Attack of the Clones DVD - Page 2

Out of curiosity, how old is your son?

In reference to the gushing of the amazon review a few posts up, I just have to say that despite all the hyperbole, that writer never gives a damn reason for Lucas himself. Seriously, go back and switch Lucas' name with Joel Schumacher and replace 'Episode II' with 'Batman & Robin' and one of filmmaking's biggest travesties becomes a must-buy.

8

LOL. That's hilarious. OMG, like I said LOL.

Well, at eight years old, I don't think that warrants a disowning. Now if he was a year older you'd have to kick his ass to the curb.

Watched again. Still dig it.

Yoda is a grumpy bastard because it appears he is hiding something and I still say the best scene in the movie, besides his most excellent duel with Dooku, is the youngling scene.

The Geonosis battle is still thrilling as hell. The Saving Private Ryan camera-zooms give it a unique and more realistic look. It fares much better than the Gungan battle in TPM.

Hayden did an excellent job as the doomed Anakin.

He is arrogant, frustrated, grateful, strong, bold, angry and shy. He does exactly what ALL young people do at that age by acting like a goddamn know-it-all by being arrogant and resentful towards their elders.
All these traits are shown in one scene and it was an excellent window into the young Anakin.

I could have done without the conveyor belt stuff but it is by no means a deal breaker. I dont hate it, just not my favorite.
Although, its no more ridiculous than the "space slug" scene in "Empire."

I love the Jedi/Jango space battle. This scene has an excellent pay-off as Obi Wan hides on the back of an asteroid. The same trick used by the Falcon in Empire. The one person to see through that trick then was Boba Fett, 'cause he saw here first. Damn right.

And to the nay-sayers, it totally sucks to be you. SW is just fine and dandy for me and many many others right now.

AOTC is on par with "Jedi" as my favorite.

I found some Edge Enhancement during the post-nightmare scene on Naboo. It kinda disheartened me for about 5 minutes. Still a perfect disc in my opinion...whether or not it's a perfect movie.

This movie makes me want to watch Empire again, I don't know why.

That's not edge enhancement. Anakin just has a healthy glow after his frantic bout of Force-assisted wanking.

Last night I was watching the disk with my 4 year old, who wanted to see the Yoda scenes, and she piped up and asked who one particular character was. I said, "That's Jar Jar". She got a big smile and said, "I love him, he's my favorite."

Somewhere deep within the bath of nutrients that keeps his human skin alive, I'm guessing George Lucas probably smiled.

Kids DO like Jar Jar (and the prequels), that's for sure.

In fact, I would surmise that this is the biggest bone of contention many of us have about the prequels: they're geared toward kids and not all generations.

Taylor (nearly 9) prefers both TPM and AOTC over the OT.

Adoption papers are being filed...

I haven't been keeping up. Has the internet agreed on whether the OT was geared towards kids, and if that excuses some of the goofy shit that people complain so much about?

Or is it better to just not even go there?

finished watching this flick in various bits, half an hour here, half hour there...that sort of thing. Hmm, maybe my attention span is shot...but I've always done that with star wars movies these past few years.

probably the crispest movie I've seen yet on my computer and tv.

everything else has been said before so why repeat it.

near the end I busted out laughing after Dookoo and Yoda had their fight, not because yoda looked weird bouncing and flailing around like that...but the look on his face as he sees both Obi-wan and Anakin on the ground crumpled and beaten. I just had this thought that yoda was thinking, "bitches you are, not jedi".

a decent movie. Not bad at all, not windtalkers.

Christ, I really do not want to get into my defense of Windtalkers again...

where exactly can I find your defence of Windtalkers. I don't plan on lambasting you or anything but I just want to read why you liked it. Me, I wanted to like it since downloading the trailer last November. Cage, Slater, and Adam Beach. How could you go wrong...I missed the theatrical release due to bad timing (vacation) and was stuck waiting even more...maybe all that time I hyped it up too much in my head to be the be-all-end-all war movie.

if you can provide a link to your post or just pm me, that'll be cool.

...now back to your regularly scheduled AOTC thread...

FOr the last time YES these movies were and always have been geared towards the kids.
The reason Lucas made these flicks was to give the kids of the day (late 70's) what he had growing up; simple adventure stories in the tradition of the saturday matinee serials like "Flash Gordon" & "Buck Rogers."

I don't agree with that. These are not strictly kids films. That implies only kids like it. If that was the case, how come there are millions of fans, who are adults, that still love them. I love the original trilogy as much or more than I did as a kid. AOTC has some of the most violent, non-kids moments of any of the films. These are films for all ages.

