While I disagree on the comparison to AOTC and ROTS, I do agree that TPM was very much moved by dialog scenes as it was fight scenes, which I appreciated. But, my other struggle with that is that the dialog is not as expository as I would like. I don't get the Trade Federation, or even how Palaptine had ended up together. I credit Palpatine for his patience in his planning, but that is a long game to play, and it feels very much like he cannot be beaten. And, I'll be honest-that's not very interesting to me. A YT channel did a video on the background of the politics that led up to TPM. It was pretty complicated stuff, so I get why it wasn't in the movie. But, it illustrates how being dropped in the middle of that particular story makes it feel very uneven, as it feels like there is a lot of missing details. In that particular instance I would put AOTC over TPM because I felt like things had a better set up. But, TPM does get points for being a very new style in the SW universe.
This is a cliche at this point, but the novelizations really do show that there is a good story to be told by a more talented filmmaker.
I tend to agree, but the problem is (and something I noticed starting in the 2000s) was that films couldn't find their pacing for the stories they wanted to tell. TPM has an interesting story, but the pacing is uneven, and the narrative muddled to the point that it's difficult to follow. Then we skip 10 years (because nothing happens in that time) and then we skip 3 years. It's all very oddly paced, and can't seem to focus on one particular issue. Now, TLJ has a similar thing in that it has a bit of an odd pacing, with things being life or death but having time for brief detours. For me though, the main difference is the fact that in TLJ things feel like life or death, while in TPM the life or death struggle of the Naboo feels rather secondary or tertiary.
Thing is, was it actually the background or just something other people had made up? I always hear about how things were made clearer in the novels, but it seems more like the author just made up their own explanations rather than clarify something Lucas had already written. I never get the impression Lucas had any background in mind for the trade routes thing.
I know a lot of it is from the novels. I would have to dig in to more of the BTS stuff to know what Lucas actually had.
It was probably either excessive dogmatism (the strong reluctance to train Anakin, forbidding marriage) ... or not being dogmatic enough (in the end doing so, Anakin choosing to break the rules and get married). Maybe also not helping enough with the negotiations with Separatists until war broke out and then being willing to fight it.
Yeah, but I mean it felt like they should have figured out what was going on relatively easily. They seemed pretty clueless. I kinda feel like the whole Jedi concept was changed for the prequels, and I don't think George spent much time figuring things out.
Well, this whole 'can't marry' thing seems to have come out of nowhere. I get the impression it was something George came up with to give the romance some conflict without thinking it through. In fact, I think that sums up a lot of the prequels. The whole midichlorian thing is pretty odd, and training didn't really feel like it would start when kids could barely speak full sentences. There was also a general move away from mysticism, and they seem more well-known throughout the galaxy. I've already made my view on lightsabers and combat in general known... There is material to support that in the OT, but it mostly boils down of personal perception . From the way the Jedi are described in the OT, it doesn't really feel to me like they all sit in a huge building in the middle of a city* or that there are very many of them. When I read Dune a few years ago, it struck me that the Bene Gesserit and Mentats felt a lot more like how I imagined the Jedi than what we got in the prequels. Not sure how familiar people are with that book? That's only how I felt, but it's worth mentioning that the original EU stuff seemed to have similar ideas. *PLEASE don't respond with any version of "explained in the novels"
The one thing I "hated" about TLJ was the Rose/Finn subplot to the casino, its totally pointless and ruins the pacing. Otherwise, the film tried to do things a little differently and subverted expectations, there's nothing wrong with keeping the audience on their toes and guessing about where they're going.
Well, if you think of the Jedi as 'space monks' (not necessarily fairly), then the prohibition on marriage isn't exactly a stretch. I was caught off-guard by the midichlorian bit, but Yoda had already said Luke was too old to train, so it wasn't -that- surprising to me that training generally started pretty young. I wouldnt' say the kids were too young to speak full sentences though... The only thing I really find odd about the Jedi being well-known back in the 'more enlightened times' is how swiftly knowledge of them seems to have faded from the public consciousness between the prequels and OT. TL;DR if how the Jedi were presented in the prequels wasn't quite what I expected, it didn't really seem surprising by-and-large either.
True, but the whole 'too old to start the training' thing left plenty of latitude given that Luke was in his mid-twenties at that point. Luke's training with Yoda and Obi-Wan doesn't really suggest that it starts around 5 and continues almost to adulthood. Training really seems like more of a personal journey. I know there's arguments to be made in either direction, but I think the on-screen evidence points more towards that way of thinking. Same with the marriage thing, and that's just too much of a plot convenience to seem organic. As for knowledge fading, I don't see how you can explain people's attitude to the Force in the OT in relation to the prequels without using the word 'retcon'. "Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other. I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all-powerful force controlling everything. There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny." "your sad devotion to that ancient religion"
The only thing about too young was the fact that Anakin was 9 and still considered too old. It casts the Jedi training in a much different light. Agree about the apparent fading of knowledge in only two decades, maybe. Tarkin's proclamation of "The Jedi are extinct. Their fire has gone out of the universe" is pretty bold.
If you look at real-life dictatorships that indoctrinate the populace, you see that it is quite possible for whole areas of knowledge to disappear from the public consciousness in just a generation. Kor
Given how influential the Jedi were during the Clone Wars, it seems pretty suspect that this could happen in 16 years or so. They seem to have basically been leading the war effort. Wasn't one of the main points of The Clone Wars that Obi-Wan and Anakin were poster boys for the Republic?
It's just like how certain influential figures can suddenly be declared as political undesirables and reduced to forgotten historical footnotes as the whole "revolutionary" historical narrative is re-written to support whatever rhetoric is in favor with the current leadership. And there are plenty of thought police around to make sure nobody tries to bring the subject up again. Kor
Sounds a little like the Star Wars fandom I get that this can happen. I'm just saying it seems improbable given the information we get from the movies.