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Calling out the bashers

#16 User is offline   jariten Icon

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Posted 12 October 2005 - 09:36 PM

Good god, its just like the old days! I’m almost tempted to add a contribution myself.
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#17 User is offline   DarthTherion Icon

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Posted 12 October 2005 - 11:54 PM

Go for it, Jariten!
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#18 User is offline   Cosmic Underwear Icon

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Posted 13 October 2005 - 01:09 AM

QUOTE (jariten @ Oct 12 2005, 09:36 PM)
Good god, its just like the old days! I’m almost tempted to add a contribution myself.


do it.

I just started this thread because I believe Lucas did have a vision, however, he also made it up as he went along. I'm not trying to convince anyone that the new or the old movies are some work of art. I just think many fans are not paying attention to the visuals.

Notice at the beginning of The Phantom Menace, Qui-Gon uses the Jedi mind trick on Boss Nass three times. The first two times it works but on the third time when Qui-Gon says, "Your gods demand his life belong belong to me," it doen't work on Boss Nass. I believe the Gungan city scene along with the scene where Jar Jar declares he owes Qui-Gon a life debt is telling the audience that gods exist in the story of Star Wars. These scenes are at the beginning of the first episode, just like at the beginning of Indiana Jones And The Temple which is the first episode of
the Indy trilogy, we are told by the Shaman that the Hindu God guided Indiana to the village. And then we see Indiana never went to Pankot Palace for fortune and glory like he believed, he went there to free the children.
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#19 User is offline   barend Icon

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Posted 13 October 2005 - 07:54 PM

lucas did have a vision...

film some guys with sticks and let the post-production guys take care of the rest...
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#20 User is offline   Casual Fan Icon

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Posted 14 October 2005 - 02:00 AM

This is a fantastic thread, but its going to die like the other threads because there are really only two possibilities with the prequels.

The first possibility is that Lucas was being incredibly subtle. Much more subtle and much more profound than I can understand, and much more subtle than Civilian # 2, Chief Elf, Jordan, Desponent etc. can understand. He had a much deeper message in the prequels than in the original movies, but we can't understand it because we don't "get" dialogue such as "sand, its rough" or "I've been waiting for this a long time, my little green friend."

The second possibility is that Lucas had no f----- idea what he was doing, was making it up as he went along, and that the two sequels to Star Wars (though they turned out OK, especially ESB) stretched the concept too far, let alone three prequels. Plus by the time Lucas make the prequels he hadn't made a movie in years and most of the movies produced in the US were crap, he literally had no idea how to make a good movie and had nothing to imitate.

Good discussion but if you use Occam's razor then its pretty clear which possibility is more likely.
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#21 User is offline   Smashman Icon

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Posted 15 October 2005 - 05:48 PM

Casual fan- I think Lucas meant to for the PT to simply be more complicated, and less adventure fun that the OT was. It was MEANT to have a more complicated, intricate plot (which it does at the surface of the OT and the PTs stories) but I think Lucas just screwed it up.

And I think SW works best with only the OT and EU- no PT.
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#22 User is offline   Mirithorn Icon

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Posted 15 October 2005 - 06:05 PM

I don't watch the movies obsessively, in fact, I think I've only seen most of them once, but to me it does look like there are no complicated subtleties. Wouldn't they be brought out in the open to make the movie more popular to people who aren't so brilliant about figuring out obscure messages? It seems a little too clear cut to me at the surface, but movies don't have to have complicated subplots. Maybe they just aren't there?
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#23 User is offline   xenduck Icon

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Posted 16 October 2005 - 05:52 PM

QUOTE (Mirithorn @ Oct 15 2005, 06:05 PM)
Wouldn't they be brought out in the open to make the movie more popular to people who aren't so brilliant about figuring out obscure messages?


lets see, maybe shakespear, dostoyevsky, kafka, orwell, homer, dante, goethe etc.
should have been more obvious. afterall, popularity is the most important thing...

the beauty of star wars is its stratification. people can see whatever they want to see. i dont recall lucas ever telling anyone their inturpretation was wrong.
that may sound like a cop-out, like 'there are no wrong answers' bullshit, but its my opinion that the stratification is intentional and brilliant.
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#24 User is offline   Despondent Icon

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Post icon  Posted 16 October 2005 - 09:47 PM

It's like you become one with the guys in the band. I mean there's...there's no division, you just...the music just unites people...with the players.



