[Paladin]

As I promised yesterday, here’s my personal addition to ‘Why Star Wars episode II sucks’.


Reason 1: Jar Jar Bink’s miraculous survival

When the Queen’s ship blows up, it’s pretty totaled. But somehow we see in the next scene that Jar Jar made it through miraculously. Did Jar Jar have his own personal decoy too? Or did he just cram himself on Padme’s fighter the whole trip?

Reason 2: Make a fool of yourself AND your homeplanet!

Back in Episode I, we've seen that Jar Jar is, without a doubt, the single most retarded buffoon in the entire series. Why he was made a general is incomprehensible in the first place. But what is equally stupid is that he was made a representative of his homeplanet and after ten *YEARS* of being in the job, Jar Jar is STILL the same old bumbling, incompetent fool we’ve seen him to be in the last movie. Just look at the way he greeted Anakin and Obi-Wan, he jumped up and down like a little kid who’s just seen his grandpa. Is this the type of person you’d want to represent your country? What are those Nabooians thinking!

Reason 3: You’re using her as bait… hmm

Instead of using Padme as bait, why not put a dummy in her place and make her sleep on the couch? They use a living decoy to die for her, why not put a dummy in her bed?

Reason 4: The poisonous bugs

I know, I know, this has been addressed already, but I have an idea of my own. Instead of busing bugs or bullets to do the job, why not send the same droid with some high charge explosives and blow the living hell out of Padme’s bedroom? Nobody can survive that and it would be even more foolproof than using a gun.

Reason 5: Hang on tight, Jedi man!

When Obi-wan leaps through the glass window and grabs on to the assassin droid, it hardly does anything to get him to fall. I have a better idea, why not have the droid set to self-destruct if something like this were to happen? That way, they would have killed Obi-wan and he would never have even gotten close to where Zam and Jango Fett were. Or better yet, make it go self-destruct once its mission objectives are complete (or whether it failed to do them); no way they can track them down then.

Reason 6: No seatbelts

Didn’t you find it strange that no one wore seatbelts during the whole chase scene? I think it would pretty suicidal to have a chase in midair, heading at hundreds of kilometers an hour and perform dives and twists and turns and not wear seatbelts.

Reason 7: Why is she a changeling?

What’s the point of Zam being a changeling in the first place? We only see her change for a split second (when Anakin is grappling on board her car) and when she gets killed by Jango. I’ll say it again, what’s the point of the ‘changeling’?

Reason 8: Call the cops!

Why didn’t Anakin and Obi-Wan call for backup? If they wanted to catch Zam so bad, why did they opt to go alone?

Reason 9: Went in there to hide… Lame, very lame

When Zam goes into this bar/disco/whatever, she isn’t going there to hide; neither is she going there to run. She doesn’t even change her form (she can do that, right?), but what she does try to do is to kill Obi-Wan, who is completely aware of her presence in the bar. Now I’ll not go on talking about how stupid this thing is (she’s bound to either get killed or caught), but why didn’t she just slip into the ladies room, take off some unnecessary clothes (her helmet and gloves would be first), ‘change’ her form, and then casually leave the bar while Obi-Wan and Anakin are looking for her? It would have been a much wiser move in my never-to-be humble opinion.

Reason 10: relative strength of the ‘power couplings’

What power couplings are, I do not know. But the whole idea of them being able to be damaged so easily from ONE shot from a pistol is not something I’m going to accept. If they’re so easy to destroy or damage than any terrorist with a rifle can wreak havoc on the entire city and probably destroy their whole power plant.

Reason 11: Saber darts and café chefs

The so called ‘reason’ why the Jedi archive droids couldn’t figure out which planet those darts are from is the stupidest thing I’ve heard of in my entire life.

Reason 12: Sure way to strand Obi-Wan

I don’t know why Jango Fett didn’t think of this but… why not shoot Obi-Wan’s hyperdrive ring thing that he uses to make his jumps?

Reason 13: No security cameras

When Obi-Wan breaks into Count Dooku’s factory, he just waltzes in there and goes pretty far, eavesdrops on Dooku and his associates, then leaves without being detected. Why is it that these people, with super advanced technology, can’t even build a good security system around an extremely vital part of their stronghold? And don’t these people have radar of some kind to stop ships coming in and out of the place?

Reason 14: Count Dooku is really a good guy!

Not only does Count Dooku tell Obi-Wan that ‘the Sith are in charge now’ and implies that Palpatine is responsible for the whole mess; he even offers to destroy them all if Obi-Wan would ‘join him’. Why Dooku is offering to betray his master and even turn against himself (he IS a Sith lord, isn’t he?) I don’t know. This is probably one of the most major problems of this crappy movie. What next? Anakin not being Darth Vader? Or better yet. How about they make Obi-Wan Darth Vader and they make Anakin change his name to Obi-Wan that would be a big surprise!

Reason 15: The battle in the arena…

Was completely unnecessary. Why do I say this? Simple. The whole purpose of having a huge amount of Jedi fighting in an arena didn’t serve any other purpose than causing the doofuses in the audience to go ‘wow’ and ‘ah’ and ‘arrg’. The battle only ends when Yoda comes with the Clone troops and saves the survivors. The battle could have been avoided and so many Jedi saved only if Yoda came earlier. They weren’t kidding when they said that fights in the movies are just there to please the crowds these days.

Reason 16: Aim right above the fuel cells…

How did Anakin know where the ‘fuel cells’ were? And did the clone pilot know that too, so he can aim at that place?

Reason 17: No rockets? Got Guns?

The ship that Anakin, Obi-Wan and Padme were flying, as we had seen earlier, was laden with guns. If the had run out of ‘rockets’, why not just open fire with your cannons and guns? And if that was too much to ask, can’t they at least use them to defend themselves against the little attack droids that were shooting them?

