Sit down and rewatch it. Take a good, deep analysis of the film. If you do you're likely to see its weaknesses and that it's actually an inferior film to Episode I, even if not by a whole lot.
But hey...that's just my opinion. Your mileage may vary.
Will AOTC 3D (2013) bomb?
- Thread starter Mach5
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Sit down and rewatch it. Take a good, deep analysis of the film. If you do you're likely to see its weaknesses and that it's actually an inferior film to Episode I, even if not by a whole lot.
But hey...that's just my opinion. Your mileage may vary.
Two words: Hayden Christensen.
Though I think Episodes I & II are of roughly similar quality...
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Stone_Cold_Sisko
Guest
You're right, i'm wrong. For some reason I remembered ESB and ROTJ as grossing roughly what SW did.
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Stone_Cold_Sisko
Guest
I don't think AOTC has anything quite as awful and overly annoying as Lloyd and Jar Jar (though the "romantic" scenes with Anakin and Padme sure come close)... but I do find it's the most "forgettable" film. It feels like little happens.
That's obviously not true from a PLOT perspective - the entire Clone Wars is basically launched, but it's all a sort of bland plot movement - meetings, and "trade federations" and "seperatists" and a bunch of nebulous talky stuff.
It's like, TPM is remembered for being the first, and for Jar Jar. RotS is basically the payoff to the whole thing... but I find other people I talk to find it hard to remember what AOTC was really about. My overriding memory of this movie is: LOTS of "meetings", a big CG battle scene at the end.
As Lucas once said about his original trilogy(I'm paraphrasing), the first act sets up the story and characters, the second act is where the collective shit hits the fan and we're left with a mesmerizing cliffhanger and the third act is where the heroes finally win and everything is resolved. With his prequels, though, it's very difficult to say that CLONES serves the same purpose as EMPIRE did in the first trilogy because...well, like one of you just said...so little happens in the film and its such a forgettable chapter overall. We get the start of the Clone Wars and Anakin begins his gradual slide to the Dark Side, but aside from that it's mostly a bunch of dull exposition and set pieces that have relatively little payoff. If CLONES is where the shit hits the fan it can only be because Palpatine assumed emergency powers and the Clone Wars began.
Well yeah, like I said, it's still pretty awful. But I'll still take the messy plot and tedious CGI battles of AOTC over the cartoony and insipid kiddie shenanigans of TPM anyday.
Plus AOTC did at least have some cool-looking characters and aliens in it-- with Jango Fett, Dooku, the Geonosians, the arena creatures, etc.
All TPM really had was Darth Maul.
Seriously, how could AOTC be worse than TPM with Jake Lloyd and Jar Jar Binks?
Two words: Hayden Christensen.
To be fair, I think Hayden gets a bit of a bad rap. Problem's more with the character he was being told to play, not the actor himself. We've already established that, with the same script and the same guy in the director's chair, Academy-Award-winning actress Natalie Portman turned in the worst performance of her entire career. I've read elsewhere that Hayden wasn't at all happy with how he was being asked to portray Anakin, but Lucas wouldn't take no for an answer. Even Leonardo DeCaprio and Orlando Bloom, then at the height of their teen-heartthrob powers, couldn't have made either that sand line or that fireplace speech work.
Two words: Hayden Christensen.
To be fair, I think Hayden gets a bit of a bad rap. Problem's more with the character he was being told to play, not the actor himself. We've already established that, with the same script and the same guy in the director's chair, Academy-Award-winning actress Natalie Portman turned in the worst performance of her entire career. I've read elsewhere that Hayden wasn't at all happy with how he was being asked to portray Anakin, but Lucas wouldn't take no for an answer. Even Leonardo DeCaprio and Orlando Bloom, then at the height of their teen-heartthrob powers, couldn't have made either that sand line or that fireplace speech work.
What kind of sick, twisted, family do you live where someone would prefer to see the prequels on the big screen and not the OT?
You're telling me. Every time he asks for clone troopers and battle droids for his birthday or Christmas, it breaks my heart a little and makes me wonder where I went wrong as a father.
In all seriousness this sounds like a kid who will be ok. He just needs to see the "real" Star Wars.
I was the most pumped for AOTC when it came out. I was addicted to online spoilers and the like. Although I loved it and the last 30 mins of the film still holds up as an exciting climax, over the years this offering of the two trilogies excites me the least.
