[Radu094]

After smashing my head arround the walls a few times ( as I was watchin the pre-sequels ), I started thinking a lot about what exactelly I didn't like in the new SW movies.What exactelly has changed in Lucas's Star Wars universe betten the OT and the pre-sequels. Was George Lucas really abducted by aliens? Was he hit by a falling brick? .etc..

I might be wrong on this one, but my general opinion is that nothing has changed. George Lucas is still making the same movies, with the same talent, and in the same respect identical with the way he was making them 30 years ago. It's not him that changed. I say it's the world arround him.

Think about it: in '77 , Ep.4 ANH was state-of-the-art visual effects. A sci-fi movie, that greatelly appealed to teenagers across the country (world). Spaceships, Jedi orders, lightsaber duels, and a Tatoonie farm boy that saves the day. This was the kind of movie that was deemed "cool" by '77 standards. The same can be said about ep.5 and 6 and their respective years of release (you can just feel that '80s in ep.6) . That's what George Lucas is good at: making movies that are "cool". Now, "cool" in '77 is way diferent than "cool" in 2001.

Now think about pre-sequels: Ep1. TPM is "state-of-the-art visual effects. A sci-fi movie, that greatelly appealed to teenagers across the country (world)."All George Lucas is making now, is a "cool" movie by the 2000's standards. It sucks, obviously, but G Lucas is sill making the same job of creating "coolish" movies, as he was making them 30 years ago.The standards are so low & stupid , noone who was alive in '77 wants to have anything to do with the new trilogy.

I'm not defending G Lucas here, I'm saying he's making what he know best : "coolish" movies. It just so happens, that "cool" is nowadays set by a bunch of semi-idiotic teenagers (and even pre-teenagers) to this embarrasing level of stupid scripts and visual effects.

Anyone else thinking the same way? Any counter-arguments to my theory?

[Chefelf]

I see what you are saying but I respectfully disagree.

In '77 Lucas made a movie that parents could take their children to but the parents would end up enjoying it as well. The prequels are now enjoyed by children thorougly (because they feature lightsabers, cartoon characters and colorful visuals) but are pretty unenjoyable by parents.

In many ways The Phantom Menace is a much stronger movie than Attack of the Clones because it was shorter and more action-based. Clones comes off like a really clumsy mystery/love story. It's just so bloody boring.

I think the stories and movies of the original trilogy hold up better over twenty-five years than the prequels will. The prequels are just very, very weak. They're like drinking watered down Kool Aid when you're expecting full strength.

[Vwing]

Yeah I have to agree with Chefelf here, also think of the dialogue in the OT and the PT. There are so many memorable lines of dialogue in the OT that it's amazing. In the same respect it's amazing at how few memorable lines of dialogue are in the PT. The only one that comes to my head immediately is "Wipe them out, all of them." for whatever reason. The OT was just a better script. The script gave the characters good lines of dialogue. The dialogue made us like the characters. The characters, combined with the sepcial effects, made us like the movies. The OT, even by today's standards, is a much better trilogy than the PT, merely because of the dialogue and the characters (as well as basically all of Chef's reasons)

[Despondent]

Surely it never happened, but I'm satisfied
George Lucas was referring to the fans of the OT:
"Wipe them out, all of them."

[Chefelf]

Surely it never happened, but I'm satisfied
George Lucas was referring to the fans of the OT:
"Wipe them out, all of them."

I wish I'd thought of that.

[Vwing]

Yeah that's great, now I'm pissed at myself for not thinking of that lol. Hold on, lemme try to come up with another clever one...Nope not comin to me. Dammit. Wait....no, false alarm. Argh.

