ugg! That should read everyone.
Am the ONLY one who actually likes all the movies? And even Jar Jar Binks?
The only thing I really don’t like is the whole “midichlorian” thing, and Anakin’s not having a father.
Other than that…no. I like them.
However, Ewan McGregor better at least have one shirtless scene in the next one, dammit!
I admit there are a few hermits in Tibet I haven’t asked yet, but… yes. 
I’m of two minds regarding Episode Three-o:
-
It’s obviously the darkest movie in the entire series, what with Anakin turning to the Dark Side, a major-ass confrontation between Anakin and Obi-Wan (with extra maiming), dead Jedis everywhere, and the culmination of Palpatine’s schemes. For sheer spectacle alone, it should be a slam-dunk.
-
On the other hand, if anyone can take something as dark and spooky as Episode III and turn it into a Playskool-style gooffest, it’d be George Lucas.
Ah well, there’s always the Star Tours ride at Disneyland…
Well… he gets wet. Maybe that’ll do it for you.
That reminds me, how silly is: surviving a fall into lava! I think just being near lava is enough to kill you, isn’t it?
This kind of sums it up for me. When Ep. I was coming, anticipation was very high, since most people were hoping it would be as good as IV-VI. When II was on the way, our expectations were tempered a little because I wasn’t quite on par with the first go-round. And now that it’s III we’re waiting for… well, our expectations are much lower.
No, you’re not. I found Jar Jar annoying but I didn’t hate the character. In my experience, online movie fans are not representative of general movie audiences, any more than SDMB’s political leanings are representative of the general political climate.
I feel the same way. Much like the last Star Trek movie, I’m just not that interested anymore. In fact, it was only a couple of weeks ago I finally saw ST:N, and thats because it was at the library. If I do see it in the theater, it won’t be until several weeks after it has been out.
He’s a Jedi. Did you see that fall Obi-0Wan shrugged off in Ep 1? And how the Big V barely noticed Han shot him repeatedly.
Actually, Vader blocked Han’s shots.
With his hand :eek:
I know. That was so kick-ass!
If anyone’s still reading this thread, I agree with gobear. Star Wars is over. The original Star Wars, for all its bad acting and writing, holds up mainly because of its good-natured naiveté–Lucas wanted to give people a good time, he actually sorta believed that all this Force hokum meant something, and the result is a movie whose “dated” qualities actually make it charming. Empire is the best of the series, and it’s also the least Lucasian–he didn’t direct it or write it, and most of the best bits were put in nearly over his dead body (he tried to scotch the most memorable scene, Leia and Han’s “I love you”/“I know” moment).
The newer films have no charm, no warmth, and while they strive to be “epic” and portentous they end up being merely inflated and noisy and dull. I think the main problem is that Lucas fell for his own hype: while he deflects criticism by claiming he’s just trying to make fun kids’ movies, he also claims – retroactively, and none too convincingly – that he’s consciously relying on Campbellian archetypes to create a new mythology for a culture that’s supposedly starved for it (though folks seem to be feeding themselves quite well on the Matrix and LotR movies). So what you have developing now with these recent films is Lucas’ private plaything, a story that’s about the kind of things George Lucas thinks are cool–but it’s also trying to be deeply mythological and serious. The impulses aren’t resolved, which is why the latter Star Wars movies are simultaneously cluttered with detail and incident yet seem to have long stretches where nothing happens.
Part of what is also happening, IMHO, is that we as an audience are much more jaded. Part of the fun of the first trilogy, as a child, was the sense of wonder. Each film took us to visual places that we had simply never been to before. The nearest modern comparison would be Lord of the Rings. Part of what makes those films work is that they bathe us in visual spectacle like none seen before. Lucas is in some sense a victim of the revolution in special effects that he wrought- we’re no longer as impressed as we used to be. (He’s also a victim of his own inability to write romance and his fetish for cute kids and creatures, but that’s another story). The recent films have some nice visuals, but that sense of “WOW” is gone. And a sense of “WOW” can cover up many sins.
Part of the problem also is that he is telling a very different story here. In the original trilogy, good was good, evil was evil (Vader at the end of “Jedi” being something of an exception), and the only real fencesitters were mercenary types like Lando and Han, both of whom we knew were basically goodhearted and would cast their lot with the good in the end. The new story deals with good people and a good system being corrupted and turned evil, which is a different type of story entirely, and one Lucas doesn’t seem to have as good a handle on. He can show how evil manipulates the good and gets a handle on the levers of power (the effective half of Ep. II, IMHO), but how evil manipulates and corrupts the good is something that he has less of a handle on how to write or convey through characters. And romance - forget it. The only reason Han/Leia worked at all was because Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher made it work, not because it was written to work.
Let’s remember that Star Wars was originally intended as merely a modern-day version of the serial sci-fi adventure stories Lucas grew up with – he wanted to do a movie remake of Buck Rogers, but couldn’t get the rights, for instance. Character development and plot are secondary to making a cinematic roller-coaster ride.
Despite the bigger user of computer-animated glitz, I think the new trilogy (or what we’ve seen so far) has pretty much stayed true to that. People who complain about Anakin “yahoo!” Skywalker in Episode I are missing the fact that he’s pretty much irrelevant – the point of the movie was for something to hang a nifty pod race scene and a nifty space battle and a kewl Jedi duel on, with lotsa explosions and narrow escapes thrown in. Similarly, Episode II gave us a massive clone army, skycars over Corusant, Jango Fett vs. Obi-Wan, and Yoda kickin’ ass. The Anakin/Amidala romance was there only because it had to be, and feels contrived as a result.
And while I haven’t seen any of the Lord of the Rings movies, this is why ultimately the LotR trilogy will beat the Star Wars series, because it was created from the onset to be a deep and complex piece. Star Wars is a Buck Rogers adventure with “mushy bits” tacked on.
My feelings toward the second trilogy can now be summed up as “meh.”
I’ll probably rent Episode 3 when it comes out on DVD, just to see how it is. I have very fond memories of how much fun the first two and a half movies were (never did muck like ewoks, but whaddaya do). The second trilogy just doesn’t seem to have that much fun in it. There were a few moments in Episode 2 that I really enjoyed, but all in all I just find them kinda dull now.
Am I old and jaded? Maybe. Do I expect too much? Maybe. But I’d much rather go back and watch “Star Wars” or “Empire” (or even “Return of the Jedi”) again before I’d rent either of the newer ones.
The problem is simply (as others have already said) that we who watched the original when it was first released are no longer as callow as Luke Skywalker was.
Before he even started the earliest pre-production, George Lucas stated many times that he didn’t expect the fans to like them much. He claimed it was because they’re too dark, but I think he knew that there just wasn’t a compelling enough story to really compare with the original, so he had to pad it out, which he did rather lamely.
I still like them, though. Everything that I personally enjoy about Star Wars is all in the prequels still, so I’m satisfied.
Pacing. TPM should have been the first twenty minutes to half an hour of AOTC.
So you’re admitting that the movie is lots of idiotic, illogical, pointless fluff, and no substance.
So why are you stating that people are missing the point when they say that it’s lots of idiotic, illogical, pointless fluff, and no substance?
I think you nailed it SPOOFE. I can’t believe the apologists in this thread. It is as if they don’t know horrible acting, weak plot and bad pacing when they see it. Sure the OT had some bad acting but it is nothing compared to the wooden corpses of I and II.
smiling bandit: jedi are not supermen, so I am not buying your answer. If they could create a force bubble around themselves then they would have in various fights and a force bubble is the only thing that would save you from a swan dive into lava.
Whatever, this is all off topic. I just wanted to know what people thought Episode III would be like.