The Final Word On George Lucas [the prequel trilogy finally makes sense] - Page 3

Really? you think? Seriously I'm at a loss to think of a scene in ROTS where there's any genuine little human incidentals... and I'm not dissagreeing for the sake of it - what scenes are you thinking of?

He must mean this scene;


Riveting stuff!

--The look on Dooku's face when Palpatine orders Anakin to kill him

--Anakin's reaction, pre-him opening his trap again, to Padme telling him she's pregnant.

--Everything about the opera scene.

--Obi Wan's intonation of "I'm so sorry" after guessing Anakin knocked up Padme.

--Generally, everything about Yoda's performance after he fights Palpatine.

--Palpatine's strangely gentle reaction to charred Anakin on Mustafar

They're few and far between, but they're in there. Just nothing particularly smartassed with there being no working class Han Solo figure in the prequels.

Just the little moments. If you watch the film again, he's just really great. The way he delivers the dialogue.. A lot of small human touches. Some are

Anakin and Obi-Wan talking after the opening of landing the ship.
"Anakin, let's be fair. Today you were the hero and you deserve your glorious day with the politicians."
"All right. But you owe me one, and for not saving your skin for the tenth time. "
"Ninth time. That business on Cato Neimodia doesn't- doesn't count."

"Who... who could've done this?"

"I'm so sorry"

"You were my brother, Anakin. I loved you."

When Obi-Wan slightly looks away as Anakin is burning to death.

EDIT: I see Justin Clark's got a few too. The Opera Scene is as good as anything in Empire Strikes Back.

Most people don't notice the structural similarities to Jedi and Menace ... both begin with the arrival of a shuttle at a space station (both carrying unseen passengers) and end with a joint ground/space/lightsaber battle. They both also end with the death of inverse father figures (Qui Gon was a mentor, not a father; Vader was a father, not a mentor.)

There's more, but the gulf between Star Wars fans is wider than the gulf between republicans and democrats, so I won't waste my time

The prequels were in heavy rotation last month on HBO, and it never occurred to me before how many damn shots we got of ships taking off and landing. I'm not talking about quick establishing shots either -- you see the ship descend from space, then it flies towards its destination, then it hover, the gear come down, it lands, expells exhaust, settles down onto the gear.... It's damn near flight porn the loving detail they go into. You could probably knock a good 10 to 15 minutes out of each film if you trimmed some of these sequences. And I remember one of the making of docs mentioning how before CGI, they could never really do a ship landing convincingly, but now they could. Well yippee for that, I guess.

Gotta love Palpatine's expression in that panel.

EDIT: Looks less like tragedy and more like a rock concert.

I totally know what you're talking about and I think it's funny too. To be fair, I love the zoom. I think it's a remnant from his 70s filmmaking days. I love the way it's used in Battle Royale.

I wonder with his precious digital technology, if Lucas is adding these zooms in post-production. Whatever he's doing, the zoom always makes it feel like there's something ominous going on (even at the wrong times).

Seriously, the final word on Lucas is all right here, it's so simple:

http://boards.theforce.net/Message.a...start=27954846

That there's the final word on a lot more than just George Lucas. Jeez...

Such as? Is the rest of the story really any stronger than if we'd just picked up at the start of Clones? Anakin just is Obi-wan's apprentice, he meets Padme when he's randomly assigned to protect her, Palpatine just is the Chancellor...these relationships are about all that is set up in TPM, but the time jump is so significant that they're not really the same by AOTC anyway.

Meanwhile, things are set up that go nowhere:

The Trade Federation are overshadowed by Wat Tambor in the "lame bad guy" gallery of Ep. II and III.
Qui-Gon exists solely to repeat Obi-wan's part in ANH. And don't try to tell me the shoe-horned bit about immortality in the last few minutes of ROTS was the point of his character all along.
Anakin and his mother's slavery is set up as something of an important plot point. I wouldn't be surprised if the thought was originally that Ep. III would open with Anakin returning to Tattooine to free the slaves to mirror ROTJ's structure, but that didn't pan out. As it is, it only has any meaning in the context of Anakin going from slavery to Watto to slavery to Palpatine, if you connect those dots yourself (ROTS being void of any reference to his former servitude).
Jar-Jar is set up as a comedic sidekick, not that I blame Lucas for abandoning that particular plan.
The idealogical rift between Qui-Gon and the Council is never revisited or even really explained. By the end, you get the sense that the Council fucked up with Anakin and Palpatine, but no indication as to how or if Qui-Gon's way would've been better.