Reason 18: We have to get to that hanger… what hanger?

How did Padme know that Dooku was heading to a hanger, and not (say) a platform, or simply a ship landed there on the ground? Also, how did she know the exact location of the hanger?

Reason 19: Are Jedi really more powerful than the Sith?

We seen that Darth Maul totally kicked the Jedi’s ass in Episode I (neither Obi-Wan or Qui-Gon stood a chance), and in Episode II, Dooku more or less defeats Obi-Wan and Anakin without so much as breaking a sweat. Are these the big, mighty Jedi that we are supposed to believe can defeat any foe? I’m not saying their invincible, but did they have to suck so bad?

Reason 20: Dooku Me Leave To!

Forgive my extraordinary lame attempt at making fun of Yoda’s English, but I felt an obligation to. Why did Yoda not have a battalion of Clone troops to back him up when he decided to get Dooku? Since they needed to capture him so bad, there was no real point in going alone.

That’s all from me on Episode II.

[Chefelf]

Reason 3: You’re using her as bait… hmm

Instead of using Padme as bait, why not put a dummy in her place and make her sleep on the couch? They use a living decoy to die for her, why not put a dummy in her bed?

I think Anakin will take care of that in Episode III.

Oh snap!

[Jordan]

...there was no real point...

Paladin the above statment sums up the whole prequel

[Jordan]

Your first reason does not count. The queen met Jar Jar on the planet, he did not arrive with her.

[Paladin]

Your first reason does not count. The queen met Jar Jar on the planet, he did not arrive with her. 

So what you're saying is, Jar Jar was on the planet before her?

I think Anakin will take care of that in Episode III.

Oh snap!  

I think I know what you mean in the first part. But what's the 'oh snap' mean?

[Jordan]

So what you're saying is, Jar Jar was on the planet before her?

Yes, that is what I mean.


Whocares- Whats sad is that the stuff Lucas comes up with is along the same lines as what you just said. If some one came up to me prior to my viewing of the movie and said "artoo has jet packs and c3p0 is made by darth vader" I would laugh.

[Despondent]

got a kick out of seeing an official in-print reason, from "this weeks movies" section of tv guide:

SW Ep2: AOTC
(2002) PG: Obi-Wan Kenobi (EMG) trains Anakin Skywalker (HC) to be a jedi. Thrilling special effects make up for stilted dialogue and wooden acting. (2:25) 2 stars.

[Mike Mac from NYU]

Reason 3: You’re using her as bait… hmm

Instead of using Padme as bait, why not put a dummy in her place and make her sleep on the couch? They use a living decoy to die for her, why not put a dummy in her bed? 


I think Anakin will take care of that in Episode III.

Oh snap!  "

Yeah, the shouldn't have tried to attack Amidala with a smal, hairy, worm-like creature. Anakin took care of that three scenes later.

Touche

[CowboyCurtis]

Reason 9: Went in there to hide… Lame, very lame

Not only that, but what frickin' place doesn't have a BACK DOOR!!! I mean, where do all the servers and dancers go? Gimme a break.

Reason 15: The battle in the arena…

And you know what's even more frickin' lame is that they take the time to execute these guys! I mean, your operation has just been compromised, there might even be reinforcements coming (gasp, hey, there might even be Jedi!), and they still go on with the pagentry. Stupid! Stupid! In all honestly, it seems like this arena scene would've worked better in the first film. It feels more like Tatooine, and Jabba should be preciding over it. It's just in the wrong film.

Again---BAD PLANNING, GEORGIE!!

This post has been edited by CowboyCurtis: 24 April 2004 - 10:08 AM

[Just your average movie goer]

The Arena Scene.... ah (shakes head sadly).....

I don't know if any of you have seen the animated movie Monsters Inc. It was a bit disappointing because there wasn't enough stuff for the older viewer but anyway, I'm not mentioning it to knock it. It was a children's film, afterall.

The reason I mention it is because it had a bad guy that was a weird snake-like monster, cartoonish and funny looking because hey, it's a children's movie.

But the thing was, in the arena scene, the monster that was assigned to Amidala looked EXACTLY like this cartoonish character from that kid's film.

Ah, the marvels of CGI! I always wondered though, do they look real to George?

[Despondent]

I sense what you're feeling. MIB was on tv the other night, and there was another one of those "snapping" insect creatures/monsters that just *sang* George Lucas is going to emulate ME?

[CowboyCurtis]

I forced myself to sit down and watch this last night, and my God, I tried.. I mean, I tried to force all of the bias and thoughts out of my head, but I could not sit through a lot of it. I only really stopped FF when the saber battles started at the end.

Sigh. There are so many things wrong. I don't mind the fighting. Nice work by the stuntman (sorry, name escapes me right now), nice choreography, but many of the shots are so far away, or too far away, and really makes the fights look passive and uninteresting. Where are the low shots, and the tight shots. I think perhaps more editing was required. The sets, too, just look over worked and underworked at the same time. One thing, and this is going to sound weird, are the floors in SW. In the older films, when I look at floors, I really believe they are there, and people are walking on them.

But, never for once, do I believe at any time that the floors are real in these settings. I mean, the DS floors... look real... Star Destroyer bridge floor... looks real... Falcon's floors... look real. TF floorboards?... nope. Theed courtyard... nope... (it actually looked like a tech had just sprayed them down with the hose)... The only floors which came close were the ones in Watto's shop... Why?

I know, a weird thing to judge films on, but...

[AdmiralViscen]

The choreography in the PT is great for a ballet, but it's frickin' stupid for a fight to the death.