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George Lucas Criticizes the Force Awakens (theguardian.com)
RogueyWon writes: While many critics have responded positively to JJ Abrams's take on Star Wars, one particular industry figure seems rather less impressed. George Lucas has criticized the "retro" tone of The Force Awakens and lamented his own lack of involvement in it. Speaking to television talk-show host and journalist Charlie Rose, Lucas quipped that he had sold his "kids to the white slavers that take these things". "They wanted to do a retro movie. I don’t like that,” he said. “They weren’t that keen to have me involved anyway, but if I get in there, I’m just going to cause trouble, because they’re not going to do what I want them to do. And I don’t have the control to do that any more, and all I would do is muck everything up. And so I said, ‘OK, I will go my way, and I’ll let them go their way.’”
Why did you sell it? Take your money and shut up, it's not yours anymore (thank god!).
-No one- wants to see Jar-Jar Binks again. Nor do they want to see a "token kid", or a Yoda doing backflips. No one.
I agree with him.
There was way too much slovenly fan service in that movie. As I expected with a Disney movie, it played it totally safe and took no chances. It looked test-marketed to within an inch of its life.
A real filmmaker would have made his own film, not just remade someone else's.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
That the first three films were decent only because of Lucas' lack of control. We saw what happens when his every whim is indulged with the prequels. Ugly stuff. In short: George, you're shite, now fuck off.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Yeah, why can't Disney be more forward-thinking like Lucas instead of just pandering to the moviegoers and giving them more of what they want?
When someone says, "Any fool can see
I don't think you know what a "loss leader" means. Exactly which Star Wars movie has been unprofitable?
May the fruit be with you.
He wasn't married in 1997. Just sayin'
And so does George especially when he's on a mission to "improve" an old film.
Translated to English:
I made three very good bottles of wine. So good people called me a visionary. My bottles were great.
Then I made three bad jars of wine. These jars were jarringly bad.
I sold my vineyard, great bottles and Jarring Jars and got lots of money.
Nobody considers me a visionary any longer because of the latter.
(Also have you ever tried discussing galactic treaties in a way that people want to hear about
it that doesn't sound like you helped write the internal revenue tax code and the trans-pacific partnership?)
Now I see that these new owners have made something good.
I think "Hey I could have done that!" I'm a visionary.
I think "Wait, I did, back in 1977, you know, before 30% of the planet was alive." Nobody knows I'm a visionary.
I think "I could have done it again." They would have recognized my genius again. Jar. Jar.
I forget about the jarring jars. I don't know where that came from anyway. I play with dolls way too much.
The grapes I would have picked are probably sour anyway.
- George Lucas
"Ruin" is very subjective, and in this case and others (Marvel, for instance) the majority of consumers do not share your tastes.
George Lucas has criticized the "retro" tone of The Force Awakens and lamented his own lack of involvement in it.
Shut up George and go spend your billions. You had your chance and blew it with the prequels. Nobody gives a shit what you think anymore. You created something cool 35 years ago and then made a mockery of it with your arrogance and incompetence 20 years later. Star Wars HAD to do something retro because you screwed it up. You failed to understand why Star Wars was a success in the first place. People needed to be reminded of why they liked Star Wars and THEN we can worry about doing something new and interesting with it.
George, if you wanted control you shouldn't have sold out. If you want to do something new then go create something genuinely new. You've got the money and the time but I'm pretty sure you don't have the talent to write or direct. Go do some experimental film making and prove to us that you have something worthwhile to contribute.
Even with the money made, the investment is still in the red. Remember, they paid $4b for the rights.
You're right that its not a loss leader, but its not going to be worth the investment on the movies alone. We're taking needing a $6b profit by 2020 for the investment to make sense, and they're not going to make that just on the movies.
....the only mistake Disney made for the moment is firing LucasArts people. Now LucasArts do not do game development anymore, just manage the IP. Wikipedia: "Disney Interactive Studios retained the ability to develop, and LucasArts retained the ability to license, the franchise for the casual gaming market."
I am going to basically repeat in a more respectful tone than what the other smart-asses said on this thread, but with all due respect,
Why did you sell your franchise in the first place? You know Disney's track record for mucking up stuff and should have known that they would not listen to you after you sold Lucasfilm to them. That would be like me selling a nice hot rod to Disney and telling them "Oh don't put flames on that car! It looks better in solid candy apple red!"
Disney basically gave you the finger in a respectful way and did what they wanted (which is to market to the lowest common denominator who likes explosions and action). They don't care about telling a story. They want $$$$$$$$$$$..
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
Lucas is like a startup founder. He had brilliant, innovative ideas at the start and was able to build an epic franchise out of it. But the different sort of work of figuring out why the initial franchise worked, and continuing that theme is best left to different personality types. Lucas is a starter, not a maintainer. He wants to do new things, not maintain the existing.
George, Your children were taken away from you because you were raping them. George, you sold them to other men, to be used.
I agree with him.
Then you fail to understand the problem. Disney HAD to make a film that reminded everyone of why they loved Star Wars. After the debacle that was the prequels, they needed to come back to basics. THEN they can start doing more creative things going forward. But they had to repair the damage first and get people enthused about the franchise again. I suspect they'll get more adventurous in the future but doing so for this movie would have been idiotic.
A real filmmaker would have made his own film, not just remade someone else's.
And if they did that then everyone would have bitched about how it wasn't Star Wars. And they would have been right. Giving some director complete freedom to go off on whatever idiotic tangent they want is how we got the prequels.
Even with the money made, the investment is still in the red. Remember, they paid $4b for the rights.
Which is completely different than claiming the movies are loss leaders.
You're right that its not a loss leader, but its not going to be worth the investment on the movies alone.
And no one said otherwise.
The hate is strange. Guardians of the Galaxy was an AWESOME product from Disney. But they had nothing "preconceived" to work from there. It was total freedom, and it was indeed awesome.
Star Wars is a totally different beast. Too many chances, and you end up with the crap Lucas spit out for prequels, and definite alienation of some fans. Regardless, there was NO WAY they were going to please everybody. But we got an entertaining continuation of the originals, IMO. Lets hope it only gets better! Honestly, I'm very much looking forward to the next installment.
