Is the Star Wars saga better with Episodes I to III or worse?

[Gov Kodos]

Han shot first Dammit!

No, Han shot... and only Han shot! Greedo didn't shoot!

True, true

 

[TremblingBluStar]

No, Han shot... and only Han shot! Greedo didn't shoot!

Rather, he shot. Just not his blaster.

 

[Silvercrest]

and what the hell is that stuff about communing with Liam Neeson's character?

I didn't have a problem with that. The OT showed both Ben and Yoda disappearing when they died, kind of implying that's what happens to all Jedi. And yet Vader was confused when it happened, PLUS he became a Force Ghost after his death anyway. So, did he not know it was going to happen? On top of that, Qui-Gon DIDN'T disappear when he died, leading to a lot of confusion about who disappears, who doesn't, and what it takes to become a Force Ghost. And whether Vader should have been "worthy" to be a Force Ghost because of all the evil things he had done.

The answers to all those questions can be extrapolated from that one exchange. No, there wasn't any contact with the dead before Qui-Gon found a way, so this is new. But it appears that anyone (or at least any Jedi) can become a Force Ghost if they have either enough training, or assistance from their comrades. (And it appears they can bypass the instant of their own death by leaping straight into the Force.)

Even though the PT had a lot of crap, I have to give it credit for answering so many questions so fast. Now, if only they had handled the prophecy so well....

Qui-Gon became a Force ghost in the end anyway, at the end of Ep. III Yoda told Obi-Wan that he had heard from his old teacher, I think in the end it was Qui-Gonn who taught Yoda and Obi-Wan how to do it.

Well, yeah, that was the point. Pauln6 was asking what was the whole point of "communing with Liam's character", and that was the whole point. Qui-Gon was the one who found the way, very neatly wrapping up a bunch of apparent inconsistencies that had arisen.

 

[Hound of UIster]

Qui-Gon was the one who found the way, very neatly wrapping up a bunch of apparent inconsistencies that had arisen.

That was apparently a plot point from the very beginning. It's even given mention in the Annotated Screenplays.


Leave it to Lucas to make it look like an inconsistency.

 

[DarKush]

For me yes and no.

Better:

-It makes me see the OT in a different light. Like the scene where Obi Wan claims he never owned a droid in ANH, I now caught a pause after he said it and a glimmer in his eye or small smile which I can now tie back to the PT, unless I imagined that.
-Palpatine's scenes have even more weight. In fact, Palpatine's rise was one of the best parts of the PT. As does the Vader-Obi fight in ANH.
-To some extent Vader's scenes also have more weight. It gets me now when Vader says its too late for him in ROTJ before he takes Luke to the Emperor.
-The Clone Wars felt larger and more epic than the Civil War. I liked a lot of the technology and characters from that era in particular Quinlan Vos and Asajj Ventress. Granted, neither really are in the actual films, though does the animated Clone Wars film count? And Vos had a cameo in TPM and was mentioned in ROTS, and Aalya Secura (AOTC and ROTS) was his padawan.
-The Old Republic really felt like a galactic government, spanning hundreds of planets.
-The Clone Wars cartoon (s) adding more to the Anakin-Obi relationship, among other things, which ameliorate some of the problems I had with the PT movies.
-A lot of the other media tie-in material was good, like the Republic comics and several of the Clone Wars novels.

Worse:

