The Definitive Evisceration of The Phantom Menace *NSFW* 629
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the meesa-completely-agree dept.
from the meesa-completely-agree dept.
cowmix writes "When TPM came out ten years ago, its utter crappiness shocked me to the core and wounded a entire generation of geeks. My inner child had been abused and betrayed. I moped around, talking to no one, for almost two weeks. I couldn't bring myself to see #2 or #3, whatever they were called. Now, a decade later, comes Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review, the ultimate, seven-part, seventy minute analysis of this mother of all train wrecks. Not only does it nail how the film blows, but tells us why. Time, apparently, does not heal all wounds." Or, if you prefer all 7 parts embedded in one page, you can check out slashfilm's aggregation.
Good Material But Lengthy and Bad Delivery (Score:0, Insightful)
Now that said, I wish the voice acting for this review had been better. Or at least normal. The guy intentionally mispronounces everything. It was funny the first time but after a bit he just comes off as a one trick pony looking for a half million views on YouTube (well done, by the way). The pitch inflections actually recall me to a sort of idiot valley girl a la Alicia Silverstone. I think if the effort had been more serious he might have gotten a message out to Lucas and maybe even Hollywood but he needs to put his own humor on it so that's his choice. Now, this isn't the MST3K style of ripping apart a movie, it's deeper than that and I just wish it had been presented in a serious manner. Yes, you can still be funny when you're being serious, that's what makes great teachers, speakers and orators.
One important caveat that this review overlooks is that many of his criticisms center on complexities and different approaches that Lucas took (before that he wanted to take different approaches when he asked Lynch to direct RotJ [cinemablend.com]). Just because Lucas screwed it up doesn't make these things bad. Lucas gambled and he lost. He lost everything. He made something different but he wasn't good enough at what he did to ensure that it was still great. In software development, you generally start with the basics and master them before you begin an epic endeavor into parts unknown.
Lucas made bad choices and failed. If you need to relinquish another seventy minutes of your life to this failure. Watch this series. The odds are you already know all of this.
If that's what it means to be a geek... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, if a Movie wounded your inner child and destroyed your hopes and dreams, you had a very sad life. Most normal Star Wars fan just didn't watch the movie again and that's it. Personally, it was the 3rd movie that turned me off completely. Anakin's turn to the darkside felt so rushed and didn't seem to work with the character at all (one minute he's a goodie 2 shoes that's going to turn Sidius in, 30 seconds later he's bowing to his new master... wtf ?).
Different Audience (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, TPM was lame when compared to the original Star Wars trilogy, but it was never meant to please the audience of the original films. Its primary target was the little kids... progeny of the original audience. Agreed, Lucas could have achieved this with a film of the caliber of the originals, but I suspect that at that point he didn't really care to go to the effort.
Han shot first! (Score:3, Insightful)
I beg to differ (Score:2, Insightful)
You seem to have forgotten about the Star Wars Christmas special. The review its self is just too long... 70 minutes of video to review a 10 year old movie is a bit much.
Jar^2 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If that's what it means to be a geek... (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, if a Movie wounded your inner child and destroyed your hopes and dreams, you had a very sad life. Most normal Star Wars fan just didn't watch the movie again and that's it. Personally, it was the 3rd movie that turned me off completely. Anakin's turn to the darkside felt so rushed and didn't seem to work with the character at all (one minute he's a goodie 2 shoes that's going to turn Sidius in, 30 seconds later he's bowing to his new master... wtf ?).
Do not underestimate the power of the Dark Side.
Box Office (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course this doesn't directly correlate to the "crappiness" of the movie, but Phantom Menace did just shy of $1 billion in worldwide sales, and it is currently the #10 top grossing movie of all time (placing just below LOTR-TTT). It was the #2 top grossing film of all time until the first Harry Potter movie came out in 2001.
Regardless of the hype, or the previous success of a franchise, a movie cannot be so popular without being liked or enjoyable to at least a very significant portion of the population. That seems to go against TFA's opening line of "Chances are you probably didn’t like Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace."
Could Episode 1 have been better? Absolutely, in so many ways. But it was an incontrovertible success on many levels too. For me personally, various aspects of the movie was too childish (for starters).
I was more disappointed by Return of the Jedi (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why a decade later (Score:5, Insightful)
The Phantom Menace could have been fixed by 3 things...
