Phantom Menace is the best Prequel.
<<hoping that the deleted scenes all get edited back in a new Super Special Edition cut>>
Phantom Menace is the best Prequel.
- Thread starter TheLobes
- Start date
Phantom Menace is the best Prequel.
<<hoping that the deleted scenes all get edited back in a new Super Special Edition cut>>
They weren't in The Phantom Menace. Luke wasn't even born yet.
Phantom Menace is the best Prequel.
<<hoping that the deleted scenes all get edited back in a new Super Special Edition cut>>
No doubt he'll do that, and I'll be re-buying these films for the FOURTH time in a few years
I still maintain that the very best lightsabre fight is between Darth Maul and Obi-wan, although short, it is very intense, and Obi looks really pissed off and mad, the only time in the whole series. If you read the book he actually flirted with the dark side in that scene. For me Darth Maul makes TPM a good movie, I could do without the Jar Jar antics however.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4gcqi2ynpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4gcqi2ynpg
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Phantom Menace is the best Prequel.
<<hoping that the deleted scenes all get edited back in a new Super Special Edition cut>>
No doubt he'll do that, and I'll be re-buying these films for the FOURTH time in a few years
Lucas: "Double dip? Bah! I shall dip and dip until I can dip no more! Bwah-ha-ha!!!!!"
Ah, I see what they were doing. Nevermind, I was confused.
Darth Maul was one of my biggest complaints about TPM and emblematic of the PT's shoddy construction in general... we learning NOTHING about him and really the only way we even knew he was a bad guy was he had a black mask and a red lightsaber!
This from the man who created Vader, one of the great villains of all time. About as bad as post-Wings Paul McCartney!
This from the man who created Vader, one of the great villains of all time. About as bad as post-Wings Paul McCartney!
I think TPM is the worst of the SW films, the only one I have trouble watching all the way through. It's really the "oddball" of the films, the only one aimed so squarely at a pre-adolescent audience, with all of the "poodoo," fart and crap jokes, so much Jar Jar, and the only one with a main character who's a little kid.
The whole movie doesn't end up mattering, as we move forward ten years after it, re-introducing Anakin as an entirely different adult character. The only part of the story that matters is Palpy coming to power and you didn't need a two-hour movie to accomplish that. Of course, the entire story doesn't make sense, and Sidious often takes actions which would seem to sabotage his goal of attaining power.
In short, I agree with many of the points Redlettermedia made in their famous review.
The whole movie doesn't end up mattering, as we move forward ten years after it, re-introducing Anakin as an entirely different adult character. The only part of the story that matters is Palpy coming to power and you didn't need a two-hour movie to accomplish that. Of course, the entire story doesn't make sense, and Sidious often takes actions which would seem to sabotage his goal of attaining power.
In short, I agree with many of the points Redlettermedia made in their famous review.
I dunno, I find TPM at least somewhat watchable.
The one I really can't watch is ROTS as it's just drags, it centers very heavily on Anakin who is not a sympathetic character at all, the alien CGI bullshit knob is set to 100 and the cackling emperor and the word-mixing up Yoda knobs are set to 101.
The one I really can't watch is ROTS as it's just drags, it centers very heavily on Anakin who is not a sympathetic character at all, the alien CGI bullshit knob is set to 100 and the cackling emperor and the word-mixing up Yoda knobs are set to 101.
Not that I disagree, but in a way this reminds me of the first film in that it was a self contained story and many of the events within ended up not mattering.
Was there ever a mention in the subsequent films of the destruction of the first Death Star at Luke's hands? Of Leia being captured and and rescued by Han and Luke? Nope.
I find that it matters a great deal for several reasons, not the least of which is the introduction of Anakin's mother. If there had never been TPM and we started with AOTC, then Anakin rushing to save his mother, a person we had never even met, would have been met met with quite an quizzical reaction from audiences.
For me, the arc of TMP-AOTC-ROTS is situation where there whole sum could be considered better than the individual parts. Whether or not it works for each viewer is subjective, but story-wise, Anakin needed to be introduced as a kid living with his mom in order for his psychological and emotional breakdown to have a starting point. If we opened up with Anakin already 20 and on his own, how we would have learned about his prior life, living only with his mother? If it had been a long monologue, critics would have cried "show, don't tell". Instead, Lucas does show how a kid of his situation and age could make one person his whole world, then we taken from that person, transfers this emotional dependency onto another, such as Padme.
