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A Closer Look at Star Wars on Film and Off
mclove writes "Revenge of the Sith comes out on DVD today, and there's an interesting article on Slate dissecting the now-complete trilogy as the avant-garde, intellectual sort of film that Lucas keeps saying it is."` Relatedly inkslinger77 writes "ILM model maker, Brian Gernand, speaks about what it is like to work with George Lucas and why he thinks Star Wars attracts such a huge following, particularly among the IT community. He also gives some information about the technology that is used behind the scenes. "
Don't count on it...
The toad can't burp - and for some reason can't fart either, so it swells up and eventually explodes. --Anonymous Coward
...It's a cash machine.
As always, any sufficiently insightful deconstruction is indistinguishable from satire.
All I want to know is if the DVD has the full Mace Windu / Palpatine fight. I heard that there was a lot more to that scene, which was cut due to time concerns. The other alien is supposed to have lasted longer, as well. Kit Fisto, I believe.
Anyone care to enlighten me?
...when the author commented that R2 and 3P0 landing on tatooine was a coincidence.
I'm not that big of a SW geek, but even I know that there is a reason they ended up back in the same place.
The slate article seems more interested in the academic thought than the actual subject matter. They should at least be related.
So what this guy is saying, is that "The Force" is actually George Lucas, and when they say "The Force be with you", they are basically saying "Pray that Lucas doesn't get you killed in the next scene"
Now it all makes sense!
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Cubicle light saber duel, anyone?
From the article:
/end quote
And we're not so far away from having lightsabers as weapons.
O RLY?
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
I love Slate and I read it every day, but this article is not convincing for me. His main point is that George Lucas got all meta about plot; the Force represents Plot; the Emperor represents the author's attempt to control the plot, and Jar Jar represents the inventive whimsy of the characters. Sounds to me like "Moby Dick is actually the Republic of Ireland". Sorry.
Never attribute to post-modernism that which can adequately be explained by stupidity!
Two questions: 1. Who decided that "WIZARD!" would be a good ejactulation to express excitement or happiness? 2. Why were those kids in episode 1 hired? Why didn't they use kids who can act?
Revenge of the Sith comes out on DVD today, and there's an interesting article on Slate dissecting the now-complete trilogy
All I can say is that I'm very grateful to have episodes IV, V, and VI in their original untouched format. IMO they are the only films deserving to be called the 'Star Wars Trilogy'.
The others films are an embarrassment at best.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
The Force is the ultimate plot device, and it's such an obvious plot device that even the characters themselves realize that their actions are being controlled by this plot device, so it becomes a post-modern plot device.
Cue fanfare and applause.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
the avant-garde, intellectual sort of film that Lucas keeps saying it is.
Darth Vader: Nooooooooooooooo!!
Star Wars is probably the best example of IT nerds meeting film geeks, and that pairing continues with all the fan films. Projects like http://www.impstherelentless.com/ bring the best of garage coders, animators, and home movie people together. And everyone wants to document their Star Wars fandom, from http://www.starwoids.com/ to http://www.starwait.com/ to the most recent project, http://www.lininguptv.com/.
Jar-Jar and the prequels "needed" to happen so that Toys'R'Us could squeeze that bit more Star Wars junk on the shelves.
This article is a load of rubbish, unless of course if it is satire, in which case it is great.
That's a big "if" ladies and gentlemen.
Okay, its only the first two movies of the new trilogy, as I got burned out by the time I hit 11 pages and just needed to sleep.
Basically if Lucas had wanted them to be artistic and not just popcorn it wouldn't have been difficult, he had a good story, just a poor execution, except for the end of the second movie and the end of the third movie, that bloody rocked.
Anyway here it is its as if Frank Herbert wrote them and George Lucas didn't suck enough to ruin them.
Read Errant Story.
Hey, they could have come up with some nonsense about how the trilogy was really just pro-Nazi propaganda. I guess George gets things relatively easy.
I was talking to a friend about Episode III. He pointed out, his words, "It was the best of Star Wars, it was the worst of Star Wars." You'd have an incredibly great moment followed immediately by something soul-crushingly stupid. The POV shot of Vader's mask coming down over his face; Vader's first breaths. Chilling.
Followed by Vader whining about where Padme is, and then, of course... "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Lucas is great at molding basic story material, but he can't write dialogue or characters to save his life. He should have stuck to producing, which is what he's really good at.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
He's not impressing people with no interest in the arts. He's sure not fooling anyone who even casually takes this seriously. I guess is supposed to be a joke on both Star Wars fans and students of literature, but where is the Monty python foot next to the submission?
Sorry, I found the first SW interesting and engaging back in 1977, despite being silly. The rest of the SW movies were progressively sillier, and less interesting. With Sith, I kept looking at my watch I was so bored.
The Lord of the Rings, now there's a real plot.
...what if there were no rhetorical questions?
Quit treating this article like it's NOT a satire! Come on, you guys almost make me register a nickname here...
From that single observation of self reflexivity he leaps to: 'the greatest post-modern art film ever'? It's a little nuts. He's got a point about the circular self-referencing but it's too caught up in the cult movie context to he hailed as an art film and there's no evidence of Lucas's touting of the film as a postmodern masterpiece either (has anyone else heard this?). I think it's a case of a bad teaser. Had a few too many wines while deciding on the catchy headline.
I've never seen someone fellate their boss more than in that interview. It was like watching the whole thing unfold through a bad Scooter Libby novel, only without the fiction.
Personally, I find this workflow* to be a more likely scenario for how the recent Star Wars were made.
* the link is correct, image name includes original site, and posting date of image, for reference.
Does anyone have an idea when there will be a box set of the second (or first, whatever) trilogy? I just want to have one box, like I have the one box of the original trilogy.
