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Revenge of the Sith TV Spots Revealed
Bobert@flixnjoystix.com writes "StarWars.com has unveiled three TV spots for STAR WARS: EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH!" The three spots are shorter than the longer trailer that has been seen earlier, and a little bit more pop action than the dark trailer that gave me hope. Anyway, here is Spot 1,
Spot 2, and
Spot 3.
You know what annoys me?
that all the freaking sentient aliens are pretty much the same size.
why can't we have some superdense 15 foot giants walking around talking trash.
Why are they all the same size?
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Show all the CGI in the trailers you want, doesn't make it a good film... You notice how the original star wars trailers talk about an experience where as these new ones talk about emotions that morons will find appealing (e.g. how cool is it to blow stuff up!)
Lets hope this one will be better than it looks.
Story>Writing>Acting>Direction>Cinematography>Effe cts/costume.
I really hope directors are reading this. They still cannot understand that story is the most important thing in a movie. No matter how good anything else is, without story and good acting, its all bullshit. Matrix Revolutions is great proof of this.
I completed the book the other night and it was pretty good. It ties up all of the loose ends that I could think of. Yes there is some pop culture, and yes Jar-Jar is there albeit briefly. Have fun, enjoy the movies, think of yourself as 5 again, and not as a critical 30 year old, and the movies will be much better.
But again, the book was worth reading and talks about a lot of interesting topics that can't be covered withing the confining medium of cinema.
GeneralKael -- Slacker Extraordinaire
but I mean, how about something twice the size of a wookie?
So... about the size of Jabba the Hutt, then?
Here's the thing: Actors tend to be human sized. The more odd-sized and odd-shaped aliens you have the less detatched from humanity your story becomes.
Farscape is cool and fun, but it borders on feeling like H.R. Puffinstuff every once in a while.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
You know what annoys me?
:)
that all the freaking sentient aliens are pretty much the same size.
why can't we have some superdense 15 foot giants walking around talking trash.
Why are they all the same size?
Glad you asked
Haldane's On Being the Right Size
Of course, his essay does make certain assumptions about an Earth-like atmosphere and gravity...
Well, based on the fact that virtually all of the Jedi are wiped out by the time of A New Hope, you ought to expect a lot of lightsaber action in the movie. Really, aside from the audio of the annoying announcer whose voice was way too happy for what was going on in the video, it's still a set of pretty dark TV spots. [I think at this point still] Chancellor Palpatine flies out of his chair with a lightsaber at the number-two Jedi for crying out loud.
That, and we see Star Destroyers. That gives me hope. My only concern is that I don't know if the movie starts with a mood-setting Star Destroyer passing over the camera. Really, judging by the past, we have a pattern. Star Wars movies opening with Star Destroyers: good; Star Wars movies opening without Star Destroyers: bad.
if you watch with a five-year old's mindset. I do watch them all the time with my five-year old, and while "we" like all of them, we like episode 6 best (I always hated those stuffed animals, but he loves them, and now I don'd really mind). And 1 and 2 are pretty cool -- we usually skip to the battle scenes in 2, which are really amazing. And, by the way, 4 is pretty lame, with lots of not-so-dramatic action.
By the way, Jar Jar is pretty funny, too.
It might be good. I hope it's good. Here's been my impression of the last few films: Ep. 1) Mostly shit. Pod race was neat. Ep. 2) Started out crappy, but got better towards the end (except that stupid romantic scene). The end, with all the Star Destroyers taking off, Palpatine looking evil, and the legions of storm troopers marching into ships was just plain f*cking awsome. Ep. 3) If the trend continues (gradual improvement), this should be sweet. We got Vader, we got dark Palpatine, we got the eradication of the Jedi we've been hearing so much about, and there should be precious few crappy love scenes.
The funny part of your diatribe is when you state "like they got the narrator for a feel good Disney movie to appeal to the kiddies." Hello! From the beginning this was a film for the kiddies. Note the PG rating. Until now its been PG all the way.
Back in 1977 I was 12 years old and what really got me excited about the film was a TV ad like one of these with a similar friendly announcer that was shown the Saturday of the opening weekend. We saw the film that afternoon.
I am now dating a woman who is 25 and had never seen any of the films. So this past week we watched all 5. Everyone has their favorites and they also have bits that they hate about the different films. Here are some interesting comments she made: She liked the Ewoks, she even liked Phantom Menace. Upon watching it with her and explaining what was going on I realized I like the structure of Phantom Menace and the part of the story that is told in it. I also realized that the "veiled racism" is really just coloring viewers add - there is nothing overtly racist in it. Its a real stretch to claim the characters *represent* real world cultures. The biggest problems with Phantom Menace are the dialog which isn't punchy enough and the acting which I think lacks the proper reaction because you have actors in green rooms talking to thin air - that type of acting will progress over time but I think classically trained actors are used to reacting to something they can see.
The 5th movie is a blast. It is a lot of fun and there is a lot of action. The dialog is much better and the acting is a lot better. Hayden Christensen actually does a decent job with the script and I think the main issue is not his acting range (which should improve over time) but the script itself. He does emote frustration, anger, happiness, joy, brooding, etc. The script itself could probably tighten up the transitions though and it doesn't.
