Slashdot Mirror
When Did Star Wars Jump the Shark?
stm2 writes "As a long time fan of the stories, I watched as Star Wars transformed from one of the better sci-fi stories told to 'Whedon is my master now.' An article at the TechRepublic blog explores the weakness of the sequel trilogy and states that the Midi-chlorians are the culprit. Was it the Midi-chlorians, Jar Jar Binks, the actors? When did Star Wars jump the shark?. A bonus question: Did George Lucas redeem himself in Episode III?"
Ewoks. 'nuff said.
First post!
The trillogy ending where it did in 1983 was just fine. Coming back to it two decades later was jumping the shark.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Jar-Jar and Midi-chorlians were just a symptom of the underlying disease. He only directed one of the first three movies (IV, V, & VI), and in that one, there were people who felt like they could challenge him when the dialogue was crap...Harrison Ford was famous for it, and I doubt very seriously that Alec Guiness would have spouted some of the tripe that came later. Other directors on the other movies made the whole thing more palatable.
Fast forward to the second set (I,II,III) and you see that not only does he feel that he is capable of directing all three movies now (ha!) but no one dares to dispute his character or dialogue choices and unnecesarry plot wankings...Things thrown in just as an excuse for visual effects masturbation. If there had been anyone who felt like they could stand up to him, I can't imagine some of the horrible bad calls (like the dialog of the whole of episode II) would have gone through.
Episode III was by far the best of the new set, but I wouldn't call it great by any stretch. The movie fricking starts with them landing half a fricking starship on a landing strip, rather than, you know, in a giant self-made crater. I know it's sci-fi, but come on. I'd have bought one of them levitating them to the ground using the Force (which doesn't make a ton of sense), but not a fricking crash landing.
In short, the whole mess had potential, but the dialog was terrible, and the actors looked uncomfortable, and there was waaaaaaaay too much "Hey this would look cool!" without a thought to what it meant for the plot.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The obvious answer: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Holiday Special.
Because any further comment would induce vomiting or unstoppable, maniacal laughter, here are two helpful links to the shark jumping incident:
* http://www.starwarsholidayspecial.com/
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_Wars_Holiday_Special
In my humble opinion, it was going back and taking the myths and legends which awed us (who the Jedi and Sith had been, how the Empire changed the galaxy) and acting them all out, while giving the prequels few myths and legends of their own to compensate. It made the series feel too much like some self-contained construct, a fantasy world dreamed up in its entirety, with no mysteries that the audience's imaginations could explore. The huge number of links into the "classic" trilogy also destroyed the sense of scale by making it seem like everybody in the series new everybody else. I know about small world networks, but that's not how an epic should feel. So you wound up with something that had all the enormity and mystery of a plastic diorama.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
actors reading a bad script and not even being on a set.. standing in front of a huge blue screen (green screen?) and doing a very bad job of visualizing ouTERSPACE while talking to each other.. or even worse talking to nonexistent computer generated characters. just not any way to pull that off without it being campy as all hell..
also there were a lot of very poor plot decisions and casting calls. george thought he could get away with half-assing it, and he did.. but at the cost of respect and not money.
Star Wars explores no scientific principles in a fictional context. Rather, it's space opera - dramatic story with whizzing space ships, bleeping robots, and fuzzy aliens set to a dramatic musical score.
and realized the original trilogy was never that great after all.
Yeah, midichlorians were a pretty big issue for me. I was more than happy to forgive Lucas' usual faults and excesses, but that one was stupid.
It's been mentioned before, but you also have to remember that he's a shit storyteller. I like to call him the anti-Stephen King: He comes up with some great plots, but when it comes to writing a coherent narrative or three-dimensional characters, he's always been hopeless, and the original trilogy bears that out to a great extent. Most of us were kids at the time and mostly missed all that, we were too busy gawping at the lightsabers and other cool stuff.
As for Episode 3 being some kind of redemption, sorry no. Granted, all the work he put into 1 and 2 reach some neat and satisfying conclusions, but he still managed to deliver a highly-flawed and (as usual) stodgy movie.
Plus, it would have helped if we saw more of Darth Vader than than pathetic and brief scene we get of him in the end. I'm not one for ragging on artists when they don't deliver exactly what the fanboys want, but the "birth" of Darth Vader scene was very weak sauce.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
He says it was Midi-chlorians because "Jedi, you see, aren't made, they're born. They're of the blood, nobility, maybe even a master race". So no point fantasising about training yourself to be one - as the author did during the first trilogy.
But I think if you had been paying attention in the first trilogy you might also have come to the conclusion that Jedi are born not made - or was is coincidence that two of the most powerful Jedi just happened to be FATHER and SON!?
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
NOOOOOOoo!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Even the standards body tasked with determining this very point can't decide whether it's Jar Jar or Midi-chlorians, so I don't expect this'll get answered any time soon.
The world's only surviving livewriter.
It had already jumped the shark before the first movie was released, because the talentless hack Lucas pretty much stole everything from real sci-fi novels such as Dune.
people are fickle. it really isn't the plot, characters, acting, writing or special effects that people fall in love with -- its how it made them feel at the time. and when a sequal fails to reproduce those feelings, it automatically becomes "not as good as the original," regardless of the technical aspects. this is something you can see the world over in many different areas of interest. (computer games for example.) i don't believe the first trilogy is any better or worse then the prequel -- just different.
George is a lucky guy that takes a too quantitative view of the development cycle.
My guess is they were so concentrated on getting every detail correct and trying not to mess up they lost sight of the art and innovation. George does have the business kahones though.
my take on this is:
prequel concept was a dumb idea
making a kids movie was a dumb idea (kids don't even want to see kids movies)
removing the pseudo religious aspect and focusing on Midi-chlorians was a dumb idea
actor choice poor with zero character development for them
no semi-sophisticated humor
let's see an episode7 that shows hans kids and a new race of jedis being trained in a brave new world.
Ye gods, I know it's a slow news day. But this....
on the front page.....
It's a slashdot of a blog about Star Wars, 8 years after the most recent offensive started, 2 years after it ended.
It's not even a long blog, and it has it's own comment section. Why does this deserve a slashdotting?
Maybe if you ran a banner add over it for the stars wars kitch on ThinkGeek, it might have been excusably evil. But no, you boned that one as well.
And I read it, then I commented...... somebody get me the eye bleach and a shot of common sense.
*sigh*
Jabba the Hut in the original trilogy!
Star Wars never "jumped the shark," it just got annoying real quick-- 30 years later and in most places you can't go a day in "real life" without hearing a Star Wars reference, let alone on the internet.
Star Wars is just the worst type of pollution, plain and simple.
When Did Star Wars Jump the Shark?
After Empire Strikes Back. After Lucas' fucked with Greedo and Han. After "This new release on super-mega DVDHD-BluRay-VHS-Beta-Widescreen is my true vision!" was sold to the fans however many times over the years.
Trolling is a art,
Easy. Ewoks.
_Return of the Jedi_ ended about five minutes early. After the Rebels blow up the Big Round Thing II, there are a bunch of perfectly good Star Destroyers left in orbit. While the credits are rolling, they fire up their blasters and start toasting Ewoks.
I would pay to see that.
Everything in the SW universe was crap after the first Ewok appeared on screen. That was the moment I realized George Lucas had sold out whatever integrity he had as a story-teller, and that from then on his real customers were the ones collecting cheap tie-in garbage at MacDonald's, Burger King and Toys-R-Us. (The appearance of Jar-Jar merely epoxied shut any hope that Lucas had of redeeming himself. I went to the remaining films only because they were "group morale events" that my employers paid for; I would not have spent my own money going -- and frankly, these events did not do much for anyone's morale, that I could see).
Any sufficiently advanced technology is insufficiently documented.
The kids who grew up on the original trilogy (like me) were too young to care about bad acting and poor scripts. There were cool spaceships and we liked the goofy characters such as c3po. When the second trilogy started we were now older and didn't like goofy characters (jar-jar) and bad acting, i.e. the special effects are no longer enough.
Lucas almost redeemed himself. Until the entire dumb Anakin kills Padme sequence -- which by itself was probably survivable -- followed by Vader howling in girlish pain over a murder he knew he was going to commit. Also, it is hard to figure, especially after watching Ep 3, just how stoopid Vader had to be to not blame the Emperor and seek revenge for what was obvious: the Emperor pushed Anakin into killing Padme in order to bring him over to the Dark Side.
Lucas took a painfully simple view of human nature. Anakin would have had to have been dumber than a bag of hammers to not get the hustle that was played on him.
Until you actually see the Emperor toying with Vader in Ep 3, it remains believable that Vader would be willing to be the Emperor's lieutenant. When you see how obvious and clumsy the Emperor's actions were, it just makes Anakin/Vader look even more gullible and childish and simple than he already was portrayed in Ep 1 and Ep 2.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
maybe even a master race
The Jedi are German?
Trolling is a art,
star wars is fairly cool in other peoples hands (Original trilogy, KOTOR, KOTOR 2, Republic comanda etc..) but when Lucas has direct and unchecked control of it he ruins it because basically he isn't a fan of his own work. That and he gets really bad ideas along with pretty good ideas. When othe rpeople have their hand in it it editorilizes his ideas and the shit gets dropped.
Before:
Lucas: "hey harrison, I want you to shoot after guido shoots at you."
Harrison: "You know what george, fuck you. Han is supposed to be a bad ass with a good side not a boy scout with a furry for a friend."
Now:
Lucas: "I want you to put in a CG rhasta with teeth grindingly bad dialogue"
ILM grunt: "Yes mr. pays my bills and whose opinion my career hinges on"
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Episode 3 was the worst of the bunch! I honestly fail to see how anybody could see Lucas redeeming himself with Episode 3. I thought my eyes were going to pop out of my head with all the eye-rolling I was doing through it. Seriously, do people actually think it's good?
The first three where joint efforts: His wife helped with the editing, two other guys directed the ESB and ROTJ, and Lucas had Larry Kasden to help punch up the scripts.
The last three had none of that. Lucas believed the "Star Wars, c'est moi!", and we ended up with JarJar, midichlorians, and "I have the high ground".
Once Lucas actually started believing that he alone was responsible for the success of Star Wars, it was over.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
I disagree. They tried to make it 'science like' which made it harder to suspend disbelief.
"The force is strong with this one" was enough.
People knew that a family may be stronger in the force, and that was all the audience needed.
It also flies in the face of the, 'mystic quality' of the force set up in 4,5,6. So people who enjoyed those movies felt disappointed.
I just watched EP1 with my 10 year old son, and he enjoyed. Three things would have improved it for me:
1) drop the midi-chlorians
2) Tighter editing. They could have chopped 30 minutes off it.
3) In the end, have had Jar-Jar release the spheres on purpose. This wuld have made him wierd because he was an Alien, and not just some bumbling idiot version of the trix rabbit.
There where other little things that I though could be changed, but those were the biggies..and I suppose anakin not accidentally taking off, accidentally getting to the station, accidentally blowing up the station, and the accidentally escaping could have been done better. My son enjoyed it, as did many youngsters, so it was ok.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Who also writes terrible stories with lame plots and card-board characters.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
What helped Star Wars to gain so much popularity were just two things: -Incredible special effects by its time. -Darth Vader. I think the story of SW is not very depth, in fact, it is very simple, and actors from before and now were always of average quality [Except of Harrison Ford]. SW is[was] a phenomenon because of special effects, and teh character Darth Vader, with his evil look and voice. I like SW, but it's not THAT good to deserve such analysis, I think.
Minti: What's that huge shuriken in your back?! Kin: It's the instrument of my victory.
Exactly - I thought that was the reason Leia has some Jedi aptitude in ROTJ?
I prefer that name. In addition to making fun of one of the stupidest aspects of the prequel trilogy, it also raises an interesting question: could the whole Darth Vader situation (and with it, the Galactic Empire) have been avoided with a simple dose of penicillin?
In the original trilogy, the Force was magic. There was no need to explain "how it works;" Obi-wan's explanation in ANH of what it is and what it does was sufficient. Nobody has to ask how Merlin's magic or Gandalf's magic works. It's magic, fercryinoutloud! Similarly, there's no need to explain how the Force works. It's the Force fercryinoutloud!
As much as I was looking forward to Episode I, I was totally disappointed by it pretty much from the beginning, and the moment at which I knew it was totally blown and wasn't going to get better was when Qui-gon started blabbing about the chlamydians or whatever. Stupid technobabble worthy of the absolute worst episodes of ST:TNG (gawd... I now wonder: how do tetrions affect chlamydians?), and worse, it reduced what had been magic to a mere blood condition.
Also, as TFA notes, being a great Jedi suddenly stopped being decided by training in the Force and became a mere accident of birth, which is much less appealing to me, as it is to the author of TFA.
Episode III was the least awful of the prequel trilogy, but the world would be better off if the three had never been made. The original trilogy is still great, though. Star Wars (ANH) is still one of my all-time favorite films. I was 8 when it came out, and that was 30 years ago, so you know I'm rapidly approaching 40, but I still feel a childlike sense of wonder when I watch that movie. Even the awful prequel trilogy can't ruin that for me. I just pretend the prequels don't exist. Besides, that way, Darth Vader's revelation to Luke in TESB, and what Luke figures out on Dagobah in ROTJ are actually surprises.
I plan to show my kids the original trilogy. If they end up somehow seeing the crap prequels afterward, that's their problem, but I won't be responsible for it. I'll show them something awesome and let them decide, knowing how Dad doesn't like the prequels, whether they want to watch them or not.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
Eps 1-3 are dull because they tell the backstory. We already know how it ends, we already know pretty much what happens. So there's no tension and no surprise. They stretch out what made an interesting few paragraphs in the original trilogy to 3 films.
Jar-Jar and Midi-chorlians are no worse than Ewoks and handmade lightsabers.
The series jumped the shark when the actors were forced to stand in green rooms for short takes. Emote, damn you! EMOTE!
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
ANAKIN
I want to go.
about ...
QUI-GON
Then, pack your things. We haven't much time.
ANAKIN
Yipee!!
My secret? I just relax and enjoy the ride. I know that this is not MY story, not MY movie but the vision of GL (good or bad). Even today I enjoy reading fairy tales to my son. And inmensly enjoy Pinoccio, Sleeping beaty , etc, and I'm not trying to search the explanation of why the she woke up with the princes kiss... Accpt it: it just happened so.
With the new trilogy I had NO EXPECTATIONS whatsoever. Yes, the episode 1 was sometimes silly whith tehe kid, but I like it. Midiclorians? The force? No diference to me. The could introduce the "infinite Delphian gravity cloack" and I would have accepted it. Jar jar? Silly but OK, as a silly sidekick can be.. The effects where great in my opinion and adeded a lot to the atmosphere.
People bitch as well with any new chapter of a sequel: Harry potter, StarTreck, Lost, you name it. Me? I enjoy the ride . And like them all? I'm I stupid? maybe, but hey, I have double fun.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
By Akira Kurosawa. Basically scene for scene, character for character.
At least he stole the first one from the best. Why not every body else steels from Kurosawa e.g. Magnificent Seven, Last Man Standing etc etc. Kurosawa himself stole from Shakespear (Ran is just King Lear in feudal Japan with awesome camera work).
Everything was downhill from there.
The only good movie Lucas ever made was 'American Graffiti'. He couldn't make that film today if he tried.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I was 9 when Star Wars came out and I fucking loved that shit. But let's face it, it's a franchise for children.
that was so lame. at least he should have used MP3chlorians! Hmm... now that I think of it, does the Light side of the Force use OGGchlorians instead?
...and IMHO, the franchise never recovered. Episode III has _so_ many flaws; its only redeeming value was that it beat Eps I and II. Well, so did "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra", and that film had a budget of $100K.
Lucas lives in his own world. He will die believing that the fans underrated his movies and that they'll be considered classics by 2050.
No, I'm not going to go into Lucas needing to support his donut habit. Instead I mean I can't answer "Did George Lucas redeem himself in Episode III?" because after Episode I, I was never going to pay to see any subsequent movies and right now (having recently moved to SF) I don't have cable. Frankly, I think it's kind of sad that people who are not and have no young children went back for another helping after Episode I and even worse - from what I heard of Episode II - that they went back for Episode III.
I think the problem is that we generally think of Star Wars as being better than it actually is. If you replace ESB with a Lucas directed Star Wars movie, suddenly even the original trilogy looks dubious. The original was exciting but also clunky in direction and acting. ROTJ's main selling points are the Vader death and Leia being the sister - what do you get if you take those two out? Singing teddy bears, various creepy looking aliens of little consequence to the movie, and Carrie Fisher in a bikini. Without ESB the original Star Wars would still be a classic popcorn movie, but seen more as a fluke from a mediocre director and writer.
Also, can we please say "Fuck You" to Lucas's revisionist history? It was not and is not "Episode IV: A New Hope", it's the fucking original Star Wars movie.
with it.
