Yes, the Holiday Special definitely comes across as one of those ‘what kind of drugs were they on when they made this?’ things when you see it.
Itchy. They named Chewbacca’s father ‘Itchy’. And his son ‘Lumpy’.
'Nuff said.
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Empire Strikes Back: One of two Star Wars movies that I can call “good” with a straight face, and this one is genuinely GREAT. The sharpest dialogue of the series, intense character-based drama, the best adventure movie score ever written, and special effects that still hold up today. Plus, extra points for being the part of the original trilogy that Lucas fucked-over the least in the Special Editions.
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A New Hope: The other good one. A fun Western-ish adventure… IN SPACE! Harrison Ford may be the only member of the lead trio who could act, but as a group, they demonstrated more chemistry in individual scenes than Anakin and Padme did in all three prequels combined. Diminished somewhat now that <i>Serenity</I> has shown just how amazing a space western can be with smart dialogue and great acting.
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Return of the Jedi: Okay, the Ewoks are lame, but at least they don’t speak English. The one-two punch of the Emperor/Luke/Vader stuff and the space battle elevate this one from the surrounding cutesy dreck.
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Revenge of the Sith: Oh gawd, Lucas is a terrible writer. Fortunately, he infused the last act of the movie with enough violence and Ewan McGregor that it didn’t matter so much. Unfortunately, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”
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The Phantom Menace: Crap except for the bad-assness that is Darth Maul. Looking back, the special effects are astoundingly bad. It’s VERY obvious that this movie was made when computer effects were cool just because they were made by COMPUTERS! The space battle in “Jedi” looks better than anything on display here.
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Attack of the Clones: The nadir of the series. Pretty battle at the end, but that doesn’t salvage the horrific dialogue and plank-like acting. And Chris Lee, as cool as he was as Saruman, just ain’t Darth Maul.
The Empire Strikes Back is a masterpiece. Still as powerful today as it was back then. Why Lucas didn’t take the hint and act as Executive Producer and story consultant on the prequels I’ll never know. Actually, I do know: ego.
Star Wars: A New Hope is a classic as well, and proof of the power of good editing and the importance of cast chemistry.
tie: Return of the Jedi and Revenge of the Sith RotJ has the original cast who still had some of their cheminstry and a great space battle, but lacks the dangerous edge of Empire and A New Hope. Sith is plenty heavy and dangerous and totally delivers the goods on the climatic duel, but Portman phoned it in and there are are a couple of other missteps. (Although I don’t really have any problem with “noo!” That’s what I would do in that situation. Of course, I’ve seen a few movies in my time…)
Attack of the Clones: a fine movie except for the awful middle parts on Naboo and the stupid tacked-on droid factory chase. If only, instead of a quiet reviere in the country, the assasins would have followed Aanakin and Amadala to Naboo and she fell in love with him because he kept saving her life in heroic fashion Clones would have been a kickass movie.
Phantom Menace Lucas was clearly out of practice. The whole thing was totally derailed by one decision: Aanakin should have been a teenager instead of being nine years old. All the other mistakes (well, except Jar Jar) flowed from that decision.
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Star Wars. Everything else since then has been trying to re-capture that first high.
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ESB. Action, interesting story developments and good direction.
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RotS. Only parts 3, 4 and 5 were anything close to story driven.
IMO, parts 1,2 and 6 were not important to the overall story and were designed to be infomercials for ILM.
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AotC. Great action- the massive land battle was great. Everything else, not so much.
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RotJ. Seen most of it before.
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TPM. Utter crap.
I think you’ve struck the order I would put them in, even tho I’ve yet to see RotS. It has to be better than TPM or TCW
(I’ll give my views as how I see the movies when I watch them nowdays)
A New Hope- Holds up very well. Space battles and all. With one exception, the lightsaber duel between Vader and ObiWan. Just looks really, really sad when compared to any of the other duels in any of the other movies. And this is supposed to be Vader at the height of his power and ObiWan at his most experienced. Just doesn’t fit in with the others.
Empire Strikes Back- Agreed as the best of the series. One exception however. Yoda is just so out of character goofy when Luke first finds him. After watching episodes 1-3 then seeing this would make you think he’s gone senile.
Return of the Jedi- Played out as act 1 on Tattoine, and a 3-part simultaneous act 2. Act 1, too little of Rick Baker and too much Jim Henson. Act 2? Excellent Vader/Luke confrontation, excellent space battle, lame-o Ewok battle.
Phantom Menace- Practically unwatchable. Painfully unwatchable. Only redeeming value is Darth Maul. The rest is pure dreck.
