Big Star Wars fan chiming in with my two cents here.
I don't know if this has been mentioned already, but one of the most glaring problems that comes to mind the most for me specifically, was the characters of the prequels. They were all, with maybe the exception of Palpatine, boring, sterile and lifeless. They made the universe of Star Wars, which seemed exciting and relatable in the originals, feel like a foreign place devoid of emotion and, well... humanity. Maybe because the characters we are supposed to empathize with the most are a bunch of emotionless monks who aren't allowed to get laid.
Concerning this point specifically, the both Episodes I and II suffer from a severe lack of a main character (and Episode III to a lesser degree). In Episode I, who is the main protagonist? Which singular character is the audience supposed to relate to? The Jedi? No, they're just on some trivial trade dispute assignment, and as I said above, they themselves are expressionless, emotionless monks. Queen Amidala? No, she's just a foreign queen in need of assistance. Anakin is a tempting thought, but he's just a child, so the events of the movie are beyond his understanding and control. Not to mention we aren't even introduced to Anakin until halfway through the movie.
Unforunately, George Lucas failed at one of the most basic formulas of filmmaking.
On that I'll disagree. Luke says he can sense the good, the conflict in Vader and I believe him.
I invite everyone to rewatch the films and check this out. From the moment Vader finds out Luke is his son, he acts to save Luke's life, even at the cost of his own. Notice how he's just going along with the Emperor's plan to have Luke kill Vader and turn to the Dark Side.
I would believe that if not for the fact Vader is attempting killing blows all throughout that final fight. There may be a conflict but it doesn't seem to be that strong if Vader is going for body stabs and throwing light sabers at necks.
I see it more as from the moment Vader finds out Luke is his son, he is trying to communicate with him to bring him into the fold of the Dark Side at the emperor's behest and not so much to keep him safe. He tries the simple method of talking through the force, he tried the forceful methods of trickery and violence(he cuts his hand off even), and even at the end he simply talks to his son directly right before they board the lamda class shuttle to be taken up to the Death Star.
Also, the fact that he goes along with the emperor's plan isn't really evidence to me if he is going with it at all and not just following orders. At this point in his life doing what the emperor says to do is just second nature to Vader. It takes his son almost being electrocuted to death in front of him and seeing how truly evil the emperor is up close to make him finally truly act against his master.
I disagree there. Palpatine wants Luke to turn. Notice how he reacts when it's clear Luke won't.
Damn it. You're right. I asserted too much there. Generally arguably as shown in the Expanded Universe he didn't care whether Skywalker lived or died being that he has already violated the rule of two(Mara Jade, the various other Dark side trained agents under his employ, his clone laboratories ready to transfer his consciousness through the force into a new clone the moment of his death so that he never truly loses power. Though, then again, Vader does as well by training Lumiya, a once rebel officer turned Sith, his own apprentice while not doing anything to usurp the emperor). I generally find myself going by this logic more often than not.
Indeed, for this discussion it is all irrelevant. My apologies. It is a believable enough reaction by the emperor.
Fair enough, but I think we must remember that we had a completely different plotline to deal with. Han and Chewie and Leia were important characters too you know. Also, Luke does mention that he's learned so much since the cave.
That, and the fact that I'm sure Yoda trained Luke enough to be able to continue his training himself. For instance, being able to craft his own lightsaber.
I mean, I'm not disagreeing with your point at all, but I think the pacing of the movie would have been offset and we'd lose stuff from the Han/Chewie/Leia plot if we did more.
Then I think George Lucas really shouldn't have built up the script to the point that Luke ends up confronting the Emperor and Darth Vader like he did and expect us to believe he can pull off a believable win with the training we see him receive previously. It doesn't add up or at least it doesn't to me and my original point also stands.
The final portion of the fight is just not very good. It is why I chuckle or cringe or just roll my eyes every time I see it. 1:43 it just gets me every time. Luke over swings right, Darth Vader ducks under...and slumps. Just Awful.
What happened to that inventive flare from Empire? I was expecting something that really just set the bar to it's zenith in terms of light saber fighting after the explosive ending to Empire but instead Lucas stated he wanted RotJ to be a more more emotional experience over anything else which to me is just the wrong call or at least for some of the film. Sure, it worked for some of the characters well enough but it doesn't help the action scenes that much. I didn't even feel bad for the Ewoks though for that matter there is no reason the little teddy bears deserved the amount of screen time they got which sapped screen time from everything else that mattered in the film. If anything there should have been only one or two that really made you feel for their race but instead they helped make RotJ feel like a semi-muppet war movie with a shoddy payoff.
Anyone remember Revenge of the Sith, at about the 30:00 minute mark of the movie, where Amidala is on the balcony and just looks hideous? Like sweaty, badly lit, and just... plain old? Made me think of one scene with an ugly girl from Shallow Hal...
Lots of awful cinematography in that movie would go under mistakes that Lucas made.
Around 34:00 minute mark, the scene with Yoda and Anakin talking with the horizontal blinds lighting just Anakin's eyes... It's bad. And ALL the scenes with Anakin being lit way way too dark... Often just silhouettes even when talking. Clumsy. And visually jarring.
So many wide shots with silhouetted figures.
And still, frankly this movie is twice as good as the two stinkers that preceded it.
Oh, and I will say watching back the light saber battle against Dooku, it's actually OK. Christopher Lee's double/stuntman is really good with the sword, and his style looks way cooler than Anakin & Obi Wan who appear NOT to be doubled by a real swordsman in those scenes. Christiansen is better than McGregor with the physical stuff, as would be expected given their ages.
Obi Wans constantly smug delivery of lines to Anakin is annoying. Smarmy. It's happened all 3 prequels, and I don't get why McGregor is delivering then that way. He's way too good an actor to not realize how those takes suck. I suspect that Lucas directed him to try it that way and edited those bad takes into the movie, because he actually thinks those takes are good.
Oh, my bad... I had thought that midichlorians had been dropped & ignored by SW 3 but here it is again.
Grievous 4 light saber battle with OBi Wan: Lucas is clumsily experimenting with new camera angles (like a young film student) and the eyeball close up (a la Sergio leone) in this battle is good example. A bit jarring because the music and the rest of the mostly wide shot battle... I don't know. Cinematography wise, this is clearly the best I the prequels by a mile... But definitely still like a film student getting his legs.
Windu vs Emperor... Why the stupid flips from the emperor? It's utter nonsense and looks embarrassing when they quick cut to Ian McDiarmid holding the sword and moving like an old man.
Ultimately the movie is entertaining and engaging but Fair number of big flaws, and the HUMONGOUS flaw of the non-sensical pathway/descent of Anakin to the dark side. Tempo wise and motivation wise, achingly awful. And killing the toddler... "the younglings???" stupid. And using that language so little kids (except the smart ones) watching won't realize what the adults realize... (and giving parents the situation to maybe have to lie when asked what he meant by "younglings" ) I just kind of HATE that.
Actually more i think about it, I cant understand why he included that in the movie... Really Lucas is DEEPLY OUT OF TOUCH and has just got no common sense. After insisting on Jar Jar being thrust on us because it's really a series of movies for little kids, he has the MAIN CHARACTER BETRAY AND MURDER A ROOMFUL OF CHILDREN WHO TRUST HIM AND LOOK TO HIM AS AN AUTHORITY FIGURE. Tiny kid runs to his savior: "Master skywalker, what do we do?" *VREEEM* <cut away> What does a 10 year old take away from THAT experience? They don't even do that in the darkest of grown up movies. It was not necessary for indicating that Anakin had turned dark. The very definition of gratuitous. Lucas proving he's "serious" that Anakin is BAD... And utterly ignoring that this is a movie for kids.
