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Roger Ebert Answers Star Wars Questions
pamri writes "Roger Ebert, in his weekly answer-man column, answers Star War related questions, chief among them being, why he gave the "Revenge of the Sith" 3.5 stars despite his criticism of the acting and whether George Lucas be faulted for violating his own work?"
I watched some of the originals (originals, mind you -- VHS and everything) this weekend. Conclusion: I didn't enjoy them as much having seen the first 3. They were actually made worse by the prequels.
The backstory between Vader and Obi-wan was much, much more interesting to have to imagine yourself than Lucas' fluid, undulating, oscillating animation and flat story, characters and acting.
You know what? The special effects in the original, non-special edition Star Wars movies looks cheesy. You know what? It doesn't matter. I don't care that I can't see the ice creature on Hoth very well. Does the fact that we can't see Vader's ships landing on Hoth affect our enjoyment of the movie? No! You know what? HUMAN IMAGINATION IS BETTER THAN ANY CGI. If you can imply something, fine, sometimes it's actually as good as spending a cajillion dollars on the CGI.
What imagination needs is compelling, interesting characters. And story. If you can make the audience want to imagine the characters, they will. And that's as good, if not better, as rendering the same thing in CGI.
The prequels made the characters worse. Pah.
Someone needs to go back in time to 1986 QUICK and kill George Lucas. OR, for the faint of heart, convince him that it would be really cool if he made the prequels using ONLY 1978 technology. I guarantee that would have made a much more interesting movie.