Hurricane Application Group, Dept of Meteorology Control, Ministry of Proactive Defense
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! (falls to knees)
My Portfolio
The real questions are ...
... when his family is also related to Darth Vader?
... with the son of the guy who built them ... and Ben not recognize them or say anything to the kid.
... ever. I mean, just one twinge of middle age and the entire scheme is ruined.
... look at it as Lucas trying to tie the new 3 with the original 3 to give the old fans something to "Hey! I recognize that from when I was a kid!" about and it all makes sense.
Why was Ben there?
If the answer is to look after Luke, then why was Luke there?
If the answer is because that's where his family is, then why put him with his family
That just sounds stupid.
But not as stupid as having those 'droids drop in on Ben
Okay, so maybe putting the kid with Vader's kin wasn't a bad idea. I mean, Kid Vader didn't even bother to save his mommy from a life of slavery. So why expect Adult Vader to drop in and visit the family
Rather
Shame Lucas couldn't put together a better plot to tie his marketing gimickry together.
I'll let you off for Ep. III, because the last 30 seconds are a homage to Ep. IV ;-)
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
... it is obviously just bad writing, that takes itself too seriously, and no 'fingerprint' evidence to the contrary can be seen.
:-(
It is a story, as he says, and not a great one. People just liked the rendering of the universe that seemed like a nice universe.
"Jump to light speed!" putt putt putt... not again! great way to save money and max ROI on sets.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
It looks like the slashdot audience is getting really hung up on the whole, "Is the Slate piece a satire or not?" thing. The thing is, as I commented before, "'satire' and 'non-satire' is a binary distinction that post-modernism transgresses proactively."
What I mean, is that the author both is and isn't kidding. Also, I'm both kidding and not kidding when I say "transgresses binary distinctions." Here's a helpful analogy: Let's imagine you're writing a horror story. You write, "Start breathing harder. OK. Let your pupils dilate. Shake a little. Cower. Think about other scary stuff. Be worried that something might kill you soon!" How effective would this be as a horror story? The answer is not at damn all. The best way to make someone frightened isn't to say, "be frightened," it's to say a bunch of other stuff that inspires fear in them.
Similarly, the content of the Slate piece isn't the point. The author almost certainly doesn't care whether Star War is "post-modern" or "avant garde." Instead, the author likes challenging his brain, and wants you to enjoy challenging your brain. So, he's given himself a task: come up with a post-modern meta-framing of Star Wars. Now, we the audience are supposed to allow our brains to quiver with joy as we connect the dots and think about whether and how the Force as a meta-explanation for plot coincidences in Star Wars can be called post-modern. The author is almost certainly serious in that this explanation is a valid one for Star Wars. The author is almost certainly joking in suggesting that Star Wars is High Art. The author is both serious and not, and that's the point.
If the author had written, "let your brain light up with activity. Think about connections. Enjoy the tingling of neurons firing," it wouldn't be effective. Instead, we're supposed to accept what the piece gives us without trying to shoe horn it into the category of "joke" or "not a joke." We're supposed to be enjoying how the piece is and isn't a joke, not trying to make it fit what we think about the quality of the Star Wars movies.
Now that we have all six films, we know that the main thrust of the story is Anakin Skywalker's fall and eventual redemption. The main story is good. The execution is patchy, to say the least. You can imagine Lucas sitting on a big pile of money at his ranch thinking "Now what this dark, tragic story really needs is an annoying rasta guppy fishman..'
So, this might be heresy, but I'd like to see a bunch of remakes in twenty years time, where the story isn't made up on the hoof and the budget for hiring writers is slightly higher than cake budget. Imagine Joss Whedon writing the dialogue...
Just as long as Han shoots first, natch.
Plot devices used to string plot holes together so that action figures can do their CGI dances.
Sell movies.
Sell games.
Sell action figures.
Sell Sell Sell.
Lucas wanted to make a set of films which reminded him of the old-time matinee serials. Lots of adventure, light on plot, big on fun. Within that framework I think he succeeded pretty well 100%.
Now, it may well be the case that some of us don't want that, and it pretty well explains such nonsense as Jar-Jar and "going through the core" etc, but it seems obvious to me that it was what George wanted and I suspect he's a happy man when he looks at what he did. And, on the way, he did manage to produce six films about the bad guy, which I think is a great idea.
Chill out and repeat: "It's just Flash Gordon". You'll enjoy the films much more that way.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
"Postmodernism" is a reaction to or evolution of "modernism". So your statement makes no sense.
So, that could be satire, but what is it satirical about?No. That wouldn't be "kidding". Maybe you're trying to be funny by using those words in that structure, but you aren't saying anything. There's no joke unless it is about people who use phrases such as that (like the author).
But that doesn't work as "satire" because you're not making me laugh at the author's work.Yeah, sure. Kind of like when you're really stoned at 3 am and suddenly that left over burrito in the 'fridge looks appetising and the late night movie looks interesting. But only when you're really stoned and you've been up for 22 hours.
Or like when your brain quivers with joy after too much vodka when you think you can sing.Like you can be both stoned and drunk, right? And if the author really thinks that Lucas' poor writing is actual postmodernism, he should really put down the crack pipe.
Stringing together plot holes with plot devices and cardboard characters is nothing more (nor less) than poor writing.Square peg, square hole. Both named "poor writing". On Lucas' part and the author's.
That article is nothing more than the pseudo-intellectual ramblings that pass for the early morning stoner "insights".
Sure, it might be just like the old serials. But why did he limit himself to making a bad copy of them ... with incredibly expensive special effects?
If you want to take that approach, FireFly and Buffy did a better job, with less money.
A poorly-written article about a poorly-written movie.