Many good movies will often have a concept, or a message, or something for you to think about after the credits roll. However, good movies also let you draw your own conclusions from the film and aren't usually incredibly overt in presenting it. This is what the first starwars trilogy did. You had the concepts of good vs. evil, predestination vs. free will etc, but you weren't constantly beat over the head with those themes. The prequels are more like the Matrix sequels in that the messages are repeated over and over again till you just don't care. Also, hiding behind intentionally confusing and/or terse dialog doesn't make you "profound" it makes you annoying....
Monstar L
Anakin was Yoda's son?
;-)
I had no idea
The correct term is "space opera".
"The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded."
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
star wars lost its way when it lost its sense of humor and started taking itself too seriously. at the end of the day...it's...just...entertainment
Consider how bad the prequels were. Three overlong, dragging, exposition-heavy, leaden-dialogue-laden messes.
Now imagine if they were one film, covering the periods II-III with I only seen a few times in flashbacks to when Anakin first met the Jedi ("We didn't come here to free slaves..."). Leave off 90% of Anakins' lines. Leave the brooding. Leave off the clone sequences, except that the soon-to-be emperor ordered up an army. You have a coup, and a trained Jedi (Anakin) who as he has grown up has had as his central life-issue, "Why did I take up with these self-righteous bastards who are so hooked on my being obedient and 'selfless' that they made me leave my mother rotting in slavery?" Such an individual might be seduced by one such as Palpitane, who promises power to live a life 'of consequence, or conscience...'
They jumped the shark when they planned the prequels as they did.
Blasphemer! Get thee behind me!
STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL. The only reason the original trilogy survived as it did was because Lucas a) did not direct and b) did not write the screenplays for Eps V and VI. And when he DID start to take more control over the property, what did we get? The made-for-TV warning of what was to come... EWOKS: THE BATTLE FOR ENDOR. Ugh.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
I was just thinking earlier today, what if Quentin Tarantino had directed the Star Wars prequels? Now that would have been interesting. It's got me genuinely curious what he might have done with the Star Wars universe and its films.
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
The only reason anyone considers the originals to be any good is the fog of nostalgia. "Star Wars" opened to terrible critical reviews and had the same wacky mix of good and terrible acting as "The Phantom Menace". Despite being a better film than its predecessor, "The Empire Strikes Back" was really no better or worse than "Attack of the Clones".
"Star Wars" is a pulp space-opera, fercryinoutloud... the exact same sort of hokey stuff writers were churning out for a penny a word in the 40s... these inflated standards of imagined quality are just typical fanboy nitpicking and bitching enhanced to the nth degree because of the series' iconic status among dorks, spazzes and geeks who grew up immersed in the stuff. Same deal with the "Special Editions" -- objectively, who can blame Lucas for wanting to spruce up those awful-to-mediocre movies, given their visibility?
Just like the original film and its sequels, the prequels were made to appeal to kids -- and just like the original film and its sequels, the marketing blitz that followed will ensure that, whatever your opinion as adults (anecdotally, most adults I knew in the late 70s thought "Star Wars" was dreck), an entire generation of kids will consider these movies classics.
The Hidden Fortress angle in Episode 4 revolved around the fact that everybody was either a pawn or appeared to be a pawn, in service of either the empire or the rebellion. In truth, Chewbacca was as close to being the supreme commander of the rebellion's forces and R2D2 was the greatest champion, but rather than build on these angles, Luke was the gifted chosen one, and the focus on the little people were lost, replaced by war scenes featuring literal little people in the form of Ewoks.
It's as if a series of movies about a WWII fighter squadron quickly expanded into a series that focused on a war of words between Hitler and Roosevelt. It just wouldn't make for an entertaining story.
Pretty much right after "Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."
Good god the original is THIRTY years old! No one under 30 can even remember a time *before* Star Wars! Not only has it jumped the shark, but the shark has died of old age! I am old enough remember when the original was released, but too old to remember when I still cared about the series.
I thought casting Hayden Christensen is on this list. The original Vader was played by a fellow who was nearly 6' 7" / 250lbs and a former champion-contender level bodybuilder who has remained committed to his work ever since. The voice was provided by the most iconic voice actor of the last century.
His replacement is about 6' 1" / 190lbs, needed a special effects suit to fake the transformation, and at one point decided "Hollywood no longer interested him" after being handed the role of the decade over some 400 other applicants. (Though IMDB reports he's been involved in a few things since.)
http://www.askmen.com/gossip/hayden-christensen/hayden-christensen-to-quit-acting.html
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I was 10 when I watched The Return of the Jedi, and I liked the ewoks. Specially funny was the part when Luke used the Force because C3PO refused to impersonate a deity.
I also loved how the Ewoks managed to defeat the imperial forces with lo tech. That was a big plus for me, and in the end, Luke defeated the dark side and rescued dad.
And what's wrong with selling toys? I loved the Jedi action figures and the little two legged transports.
In my opinion, the movie was perfect. Now let me tell you, it was Ep 1 that jumped the shark. Midichlorians, no father, and let's not forget the new adventures of R2D2 and C3PO!
Ep2 was less awful, but Ep3 really screwed it. Even I could have come up with a better plot! I was hoping to see Anakin's corruption and how he began desiring power and destroying cities all along. Big disappointment.
When 800 years old you have reached, a grumpy old muppet you will be. Deter others from training you will attempt. Rely on the old standbys you will.
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
In 1980, when they made a sequel.
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
Eps IV - VI had a sense of fun and derring-do that the prequels could never match. Somehow, it was lost while EP1 gestated in Lucas' brain. It also doesn't hurt that the Rebel Alliance vs. Empire plot unfolded already... the rest was filling in the backstory.
Germans, no matter what their political stripe, never referred to themselves as a "master race". Remember, the Germans were fighting the British and French - the people who brutally subjugated every non-white race on the planet as they believed they were inherently inferior and in need of European domination. In contrast, Germany and Japan were fighting against the Anglo-American control of world trade and domination of the world's people.
British propaganda has always been characterized as chutzpa, but none of moreso than the claim that British Empire, that controlled 2/3 of the globe, somehow saved the world from a little country the size of Texas that was bent on world domination due to their belief they were the "master race".
Honestly I've thought a lot about this issue. I've watched all the movies many many times.
To start, the episodes 1, 2 and 3 weren't so unlike the original trilogy. The story was mostly G-rated, with not a lot of blood and violance (although 4,5,6 re-release I noticed the scenes added/updated seemed much more violent than the original) It seemed like the same formula however. We had Jar Jar as our 3PO, Obi-Wan as our Han solo, Anakin was basically Luke and the Universe faced the same situation.
I think most of us Adults forget that these movies were obviously aimed at a different audience, look at the fight scenes, the love scenes the political dialog, all of it isn't complicated--a 6 year old could follow it easily. I feel like these movies were mostly a sell-out. The toys, the backpacks, the snacks, even the characters seemed aimed at Children. Anakin was a 8 year old--perfect to create an idol for 8 years of merchandise purchases.
If we watch the actors, we can see that they're really laying on the Cheese. Ewan McGregor is a good example, I think this was his worst role I've ever seen him in.
I lost my steam on this post, but in all, these movies are exactly what I expected. If I want to enjoy the Star Wars universe I will always be more happy with the Books and few video games (SW: SOTE for N64 comes to mind).
No, Lucas didn't redeem himself on the 3rd I think it was actually a shame, it seemed like he tried to make all his fanboys happy and really didn't do a great job.
[J]
Was it the Midi-chlorians? Yes.
Jar Jar Binks? Yes.
The actors? Yes.
When did Star Wars jump the shark? Episodes I-III.
Did George Lucas redeem himself in Episode III? No. But he sold a lot of action figures.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Even from the first pic, Star Wars was always about spectacle more than plot or dialog. The characters were always stereotypes and the story line was never profound. The difference is that in 1977, the CGI and modeling detail were something new and had a Wow! factor that had never been seen before in film. Apart from the sheer pace of the action shots, itt was the first time a film successfully communicated the sheer magnitude of space and the structures required to support it. Even Star Trek failed to give you a concrete vision of the size of the Enterprise, simply because they didn't dare shoot such a close-up of the models they were using. But the pan of the battle-cruiser in the Star Wars opening was simply awe-inspiring.
So from a cinematography standpoint, I can't say that it ever jumped the shark. The audience just developed a tolerance for special effects that made us require more of the drug to achieve the same sense of wonder.
From a story-telling standpoint, it was never high art, but I think that Empire and Return add enough backstory to the original that they add value to it. The second trilogy was just milking the cash cow. Kind of like Frank Herbert writing new Dune books 10 years later, or Robert Jordan's series that doesn't end. So episode 1 definitely jumps the shark.
We are the 198 proof..
If only Lucas had stopped trying to write SF at the end of THX-1138.
I'm with David Brin here, Star Wars was screwed up with Lucas' elitism right from the start.
Hayden Christensen. Seriously. I cannot watch the last two movies. It's too sappy for me, and that actor is just infuriating.
I know this is sacrilegious for such a beloved character and I have grown to love him more in the years. But when he first appeared the perfection of the series ended for me.
Up until then the series was gritty and realistic and required no sense of disbelief. Yoda just seemed like a puppet to me. And the more the camera stayed fixed on him, the more he seemed like a puppet. And the Frank Oz voice was Fozzie the Bear to me. I kept thinking this as I watched Yoda. Took me totally out of the story and into the fact that Yoda was a fake puppet being voiced by an actor I knew too well in another context.
Assuming they mean 1/2/3 and nothing that happened in 4/5/6 Everything about the character from his age to the plot around him was so convoluted you couldn't care less what happened to him.
When they first find him hes about 8 yet hes too old to train and have no problems entering him in a life or death race
He falls in love with a 14 y/o princess who apparently loves him back
He saves the day by randomly pushing buttons in a star fighter he can't even see or even knows that the buttons do defeating the whole "he can drive a race pod so surly he can fly a spaceship"
In Ep2
Hes now 18-20and the princess is around 16 *blink*
he kills off that village in revenge and no one seems to care, yea they were bad guys but shouldn't of doing that turned him to the dark side
In Ep3
Hes still 18-20ish and now the princess is 18-20ish *blink*
He turns to the dark side over a dream of losing the princess and not even a full detailed dream just one ware she is sick. And apparently trusts that a sith lord knows how to cure it.
his first assignment as vader is to kill off a bunch of kids and he has no problems doing it they could of at least worked his way into the evil role a bit first
I loved the first Star Wars. I was there opening day; a gram of hash in my mouth and stoned from a gram we shared. But, I remember watching one of the sequels (the Jar-Jar Binks one, and no, I don't know which one or care... read on), and wasn't even SLIGHTLY amused when I was able to predict most of the dialogue before it was uttered. It was dumbed down for children... inane, cutesy, and without a single thread of adult theme or motivation. I felt extremely ripped off when I left the theatre. The series died that day for me.
I call computer-illiteracy job security
In most medieval tales, people have free will to choose between good and evil. Darth Vader chose evil. Han Solo also made the wrong choices, but at the end of Star Wars IV, he made the right choice to not abandon the rebels. Han Solo saved the day by protecting Luke Skywalker as his space ship ultimately delivered a blow against the Death Star -- the ultimate symbol of evil. Of course, in "Star Wars VI", even Darth Vader chose good and became reborn as a good spirit.
In the first 3 movies, people who chose good and who committed their lives to the ideals of the Jedi could acquire the powers of the Jedi. Of course, one must be open-minded and must be sensitive to the true nature of the universe. This message is a wholesome one for all the bratty kids who adored these movies and who eventually grew up to shape our society (via, for example, the many discussions on Slashdot) for the better.
Now, fast forward to the 21st century. George Lucas changed the message of the original "Star Wars". In the new "Star Wars", the powers of the Jedi belong only to the people who inherit specialized midi-chlorians in their genes. If you do not have the special genetic material, then you are a loser like the rest of the humanoids.
In the new "Star Wars", the Jedis are the highest, most privileged class in a caste system (like the one in India). People are born into their fate. Regardless of the amount of effort in abiding by the Jedi ideals, a person can never be a Jedi. Being a good person means nothing.
George Lucas transformed the Western theme of free will (to choose good and become a Jedi) to the Indian theme of a caste system. That is a terrible message to send to today's children. Though both the old "Star Wars" and the new "Star Wars" have characters (e.g., ewoks and Jar Jar Binks) specifically appealing to children, the underlying message of the old "Star Wars" is a much better inspiration for children.
Yet, we should not whine about Lucas' tragic blunder. We should create another new "Star Wars" by re-writing the stories and re-developing them into an alternative prequel, which sticks closely to the original theme in "Star Wars IV: A New Hope".
Fixing a tragic blunder is the plan for a new movie about "Star Trek". This new movie is also a prequel and attempts to return to the original spirit of "Star Trek".
There were a lot of problems with the original trilogy but I think the biggest two were the Ewoks and having 2 Death Stars (they couldn't make 3 movies without recycling that plot). The other stuff was mostly just sloppy planning or bad writing like Luke and Leia's kiss. There was plenty of that in the last 3 movies (I'd say it was worse) but there were major additional problems.
1. We knew the ending just not exactly how they got there. That works fine if there is some mystery to it or it just seems like an odd outcome you have to work your way to (JJ Abrams did MI:3 and several episodes of Alias like this). It doesn't work that well for Star Wars because the original trilogy is pretty much a spoiler for the last three. The new trilogy hit the requirements of setting the stage for the original trilogy. I think they did it poorly because they tried too hard to bring in old characters and thing like that to tie the movies together without a good reason.
2. The good guys aren't the underdogs like they were in the original trilogy and one of the main protagonists pretty much becomes a strait up villain. Do we root for the guy who's going to become a villain and hunt down and kill the Jedi including kids? Do we root for the second tier character who dies in the first movie of the original trilogy? The answer is we tolerate them and their poor characters until they do cool fights or Jedi tricks.
This stuff made it a lot harder to put up with Jar Jar, annoying kid Anakin, whiny teen Anakin, teen Anakin hooking up with Padme, Midicloriens, the title "Attack of the Clones", a trade dispute war no one gave a damn about, and villains that weren't very intimidating. It was never going to be easy to make a prequel trilogy but they could have done a lot better.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
I know I'll be in the minority with this view (possibly a minority of 1) but here goes.
The Internet killed Star Wars.
Long ago, in a galaxy far far away, when people didn't like a film they told their friends not to go see it, then let it go. If you look at the box office records for TPM, you'll see it continued strong in theatres throughout the summer, and hung in all the way to October. This is not the box office of a film that had great hype but no substance; it is the box office of a film that impressed more than a few people.
Of course, the internet says otherwise. For three years the only thing more hated on the internet than George Lucas was Jar Jar. I'll be honest, I have no comprehension of how people can invest the kind of time I saw wasted complaining about TPM.
Worst of all, I think that the numerous online complaints got to Lucas. I think that AotC was dubious and RotS was pure crap largely because Lucas was trying to meet the demands of a group that probably couldn't be satisfied.
I think that TPM is much more like the original trilogy than some people want to give it credit for; most likely because OT was from their childhood, and so it got rose coloured. (movie goers from my mother's generation certainly didn't have as high an opinion about OT as my gen did; perhaps that says something)
(If anyone is dying to respond to this post with arguments about why TPM sucks, my lack of response is because I wasted three hours a day for three years on multiple forums fighting this fight, and at this point I don't care any more. You think that GL ruined SW for you, well people like you ruined it for me.)
But the original trilogy isn't flawless either, with the aformentioned ewoks that can maybe seen as a part of how George Lucas lost grasp of his universe, at least to an external viewer.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Return of the Jedi was released five months after I was born. My parents bought me a few Star Wars toys that I must have kept for years because I distinctly remember playing with them as a kid. I also had an original Return of the Jedi blanket and movie tie-in books, so I consider myself to be at the extreme edge of the group who can claim Star Wars as part of their childhood.
I'm sure some of you who are older than me by a few years will say that the Ewoks ruined the Star Wars franchise, but for me, they have always been an intrinsic part of it. Yes, they were largely a comedic species, but in RoTJ, their nievity - their childish, silly actions and noises served as a contrast to the evil of the Empire. One of the most touching moments in the original trilogy was a scene where one Ewok is killed by an imperial laser blast, and another leans down beside him, prodding him, clearly not realising his friend is dead, and possibly even unfamiliar with the concept of non-natural death itself.
The Ewoks are often compared to Jar Jar, but I think this is very unfair. Yes, they made the audience laugh, and yes they probably made Lucas lots more money from merchandising, but they served a purpose in terms of the film's plot, and without the contrast that they created, the Empire's actions would have had a greatly reduced impact on audiences.
None of this can be said of Jar Jar Binks. His "zany antics" serve no purpose but outright slapstick humour, and even this is not done very well. He alone does not create a contrast with the Trade Federation, nor does his innocence underscore the central themes of the film(s). He exists purely because the writers needed a "funny character", and were too lazy to create something better.
As I have said, I am (by the skin of my teeth) a member of the "Star Wars generation", but because I was not old enough to be obsessively interested in movies, I do not think that the modern trilogy "ruined my childhood" by any means. However, there is a noticable drop in quality between the two sets of films, and for me, the most blatant example of this is the presence of Jar Jar Binks.
