I still DO like Star Wars - Page 9

You know, a game might have worked.

With the soundtrack to Episode III there came a little DVD of musical montages set to the most important cues from the whole saga. Across the Stars accompanied a montage of Anakin's courtship of Padme. I couldn't believe what I was seeing: a sequence legendary in its shittiness was actually working on screen, just by cutting out the dialogue.

I think the best the prequel trilogy gets is the moment in the third film where Anakin and Padme look out to each other from across the city, in separate buildings. It's just images and music, and it's the closest any of it comes to poetry.

That is a pretty effective scene.

Even going back to Star Wars, the big moments are all dialog-less: the opening battle, Luke gazing at the twin suns, Obi-Wan's death, the throne room.

That scene feels like it's from another movie. Every other scene in ROTS is just so cluttered and distracting.

Luke Gazing at the twin sun's is one of my favorite pieces of cinematography.

Couldn't agree more. It's the one moment that actually feels like the direction the Prequels should have gone in. So much is said with no dialogue. That's the kind of filmmaking Lucas was originally interested in, especially if you look at his USC student films. It's like a blinding diamond stuck alone on a vast flow of rancid diarrhea.

Lucas' first short film was just still images to a driving soundtrack, and it was masterfully effective. He's always been a superb visualist.

And has said before on the boards, THX 1138 is that at its most brilliant and masterful, the Murch only option on the DC should be carried over to Williams and the prequels.

The only time he came close script perfection was Grafitti but thats just because he was pulling directly from his youth. If you think about the promise of American Zoetrope it was the Visual and Sonic of Lucas and Murch with th Writing power of Coppola, that was the most wasted potential.

Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz did a lot of the dialog for Graffiti, and also did some punching up to the Star Wars script.

Even Graffiti is more about tone and atmosphere than plot. I'd say Star Wars is stronger from a script standpoint.

And yet the dialogue in Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom is quite bad. I never could figure out what happened there.

Law of diminishing returns.

My friend was watching Revenge of the Sith today and I was able to catch about thirty minutes of the film whilst I was at his place. Every single piece of great visual work is ruled out by dialogue like "Only a Sith speaks in absolutes".

How Lucas wrote that and didn't immediately edit it is beyond me because it's just utterly flawed as a sentence AND it's one of the key exchanges between Anakin and Kenobi. I'm not even a fan of Order 66 because I honestly think the music does way too much of the heavy lifting.

Their is literally nothing to like about the characters and definitely no reason to lament their loss. They've been in the background for three films and they're just ciphers. Mace Winduu is perhaps the only original Jedi who gets any sort of presence and all he does is make you realise just how insufferable the Jedi truly are.

I don't think that the music doing the heavy lifting is a bad thing. That's what film scores are for. It's supposed to carry part of the emotional weight of the scene. And it's part of Lucas' job as a director to decide when the music should come in.

But there's using a score to make a scene resonate emotionally and there's using a score as a crutch because you've literally got nothing to latch the film onto emotionally. There's nothing in the Order 66 sequence which is really emotionally affecting, you're watching characters we barely know being murdered due to their own hubris, aside from that piece of music. At least the Padme and Anakin window gazing scene actually uses blocking and cinematography to achieve its effect as well as the music.

I'm not so sure that you're supposed to be emotionally connected to that sequence, though. It's a tradition and a way of life being destroyed, not characters we care about being killed. I don't think that Lucas intended it to be the latter.

In A New Hope the death star blows up Alderaan. We don't know a single person on the planet. Yet we hate the empire for it.

The enormity of that event AND Leia's reaction to it are what make us hate the Empire. The killing of the Jedi is just way too personalised for it to have the same effect as the cold and efficient genocide in A New Hope.

You should really watch the movie if you're going to talk about it.

Oops. I'm talking up Star Wars in the TPM sucks thread, my brain's getting scrambled.