(Just in case there's any confusion, this is a quote from "This is Spinal Tap" where a zoned-out fan explains the Depth behind following her favorite musicians.) No, it has nothing to do with Star Wasr; It has everything to do with blindly following a cause.

This post has been edited by Despondent: 17 October 2005 - 04:01 PM

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#25 User is offline   Madam Corvax Icon

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Posted 17 October 2005 - 02:20 PM

QUOTE (DarthTherion @ Oct 12 2005, 01:50 AM)
One thing I noticed about the PT is the progression of the "tone" of narrative. Episode I feels like a kid's movie *far* more than any other episode of the saga. This is rather appropriate, seeing as its subject is an innocent child. In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce employs a similar technique when describing his hero's formative years, composing the first chapter in a childlike voice and then maturing each successive chapter. One might argue that the narrative of the PT "matures" in accordance with the age and mental state of the hero.


I mean, you've got to be joking, right? Comparing Joyce with Lucas, attributing all that "deepness" to crappy storytelling.

I find it sad that there is a turning point in a career of a person where he gains such a power over people's minds that they actually justify his shortcomings.

Why don't you just admit that TPM had cool CGI and special effects and that is why you like it. This I would understand.
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#26 User is offline   barend Icon

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Posted 17 October 2005 - 06:51 PM

QUOTE (xenduck @ Oct 16 2005, 05:52 PM)
lets see, maybe shakespear, dostoyevsky, kafka, orwell, homer, dante, goethe etc.
should have been more obvious. afterall, popularity is the most important thing...


I hope you don't put Lucas in that league.

QUOTE (xenduck @ Oct 16 2005, 05:52 PM)
the beauty of star wars is its stratification. people can see whatever they want to see. i dont recall lucas ever telling anyone their inturpretation was wrong.
that may sound like a cop-out, like 'there are no wrong answers' bullshit, but its my opinion that the stratification is intentional and brilliant.


What movie were you watching...

every character seems to completeley verbalize their opinions and announce their actions...

"from my point of view the jedi are evil." being a prime example...

well duh... thanks for sharing... guess we could have skipped all the shit between annie and palpy leading up to that if he was just going to say it!!!

yeah... Lucas is the king of subtlety and open interpretation. dry.gif
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#27 User is offline   DarthTherion Icon

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Posted 18 October 2005 - 01:36 AM

QUOTE (Madam Corvax @ Oct 17 2005, 03:20 PM)
I mean, you've got to be joking, right? Comparing Joyce with Lucas, attributing all that "deepness" to crappy storytelling.

I find it sad that there is a turning point in a career of a person where he gains such a power over people's minds that they actually justify his shortcomings.

Why don't you just admit that TPM had cool CGI and special effects and that is why you like it. This I would understand.


Actually, I'm only half joking.

TPM did have some pretty awesome special effects...but I haven't seen the movie in nearly a decade, so I'm not in much of a position to speak.

Like Xenduck (I think I can speak for him on this), I feel that Star Wars is constructed on two very different levels. The first is the most obvious "external" sense of the Hollywood Blockbuster. Star Wars works well on this level. Alot of people can go and watch shit blow up and be entertained. Plus there's this guy with a stupid way of acting who becomes Darth Vader! Evil badguy! And some hot chick who's his wife! And look...isn't that Sam Jackson? Kick Ass!

Star Wars also has a much deeper level on which it's constructed, on which it is attempting to formulate a modern myth, one that draws upon archetypes that have always been present in human storytelling. Xenduck had an excellent thread on here a while back about interpreting Star Wars with this depth. Few people commented on it, probably because most of the audience isn't concerned with this aspect of the story.

I don't necessarily think every last bit of the depth is intentional. In fact, even if it existed only in my head, I still would be cool with that.

Maybe these new movies don't resonate with people because they don't display such generic archetypes as Episodes IV-VI. The original Star Wars had the most basic fairy tale outline there is -- farm boy becomes hero and saves princess from dragon with the help of wizard and older, cynical adventurers. The fact that these movies are prequels, a backstory, means that they have to do a great deal of exposition, which ends up harming the purity of the archeypes they employ.

