Again, a plea to those convinced they will hate ROTS (unboxed spoilers)

Pretty much. It’s been thrashed out recently hereabouts - do a quick search on “Immaculate conception”.

/hijack

I, much like Miller, will got to see Revenge of the Sith because I desperately want it to not suck.

However, George has done much to deserve scorn from the first two prequels. In episode 1, we get the midichlorians which was a little :rolleyes: but for me it was forgivable. What was unforgivable was that there was no hint of any darkness in young Anakin. This is the kid that is supposed to grow up into Darth Vader, and instead we get the cutest little child since Tiny Tim. “Oh I woves you mommy. Now I gonna go be a jedi knight <giggle>.” We were supposed to get foreshadowing and instead we got sweetness and light.

Next comes part 2. Surely there will be foreshadowing. He has to start building tension at some point right? Wrong. What we get is 90 minutes of teenaged hissy fits. “But,” I hear you saying, “what about all those sand people that he killed?” There was no precursor to that . He went to the planet, found out his mother was dead, killed a bunch of sand people, and cried like a little bitch afterward. Was there any hint of darkness before or after? Not unless you count him getting cranky towards Obi Wan.

And I still haven’t gotten into how wooden and clunky the dialog is and how it wastes the talents of the actors involved, or how much of it is blatant pandering to an audience (Jar Jar anybody? How about the pod race?), ot how much of the backstory from the original movie has been dumped (How is Anakin a famous pilot, and who in the crap is this Qui Gon Jin dude anyway?)

This should’ve been a slam dunk series. Show us a fat, bloated, and far too comfortable Jedi convinced that Anakin can finally lead them to eternal triumph against the dark side. Show Yoda and his pupil Obi Wan as the voices of reason that are not heard, knowing full well that light and dark must be balanced. For god sake show us some hint of the dark side in Anakin. Give us a sense of drama and tragedy, not just numb inevitability.

The star wars: Clone wars shorts on cartoon network were much more effective at showing the darkness in Anakin than both of the prequels so far, and they are only five minutes long.

I will go see Episode 3, because I have hope that there could be some good left in the series. Part of me knows that the only tragedy that I will see is the fall of a once proud franchise into mediocrity.

Chances are I’ll be seeing it with a friend, because she wants to. She’s probably no fonder of the Star Wars prequels than I am, she just likes seeing movies on opening night (which, admittedly, is a lot of fun.) I would no doubt end up seeing it eventually, but probably not until several weeks after it opened to avoid the crowds. I have to be curious how it ends.

That said, there’s something really sad, frankly, about anyone being as hardcore about it as you are. Not that obsession with a movie is a bad thing (you should have seen me the week before Return of the King came out) but just because the Star Wars prequels have been so unabashedly awful.

I enjoyed the original Star Wars movies a lot. Not enough to become obsessed with them, but they were definitely very good movies. But the first two prequels are just insultingly bad. I mean, bad enough that you’re gonna have better luck finding good science fiction in the weird syndicated shows that get shown at like four in the morning on Thursdays.

I can understand being sorta obsessed with something that’s actually, you know, good. But aside from being designed apparently for the strict purpose of selling merchandise, the new Star Wars movies have had moronic plots, awful acting*, JarJar Binx, and special effects that are glossy and high-tech but lack any of the visual genius that the original trilogy had.

So if you’re obsessed with them and defensive, well, that’s really sad. I doubt there are enough people as forgiving as you to fill one theater, let alone every one in the country. Don’t expect to be surrounded by throngs of people like you. Virtually everyone else has better taste than that.

Oh, yeah, and while I don’t care personally (because, as I mentioned, this movie is going to be awful) not everyone speaks in acronyms. Most of us are capable of typing out full names of movies; I didn’t know what I was clicking on when I opened this, so I have just been inadvertently spoiled. Don’t do that again, dumbass.

Deep, cleansing breaths. You’ll feel better afterwards. In with the good, out with the bad.