If Luke dies by Vader's hand than he sure as hell would die when Palpatine would get to work on him. It's not a case of "I trust you to not get your head sliced off", it's "If you're too weak to defeat me in a straight fight, we're both dead anyway".
Saving Luke by flunking the fight accomplishes nothing. In fact, dying (when Palpatine figures out you're faking) and leaving Luke to the Emperor would probably be worse than killing him outright.
Agreed actually. There is no doubt the Emperor would have killed him and Vader going easy on his son would have been a terrible thing.
I think Luke doesn't enter the Death star to confront Palpatine. He's there to save Vader and, if he succeeds, possibly defeat the Emperor. And for that he doesn't really need Yoda level of powers.
I think Luke definitely went up there to try to save his Father anyways. As for defeating Palpatine I think that is a different story. I don't know if he needs Yoda level powers per say but he definitely needs something to combat a master of the Darkside that as a New Hope establishes helped in defeating the entire Jedi order. Luke clearly doesn't have whatever is needed and nothing shows him gaining anything to even come close to being able to handle this fight even against Vader in my opinion. Which is why I say the way Lucas went about writing this whole final sequence with Luke, Vader, and the Emperor is just sort of a bad and illogical in a lot of ways.
We are forced to believe having done so much training in the last few films and possibly in between Luke is now a Jedi Knight and can walk into that final sequence and handle himself and possibly pull off a win because a few characters have made some comments about his skills and those scenes didn't really tell much of his skills to begin with. I can agree it sort of works for the bare story and the emotional feel of everything because that whole final fight scene is more emotion than it is a logical convincing fight scene which Lucas probably wrote that way so it fit into the whole idea of emotion and the idea of the under dogs winning idea in the first place. But it isn't enough for me anyways as a fan and the more I read into the initial and critical reviews since RotJ debuted it isn't enough for a lot of people actually. It is apart of the classic Star Wars trilogy though so it has it's place in the pantheon of Science Fiction(though that is seriously arguably given the argument from Frank Herbert's Eye that Star Wars in it's entirety as films were rip offs of existing stories and television series from the time period in everything from the characters to the light sabers to the opening of the films, etc) but it certainly in my opinion is not the best Star Wars film.
Ultimately the movie is entertaining and engaging but Fair number of big flaws, and the HUMONGOUS flaw of the non-sensical pathway/descent of Anakin to the dark side. Tempo wise and motivation wise, achingly awful. And killing the toddler... "the younglings???" stupid. And using that language so little kids (except the smart ones) watching won't realize what the adults realize... (and giving parents the situation to maybe have to lie when asked what he meant by "younglings" ) I just kind of HATE that.
Actually more i think about it, I cant understand why he included that in the movie... Really Lucas is DEEPLY OUT OF TOUCH and has just got no common sense. After insisting on Jar Jar being thrust on us because it's really a series of movies for little kids, he has the MAIN CHARACTER BETRAY AND MURDER A ROOMFUL OF CHILDREN WHO TRUST HIM AND LOOK TO HIM AS AN AUTHORITY FIGURE. Tiny kid runs to his savior: "Master skywalker, what do we do?" *VREEEM* <cut away> What does a 10 year old take away from THAT experience? They don't even do that in the darkest of grown up movies. It was not necessary for indicating that Anakin had turned dark. The very definition of gratuitous. Lucas proving he's "serious" that Anakin is BAD... And utterly ignoring that this is a movie for kids.
Oh good lord, agreed. The entirety of Anakin's fall in the latter half of that film is incredibly weak not to mention the stilted and awful dialogue showing Anakin's descent especially before and during the last fight just make me cringe in how bad they are.
Quote from dcartist »
And ultimately, "In my point of view, the JEDI are evil!" (that line would have made sense if there had been something like what *I* outlined: That the passivity of the Jedi is "evil". )...
But WHAT THE ****? Does George have the mentality of a 12 year old?
That says it all right there actually. Anakin's response in that final scene should have been powerful and dramatic and illustrates entirely how far he has fallen. Instead, and especially in how badly it is acted, it sounds like a slight disagreement someone is having at a discussion over Sunday Brunch. Just Awful.
I cringe at the blown opportunities...at what great movies these could have been with a good director, and a grownup writing the scripts.
I do too. These could have been such dramatic well acted and creative gems(I mean, on the art side things were fantastic. They had the right crew but George Lucas just demanded they embellish everything which artistically isn't a problem but for the film it made things all the more hard to believe at times if not just overwhelming in terms of the backgrounds and 3D elements entirely) if only good things had happened like a having a good director and having a grown up script and namely a more conservative use of the 3D technology and in general film Effects instead we got bad dialogue, bad acting, a lack of a character driven story, a reliance on 3D and special effects in just a blatant way, a complete lack of allowing happy accidents to occur in the scenes due to the rigid structure of the filming, and a supposed main character that you felt nothing for due to the bad script and arguably a lack of acting altogether. Half the time Hayden Christensen was delivering lines like he was talking to a child. I think it definitely was a bad casting choice to begin with. He has some skills shown from Life as a House but they didn't show through in the Star Wars films by any means.
If you step back and watch 1-6, it's extremely obvious that the character arc for Anakin got ****ed up badly in 1-3.
How can you watch a rotten obnoxious teenage Anakin directly chop up & mass murder a bunch of grade school kids looking to him for protection in movie 3... And then his redeemed self becomes this jolly looking man at the end who finds redemption? You have to be emotionally tone-deaf to think this flies in sequence.
Ordering a planet to be blown up is one thing... It's abstract, at a distance thing... Like Truman ordering a nuke to be dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki (it instantly vaporizes tens of thousands of women and children and babies, but you can still look at him as something other than utterly loathsome)
But a guy who hacks up a roomful of small doe-eyed children who trust him and are asking him for help? That's getting into serial child molester level of hands on evil... Its so inhuman that you don't even want to see that movie character earn redemption... You want him to just DIE HORRIBLY.
ALSO: after the original trilogy, you have the impression that Anakin was once a "GOOD MAN" who turned to the dark side of the force... And that Luke triggered Darth's father feelings to regain his humanity. Then at the end of ROTJ you see a jolly, kindly old Anakin spirit (soul redeemed) around the fire with spirit Obi Wan and spirit Yoda... Who the **** is that Anakin spirit? According to the prequel trilogy, Anakin was NEVER a good MAN. Before he turned to the dark side he was first a charisma-less little slave boy who liked to fix machines, then he was a teenage Jedi prodigy tripping over himself to get with Amidala... And then inexplicably became a child murdering bastard and then got his legs cut off and caught on fire... Then the next 20 years of his life or so are spent as the evil scourge of the universe, Darth Vader, murdering people.
What "GOOD MAN" is there for Anakin to revert to?
What "fatherly instincts" are there for Luke to appeal to?
Anakin was never a functional adult before he turned dark. Just a callow asshat with prodigious force powers and a hard on for Amidala.
That jolly spirit Anakin by the fire at the end of ROTJ never existed, and if he's laughing by the fire, it's because he forgot about the time, just 3 movies before, when he mass murdered a roomful of 6 year old children who were screaming and crying "master skywalker! Save us.. What'd are you doing? Waaaah!!! please dont!!! Arrrgh!!!! Mommy!!!!"... Er... I mean, killing younglings.
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Also just a comment about the end of ROTS:
Anakin's "death scene" after OBi Wan chops off his legs. Dude is DYING ON FIRE!!! And Obi Wan turns his back on him & walks away and lets him continue to lie there on fire in agony rather than either saving him or finishing him off painlessly??? WTF was the motivation for that??? Is it the Jedi way to let your enemies suffer as much as possible before they die? Come on... Can anybody explain that to me? How can Ewan act that scene and not notice that his motivation to walk away there is illogical?
