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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?"
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
This guy has a great sense of humor. If you scroll to the bottom of his questions/answers section:
/
o m/
Q. I greatly enjoy your reviews and the thoughtful observations they contain. However, I get a little worried about the strength of your argument in your review of "Unleashed," when you make the case for women being able to stir a man's humanity by using Ann Coulter as your example. That is the same person who claimed women should bear arms but not be able to vote.
C. Perla, Miami
A. Wouldn't you sleep more soundly at night knowing Ann Coulter was in the Army and not in a voting booth?
If you like laughing at Ann Coulter, please don't miss these stories:
http://ifuckedanncoulterintheasshard.blogspot.com
http://backinanncoultersasssaddleagain.blogspot.c
(bye karma...)
Q. Is George Lucas a knowing Economic Terrorist? Lucas KNEW that by releasing the last "Star Wars" movie what effect it would have on the United States Economy. The movie was released on a working day. Lucas could have well waited to release his movie on Saturday or even Sunday. The effect was a $627 million loss in American Productivity.
The box-office take was $158.5 million. That leaves a $468.5 cost to the U.S. Economy. But that's not the end of the loss. Each day, Lucas is losing $1.5 million to pirates -- a capital cost to his investors of $6 million in four days and climbing. The loss could and should have been avoided by release on a Saturday or Sunday, and Simultaneous Distribution to Television, Sales and Rentals. The question becomes, would George Lucas really damage the economy to make a point of his hate for the Republican Party and President George Bush?
D.L. Graham, San Diego
Sigs are like bumper stickers.
There seems to be a disconnect between critics and just about everyone I've talked to about the movie. Just about every review has overlooked the awful dialog, bad editing, and crappy sructure/pacing and praised the movie as one of the best, I'm sorry but in a post-B5, Firefly world, my Sci-Fi (or Sci-Fantasy, if you prefer) requires MUCH better dialog than 14 characters commenting on how much STRESS Annakin is under. F-in STRESS! As though the Republic could have been saved if the Jedi had had a better insurance program that had covered counciling!
Someone needs to stand up and hit Lucas with a rolled up newspaper, hopefully it'll be #2 this weekend and some lesson will be learned (though they'll probably blame it on poor elitetorrents and their crappy workprint).
. . .compared to the last two star wars films it really shines.
Oh goody, a polished Lump-O-Coal.
KFG
Buffy - "I really thought that you were a nice, normal guy."
Riley - "I am a nice, normal guy."
Buffy - "Maybe by this town's standards, but I'm not grading on a curve."
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Like Buffy's love life, movie reviews should be on an absolute scale, not comparing a film to previous films of the same series. Because, quite frankly, I'm sure ROTS is f**king brilliant compared to the previous two. That doesn't make it a good movie, it makes it "less sucky".
Freedom: "I won't!"
Natalie Portman was involved in a "no-pants continuity error"? I'm surprised this wasn't on the front page as its own article.
Freedom: "I won't!"
First, you ask yourself "Was this film made for movie critics?" - in other words, lots of "character development" (i.e. pointless talking that does not REALLY develop the character), lots of "stunning camera work" (e.g. artsy shots of rotting fruit), and so on. If yes, then you blither on about the film, and how it is a shame that nobody in "the mainstream" will "get it" - thus assuring your street cred with other movie critics. The people who make your column pay (the common man) won't care. Next movie.
Failing that, you ask yourself "Is this film likely to be a popular success?" - such as a Terminator movie, or Back to the Future. If so, you give it a good review, so that the people who actually make your column a success won't stop reading you. It won't hurt your movie critic street cred: the other movie critics will understand - they will be doing the same thing. Next movie.
Lastly, if there is some question as to whether the movie will be a success, you do one of two things: You either give it
- a glowing write-up but a poor numerical rating, or
- a high numerical rating but a poor write-up.
That way, you are covered no matter what: if the movie is a success, you point to your glowing review (or high rating), and say "See! I told you this was a good movie!". If it is a total flop at the box office, you point to your poor rating (or bad review), and say "See! I told you this was going to be a flop!" Either way, you conveniently ignore the part of your review that was incorrect.So, Ebert just did the third option: he knows the movie will be a box office success, but he doesn't know what the fans will say after they've seen the movie, especially a few months afterwards, when the blush is off the rose. So, he gives the movie a good numerical rating, but then gives it a poor review. So, right now, when the movie is popular, he can point to the high rating and say "See! I know what I am talking about - you want to read ALL my reviews, and my web site, and my books, and....". Months from now, when rationality rears its unwelcome head and people start saying "Yes, the visuals were stunning, but I've heard more convincing delivery of dialog in pornos" he can point to his text reviews and say "See! I know what I am talking about - you want to read ALL my reviews, and my web site, and my books, and....".
www.eFax.com are spammers
How is that significant? It makes absolutely no difference to the story, it's just a petty quibble about a minor detail.