... when they decided to recycle the death star threat.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
... horribly, horribly... implausible. Vader is Luke's daddy? Okay, fine, I'll buy it... stretching a bit there. Yoda is a super powered oven mitt that trains warriors as a hobby... whatever. Leah is his sister... wait... huh? Straw. Camel. Back. Snap.
And I always hoped that the "Clone Wars" meant that the Obi Wan we knew from "New Hope" was a clone of the original... or that he was the original and Vader had been going around killing every Obi Wan he found. I had hoped that Jedi were super rare so that when someone actually became a Jedi they cloned the heck out of him so that there would be lots of copies. Vader would some how become miffed at this saying it was a perversion of the true Jedi religion and start slaying the cloned Jedi in a religious pogrom that would end in his becoming the very evil he sought to purge the galaxy of. I would have loved to see five Obi Wan at various ages doing battle with one suped up Vader.
So when Episode I came out and we heard something about the Queen of Naboo being surrounded by clones of herself I had hoped we would see something about clones that didn't suck eggs.
No dice. The story line is merely full of things that are cool by accident. There was no story telling genius... just accidental genius. You've heard people say: "I'd rather be lucky than good any day." Well, that applies to Lucas. Lucky. Not good. Story is just a prop for visual effects to sell merchandise.
[signature]
... but the linked article is simply lame and not even worth reading. It was written like someone just needed a fill-in and was running out of time.
Call me a troll all you want. I just want my 2 minutes back!
the Tarzan thing in the first goddamn movie.
The musical number in Jabba's palace was when the Fonz started revving his engine.
It isn't a memory leak. It's an object life-span issue.
Have you actually watched The Hidden Fortress? There are some similarities, but to say the two movies are the same, scene for scene and character for character, indicates that either you haven't watched Star Wars or you haven't watched The Hidden Fortress. The latter seems more likely, which is why I asked it that way.
If you actually have watched both, I'll be very curious to hear which characters are the same as Greedo, Han and Chewie, which one is like Luke, and which scenes are like Obi-wan training Luke and Obi-wan confronting Darth Vader. Y'know, the important scenes in the movie. For bonus points, be sure to specify which scene in THF is exactly the same as Luke talking to Uncle Owen about the droids and saying he wants to go to the Academy, and what in THF is even remotely similar to the enormously important plotline of Luke knowing little about his father other than the fact that he was a great star pilot.
Yes, there's a princess in both, and yes, there is a pair of "comic relief" characters in both, but do you really want to try to say those two are that similar to R2D2 and C-3PO? I just don't see it. For one thing, R2 and 3PO are actually likeable, and I don't see any redeeming characteristics at all in their counterparts in The Hidden Fortress. Also, Princess Leia doesn't hide her identity from her protectors. You can argue that there's a general loyal to the princess in both, but there's nothing even remotely similar in THF to Princess Leia having to try to find "General Kenobi" after years and years of nobody having seen him. I don't know why I'm bothering to cite differences when in fact the two movies are very, very different, with only a few points that coincide.
Kurosawa never tried to hide the fact that Ran is based on King Lear (it say it in the credits, for example, and he stated it in interviews), nor that Throne of Blood, signfiicantly older than Ran, was based on Macbeth (hint: it's also mentioned in the credits). In fact, many consider Throne of Blood to be one of the best productions of Macbeth ever made. To say Kurosawa "stole" from "Shakespear" (sic) is just plain silly. So is saying that American Graffiti was the only good film Lucas ever made. AG was and is a fine film, but so is Star Wars. It's also completely ridiculous to say that Star Wars was stolen, scene for scene and character for character from THF.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
Don't forget that Anakin didn't even have a father - unless Shmi was lying, of course.
(Scene I wanted to see):
Qui-Gon: The Force is unusally strong with him, that much is clear. Who was his father?
Shmi: There was no father, that I know of... I carried him, I gave him birth... I can't explain what happened.
Qui-Gon: You mean Anakin was born of a virgin..!?
Shmi: Well, I didn't say that, exactly.
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
The fact that 1/2 of Phantom Menace was either the set-up for the pod race or the pod race itself was a huge miscalculation.
The other biggie was off-loading the Clone War to a cartoon series.
My favorite review was from, of all places, a religious web site called decentfilms.com.
Here's the link: http://decentfilms.com/sections/reviews/starwars1.html
Be sure to read the "Final Thoughts" section at the bottom.
Basically he nails the point that TPM should have adhered to origin story conventions.
To sum up:
- Episode 1 should have been an origin story that ended with the start of the Clone War.
- Episode 2 should have focused on the Clone War itself, and the transformation of Anakin to Vader should have been well underway at the end.
- Episode 3 should have kept the "Rise of the Empire" theme but given us more of Anakin as Vader.
I think that Terry Goodkind sums it up nicely in his Sword of Truth series. In that series, there are two types of wizards; those with the Calling, i.e., they want to be, and those with the Gift, i.e., they're naturally talented at it.
in the OT, or at least Epi 4, it was quite clear that any old idiot could use the Force; Kenobi offers to teach some to Solo. That having been said, some people, through luck, or heridity, or whatever, have a particular aptitude or talent for Force usage.
In TPM, all they had to say was 'Midichlorians are ATTRACTED to The Force', not 'CAUSE The Force.' Simple. People with natural aptitudes have higher counts. People with higher counts should probably get some sort of training. Done.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
You can't use that without invoking one of the most powerful symbols in western culture, and doing it randomly, without any purpose or even any sense of the symbology you're riding is really stupid. If Lucas wanted to explore some "Christ turned evil" meme that would have been one thing, but to throw a symbolic bombshell like that out and then ignore it just shows... I'm not sure what. Clulessness? Arrogance? Some combination, I guess, but heavy on the gorm deficiency.
As for whether or not he redeemed himself in ep III, I have no idea, and probably never will. I own a copy that my wife bought for my kids, but the few times I've considered watching it I decided I'd rather mow the lawn. And I hate mowing the lawn. Maybe someday I'll be so bored that I'll watch it, but I doubt it. This is from a guy who wore out two copies of episodes 5-6 on VHS and probably would have worn out a set of DVDs, too, except that I ripped them to my file server as soon as I got them home.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Meh. Everyone acted like crap in those movies. I don't blame him. I expected more out of nearly everyone, and I never got it.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
When the shark got a laser on its head.
1) That crappy move where Yoda already knew Chewbacca and "his people" just for the sake of what??? Tieing some unspoken plot together? Did it even matter that Yoda knew Chewy? It was just stupid.
2) That crappy bullshit where R2-D2 and C-3PO were paired before being found by the Jawas AND being owned by Anakin. It was better when they were just randomly teamed those two, and it was patently ridiculous to have them owned by Anakin then Luke. It did nothing to help any plot point, an dit was unbelieveable.
Lucas did the same thing twice: connected characters from 4 - 6 in the earlier movies for no reason a tall: did he want to look clever? It failed.
On the other hand, the first Yoda light-saber fight was the only good thing about Episodes 1 - 3. Forgive my lack of knowledge: they sucked so much I couldn't even watch them.
I'd suggest another moment for jumping the shark:
3) When Wikipedia's entry about lightsabers got longer than the one for the goddam United States Bill of Rights.
That, my friends, is a gorram tragedy.
Skot Nelson music is my saviour / i was maimed by rock and roll
Many years ago I picked up a book about the making of the original Star Wars trilogy at a the local discount/second-hand book store. I think it was called Empire Building. It was an interesting read, I not enough of Star Wars fan to know if the book was accurate and balanced or if there was an axe to grind. I came to the conclusion that George Lucas's worst enemy is George Lucas working alone. He's talent is thinking of ideas, not necessarily executing them. Lucas needs people help him see the idea to completion. You think of Start Wars, you think of Lucas. It's surprising to learn just how many other people contributed to Star Wars and Empire. By Jedi, it was more of a "solo" effort. The impression was that the Jedi director was basically a yes-man to Lucas. After the cantankerous relationship between Lucas and Kirshner, Lucas wanted someone who would shoot the film according to Lucas's idea, vision, and script.
As I recall, the prequels, at least started off, as more Lucas then other people. Lucas had his vision for Phantom Menace, and by god that's what was put on the screen. It wouldn't suspire me to learn that Clones and Sith had more people inputting ideas.
I'd have to go with Ewoks, but other than that, the Directors' Cuts with the new CGI footage. The bar scene on Tatooine was more interesting because it was populated by all these fantastic creatures played by human actors and puppeteers. None of the new CGI creatures had anywhere near as much charm. What was up with Jabba the Hutt meeting Han Solo *before* he fled Tatooine? Aside from destroying Han's motivation to flee, the CGI Jabba--who could walk (?!), was nowhere near as interesting as the giant muppet Jabba.
As Pixar shows, it's possible to have interesting CGI characters, but Lucas didn't succeed at it.
But we didn't expect the downhill slide to turn so steep, so quickly.
Was Luke really one of the most powerful Jedi? I don't think he even makes the top 50. For example, Palpatine or Yoda could have easily beaten him in a fight.
The guys who did "Park Wars: The Little Menace" did a great play on this scene:
Qui-Gon: The Force is unusally strong with him, that much is clear. Who was his father?
Shmi: (having a flashback where she is in bed with the South Park Saddam, who says, "I love you") there was no father
I'd go with, as some of the problems in the new trilogy, off the top of my head,
1. the poor personalities and lack of audience empathy with the characters
2. the lack of a plot
3. the over-complicated and pointless background
4. the Jar-Jar binks (and his not dying),
5. the total absence of mystery (esp. about the force)
6. the absence of a jovial Yoda that tested by effect and not speech
7. the high expectations
8. the sell-out to Pepsi and superfluous advertisement of Lucasarts
9. the inconsistencies with the fundamentals of the original (to my mind)
10. the contrast with the originals
All to say, ten faults of many that massacre the stunning simplicity and beauty of the originals. A farm boy relying on his friends who turns his dad from evil and overthrows an overconfident emperor, they are not.
Screw the second trilogy, Star Wars jumped the shark in Episode VI. It's like Dante Hicks said - "All 'Jedi' had was a bunch of Muppets."
And to answer another reply to the parent - this is not a case of "automatically slagging on sequels". Empire was, if anything, even better than the first movie. Episodes I-III, however, just plain suck. (Well, maybe Ep III doesn't outright suck, but it's no Empire.)
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
> Was it the Midi-chlorians, Jar Jar Binks, the actors?
Yes, Yes, and Yes, oh, and you missed "the script" and "the director"
> When did Star Wars jump the shark?.
Ewoks.
> A bonus question: Did George Lucas redeem himself in Episode III?"
No.
Ian Ameline
Dude, 1999 called. They want their article back.
Never argue with a man carrying a water buffalo
It would have been better with Wookies, true, but they didn't ruin the movie for me. The true shark jumping took place in Lucas' mind between the wrap of ROTJ and the commencement of work on the special editions. When those came out, I still had hope for Phantom Menace. In retrospect, they were the warning I did not heed. The SE changes proved that Lucas had no idea why his movies were so good. He should be adjudicated as mentally incompetent and his movies removed to a foster studio.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Which is why, of course, the Jedi had that entirely logical and sensible rule that Jedi not procreate.
The real thing here is why we care. Why we keep going back to these movies, stopping our channel surfing when we see those great visuals, hungry for what they just don't deliver. The Star Wars movies, especially the first one in 1977, did a lot of things right, creating an appetite for more. Great visuals, great orchestral soundtrack, simple story that carries you from one really cool place to another.
This broke down as the films went forward. It became all about a few characters, which weren't very developed anyway, and a plot that just got more hokie and convoluted with each episode. This meant the writing became so much more important. And whoever was behind the script, well, they stink at writing - at first it was just dialog; later it was story, too.
But it wasn't until Jar Jar that even the visuals couldn't save the movie. Half-way through Phantom, when the movie was reduced to nothing but talking (talking about virgin birth and mita-con-whatevers), I realized I didn't care anymore and walked out.
And in the end, even the Force was a disappointment. Vader once said that the Death Star's power to destroy an entire planet was insignificant compared to the power of the Force. Yet Yoda lost every fight he got into... can't even lift himself over that thing he was hanging from in his fight with Palpatine. The rest of the Jedi went out with a whimper.
Lucas made a lot of excuses over the years of the second trilogy, many of them involving kids. I see a colossal movie-making opportunity, when all the resources were put in place to do something incredible, only to fizzle.
Therefore, the only reason I think most people keep watching these movies (and ranting about them) is they use their own imaginations to make up for what could have been.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
Ep 3 was complete and total shite. Even being drunk couldn't make it watchable.
As someone who intentionally did not and has never watched Episode I (Wierd Al told me everything I needed to know in under five minutes) or II or III, I know that it had already jumped before Jar-Jar. The bad parts of Episode I were just higher jumps.
What jumped it for me was the "Han didn't really shoot first" edit from the Ministry of Truth. I don't care enough about the other changes to even know what they are, but that really bugged me. I still have the laserdiscs. They did eventually release the original version on DVD, but you could tell that Lucas really didn't want to.
Actually, the first hint of a jump was when the original movie was retroactively renamed to "Episode IV". I just wish I still had that bootleg VHS tape from back in the mid '80s so I could see if it had the original opening.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Shark jumpage started with the 1997 re-release of Empire, when Lucas changed the scene of Luke jumping off the Cloud City platform by adding that hollering scream all the way down. Suddenly Luke wasn't a Jedi nobly accepting his own death rather than turning to the dark side. He was just a blithering idiot falling off a cliff, in strangely accurate foreshadowing of the whole Star Wars franchise for the next decade.
Revenge of the Sith didn't redeem the mess... it was just good enough to remind you of how good the prequels could have been, if someone had taken George's crayons away and hired a screenwriter. ILM should release a Special Edition using CGI to replace the entire trilogy.
When?
Uh... Long long ago, in a galaxy far far away.
On a more serious note, why do we get subjected to posts like this that inevitably turn to useless rants and/or someone calling someone else a Nazi?
Oops, how did this get here?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Have you read the whole Dune series? Books 4 - 6 are every bit as good as books 1 - 3, maybe even better.
In my opinion, the biggest contributing factor to the failure of Episodes I, II and even III is the lack of one very important technique that was invented during the making of the original Star Wars. This technique helped make the original films believable, which also in turn made them immersive.
During the documentary of the making of Star Wars (on the 4th disc of the box set DVD release), one of the film crew members described a problem where C3P0s costume was initially a highly reflective chrome surface and was causing the cameras to be visible during their test shoot. To offset this problem they rubbed dirt and grease into the costume, dulling it enough so that it would no longer be reflective. They then used this technique with other droids, vehicles and anything else in the film. They called it the "used future" - and it was all the more believable because these objects, vehicles, droids and other things really did appear as though they had always been there.
As we all know, not only was there an overzealous amount of CG in Star Wars Episodes I, II and III, but the real sets and costumes were kept pristine and perfect throughout the films. Hair cuts, makeup, billboards, decorations, vehicles, aliens, etc, all looked perfect 100% of the time. Too perfect.
Just as human brains are capable of instantly detecting the subtle differences in something that is not really alive (which is a common problem when watching CG special effects in film), it also can detect when something is "too perfect".
This alone was enough to ruin any immersive qualities the new Star Wars films might have had, and this problem was compounded by the poor dialogue, stupid gags, dragging plot-lines, inconsistencies and the idiotic notion that everything needed to be explained in detail.
Also, the new films had a practically unlimited budget, and therefore there was less need to innovate or improvise, almost eliminating the possibility of creating "happy accidents" that were part of the magic of the original movies (some of which were later removed by George's "improvements" in the re-releases).
My favorite Star Wars film is the original Empire Strikes Back, which was not directed by George Lucas, and also happens to be his least favorite of the series. The original film is a perfect balance of action, romance and drama, and should have been left entirely alone. But I suppose until I am as successful as George Lucas in the entertainment industry my two cents are pretty meaningless.
I would say the combination of the bad puns in 1-3 referencing 4-6 as well as the need to tie up everything in a pretty package where EVERYONE was put into their place at the end, Vader has his suit, Kenobi off to Tattooine (Lars being Anikans half-brother), Leia, etc etc. Episode III ended with every thing ready and everyone was in their place waiting for 17 whole years or so for Luke to grow up. Heck they even had the death star plans put in there, I guess they got stupid for those 17 years and just sat around grew old and built the Death Star.
The plot could have just:
Let Anikin be good at the force without being some weird plot thing and then would better explain why in 4-6 he was not quite powerful and stiff.
Beat up Anikin real good and put him out of commission for a while and just gave him a couple more artificial limbs and a lot of destructive anger (so he could earn the rest of his suit)
Let "Uncle" Lars be his brother, or just as well another fallen Jedi in hiding that unlike Kenobi totally disavowed the order.
