Aha! We finally found him! Why do you ride on so many buses?
This
This. I did like Queen Amidala’s starship tribute to the CIA A-12 spy plane. That was the highlight of the movie for me.
And This. The warrior teddy bear race needed to die (where is the Deathstar when you need one). This was the beginning of the Lucas SW downfall. At some point in the movie I was rooting for the ridiculous robo-elephants to stomp dead all the even more ridiculous care-bears. Return of the Jedi should have been renamed Return of the Lucus Paycheck. It was nice to see that Jabba the Hut has since gotten work doing the Mucinex commercials.
This isn’t a function of people outgrowing the original movies. As TWDuke pointed out, the same people who grew up on Star Trek and Doctor Who enjoyed the newer versions.
I couldn’t personally bring myself to see the last movie because of the death spiral that started with the 3rd movie. It gets lumped in with the first three when really it should be filed with the last four.
Not even close, no. But you’re right that I should have seen the OP and realized you were being sarcastic. My previous note stands, but the warning is reversed.
I’m not sure where this quote is from but I have it still and I thought it was another so far undiscussed problem with the entire prequel triology:
That’s an interesting thought. How might the prequels have turned out if Lucas had an express goal to make it so you could watch 1 through 6 and have it be a continuous story?
Obviously the transformation from Anakin to Vader would have to be removed entirely. It wouldn’t even be that hard to do. Obi-Wan and Anakin could still have their emotional fight over the lava pit with Anakin falling to his (presumed) death, then nothing. The closure of the film would come from Padme, Yoda, and Obi-Wan going into hiding from Palpatine (oh, if Padme must inexplicably die, then she must, but finding a new life with Senator Organa would work just as well).
The only difficulty I can see with that is reconciling Obi-Wan’s line about “[Vader] betrayed and murdered your father.” But it probably could be done, especially if you threw out the prequels as they are now and redid them from the ground up.
I think if Lucas had gone in with that approach, the prequels would be far better movies, as they’d have to stand on their own feet rather than riding the backs of the original trilogy like a crazy green Muppet.
The strongest criticism from the 70-minute review is that “Phantom Menace” has no protagonist. A few posts upthread Anakin is stated to be the protagonist, but is he? Qui-Gon Jinn is far more present than Anakin. And the protagonist of the entire trilogy, logically, should be Obi-Wan, but he’s amazingly weak and ineffective in this film.
As our correspondent notes, in some movies you could get away with having no clear protagonist, but you sure can’t in a movie like this. You need a hero.
Well, he did. It’s just that “Episodes” 1 through 3 are idiotic.
There’s no reason they could have made these movies when they did and have them work. Obi-Wan’s “Vader murdered your father” line has already been revealed to be a lie (or, as Obi-Wan’s ghost says, true from a certain point of view.) And it’s a reasonable lie to tell, and works in understanding Obi-Wan, who understandably would prefer to think of Darth Vader as being something totally different from the man he knew and loved as a brother.
The prequels do ride on the back of the sequels, but they still don’t work, because they don’t make any sense anyway, and they’re just not well made movies. If the only problem with them is that you had to watch the first three movies to understand them… well, that wouldn’t really be a problem at all. “The Two Towers” doesn’t really work if you haven’t seen “The fellowship of the Ring” but it still works. It’s meant to be watched as a sequel, and that’s fine. The prequels were meant to be watched after watching Star Wars-SB-ROTJ and that’s okay too, but they just shanked them.
As the 70-minute-guy points out, “Phantom Menace” just doesn’t make a lick of sense as a story. It’s one of the worst-written movies I’ve ever seen, counting only professionally made movies; I cannot offhand think of a worse-written movie I’ve ever seen (in this context, of course, part of what we see on screen is also editing, not just writing, but I can’t see how the film could have been edited to make it better or worse.) Irrespective of intent, the execution was an epic fail.
Having Padme live would also solve the continuity problem of Leia apparently having memories of the first two minutes of her life.
I think the prequels could have worked, even with everyone knowing the key elements. Isn’t a core part of Greek tragedy the inevitability of things? But to make it work, you’d have to have Obi Wan as an actual, sympathetic character, and focus on his friendship and mentoring of Anakin. Have him make the wrong decisions for the right reasons. Show that he’s grown to love this kid like a son, and watches him slide into evil, not despite his efforts, but in part due to them. That would be compelling, even if everyone knows how it ends.