Attack of the Clones- I liked this one. Bounty hunter chase through the city, ObiWan vs. Jango, gladiator style battle, big battle at the end, yoda fights. However, not without it’s faults. Mario Brothers part 5 “droid factory” serves no purpose. Not much can save wooden acting and wooden love story between Anakin and Amadela.
Revenge of the Sith- Have only seen it once but liked it a lot. Will have to see it again at home to see if it holds up.
First: Star Wars. It’s adventure SF in the purest form. Enormously large space base, towering villain in blakc with really evil voice, comic relief robots, space battle, saving the galaxy with two seconds to spare, great music, what else could you want?
Second: Empire Strikes Back. It has two of the best action scenes ever, ice battle and asteroid field. Clever writing, especially where they fly into and out of the snake. Bobba Fett is really cool. But never quite as much heart-pounding excitement as the original.
Third: Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace. Classic “meh” movies. i have no desire to see either of them again. The wit of the first two movies is mostly missing, the “yes it’s campy but let’s have some fun anyway” feeling is gone. The Ewoks I don’t mind so much, but Jar Jar is tough to ignore since for most of the movie he has no purpose.
Fifth: Attack of the Clones. Alternate title: George Lucas plays with his toys for almost three hours. The screenplay is one of the worst in Hollywood history. it was so bad that I didn’t even see Revenge of the Sith.
Not quite. Obi Wan has most likely not practiced his saber skills since his fight that led to Vader’s crippling injuries, and Vader probably hasn’t had to use his saber very often either, considering that most (and unless you’re a fan of EU, all) of the Jedi were wiped out. Vader probably just used his saber to intimidate or to strike down the occasional rebel scum. He only fairs so well against Luke because Luke doesn’t really know shit about saber fighting when compared to some of the lifelong Jedi we’ve now seen in the prequels.
Rating them relative to one another.
TPM: 3.5 Not actually painful without Jar Jar, but bland and pointless.
The plot made no sense that I could fathom. It was all one massive plot hole wrapped up in inconsistencies with no clearly defined motives by any of the characters. Trade Federation wants to ensure its monopoly, yet invades for reasons never elucidated. Jedi want to free the planet, yet for some reason think that taking a 14 year old girl, 10 year old boy and a retarded frog on a crucial stealth mission is a great idea. And dso forth for the entire movie. The entire ‘plot’ seems like a convoluted excuse for the use of special effects. Instead of SFX tacked onto plot the plot is tacked onto the SFX as an afterthought, notably the far-too long submarine sequence and the obvious video-game exercise with the pod race. Uninspired characters that nobody gave a shit about. Obi Wan spends the entire movie hanging as fifth wheel, just so he can kill the villain at the end. Main villain and main hero die and nobody cares.
AOTC 5.0 Mediocre in the extreme.
One word: why? Lots of people and robots running around shooting at things. A plot with so many pointless-yet-obvious twists and ridiculous contrivances that it made Get Smart look like Shakespeare. Yes people, you really can hide an entire planet by drawing over it with black felt pen in one atlas in one building. In the entire galaxy no other atlases exist, even in those fricken’ starships everybody seems to own. And no instruments exists that can sense that star system. And nobody can be found who ever lived there. And no reference to the planet has ever been made in history or anthropology or ecology texts. Hence the only way to even know the planet exists is to travel there and land on it. This is like suggesting hat 5 minutes with felt pen in the Library of Congress would require us to red-discover Hawaii.
And the morality of the two sides got incontrovertibly lost. No longer is does Emporer = Black Hat and Republic = White Hat. Oh no. We see Yoda personally sending brain=washed and drugged clone soldiers out to die in war. And we see Leia’s fricken’ mother marrying someone she knows is a mass murderer/war criminal. The Republic in nolonger just corrupt and incompetent and unable to protect its own citizens, it now becomes complicit in committing morally abhorrent acts.
ROTS. 6.8 Ran hot and cold, but the good bits more than made up for the bad. The major plot holes could b ignored because they weren’t actually vital to character development or plot progression. Special effects weren’t over-exploited and seemed to be used where plot demanded, rather than giving the impression of the plot being written to allow SFX as the previous two movies did.
ANH. 10 Easily the best of the bunch. Simple plot. No need for the brain to work, I could just sit back and enjoy the ride. Easily-identified-with characters. I actually cared whether Obi Wan died or whether Han would come back. Even the villain was a real villain. Good SFX, even by today’s standards, but not over played. No annoying characters and no crucial plot holes.
ESB. 7.5 A worthy sequel. In no way disappointing, great action scenes, characters are advanced while remaining faithful to their original concepts. Not sufficiently different enough from ANH to warrant a higher score. It’s really just the same crew in different locations. But that’s not a bad thing for a sequel.
