Star Wars: Episodes I-VI (prequels and original trilogy) Randazzo: Ep. 1 is good now

[GulDukat]

There are a few Star Wars threads already going, but as the threads often go off-topic, i.e., TOT/prequel discussion in The Force Awakens thread, I thought maybe one entire thread could be devoted to I-VI. This may be especially helpful as The Last Jedi thread will soon be very active.

I am in the process of re-watching all the movies in preparation of The Last Jedi. I just re-watched The Phantom Menace today and considering how The Force Awakens and Rogue One were so good, it only highlights how flawed TPM is. Some initial thoughts from a viewing last year:

Just saw 'The Phantom Menace" for the first time in about 15 years and here are some thoughts; The good:

1. It was better than I remember. I still think that it's a flawed mess at times, but it's not as awful as I remember or as bad as its reputation.
2. The movie looks really, really good. Especially on blu-ray, it just looks beautiful. The underwater scenes on Naboo and the Galactic Senate look... especially nice.
3. Despite the movie's flaws, the main story, involving the Federation invading Naboo and forcing them to sign a treaty is somewhat interesting. It needed to be fleshed-out a little more, but the story isn't bad.
4 Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor gave very strong performances.
5 The showdown between Darth Maul and Obi Wan/Qui-Gon Jinn was well done.
The Bad:
1. Overly long. The pod-race was really dull and pointless and the fat could have been trimmed here and there.
2. While this actual heart of the story is rather good, this movie tried too hard to be for kids, at the expense of adults. This movie is a bit schizophrenic. It doesn't know if it wants to be a kid's action/adventure or a film involving political intrigue. It tried to have it both ways and that didn't really work.
3. Reducing the force to some gobbledigook about midichlorians and Anakin's virgin birth origins was stupid and misguided.
4. Jake Lloyd as Anakin Skywalker was a mistake. Anakin should have been several years older, although Hayden Christensen was terrible too.
5. The movie lacked a good villain. Viceroy was lame and Palpatine/Maul didn't get enough screen time and weren't developed as well as they could have been.
I enjoyed watching this film again, at any rate. I'd give it a 3/5 or a 3.5/5.

Some additional thoughts. Jake Lloyd is worse than I remember. His casting was all wrong and his performance was terrible. He was probably a good child actor, and I blame his poor performance strictly on Lucas. A boy Vader yelling "yippie." WTF? The budding romance between Anakin and Padme was beyond bizarre/uncomfortable/creepy.

On the plus side, the visuals were beautiful, some great action scenes and I loved the alien cities and planets. They were the one thing Lucas got right.

[thevoid99]

Two years ago last summer, I did a summer devoted entirely to Star Wars where I re-watched the original trilogy in its original form as well as those awful prequels but I also watched other things relating to the franchise. There was so much about the prequels that I disliked but I would rather watch them all over again and maybe in 3D than watch another minute of The Star Wars Christmas Special.

[eversonpoe]

Two years ago last summer, I did a summer devoted entirely to Star Wars where I re-watched the original trilogy in its original form as well as those awful prequels but I also watched other things relating to the franchise. There was so much about the prequels that I disliked but I would rather watch them all over again and maybe in 3D than watch another minute of The Star Wars Christmas Special.

there's a version of the christmas special with rifftrax (they riff the commercials, too) that makes it much more bearable. the prequels are a lot of fun with rifftrax, as well. i lost it when they called him "goofy-wan baloney"

[Wretchedest]

Hey guys lets have 3 star wars threads.

Edit: Holy shit there are 5

[eversonpoe]

Hey guys lets have 3 star wars threads.

Edit: Holy shit there are 5

hey, man, you don't like star wars, that's fine. let us have our nerdy fun

[Jon]

Hey guys lets have 3 star wars threads.

Edit: Holy shit there are 5

We should at the very least have around 9. I'm disappointed, too.

[Shadaloo]

I'll make one for the holiday special

[GulDukat]

We should at the very least have around 9. I'm disappointed, too.

Does Attack of the Clones really need its own thread? I'm sitting through that pile of shit next.

[Shadaloo]

The Phantom Edit and especially Attack Of The Phantom are the only ways to watch EPI and II without significant brain cell loss.

[GulDukat]

The Phantom Edit and especially Attack Of The Phantom are the only ways to watch EPI and II without significant brain cell loss.

I heard about those. I'd like to check them out.