RickJay, I think **Bosstone **is referring to his alternate ending to the prequels, in which Obi Wan (along with everyone else) would think that Anakin had died by his hand. So no one would know who Darth Vader really was, and Obi Wan’s mention of him betraying and killing Luke’s father makes no sense.
The basic flaw with the prequels is that George had to return his copy of “Hero With A Thousand Faces” to the library. 
The prequels concentrated on the backstories of the wrong characters, in my opinion. The prequels should have been about Han Solo, the early days of the Empire, and all those grizzled old Rebel pilots (where did they come from? Where were they trained and organized? Are they all ex-Imperial pilots?) There’s a gold mine of potential material there. I think the official canon says that Han Solo was an Imperial pilot before going rogue as a smuggler - right there is like a treasure trove of potential badass scenes; then he worked as a smuggler - more badass scenes. The early Empire in its formative stage would have been great to show - all those Moffs and evil Nazi/British-esque officers - where did they come from? How were they trained? What was Palpatine like after he first became evil but before he became old and decrepit? The Rebel Alliance - how did it come to be? Who were its early organizers?
All of this would have been really compelling material for prequels. Those guys were always the more interesting parts of Star Wars to me, anyway - the spiritual Force stuff and the back story of Anakin never really interested me at all. I was always way more intrigued by the war powers and the criminal elements.
Sort of, yeah. I mean, the prequels make sense chronologically, but as it stands right now, if you watch the prequels before ever seeing the originals, the dramatic reveal of Vader being Luke’s father is completely hosed. Chronologically it works, sure, but it kills the emotional impact.
Another reason why the backstory of Anakin was a lame thing to make the prequels about compared to other material they should have explored instead.
Part of the problem is that GL can’t seem to decide what story he is telling. If you watch the deleted scenes in Phantom Menace it becomes clear that originally Anakin was damaged goods from the get go. He killed another little street urchin. He is not a happy go lucky optimist. He is already a barely contained ball of rage. All that was cut out to make it more kid friendly and more of an adventure story. Between that and the Han/Greedo thing it almost seems that George is afraid of showing nuanced characters. Either he is only comfortable with black and white, or he thinks the audience can’t deal with gray.
Jonathan
I’ve only read page one of this thread (and watched 5 of the 7 parts to that long arse critique), but I have to say that this whole discussion is unbelievably surreal.
Right now we have have the OP and others who love the first three Star Wars movies and are simultaneously chastising those that critique it of being losers who have never kissed a girl. Seriously. The argument is actually being made that those who hate Star Wars are weirdo losers who suck at life, without a hint of irony.
Here’s another critique of TPM:
Vader is a monster. A ruthless, utterly dispicable person who will go to any lengths to achieve his goals up to and including the cold blooded killing of BILLIONS of people on an entire planet. You could go all Godwin and throw in Hitler as a comparison but honestly, even Hitler didn’t have the same reach and the same level of terror that Darth Vader rose to in episodes 4-6. Seriously, imagine Hitler with a passion for killing four orders of magnitude greater than he did, with mystical powers to allow him to kill anyone who crossed him at whim.
So now you’re creating a 3 movie arc to show the creation of this uber-Hitler. Where do you start? Well by making him a precocious little kid you just want to eat up and root for him to win that pod race! A guy whose anger comes from voluntarily leaving his mom to rot for a decade as a slave and because his teacher won’t let him play with the big boy toys. Seriously? He’s HITLER! If you want me to empathize with his plight you’re really going to have to try a hell of a lot harder than that.
Nitpick: Vader isn’t the one who blew up Alderaan. That’s the handwork of Grand Moff Tarkin.
Nope, I think it is nomal.
When 4 was originally released (I saw it twice on opening night), GL spoke of doing 9 films, with 4, 5, and 6 being the “current story line”, 7.8 and 9 being the “sequel” and 1, 2, and 3 being the “prequel”. It made sense. You wouldn’t have to pay any of the actors gynormous salaries as they could not play their younger or older selves.
