[Jaded Wolf]

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I have just completely read all the reasons to hate Star Wars Episodes I and II. While there are some I can agree with, there are some I think are jsut way too nit-picky and also a little off. For instance, criticizing holo-projectors with robot legs and the use of poodoo as a curse word is a little nit-picky. Does a holo-projector with legs constitute Episode I has being bad? No. If the viceroy wanted to have one with legs, then he wanted to have one with legs. Poodoo may just be a common curse word among the hutts. Deal with it.
There was another thing too that was nit-picky and that Watto's invulnerability to the Jedi mind trick. ChefElf stated this as a reason to hate Episode I yet Jabba the HUtt could not be persuaded either. Then ChefElf pops off that Watto could have made all Jedis their (explicit word) :yuck: . This is unacceptabel because even though Luke could not use the Jedi Mind Trick, he still found other ways to deal with Jabba through the Force. I can accept that the Jedi Mind Trick doesn't work on some people because even Obi-Wan in Epsiode IV said that it only works on those who are weak minded.
BTW, the slave chips in Episode I were not in the heads. In fact the movie never revealed where the chips were because Anakin said he was working on a device that would scan the body to locate the chip. Get some facts straight before you go off on it. I will agree that the use of chips is kinda off because if they were true slaves, they should have not been able to move about so freely without the direct supervision of Watto.
All the comments seem to be trying to limit George Lucas' imagination. :angry: The senatorial chambers being criticized because of hover seats. C'mon, what good is a sci-fi/fantasy if you can't use the imagination and put it in print or on the screen. No one seems to mind time travel movies although we know that is impossible. Yet Lucas puts hoverseats in the senate and it's beyond credibility. Get off the soapbox and open your minds a little.
Also, how does ChefElf know what the Force can or cannot do? Was he the author of the Force? Is he the all knowing Force-god? No. Only George Lucas knows about the Force because he created the Force. In the original trilogy, we only saw brief glimpses of the Force. We know the Force can choke people, play mind tricks, lift objects, make sounds to fool people, ability to sense other Force users, and limited, I say again, LIMITED, sight into the future. That was it, so how do we not know the Force can do other things? At first, I was a bit skeptical when I saw Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon take off at super speed, but then I realized that this is jsut a Force ability not known because the original trilogy did not feature all the Jedis. They were wiped out, remember, and so with them certain knowledge of the Force. Plus Lucas just did not have the effects nor the budget to get them in there. So, unless you created something, you really have no say in how or what can be done with the Force. If Anakin can somehow control the rate of his descent on Coruscant as he suicides dives onto the hovercar, then so be it. Open your minds.
I can go and on and I'll need to post another post for them because I really want to take the time and effort into these counter arguments. The deal is though that you watch these movies for the fiction and the imagination. I admit the prequels could have been better. But hey, I can sit right down and nit-pick the original trilogy and find all kinds of things wrong. I won't though because it takes away the enjoyment from the movie. This is how I feel about the saga thus far. Epsiode III should be a mind blower. May open mindedness be with us all...

[Jordan]

I'm not going to bother argue, save one point.

You keep saying that it's George's idea and he can do what ever he wants with it. Fine, that's ok. George can do whatever the hell he wants. But it does not mean it's right.

If an anvil fell on Anakin's head and then after he simply got up and walked away , would you accept that? Probably not. If Anakin fell 100 metres and lived, would you accept that? Well, you did. Both are tickets to death.

The budget restraint was actually a good thing. If Lucas had the technology back then, things would have been just as silly as they are now. The simple swing across the casam in the Death Star would nodoubt be a swing across a 130 m gap with robot arms and flying bombs in the way. CG has allowed Lucas to get closer to the impossible, and this is not always a good thing. Many scenes in the PT felt like a video game, not something we could relate too.

Van Helsing is another movie which totally disregards any level of realism and simply slaps the audience around for about 2 hours with off the wall stupid bull shit.


The fall during the speeder scene was too much. You can't have an open mind all the time. YOu need a level certain level of reality. IF not, then SW or any movie would be not unlike a stupid fucking cartoon, where characters die, fall of cliffs, blow up and still be around for the next scene.