-It makes me see the OT in a different light. The OT universe seems smaller and lower tech. The drop off in technology, or the look of it at least is never explained. Its sometimes hard to reconcile the look and feel of the PT and the OT. I think at times the PT overdid it with the computer graphics.
-TPM was largely a waste of a film. The Clone Wars should have begun in the first film. I also agreed with the idea of Dooku being on the Jedi Council in the first movie and being concerned about the return of the Sith in addition to Republic corruption, it could've been great foreshadowing.
-Midi-chlorians. I much rather prefered the more mystical explanation in the OT.
-Jedi. Even though I'm still a fan of the Jedi and I like the PT Jedi Council much better than the current one in the novels, Luke's NJO, I think the PT sort of demystified them a bit too much.
-Vader. I think Vader lost major cool points with me. I can't see him as the badass anymore. The PT ruined that. Sidious is the real badass and the greatest Sith Lord. Vader is just a glorified follower now, a sad dude trapped in a suit. He went from being the ultimate ass kicker to a guy who can't reach his full potential, a failure.
-Vader, part 2: The hyperkinetic Jedi fighting styles of the PT really make OT Vader look bad as well. I can't buy him being this badass Jedi killer moving so slow and mechanical. Why is it that Grevious, created nearly 20 years prior, is so agile, or even some of the droids during the PT, than Vader? Sidious wouldn't go all out to secure the best cybernetics for him? And has anyone heard of an upgrade?
-Chosen One. I generally don't like the idea. It's been used to death. However, it makes no sense that Anakin is the Chosen One instead of Luke. It fits Luke's arc much better IMO.

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

Obi-Wan's shit alias;
OWK selection of a hiding place twenty miles from Darth Vader's house;
OWK's quasi-deadbeat plan to pawn Luke off on some moisture farmer when he could more effectively have raised Luke himself;
OWK and Yoda's invisibility to the Emperor's otherwise exceedingly thorough genocide;
OWK and Yoda's laziness and outright cowardice in the face of the Empire, dicking around on Tatooine and Dagobah respectively while millions fought their archenemies, dying in their stead;
their disappearing act.

Actually, part of the Prequels show is that the Jedi are elitist pricks, which led to their destruction. They were the protectors of the Republic. They decide who is trained in the force. They don't have faith in the rebellion. It's all a chess game between them and the Sith. (Kenobi was willing to die to motivate Luke, instead of living to help the Rebellion...of course, Guinness wanted his character to be killed off, IIRC) Perhaps Luke was only able to succeed because he cared about the "common man". Had he been raised by Kenobi, he'd have faced Vader or the Emperor and been killed outright. Though, with all the extra training he'd kick Vader's ass but knowing he was his dad, wouldn't have been able to follow through.

Vader, btw, was never that competent in the Original Trilogy. Look at his track record. Failure after failure, his successes were due to the men under his command (Hoth) or Boba Fett. He didn't get those plans back (Admiral "choked" Motti was right!) He didn't get Leia to reveal the location of the rebel base. He didn't beat Kenobi; Kenobi quit. He nearly got blasted by Han Solo. Luke and the lead heroes escaped Hoth, which he probably blamed on that admiral he killed earlier. Han and company outwitted his ass in the asteroid field, while Vader's fleet suffered his incompetence. Luke escaped Bespin. He does nothing especially useful in Return of the Jedi except betray Palpatine at the cost of his own life.

He did put or order putting the tracking device on the Falcon, making it easier for the Rebel fighters to attack the Death Star, though. He did deduce that Hoth was the right target. But never reveals how. For all we know he'd said "That is the location" a dozen times before with no results.

But no, instead we're given Dooku as a suddenly introduced character--we have no idea why he's called a Count; in fact, having read no supplementary materials, I *still* don't know why he's called a Count.

Because Christopher Lee played Count Dracula in Hammer Horror films. EVERYTHING HAS TO BE AN HOMAGE.

I like the crowd, small they are, that think Lucas should've ingored complaints about Episode 1 and gone with his "original vision".

Which is funny, because I got the impression that he only had the vaguest ideas for the prequels (a few character names, settings) and didn't do shit to create the story line during the down time of the Star Wars franchise.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I agree with most of what Dar Kush stated. I forgot to put it in my comments from earlier but also the way it was filmed didn't seem like Star Wars to me if that makes any sense. I know that Lucas purposefully wanted the prequels to like lighter because it was an earlier time in history but it doesn't seem like Star Wars to me. Even with the cleaned up original trilogy they just don't feel like they're in the same universe. I guess all of us will have this love/hate relationship with it. I also think a part of the negativity we have towards it stems from the fact that we were all sooooo hyped up for new Star Wars and had our own expectations and things we wanted to see and when Phantom Menace premiered it shattered those expectations. Right now I'm enjoying Clone Wars and as I mentioned I wish Anakin had been portrayed more like he is in the series.

