“He (Luke’s father) was the best star-pilot in the galaxy, and a cunning warrior…well, he never actually was a member of any military organization. But he won a pod race once when he was a kid.”
“He (Vader) betrayed and murdered your father. Well, in a metaphorical sense.”
We could go on and on. You could say that much of this were knowing lies told to shield Luke from the truth.
Naaah…retcons.
“When last we met, I was but the learner. Now, I am the master.”
“Only a master of evil, Annie.”
Any film or films based on the premise that people will battle to the death with swords – er, excuse me, light sabres – istead of using the copious numbers of death-ray style guns that are as abundant as cat hairs on a sofa will have credibility problems from the get-go.
[QUOTE=ululate]
You’re right about the retcons, though. I now wish for an Ewan MacGregor dubbing session for Episode IV: “Obi-Wan? Now that’s a name I haven’t heard since, oh, long before you were born. Well, except for the way your mother called me Obi-Wan right after you’d been born. Anyhow, here’s your father’s sword; he wanted you to have it. Well, no, that’s not entirely true; he wanted to keep it, but I hacked off his arms and took it from him anyway.”
[/QUOTE]
Makes you think that Obi-Wan turned into a rather polite and sensitive guy, doesn’t it? The euphemisms are strong in this one.
[QUOTE=ululate]
(You’re right about the retcons, though. I now wish for an Ewan MacGregor dubbing session for Episode IV: “Obi-Wan? Now that’s a name I haven’t heard since, oh, long before you were born. Well, except for the way your mother called me Obi-Wan right after you’d been born. Anyhow, here’s your father’s sword; he wanted you to have it. Well, no, that’s not entirely true; he wanted to keep it, but I hacked off his arms and took it from him anyway.”)
[/QUOTE]
The thing that caught my attention the most in Episode IV was the way Uncle Owen pretended like he didn’t recognize the two droids that used to be in his possession. He’s either senile, or has owned a lot of forgettable droids in his day.
[QUOTE=Lochdale]
2. It takes 20 years to build a Death Star? WTF.
[/QUOTE]
Too long, or too short?
[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
Ah, but Trunk was responding to my point about the visual beauty of SWIII. Which I think applies to ALL the SW movies. Whatever you may think of the acting and direction (and I don’t share your opinions, I’m just choosing not to argue that point here) the movie had brilliant art direction, cinematography and CGI. But that’s only part of the story. Lucas is about the only director I’ve ever seen who is able to convincingly imagine what a society that is on the whole much wealthier than Earth would be like. I mean, imagine what New York would look like to a Stone Age tribesman. That’s kinda what I think the capital of a world-spanning galactic empire would look like to us. And Lucas has gotten close to conveying that
sense of wonder
than any other director I know.
[/QUOTE]
What I found surprising was the absolute monotony of the scenery in Revenge of the Sith. It’s true that any given scene set on whatever planet it was looked pretty nice - but the trouble is that every room looked identical. It’s one of those things that really drew me out of the movie - seeing what looked like the same set reused over and over (particularly odd since much of it was probably CGI and there was no reason not to go all out and actually make different places look different.)
[QUOTE=RickJay]
Lucas doesn’t get bonus points for “Creativity” for creating three poorly written and directed movies just because they’re original screenplays. Logically, that would make “Plan 9 from Outer Space” more “original” than “The Godfather.” Maybe in one sense it is, but who cares?
[/QUOTE]
Exactly. And particularly so given how very, very uninspired the story was. It’s not just that it was bad, but there wasn’t any particular creativity present in the storyline at all.
What ruins the movie for me, though, is the same thing everyone else has been saying - Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman simply were not convincing. I’ve seen Natalie Portman in a couple other things and generally enjoyed her performances; I’ll have to take you guys’ word for it that Hayden Christensen is not normally such a godawful actor. But the two together? Under Lucas’ direction? Dreadful. I simply couldn’t suspend my disbelief and imagine that they actually cared about each other, because they were so unconvincing together. Even if the actors’ performances weren’t the strong point of the original trilogy, they were good enough that I could buy the characters as real people. Not so in RotS. And given the weakass motivation for Hayden Christensen’s betrayal - something that’s already been discussed earlier - not being able to believe in his feelings for his wife makes the entire movie fall apart.
But yeah, it had some pretty scenery in spots.
[QUOTE=ululate]
(You’re right about the retcons, though. I now wish for an Ewan MacGregor dubbing session for Episode IV: “Obi-Wan? Now that’s a name I haven’t heard since, oh, long before you were born. Well, except for the way your mother called me Obi-Wan right after you’d been born. Anyhow, here’s your father’s sword; he wanted you to have it. Well, no, that’s not entirely true; he wanted to keep it, but I hacked off his arms and took it from him anyway.”)
[/QUOTE]
Some more re-do’s from the original series:
Vader vs Obi-Wan: “Your powers are weak, old man. But you’re still younger than Count Dooku when he beat both our asses.”
Vader to Obi-Wan: “I’ve been waiting for you, Obi-Wan. We meet again, at last. The circle is now complete. When I met you I was but a jedi apprentice. Now, I am a sith apprentice.”
Yoda: “Wars not make one great… but seen me you should’ve during the Clones Wars. Kicked ass, I did.”
