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David Brin on "Attack of the Clones"
dpt writes "Science fiction author and scientist David Brin caused quite a stir at the time with his article on The Phantom Menace, and now here are his thoughts on Episode II. Not being as harsh, it hasn't received much attention, but it's an interesting read anyway."
A girlfriend of mine had a cat that would sit and watch you all day long, not moving, not reacting to anything. If you got close enough, it would try to claw your eyes out. If you escaped and could still use your eyes, you would see the cat sitting there looking at you calm and cool. That cat was evil.
Giving into anger is more about making a person evil than it is about displaying emotion. Any master is calm, cool and collected. Luke was a student, not a master. They wanted him to be an evil student, and the quick path to that is anger.
Overall, I don't think that article was any more accurate or insightful than the movie it chose to criticize. It, too, was somewhat obvious and full of factual errors. (Lucas did not direct all five movies, for example.) I'm glad he found it entertaining, though.
The biggest irony is this -- I could scribble a 3 paragraph outline that would save Lucas. It would explain every awful inconsistency/paradox in his universe.
To me, something about Brin's vehemence moves him from "critique for criticism's sake" into "personal beef with Lucas"-land. Or more likely he envies Lucas' success compared to what he considers more legitimate and well-written sci-fi (his own work?).
I think what would have really put Episode 2 over the top would have been if Count Dookoo was fighting the Dark Side. If he had seen the Sith's rise and the Jedi's incompetence, he should have moved to build an army and defeat the Sith before it took over the Senate, or at least gather enought power to form a decent resistence. Then everything mostly could have worked in the plot. Why kill Obi-wan? Because obi-wan knew where they were. Why fight the Jedi? The Jedi were being used as pawns of the Sith and had to be stopped before they caused too much damage.
Of course this is just one CS majors ramblings, but I would have liked to see that.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
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Yes! Lucas needed to whittle the Jedi down in a tragic and colorful way. But couldn't he have shown them suffering calamity despite behaving cleverly and well? Doesn't he have peers to workshop this stuff against?
Good question but I suspect that Lucas honestly believes that he has no peers. It's unfortunate because the scripts that came out of his colaboration with Kasdan were pretty good, IMHO. Yes, I know Lucas co-wrote AOTC with someone from Indiana Jones Chronicles but I argue that this guy was just a yes-man for Lucas. Lucas really needs to team up with a good, known writer to come up with an interesting story for Episode 3. Maybe he'll come to his senses and realize that he needs some help in the script department for his final Star Wars film. We can only hope.
GMD
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The problems and holes in TPM could have been fixed with some quick editing and a couple of reshot scenes. It wouldn't have approached the first Star Wars, but then again very little does.
AotC was so utterly, unredeemably bad that it is unfixable. Sheesh - once glance between Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher in ESB carried more romantic tension than 30 minutes of moping between what's his name and Natalie. "Let's go to the mall Anni". As my 8 y.o. said "Yuck". How perceptive is the mind of a child.
sPh
His crazy plot for Ep III sounds interesting ...
.... Darth & Obi-Wan setting this whole thing up to bring balance to the force ... how crazy would this be! Lucas would forever be known as a movie genius!
... we still don't know where he learned the ways of the Dark Side ... maybe it was Yoda that taught him ... That would REALLY mess things up!
...Yoda trained Dooku, who has obviously played a part in Anakin's turning to the dark side by showing him how powerful it is. Yoda trained Qui-Gon ... who trained Obi-Wan, who trains Vader. And if Yoda trained Sidious!!! WOW! At that point, maybe the universe should have been focused on pointing a death star at the little green bastard! ... or maybe Yoda was so smart that he knew this would rid the Universe of the Jedi and prevent the Jedi from taking over (for the long haul) ....
It would definately make Lucas look like a genius, but like the good doctor, I don't believe that Lucas would be smart enough (or would let his ego deflate enough) to use this terrific plot that has been presented infront of him.
Consider the possibilities: Yoda and the Emperor working together the whole time
This would also answer the question of how the Emperor became so powerful with the force
Think about it
That story line definately has possibilities!
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I read David Brin's article and noticed that he keeps mentioning how the whole series can be "redeemed" should Lucas decide to do "something special" to the plot. Of course, Brin never enlightens us to his fix-all plot twist.
Well, I think I might be on to what he's talking about. How cool would it be if Anakin's drop into the Dark Side was manipulated and guided by Yoda (and maybe some other elite Jedi) with the expectation that he'd eventually bring balance to the force in VI: ROTJ? Yoda ( or perhaps a council even higher than the ovenmit?) allows certain attrocities to go unchecked because he has a higher prophecy to fulfill. When I think about the possibilities, this could really put a brilliant and completely new spin upon the Star Wars universe. If done correctly, it really could be the next Empire Strikes Back in terms of having a plot that is more than predictable pubescent garbage (don't get me wrong, I love Star Wars).
But at any rate, those are my thoughts, and I'll admit that I don't read the forums and gossip websites at all. Does anyone else have any ideas as to what this "something special" which David Brin is referring to might be?
But it was acceptable in those films, because it didn't really strain credulity. In this new batch, Lucus has underminded the previous films with shit like "midicholorians" and "vigirn births", and the acting is even worse. The stilted dialougue between Anakin and Queen Whatsherface is so bad its like hearing fingernails on a chalkboard! Make it stop!
And whats with the political intrigue so simple a child can follow it? Was that his intention? Perhaps he hopes it will sell more toys, if kids want to reenact the Senate debate.
