little fraction of a detail. Again: I'll repost what I already posted: "Rather than viewing these films as a whole and pointing out the ups and downs of the big picture, we decide every little thing must be questioned, analyzed, and disected to the point that of course it won't make sense anymore, and of course you won't be able to enjoy any of these films." So when Red Letter Media begins disecting crap like "Who, huh, what prophecy, what does it mean...who wrote it?" It's not relevant to the story. We don't need to know who wrote and we don't need to see every little detial. We don't need a flashback scene of 1000 years earlier of some ancient guy writing some prophecy into a magic rock just so we can see what we hear Mace Windu say.
Then he goes onto complaining about Sam Jackson being in Star Wars. Star Wars is not the only franchise that selected certain actors for a big box office draw. But it's only a sin if Lucas does it.
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I like George.
Last edited by Sith Master X on Jan 26th, 2011 at 03:56 AM
I guess what I'm pretty much trying to say is this. I can guarantee you that directors who direct their own work do so becuase they are passionate about the stories they created in their minds and want that story to live up their vision. Lucas said in an interview with Katie Kouric that "I make movies primarily for me." He is thrilled with how the prequels turned out because they lived up to "his" vision. As an artist, he has the right to display his work according to his own vision and not everyone elses.
There's no ulterior motive behind it....and I think that's what Plinkett has done with Lucas...acting like every move the guy makes has some evil, sinister, ulterior motive when the guy is simply a storyteller and filmmaker. People don't have to like his work, but everything I read these days pertaining to Lucas has ridiculous hatred and comments like "hey, look at that sellout, the man is growing another neck!" Stuff like that and hatred toward people that I find completely uncalled for just because the guy made his own film, and not the one that poor little fan wanted to see.
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I like George.
Last edited by Sith Master X on Jan 26th, 2011 at 04:10 AM
I think you're selling PLinkett a little bit short there. There is some nitpicking going but a lot of stuff is part of a larger argument in which he states that the movies have blurred storylines, things do not happen from action-consequence situations but because they have to happen and the movie fail to connect with the audience on an emotional level. That is his argument, and almost all of his points are made to support that. And yes, sometimes he takes thing a little far, but it's also meant to be entertaining.
If you say the prophecy thing is nitpicking, I really disagree. If this prophecy thing had been a McGuffin type of thing that Lucas had gotten rid of quickly and used only for QGJ's motivation to train Anakin then it'd would have been allright. But it's LUcas that keep bringing the prophecy up in all three PT movies... all of them... and by the same people: OB1, Yoda, Mace... So if that damn prophecy is so important (mind you: Lucas is the one who MAKES it so important)... we should know a little more about it.
The same goes with this whole Sith thing: why are they so made about things that happened a 1000 years ago?? Honestly, we fail to connect with their point. In the OT it was simple and clear: the Empire wanted to dominate the universe and rejected any opposition. Everything they do is based on that.
What the Sith want: I have no idea. What Palpy wants: power. Well, okay... But factually, looking at what the PT movies tell us, we only know that in ROTS. We haven't got a clue what Palpy wants and we don't really know what Sidious wants. In other words: these characters fail to connect with the audience, motivationwise and often, like the love story, on an emotional level.
I am reading the Making of ESB. An excellent book, like The Making of Star Wars... and it shows a George Lucas who knows so well what to make. They way he relcutantly rewrote Leigh Brackett's first and no so great first draft is impressive. Brackett's script felt a lot like the PT and he turned it around in a few weeks into about 85% of what we get on the screen... Amazing, but also amazing to see how far these movies are from basic understanding and emotional connections movies like ANH and ESB had.
The Sith are one of several things- like the Living Force, the precise nature of the midichlorians, the Prophecy and the concept of Balance in the Force- which actually are part of a decent coherent narrative that all connect well into the grand storyline that, for no reason I can discern, George somehow completely failed to explain actually inside the films. The Sith are a particularly interesting one because every Star Wars fan knows what the Sith are, but there's literally bugger all about it on-screen.