Older Skywalker (Lets get him in his late teens)
No JarJar and/or no C3PO and R2D2 (way to many comedy characters)
No Pod-Racing... 20 minutes about 1/3 of the movie about nothing.
Did she mention Stupid? (Score:1, Insightful)
If she's so proactive why did she call for the no confidence vote so quickly, and then rush back to the planet with no plan 10 minutes later?
Stupid and quick on the draw. A hotter version of George W. Bush??
A lot of these characters are STUPID, but I don't think that's a good enough description for a redeeming movie.
Grow Up (Score:1, Insightful)
The prequel to the movies you saw as a child didn't live up to your expectations? Perhaps you should take a closer look at those first three movies, and maybe you will realize they are all crappy movies meant to be enjoyed by kids.
Re:Good Material But Lengthy and Bad Delivery (Score:2, Insightful)
So from watching the first part,
So you didn't watch the whole thing?? Your three paragraph diatraibe is rather wothless if you didn't watch the whole thing. The guy does know a thing or two about making film, and what makes this review funny isn't just ripping apart The Phantom Menace (which in itself isn't hard to do), but the way he does it and the way it is revealed there is something else about the reviewer. While this review makes some serious points pulling apart TPM, it is not a serious review itself.
How about you watch the whole thing and then start your diatribe?
Re:Different Audience (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good Material But Lengthy and Bad Delivery (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously. The review itself has more character development, plot, intrigue, etc than TPM itself. Thought I found the ST: Generations review to be a lot funnier, esp. the parts that show the shortcuts and incongruities with the series.
Re:Good Material But Lengthy and Bad Delivery (Score:3, Insightful)
Lucas gambled and he lost. He lost everything.
This is where I have to disagree. He went on to make 2 more movies, and their associated toys, video games, books, etc. He went on to make a stupid amount of money. While the person who created this entire thread said he didn't see the last two movies (and I doubt this very much) most people, even the ones who complained about TPM, did. We went to the theatres, we saw the movies, and cheered during the movie. After the movie we became the typical fanboys who tried to equate the last three movies to something from our childhood.
Right there that is the equivelant of what I did to myself by watching Transformers cartoon (the original cartoon) when I was 30 years old. I f'd up my memory. Back when I was 8 y/o Transformers was top notch graphics...now it is like reading a comic book - except not drawn as well. Same thing with these movies; we are trying to compare what our childhood memories (fantasies) represent and compare it to this -- it ain't going to fly.
Anyhow - many of us have gone to see movies for their graphics and not their stories (avatar anyone)
Re:Demo Reel (Score:5, Insightful)
I was so digusted with Ep. 2 that I never did get around to watching Ep. 3.
But you're exactly right. Lucas should have stuck with just coming up with ideas and visuals of these alien worlds and ships, and that's it, and left the storywriting to people who are actually talented at that. That's why ESB was so great: it was written by a professional sci-fi author, not Lucas. Any time Lucas writes dialog, it's beyond terrible. But his ego is so huge that he refuses to admit it, and insists on doing it himself.
Re:Why a decade later (Score:5, Insightful)
Those three points violate rule #1 of sci-fi action for kids - Marketability outweighs quality.
Older Skywalker (Lets get him in his late teens)
Younger kids identify more and are responsible (indirectly) for many more toy sales.
No JarJar and/or no C3PO and R2D2 (way to many comedy characters)
Action figures.
No Pod-Racing... 20 minutes about 1/3 of the movie about nothing.
Video games.
Re:Different Audience (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, TPM was lame when compared to the original Star Wars trilogy, but it was never meant to please the audience of the original films. Its primary target was the little kids... progeny of the original audience.
That point is addressed in one of the later clips. If this movie is made for little kids, then why make it so complicated in regards to trade disputes, political arguments in the galactic senate and the machinations of someone trying to take power.
Re:Good Material But Lengthy and Bad Delivery (Score:5, Insightful)
One important caveat that this review overlooks is that many of his criticisms center on complexities and different approaches that Lucas took (before that he wanted to take different approaches when he asked Lynch to direct RotJ).
I don't know what this sentence is supposed to mean, exactly.
Just because Lucas screwed it up doesn't make these things bad.
Well, yes it does. The Phantom Menace is bad because Lucas screwed up. And the critic does explicitly address the fact that it is not just Lucas's fault, but the fault of the editors, producers, screenwriters, and everyone else who were sycophants instead of creative partners willing to say no and challenge Lucas when he screwed up.
