the crimes of george lucas ('90s on)

How come every fucking scene in these movies involves someone standing in front of a window with a million fucking things happening in the background.

― Your heartbeat soun like sasquatch feet (polyphonic), Wednesday, July 15, 2009 2:22 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this made me legit lol btw

still reading the thread so maybe this has been mentioned already but one thing in episode three that drove me nuts as much as anything in the prequels - was just talking w/my dude about this the other day actually - was when they had james earl jones talk in an american accent at the end of the movie, to match up w/fukkin hayden christinstinet's voice. goddamn that was some bullsquid.

i also never really 'got' why there were so many dang racialist stereotype aliens - obviously i'm not offended by them, but it's just mystifying, it's not like there was a precedent from the earlier movies???

it depends on how you feels about the "jawas" (p.s. they did alderaan)

I bought the 2006 limited time re-releases merely cuz they contained hte original theatrical cuts (albeit in very low quality laserdisc transfer, but who gives a shiz).....

then I farted in Lucas' face

one of the crazyfrustratin things about the prequels is how there's all these hints of badassery on the margins that's never delivered on - like fukkin temuera morrison as jengo fett, and the whole clone army of jake the musses, but it's never really as cool as it should be. the whole thing is just like.... unexploited opportunities. it's like if u were present at 9/11 and had ure handheld camera trained on the towers, and right before something happened (planes hitting, towers falling, people jumping) you train the camera away and zoom in on a cloud shaped like a giant pair of balls

episode II is, i still maintain, one of the all-time great comedies though. the more 'human' lucas tries to make things - the more he tries to emulate human emotions with his cold steely robo brain - the more insane and embarassing shit gets. i saw it with a non-nerdy adult audience at a midnight showing, and as a collective experience it really drove home for me that it uh... i was just like, this HAS to be satire or something. the whole theater was losing its shit by the time we get to the shot of portman wearing a leather bustier and chilling out by a fireplace, it reminded me of vivian leigh in 'touch of evil' or something.... the whole romantic storyline, the holy-shit-are-you-shitting-me-ness of almost every scene (yoda fight), it fries my circuitry so much that i cant even articulate what im getting at so i'll just conclude by posting this:

[img]http://i25.tinypic.com/1z222dd.jpg/img]

http://i25.tinypic.com/1z222dd.jpg

one of the crazyfrustratin things about the prequels is how there's all these hints of badassery on the margins that's never delivered on - like fukkin temuera morrison as jengo fett, and the whole clone army of jake the musses, but it's never really as cool as it should be. the whole thing is just like.... unexploited opportunities. it's like if u were present at 9/11 and had ure handheld camera trained on the towers, and right before something happened (planes hitting, towers falling, people jumping) you train the camera away and zoom in on a cloud shaped like a giant pair of balls

Yes, that is exactly what I thought. Imagine if you'd been on the plane with your camera.

the prequels are a really good cautionary tale for when you're writing something, be it a novel or a movie script. if you've got some backstory that explains how characters got the way they were, either make it brief or incorporate it into the story. or drop it. don't go back into the past and show us darth vader hitting puberty.

I remember reading something about prequels somewhere which basically summed up why they were bad with the line, "Oh, Gandalf, kiss me again."

lol i saw ep II at the mann's chinese theater in hollywood on a massive screen with a packed house that could not stop losing its shit over every serious scene.

When I saw ep 2 the guy next to me yelled out "HEY LOOK ITS SHREK" every time a CGI character appeared on screen.

lol i saw ep II at the mann's chinese theater in hollywood on a massive screen with a packed house that could not stop losing its shit over every serious scene.

otm. My buddies and I treated it like Mystery Science Theater shit.

http://www.theonion.com/content/files/images/onion_imagearticle1296.article.jpg

something that hasn't been mentioned: Jar Jar Binks casting the vote that grants complete power to the Emperor.

It's funny to read the Jedi hate/disappointment cause I loved that movie so much when I when I was a kid. I was a month shy of my 9th birthday when it came out and I knew it was going to be coming out for ages before, back when it was going to be called Revenge of the Jedi so I was super excited and looking forward to it. I didn't even hate the Ewoks.

In retrospect yeah it's not as good as Empire but it was so mind-blowingly great when I first saw it that it's hard to dislike it too much even now.

Jedi has lots of awesome shit in it. Great space battle stuff, the vader-luke lightsaber fight is cool. The first 30 minutes are just plain awesome with Jabba, the Rancor etc.

My main problem with the Ewoks was just the ridiculousness of them defeating the stormtroopers in hand to hand combat. The part where the ewoks and han surprise the stormtroopers on top of the building is just insane and really takes me out of the movie.

Ewoks = VC ?

They should have done more VC-style boobytrapping, instead of felling stormptroopers with twig-sized arrows.

haha yeah

something that hasn't been mentioned: Jar Jar Binks casting the vote that grants complete power to the Emperor.

― Matt Armstrong, Wednesday, July 15, 2009 9:47 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you may be the only living human being who remembers that detail

it was so mind-blowingly great when I first saw it that it's hard to dislike it too much even now.

see I wonder how much this effect will be in play for those who were kids when the prequels come out - or if they will, over time, grow to hate acknowledge them as crap.

I remembered that Jar-Jar cast the vote that granted complete power to the Emperor and that's really the only reason I can stand the Jar-Jar character at all.

are going to have a thread next week called the trial of george lucas

No, but I'd imagine we'd have some fun with "the execution of george lucas"

"They should have done more VC-style boobytrapping, instead of felling stormptroopers with twig-sized arrows."