What more can you ask for? They had epic expectations and didn't completely fail like the previous attempt from Lucas.
Ugh... Then what we he doing driving a silver late 80's mercedes roadster?
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This movie is a reboot that dare not speak its name ...
Every three seconds you have a picture that is only a parody of the old ones. Yes, not bore you, but it's the cold shower.
the ultimate, the weapon called the daughter of his master, we've seen everything
IV, V and VI are only the good way.
My problem with all this, and the tentative point where I agree with Lucas, is that it seems a strange new world where the creator of a work is locked out of its further development simply because a corporation stepped in with $4B's and bought all rights and control of it.
Pretty naive to think that that is somehow anything new. People have sold IP rights since the first moment there was such a thing as IP. That's like selling your house and then expecting to have a say in how the new owner decorates it. The entire notion is idiotic. If George wanted a say in how things were done he could have negotiated that. He chose not to. Frankly given how bad the prequels were, I wouldn't have wanted him around either. He clearly failed to understand why people liked Star Wars, couldn't direct, couldn't write and everybody knew it. Disney has dealt with guys like him before and his time had clearly passed.
In other words, when a work of art becomes too popular it is in danger of becoming a mere franchise.
It's adorable that you think Star Wars wasn't a franchise before. I saw Star Wars in the theater in 1977. Do you have ANY idea how big of a think merchandising became because of Star Wars? Every kid I knew was carrying around a Darth Vader carrying case loaded with action figures. Video games, lunch boxes, toys, decoration, etc. Those became a big deal because Star Wars WAS a franchise right from the very beginning. Your notion that it was some holy work of "art" is belied by the actual facts.
Count your blessings. Disney could have brought in Uwe Boll.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm assuming by 'retro' he means we didn't see a bunch of tedious senate scenes. Instead they just blew the senate up before we ever saw it.
Seriously though, making a Star Wars movie is a "damned if you, damned if you don't" scenario. No matter what you do, there are going to be people who hate it. Disney and Abrams just took the route that would please the most people (and generate the most revenue). I can't really fault them for that.
Ticket sales seem to say who cares George Lucas.
For the sake of argument, if we are going to use ticket sales as the judge of quality The Phantom Menace wins hands down adjusted for inflation. In 2015 dollars it made around $1.4 billion.
Isn't he simply the Lucas of game adaptation movies?
Given that they now own Starwars I'm wondering if it is possible for Disney to rework the prequels.
Given the soul that Pixar can put into a 100% CGI movie with close to no dialogue (Wall-E) I'm sure the Special Edition of the prequels could be injected with some.
They could retcon Darth Jar-Jar! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yy3q9f84EA) ;)
It's Star Wars we're talking about here, not La Strada. The whole problem with the prequels was Lucas taking himself waaaaay too seriously. Star Wars is a Saturday Matinee Samurai Space Opera. Which is what Abrams delivered. Yay!
Lucas was fine, when he let other people direct and stayed focused on special effects. He's not good at directing people. If you listen to the interviews from Harris Ford and Mark Hamill it's pretty clear Lucas shrugged off simple questions on dialog and motivation. The original movie ended up good because the actors were talented and worked extremely well as an ensemble cast. When you got to Empire and Return you had talented directors set the tone and motivation for the cast.
You go to the prequels and it's uneven mix of amateur hour theatrics mixed in with cameos from talented actors. "I...I killed them. I killed them all. They're dead, every single one of them. And not just the men, but the women and the children too." Anakin Skywalker Episode II. The most cringe worthy scene in the entire series.
This is probably the most accurate account of the perspective and critique george has offered the community. http://i.imgur.com/91sn32Q.jpg
Good people go to bed earlier.
No, the whole way he killed Padme off was terrible. How is it Leia could remember her mother when she was about thirty seconds old when she died?
And midichlorians...
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The Plinkett Reviews of Star Wars are as long as the movies, far more entertaining and completely hilarious.
Watch the DVD/Bluray extras about the making of Star Wars that gives you a glimpse into the actual original dialogue that Marcia Lucas, in her wisdom, cut out of the film. It's atrocious, with lines straight out of 70s sci-fi fanfic. That's what saved the film. There's one particular one in Kenobi's "if you strike me down" line.
That's one way to look at it... but seen how he f*cked things up in the prequels, this movie truely is part of the series. I'm normally very critical about Disney, but you can only admit that they got this one right.
Maybe his first 3 movies where so good because his ex-wife was involved so much?
I enjoyed this movie, despite the high expectations (which normally make it more difficult to live up to it).
Over a billion gross on this one already in less than two weeks, and it hasn't even opened in China (the second largest market globally) yet. They plan at least a movie a year for several years to come (at least two trilogies planned so far).. Plus the deal bought them ILM which is widely used earning more profits from other movies. They'll likely have that $4b paid off in two or three years tops. Then it's all gravy. Loss leader? Not even close. Not with the Disney marketing machine. Will the following movies do as well? That has yet to be seen. But they don't have to be blow-out blockbusters like this one is to quickly turn into a long term money maker even without the merchandising.
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"I...I killed them. I killed them all. They're dead, every single one of them. And not just the men, but the women and the children too." Anakin Skywalker Episode II. The most cringe worthy scene in the entire series.
I would disagree: "I love you, but I can't love you." I didn't see Twilight but I would say it had better romance.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The movie earned s billion dollars in twelve days. I wish I could ruin things like that.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Mooooo Cows Moooooo! You imperial Cows!
(couldn't resist...)
and all I would do is muck everything up.
Better 16 years late then never, I guess...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
to Midoclorians & Virgin Births any day of the week. The story telling in the prequels was just awful. The tonal shifts while necessary were badly handled, the love story dragged on and on and was awkward as hell and the trade federation crap was so bad it was silly. When they were good (Podracers, Yoda vs Dooku, Starfighter Battles) they were great but they were so often terrible ("From _my_ perspective the Jedi are Evil!", how the hell did that line survive focus groups?).
Play it safe, rebuild the franchise, and we'll let folks experiment in games and TV.