 

[I am not Spock]

Like it or hate it, the notion of prequels is never going to go away. Hollywood has been churning them out non stop since Menace... even Trek got the treatment in Enterprise and JJTrek!

I don't mind this... particularly when the story is good or at least entertaining... what I can't stand is sitting through origin stories that I know inside and out. Case in point: Spiderman is on the cusp of being rebooted and I'd read they are doing the high school spider bite origin movie yet again. Why do I need to sit through that again? Why can't they start a series when Spider-Man is already Spider-Man??

I don't so much mind prequels or reboots, either, but I agree with you on origin stories. I'm so sick of them. We really don't need to see Peter Parker become Spider-Man AGAIN. It wasn't that long ago when the first Raimi/Maguire film came out.

At least with JJTrek, we hadn't really seen the origin story of Kirk's Enterprise crew before. And it was done well. In the second TOS pilot, the crew was already established. So it was good, in this case, to see how it all happened.

 

[Admiral_Young]

Not to nitpick because I agree about the Spider-Man reboot but it's not been established if we will be seeing Peter become Spider-Man again or not. It most likely will feature an origin story but just saying I don't recall reading that it would.

 

[Gaith]

I guess all of us will have this love/hate relationship with it.

You're forgetting option #3... to forget...

 

[ALF]

The OT universe seems smaller and lower tech. The drop off in technology, or the look of it at least is never explained. Its sometimes hard to reconcile the look and feel of the PT and the OT. I think at times the PT overdid it with the computer graphics.

I think a lot of people had trouble with this one... basically the galaxy was in good economic shape "before the dark times" and then 30 years later (OT) the empire has crippled the galactic economy for it's own might.

 

[DWF]

The OT universe seems smaller and lower tech. The drop off in technology, or the look of it at least is never explained. Its sometimes hard to reconcile the look and feel of the PT and the OT. I think at times the PT overdid it with the computer graphics.

I think a lot of people had trouble with this one... basically the galaxy was in good economic shape "before the dark times" and then 30 years later (OT) the empire has crippled the galactic economy for it's own might.

I didn't notice much of a difference, we saw so very little of the Empire in the OT I'm not sure how people can make that claim in the first place.

 

[RandyS]

The OT universe seems smaller and lower tech. The drop off in technology, or the look of it at least is never explained. Its sometimes hard to reconcile the look and feel of the PT and the OT. I think at times the PT overdid it with the computer graphics.

I think a lot of people had trouble with this one... basically the galaxy was in good economic shape "before the dark times" and then 30 years later (OT) the empire has crippled the galactic economy for it's own might.

I didn't notice much of a difference, we saw so very little of the Empire in the OT I'm not sure how people can make that claim in the first place.

It's quite obvious. In the PT, everything is clean and fresh looking, while in the OT, everything is dirtier, and more "lived in" looking. Watch the series again and you'll see it.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

It looks worn, but I don't think it was necessarily inferior in the Empire (I used to think it was inferior, but I was quite young then and probably basing it on the Naboo Starfighter in Star Wars: Rogue Squadron). It seems to me that they made their big technological advances during the Clone Wars, and, after that, all the resources went into oppressing the population more efficiently rather than developing new technology (and this meant keeping the same cookie cutter designs in production, rather than new stuff with pretty bells and whistles).

 

[Hound of UIster]

But no, instead we're given Dooku as a suddenly introduced character--we have no idea why he's called a Count; in fact, having read no supplementary materials, I *still* don't know why he's called a Count.

Because Christopher Lee played Count Dracula in Hammer Horror films. EVERYTHING HAS TO BE AN HOMAGE.

I don't think this is homage. The traitorous Count character was from the very original Star Wars screenplay.

 

[Gaith]

Losing the thread, we are...

 

[DWF]

I think a lot of people had trouble with this one... basically the galaxy was in good economic shape "before the dark times" and then 30 years later (OT) the empire has crippled the galactic economy for it's own might.

I didn't notice much of a difference, we saw so very little of the Empire in the OT I'm not sure how people can make that claim in the first place.

