the crimes of george lucas ('90s on)

Agreed that on paper a lot of these ideas don't necessarily sound more thrilling than what we got - I think we're taking it as a given that whatever the story was, it needed to be worked out through awesome set pieces, chases, near misses, the occasional light-saber fight, betrayals, shocking revelations, and cool aliens. But the story itself needs a compelling structure, and I think these are good for that, better than what we got ("The Council doesn't trust me and my wife is having bad dreams, I guess I'll start killing children").

See Phantom Menace could sound compelling on paper ("A small peaceful planet is being invaded and no one knows about it! We have to get to Coruscant and warn the council before it's too late!"). But there was never any real sense of threat, and that looong Tatooine detour slowed the plot to a crawl.

okay I think I hurt myself stifling laughter from rereading this thread

as a huge fan of the first 3 who never saw the new 3, can i just ask is there a clear outright winner for the title of BEST of these? is there an EMPIRE... of the 3 that even those who were anti like maybe a good chunk of?

Revenge of the Sith is pretty clearly the best.

I would rep for "Attack" if it didn't have the stupid meadow scene in it, but yeah "Revenge of the Sith" is pretty unambiguously the best realized of the three.

Seconded - "Attack" has some actually enjoyable sequences, basically everything to do with Obi-Wan, but "Revenge" comes the closest to a movie you'd want to watch again.

basically everything to do with Obi-Wan

the first one is c-span with special effects and a quick channel change to a weird car race in saudi arabia

basically i think the ultimate obi-wan story for the first three would for him to have been this reckless, wisecracking guy. probably should have been older than ewan mcgregor, imo. like s1ocki said, the han solo of the prequels. anakin should have been more similar to luke skywalker in terms of age and maybe even very basic story arc, i think. i dunno.

could get behind a story arc that gave us all obi-wan for the first movie, tbh, with no anakin at all.

In the eighties I had a subscription to Science fiction mag Orbit. They wrote a story on what might have happened before the original trilogy. Their idea was that Anakin was a promising Jedi. So promising even, that he became cocky. So cocky even, that he thought he could destroy the Emperor all by himself. The Emperor was an upcoming crime lord, slowly destroying the peace and justice in the galaxy. The Emperor of course slashed Anakin to pieces. But instead of simply killing Anakin, he let him live and forced him - Anakin, the most promising Jedi ever - to become his personal slave and servant: Darth Vader. The ultimate humiliation. Sith Lords thrive on hate and hate makes them prisoners of the dark side. Vader of course hated the Emperor, which meant he would never be able to escape him or destroy him. His hate made him the impressive, sadistic dark lord we would come to know from the original trilogy, which helped the Emperor in his takeover of the galaxy.

The motivation for this story was, that in Return of Jedi, Luke tries to work on Vader's feelings, by stating that he did not accept that Vader is his father but that he accepted that Vader was once Anakin Skywalker. Vader replies that this name no longer has any meaning for him. This implies that by now Vader has accepted his fate. This acceptance, this resignation, allowed his hate to tone down; because only caring people hate. In short, Vader had let go his feelings (as Yoda claimed every Jedi must be able to). This allowed him to get in touch again with the good side of the force, with Anakin Skywalker, which enabled him to destroy the Emperor and redeem himself.

I still like this idea.

I forgot: the Emperor kept Vader alive through the force. So if Vader tried to kill him, he himself would die to. At the end of Return of the Jedi, he was at ease with this fact and did what he had to do, and finally could do.

because only caring people hate

what a wonderful world that would be, eh? I routinely hate the fucker in the queue ahead of me, tbh

Hey, this is movie rhetoric. Bear with me.

always saw the emperor/vader dynamic in IV-VI as a direct rip of the Saruman/Wormtongue relationship at the end of LOTR

disclaimer for george's lawyers- there are clearly no parallels to be drawn whatsoever from mr lucas's masterwork and tolkien's sprawling mess.

which, let's not forget, didn't even exist until the late 90's AFAIK

From John Hodgman's Phantom Menace:

"at this point you will want to know what is the solution to the jar jar problem. i understand. everyone hates jar jar. in fact everything in my screenplay flows from this very simple fix and that is: replace him with sebulba."

someone transcribe this!
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=963

you do it

i'm real glad that to this day i still have absolutely no idea what jar jar binks sounds like or what he says.

to be honest it becomes a super bummer here:
"there's a reason I would work on my screenplay while falling asleep, at night, dozing in the hospital while my mother was dying, or when i was awake in bed in october 2001 listening for planes over NYC"

basically i think the ultimate obi-wan story for the first three would for him to have been this reckless, wisecracking guy. probably should have been older than ewan mcgregor, imo. like s1ocki said, the han solo of the prequels. anakin should have been more similar to luke skywalker in terms of age and maybe even very basic story arc, i think. i dunno.