Pokemon was a kids film. Star Wars is a film that can be enjoyed and loved by all ages.

I don't mean that as an insult, but its true. Reading the man's bio, GL he states that from the very begining SW has always been geared towards kids. It's a testament to its glorious ability to entertain that it spanned(s) the generations and keeps doing so nearly 30 years later.

Exactly. The "Star Wars" generation - or "us" - is the first generation that has been allowed to hang on to our childhoods for this long. You think our fathers, or our grandfathers, generation had time to hang around and shoot the shit about movies they saw twenty five years ago? No, society forced them to grow up, get a job and become adults - and way before they hit the age of twenty, I might add.

Not to say that we're not "adults" - obviously we are, physically - but mentally we are living in an age where nostalgia is huge business, and we're actively encouraged to live in a state of retarded childhood. Just start a thread about your favourite kids TV themes and see what I mean.

So, yes, Star Wars is a "kids" franchise. It's just we're staying kids for much longer than nature intended. That's why Star Wars still has millions of fans.

So you're saying no adults today like Star Wars at all, and the only reason they say they do is they're trying to recapture their youth? Okay.

Again, I think that's BS. We're not going to agree on this, and I never heard Lucas say this 25 years ago. Either way, I'd tell him he's full of shit too. My mom who is over 50, loves all of the films except TPM. She was an adult when she saw the originals. Is she just trying to recapture her youth?

No, Star Wars has millions of fans because there are millions of people of all ages love the films. It has millions of fans because the originals are very good films, classics that have stood the test of time.

Now, let me ask you a question. First, are you an adult? Second, do you like/enjoy the original Star Wars trilogy? Third, do you like it simply because you're trying to recapture your youth, or do you like them because you find them to be good, fun, enjoyable films? If it's the latter, that completely blows the theory that it's only a kid's film out of the water. Again, saying it's a kids film us equivalent to saying only kids will like these films. That's not the case at all.

would be interesting to know which specific scenes carry no cgi or blue screens at all.. because for some reason even the most simplistic of shots seem to have some odd contrast/lighting thing going between character and background.. whether it be padme running in the sand, people walking in a simple room, etc.. it's extremely distracting, I'm hoping that maybe after I see this film on dvd over a few times that this sensation will go away..

On second thought...nevermind. No good can come of me engaging this subject matter right now.

I don't really care for the look of the movie. Everything looks like a digital effect because it was shot with digital cameras. I don't want to sound like one of those guys that still prefer vinyl to CDs but without film grain something is definetly missing. Even what's real looks fake. It's a great tranfer but at this point digital can't match the look of film in my opinion.

"Also, these prequels are made solely to show off Digital film & special effects - pure eye candy. That's why the story & acting are so mid to sub-par"

I think it has more to do with the fact that Lucas is now free to make the films as he wants, and there are no factors in his production crew that are willing or able to try and guide Lucas to improve on his many shortcomings as a film maker.

There's a reason why so many of those elements in ANH and ESB begin to make a departure in RotJ.. and to a much larger extent in the prequels.

It'd probably be a lot easier to overlook the cgi shortcomings, if the story, atmosphere, and characters offered more in the way of depth, and weren't left to be leading a strictly superficial sci-fi action movie.

Beyond that, I always found ANH and ESB to pose more questions than they were willing to give the answers to (a good thing, and is what made them more fantasy than sci-fi). They offered up ideas and possibilities by only hinting at a much larger storyline. Story elements like 'the force' were left as mysterious things never really meant to be explained - simply accepted as a part of the fantasy. Yoda's wealth of power seemed even greater by the fact that it was left up to mystery as well, and when he did finally show it, it wasn't simply a display for the sake of showing off some "cool" effects shots. Due to this, it didn't feel like they were selling out the character any - a display of his power, while making the character even more wonderous and mysterious. It never contained a blatant/in-you-face style.

It seems as though everything that's done in the prequels so far, is done for "wow" factor, but at the same time it doesn't try to add to the mystery - it only chips away at whatever's left of it. Because of this the stories don't work on multiple levels nearly as well as the originals did. This is also why the originals can't be purely considered "kids films."

Regardless of the apparent flaws in dialogue and direction, it's fair to say that the relatively young and inexperienced cast seem to be having a hard time working on their own. Neeson and McGregor i think were able to 'click' regardless of this, and it helped carry the film much better. Portman and Christensen don't seem to do nearly as well in AOTC.

Fuck it.