[HK 47]

Judging by the title of this thread: "It's not that BAD, Why Star Wars saga is quite good" I thought the important issues were gonna be discussed. Perhaps I should add that it's the prequels most people here hate, not the original trilogy, even though some have a problem with ROTJ...

Walking holo-projectors, Poodoo, Toydarian force-immunity, slave-chips, hover seats and the limits of the Force? If all these things would change for the better the PTs would still be f**king horrible. You are correct that we sometimes nitpick here. We do so because Lucas stretches the suspension of disbelief too thin. And don't give me any crap about "Only George Lucas knows about the Force because he created the Force." Lucas also created the midichlorians and that concept clearly contradicts one of the very cornerstones on which the original trilogy found its strength.

In conclusion, the aforementioned details you argue are microscopic in comparison with the major reasons that makes the PT so very offensive and disappointing.

[civilian_number_two]

What he said. Listen to that robot: he knows what he's saying.

The thing is, it's a mark of a bad writer to make a big song and dance out of something and then to disregard it later. Like endless loving closeups on a stranger in a crowd, the entire backstory of the Jedi has been spanked by these prequels. Lucas is more interested in goofing around with CGI than in bothering to tie up certain key events in any emotionally resonant way:

-Obi Wan is a GENERAL in the clone wars, working for a guy who isn't even a character yet. And yeah, I know Han Solo was made a "general" in JEDI, but when I saw STAR WARS, I thought "General" was an important military rank.
-He and Anikin were once very close friends, not some rigid master/student symbiant pair.
-The Force is an energy field that binds all living things, not a species in the blood of the ubermensch.
-Yoda is a Jedi Master, and a student of the Force, not a lightsaber-wielding video game element.
-Luke's Father was a great pilot when ObiWan first met him, a cunning warrior and a good friend. He had entrusted Ben with his lightsaber, to be given to his sone when he died. Ben should not actually have known that Anikin was Darth Vader; in JEDI, this revelation made stuff said in STAR WARS suddenly trivil and senseless.
-The Force is Zen Mysticism writ small; Lucas did not invent it. Anyway, your argument is God's answer to Job (Job, chapters 38-41): a big, lame cop-out.
-Lucas set up an important question in the OT, lame as it ultimately was: "What happened to make Vader turn evil?" Apparently, he'll never answer that, unless I'm supposed to go with Sandpeople killing his mom, or restrictions on emotions, or Ben holding them back. Because frankly that's some pretty weak writing.

I could drop a screenplay ut of my ass in one month that would be better than TPM, and that would set up a story arc for two more films that would end in satisfying way. I could do it in one month; so could a lot of guys here, and Lucas twiddled his thumbs for twenty years before he turned out the marketing juggernaut that is the PT. More importan than making the thing any good was having the right tie-ins and products. It is insulting.

All of Chef's nitpicking is there to serve a larger purpose: to raise the question "What is good in the PT?" And another: "How does this tie in with the OT?"
The "poodoo" and the "brain blocking" gags are weak, since they serve the same purpose as they did in JEDI: they are filler, to cover bad writing. How about Jedi can convince people of things they want to believe, nut not otherwise? Those Stormtroopers wanted to have a beer and kick back; they didn't want to arrest anyone. So Ben had no probelm telling them "these aren't the droids youre looking for." He reinforced their own laziness. But what level of mind control could convince Jabba to turn over Han Solo? Nothing short of total domination! So there was no need to make Jabba "Force-repellant;" we just needed better "Jedi Mind Trick" rules. What about Poodoo, and walking hologram droids on spiderlegs? These are stupid because they are there begging for us to say "Cool!" Wow, a swear word in another language! That's impressive to all the people who think Lucas invented an entrely dfferent language just so he could have some chick babble out a song at the beginning of JEDI. No, Lucas did not invent a language. The notion is absurd. Even Tolkien dd not invent languages, but his fans have better cause to make the claim. And the little droid is stupid. It serves no purpose, other than to clutter the frame with one jaw-dropping level of awesomeness after another. Wow! Did you see Jar-Jar dive?

Cool!