If this is satire, or even humour, it fails. It doesn't push the boundry at all. This is someone's bad impression of a lit major saying Lucas is very smart.
Yeah, I bet that has them rolling in the aisles.
Now I will do my impression of a political science major buying name-brand cereal at the local co-op.
Wait! Wait! Don't leave. Here's my impression of a male math major doing laundry and finding a bra in the wash!
>> Can anyone give me a precise reason why they think Star Wars I, II or III were horrible movies?
Because they sucked. How much more precise can I be? You want me to list scene/chapter/verse? Why isn't the perception of overall suckiness enough for me to say that it was a horrible experience to watch the new "trilogy"?
When The Matrix sequels came out, I had a hard time arguing with at least one fan-boy at the office who kept telling me that if I didn't like them it was most likely because I just "didn't get them". As if there was some secret deeper meaning behind them of which only an enlighted selected few were aware. As if I am not smart enough or rational enough to be able to form a valid opinion on something by sheer perception and experience.
I liked the LotR movies a lot, but I accept the fact that there are people who found them slow, boring, and too distant from the original work to qualify as Tolkienesque. I can certainly see why, but more importantly, I respect their opinion.
Now respect mine (and all those others who have a negative view of SW movies): I believe that Episodes I, II, and III were horrible. I believe that Episode II was (slightly) better than the first, and that Episode III was still even better than the previous two, but in my eyes that still means that Lucas finally reached mere mediocrity from the depth of incompetency and horridness. On the other side of the token, I believe that the original Star Wars (what you would call Episode IV) was the best of the series, with a very good follow up in The Empire Strikes Back (that's Episode V for you kiddies). I don't really care much for Return Of The Jedi (Episode VI if you're not following).
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
Show a postmodernist a Rorschach ink blot, and he sees an existential and reflexive dialectic between order and chaos. Show the same blot to a wino, and he sees a beer can.
He did not lie when he said "I don't recall ever owning a droid" as far as we know. Also, he may not have much reason to recognize R2D2 as he never really did anything with R2...That was all Anakin, if you recall. Obi-Wan was using other droids in his ships. As for C3P0, well, as we saw in Cloud City (among other places), there are other droids with identical designs, so there is no reason to recognize 3P0 either...
However, it seems (to me) quite clear that the droids were sent to Tattooine with Leia by her "father" (Senator Organa, right?). It was only after Leia's ship was attacked that their mission (well, R2's anyway) became to find Obi-Wan.
To me, it seems to fit the plot rather well, with the only thing that seemed to happen by chance (or the will of the Force if you buy the article author's premise) was the droids coming to Luke first.
IMHO. :-)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
"All it takes is an idea. I know some people who, as children were watching the Star Wars trilogy and fantasising about being able to drive around in a hovercraft or using a lightsaber as a weapon. They have grown up to became scientists or technology professionals, but did not let go of those "wouldn't it be cool if we could beam holograms or fly at warp speeds" kind of ideas. They have devoted their grown-up lives to trying to scientifically realise fantastical ideas. Many of them have found solutions. It's like the chicken and the egg. Did George plant the seed and then the kids grew up and made it real? We don't know, but it is an interesting question."
For goodness sake, this is making me sick - could George be . . . God ?
In the previous paragraph this sycophant is explaining how Star Wars invented all this new amazing technology and really opened peoples eyes for the first time to the potential wonders of technology ( and uses as an example the Star Trek communicator and mobile phones ).
So has anyone been inspired by anything they have seen on Star Wars ( as opposed to the 100 years of material in Sci-Fi books ) to make ground breaking, revolutionary scientific or engineering breakthroughs ? Do you know anyone who has or can you point to anything new or amazing you saw in Star Wars and was subsequently invented by a Star Wars fan ?
"and there's an interesting article on Slate dissecting the now-complete trilogy as the avant-garde, intellectual sort of film that Lucas keeps saying it is."
So, is avant-garde french for really crappy?
i like the movie. But the episode I was a full fiasko.
How is supposed so advanced army when they blow up their command ship to just
stop working the whole army.. this is ridiculous.
Anyone will have some fallback to autonomous..
And the army is disabled in the most stupid way, just shut-down !?!
Even in today standards the droids can be made to act on their own...
And before the invasion there was 20-30 federation ships, how they
become just 1 ?!?!?!?
This ruined for me the great 4,5,6 episodes...
as the avant-garde, intellectual sort of film that Lucas keeps saying it is.
jar-jar binks is most definatly not intellectual, and he wasted half the time in the first two prequel star wars movies. so i guess maybe you could argue that episode III was intellectual, but I and II vaporized my brain.
The other thing I hate is that all the jedi are assholes in these movies. It used to be about good vs evil. Now it's all about "nonattachment," like Lucas read some low-grade pop version of buddhism. Anakin's not allowed to fall in love, and none of these rich and powerful people bothers to buy their golden boy's mother out of slavery, which would have saved them no end of trouble. Bah. They deserved what they got.
This isn't interesting any longer. It's over and done with - a DVD release is hardly a blip on the radar seeing as how it's been available for months via download.
Star Wars (six movies) was a critical failure - and not just with the movie critics, but also with the fans. It is the fans that say "Greedo shot first." Lucas says no and thereby ruins something fans liked from the first. From this no one recovers because it's not your masturbation fantasy that interests Lucas but only his own instead. In fact, it's those kinds of fundamental changes (by which I mean that such a scene completely defines Hand Solo as a character) that tell you that Lucas had no grand scheme in the telling of these stories. These films barely have a plot at all.
