Snap.
Most hated trilogy: Star Wars prequels or Bayformers?
- Thread starter Whofan
- Start date
Snap.
Lucas just needed to do his standard 15-page story outline and hand it over to people like Larry Kasdan, to do with it whatever the hell they liked. Also, he shouldn't have directed. There were tones of A-list directors dying for a shot at Star Wars, Spielberg being just a tip of the iceberg.
As I said already, when it comes to PT, what IS there is less then great, but the real problem isn't what's there, but what could have been. These movies had immeasurable potential.
As I said already, when it comes to PT, what IS there is less then great, but the real problem isn't what's there, but what could have been. These movies had immeasurable potential.
He did ask Kasdan, and Kasdan said no.
Spielberg did offer to direct, but Lucas said no.
Agreed.
Which means Kasdan is the main guy to blame!
But there are other people like Larry Kasdan in Hollywood...
Spielberg once said he practically knelt and begged, but Lucas was too selfish and didn't want anyone around his "baby". Too bad, Spielberg wouldn't have treated it like a bastard.
Which means Kasdan is the main guy to blame!
But there are other people like Larry Kasdan in Hollywood...
Spielberg once said he practically knelt and begged, but Lucas was too selfish and didn't want anyone around his "baby". Too bad, Spielberg wouldn't have treated it like a bastard.
I like Spielberg but I don't think a Spielberg directed Star Wars would be an automatic good movie... but I wasn't a big fan of, for example, Minority Report, which is a sci-fi Spielberg film released during the production of those films.
But yeah, it would not have hurt Lucas to have a relationship to the film similar to the one he did in Empire and Jedi, an executive producer with one or more writers working on the script and more than one director. Lucas did recognize as the prequels go on it'd be best if he didn't write them alone (Stoppard had a hand in ROTS, IIRC), but he stuck to his guns as far as directing 'em went.
MR even has a conveyor belt scene just like the one in AOTC.
In fact, the score in those two movies (both by Williams) actually sounds kinda similar when you compare it.
BTW, if I'm not mistaken, Spielberg worked with Lucas on the final duels (Yoda/Palpatine and Obi-Wan/Anakin), and the end product wasn't bad. That scene when the lava splashes on that bridge and burns through, and the part when Palpatine throws senatorial pods at Yoda was Spielberg's idea, IIRC. I really liked both.
I once wrote a review in which I called TF1 "a good summer blockbuster", but I'd never dare call it a "good movie". It just... Isn't.
For the sake of reference... Of all the sci-fi/fantasy/comic-book movies that you've seen on the big screen in the past decade, which one is your favorite, and which one do you hate the most?
I like thought-provoking sci-fi, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Forbidden Planet and Blade Runner (my all-time favorite film), and I like popcorn-fare, blockbuster (seemingly not "good") sci-fi, such as Transformers. I also like juvenile stuff, like the 1930s Flash Gordon serials, and Z-grade movies like Plan 9 from Outer Space and Robot Monster.
I consider Star Wars Episode II to be semi-tolerable because it lacks the stuff that I hated most about the prequels: Jar Jar, Qui Gon, Anakin's unbelievably rapid fall to the Dark Side and Amidala giving up on life despite having given birth to two children whom she loved enough to name. That's not to say that I loved the film. I can barely watch any of the SW prequels.
As for Transformers, the very concept of sentient, alien robots disguising themselves as cars, planes, cassette players and handguns is stupid except as a toy line. No TV show, comic book, movie or graphic novel can change that. What they can do with the concept is make an eye-candy, check-your-brain-at-the-door, over-the-top action movie. The first and third Bayverse movies worked very well on that level. (Obviously they don't work for everyone. I don't care.)
I consider Star Wars Episode II to be semi-tolerable because it lacks the stuff that I hated most about the prequels: Jar Jar, Qui Gon, Anakin's unbelievably rapid fall to the Dark Side and Amidala giving up on life despite having given birth to two children whom she loved enough to name. That's not to say that I loved the film. I can barely watch any of the SW prequels.
As for Transformers, the very concept of sentient, alien robots disguising themselves as cars, planes, cassette players and handguns is stupid except as a toy line. No TV show, comic book, movie or graphic novel can change that. What they can do with the concept is make an eye-candy, check-your-brain-at-the-door, over-the-top action movie. The first and third Bayverse movies worked very well on that level. (Obviously they don't work for everyone. I don't care.)
Good effort, tho.
That's just one of the many flaws, but I'll give the PT credit for providing the fodder for a better story in The Clone Wars, where the whole tragedy is being set up without needing the Jedi to look quite so dumb. The real key, all along, was throwing the weight of the story into the mystical realm.
The Jedi (and Anakin) do realize things are going off the rails badly, but don't know how to solve the problem. If Anakin perceives the dark side as a shortcut to solving everyone's problems - and the dark side has some degree of mind control power (or changes your personality; same difference) - then he can cause the whole catastrophe by simply being desperate and incautious, rather than anyone needing to be contemptably stupid.
But then the key becomes, making this story REAL for us. And to do that requires a visualization/dramatization of what the dark side/light side conflict actually means. That's what The Clone Wars has delivered (and hopefully will continue into the next two seasons).
It boggles my mind that the PT ignored this facet of the story, considering that it's the part that distinguishes Star Wars from other space operas, and always held the key to effectively delivering what is, after all, a very tricky and difficult story, in which the audience must sympathize and identify with a main character who is fated to become a villain.
Yeah, Transformers is just twaddle that doesn't have any potential to rise above its inherent twaddle-hood. Star Wars has more potential than any franchise except (arguably) Star Trek. But with Lucas actually drawing out that potential on TV now, Transformers is therefore worse.
Temis the Vorta said:
Anakin said:
Temis the Vorta said:
That is an absurd claim. There was the balance of the Force plotline, there were Jedi, there were Sith. That's all the visualization you're realistically going to get, because the Force is invisible ( except when it's shooting out of someone's fingers ). There is nothing missing from the PT's presentation that was not also "missing" from the OT, but the OT has oddly never been faulted for this.
Oddly, all this thread has done is made me want to see a trilogy of new Star Wars movies...directed by...Michael Bay.
AAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!
I think the Star Wars prequals were disappointing compared to the masterpieces that had gone before. I think with Transformers there was nothing to compare them to so I actually enjoyed them a lot better but you were still left thinking 'They could so easily have been so much better'
But still, Megan Fox
But still, Megan Fox