Lucas gambled and he lost. He lost everything.
Lucas didn't gamble anything. And he sure as frak hasn't "lost everything". He's still in the top 25 of Forbes Celebrity 100. He pulled in $170 million last year and has an estimated net worth of around $3 billion (that's three-fraking-BILLION-with-a-"B").
In software development, you generally start with the basics and master them before you begin an epic endeavor into parts unknown.
How did this vacuous comment make it to +5?
Re:Demo Reel (Score:5, Insightful)
Episode V had some great dialogue. The Yoda sequences gave us all the mystic mumbo jumbo of Episode IV, but with more Zen-like conviction and less being pure corny. The fight between Vader and Luke, and the ultimate revelation of Vader's identity was a moment of extraordinary drama that surely stands as one of the great moments in cinema history.
The whole film has a kind of tension to it that none of the other films had. It was a character driven film. The special effects don't play as a big a role. You'll note a lot of the action in this film takes place in claustrophobic places; ice tunnels on Hoth, Bespin interiors, Star Destroyer interiors, Dagobah (which is so murky it might as well be a closed interior), the interior of the worm creature/asteroid. This means the camera is concentrating less on eyecandy and more on the characters, and requires a lot more dialogue and interaction between characters.
Re:Did she mention Stupid? (Score:4, Insightful)
That was actually the point of the movie. It's all about the downfall of the Republic, characterized by Queen Amidala's ineffectual term as Senator, and the decadence of the Jedi Order, demonstrated by how even "renegade" Qui Gon Jinn tells Obi Wan to let The Force guide him. When Qui Gon said "There's always a bigger fish" he didnt mean "It sure was lucky that a bigger fish came by", he actually means it. Throughout the entire trilogy all of the Jedi blindly stumble around hoping that The Force will do their thinking for them, and without the Sith to oppose them that approach had worked pretty well for them for a long time.
So the characters in the prequel trilogy weren't mind numbingly stupid because of sloppy writing, it was all part of a larger plan to --
Oh, forget it. I can't keep this up with a straight face. If Lucas had really explored any of those ideas in the films then he could have had something interesting. Instead all we got was a bunch of muppets.
midichlorians (Score:5, Insightful)
A big problem for my enjoyment was the midichlorians, the microbes that supposedly give a person control over the Force.
By making the Force scientifically explicable rather than mystical/magical, it changed the feeling of the story for me.
So am I normal or something? (Score:3, Insightful)
I moped around, talking to no one, for almost two weeks.
Really? I mean... really?
I left the theater, commented to my friends that Lucas had lost the formula somewhere along the way, and got on with life. I rented the next two. End of story.
Re:Why a video (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure why there's this trend to having high bandwidth video for stuff that the simple written word can handle. The Apple site comes to mind with the "Learn Your Way Around the Mac in Minutes" videos, that would take only seconds if it were text. Some of us still remember how to read.
Re:Why a decade later (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the one thing it needed that would've made it a thousand times better would be a single likeable character.
I don't know about you, but for me the star of the original trilogy was Han Solo. I'm not sure who the star of the prequel trilogy was, but there was not a single Han Solo-esque character in it.
Re:Why a decade later (Score:3, Insightful)
The comparing of the opening shots of The Phantom Menace and A New Hope was a great piece of film design analysis. The scene of the blockade runner getting blasted by the star destroyer set up everything; there was a conflict going on, the rebels were weak and ill equipped and the empire was big, scary and not afraid to use force. The Jedis approaching the trade federation ships in The Phantom Menace told you nothing about either side, and that sort of weakly defined sense of design pervades the entire movie. The battle droids were never intimidating, they looked like they were designed purely to stand around waiting to be light-sabered in half. I mean storm troopers were a joke in an actual fight but at least they looked bad assed. Darth Maul had some scary design going on but he was out doing his own thing. Vader not only looked like a bad guy but he was also the fist on the long arm of the empire which added to his menace. Epic fantasy (yes, Star Wars has more in common with the Lord of the Rings then 2001) needs its clearly defined villains and heros, and some trade dispute is just not the right kind of conflict for this kind of movie.
Re:Why a decade later (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? Just those three things? Let me point out why the movie really sucked.
In IV - VI, we find the story of a character who's very evil who finds redemption. We also find out that he used to be good.
