I just threw out Jackson because LOTR was the closest thing to epic fantasy done by a current director.
Spielberg's last directorial project was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which was... just as bad as Revenge of the Sith.
Plinkett gets REVENGE
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I just threw out Jackson because LOTR was the closest thing to epic fantasy done by a current director.
Spielberg's last directorial project was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which was... just as bad as Revenge of the Sith.
That film suffered from many flaws, but directing was hardly one of them.
Spielberg could do better directing job in his sleep than 80% of other Hollywood directors.
Ron Howard and Richard Donner made some bad movies themselves over the years too, but I don't remember any of the three making anything remotely as bad as The Lovely Bones. Also, looking at filmographies, compared to them PJ still looks like a rookie.
Also, I remember this rumor that was going around like ten years ago, about Lucas wanting David Fincher to do the third movie. I think he would have been a great choice too.
I think we must have seen different movies. I'm not saying the Prequel Trilogy was Shakespeare, or anything, but his childhood, his relationship with his Mother, and his choice/being coerced to leave her cast a shadow over his entire character arc. It's what started his path to the Dark Side!
Finally saw some of this, and I definitely think he makes some great points. His simplified storyline featuring an outside threat (and a war that actually impacts Coruscant in some way) would have made things a LOT more emotionally resonant that what we got.
And I never really thought about it before, but the prequels ARE unnecessarily dark and violent. We don't need to see Vader slaughter innocent women and children to get that he's "bad." It's completely at odds with the tone and style of the original movies (even the darker ESB), and makes me even more disgusted with the prequels than I already was.
And I never really thought about it before, but the prequels ARE unnecessarily dark and violent. We don't need to see Vader slaughter innocent women and children to get that he's "bad." It's completely at odds with the tone and style of the original movies (even the darker ESB), and makes me even more disgusted with the prequels than I already was.
We don't exactly see it, though, do we?
Well it doesn't even need to be suggested. Fans might take this universe ultra seriously today, but the original movies were never more than fun adventure movie throwbacks to old movie serials. With an old-style, sinister villain in black threatening our "noble heroes".
Turning Vader into a dark and creepy child murderer is completely unnecessary, and misses the spirit of the original movies completely. You might as well make him a child molester and rapist too, while you're at it.
Well judging by how thoroughly untraumatized Leia is throught the rest of the movie (despite losing her family and home planet), I'm guessing we weren't supposed to take it THAT seriously.
Well, we didn't see any worried-looking children on Alderaan pointing up at the Death Star...
Anakin could have participated in the Jedi hunt without us actually seeing him about to slaghter children. Guess as that point ol' GL was just desperate for us to feel something...
Well, we didn't see any worried-looking children on Alderaan pointing up at the Death Star...
Anakin could have participated in the Jedi hunt without us actually seeing him about to slaghter children. Guess as that point ol' GL was just desperate for us to feel something...
It's partly the timing and the overall flow of the story that makes the youngling incident feel so forced. We never really feel that Anakin is seduced by the dark side, but rather that he is conned by Palpatine and convinced that the Sith are only evil according to Jedi propaganda.
So, given all that, it is rather absurd that Palpatine's first order to Vader is: ok, now that I have convinced you that the Sith are not really evil, now go slaughter some children.
All of this makes Anakin's line later on, "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil" (or words to that effect, I don't recall exactly), one of the most laughably bad moments in the whole trilogy.
At some point, the bad-ass, gleefully evil Vader had to emerge, the same guy who says things like, "I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further." Vader had fun being bad and we had fun along with him. In the PT the character is utterly lacking in charisma and all the fun is gone.
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See, I think that weakens everything. In Attack of the Clones, he doesn't seem to regret his choice. Rather, it seems he wished he had learned more in order to have prevented her death. He didn't seem to doubt his decision, nor did he condemn Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan for coercing him to leave. If anything, with the big gap in years between his leaving with the Jedi and returning after her abduction, it makes him seem more selfish for not finding time to go back to Tatooine and attempt to free her from Wattoo. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure there were some Jedi rules about that, but as we saw with Padme, he would have found a way around that. My reading of the prequels is that he left Tatooine and didn't give it much though, until it was too late.
Which furthers my belief that the prequels should have introduced him as a teenager. That would have made his decision to leave have more impact, as he would have experienced life as a slave longer and would have understood the impact of leaving his mother before more.
At the very beginning of Clones, he was having nightmares about his Mother. Padme says "another nightmare," indicating it's an ongoing problem. My impression was that the Jedi wouldn't allow him to see his Mother, and up until Clones, he was begrudgingly going along with them. It wasn't until later, he got really rebellious.
Topless Robot SW Haiku Contest:
Padme would be here
if spoiled b**** had just bought
Anakin's slave mom
Padme would be here
if spoiled b**** had just bought
Anakin's slave mom
Yeah, Vader definitely had a pretty badass attitude in the OT that was not developed at ALL by Lucas in the prequels. Even if you argue Vader hadn't become truly consumed by evil yet, there still should have been at least a trace of that early on.