Leaving some things open to speculation and opportunity for fans or authors to fill in the blanks would have been a whole lot more entertaining and interesting in my book.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Lets face it, by the time the 2nd trilogy was made, the Star Wars brand was so massive that the title "Star Wars" could have been slapped on nearly any movie, no matter how awful, and it would have been a massive commercial success. Lucas knew this, and knew that he could do all his playing around with CGI and computers in these movies because no matter what, they'd be successful at the box office and he wouldn't loose his shirt doing it. When could he ever get an opportunity like that again - to experiement to his heart's content without worrying about the financial consequences? So that is when it jumped the shark, IMHO - that moment where the thought first formed in Lucas's mind that his chance to go balls to the wall with the effects and the technology were more important than just telling a good story, and that the story could be crap as long as the movie was a visual "wow".
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
I have to agree -- Star Wars jumped the shark long before Episode I. The Ewoks were toy store cute, and were way too effective against the storm troopers. Scurrying little natives? The Jawas in Episode III were far more interesting. The speeder bike chase was gratuitous ("hey, look what I can do with my special effects house"). And the second Death Star? Aw, c'mon -- don't you have any new ideas?
if you're above the age of 9 and you still like star wars that means you're a fag.
In a story with a princess and a destined one? The original three movies just didn't lay it on as thick as the pre-quels but they are BOTH the same story. Luke Skywalker is DESTINED to be a jedi, because his father is one. Han Solo could NEVER become one. This whole upper-cast system has ALWAYS been there, both in the form of born-to-be jedi's and royalty.
Lets be honest here, it is a fairy tale, and in fairy tales the world revolves around nobility because telling a story of how a real peasant becoming a great leader might just be a little upsetting to the people in whose kingdom these fairy tales began.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
They made a sequel, big mistake.
Then they made some more...
Completely ruined Star Wars for me, that did. Fucking kikes.
Do we have any opinions from the younger generation that has no preconceived notions of what Star Wars "should be"? In other words, someone who watched Episodes I, II, and III - then got IV, V, and VI, so as to see the whole thing in order? On one hand, yeah. Some of the magic was lost, because we already knew that Vader was Luke's father, Anakin was Vader, and Palpie was the Emporer... but would someone watching the ensemble for the first time have the same opinion?
"In caelum, illuc est libertas."
I think Star Wars is riding the shark. Despite the Ewoks Christmas specials and the mediocrity of the second trilogy, there are still great manifestations of the Star Wars Universe out there. Particularly in video games (Knights of the Old Republic, Jedi Knight) and though I've not read them, I've heard good things about many of the books. Oh and since you reminded me. Did anyone else think of 'Parasite Eve' when they first started talking about Midi-chlorians in Episode 1?
I know it's been said before by many, but Greedo shooting first doesn't make sense. The reason though isn't just that "Han is a bad boy who would shoot first if his life is in danger", but that the scene is totally unbelievable that way. You have a trained bounty hunter sitting about three feet away from Han with a gun pointed right at him. If he had intended to kill Han, why not just shoot him to start with? How does he miss him over his shoulder? Even if you had never seen the original Star Wars, you would have to ask yourself "What just happened?" Then you have Jabba the Hut, who can't even move in Return of the Jedi so he has his platform move in and out from the wall, meeting Han personally in a busy spaceport. He doesn't take Han in though, instead he lets Han step on him. You also have all the digital creations added to make the space port look busy, like the guy on the motorbike that swerves to avoid the dinosaur thing, causing the digital guy to fall off and hang on by the reigns. Lucas said he always intended Mos Eisley to be a bustling space port, but why? Tatooine was chosen to hide Luke specifically because it was a backwater planet with little interstellar travel. Having all of this digital crap on the screen distracts from the story. It's like he forgot anything he learned in film school about drawing attention to things that are important to tell the story.
The three "prequels" are all about special effects. Now Tatooine is a busy planet with thousands turning out for a spectacular race all the time. Anakin's boss is a ridiculous digital flying creature that could never fly in real life because 1) he's fat, 2) his wings are too flimsy and 3) he has no chest muscles to flap those wings. The story is about some "trade federation" blockading a planet for no other reason it seems than they like to take orders from a shadowy figure over holographic communications. I don't even remember the plots from the other two really, they are just forgettable.
Luke wasn't a jedi until he completed his training and faced vader. Anikin wasn't a jedi until he completed his training and apprenticeship. Leghia (sic?) also had the force, but she wasn't a jedi.
Clearly, the force isn't something that everybody has. And being a jedi isn't just a matter of having the force.
It's being a professional baseball player: it takes natural ability, training, and steroids.
I was about ten when I saw Episode I. I had seen the original trilogy before that, but hadn't really remembered any of it. I enjoyed Episode I quite a lot: the special effects were cool, and I thought Jar-Jar was funny. Would I like it as much if I saw it again now? No, I'm sure I'd see how bad a lot of the dialogue was and such, but I'd still probably enjoy it more than any of you did, if only because of nostalgia.
When I was a bit older, I watched the original trilogy again. As far as I could tell, it was just a somewhat decent sci-fi movie. Nothing that special. I have never understood why it was such a big deal. There were many better movies, better stories than this out there. Why was this one supposed to be so special? I still don't really get it. From my point of view, the original wasn't that much better than the sequels.
Star Wars jumped the shark when Lucas had too much control over the films.
While midiclorians are stupid, the real problem was a failure to get performances out of the actors, and then assume that the important part of the movie would be built in post-production. While the effects in the early Star Wars films were groundbreaking, they themselves were not the reason for the movie's success. I have seen good performances from the majority of the talent they got for the later films, just not in Star Wars.
...it's that our collective soul is not a sustainable power supply.
What sound do people on rollercoasters make? Hint: it's not Xbox 360.
Read the novels, Luke turns into Superman.
Later on in the novels he recovers from wounds that is described as capable of killing a normal man in a matter of minutes, a few hours later he isn't even wounded. He even pulls a Jesus and walks on lava
Hell, he even built his own Fortress of Solitude using the force and cloaks an entire planet from sensors, permanently. Just face it, he is Starwars Elminister
For me, probably the biggest surprise/let-down was when Darth Vader's mask came off and it _wasn't_ James Earl Jones. Everybody knew who the man behind the voice was. And he has was probably a better match for Vader physically than Christensen ever was or will be.
-X
Ok, jedi sense the force via midi-chlorians. But how then, for God's sake, midi-chlorians sense the force? Do they have midi-midi-chlorians?
And that's not even funny. This was so weak explanation of force that it was insulting. Even worse, it was something that wasn't even supposed to be explained! Of course they feel the force, they are f**cking jedis! That's the whole point of being jedi - they are different from us since they feel the force. If I kill the jedi and take his midi-chlorians (they are some kind of blood cells, aren't they?) and put them into my bloodstream would I become a jedi? Or at least jedi-like? Are there, in some obscure bars in the rogue part of the Galaxy, illegal dealers of the midi-chlorians? If there are not, why is it so? I want an explanation! I want to know everything about them, since they are so important. No, jedis are not important per se, I want to know about midi-chlorians, the real heros of the Galaxy!
I want to create a list of unanswered questions about midi-chlorians.
* (already mentioned) How midi-chlorians feel the force? (answer cannot be "via midi-chlorians")
* If they are living organisms, blood-cells or something like that, why they can be found in so many different species?
* In what organ are they produced?
* Why I cannot insert them into my bloodstream to become a jedi?
* Why some persons do have midi-chlorians and some other do not have them?
* Why there is no species that consist entirely of jedis? If ones with midi-chlorians are so superior, why they did not evolute into separate species or survived better than those without them?
No sig today.
Actually, I think he meant to imply that Yoda was Palpatine's father.
The pod race copied the Norwegian puppet movie "Flåklypa Grand Prix" from 1975. The whole race-while-fighting-thing is of course age old in films, but Ep1 takes it one step further, and copies the exact motions in the last stretch from Flåklypa. BTW, Flåklypa is a great film, if you haven't, go see it.
Now that would have made sitting through them worthwhile. Hope somebody answers which episode that was in.
In a Punch and Judy show you got the hero who is a clueless brainless idiot, and a baddy. The baddy will helpfully explain his entire scheme to the audience. Then when it comes time to execute his plan, the audience will try to warn the hero of the baddy creeping up behind him. The hero, being an idiot, will offcourse look the wrong way and never see the baddy no matter how hard to audience shouts. But no worry, the author knows his stuff and through sheer luck, the hero will nonetheless triomph.
Now take Episode 1. We know who the baddy is, Palpatine. We KNOW him to be the future emperor, no suprise there. We also KNOW him to be evil. The prequels don't even pretend he is perhaps someone who is trying to create a better future but gets corrupted along the way. Palpatine is evil, end of story.
We know what his plan is. Nobody in the movie seems to have a clue. Powerfull Jedi, experienced leaders. Somehow this dude manages to pull the wool over an entire galaxies eyes. Only near the end does one Jedi finally get a clue. It is pathetic. In episode 4-6 the whole galaxy KNOWS the empire is bad, there is not even the smallest pretense that the empire might be good for some people, it is an evil goverment, end of story. Did something happen between 3 and 4, did every living creature get hit by a massive cluestick?
Were episode 1 is bad enough (what with the KID, and shiny spaceships) 2 and 3 has us watching in disbelief, wanting to shout "BEHIND YOU" but being too old for that.
Steven Spielberg has directed a Columbo show, that is a series that proved a "WE KNOW YOU DID IT" can work, if you are really really good and have a fantastic hero and amazing actors. Spielberg MIGHT have been able to turn the prequels basic story into a story that worked. Possibly if we had witnessed Palpatines own fall as well. So that he starts out with the best intentions but becomes seduced by the dark side and takes Anakin with him in his fall. ANYTHING but this "BEHIND YOU" and Punch not even bothering to look behind him.
People love to rant about the Ewoks and JarJar but that is just cattle following the herd. The real problem is simple, the story just does not work. If you want to create a story about the tragic fall of a hero, you must first create a likeable person. Anakin ain't likable. He never does anything that endears us to him. We don't see him as anything but a brat who can't see how he is being manipulated.
If you make a Punch and Judy show, the hero has got to win. Yes he will get the audiences warning WRONG but in the end HE will WIN because right when all seems lost, he listens, spots the baddy and triumphs.
And that is the ultimate failing of the pre-quels, we don't get a happy ending. 3 movies and it is all just doom and gloom. The death of a princess, the slaughter of the jedi and the collapse of a galaxy wide civilization, all because everyone in it is to dumb to see Palpatines rather obvious moves.
Columbo would NOT have worked if the baddies got away with it.
George Lucas just ain't a good enough writer, I am not talking about dialoge here, that is just details, the synopsis of the pre-quels doesn't even work. Why doesn't Anakin see the manipulations? The entire fall just doesn't come across. If anything it reminded me of some of the more angsty animes where the hero is a kid who won't talk no matter what because that wouldn't be cool and shouts at the world for not being able to read his mind. Angsty teen movies are NOT what Star Wars is about.
Because we also got to ask ourselves what was so great about Episode 4? The hero did what he was supposed to do without whining about it. Luke Skywalker NOT ONCE bemoans his fate. He WANTS to join the rebellion, very briefly he protests because he has responisbilties but when the empire destroys that by killing his family he fights for the cause and never looks back. A HERO and rather unlike most other movies off that type where the weenie spents at least half the movie whining about how he doesn't want to be the
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Instead of growing up like the rest of us they where transformed into an unabashed Disney-style theme ride. This was a chance for Lucas to show how he's matured. To show us he was a real film maker. Instead we got a live-action coloring book. That's a bit disappointing.
Quack, quack.
I've never been into the star wars movies. After reading the comments posted here today I can't imagine even saying I relatively liked the movies because that would be an out and out lie. I've never seen the first 3 all the way through... my dad used to watch them back when I was pretty little (5 or so), but I saw the latest 3. I didn't think anything was wrong with any of them, however there wasn't anything spectacular either. If I never saw another star wars movie again it wouldn't bother me in the slightest.
I know this is total blasphemy but I feel like it's just an automatic assumption that every computer nerd should automatically love AND hate star wars. I feel neither, just a complete indifference, much like if I saw a kid's movie with the family.
You're nothing; like me.
The pod race reminded me a lot of the Jabba's Palace sequence from RotJ. Both are long, boring and essentially pointless. They drag their movies down and seemed more designed so that manufacturers can make toys.
Lucas has never had any sense of pacing. He's like a kid in a candy store, and because his movies make loads of money, everyone lets him get away with what other filmmakers wouldn't dream of doing.
Look at the idiotically long and way overdone final fight sequence between Anakin and Obiwan in Episode III. How much of a light saber fight can you watch before it gets downright dull. The best part of the Luke-Vader duels in ESB and RotJ is that they actually don't occupy all that much screen time, and in particular is the one from ESB which demonstrates that filming is actually only one part of the movie making process, and just as important, if not moreso, is having a damned good editor.
What the prequels needed as much as anything was a good editor with the authority to tell Lucas to shut the fuck up. So many scenes from all three films desperately need tightening up it boggles the mind.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Star Wars spaceships use repulsors NOT wings. The use repulsors to hover and land and provide the lift that wings or rotors do in our craft. The engines in the back are just there for forward propulsion. The repulsors would be at the bottom of the craft, and so half a star ship would still have them, just as the front half of an aircraft would still have a landing gear.
If you want to complain, how about the foam from the firecraft not instantly scattering in the onrushing air?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
After watching the latest three Star Wars it came to my attention that Episode IV was pretty bad as well. What do those 4 have in common, Lucas wrote the screenplay for them all. We give Episode IV a pass because it was the one that introduced us to the universe but Lucas' writing just take great actors and makes them into cardboard.
Episodes V and VI to me is just one great 4 hr movie, Lucas did not write or direct either of those and I think it shows.
He created one of the greatest universes of all time but he just can't write dialog.
"If you like Battlestar Galactica, you're probably a huge nerd." -Stephen Colbert
It's the source of the Force in the revised Star Wars universe!
http://www.giantmicrobes.com/us/products/chlamydia.html
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
with American Graffiti.
Sense then?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Any of the next three to comne out...
- How did the Senate come to the point it was at in Ep1? Sith lord and the droid army? Plenty of material for an Ep-1 in exploring the Sith and the conspiracy to rais an army and make an Empire. ps- this sets the stage for figuring out how the driod army was just bait, an excuse to use the clone army.
- How did the Sith come to be? EP-2 can explore this, the rise of the Dark Side, the backstory to the convergence of both sides of the Force, and the split in the first place.
- And what about the Force? Ep-3 can certainly develop this, with the rise of the Jedi, the inevitable rise of a Dark Side, infiltration of the Federation by evil forces which probably pre-date the federation and certainly become Jedi if only by by the accident of birth.
Plenty of material to work with. Let's just hope Lucas doesn't hire any of the Tolkein family to work on this... Since The Silmarillion, that franchise has been as dry a husk as a corncob pipe. ewww.
Jumping the Shark would be to come up with the other 3 prequels. New cast, more hot babes, 'retro' effects for a Federation not so much into chrome and stupid engine noises. Though something like a '69 Bug sound would make sense. Right.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Sure, there were lots of more dramatic signs of failure further down the road, but I say that the signs it was jumping the shark were all present in Jedi.
When I was eleven or so, when Jedi came out, I loved it just as much as I loved the first two. Then Star Wars was all but forgotten until some friends and I dug up Laserdisc copies in high school. And we watched all three straight through several times.
Right away it was apparent that Jedi was a major letdown. If nostalgia was enough to carry a film, then it should have held up as well as the other two, but it didn't. Though it has several inspired moments throughout, it also has far more embarassing bits than the first two films put together.
I'm not going to get into the details since that's a pointless argument, but I bet nearly everyone here, if they watch the whole OT from beginning to end will notice a dropoff in quality for Jedi. If you don't, then it's likely that the nostalgia _is_ enough for you. Which is fine, and honestly I envy you. But for me the nostalgia is gone, and only the first two films hold up for real.
After that it was mostly downhill. There were a few inspired moments spread out in the prequels... several in Revenge of the Sith, but again, not nearly enough to make up for the embarassing misfires.
The "Attack of the Phantom" re-edit of "Attack of the Clones", complete with re-editor's commentary, highlights just how far off Star Wars films got.
Does your significant other love shoes?
I saw "A new hope" when I was 12 years old. It was the perfect matching of audience maturity to film making. The wonder/comedy/romance balance was just right for a 12 years old.
When I saw "The empire strikes back", I had grown slightly more adult and so had the series, it was again almost a perfect match.
Then "Return on the Jedi" and I was now a more cynical young adult. The series had not kept pace. Silly antics and cutsey toy ewoks sullied what could have been a brilliant trilogy capper if the original writing/directing team were kept in place, and someone kept George from going backwards.I thought this was bad, but little did I know...
So a combo of me growing up and George aiming younger and lower. The sharked jumped at ROTJ.
The special edition tweaks were lame. Not just Han turning from calculating badass to a typical good two shoes hero, but all the lame overdone insertions of random creatures all over the landscape. Bleh. But this is more of footnote you can ignore.
The new trilogy: Seriously this was garbage by almost any standard. It sold because of mega marketing dollars and because we are suckers for nostalgia. Though I waited for the 1 and 2 to hit video or TV broadcast,because even the previews were painful to watch. I saw 3 in the theater and it was meh.