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I loved the new movie, but have heard and agree with the comments
Even as I watched the new movie, I noticed “that’s the cantina scene”, “that’s the new yoda”, “really? the death star again?” They dealt with it with humor, “there’s always a way to blow it up”, but it’s a rehash of story & themes from Episodes IV & V.
I liked the *story line* of Episodes I-III— they filled in the story of how Anakin turned to the dark-side. Where Lucas messed it up was everywhere else, directing, script, CGI, lack of directing, over-the-top characters (jar-jar binks), etc., etc.; probably because no one could tell the “famous in his time” person, that all important word. “Nooooooooo!”.
What I am and will be curious about is what we might have gotten if Lucas had given the story line (and then gotten out of the way). Let Kasdan (Empire Strikes Back & Force Awakens) write the script, and Abrams direct — e.g. let the people who are good (still) at telling the story tell the story, while Lucas provides the story-arc, the richness of the ideas that gave us the back-story and the awesome episodes IV-V-and maybe (VI).
It just **might** have been awesome.
Now, I just have to hope that as a friend quipped, Episode VIII is not named, “The First Order Strikes Back”
If you're paying attention, Abrams actually steals from all 3 original trilogy movies extremely heavily (particularly New Hope and Empire). There are a couple of very small segments for doing backstory but overall very little in the way of building characters. It's more like he watched the original trilogy and just wanted all the action scenes.
The screen writing needs serious work. The new characters are.. mostly forgettable although decent actors so I don't think that was their fault. Kylo Ren is laughable, near complete dark side trained (no mention of Sith) but gets his ass kicked by the most competent STORM TROOPER we've ever seen on screen and a completely untrained girl with some innate and until-she-meets-with-him latent power that she suddenly figures out how to use better than he does?? WTF?
The pacing was fast and I suspect aimed at Millennials and Sub-Millennials with 0 attention span and their goddamn phones out at all times (as evidenced by the 2 chattering girls and one of their boyfriends who wouldn't shut the fuck up the whole time - guy "Sick!" every 30 seconds).
Having said that, it's 10x better than the prequels - ALL of which are/were fucking terrible. I'm glad there was no mention at all of midoclorians or whatever. All of the 3D effects were good and real people in costumes where needed - despite there being a shit load of it comes off far better than farting brontosaur pack animals in the prequels. My girlfriend, who is not a Star Wars fan in particular, thinks it was great. As a Star Wars fan, I'm just glad they told Lucas to fuck off.
where the lead happens upon it...
Probably my greatest frustration with the movie (though, there were many) was that there was no clear lead character. Is Ray really the protagonist of the movie? From my count, there was at least three: Ray, Finn, and Han Solo, and none of them were developed particularly well. Of course, we already knew everything we needed to know about Han Solo, but as for Ray and Finn, we understand very little about their backgrounds. We are never really told why Finn becomes "self aware" of the evil that he is a part of, aside from some quick cop-out line about occasional storm troopers going rogue and needing "reprogramming". And Ray just is abandoned on Jakku as a child; we don't know who abandoned her, and we don't know why. As an audience, we really cannot empathize with either character, making it challenging at best for us to identify them as lead characters or feel any attachment to their plight or their struggle to overcome it.
When comparing the two stories, episode 4 wins hands down.
Wow.
Criticism on the 'retro' tone from the guy who mande American Graffiti? And then who made a bog-standard space opera comprised of a mashup of cowboy movies and Kurosawa? Really? And did he actually watch episodes 6, 1, 2, and 3? What was intrinsically novel in them?
That, my friends, is irony.
Yes, the Disney film was entirely an homage (read: flat-out-copy) of the first film. It took no risks, but what it did do is retell the first film for an entirely new generation. "Rebooting" is such a popular way to say "copy" today, if they'd just said "we're rebooting it because 2/3 of the source work from the original author we have as a foundation was utter crap" people would be arguing about that.
Yes, it was a naked merchandising enterprise (I believe I saw a 50 yard WALL of merch at Target before the film came out) but SO WAS THE FIRST.
Suffice to say: I loved Star Wars - I was 10 in 1977, and watched it at least 30 times in theaters. It is what it is. All the encrustations of epicness that have been laden on by Lucas and creepily-worshipful fans are just that: extrinsic and irrelevant. If it took a single new film to break that all off and start clean, I'm cool with that.
I hope this means that the NEXT film can be more interesting and a little more daring.
-Styopa
Well, that’s a relief.
Mine was "Anakin, you're breaking my heart!"
It's really easy for me to "get into" a performance and to stay focused, especially when it gets to the climax scenes, but this totally took me out. I was actually mad when this happened, and it was hard to get back into the movie before it was finished.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
And midichlorians...
That was the exact moment when episode 1 jumped the shark.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
The original acting was bad. Wooden characters. Stilted dialog. It was a few memorable lines, some great CGI / scene display and the fact that it's really a Western that made it great.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
At the seven-movie marathon back on VII's opening day, the MOST cringeworthy scene was in AotC, when Anakin just gives this creepy lust-infused stare to Padme, who looks vaguely skeeved out and worried.
I thought, 'How could ANYBODY think Hayden Christensen is a bad actor? This is EXACTLY how a teenage boy acts when he's 'so in love'.
Of course, then she kisses him...I think there was a sit-com style 'he got older, she stayed exactly the same age as TPM' sort of idea there.
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It's called giving the people what they want. The Phantom Menace has a 56% RT score. The Force Awakens has a 94% RT score. The audience scores are roughly similar, and the audience scores don't really improve for the subsequent prequels.
Lucas made four star wars movies himself: one good one (4) followed by three mediocre ones (1/2/3). He clearly doesn't know how to make a good one anymore.
Slashot can't quite decide whether they hate Lucas of The Force Awakens worse.
I dunno. If they could make the whole "Jar Jar Sith Lord" theory work out that'd be pretty awesome, especially if somebody gets to chop him in half near the end.
Yeah, it was obvious and very deliberate, but when you think about it even the originals were like that. Empire did split off the plot a bit, but Jedi pretty much rehashed plots from both New Hope and Empire.
