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

[I Grok Spock]

I would highly suggest trying to download or even order it from amazon the book "The Secret History of Star Wars". It's a fantastic 500 plus page opus about the origins of "Star Wars" and focuses on George Lucas's own "rewritten" history regarding his origins of the "nine" Star Wars movies.

It's a pretty good read for an amateur work and a great collection of contemporary quotes.

Another problem of having Anakin be a boy is that I don't think there was enough time to really develop the romance part of the relationship. When we see Anakin next he's 19 and practically obsessed over Padme an obsession that turns almost possessive. Also there was no chemistry between Hayden and Natalie (which is weird since they were reported dating during the time of Episode II) and their characters were forced into a serious relationship. I never bought their romance due to these reasons.

All failures in conception and execution of storytelling. Muir can type away about the historical resonance of the prequels, but that doesn't address these fundamental flaws.

 

[Gaith]

The Clone Wars S3 Comic-Con trailer is out... and boy, does it look lame: even more look-and-sound-alike clones fighting more faceless droids!

This is why the PT makes SW worse. (See the RLM review, starting at 3:56 here. "Oh, Christ, I'm referencing The Phantom Menace as a positive example?" ) No matter how many mildly different haircuts the clones get, they're still not going to be anywhere near as interesting as individuals.

The Clone Wars mentioned in ANH should have been good individuals versus bad clones, clones on both sides, or some combination of the two, but NOT good clones versus individuals (and droids should never have been fighters in the first place).

The PT is Star Wars fail, plain and simple.

 

[Myasishchev]

One thing I hope for is that George Lucas takes Star Wars with him into his grave. NOBODY should ever be allowed to touch this again. It's good as it is. The original trilogy is PERFECT as it is.
No reboots, no prequels, no sequels, unless Lucas is involved. Same goes for Indiana Jones. That's one thing I appreciate, even if the outcome is not so well done (like the prequels or Indy 4). It should stay with the original creators and should never be touched by anyone else.

No, it shouldn't. The prequels should be remade at the earliest possible opportunity. But even if they were awesome, George Lucas taking a 20th century legend into his grave with him like a pharaoh's slave is a bad thing in principle. By your logic, no one could ever do a cover of the Iliad and Romeo and Juliet could only be done live and staged at the freakin' Globe.* And worse, neither Watchmen nor Justice League International could exist, because no one could ever turn Steve Ditko's objectivist Charlton monster into the loveable super-schlub Dan Dreiberg or the wonderful wisecracking Ted Kord of New Earth. The high campgasm of the 1980s Flash Gordon? Wiped from space and time. All those movies about Jesus? Omega sanctioned.

Hell, the Christ Himself probably couldn't have been preached about because the guys who came up with Sol Invictus and Mithras were dead...

But luckily, this nightmare scenario shall be averted. Star Wars will eventually become public domain--even if some of us may not live to see it. It will at least fall into other, more capable hands.

*On the plus side, it might get rid of some film adapters' inexplicable habit of cutting Paris' murder at the hands of Romeo and the lines establishing that he's a relative of a Prince, the deletion of which undermine the entire point of the tragedy. But that's a whole different argument.

I liked the first film Only because of Queen Amidala's costumes.

You know, I forget if I mentioned this before, but to give credit where it's due, the Amidala costuming is really excellent. That and Maul constitute exactly one star on a four star scale for the Phantom Menace, but they are both pretty awesome.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

The Clone Wars mentioned in ANH should have been good individuals versus bad clones, clones on both sides, or some combination of the two, but NOT good clones versus individuals (and droids should never have been fighters in the first place).

I don't see how your statements logically connect together. Why shouldn't droids have been fighters in the first place? As far as faceless qualities go, are there substantial differences between clones and droids? The fact that we have the Jedi show that there were good individuals vs. droids. We have faceless troops on both sides, plus good individuals on one of the sides.

I think you need to develop your arguments a bit better on why this particular creative decision is a bad one. All I see is "it should be" without the Why.