That should have been the heart of the story. Why and how did Darth Vader become so evil? How did he get seduced to the dark side? The films hand-waved through the most important question that everyone had. He thought his wife was going to die and started killing children or something.
The flaws weren't that there were too many characters. The flaw was that there just wasn't a coherant story.
Merchandising doesn't require bad child actors (Score:5, Insightful)
Those three points violate rule #1 of sci-fi action for kids - Marketability outweighs quality.
Marketability is made much easier by having a good product.
Older Skywalker (Lets get him in his late teens)
Younger kids identify more and are responsible (indirectly) for many more toy sales.
I've got a box full of the original Star Wars action figures that says the age of the kid has little to do with marketability. Furthermore, none of the other Star Wars movies featured a child so prominently and somehow they still managed to sell a galactic ass-load of merchandise.
No JarJar and/or no C3PO and R2D2 (way to many comedy characters)
Action figures.
See previous response.
No Pod-Racing... 20 minutes about 1/3 of the movie about nothing.
Video games.
You don't need pod racing to do a video game. Even if you do want to make it a video game you don't need 25 minutes of it where the plot advances nowhere and we have bad dialog and worse acting by the kid playing Anakin. They could have shown pod racing in about 2-5 minutes and you'd have your video game AND a better movie.
Re:Why a decade later (Score:1, Insightful)
Flaws?! OK, I'll grant that TPM had flaws... lots of em. But I'm not sure that I heard any of them described in part one of this excruciating mess (and no, I refuse to suffer through parts 2-7) other than a vaguely sidewise slap at Jar-Jar (as easy targets go, that one was an elephant at 3 foot range, and he still only got in a glancing blow).
Points he broughtup:
No one can describe QGJ without using his character's profession or wardrobe as descriptors. OK, let's try that one:
A mentor archetype whose quite reserve conveys the inner peace to which his order aspire. Often lacking in praise, but always supportive. Older-brotherly.
The people he got to comment could only come up with "stern." Really?!
The other one was Queen Amidala. Now to be fair, that's a trick question, since most of the film you spend watching a stand-in for the Queen and interacting with the real Amidala as "Padme". So the question should have been about Padme or the stand-in Queen Amidala. Still, let's assume they mean Padme.
An outwardly sure of herself leader whose independence covers a sense that her world is not entirely in her control. A woman trapped within the role that she feels she has to play, both literally and figuratively.
That's as far as I can go, since Amidala's character is best described in terms of her relationship to her wardrobe, which is a constantly shifting front intended to obscure her from the public eye while highlighting the significance of her role. That can't be said within the strictures that he set up, though and what I did manage to cover does seem to cover more than the idiots he interviewed who don't seem to remember who she was.
Also, what's with the editing? It looks like he added his voice to video-from-still images and then edited them for time, chopping himself off in several mid-syllable lines. If he's having trouble working any of the free movie-making tools out there, perhaps he shouldn't be doing a video review. Podcasts work just fine.
Re:Why a decade later (Score:5, Insightful)
In the phantom menace, most things could have solved by making Anikin a little older. I think some of the pod-racing was good, as it established the family as skilled in the trade. Developmentally putting a kid that young into a pod racer just seemed too fake, so the establishment seemed forced.
It is arguable that R2D2 had some knowledge of Anikin and the kids, as well as where Obi was hiding. This allowed him to deliver the message from Princess Leia. It seemed to be quite silly to have CP3O built by Anikin, and did go too far on the comic relief. The urge was likely to have some overlap between the movies, but this as a plot device failed.
An overall critic of the critics. I think many fans did not like the world painted by the second trilogy. It seemed too different. I found it was the one think that world. The empire of Anikin was the high point of civilization about to fall apart, but still visually perfect. The world of Luke was broken, not in the over the top manner of Road Warrior, but in a very natural manner where things are simply old and not much creation is going on.
Because it is funny and entertaining (Score:5, Insightful)
Who's going to watch a video review, much less a 70 minute one? Write it up on a web page with some illustrative clips.
I did. It's actually funny as hell as well as pretty insightful. If you actually watch it you'd understand that there are some points that are a LOT easier to make with a video. It also has more impact when you see Darth Lucas himself actually saying things that matter in the context of the argument about why the movie sucks.
I'm not sure why there's this trend to having high bandwidth video for stuff that the simple written word can handle.
Because there are some things that video can do that text can't and vice-versa. Sure it can be misused but that isn't an argument against the format.