You don’t really get the concept of literary archetypes, do you? Joseph Campbell described the basic plot elements of many myths when he discussed the Hero’s Journey. That doesn’t mean that later works are derived from his concepts - it means that those concepts are what add up to an effective mythology, which is why they’re seen in very old stories. A story built around Joseph Campbell’s work the way you imply would be a cookie-cutter formula piece, and I really would like to think that the original Star Wars trilogy was not written that way.

Your general point about mythology is well-taken, though. I’m not sure why Lucas lost that idea. He also lost the sense he used to have for amazing visuals; there were so many amazing, visually stunning scenes in the trilogy. I find it so odd that he lost that ability when he made the prequels. Epic mythology never loses its power for some reason - no matter how jaded and cynical my generation is compared to previous ones, and no matter how much we look for “alternative” entertainment, just look at the popularity of the Lord of the Rings movies to see how much power these concepts still have. Could there be anything less ironic than those movies? And yet we love them. The Star Wars prequels, in contrast, come across like they were written by committee.

Man, no kidding. Get a girlfriend. Smoke some pot. Masturbate. Do something to dissipate this excess energy because it’s seriously abnormal for it to be so focused on something so utterly irrelevant (and, as I mentioned earlier, mediocre :)). Drop the defensiveness.

  • aside from my beloved hottie, Ewan McGregor - why, oh why, is he wasting his talents on this crap?

Then the question arises: why didn’t you just shrug it off and enjoy the movie? I’ve seen both the prequels to date and the midichlorian stuff did not detract from the movies in the slightest. At best, it got a “hmm…interesting” from me.

Frankly, in some aspects, it enhanced the saga. I had always wondered why only a few people could tap into the Force; now I know.

Oh my God, Excalibre, I have just spontaneously seen the light!

The Star Wars prequels, which I liked, now appear to be the shit you claim they are!

I’m so glad I have someone like you around for me to conform my opinions to. :slight_smile:

Being someone who has enjoyed the last two movies (but enjoyed the OT on a different level altogether), I only really have two complaints about the bitching over the prequels:

  1. the whole Comic Book Guy-style absolutist hyperbole (“Worst movie ever!!!”) got old six years ago, and…

  2. the very personal attacks on Lucas (and/or people who enjoyed the new movies) that some people choose to pursue instead of focusing on the movies and his artistic decisions.

At the risk of name-dropping, I’ve met Lucas personally and talked to quite a few people who’ve worked with him, and I can say that, without a doubt, the one thing the guy isn’t is “greedy” (as he’s often accused of). He’s a very kind, generous, and humble man.

I used to agree with you Lobot, but then the wise Excalibre showed me the error of my ways. We were foolish to try and defend such a thoroughly shitty movie, regardless of the level of enjoyment that we personally obtained from it.

Elitism can be fun! :slight_smile:

But seriously, from everything I’ve seen and heard I too am appalled by the personal attacks towards Lucas. The man has been making these movies from his own pocket, the only person who stands to lose anything from them is Lucas himself. He has also poured more money back into the industry than probably any other actor, director, or producer.

I agree with this part wholeheartedly - introducing Anakin to us as a young boy made it harder to see him as the future scourge of the galaxy. And it introduced an ick factor into the Anakin-Amidala relationship that just shouldn’t have been there. She was basically his babysitter. (Still is, I suppose.)

Depends on how you define darkness, I suppose. If you use Yoda’s unholy troika of “anger . . . fear . . . agression,” he showed two out of three in the sandpeople incident, as well as a rather overdeveloped sense of his own power (the sin of pride) throughout the movie. The petulant teenage Anakin is probably where the prequels should have started, since its as an adolescent that we start making the choices that will dictate the kinds of adults we will become.

