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Why PhantomMenace didn't suck (let's have a decent argument!)

#16 User is offline   Despondent Icon

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Posted 04 October 2004 - 10:15 AM

QUOTE (J m HofMarN @ Oct 4 2004, 04:08 AM)
What I saw  was closer to rockem sockem robots and while this might be exciting for those playing it it's not exciting to watch at all.

Did anyone really suffer at all in the PT (other than the viewer)

tongue.gif laugh.gif

Great post, Hoffman. Freaking excellent.
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Posted 04 October 2004 - 10:59 AM

Yeah, more of what movie goer just said:

TPM and AOTC (I presume) have weaknesses that the viewer HOPES will be resolved with the final segment, plot holes that we (that is, other people, not me so much) PRAY will be fixed up later. So the onus is on the later film to make the current one good.

EMPIRE is great and incomplete, and it gave its sequel a lot to answer for and to live up to. EMPIRE is not as good post-1983 as it was pre-1983, simply because JEDI failed to complete the story and to live up to the promise. In fact, in the light of the story elements made available in JEDI, EMPIRE just sucks ass.

But it's not EMPIRE's fault; it's due to the fact, not known to us at the time, that Lucas had no idea what he was going to do with all that stuff he was throwing at us in 1980. Unlike the PT, where Lucas has produced mediocre films he need to make better with a decent conclusion, with EMPIRE Lucas had produced a great flick and he needed to live up to it. When actually put to the wall, he waffled. And too bad, because in my opinion he had something there for a year or two.
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).
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#18 User is offline   Vwing Icon

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Posted 04 October 2004 - 02:47 PM

JYAMG, just a couple things you said about ROTJ I would like to clear up.

1. Facing Darth Vader/Not Facing Darth Vader - This was also in that guy's 50 reasons ROTJ sucks, and it still remains the one thing on Jedi that I think people are stretching to make it a reason it sucks. Yoda's reasoning on this is very clear.

In ESB, Luke was not ready to face Vader, and if he did he would either die or be seduced by the Dark Side. However, though Luke initially failed the test by leaving, he passed in the end, being stronger than Yoda thought and not giving in to Vader's temptation.

In ROTJ, Luke is sure of himself, a confident Jedi. He is now ready to face Vader, and he must, if he wants to defeat the Sith and bring back the Jedi. To be truly powerful, he must now face the one thing that he fears, the one thing that could tempt him, and overcome, and only then could he truly delve into the deeper world of the force.

2. I highly doubt that Vader voluntarily gave up command of the fleet. More likely, his master came to oversee the fleet and assumed command, and Vader, who remember is now unsure of himself because of his new relationship with Luke and who in the last movie just said he wanted to destroy the Emperor, had to accept and protect his master.

Your other points are well-taken however.
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#19 User is offline   J m HofMarN Icon

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Posted 04 October 2004 - 08:52 PM

Jariten- Oh, please do try, I'm very much looking forward to it. I'm sorry the post was rather lengthy.

Everyone else- Regardless of ROTJ's failings you have to admit that it flowed with the other movies even though it may be decidedly different. Luke and Han and Leiah and Vader and Lando changed onscreen rather than offscreen so you can see the character progression throughout each of the three films.

Lucas in the PT just asks us to assume that characters change. Neither of the prequels are as complete as any of the OT movies because we pretty much know that very few of our questions will ever be answered. Unlike in the OT where, even if they weren't answered satisfactorily to some of us, they were at least addressed.

Also, does anyone realize how expendable the PT's characters are? There are so many extra characters in it that it's not even funny, it's like it's trying to be the lord of the rings half assed edition. In the OT if something happened you could bet it involved someone you knew. For instance, Han's problems with Jabba the Hutt were there throughout all three films and when Lando was introduced he was actually used for something and not just discarded. Not only was his character redeemed in the viewer's eyes but he was also symbolic of the planetary governors forced to bow to the empire and then rising up as the rebels gained strength.

And if anyone died it was for a damned good reason. There was no sudden use of deus ex machina. Yoda died of old age, Obi Wan died to save Luke, Vader died as penance for his sins and the emperor died because he had to be killed. Compare this to the sudden death of Qui Gonn which only served to make the OT's Obi Wan look like he was guilt tripping over nothing, the pointless death of Darth Maul who only had to be killed cuz he killed Qui Gonn, the death of Anakin's mother who was just randomly murdered, the eventual death of Mace Windu and Count Dooku which will also serve little or no purpose. Lucas' new characters are not only more expendable but their deaths have less meaning.

ROTJ and ESB both had deaths in them that happened for a reason and meant something. Lucas may as well just have said that Shmi was killed in a hovber bike crash so Anakin could slaughter a community of hover bikes or maybe she died of erotic asphyxiation so Anakin can take to lurking around a lake in a hockey mask and slashing horny teens to death with his lightsaber.

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#20 User is offline   Just your average movie goer Icon

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Posted 05 October 2004 - 06:55 AM

J M, the other day, I didn't really have time to read your post fully... not the last one in this thread but the one before.

