Does the Star Wars series have only one good movie?

In the commentary for A New Hope, Lucas said that Luke could always have run away, but once he made his choice do think that Luke had one direction to go in. And in any event in the Star Wars universe a person's fate is decided on by the Force.

 

If anything has come close in the past 20 years to Star Wars level of public recognition, I'd say Harry Potter, and possibly the first Jurassic Park did.

 

JURASSIC PARK comes closest, followed by LotR and then Harry Potter. They're the only other movie series that have rivaled STAR WARS in retail merchandising and public awareness.

 

The Force doesn't control anyone like a puppet. They still have to make the choice to do something.

 

Not a whole lot of choice there and according to Obi-Wan there's no such thing as coincidence so nothing from a Jedi's point of view happens by chance, Qui-Gonn saidas much in The Phantom Manace.

 

So Anakin didn't have the choice to turn back from the dark side, eh?

I think you mean luck.

Making a choice is not something that "happens by chance", it's a deliberate act. When I was talking about the films in the saga that emphasize choice, The Phantom Menace was among them.

 

I don't see it that way and in the order the movies came out in we know the characters had no choice, we knew that Anakin would turn into Darth Vader and later kill Palpatine, In the end he was the chosen one and he had no other choice than to do what he was always destined to do.

 

That's an out-of-universe consideration. It doesn't mean that the characters had no choice in-universe. You're saying prequels can't be made in a universe with free will. This just means you have a problem with accepting the concept of prequels. As the OT was coming out, there was no foreknowledge of what was going to happen. Thus the order of release argument is pointless.

Also, saying we knew Anakin would kill Palpatine doesn't help the intent behind your Yoda quote, because it shows that Anakin had the choice to turn back from the dark path.

No, he had the choice to either do it or not, which is exactly what Lucas said. The characters have free will and are not forced like puppets to follow a predetermined course of action ( which would be a terrible story anyway ).

 

No, you're twisting my words in the end Anakin was the chosen one and in reality he has no choice but to do what he did and kin the order of release the movies show you in retrospect that Anakin was going to do what he did. Once you know the ending there's really no other way things would've turned out, characters in fictonal universes have little control over their lives in-universe.

 

No one's "twisting your words". That's exactly what I said you said.

You merely repeat your belief in predetermined outcomes and throw in the "release order" red herring again. Release order means nothing. If you don't believe characters have free will, that comes into play regardless of release order.

 

Star Wars are the movies where Obi-Wan said "Only a sith deals in absolutes.'

Why are you conversing as if Star Wars is even remotely logically self-consistent?

 

Obi-Wan wasn't making a blanket statement about A=A. Anakin was the one making that kind of statement. Obi-Wan was simply acknowledging that Anakin was now a Sith.

Vader: Either you're with me or you're against me.
Kenobi: Only a Sith [makes those kinds of statements].

 

'ONLY a sith deals in absolutes.' - quote from the movie, StevenR.
Only=the statement is an absolute. Logic 1:1.

Apparently, Obi-Wan is no stranger to absolutes himself.
I very much doubt Lucas wanted to reveal Obi-Wan as a sith AKA that's a blatant logical inconsistancy of the movies (there are many others - both subtle and obvious).

 

And the bit of dialog before Obi-Wan? You know, the part where Anakin is saying with me or against me? Don't forget that part, which is what Obi-Wan was replying to.

It's Obi-Wan simply saying Anakin is gone and Vader is all that's left and now it's time to get down to business.

 

As said, logic 1:1:
Obi-Wan is saying far more than that Anakin is a sith. He's saying that ALL who 'deal in absolutes' are sith - and that inculdes himself.

That's a rather straight-forward/simple logical deduction, StevenR.
Not the kind of thing one expects to find in a million-dollar movie.

 

Listen to what Obi-Wan is really saying and not just the words.

 

Jedi is better than Empire, Temple of Doom is better than Raiders, and Search for Spock is better than Khan. CAN YOUR HEART STAND IT?

No, I didn't read the whole thread. Good Lord, look how long it is!

 

The third film in a series CAN be better than it's predecessors. GOLDFINGER was superior to DR. NO or FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE(although I love all three and they're great). REVENGE OF THE SITH is better than PHANTOM or CLONES. And THE RETURN OF THE KING is, in my eyes, the greatest of the LotR films. So it does happen. Just not very often.

 

I didn't read the whole thing either, but I must say, despite your obvious sarcasm, you are in fact, quite correct about Search for Spock being better than Wrath of Khan.

 

Oh, I wasn't being sarcastic about the movies. Those are true opinions. Empire doesn't have an ending without Jedi; it's really more like a two-part movie, and Jedi has the part where the Death Star II gets blown up and the part where Luke lets the hate flow through him. Empire has a lot of cool parts too, but not as cool as those. (Star Wars is fine, but suffers in comparison to both, I think.)

And Temple of Doom is awesome (Last Crusade is actually my favorite, but Temple gets shit on much like Jedi), and Search for Spock makes me cry.

There's too much hate for the Ewoks, too. Any civilian resistance should be crushed by the "a legion of the Empire's best troops," but a lot of people think that substituting Wookiees would make it all better. Hell, the Ewoks being lousy makes sense: you'd expect any population the Empire actually recognized as a potential threat (like Wookiees) to have been exterminated for a hundred miles in every direction from the shield generator. The Ewoks' crappiness = strategic advantage.

Also, sometimes I hear people say that it's a Vietnam metaphor. (Nevermind that the NLF was actually broken during Tet, and it was the PAVN who won the war through basically conventional means. That's not important to the myth that a badly armed, small-framed, fuzzy [?] paramilitary resistance threw the Americans out of the country.) It sort of works.