But the secondary result is that Anakin survives and gets saved by the emperoro to become Vader. He really couldn't plot that end sequence in a way that actually makes sense?
Dcartist is right.
They do nothing to develop this "god man" Vader is supposed to revert to in RotJ
He becomes a child slaughtering monster because he is "under alot of stress" and "doesn't want Padme to get hurt"
Lets look at our friendly movie timeline shall we:
He races some pods :thumbsup:> he boycrushes on Padme :love:> he has a few bad dreams :(> he slaughters the sand people, betrays the Jedi order, betrays his friends who freed him from slavery, and slaughters a room full of children :mad1::evil:!!
Exactly WHAT is Luke saving here???? An expert pod racer?
If you step back and watch 1-6, it's extremely obvious that the character arc for Anakin got ****ed up badly in 1-3.
How can you watch a rotten obnoxious teenage Anakin directly chop up & mass murder a bunch of grade school kids looking to him for protection in movie 3... And then his redeemed self becomes this jolly looking man at the end who finds redemption? You have to be emotionally tone-deaf to think this flies in sequence.
Ordering a planet to be blown up is one thing... It's abstract, at a distance thing... Like Truman ordering a nuke to be dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki (it instantly vaporizes tens of thousands of women and children and babies, but you can still look at him as something other than utterly loathsome)
But a guy who hacks up a roomful of small doe-eyed children who trust him and are asking him for help? That's getting into serial child molester level of hands on evil... Its so inhuman that you don't even want to see that movie character earn redemption... You want him to just DIE HORRIBLY.
ALSO: after the original trilogy, you have the impression that Anakin was once a "GOOD MAN" who turned to the dark side of the force... And that Luke triggered Darth's father feelings to regain his humanity. Then at the end of ROTJ you see a jolly, kindly old Anakin spirit (soul redeemed) around the fire with spirit Obi Wan and spirit Yoda... Who the **** is that Anakin spirit? According to the prequel trilogy, Anakin was NEVER a good MAN. Before he turned to the dark side he was first a charisma-less little slave boy who liked to fix machines, then he was a teenage Jedi prodigy tripping over himself to get with Amidala... And then inexplicably became a child murdering bastard and then got his legs cut off and caught on fire... Then the next 20 years of his life or so are spent as the evil scourge of the universe, Darth Vader, murdering people.
What "GOOD MAN" is there for Anakin to revert to?
What "fatherly instincts" are there for Luke to appeal to?
Anakin was never a functional adult before he turned dark. Just a callow asshat with prodigious force powers and a hard on for Amidala.
That jolly spirit Anakin by the fire at the end of ROTJ never existed, and if he's laughing by the fire, it's because he forgot about the time, just 3 movies before, when he mass murdered a roomful of 6 year old children who were screaming and crying "master skywalker! Save us.. What'd are you doing? Waaaah!!! please dont!!! Arrrgh!!!! Mommy!!!!"... Er... I mean, killing younglings.
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Also just a comment about the end of ROTS:
Anakin's "death scene" after OBi Wan chops off his legs. Dude is DYING ON FIRE!!! And Obi Wan turns his back on him & walks away and lets him continue to lie there on fire in agony rather than either saving him or finishing him off painlessly??? WTF was the motivation for that??? Is it the Jedi way to let your enemies suffer as much as possible before they die? Come on... Can anybody explain that to me? How can Ewan act that scene and not notice that his motivation to walk away there is illogical?
But the secondary result is that Anakin survives and gets saved by the emperoro to become Vader. He really couldn't plot that end sequence in a way that actually makes sense?
very well stated dcartist.
i guess one could argue that in the Clone Wars cartoons, Anakin was a hero doing a bunch of hero type things. but even if one includes those deeds, it doesn't change a fact the we never see him being a "good man" in episodes 1-3.
Everything Dcartist just said +1
....
Lets look at our friendly movie timeline shall we:
He races some pods :thumbsup:> he boycrushes on Padme :love:> he has a few bad dreams :(> he slaughters the sand people, betrays the Jedi order, betrays his friends who freed him from slavery, and slaughters a room full of children :mad1::evil:!!
Exactly WHAT is Luke saving here???? An expert pod racer?
..yes? i got nothing.
what "good" was Luke sensing Vader? Obi Wan even says "he's more machine now than man, twisted and evil." Er....wasn't he always kinda twisted?
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..yes? i got nothing.
what "good" was Luke sensing Vader? Obi Wan even says "he's more machine now than man, twisted and evil." Er....wasn't he always kinda twisted?
Its always different when its family. Luke isn't redeeming a good and noble person, he's saving his father. If you were Luke, and your father was one of the greatest jerks in Galactic history you'd probably feel obligated to save him as well.
Obi-Wan lied to Luke. Who wouldn't? If you knew a person who was a child-killing, tantrum throwing, wife-beating *******, and his son asked you about him...would you really tell the truth? "Well son, you daddy was a horrible person, he killed kids, choked his mother while she was pregnant with you, he even betrayed a murdered all his friend." Yea...you wouldn't.
It all works out if: Anakin was always evil, Obi-Wan is a damn liar, and Luke is a selfish kid with daddy issues.
Its always different when its family. Luke isn't redeeming a good and noble person, he's saving his father. If you were Luke, and your father was one of the greatest jerks in Galactic history you'd probably feel obligated to save him as well...
...It all works out if: Anakin was always evil, Obi-Wan is a damn liar, and Luke is a selfish kid with daddy issues.
Sure... That covers Luke. But who is the gentle, self-satisfied, guiltless, smiley dude whose spirit is sitting by the fire with spirit Obi Wan and spirit Yoda at the end of ROTJ? Spirit Anakin appears to bear no resemblance to any formerly Living Anakin ( and it seems that Anakin's redemption rings hollow ). Dude was chopping up 6 year olds who were begging for his help only 3 movies ago, and at his best was never more than a shallow, cocky twit whose only positive attribute was being born with Jedi superpowers he eventually squandered.
Anyone remember Revenge of the Sith, at about the 30:00 minute mark of the movie, where Amidala is on the balcony and just looks hideous? Like sweaty, badly lit, and just... plain old? Made me think of one scene with an ugly girl from Shallow Hal...
I'm glad other people noticed that. I'm still confused as to what happened there. I assumed Natalie Portman pissed off either the lighting director, cinematographer, or her make up artist that day.
Or pissed off all three maybe? What the crap do you have to go through to make Natalie Portman ugly?
Its always different when its family. Luke isn't redeeming a good and noble person, he's saving his father. If you were Luke, and your father was one of the greatest jerks in Galactic history you'd probably feel obligated to save him as well.
No, Luke WAS redeeming a good and noble person. It's just any resemblance between the prequels and any kind of thing that would logically fit the backstory of Anakin Skywalker doesn't exist.
Obi-Wan lied to Luke. Who wouldn't? If you knew a person who was a child-killing, tantrum throwing, wife-beating *******, and his son asked you about him...would you really tell the truth? "Well son, you daddy was a horrible person, he killed kids, choked his mother while she was pregnant with you, he even betrayed a murdered all his friend." Yea...you wouldn't.
It all works out if: Anakin was always evil, Obi-Wan is a damn liar, and Luke is a selfish kid with daddy issues.
No, it works out if we discount the Prequels as bull****.
We see more nobility from Anakin Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back than we do in the Prequels.