Even with that said, episode II moves along a lot faster and doesn't have some of the more difficult plot complications of Episode I. When you look at a book like Dune you see an interesting and complex interconnection of science and mysticism. We have that here too in the Star Wars saga. One thing stands in contrast though - Frank Hurbert can include appendixes and go on for several pages about the subtlties of these concepts. In a 2 hour movie Lucas can at best hope to give us a hint of what he means. Things like the symbiosis of the Midi-chlorians and the immaculate conception of Anakin are difficult enough to explain on paper let alone in 15 seconds on film. In going over the additional information available from the official sites it becomes more clear what Lucas means when he inserts this stuff. It is a question for film makers: how do you do it differently without affecting the tone of the story or slowing it to a crawl while you lecture?
Lucas was inspried a bit by watching Japanese films. He enjoyed them without having to fully understand them. In those films the Japanese don't explain everything about their culture (actually quite the opposite they explain nothing) and its up to the viewer to interpret or just accept and move on. The problem initially I had with the Imaculate Conception of Anakin is its too close to Christian beliefs about The Christ. The Will of the Force thus becomes an intelligence and one that is all pervasive much like God. Its hard to escape that conclusion. The problem with the alegory is that Anakin isn't Jesus but a person who has a hard life, becomes corrupted into a force of Evil and 25-30 years later finds partial redemption and perhaps does bring balance to the Force by getting rid of the Sith Master.
I am looking forward to this 6th installment of the series. Mainly because it wraps things up. In many ways the story is already well known. We know all the roads that get to here.
But what entertains me is the story.
.hack//SIGN. In particular, .hack//SIGN contains basically no action whatsoever and hardly anything interesting happens until the end of the series. But it was extremely entertaining... because of the suspense, mystery, and storyline. I don't watch movies for the special effects--I watch them for the entertainment value. I.e. the story. Just like I don't play games for the graphics--in that case Doom 3 must be a billion times better than say, Civilization, right?
As probably a prime example, I loved the series
There was a scientific american article some years back about Murphy's law. The article was trying to prove that Murphy's law was a universal constant and was using the fact that bread always landed butter side down as the start of its proof. in order to prove this, the writers went into a great deal of detail about rotational speed of toast falling off a table, the range of table heights that were required for a 180 degree turn of the bread, and the beings that might sit at such a table.
= A3B20D65-8339-4260-A5D1-4E6E083116A&methodnameCHAR =&interfacenameCHAR=browse.cfm&ISSUEID_CHAR=C2A9E0 84-7CAA-4ABC-9BAE-BF9C44829FB&ArticleTypeSubInclud e_BIT=0&sequencenameCHAR=itemP
The end result of the article was a proof that the maximum height of a bipedal being, (one that would not crack its skull and die every time it fell over,) was about 9'8", and such a being would use a table that was of a height that fit into the previously described range, therefore Murphy's law, (as it applied to bread landing butter side down,) was in fact a universal truth.
I think the article was printed around '95 so you have to buy the archive... http://www.sciamdigital.com/browse.cfm?ITEMIDCHAR
(for those who read this far, it wasa joke...)
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
"But the CGI was frelling fantastic."
Yes, it was frelling, but it wasn't fantastic.
Myself and quite a few other professional 3d artists have NOT been impressed by the CG in this movie. Not only is the color palette nauseating, but the effect is far from realistic. It's a step BACKWARDS from Episode I. The space scenes in particular... blerg.
Believe me, we've nitpicked the shit out of EpIII. Hehe.
"Derp de derp."
What do the new films have? Plastic line recitals and effects galore. Can someone name one funny scene in either of the last two films? How about one witty exchange? Or one action sequence that is even half as cool as the surprise attack by the Empire in RotJ? Do you feel that the battle between the plastic robots and Jar-Jar armed with blue beachballs stacks up?
I agree with all of this, the plastic robots and blue beach balls scene is awful, as is the trite "oh let's all fire our grappling gun at a very narrow window frame area and all rappel up like synchronised marrionettes" scene.
However, I absolutely love other bits and pieces. Often very short bits. Ideally when nobody speaks.
For example :-
- the lightsaber battle between Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon vs Darth Maul. Excellent.
- Qui-Gon wasting the blast doors with his lightsaber
- The Jedi's flicking off at super-human speed when confronted by shielded Droidekars
- Anakin wasting droidekars by accident in the hangar (stupid bit of plot, but just looks so cool).
- a very brief scene where Obi-Wan is fleeing flying plastic robots and Qui-Gon deflects the blasts with a casual elegance
- "There's always a bigger fish" scene. Again, not a great bit of story, but every time I hear Jar-Jar say "biiiig goober fish" and the little ship plunges into the depths it's a thrill
- Flying scenes over Coruscant
- Ian McDiarmids dual roles, his pure evilness as the emperor contrasted with his joviality as Senator Palpatine.
- Anakin's mother is just excellent all the time, she even make it easier to tolerate George's appalling stilted dialog.
- Qui-Gon's first battle with Darth Maul. I don't know why, but I really like this bit too.
The trick for me is to be open to the joy and thrills available from the visuals, music, action, design etc etc whilst refusing to have the whole thing spoiled by the plot, dialog, acting or (at times) simplistic and annoying CGI.