Re:Demo Reel (Score:5, Insightful)
I may receive flack for this but Lucas' is *horrible* at writing dialogue. Try to count the number of times he has used the line "I have a bad feeling about this" throught the Star Wars movies and you'll get to jesus kabillion in no time.
What's more - the only variance with these lines is where to put the intonation. Here's a quick rundown on Lucas' options when writing dialogue:
1. *I* have a bad feeling about this
2. I *HAVE* a bad feeling about this
3. I have *A* bad feeling about this
4. I have a *BAD* feeling about this
5. I have a bad *FEELING* about this
6. I have a bad feeling *ABOUT* this
7. I have a bad feeling about *THIS*
That is all.
Re:Why a decade later (Score:1, Insightful)
I think the real problem is that all the kids that watched star wars when they were little grew up to be cynical assholes. Yes, every movie sucks, except the ones you watched when you were a kid, I get it.
If you look at it with fresh eyes, the original three had a weaker plot line, worse acting, worse special effects, and significantly worse choreography. C3PO and R2D2 were still there, as the robotic comic relief (to sell toys), and they were still annoying as hell. Maybe it's cool that Lucas originally did so much with such a small budget, and you somehow expect quality to scale linearly as budget increases, but it didn't turn out that way, and saying a movie is better because it is older and had a smaller budget is a pretty weak argument.
Keep in mind that every star wars movie was a kids movie. Kids were the target audience. If you were a kid when you watch one of the movies, you probably liked it, if you were not a kid, it was probably boring and predictable.
Re:Why a decade later (Score:5, Insightful)
As is was The Phantom Menace seems heavily designed to be a marketing vehicle. This is quite the opposite of the original Star Wars (not going to call it A New Hope as that was never the original title). No one knew Star Wars was going to be a hit, it was just going to be a stand alone story, an homage to older space operas. The major merchandise tie ins to movies didn't exist. The concept of a blockbuster didn't exist either. It succeeds on its own merits.
Flash forward to The Phantom Menace. Merchandising is now a huge concern. So are demographics; like many lousy movies, you either start with a kids movie and sneak in some adult jokes, or you start with a more mature movie and stick some bratty kid in to attract the kids to the theaters too (it's a sci-fi movie with explosions, the kids should have been a built-in audience without the brat). Then you toss in a comedy character so the kids keep watching and don't start whining that it's too long. The big problem with The Phantom Menace is that it was created with a formula. That may work for a Syfy movie of the week, but not a major theatrical release when your professional reputation is already starting to slip.
Re:Why a decade later (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Merchandising doesn't require bad child actors (Score:3, Insightful)
You're response is too intelligent to deserve a response. (and likely beyond the abilities of most movie executives to understand)
Re:If that's what it means to be a geek... (Score:5, Insightful)
The prequels were for kids, no doubt about it. And all these whiners who are talking about how Lucas raped their childhood (and so on) are forgetting one important thing... they were KIDS when they saw the first trilogy. The only problem with the 2nd set of movies is that after the first Trilogy, everyone and his sister tried to re-capture the model Lucas used to achieve blockbuster status. There have been DECADES of also-rans, improvements, and the entire hollywood system has morphed into the "blockbuster channel" (with some Oscar stuff thrown in like sprinkles on a sundae). Before A New Hope there wasn't much in the way of epic Space Opera storytelling (the storyline was pretty standard and had been done to death in books before and in movies/games/books since), now with the likes of Terminator, Alien, etc. we have been accustomed to the epic blockbuster sci-fi movie. The new Trilogy from Lucas did not open in the same atmosphere as ANH did.
I for one enjoyed the movies for what they were... another trip into the Star Wars universe. I didn't expect Shakespeare, nor did I expect Oscar quality acting (let's face it, Mark Hamill was a whiny bitch in the first movies...) I just wanted a fun ride with awesome effects that let us know how it all started. Was it perfect? Far from it. But then again, if we are honest with ourselves, neither was the first Trilogy.
You don't like them because they aren't for you (Score:3, Insightful)
My kid loved all three prequels. Given the target audience, that makes them a success. Maybe people don't like the prequels because they are grownups now. /shrug
All I know is my dad thought the first 3 were crap. Probably because he was a grownup. Us kids loved them.
I think everyone is pissed at Lucas because they feel abandoned. You don't like them because they were never meant to be liked by you. You like the old ones because you were a kid when you first saw them. I have no problem turning on my sense of wonder and suspension of disbelief. I loved all 6 star wars movies and the animated series'.
