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

[Temis the Vorta]

Who cares how Anakin became Darth Vader...

Because it could have been a cool story, and also enlightening about aspects of the mystical backstory of Star Wars.

The Clone Wars is now re-writing the story so that it is cool, and enlightening. Just because the PT wasn't that story doesn't mean it couldn't exist. Now it does exist. We never needed the PT at all, just TCW.

 

[P0sitr0nic]

Better. Much better. We have a good look at the old republic, at the arrogance of the Jedi, and a good reason why there were rebels.

Also, without the new movies, there would be no clone wars series. And weekly SW is a gooood thing.

 

[Galileo7]

I think of the CLONE WARS animated series and Episode III:ROTS as an excellent prologue to the original SW trilogy. ( I just don't think about Ep. I or Ep. II.)

 

[Temis the Vorta]

The way they've gone with TCW, it's not synching up with ROTS, and the divergence is getting wider all the time. I can understand why you may hate TPM and AOTC, but the trilogy does form a coherent whole:

TPM: Anakin is taken from his mommy and develops deep seated attachment issues, in which his idea of relating to loved ones isn't truly love but rather fear (dark side emotion, not light).

AOTC: Things get worse, with Shmi's death. Padme takes the place of Shmi as the object of clinginess.

ROTS: Anakin freaks out because of visions of Padme's death, too parallel to Shmi's for him to handle. Dark side takes over completely.

And that is the core story. All the other stuff about war and clones and lightsaber duels and the Trade Federation is just stage dressing. This story is entirely psychological, with politics as a fairly irrelevant backdrop (if Anakin thought fighting for the Republic or democracy was a waste of time, this idea really wasn't developed). There's no attention paid at all to the mystical part of the story - fate, prophecy, what the Force means, etc.

By presenting the "hero" as a weakling and a headcase, the PT has raised a lot of ire. It might be a story that we don't want to see, especially from Star Wars, but it does make sense.

Now TCW is changing the psychological elements so that Anakin is no longer a weakling or a headcase. He's sad and guilt-ridden about his mother's death, and extremely attached to Padme, but it's no longer the kind of dysfunctional emotion that we can link up to the Dark Side. It seems like genuine love. How can genuine love lead to the Dark Side?

TCW is also introducing politics as a more important and believably written factor (though how it works into Anakin's story, I don't yet know). Most importantly, they're also fleshing out the mystical side of the story, which really should be the predominant story thread. Star Wars is chiefly mystical, not psychological or political.

They've got 2 1/2 seasons to make TCW synch with ROTS, but the way they're moving further away all the time, I think they're going to have to rewrite ROTS to make it synch up with TCW. Just have a series of animated episodes that trot through the basic story of ROTS. A lot of the events can stay the same but the interpretation might be very different the second time around.

 

[P0sitr0nic]

Anakin was wracked with guilt when he killed the jedi and younglings in the temple in ROTS.

He just had by then, found a way to purge himself of the feelings. We are seeing the beginnings of those ways now.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

You mean, because he sees that as the Chosen One, he's above all that twaddle about Light and Dark Sides? That would make sense. Too bad Lucas didn't put it in the movies, where it might have helped explain a character who just came off as a loon. Better late than never.

 

[P0sitr0nic]

Oh, by the time he went on a killing spree, he had been so manipulated by a sith lord, he WAS a loon.

 

[Bishop76]

Way worse. In fact, I'd argue that there was no good or benefit at all from them being made.

 

[Skellington]

Also, without the new movies, there would be no clone wars series. And weekly SW is a gooood thing.

"Gooood".

 

[Bishop76]

It's not a good thing if it's as lemon-suckingly awful as Clone Wars is on a week to week basis.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Oh, by the time he went on a killing spree, he had been so manipulated by a sith lord, he WAS a loon.

He acted like a loon all the way thru AOTC too. Don't you remember that icky stalker vibe in all his scenes with Padme? I thought the intent was for us to believe he was so psychologically damaged every since childhood that he could never make a good Jedi, and was easy prey for Sidious. And he was also pretty dimwitted to boot, which made Sid's job laughably easy.

But I've never been able to decide whether all this was how I was supposed to interpret it. It seemed like the only possible interpretation, given Hayden Christensen's performance. The only way he could have been more obvious about it would be to have the makeup department write I'M CRAZY on his forehead.

But was that performance intentional, or was Lucas simply not paying attention? And since the only performance that I've seen Christensen give is "stalker emo psycho brat," is he even capable of performing any role any other way? Did he not know what he was doing?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

It's simple enough to just ignore everything post-ROTJ (or TESB) if one doesn't like it. I don't think it enhances Star Wars at all, but it's only a few movies.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I hated how the romance and relationship between Padme and Anakin was developed. Lucas took a childhood crush and twisted it into a lust filled obsession. There was no chemistry between Hayden and Natalie whatsoever either which only added to the implausibility of their relationship. Despite Anakin's few good qualities there was really no reason for Padme to fall in love with him. They were forced together. Simple as that. Clone Wars has done a bit better job in fleshing out their relationship but still I've never bought them as a couple.