The new movies just continue with rehashing:
* older "mentor" character (who dies): check
* big scary space-station with even bigger guns: check
* growing magical force powers: check
* a little bit of romance and some roguish charm: check
* cute robot blip-bloop-blip-bloop: check
What I see this as, is setting the ground for the future episodes without doing the whole "reboot" thing. Instead, it's more of a hand-off. Now if they pull the same thing for the *next* episode it's probably going to piss people off, but this was more about bringing people back after the prequels with a bit of good old fashioned nostalgia (also known as fan-service).
How is it Leia could remember her mother when she was about thirty seconds old when she died?
That's just one of the many temporal inconsistencies. Luke being 16-20 in IV-VI yet Obiwan aging probably a hundred years (Jedi are long-lived and Tarkin thought that "surely he must be dead by now") - plus Anakin at the end of RoTJ was pushing 80, even if he was dark-force-degraded, other Sith Lords last far longer.
And midichlorians...
Which don't exist in the ESB Yoda's universe. I-III, as currently filmed, exist in a similar but different universe from IV-VI; that much is provable from the timelines (relativistic effects are just not part of the Star Wars lore - you have to suspend disbelief on that one).
Lucas didn't want to make more Star Wars but there was so much money thrown at him that he went full-cynical and made the worst movies he knew how to do and taught his inner circle to not be yes-men after they all worked to turn out the crapfest of TPM, even though they knew it was bad (yet, it was a hugely profitable merchandising vehicle, so in that sense it was great, and Lucas has always done merchandising well because of his studio contracts). Lucas succeeded in proving to himself that the fans never really appreciated his work and will buy any shit sandwich with a logo on it.
Lucas's one concession to his younger self was that he left room to do I-III later, in a consistent universe, if he ever wanted to (he has zero compunction about remaking movies). He'd have to give up his fortune and prestige to return to his roots and find that energy again, and I think he's probably going to be happier doing his educational charity work instead. Meanwhile Disney couldn't be happier that he's talking smack about the new film - heck I might even go see it after hearing this.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Hey, you insensitive clod, I'm a Jar Jar fan!
The Force is channeled through his clumsiness for good. I'm also a Scooby and Shaggy fan for similar reasons, although there is no explicit "Force" in that show to explain their luck. Lucas covered that better.
You Binks haters just don't get it.
Table-ized A.I.
"I...I killed them. I killed them all. They're dead, every single one of them. And not just the men, but the women and the children too." Anakin Skywalker Episode II. The most cringe worthy scene in the entire series.
The worst part of that was that after listening to Anakin's insane rant, Padme just goes, "It's OK you just slaughtered a bunch of people. We all get mad sometimes."
Yeah I have to wonder about 'visionaries' like Lucas and Zuckerberg that hang around and suck every last bit of juice from their one creation.
love is just extroverted narcissism
In both movies a key character gets captured in the beginning, gets interrogated, gets rescued / escapes. Amazing how similar the two movies were. If it wasn't a Starwars movie it would have been called a Starwars knock off.
There was a moment in this movie that was supposed to take 15 minutes, but took half an hour...during that time our 'heroes' walked about 20000km across a 'planet' in 15 minutes, yes they walked 20000km in 15 minutes....JJ Abrams has no sense of space or time, at least Lucas would not have cocked up something so simple.
The Phantom Menace I could sort of live with, Attack of the Clones was ok in a few ways but was mostly still a miss. But lets not act as if his final attempt (Revenge of the Sith) was worth anything, it made everything look like a bunch of toys and was a worst case abuse of CGI.
See I had the opposite opinion of their relative quality. All three were crap but ROTS was the most bearable of the batch to me. Don't get me wrong, it was terrible but marginally less than the other two. TPM was just horrid aside from the one lightsaber duel. It was like watching a Disney theme park ride but with worse acting and dialog. Jar-Jar gets the hate but the worst of it for me was any scene with the kid that played Anakin in it. AOTC wasn't any better. I'm not expecting Shakespeare or anything but the movies are so bad I don't even watch them when I'm bored and there is nothing else on TV. The problems were almost all in writing and directing and to some degree editing. I've seen most of the actors in other things so I know it wasn't a talent problem. The special effects were pretty amazing as expected but a movie has to have more than that. Dr. Who has legendarily terrible effects but it's still fun because the stories and dialog are generally pretty good.
When you sell a house, that's pretty much it. However, when you sell IP, you can actually stipulate terms in the sale which may restrict use of said IP, or retain certain rights.
I have news for you. You can do that with a house too. Terms of sale aren't just for intangible property. If you are the one selling you can request all sorts of crazy terms if you want and can find a buyer willing to agree to them. When I bought my last house there were so weird stipulations regarding delayed move out dates and some other stuff. A friend of mine put a conservation easement on his farm which affects the uses available to any future owner. You can sell most things with terms attached if the other party is amenable to the terms.
"I...I killed them. I killed them all. They're dead, every single one of them. And not just the men, but the women and the children too." Anakin Skywalker Episode II. The most cringe worthy scene in the entire series.
Yes, that was horrible. But one of so damn many. For me it was the drivel about Midichlorians, and then a child's half-baked "yippee"s in horrid Episode 1. The prequels broke suspension of disbelief many many times, but even Jar-Jar didn't bug me as bad as the boy actor playing young Annakin because, you know, the whole damned story is ultimately about Annakin. The kid was so poorly directed and his lines so bad, I never believed in him or in any of his abilities or that someday he would become an arch-villain who would choke the life out of people as easy as look at them. Every seen he was in, every line, and every ridiculously contrived tie-in with the other films (I fucking built C-3PO!!!) shoved me out of the movie to look for the nearest exit. I couldn't forgive that shit. Kids can act well and carry a movie if a director takes them serious enough (e.g., The Sixth Sense), but Lucas didn't bother to give a shit.
Count Dooku in Episode II was pretty fucking cringe-worthy as well, stopping a fight with Yoda because, you know, let's fight with light saber instead. And does Yoda defeat him? No... he does a little thing and walks away, leaving three Jedi holding their limp little dicks. Clued me in on something, though: the Force sucks, particularly the good side. "Failed, have I" in Episode III. No shit, Yoda, because you SUCK! Mace Windu almost smoked Palpatine, except the good side didn't clue him in to an attack coming from amateur Annakin.