Episodes 4 and 5 were masterpieces.
IMLTHO, 6 jumped the shark with the Ewoks. I think they were created so GL could pimp them as plushies and create a string of direct-to-DVD movies and cartoons.
Then GL and the studio came up with a briliant idea: warmed-over leftovers. Let’s release a new version with Jabba the Hutt added! Let’s release a version that doesn’t show Princess Leia’s nipples under that gown! Let’s do everything except shooting the remaining films!
Then Episode 1 came out with Jar Jar (Stepin Fetchit) Binks. Was he a gay archetype? Was he a throwback to the “shuffling negro” archetype? What on earth did he have to do with the plot? It was Episode 6 all over again.
I decided then and there that GL had lost his mind and one fan (I’m sure he weeps about it every day as he rolls around in his money). I haven’t gone to see 2 and 3, and I probably won’t see 7, 8, and 9…
It comes from the idea that fans hate their fandom, or doing anything new with their fandom, so if you hate the new movies, you’re just a Star Wars fan, and being so means you’re a loser at life.
Never mind that the prequels can be utterly blasted on literary merits without ever once retreating into fanboy nitpicks.
I knew the prequels weren’t for me when, during the pod race, I found myself deeply wishing I was watching the lightcycle scene from Tron instead.
I definitely agree with this. Vader is the most recognized iconic villain in all of cinema. If you’re going to portray him as a child, you don’t make him the good guy! These stories are space opera, with clearly defined sides of good and evil battling against each other. When watching the monstrous, menacing Darth Vader in the original trilogy, I should be thinking “boo! hiss!” not “ah, but he was once such a cute lil’ boy!” It just brings up too many conflicting emotions that don’t belong in what amounts to a fairy tale set in space.
I was just watching Harry Potter 6 the other day, and that’s one where they got it right. Voldemort, like Vader, is an iconic villain that is unequivocally evil. They show him as a kid, and then growing up as a young adult, and at each stage you can definitely see the early signs of a psychopath killer in the making.
Was there any indication in Ep I that the kid was going to grow up to be the most evil person in the galaxy? No, he loved his mommy and flew a spaceship around shouting “yippee!” Even Ep II and III got it wrong. There are scenes where Anakin begins to show his psychotic tendencies, like the sand people massacre, but it’s masked by petulant whining and crying. What would’ve worked even better is if after the sand people massacre, Anakin didn’t tell anyone what happened, and didn’t even feel any guilt for it. Sure he did it out of revenge, but it’s not a huge step up from there to going around killing other jedi without remorse.
It would’ve been more difficult to set him up for his redemption at the end of Ep 6, but it could happen. In fact, you could even make it more meaningful. Perhaps Obi-Wan finally catches on to the fact that Anakin is a dangerous psychopath and hides his kids from him, and tells him they died. Anakin blames Obi-Wan, fight ensues, Anakin falls in volcano and puts on asthma suit. Years later, Vader discovers his children are actually alive, and decides to put them to use. It’s only when he sees the emperor roasting his son alive, and that he’s about to lose his son again, but that it’s really his fault this time, that he realizes what he’s become.
I don’t even have an issue with the basic idea that Anakin was a good kid who ended up becoming a monster. There’s interesting things you could do with that premise. You could mine some interesting “nature vs nurture” themes, it could be an exploration of evil and what creates it. Is it inborn? Is it the product of an unjust world? Some combination of both? It’s a complex, thorny issue that could be the heart of a very good science fiction story (even one with laser swords and massive starships battles). Just look at Battlestar Galactica for an example of intelligent sci fi drama done well.
Unfortunately, Lucas just isn’t good enough of a storyteller to do his own premise justice. He sets Anakin up as this adorably angelic (a.k.a. incredibly annoying) little urchin, and then spends the next two movies having him execute ridiculous character about-faces while passively whining about all the shit going on around him. Never once is there any serious attempt to explore what’s going on under the surface with Anakin, or to bring the character into situations where he has to make important decisions. Instead, he just follows the lead of whatever Older Jedi happens to be in physical proximity, and whoops, it’s just bad luck that the last Older Jedi turns out to be THE FUCKING EMPEROR.
Voila. Darth Vader’s origin story.