Amen to both of you.
It didn’t out and out suck IMO. But it also didn’t rise much above mediocre.
- Tamerlane
Exactly. I’ve only watched the movies, never read the books, so I’d always imagined the fall to the Dark Side starting later and taking much longer. There were some clues, but it felt like he went from slight dark side leanings to full blown I’m evil and kill child Jedi far too fast. Also a bit much teen angst, or maybe even child angst. I kept expecting him to break out into song “Everybody hates me, nobody likes me, guess I’ll go eat…” some worm equivalent.
The Jedi (?) would be much smarter about how they treated a kid they viewed as a threat. None of this, “Go 'way kid, we don’t trust you and we really don’t want you here” craziness.
Leia would have good reason to have memories of her mother.
I just saw the Empire Strikes Back a few months ago and came to the exact opposite conclusion. If that was the only movie I had to judge Harrison Ford I would have thought he was terrible. Even the actors thought the dialogue in the first Star Wars movie was terrible and that they were making a turkey.
Marc
Hmm. You know, Alan Dean Foster worked on the STAR WARS novelization back in the '70s, what with passing mention of how Vader was an extremely driven man working toward some grand and long-term plan; we necessarily happen not to get the details of it, just the fact of his incredibly disciplined ambition – and from his own point of view, yet; Vader manages to not give any specifics, but plenty of generality.
And shortly thereafter, Foster builds an entire sci-fi novel around the idea of an extremely driven man who likewise spends his life in single-minded pursuit of some mysterious goal; he’s constantly putting aside fear and compassion and all the rest to instead bend all his efforts to whatever the heck it is that he’s trying to accomplish. He amasses tremendous power for an ambition that others only guess at, and we’re constantly reminded that he’s ready to die for his cause – but we don’t find out why until the last pages, where it:
…turns out he wasn’t, technically, after anything at all; the single-mindedness of his pursuit was pretty much the end in itself, as he’s forever struggling to just keep himself free of fear and compassion and all the rest.
What made Vader so menacing in the OT was that you never knew how he was going to react to anything. He could casually shrug off bad news, or he could Force choke you to death and you wouldn’t know what was going to happen until he either turned away or did that little finger pinch thing (I would love to redub those scenes with James Earl Jones saying, “I’m crushing your head! I’m crushing your head!”)
Oh, and Yoda is not a fighter! (At least not in the traditional sense.) He’s like the martial arts experts who dispatch their opponent with one deft blow. If they’re up against someone is their equal, they both just stand there staring at one another, until one of them suddenly lashes out, there’s none of this wild flailing about. Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character in M:I:III is closer to what Yoda would be like, than the Yoda we saw in Sith.
IMHO, Sith was the worst of the prequels. There were moments in the first two that I could enjoy, but the entire Sith was agony for me (and I need to point out that Bail Organa’s speeder is Tucker [the car, not me] inspired and it only appears in the third film).
Right before Shattered Glass was released with him in a starring role - apparently to much acclaim for his performance - I was reading an interview with him, and one of the topics was (naturally) the SW films. He mentioned how Lucas didn’t let him have any leeway in how the lines were delivered, what his reactions were, anything. All of Christensen’s suggestions or changes were shot down.
In other words, Lucas got exactly the acting job that he wanted. Yeah, that’s a scary thought.
Eh, I think Lucas made everyone else look like mental midgets.
One of the things I can’t get over in this movie is how awfully the Jedi Council treats Anakin. I mean, they’re worried about traitors, they’re worried about the dark side, they have suspicions, and yet they jerk Anakin around seemingly oblivious to how frustrated he is, or how that frustration could leave him open to suggestion. And, Anakin is clearly the lap-boy of Palpitane.
The Jedi were the most unwise ‘wise men’ I’ve ever seen in a movie ever. Very frustrating.
I’m not sure if I am the only person to have figured it out, or if it is just that I’ve only happened on threads where the topic is “what sucked”, but midway through watching Episode I, I figured out the movies had zero to do with Anakin and that the first trilogy was about Obi Wan. From there–and just blocking out all the Anakin stuff–it was actually pretty kick-ass. The whole Vader thing is rushed and incomplete, but partly that’s because it’s just a subplot to satisfy our knowledge on that topic. The real story is Obi Wan’s loss to Palpatine, and that I thought was done pretty darn well (though admittedly neither of the Star Wars trilogies were favorites.)
Hubby and I have debated this since we saw the movie in the theaters. (I even had a thread on it way-back-when.) My opinion is that you’re right: Yoda shouldn’t have to bounce around like that. It cheapens him. He should be able to defeat his enemies with a wave of his little green hand.
Hubby disagrees. He says that saber fighting is one of the most important skills of a Jedi, one which Yoda would have to have, and because of his disadvantage in size, he’d have to rely on speed and agility.
Me, I laughed when I saw Yoda jumping around like a big green flea. The first thought that popped into my line was a line from Blazing Saddles: “Jumpin’ around like a Kansas City faggot.”
I agree. IMO, lightsabering is all well and good- but it really is beneath a truly skilled Jedi, for whom the force itself should be the ultimate weapon.
That, and kung-fu green teddybear Yoda was idiotic.
Noooooo!!!
Right. They were Wookies, filmed from a distance.
They were crouching, because they were Wookie Ninjas.
To be honest, I never quite understood why they couldn’t have Wookies on Endor just because Chewbacca flies in a spaceship. Hell, we have people who fly the space shuttle, and other people from the same planet who live in primitive villiages out in the middle of nowhere.
So, were the books written prior to the films, or were they novelizations after the fact? As a kid, I remember it being common knowledge that the first trilogy was actually the middle of the story, and that they came from a series of books that had already been written. But for all of the frenzy surrounding SW back in the day, I don’t recall anyone who ever read them.
Personally, I think the best way to handle Yoda fighting would be to have him just stand there motionless… While he telekinetically swings his 'sabre around like it was weilded by a mutant flea on crack. You get the best of both worlds, that way: You get the high-paced adrenaline rush special effects, while at the same time illustrating Yoda’s inner serenity and affinity with the Force.
Well, one person who deserves credit is Ewan McGregor. Not many actors could’ve nailed the role of a young Obi-Wan much better. I had no trouble believing he would grow into the wise old Ben Kenobi played by Alec Guiness in Episode IV.
Perhaps Ewan is immune to Lucas’s control-freak directing style.
If you’re talking about the books with the same names as the films, they’re novelizations.
Shoudda had Bill Shatner direct it! :dubious:
HEY!! 
The one truly annoying thing for me in the prequels were R2D2’s upgrades. In the first movies, he could zap you with lightning, fire lighsabers at you, and swim around underwater with his periscope. OK.
TPM: He’s got the hopping ability to quickly go up and down stairs (I know, it was an homage to the scene in Jedi where they had to pan away).
AOTC: He’s got jet packs that allow him to fly around wherever he wants to go.
ROTS: His blue thingies can open up and catch things you throw at him.
By the time Sith was over I was waiting for him to open up and see a little alien crawl out of there, pull out a lightsaber, and start battling Palpatine.
Shouldn’t the film have been called Crouching Wookie, Hidden Ewok then?