Someday he will. It’s not a big secret that George Lucas has always been more into the technology side of movie-making, and he’s done some great things with it. ILM is amazing. But I think some day he will make a movie where the “actors” are computer generated and that will be fine with him.
Mr. Peg-to-Be made us wait in line for 3 hours for Attack of the Clones. He will never live this down. Of course, he claims that I ruined his experience by cringing at the Padme-Anakin scenes, but … who would not have cringed? The direction was so bad and that dialogue! Don’t get me started, my head will explode.
I am not a huge fan of the first Star Wars trilogy; going back and seeing them, they do have problems. (Empire is probably the strongest of the 3 and it’s interesting that someone else wrote or helped write it.) I suspect, however, that the vast love for the first series has something to do with nostalgia.
Hey, at least George Lucas has the decency to leave the N’Sync guys as jedis in training in the editing room.
Glad I’m not the only one. Well, “loved” is too strong, but I certainly liked both of them. They both have their stupid parts, stilted dialogue, and wooden performances, but so what? So did the originals. Hel-lo, people, does the name “Mark Hammil” ring any bells? It ain’t like the boy’s some sort of acting genius.
They’re popcorn flicks, not high philosophical art. And judged as popcorn flicks, they deliver. The action scenes are pretty damn cool, they look great, and if you turn off your brain and just relax already, they’re a fun way to blow a couple of hours. If you’re looking for anything more than that in a Star Wars flick, you’re definitely going to be disappointed.
I liked them too, but I thought the politics was at least a little deep. Certainly more well thought out than in the original trilogy. If you watch them with your brain off, you’ll miss the deeper level of the bad guys’ motivations, which is probably okay for some, but the machinations are my favorite part. And I think that once you figure it out, that’s just what they want you to think, and there’s even another level below that.
Heh, priceless. It was pretty fucking stupid. I mean, didn’t these Jedi have ships? They couldn’t have controled the staduim before diving into flying plasma? I hope the rest of the Jedi don’t go down so easy.
Actually, a lot of the politics is pretty unbelievably stupid/unexplained. David Brin has written a series of articles discussing the goofiness of it all, including Lucas’ “if you get angry enough at an evil that’s hurting your friends to strike it down, then that magically makes you into a genocidal warlord that turns on all your old friends!” stuff.
He links to his articles on the first movie, and I really agree with him on that one: THAT plot made NO sense whatsoeverwhen you try to think too deeply about it (yes… let’s send out somone to kill the very person who I need for my master plan to work!)
Hey! ‘Dem’s fightin’ words! kicks minty in the shins.
Mark Hamill RULES!!! Do you hear me? He RULES!
Seriously, he’s done a lot on Broadway, and small parts, as well as voiceovers for cartoons and he wrote his own series of comic books with a cousin.
From what I’ve read, Mark chose to take a more low-profile career on stage after the SW movies to be able to be with his family. He’s also one hell of a nice guy.
Okay, I think I read what you were directing me to (There’s a lot on that page and the links therein.), and if so, I’m not convinced yet. I admit that Brin knows a lot more about storytelling than I do - in particular, I don’t know what Campbellian storytelling is - so I write this response at the risk of being completely wrong. But I’m going to do it anyway. In a spoiler box, just in case:
[spoiler]For Phantom Menace, he says that Sidious should not have sent Maul to kill Amidala. This is true if you assume that what went down was the plan all along. However, it all makes sense if you assume Sidious had some other plan. In particular, he was in no hurry. If Amidala had been killed at the hands of the Trade Federation, it would have galvanized the Senate against them, and as long as Sidious controls the Federation and the Federation controls Vellorum, Vellorum can be dethroned. If Amidala had been killed, either at the hands of the Federation, or by Maul, which could then be blamed on the Federation, there would have been little doubt in the mind of the Senate that something needed changing.
As it turns out, there was little enough doubt for it to work anyway, but who could have expected that? Think about what Amidala did; was there any reason to think it would have worked? Palpatine wasn’t even elected Chancellor until after the Federation was defeated! Unlike in Attack of the Clones, promoting Palpatine did not benefit the side of “good” in the short term.
Now, why is Maul still after Amidala after Vellorum is thrown out? Because Sidious still wanted the Trade Federation as pawns. Because of Amidala’s intervention, the only way Sidious can keep the Federation around is by bribing the Supreme Court. And remember in Attack of the Clones, they still want her dead. It’s because they knew she came this close to destroying them.[/spoiler]
Some of Brin’s problems also seem to stem from the idea that he doesn’t like the message, i.e., evil wins. Aside from my initial reaction - that’s his problem - I don’t think he’s looking at the big picture. Episodes I-III are supposed to show evil defeating “good”, so that IV-VI can show the good that overcomes that evil. I think a big part of it, which Brin doesn’t seem to notice or agree with, is that the “good” Jedi and Senate are really too closed-minded to catch what’s going on. It takes a catastrophe to put it all back in perspective. In a sense, the Old Republic is no better than the Empire, and it’s in the Rebellion that you put your faith.