It's quite obvious. In the PT, everything is clean and fresh looking, while in the OT, everything is dirtier, and more "lived in" looking. Watch the series again and you'll see it.

Besbin looked pretty clean to me and so did the Death Star, the Falcon looked worn but that was part of it's charm.

 

[Pauln6]

I didn't have a problem with that. The OT showed both Ben and Yoda disappearing when they died, kind of implying that's what happens to all Jedi. And yet Vader was confused when it happened, PLUS he became a Force Ghost after his death anyway. So, did he not know it was going to happen? On top of that, Qui-Gon DIDN'T disappear when he died, leading to a lot of confusion about who disappears, who doesn't, and what it takes to become a Force Ghost. And whether Vader should have been "worthy" to be a Force Ghost because of all the evil things he had done.

The answers to all those questions can be extrapolated from that one exchange.

Even though the PT had a lot of crap, I have to give it credit for answering so many questions so fast. Now, if only they had handled the prophecy so well....

Qui-Gon became a Force ghost in the end anyway, at the end of Ep. III Yoda told Obi-Wan that he had heard from his old teacher, I think in the end it was Qui-Gonn who taught Yoda and Obi-Wan how to do it.

Well, yeah, that was the point. Pauln6 was asking what was the whole point of "communing with Liam's character", and that was the whole point. Qui-Gon was the one who found the way, very neatly wrapping up a bunch of apparent inconsistencies that had arisen.

I hadn't realised that people were bothered by Vader's 'confusion' in IV. I thought the scene in III was forced (no pun) and while, like many of the scenes in the last half hour, it tied up a loose end, I never felt that it was a loose end that really needed tying. Kenobi and Yoda were more experienced Jedi than Vader so there could be many tricks known to them but not to him. Also, the ability to do this could have been learned only after the deaths of so many other Jedi, possibly even as a direct result of those deaths. I also felt that, as a result of his redemption, Yoda and Kenobi guided Anakin to the other side rather than assuming he did it on his own.

I for one can definitely live without this scene.

 

[Leandar]

I liked the prequels, they could have been better, but at the same time, I don't think they would have ever met up to anyone's expectations after all the years we had to imagine what they were going to be like. Nevertheless, it's richly added to the SW mythos in stories, not just the films, but how the EU has been able to get into these eras now and work with them, so I'd definitely say better.

I can't decide. On the one hand, I liked seeing the backstory of the OT, but there were several things I would have liked to see changed. Anakin's expressions of love for Padme in Episode II come to mind. That whole "Padme dying of a broken heart" nonsense. It would have added to Vader's fearsome persona if she had died as a result of Vader's choking her--bringing about Anakin's dreams about her dying. As would Vader killing Jar Jar with his lightsaber. What fan wouldn't have LOVED that?

Any fan who happened to like Jar Jar, particularly the kids, who Jar Jar was designed for.

Then there was the business about the Jedi having to take control of the senate if they arrested Palpatine. This makes no sense either. I doubt every senator was under Palpatine's influence. Clearly the ones that weren't would have been able to take control of the senate and restore order by calling for a special election to replace the senators Palpatine controlled.

I'm sure you're right about not every senator being under Sidious' influence, however he did have an overwhelming supermajority in the Senate, according to the Episode III novelization so it would still have been the majority of the Senate.

 

[Silvercrest]

Kenobi and Yoda were more experienced Jedi than Vader so there could be many tricks known to them but not to him. Also, the ability to do this could have been learned only after the deaths of so many other Jedi, possibly even as a direct result of those deaths.

True, but that requires a lot of evidence not seen on screen. Qui-Gon was more experienced than Obi-Wan and that trick wasn't known to him (assuming we leave out the dialogue in question). So if all the Jedi characters from the OT can become Force Ghosts and none of them from the PT can, with no explanation, it looks like yet another inconsistency.

I also felt that, as a result of his redemption, Yoda and Kenobi guided Anakin to the other side rather than assuming he did it on his own.

Yeah, I left that part out, but that was my assumption too... but only if we assume that Qui-Gon guided them first.

I for one can definitely live without this scene.

No worries!