So ROTJ jumped the shark, but it got mind boggling worse from there.
You enjoyed it when you were ten years old, right?
...or should he be aiming his latest movies at todays ten year olds?
So is George Lucas supposed to keep raising the age level to keep pace with you and your aging process...?
No sig today...
Interestingly, the myth of Star Wars is stronger than the films. --My memories of Luke's training with Yoda is much more robust than what was actually on the screen. The Jedi and what they mean hold a place in my mind and heart which isn't going anywhere, and which fits into a larger perspective of life as I see it, and I am thankful to have those ideas contained in the myth of Star Wars.
It's like the stories of the Greek Gods; there are many different tellings from many different story tellers, some good, some less so, but they were just facets of a greater thing. An idea which is 3D to a story's 2D, and which must be approached many times from many different angles to be fully understood, and which cannot be diminished by a bad telling; only the story might be foggy. The idea itself is perfect, and we know this, or we wouldn't argue about how such and such a scene could have been done better. We KNOW there is a perfect idea within it all, and it is what we are all seeking to understand. --And of course I'm not talking about the Greek myths here. They don't do much for us today. I'm talking about the myth that Star Wars looks in upon and which still holds enormous power today even though Lucas coughed and lost his place a few times while telling it as we all sat around the fire.
There are so many great ideas from Star Wars which can be used to measure and reinforce other stories. A couple of my favorites. . .
"Fear leads to Anger, Anger leads to Hate, and Hate leads to Suffering. . . I see much Fear in you."
"You focus determines your reality" "I don't understand." "You will, Anakin. With time and training, you will."
Other films, even great stories like Lord of the Rings, don't cut to the quick of the experience of this world in quite the same way the Star Wars myth does. --Star Wars shows how politics works in our world, it shows how Spirit moves in our world, and it offers a means to navigate through these interesting times with grace and power. And that's why people constantly re-tell the same myths over and over. They inform our lives.
Yeah, I'd be happier if Teen-Anakin hadn't been such a weenie. But that was just a movie. The ideas are what count.
-FL
Seems I'm one of the few who actually liked the Ewoks..
Jar Jar did him in - the original trilogy was only mildly original at best, the wow factor was the effects. There was no such wow in the new trilogy, ergo there was never even a shark to jump - it just failed before it got started.
No Ep 3 didn't redeem anyone, if anything it cemented Lucas' reputation as a positively gruelingly awful writer.
I have spoken'eth.
Jabba the Hut ALWAYS met up with Han Solo BEFORE he fled Tatooine, it is part of the books and was shot at the same time of the original. In fact the bit where Han steps on his tail is because originally Jabba was a fat human with no tail so Han could just walk around him.
This scene (apart from the 'comedy') actually is a good thing, it helps deepen the characters bit. I just wish they had added the scenes where Luke talks to Biggs about joining the rebbelion, it would help explain why Luke chokes up when Biggs buys it over the death star.
But I guess George Lucas can only have so much depth in his movies. Really, examine the original Biggs scene, realise that it removes an essential human element from the movie, a real bit of drama and you will learn why the prequels were so bad. George Lucas can't do drama. That wasn't a problem in A New Hope, it in many ways succeeded because it was a non-stop thrill ride, but the prequels demanded more and GL just could not deliver. If he could, ANH would have had the biggs intro.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I still look at episode V as the best of the bunch. Its a gothic-type tale (I'm not great with movie genres). Its a dark story, with unforgiving environments and people, ugly truths revealed and lots of double crossing. When Episode III was made, I think it too was supposed to be a gothic but failed. The things in EP V which made it so good were all missing from III. Comparing the two movies reveals where the series went wrong: bad plot constuction and story telling, dark stories need to be, well, dark, and actors need to act. The earlier episodes also look much more futuristic (because of better special effects). I think the entire series should have maintained a consistent look and feel which it did not.
The acting alone in I, II, III leave so much to be desired that it ruined the entire movie. That and the special effects. Had it been an anime with good voice actors maybe I,II and III would have fared a lot better. Maybe.
Bringing back C3PO and R2D2 in Phantom Menace was ridiculously lame.
That totally screamed "insert plot contrivance here"
Takes retconning to obscene proportions
For me, it was that first piece of dialogue with Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon. I listened to the clunky phrasing and complete absence of chemistry with this horrible sinking feeling. The original movies had scripts that made you feel like the characters were talking to each other. _tPM_ had scripts that made you feel like the actors were talking at each other. I mean:
Ugh. This is a master Jedi talking to his apprentice. They have a close personal relationship. They're going to talk like they know each other, not in formal platitudes and lectures. Compare with Yoda and Luke on Dagobah --- or even the wonderful endless bickering between Luke, Han and Leia... now, that was good dialogue. This stuff? Blah. It's all too obviously glue to stick the actions scenes together.
Basically, the tPM script was just bad.
Obligatory VGCats comic reference.
> Germans, no matter what their political stripe, never referred to themselves as a "master race".
At least one did - Friedrich Nietzsche. Of course, the Nazis perverted Nietzsche just as they did everthing else, from a philsophy of human improvement to one of domination.
> Remember, the Germans were fighting the British and French
Yeah, so Hitler went right to work, liberating Poland from the English and French. Then, and for good measure, he rounded up all the British and French in Germany and stuck them in concentration camps.
> the people who brutally subjugated every non-white race on the planet as they believed they were inherently inferior and
> in need of European domination. In contrast, Germany and Japan were fighting against the Anglo-American control of world
> trade and domination of the world's people.
Please. The Germans were fighting for a bigger piece of that same pie, and were just as much a part of the racist imperialist machine as Britain, France, the USA, and any other western country with an army and economic interests overseas.
The original Star Wars leaned very heavily on Eastern narrative traditions (drawing particularly on Hidden Fortress by Akira Kurosawa.
The Eastern narrative commonly relies on two classes of hero: one who is pure of heart and destined for great things and one who initially joins the quest out of self-interest, but finds himself affected by the actions and idealism of his companions. The first type cannot succeed without the strength of the second, and the second cannot succeed without the first showing them the path to enlightenment.
This archetype can be traced back at least as far as Journey to the West (circa 1590, the source for the TV series Monkey) in which the pure hearted monk Tripitaka (Xuánzàng) is aided by three characters, all of whom have fallen out of favour with the gods and seek redemption.
Luke is pure archetype number 1. Han Solo was archetype 2, an unreconstructed rogue even to the point of casually shooting Greedo in the Mos Eisley cantina. When he flew back at the Death Star scene, he redeemed himself. Even so, in ESB he was still not fully converted, planning to head off just before the imperial attack started. His buddy Lando Calrisian stepped in to bolster the "soul in need of redemption" role, and by the end of the film, both Lando and Han were fully redeemed. Who did that leave for ROTJ? Yup, the big one: Darth Vader, whose hatred, bitterness and resentment was purged by love.
Now, when Lucas redid the original trilogy, he took away that first defining moment in Han's character, that cold-blooded, unflinching murder that showed us just how much of heartless, self-driven piece of scum he was. This was when Lucas started moving back into modern Western narrative. In the West, bad guys don't get reformed -- they get "what's coming to them!"
By the time he finally wrote the first three episodes, any aspirations to Eastern narrative was gone and he we had good people who were good, evil people who were evil and one good guy who was stupid and let the bad guys win. No-one was redeemed, and we made do with western "punishment": Maul, Dooku and Grievous were all cut to pieces before death.
Oh, if only the story had stayed eastern....
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
he only thing that *didn't* go wrong with the sequel was the actors, which is not to say the acting wasn't horrible.
If you look at some of the actors, particularly Natalie Portman, they're pretty good in other roles. Compare V for Vendetta to any of the Star Wars prequels. The acting sucked because the dialogue and plot sucked, and no actor, ever, could read those horrible emo lines seriously. The characters they had to portraTy were paper thin. I think it also seriously hurt them that they were acting on a blue screen for the entire movie.
We recently had the Lord of the Rings movies. Handsup who fast forwards past the hobbit bits to the good stuff. The action rather then the endless whining.
Read the book, it is worse. Edit out the bits where Frodo is whining about his fate and you got the shortest book in history. The Star Wars formula is an intresting new and original take on the classic fairy tale. Evil king, entrapped princess, destined hero.
It is nothing unusual except George Lucas added a brilliant new twist. The hero doesn't whine. Compare Luke Skywalker (and for that matter Han Solo and Leia Organa and Obi-wan Kenobi, even the baddies (please do not force me to name them as well, I would like to pretend I have at least once touched a girl) with ALL the other destined heroes from entertainment. Luke doesn't whine. He WANTS to join the rebellion as a fight pilot and when opportunity knocks he turns from a teen boy into a responsible adult in a flash. He acts! He is there for his friends and fights for the cause ALL WITHOUT ONCE WHINING ABOUT IT. Nobody in the entire movie WHINES.
You especially have to take note of this as the movies launched in the late 70's when EVERY bloody movie had tons of whining in it. Endless soul searching and meaningless drivel was what made movies. The audience was desperately inneed of some mindless entertainment with simple heroes who did the right thing and George Lucas gave it to them.
It is this element that is most often forgotten about why Star Wars was so amazingly succesfull. People who were kids then forgot that the movie had just as much of an impact among the ADULTS of that day. Star Wars was NOT a 'for kids' movie. ALL ages loved it.
Then come the prequels and we don't get Lukes dad, we get Frodo, a teen Frodo. An angsty teen frodo. And no Han Solo or for that matter a Leia. Were are the heroes in the pre-quels? Where are the people who do the right thing? It gets killed of right at the start "we are not here to free the slaves". These are NOT the Jedi we are looking for.
George Lucas once gave us a simple story of heroes and we loved it. Then he gave us an angsty teen story and we didn't give a shit.
Another thing to consider, there are more Han Solo prequel books then Luke Skywalker or Leia Organa prequel books. Even Lando has more then the two skywalkers combines (The twins only have a Splinter of the minds eye and both Han and Lando each got a trilogy back in the 80's or so and Han Solo got another trilogy in the Expanded Universe.) Lots of people thought Han was the hero. Where is the smuggler in the prequels?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I'll take on the bonus question: Did George Lucas redeem himself in Episode III?
The answer IMHO is no. Episode III was excellent, but not so good that it erased the stain on my memory that Jar Jar left.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
When the first two movies were made (New Hope and Empire) the impression was given of an ongoing adventure serial, one that could continue on and on. Then somewhere in there Lucas burned out and made Jedi to wrap things up, than started denying his quotes of a second trilogy. If you can't afford Han Solo's salary leave him in carbonite for a few episodes. Of the Princess is stoned out on coke bring in a new character. Keep the thing running. Lucas followed Isaac Asimov's footsteps in that the later works were trying to tie up loose ends and fill in gaps that nobody really wanted filled in. Our imagination filled that stuff in just fine thank you. Give us new adventures, don't destroy our imaginations by filling in backstory.
To call Star Wars "one of the better sci-fi stories told" really exposes a tremendous lack of familiarity with the good science authors over the last 50 years. Star Wars is, and was even in the first movie, nothing but space opera (and not even very GOOD space opera), full of bad or non science, and deus ex machina plot devices.
Read some good science fiction, and you'll quickly see the difference...I highly recommend trying some Robert L. Forward, some C.S. Friedman, some Vernor Vinge, or some Stephen Baxter. If you swing more for the adventure side, check out some of the true classics: Robert A Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Charles Sheffield, Isaac Asimov (for science, not for characters), or John Brunner.
We complain a lot on Slashdot about parents who want to turn the whole world into a nanny state with censored everything so their precious snowflake will never see anything they don't approve of, but it's time we start exercising our own prescription for them ourselves: If you don't like it or don't approve of it, don't watch it. Conversely, if you do like it, enjoy... and you can pick and choose which movies you like and don't.
The newer Star Wars trilogy managed to put me off so badly with "episode 1" that I never watched 2 and 3, and it left me with distaste for the whole franchise. I was also put off by Lucas meddling with the original 3 movies, and didn't like his new versions... I refused to even see how he massacred Revenge of the Jedi.
Years went by, and I didn't watch any Star Wars. Then, a year or so ago, I got out an old set of Star Wars laserdiscs and watched them... They felt fresh and new, like when I was a kid, because I hadn't seen them in years. They were exciting, moving, thrilling, and joyous. They felt huge and epic. Yes, here were the movies I was so excited about as a child, here they still were, as wonderful as I remembered thinking they were. And you know what? Nobody, not even Lucas or Jarjar, can ever take that away from us.
For me, it was when Luke landed on Dagobah and encountered Yoda.
From Wikipedia:
It was always awful, we just didn't have anything good (outside of print, anyway) to compare it to. Even the original Star Wars is just a subtlety-free retelling of The Hobbit with big explosions, but we needed a string of movies and tv shows from Star Trek: Next Generation to Enemy Mine to Babylon 5 to The Terminator to The Matrix to realize what good sci-fi storytelling was.
In episodes I, II, & III, I got the impression that the jedi order had gotten a bit fossilized, entrenched, political, and maybe just a little too comfortable in their exalted position.
I think it's pretty regrettable that Lucas botched the execution so badly. A better director might have had us inwardly cheering when the revolution came and the old power structures were wiped away. That way, he could have fucked with us further when it turned out that the revolution replaced a necrotic corrupt regime with a despotic regime.
In my perfect world, Star Wars I, II, & III would have been rated R for strong language, nudity, and disturbing images. Then again, Lucas probably wouldn't have sold nearly as many plastic figurines along with Happy Meals or whatever.
. Penguins Surely Ca
When he remastered the first three episodes and copied-and-pasted extra TIE fighters (and an extra shot from Greedo's blaster.) It was so obvious it was horrible.
"There's too many of them!" And there were.
It didn't help either that ILM reused the brontosaurus model from Jurassic Park and called it a "Ronto".
That said, Lucas did exert a lot more of his own personal control into episodes I-III and that made his always hammy scripts even hammier, but as much as I love episodes IV-VI, and as much as I hate the new ones, I know that that's because I'm not a kid anymore. I don't like the new disney movies as much as the ones when I was a kid either, but they haven't jumped the shark.
Whatever the hell made Lucas go back and remaster his most popular film, take the coolest character, and redefine him.
Whatever the hell is wrong with Lucas, that was the first symptom and probably the moment the franchise jumped the shark. You're right, everything that came after that is a symptom of the disease.
Oh yeah, and I have to add this. =)
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
When I first saw Episode 1, it seemed to confirm everything I had heard about Lucas' being self-absorbed, surrounded by yes-men, hating directing, treating actors as props, and being overly enamored of computer graphics and the technical aspects of digital media. In fact, I swore I would never again watch a Lucas film. I skipped E2 in theaters. Much, much later, E3 was about to come out, and E2 was going to be shown in HD on PPV, and I decided to give in and watch it. In preparation, I rewatched E1 on DVD.
What a revelation! E1 was still packed with sophomoric crap geared toward 4-year olds (yo George: kids look up to people 5 years older than they are, not 5 years younger!), but I suddenly realized that, if you managed to see past Jar-Jar's big, floppy appendages, there was a pretty interesting political-thriller message movie going on. E2, which had previously seemed wooden and laughable - especially the scenes with Annakin - now emerged as extremely realistic. If you were a young, straight man who had grown up with a bunch of bearded men in robes, wouldn't you be awkward and nervous vacationing alone with Natalie Portman, who, for this occasion, happens to wear nothing but tailored evening gowns cut down to her ass or, for more intimate encounters in candle-lit boudoirs, goth-couture fetish lingerie? If you were Queen of Naboo, wouldn't you be a bit awkward and distant when thrust into a situation where the punk kid you first met as a young boy has grown into a strapping bad boy, oozing with pent up sexual and mystical energy? Who has been assigned to watch your every move? Oh, and by the way, a relationship with him is strictly forbidden?
Once I started taking the movies seriously, I experienced a slow revelation. Where were the familiar Blacks and Whites of the E4-6? What's with all this ambiguous realpolitik? Why are the Jedi blowing it so badly? They're arrogant and isolated. They're a ruthless superpower. They're above the law. They're a hereditary, elitist priesthood with a lot of stupid rules that is totally willing to crush anyone who threatens their power. They represent everything I hate in real life. They're a lot like Pervez Musharraf - or, dare I say it? - George Bush. Hey, wait a minute! The Jedi are evil!
That's right, the Jedi are the Bad Guys of E1-3. And Annakin is the tragic hero. And there aren't any Good Guys.
This is the nasty, unwanted Truth about why so many people hate Episodes 1-3. Yes, the movies have their faults, but really, have you actually watched A New Hope lately? It doesn't stand the test of time very well (I saw it 9 times in the same theater over a period of 20+ years, so I feel I have a worthy opinion on this). What makes E1-3 different is that Lucas has changed - or revealed - his political views, and his fans didn't get the memo. Because if the people who dreamed of being a Jedi as a kid got the memo, well... imagine the Star Wars kid crossed with the Seattle WTO "riots" and you'd get the frightening picture of what might happen. Or maybe not - die-hard Star Wars fans simply look at me with disbelief and pity when I expound on my "Jedi are evil" theory.