 

[exodus]

Yeah I remember seeing the interview from Lucas regarding Hayden and comparing him or at least being reminded of James Dean. Hayden was overhyped and like most of the actors not utilized well enough due to Lucas's bad writing. Hayden I've often argued is a fantastic actor who should have been able to pull off portraying Anakin Skywalker...with get small glimpses as was pointed out by another poster of Anakin as being likeable and that was indeed the start of episode iii. After that he's back to being his douche self again. Watch Hayden in his television series "Higher Ground" or "Life as a House" where he plays Kevin Kline's depressed emo son and tell me he can't act. Natalie was wasted in all three movies imo. Another problem of having Anakin be a boy is that I don't think there was enough time to really develop the romance part of the relationship. When we see Anakin next he's 19 and practically obsessed over Padme an obsession that turns almost possessive. Also there was no chemistry between Hayden and Natalie (which is weird since they were reported dating during the time of Episode II) and their characters were forced into a serious relationship. I never bought their romance due to these reasons.

I don't think much of this has to do with bad writing but more due to bad directing. It's the directors job to get the right emotional impact from the actors. You can write anything on a page but it's mostly up to the director to get the actor to speak those lines with conviction.

 

[Set Harth]

The worst thing about it is that from the very first moment we meet Anakin it's clear that he will become the bad guy.

That's only because we already knew that from TESB/ROTJ. He's not depicted as a bad guy in TPM.

There was no tragedy in his downfall. There wasn't even a downfall, because he would have needed to be up somewhere before that.

QUI-GON: You should be proud of your son. He gives without any thought of reward.
SHMI: He knows nothing of greed.

The Anakin Skywalker described by Obi-Wan in Star Wars and shortly seen in Return of the Jedi was a much different character than the one portrayed in Episode I-III. I always imagined him to be older, wiser, patient, a person so good that he couldn't do harm to a bug. A person you would NEVER expect to turn to the dark side.

Darth Vader was always supposed to be younger than Obi-Wan, having been his apprentice; ROTJ screwed with this to some extent by casting Shaw as "elderly" Anakin. The PT course-corrects on this point. Also, Obi-Wan never described Anakin as especially wise or patient. He was called simply a "good man", but other than that, Obi-Wan only said that he was a great pilot, a cunning warrior and exceptionally strong in the Force. Yoda said that Anakin had been a "powerful Jedi" with "much anger in him". People imagined things about Anakin that were not actually said.

 

[davejames]

Darth Vader was always supposed to be younger than Obi-Wan, having been his apprentice; ROTJ screwed with this to some extent by casting Shaw as "elderly" Anakin. The PT course-corrects on this point. Also, Obi-Wan never described Anakin as especially wise or patient. He was called simply a "good man", but other than that, Obi-Wan only said that he was a great pilot, a cunning warrior and exceptionally strong in the Force. Yoda said that Anakin had been a "powerful Jedi" with "much anger in him". People imagined things about Anakin that were not actually said.

I certainly didn't see any sign of this "good man" or "cunning warrior" in the prequels. And I can't see Obi-Wan or Yoda seriously describing the Anakin of the prequels that way either-- at least not while keeping a straight face.

"A whiny, petulant, and incredibly immature teenager" sounds a lot more like how they would describe him now.

Granted, one could argue that they were simply building him up more for Luke's sake, but it's still no where even CLOSE to the Anakin we actually saw.

Hell, the older Shaw radiated more of those qualities in his couple minutes of screentime in ROTJ than Christiansen did in three entire movies! To me, he will always be the real Anakin.

 

[Gaith]

Why shouldn't droids have been fighters in the first place?

Apart from being wretchedly boring, they're obviously too advanced to precede the OT. (And please, don't say "we only saw backwaters in the OT, therefore showing obviously more advanced tech before makes it okay"... because it doesn't.)

As far as faceless qualities go, are there substantial differences between clones and droids?

There's all the difference in the world: one group is alive and the other isn't. There can be no anguish, satisfaction or any other trace of emotion in destroying droids... Lucas effectively sanitized a huge aspect of war in order to avoid having the Jedi cut up living beings with their sabers.