You didn't watch the prequels, you fucking endured them, waiting out one dull scene after another, hoping something redemptively cool would happen. Next thing you know, the movie's over. Two hours and ten bucks you'll never have again. Fuck you, Lucas. Take your billions, buy an island, and live on it with all the most expensive, pure, uncut highest-quality coke money your billions can buy. That'll get your mind off Disney giving you the shove.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
Personally, I never judged anyone in the prequels as a "bad actor" because of the terrible dialog. Just look at the actors that have delivered great performances before and after the prequels: Ewan McGregor (Trainspotting and too many to count), Natalie Portman (The Professional, Closer, and Black Swan and many others), Liam Neeson (Schindler's List and many others), Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction and others). Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen both get a pass in my book for their performances. The dialog and writing were terrible and very few actors could make them better.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
WaaaH!! WaaaH!! WaaaaaaaH!! WaaaaH!! WaaaaaaaaH!!
(edited for length)
I was hoping that J.J. would at last introduce the real evil mastermind behind it all. Darth Locutus of Borg! And neatly tie his two franchises together (wouldn't Paramount and Disney both love that).
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The conversation in return of the Jedi between Luke and Leia where he reveals they are siblings and their father is Darth Vader heavily implies that Luke was asking about THEIR mother, not about Senator Organa's wife.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And was about 25 minutes into the film, which left over 90 minutes of shit.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If I remember correctly it was Anakin who said those words.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
As a result of other works involving Harrison Ford, the phrase "jumped the shark" has been replaced with "nuked the fridge."
Over a billion gross on this one already in less than two weeks,
Merchandise sales are expected to reach $5billion in the first year. Disney is very good at that.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You realise you're defending the creature who brought down civilisation and elevated one of the most evil characters in movie history to power, right?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The sad thing is, I even liked the midichlorians in principle (assuming that they were symptomatic of Force concentration, and not the cause of it). They illustrated that before the fall of the Republic, the Force had been almost reduced to a scientific principle: something that was studied and analyzed formally, even too formally, by the ivory tower Jedi who lost touch with gritty reality and thus brought tragedy upon themselves and the entire galaxy.
It's a shame that this potentially elegant expository device was wielded by a windbag imbecile like Lucas, but on the other hand, he did everything wrong and created a series of movies with more inconsistencies than the average piece of fan fiction. The midichlorians could have been done well by a competent writer. Instead, rather than try to redeem the idea, Lucas ran like a coward and dropped the concept like a hot potato after the damage had already been done.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
I would love to see Jar Jar Binks again. His tongue could get caught in large dangerous machinery, say a sandcrawler, and he could get slowly pulled in while screaming to be mangled to death. Am I right?
Should we have invaded Iraq? Episode 7 gave me no guidance on that like eipsode 2 did.
I'm afraid we are lost, lost at sea about this question because Abrams didn't answer that one.
Back in the day, plopping correct opinions in entertainment pieces wasn't acceptable. That's how the movie is too retro.
Think of all the progress we've made with the Midichlorian counters. Gone forever!
Exactly. The acting was bad, because the direction, script and what not was bad. The actors, by and large, were and are all good to wonderful.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Along those lines ... did slaves sell their children to white people as Lucas alludes?
...
Because I thought their kids were taken from them?
No reason to let Lucas' choices factor into the analogy
Indeed. It makes one wonder, as Robot Chicken did, whether he's really secretly a Sith master who deliberately sought to gain a position where he could put Palpatine in power and pull Anakin into Palpatine's web, with his slapsticky character designed to throw people off of suspecting him and to be appealing to the young Anakin.
Shiny New Australia.
When you sold Star Wars to Disney for $4 billion, you washed your hands of the franchise.
I think George has the right to critique the new movies, just as much as anyone else does. But at this point, he really has no reason to be upset that people aren't asking for his creative input.
Truthfully, I think the original Star Wars movies were as much a happy accident as anything else. Nobody knew they'd be a success, originally. And Mark Hamill was so unsure it was a good move signing up to play Luke Skywalker (Starwalker, originally), he signed on to play a role on the Eight is Enough TV show at the same time. They would have made him leave the Star Wars franchise, under contract, if he didn't have that car accident and spend time in the hospital, just as shooting began on Eight is Enough.
I give George credit where it's due -- for bringing the whole concept to life as a movie in the first place, and for being wise enough to get 100% of the royalties on the toys and other products. But the more I read about all of it, the more I realize he isn't very good at script-writing and has a real problem knowing when to delegate and get "hands off" with things. His explanation of viewing movies as fluid, evolving, "never finished" things is pretty ridiculous too. Sorry, buddy... When the last frame is filmed and edited, the movie is finished. The idea it's good to keep messing around with it after the fact, re-releasing it with minor changes? That just dilutes the original story and frustrates people who want to show the next person the same thing they always watched.
Relevant
https://www.reddit.com/comment...
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Agreed! When I first heard the utterance of midichlorians, it was a major downer. I mean, it's the "force", no longer mysterious.
IMHO, the whole franchise could back-peddle on this. And while I don't know exactly what they are, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it initially got the impression that midichlorians is how someone gets the force. Rather, if they just say "midichlorians are attracted to life that's tuned to the force, and thus take refuge inside living things", THAT that would make "The Force" a somewhat mysterious and powerful thing again in Star Wars. But what do I know....
Life is not for the lazy.
In general Samuel L Jackson could read the ingredients of a breakfast cereal and make it sound cool, but somehow Lucas wrote dialogue so stunningly stilted and awful that even Jackson couldn't find a way to rescue it. But even with the bad dialogue, Christensen is just not a very good actor, and the other roles I've seen him in confirm this.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
... swelling in you now.
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
You mean they're offering a refund?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Nice!
Life is not for the lazy.
Lucas is correct that they aren't making the movies he wanted. Frankly, I wanted to see those movies. But, he PROMISED us we'd NEVER see them! He also had literal decades to do stuff, and couldn't be bothered.
Star Wars will be used constantly and ceaselessly by Disney. They will not stop pumping out movies until the franchise is dry, then they will pause briefly and continue. And for a story about A WHOLE GALAXY wherein you can tell a zillion stories, that's FINE!