[barend]

i have a friend who pushed the same point to me a while back...
I gave it serious consideration and thought, nah - GL has made a bunch of disney flicks. the OT gave actors cool sets and creatures to react to, now he rushes them through blue screen shot with no description of what will be around them. that's just weak and makes the actors look bad. alot of the plot was really bad aswell with bounty hunters hiring bounty hunters hiring robots hiring giant slugs...

in the original you had the goodguys dressing up as storm troopers, and trying all sorts of things and messing up like luke shooting the bridge controlls and so on.

no I'm afraid I'll have to disagree. I do see where you are comming from and to an extent you do have a good point, but some change has definitley taken place.
alot of ego brushing and not enough honesty being givin too him!

[civilian_number_two]

Replying to the original post, I have to say there's no way I could agree with that. STAR WARS did stand out, like you say, for having state-of-the-art special effects. That's why everyone went to see it; that's why it was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. But I wouldn't say that it was an example of Lucas making a "cool" movie for his time. Lucas was trying to do something nobody else was doing, to make a movie that reminded him of the serials he would have seen rerun in the drive-in theatres when he was a teenaged loser wishing he had a turbocharged street racer like that Bob Falfa. in STAR WARS and moreso in EMPIRE (but not so much in JEDI), Lucas made movies that he hoped people would like and pay to see, but mostly that he knew he would like. And people did like them, even if a good many didn't knwo what was any good about them. So they could go on about the special effects, while the real fans were genuinely fired up about the story.

With TPM and, presumably with AOTC, Lucas has tried to make movies that would appeal to his target audience. He gave in to some imagined pressure and came up with a "scientific" explanation for the Force. Then he immediately dropped it altogether when he realized his fans didnt want it. So no reference to the parthenogenesis or the midi-fuck-off-I-won't-even-type-the-wordians in AOTC. He imagined that kids wanted to see all their old favorite characters again, so loads of reintroductions, lame as they were. he gave R2 jet boots, and Yoda a lightsaber. He briefly considered putting 'N Sync in the movies (which would have been a better move than having no obvious Jedi Knights of any kind), then backed out and said "I never planned to do that." he consulted on story ideas and creature varieties with his children.

Lucas was a genius when he pasted together ideas from various other movies to make STAR WARS. He was a criminal mastermind when he hired writers to invent Episode two for him, and to rename it Episode 5 with the claim that he'd "Alwayss meant to make nine films." He was a no-good second-guessing bastard when he put Boba Fett and the Care Bears into JEDI. Now he has no merit whatsoever. I am 35 years old. I can still watch EMPIRE and not be embarrassed, as I often am when I watch other films I loved at 12. One viewing of TPM convinced me that I'd been right when I said, after JEDI, "I have given up on STAR WARS." After TPM it was with new conviction that I said "I will never see another STAR WARS production, or read a SW novel, or watch a SW cartoon, or whatever." They all work to make the first two films bad by association.

What's so threatening about Vader reaching out to Luke in Cloud City? It's just a tired old man trying to connect with the son he never knew. JEDI kinda took the sting out of Vader's villainy, and not even in an interesting way. And if I have to watch EMPIRE knowing that this horrible villain who kills his own men, his obsession is so strong, is actually the cute little kid who made C3P0; well, enough has been said about that.

[Paladin]

I thought that Boba Fett was appropriate for JEDI. He was employed by Jabba, and he DID do something that made Jabba really happy (capturing Han Solo), I don't see anything wrong with him being there. The only thing that disappointed me is that he managed to escape the Pit of Karkon in the EU of Star Wars.

[Radu094]

hmm.. Ooook, so noone is with me on this one

I guess each one of you made a valid point: as much as the OT was a based on a great story, just as much the prequels are a thumb-silly cartoon plot. You can't argue with that, and the 30 years that passed inbetween can't have much to do with it.

All I was saying was that movie culture has changed a lot in 30 years. In the '70s your movie NEEDED to have goodly portrayed characters. You needed to have a touching story, good dialogues , a well built script . This is what people were expecting from a good movie. Nowadays , you just need a cool pod race.