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You fast-forwarded the movie? Didn't the other people in the cinema get upset?
Then maybe you should spend money on a chair.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
...His head is detached, and the power is off. Apparently, the power source (possibly the batteries) is located in the torso. Later, Chewbacca re-attaches the head, and it turns back on. Of course, C3PO continues his comedic monologue.
Now, in SW II, we see that C3PO loses his head again when an assembly tool knocks it off in the droid factory. However, the head continues to be powered and keeps talking....
One possible explanation: NiCad battery in the head, charger in the torso (where there is some kind of generator.) The battery got fried when he was shot in Empire, so he needed the juice from the charger to power up.
Another: The torso has nothing to do with head power. Chewie just happened to close a broken circuit (or open a short) when he put the head on.
Of all the possible nitpicks I've heard, this isn't really a very big one.
Watch any version of Star Wars prior to the DVD (including a bootleg of the theatrical "Special Edition.")
After killing Ben, Darth walks toward the Falcon and the iris doors close in front of him... They forgot to animate his lightsaber! He's carrying a metal stick.
Not good enough for you? Try this one: In III, Obi-Wan says goodbye to R2 after all they had been through together. In IV, he doesn't recognize him at all. "I don't remember owning a droid."
Still want more? Leia tells Luke about her childhood memories of their mother... but now it turns out that mom died on the delivery room table. Either Leia was never told (and never suspected) that she was adopted, or she sees dead people.
There. That should be enough to fuel your nitpicks for a while.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
> Anybody else remember in Empire when Ghost Obi Wan is
> talking about "he is our last hope" and Yoda says... "No, their
> is another". Exactly why was Obi Wan so clueless!!!! That was
> the first thing that popped in my head when I saw Obi Wan
> hearing the names of the two kids and seeing them off.
It's the difference between hope and despair.
I know that some people are desperate to find plot continuity errors between Episodes I/II/III and IV/V/VI in hope to justify some sort of emotional reason to reject the latter produced episodes -- "See! Obi-Wan has a different mole in Episode IV than in Episode III, so the prequels don't count!!1!" However, this isn't the case.
This isn't simply a matter of hunting down the second twin and starting her training. Remember, Palpatine and Vader killed all the other Jedi. Palpatine defeated Yoda who was the strongest Jedi (after Anakin lost his limbs). Vader struck down Obi-Wan. In short, Sideous and Vader were tough to beat.
Obi-Wan had lost hope and he really thought that Luke was going to fail. Just like Anakin's love for Padme sent him to the Dark Side, Obi-Wan thought that Luke's love for his friends would send him to the Dark Side. Obi-Wan was feeling despair and he couldn't imagine they would succeed by starting over with the other twin. He had simply given up hope.
Yoda clearly was upset, but he was optimistic enough to at least try to start over. "There is another." I guess when you're ~800 years old, you have tremendous patience, and you're willing to fail 99 times and still start over for the 100th time. So while Obi-Wan lost hope, Yoda didn't.
However, in Episode V, Yoda and Obi-Wan both failed again the same way they did in Episode III; they gave up on their friends too easily. Remember how Yoda told Luke it was okay to let his friends die? Didn't he tell Anakin the same thing in Episode III? That's one of the things that drove Anakin to the Dark Side.
The reason for this is related to a flaw in the Jedi order. The Jedi knew that passions (like hatred and anger) lead to the Dark Side. Their answer was to eschew emotions. I believe one of Lucas's themes is that their choice was wrong.
Jedi weren't allow to have attachments or to love (Episode II). The Jedi were so afraid of using the Dark Side, that they went the wrong way and became unemotional. Lucas's point is that is wrong. Love and friendship were the right course of action. That's why the Force had to be brought back into balance. In their own way, the unemotional Jedi were as bad (okay, almost as bad) as the hate-filled Sith.
Luke on the other hand felt emotion. His love for his friends brought him to rescue Han Solo and eventually save his father. So emotions were not to be eschewed, but were to be used constructively. Was there a danger to allowing love to lead to the Dark Side? Of course (case in point: Anakin). But the risk of not feeling love at all was worse.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Ebert, Roeper, that guy waiting in line in a stormtrooper outfit...they're all missing the true point of this movie. It's not about an innocent man's decent into darkness. That's just a subplot, a minor detail if you will. No, this is George Lucas's attempt at a public service announcement about the importance of contraceptives. Because if Anakin hadn't knocked up Padme, he wouldn't have had visions of her dying in childbirth, he wouldn't have searched for the power to save her, and he wouldn't have sold his soul to Palpatine in a vain attempt to do so. Because even in a world as technologically advanced, like a few inches of impermeable rubber, that make the world go round.
