• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Plinkett gets REVENGE

Status
Not open for further replies.
Pointy lightsabers are right up there with "Akiraprise" as Fanboy Obsessions I Will Never Comprehend. :rommie:

To me, the first mistake was with The Phantom Menance taking place when Anakin was a boy. We're "introduced" to Anakin as an annoying young kid and not given anything to make us like him. In fact, his childhood (aside from "The Prophecy") is so unimportant, it's only mentioned once, in passing, at the beginning of Attack of the Clones. Why spend so much time showing him as a kid, to not have it bear any relevance to the overall "plot" of the prequels?
His childhood is important if the story is psychological. Anakin was a messed up kid, which is why he fell to the Dark Side.

That's okay as some kind of story, but it's not a Star Wars story. Star Wars is not political or psychological (although it's fine to have both introduced as contributing factors) - it's metaphysical, about the eternal struggle between good and evil.

If you lose the metaphysical dimension, then Star Wars is just another space opera story. Might as well be Star Trek, except Star Trek does psychological and political storytelling a whoooole lot better.

For similar reasons, it doesn't make sense for Anakin's fall to be political (if he honestly felt an Evil Galactic Empire was a more rational and perhaps even humane system of government - I'm not even clear on whether that was the case). Star Wars has psychology and politics, but that's not what it's about.

We never really feel that Anakin is seduced by the dark side, but rather that he is conned by Palpatine and convinced that the Sith are only evil according to Jedi propaganda.
Exactly. The metaphysical content of the struggle between Good vs Evil is simply missing, yet that should be the whole impetus of the story and the reason Anakin falls. If it's because he's messed up psychologically, that's just not fair. If it's because of his political beliefs (and assuming any effort were made to explain those beliefs to us), then the story comes down to some made-up space politics that don't really matter anyway. If Anakin legitimately believes in dictatorship, whoopee for him. The audience is never going to be convinced to side with him on that score, so why even go there?

Because none of the motivations make sense, we're left with the appearance of Anakin being a dolt - he falls for no observable reason. The reason should be something about the Dark Side - what it does to your mind, or your ethics, or your destiny, or something.

There's a whole lot of development Lucas needed to do, to figure out exactly what "falling to the Dark Side" means. How does it work? How does it feel? How much does it change you as a person? How much is it like drug addiction? Then the essential part of that larger picture should have been added to the script so that even if we can never actually feel what Anakin felt, we would still get the message that something is happening that is not psychology, politics or sheer stupidity.
 
Last edited:
Pointy lightsabers are right up there with "Akiraprise" as Fanboy Obsessions I Will Never Comprehend. :rommie:
What's so hard about "five movies of precedent"? :p

Correct sabers:

mustafarduel7.jpg





WTF IS THIS SHIT:


sw8b.jpg

I wouldn't even mind pointy red blades... but a Jedi's lightsaber is a defensive weapon, so the round edges are thematically appropriate as well as established canon.

But hell, I reject the PT anyway, so...
 
^
I don't think Anakin was "messed-up" as a kid, well, not until he joined the Jedi. Despite being a slave, he seemed to be content. He built a pod-racer, had friends, and seemed pretty "normal" for a kid his age. Like most things with Star Wars, we just don't see how serious things are. Why make Anakin a slave, other than to come up with a reason to separate him from Shmi?
 
^
I don't think Anakin was "messed-up" as a kid, well, not until he joined the Jedi. Despite being a slave, he seemed to be content. He built a pod-racer, had friends, and seemed pretty "normal" for a kid his age. Like most things with Star Wars, we just don't see how serious things are. Why make Anakin a slave, other than to come up with a reason to separate him from Shmi?

That's one of those things I never got: his "slavery."

He had a home. He had friends. He was cheery all the time. It looked like he had an after school job.

What was so "slave" like about his life?
 
What's so hard about "five movies of precedent"? :p
I just can't get past the who the frak CARES factor! :rommie: Why not complain the lightsabers are the wrong color? The OT didn't have purple lightsabers, wtf, is this a disco or a fight???

The problem with Anakin being the slave is that it set my teeth on edge right away, because it was so obviously intended as manipulation. Oh poor widdle boy, he's a slave, boo hoo, feel sorry for him. Bah!

They should have gone 180 degree opposite, with Anakin as a spoiled princeling from a royal family on some minor world. Then when his family learns he's Force-sensitive, they're happy because that gives them lots of prestige and contacts on Coruscant. So they basically throw Anakin (I like the idea of him being an adolescent at the start) out of the family for their own political gain, because they're all a bunch of self-serving jerks. This infuriates Anakin, who doesn't particularly want to live with them anymore, anyway, but it always rankles him.

Then he gets swept up in the sheer fun of being a Jedi, and doesn't worry so much about it. And he's a genuinely decent guy, but there's always that sense of vindictiveness against his family - and that's the root of his evil, not really caring about other people. He shouldn't have been a guy who would go off the rails because Mommy was killed. He should be a guy who might be a little too blase if Mommy was killed.
 
There's a whole lot of development Lucas needed to do, to figure out exactly what "falling to the Dark Side" means. How does it work? How does it feel?

I do think this is something we can feel, at least sporadically, in RotS, due to Ian McDiarmid's performance. He seems to have figured it out: wielding power feels awesome and is extremely seductive and desirable in itself.

Plinkett mentions that Palpatine seems almost to be "getting off" when he speaks of the dark side, and I think that is accurate, though not in any way a criticism of McDiarmid's performance. Oddly enough, Palpatine's scenes are more sexually charged than the scenes between Anakin and Padme.
 
