the crimes of george lucas ('90s on)

remember guys, if the biggest gripes are about how unrealistic the effects look that's not actually bad going

the effects are probably the only fun thing in the movie. My only positive memory of the movie is that the Mushroom Cloud looked cool.

"it really comes into its own on telesync avi"
You are probably joking but you are very right!

never did make that poll

"You would prefer some other utility data? Perhaps individual building meter data? Then name the system!"

― I am moving on baby, I am moving on (Pancakes Hackman), Wednesday, July 15, 2009 3:45 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

:D

actual LOLs re-reading this. i still dont know why it was so funny... something about shakey's personality just made it extra-rofly

i thought it was some obscure nugget about lucasfilm's data output and how that proved the originals didn't exist any more or something

― Cowardly G. Soundgarden (s1ocki), Wednesday, July 15, 2009 1:49 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^ best moment

This thread would make my poll of best ILE threads.

I can't reread this right now (lol ZING) but I remember getting shushed in the library at the time

This thread is amazing. Did you guys realise that he made changes to the movies *before* the 1990s?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_changes_in_Star_Wars_re-releases:

# On Hoth, right after C-3PO tells R2 to "Switch off", R2 gives out a little "blurp".
# When Luke finally collapses in the snow, he lets out a grunt as he lands on his face.
# Han says "until I can get the shelter up" instead of "until I can get the shelter built."
# Luke says an additional "Ben... Dagobah..." just before Han says, "and I thought they smelled bad on the outside."
# When C-3PO tells Luke "It's so good to see you fully functional again", Luke replies, "Thanks, 3PO.

and so on and so on and so on...

This is all for the '70mm' edition whatever the hell that is/was. So basically he'd been tinkering with them since they first came out!

Wasn't 'Episode IV' only added to the opening crawl in later prints of the initial run?

Actually, I'm more bothered by all the extra shit added to THX 1138

― Elvis Telecom, Wednesday, 15 July 2009 21:59 (4 months ago)

i think the only really bad thing here was the monkey shell-dweller dudes.

Half the complaints about Jar Jar and other aliens in the movie would have been taken care of if they'd gone the route with Greedo, Jabba, etc. in the originals and had them speak in Ben Burtt-invented languages with appropriate subtitles, I figure.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, July 16, 2009 2:49 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark

OTM. I can clearly remember on opening day for Episode 1 having those two green aliens in the beginning talking to each other using silly voices instead of made up languages with subtitles and having a very bad feeling about where the rest of the film was going...

No-one has mentioned the part where Obi-Wan jumps on the back of a space lizard in Episode 3 and the movie fulfills its threat to become a videogame cut scene.

# Han says "until I can get the shelter up" instead of "until I can get the shelter built."

Clearly a change that needed to be made.

My "fuck they made it into a videogame" moment was in ep 2, R2 flying around the robot construction place trying to save 3PO. Or whatever, but fuck if I'm watching it again to refresh my memory.

It is that bad. In the same scene Padme is on a conveyor belt and has to duck under a series of Thwomps, and I thought "this is Mario except everything's rusty"

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

― rip dom passantino 3/5/09 never forget (max), Thursday, 16 July 2009 13:34 Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This is really, really true.

In general there's a crucial loss of instincts about what would actually be ENTERTAINING in a movie like this, which were really strong in the first three films. Setting aside Empire, which brings some (well-done) heaviness, the OG trilogy are just damn FUN, raggedy, cowboy fun, not forced amusement-park pod-racing fun.

The trilogy also screws itself by being a story about people on the top (Jedi) who very, veryyyyyyyy slowly realize there's a needlessly elaborate and dull conspiracy to unseat them. As an arc, you can look at that from a distance and see a story there, but minute by minute it doesn't really generate much tension. Whereas in the first movies, our heroes are always ON THE RUN from a threat that's way bigger than them - I mean even from that shot of Leia's ship with the GIANT FUCKING STAR DESTROYER bearing down on it - you know who to sympathize with from the get-go, and that underdog thing never really lets up. They're a scruffy, unlikely bunch of misfits going up against the whole Empire, sneaking around, wearing disguises, riding a beat-up old ship and teaming up with anybody they can find who's with them. It's just more satisfying than Jedi dithering over the necessary 2/3 vote to override a veto, or whatever.

Assuming the prequels HAD to be made, which clearly they didn't because everybody was fine without them, it seems like it would have made sense to follow the first movies' success - screw the details about how the Empire comes to exist and just tell me a fun story for chrissakes. I'm not sure what that story would be but this wasn't it. I've been plowing through Stephen King's Dark Tower series lately, and there's some interesting parallels. Overall the series is pure candy, a light romp through various genres/archetypes, a motley team up against unstoppable evil, all of that. Our heroes are led by Roland the Gunslinger, a Clint Eastwood type who is also the last of a bygone era when his kind policed and protected the world from evil, while going on a lot about a vague universal power that guides their destiny (ie, they were Jedi Knights). There was a long gap in publication after the first three, and the next to come out was basically a prequel book, with most of its page count given over to an extended flashback to those bygone days when Roland was just one of many gunslingers and the world looked to them for protection.

