I was hugely disappointed by The Phantom Menace. I hoped that Attack of the Clones would be so good it would make me re-evaluate the first movie and “save” it for me. Well, be careful what you wish for. Clones was so absolutely god-awful that I know look back at PM with a sort of nostalgia. I mean, sure, Jar Jar was annoying, but at least he was a new character. They didn’t take established characters I had previously liked and ruin them with unbelievably stupid jokes, like they did with C3P0 and R2-D2. The villains were actually kind of cool. Darth Maul didn’t get enough screen time, but he was really menacing and interesting. Clones gave us Count Dooku. Even Christopher Lee couldn’t salvage a character with a name that stupid. And Yoda was simply retarded. His big fight scene was neat, but where was the great, subtle mystic of Empire Strikes Back? That Yoda wouldn’t have been fooled for a second by the shallow, stupid machinations of this latter day Palpatine. Even Hayden Christiansen actually made me long for the understated, nuanced performance of Jake Lloyd. And don’t get me started on Amidala…
Attack of the Clones wasn’t merely bad. It was down there with Battlefield Earth.
Since we’re mentioning it, I’ve enjoyed the LOTR films more than the books, probably the only case of that happening with respect to a book that wasn’t by Thomas Harris.
As you’re relatively new here, I recommend you do a search for LOTR in Cafe Society for the last coupla years and you’ll find a huge contingent of die-hards who absolutely loved Peter Jackson’s films.
On second thought, don’t do a search. You’ll likely give the hamsters conniption fits.
As for Star Wars I & II, I thought TPM was a crushing bore redeemed only by the closing credits and AOTC was marginally better if only because of the Yoda fight scene. I can’t say I was surprised, though. When the special edition butcheries were released back in the mid-'90s, I felt like a kid at Xmas time and fully intended to see all three of them on the big screen multiple times, just like when I was 9 yrs old. And then Greedo shot first.
I immediately filed Lucas into the over-rated hack category, never bothered seeing the other special editions and re-adjusted my expectations for the new trilogy. Sadly, those expectations were borne out.
Not that old, but I’ve seen it. And the animated version of the Hobbit, where Smaug has a hairy back. God, the torture. Don’t want to kill the hampsters, but I’m glad to see it was just some people who didn’t like the movies. I thought they were the best possible movies that could be made from the books. Yes, he could’ve covered every single little detail, but the movies would’ve been five hours long…
That’s what the DVD box sets are for!
To force myself back on topic, Episode 1 was bad, Episode 2 was worse, and god knows what Episode 3 is going to be. I think George Lucas has gotten so obsessed with being George Lucas that he forgets what got him to that point: good movies.
I was sort of amused by the latter parts, where there was so much flashy loud colorful cg happening all over the screen that the actors looked like people who’d wandered in front of a blue screen by mistake. Also:
No. No, you were not. That would have improved the scene greatly.
[Yoda]Aaaahh! Andale, andale, arriba arriba! Cut thrust spin parry bounce! Arriba arriba![/Yoda]
Meh on the Tolkien movies. I understand that movies are a very different medium, and require re-writes, but they took out some very important stuff just to add in cliches, vasaline over the camera lens, and terrible, terrible dialouge and comedy. It could have been a great series of movies whether it was like the books or not, but when I started hearing lines that have been in a gazzillion movies before I said to myself “this is what happens when you let your wife write the screenplay.”
They weren’t terrible, the effects were great, and some bits are very well done. But there were also cringers, and there just didn’t half to be, no matter what story it was telling.
Hey, it could have been worse, you could have been watching Star Trek V: The Final Frontier! (Don’t deny the movie exists. You know it does. Even SW fans can admit that there’s some lamo SW movies, so you Trekkers can suck it up and admit that there’s a sucky ST movie!)
I just finished watching it. I think I have a new formula: my enjoyment of the movies in the current series is exponentially opposite the delight obtained from this series by fans of the original trilogy. Yep. I liked the Phantom Menace, and I liked this one better than the first three too. A lot better. OTOH, I really hate three movies that came out first…
But … but … but, Aragorn never fell off a cliff! And when Galdalf lifted Wormtongue’s spell from the King of Rohan, he was supposed to go charging into battle, not wimp out and hide! Waaaaaah!
ivylass: That sounds just like me when I watched the DVD.
We rented it when it came out. My daughter and I sat down to watch it. About 20 minutes into the movie I find myself drifting. About 30 minutes into the movie I find I didn’t really watch the past 10 minutes from when I realized I was drifting.
I got up and left the room and did something else.
About 10 minutes later I hear my 11 year old daughter turn the TV off.
I REALLY wanted to like that movie. I loved the first Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back. The “Darth Vader vs The Teddy Bears” Jedi movie kind of sucked, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as Phantom. I REALLY wanted Attack of the Clones to be better. I finally made it though the entire movie. It took 3 sittings though.
I have to say you didn’t miss much. The movie got worse as it moved along.
See, I thought the half of the movie that didn’t involve Anakin or Padme was actually a good movie, and if they had stopped cutting to the contrived and chemistry-free romance, they might have actually had a good transition movie to take us from a democratic republic to a fascist empire. Unlike a lot of fans, though, I actually like a lot of the political stuff that was going on. I mean, we know how the story turns out - but how do we get from Republic to Empire? And the parts of the story that didn’t involve the romance did move to get us there. Much more so than Phantom Menace, which mainly served to get Palpatine to the Chancellor’s chair.
Hayden Christensen was abysmal, and Natalie Portman phoned in her performance, but if you cut out pretty much every scene that involved them and remove them from scenes where they were bit players, you actually come up with a decent film. I mean, at the end, when we’re seeing the stormtroopers marching into the transports and hearing the Imperial March, knowing that about half the Jedi were killed in the first battle, you realize how clever is the Dark Side.
Unfortunately, this appreciation was rather marred for me, in finding out the first battle consisted of all the Jedi–those uber-wise, Force-filled defenders of all–dropping deliberately into an enclosed open space under constant crossfire.
But come to think of it, I guess this does explain why Yoda scoffed at being called a great warrior. All those years on the swamp, smacking his forehead, muttering “For what did I do that? Ohhhh.”
Granted, Episode II had plenty of flaws. But to be fair to Lucas, it had none of the same flaws as the first one. He’s learning from his mistakes. Fans hated Jar-Jar, so he cut Jar-Jar’s importance as much as he plausibly could, given the story. Fans hated midichlorians, so they’re not so much as mentioned in the second one. Fans hated having Annakin as an overly-cute little kid, so he’s a teenager now. The pitiful excuse for a villain in the first one didn’t do anything remotely evil, and got killed off before he could develop, so the new villian tries to corrupt the heros, and escapes at the end.
I have great hopes for Episode III. If Lucas learns from his mistakes here the same way he did from Episode I, we could end up with a great movie. There are only so many mistakes he can make, and I think that he’s running out.
