What did Lucas do?

[BillJ]

Professor Zoom wrote:

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Lucas made some OK movies with the PT.
It's the fanboys and their rage and OCD that have turned me off the Star Wars now. It no longer holds the excitement and thrill it once did.

I didn't give a shit what "fanboys" thought. The prequel trilogy was seriously flawed and turned me off to the franchise for a long time. But I've gotten a chance to recapture a bit of the fun watching The Clone Wars with my little boy.

[Temis the Vorta]

Set Harth wrote:

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Well, the idea is that the Jedi are "bad" for accepting the clone army.

Whose idea? I certainly think the Jedi are complicit, but I never saw anything in the movie to convince me that Lucas was making that point.

However, just as we saw in TPM with slavery in Hutt space, the Jedi don't really have the authority to shut down Kamino, at least not by AOTC; that film tells us Kamino isn't in the Republic.
( Also, even if the Republic had rejected the army, the clones were trained for war and could still have ended up being used for their original purpose, but in some other conflict. )

If the Jedi didn't have jurisdiction, they could have walked away and had nothing to do with the clones to avoid becoming morally complicit.

And the issue of what to do humanely with the clones is a completely different story. Maybe the Jedi needed to create a social service organization to help the poor clones. That obviously would have dragged the story way off focus but in that case, why even introduce clones? They existed only because there needed to be a rationalization for The Clone Wars, but there are many other ways to do that.

This is just another example of why the prequels seemed to be first drafts. somebody really needed to sit down and think through the way the clones were being used in the story and come up with better options. Let's see, maybe the Seperatists are the ones making clones as slave labor and the Republic is trying to stop them. The war is over the clones, but they arn't fighting in it. See how easy it is to come up with alternate approaches that don't result in a muddle?

I see no reason to invent rationalizations to defend Lucas' shitty, sloppy writing. i'm certainly not going to waste my time defending it, not when bashing the hell out of it is so much more entertaining.

[Temis the Vorta]

Drago-Kazov wrote:

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They are also bad for supporting a corrupt republic in my book.

Another potentially interesting idea that didn't actually make it into the movies in any real way, although it is being used to good effect in the TV series.

The prequels contain many good, workable ideas, which might have been used to create some decent scripts after several rounds of revision and input from better writers.

[Mach5]

George Lucas is a douche. Both Star Wars and Indy are great in spite of him, not because of him... Kinda.

But he's also FUCKING AWESOME, and I love him for enriching my childhood. Despite the fact that SW would have been shit without the likes of Garry Kurtz and Larry Kasdan.

Haters be damned. You owe some of your fondest memories to this guy, never forget that.

[Set Harth]

Silvercrest wrote:

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By contrast, Gollum died saving the world

Let's not forget that Gollum wasn't trying to save anyone when he died.

Silvercrest wrote:

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but he had enough depth and characterization that people can still feel sorry for him... more or less...

Depth and characterization? You mean the fact that he had a dark side and a light side?

Temis the Vorta wrote:

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Another potentially interesting idea that didn't actually make it into the movies in any real way

If we ignore the places where it did make it into the movies, such as the TPM Coruscant material.

Temis the Vorta wrote:

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See how easy it is to come up with alternate approaches that don't result in a muddle?

The approach that was used didn't result in a muddle. It just made Jedi-haters think it had given them ammunition.

Temis the Vorta wrote:

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If the Jedi didn't have jurisdiction, they could have walked away and had nothing to do with the clones to avoid becoming morally complicit.

The moral angle might not be quite as cut-and-dried as many seem to think. Refusing the army means losing the war, letting the Republic be split in two.

[Harvey]

Temis the Friendly Ghost wrote:

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What sabotaged the prequels in a larger sense is that Lucas had no adult supervision since he was not working for a public corporation with shareholders and a board of directors to answer to, who could have kicked butt if substandard movies were made that underperformed.

The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi were both independent productions produced by Lucasfilm. Star Wars, on the other hand, was a studio picture, and by all accounts Lucas had to fight with the board of Twentieth Century Fox tooth and nail to get the film made, and to get it made his way. (Thankfully, he won).

What the prequels didn't have was a producer like Gary Kurtz (IV, V), a screenwriter like Larry Kasdan (V, VI), or a director like Irvin Kershner (V) -- people who could disagree with Lucas or at least present another point of view.

A board of directors would have likely looked at the box office receipts of The Phanton Menace and put as many sequels into production as possible (which, lo and behold, is exactly what Disney is doing now that they control the property).