The difference between Dark Tower IV and "The Phantom Menace" is that Stephen King (another awkward-looking nerd who came to power in the 70s on the back of THRILL POWERED entertainment fiction) can be bothered to make the flashback story actually interesting. He doesn't try to tell us the entire saga of Roland's life, he just zooms in on a pivotal mission he went on in his youth, a mission on which everything changed, he became a man, first fell in love, etc, etc. And while we've gone back to the time when the gunslingers were generally still a force to be reckoned with, Roland in particular is still a fresh-faced youth, capable of making mistakes he doesn't make in the present.

I would bet money that George Lucas read this book somewhere in the process of generating the new films (book came out in '97) but he missed the point. We should have gotten flawed, screwup Jedi getting in over their heads, maybe gradually getting their shit together but realizing too late the evil that they've stirred up and how long the odds against them are. A lot of those elements were floating around the edges of the prequels but they were swamped by unthrilling action sequences, an uninvolving conspiracy plot, and high-school drama club acting in the central character. And what the hell was Obi-Wan's character arc?

haha, I really need to stop, this is turning into like every internet post about the prequels ever

I'm not sure what that story would be but this wasn't it.

Shoulda followed Anakin much more closely from the start, as a wild, talented kid from a bad background trying to prove his mettle in the haughty, rarefied world of the Jedi. I would've had him as a tough street kid. That would've had much more dramatic potential than some brat plucked out of nowhere because Obi Wan recognised his magic powers.

ps if anyone finds my post horrifyingly nerdy let me remind you that many Bothans died to obtain that individual building data from the campus

I can sorta imagine this street-tough Anakin movie - - - but given how lousy the actual Anakin turned out to be I'm hesitant. My gut says the movies should have been more about Obi-Wan, or at least really told from his perspective.

I've just been thinking about it a bit more, and actually I would've had the entire first movie being about Anarkin's efforts to become a Jedi, with no mention of the Sith or Trade Federations at all till Episode II.

The story might have been tolerable without all the awful slapstick and tomfoolery, of which Jar Jar was the main culprit but he wasn't alone - e.g. Anakin destroying the space station by pure chance in ep 1. The originals may or may not have been kids films but either way they succeeded without any of that absolute cringeworthy nonsense. RotJ excepted.

padme character should have been a lady jedi instead of just a blank love interest

they should have been rivals/love interests

and like i said upthread obi-wan basically should have been han solo

Could be good actually - - or maybe Obi-Wan is a kind of promising but distractable and doubting Jedi, with a girlfriend and a "real life" that makes him doubt in the power of the Force until it's too late to save his buddy from the Dark Side, or something like that. Anyway, the doubting/cynical aspect of Han could have done some good in these movies and it would be interesting if Anakin is actually the MORE promising Jedi, not just in terms of his midichlorians and lifting-up-boxes abilities but in his actual faith in the system.

It would've been good to have some sense that the Jedi were on the wain and maybe becoming corrupt and too powerful, rather than being the morally perfect supermen they're presented as - so that the whole Empire debacle was kind of needed as a reset button, so the Jedi could go back to their original purpose. That would make sense of the 'balance to the force' prophecy, which is never really explained.

Shoulda followed Anakin much more closely from the start, as a wild, talented kid from a bad background trying to prove his mettle in the haughty, rarefied world of the Jedi. I would've had him as a tough street kid. That would've had much more dramatic potential than some brat plucked out of nowhere because Obi Wan recognised his magic powers.

― I am flesh and blood. You are software and circuitry. (chap), Tuesday, November 17, 2009 10:04 AM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark

^^ this fits with my sad dream of eps 1-3 as a political story about the rise of a terrible gov't. anakin as the tyro with a chip on his shoulder, equally hungry to make the old world perfect, and wipe the old world away

it would be interesting if Anakin is actually the MORE promising Jedi, not just in terms of his midichlorians and lifting-up-boxes abilities but in his actual faith in the system.

That would have been interesting, because in Ep.I Anakin is all "I wanna be a Jedi! Jedi's are badass!". So maybe he could have gradually found out that his dream job wasn't so great, that a lot of it was guarding diplomats and other boring tediousity. Same thing with Obi-Wan - he goes from stopping an invading army to getting sass-talked by a Jedi librarian. And in the end Palpatine's plans succeed because he's able to keep focusing on his game long after everyone else has nodded off or got bored.

you think lucas should have made it MORE boring??

That would have been like, the first half of Ep.II, then gradually winding up to Anakin's transformation into Vader over the next one and a half movies.

you guys are suggesting a rad 13-episode HBO miniseries not a rad 3-movie sci-fi trilogy

most scifi epics would be better as HBO mini-series anyway

anything about the politics of the galactic senate i would totally watch but only if i can get really into it over the course of four months

david simon's THE COUNCIL

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.