Get over it, they are tween movies, a space soap opera meant for kids, like Buck Rogers. You need to look at them from that perspective. Then again I'm totally into Sponge-bob and iCarly too. I step down to my son's level and watch the stuff with him. When I'm there, I love it. I don't like serious movies or tv shows. I'd rather watch Toy Story than Seven.
I'm not sure how you can take a set of movies called "Star Wars" seriously to begin with. Adults expecting something more is like expecting High School Musical or Hannah Montana to be as satisfying as Gone With the Wind.
Analyzing every detail and character takes all the fun out of it. It's like critiquing the latest McDonalds happy meal and talking about how it doesn't measure up to what a meal at a 5 star French restaurant should be.
The whole subject of Lucas "ruining" Star Wars is decidedly stupid. Move on, grow up, and let it go, or enjoy the movies for what they are: movies for kids.
Re:Why a decade later (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahhh...that's why there are no video games based on any of the other star wars movies...lack of pod racing!
Re:Demo Reel (Score:3, Insightful)
I heard William Shatner in my head saying these lines as I read them. You sir, are an insensitive clod!
Re:Why a decade later (Score:3, Insightful)
Stormtroopers wore white and Jedi Luke Skywalker wore black. ;)
Re:Why a decade later (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you're totally on the right track, although I would disagree that there wasn't a coherent story. It just sucked and wasn't entirely believable.
The key, IMO, is that Anakin was a whiny bitch. Darth Vader was anything BUT a whiny bitch. Given how much I loved 4-6, I expected to see a noble character who was gradually, tragically led to the dark side. Instead, we see an emo prima donna who whines about everything. How did this guy become the most dignified and feared person in the galaxy? It just doesn't add up.
At the end of of the prequels, I wasn't mourning the loss of Anakin Skywalker; I was just glad that whiny kid was going to finally STFU.
Re:Why a decade later (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure who said it first, but I think there's a lot of truth in the statement that no kid wants to be robin, they all want to be batman. As a kid, I recall always hating the "kid character". I never identified with him. Or, if I did, that was a bad thing. I didn't watch transformers, for example, to understanding of the young male viewpoint in a world with giant robots. I just wanted to be a giant robot who could shoot lazers. Or be a part of gi joe, not the dumbass kids they saved.
Re:midichlorians (Score:5, Insightful)
I've always wondered why more people can't subscribe to the notion that midichlorians don't cause the Force, they're drawn to the force. Like if someone had control over magnetism, you'd expect to find lots of iron on him... that doesn't mean that that iron caused the magnetism
Because that's simply a mechanism put there by your brain to help you maintain your sanity. You're making that up because it helps you feel better.
What the Beardo actually said in the movie was:
Anakin: “Master, Sir... I heard Yoda talking about midi-chlorians. I’ve been wondering: What are midi-chlorians?”
Qui-Gon Jinn: “Midi-chlorians are a microscopic life form that resides within all living cells”.
Anakin: “They live inside me?”
Qui-Gon Jinn: “Inside your cells, yes. And we are symbionts with them.”
Anakin: “Symbionts?”
Qui-Gon Jinn: “Life forms living together for mutual advantage. Without midi-chlorians, life could not exist and we would have no knowledge of the Force. They continually speak to us, telling us the will of the Force. When you learn to quiet your mind, you’ll hear them speaking to you.”
Maybe he's just delusional. There's little mention of this feature of the Force ever again. Perhaps he's uploading his test results to the Jedi temple, they're rolling their eyes, and playing along, but it doesn't really mean anything. Again, however, this goes outside the material provided and makes assumptions. Beardo certainly believes in a causal relationship, and we're never given any story reason to doubt him.
Ergo, bad plot element.
Re:Why a decade later (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why a decade later (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep in mind that every star wars movie was a kids movie. Kids were the target audience.
No, they weren't. You don't have Han Solo shooting Greedo first in a kids movie. You don't have Darth Vader torturing Han Solo and cutting off Luke's hand in a kids movie, or Lando betraying Han. I don't even think you have the Rebels getting their asses kicked from one end of Empire to the other in a kids movie.
The original trilogy were all-ages movies. The kids could enjoy them, the adults could enjoy them, and they (until Return) didn't insult anybody's intelligence.