I now consider E1-3 right up there with the Matrix Trilogy as some of the great, unacknowledged political films of the 21st Century. Matrix is clearly anarchist, but it's a bit harder to put a finger on Lucas' political persuasion, except that he's anti-Fascist. I'll be the first one to admit that I'm a sucker for romantic fantasy along the lines of "the True King will save us and restore the Realm of Good", but let's face it - now that we're adults, it's nice to have a few sci-fi spectaculars that fight the power. Where Battlestar Galactica Redux grabs the jugular, rips it out, and comes back for more, Lucas takes a somewhat oblique approach with Episodes 1-3. The result is something widely considered less than brilliant. But shattering people's blind faith in the Jedi and their supernatural powers is A Good Thing, even if they don't realize why it's happening.
Episode 0 in the works
http://www.bbspot.com/News/2005/05/episode_0_midichlorians.html
There was a rumour going round for a while that the Emperor was not, in fact, Palpatine... but was instead Palpatine's clone.
Despite totally shooting dead any post-film continuity, such as Timothy Zahn's excellent novels (and a lot of other really bad ones), that would have actually worked as a overall theme. It allows the Clone Wars to actually work... and then go horribly wrong. It moves the good vs. evil struggle away from Anakin (who is currently good, but we know is going to turn out evil) and on to Palpatine (who we think is going to be evil, but in the new continuity actually turns out to be good). Suddenly, there's a whole new storyline of Palpatine vs. Palpatine's evil twin. And we, the audience, don't know who is who. It's actually interesting, which the existing plots aren't.
But nah, he doesn't do it. Instead he piles up a big heap of clichés and expects us to like them. Bah.
Star Wars was an incredible series, because I was something like 5 when the first one came out.
Star Wars is sort of mediocre now, because I'm an adult, and I can understand plots, and I can perceive plot holes.
Why look for changes in the series, when we have a perfectly adequate explanation now? This is like asking when Curious George stopped being incredibly fascinating and started being sort of tedious.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
When Lucas re edits the entire trilogy, has Orson Welles voicing Jar-Jar and turns the series into a metaphor for whatever's happening in a few years. That's the great thing about Lucas Films. Don't like a movie? Wait a decade, It will change.
That's actually a fairly common movie reference that pops up all over the place where it doesn't belong.
:)
It just seemed even more incongruous in the Star Wars universe. But Lucas by no means invented this stupidity.
Incidentally, he first did this in Return of the Jedi (although Star Wars fans seem to have forgotten). He also did it in Howard the Duck... you can stop giggling now.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
a long time ago, in a galaxy...
Wookie Christmas Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P9R4ICu1qg
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Episode I would have made much more sense if Anakin had been 15 instead of 9. The pod racer/hot rod would have made sense. The ability to cobble together a droid from spare parts would have made sense. The infatuation with Amidala would have made sense. And Yoda's comment that he's too old for training would have made sense. But no, we get a 9yo kid, and no plausible explanation for any of that. Having an older Anakin wouldn't have screwed up the other movies at all. The timeline would have worked out just the same if he was six years older.
Killing off the visible villain in Ep I was also stupid from the perspective of the narrative. Yeah, we all knew that Palpatine would grow up to be the Emperor. But he was just the shadowy figure in the background. There should have been someone to boo throughout the series, just like we had Vader in the original movies. The characters of Darth Maul, Count Dooku, and General Grievous should have been combined into a single character that would harrass the heroes all along the way. In Ep III we had this big fight against Grievous and there was really no reason to care about it. Where did this guy come from?
That's not even counting the just plain dumb things in the movies. Midichlorians? Aarrrgh! The Force gets demoted from being this mystic energy field generated by and surrounding all living things, to the by-product of some semi-sentient bacteria. The way the Jedi interacted with Palpatine. You mean we've got this group of friggin' mind-readers, who have demonstrated in the original series that they can sense individuals strong with the Force at interplanetary distances, and they can't tell that the big bad guy just oozing with the Dark Side is standing right in front of them!? The droid factory sequence in Ep II? Come on, that was straight out of Galaxy Quest, and even in that movie the dumb blonde character knew it was really stupid. What made Lucas think it would be a good idea to have the Menacing Crusher Thingies trying to pound our heroes into oblivion? And Grievous... Oy! Why would a mostly-droid character, who's shown us that he can survive vacuum, have a respiratory problem?
You'll notice I haven't railed against Jar-Jar. I actually think he was the least of the movies' problems. He was annoying in the same way the Ewoks were annoying, but all in all I could live with him. If only the rest of the show was better!
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
...or indeed any of the actors. It's Lucas. The actors can only do what the director wants. I posted about this after Episode 1 was released. Hayden Christensen has been fairly criticized for a terrible performance, but unfairly characterized as a terrible actor. He's anything but. In fact, he's actually quite talented, as anyone who saw his performances in "Life as a House" and "Shattered Glass" can attest. All the featured actors have proven in other films that they can act, but their performances in the prequel trilogy were uniformly cringe-worthy. The common denominator is the director: George Lucas.
I remember an interview with Carrie Fisher from maybe 1978, in which she talked about her experience in "Star Wars" as a young actress (I believe it was only her second film, and she was about 19 when it was shot). Fisher is quite witty, and it's a delight to read interviews with her. She said something to the effect that Lucas wasn't really an actor's director, and spoke particularly about the set-up for the scene in which Leia witnesses Alderaan being destroyed. She asked him what he wanted her to do: "I mean, there goes home, family, record collection, everything. He kind of grunted and waved his arm in the general direction that he wanted me to face. That was it."
Recipe for Star Wars Episode 1:
1) one shitty story;
2) liberal amounts of crappy script;
3) mix in lousy director;
$) PROFIT!!!
Repeat steps 1) through $) for Episodes 2 and 3.
http://www.pvponline.com/2005/05/10/tue-may-10/
My Answer: YOU'RE ALL TOO OLD!!!!
Sorry guys, but I'm a medical student in pediatrics, and I can tell youI see kids everyday, and every boy (and a lot of girls too, let's not discriminate) LOOOOOOVES Star Wars. And guess what? They LOOOOVE Jar Jar too. They get Jar Jar bookbags, folder, binders, etc. Star Wars is cool to them.
And you know what? Being born in 1979, I notice a huge difference between the people who were 5 when ROTJ came out and the people who were 25. The difference? My friends and I love the Ewoks. Kids love the Ewoks. Star Wars is a movie made FOR KIDS! Or... at least, people with the imagination of a kid.
I read some of these complaints, and some are valid (even if I disagree). Don't like Hayden? Fine (I did). Don't like Jar Jar? OK, big deal. But holy moly... you people are complaining about "Landing a Star Cruiser on a landing strip! Lame!"
You people are just way too old (in your mind I guess) to enjoy these movies. Not to say not liking them is illogical or stupid, but most of the complaints here to me are disproven by those points being exactly what kids love about them.
Honestly, I was so completely disappointed by the sequel trilogy, that it really broke my heart. The first three movies (which are parts 4, 5, and 6, just to clarify) were so incredible that it really opened peoples' minds up to things that had never really been envisioned before. I'm not old enough to have experienced this myself, but I was told that when Star Wars first hit the theaters, right at that first scene where the big huge spaceship thingie comes flying in from above the camera, people literally said, "Oh my God." The story was something incredible, mixing incredibly innovative science fiction with an element of spirituality and ancient wisdom; the movie was an incredible performance of this, with great actors, amazing special effects.... to make a long story short, it is clear that an incredible amount of thought, innovation, and effort went into making these three movies something out of this galaxy. Today, these movies do have a bit of an old fashioned feel to them, but aside from adding a pinch of nostalgia, it really shows that the movie had soul as opposed to just special effects and lines recited by actors. There was something behind the movie itself.
The later three movies, parts 1, 2, and 3, were a disappointment because the 25 or so years that elapsed since the first Star Wars was filmed have brought us some incredible advances in filmmaking technology, making it possible to portray nonexistent or currently impossible things as if they were perfectly real. This should mean that movies should be better now, not worse. Unfortunately, exactly the opposite has happened. So much emphasis has been placed on making the scenes in Star Wars look incredible that it seems as if the story line has really suffered. Suppose that the original Star Wars were duplicated exactly, but using today's technology to make the scenes look more incredible. That is how the later three movies should have been. Instead, it seems all made up as an afterthought.
Please don't mod this troll or something like that. These really are my thoughts about this subject. That's all I have to say about that.
He has a bad dream, and after a nice little chat with a Sith Lord he feels all better and coincidentally turns into a rampaging murderous genocidal child killer, finishing with the attempt to kill the very person whose imaginary death somewhere vaguely in the future drove him to this in the first place. It's ten times worse than less credible moments like Ewoks defeating a legion of stormtroopers armed to the teeth using rocks and twine, or a moon sized space fortress not armouring its exhaust pipe, or anything Jar-Jar said or did because it makes Darth Vader look like a whinging, cretinous gullible fool. Darth fucking Vader, the ultimate evil badarse from my childhood turned into a snivelling, drooling moronic dipshit. Episode III was the culmination of a massive, stinking turdlogy that utterly ruined my joyous childhood memories of the originals. Fuck George Lucas, first he neuters Lucasarts then brings out this Hutt sized steaming pile of crap forever tainting the good reputation he obviously never deserved. Nobody with half a brain will let him go near a camera again, but unfortunately the entertainment industry was never one to require half a brain. It was just too much to retire on millions of dollars, the tool had to go prove what a talentless hack he was.
There's a lot of fine, classic sci-fi in the More than Human sub-genre. There's nothing to stop the reader or viewer from identifying with the superior species. Similarly, most of us have no problem identifying with movie characters who are more beautiful than we are, speak better, &c. And a majority of American who are neither prosperous nor otherwise particularly lucky in life quite often vote for the politicians most favoring the interests of the rich and fortunate - because we all secretly like to imagine that we are but a day away from our personal windfall.
So it's not the midi-clorians. We have no trouble believing that we ourselves are the real-world equivalents of the Princes of Amber, or descendants of Lazarus Long, or otherwise genetically destined. What sucks is the bad story telling. The way to pull it off is to present the More than Humans in a way that's plausible. The Jedi aren't. In the first movie, they're portrayed in a sketchy-enough way that we can project the premise onto them, if we've the imagination for it - or have read too much sci-fi. But once we get to know them well, once the details are filled in, they're pretty much idiots. That doesn't work.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I've only a vague memory of the prequels (I try to forget more and more of it every day) but I don't think Obiwan ever offered to teach Han even the simplest parts of force-sensitivity. It was something you were born with. So no, I don't think the medichlorin's were that big of a deal. Choosing a wooden I-can-only-play-a-punk-teenager-with-angst-issues actor to play the arguably greatest villain ever concocted ranks way up there in terms of reasons why the prequels sucked.
The second trilogy is like Highlander 2. I might have appericated both more if they weren't related to the orignal. Watching the second triology was like watching the last two Matrix movies. You were orignally excited then you left wishing you hadn't seen them and lamenting what could have been.
To get back on topic, the French were the Old Republic, and the British the Trade Federation with their control of trade routes and legions of driod slaves. The Sith were the Germans, who created a master race of identical clones that they used against the French and the British. Led by a powerful charismatic senator the galaxy was to come under a thousand year Reich, that is Empire. A while into this, the Americans, or Rebels showed up and proceeded to kick the Empires arse, and with the aid of the Ewok French Resistance they freed the galaxy from Darth Hitlers tyrrany. Oh, and the Russians were Wookies.
Even in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Zauberflöte (Magical Flute) opera (1791), for example, you get a pretty typical archetype 1 Pamino and archetype 2 Papageno.
I'm sure if I wasn't tired, I could also dig out some old greek myth I've studied presenting the same structure.
Such widespread occurance will probably mean that the myth is very old and did travel with humanity.
Probably, Ughr and Onkr did already tell such tales, when they got tired smashing clubs on each other's head and sat down around the fire,...
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Without the midichlorian story device, Vader would have continued to be as powerful after his battle with Obi-Wan as he was before it. Since the midichlorians in his bloodstream provided his link to the Force, once he became "more machine...than man" he could no longer control it as he once did, thus weakening him to the point where he was defeatable.
No. Someone here on /. summed up the stupidity of episode III perfectly awhile back with the plot summary:
Palpatine: Join me.
Anakin: No.
Palpatine: Do it.
Anakin: OK.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I had to log in just to post this for the bonus question: Episode III was the first movie I ever asked for my money back after watching it in the theater.
Great comments! I completely agree that, no matter what lame story or acting or stupid accents that GL might have foisted on us in the episodes I - III, the worst was the midichlorians. Take a mythology and turn it in to some accident of nature, something that you can measure under a microscope.
However, to say that they "didn't make sense" isn't completely true. There are several people who have compared GL's work with that of Campbell. It was the creation of a "campbellian" super race that necessitated the little things growing in our cells. That's the whole point -- you CAN'T become a hero, or even a great leader by dedication and hard work. You have to be BORN a super-hero, or be "destined" to save the world. The rest of us are just the drones that follow those born to lead.
Oh and the whole "virgin birth" thing really sucked too. That one about made me puke.
I think my favorite article is an old one by David Brin at: "Star Wars" despots vs."Star Trek" populists and his follow up article
Your Servant, B. Baggins
I just know I'll get some heavy fire from die hard fans here, but let's face it. The story of any SW movie is campy. There's nothing really original in the stories in any of the movies. Yes, it's the epic struggle of good vs. evil, as it's been done a thousand times before in other movies. You have the old warrior-monk who takes his young apprentice with the aid of some shady mercenary to the quest of rescuing the princess in distress from the clutches of the evil emperor. That's pretty much the story of EpIV. In V, we see the empire strike back (hey, wait, that's even the name of the movie!) and destroy all hope, while in EpVI we finally get to see the resolution, where the young apprentice becomes himself the master and challenges his nemesis.
That's not original. That's been done before a thousand times, as stated above. Usually within a single movie instead of spanning it over three, but still, the story arc isn't something terribly inventive.
What made SW the cult classic it is today and created an incredible fanbase is the absolutely awesome effects of the first trilogy. We're in the late 70s and early 80s. Movies rarely have spectacular FX, and most of the FX are even more campy than the storyline, but in SW, the FX were just aweseome. Awesome isn't even close to how they felt. Trench run anyone? That was immersion! Fantastic. Awesome squared.
The older ones here will probably remember. You came out of the theatre and were in a haze. It was just sensory overload. The absolute movie. Best ever. You didn't even notice the rather thin story, it was just too awesome to look at.
That's what the first trilogy made great. It wasn't the great story, it was only partly the acting (yes, the acting was actually good, mostly because Alec Guinness can't act badly), but what really made the movies great was the FX.
Fast forward into the 21st century. Still the same cheesy scripts, worse acting (hey, no Guinness), but now the effects aren't something awesome. We're used to great FX in sci-fi movies today. We expect them. Mostly because FX aren't a terribly expensive and cumbersome thing anymore. Computers are far ahead from where they were in the 70s and 80s, it's almost trivial today to create credible sci-fi FX.
So that's what made the second trilogy rather bad. We finally saw past the FX and noticed how bad the scripts really are.
I wouldn't say it jumped the shark. It's still the same ol', just that we're not so easily captivated anymore with FX. We got used to them. We see past them.
It's a bit like with computer games. 10 years ago, great, realistic graphics redeemed crappy gameplay to some degree. Today, we expect those standards, and require good gameplay because great graphics are a given.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As mentioned before, the original movies were like a medieval movie gone hi-tech. Not to quote the OP, but he made the point. It was exactly that. Now we ask why? Why was it done that way? Because its a space movie. Love, heroism, victory, defeat... its all there. Its a very classic good/bad movie. You can't demean or dissuade the fact that they are masterpieces. The how... well... not very hi-tech devices and technology provided the next step. There is nothing from that time frame that even remotely compares. And to talk of Ewok parties or the relevant changes in character... leave that to archetypes (http://www.youth.gc.ca/yoaux.jsp?lang=en&auxpageid=1104&flash=0/).
Now we come to the prequels. Do I find it as a caste system? No. I find it a very feudal system. Kings, peasants, a galactic council. Its all very Arthurian in role. I do not see the Jedi as a type of master class, but rather the effect of a very hardcore role of seeking out potentials, weeding out the weak and training the strong. Jedi served as guardians, as mediators, and near the end, as denizens of control. The prequel trilogy was another very space drama movie. The why answers everything. Lucas made the movies the way he wanted to, because of the demand of answers. We may not agree with him. And thats the how. He did it the way he visioned. There are hundreds of writers who write stories, all of which are licensed by Lucas, about the Star Wars world after ROTJ. So Lucas wrote and directed the prequels as he saw fit. Don't agree with him? It doesn't matter, because its his story.