[Shadaloo]

I think Attack Of The Phantom in particular goes a long, long way towards making EPII enjoyable; I can't watch the theatrical cut anymore. It does a lot to better establish mutual feelings of attraction between Padme and Anakin by reinserting deleted scenes where they visit her family, not ruining their kiss by having her pull away and saying it was wrong, ditching the stupid dialogue about sand, and they do all this while managing to remove the entire badly written fireplace scene. Plus some clever edits make it apparent that they totally boned, her waking up to find him no longer in bed after he has his nightmares.

It also makes Obi-Wan's investigation into Jango Fett's Kamino dart much more believable. Removes the inanity of him needing Yoda and children to tell him someone with Jedi rank erased the files on Kamino, and removes the diner bar scene entirely.

The only thing I dislike is that they also ditched Obi-Wan and Jango's space dogfight because they saw it as filler that dragged. I get that but...it was cool filler.

[GulDukat]

Watching Attack of the Clones, and even now, after all these years, I am simply amazed at how absolutely atrocious the dialog is. Some pretty amazing visuals and Ewan McGregor's superb performance make this movie salvageable. Ian McDiarmid also gives a memorable performance as Senator Palpatine.

I think Roger Ebert gave the movie a very fair review and does a good job at pointing out what is really wrong with the movie and what Lucas got right (I highlighted the bold points). My only area of disagreement would be I really liked McGregor and think he deserved more praise and I probably liked the visuals a little more than Ebert did. I think his 2/4 is about right.

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (2/4)

It is not what's there on the screen that disappoints me, but what's not there. It is easy to hail the imaginative computer images that George Lucas brings to "Star Wars: Episode II--Attack of the Clones." To marvel at his strange new aliens and towering cities and sights such as thousands of clones all marching in perfect ranks into a huge spaceship. To see the beginnings of the dark side in young Anakin Skywalker. All of those experiences are there to be cheered by fans of the "Star Wars" series, and for them this movie will affirm their faith.

But what about the agnostic viewer? The hopeful ticket buyer walking in not as a cultist, but as a moviegoer hoping for a great experience? Is this "Star Wars" critic-proof and scoff-resistant? Yes, probably, at the box office. But as someone who admired the freshness and energy of the earlier films, I was amazed, at the end of "Episode II," to realize that I had not heard one line of quotable, memorable dialogue. And the images, however magnificently conceived, did not have the impact they deserved. I'll get to them in a moment.


The first hour of "Episode II" contains a sensational chase through the skyscraper canyons of a city, and assorted briefer shots of space ships and planets. But most of that first hour consists of dialogue, as the characters establish plot points, update viewers on what has happened since "Episode I," and debate the political crisis facing the Republic. They talk and talk and talk. And their talk is in a flat utilitarian style: They seem more like lawyers than the heroes of a romantic fantasy.


In the classic movie adventures that inspired "Star Wars," dialogue was often colorful, energetic, witty and memorable. The dialogue in "Episode II" exists primarily to advance the plot, provide necessary information, and give a little screen time to continuing characters who are back for a new episode. The only characters in this stretch of the film who have inimitable personal styles are the beloved Yoda and the hated Jar-Jar Binks, whose idiosyncrasies turned off audiences for "Phantom Menace." Yes, Jar-Jar's accent may be odd and his mannerisms irritating, but at least he's a unique individual and not a bland cipher. The other characters--Obi-Wan Kenobi, Padme Amidala, Anakin Skywalker--seem so strangely stiff and formal in their speech that an unwary viewer might be excused for thinking they were the clones, soon to be exposed.


Too much of the rest of the film is given over to a romance between Padme and Anakin in which they're incapable of uttering anything other than the most basic and weary romantic cliches, while regarding each other as if love was something to be endured rather than cherished. There is not a romantic word they exchange that has not long since been reduced to cliche.


No, wait: Anakin tells Padme at one point: "I don't like the sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating--not like you. You're soft and smooth." I hadn't heard that before.


When it comes to the computer-generated images, I feel that I cannot entirely trust the screening experience I had. I could see that in conception many of these sequences were thrilling and inventive. I liked the planet of rain, and the vast coliseum in which the heroes battle strange alien beasts, and the towering Senate chamber, and the secret factory where clones were being manufactured.


But I felt like I had to lean with my eyes toward the screen in order to see what I was being shown. The images didn't pop out and smack me with delight, the way they did in earlier films. There was a certain fuzziness, an indistinctness that seemed to undermine their potential power.


