Why so few Star Wars films/tv?
- Thread starter Gotham Central
- Start date
Star Wars is a great movies series and doesn't necessarily make for great TV.
You mean all the orgies?
Star Wars isn't allowed to have sex! If that's the kind of "corruption" the Republic had - basically the elites were just living it up while the masses suffer - then the Jedi would look complicit for defending the Republic.Which might be an interesting way to take the story. What if the Jedi were the only non-corrupt portion of an otherwise hopelessly corrupt society? But then you have to wonder why they don't just join the Separatists, too? If the Seppys are no better, the Jedi should take their lightsabers and go off to some kind of monastery planet and just forget the whole rotten bunch.
There are probably ways to improve the political story more than they've been doing, through even more radical rewriting. I guess they can only go so far.
If I had my way, I'd rewrite the premise: legit Seppys or no, it's stupid to show a war where you can't root for either side. Also, I'd like a real good explanation why the Jedi would allow sentient beings to be bred as cannon fodder. I'd prefer to lose the idea that the clones fight in the war. The fight should be over the clones - to stop worlds from breeding clones as slaves.
I'd also lose the idea that the Jedi run the military. There should be a "real" military made up of normal folks, not Jedi, not droids, not clones. The Jedi form a kind of diplomatic/special ops wing, off on their own steam.
The Jedi become rock stars and are popular for promoting the general good, while the politicians and regular military are increasingly mired in corruption. The Jedi don't want to dump the Republic because they are doing some good, against all odds. Running away would solve nothing.
The regular military becomes envious and threatened by the Jedi's popularity. It would be child's play for Palps to team up with corrupt politicians and military brass to stab the Jedi in the back. To consolidate their power against the popular uprising this would cause, they form an Empire and rule with an iron fist. Palps gets to be the ruling Sith, the politicians and the military increase their power, everyone is happy. Except for the common herd, but that's what Death Stars are for...
I wouldn't say the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles were unsuccessful, they went on to the Family Channel forthe final season which were four movies and there were unaired eps. as well. But it was moved around the schedule still they were able to attract Harrison Ford to reprise Indy for the bookends of The Mystery Of The Blues. Still I thought it was a prety good series.
Anakin's personality is totally different in TCW. He's headstrong and impulsive but in a heroic, charming way. He isn't an off-putting, immature creepy little twerp. They're simply two different characters. I think of Anakin as the TCW guy, not the PT guy, and I wonder if the PT guy was ever supposed to exist.
I suspect even Lucas would know better than to expect an audience to want to watch the story of an off-putting, immature creepy little twerp, and he just wasn't paying attention as a director to what Hayden Christensen was doing with the role. Christensen probably didn't have a clue what he was supposed to be doing (he's an actor, not a psychic), so he was just winging it, and the result was a train wreck.[/QUOTE]
I think that's a bit overly harsh. Christensen's portrayal wasn't that bad.
I suspect even Lucas would know better than to expect an audience to want to watch the story of an off-putting, immature creepy little twerp, and he just wasn't paying attention as a director to what Hayden Christensen was doing with the role. Christensen probably didn't have a clue what he was supposed to be doing (he's an actor, not a psychic), so he was just winging it, and the result was a train wreck.[/QUOTE]
I think that's a bit overly harsh. Christensen's portrayal wasn't that bad.
Except where it didn't.
It wasn't necessarily bad acting, if that's how he was directed to play the character. If he got no direction, then it's a valid interpretation of the character (trying to give us some reason for the fall other than stupidity - if he were unhinged and evil from the start, then that works logically) and it's the director's fault that he didn't get the "right" performance from the actor, assuming Lucas even knew what performance he wanted other than "stand over there and read the lines."
But Hayden's performance was very off-putting and creepy, there's no way to sugar-coat it, starting with AOTC where his scenes with Padme came off as stalkerish and very unromantic (which made Padme look either stupid or oblivious.) In fact I distinctly recall one of his first - or the very first - scene where he visits Padme and they see each other for the first time in years, he gave off this creepy rapist vibe and I was completely confused - they're setting up him becoming Vader, okay, but isn't there supposed to be some kind of romance plotline here too? This guy doesn't belong in any romantic plotline. He makes my skin crawl. Also, it pretty much shoots down the possibility of him being portrayed as heroic (which I expected but which never happened till TCW).
It definitely wasn't the right way to play a lead character in a mass market movie, and it didn't fit into the PT overall, but if the PT had been little arthouse flicks, I could see it working okay.
If Lucasfilm is ever sold as a public company, yeah, the properties will be exploited far more. However, quality is anybody's guess. At the very least, they should be workmanlike. We won't get any more amateur-hour crap, with errors that nobody who works professionally in the film biz should make (and everything about the PT is very professional except for the directing and writing).
Didn't they explain in TPM that the Republic is corrupt because the bureaucrates incharge are being paid off to favor some systems over others and that systems that have more to offer(such as higher valued resources) get immedate attention in crisis over those that aren't, like Naboo? Isn't that why Amadala called for "no confidence" in Chancellor Valaroium and had him removed? The Seperatist feel the Republic doesn't protect it's people equally, while the Corporations have the vast money & resources to do so.