This "they were only ever kids movies" is pure Lucas bullshit intended to paper over just how bad the prequels really are.
Re:midichlorians (Score:5, Insightful)
Ergo, bad plot element.
I think even Lucas realized this mis-step, which is precisely why the midi-whatsits were ignored in the other films.
Further, it's a shame that on at least one more occasion (R2 having booster rockets is one example) Lucas introduced something that had no later historical reality (in the scope of his fictional universe).
Re:Why a decade later (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why a decade later (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why a decade later (Score:3, Insightful)
No one can describe QGJ without using his character's profession or wardrobe as descriptors... The other one was Queen Amidala.
The question I pose to you is, even if you are more capable than the people he interviewed to come up with descriptors, do you honestly feel the characters in the more recently-produced films are as strong or stronger than those in the originals films? If so, all you and I can do is agree to disagree on that point (and honestly, it's just film, so I'm not up in arms about that - just sayin' I think the newer characters do lack in development and depth).
Also, what's with the editing? It looks like he added his voice to video-from-still images and then edited them for time...
That was all done on purpose - he was going for a "feel" to his work. I'm not going to try to explain it, but there are certainly people who "get" what he did and why. I've talked to them and we had a good laugh over it. Just trust me, it wasn't an accident.
Re:Why a decade later (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it had cool space ships, guys dueling with swords made out of light, and the coolest looking damn villain ever put on the silver screen.
Re:SWHS? (Score:3, Insightful)
My wife had never seen Wrath of Khan before. Last night we rectified that. I was honestly worried that she wouldn't sit through the film, because of the pacing. Wrath of Khan is a slow developing character piece wrapped in the trappings of sci-fi blockbuster.
I really wonder if a film like that can be made today with a sizable budget.
The latest Harry Potter was editted pretty tight, rushed, and they felt the need to add an extra attack sequence that wasn't in the books. The best parts were the scenes in between because the principle actors have such good chemistry with each other at this point. But I fear Hollywood would never allow a major film to hinge on such moments.
As for the glory days of sci-fi, I find it sad that Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers are far more famous than The Twilight Zone. Not everything that came before was all that great. But as you said, when you only had a few stations, no cable, no internet, you took what you can get.
You would think in era of ten million choices, competition would make everything better. Yet cat videos and stupid memes gather more attention that quality entertainment. I don't get it at all.
Eh, we had the older skywalker (Score:3, Insightful)
He was a whiny teen. Luke Skywalker just accepts his fate. In an ACTION movie, that is important. Leave the shallow soul searching for MTV. The problem with the movie is that Darth Vader it truly and wholy evil. The "saving" at the end of Return of the Jedi was already bad enough (in the books and expanded universe it is made clear that he can't cross over nearly as easy, hence the reason to burn the corpse where Yoda and Obi-wan just faded away) but it still doesn't sit well with the hero ending of the bad guy being blown away, but is excused because it is different enough to be seen as original.
But he AIN'T a hero character. And in the first three movies you are supposed to care about this guy who really is not going to end up saving the day. It would be like making a movie about Adolf Hitler's youth and expecting people to root for him. Sorry, no. And there was a remote possibility that we could have cared, if we had seen him fighting the dark side only to be tricked fatally in the end in a way nobody could forsee. But the entire 3 movies are like a Punch and Judy show, with the audience screaming "look out behind you" and punch looking the wrong way and saying "where". Hilarious when 4 year olds see it done in a good puppet show, but the political antics were beyond young kids and below adults. Where were those supersmart jedi, were was the mastermind of the emperor. No action hero to save the day, no intense manipulation by unseen puppeteer masters who turn wheels within wheels. Just... well just the 3 prequels which told a story that could have been told in a simple expanded universe book in a way that would not have focussed on the villain but on a new hero whose path crosses that of the villain.
There is a reason this guy takes 70 minutes to tear the movie down, because the prequels are really that fucking bad. Not the kinda bad that you get when a producer gets his hand on something he doesn't understand (Uwe Boll) or the producer just can't direct (Plan 9 from outer space) but the kinda bad that arrives when a lot of very talented people forget just what the fuck they are good at doing.
The simplest example of this is the CGI battle on the grassy plane. What did CGI do well in those days? Tech scenes, hard corners, steel and concrete. So what did they render, lush grass land. It looks fake! They managed to get a green lawn which you can shoot for real on any golfcourse looks horribly fake.