The cartoon, from the few episodes I've seen of it, show a better portrayal of Anakin and probably a closer to what he should've been in the main movie. Equally his student in that show is actually a decent character and is a huge step up from Jar Jar Binks. She should've been a major feature in the third movie.
Overall, I think with more of the "fill in the blanks" for Vadar people will try to scavenge together a better storyline. Ultimately after Lucas is dead someone will probably do a better version with a "reimagination."
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The cartoon, from the few episodes I've seen of it, show a better portrayal of Anakin and probably a closer to what he should've been in the main movie. Equally his student
No. That right there? That completely contradicts the sentence before it.
The idea of Anakin Skywalker ever having an apprentice is completely ridiculous.
Anyone remember Revenge of the Sith, at about the 30:00 minute mark of the movie, where Amidala is on the balcony and just looks hideous? Like sweaty, badly lit, and just... plain old? Made me think of one scene with an ugly girl from Shallow Hal...
I'm glad other people noticed that. I'm still confused as to what happened there. I assumed Natalie Portman pissed off either the lighting director, cinematographer, or her make up artist that day.
Or pissed off all three maybe? What the crap do you have to go through to make Natalie Portman ugly?
seems even more bizarre when you consider that the shot was Natalie by herself, and was shot with unlimited studio lighting options, against a green screen. Its not like it was a twilight outdoor shot with extras, and a tight time frame.
Like Lucas manned the camera himself or something, and the cinematographer wasn't there, or anybody else to second guess him.
I really wouldn't put it past him. Like he did the makeup, lighting and camerawork with Portman on his own, figuring "yeah, it's green screen, we'll touch it up later. I'm good at everything"
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Other problems:
Getting into just the narrative, even setting aside the majorly ill-conceived plotting choices, the utterly stupid Character arc for Anakin, and jaw droppingly bad dialog... Its clear the narrative was not well thought out from an information standpoint for the audience.
The scripts needed at least a couple more rewrites so that a person watching the movie could rapidly infer & fill in the details about what's going on. It's really wordy, and there is tons of pointless mayhem going on all the time.
It's like Lucas just doesn't know how to tell a story. He first relies on the crutch of "I can start anywhere in the middle of the tale, because this is a 'serial style' movie", which is fine (he also seems to think that cutting back and forth between all these threads absolves him of responsibility to put thought into how information is introduced) ... but he fails to realize that you then need to cleverly grab the viewer and orient the viewer with what's going on. Not by having the characters drone on about the political situation and have awkward conversations about it while fighting. It's gotta all come out naturally. All these early wide shots and the creepy cold Amidala at the beginning, utterly unrelatable. Then the details of the story unfold haphazardly, like not a lot of thought went into the storytelling. The story doesn't build, but just sort of meanders all over the place. I think of that movie and literally I forget that there was this long bit on the slave planet with a pod race and whatnot. A little sword fighting here, a little space fighting there, a lot of stupid looking, fake looking cable guns being used to get into the palace (remember the ridiculous shot of then all shooting up the wall... Coulda been action figures and miniatures it looked so cheesy).
Think about how characters are introduced to us. Amidala just cold and dead and with that stupid voice, not the least bit majestic. Not the least but interesting.
Qui Gon and Obi Wan. Horrible reveal, just sort of thrown into things.
There is absolutely NO SENSE OF DRAMA.. Of THEATER.
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Compare those intros to how Darth Vader was first introduced... He got an ENTRANCE. Space ship battle gun battle... Darth Vader's theme and The menacing reveal as he steps into the scene full of menace. Everybody is afraid of him. And that Voice...
Obi Wan... Blazing light saber saving Luke... Then a hooded, and the hood lifted reveals Sir Alec Guinness.
Luke... Yeah you see him haggling for droid, etc. mundane guy, but then it's just being introduced to him and his boring life and no other characters distracting you... Follow the story through his eyes.. Then the burned house and the iconic shot of Luke standing in the sunset as Luke's theme plays and the wind sort of blows in his face and he makes his decision to go join the rebellion.
Han Solo - How he is introduced to us as this Savvy smuggler immediately at odds with Luke. Then shortly thereafter the critical shot establishing the kind of guy he is when Greedo corners him and Han shoots first.
Princess Leia - defiant and sassy from the get go with every evil powerful character she faces.
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The prequels, we get none of that BASIC THEATRE 101. How do we introduce our characters and establish the major plot points?
Just running round with light sabers in wide shot basically shooting off dialog between sword swings and ducking, not much better than: "youre Obi Wan and youre my padawan" - "youre Qui Gon and youre my Jedi master" - "were here to stop the trade federation and gt through the blockade-droid to your left" - " I'm young and reckless" - "I'm wise" - "here's some more backstory-duck!"
You're supposed to use that kind of ham handed character exposition of those kinds of points AS A LAST RESORT, after you find you can't cleverly incorporate it into the visual narrative action.
Your characters are your major story pillars and you need to respect them, give them a chance to breathe some life into them. Prequels especially episode one felt more like he had key Star Wars MYTHOLOGY points as his pillars, and rhe rest was a rushed exercise in connecting those dots, one way or another, while including certain set pieces he had in mind -- space battle, check-- Kurosawa style cavalry, check--pod race, check-- two major sword battles, check, master chineses style wushu double light saber demon fight with Ray Park, check... (a la Michael Bay who seems to build his movies around the set pieces). No investment in the characters except as chess pieces and no thought put into plotting a tight story that could stand on it's own as entertainment without the CGI.
Wow, and I'm barely scratching the surface of what I was finding way off about the prequels when I watched them in theaters. But there was so much wrong with them from a basic writing and storytelling standpoint, and it all stems back to Lucas' egomania.
Why? In the original trilogy he is described as a full Jedi Knight. He could have. No way she survives the prequel trilogy, though.
It's wrong for reasons depending on which Jedi lore you use.
In the prequels, which is where it's described he had an apprentice, it's wrong because Anakin is a Jedi not trusted by anybody and never awarded the rank of master. So why on Earth would they give him an apprentice? Especially if the Council needs to sign off on someone training an apprentice?
In the originals, Anakin was described as a young pupil of Obi-Wan who was never trained by Yoda and described by Obi-Wan as not trained as well by him as he could have been with Yoda. It all seems to me like Anakin turned before he ever had the chance to do the whole apprenticeship process.
In the prequels, which is where it's described he had an apprentice, it's wrong because Anakin is a Jedi not trusted by anybody and never awarded the rank of master. So why on Earth would they give him an apprentice? Especially if the Council needs to sign off on someone training an apprentice?
I'm not that familiar with the "apprenticeship" process.
Jedi knights start training much younger than Anakin did. I got that much out of their arguments over letting him enter the order (note that Luke, likewise, started training years later than normal Jedi).
So the "younglings" @ Jedi Central that Anakin killed in episode 3, were they in pre-training, and not yet assigned a master-apprentice relationship? Or did each have a master by that point? Could the first kid that Anakin decapitated have been his own assigned apprentice?