I think the relative success of the first 3 movies (the classic trilogy or whatever) is due in large part to the presence of the roguish Hand Solo who serves as a foreground to the fairy tale backdrop about the Force and Jedi Knights and so on. Hand Solo was basically "you" in the movie - he's the guy with whom you can identify while all the fireworks go off around you. And let's not forget that while he still shoots Greedo first, he really is your man. By making the fairy tale the foreground of the story in the new trilogy, we soon discovered that the story line not only lacked a soul but whatever it did have was infested with Midi-chlorians. So now it doesn't matter who shoots first because there is no deeper meaning to this jerk-off of paired trilogies.
BTW, the real name is obviously "Hand Solo" because all he represents is a wank, and I should know check my user name. If Lucas ever had a joke to tell it was usually in the names of various things. Here Lucas is telling you that your "hero" is a masturbatory fantasy. Obviously, Hand Solo used to be Lucas' masturbatory fantasy too but he got rich and moved on to fresher territories.
Lucas is great at molding basic story material, but he can't write dialogue or characters to save his life. He should have stuck to producing, which is what he's really good at.
Every movie since Star War's Empire Strikes Back has sucked because George didn't have his film editor, Marcia Griffin. They divorced in 1983, but were already in the process before that....hence Return of the Jedi sucked.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
"As an audience, we grapple with not just the intricate clockwork of a complex and interwoven narrative, but, in postmodern fashion, with the fundamental mechanics of storytelling itself."
That isn't postmodernism as postmodernism would be some sort of comment on the hallowed standards of modernist storytelling. The author here tries to tell us that "The Force" is Lucas' comment on the progression of plot ("The Force is... a metaphor for... the demands of narrative. The Force is the power of plot.") Uh, no. The author displays horrific set logic as he mistakes set inclusion with set equivalence. In fact The Force is a part of the plot of the movies; the plot, however, is not just The Force. The author tries to argue that the events in the movie needed to happen for the plot of the movie... well no shit. He earns a gold star for rediscovering the definition of plot. Tomorrow of Slate: "Breaking News! Water is Wet!"
Taken further, The Force is standard romantic narrative and reinforces modernist notions: there are important characters (where the protagonists are "good", the antagonists are "evil"), there is a defined hierarchy of symbols (the artifacts of the Jedi, conformity as an enemy [in either as clone troopers or legions of identical droids], noble natural forces [Jedi powers, wookies with bowcasters] combating dehumanizing industrial ones), the important characters are the only characters of consequence (in that their actions and their actions alone drive the plot and, through that, the universe: Anakin wins his own freedom, Anakin alone defeats the Trade Federation in the first movie, Paplantine alone starts the war, Palpantine alone finishes it, Luke destroys the Death Star, only Vader kills the Emperor, etc. Everyone else is a nameless Redshirt). The Force is just a reartifacting of the classicist text that has existed forever: Fate, God, Dame Fortuna, Generic Script-writing or whatever you want to call it.
This article isn't a deconstruction, it's a validation. The author accepts the Lucas authored structure of the films' text as sacrosanct, a complete undermining of the Derrida idiom that the audience constructs its own structure of the symbols presented. That would be a postmodern critique. Instead the author takes the assumptions of the text (The Force, the balance between light and dark) and uses it to justify every lucky break or bad choice in the series (Harrison Ford adlibbing text, the diminishing returns of Jar-Jar, Lucas' choice of using all digital technology) when application of Ockham's Razor would be that Lucas was just tentative and exhausted of the vitality he leveraged in the original trilogy when filming these movies. This article is just pomobabble disguising a formula analysis. Of course that's what passes for a lot of postmodern criticism these days... hell, you could even say that this article isn't an analysis of Star Wars at all but a metanarrative analysis of analyses of Star Wars. Now that's postmodern.
What is music when you despise all sound?
and really is an insult to Greenaway & the other artists mentioned in the article.
You know, as a joke article I think this could be really funny. But after reading through it, I'm pretty sure it's just further evidence that anyone who wants an English degree should have to base a basic IQ test before graduating. Some of these guys just shouldn't be let out in the wild.
Sometimes something is so awful it's difficult to point out any one thing that's wrong with it. Not because there's a lack of weak points, but because there are simply too many targets. This article is one such piece. Nevertheless, I'll take a few whacks.
Greenaway and Barney take the construction of their own work as a principal artistic subject, and Lucas does, too. "This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level," one of John Ashbery's works begins.
Now, if Star Wars had any line of dialogue in the whole movie that hung together that well, there may have been hope for the series. The article could use this point to humorously emphasize how bad the dialogue of Star Wars was, but apparently our kindly author is oblivious to any irony except the dramatic kind he invents himself.
As Star Wars works to make us aware of its own narrative structure,
In other words, the characters were so damn unbelievably bad that I couldn't watch the movie without wondering why Lucas had to try so hard to shoe-horn his 2d characters into what could have been a very interesting plot.
The audience's willing surrender to narrative coincidence is demanded by the story's need to conclude itself.
"But all my english professors loved it when I copied phrases I heard them use in class to papers that I turned in!" Or, from another viewpoint: the Star Wars fans were so desperate to see a good movie that they saw one even though Episode I was playing in on their screens.
The Force is the power of plot.
So... the plot is powered by mitochalorians that appeared only briefly in Episode I?
Every text depends on the balance between inspiration and authorial control, and Lucas makes that tension the principal subject of his film.
Oh, now I see the problem. I went to see a movie about Jedis. My bad.
Lucas now says that he's finished with popular filmmaking and wants to return to the experimentalism of his early career
But wait - wasn't the WHOLE POINT of this article how experimental and edgy Star Wars was? This is the line that really sinks the whole article. If Star Wars was popular as opposed to experimentalism (I'm not the one saying the two are mutually exclusive, the author just did) then didn't he just torpedo the thesis of the whole article?