And if you think 20 minutes is 1/3 of the movie, then your brain must have carefully restructured itself to shut out the most damaging memories, memories that if they were to surface would turn you into a bliddering murderous psycho.
Proof, you think the movie could be fixed. Amazing healing capacities the brain has. I can remember it all, but I am sane! Ain't I Mr. Fibble?
Re:Because it is funny and entertaining (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why a decade later (Score:3, Insightful)
I vote this best comment of 2009!
Re:Why a decade later (Score:3, Insightful)
Anakin went from whiny kid to arrogant teen to Darth Vader, and sucked at two of those roles.
Only two of them? Which one didn't he suck at?
Re:Why a decade later (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll add this: In the first five minutes of Star Wars, Vader walks into the carnage of battle, picks a captured soldier up by the neck, holds him dangling in midair at arm's length and questions him before offhandedly snapping his neck with one hand and tossing the body aside. Bad guy established in less than 2 minutes. While it is cheezy sci-fi schlock, it is also effective storytelling. You knew right off the bat that Darth Vader was an evil badass that you didn't want to get involved with.
Darth Maul gets introduced half way through the movie and despite the cool makeup we have to be told that he is a bad guy. Also, despite being a much better stunt man and athlete and having much cooler fight choreography, Maul never reaches the level that Vader does in that introductory scene. Therefore his defeat is no more intriguing than getting past the chompy things on the assembly line. He's not a character, he's just another obstacle for our hero to jump over.
Re:midichlorians (Score:3, Insightful)
Your example is not quite right. In "The Black fleet Crisis" trilogy R2D2 uses them to maneouvre in the Vagabond ship in the absence of any gravity.
Actually, it has the trinity (Score:4, Insightful)
All good stories have MULTIPLE characters, to appeal to our different tastes.
The hero is Luke, he is the guy you know you should wannabe like. He is the guy your sister knows she should want to date.
Han Solo is the guy you want to be, and the one your sister/mother REALLY liked. You can see that in part 1 of the review, the guys describe Han as a wannabe womanizer. The girl describes him as a succesful ladiesman. He can jump her hyperdrive anytime.
And Leia, Leia is the girl you wanted or the one your sister wanted to be.
While Obi-wan guides them until they are old enough to stand on their own feet. It is classic stuff. Kirk/Spock/McCoy. The Fellowship of the Ring. It works, because one person can't appeal to the entire audience or even one person.
But in the end, it is Luke in Star Wars who is the real hero, we just like to pretend he isn't because we want to be cool. But in the end, it is Luke whose struggle we follow. Luke who we see grow up from anxious teen farmboy to Jedi Knight who confronts the emperor and his past.
And that, as this review points out best in part 6, is missing. We don't care. Characters are not making sense and fights are about acrobatics.
I totally agree with the reviewer when he states that if you thought the prequels were okay because of the fights, then you don't get it. The slow fight between darth vader and obi-wan was never about swords-play. This is NOT a swashbuckler movie. And that was missing. The prequels are a Jackie-Chan movie. Very nice moves, but that is all there is. Early Jacky Chan movies don't even have an epilogue, they cut to credits the moment the boss bites the dusts.
At the time you had a lot of kiddies wowing about Darth Maul, but who or what was he. He was no Darth Vader. Rather amusingly, George Lucas is quoted in the review as saying that CGI is nothing compared to story telling. Boy did George forget that lesson.
What the review is wrong about is focussing on the story plotholes. The original got tons of them too, perhaps even more, but it don't matter because the core is solid. The CGI and even the story don't need to be good if their is a heart beating in the middle of it all. And that is ultimately what the prequels lack. There is no soul.
Eh... (Score:3, Insightful)
That is called a running gag. It is SUPPOSED to be like that. What next, you cleverly going to remark how Kojak writers sucked because they could never get the lead to eat anything else then a lollypop?
That Columbo was bad because no real cop would always were the same trenchcoat?
Talk about missing the point. If the point was the center of the galaxy, then you would be on the planet farthest from it.
Re:Why a decade later (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think he pulled anything off. Even with retarded dialog Alec Guinness was a kick-ass Obiwan, and even Mark Hammel, not exactly a thespian of any great note, could produce a character who is the legitimate hero of the first trilogy. Christiansen is wooden, having two faces; adolescent intense gaze and adolescent bitching. Like I said, he's a Breakfast Club reject.