There's simply TOO MUCH in these films. There's Trade Federations (boy, isn't that scary!), Commerce Guilds, Droid Factories, Clones, Dooku, tons of Jedis, etc. And there's no clear reason for it all. I almost feel there's no point to the movies except to say "oh, by the way, here's what happened in the galaxy far, far away before Episode IV". And I'm beginning not to care how Anakin turned into Darth Vader. Do you care?

Um... that is the main point. It's not like the originals. It's not definable opposites. Anakin doesn't just go one day 'hey, I'm evil!' Where the OT was black and white, the prequels are grey. The whole deal with the Jedi, and the seperatists, it's all going to culminate in something huge. And yes, I care.

Also, these prequels are made solely to show off Digital film & special effects - pure eye candy. That's why the story & acting are so mid to sub-par.

That's your opinion. Sure, many people may agree with it, but until we can get inside the brain of George and see what's really ticking, it's an opinion. Quit treating it like it's a fact.

I was so hoping these films would stick to a more familiar formula of good vs. evil

Like I said before, it's not straight black and white. While the familiar good/evil archetypes are still being used, a lot of different factors are weighing in on how the galaxy turned from a relatively peaceful place to the space equivalent of WWII.

Lucas always knew the prequel backstory didn't have the pop appeal of the OT's primal hero's journey. Good and evil are not clearly defined, seriously flawed characters abound, we have a failure of the hero's journey, heavy reliance on plotting-mystery-politics, lack of a raging galactic war conflict, and even the absence of edgy characters like smuggler Han Solo. It's why he started in the middle of the saga. Where as he put it 21 years ago, all the excitement is.

Why is it so hard for people to understand that he is not screwing up the SW formula? He is purposefully doing something different. Telling a story. Now, there is nothing that says you have to like this backstory. Change can always rub people the wrong way. And the prequels are so different in dynamic, I'm not surprised SW fandom has been fractured because of it. Some like both trilogies, others don't. However, it's really presumptuous to act like Lucas screwed up Classic SW formula haphazardly, when it's exactly what his intent was. He's not repeating himself methodically.

There are pleny of SW fans that love the original films and are definitely digging this very different "backstory". I know I'm one of them.

Consider Lucas' success allows him to finish HIS less-mainstream backstory. It still has pop appeal, just not as much as the OT. He is making this trilogy because he wants a 6 film saga. These prequels are not meant to TOP the original films in that Hollywood mentality of bigger is better. They are created to change the way we look at the HEROIC Luke Skywalker story. It's really a ballsy enterprise, twisting some of the most beloved films of all time. Just asking for trouble. wink

Kudos to the flanneled one for not repeating what made him a billionaire.

There are two ways to look at this:
1) This was the master plan and Lucas is just doing what he set out to do 20+ years ago.

2) This Emperor has no clothes.

I tend towards the latter, but hey, will Ep.3 either change everything, or dilute the number of faithful. Or Both, or neither.

Episode III: Padme does Courscant

Pretty crazy time to be a SW fan, ain't it?

As much as I am not that crazy about AotC, if Ep.III eats it... I don't even want to think about it.

Good point, Mecha.

Twisting and giving us a new angle to look at the OT is what makes these new movies so entertaining.
Most of all, these new films will make us look at our heroes in an altogether different light. Yoda and Obi Wan especially, who will come off not looking so good. Lying to Luke and making him clean up a mess caused by their Jedi arrogance.

Or just read the book of the first film that Lucas' name is credited with writing (though IIRC Alan Dean Foster did write), which has Luke as 19 and Leia as 17. Pretty irregular twins, if you ask me.

I actually agree with Devin here. Except when it comes to EP3. Much of that story IS set in stone. But because Lucas decided (for whatever reason) against expanding the EP3 story into all three films, this is the exception. As I've said before, TPM & AOTC were expendable when it comes to the big picture. Unfortunate, but true. Not so with EP3, which includes about 90% of what Lucas is obligated to tell unless the whole thing is for dick.

By the way, The Annotated Screenplays is terrific.

The whole "Twin Sister" thing was created just before filming began on JEDI to appease a disgruntled (and high on coke) Carrie Fisher.

And, yes, Alan Dean Foster was the ghost writer on the original novel adaptation.

I worry about your expectations, Carl. Because while much of EP3 is set in stone (Jedi demise, Kenobi VS. Anakin, Empire, Luke/Leia, Vader), you just know Lucas is going to throw some twists.

Serious twists.