It also fails to set up stuff that it would have if there had been even a rough treatment of the trilogy:

Dooku could've been quickly introduced in either the Council or funeral scenes, and possibly offered encouragement to Qui-Gon in his defiance.
Maul and Grievous should've been the same character. If Obi-wan is going to fight an alien on cyborg life-support in Ep. III, why not have it be the alien that he and the audience already have history with? I'm actually surprised Lucas didn't retcon this in for ROTS anyway.
There's no inkling (in TPM or AOTC) of the immortality angle that becomes so important in ROTS.

Anyway, I actually like quite a bit of the prequels, but I've never understood the back-backlash that says TPM was actually pretty good. As a standalone film, it's got a great opening and closing with some really excrutiating parts throughout the middle (even the pod race bores me to tears). But as far as the overall story goes, it barely gets its foot out the door; it's a prequel to the prequels, and it does nothing but set up characters who we're only going to see a decade later when they're positions have changed considerably.

TPM would have been a decent Knights of the Old Republic movie -- just a simple Jedi adventure that has nothing to do with the main saga.

TPM could also have been improved immeasurably by having Qui-Gon be Obi-Wan and Obi-Wan be Anakin. You could do the entire story almost note for note, and the seed of Anakin's dissatisfaction is Obi-Wan's insistance that this little boy they've found is some kind of big deal. Then, whereas in the film Obi-Wan is ticked about Qui-Gon dumping him for Anakin for all of about one scene, this would be the first wedge between them that would ultimately lead to ROTS. And when Anakin goes to kill the younglings in that film, the little boy from TPM is the first one he goes after.

I find it odd that so many people hate these films yet own them on DVD or watch them on cable. Call me crazy, I tend not to pay attention to things I dislike.

Perhaps he likes reading about people discussing things he dislikes and likes deriding it.

Didn't they bring that up in a Simpsons episode?

"Worst Cosmic Wars Ever! I will only see it three more times... today!"

http://www.videosift.com/video/Cosmi...thering-Shadow

Endgame happened some time ago. Sorry, but this thread was over as soon as it turned into yet another "what's wrong with the Star Wars prequels" thread. People just never get tired of this subject, apparently. And you simply cannot bring up Star Wars in any thread without this happening.

Yes, once it turned to that subject, it remained civil and mellow, I'll give it that. It's just difficult to imagine that everybody hasn't already said everything they have to say about it at this point.

That certainly describes me. My first taste of the idea of filmmaking came from The Holy Trilogy. I wasn't old enough to experience them during release and discovered them on home video. The Special Editions came around at the perfect time to keep me interested. Star Wars is the reason I learned more about music, editing, special effects, widescreen, and more.

I can never really argue about the prequel trilogy since I don't think they're good. I can't defend them. I deride them along with everybody else. But damn it if I can't help but love them anyway. At least I can talk about what I liked about them.

You want crazy? Someone once told me, completely serious, that Saw II is a "perfect film."

Didn't know there were rules to liking a movie. Thanks taste Nazis. Hell, I did it mostly just piss some folks off. It's scary that my words still linger with them or anyone for that matter.

You shouldn't. Not everyone is going to think alike. I placed ROTS on my list cause thats how I felt at the time. My favorite list changes constantly. I probably should have just put the usual suspects of "Taxi Driver", "Everyone Says I love You" or a Marx brothers movie; all which I love, just trying to be different...

See, I'm not sure how to factor in deleted scenes into judgind a script. But this still doesn't change my complaints about the sloppy set-up of TPM. It failed to set up the larger themes and events that would come, and the stuff it does introduce (the Living Force mumbojumbo vs. the Council's dogmatic mumbojumbo) is followed through in very weak fashion.

I've read the Qui-Gon Jinn scene from the ROTS scene... and it's terribly written. Like someone said, Jinn felt shoehorned in into the saga and this scene feels exactly shoehorned into the script. And Lucas made it worse by giving it a small mention at the end of the final cut.

It's almost like Lucas had a checklist. "Okay, well I've taken care of that. What else do we have... ah yes, gotta get those babies to their destinations."

George Lucas is a good writer, he just casts people who can't manage to chew his dialogue without it falling on their pants.