Ok, I'm not going to argue this point much further, but just think in terms of :
2001: A Space Odyssey ('68?) and Lost in Space ('98)... both are based on great Sci-fi books. How comes one is great and the other sucks? Well, maybe it's not a fair comparison, but you get the point I'm trying to make..

[civilian_number_two]

Ok, I'm not going to argue this point much further, but just think in terms of :
2001: A Space Odyssey ('68?) and Lost in Space ('98)... both are based on great Sci-fi books. How comes one is great and the other sucks? Well, maybe it's not a fair comparison, but you get the point I'm trying to make..

Hey. I'm an old cynic myself, so I appreciate your cynicism. But again your analogy is just way off. You're taking something long appreciated as the pinnacle of Science Fiction film (but a bad example for your point about characterization), and you are comparing it to something that lost money and that was lampooned by the critics of its own day.

A fair comparison might have been ALIEN and ALIEN:RESURRECTION. or THE TERMINATOR and T3: THE RISE OF THE MACHINES. The thing is, sequels, or prequels, have a hard time of living up to their predecessors even in the best of cases. But to say that all a film needs to be successful today is a good (or, in the case of TPM, a bad) pod race is to ignore all the films out there that are made for adults. STAR WARS created the blockbuster, but studios are still trying to put out quality films from time to time. You need to wade through a lot of crap to find it, but the quality's still there. And it's not like the seventies were some Golden Era, either; for every CHINATOWN there's a SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT not far away.

[Radu094]

A fair comparison might have been ALIEN and ALIEN:RESURRECTION.  or THE TERMINATOR and T3: THE RISE OF THE MACHINES.

Dang, 'wish I had thought of those.....

Yeah, the examples were poorly picked.I simply thought best old-timer movie and the worst contemporary movie, these two poped in my head.

Ok, then .. I'll take it all back. G. Lucas HAS changed the way he is making movies.

[Vwing]

What's so threatening about Vader reaching out to Luke in Cloud City? It's just a tired old man trying to connect with the son he never knew. JEDI kinda took the sting out of Vader's villainy, and not even in an interesting way. And if I have to watch EMPIRE knowing that this horrible villain who kills his own men, his obsession is so strong, is actually the cute little kid who made C3P0; well, enough has been said about that.

Ok what? Jedi took the sting out of Vader's villainy? No, Jedi made him, well, an actual character that was begun in EMPIRE. In the original, he's one-dimensional. In EMPIRE, he's 2-dimensional. In JEDI he's 3-dimensional. It completes his character, in a very interesting way. In fact, even if you HATED the rest of JEDI, the Vader character and his relationships with Luke and the Emperor make for fabulous scenes, some of the best of the entire trilogy. Also, I have to disagree with the second statement about him being a 9-year-old boy also making it worse to watch EMPIRE. I hated TPM too, but in a perfect world, if TPM was done right, it would make the Vader character that much more tragic. You see in E1 an innocent boy, E2 is a bit less than innocent but still nice, E3 is his tragic turn to the dark, E4 is at his most tough and evil, E5 is evil, but it makes you feel that much more emotion for him when he reveals he's Luke's father, remembering that he was once this little nice boy, and looking at what has happened to him. E6 still has the evil in it, but it's now come full circle, as his caring for his son spreads throughout him, and brings us back to the person that he could have been, making him an even better, complete character. The prequels were supposed to make Vader an extremely tragic character. Just because they didn't succeed doesn't mean it couldn't have worked. And JEDI completes the character, showing that good does win over evil. I don't understand what you find wrong with that. Again, even if you hated the Ewoks and everything else in JEDI, how could you not like what they did the Vader, Luke, and Emperor characters?

[barend]

I guess each one of you made a valid point: as much as the OT was a based on a great story, just as much the prequels are a thumb-silly cartoon plot.

yeah! the OT was *based on Lord Of The Rings, and knowing that the films were
being made, i Guess George realized that he couldn't get away with it twice!!!