The fact that we have the Jedi show that there were good individuals vs. droids.

Uh, yeah... I happened to notice that a few years ago. Your point?

I think you need to develop your arguments a bit better on why this particular creative decision is a bad one.

Well, it is partly subjective. If you can't already see why battle droids were a terrible artistic blunder in the first place, I may not be able to help you.

 

[exodus]

There's all the difference in the world: one group is alive and the other isn't. There can be no anguish, satisfaction or any other trace of emotion in destroying droids... Lucas effectively sanitized a huge aspect of war in order to avoid having the Jedi cut up living beings with their sabers.

Which would have given Star Wars a more adult rating, thus limiting the turn out of children which has always been a main staple of the Star Wars audience.

As far as emotion over destroying droids, how many of us that watched Star Wars when we were young were emotionally upset at seeing R2 & 3PO shot or destroyed?
I know I myself was satisfied at seeing someone destroy a Droideka.

 

[Set Harth]

Hell, the older Shaw radiated more of those qualities in his couple minutes of screentime in ROTJ than Christiansen did in three entire movies!

I'll give you that: Shaw's piloting skills and karate moves were top-notch indeed.
( And it should properly read one-and-a-half entire movies! above, since it isn't really fair to expect Anakin to display good qualities in the second half of ROTS, and Christiansen wasn't even in TPM. )

And I can't see Obi-Wan or Yoda seriously describing the Anakin of the prequels that way either-- at least not while keeping a straight face.

"Much anger in him", "powerful Jedi", and "I was amazed how strongly the Force was with him" are right on the money. Then again, that's what they actually said.

 

[davejames]

"Much anger in him", "powerful Jedi", and "I was amazed how strongly the Force was with him" are right on the money. Then again, that's what they actually said.

If it was just those things alone, I might agree. But Obi also calls him "a good man" and "a good friend" (quite wistfully too). And that just doesn't square with the relationship we see in the prequels at all.

Even with the forced reparte in AOTC and ROTS, he still seems more irritated and annoyed with Anakin (and justifiably so) than anything else.

No matter how much you try to justify it, Anakin was just a horribly written character in the prequels.

 

[Myasishchev]

"Much anger in him",

One of the most obvious problems with the PT is how they developed that anger--Lucas seemed to be under the mistaken impression that the best thing to base this on was Anakin's childish ambitions being stifled by Obi-Wan and the Jedi Council. Unfortunately, every scene where Lucas tried to get this across, Anakin came across as the most self-indulgent nancy in cinema history, and no actor could have elevated those emotions.

What's truly bizarre is that a real basis for Anakin's "great anger" was sitting right there being raped to death by Space Bedouin on Tatooine, apparently for more than a Goddamn decade. There's the barest ghost of an implication that Anakin might have been constantly requesting funds, transport and diplomatic support in a bid to purchase his mom's freedom, and that these, for whatever reason, were constantly refused. It's certainly never made explicit, but maybe we can dream.

Yet even if this is the case, it's still evidently not what he was actually pissed off about, because he never actually mentions any anger toward the Jedi on this score in two whole films. It's an easy line to write: "Obi-Wan [Yoda, Windu, Jedi as a whole] let her die."

Likewise, and to a lesser degree, it is never raised to more than the level of apparently accidental subtext that Anakin is pissed because the Jedi don't let him bang Padme openly.

Those motivations are so much more compelling, and so much more sympathetic. An audience can comprehend blind rage at an organization that stood by uncaring while their mom died. An audience can understand rebelling against the homoerotic monastic strictures of a religious order that they've been trapped in since childhood.* These sources of "great anger" are never interwoven into Anakin's campaign against the Jedi, though. Palpatine never uses these to poison him against the Jedi, preferring vague assertions about immortality in the future instead of actively and accurately describing Jedi immorality, helping Anakin develop a coherent and principled opposition to the Jedi and attachment to the more liberal Sith.**

Nope, he's mainly pissed about not being immediately recognized as awesome, even though he isn't particularly, and not being promoted to Jedi Master as soon as his testicles dropped. Who could possibly care about that?