[Ian Keldon]

Temis the Friendly Ghost wrote:

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Weird thing is, there was something likeable at the core of Frank Burns. Somehow he tapped into a sympathy-for-the-underdog vein. Maybe because Hawkeye et al seemed like the cool kids and Burns was he dweeby outsider.

So maybe if the Jedi have been portrayed as insufferably arrogant, we wold have liked Anakin more. There was certainly a lot of surface evidence of arrogance, but the prequels didn't really follow up that possibility. Lucas never allowed the Jedi to be portrayed in a bad light like that.

And that leads me to another problem - the clones! If the Jedi are supposed to be so good and holy, why are they breeding cannon fodder? They should have shut down the clone factory as soon as they discovered it, as an obvious crime against humanity and all the other species-anity.

If conversely they were faring so badly in the war that they were forced to use cannon fodder, then what does that say for a Republic who can't get its own citizens to fight for it?

When you look at the subtext, the Republic AND the Jedi Order at the time of the Clone Wars were in the last stages of internal decay. The Republic, hopelessly politically corrupt and impotent and the Jedi rapidly losing their ability to connect properly with the Force due to their arrogance and inflexibility.

True, it's portrayed a bit simplistically, but it IS a film franchise based ultimately on Saturday Matinee short subject type storytelling.

[Set Harth]

Ian Keldon wrote:

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and the Jedi rapidly losing their ability to connect properly with the Force due to their arrogance and inflexibility.

Nope.

The Jedi ability to use the Force has diminished due to the darkness in the Force; the darkness in the Force is due to Palpatine.

[Gotham Central]

What's funny is that the ultimate proof that the flaws of the prequels are directly Lucas' fault is the fact that The Clone Wars, which he has limited involvement with, is VASTLY superior to anything in those movies. In deed, the one part of TCW that Lucas was deeply involved with was the one part that was universally panned, the theatrical film/pilot.

But seriously, had Anakin been depcited in the films the way he is shown on TCW, those movies would have been infinitely more watchable. In some ways, they are not even the same character because Anakin in The Clone Wars is a likable if flawed and conflicted person...i.e someone you want to watch. There is no way that the PT Anakin ever had someone like Asoka in his life.

[teacake]

BillJ wrote:

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By making Anakin whiny, no one actually cared about his path to becoming Vader.

I care.

Professor Zoom wrote:

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Lucas made some OK movies with the PT.
It's the fanboys and their rage and OCD that have turned me off the Star Wars now. It no longer holds the excitement and thrill it once did.

This. My SW fandom is pretty much ruined by the PT hate and disdain. I used to spend a lot more time in SW land but I walked away from it because of the venom.

[Mr. Adventure]

I love the George Lucas who made the original Star Wars films and THX-1138 and embraced the fan community, I hate the George Lucas who handled the Special Editions of the original Star Wars films and THX-1138, and I'm ambivalent about the George Lucas who made the prequel films.

[Set Harth]

The Lucas you loved, gone he is. Consumed by Darth Ca$h Money.

[SiddFinch1]

I disliked the whole "bring balance" to the force idea. I mean you are the Jedi & you think there are no sith. What are you trying to balance? If a 300 pound weight.is on one side and nothing on the other..how.to balance.?add to the other.side . As others have said a better arc of Annikans fall would.have helped.

Of.course.part.of.it.is.that when star wars came out in 77 it blew.my 9 year old.mind away with the then extraordinary effects. Not possible for a movie to so that to my now middle aged mind.

[Set Harth]

SiddFinch1 wrote:

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I disliked the whole "bring balance" to the force idea.

You and everyone else who incorrectly read "balance of the Force" as "balance of Force-users".

[DWF]

Harvey wrote:

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The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi were both independent productions produced by Lucasfilm. Star Wars, on the other hand, was a studio picture, and by all accounts Lucas had to fight with the board of Twentieth Century Fox tooth and nail to get the film made, and to get it made his way. (Thankfully, he won).

What the prequels didn't have was a producer like Gary Kurtz (IV, V), a screenwriter like Larry Kasdan (V, VI), or a director like Irvin Kershner (V) -- people who could disagree with Lucas or at least present another point of view.

A board of directors would have likely looked at the box office receipts of The Phanton Menace and put as many sequels into production as possible (which, lo and behold, is exactly what Disney is doing now that they control the property).

All of the OT movies were studio movies, he didn't start paying for the Star Wars movies himself til the prequels came along. Kasdan and Kershner both turned down offers to work on the prequels.