Some have said Phantom Menace has aged much better than Clones, and I think I'm starting to agree. Clones takes forever to gain momentum. The opening "action" scene of Padme's ship exploding drags to the next action scene which I believe is the speeder chase with Zam Wessel, a solid 15-20 minutes after that?
There's no question I would have been in that theatre had A New Hope been showing in 3D. I have the feeling that others feel that way, too. Of course, I'll probably go see Sith in 3D. That one kicked ass.
Some have said Phantom Menace has aged much better than Clones, and I think I'm starting to agree. Clones takes forever to gain momentum. The opening "action" scene of Padme's ship exploding drags to the next action scene which I believe is the speeder chase with Zam Wessel, a solid 15-20 minutes after that?
There's no question I would have been in that theatre had A New Hope been showing in 3D. I have the feeling that others feel that way, too. Of course, I'll probably go see Sith in 3D. That one kicked ass.
I think they'll all look amazing in 3-D. But the story will hold up a hell of a lot better with the Original Trilogy and SITH than it will for Episode II, and when all is said and done the story is what really matters...not seeing shards of broken Battle Droids flying off the screen and into your face or Jango Fett's ship leaping into the audience.
To quote AMC's catchphrase: Story matters here. I'll go see CLONES in 3-D, but I know I'm gonna cringe and sigh at some parts and that won't change no matter how incredible the image is.
To quote AMC's catchphrase: Story matters here. I'll go see CLONES in 3-D, but I know I'm gonna cringe and sigh at some parts and that won't change no matter how incredible the image is.
The biggest problem with AOTC is the terrible romance which takes up HALF OF THE ENTIRE movie. During those scenes the movie slows to a crawl and we get no action and even less character development. What do we learn about Padme? Almost nothing. We learn that she was smart and had a boy friend when she was younger. What do we learn about Anakin? He is pissed at Ob-Wan and wants to get in Padme's pants.
It also has too many political scenes that feel out of place in a Star Wars movie.
TPM had its silly parts with Jar Jar and kid Anakin, but those parts didn't take up so much of the movie. TPM is still mainly an adventure so it doesn't seem to drag as much as the romance and political focused AOTC.
Bingo. Spot on. Good summation. PHANTOM is about a nine-year-old kid's adventures in a scary and violent galaxy. CLONES is about a twenty-year-old guy's adventures with a wooden and boring pair of breasts.
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Stone_Cold_Sisko
Guest
You know, I remember seeing AOTC in IMAX not long after it came out. Back then, there was some strange limitation in the runtime of IMAX movies - I still don't exactly understand why but basically the movie had to be about 20 mins shorter than it was.
I remember watching this shorter cut and thinking "wow this movie is really moving" - it was so much better. I paid closer attention and realized, the movie cut out 90% of the romantic scenes. They were the first ones to go... and not only was the movie better, but the romance was actually better. It was so much simpler, and cleaner, without all these awful scenes. They met, liked each other, and were together. Not the deepest romance, but in a scifi action movie was perfectly fine.
There were other exposition scenes cut as well, and the movie was much better for it. Wish they had released that cut of the movie.
Yep. "Wake me up when we get to Geonosis."
Actually, my favorite entry point of the DVD is the scene where Mace creeps up and delivers the classic line, "this party's over."Poor Dooku. Just wants to party with the bugs.
Oh yeah. They got rid of most of the awful romance along with many of the pointless scenes that were in the movie that did nothing but drag the entire thing down.
Here is a complete list of what was deleted for the superior AOTC IMAX version. 20 minutes were edited out of the movie.
http://www.theforce.net/latestnews/story/the_definitive_imax_cut_scenes_list_64801.asp
I'm all for deleted scenes and bonus footage to help flesh out and expand on a story, but it's clear that CLONES didn't have enough trimmed from its final edit. The Anakin-Padme romance drags on for scene after badly-thought-out scene and takes needed attention away from Obi-Wan's investigation of the Kamino cloners and the Separatists. By the time you get to the marvelous final act the film has already been dragged down to the point where the only things that CAN save it are Anakin slaughtering an entire camp full of Sand People and the concluding battle on Geonosis. Who'd think that a massacre of men, women and children would be preferable to watching the parents of Luke and Leia fall in love?
I agree the Anakin/Padme scenes are not the greatest, but I do love the Obi-Wan scenes that run with it. After the disappointment of TPM, even though I enjoyed it at the time, it was just so exciting to see Obi-Wan in action. And the final battle was just so amazing. And I really loved the speeder chase through Coruscant.