Um... Being that he IS the director, he has final say... and FULL culpability. When you call "Cut" and "Print" and you can't recognize the awkwardness, you should hand the reigns and veto power to someone else.

Film making is a group collaboration. No one person is to blame. Is Gangs of New York genius JUST because of Scorsese, or because of the haunting performances of Leo and Charlize? You have to give credit all around, and pass blame all around too.

Are you trying to say that LOTR was genius just because of Peter jackson? Should everyone else be discredited? You have an arrogant opinion of film making.

I, for one, blame both you AND your parents equally, if that makes you feel any better.

I'm beginning to believe that Don Piano is actually Sacha Baron Cohen.

Except Borat was funny. And clever. And aimed at targets worthy of satire.

Anakin Skywalker, in my mind, was Mal Reynolds during the clone wars. There was no Hayden nonsense. There was only Fillion. With Macgregor. Chilling.

I still hold that if Lucas really wanted Episodes I, II and III to be considered the true beginning of his story he should have gotten other directors and writers like he did with Brackett, Kasdan, Kershner, Marquand and - if the Return of the Jedi wiki is to be believed - David Peoples.

As it stands though, you either watch the prequels as a prelude to the original story or you just don't bother with them.

Not much more to add other than that I had a blast reading through this entire thread several days ago.

Camille Paglia, of all people, just chimed in at Salon with a very spirited defense of Revenge of the Sith:

"A quite different film that I've recently enjoyed re-seeing and studying is "Revenge of the Sith" (2005) from George Lucas' "Star Wars" saga. The climactic light-saber duel between Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi on the volcano planet of Mustafar (with footage of actual explosions and lava flows at Mount Etna in Sicily) is nearly mystically sublime in the High Romantic sense. The convulsive, manly passion between the two tortured Jedi is hyper-sustained by John Williams' powerful music. Then there's Anakin's shocking mutilation and Wagnerian immolation, leading to the grisly Frankenstein surgery that turns him into Darth Vader and that is cross-cut with a parallel hospital sequence, as Anakin's wife, Padme, dies while giving birth to the twins Luke and Leia.

It's amazing how much primal emotion Lucas is able to generate from such scenes. The finale of "Sith," with an adoptive couple tenderly cradling the infant Luke (separated from his sister) as they stand before a brilliant sunset, is reminiscent of "Gone With the Wind," produced at a time when Hollywood could speak in universal emotions (rather than cheap irony) to a mass audience. I began wondering whether only epics, with their action and drama, can now get away with deep emotion -- as "Titanic" (1997) also did, thanks to Kate Winslet's brilliant performance, for which (I cannot miss any opportunity to bang this gong) she so richly deserved -- but did not win -- the Academy Award for best actress. My eternal motto: Helen Hunt, give back Kate Winslet's Oscar! "

I could probably type up similar hyperbole about SUPER MARIO BROS.

Then you'd be a twit, which I sincerely hope you aren't. Paglia, on the other hand, is one of the best writers on the planet, and makes most other internet discourse and criticism look like it farted from the pen of drooling four year-olds.

I don't totally agree with her on this (or on a lot of stuff) - though I'm completely on board with her anti-cynicism argument. (Obama had a good line about this last night - "Cynicism is a sorry kind of wisdom.") But the fact that she put the observation out there makes the argument at least worth taking up. She's got too much erudition, curiosity and raw perception to crudely dismiss out of hand.

I think one thing we can agree on is the last third of REVENGE OF THE SITH is pretty solid. This is pretty much the ground she's covering. If it was a spirited defense, she'd defend the first two acts as well. And while the last shot is quite iconic, comparing it to GONE WITH THE WIND? Please.

The first thirty minutes of Sith are gold -- so much fun.

You know, I give these films alot of shit, but the truth really is that on some level Lucas does put alot of thought into the things he puts into these movies.

Take Lucas naming convention for instance. It doesn't apply everywhere, but it does really apply in some places.

here is an example:

Qui-Gon is a paraphrase of the Chinese term Qigong also known as chi kung, which is a meditation discipline taught in conjunction with Japanese modern arts.

It get's deeper than that though, the words qi and chi are different versions of the same Chinese term which refers to the energy thought to flow through all living things from the Tao. Sound familiar?

Say what you will about him but the man is a good myth maker. Too bad some of the myth is clothed in a few really shitty films.