In a nutshell, Joseph Campbell identified an archetypal story (“The Hero’s Journey”) that is reflected in all the great stories of folklore and mythology. George Lucas consciously structured his films to reflect this.
Sorry, but it just doesn’t make any sense. The entire plot seemed like someone had read novels about political intrigue, and threw in a bunch of elements from that genre, but didn’t realize that they all had to work together coherently. If it isn’t Palps plan to engineer his rise to power, then who cares about that little planet? And since when did the Princess nearly beat them at their game? She accomplished precisely nothing: managing only to help them. And she continues not to be any sort of threat whatsoever: in fact quite convienient for yet another tricksy ploy. And Brin’s point is simply that its a little deflating to realize that everything the heros spent all their time doing, and hence everything you’ve been watching, was utterly pointless and unecessary.
Probably not. We discussed Campbell’s influence on Stars Wars in a thread here a while back. Essentially, there are several sources which assert that Lucas didn’t read Campbell’s works until after the first two movies had come out. Lucas is accused of attributing influence to Campbell as a way of making his work seem more meaningful, and at the same time Campbell is accused of ingratiating himself with Lucas to reach the younger generations. There’s at article at Salon about this.
I never said it wasn’t. I think we agree on what Darth Sidious’s plan was; we only differ on how exactly he planned to accomplish it.
I can only assume by “Princess” you mean Queen Amidala, and by “them” you mean the Sith. I was talking about the Trade Federation, not the Sith. The rebellion led by her did manage to destroy their stranglehold on Naboo, didn’t it?
Doesn’t this happen a lot in stories? The heroes make mistakes in the first part, and have to fix it in the second part?
This article? I don’t know what makes Steven Hart’s opinion more credible than Lucas’ and Campbell’s on this particular topic. He doesn’t seem to have more contempt for Lucas and Campbell than understainding of what either man’s work was about
Well, he is right in that Lucas didn’t say anything about Campbell’s mythological theories until some time after Star Wars had become popular. Strange how Lucas would remain silent about what was supposedly his biggest influence, eh?
But Lucas redeemed himself with AOTC. As it should be obvious, Lucas deliberately made Jar-Jar act REALLY stupid in TPM with the clear objective of setting up his fundamental role in leading to the creation of the Clone Army (else, how could the audience be expected to assimilate the fact that someone could possibly be THAT brainless?).
This alone makes Jar-Jar’s unbridled display of annoyance back in Ep. 1 truly worthwile; it was required to substantiate future plot developments. You see, my esteemed TWDuke, it was all brilliantly planned in advance.
Okay, I just finished watching this movie on HBO. Yeck, what a movie. I knew I was lost when I kept giggling over Yoda sounding like a geriatric Sesame Street Grover and CP3O was a dead-on natch for Katherine Hepburn.
Lucas didn’t remain silent or we wouldn’t even be discussing this. He may not have brought it up immediately, but I don’t see how he had any compelling reason to do so. It’s not that important to me whether Lucas considered any of Campbell’s ideas when working on Star Wars, but I still haven’t seen any reason to call him a liar and a fraud for saying he did. We seem to have wandered away from episode 5, but if you’d like to start or bump a more appropriate thread to debate that essay, I might join in.
I’ve said it before: I quite enjoyed AotC. I won’t say it was a genius film, but none of the SW movies were. I’d probably rank it the third best of the series. Palpatine’s plan, if you take a close look, is more or less reasonable. And I laughed aloud at the point when Palpatine “convinces” Jar-Jar to “help”. Hayden was perfect in the Tusken Raider camp, and Ewan McGregor was just perfect, period. Hayden was quite convincing as the rather confused, increasingly angry Anakin.
That said, I understand why people didn’t gape in awe, but not to the degree of disgust so many seemed to have. The fact is, it is precisely like the originals, and probably a lot more polished. The only thing most people really identify as disliking is the romance scenes, which I thought were more or less right - these two are blindly inexperienced late-teen idiots, both of them extremely sheltered, isolated, and buried in work. They aren’t in love - theyy’re infatuated. I think the bad romance hit a little too close to home for too many people.
But seriously, I’ve become convinced that there are a lot of people out there who forgot what Star Wars has always been about: awesome vistas and wonderful sound. Thats it. The background tells the story.