Qui Gon Jin is addition, not dumping. Obi-Wan said to Luke that he was impressed with how strongly the Force was within Anakin (which is still true), and took it upon himself to train Anakin as a Jedi (which is also true). Qui Gon is simply addition of a separate, related motive for training Anakin - to honor what his master would have wanted. (What did get altered is that Obi-Wan still thought of Yoda as the model for a Jedi Master, even though we now know Count Dooku was Yoda’s Padwan.)

As far as famous pilot, was that ever said during the original series? I think Obi-Wan said something about a “great” pilot, which could just mean a very accomplished one, which Anakin was.

The dialog is a bit clunky at times, but at times, so was that of the original series. The Han-Leia relationship succeeded in spite of the script, not because of it. It succeeded because there were actors with genuine chemistry. Which I don’t find as true of Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman.

I don’t think there was any way that Lucas could have won with the prequels no matter what he did. The kids who fell in love with these movies, the ones now claiming their childhoods were raped, have spent most of their lives deconstructing, analyzing, replaying, and reliving these movies. They would have destroyed these movies no matter what was on the screen, because they have preconceived notions about what the movies “should” be. These are the same ones that complained about changes to the narrative in the Lord of the Rings movies and changes to the stories in comic book movies. They are obsessive nitpickers.

Jeevmon, Qui gon was as much of an unnecessary addition as the mitochlorians was. Obi Wan could’ve just as easily taken over the training of Anakin without dragging Liam Neeson into this. And you are right. Anakin should’ve been started as a teenager. Thusly more appropriate Yodas remark about Anakins age becomes.

And petulant does not equal dark side. The problem with the sand people slaughter was that there was no precursor or appropriate follow up. It was practically an aberration. Seemed like a lazy plot add in to get rid of Anakins mother and show the darkness that is supposed to be building within Anakin. Instead of a gathering storm we got a sudden squall.

The way you get past the nitpickers is to make good movies. Spider Man and it’s sequel, the Lord of the Rings movies, and even the Blade trilogy are all far better than episode 1-3.

What the episodes should’ve been was tragic. Nearly everyone know that Anakin becomes Darth Vader. We know what the characters in the film do not. Therefore you have to build a sense of dramatic irony. We need to see the darkness building within Anakin and see the Jedi ignoring it. Instead we’ve seen something they don’t know about (the sand people massacre) and a variety of bratty behaviors. It’s just poor writing.

And as an FYI, George Lucas didn’t rape my childhood memories with the prequels. He did it when he made Greedo fire first. :mad:

Yes I do. Don’t be arrogant. I know that Campbell’s role was primarily descriptive, but Lucas explicitly based his ideas for Star Wars on Campbell’s interpretation of archetypes. Those archetypes predate literary tradition, by the way, so they shouldn’t be referred to as “literary archetypes.” More like “mythological archetypes,” if anything.

They were buds. Campbell was Lucas’s mentor. His guru. The source for a lot of his inspiration. Campbell’s specific interpretation (and his is not the only available one by a long shot) is what filtered through to Star Wars.

I concur. That movie atleast brought to our attention the very real potential threat of Space Herpes!

I absolutely disagree. I’m as much of a LotR fan as I am a Star Wars fan, and I loved the movies. Most LotR fans did, too. Read any of the threads about them. Sure, there are some people who disliked them, but they are very much in the minority. Similarly, the total reinvention of Battlestar Galactica has been quite succesful, although, of course, the original had little to recommend it in the first place. The success of the X-Men and Spiderman movie franchises are also points against your claim.

And I’m sorry, but “The plot was dull, the actors had absolutely no chemistry and often no visible talent, and the action scenes felt like video game sequences” are not “nitpicks.” There are huge, substantive, crippling problems with these movies. Obviously, these are all subjective judgements, and you might disagree that they even exsist, but you can’t just wave them away by second-guessing the motives of the movie’s critics. These were bad, bad, bad movies. For pictures with their budget and prestige, they are among the worst I’ve ever seen, AotC in particular.