Of course that also comes down to not getting a more charismatic, badass actor to play the character in the first place...
I forget, did he share this with Obi-Wan? I find it hard to believe that Obi-Wan would tell him to just forget it. Family member or not, what good are the Jedis if they forsee trouble and ignore it because of the possible emotional entanglement.
The ability to see the future and prophecy are an odd thread going through the prequels. I get the impression that Qui-Gon was one of the few Jedi who put much stock in prophecy/the ability to see the future. Maybe I'm reading into things, but it always seem the Jedi are slightly derisive of the prophecy and put little faith in Anakin's ability to see the future.
Even in Empire, Yoda dismisses Luke's premonition about his friends being in danger on Cloud City. The Jedi seem pretty determined to focus on the present and won't risk anything affecting the present, even if it means staving off disaster in the future. And the answer is usually the issue of emotions.
And while there really was no other way to save Han, Leia, etc. without Luke going (as Yoda was too old to go himself), I'd hope the Jedi would at least send someone to check on Shmi, even if they decided it should not be Anakin.
The more we learn about the Jedi, the less effective they seem.
Until you have to explain why someone who loves power for its own sake would be a Jedi in good standing in the first place.
There it is again. Apparently, the people who don't know it don't actually exist. A 1996 source described Anakin as "weak", "foolish", "idealistic", "frail", and "blemished". The use of "is" in this context seems to imply that the character should be in stasis for his entire life. How is zero character development to be considered an improvement?
Still an imaginary rule, invented just for this situation. It fails miserably when applied to the preexisting history of literature and film. And, no, you're not supposed to root for the villain, though that continues to be an amusing red herring.
( We hope. )Easily disproved by Palpatine and OT Vader. Perhaps he simply doesn't agree with you that Anakin should have represented that character type before turning to the dark side ( thus denigrating the importance of the turn as emphasized by the OT ). Maybe Lucas didn't actually participate in the Force retcon to which his name was clumsily and erroneously attached after the fact.
But the backstory of Vader, as far as we know from the OT, didn't feature Vader becoming omniscient, in charge of everything that happened, or exempt from manipulation by any other character. In fact, quite the contrary: Luke, do not underestimate the powers of the Emperor, or suffer your father's fate you will. Once again Lucas is being damned simply for being consistent with his earlier films.
You might not be getting the intended message.
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The comparison between the youngling incident and the destruction of Alderaan in the original film is really quite interesting because, yeah, it seems that the murder of an entire planet's population should prevent us from taking any pleasure in Vader's gleefully bad-ass attitude. It doesn't, probably for a variety of reasons.
On the one hand, there's the clever use of the odious Tarkin as a scapegoat to deflect the audience's ire that might otherwise be directed at Vader. Beyond that I think it's a question of tone and genre convention. We expect a certain amount of gratuitous mayhem in a film like this and so we will not dwell on the actual horror of such events, were they translated into the real world, unless the film asks us to do so. Moreover, the film has clearly identified these characters as evil, so we feel no pressure to revile them.
All in all, the original movie displays a masterful understanding of what makes this type of film work.
The PT is inept by comparison. It bends over backward to present Anakin as merely misguided and confused, then sends him out to commit one of the most despicable crimes imaginable in cold blood, then asks us to go on perceiving him as essentially only misguided and confused.
On the one hand, there's the clever use of the odious Tarkin as a scapegoat to deflect the audience's ire that might otherwise be directed at Vader. Beyond that I think it's a question of tone and genre convention. We expect a certain amount of gratuitous mayhem in a film like this and so we will not dwell on the actual horror of such events, were they translated into the real world, unless the film asks us to do so. Moreover, the film has clearly identified these characters as evil, so we feel no pressure to revile them.
All in all, the original movie displays a masterful understanding of what makes this type of film work.
The PT is inept by comparison. It bends over backward to present Anakin as merely misguided and confused, then sends him out to commit one of the most despicable crimes imaginable in cold blood, then asks us to go on perceiving him as essentially only misguided and confused.
Well, we didn't see any worried-looking children on Alderaan pointing up at the Death Star...
Anakin could have participated in the Jedi hunt without us actually seeing him about to slaghter children. Guess as that point ol' GL was just desperate for us to feel something...
It's partly the timing and the overall flow of the story that makes the youngling incident feel so forced. We never really feel that Anakin is seduced by the dark side, but rather that he is conned by Palpatine and convinced that the Sith are only evil according to Jedi propaganda.
Problem is we never even see him "seduced" as most of the time his bitchy, whiny, ranting, people-killing ways shows him to already be there. Shit, it would've probably made more sense if Palps simply said, "Hey Anakin, want to join the Dark Side?" in a matter-of-fact manner and Anakin replies with a shrug and a "I dunno, I guess. It sounds cool. Whatever."
The transition flowed like cold molasses.
I think we are basically in agreement on that point.
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