Yes. I think he did.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
You missed the real story, though:
(George Lucas isn't quite the movie producer version of David Brent, though. That would probably be Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
His kid is playing the jedi teenager who gets blasted in front of Bail Organa at the landing platform. Now, as I remember in the movie theater (and the timestamped bittorrent copy), he did a somersault between the two groups of stormtroopers, then tried to deflect their shots before being hit multiple times. In other words, he went out like a punk. But on the DVD, he does some crazy flying jump, kills three or four guys, then turns around to face the second set, and gets his in the chest. Or am I just imagining things?
>What do you people have against Star Wars? Most people here think Star
/remember/ how great they were. And we all went in droves to see, we hoped the continuation of that greatness. And even as pathetic as the new installments kept being, I kept going, kept hoping that it would get better.
>Wars (IV, V, VI) is cool because all the older geeks they live up to thought
>it was cool. Now everyone that watched the newer episodes (or even heard about
>them) and their grandmothers think they suck. Well you know what? If they did
>truly suck, people wouldn't go like crazy to watch them (don't forget,
>Episode I is 5th on the All Time Box Office for the USA) all.
There is one huge, huge reason why lots of people went to the box office to watch them. All of us "older geeks" who were actually alive and went to see the original movies
>Can anyone give me a precise reason why they think Star Wars I, II or III
>were horrible movies? Was it Jar Jar? If yes, how would you do it to
>make it suck less, stick to the original story and ensure IV, V and VI
>don't have to change? Remember, you still need a gullible character that
>can be trusted by the Jedis, loyal, possible elected to be a representative
>in the Senate at a future time and easily manipulated in the future. Any
>character you make like that (even making Harrison Ford play the character,
>since so many love him) would still make you hate him. It is the exact purpose
>of the character. And it is also the ingredient the movie needs to evolve.
In a nutshell, the latest three suck because they were too childish. The first three movies were much more "adult" feeling. They weren't "Aliens" by any stretch of the imagination, but even when I watch them now as an adult (I was 7 when the first one came out) I can appreciate them as being dark and sinister, but not in a Sunday-morning cartoon kind of way. For example, the mighty droid army that took over Naboo? They look, quite literally, like puppy dogs. My droid army would have looked like the exoskelton T800 from "The Terminator".
But I think my biggest problem with the last 3 movies was the acting. You would think George Lucas could get anyone in the world he wanted for his movies. The kids who played Anakin, both as a child and as an adult, could not act their way out of paper bags. Maybe some of the actors in the original 3 movies weren't the hottest actors in the world, either, but none of them made me CRINGE as they said their lines.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
> When someone says avant-garde...
Yeah, when someone says "avant-garde" it usually means they are looking at a turd and trying to sound sophisticated by using big words to convince others that it really isn't a turd.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
He (Lucas) knows what exactly what the film should look like so his direction is very clear and his decisions are always the right ones.
Hmmm.....well I tend to disagree although I did enjoy most of the Episodes 1-3.
I would say that the decision to have Jar-Jar Binks as a central character was a mistake. The long dialogue scenes with 'Annie' were bad, as was the writing for those scenes. The space battles in all three were not long enough, and we didn't get enough background on Jabba the Hutt, Mace Windu, Yoda and Chewbacca which are all interesting characters.
Another big problem was the dialogue, the original Star Wars was funny at times and had lighter moments. I think that Ep1-3 took themselves too seriously and ended up having a complicated plot involving senators and government, which takes away from the adventure part of the film. When trying to make a political point, Lucas gets off track and away from the fantasy world in which we enjoy. People don't want to hear about political problems in a space fantasy, they want the fantasy.
Another issue I had was the lack of space battles, too much of Ep1-3 were on the ground in CG sets that were dull and uninteresting. CGI may enable you to create anything you want, but it doesn't look and feel real. It has a dullness to it which is hard to explain. It's TOO perfect, as to say it has no imperfections or flaws that are subtle to the eye and make it seem real.
I have a theory that once artists/musicians/filmmakers get older and have kids, their sense of adventure and fantasy gets viewed through a lens of what they would find acceptable for their OWN children to watch/view/listen to. Not all artists succumb to this problem, but I feel that Lucas made Ep1-3 to appeal to his kids, and softened the violence and action in this regard.
And finally, the decision to have Greedo shoot first at Han Solo in A New Hope is a total abomination and should never have been changed.
In my opinion, The Empire Strikes Back was Lucas' masterpiece and I will continue to enjoy that movie as much as I did in 1980.
Hopefully, the next movies Lucas will make will be as original and interesting as his 1970s adventures. A new hope indeed!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
A young innocence man trying to do good and is corrupted by a evil force to be come the DARK OVER LORD!! oh I'm not talking about Anakin... I'm talking about George Lucas He starts out as a independent film maker and sells his soul to Hollywood to become a billion dollar mogul.
(a) it changes Han's character; he only shoots in self-defence and
(b) how did Greedo MISS at point blank range? It's just stupid.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
This raises a really interesting question about why Leia's ship was near Tatooine in the first place. According to the narrative in Episode IV, she had recieved the stolen plans from the Rebel spies, and was en route to Alderaan to deliver them to her father, Bail Organa, presumably the leader of the rebellion. I have always assumed, since we don't know where they started out from, and since it seems like a relatively short journey from Tatooine to Alderaan, that the ship was damaged and forced to seek shelter at the nearest available system (such as what happens to the Falcon in Episode V).