Star Wars came out in 1977. Return of the Jedi came out in 1983. That's three movies in six years- one every two years.
Then Phantom Menance in 1999. Lets be clear here- they could have told three OTHER stories in the Star Wars universe. They could have gone back in time to tell stories (video games inserted an "Old Republic" in the distant past, and novelists have gone to town). They could have followed the stories of the smaller characters, who Lucas had no problems spinning up backstories and names for, to put out all the merchandise. Lucas could have pushed stories to the past or the future and continued to tell entirely different stories, could have hired other people to tell the stories, and could have just had a team review all the ramifications (technological and political) to be sure that it didn't shut down anything he did in the future.
He could have had an action movie with none of the force users. He could have followed a bad guy around a temple, or any goddamned thing. In fact, if there had been a movie every FOUR years following Jedi, we would have had a 1987 release, a 1991 release, and a 1995 release before Phantom Menace, each would have made money, and even if Phantom Menace was the exact same, it wouldn't have mattered.
Further, EVERY TIME Lucas finishes a Star Wars series, he talks like a wounded artist. If the movie was successful, he talks like someone who is sad that people liked the wrong things. If it's unsuccessful, he talks like someone who is sad that people didn't know enough to like the good things. It's subtle, and overall I'm sure he knows how influential, popular, and polarizing he and his works have been.
But if he didn't like the path Disney would take, he should NEVER have sold it. If he wanted to make movies, he shouldn't have been telling us that there would NEVER have been an episode seven. Disney will release a Star Wars movie every year for at least six years hence, and probably more- they have them announced with spinoff movies on the years where they aren't telling the main plot.
Lucas could have done all that and more. Anyone would have lent him any amounts of money to make this happen, if in fact he wasn't vastly in the positive already.
So I feel for his lost vision and am sad we don't get to see it, but it's not at all obvious that we would have.
You'll "let them" go their way? When you got paid the money, you lost the ability to say anything about it.
George, the prequels sucked. You've lost the ability to tell a compelling story, if you, personally, ever had it. Thanks very much for inventing Star Wars. Nobody can take that away from you. But you've proven without any possible shadow of a doubt that you have no more to contribute. Please step aside while you still have some shred of dignity.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Its funny up to the point where there is a women tied up in his basement.
I loved Jar Jar. I loved short spinning yoda. I didn't hate Anakin younger or older. I did see the makings of a perfect democrat in Anakin though.
I'm also a Scooby and Shaggy fan for similar reasons...
But do you go as far as being a Scrappy fan?
Dark Reflection
Star Wars is the only show that has more revelations of "who the real father is" than Jerry Springer.
Seriously though let me guess what's next. They make an even bigger Death Star with an easy weakness that gets exploited, someone is revealed to be the father of someone important, and someone important falls into a pit. My interest stopped after the first 3 released.
Abrams, et. al. didnt really introduce anything substantially new, but re-arrangements of earlier material. No new planets, plot twists, races, character types, special effects ... It was safely done without any overdose of computer graphics like the clone armies or rubber-Jar Jar. For these reasons, I'd probably say it is the movie I'd least like to see again of the seven.
But Ian McDiarmid took Palpatine's ham-laden dialog and chewed on it with a side order of scenery, and it was delicious. :)
Dark Reflection
Abrams story telling always tends to be lazy, sloppy, and incoherent.
How does Rey have knowledge, and skills, that exceed those of Luke, and Han, put together? She has no training, or experience, yet she is an instant expert in operating and repairing the Falcon. She knows how to fight with a light saber, and otherwise use the force - as well as, or better than Luke did after years of training.
How could the bad guys be stupid enough to build a mega death star? The first two were stupid, and easily defeated. Bad guys are not formidable if they are that dumb.
I'm actually happy that Disney acquired a cultural icon and think they did a better job of it than the original creators. I never thought I'd see the day. I'm just going to blame George Lucas for this sad state of affairs, and in retaliation would like to remind everyone that ONE of the two parties being discussed is responsible for the Wookie Life Day Christmas Special.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Within the second week of its release?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Loose lips sink ships my friend, mine excluded, of course.
In any case, I'd suggest being a bit more circumspect with your opinions. You never know what terrible misfortunes might consequently arise.
Misa no botha with yousa.
I wasn't alive in the 70's so I don't know if the original trilogy had this kind of saturation, but I am SO fucking sick of seeing and hearing about fucking star wars.
It did, to the extent possible back then. We've got so many more advertising channels these days it's nearly ubiquitous.
Celebrity worship is a poor substitute for Deity worship and costs more to boot.
No, I think "Hold me Ani! Hold me like you did by the lake on Naboo!" was way ore cringe-worthy, in that I actually, physically cringed (and someone else in the theater shouted "oh come on!" at the screen) when that happened.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
There's a new Star Wars movie?
But how many people who watched this movie as a kid will keep coming back to it as an adult, the way my generation has with the original?
All the same kinds of autists and Aspies that were unreasonably obsessed with the original.
Celebrity worship is a poor substitute for Deity worship and costs more to boot.
What I am and will be curious about is what we might have gotten if Lucas had given the story line (and then gotten out of the way). Let Kasdan (Empire Strikes Back & Force Awakens) write the script, and Abrams direct
Stop making me cry!
They should make a huge hollow death star with loads of death stars inside so that when the rebels think they've won they haven't.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I've heard that said about Dubya, but if it's true he's a bloody good actor.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Mediocre as it was, that doesn't mean your involvement would have improved it.
P.S. When did you last have a discernible neck?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Ah, yes, a common error of homophone substitution. So...do you have anything useful or interesting to say, or is playing grammar-checker your only skill?
Wait, what? Mute rhymes with "cute" and moot rhymes with "boot". So, no, not a common error of homophone substitution. An error of not-knowing-what-the-correct-word-is, followed by doubling-down and making like someone else is to blame.
"Oh no... he found the
And at that point, Leia didn't know they were brother and sister (for certain).
Fake scandal --> publicity++ --> $$$++
Requiem for the American Dream
it's really a Western
No, it's really a WW ][ movie. At least the part that counts.