And the whole Sith-Master-Apprentice thing, always just 2 of them, plus a bunch of acolytes, who trained the acolytes? I'm still not clear how Darth Tyranus succeeded Darth Maul under Darth Sidious. I know that Dooku (as Tyranus) approached Jango Fett about being cloned on Kamino. And I had to go and read stuff to piece together that Master Sifodius was probably a dead Jedi whose identity was probably taken by Count Dooku (as Tyranus... though why use his real name with Jango anyway? If he's in disguise, why not call himself Sifodius when dealing with Kamino AND dealing with Jango Fett?) Episode 2 was sort of supposed to be almost a noir style whodunnit mystery where Obi Wan is trying to uncover the trail of who made the clones, etc. (chasing down the first assassin into the dark noir city... questioning the guy in the diner, questioning Yoda and looking for the planet at Jedi central, questioning the aliens at Kamino)... but they do so little to set up the locations and the players involved, that it's all a bunch of gobbledy-gook. There is no real sense that there is any kind of mystery to engage the audience, because there is not the slightest possibility for the audience to try to speculate about anything. No dramatic tension. Just eye candy while we wait for Lucas to TELL US who the bad guy is... and by the end, you're really not sure what he's told us. We know Dooku is a Sith lord, but the details of the mystery, etc. is just confused ( Remember how THE HANGOVER used the mystery of "what happened? to engage the audience in the journey that would otherwise far less interesting? SW episode 2 sort of tries to set up that structure, but Lucas seems to have no clue about what makes such a story "WORK". No clue. Something that any above average writer of fiction would know )
To this day, I don't know how the separatists, the droid army, and the trade federation are connected exactly. I know all of them are fighting the Republic which eventually becomes the empire. I'm sure I could look it up, episodes 1-3 left me actually not caring.
The trade federation and the droid army and the insect people all seemed like bad guys. And there was nobody ever identified as a separatist. Did the separatists ever exist? Are they made up by the emperor to seize power, or are they in fact, real people with real grievances, who become the Rebels in 4-6? The comments in Episode 3 by Padme about maybe being on the wrong side seem to imply that there are legitimate Separatists with legitimate grievances who are resisting the Republic, but are they actually fighting with droid armies? I thought the evil trade guild was running those. Again, after 1-3, I didn't really care to look it up.
Episode 2 SUPPOSED to hook us with with a detective style story... when you rewatch it, it's very obvious, but the details are SO UNCLEAR, that you don't even remember it as a detective story. There was no real attempt to let the narrative (or the endless dialog) explain the ACTUAL political situation.
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Sometimes I get the impression that "master bible" or "Silmarillion" of STAR WARS is just messed up and not fully thought through. Certainly the movies should be taken as canonical, but it's almost like Lucas didn't bother to rewatch 4-6 before writing 1-3. The politics in 1-3 might be less boring if they actually made it clear what was going on. Lucas had it all in his own head, and half of it is messed up and self-contradictory, but he feels that its HIS, and nobody else has the right to mess with it.
Sometimes I get the impression that "master bible" or "Silmarillion" of STAR WARS is just messed up and not fully thought through. Certainly the movies should be taken as canonical, but it's almost like Lucas didn't bother to rewatch 4-6 before writing 1-3. The politics in 1-3 might be less boring if they actually made it clear what was going on. Lucas had it all in his own head, and half of it is messed up and self-contradictory, but he feels that its HIS, and nobody else has the right to mess with it.
We call it the EU. Which usually has like 9 or so crappy books, then some writer with talent writes a fix fic. Like how the Darth Plagueis novel fixes Episodes I and II. Or how the novelization of Episode III explains what is going in the movie version.
Jedi begin training practically at birth. A Jedi Master will shake a toy in front of a baby until the baby reaches for it. Then he'll hold it just out of reach of the child making the child reach for it through the Force. And Jedi training begins!
Jedi are also taught from birth not to argue with Yoda. Even Senators are taught not to argue with Yoda.
I'm not that familiar with the "apprenticeship" process.
You don't have to be. Just look at Episode 1.
Qui-Gon: Can I train this guy?
Jedi Council: No, the Council does not allow it.
Qui-Gon: Anakin, I'm forbidden to train you, but I'm totally going to do it anyway.
So clearly, the Council needs to finalize all apprenticeships and all training. None of this makes sense in the context of Anakin having an apprentice.
(Also, notice how this is contradicted by Obi-Wan just going right on ahead and training Luke in Episode 4.)
Jedi knights start training much younger than Anakin did. I got that much out of their arguments over letting him enter the order (note that Luke, likewise, started training years later than normal Jedi).
So the "younglings" @ Jedi Central that Anakin killed in episode 3, were they in pre-training, and not yet assigned a master-apprentice relationship? Or did each have a master by that point? Could the first kid that Anakin decapitated have been his own assigned apprentice?
Except, why would Anakin have an apprentice in the first place? No one in the Jedi Order trusts him. Plus, he's depicted as being in battle almost continuously before Palpatine makes him his representative to the Jedi Council (which doesn't make any sense, how does Palpatine have the power to nominate Jedi Council members being a non-Jedi, but then the expectation that any of this crap makes sense should not still be around.)
Sometimes I get the impression that "master bible" or "Silmarillion" of STAR WARS is just messed up and not fully thought through. Certainly the movies should be taken as canonical, but it's almost like Lucas didn't bother to rewatch 4-6 before writing 1-3.
The idea that George Lucas had any kind of coherent story planned for films 1-9 is completely false, this we know with absolute certainty.
And I think any expectation of anything ever being concrete at all is pretty clearly off at this point.
Qui-Gon: Anakin, I'm forbidden to train you, but I'm totally going to do it anyway.
So clearly, the Council needs to finalize all apprenticeships and all training. None of this makes sense in the context of Anakin having an apprentice.
So now we're taking the prequel trilogy as canonical?
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So now we're taking the prequel trilogy as canonical?
When discussing the continuity of material meant as a supplement to the prequel trilogy (Anakin having an apprentice during the Clone Wars in a cartoon depiction), we are taking the prequel trilogy as canon, yes.
Now, we could give up and say, "Nothing that happens here makes any sense at all ever, it's just a mess of garbage," and have an easier and more accurate time of things. But that would just bring us right back to what I said previously, which is Anakin having an apprentice makes no sense and is dumb.
I don't know if this has been mentioned already, but one of the most glaring problems that comes to mind the most for me specifically, was the characters of the prequels. They were all, with maybe the exception of Palpatine, boring, sterile and lifeless. They made the universe of Star Wars, which seemed exciting and relatable in the originals, feel like a foreign place devoid of emotion and, well... humanity. Maybe because the characters we are supposed to empathize with the most are a bunch of emotionless monks who aren't allowed to get laid.
Concerning this point specifically, the both Episodes I and II suffer from a severe lack of a main character (and Episode III to a lesser degree). In Episode I, who is the main protagonist? Which singular character is the audience supposed to relate to? The Jedi? No, they're just on some trivial trade dispute assignment, and as I said above, they themselves are expressionless, emotionless monks. Queen Amidala? No, she's just a foreign queen in need of assistance. Anakin is a tempting thought, but he's just a child, so the events of the movie are beyond his understanding and control. Not to mention we aren't even introduced to Anakin until halfway through the movie.
Unforunately, George Lucas failed at one of the most basic formulas of filmmaking.
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I would believe that if not for the fact Vader is attempting killing blows all throughout that final fight. There may be a conflict but it doesn't seem to be that strong if Vader is going for body stabs and throwing light sabers at necks.
I see it more as from the moment Vader finds out Luke is his son, he is trying to communicate with him to bring him into the fold of the Dark Side at the emperor's behest and not so much to keep him safe. He tries the simple method of talking through the force, he tried the forceful methods of trickery and violence(he cuts his hand off even), and even at the end he simply talks to his son directly right before they board the lamda class shuttle to be taken up to the Death Star.
Also, the fact that he goes along with the emperor's plan isn't really evidence to me if he is going with it at all and not just following orders. At this point in his life doing what the emperor says to do is just second nature to Vader. It takes his son almost being electrocuted to death in front of him and seeing how truly evil the emperor is up close to make him finally truly act against his master.