Yoda: “Sicker I become, old and weak… When nine hundred years old YOU reach, look as good YOU will not, hmm? But when I was 870 years old, jumping and flipping around was I!”
[QUOTE=KidScruffy]
The thing that caught my attention the most in Episode IV was the way Uncle Owen pretended like he didn’t recognize the two droids that used to be in his possession. He’s either senile, or has owned a lot of forgettable droids in his day.
[/QUOTE]
Meh, they all look alike.
[QUOTE=jsc1953 ]
“He (Luke’s father) was the best star-pilot in the galaxy, and a cunning warrior…well, he never actually was a member of any military organization. But he won a pod race once when he was a kid.”
[/QUOTE]
“We are here to protect you, we cannot fight a war for you..except for the interplanetary war we are going to fight in the next two movies”
What do you mean WTF? It’s a freakin MOON! If they could crank them out in a year there would be Death Stars around every planet thus rendering Episodes III and IV irrelevant.
[QUOTE=msmith537]
It’s a freakin MOON! If they could crank them out in a year there would be Death Stars around every planet thus rendering Episodes III and IV irrelevant.
[/QUOTE]
Technology must’ve advanced quite a bit in one generation if they were able to build another in a matter of months for Episode VI.
[QUOTE=MGibson]
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.
[/QUOTE]
“‘I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board.’ Who talks like that?”
[QUOTE=msmith537]
What do you mean WTF? It’s a freakin MOON! If they could crank them out in a year there would be Death Stars around every planet thus rendering Episodes III and IV irrelevant.
[/QUOTE]
They had the main skeleton already built. So it takes 20 years but then once it’s levelled they rebuild one in a few months? Does not compute.
[QUOTE=Lord Ashtar]
Technology must’ve advanced quite a bit in one generation if they were able to build another in a matter of months for Episode VI.
[/QUOTE]
Or they were building two at the same time.
[QUOTE=Push You Down]
Or they were building two at the same time.
[/QUOTE]
Didn’t look that way in ROTJ. So they were building two and then had a massive labour dispute?
[QUOTE=Menocchio]
“See the blood on the handle? That’s from the children he slaughtered with it. A more elegant weapon for a more civilized age.”
[/QUOTE]
“Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to hack some drunk’s arm off in a bar with one. Ah, elegance and civilisation.”
[QUOTE=Lochdale]
They had the main skeleton already built. So it takes 20 years but then once it’s levelled they rebuild one in a few months? Does not compute.
[/QUOTE]
Well, that’d be part of it. Prototypes are always a lot harder and more time consuming to build. A good chunk of building the first one would have been building the machines you need to build the Death Star itself. For the second go-round, they don’t have to worry about that. Plus, once the machines that do the first part of the DS construction are finished with their job, they can go right on to building the first part of the second DS. Sort of like an assembly line. There’d be two DSes under construction at the same time, but not at the exact same stage of construction. And, of course, right before the unveiling of the first DS, the Emperor finally dissolves the Senate, which probably freed up a bunch of funding for the Emperor’s various military projects. Not having to ram all his budget proposals through the Senate Panel for Interstellar Doomsday Devices would have considerably sped up production on the second DS.
[QUOTE=Lochdale]
Didn’t look that way in ROTJ. So they were building two and then had a massive labour dispute?
[/QUOTE]
:rolleyes: Sure why not.
[QUOTE=Lochdale]
This, of course, is one of the central arguments in the Jedi Are Stupid theory. So, a Jedi that people hardly remember ordered this army of clones. On what authority? Where did he get the money? What was the motivation for creating this army in the first place?
All important questions that the Jedi completely ignore. It’s one thing to opportunistically “appropriate” the army to rescue their comrades on Geonosis. But years later, they’re still using these clones. Aren’t any Jedi remotely suspicious? Doesn’t anyone sense something the slightest bit fishy? Based on the films, No. They’re like Homer Simpson: “Yoink! Free Army!” And then it’s forgotten.
Of course, this makes the Code 66 thing possible, which means that the Jedi’s stupid-but-convenient oversight (their “wisdom” notwithstanding) is necessary to facilitate that particular plot point. Really really dumb.
[QUOTE=Lochdale]
All in all I liked the movie but it didn’t stick with me the way the original triology did. Probably has a lot to do with age but I also think it has a lot to do with one major character who was missing from the prequels:
Han Solo.
Star Wars worked for me because of Han Solo. Forget the force and all that nonsense. As a kid I wanted to be a wise-cracking, ass-kicking space pirate like Han Solo. Luke was boring. Obi-Wan was boring. Han got the girl, shot first and lived the fun life. He also made the movies in a sense. Not having a Han Solo character really lessened the prequels for me. Solo humanized the movies in a way that celibate monks just didn’t do.
[/QUOTE]
Right on the money. Almost all the discussion in this thread is centered around the idea that the story and characters were basically good but should have been executed better in the movie. I think the whole premise was flawed, it just doesn’t work the way the original movies did. The first trilogy was a HUMAN STORY and the aliens and droids were just there for color, really. All the main characters, good and evil, were humans - Luke and Leia and Han and Obi-Wan vs. Palpatine and Vader. It was a human story.
The overemphasis on droids and aliens with goofy-ass names meant that the prequels had none of that humanity.