Jordan, as always, is right: the PT is VAN HELSING. My favorite bit in VH is when the heroes are racing through the woods, and these harpies attack them, and it ends with the harpies getting blown up by a big bomb on board the heroes' coach, and then we learn that there's another road through the woods, like 30 feet away, and there's another coach, and that's the one the heroes are really using. HUHN? Do you know what it takes to carve a road through the woods? And can't these bitches fly? It's absurd, it's sad, it's a big waste of time.

I came out of VAN HELSING telling people I thought it was a fairly amusing medieval send-up of James Bond. It's that much better than the PT. Tell me why.

[azerty]

It aint " quite good"

One of the biggest problems with the Star Wars universe and the back story is that it is all far too simple. This is what I mean - sure there are a lot of dots to connect, but all the connections are totally obvious, (or at least have been so far). Any of us could connect these dots into some kind of a logical thread, and so what? And we know what has to happen in Episode three; so what again? As the connections are made, are we supposed to sit back in the cinema with our checklist and tick them off one by one like we are in some kind of lame history lecture? That's what bored the piss out of me in Clones! How should I put this: I don't want my dots CONNECTED, I want some NEW dots that slide neatly into the old dots that make me sit up and smile and think "now that was damn good!"

The main thing that I dislike about the Star Wars universe is that instead of increasing in size with each movie, it does the opposite and just shrinks in on itself and becomes less and less interesting. I wish George (or who ever) would throw a huge wrench in the works and show us something that will be a total shocker. And though I dislike all the PT quite a bit, I still think that George could do it. There is something inside that head of his, if he could just somehow get it out.

I said in another thread that I thought Phantom didn't totally suck for a couple of reasons, and most of those reasons were because there were some new looking and sounding things in the film. Shiny ships, new space noises, machines that roll, catapulted blue balls of energy - sure it's small stupid stuff but at least Phantom wasn't a Star wars Rip off. That's what we have Battlestar Galactica for, to be a lamer version of ripped off star wars stuff. Amost-X wings, almost-stormtroopers, almost-Imperial Cruisers, etc. Big deal. Phantom had some problems and all, but I kinda liked watching it. Clones on the other hand was totally boring. Why, I don't exactly know. It's similar to the truck chase in Raiders of the Lost Ark being fun, and the tank chase in Last Crusade being a yawner. How can two things exactly the same be so different? Clones had more action, and was still utterly lame. Phantom was different. It wasn't MY movie, but at least it was a DIFFERENT movie.

But as for Episodes one and two being "not that bad", they ARE that bad. It's all too damn predictable. Those Harry Potter books are more of what I like in my episodic stories, each one is a shocker. The pet rat is a person, the old lady down the street is a witch, their own brother changes sides to the bad guys, somebody significant snuffs it, etc. I want each installment to let me know that everything I knew was wrong. I want the author to be way ahead of me, not just trying to keep pace with my own imagination. I don't need Uncle Owen to say "this is my girlfriend Beru", We already know that. What if Beru was an ex jedi, or something INTERESTING! Nope, all we are going to get is the shortest, most boring line from dot to dot. It's as if George has restricted himself with the same restrictions he puts on other authors who use his characters; "Don't add or subtract anything, or change anything or go outside any of the rooms I have already created." That's why it does and will continue to suck.

This post has been edited by azerty: 17 October 2004 - 04:02 PM

[Chefelf]

Wow, those are some really good points. This is why I created this forum. In the "old times" I had to field every email I got on this subject. Now when people post here, their views can be discussed by everyone and often times the readers here will post better things that I would say.

civilian_number_two and azerty both had very good points. Something I have said time and time again is that Lucas is just connecting the dots but he's not even doing a very good job of it. There were so many things that we took for granted we would see in Episodes I and II, listed conveniently by civilian_number_two. We don't see any of those things so even the most basic structure of the movies is instantly lost.