Damn it. You're right. I asserted too much there. Generally arguably as shown in the Expanded Universe he didn't care whether Skywalker lived or died being that he has already violated the rule of two(Mara Jade, the various other Dark side trained agents under his employ, his clone laboratories ready to transfer his consciousness through the force into a new clone the moment of his death so that he never truly loses power. Though, then again, Vader does as well by training Lumiya, a once rebel officer turned Sith, his own apprentice while not doing anything to usurp the emperor). I generally find myself going by this logic more often than not.
Indeed, for this discussion it is all irrelevant. My apologies. It is a believable enough reaction by the emperor.
Then I think George Lucas really shouldn't have built up the script to the point that Luke ends up confronting the Emperor and Darth Vader like he did and expect us to believe he can pull off a believable win with the training we see him receive previously. It doesn't add up or at least it doesn't to me and my original point also stands.
The final portion of the fight is just not very good. It is why I chuckle or cringe or just roll my eyes every time I see it. 1:43 it just gets me every time. Luke over swings right, Darth Vader ducks under...and slumps. Just Awful.
What happened to that inventive flare from Empire? I was expecting something that really just set the bar to it's zenith in terms of light saber fighting after the explosive ending to Empire but instead Lucas stated he wanted RotJ to be a more more emotional experience over anything else which to me is just the wrong call or at least for some of the film. Sure, it worked for some of the characters well enough but it doesn't help the action scenes that much. I didn't even feel bad for the Ewoks though for that matter there is no reason the little teddy bears deserved the amount of screen time they got which sapped screen time from everything else that mattered in the film. If anything there should have been only one or two that really made you feel for their race but instead they helped make RotJ feel like a semi-muppet war movie with a shoddy payoff.
Lots of awful cinematography in that movie would go under mistakes that Lucas made.
Around 34:00 minute mark, the scene with Yoda and Anakin talking with the horizontal blinds lighting just Anakin's eyes... It's bad. And ALL the scenes with Anakin being lit way way too dark... Often just silhouettes even when talking. Clumsy. And visually jarring.
So many wide shots with silhouetted figures.
And still, frankly this movie is twice as good as the two stinkers that preceded it.
Oh, and I will say watching back the light saber battle against Dooku, it's actually OK. Christopher Lee's double/stuntman is really good with the sword, and his style looks way cooler than Anakin & Obi Wan who appear NOT to be doubled by a real swordsman in those scenes. Christiansen is better than McGregor with the physical stuff, as would be expected given their ages.
Obi Wans constantly smug delivery of lines to Anakin is annoying. Smarmy. It's happened all 3 prequels, and I don't get why McGregor is delivering then that way. He's way too good an actor to not realize how those takes suck. I suspect that Lucas directed him to try it that way and edited those bad takes into the movie, because he actually thinks those takes are good.
Oh, my bad... I had thought that midichlorians had been dropped & ignored by SW 3 but here it is again.
Grievous 4 light saber battle with OBi Wan: Lucas is clumsily experimenting with new camera angles (like a young film student) and the eyeball close up (a la Sergio leone) in this battle is good example. A bit jarring because the music and the rest of the mostly wide shot battle... I don't know. Cinematography wise, this is clearly the best I the prequels by a mile... But definitely still like a film student getting his legs.
Windu vs Emperor... Why the stupid flips from the emperor? It's utter nonsense and looks embarrassing when they quick cut to Ian McDiarmid holding the sword and moving like an old man.
Ultimately the movie is entertaining and engaging but Fair number of big flaws, and the HUMONGOUS flaw of the non-sensical pathway/descent of Anakin to the dark side. Tempo wise and motivation wise, achingly awful. And killing the toddler... "the younglings???" stupid. And using that language so little kids (except the smart ones) watching won't realize what the adults realize... (and giving parents the situation to maybe have to lie when asked what he meant by "younglings" ) I just kind of HATE that.
Actually more i think about it, I cant understand why he included that in the movie... Really Lucas is DEEPLY OUT OF TOUCH and has just got no common sense. After insisting on Jar Jar being thrust on us because it's really a series of movies for little kids, he has the MAIN CHARACTER BETRAY AND MURDER A ROOMFUL OF CHILDREN WHO TRUST HIM AND LOOK TO HIM AS AN AUTHORITY FIGURE. Tiny kid runs to his savior: "Master skywalker, what do we do?" *VREEEM* <cut away> What does a 10 year old take away from THAT experience? They don't even do that in the darkest of grown up movies. It was not necessary for indicating that Anakin had turned dark. The very definition of gratuitous. Lucas proving he's "serious" that Anakin is BAD... And utterly ignoring that this is a movie for kids.
Still watching through it now.
Agreed actually. There is no doubt the Emperor would have killed him and Vader going easy on his son would have been a terrible thing.
I think Luke definitely went up there to try to save his Father anyways. As for defeating Palpatine I think that is a different story. I don't know if he needs Yoda level powers per say but he definitely needs something to combat a master of the Darkside that as a New Hope establishes helped in defeating the entire Jedi order. Luke clearly doesn't have whatever is needed and nothing shows him gaining anything to even come close to being able to handle this fight even against Vader in my opinion. Which is why I say the way Lucas went about writing this whole final sequence with Luke, Vader, and the Emperor is just sort of a bad and illogical in a lot of ways.
We are forced to believe having done so much training in the last few films and possibly in between Luke is now a Jedi Knight and can walk into that final sequence and handle himself and possibly pull off a win because a few characters have made some comments about his skills and those scenes didn't really tell much of his skills to begin with. I can agree it sort of works for the bare story and the emotional feel of everything because that whole final fight scene is more emotion than it is a logical convincing fight scene which Lucas probably wrote that way so it fit into the whole idea of emotion and the idea of the under dogs winning idea in the first place. But it isn't enough for me anyways as a fan and the more I read into the initial and critical reviews since RotJ debuted it isn't enough for a lot of people actually. It is apart of the classic Star Wars trilogy though so it has it's place in the pantheon of Science Fiction(though that is seriously arguably given the argument from Frank Herbert's Eye that Star Wars in it's entirety as films were rip offs of existing stories and television series from the time period in everything from the characters to the light sabers to the opening of the films, etc) but it certainly in my opinion is not the best Star Wars film.
Oh good lord, agreed. The entirety of Anakin's fall in the latter half of that film is incredibly weak not to mention the stilted and awful dialogue showing Anakin's descent especially before and during the last fight just make me cringe in how bad they are.
That says it all right there actually. Anakin's response in that final scene should have been powerful and dramatic and illustrates entirely how far he has fallen. Instead, and especially in how badly it is acted, it sounds like a slight disagreement someone is having at a discussion over Sunday Brunch. Just Awful.
I do too. These could have been such dramatic well acted and creative gems(I mean, on the art side things were fantastic. They had the right crew but George Lucas just demanded they embellish everything which artistically isn't a problem but for the film it made things all the more hard to believe at times if not just overwhelming in terms of the backgrounds and 3D elements entirely) if only good things had happened like a having a good director and having a grown up script and namely a more conservative use of the 3D technology and in general film Effects instead we got bad dialogue, bad acting, a lack of a character driven story, a reliance on 3D and special effects in just a blatant way, a complete lack of allowing happy accidents to occur in the scenes due to the rigid structure of the filming, and a supposed main character that you felt nothing for due to the bad script and arguably a lack of acting altogether. Half the time Hayden Christensen was delivering lines like he was talking to a child. I think it definitely was a bad casting choice to begin with. He has some skills shown from Life as a House but they didn't show through in the Star Wars films by any means.
How can you watch a rotten obnoxious teenage Anakin directly chop up & mass murder a bunch of grade school kids looking to him for protection in movie 3... And then his redeemed self becomes this jolly looking man at the end who finds redemption? You have to be emotionally tone-deaf to think this flies in sequence.