If Lucas has ruined with his CG knives, why in principle can't we make it more awesome by tastefully splicing in footage from Full Metal Jacket like you suggest?

More ewok tunnels, pitfalls with spikes, and teddy bears punching bound storm troopers in the kidneys while shouting "Didi Mao".

are going to have a thread next week called the trial of george lucas

― Mr. Que, Thursday, July 16, 2009 11:47 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that's basically the plan but i hadn't come up wiht a name yet so thank u q

Nominating Shakey Mo as stenographer

basically all the imperial ground troops were felled because some muppets threw a bunch of small rocks at them

I still think that:

- aside from Jar-Jar and Anakin, Episode I is good
- aside from Hayden Christensen, Episode II is good
- aside from Hayden Christensen, Episode III is good

I do recognize that a trilogy where the worst, most detestable (in execution, not plotwise) actor/character is the main focus of the story is problematic but it's also par for the course with the Star Wars movies; if anything, the problem with the prequels is that there is no comparable synergy to the Harrison Ford/Carrie Fisher sparks to get you to ignore how awful the plot and most of the acting is. Had they cast a love interest for Ewan (besides Hayden Christensen), conventional wisdom on these movies would be completely different.

a love interest for Ewan (besides Hayden Christensen)

bahahahaha

i think the big problem with this trilogy isn't storywise but execution-wise. there was a sort of looseness to the OG trilogy that the new ones are missing. a lot of the serious shit and the mystical bullshit was around the margins plus it had a character or two built in to call bullshit on it and to suggest that the FORCE wasn't always the answer (cf han solo showing up at the end of ep IV).

part of me cannot believe i actually typed that, or typed everything else i've written on this thread

conventional wisdom on these movies would be completely different.

Maybe so, but I definitely would still hate them.

GIS searching for 'obi wan anakin love' leads to odd results.

we could argue all day about what were the specific problems w/ the prequels, & ultimately i think the answer is basically just that they were shitty movies with shitty actors written and directed by a chinless goofball

that being said imo the biggest gap btw 4/5/6 and 1/2/3 is that 4/5/6 were pretty FUNNY, like basically every main good guy except luke and obi wan is comic relief and han/leia/3p0 are actually pretty hilar, and in an actual non-slapstick adult humor kind of way, where as 1/2/3's humor is derived basically from unfunny racist cgi aliens

occasionally a robot will fall over!

what a disaster for robotry

the problems with the prequels are all about execution--from story to script, as a director of actors, and in creating images that people might actually want to look at. max is also otm the prequels were heavily juvenilized and their tone is pretty much totally divorced from the originals.

yeah basically han solo taking the piss out of everything was essential to the first 3 films and tbh his character's arc was by far the most interesting, but then it dead-ended when he got frozen and apparently lost his ability to do anything other than lead midget furries around a forest

I would like to offer my services for the upcoming trial. I am unsure as to how I can best be of service, but I have legal training.

i think i knew the prequels were gonna be shit when the very first trailer for ep I showed a thrilling shot of boring-looking robots cresting a grassy ridge

i think i knew the prequels were gonna be shit as soon as that crazy galactic senate trade shit started scrolling across the screen and then the racist cgi aliens showed up

I didn't mind them running with the idea that the mystical Force is always the answer in the prequels, given when they happen in the story and who the main characters are; it would have been odd to have a skeptic running up and going "oh come on, that mumbo-jumbo that btw is the main peacekeeping force of the galactic gvt and flexes its muscle regularly on dissidents is just a pile of handewavey crap" given the prevalence of the Jedi in the life of the Republic. I do kind of mind that they cast a total knob as Anakin in all three movies and then didn't minimize his dialogue or have much cooler characters do all of his heavy-lifting for him. There was a real lack of coherence in the prequel trilogy that isn't there in the originals; you have the good guys (Rebels with Han assist) and you have the bad guys (Vader and the Empire) and they are basically constant throughout all three movies; not having those distinct sides probably made the threat too diffuse (Palpatine and his one follower doesn't generate the same level of threat to the viewer and all of the Republic separatists were too disconnected and uncoordinated to come across as a credible threat).

Plus Anakin was a tool.

And yet, I still like these movies.

"the prequels were heavily juvenilized"

Huh? But these have always been movies about lazer swords and pew pew pew!
There's some argument somewhere justifying adult criticism of children's books that I used to accept but now, not so sure. Please help reaffirm my faith that old folk have any business critquing movies like SW, other than normal parental concerns like it'll rot their brains and turn them into space-republicans.

but then it dead-ended when he got frozen and apparently lost his ability to do anything other than lead midget furries around a forest

have u ever been frozen and used as interior decoration? that's some traumatic shit.

simply not making eps 1-3 story and characters good/interesting/fun enough

as max pointed out the humor in 1-3 (or at least 1 and 2 as i never saw 3) is more juvenile and slapsticky, one of the main characters in 1 is a child, another could not possibly be enjoyed by anyone who is not a child.

there is nothing about 4 and 5 that says "this is for kids" to me, laser swords incl.

this is a real lego

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_SD4eU30CWiY/SOHKah_LfMI/AAAAAAAAAxA/zb3AG210TE0/s320/Lego+Star+Wars+Mini-Figure+Han+Solo+In+Carbonite+Block.jpg

I think it's funny that 4-6 have simplistic kiddie plotting with adultish performances and 1-3 have overcomplicated adult plotting with kiddie performances.