But then this raises the question of how Princess Leia knows who Obi-Wan Kenobi is, or how she knows that he is located on Tatooine. The end of Episode III tells us that Bail Organa knows this information, and so we need to conclude that he told his daughter. But this raises a startling additional point: Organa also knew that Luke Skywalker was in residence on Tatooine. It coule be that Organa has decided, now that Luke will also be of age, to call in Obi-Wan and Luke to assist the Rebellion. Since none of this is given in the narrative, it isn't very likely that this is Lucas's intent. It is perhaps more likely that Leia has a letter from her dad on the ship that says "Open in case of being marooned on Tatooine - it happens more often than you might think." Or maybe she had an emergency call back home and said "I've blown a tire near Tatooine, who can help me nearby?" Nevertheless, it is interesting to speculate about the possible motives for sending Leia to Obi-Wan at this point in the history of the Rebellion.
That would be Natural Born Killers.
If I could, I'd destroy you all.
They could've tried a LITTLE harder on that one, it felt like an insult to the first two. Seriously, it needed better special effects, I felt like I was back in the 90's. The first 30 minutes really felt.. fake. After that it got a bit better though. I demand somebody remake it >->
It's never just a game when you're winning. - George Carlin
Yeah, has anyone come up with a plausible theory for how hiding Luke from his dad by putting him with his dad's half-brother (?) and wife, whom his dad knows, on his dad's home planet, was a good idea.
:).
Also, why did Vader let them get slaughtered like that during the search for Luke.
Before #3 came out, I always figured we'd have some kind of "memory wipe" take place as part of him becoming Vader to explain all these inconsistencies. Something like the emperor taking away his past so he would be a more loyal follower or something. Didn't happen though.
I'm sure some fan or another has a detailed web site explaining why all this makes sense
My video compression blog
The whole article.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Yes, I agree, these three movies were total crap and a waste of time and effort and my money.
I realize this may not be well received in this forum, but here goes: the FA is written by a psychobabbling baboon. The Star Wars trilogy (in six parts) that he attempts to postmodernistically disect is likewise the wailing of an incoherent, attention-seeking egomaniac.
:-) ). In that context, Star Wars is great. But if you decide to be honest with yourself, you'll see that it's nothing more than that, and attempts to make it out to be something grander fall flat on their collective face.
Look, as a kid I loved the series (especially SW V). It was awesome. I built lego X-wings. And then I grew up, and I look back on it, and what do I see, honestly? With the exception of a few fun scenes (carried chiefly on the shoulders of Harrison Ford), it's mostly a badly-acted space opera. Yes, they added tons of special effects (in the newer series), but that does not a great movie make.
Let's look carefully at what Star Wars really represents - the original (Ep. 4) was a space opera, with a modern (i.e. 90's) approach to action, but made in 1977. It was pure, mindless fun, but much more dynamic fun than they were making in the 70's. (And for this I give Lucas ample credit, btw. This is something he actually did innovate) The kids loved it, and the parents got dragged along, and it was just fun enough to be enjoyable without being a kid's movie.
But that's it. It was not a discussion of postmodernistic visions in the starry night. It was not an essay on "Force as Film". It was not an exposition of a "new mythology". It was not an exploration of the deeper values of human society. It was not an objectifying narrative deconstruction of the patriarchal jedi paradigm within the neodialectic context of the Force. (for partial reference, see the Postmodernism Generator).
It was *described* as that when the movie became tremendously successful (success owing to it's overt mindless fun), and Lucas wanted to make himself appear more creditable - after all, you can get alot further with a fun movie and a legion of media whores singing postmodernist deconstruction eulogies to you than you can with just a fun movie.
Thus, the article, and all other publications that attempt to find "real meaning" in the works of Lucas are misguided - they are in the proverbial pitch-dark cellar, at midnight, looking for a black cat that isn't there. The only "real meaning" is the egomaniacal pursuit of M-O-N-E-Y. Oh, and I use "egomaniac" quite intentionally - Lucas knew damn well that the movie was just for fun. He even said so, in the earliest interviews. Afterwards, when every two-bit journalist started blowing him for being such a genius, he put on that hypocritically benevolent smile, and started discussing how he is a prophet among men with his "new mythology".
So please, let's stop discussing Star Wars as an article of either faith, religion, or artistic genius. It's just fun (assuming listening to Christian Hayden's acting in Ep 3 is your idea of fun.
Unfortunately, I think Star Wars suffers heavily from it's own massive popularity.
Before the original great three, few sci-fi "geek" films broke so successfully into the mainstream, and this is what made the original trilogy set itself up for failure. It had set up a very entertaining universe - suave bounty hunters, modern knights/paladins, a small rebellion with which the audience can love to hate the empire with, and this made it appealing to both the N*Sync loving masses and the rabid fanboys - the masses had entertaining cinemas with plenty of action and taglines, the fanboys had a new fantasy environment to revel in and plots to twitter about.
At the time, the big three were just plain fun to watch and everybody enjoyed it. Then came the new era.
Now here's the problem: Star Wars had set a precedent that even it could not aspire to as, quite possibly, the most popular cult classic to hit the big screen, which presented the paradox: to delve more deeply into the saga and please the fanboys and leave the masses scratching their heads, or to punch out a bland shoot-em-up that everybody knew would be widely viewed courtesy of the former popularity of the old three. In my opinion, Lucas blundered and attempted to stay in the middle, but ended up bending to the will of the huddled masses a little. This produced what we see now: a duly franchised and heavily marketed funfilled joyride that the majority of devotees to the series saw as a sellout. However, it also lacked the memorable characters that, while few, the originals had contained. The suave bounty hunters, the fiesty princesses and the grandfatherly old man Obi-wan were now gone which killed it even for the mass of casual viewers. The biggest outburst of memorable emotion in the new three is Vader's passionate "Nooooo."
Like many before me have said here, I'm glad I have the unspoiled versions safely tucked away in my cabinet, with no ghostly young Anakin to be seen at the end of the last movie.
The problem with these kinds of analyses is not that they are debasement of criticism, as some have suggested. It's that they create complex and appealing explanations where simpler ones fit better.