Will Obi-Wan serve with Bail Organa in the Clone Wars? I dunno. Lucas has one more movie to have this happen but it is doubtful at this point that we will see it happen. Other things (i.e. Anakin being a good pilot, being friends with Obi-Wan, etc.) just won't happen because it's too late.

azerty, I agree with you. TPM almost makes me laugh now with how comically bad it is. ALMOST! It can, however, be entertaining from a certain standpoint. AOTC is just a snoozefest. The screen is constantly filled with action yet the movie is completely lifeless. The romance, the mystery for braindead five-year-olds, the stupid Jango Fett/clone subplot... it's all so unbelievably dull.

And azerty is absolutely right about the universe simply collapsing on itself. There is so much room for expansion that doesn't take place. Not including Tatooine, for example, would have been a great start. There is no reason that it should be in 5 out of 6 of the Star Wars movies. Create some new interesting planets in its place.

As for Anakin controlling the rate of his descent, I'm not buying it. Part of the Force is that it isn't well defined, but I was always under the assumption that you couldn't use the Force to do such things. He would have had to control his descent and also have speeded up to about 150 mph. Only Superman and Neo have that ability as far as I know.

And if Anakin could do that then how does he so easily dispatch of the emperor in ROTJ?

[Helena]

I think you others have already said everything I wanted to say. Just one thing about the 'Force-Proof Head': In the OT it was stated that the Force can have a powerful effect on the weak-minded. In other words, it is less likely to work on those who are 'strong-minded' - i.e. more than usually determined, stubborn, and self-assured. So there was no need whatsoever to state that the mind-trick doesn't work on whatever alien species Watto belongs to.

[Jaded Wolf]

Wow, these replies are exciting. Look, I am short on time so I know it seemed I picked some of the little things to counter argue with. I was just trying to point out that alot of the 70+ reasons to hate Star Wars was little. I admit there are some things I said, "Huh?" on, but when it came down to it, I overlooked it and enjoyed the story for what it is. Also, I don't think bashing God and the book of Job serves any purpose here now does it?

Look, if an anvil fell on the head of Anakin, you are right in assuming I owuldn't accept it. However, if I can believe Christopher Reeve, may he rest in peace, can fly as Superman only for Keanu Reeves to rip him off in the Matrix, then I can believe that somehow in someway Hayden as Anakin controlled his descent and speed. Maybe I am a fantasy lovin nut on this one, but I can overlook it.

I admit that it was crappy of how Obi-Wan and Anakin met. I didn't like it because in ANH Ben said he knew Anakin as a pilot and a cunning warrior. Then again, Ben did lie to Luke about Anakin being killed by Vader and covered it up as "half-truth", so most likely it will be covered up like this as well. Then again, maybe Ben was ashamed that he met Anakin as a podracin little slave boy who was whinny and took the last few precious moments of Qui-Gon's time away from Obi-Wan. Who knows why the history changed?

Let me say what I think was good about the PT thus far. You have the CGI effects, which I know everyone said ruined the movie, but I think it enhanced it for what it needed to do for the storyline. I loved the scene where the droids were placed on the battle field on Naboo against the Gungans. I enjoyed the underwater city of the Gungans mainly because I love the myths and legends of Atlantis and it just looked cool. I actually liked Jake Lloyd as Anakin but I think they should have played off the strengths of a ten year old boy and not make him grown so fast. Also, I would have made him this innocent boy where nothing bad was sense in him. His turn would be slow and deliberate seeing most of it in Ep II and then see the ultimate culmination in Ep III, but then I'm not the creator of Star Wars. I thought Darth Maul was one bad villian and his time on the screen and in the universe was short lived and I really liked the lightsaber duel between Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, and Darth Maul. I do agree that the whole running through the shields was kinda gay and was just too convenient of a way to off Qui-Gon.

Episode II exceeded Episode I in that we now got to see some of the development of Anakin. Was it poorly done? No, it just wasn't what anyone was expecting. I think they tried to hard to show a rift between Anakin and Obi-Wan when again I would have done it slowly. However, what they were trying to show was Anakin's ambition and they done that, if not too much. I think the love scenes between Anakin and Padme should have been done like ESB but then everyone would say they ripped that off, so no one wins on this one. It was cool to see Anakin weilding two lightsabers and for a moment there I could almost see Darth Vader's patent lightsaber moves from ESB. I thought the entrance of the Clone Army was great although I'm not sure how I feel about Boba Fett being a clone and all the stormtroopers are almost like his brothers. I liked Palpatines slow influence on Anakin. Yeah they don't show much but then again there's a whole expanded universe that could have happened in the ten years since we last saw Anakin in TPM until AOTC where there could have been more interaction between the two.