No, I think Padme feels the way allot of women do when they marry the wrong man.
They feel sorry for them because they're so troubled & screwed up, so she thinks she can "change" him with her compassion. It's Stella & Stanley Kowalsky of "A Street Car Name Desire" , Star Wars version.
I don't think so.
http://blueharvest.net/scoops/aotc-script.shtml
Anakin is the only guy we see that compliments her looks and talks to her like a normal person. She's comfortable around him so I had no problem believing that they naturally fell in love. At least as far as any movie couple can.
Like, his entire mannerisms and everything about him, all the time?
Your inability to perceive such things could possibly stem from you not being female. Women are definitely better at noticing when some guy is being a creeeep, for obvious reasons, though I've also talked with guys who intensely disliked Anakin in the PT, though I guess it's more because he was a pathetic whiny little twerp. My observations are that women disliked his creepiness and men disliked his weakness.
Good lord, poor Padme! Nobody else in the whole galaxy was ever nice to her?
Gorgeous, intelligent, powerful...what does a girl have to do to get a date?The notions that Padme fell for Anakin out of loneliness and desperation, or that Anakin was using mind-control on her, are both fan rationalizations for bad writing, or maybe bad casting. Given the same script, a different actor would probably have come off a lot better. There was no reason the script demanded the guy be creepy and whiny. However, the bad dialogue and overall badness of the writing would still have hampered even the best actor.
I can buy the notion that Padme stuck with Anakin because she felt sorry for him, but that doesn't explain why she married him in the first place. Maybe she just thought he was hot and Jedi are sexy (that forbidden fruit thing, ya know). However, this is more fan rationalization and also makes Padme look like a shallow, stupid little girl who got what she deserved. Somehow I don't think that's what we're supposed to think about the character!
They may have said all that but they didn't show it. Drama is SHOW not TELL. That's one of the major problems of the PT. TCW is putting more effort into showing the political backstory and making it real for us, even if they're not 100% successful in making the stories interesting at the same time.
Good lord, poor Padme! Nobody else in the whole galaxy was ever nice to her?
Alot of beautiful women are seen as being untouchable and unattendable which frightens most men off. Padme talks about her work being important and only one previous boy friend before she enter politics.
Sending out the signals she did it's hard to believe that guy wold be interested in her for very long since she has little interest in falling in love.
You mean like the Republic never coming to her aid, so she had to enlist the Gungans to help free the planet? Like when she asked for immediate aid from the Republic to save her dying people and their reply was: "We have to talk it out for a few weeks first."?
...and yet John Malcovich, Christoper Walken, Leland Orser & John Lithgow are all married.
Why make new films when you can just sell slightly different versions of the same film over and over again?
Good lord, poor Padme! Nobody else in the whole galaxy was ever nice to her?
Alot of beautiful women are seen as being untouchable and unattendable which frightens most men off. Padme talks about her work being important and only one previous boy friend before she enter politics.
Sending out the signals she did it's hard to believe that guy wold be interested in her for very long since she has little interest in falling in love.
You are really extrapolating there something fierce. Maybe she meant that she's still young and wants to focus on her career before getting into a relationship with a guy which if discovered would probably end her political career pretty abruptly due to scandal? Maybe she'd go to jail! Distracting a Jedi and exposing him to possible Sithitude sounds like treason to me!
Does the Republic have the death penalty?Extrapolating is fun, I do it all the time, but there's no reason to believe that Padme had terrible self-image issues or whatever that drove her into the arms of a nasty little creep.
Here's what's a lot more likely: Anakin was like that guy in TCW: in addition to being really hot (in a masculine way, not in a he-looks-like-a-girl way), he's heroic, fun to be around, has a sense of humor, self-confident, cool and generally really really attractive, even to a very attractive woman who has her pick of any guy she wants. And the fact that he's insanely in love with Padme and shows it at every opportunity is flattering and a definite bonus.
His faults are of the easily-overlooked type: a bit immature (he'll grow out of it), headstrong (just means he's passionate, nothing wrong with that!
), maybe a slight tendency not to listen to alternate points of view (but politics aren't a Jedi's job anyway), has unorthodox opinions at times regarding democracy etc (that just makes him more unique, plus politics aren't a Jedi's job anyway). Together, they form a worrying picture, but for someone who maybe isn't too familiar with the ways of the Force, that isn't going to be terribly obvious.That might be a sign that the Republic is incompetent, or just the usual logjam you see in any democracy, where multiple opinions need to be taken into account. Unilateral action that you see in an empire would be less frustrating, just give up your freedom and you'll get immediate action in a crisis.
That's a good argument why for instance Anakin might disdain democracy in favor of empire (if that was part of his rationale), but not why the Separatists would leave the Republic for being "corrupt." Well-meaning incompetence or structural logjams are different from corruption. TCW has been far more definite about depicting the Republic as specifically corrupt in ways that couldn't be mistaken for other issues.
I'm sure they're all nice guys in real life. The creepy characters they play are another thing.
Last edited:
Similar threads