You are wrong. Lucas wrote all three treatments at the same time, and than began writing EP1. He couldn't write EP1 the way he did without knowing where it was going to lead into. Yes, details, action set-pieces, changes in focus, are all revised when he writes each screenplay (Qui-Gon replacing Obi-Wan's role in TPM comes to mind). But since late 1994, Lucas has been working on an overview of the complete prequel storyline. And it started with his copious BACKSTORY notes, he's been building up since before ANH's release. And yes, he had been revising these notes over the last 20 years. So frickin' what. No different than Tolkien finding his story over the 10 years it took him to write that little sequel to THE HOBBIT. wink

From my perspective, this old fart's storytelling deepens in every way, what the young man created all those years ago.

But that's me.

Carl you no longer have to defend yourself as Chud's resident Lucas apologist, as it appears you've been dethroned. Not that I thought you were, anyway.

Oh boy.

Oh, don't worry... I'm always having to defend myself over something or the other.

Is a joke, Mecha.

For laughs, and joy.

Yeah, but Lucas apolgist is a low blow. As bad as Lucas raped my childhood.

And seriously, defending the prequels feels like protecting the little kid from bullies. Aggressive, mean bullies. wink

No offense meant, just ribbing an old joke about our beloved Carl.

Hey, you love these films, and it's good to be in love. Some of us (on both sides) probably take this a bit too personally. I love the film Bloodsport, and you can make fun of me for it, if it makes you feel better.

Kumi-te Kumi-te Kumi-te

Peace, man.

Actually... Mace Windu was the first SW character Lucas ever came up with when he began writing "THE Star Wars" in 1973 & 1974. And he/she was also a Jedi character.

And, believe it or not, there was a rumored backstory of 3P0 having been created by Vader which was spoken of by SW Radio Show scripter Brian Daley on conevntion circuits way back in the ESB days. As the story goes, Lucas told Daley that one idea he had was that 3P0 had been originally created by Vader. In fact, an early draft of the ESB screenplay featured Vader ripping the robotic "heart" out of 3P0 and crushing it in his hands... a symbolic gesture of creator=destroyer.

Oh, what could have been...

Yeah... learn about Usby CJ Thape and the motherfucking Jedi-Bendu before spouting off stuff as fact, biatch.

Midichlorians are the conduits through which humans can use the Force, they don't create the Force themselves. Thus, its mysterious nature remains.

(gee, even for a Lucas apologist I'm pushing it)

Um, that's exactly what I've been saying for three years.

Just because I know how my ears translate sound waves into discernable sounds in my brain doesn't mean sound waves no longer exist, same thing with the midichlorians.

Well, since you seem to know exactly what Lucas is thinking, and what his intentions are/were, that must mean you know him personally. In that case, could you introduce me to him?

Or for that matter, who cares. It would be a blessing if those who didn't care for the prequels would just let it go, shut the f*ck up, and leave the Star Wars saga behind. It sure would spare a lot of bitching and moaning. What is hilarious is the people that claim to hate the films, are the ones that spend the most time talking about it. Funny considering I do not talk about films I don't like. Maybe that's just me.

Terrell, is there nothing more frustrating than something that could have been? When watching certain films a filmmakers standard is only what they have achieved in the past and are capable of. Watching someone who is/was talented toss one off without the care and effort they showed in previous works is them telling the audience "I've lowered my standards, so go eat it." Where it's much easier to enjoy something bad when all the filmmaker has done in the past is subpar. For some the only standard to hold George to is A New Hope. Perhaps it's unfair to ask him to catch that lightning in a bottle on multiple occasions, but of course the flip side is that perhaps he shouldn't try to.

Then again, for some his new PT is acceptable. That's fine, but for some the bar was set wth episodes four and five, hurdles that even the faithful would argue Lucas hasn't improved on. But that shouldn't denigrate your experience.

As for your comments on Ep.III, I think you're exactly right. Inflated expectations will only disapoint.

Now we all know how I hate Star Wars...

But it seems to me that the prequels are Lucas' way of finishing his "story". What we are getting is the chance to see him complete the overall tale, with us as a passenger.

He made money off of the success of the original trilogy and his other films and companies. He is going to finish the prequel trilogy, regardless of what flak there is. Of course, you are entitled to complain about paying for the prequels and saying that they suck. You are right in your own opinion.

You have the chance to see this thing through to its end as an audience member, angry critic, spitefully raped "inner child", enthusiast, etc.

I simply look forward to being in the seats one more time--one last time--as someone who loves the prequels as much as the originals.

Have you found something to love yet? It certainly is not imperative that it be Star Wars or any other franchise. I genuinely hope there is something.