ROTJ. 8. Much like ROTS, it runs hot and cold. Good character development, though Mark Hammil as kick-ass Jedi was never really plausible and always makes me wish Ford had won that role. The entire Endor/shield-generator/Ewoks side trek was a huge plot hole as well as sucking severely. Made no sense, advanced the plot not one iota. Could have been cut from the movie and I doubt anyone would have noticed. Replace the whole thing with a lone X-wing taking out the shield generator. Good climactic battles. A fine note to end on.
Yeah, I know that’s the standard fanboy excuse but it’s really a lame one. Just because they’re both a little rusty doesn’t mean they should poke at eachother with the things like two old men with canes.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I still agree it looks pretty pathetic when compared to the others. There is always the possibility that Lucas may one day remake the scene. But considering that there are people who apparently need daily medication due to the fact that Han now shoots first, I fear to think what the backlash to a remade Vader vs. Obi scene would be like.
- The Empire Strikes Back, the only SW movie I actually enjoyed instead of pretending to like so I didn’t have to endure derision from my geeky friends and ex
- The middle third or so of Revenge of the Sith
That’s it.
The study of hexes?
Haxalogy, would be my guess.
I only liked Star Wars and thought the rest were pretty crappy. Episode 1 was the absolute worst, and not just because of Chloe.
Of course he’s gone a bit batty. He went from living in the Jedi Temple, respected by the Senate, even having his own Dominar Rygel XVI Hover-Chair[sup]TM[/sup] to living alone in a slimy mudhole. It’s bound to make someone a bit nuts.
Hexalogy, that is!
Most to least favorite, with random stream-of-consciousness observations in no particular order:
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Star Wars. *“A long time ago…” * The King; The Big Number One. A show with everything but Yul Brynner. The opening crawl, the Star Destroyer, Darth Vader’s entrance. Quintessential space opera, engaging characters… Alec Guinness at his most fatherly; Peter Cushing at his most sinister. By the judicious use of matte paintings, models, deceptively simple in-camera effects and a committed attention to detail, the movie manages to pass off a Tunisian desert and a bunch of corridors as an entire galaxy in a way that the **Doctor Who ** franchise and its gravel quarries could only dream about. Subtle humor. A great musical score. Two suns. Blue milk. Scum and villainy have surprisingly upbeat tastes in light jazz! The run on the Death Star: “Stay on target… stay on target…” An entire planet gets blown up as an object lesson. An arm is severed. Gentle, nurturing relatives are incinerated into smoldering skeletons. And kids learn not to play in the trash compactor.
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The Empire Strikes Back. Close contender for the number one spot; the battle with the Imperial Walkers is fantastic. *“Hi, I’m an Imperial probe droid, and I’ll be taking over the ‘alarming machinery’ role from the last movie’s interrogation droid.” * I entirely believe that the interior of a Tauntaun smells horrible. Giant colliding asteroids have great musical accompaniment. More arms are severed. Less subtle humor. “I’m Lando Calrissian, administrator of this facility… and twice voted Smoothest Man in the Galaxy.” Threepio seems rather more annoying this time out. Yoda (That’s Yoda?!) teaches that the power to move starships is within us all, and there is no try. Why does his voice sound so familiar? Also, he hates granola. There is one scary-ass tree on Dagobah, and Yoda’s line foreshadowing this is the creepiest bit in the movie. Vader teaches that the power to move big chunks of metal is within us all, and don’t stand in front of the bay window.
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Return of the Jedi. I think I saw most of this movie in various “The Making Of…” type TV features before it even hit the theaters. Lots of Muppets, right out of the gate. The Rancor is cool, even though it’s pretty obviously a rod puppet with an unconvincing thread of fake drool; the Sarlacc is not cool. * “Hi, I’m a pulp sci-fi magazine cover from the 1950’s, and I’m going to be borrowing Leia for a few scenes, if that’s okay.”* Somehow, the idea of droids torturing other droids seems singularly pointless. Another Death Star?! * Oh, but they have to actually go inside this one;* well, that’s completely different then. The speeder bike chase is pretty exciting, for what it’s worth. An arm is severed. If the Ewoks had ever actually eaten anyone, they might have been somewhat easier to take. But probably not. The love triangle resolves itself in a way that hurts my mind. When the helmet comes off, turns out Darth Vader looks like my Uncle Frank.