Plus, TPM is important to show lessons taught to Obi-wan by Qui-gon, some of which he won't really understand until much later in his life. In addition, I really liked the small detail in Episode III of that trinket Anakin crafted for Padme in Episode I showing up again, as a marker for when he transferred his emotional dependence over to her and its continuing hold over him.
Well, obviously things in Clones would have to be changed to better explain what is going on, but to say we need a movie that shows Anakin leaving his mother is like saying we need a movie showing Leia being raised on Alderaan in order to feel anything for her when the planet is destroyed.
The possible loss of Padme in Ep. III was meant to mirror the loss of his mother in Ep. II, so I do think it matters that we meet Anakin's mother and see the pain he has in having to say goodbye to her.
It was mentioned in Empire that Luke destroyed the Death Star. Once, indirectly, during the opening crawl and later, directly, during Vader's chat with the Emperor. It should be noted that the latter was a DVD change.
Indeed, Anakin's journey and Leia's journey are quite different, Leia was an adult when she watched Alderaan get destroyed and the fulcrum for Anakin's entire path begins with leaving his mother. This is important to the story, whether it resonates with you or not. It does resonate with me and I can understand its affect on a person as they grow up past that point.
Speaking about stuff that ultimately doesn't matter, how about Anakin as a slave? It shaped who he became no doubt but I really thought that might have been a storyline in AOTC. Anakin returning to Tatooine to free the slaves like he dreamed about and told Qui-Gon. But that's never addressed again.
You can't compare ANH to TPM because ANH was meant to be a potentially self-contained story since they had no idea how SW was going to do.
theoretically, ANH still works as a stand-alone, you could basically ignore the rest of the saga, pretending it didn't happen, and ANH still tells a good story.
The difference with TPM is that it was deliberately part I of a trilogy and accomplishes very little for its part, which is really what eventually leads to such a compressed part III, where you have so much stuffed into one movie because TPM didn't pull its own weight, telling an irrelevant little side story.
Also, ESB didn't totally re-introduce new versions of the characters from ANH, it just built off of it. It's a much more natural sequel to ANH than AOTC is to TPM.
theoretically, ANH still works as a stand-alone, you could basically ignore the rest of the saga, pretending it didn't happen, and ANH still tells a good story.
The difference with TPM is that it was deliberately part I of a trilogy and accomplishes very little for its part, which is really what eventually leads to such a compressed part III, where you have so much stuffed into one movie because TPM didn't pull its own weight, telling an irrelevant little side story.
Also, ESB didn't totally re-introduce new versions of the characters from ANH, it just built off of it. It's a much more natural sequel to ANH than AOTC is to TPM.
But you're forgetting the established, set-in-stone format of each STAR WARS movie. They all take place in a linear fashion, no flashbacks or jumps in time within the same film and each movie's story starts and finishes within one set time frame, as seen in movie serials of the past. Someone might say this is a limitation, but it exactly Lucas wants to stay true to the movie serial format with each Star Wars film. Once the opening crawl is done, he drops you into an action/suspense sequence with little introduction in which the audience has to find its bearings. Post-crawl, a Star Wars movie by its very nature would not have a 5-minute flashback, fade to black and then jump forward with a "10 Years Later" title. Each Star Wars film tells a story that takes place in a 1-2 week time period, in a linear fashion and that are their established format.
I'm not sure if that's an explicit limitation. Until ROTS no SW movie had a dream sequence or a montage sequence either, but it broke those rules.
But let's say you're right and Lucas wouldn't violate that rule. Anakin's backstory could still have been established in dialogue.
The bottom line, to me, is that TPM as one-third of a trilogy that had a LOT of ground to cover in a reasonable way to be successful just didn't "pull its own weight" in terms of adding to the overall saga.
Qui-Gon and Darth Maul die, we never see either again
Next time we see Anakin he's ten years older and a completely different character, personality-wise
Jar Jar Binks, who gets a LOT of screen-time in TPM, is progressively less relevant in each of the next two movies
So much stuff that's in TPM just turns out to be irrelevant filler