― jØrdån (omar little), Tuesday, November 17, 2009 8:02 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

imo he should have followed luke's arc almost exactly up to the point where he chooses bad where luke chose good

the greatest crime of george lucas is tricking me into writing fan fiction :(

At least you're not writing jarjar slash...

I would rep for "Attack" if it didn't have the stupid meadow scene in it

The meadow scene is funny and I enjoy it more than I do any other scene from the prequels. I think I know all of the lines from it, being so memorably bad.

i think it gives us an insight into just how hard lucas would find it to chat to the opposite sex if he wasn't a bajillionaire.

watching Star Wars on TV now, the 'name the system' line gave me a little lol.

On ITV1? I stopped after there were two 5 minute breaks within the first half hour.

yeah. and then the 15-minute news break. I thought there were broadcast rules that you could only have a break every 45 minutes when showing films? I guess I'd mind more if I hadn't seen it a hundred thousand times already.

I think it's probably signalled the end of my fanatical interest. It's taken a lot though: 1) on ITV1 and cut to pieces with long ad breaks, 2) stupid ITN news break, 3) Lucas's Greedo-shoots-first-Han-steps-on-Jabba's-tail-blah-di-blah cut, 4) shown after ITV1 has shown the three prequels (guess that answers a question upthread about when is some kid going to see them in I-VI order). But still I switched on the TV.

you know though, chopped to bits and sprinkled with Lucas's meddling it may be, but the final attack on the Death Star still rocks the fuckin' bells like nothing else in the whole series.

I think Jedi has the best space battle. The asteroid chase in Empire is pretty fucking intense too.

yeah, Jedi's insane screen-filling battle is A+. Admiral Ackbar! Hoth attack in Empire also stupendous.

they changed the advert timing rules about a year ago iirc

Empire is on next week.
Rebel: "Commander, Echo Base is under attack by..." <CUT-TO-AD-BREAK> Katie Price covered in cockroaches
(OK so it's not that bad, yet...)

totally derails the thread, but this is (a small part of) why when UK people piss and moan about the BBC licence fee I totally disagree. No adverts in films, yo.

that and the bbc is fucking awesome on so many other levels.

£142.50 is a bargain, even if all it meant was not being spammed every ten minutes with commercials that assume I'm a moron.

I had some fella trying to flog me sky HD for £50 a month yesterday, which puts things in perspective I'd say. Again, it's not really a crime of George Lucas, but I *bet* he is pals with Murdoch. Or at least likes him, they certainly share a marketing ethos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-5AMapzFWg

there are no crimes being committed in that video, unless awesomeness is a crime

Rebel: "Commander, Echo Base is under attack by..." <CUT-TO-AD-BREAK> Katie Price covered in cockroaches

I think if I had to come up with the one thing that most confuses me about the UK, it would be Katie Price.

is THX 1138 his best movie...?

I watched it the other night for the first time in what must be 20 years and its pretty good but kinda empty. struck mainly by two things:

1) even THIS film he had to fuck with. the digitally added stuff is so jarring and glaringly out-of-place. not to mention totally unnecessary. this guy is the most insecure filmmaker of all time.
2) what works about this is rather blatantly cribbed from its primary sources - We, 1984, etc. Lucas' major contribution to the genre is almost entirely in terms of design/style. The minimalism, both of the narrative and of the overall look and feel, is great. Of course by the end he doesn't know what to do and just turns it into a stupid chase scene with a completely anticlimactic ending.

is THX 1138 his best movie...?

Nah.... American Graffiti and Star Wars are better imho

It'd be kinda cool if Lucas went back and digitally added nudity to American Graffiti.

Most active thred gets this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDB8Q15iUIE

Rats. Wish Lynch had said yes

what jabba would have done to poor leia in a lynchian ROTJ doesn't bear thinking about

a completely anticlimactic ending.

love the ending! final shot is superb

also wish he did not digitally fuck w/ it