“Unnecessary” =/= “dumping,” though. The midichlorians were more of a “dumping” because it was a scientific explanation for that which had been purely mystical. Qui Gon was not a necessary character, but then neither is Mace Windu, Count Dooku, Jango Fett, or Jar Jar. It’s only the last that I really object to. The rest are people who, IMHO, enrich rather than detract from the mythos.

He’d never lost anyone close to him before either. Anakin’s tragic flaw is a pathological fear of losing those closest to him. He was desperately afraid of something happening to his mother, angry at the Jedi for letting it happen and at the sand people for making it happen, and aggressively avenged himself upon the sand people. According to the spoilers, it will happen again.

I think it’s a defensible approach, if well-acted. But Hayden Christensen does a pretty poor job of differentiating between “anger” and “fear.” He sounds pretty much the same doing both.

Hasn’t worked yet, or did you miss the “no organic webshooters,” “no elves at Helm’s Deep,” “Faramir was never tempted by the Ring,” “Hugh Jackman is too tall to play Wolverine,” or “Iceman was one of the original X-Men, not a student when Wolverine came to Xavier’s” discussions? There will always be a vocal minority of “worst . . . episode . . . ever” fanboys who will never stop whining about the changes. Your criticisms are more valid and well thought out than most, but I doubt the movies you have in mind would receive any more adoration than what’s actually been produced. As was pointed out earlier, one of the complaints has been “too much about the politics,” even though the politics are crucial to the plot of how the Empire comes about.

If the criticism of the Spider-Man or Lord of the Rings movies seems more muted, it may be because the others were print stories translated to film, rather than a continuation of stories told on film in the first instance.

Arguably, Yoda did know about the sand people massacre. And the fact that Anakin is arrogant and impetuous has been noted.

It’s not the best writing in the universe, but I don’t think it’s leaps and bounds below what was written for the first movies.

I didn’t mean that making a good movie keeps the nitpickers at bay. It just gives them a good deal less to stand on. The spider man and lord of the rings purists are ignored a good deal more than the Catwoman or the star wars purists

I think the writing is a good deal worse. The dialogue is downright clunky. The characters are a good deal less fleshed out than the original trilogy. The new trilogy has been great whenever people haven’t been speaking.

The dumping of the mythos with regards to Qui Gon was that Lucas dumped the original statement that Obi Wan was trained by Yoda. I can’t think of a single good reason to add a new character, especially since Yoda is still in the films.

I am not a Star Wars geek by any means. In fact I don’t plan to see the original three movies again unless I am bored and they are on cable. I’m afraid Lucas’ faults, which are less in evidence earlier, have left me completely uninterested.

I don’t think enough attention is given to how the quality of the acting destroyed Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. Jake Lloyd was utterly insufferable as Annakin. Hayden Christensen was not much better as an obnoxious and petulant adolescent. I don’t know what it is about Lucas and his choice of actors, but that acting could have destroyed a good script.

I recently rented AOC and turned it off during the contrived factory scene where Amidala C3PO and company were dodging machinery. I am sure I will see the last one out of obligation, but my expectations are at exceedingly low. I do wonder how the (few) people who liked PM and AOC justify the quality of the acting, it is sub Lifetime movie of the week quality.

I agree. I knew the whole thing was going to be a bust after the much-lamented “Yippee!” scene in Phantom Menace. Just…terrible.

I don’t know if it’s stated or implied in ROTS, but it appears that Darth Sideous actually willed the midichlorians to concieve Anakin. They were the physical actors of his will. Anakin’s immaculate conception was all part of the Sith plot, though, of course, in the end it serves to fulfill Jedi prophecy.

I believe the word is used once in Episode III, when Palpatine is explaining how truly powerful the Sith are, and that Darth Plaugueis taught his apprentice (Sideous) to compell the little beasties to create life.

[spoiler]So… the Emperor is Luke’s grandfather?

Man. And I thought my expectations for this film couldn’t get any lower.[/spoiler]

No, not in any meaningful sense. There is no biological connection between them.