[KurganX]

You know what I'm talking about, you're somewhere complaining about the Prequels or whatever, and somebody pipes up:

"Oh yeah? Well the Original Trilogy was cheesy too, and had all those same flaws, so why aren't you bashing those movies too?"


Post your favorite responses below... !

[civilian_number_two]

1) Yeah, the original series was cheesy, and had classic B movie acting, and a silly narrative, but it was charming. Rio Bravo is cheesy as well, but it's a bit charming and it still holds up. The new Star Wars movies aren't charming, so their pointlessness doesn't escape notice. They are boring, they are full even worse pseudo-religiosity than the originals (zen-lite replaced with virgin births and prophecy), and the action scenes don't even have a simple means-to-ends credibility to them (pod race, arena fights, child in starfighter surviving dogfight). "Cheesy" isn't a singularly descriptive term. There are degrees of cheesiness, surely. The original trilogy was cheesy and entertaining. These new movies are not entertaining. As a side note, they are cheesy.

2) Another way I like to go is to say I liked old Lucas, who openly admitted to cribbing from classic sci-fi and serials. When you watch the movies, you can see his sources and either you can enjoy the homage or you can call him a rip-off artist with no originality. But either way you know where you stand: the homages and spoofs and citations are open and obvious. Sometime late in the trilogy Lucas claimed that he had studied storytelling forms and Joseph Campbell and had based his trilogy on Classical Mythology. He even plagiarised Tolkien by saying something to the effect of wanting to create a new fairy tale for a society that had no mythology of its own. Well, I am fairly well versed in the Classics and I can't draw any decent analogies between the OT and any legend or myth. So the reaction there is either to accept his statement credulously or to scratch your head and grumble. And the other comment is just pretentious, not to mention insulting: the United States does have its own series of folk tales that have to be considered a kind of mythology. They just don't have fairies and dwarfs in them because they were created in the age of industry. Anyway, the problem with the PT is that it came after Lucas had stopped openly acknowledging his sources, so it's mired down with all the pretentious pseudo-religiosity. So even if I enjoyed the clearly-taken-from-Ben-Hur pod race, I'm still busy shaking my head about the Midiwhatthefucks and the virgin birth.

3) Yet another complaint I make about the PT is how self-congratulatory it is, with all of the citations to films from the OT (which shouldn't be cited since they come LATER), and tedious reintroductions of character who already had great introductions before. The best example of that last complaint is Yoda, a decent character in Empire whose every subsequent use has dilluted and diminished his screenworthiness.

This post has been edited by civilian_number_two: 03 April 2009 - 10:07 AM

[Mr Pye]

I'd suggest since he/she avoids your topic, you could avoid his/her by claiming that the prequels are so soaked with empirically bad flaws that it is a full time job to teach these to the ignorant.

[barend]

1. the only thing the two trillogies have in common is bunch of nouns and pronouns. If you're going to make a prequel to a film, all you have to do is sit down with a note pad and re-watch the original material for any quotes or established history to make sure what ever you do in the new project ends up making sense and leading to the original. Otherwise you end up compromising both. "You're father was the best pilot in galaxy when I met him" couldn't possibly refer to to what we saw in TPM, "I was amazed at how the force flowed through him" couldn't possibly refer to a transmited readout of a bloodsample indicating high trace elements of a microsopic organism living in the bloodstream. I could go on, but we'd be for hours and you'd look dumber and dumber for not agreeing with me sooner.

"But..."

Lavasurfing STFU.

[civilian_number_two]

Hey ... this lavasurfing people keep mentioning. This is a joke right?

[Vesuvius]

Hey ... this lavasurfing people keep mentioning. This is a joke right?

Oh no, it's not a joke. It happened.

First, they are on a volcanic planet with cinders and ash falling all over the place. There are miners/workers on the planet scooping lava into containers and they are "surfing" on the droid/platform things.

Then, Anakin and Obi-wan are on these droids that withstand the lava due to shields, and they're both "surfing" on the lava and sword fighting while only about a foot above it.

It's very difficult to suspend belief here. I don't think that even the Force can stop lava from burning someone a foot away when you can feel lava up to two miles away (and be sweating!) in the middle of winter.

This post has been edited by Vesuvius: 24 April 2009 - 03:52 PM

[Chefelf]

Yeah. Lavasurfing. Definitely happened.

[civilian_number_two]

I am so glad I never saw that movie.

[J m HofMarN]

download Battle of the Heroes and you can get all the good, none of the bad.

[barend]

I am so glad I never saw that movie.

The scene in the biker episode of the Simpsons when Homer and the leader of the Hells Satans fight using huge choppers as swords was more convincing.


EDIT: http://www.youtube.c...h?v=zzph5aVsa-0
8:00 minutes in. Go on. Have a look. You must.

This post has been edited by barend: 26 April 2009 - 09:18 PM

[civilian_number_two]

Ok, I looked. I jumped ahead to the bit but I couldn't stay. That's terrible. I can't even figure out what they're supposed to be on. Rocks floating on the surface of molten rocks? There are some points where they drift apart and then back together ... what's making that happen?

And yeah, air so hot their lungs would scald, and their skin should just blister off from being in there, etc etc. I suppose we're to imagine that "The Force" is the answer to all of that. What a load of horse hockey.

This post has been edited by civilian_number_two: 27 April 2009 - 03:07 AM
Reason for edit:: typos

[Vesuvius]

And yeah, air so hot their lungs would scald, and theyir skin should just blister off from being in there, etc etc. I suppose we're to imaging that "The Force" is the answer to all of that. What a load of horse hockey.

Yeah, and when Anakin is cut up at the end, all of the sudden, The Force just magically stopped working for him and then he got burned alive... still no explanation as of why he needed the Vader suit.

Oh, and he had his eyebrows in tact when the helmet was placed on him. Interestingly enough in the SE RotJ, Anakin has lost his eyebrows. Did it really take him 30 years to have them finally burned off?

[njamilla]

Now, now. Yes, (like the Bush administration) we lay all the blame on GL, let's not forget all the sychophants so enamored with SW that they cow-tow to all the cliche conventions that make SW bad, and not charming.

From the get-go GL made efficiency, money, and SFX priority over the story. He handed in scripts just before the actual shoot. He had expectations about digital technology that weren't even ready yet. He misjudged his audience by catering to catering to kids on the one hand, while ascribing the Campbellian mythos to the francise on the other.

LOTR accomplished something that everyone thought impossible. The creation of a fantasy world without it looking like it was produced by Sci-Fi channel.

[civilian_number_two]

Hey welcome back, Nick! And with a vengeance.

I agree with your on FotR. The other two LoTR movies left me a bit cold, though the ending of RoTK is nice (not the jumping-on-the-bed-Frodo-is-alive ending, or the Aragorn-eats-Arwen's-face ending or the Frod-leaves ending, but the Sam-returns-to-the-shire ending).

[njamilla]

Thanks for the welcome back.

Not all of LOTR got me either. I even think digital visuals in those movies weren't perfect yet. Are they even now? It seems you have to use speed and quick cuts to hide the imperfections.

You know, I love the Rankin Bashi versions of those films. It was full of music, great animation, and it had a very traditional story-telling feel to it. I do agree with Tolkien that The Hobbit was written too juvenile a manner. But I love the battle of 5 Armies at the end. It's a shame ROTK ended with 30 minutes of bye-bye instead of the attack on the Shire, which brought the whole story back home to Hobbiton. One might even have to say that LOTR would not have really ended without Saruman attacking the Shire. Brilliant on Tolkien's part.