Tonight, having more time available to me, I sat down and read your post at a nice leisurely pace and read it in its entirety.

I have to say - that is one of THE BEST posts I have ever seen on this forum. It was very informative and summed up so many of the problems with the prequels. In addition to this, it was very entertaining as well.

If you were to take out the four letter words and replace them with something a little less crude, and polish it up a little, this would make a damn fine article that you could send to an online magazine or something.

Perhaps we cannot sway Jariten (and I respect that, Jariten... although I do not understand it) but your commentary may be able to convince others that Lucas has truly lost his touch with these movies and perhaps we can make a dent in the denial shields carried by his deluded fan base. It may not be much... but perhaps it could stop a little bit of the madness.

Very impressed over here (and I don't get impressed easily).

- Movie Goer
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#21 User is offline   J m HofMarN Icon

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Posted 05 October 2004 - 05:28 PM

Movie Goer- I think I just might do that, I'm glad you liked it.

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I don't know about you but I have never advocated that homosexuals, for any reason, be cut out of their mother's womb and thrown into a bin.
- Deucaon toes a hard line on gay fetus rights.
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#22 User is offline   Xombie Icon

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Posted 05 October 2004 - 06:24 PM

I take issue with the comment that death means more in the OT. In fact, in the OT NO ONE of any import dies. No one. Oh, Vader, Obie Won and Yoda "die" but they don't really die. There's no loss. They keep dropping in all the time as Jedi ghosts. As the grinning ghostly trio demonstrates at the end, it's probably fun to be a dead jedi.
Dramatically someone should have died in the final battle in RotJ. It is a war movie, even if it is for the kiddies. But Lucas is too gutless at this stage to have any kind of sacrifice. I liked the suggestion that was made in the forum a ways back that Han should have bought it heroically, and Luke would have to go back to pursuing his celebate Jedi career, leaving Leia to try and gather the remnants of her people together to form a new society. That is the proper sort of ending for a war movie. Not a birthday party attended by singing teddy bears and kindly ghosts.
(And by the way, if the force is about having a high midi count in the bloodstream, how do the Jedi come back as ghosts when, I assume, ghosts wouldn't have a frickin bloodstream?)
And speaking of Leia's people, what about Alderran? Leia gets to watch her home planet blown up and countless billions of her subjects murdered (to get HER to talk) and she can't be bothered to ever bring it up again. What the fuck is she smiling about at the ceremony at the end of Star Wars? Its been, what?, 48 hours since her FREAKING planet got blown up??? What's typically considered a decent period of mourning on Alderran? A minute and a half? The genocide is never brought up again, even when Luke reveals he wants to redeem the soul of one the chief instigators of it? This willingness to go along with redeeming Vader makes leia every bit a moral monster as Luke at this point.
Death more meaningful? No, I'm afraid death hasn't meant anything in a Lucas film since the final two minutes of American Grafitti.
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#23 User is offline   J m HofMarN Icon

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Posted 06 October 2004 - 12:22 AM

Returning as a spirit meant that Obi Wan and Yoda's work was not done, they could not flow with the force or whatever it is they do. What we saw at the end of ROTJ should have contained the ghosts finding peace and fading away. But you must admit death in teh OT was more poignant than in the PT. And it was at least mentioned. "It was as if a million souls cried out at once and were suddenly silenced." Where do you find things like that in the prequels?

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I don't know about you but I have never advocated that homosexuals, for any reason, be cut out of their mother's womb and thrown into a bin.
- Deucaon toes a hard line on gay fetus rights.
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#24 User is offline   Just your average movie goer Icon

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Posted 06 October 2004 - 07:46 AM

I agree with both of you. Death wasn't treated as seriously as it should have been in the originals, but they treated it with more maturity than the prequels ever did.

Return of the Jedi is where they lost it. In The Empire Strikes Back, Obi Wan appeared at two really important moments. His apparation was also quite unearthly - larger than life, shimmering, suspended in the air in the one place... and then fading away into the snowstorm on Hoth and the darkness on Dagobah. And that really should have been the last we saw of him.

In Return of the Jedi, however, he appears pretty much as a fully living human being - just with a bit of blue light around him. He walks over to Luke, sits down on a log and then proceeds to answer all his questions about everything that happened so far and conveniently tie up any loose ends. It was terrible.

Luke - You lied to me about my father.

Obi Wan - No, I didn't. I was just telling it from my point of view.

Luke - There's still good in him.

Obi Wan - Since when? When he tortured your friends or when he cut your hand off?

Luke - I don't know. But Lucas has decreed that I shall care about this man.

Obi Wan - I see.... but you're wasting your time. He's more machine now than man, twisted and totally, utterly evil.

Luke - I'm not gonna kill my own father, dude.

Obi Wan - Then we're screwed. You were our only hope.

Luke - Yoda said there's another.

Obi Wan - Oh, your twin sister. Yeah, I completely forgot about her too. Guess who your sister is?

Luke (thinking of any female characters he knows) - Um... Leia.

Obi Wan - Good guess. Okay. Anything else you wanna know?

Luke - Yeah, will Han ever get his Sports Illustrated football phone?
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