Uh, is that $1.4 billion for Phantom's first 28 days, or it's entire run?
Force Awakens made $1 billion in just 28 days, and it damn-well hasn't even begun. The only question is whether Awakens is good enough for anyone to want to see more than once, and push it into hyper-money.
OTOH, once was more than enough for Phantom - I think it sold so many tickets because people wouldn't believe the stories of how bad it was. But nobody would pay to sit through that twice. Maybe catch it on cable, just to see if they maybe missed something interesting... (nope, nothing).
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
I'm not sure if I should share this but, well, I'd clicked the link and mistakenly thought I was in the Microsoft Writes a Selfie app thread. I've been reading down through and wondering what the hell you guys were talking about. The first comment, about someone having sold it, really threw me for a loop and then the rest devolved into a whole bunch of silliness. I was trying to figure out what Lucas had to do with it - it turns out that the refresh had changed the location and so I didn't actually notice this thread before.
I'm not even drunk or stoned! That's probably for the best as I'd have probably been even more confused. :/
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
He mutilated the original trilogy and instead of releasing the new versions as "director's cuts" in parallel with the original versions, he took the original versions off the market. Maybe Disney will undo the damage. Also, his favorite character is Jar-Jar. So he can fuck off.
In the USA, we like stuff watered down, like beer, television, and freedom.
the film is already north of 1 billion and there are people who want to see it who haven't?
I went because it was star wars but JJ Abrams let me down, in all the ways I expected. This is the second movie where he has directed it incredibly poorly, just expecting the audience to relate to characters he spends no effort developing (except while beating you over the head with amateur characterization). But it was filled with great CGI and action scenes. He is turning into michael bay.
Lucas was right. with the prequels he tried to do something incredibly different than the original trilogy. It failed on many levels, but at least the entire plot wasn't predictable 30 minutes into the movie. worse, because so little time was spent developing characters and so much time dedicated to CGI, Abrams created a completely unbelievable ending battle, where a sith who in the beginning shows strength in the force unheard of in the previous 6 movies loses in a light saber duel to a complete novice simply because he says "let me teach you to use the force". completely unbelievable story telling, unless in the next movie we will actually see her use the force to destroy entire star systems after shaking Luke's hand.
You did "such a wonderful job" with 1, 2, 3, and 6, George, it's probably for the better that you're not involved in 7, 8, and 9.
But, this first Disney Star Wars film was never about story! What the first SW film after the George Lucas travesty known as episodes I - !!I needed to be was a spectacle that clearly established, for the fans, that Disney could recapture the look and feel, mood and tone, however you want to describe it, of the original trilogy. They have unequivocally done that!
Let's face it ... nobody would pick Abrams to tell a story. Abrams is a spectacle guy. Not a story guy!
I anticipate few story elements will be "borrowed" from the original trilogy for any of the episodes to come. Don't expect redemption of the villain, for example.. Do expect that the sets will be reused ... they are an integral and essential part of the mood and tone of the franchise ...
The guy tagged to write and direct episode VIII( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt25... ), Rian Johnson (Looper), is NOT a spectacle guy he is definitely a "story" guy and while he's no Irwin Kershner, I have considerable hope that episode VIII will be as much better than VII as V was better than IV.
I know that is dangerous, shattered hope kills ....
Let's face it ... nobody would pick Abrams to tell a story. Abrams is a spectacle guy. Not a story guy!
I anticipate few story elements will be "borrowed" from the original trilogy for any of the episodes to come. Don't expect redemption of the villain, for example.. Do expect that the sets will be reused ... they are an integral and essential part of the mood and tone of the franchise ...
The guy tagged to write and direct episode VIII( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt25... [imdb.com] ), Rian Johnson (Looper), is NOT a spectacle guy he is definitely a "story" guy and while he's no Irwin Kershner, I have considerable hope that episode VIII will be as much better than VII as V was better than IV.
I know that is dangerous, shattered hope kills ....
George...why ever give it away? Nobody will ever make a movie like you would. Even though I'm a Star Trek fan, I still like Star Wars, as it's science fiction. But Star Wars and Star trek are two different types of sci-fi. And to me, I believe J.J. Abrams has messed up both franchises. He made Star trek for the current fans..the millennials and this series of Star Wars movies, the same. J.J. Abrams is just rehashing what he saw when he first saw Star Wars as a kid. But he isn't actually understanding the source material, as what he did with Star Trek. What Abrams is doing with the The Force Awakens with the inclusion factor, actors of color and women, he's just borrowing from Star Trek. Star trek originally wasn't an inclusive universe of people of color and gender; that isn't a bad thing, because Star Wars is a different type of science fiction story..to me it was more about the different types of aliens. Star Trek, is the inclusive. But Star trek, discussed those themes. The Midi-Chlorians. No research George did. When I first saw The Phantom Menace and heard the explanation of The Force, I remember my Biology about what mitochondria are. I accepted it only for the movie, but if better research was done, another name could've been used. I haven't Seen The Force Awakens yet and probably won't until it comes on Starz. I have a big issue with Disney having Marvel. Disney is good at Disney-inspired & Disney-own universe. They could put all of this effort into doing the sequel to the current Tron movie, If The Force Awaken is doing as well as it done, The next Tron sequel will as well. I'm responding all over the place. But, George..he should've kept it or at least given himself some kind of control/attachment still.
Use way as no way; Use limitation as no limitation
George forgot that the whole point was to produce great entertainment (and maybe commentary, life lessons, who knows), and that the creativity to do that usually requires the collaboration of a lot of people and all their good ideas, that one person's ideas are seldom enough. He also seemed to forget that not all idea are good (not even his!), and most ideas should end up being discarded (but not too soon). He had a great idea for ONE movie and its continuation in Empire, but CONSISTENTLY creating great movies takes a team effort and a system for creativity and innovation. He stopped trusting or listening to other people's ideas, and stopped soliciting feedback on whether his were any good.