I do think this is something we can feel, at least sporadically, in RotS, due to Ian McDiarmid's performance. He seems to have figured it out: wielding power feels awesome and is extremely seductive and desirable in itself.
Just goes to show that Palps is the ONLY element in the PT that "works" (other than the visuals and the music that is).

Even though Palps should be a one-dimensional character, he feels ten times as vibrantly alive and real as the other characters do. That's because he's the only pro-active character. He knows what he wants - more power! a war to help him get more power! stupid Senators to help him get even more power! a Jedi stooge to help him get still more power! - and he goes after it with all the intelligence and energy he can command. You know, like a main character of a story is supposed to.

Here's an idea. Forget the idea of Anakin "falling." Give Anakin the role played by Palps - the main character surely deserves to have the most pro-active role. Just have Anakin be evil and power hungry from the word go. Have him manipulate the Senate, the Jedi, the clones, the Hutts, pretty much everyone who crosses paths with him, in a unending quest for more power. Maybe he's the one who corrupts Palps, and not the other way around.

Oddly enough, Palpatine's scenes are more sexually charged than the scenes between Anakin and Padme.
A slow day on C-Span is more sexually charged than the scenes between Anakin and Padme.:rommie:
 
^
I don't think Anakin was "messed-up" as a kid, well, not until he joined the Jedi. Despite being a slave, he seemed to be content. He built a pod-racer, had friends, and seemed pretty "normal" for a kid his age. Like most things with Star Wars, we just don't see how serious things are. Why make Anakin a slave, other than to come up with a reason to separate him from Shmi?

That's one of those things I never got: his "slavery."
He had a home. He had friends. He was cheery all the time. It looked like he had an after school job.
What was so "slave" like about his life?
Good points:cool:
Anakin also had time to build robots and stuff on his spare time:shifty:, that he seemed to have a lot( I doubt he build that stuff when he was 5 years old though).
I think it would have been better if Anakin wuold have been older on the first film allready..would have been much less annoying..No need for those "oops...I destroyed a huge ship by accident":p

One thing that is also bothering me about the prequels is the fact that we dont see Anakins training at all.
I mean, is it possible that Obi-Wan failed to train him well enough and thus he became so angry?
Where was Yoda during all this?
(I mean Anakins midch..Force levels where even higher than his, making him maybe the most powerful Jedi of all time. Wouldnt that make the success of his training paramount?!?!..or maybe the Jedi council just sat in their chambers:confused:)
Was Palpatine luring him to the dark side allready during the training?
And so on..
 
I'm curios, will Plinkett do the Original Trilogy? That would be awesome, I can almost hear him yell "You stupid bitch, the Empire just destroyed your home world, killed everyone you know an love and all you do is look away for two seconds, then pretend that NOTHING HAPPENED? WHAT IS FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?"

Also - "You retarded Imperial fucks! You spend gazillions of Imperial credits (or whatever it is you use) to build the fucking DEATH STAR, the ULTIMATE WEAPON IN THE GALAXY, yet any retard with a fighter jet can blow the shit out of it just by shooting at it with blasters? Didn't you people hear of DEFLECTOR SHIELDS and shit? Are you really THAT fucking retarded? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?
 
I'm guessing that's a drawing of me watching all three prequel films on my computer.
Stupid thing is I'm shooting myself after the third one's finished instead of wisely doing so at the beginning of the first one.
I always loved that about the prequels. TPM comes out, followed by three years of whining, and bitching, and bitching, and bitching, and cursing the evil George Lucas, and some more bitching... Then AOTC comes out and almost every single bitching whiner gives Lucas money to see it.

And again they're whining, and bitching, and bitching, and bitching, and cursing the evil George Lucas, and some more bitching... Then ROTS comes out and almost every single bitching whiner give Lucas money to see it - AGAIN.

And now, five and a half years later, here we are, still whining, and bitching, and bitching, and bitching, and cursing the evil George Lucas, and bitching some more... And there is no end in sight.
 
It seems like the review was really drawn out. For as much as he talks about filler in the movies, most of his review seemed like filler. I liked it more when they were shorter and to the point. A lot of stuff in this one seemed forced.

And I've defended the psycho killer aspect before. I think it fits perfectly with someone who overanalyzes a movie to death and nitpicks that much. But seriously, cat rape? That part was pretty appalling.
 
I'm guessing that's a drawing of me watching all three prequel films on my computer.
Stupid thing is I'm shooting myself after the third one's finished instead of wisely doing so at the beginning of the first one.
I always loved that about the prequels. TPM comes out, followed by three years of whining, and bitching, and bitching, and bitching, and cursing the evil George Lucas, and some more bitching... Then AOTC comes out and almost every single bitching whiner gives Lucas money to see it.

And again they're whining, and bitching, and bitching, and bitching, and cursing the evil George Lucas, and some more bitching... Then ROTS comes out and almost every single bitching whiner give Lucas money to see it - AGAIN.

And now, five and a half years later, here we are, still whining, and bitching, and bitching, and bitching, and cursing the evil George Lucas, and bitching some more... And there is no end in sight.

I didn't pay to see the second two in the theater after TPM, though I did rent.
 
Padme would be here
if spoiled b**** had just bought
Anakin's slave mom

That’s one of the (many) problems that I have with the Prequels.

Why did they just leave Anakin’s mom on Tatooine? Padme is a princess, doesn’t she have the money to set her free?

Even if she’s broke, doesn’t she have the influence to free her?

What about the Jedis? The guardians of the republic… are you telling me that they didn’t have the funds or means to free her?

Bullshit.

Ok, they don’t want her being close to Anakin , emotions yada yada, buy her free on the conditions that she won’t seek out Anakin.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top