While you can frame Lucas' triumphs and missteps in a kind of Dionysian/Apollonian dichotomy as the author does, I think the more economical explanation is this: Lucas is hampered by having too much money.
For this analysis, it is more useful to consider the films in release order, not narrative order.
Episode IV barely got made; Lucas had no idea whether his whole vision would ever come to fruition -- probably he doubted it. He also had limited budget; within that budget, his effects had to be as convincing as he could manage, and it probably wouldn't be wise to let people dwell on them (or the novice actors' performance) too much. Struggling against these limitations, he ended up trying to squeeze a barrel full of plot squashed into a thimble of time. The result is that the Episode IV unrolls at a pace that may never have been matched before or since, at least in a movie that had any narrative cohesiveness. The only reason it can be followed at all is that it's cobbled together out of familiar old stuff out of the common cultural attic. The result was a freshness and exhiliration that none of the subsequent movies could match.
Episode V is widely regarded as the most satisfying of the series. The actors have hit their stride (helped along by a new director), the most onerous of the limitations have been lifted, but Lucas is not yet an all powerful, infinitely financed auter yet. The movie runs along at a slower but still brisk pace as Lucas the writer fills out the story from his Joseph Campbell crib sheet. Overall the best balanced of the entire series.
Episode VI is remarkable for being the first unremarkable film in the series. The cast has hit it stride, but Lucas the movie maker and story teller is starting to fall apart. Like the once athlete who starts to succumb to middle age, he's succumbing to middle aged spread and is plodding perceptibly. He now has power; limitless resoruces and self-indulgence are starting to take their toll. But he still has a compelling story to finish, and he manages to make it over the finish line. In retrospect our disillusionment with this film is perhaps tinged by our over optimistic expectations.
Episode I-II should be one film. That they are split into two is a sign of Lucas' complete independence, not only from financial constraint, but its accompanying artistic constraint. He made two movies out of one movie's worth of plot, for no other reason than he had a notion to. Add this to the limitless distraction iof digital effects on an unlimited budget, and these films do the unthinkable for fans of Episode IV: they drag on, and on. We're given plenty of time to ponder the imponderables as "WTF is the Trade Federation" or "How could Annakin go from ten years old to twenty without Padme going from twenty to thirty?"
Episode III: Lucas return to mediocrity. There is story to tell; Episode I-II has to be bridged to Episode IV, and he only has one movie to do it in. So his tendency to ramble is reined in, which is a very good thing. He also has an interesting philosophical point to make, one that's familiar to thoughtful readers of Tolkien and CS Lewis, about the costs of trying to impose your personal narrative on the people around you and the inability to accept the impermanence of life. But the movie, while entertaining, is unsatisfying because it wants to be profound but fails. Lucas can't shoehorn a archetypal myth like the quest or rebirth into a script that will do what he needs to do in this movie. What he has to work with is collection of loose ends that he must tie up in a way that makes his point. What he needs to achieve his ambitions in this episode are the powers of a dramatist, which he lacks.
In politics, power is the instrument. But power also corrupts. In art the struggle for freedo
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Maybe I did misread the article, but the CGI effects are still dull and they are an integral part of the movie.
From every Star Wars fan I have talked to, MOST of them think that Episodes 1-3 were not nearly as good as the original trilogy and they complain about the effects trumping the story.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Gilker_Kimmel
Star Wars is not the universe-spanning mythic adventure Lucas pretends. It is a hack-written space opera with cardboard characters play-acting through old-time Saturday morning serial cliff-hangers. It is not an art film of great depth.
chadosaurus
But is it reasonable to think that within his many explicit metaphors, the story concealed an overarching and intentional central metaphor about the good and evil inherent in plotting? Or is it perhaps more reasonable to conclude that Aidan Wasley came up with a silly ass theory and expanded that to article length, mainly because someone was willing to pay him to do so?
TheNewSnobbery
So let me get this straight -- anti-intellectuals fill the Fray to trash a fawning, academic analysis of the Star Wars series?
2005 is so schizophrenic it makes my head hurt.
petersattler
Dear First-Year Grad Student:
Your analysis of Star Wars is good, as far as it goes. At one time or another, we have all felt that rush of excitement as we try out rhetorical terms and academic jargon for the first time. And I can definitely feel that excitement in your essay. You grab your readers' attention by making sweepingly counterintuitive claims (Star Wars is postmodern art) and then cement the argument with the glue of those old lit-crit favorites, self-referentiality and self-reflexivity. It's a tried an true method -- musicals about musicals, genre fiction's obsession with its own rules, comic strip characters who talk about comics -- but it still packs a punch with some people. And it make popular culture seem canny and highfalutin. Nice try on that account.
Keifus
Oh for Christ's sake.
Which is more likely:
(A) Lucas cleverly and consciously infused a subtle interplay of textual analysis on serendipity in fiction into a series of films where starchy dry plot points are piled high like flapjacks on a lumberjack's plate, with an ice cream scoop of buttery special effects on top and smothered sloppily with a pitcherful of treacly, saccarine emotion.*
(B) It's a vestigial relic of the storytelling tradition he's borrowing so heavily from.**
I've gotta go with B, Alex.
The one that bugs me is when Ben repeats, "Obi-Wan? Now there's a name I've not heard in a long time." He goes on to say that no one called him since long before the rebellion. So, is the rebellion not started until after Tarkan, Vader and Palpatine climb in bed together?
Click here or here.
Episode II is the worst movie ever (suckier than Citizen Kane).
Episode I was better and had that cool computer game in the middle.
Though obviously I'll respect your opinion 'cos you're not trying to say that I/II/III (adds up to 6? OMG!) were better than IV/V/VI (adds up to 12! Duh, they're twice as good as the first three!).