*A justification for Kid Anakin in The Phantom Menace? Horrifically, yes.
**Of course, this might open up some plot holes about the obviously wealthy and influential Palpatine not being able to help Anakin free Shmi on his own initiative. Minor chronological reshuffling could free him from this obligation.

 

[Anwar]

The whole Shmi thing just makes the Jedi out to be real asses, and Anakin pretty negligent. I mean even HE friggin seemed to forget about Shmi between TPM and AOTC. If the Jedi wouldn't do it, for whatever reason, couldn't he even just go ask Padme about help?

 

[Gaith]

Lucas effectively sanitized a huge aspect of war in order to avoid having the Jedi cut up living beings with their sabers.

Which would have given Star Wars a more adult rating, thus limiting the turn out of children which has always been a main staple of the Star Wars audience.

Please note that this thread is titled "Is the Star Wars saga better with Episodes I to III or worse?", not "Is George Lucas richer because of Episodes I to III or not as rich?"

The whole Shmi thing just makes the Jedi out to be real asses, and Anakin pretty negligent. I mean even HE friggin seemed to forget about Shmi between TPM and AOTC. If the Jedi wouldn't do it, for whatever reason, couldn't he even just go ask Padme about help?

Topless Robot SW Haiku Contest:

Padme would be here
if spoiled b**** had just bought
Anakin's slave mom

 

[DWF]

The whole Shmi thing just makes the Jedi out to be real asses, and Anakin pretty negligent. I mean even HE friggin seemed to forget about Shmi between TPM and AOTC. If the Jedi wouldn't do it, for whatever reason, couldn't he even just go ask Padme about help?

That's kind of like asking in the three years between ANH and TESB couldn't Han have paid off Jabba so they wouldn't had to deal with later on?

 

[Gaith]

^^ An excellent question... if it had been three years. I'd much sooner call it three months.

 

[Alex1939]

Considerably worse.

Red letter media pretty much covers the reasons.

 

[Anwar]

Of course, that's also a valid question as to why he didn't try to pay off Jabba when he could. I mean, the Rebels gave him all the money he needed/wanted in ANW. It's why he left them in the first place before going back to help Luke. So he fully could've paid off Jabba.

Unless Jabba just got so PO'ed with Han he just didn't care about being paid anymore.

 

[Myasishchev]

It might actually fit Solo's character just as well that he welched (regardless of any personal, biased declarations of his trust- and creditworthiness).

"I'm a heroic figure in a heavily militarized rebel army surrounded by guys with weapons. Fuck that slug guy--when we win I'll probably have him executed."

And since he did have a change of heart, it's not even particularly likely that he kept all of the funds, which could obviously be used more profitably by the Alliance. If nothing else, Solo certainly wasn't big pimpin' on Hoth.

 

[FluffyUnbound]

There's all the difference in the world: one group is alive and the other isn't. There can be no anguish, satisfaction or any other trace of emotion in destroying droids... Lucas effectively sanitized a huge aspect of war in order to avoid having the Jedi cut up living beings with their sabers.

Which would have given Star Wars a more adult rating, thus limiting the turn out of children which has always been a main staple of the Star Wars audience.

As far as emotion over destroying droids, how many of us that watched Star Wars when we were young were emotionally upset at seeing R2 & 3PO shot or destroyed?
I know I myself was satisfied at seeing someone destroy a Droideka.

Hey, it's possible to employ robots as warriors and make it interesting or suspenseful. I think Hardware did a good job of that, as did Judge Dredd.

The problem with the prequels is that the droids are pathetically inefficient, Keystone-cop forces, that never once remotely create a sense of jeopardy for anyone. In the OT, stormtroopers occasionally win. The droids are just a joke.

The stormtroopers in A New Hope wipe out Leia's crew, they wipe out the Jawas, they kill Luke's aunt and uncle, they destroy the entire rebel attack force except for a couple of ships. They somehow do this without getting an R rating. The droids run around, say "Roger roger" and bump into each other before getting destroyed en masse.