I've heard some hardcore star wars fans say claim that this is deliberate and we're not supposed to like the jedi, the prequels are challenging our expectations, etc. But I think we really are meant to care that Mace Windu and the conehead jedi and the other ones all die. (The same goes for the notion that creepy teenage Anakin is supposed to be weird and unlikable because teenage boys are really like that. I think Lucas meant for him to be endearing.)

No worries, Ambler.

I remember drinking the Kool-Aid and being all "Phantom Menace is brilliant because the bad guys win but nobody realizes it! The victory theme at the end is the Emperor's theme!!! He's fooling us!!!!!" Grasping at straws, looking back at it.

The movies suck, but I always thought it was really cool that the Naboo celebration theme is the Emperor's theme and that the Phantom Menace's happy ending is really the beginning of Palpatine's highly circuitous scheme.

If the movies were at all better, it would be all the more awesome. But alas...

Williams really did do a lot of heavy lifting for the prequels, it's true. Man, imagine if we actually cared about ANY of those other Jedi assholes that got killed...

True, TPM could have risen in estimation if it had led somewhere in the next two films.

Williams did do some great stuff though. It still tickles me how the main melody of "Across the Stars" is basically a re-working of the main Star Wars theme, but falling instead of rising, and how Vader's theme sneaks in at the end of Anakin's theme.

Anakin's theme remains the best piece of music in the prequels.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksQL1NFvKYQ

Across the Stars is my favorite piece of music in the series. Yes, the whole series. Stop looking at me like that.

Ain't nothin' wrong with that. Whatever charges may fairly be leveled at the prequels, John Williams went above and beyond. Those films contain some of the best work of his career.

Much of which got mangled by Lucas in editing.

True. And The Phantom Menace soundtrack exacerbated the sin by transferring the score from the film edits instead of the original session recordings. I still want a do-over on that album.

Edit:
This is the special edition score album I'm referring to. The initial release didn't do that, but on the other hand, it had less than half as much material.

It helps that that entire sequence was Francis Ford Coppola's idea.

The asshole Jedi theory is one I subscribe to, but that second point, all the way back to Luke's impetuousness on Tatooine and during his training, this series has a long history of making teenagers look like idiots. For Luke, it's only after he sees the kind of man he's becoming after slicing off Vader's hand that he becomes an adult.

Except for The Phantom Menace, I sincerely believe Anakin was never meant to be too endearing. IIRC, there was even a moment in Phantom Menace's script where Anakin's being tested, and he kinda blows up at the Jedi council for telling him he's too attached to his mother. And really, that distinct immature "Let's not rationalize it, let's just DO IT" mentality is the only thing that would allow anyone to be okay with creating a space station that can destroy a planet if it meant shutting up the opposition.

Yo, Dark Shape, imma let you finish, but....

This may be my favorite piece of scoring in the whole saga.

Good choice, and absolutely loved that Williams quoted so much of that track in Anakin vs Obi-Wan.

Where was he during the first two films?! Lucas worked better when he had other people to bounce ideas off of.

Speaking of which, favorite piece from Episode III that isn't on the soundtrack: The reprise of the Qui Gon's pyre/Birth of the Twins theme that underscores Padme's funeral/Vader and Palpatine overseeing construction on the Death Star.

The ending to Episode III is the highlight of ALL the movies?

I'll agree that Episode III is the best of the prequels, and it's ending is far better than the Episode I and II endings but there are some AWFUL, AWFUL things in the ending sequences to Episode III.

Padme dying of a broken heart.

Obi Wan and Anakin fighting for 45 minutes in a ridiculous (and fake looking) cgi volcano. (I don't think it actually lasts for 45 minutes, but it felt like it did. And nothing interesting happens in it until Obi Wan cuts Anakin in half. The dialogue exchanged between the two of them after that is emotional, believable and has all the pathos that most of lightsaber duels in the prequels lack. It's unfortunate it's preceded by a half hour of Jedis doing cgi backflips.)