...should write a postmodern article about English professors that we've never heard of getting paid to write pseudointellectual articles about whose actual purpose is to advertise the DVD releases of popular but overrated motion pictures. A-- W--, the greatest postmodern shill ever!
Portman......grits.....orders to ....tidy up.... TOO M..U..C...H...
A lot of your points of contention are addressed in that game. It's possible that LucasArts created the storyline with the express purpose of quelling just those arguments amongst fans, betting that those viewers rabid enough about the storyline would also gobble up the videogame and be appeased. It's not by any means probable, but you bring up some decent points, and that has me thinking...anyway:
there's no evidence that I can remember that the Force makes everything happen according to some predefined plan. This would completely negate free will, which undermines Anakin's entire fall from grace.
Not in the movies, no. In KOTOR 2 (spoiler..sort of), one of the main characters manipulates the player character throughout the entire game in an effort to stop just this supposed motive of the Force. To end the Mandalorian Wars, he/she gave the command to initiate the Mass Shadow Generator, killing thousands of Mandalorians and Jedi alike. The result of all that death turned all surviving Jedi to the dark side (for a time, and depending on how you view Revan), except for the Exile, your character. Between then and the beginning of KOTOR 2, he/she completely lost or severed his connection to the Force. Traya viewed this from afar, and saw in him the ability to end the influence of the Force altogether. She did actually view it as what made everything happen, and wanted to end that measure of determinism. Whether that's correct is anyone's guess, it's never corroborated, but at the very least addressed as an option.
Also, there's nothing that precludes Anakin's fall to the dark side, if this is the case; I'm not really understanding your logic. Even if the Force were controlling all events, the mass slaughter of Force-sensitives occurs in several of the games and comic books that precede the two trilogies in the timeline, the Jedi Purge (the events of Ep. 3) was no different, and some trained Force-sensitives still endured. Additionally, the Jedi Purge really only exterminated a large number of trained Force-sensitves, vis-a-vis, Jedi; there were more than likely still Force-sensitives in the galaxy. Untrained Force-sensitives are apparently much harder to detect, as their power isn't concentrated, and usually much weaker than that of trained Jedi or Sith, etc. Thus, you'd have to be at least on the same planet, if not the same continent, if not the same city, if not the same general area to recognize an untrained Force-sensitive. Ep 4 is a good example, the bond between Obi-Wan and Vader is strong, as they were master and apprentice, and he notices as soon as Obi-Wan boards the Death Star. By comparison, Vader has to be within a few hundred meters of Luke (in the trench) before he notices his sensitivity; in later movies--when Luke is quasi-trained as a Jedi, he can feel him from the forest moon (I believe), and vice versa. Thus, the Force could still operate in subtle ways, even while most of the trained practitioners were dead.
Both individuals argue for both things, just in different contexts.
Again, play KOTOR 2. They are actually telling them the same thing in different contexts, that's addressed. In the second KOTOR, after the Jedi Civil War in the first game, many "normal" folk in the universe despise the remaining Jedi, who are often confused with the Sith. To 'normals', the matter of context is irrelevant, it's just a minor difference of religious beliefs, and the general consensus is that they go to war quickly over these trivial matters, while at the same time being capable of immense acts of destruction (both light and dark), and thus are considered to hold too much power. It's a similar deal with the X-Men comics, etc. Thinking about it, they pretty much ripped off that entire part of the plot from the X-Men...and I haven't read much X-Men in like 10 years.
"we are led to understand in Sith that it was Palpatine himself who set the entire plot in motion by manipulating the Force toward Anakin's virgin birth."
I still conside
--- What
Why doesn't anyone get it?
You must read the other side of the story, the truth demands to be told.
Anakin was a loving, good-intentioned person with a conscience. The film's attempts to drive him to the Dark Side were staged and pushy and contrived and ultimately ridiculous. --You can frustrate a person and make him/her angry, but to become Vader, you have to scramble a person as a child. Anakin was already well past the point of such vulnerability; he had seen and learned love and friendship during his formative years. --His love and selfless good deeds were rewarded with the gratitude and returned love from solid, respectful friends, and thus his belief system and internal compass about how the world can and should be would have been set and anchored deeply. It would have taken a LOT more than a sly Palpatine whispering shit at him to screw up a 20-something year-old Anakin. Heck, even the flying junk-dealer from his childhood spoke of little Anakin with pride. --There are fatherless kids out there in the real world who would do anything for the kind of affection Anakin was shown in Phantom Menace. If you want to create a Vader, you have to start kicking him as a baby and never let up. Anakin should have been the second coming. Vader? No chance.
2. I DID however like the illustration of how a republic can easily turn into a fascist state. We all can take a lesson from that and pack our bags and move to Canada, France or New Zealand. . .
So Lucas gets half marks for insight. Politically, he's got a clue, but otherwise he's still learning. Evil is a tough problem.
-FL
We all know those movies are how the white man keeps the brother man down, even in a galaxy, far, far, away.
I hate those microbes.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Neal Stephenson wrote an article for the NYT (which I'm sure many of you remember) regarding the same issue. The basic gist of it was that in the 1970s, Star Wars was fun (read geeky) because of all the backstory and detail: every trufan knew who Han Solo worked for and who owned every ship and what the political problems in the galaxy were. In the recent installments, the story has been reduced to special effects and reliance on what had already been developed, with the cut speed of a music video and the dialogue of a television show. He rambles quite a bit as usual, but the idea is relevant and he knows quite a bit of trivia himself. It can be found here:
e nson.html?ex=1276660800&en=a693ccc4ec008424&ei=509 0&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&YOUR_REG_SYSTEM_IS_B AD_FOR_THE_INTERNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/opinion/17steph