It's all there to be found in the interviews, providing plenty of "Ohhhh, I get it..." moments, but what's the point of that? Sometimes I suspect that the precise writing of the PT films became so protracted and re-written (not dissimilar to what happened with ROTJ, causing the logical disconnect of the finale that I have talked about before) that any explanations got overwritten and those responsible forgot that THEY knew what these terms meant, but the audience did not. It really is a shame.
I've always defended the PT, but only against the more extreme allegations which are generally based on minor issues. It's definitely a trio of films where you have to be aware of the shortcomings.
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"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on Jan 26th, 2011 at 04:49 PM
I used to have a bunch of links for them saved for use in debates but I am pretty sure the links are dead by now. There was some interview he did with Time magazine that was significant, as well as some Insiders.
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I had a couple of examples saved down- here's his quote that confirms Anakin is the Chosen One (there was a heavy argument about whether it was Luke)
"I think it is obvious that Qui-Gon was wrong in Episode 1 and made a dangerous decision, but ultimately this decision may be correct. The Phantom Menace refers to the force of the dark side of the Universe. Anakin will be taken over by dark forces which in turn destroy the balance of the Galaxy, but the individual who kills Emperor is Darth Vader - also Anakin. The tale meanders and both the prediction, and Qui-Gon are correct - Anakin is the chosen one, and he did bring peace at last with his own sacrfice. Luke couldn't kill the Emperor himself, but he could make Anakin reflect on his life and kill the Emperor. "
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And here's his schtick on the Living Force:
"The Force itself breaks into two sides: the living Force and a greater, cosmic Force. The living Force makes you sensitive to other living things, makes you intuitive, and allows you to read other people's minds, et cetera. But the greater Force has to do with destiny. In working with the Force, you can find your destiny and you can choose to either follow it, or not"
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And one of his comments on Balance, which ends in a claim that was patently untrue.
"In The Phantom Menace one of the Jedi Council already knows the balance of The Force is starting to slip, and will slip further. It is obvious to this person that The Sith are going to destroy this balance. On the other hand a prediction which is referred to states someone will replace the balance in the future. At the right time a balance may again be created, but presently it is being eroded by dark forces. All of this shall be explained in Episode 2, so I can't say any more!"
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Here's a useful quote on the Sith:
"One of the themes throughout the films is that the Sith lords, when they started out thousands of years ago, embraced the dark side. They were greedy and self-centered and they all wanted to take over, so they killed each other. Eventually, there was only one left, and that one took on an apprentice. And for thousands of years, the master would teach the apprentice, the master would die, the apprentice would then teach another apprentice, become the master, and so on. But there could never be any more than two of them, because if there were, they would try to get rid of the leader, which is exactly what Vader was trying to do, and that's exactly what the Emperor was trying to do. The Emperor was trying to get rid of Vader, and Vader was trying to get rid of the Emperor. And that is the antithesis of a symbiotic relationship, in which if you do that, you become cancer, and you eventually kill the host, and everything dies."
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The EU immediately contradicted that one by having the Rule of Two come into play only 1000 years ago, not 'thousands' as GL believes.
Which is odd of the EU as if that was the very last thing the Sith did, it seems odd that the Jedi are so certain that that was how the Sith worked. When Yoda said "Always two there are", to me that implied strongly that the Sith had been like that for as far as the Jedi could remember, or at least close to.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on Jan 26th, 2011 at 04:47 PM
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Jan 23rd, 2011 08:31 PM
I like Maul better than everyone of those guys there, except for the Emperor. Palpatine had far more character development than Maul, so did Dooku, but Maul was cooler. The PT was cool, like Maul, but lacked that rich development that made the OT so special, so I'll have to go with the Emperor over Maul in terms of story and character development.
I always thought Boba Fett was overrated x 100. Jabba........no biggie there as far as villainy in my opinion.
