Chefelf.com Night Life: MyPantsAreOnFire - Viewing Profile

Yeah, it doesn't make much sense as to why the Jedis are automatically on the side of the Republic in the prequels. It just speaks to what was so brilliantly spelled out in the Redlettermedia review as to the difference between the prequels and the OT in regards to immediate impact. It's obvious right away that the Empire is evil, or at least oppressive. You have the immediate symbolism of the tiny Rebel ship being chased by the giant Star Destroyer. You're presented the Rebels with the closeups of their faces as they prepare to be boarded, and then the Imperials are introduced as cold, masked soldiers being lead by Vader. You see Vader mercilessly choking a prisoner to death. You see what happens to the Jawas and Luke's family when they get in the way. You see Leia's home planet being fragged for no real reason except to show off what the Empire can do. You hear about the senate being dissolved. There's no short order of very clear actions and lines in ANH that portrays the Empire as obviously being made up of bad, bad people. You don't have that at all in the prequels. The Trade Federation is far too vague to be a true "evil" enemy. Same with the Seperatists, and both groups are also arguably justified in their reasons for conflict. SW lends itself much more to have clearly defined bad guys and good guys.

It's true, it's functional in terms of being pretty easily accepted in its role at face value, though it certainly doesn't hold up to much practical examination. There doesn't seem to be much room on it for passengers (hell, where do Han or Chewie even sleep on it?) or cargo so it doesn't seem too practical for significant amounts of either. It doesn't seem to be very well armed at all, though that makes sense if it's designed for speed above all else. And while a role as a courier ship makes sense to us, it doesn't seem to be Han's typical job given the context of how Obi Wan has to convince him to take them on and the whole mess with Jabba sounds like it's over a pretty sizable cargo of something being dumped. It seems that Lucas was trying to establish that Han was a smuggler of illicit goods and not typically just a courier of relatively small deliveries and definitely not ferrying people around.

I can't imagine that films this relatively modern and that have been as huge as they've been are short on original copies. Sure, accidents do happen and unfortunately many films have been lost to fires and deterioration and such, but we're talking about films that are not even 35 years old. And 3 of the biggest films of all time. Lucas is spinning like there's no tomorrow if he's trying to convince everyone that he's short on copies of the orignal films to do a restoration sans the Special Edition "upgrades." It seems pretty clear to me that he just wants what he considers to be the definitive versions out there and not what he views as lesser films. You see these films on TV now and it's always the Special Editions. How much you want to bet you'd see the original versions aired instead if they were released in remastered or HD versions? He doesn't want that at all. He wants people to see the newer versions or nothing at all.

Oh man, RotJ is just the height of laziness. It starts off by taking us back to freakin' Tattooine, which is just absurd. There's simply no good reason for the film to have to be there. It's not like ANH established that Jabba is based on Tattooine; in fact, it makes little sense that if he was that Han Solo would just be chillaxing in the cantina basically down the street like it's no big deal that he's got a bounty on his head. Sure, I guess you could argue that Jabba is there because it's supposed to be an out of way planet away from the eyes of the government and law enforcement, but Lucas totally undermines that by having scenes on the planet in FIVE of the six SW movies. ANH should be the ONLY time that we're "on" Tatooine outside of maybe a brief scene at the end of part III where it establishes that that's where Obi-Wan goes to hide Luke. Movies set in a huge galaxy with the budget they have should not keep going back to the same desert planet. Vader should not be from there. There's no reason for Jabba to be there. It's ridiculously uncreative laziness.

And the scene between Obi-Wan and Luke in this movie is just appalling. It should shown in film classes as the cardinal sin in terms of defying the "show, don't tell" rule of filmmaking. It's incredible that a film actually stops everything dead so that two characters can sit on a log for what seems like ten minutes and do nothing but explain away the filmmaker's contradictions, screwups and flights of fancy. It's one thing to have a scene like the one just before that where you have two characters mulling things over (Luke and Yoda) because it's framed by something actually occuring in Yoda's death (even though Yoda dying is completely unecessary and pointless except for cheaply tugging on the audience's heartstrings because the cute Muppet dies. It would be much more meaningful for Yoda to die, if he must die, at the hands of the Empire or Vader himself. This would further fuel the conflict of whether or not Luke will be able to keep from turning to the dark side).

And the Falcon being in the final space battle doesn't even make much sense. I mean, what good is it? It's basically a cargo ship. Yeah, it's got two piddling turrets on it, but it's basically just a big fat target otherwise. It would make much more sense (and explain all the commandos onboard, though not their green camo outfits!) if the Falcon (and other small, fast transport ships) was there to storm aboard Imperial vessels and then take them over. It would have been much cooler if Lando and co. had taken over a Star Destroyer and then the command tower of the Super Star Destroyer from behind by Lando's ship right as the SSD was about take out Ackbar's ship. Cheesy coincidence, sure, but it would have been a lot more plausible and badass than the SSD being taken out by a single out of control fighter that somehow kamikazes the entire control tower, which then inexplicably causes the entire SSD to plow into the Death Star (with one of the worst effects in the series, too). What, they don't have backup controls anywhere else on that giant ship? And how would blowing up the control tower cause it to turn off and slam into the Death Star? Its not like the thing is driven with a steering wheel and the helmsman turned it at the last second as he blew up. And hell, you'd think the SSD crashing into the Death Star would do a lot of damage to the only half-finished and largely exposed Death Star given how huge the SSD is. It's ridiculous that it goes up like a roman candle just because it's tip touches the Death Star when it's far more likely that it would actually plow through much of the DS and probably basically tear each other apart.

But yeah, the Falcon; it's goofy as hell that it's in the final battle and that it flies into the Death Star itself. I can buy there being room for the smaller fighters...but for a cargo ship? Good thing the tunnel was built specifically to accomadate a ship just as wide as the Falcon (but not any higher!).

Oh, it's abundantly clear that he made it up as he went along, and that he didn't bother to refer back to his own films and scripts when making it up.