Later I went on the Web to look at the trailers for the movie, and was startled to see how much brighter, crisper and more colorful they seemed on my computer screen than in the theater. Although I know that video images are routinely timed to be brighter than movie images, I suspect another reason for this. "Episode II" was shot entirely on digital video. It is being projected in digital video on 19 screens, but on some 3,000 others, audiences will see it as I did, transferred to film.


How it looks in digital projection I cannot say, although I hope to get a chance to see it that way. I know Lucas believes it looks better than film, but then he has cast his lot with digital. My guess is that the film version of "Episode II" might jump more sharply from the screen in a small multiplex theater. But I saw it on the largest screen in Chicago, and my suspicion is, the density and saturation of the image were not adequate to imprint the image there in a forceful way.


Digital images contain less information than 35mm film images, and the more you test their limits, the more you see that. Two weeks ago I saw "Patton" shown in 70mm Dimension 150, and it was the most astonishing projection I had ever seen--absolute detail on a giant screen, which was 6,000 times larger than a frame of the 70mm film. That's what large-format film can do, but it's a standard Hollywood has abandoned (except for IMAX), and we are being asked to forget how good screen images can look--to accept the compromises. I am sure I will hear from countless fans who assure me that "Episode II" looks terrific, but it does not. At least, what I saw did not. It may look great in digital projection on multiplex-size screens, and I'm sure it will look great on DVD, but on a big screen it lacks the authority it needs.


I have to see the film again to do it justice. I'm sure I will greatly enjoy its visionary sequences on DVD; I like stuff like that. The dialogue is another matter. Perhaps because a movie like this opens everywhere in the world on the same day, the dialogue has to be dumbed down for easier dubbing or subtitling. Wit, poetry and imagination are specific to the languages where they originate, and although translators can work wonders, sometimes you get the words but not the music. So it's safer to avoid the music.


But in a film with a built-in audience, why not go for the high notes? Why not allow the dialogue to be inventive, stylish and expressive? There is a certain lifelessness in some of the acting, perhaps because the actors were often filmed in front of blue screens so their environments could be added later by computer. Actors speak more slowly than they might--flatly, factually, formally, as if reciting. Sometimes that reflects the ponderous load of the mythology they represent. At other times it simply shows that what they have to say is banal. "Episode II-- Attack of the Clones" is a technological exercise that lacks juice and delight. The title is more appropriate than it should be.


http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/st...he-clones-2002

[eversonpoe]

watched Rogue One into Episode IV on thursday night, which was AWESOME. also downloaded Harmy's "despecialized edition" of episode iv so it was REALLY cool to see it without all the added bullshit, a very small amount of which i think was even in the laserdisc to vhs transfers that i watched repeatedly as a kid. either way, harmy did an amazing job and i basically watched the whole thing with my jaw dropped because of how happy i was to NOT see a bunch of ridiculousness that adds nothing to the film. can't wait to watch Empire & Jedi the same way!

[imail724]

watched Rogue One into Episode IV on thursday night, which was AWESOME. also downloaded Harmy's "despecialized edition" of episode iv so it was REALLY cool to see it without all the added bullshit, a very small amount of which i think was even in the laserdisc to vhs transfers that i watched repeatedly as a kid. either way, harmy did an amazing job and i basically watched the whole thing with my jaw dropped because of how happy i was to NOT see a bunch of ridiculousness that adds nothing to the film. can't wait to watch Empire & Jedi the same way!

I refuse to watch anything but the despecialized versions now

Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

[GulDukat]

I refuse to watch anything but the despecialized versions now

Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

A re-released theatrical release of TOT would make billions of dollars WW. I don't understand the reluctance of giving fans what they want. I have heard that Lucas fucked with the original prints, but surely there is a way to fix that.

[GulDukat]

A few more notes on AOTC:

- The finale at the coliseum was the worst climax of the entire series. Real actors fighting obviously fake (and very dated) CGI, terrible.
- I really liked one of the final scenes, when Count Dooku meets Palpatine. We see his ship travel over an industrial wasteland, with a blood red sky. It just looks really cool. Another very cool visual is the water world, where the Clone army is being produced.

I don't understand, who ordered the Clone army? Who erased the planet from the archives?

[GulDukat]

Don't know if anyone is familiar with Confused Matthew, but his reviews are pretty spot-on and hilarious. These are uploads of his old reviews and each one starts a few minutes in:

[thelastdisciple]

I don't understand, who ordered the Clone army? Who erased the planet from the archives?