And the racial stereotyping? Is it some sort of one-upsmanship with Star Trek? I don't know which is more offensive, the Shylock Ferangi or the "ah so" Trade Federation. Oh, oh! Meesa Jamaican retard!
I still enjoy the old films. I even liked the Timothy Zahn sequels. That's why I hate these movies, it's like George Lucas wanted to take a big chunky dump on everything he's done before.
We wasted a 'movie night' on TPM so we passed on AotC. If the reviews (professional and peer) were outstanding we would have seen it, but they were all 'it's better, but not great.'
When I heard that it was going to be out on IMAX, I considered going to it but as my wife said "Why, so we can see a so-so movie on a bigger screen?"
1. Owen had VERY little interaction with the droids in AotC. :)
:)
2. The droids are all named by their model number. In a universe, it's clear that there are likely millions of each model droid. There'd be no reason to think that a C3PO is the C3PO he dealt with about 20 years prior.
3. Droid memory erasures, as mentioned by many people.
4. If you watch the original film, Owen goes out of his way not to select C3PO or R2D2. It's Luke who's so damn adamant about getting C3PO, and they only get R2 because the other unit burnt out before it moved 50 feet... My thought is that he had some sort of subliminal memory of droids like these ones, and thus didn't like them. If memory serves, he actually bitches about them to Luke in Episode IV. He's also very pushy about Luke taking them up to Anchorhead to have their memories erased. Interesting.
Though I do like your comment about Padme and the oil bath.
.... um, i lost you after "0110100001101001".
There has to be more to Yoda than meets the eye. First he (apparentlly) has no clue as to what is going on around him in the most recent films. Second -- Their is a questionable amount of mystery as to why he went into hiding during the last 3 star wars movies. I think Brin has a good theory that Lucas could use to tie up the MANY loose ends in this story. I just can't help but think that Yoda's mysterious actions and apparent ignorance is the biggest outstanding mystery of all.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
"Battlestar Galactica" came out in 1978 and "Buck Rogers" in 1977--both were capitalizing on Star Wars to some degree. ("Rogers" was probably in the planning stages before Star Wars' release but they clearly knew of the movie, and "Galactica" never made much effort to hide its influences. And, while I'm honestly not much of a "Star Trek" fan, when the original series was good it was good on a level that George Lucas never came close to. The Empire Strikes Back made an effort, but mostly thanks to screenwriter Leigh Brackett (who's almost certainly responsible for the clever plot twists and delightful character development).
I really didn't expect too much from the new trilogy because I lost a lot of respect for Lucas the more I watched his career and the more I learned about the development of Star Wars itself. (The Phantom Menace is much closer to his original draft for Star Wars, before people convinced him that he needed to have a mythic story and turned him on to Joseph Campbell.) I had, however, expected that Lucas might have been wise enough now to recognize his limitations and to bring other screenwriters on from the start. Instead. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be the case.
Same thing that Hitler did, several of the Roman emperors, and so on.
In the first movie, he gets the largely ceremonial post of Supreme Chancellor; he officates the Senate, which basically means he gets to 'recognize' who is speaking. Also, he likely gets to form 'subcommittees' for things that the Senate has decided to 'investigate' such as the problems on Naboo. Otherwise, probably lots of kissing babies and opening bridges.
Also, and far more insidiously, he plants the idea that the Senate is too big and bloated to actually do anything in a timely fashion.
In II, he engineers a war crisis. Then, he gets himself granted 'emergency powers.' The analog here is Republican Rome; an Emperor would appoint a Dictator (Speaker) who would wield absolute power during times of war, then hand control back to the civilian gov't when the crisis was past.
Now that he has those powers, he can keep them until HE decides that the 'crisis' has passed. But it won't have. He'll next put into place the command struture of the Empire; Moffs rule systems, Grand Moffs rule sectors, and report back to him. The Senate, at this point, is rubber stamping things. Then, as we hear at the start of IV, he dissolves them, and the Republic becomes the Empire.
Also, expect him to do something to turn the Galaxy at large against the Jedi; he'll probably point out how they were completely incapable of stopping the Kamino insurrection, for example. Then, he'll have them hunted down and killed behind the scenes.
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Exactly. I thought the whole reason Luke was on back-woods Tatooine ("If there's a bright center to the Universe you're on the planet that it's farthest from,") was so Vader couldn't find him. I was sorely disappointed to see that Anakin had been born and raised on Tatooine too, and that he and Luke's mother return for frequent visits. Everyone in the Republic seems to know about the place. Can't George come up with any more planets?
I agree. This can turn out to be a "what have I done?" sort of realisation. With a broken, dispirited Yoda fleeing to Degobah and the High Council doing penance for his sin (getting slaughtered covering his escape).
I always felt that the hate that fuels the most powerful of the Dark Side is self-loathing. Vader hating himself for what he has become, and what he must do to maintain order. Palpatine could be driven by a hated of all that opposed his dream of a unified government, of all of those bickering fools. And probably a good deal of self-loathing for realising what price he paid for power.
Yoda's lesson at the end of Episode 3 could be that in denying all emotion, the Jedi imbalanced their souls. That with their concentration on the science of the Force, they forgot that it was a mystic power above science and "midichlorians". The Balance that Anakin/Vader brings is the balance between rational logic and passion. A spiritual illumination (rathar than a metaphysical balancing) that almost comes too late.