Well, I am being charged for my time here in Iraq on this computer. I know there will be more replies to this and I can't wait. I can agree with some that this PT has not lived up to certain expectations, but then it has fulfilled and even inspired more expectations in myself about the saga as a whole. Can't wait to hear from you all.

[Helena]

JW, I'll leave the others to argue about Gungans and CGI effects, but I really have to take issue with you on Anakin's 'character development'. It wasn't just poorly done, it was appalling. From the way Obi-Wan described him in the original trilogy, I expected to see Anakin as a well-meaning but overconfident Jedi who eventually let his darker side get the better of him, but so gradually that he (and everyone else) could be forgiven for not noticing until it was too late. What we got in Episode II, however, was a whiny, arrogant and unbelievably immature teenager with no sympathetic or redeeming qualities whatsoever.

None of the good things Obi-Wan says about Anakin were even slightly in evidence. Anakin wasn't a 'good friend' to him; their relationship was more akin to that of a bratty thirteen-year-old and a harrassed father. Then suddenly, without any warning, bam! Anakin turns into a raving psychopath and kills a whole village of people. Now, in the middle of the second film of the trilogy, he's 300% Dark Side - yet he's still a Jedi, and we still haven't seen any of the qualities that are supposed to make him worthy of Luke's efforts to redeem him in Episode VI.

I know what Lucas was aiming for - to show how Anakin's arrogance and strong emotions eventually destroy him, turning him into Vader - but anyone with half a brain can see that this transformation should have been subtle. Not only that, but the more sympathetic side of his personality should have been brought out as well, and not just by showing him as a goody-goody little kid in Episode I. It's easy to make a kid look cute, but writing likeable, believable adult characters takes actual talent - talent which George Lucas manifestly doesn't possess.

[HK 47]

Let me say what I think was good about the PT thus far. You have the CGI effects, which I know everyone said ruined the movie, but I think it enhanced it for what it needed to do for the storyline. I loved the scene where the droids were placed on the battle field on Naboo against the Gungans.

The reason why people say CGI ruined the film is not due to the special effects themselves. It is due to their horrible overuse and reliance upon this eye-candy rather than good story, plot and characters. The spectacular effects only amplify and clarify the sad truth that almost all other aspects of the PT are bad, horribly bad. CGI means nothing if you haven't got anything interesting to tell.
Compare for instance the very first battle aboard the Blockade Runner in ANH with the Gungan vs Droid battle. The soulless computer video game antics of the PT loses every time. Why? Aboard the Blockade Runner there was tension and a real sense of danger, excitement! On Naboo, grab your handcontrols kids and look at the funny fish and robots!

[Madam Corvax]

Hear, hear.
CGI is eye-candy, nothing more.

I once heard I good question which concerned this issue:

Which alien looks more geunine and convincing to you - Peter Mayhew dressed as a Walking Carpet Wookie or Jar Jar Binks?

[Chefelf]

Which alien looks more geunine and convincing to you - Peter Mayhew dressed as a Walking Carpet Wookie or Jar Jar Binks?

And the best part is that they probably spent about $3000 on labor/materials to make the Chewbacca costume. They probably spent close to $1 million on Jar Jar.

[civilian_number_two]

For the record, I never picked on God. I was making a reference to the book of Job, and how God is cited as telling Job to quit complaining, since he didn't make the world. Your defence of the PT is as much a cop-out as this citation in the book of Job, which incidentally was written by some Israelites to explain the presence of evil in the world, using "God" as a mouthpiece for their argument.

If you wnat me to believe in God, to the extent that I'm afraid of picking on him, you have to lay off about Job, since it didn't happen and God didn't write it. I just don't buy that this deity got bored one week and decided to bet Satan that he couldn't break a man's resolve of faith by killing his family and giving him hemmoroids. That's fucking stupid.

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

Back to the PT, everything that Helen said.