Vader screams NO!!!! I know this is one that's harped on a lot, but it really is an awful sequence.

Yoda meeting with Qui Gon and learning how to become one with the force. This would've been a scene I would've liked to see. I mean, Liam Neeson loves money, why else would he of agreed to be in the A-Team? Surely Lucas coulda paid the dude for a weekend.

My favorite part of the ending of Episode III is when the droids are given to Captain Antilles. Always makes me laugh.

Episode III is a decent film (I hate it, but I'm biased), but I don't know how anyone can say the ending is the highlight of all the movies ESPECIALLY when compared to the perfect endings of Episode IV and V. Those films have emotional endings that don't get convoluted with 45 pointless storylines , cgi volcanos, or Darth frikkin Vader acting emo.

I would still love to know what illegals Lucas was on when he decided to snip out Yoda landing on Dagobah.

I think SAIRUS was talking about the music.

I dunno. Yoda landing on Dagobah seems like just more unessential shoe leather to please continuitists but doesn't add to the core drama unfolding, such as it is. I don't need to see every single second of every single trip every single character makes to end up where they're going to be until the next trilogy.

Personally, I think SITH is pretty much just as shit as the other two prequels. It has some nice moments but so do MENACE and CLONES. All three represent some of the laziest, clunkiest, most incompetent writing ever to have this much money and technology spent on realizing it. In many ways, SITH is more painful because it should have had the juiciest plot points and revelations of the Prequels. Instead, it largely focusses on quickly and uninventively filling gaps. I mean, did Yoda really have to go into exile after his battle with Palpatine? He survived with barely a scratch and instead of regrouping with the remaining Jedi throughout the galaxy, he pouts and buys a ticket to Dagobah so he can soak his head the next two decades?

I smell Pizza Rolls...

There was a part of me that wanted Yoda to talk completely normally in the prequels, with the implication that 18 years alone on Dagobah with that Dark Side tree screwed up his mind.

Speaking of, just why the hell did Yoda choose to go into exile on a planet with a huge Dark Side well on it? It really feels like when they wrote Empire, the intention was that all Jedi went to Dagobah to train with Yoda and all took the test of the tree.

If you want someone to blame for the prequels, Frank Darabont is your man. He was originally chosen to write the screenplays (and possibly direct one or more), but told Lucas to do it himself, that it was his baby.

WTF*%@#$)!!(@)!11!

Oh. The music in Episode III kicks ass. I stand corrected.

Yep, and based on Luke's "I dunno...there's something familiar about this place" line, I always thought that Luke and Leia would have been born on Dagobah. Like Obi-Wan would have brought Padme there to hide from Anakin and she gives birth to the twins on a stormy night in Yoda's hovel, almost like Mary giving birth to Jesus in a humble manger.

Exactly. Or even Yoda just taking the twins there after their birth to hide them for a bit.

This was always my take as well (although I still refuse to subscribe to that "twins" foolishness)-- something important went down on Dagobah, and Yoda's been standing watch ever since. When Luke goes on his dreamquest in the tree/cave, the Vader apparition steps out from what appears to be a solid corridor or doorway. Part of the illusion? Error in art-direction? Or was there something down there?

As for Yoda's "backwards talk", I gather that Frank Oz became its chief proponent in later years. In Empire, Yoda (following a classic Hero's Journey archetype) acts the fool upon meeting Luke, the better to take his measure of the kid. When it's time to get serious, he drops the act-- and the dialect: "He is too old!... Will he finish what he begins?... You are reckless!..."

He doesn't drop it completely. It's just done when with a nice amount of variety so that he doesn't sound too silly. Of course, the prequels completely failed to do this and turned it into total schtick.

"Around the survivors, a perimeter create?"

Hahahahaha

EDIT: My most favorite piece of Star Wars music EVER... is the final track of Empire. Rebel Fleet leading into the end credits suite that features Yoda's theme, then the Imperial March, and climaxes in an awesome fanfare at the end.