Lucas is nowhere near the artist Joyce is. Yet, there's not very much ground for comparison, because their respective artwork takes radically different forms. But is anyone denying that Lucas is employing a "maturation of narrative" technique similar to that used by Joyce?
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#28 User is offline   Zatoichi Icon

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Posted 18 October 2005 - 10:05 AM

QUOTE (xenduck @ Oct 16 2005, 06:52 PM)
lets see, maybe shakespear, dostoyevsky, kafka, orwell, homer, dante, goethe etc.


Wrong. Of those on that list that I have read, I usually got it in one go through. Maybe two if I was struggling. I never had to be told or have someone else figure it out for me. When trying to show the moral of the story and other such things, it is made fairly obvious to those who will see your creation. They are the whole point of your creation when you have something like that in them, the point is to send a message to the public in a way that they can relate to it. Because if it is so deep and hard to find, then you totally botched what you were trying to do.

QUOTE (DarthTherion @ Oct 18 2005, 02:36 AM)
Maybe these new movies don't resonate with people because they don't display such generic archetypes as Episodes IV-VI. The original Star Wars had the most basic fairy tale outline there is -- farm boy becomes hero and saves princess from dragon with the help of wizard and older, cynical adventurers. The fact that these movies are prequels, a backstory, means that they have to do a great deal of exposition, which ends up harming the purity of the archeypes they employ.


Flat out NO. A lot of great EU stuff didn't have the archtype stuff, and still managed to resonate with me. Just by looking at the fact that I have no great love of the PT shows that it wasn't just because it was "Star Wars".

This post has been edited by Zatoichi: 18 October 2005 - 10:06 AM

Apparently writing about JM here is his secret weakness. Muwahaha!!!! Now I have leverage over him and am another step closer towards my goal of world domination.

"And the Evil that was vanquished shall rise anew. Wrapped in the guise of man shall he walk amongst the innocent and Terror shall consume they that dwell upon the Earth. The skies will rain fire. The seas shall become as blood. The righteous shall fall before the wicked! And all creation shall tremble before the burning standards of Hell!" - Mephisto

Kurgan X showed me this web comic done with Legos. It pokes fun at all six Star Wars films and I found it to be extremely entertaining.
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#29 User is offline   xenduck Icon

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Posted 20 October 2005 - 09:39 PM

first off, id like to be clear that i, for one, have no qualms with including lucas in a list of the greatest, or most renowned, authors of all time.

zatoichi, you got my point, and totally missed it at the same time. im glad you dont need anyone to explain to you the stories you've read, but i never needed anyone to explain star wars to me. yes, ive read about it, ive polished my understanding, but its obvious to me, and many others, there is more than meets the eye. now, i dont know who on that list you've read, but in my experience, homer, dante, goethe, and others i didnt mention, like milton, byron and virgil all come with extensive footnotes. many of those footnotes (especially dante and the beowulf poet, also H.G. wells) are meant to explain historical context, becuase so much of the story is underlined with subtle comments only contemporaries can understand.
also, maybe im just stupid, but i found the plethora of essays on the philosophies of kafka, dostoyevsky to be highly enlightening. even though i thought i got all there was to get out of them the first time through, another person's perspective often proves invaluable(hence why i visit this site).
i think the perfect example of what im talking about is C.S. lewis in his chronicles of narnia. excellently crafted works, primarily on the level of adventure fantasy, but also, he cunningly, but not TOO cunningly, slips in christian motifs. in the same way, lucas laceses his films with jungian archetypes and byronic charactures; and i am convinced that what i see in these movies is not entirely CGI and natalie portman (mmmm, natalie portman....)

and one more thing, i freely admit that if books could attack, portriate of an artist would kick my ass. that book is INSANE!!! i would have been tottaly destroyed if not for the merciful introduction that explained joyce's style and tried to prepare me for the mishmash of wordplay and bizzare sentence structure. he's like the pollock of literature. yikes. finnegans wake? no thank you.
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#30 User is offline   barend Icon

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Posted 10 November 2005 - 06:34 PM

QUOTE (xenduck @ Oct 20 2005, 09:39 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
first off, id like to be clear that i, for one, have no qualms with including lucas in a list of the greatest, or most renowned, authors of all time.


then i think you should add the people who wrote 'Where's Waldo?', the 1993 Elle McPhearson Calander, and 'Give Way' traffic sign.
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