Ordering a planet to be blown up is one thing... It's abstract, at a distance thing... Like Truman ordering a nuke to be dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki (it instantly vaporizes tens of thousands of women and children and babies, but you can still look at him as something other than utterly loathsome)
But a guy who hacks up a roomful of small doe-eyed children who trust him and are asking him for help? That's getting into serial child molester level of hands on evil... Its so inhuman that you don't even want to see that movie character earn redemption... You want him to just DIE HORRIBLY.
ALSO: after the original trilogy, you have the impression that Anakin was once a "GOOD MAN" who turned to the dark side of the force... And that Luke triggered Darth's father feelings to regain his humanity. Then at the end of ROTJ you see a jolly, kindly old Anakin spirit (soul redeemed) around the fire with spirit Obi Wan and spirit Yoda... Who the **** is that Anakin spirit? According to the prequel trilogy, Anakin was NEVER a good MAN. Before he turned to the dark side he was first a charisma-less little slave boy who liked to fix machines, then he was a teenage Jedi prodigy tripping over himself to get with Amidala... And then inexplicably became a child murdering bastard and then got his legs cut off and caught on fire... Then the next 20 years of his life or so are spent as the evil scourge of the universe, Darth Vader, murdering people.
What "GOOD MAN" is there for Anakin to revert to?
What "fatherly instincts" are there for Luke to appeal to?
Anakin was never a functional adult before he turned dark. Just a callow asshat with prodigious force powers and a hard on for Amidala.
That jolly spirit Anakin by the fire at the end of ROTJ never existed, and if he's laughing by the fire, it's because he forgot about the time, just 3 movies before, when he mass murdered a roomful of 6 year old children who were screaming and crying "master skywalker! Save us.. What'd are you doing? Waaaah!!! please dont!!! Arrrgh!!!! Mommy!!!!"... Er... I mean, killing younglings.
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Also just a comment about the end of ROTS:
Anakin's "death scene" after OBi Wan chops off his legs. Dude is DYING ON FIRE!!! And Obi Wan turns his back on him & walks away and lets him continue to lie there on fire in agony rather than either saving him or finishing him off painlessly??? WTF was the motivation for that??? Is it the Jedi way to let your enemies suffer as much as possible before they die? Come on... Can anybody explain that to me? How can Ewan act that scene and not notice that his motivation to walk away there is illogical?
But the secondary result is that Anakin survives and gets saved by the emperoro to become Vader. He really couldn't plot that end sequence in a way that actually makes sense?
The prequels took a dump all over Ep. 4-6 mythos.
Dcartist is right.
They do nothing to develop this "god man" Vader is supposed to revert to in RotJ
He becomes a child slaughtering monster because he is "under alot of stress" and "doesn't want Padme to get hurt"
Lets look at our friendly movie timeline shall we:
He races some pods :thumbsup:> he boycrushes on Padme :love:> he has a few bad dreams :(> he slaughters the sand people, betrays the Jedi order, betrays his friends who freed him from slavery, and slaughters a room full of children :mad1::evil:!!
Exactly WHAT is Luke saving here???? An expert pod racer?
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very well stated dcartist.
i guess one could argue that in the Clone Wars cartoons, Anakin was a hero doing a bunch of hero type things. but even if one includes those deeds, it doesn't change a fact the we never see him being a "good man" in episodes 1-3.
..yes? i got nothing.
what "good" was Luke sensing Vader? Obi Wan even says "he's more machine now than man, twisted and evil." Er....wasn't he always kinda twisted?
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Its always different when its family. Luke isn't redeeming a good and noble person, he's saving his father. If you were Luke, and your father was one of the greatest jerks in Galactic history you'd probably feel obligated to save him as well.
Obi-Wan lied to Luke. Who wouldn't? If you knew a person who was a child-killing, tantrum throwing, wife-beating *******, and his son asked you about him...would you really tell the truth? "Well son, you daddy was a horrible person, he killed kids, choked his mother while she was pregnant with you, he even betrayed a murdered all his friend." Yea...you wouldn't.
It all works out if: Anakin was always evil, Obi-Wan is a damn liar, and Luke is a selfish kid with daddy issues.
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I'm glad other people noticed that. I'm still confused as to what happened there. I assumed Natalie Portman pissed off either the lighting director, cinematographer, or her make up artist that day.
Or pissed off all three maybe? What the crap do you have to go through to make Natalie Portman ugly?
No, Luke WAS redeeming a good and noble person. It's just any resemblance between the prequels and any kind of thing that would logically fit the backstory of Anakin Skywalker doesn't exist.
No, it works out if we discount the Prequels as bull****.
We see more nobility from Anakin Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back than we do in the Prequels.
Overall, I think with more of the "fill in the blanks" for Vadar people will try to scavenge together a better storyline. Ultimately after Lucas is dead someone will probably do a better version with a "reimagination."
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No. That right there? That completely contradicts the sentence before it.
The idea of Anakin Skywalker ever having an apprentice is completely ridiculous.
Why? In the original trilogy he is described as a full Jedi Knight. He could have. No way she survives the prequel trilogy, though.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Like Lucas manned the camera himself or something, and the cinematographer wasn't there, or anybody else to second guess him.
I really wouldn't put it past him. Like he did the makeup, lighting and camerawork with Portman on his own, figuring "yeah, it's green screen, we'll touch it up later. I'm good at everything"
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Other problems:
Getting into just the narrative, even setting aside the majorly ill-conceived plotting choices, the utterly stupid Character arc for Anakin, and jaw droppingly bad dialog... Its clear the narrative was not well thought out from an information standpoint for the audience.
The scripts needed at least a couple more rewrites so that a person watching the movie could rapidly infer & fill in the details about what's going on. It's really wordy, and there is tons of pointless mayhem going on all the time.
It's like Lucas just doesn't know how to tell a story. He first relies on the crutch of "I can start anywhere in the middle of the tale, because this is a 'serial style' movie", which is fine (he also seems to think that cutting back and forth between all these threads absolves him of responsibility to put thought into how information is introduced) ... but he fails to realize that you then need to cleverly grab the viewer and orient the viewer with what's going on. Not by having the characters drone on about the political situation and have awkward conversations about it while fighting. It's gotta all come out naturally. All these early wide shots and the creepy cold Amidala at the beginning, utterly unrelatable. Then the details of the story unfold haphazardly, like not a lot of thought went into the storytelling. The story doesn't build, but just sort of meanders all over the place. I think of that movie and literally I forget that there was this long bit on the slave planet with a pod race and whatnot. A little sword fighting here, a little space fighting there, a lot of stupid looking, fake looking cable guns being used to get into the palace (remember the ridiculous shot of then all shooting up the wall... Coulda been action figures and miniatures it looked so cheesy).
Think about how characters are introduced to us. Amidala just cold and dead and with that stupid voice, not the least bit majestic. Not the least but interesting.
Qui Gon and Obi Wan. Horrible reveal, just sort of thrown into things.
There is absolutely NO SENSE OF DRAMA.. Of THEATER.
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Compare those intros to how Darth Vader was first introduced... He got an ENTRANCE. Space ship battle gun battle... Darth Vader's theme and The menacing reveal as he steps into the scene full of menace. Everybody is afraid of him. And that Voice...
Obi Wan... Blazing light saber saving Luke... Then a hooded, and the hood lifted reveals Sir Alec Guinness.
Luke... Yeah you see him haggling for droid, etc. mundane guy, but then it's just being introduced to him and his boring life and no other characters distracting you... Follow the story through his eyes.. Then the burned house and the iconic shot of Luke standing in the sunset as Luke's theme plays and the wind sort of blows in his face and he makes his decision to go join the rebellion.