There is a whole subculture these days just for people who dislike movies because they have the potential to be popular, and this entire Slashdot thread seems like the embodiment of that.
When I went to see the movie, my entire experience was completely ruined by hecklers. People who went on opening night with the sole purpose of making fun of the movie. Laughing at Palpatine's makeup, booing when Anakin first appears, shouting "LOG!" whenever Padme shows up.
Everyone here is so quick to dismiss the movie on the simple things (like if Samuel delivered his lines well) or tries to focus on bad interpretations of the themes (oh yeah, G. Lucas hates women because Padme is ineffectual in the last movie) or claim that the movie was high-schoolish (erhem, this is Star Wars, what did you expect?). People who complain this movie is campy seem to forget that the Star Wars trilogy is part of what helped us define what campy meant. It wouldn't be true to its roots if it didn't sound campy!
I wish people could just accept movies for what they are, appreciate the hard work that went into them, and enjoy them. Given the cost of movie tickets today. If you aren't ready to enjoy the movie, why fork over your $10 for it in the first place?
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Did that Bit Torrent guy give you a copy too? Wow, I really have to meet this person.
I hear complaints about the acting so much, but I got news for you all: episodes 4,5,6 weren't exactly monuments in film-acting history either. It's star wars. It's cheesy. It's fun. Get used to it.
Given the quality of writing in your post, you're clearly an expert in the English language. But I digress
Die hard was well written. It understood its medium and its audience, there were no painful moments of dialog where our hero broke into long winded speeches about man's inhumanity to man, no oddly placed iambic pentameter. It had a simple but classic plot, a NY cop trying to come to grips with his wife's success, goes through an ordeal where he learns how much he really loves his wife.
I've actually seen quite a bit of foreign cinema, and seen very little to make me non US movies are better written than our in general. Are you judging it based on the .05% of foreign films that make it to the US general release? The cream of teh cream of the crop? Or perhaps you are judging based on the fact that they follow different cultural norms? I was a bit shocked to watch a Japanese film whose moral lesson was "Its the kids fault, had he listened to his adoptive family and done what the state wanted hime to do he and his sister would be alive and happy to day. Conform or be miserable!" But I've also seen horrible French, Italian, Soviet, Polish, and Korean cinema.
Or perhaps you're refering to outside Hollywood projects such as "In the Bedroom", a dull, painfully slow moving work that rivals the infamous "Manos: Hands of Fate" for five minute riding in cars peering out the windows segements. Its bad when the high point of a movie is watch the toll bridge guy run around in circles again to move the bridge, punctuated by self-indulgent lines like "It comes in waves, and then nothing... like a rest in music - no sound, but so loud."
Is "Die Hard" superlative writing, like Shakespere's Saint Crispin's Day speech in Henry V? Heck no. It neither tries to be nor should it be.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
Please. Star Wars was always about special effects and nothing else.
The first Star Wars was nominated for Best Picture in the Oscars of that year. It did not do so because of only technical acheivement. It was because it had compelling story and characters.
Look at Chewbacca. He can only speak in unintelligible grunts, yet he is a complex character with conflicting traits whom we end up caring about by the end of of the movie. Look at Jar-Jar Binks. His only trait is that he's annoying, and by the end of the story the audience wants him dead.
There are scenes in Star Wars that are so memorable that they've become shared cultural cliches. The garbage-smasher scene. Luke's swing across the abyss. They Cantina scene, or Leia as Jabba the Hutt's slave. These scenes have been parodied countless, countless times in other contexts. It's hard to imagine any such equivalent in the Phantom Menace.
Look at the Imperial Walkers. We first see them as tiny, blurry ants through the underpowered lens of a rebel infantrymen's binoculars. We see them growing larger until they're huge and seemingly unstoppable, all the while moving slowly and formidably. This is dramatic structure. You find yourself caring about whether or not the rebels win, you feel their frustration along with them, and the slow unveiling of the walkers makes it more believable -- not the beautiful CGI. They're actually ugly, industrial-looking, rigid and inflexible.
Try to think of anything like this in the prequels.
The millenium falcoln. The Death Star. The Imperial Walkers. They are cool not because of the fantastic rendering. They are cool because they are scary, or dramatic, and their properties are interesting and novel even if only in a purely theoretical way, not simply because of how realistic they look.
Star Wars was always about the human imagination. The special effects were always only a medium for that imagination. You cannot capture the human imagination with wooden characters doing uninteresting things. Chewbacca is a 8 foot tall hairy monster that can't speak English but we end up caring about him because of his human-like complexities. Without stuff like that, all that animation is like a math textbook with a pretty dust jacket.