The Clone army was Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas' idea, he is the one that the Kaminoan refers to when he meets Obi-Wan for the first time.

Supreme Chancellor Finis Valorum (vote of no confidence guy from The Phantom Menace) had ordered Sifo-Dyas to help resolve a dispute with the Pyke Syndicate and sent him on a secret mission to the planet Oba Diah. Although he arrived there, he never got to complete the mission and was assigned to Felucia by the Jedi Council to stop a conflict. What Sifo-Dyas did not know was that Dooku/Tyranus had hired the Pykes to kill him, upon his departure he was shot down over Oba Diah's nearby desert moon. Somewhere along the way and I'm not clear exactly how, an intercepted transmission or clairvoyance perhaps?... Palpatine found out about Sifo's idea to create an army and he decided to hijack it, he or Dooku had assumed Sifo's identity after they had him killed and it was Dooku who ended up scrubbing Kamino from the archives to better keep it secret.

Some of this is covered and answered in the Clone Wars season 6 episode "The Lost One".

[elevenism]

Happy 40th birthday to A New Hope!

[GulDukat]

Just re-watched Revenge of the Sith--really enjoyed this. Frankly, this is about as good as ROTJ or even ANH. Yes, some of the acting and dialog is weak, but frankly, the same could be said for some moments in TOT. ROTS is a really fun movie, with great visuals, plenty of action, and a solid plot that bridges the TOT with the prequels. Whatever you may think of the prequels, Ewan McGregor was one of the best actors from the entire franchise. As weak and flawed as AOTC is, McGregor shined. The confrontation between Vader and Obi Wan is a highlight in tne series.

TPM and AOTC were deeply flawed, although I have grown fond of them, but ROTS is a good film, a film that has only gotten better over time.

[eversonpoe]

Just re-watched Revenge of the Sith--really enjoyed this. Frankly, this is about as good as ROTJ or even ANH. Yes, some of the acting and dialog is weak, but frankly, the same could be said for some moments in TOT. ROTS is a really fun movie, with great visuals, plenty of action, and a solid plot that bridges the TOT with the prequels. Whatever you may think of the prequels, Ewan McGregor was one of the best actors from the entire franchise. As weak and flawed as AOTC is, McGregor shined. The confrontation between Vader and Obi Wan is a highlight in tne series.

TPM and AOTC were deeply flawed, although I have grown fond of them, but ROTS is a good film, a film that has only gotten better over time.

what the hell is TOT?

[imail724]

what the hell is TOT?

The Original Trilogy

[eversonpoe]

The Original Trilogy

well, that's confusing because at one point he said "the TOT"

people on this board use WAY too many acronyms.

[imail724]

well, that's confusing because at one point he said "the TOT"

people on this board use WAY too many acronyms.

Haha, you're right. I've never heard it referred to as TOT before, I just assumed that's what he meant. Its the OT (or the OOT if we're talking about the original, unaltered versions).

[GulDukat]

well, that's confusing because at one point he said "the TOT"

people on this board use WAY too many acronyms.

Try being a Trek fan:

TOS
TNG
DS9
VOY
ENT
J.J. Trek

[eversonpoe]

Try being a Trek fan:

TOS
TNG
DS9
VOY
ENT
J.J. Trek

i am a trek fan. i refuse to abbreviate things that far. i say "original series", "next gen", "deep space", "voyager", etc.

[GulDukat]

Question: At the end ROTS, we see a Star Destroyer and other Imperial ships. When were they built? It's like one minute there is this intergalactic civil war, with the Clone army and the Republic using Republic ships, and the next moment there is a vast Imperial Navy?

[Conan The Barbarian]

Question: At the end ROTS, we see a Star Destroyer and other Imperial ships. When were they built? It's like one minute there is this intergalactic civil war, with the Clone army and the Republic using Republic ships, and the next moment there is a vast Imperial Navy?

I think it was just a poor attempt to try to connect the prequels to the earlier films. I like ROTS, but damn the ending sucks ass.

[eversonpoe]

I think it was just a poor attempt to try to connect the prequels to the earlier films. I like ROTS, but damn the ending sucks ass.

what ever do you mean?

[GulDukat]

I think it was just a poor attempt to try to connect the prequels to the earlier films. I like ROTS, but damn the ending sucks ass.

I actually liked the ending, but that does seem to be a plot hole.