Compare and contrast. 456 vs 123. No comparison. Only because they are different stories for different people. Who cares about the visual masturbation, the introduction of midiclorians, the illicit use of JarJar to make people laugh or vomit, or Ewoks dancing in the night. Arguing over it reminds me of Dante and Randall arguing over the better ending - Empire or Jedi. Its all up to who is talking.
Fiend on.
A lot of it is because people who watched the first Star Wars were younger than when they watched the subsequent ones. If you want to be scientific you can make kids who have never watched Star Wars before, watch the prequels first then only Ep 4 etc, and then the other way round, then repeat with adults and see what they think.
;).
HOWEVER for Phantom Menace the actors looked like it was their first time going through a powerpoint presentation, rather than "forget the slides, let me tell you a story". Actors weren't totally in character - maybe some hadn't even "found" their character yet. Actors weren't totally "together" with each other, no rapport being built up - they were like strangers to each other in every scene even if some time was supposed to have passed. Ever drank a soup with an OK recipe but was "rushed"? That's what it was.
While Lucas might have ideas he's not the best with scripts. He needs other people to challenge his stuff and make it transcend itself.
After all: "Attack of the Clones"- "I truly, deeply, love you, and before we die I want you to know.". If that was in character, then she's really a cold fish
In contrast we have:
Leia: "I love you"
Han Solo: "I know".
Which practically everyone _knows_ the "real" Han Solo would say.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Sure JarJar was about as cool as a sex droid with square tits.
But Hayden Christiansen managed to be both wooden and wimpy. He even made a pro like Natalie Portman look bad.
Still, his pouting skills could land him a part on Jedi Hills 90210.
In the end, though, he reaffirmed my faith in the power of The Force by showing how a sulking nancy-boy
with no presence could be transformed into a seven foot tall bone crushing badass.
"Many good movies will often have a concept, or a message, or something for you to think about after the credits roll." If now I had to explain why I loved the first Stars Wars movies (especially the first one) I would simply put it as a search query: "Star Wars, Wuxia, Kurosawa". That was the concept I liked.
...is when it jumped the shark. It's a silly space opera series, and that is all it was ever meant to be. But some of you had to go and turn it into a religion. Enjoy it for what it is, and then let it go. I see people writing stuff like, "They wanted to sell toys, and they brought in e-woks and Jar Jar".
No shit. That's how you turn a profit on a movie that was targeted to kids.
It's so pathetic when I'm in a department store and I see some fat ass in his 30s or 40s desperately searching through a shelf full of Star Wars dolls and telling his friend how hard it is to find a rare variant Princess Leia. Why not look on ebay, I'm sure you can get that Leia doll that has blue eyes instead of brown for only $300 (unopened!!!).
Obviously, the point where they jumped the shark was when Greedo shot first. :P
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Were the Starwars movies really that bad? I think they were bad in so many respects, from the very beginning: the dubious understanding of science, the strange coincidence that all these aliens in a galaxy far, far away looked exactly like humans with the occasional funny hairdress, the utterly uncool wookies, the jedis with their supposedly deep wisdom who still educated their apprentice jedis like a caricature of the archetypical 'Zen master/student' relationship; isn't it likely that if a hugely gifted boy like Anakin had been treated with care and understanding, he might have had the strength to resist the rather naff temptations of Mr. Palpatine, Esq.? In this context things like midichlorians and Ewoks are simply natural and quite cute.
I think it is simply being seen from the wrong perspective - Starwars was never more than an entertaining, exciting story, and as such brilliant. I remember when I saw them in the beginning I felt hugely disappointed, but now I really enjoy them for what they are. They are just not 'deep' or insightful, that's all.
The phantom menace was plotted poorly, being simply a mechanism to get the young anakin from a backwater world to jedi training.
The better plot line would have been to surprise everyone by making anakin identical or fraternal twins. Then the plot twist is in which one becomes darth vader, or even if both receive training, or just one. And was the 'right' one selected for training? etc.
a missed opportunity.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I just wonder how long it will take before someone manages to remake it all the way it *should* have been in the first place.
A lot of that was just bad storytelling. I believe Lucas has stated that Anakin had the most force potential of anyone that has ever lived in the SWU. Obviously his descendants are going to be very powerful, but how they'd match up to Marka Ragnos or Exar Kun is anyones guess.
Without the midichlorian story device, Vader would have continued to be as powerful after his battle with Obi-Wan as he was before it. Since the midichlorians in his bloodstream provided his link to the Force, once he became "more machine...than man" he could no longer control it as he once did, thus weakening him to the point where he was defeatable.
That could be covered by Yoda's explanation in ESB that the force flows from "all living things". Since Vader was "more machine than man" it could be explained that his ability to use the force was diminish along with his physical body. Or at least a much better explanation than that midiclorian BS. That, and I imagine all those cybernetic parts would make one a little vulnerable to Force Lighting. And who loves to use Force Lighting like flies on rice?
You know, because it kind of permanently took mainstream scifi out of the dimension (pun intended) of the more serious speculative fiction and into adolescent fantasy. Then again, there are those of us that like all six of them.
Also, there are those of us that think this is one of the stupidest questions that people won't stop asking. The verbage might change every now and again, but the essence of the question "why don't I enjoy these movies as much when I'm 30 as I did when I was ten" got old three months after the release of Ep 1.
I'll happily take the flaimbait or troll mod I'm sure to get for posting this to take this moment to inform you that ya'll seriously need to get a hobby, or a girlfriend, or both, and put this ad nauseum, ad absurdem Star Wars "discussion" to rest.
Yeah. that also is going to be bringing down a spiraling of gnashing of teeth and crying and whatnot. apocalyptic it may not be, stupid it is. Of course I can't talk, I started a rewrite at Fanfiction.net, but it's not up yet, I'm rewritting the rewrite. Anime, Marvel, and Star Trek cross overs. there is a reason I should be shot. But still. Lucas lost it, he became the Man. He did it for the money, not for the glutsy glory, but for the merch, the money, and of course the fact to see the girl who plays Padme, almost naked. then again, Laurence Fishburne. enough said.
The Robot Chicken Star Wars Special explains all
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Robot+Chicken+Star+Wars+Special+%2F3&search=Search
to answer your final question,
NO
brian botkiller "Condensing fact from the vapor of nuance" - Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
... when the kids who grew up with the second trilogy are in their early twenties, and realize they don't have to listen to the old generation any more. For them, the second trilogy will seem great through the eyes of their childhood, while the first trilogy will just seem camp.
The midi-chlorians and the fact that C3PO and R2D2 were hanging around in the very beginning of the saga were silly and all, but how Lucas managed to kill off the mystery factor of the coolest character of the old movies is beyond me: a powerful and cunning villain that seems to be playing cat and mouse with the heroes, even more driven by his own agenda than Han Solo and even respected by Darth Vader. Search your feelings... You know it to be true!
Boba Fett
As a kid? Huh? Wtf!! Jango Fett!!?? Clones!? Why!!? Noooooooooooooo!!
That's where it became clear Lucas had lost the plot. Episode I just compounded it with a bad story, lame characters, wooden acting and terrible CGI.
You know, if be(com)ing a Jedi is a matter of integrity, honour and all that and if you have to learn the right values etc., then I can certainly see why the son of a great Jedi might well become a great Jedi as well.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Randall Curtis (George Lucas on The Simpsons): Hey, what are you doing here?
Bart Simpson: We come from the real world.
Lisa Simpson: And we're here to tell you that your movies have lost their way.
Randall Curtis: No, they haven't! My characters are getting better all the time, now that we've perfected digital eyelash rendering.
Lisa Simpson: Better technology doesn't mean better storytelling.
Randall Curtis: Well, now I know you're crazy.
Bart Simpson: Wait, before you have us killed, hear us out.
Randall Curtis: I will wait ten of your earth seconds.
Lisa Simpson: Your early movies are timeless classics. Please, Mr. Curtis, go back to what made your first films so great.
Randall Curtis: You know what? You're right. I'm going back to my roots: plots and characters lifted from westerns and samurai films. To the video store!
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
And yet Obi-Wan, not considered to be a particularly powerful Jedi, manages to smack him down, showing that skill, experience, and, dare I say, rightness of cause, beat raw talent. Or that a Dark Jedi defeats himself. Or something.
On a side note, Joe? From Ontario?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
The first two movies were the best and carried the story through even though ewoks were a bit lame. The problem is George Lucas wrote the screenplay and directed the prequels. The Empire Strikes Back is one of the best Star Wars movies and had an independent director and screenplay writers. The prequels suck because by that stage there was no one around to George that he had his hand on it.
I wish the editors had included a spoiler warning on this thread!
I wonder why that sounds so much like what Scientologists call Thetan. Yet Lucas Film wasn't sued by Scientologists.
I think The Phantom Menace was the best of the prequel movies. It had the same depth and feel of the originals. Episode 2 and 3 were basically just action movies.
My rights don't end where your feelings begin.
Han had to be cool headed and even heartless to plan and execute an execution while giving Greedo no hint of his impending death.
A *good* guy would have tried to talk him out of it but would have shown some sort of compassion.
A bastard wouldn't.
Han was, at first, a bastard.
And I should care about this.........WHY??
Normally I ascribe all life to intelligent design, but in your case I'll make an exception.
Star Wars is for stupid Amerikkkan imbeciles.
When did it jump the shark?
When Lucas waited 20 years and then made that piece of crap that is EP I.
Did Lucas redeem himself with EP III?
Nope. I and II were such stinking piles of crap that no amount of work was going to turn III into a jewel. That and after making I and II Lucas clearly indicated that he had "lost it", so there was no way (save from him walking away and letting someone else write/direct/etc.) to save it if he remained the "chief".
The othe problem that infected Lucas is one that has infected lots of producers/directors as tech has gotten more powerful. Back in 77, the possibilities for special effects were limited (due to money or to simply being impossible without the computer tech to perform the effect) so the result was that more time and money was spent writing an actual __story__ and the special effects were present just to highlight the story.
Now, jump forward 20 years. Computer tech allows all kinds of incredible, out of this world effects. So what does Lucas do, he goes on a 2 hour long special effects mastrubation with EP I, simply because he can. The result? The money has to come from somewhere. Where it comes from is not writing a decent __story__ to backup the flashy graphics. So what one has is all special effects, with no __story__ underneath. The result, the crapola that is EP I.
After the fifth time Jar Jar said "How Wude!" it became apparent Lucas had completely given up on any semblance of craftsmanship. Not only was a lot of dialog recycled, but even R2D2's beeps and whistles simplified, he might have had a vocabulary of 3 or 4 responses (compare R2D2's "speech" in ep 4 vs. ep 5).
Other things were extremely annoying, such as using an off-the shelf SR-71 Blackbird plastic testors model as the Nubian - even the same suggests the original - NO IMAGINATION AT ALL. Don't blame me just because I happen to recognize a Lockheed aircraft that I am annoyed. The paper-thin plot depth & Teletubbies-level conversation tells us who the movies were aimed at - it wasn't adults.
Certainly an empty-headed child can find "childlike wonder" in any Star Wars episode, but the same child can be fascinated & play for hours with an empty cardboard box, I was hoping for a little more depth from a "science fiction" movie.
Come on, the Phantom Menace was *dreadful* (unless you were, say, nine years old). It *certainly* didn't need an entire video race game in the middle of it. And having Anakin build C3-P0 and Artie Deco is absurd: you simple can *not* do that kind of "coincidence" in fiction.
Another example: Ooh, ooh, Darth Maul is BAD, is EVIL.... and what the hell did he *do*? Nothing much, until he kills Qui Gon. Think back to Episode IV: Vader comes onstage, and the first thing he does is to personally, grusomely, kill the captain of the Antares. Then he shows up at the meeting the Tarkin & co, and levitates and semi-strangles a general. In writing, this is kmown as "show, don't tell"; Vader was *shown* to be Evil, while Maul was only told.
The same, btw, could be said of whatisname the bounty hunter in the last two movies. He means nothing, until you see the origin of the clone troopers.
Around 2000, a friend/co-worker found this *wonderful* 17-page treatment for Episode One that was *great*. The auther - and I don't remember the name, nor can I find it on the web (I didn't save the URL - said that they'd tried to contact Lucas, and got ignored, not even slush-piled.
It was, as I said, awful.
Episode II was a bit better, though not what a lot of folks expected. Really, it was a stylized Greek tragedy, not Shakespeare. Go read some of the old tradgedies.
Episode III, on the other hand, was the one I was waiting for.
mark
Star Wars is and always has been dorkish and for the comic-reading crowd/Manilow lovers only. The dialog from first movie on was cringe-inducing, and the embarrassing interplay between Carrie Fisher/Mark Hammil/Harrison Ford was..simply sad. At least Lucas started cleaning up the weak fx over the years with digital improvements. And the Yoda puppet? Fucking Sesame Street.
Ewan McGregor brings more to the table but is wasted in scenes where Portman and ilk bring him down.
Why is anyone surprised that it turned into a toy merchandising trojan? It was made for child minds to begin with.
Or more specifically, the lack of muppets really hurt the new trilogy. Muppets are "alive" in a sense, they physically exist they have textures and wrinkles and other bits of character. Having everything CGI really sucks the sense of life out of a film IMO. I would much rather have a well-made muppet.
CGI and Green Screen acting ruined the new trilogy. Though really, I thought the second and third ones were ok - from a "popcorn" movie sort of standpoint. But I'm not a huge Star Wars person to begin with.
Of course, no Star Wars thread can be complete without a mention of the Star Wars Kid.
KOTOR 2 = Worst. Ending. Ever.
the word "taxation" has not shown up yet in this discussion.
Star Wars never really jumped the shark. The real problem with the prequels were the sky-high expectations of the fans. The fans seem to have expected George Lucas to remake the original trilogies, and when he went off on a new direction, with a new tone and showed a whole other aspect of the Star Wars universe, everyone freaked. I just watched The Phantom Menace with my kids (age 5 and 11) this weekend and they were howling with delight every time Jar-Jar did something ridiculous, especially during the battle at the end. If you go to the movies like a kid, without all those years of built-up expectations about what a Star Wars movie "should" be, then you're going to see the films for what they really are: pure fun. And from that perspective, the Star Wars films have never jumped the shark.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
To answer the question... it never did. The movies made today are every bit as high-quality as the movies of yesterday, and in some cases (Episode 3), much better. I have a hard time finding Star Wars fans who dislike the new movies, who aren't also the idiotic "omg Han Shot first that changes eeeeverythiiiiiing omg" type. My sense of logic tells me that there must be some of them, but my luck is apparently bad.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
...Natalie Portman. The only good dialog in the entire series was "I know," and that was sheer accident, but for my money the worst thing he did was to bury Keisha Castle-Hughes under a walk-on role carrying more weight, in terms of misogynist costumery, than a gunnery sergeant. Could it get any worse?
Oh, wait. I'd almost forgotten: Ewoks.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
To any overly zealous respondent that wants to shatter my metaphor; phbplphbphtphbpht!
To everyone else:
I'm going to be on the side of Ep 1 and not ROTJ; the Shark wasn't even in the tank for ROTJ, but it was jumped, the leather jacket was torn, and the hair mussed-up, all before Ep 1 rolled credits.
For my own timeline; I saw SW:ANH when I was six, and it was larger than life. I was too young to care about anything like the overall story or plot, but the space battles were like nothing anyone had seen before. I was haplessly indoctrinated into Lucas' vision... and I desperately wanted a speeder of my own.
As you might guess, I was ten years of age when I saw SW:TESB. One word: Scary. In the mind of a young boy, I clung to the happy moments in that film like precious candy. It seemed unlike the first movie; why aren't the good guys winning every battle!? My disillusionment didn't kick-in at that time, because there was still the colossal Hoth battle, encoring the most awesome space battles of any movie... and there was the questions raised; what will happen to Han? ...what's Lukes plan? ...and how could Vader *ever* in a *million years* be Luke's father? This one-two-punch to the senses and emotions is surely why the term "Space Opera" was coined for this franchise.
Then, as I turned thirteen, there came exactly what I wanted. Just the mere title gave me the hope I was looking for at the end of "Empire"; SW:ROTJ promised the return of the mythical warrior caste only known vaguely as the Jedi Order. Luke has a plan, and it's brilliant! Battles swayed to the good guys once again, more serious moments were broken-up with well-timed (albeit campy) moments of comic relief. A well-balanced adventure, leading to the most spectacularly choreographed combination of battle on the ground and in the heavens (only slighly lessened by the cutsey-fied Ewoks) climaxed in another tremendous victory for the good guys. The ending celebration, while a bit corny, was a welcome afterglow for the roller-coaster that had blown the senses of a young teenage boy. If there was anything missing, it was the sense that the victory was on a galactic scale and not just for one New Republic armada.
Working in Tech Support in the late 90's, the rumours of a new trilogy was sooo seductive. My initial thoughts were, "Another trilogy! Unbelievably Fantastic! If there's anything that will sure to be a great series of films, it is another set of movies from the Master, Mr. George Lucas!" Alas, in hindsight, I truly believed that Lucas couldn't possibly let us down.