In other words, he seems to have bought into the myth that he created all the ideas that went into Star Wars and that all his ideas are good, and that since he's the creator of it, only his ideas and opinions matter or are correct. (Apparently people at Lucasfilm/ILM were fired for not being team players when they complained about Jar Jar and other atrocities being put in the film.) Unfortunately, all of those notions are total stinking crap. For instance, visually, Ralph McQuarrie was far more responsible for the look and feel of Star Wars than George Lucas was. And his then-wife Marcia, as well as the other writers and editors involved, had a ton to do with making it into an actually good story with good characters and enjoyable dialogue. But of course he wrote her out of the history of the making of Star Wars after the divorce, apparently jealous that she might have contributed anything. (Duh, Geroge! SHE won an oscar for Star Wars, YOU didn't!)
As part of this self-deception, the story somehow became canonicalized in his head as if it were received wisdom, an actual history that actually happened in a certain way and it HAD to be brought to the screen in a manner that accurately reflected that history. Which is idiocy if he really wanted to make great movies, but even "historical" films are usually made to be entertaining and with details altered as needed to make the characters and their interactions interesting. He seems to have forgotten about that as a goal too.
So I really don't understand where he gets off criticizing a film that's, in my opinion, better and more interesting, entertaining, and likable than 2/3 of the Star Wars films he was actually involved with, and more true to the originals and what made them great, as well. At least JJ Abrams and Disney haven't forgotten what the entire point of making these movies is and why billions of people enjoyed watching them and wanted to see more.
I don't get why he's criticizing it at all, what possible benefit does that serve? We already know his ideas and opinions are crap and he doesn't listen to anyone (he got massive criticism for Phantom Menace, and somehow managed to make an even worse movie in Attack of the Clones), why would we care what he thinks about the new movie? Anything positive he says would just confirm what the fans already know,;anything negative makes him seem like a jealous, talentless douchebag.
Wait. The same asshat that allowed others to create in his universe, then fuck them over, is butt-hurt because that new universe's owners went against what he would've wanted? Fuck that guy and his Boba-Fett/Jaster Mareel ret-con bullshit.
...
That's a bit mean Jar Jar Abrams did nothing of the sort, just a really bad science fiction story teller. Pretty lame to call a poor remake a new episode though. Lucas got carried away in specific styled story telling, that space opera style he remembered from his youth did not transfer well into the modern era and modern audiences had very little binding to that 1950s story telling style. When it comes to story telling, the marketdroids behind Jar Jar Abrams are working over time on viral marketing, flooding every venue, that is pretty lame as well.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
They'd have to provide me compensation for the permanent space that trash takes up in my brain.
I absolutely agree about the kid who played Anakin - he totally killed the movie - look at the bit where he is trapped in the fighter and ends up destroying the Droid ship - at no point does it feel believable. Kind of like the droids having such an easy point of weakness in the first place.. Then the pod race.. pod racing was an idea that had been around for a while, the old series 'Droids' included a pod race.. But the race in TPM was a low point for me, not only the totally wooden Anakin flying the pod, there were also the pods themselves - going from something that looked a bit like the old playstation game 'Wipeout' to a kind of crazy chariot race with force fields..
The scariest thing is what Lucas actually wanted to do instead of TFA. A movie not only focused on kids as an audience but having the whole action focused around and all the main characters being children. Imagine an Ewok paradise also filled with force wielding children and a group of baby Jar Jars. Maybe he was looking at the early Harry Potter movies, maybe it would have been something more like Home Alone. (shudder!!) My own conclusion is that the man has hated adult Star Wars fans for decades, its hugely fortunate that he liked the money even more..
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
No, that's just Koch Vader propaganda.
Table-ized A.I.
Meanwhile Disney couldn't be happier that he's talking smack about the new film - heck I might even go see it after hearing this.
Don't do it, it is crap.
There's simply nothing new in it. Every concept and scene is simply a rehash of Ep4, along with some really big plot holes...
In general Samuel L Jackson could read the ingredients of a breakfast cereal and make it sound cool,
He sounds cool from a 20th century street talking tough guy sort of way. But there is no place for that type of character in a futuristic space universe (even if it was set "a long time ago...").
I think it was less the acting and more the poor casting. Christensen was about the worst choice for Annakin as you could get.
I fucking built C-3PO!!!
Oh thanks for reminding me of that turd. It was shit like that the movie simply didn't need, as if Lucas simply tried to cram in as many ideas as possible, regardless of impact.
Go to a book shop and take a look at all the Star Wars universe material that is Star Wars without simply rehashing Ep4.
Just because they are set in the Star Wars universe doesn't mean people will give a shit about them or that they are any good. I've read a few of the better known fan-fic... err, Extended Universe books and frankly they weren't any better than Ep7. I've seen Ep7 and while I do agree they copied rather heavily from Ep4-6, I think it was good enough to get people excited about the next movie. It was basically a reboot without actually rebooting the series.
Now if they do that again for Ep8 I'll be pissed but a one time reminder of what made the original series good isn't a bad thing and I enjoyed the movie.
Yes, that was horrible. But one of so damn many. For me it was the drivel about Midichlorians, and then a child's half-baked "yippee"s in horrid Episode 1. The prequels broke suspension of disbelief many many times, but even Jar-Jar didn't bug me as bad as the boy actor playing young Annakin because, you know, the whole damned story is ultimately about Annakin. The kid was so poorly directed and his lines so bad, I never believed in him or in any of his abilities or that someday he would become an arch-villain who would choke the life out of people as easy as look at them. Every seen he was in, every line, and every ridiculously contrived tie-in with the other films (I fucking built C-3PO!!!) shoved me out of the movie to look for the nearest exit. I couldn't forgive that shit. Kids can act well and carry a movie if a director takes them serious enough (e.g., The Sixth Sense), but Lucas didn't bother to give a shit.
My favorite part of Episode 1 is still the scene from the making of bit where he's sitting in the pod racer with the wind machine on and keeps yelling, "I CAN'T HEAR YOU CHRIS! I CAN'T HEAR YOU CHRIS!"
Makes me smile just thinking about it.
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
No, the whole way he killed Padme off was terrible. How is it Leia could remember her mother when she was about thirty seconds old when she died?
Because she wasn't remembering Padme. She was adopted and believed Queen Breha Organa to be her mother.