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** Star Wars Christmas Special**: No arms are severed. It’s been a while, but I still recall seeing Mark Hamill’s makeup and realizing that something just wasn’t right about any of this. I didn’t recognize Bea Arthur at that time, but I did recognize Harvey Korman, and his practice of drinking through the top of his head only increased my anxiety. I also remember a bit where Chewbacca’s kid balanced on the rail of their impossibly high treehouse; the bluescreen effect or whatever wasn’t very convincing. I also recall a scene featuring Luke tinkering with some stuff among movie props from the Tatooine moisture farm, and thinking it odd that he’d go back there after his aunt and uncle had been flamed to death on the front steps, but it was still his house after all, so where else would he go? I don’t remember any of the musical interludes.
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Attack of the Clones: I rank this one above Menace because I went into it with significantly lower expectations, and also because I remember less about it. Anakin rides a bug, and hates sand. Dear God, the dialogue hurts. Lucas, why are you testing my suspension of disbelief by having the undershirt-wearing alien’s diner look so much like a 1960’s diner, even down to the napkin dispensers? The Q-tip clone aliens represent the pinnacle of effects technology and still manage to look less convincing than the cantina aliens from three decades ago. What the… Fett, you have a rocket pack! And a *flamethrower! * What the hell are you landing for, dickweed? Jango Fett’s demise makes me suspect that Lucas really is amping up the suckage intentionally. Christopher Lee’s incredibly undignified-looking escape vehicle confirms it. Yoda’s Kung-fu stance signals the nadir of the franchise so far.
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The Phantom Menace: The name alone suggests Lucas has arrived at the conclusion that the really stupid bits of the old serials were an integral part of their charm. Still… that first ten minutes were an encouraging buildup, eh? The Orientaliens’ accent gave me pause, but even so… “Oh no, there’s a Jedi loose on board! Alert out all our forces! What?! Two of them?! Holy crap, we are so screwed!” So my hopes were high until they escaped to Naboo. Then It appeared, and about ten minutes after that I walked out of the theater. Some so-called “friends” finally convinced me to attend another screening by paying my way. *“Hi. I’m Darth Maul, and I’d like to give my impression of what the character of Darth Vader might have been like, if he had no lines and died when the original Death Star exploded.” * Watto hurt. The pod race announcer hurt. Seeing Threepio hurt. Remember how in Star Wars, Threepio was willing to sacrifice himself so that Luke could escape the Tusken Raiders? Wasn’t that a nice little moment? …Anyway. Ah. So, the Force can be measured with a tricorder. Grand. Darth Vader was originally Dennis the Menace. Fine. Fine. That’s all just perfectly fine.
(?). A Very Star Wars Christmas: I haven’t actually seen it, and don’t know whether Lucasfilm has any DVD release planned. However, Christopher Lee is always watchable, and the storyline seems intriguing to say the least. If I ever score a copy, I’d hazard it would probably rate fifth on my list, or fourth if Christopher Lee doesn’t sing.
And I’d have thought that “septology” referred to the study of sepsis, or massively infectious disorders, which of course would only include the prequels.
So, Sith didn’t even make the cut, eh?
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Empire Strikes Back: One of two Star Wars movies that I can call “good” with a straight face, and this one is genuinely GREAT. The sharpest dialogue of the series, intense character-based drama, the best adventure movie score ever written, and special effects that still hold up today. Plus, extra points for being the part of the original trilogy that Lucas fucked-over the least in the Special Editions.
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A New Hope: The other good one. A fun Western-ish adventure… IN SPACE! Harrison Ford may be the only member of the lead trio who could act, but as a group, they demonstrated more chemistry in individual scenes than Anakin and Padme did in all three prequels combined. Diminished somewhat now that <i>Serenity</I> has shown just how amazing a space western can be with smart dialogue and great acting.
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Return of the Jedi: Okay, the Ewoks are lame, but at least they don’t speak English. The one-two punch of the Emperor/Luke/Vader stuff and the space battle elevate this one from the surrounding cutesy dreck.
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Revenge of the Sith: Oh gawd, Lucas is a terrible writer. Fortunately, he infused the last act of the movie with enough violence and Ewan McGregor that it didn’t matter so much. Unfortunately, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”
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The Phantom Menace: Crap except for the bad-assness that is Darth Maul. Looking back, the special effects are astoundingly bad. It’s VERY obvious that this movie was made when computer effects were cool just because they were made by COMPUTERS! The space battle in “Jedi” looks better than anything on display here.
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Attack of the Clones: The nadir of the series. Pretty battle at the end, but that doesn’t salvage the horrific dialogue and plank-like acting. And Chris Lee, as cool as he was as Saruman, just ain’t Darth Maul.
7 hours, is that a record for a double post?
Ack. Sorry about that… I came home from class to find that my browser was still on the “submit” page and assumed that it hadn’t posted correctly or something.