The day I saw Episode I... I was impressed with all the CGI-spiffy things, and there was something that seemed like a plot, and the idea of Midi-Chlorians made me a bit ill along with the 'immaculate conception' theory. As the credits rolled, I felt that I had died a little bit inside.
SW:TPM was where it all began; Lucas chose vanity over soul, he chose polish over content, and he chose mass appeal over the story. It was all the wrong choices and it just got worse from there.
P.S. There's a reason I don't include Jar-Jar in any of the comparisons; he was just a CGI pipe-dream made to cover-up the lack of any sincere storytelling ability.
If anything in the galaxy could redeem these ill-conceived works of a troubled soul, it would be a re-imagining of the trilogy with fanbase content. (ducks)
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
They both suck ass, IMHO.
Society is nothing but collaboration.
Since everyone now knows that Vader has over niiiineeeee thousaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand!
When they put the free espresso/latte machine in the cafeteria at the Ranch.
Was it the Midi-chlorians, Jar Jar Binks, the actors? When did Star Wars jump the shark?. A bonus question: Did George Lucas redeem himself in Episode III?"
When did it "jump"? If I was forced to choose one moment, it would be Midi-chlorians. However, things are not that simple in this case. I'll explain that in a minute. Lucas is a visionary and deserves every dollar he makes, but things started to slide down-hill with Episode 1. Bad dialog, sub-par acting, and plot killers (Midi-chlorians & Jar-Jar) all contributed. So I'd say that the jump started in TPM at the explanation of the Midi-chlorians.
Did Episode III redeem the franchise? In the short term, yes. In the long term, no. This is where things are not that simple. In the short term RotS is a better movie than the first two films, but not by much. I was not expecting Shakespeare, just lightsaber duels and space battles. However, looking at the big picture RotS was doomed due to the events of the prior films. To redeem the franchise, Lucas would have had to re-shoot the first two films or break RotS into two films. The "fall of Anakin" in RotS was not very convincing. Mostly, due to time limitations. Lucas painted himself into a corner and realized he had half of a film in which to do it. So, when I view the films I see a very slow motion "jump the shark" that began early in TPM and ended in RotS.
Bonus Answer: What went wrong with the big picture? IMHO, the story/time-line of Anakin was not as good as it needed to be. He started out way too happy and a bit too young. In TPM, we should have seen a disgruntled slave, about the same age as Amidala, that resents constantly being told what to do and dreams of being free some day instead of the "too happy to help" child. Basically, move his transition to the dark side up a bit in the time-line. Anakin should be on the fence from day one with the memory of his Mother, desires for Amidala, the Jedi Order being extra harsh on him (from Anakin's POV), and Palpatine nudging him to the dark side constantly. Eventually, have Anakin take "The Siegfried Oath" to Palpatine, but take the time to do it right. Build up some pressure over an entire movie or so to the point where Anakin says something to the effect of "I've had it with this stupid Jedi Order!" and decides to go to the dark side. The moment of Anakin's transition in RotS is lame at best. (In fact, so is the Emperor's case against Luke. He had ZERO chance to convert Luke. Luke's attacks on Vader in defense of Lea were more out of Love for Lea than Hate of Vader) I truly believe that a script/plot could be generated where Anakin falls to the dark side in the second movie and the third is entirely Vader slaughtering the Jedi one (or more) at a time.
Wow! Your insight into the caste element of the prequels is really screwing me over. It's right on target. But what's got me so crazy is that several writers noted that the Clone Wars lead-up greatly resembled the US after 9/11. The use of the pretext for giving the Chancellor/ Emperor more power. Maybe GL is onto something. One thing I really liked about the prequel was Master Yoda's fallibility. "Blind are the Jedi."
One thing I think everyone overlooks is how GL didn't pander to the Dark Side. Ultimately, he does not dwell or relish the rise of the Dark Side. All the dark victories are pretty much off screen. By presenting Anakin as a whiney dude with attitude he leaves the audience rolling their eyes. He then shows how all the dark side power leads to ruin- killing his beloved and destroying his society. He could have focused on Darth Vaders duels with Jedi, instead he shows a cowardly scene where he kills helpless kindergarten kids. In a way, that may be a touch of brilliance. The reaction to that scene dampened much of the Vader fervor out there. Maybe he was just trying to be responsible when he made Anakin so pathetic. I think many a young mind not to idol worship Vader- Yes, the armor is cool, but the guy inside is a headcase. Let me go emulate Batman instead. In the final equation, Palpatine was bested by Yoda in force power and bested by Windu in saber fighting. GL was definitely being consistent with Obi Wan's observation that the Dark Side was not more powerful than the light. In fact, the prophecy seems to be about a correction of too much dilution of the force. So all those Jedi using the Force to flip burgers may be the cause of all the trouble.
The caste references sort of fit with this. "Queen" Amidala is supposed to be elected, but as trussed up and royal as any royal of any government ever. With words one value is stated, while with visuals the other is embraced as fait accompli. The Jedi are a warrior priest caste that selects new members through the draft and who show contempt for family ties like Maoist's. They are led by a 3 foot 800-year old, green-skinned dictator (with a handpicked council of yes men). These then purport to protect "democracy" and "freedom". But in their defense, Yoda was a downright enlightened despot compared to Palpatine.
Thanks for that insight!
One of my least favorite things was the renumbering of the original series. That made no sense whatsoever, and looks very bad when you watch them in numerical order. "I am your father, Luke" has no impact whatsoever to anyone who saw the prequel first. And Obi-Wan comes off as a trickster sending novice Luke to fight Sith he's been hiding from for 30 years after they wiped out all the Jedi Masters of rank higher than his.
As for a better prequel, combine E1 & E2 into one movie by editing out the boring stuff (and speed up the Pod Race to 2 minutes max). Produce Clone Wars as the second movie. When the clones turn on the Jedi come up with some reason why clone blasters are less blockable than the swarm of droid blasters. And Make Anakin actually duel Mace Windu instead of a cheap shot and for God's sake- let's have Anakin at least try to resist Palpatine's invitation. Get rid of m-clorians and replace them with Pokemon cards. Definitely determine a Jedi's Force strength by counting the number of Pokemon cards they win at age 7. It would work.
And most of all, let's get the name Vader to be something, mean something, more than just a random thought off the top of Palpatine's head as his skin stops melting.
I paid money to watch those movies. It took 3 movies for Lucas to destroy his reputation as a film maker.
,...)
I do have the right to complain and make a fuss about it, I gave him at the very least the equivalent of $120 in today's money.
I do have damn right to complain and ensure as many people as possible know about this so they are forewarned in case he tries to pull another one on us ( the talk of "postquels" is unnerving
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There is such a thing as a good plot, where on scene in the movie is there for a reason that helps to develop it.
In the original movies (and here I include Ewoks and all) the plot moves along from a beginning to a middle tense point and to a satisfactory resolution, this is completely and abjectly absent in the first 2 prequels and completely convoluted in the last one (where Lucas had got enough flak for the 2 previous failures that if felt like he was trying to make for it).
Where the first 3 movies may have been corny, they wore this with gusto and sense of awe. The prequels are far too knowingly, they take the politics far too seriously (sorry Mr Lucas, there are filmakers that know how to do that, that ain't you) and the pseudo spiritual aspects that gave some unspecified backbone to the good vs evil saga in the first three movies is completely misused by taking it too seriously to the point of self parody.
The time when the films were made matters. there was never before a movie with such majestic intentions so well put in screen. The first scene in the first movie still astonishes if watched in a cinema, as well as the scenes of space fights. The clinical labyrinth like nature of the empire's cuartels (Death Star, etc) is creepy and futuristic and the uniforms used in both sides look credible and polished. Compare all this with the lame CGI hickery pockery of the last three movies. Where there was real craftsmanship in the first movies (were attention to detail was paid to every character, spaceship and scene) in the last movies all is passed through the CGI churning machine forgetting about the soul of the movie: the bloddy damn plot.
There are good ways and bad ways to do corny stuff. The frist three movies are a text boo case of how to do it properly, the last three are text book cases of exactly the opossite.
This is easy to explain: in the first movies we have a director desperate to build a good history not knowing if he would ever be able to go beyond the first movie.
In the last movies we have a Director that knows he can rest on his laurels and milk the franchise for all what is worth.
It shows, and anybody that knows two things about film making can see this, the nostalgia would not cloud the judgment of anybody that has studied even lightly how a good movie is built.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
While I generally hate it when people validate their opinions by pointing out that theirs happen to be the ones accepted by the majority, I do feel it necessary to clear up your confusion. . .
Star Wars pulled most of its ideas about the Jedi directly from some of the best respected Chinese and Toltec philosophies. So, if you're going to sneer at me from the back of the class room, then you might want to consider that you are doing so very much as a knuckle-dragging philistine in the landscape of philosophy. Or would you have me believe that you woke up one morning with the crystal clear understanding of the relationship between fear and suffering standing bright in your mind and that you achieved this insight all by your lonesome? Hm. You're a smarter man than me, if that's the case.
Or maybe you just find it offensive that I should enjoy my Taoist thinking packaged with cool light saber dramas. I don't know.
As for your other complaints. . . No, no, no. --You don't look exclusively within a story for truth. Nobody does this! You use the story to re-tell and refine what you learn from living; to share knowledge with your society. Stories always simplify truths, but they also inform by amplifying and isolating the important patterns. Stories are immeasurably valuable in this way. They are a way for communities to process and agree upon the truths which will shape and drive them.
Perhaps you're just trying to sound cool and all grown-up by rejecting the things of your youth. Only kids do that, until they eventually realize it neither works nor should.
-FL
Flaming someone for being stupid is not flamebait, mods, learn the difference.
You can't take the sky from me...
Han shot first!
I got this from a Patton Oswalt recording and it is pretty much spot on: Episode one is about Darth Vader, the dark knight, the fallen Jedi, who looks like evil incarnate. But we make him a little boy... and he's sad. Episode two is about Boba Fett, the quiet mysterious bad-ass bounty hunter who bested Han Solo and whom fans just can't seem to get enough of, despite his meager on-screen time. But we make him a little boy... and he's sad. Episode 3 plays catch-up to all that. And does a decent job, but it can't help but feel like an apology. It also didn't help that those fearsome jedi warriors were so easily back-stabbed. :P
Please stop espousing this nonsense. Yes, George Lucas has claimed a half-dozen clever explanations for various pieces of the Star Wars legacy -- all of them after the fact. And if you spend 12 seconds actually watching the films, you'll see they're all nonsense. No, Darth Vader was not originally intended to be Luke's father; it's pretty obvious, too, unless you contort reason trying to squeeze inferences into Obi-Wan's first conversation with Luke. And no, the entire story was not intended to be told from the 'droids perspective; if you watch the series very, very closely, you'll notice that they're absent from, like, half the major plot points.
This is the kind of thing that was going through my mind when I watched that scene, back in 1977:
Look, Luke, you're in a frigging starship, you've got a bloody warp drive behind your seat. Plus, your best friend is a robot, and your most treasured possession is a frigging laser sword. You're embedded in so many layers of high tech that you make the lunar lander look like a housboat. You're not shooting "womp rats" in "beggar's canyon" and your fighter isn't a souped up flying pickup and you're not waving a gun or even a light saber around: you're using a fly-by-wire control system with god knows what kinds of control software just to keep from augering in every time you twitch that joystick... that's your "targeting computer".
I was 16 years old and my bedroom was full of model planes and I was into the technology. I mean totally into it. I was identifying the hell out of the movie, and I was Luke Skywalker... and as soon as he turned off his targeting computer and I just knew he was gonna blow that thing up just like it was a big old womp rat (with lasers)...
Totally blew my suspension of disbelief.
Man, it was a good two or three minutes before I got totally back into the mindless special effects action movie mode. And for a 16 year old with ADD, that's a long time.
The post-Jedi Heir To The Empire books were, for me, the high water mark. Unfortunately, they opened the floodgates for additional books, none of which are nearly as good. The continued interest in SW fueled the THX remaster, the re-release of the toys, Shadows of the Empire.... by the time Lucas's ego went critical and he started work on Episode I, the market had already been flooded with new stories, new plots, new technology, and new aliens - all post Jedi - that were better than anything he could come up with. And then along comes Episode I, which does to Star Wars what Star Trek : Enterprise did to Star Trek.
Bleh.
Am I the only one who thought Star Wars jumped the shark back in The Empire Strikes Back? When Darth Vader claims to be Luke's father. That was totally contrary to everything said in the first movie.
I stopped watching before Episode I came out. Never seen complete I or II and none of III.
Zahn books rocked, but that was it.
I will never buy another Star Wars item ever because:
1) Boba Fett was brought back from the sarlaac (read pieces of intro from the book.. ugh)
2) They killed of Mara Jade (and in a stupid way too) (learned from the back of a recent book and the bring back mara jade online petition)
Much as you can hate Lucas, yes other ppl can screw it up more. An artist being artsy vs. stuffed-shirt peacocks
I think it was when Jedi Clampett loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly... Hills that is...
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
SURPRISE! With Return of the Jedi. That movie was good- maybe very good- but paled with the greatness of the 4 & 5. Ep. 1 & 2 made things abysmal, but Lucas returned to at least RotJ form with Ep. 3. Regardless, bring on Ep. 7!!!
Skywalker Jedi Academy babayyy!!!
art is science made clear. -cocteau
We geeks will essentially always be eight......so Star Wars rocks.
Evidence:
- We still play with toys (just more expensive)
- We watch cartoons
- We live in our mom's basements.
- We've never had sex
Layne
P.S. Yes, sterotype. I'm married w/ kids living in my own house.....of course, I still play with toys and watch cartoons.
The best creativity and sharklessness frequently occurs within constraints (self imposed or otherwise). This "do a lot with a little" approach goes against common sense which might point to the "infinite resources, do whatever you want" school of maximized creativity (something GL has embraced). The latter almost always leads to shark jumping. Working within constraints forces a filmmaker to focus resources on the things that really matter (although obviously is not a recipe for success). Also, as soon as a work becomes too self conscious, knowing "what it is," the creative process becomes ultra-fragile and shark jumping becomes enevitable. Star Wars IV was a lean, beautiful piece of cinema largely because it was working within constraints: GL didn't get whatever he wanted, didn't have infinite resources, actually had a fear of failure, and Star Wars didn't know what it was yet. Everything GL has done with Star Wars since then has been an every-increasing exercise in self-indulgence diluting the creative effort. ESB is still high quality artistically, but it was creatively set in motion earlier and GL didn't direct it. Although GL didn't direct Jedi either, the genre was already too self conscious to be saved artistically and had degenerated to children's programming. Jedi was 70% shark jumping: second death star (creative!), Ewoks, excessive muppetization (Jabba's Fraggle Rock palace was what GL really wanted the cantina to be like in SW), soap opera romance consummated, another death star explosion in the finale. There were some fine moments in Jedi, but you had to hunt for them.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
I remember watching a documentary that came out sometime in the late 80's/90's called "From Star Wars to Jedi." In it Lucas said that the reason that the first (IV, V, VI) three movies were so good was that so much time was spent developing the story and characters instead of on the visual effects.
Fast forward to Episode I and it becomes clear that Lucas has been replaced by an opposite version of himself from an alternate universe. There is no more storytelling and most of the movie is spent zooming around expensive CG settings.
Yay, I mixed a Star Trek reference into a gripe about Star Wars episode I:)
I keep trying not to post, but I give. Why does everybody hate the force-critters so much? They change nothing.
But it fits perfectly with the story that an organized Jedi school might know a hair more about the specifics than one old guy in the desert and a half-insane swamp cave hermit midget. All it did for me was point out how much they'd lost in the fall. They used to know stuff. In IV-V-VI, they were mystics only because they'd been hunted to extinction, and the specifics had been lost. That sort of "magic is just leftover technology from before the fall" thing is such a sci-fi staple I'm surprised it enrages people so much.
What does it change? Everybody's still got 'em, they said so. Han can still pick up some tricks from Obi-Wan if he feels like it. Some people have more jedi blood cells than others. That much was obvious from the get-go in the original, or nobody would have been looking for Luke in the first place. Instead, it's Vader, Luke, and his Sister, and a couple of childless bachelors-- and despite misgivings, the bachelors are forced to train up less-than-ideal Luke despite a wide variety of well behaved children of appropriate age they could have picked. If they could teach any kid, they'd have been doing it already. It's clear that the Force is as widespread as being able to run... but olympic-quality runners are hard to find. The *only change* is that they haven't forgotten how to take the jedi equivalent of a blood glucose level, and Obi-Wan hadn't misplaced his testing meter on a trip to Mos Eisley in the intervening years.
So explain this entire "holocaust" concept to me again. I'm no apologist for the historical record of the British Empire, but it's sad and somewhat frightening that there exist apologists for the Nazis.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Who needs thrusters, inertia, centrifugal force and the vacuum of space when you can have magically maneuverable ships that whoosh as they pass by?
The "whoosh" is actually entirely subjective, it's caused by their shields interacting directly with your neurons. It's why X-Wing pilots have 24 times the incidence of brain cancer as the rest of the Imperial Fleet.