(*ie. ripped off)

[civilian_number_two]

Again, even if you hated the Ewoks and everything else in JEDI, how could you not like what they did the Vader, Luke, and Emperor characters?

I didn't like what Lucas did with the Vader/Emperor/Luke scene because it is terrible, repetitive and boring. Between the two of them, Vader and the Emperor tell Luke something like six times that he underestimates "the power of the Dark Side" and that turning to the Dark Side is his "destiny." The Emperor repeatedly invites Luke to give in to anger and hate, because apparently if you are ever angry, even if the anger is justified, or if you ever hate, even if the thing you hate is evil, then the Dark Side will forever get you and you will turn into a mass murderer in the service of the Emperor. It apparently worked just this way with Anikin/Vader, and the Emperor has no worry that it ought to work just fine with Luke as well. There's some yammering on this topic, and then Luke and Vader fight for a while, with the Emperor stupidly cackling in the background about swelling hatred and flowing anger. At one point he says "Good. I can feel your anger. I am defenseless. Take your weapon! Strike me down with all of your hatred and your journey toward the Dark Side will be complete." It's all like a bad pitch for a time share, but with more swordplay and no buffet.

The film spends a lot of time here, cross-cutting with the forest moon raid and the space battle, and this of course is where the complaint comes in about repetitiveness. Every time they come back to the trio, they're labouring over the exact same question. Luke says "No; I think if I'm going to pay that kind of money, I need at least four weekends, and better pool access." The Emperor mentions the spa. Vader threatens to walk out, since he's meeting a couple from Kennelworth at noon. Luke waffles for a bit, but won't commit.

All of this timekilling draws attention to just how ridiculous the conflict really is. Luke should be dead here. He has surrendered himself to the Emperor, and is alive and talking only to indulge Vader. We are sold -agressively- the idea that the Dark Side is a quagmire out of which Luke could never return. If we don't believe this, then it is entirely stupid that Luke can't just get angry, kill the Emperor, and then recant and be good again. It's equally ridiculous that the Emperor believes this plan of getting the kid mad will work. It's only if this is the sort of thing that *can* work that I will believe it's worth the risk for the Emperor. Otherwise, this is a classic case of the big bad guy putting the hero near the kill switch that turns all of his robots off, or or talking for too long with a gun in his hand, unaware that the rescue is on its way. So giving in to anger and embracing the Dark *should* be a one-way street. Naturally it's a bit of a curve ball that Vader turns into a nice white guy at the end, all apologetic and totally capable of killing the Emperor by tossing him from a height, something that didn't even kill Luke when he was a novice. After this act of anger, Vader takes off his mask (the true source of all his evil) and dies all happy and proud of his son. He escaped the Dark Side long enough to kill a man with his bare hands, and now he's cured. Apparently, if you give in to anger once, you become evil, but if you give in while you're already evil, you become good again. It's like STAR WARS suddenly started to borrow plot ideas from GILLIGAN'S ISLAND.

That's what I didn't like about the interaction between those characters.

-----------------------------------------

But as a general observation, I think the worst idea Lucas ever had was to make the big villain and the big hero the same guy. This isn't GORMENGHAST, ELRIC, or even INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE. Lucas just wasn't up to the task of making a tragic hero/villain, and in case anyone out there ever wants to do it, the way you do it is to make the hero/villain the main character of the story and you stay with him, thick and thin. Lucas established Vader as the bad guy in all three OT films, even the third one, where he converts back to good. We never got any idea of his motive, or what kept him on the road of evil. Trying to make him a tragic figure after the fact without ever once characterizing him was like making Maul the big villain of TPM and giving him no more than a throw-away line. It's just not something you can buy without meeting him far more than halfway.

The fact is that Lucas wrote himself into a corner with the big reveal in EMPIRE. Once he had Vader = Luke's dad, he didn't know where to go. And he went somewhere I wouldn't have expected of a high school kid in a creative writing class.