Han Solo - How he is introduced to us as this Savvy smuggler immediately at odds with Luke. Then shortly thereafter the critical shot establishing the kind of guy he is when Greedo corners him and Han shoots first.
Princess Leia - defiant and sassy from the get go with every evil powerful character she faces.
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The prequels, we get none of that BASIC THEATRE 101. How do we introduce our characters and establish the major plot points?
Just running round with light sabers in wide shot basically shooting off dialog between sword swings and ducking, not much better than: "youre Obi Wan and youre my padawan" - "youre Qui Gon and youre my Jedi master" - "were here to stop the trade federation and gt through the blockade-droid to your left" - " I'm young and reckless" - "I'm wise" - "here's some more backstory-duck!"
You're supposed to use that kind of ham handed character exposition of those kinds of points AS A LAST RESORT, after you find you can't cleverly incorporate it into the visual narrative action.
Your characters are your major story pillars and you need to respect them, give them a chance to breathe some life into them. Prequels especially episode one felt more like he had key Star Wars MYTHOLOGY points as his pillars, and rhe rest was a rushed exercise in connecting those dots, one way or another, while including certain set pieces he had in mind -- space battle, check-- Kurosawa style cavalry, check--pod race, check-- two major sword battles, check, master chineses style wushu double light saber demon fight with Ray Park, check... (a la Michael Bay who seems to build his movies around the set pieces). No investment in the characters except as chess pieces and no thought put into plotting a tight story that could stand on it's own as entertainment without the CGI.
Wow, and I'm barely scratching the surface of what I was finding way off about the prequels when I watched them in theaters. But there was so much wrong with them from a basic writing and storytelling standpoint, and it all stems back to Lucas' egomania.
It's wrong for reasons depending on which Jedi lore you use.
In the prequels, which is where it's described he had an apprentice, it's wrong because Anakin is a Jedi not trusted by anybody and never awarded the rank of master. So why on Earth would they give him an apprentice? Especially if the Council needs to sign off on someone training an apprentice?
In the originals, Anakin was described as a young pupil of Obi-Wan who was never trained by Yoda and described by Obi-Wan as not trained as well by him as he could have been with Yoda. It all seems to me like Anakin turned before he ever had the chance to do the whole apprenticeship process.
Jedi knights start training much younger than Anakin did. I got that much out of their arguments over letting him enter the order (note that Luke, likewise, started training years later than normal Jedi).
So the "younglings" @ Jedi Central that Anakin killed in episode 3, were they in pre-training, and not yet assigned a master-apprentice relationship? Or did each have a master by that point? Could the first kid that Anakin decapitated have been his own assigned apprentice?
And the whole Sith-Master-Apprentice thing, always just 2 of them, plus a bunch of acolytes, who trained the acolytes? I'm still not clear how Darth Tyranus succeeded Darth Maul under Darth Sidious. I know that Dooku (as Tyranus) approached Jango Fett about being cloned on Kamino. And I had to go and read stuff to piece together that Master Sifodius was probably a dead Jedi whose identity was probably taken by Count Dooku (as Tyranus... though why use his real name with Jango anyway? If he's in disguise, why not call himself Sifodius when dealing with Kamino AND dealing with Jango Fett?) Episode 2 was sort of supposed to be almost a noir style whodunnit mystery where Obi Wan is trying to uncover the trail of who made the clones, etc. (chasing down the first assassin into the dark noir city... questioning the guy in the diner, questioning Yoda and looking for the planet at Jedi central, questioning the aliens at Kamino)... but they do so little to set up the locations and the players involved, that it's all a bunch of gobbledy-gook. There is no real sense that there is any kind of mystery to engage the audience, because there is not the slightest possibility for the audience to try to speculate about anything. No dramatic tension. Just eye candy while we wait for Lucas to TELL US who the bad guy is... and by the end, you're really not sure what he's told us. We know Dooku is a Sith lord, but the details of the mystery, etc. is just confused ( Remember how THE HANGOVER used the mystery of "what happened? to engage the audience in the journey that would otherwise far less interesting? SW episode 2 sort of tries to set up that structure, but Lucas seems to have no clue about what makes such a story "WORK". No clue. Something that any above average writer of fiction would know )
To this day, I don't know how the separatists, the droid army, and the trade federation are connected exactly. I know all of them are fighting the Republic which eventually becomes the empire. I'm sure I could look it up, episodes 1-3 left me actually not caring.
The trade federation and the droid army and the insect people all seemed like bad guys. And there was nobody ever identified as a separatist. Did the separatists ever exist? Are they made up by the emperor to seize power, or are they in fact, real people with real grievances, who become the Rebels in 4-6? The comments in Episode 3 by Padme about maybe being on the wrong side seem to imply that there are legitimate Separatists with legitimate grievances who are resisting the Republic, but are they actually fighting with droid armies? I thought the evil trade guild was running those. Again, after 1-3, I didn't really care to look it up.
Episode 2 SUPPOSED to hook us with with a detective style story... when you rewatch it, it's very obvious, but the details are SO UNCLEAR, that you don't even remember it as a detective story. There was no real attempt to let the narrative (or the endless dialog) explain the ACTUAL political situation.
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Sometimes I get the impression that "master bible" or "Silmarillion" of STAR WARS is just messed up and not fully thought through. Certainly the movies should be taken as canonical, but it's almost like Lucas didn't bother to rewatch 4-6 before writing 1-3. The politics in 1-3 might be less boring if they actually made it clear what was going on. Lucas had it all in his own head, and half of it is messed up and self-contradictory, but he feels that its HIS, and nobody else has the right to mess with it.
We call it the EU. Which usually has like 9 or so crappy books, then some writer with talent writes a fix fic. Like how the Darth Plagueis novel fixes Episodes I and II. Or how the novelization of Episode III explains what is going in the movie version.
Jedi begin training practically at birth. A Jedi Master will shake a toy in front of a baby until the baby reaches for it. Then he'll hold it just out of reach of the child making the child reach for it through the Force. And Jedi training begins!
Jedi are also taught from birth not to argue with Yoda. Even Senators are taught not to argue with Yoda.
Sith begin training as teenagers.
Control is the ultimate expression of power.
You don't have to be. Just look at Episode 1.
Qui-Gon: Can I train this guy?
Jedi Council: No, the Council does not allow it.
Qui-Gon: Anakin, I'm forbidden to train you, but I'm totally going to do it anyway.
So clearly, the Council needs to finalize all apprenticeships and all training. None of this makes sense in the context of Anakin having an apprentice.
(Also, notice how this is contradicted by Obi-Wan just going right on ahead and training Luke in Episode 4.)
Except, why would Anakin have an apprentice in the first place? No one in the Jedi Order trusts him. Plus, he's depicted as being in battle almost continuously before Palpatine makes him his representative to the Jedi Council (which doesn't make any sense, how does Palpatine have the power to nominate Jedi Council members being a non-Jedi, but then the expectation that any of this crap makes sense should not still be around.)
The idea that George Lucas had any kind of coherent story planned for films 1-9 is completely false, this we know with absolute certainty.
And I think any expectation of anything ever being concrete at all is pretty clearly off at this point.
So now we're taking the prequel trilogy as canonical?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
When discussing the continuity of material meant as a supplement to the prequel trilogy (Anakin having an apprentice during the Clone Wars in a cartoon depiction), we are taking the prequel trilogy as canon, yes.
Now, we could give up and say, "Nothing that happens here makes any sense at all ever, it's just a mess of garbage," and have an easier and more accurate time of things. But that would just bring us right back to what I said previously, which is Anakin having an apprentice makes no sense and is dumb.