 

[JarodRussell]

Many things twisted and "wrong" with the Prequels. The idea that a Jedi should not ever have a relationship with someone, for instance (which of course influenced the entire Prequel trilogy because it was then basically just Natalie Portman who turned Anakin into Vader). What was that silly Yoda speech again? "Love leads to fear, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, etc..." BULLSHIT! Complete BULLSHIT!

Episode II and III suffered from things done wrong in Episode I. The whole silly "Trade Federation is just a ploy, but it's actually secretly produced Clones, but actually both are just a ploy." thing. Only there, and badly executed in my opinion, because they introduced the Trade Federation and their droid army in Episode I without thinking ahead.

And I think I said it before somewhere, at the end of the day Episode I - III simply lacked human characters. It was all just Jedis and Droids. Jedi who can jump twenty meters, always swirl their lightsabers, etc... There was no Han Solo, no Lando, no Luke, there wasn't even a Wedge Antilles.

Another problem I have is that they had Christopher Lee and Samuel L Jackson in them, but eventually those were simply just Christopher Lee and Samuel L. Jackson. Just with lightsabers and weak dialogue.

 

[Bishop76]

What was that silly Yoda speech again? "Love leads to fear, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, etc..." BULLSHIT! Complete BULLSHIT!

Yeah, it was pretty ridiculous. As the Red Letter Media review points out, "can't anger lead to fear? And fear lead to suffering? And then suffering lead to hate? You see when you have three totally interchangeable emotional states, they can't really be arranged in a certain pattern of logic."

And I think I said it before somewhere, at the end of the day Episode I - III simply lacked human characters. It was all just Jedis and Droids. Jedi who can jump twenty meters, always swirl their lightsabers, etc... There was no Han Solo, no Lando, no Luke, there wasn't even a Wedge Antilles.

More than that, the movie itself lacked any humanity. Acting against blue screen in every scene really led to poor performances and, frankly, the VFX in the prequels was cartoonish and poorly done. They were movies cranked out by a computer with no soul.

 

[JarodRussell]

And I think I said it before somewhere, at the end of the day Episode I - III simply lacked human characters. It was all just Jedis and Droids. Jedi who can jump twenty meters, always swirl their lightsabers, etc... There was no Han Solo, no Lando, no Luke, there wasn't even a Wedge Antilles.

More than that, the movie itself lacked any humanity. Acting against blue screen in every scene really led to poor performances and, frankly, the VFX in the prequels was cartoonish and poorly done. They were movies cranked out by a computer with no soul.

I don't think that has much to do with the way it was shot. Just go to the theater. It doesn't really matter if the sets are real or just a blue screen. They didn't act against the blue screen, they acted with each other in front of the blue screen. They only acted with the blue screen when they had to dodge monsters or droids, and even then there were references on the set. Good actors can work with that. I also don't care how the VFX look like. The script just didn't contain any good characters, and that most of the actors weren't well cast.

 

[Bishop76]

It has everything to do with how it was shot. Acting against nothing is absolutely horrible for actors and was exactly why capable actors like McGregor and Portman looked like rank amateurs (not that their dialogue helped). Ask Ewan McGregor how much he loved acting in these monstrosities. And the FX do matter in this case. The original trilogy had a dirty, gritty, REAL, practical universe that was replaced with a clean, computer generated, cartoony universe. They didn't jive at all. And obviously the script didn't contain any good characters. They were all written like robots.

 

[JarodRussell]

Sigh, I forgot that you are prejudiced against visual effects.

The original trilogy had a dirty, gritty, REAL, practical universe that was replaced with a clean, computer generated, cartoony universe.

This quote alone I could disagree with the entire day.

 

[Tulin]

Sigh, I forgot that you are prejudiced against visual effects.

A strange thing to say on a BBS entitled "Trek".

No, I'd rather assume the person you quoted(or rather, didn't)is just prejudiced against cartoony looking films with bad stories and lame scripts that try to hide both with flashy CGI.

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"

 

[Bishop76]

I'm not prejudiced against special effects. I'm prejudiced against using digital effects where a practical one would have been just as good and been more visceral. Digital effects are great to enhance things - or even to make a fully digital movie like Toy Story. They are not good in and of themselves because they exist, as you seem to believe. You don't really seem to believe that story or tone or the mise en scene of a film is important as long as they have cutting edge technology in them.