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i’m listening to show 176, and in it you say you love the prequels. maybe it’s just my imagination, but i remember the whole crew, you included, shitting on those movies in the past. personally i’m not a huge fan, but i’m interested to know what you think about them – like, how they’ve aged for you, I guess. as for me…
The prequels, as well as most things star warsian, occupy about 30 percent of my mind-hole. a month or so ago, i decided to watch ’em, after reading a couple of novels and getting in the mood (i even withstood episode II twice to listen to the running commentary you guys did).
even though the action sequences are super exhilarating (especially for SW devotees), I still can’t get past the stale, stumbling problems that plague the dialogue and pacing, especially in attack of the clones. if i had a nickel for every time anakin and obi wan had a boring conversation pointing out obvious shit, i’d probably have a dollar or two. that’s a LOT of nickels
maybe i’m getting bitter in my old age (is 19 over the hill or just on the crest of it?) but watching 3 was like watching barney after you learn to read. the initial magic of that is still there, and I can enjoy it for the parts that excite me or tense me up (IE emperor scenes). but the rest was just…paste. bland sticky stuff that adheres the before that is 1-3, to the after that is 4-6. anakin’s motivations as a character, his sudden devotion to the emperor, didn’t seem right. maybe if it wasn’t hayden christ-almighty shooting words out of his mouth-bung, i would have liked it more.
so yeah, maybe this is really irrelevant to everyone but i was just thinkin’ bout it.
also hi. it’s been a while. how are you guys ‘n’ gals?
My thoughts are like this – although they do have their problems, overall they’re still okay in my book. My biggest problem with the prequels isn’t the dialogue being softer than sand – it’s the unnecessary scenes. Examples are the lengthy pod race and the droid factory Super Mario scene.
In From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga, a documentary from 1983, there is an interview with Lucas stating that so many sci-fi directors fall into a pitfall where they tend to focus on the special effects instead of advancing the story. We, as Star Wars fans, should have realized that we were in for a rough road when we saw the Special Editions. The Jabba scene in Episode IV is talked about in that doc, where George explains how they didn’t have the money to do the effects for that scene so they cut it altogether. And it really wasn’t missed, George said, because the information conveyed was in the Greedo scene. For the SE, they brought it back, and it’s obvious that they didn’t need it at all.
So yeah, if there is one thing that’s annoyed me beyond everything else, it’s the extraneous overlong special effect displays. That’s also what I have been the most critical of in movies in general. The pod race didn’t need to be that long – the importance of it, story wise, is that Anakin wins the race. Does it need to be 30 minutes? And that droid factory sequence in II – the importance of it is that Anakin and Padme get captured. I actually get more annoyed with that scene than any other in the whole saga, because nothing is gained, in story or character, and it seems really long. It’s treading water. They could have stepped off the ship and been captured, and it wouldn’t have mattered.
If you love Star Wars, that documentary with the long name is really worth seeking out. Again, though, I just wish that George heeded his own advice when it comes to extraneous scenes.
Something else – I remember that at one point I’d outlined what I thought would have been a better way for the prequels to go. Episode I would be the beginning of the Clone Wars. I thought that it would be a good intro back into Star Wars, with all of the characters being reintroduced, and it could end a lot like IV, where it could almost be a standalone movie. Episode II would be all about Anakin’s turn to the dark side, a lot like V in overall feel, and it ends with him killing his first Jedi. Episode III would be about the Jedi purge, his hunting down of the rest of the Jedi, and Anakin and Obi-Wan’s duel, and it ends with Vader being in the suit. I guess maybe it’s because Obi-Wan’s lines in Episode IV about the Clone Wars and Anakin hunting down the rest of the Jedi just seemed so awesome that it seemed a waste not to see them.
I remember being pretty disappointed that we didn’t get to see a lot of the Clone Wars in the movies, but that’s before the Clone Wars series came out. It’s strange to believe it, but I think that series actually enriches the prequels. Watching them has really deepened my love for Star Wars in ways I didn’t think were possible.
Something else that I think was needed in Episode I that I hadn’t really considered before – I think that Anakin should have had a moment in Episode I, on Tatooine, where he used his powers for something bad. Kinda like young Voldemort in Harry Potter, there should have been an inkling of evil there. I think that Anakin’s final turn is pretty sudden, although you could argue that Mace Windu attempting to kill the Emperor showed that he, too, wasn’t susceptible to the dark side.
So yeah, hope that answers your question. I like them okay, but really, the Clone Wars has done a better job than the movies have. And again, there are many reasons to be excited for the future, especially since Lawrence Kasdan is back doing the scripts (he did V and VI).
This actually inspired me to do a mini-show about Star Wars, so here.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that sort of stuff, it bothers me too. The first time I experienced Episode II was at the humble, naive age of eight. I remember asking my dad something about the scene, because at the time i thought it to be a scene from an entirely different movie. I was pretty oblivious to a lot of the stuff going on, but it’s possible that my heavy exposure to video games, combined with seeing 4-6 on countless consecutive weekends, sparked the first instance of sarcastic, Star-Wars-advocate fueled frustration. The understanding that it was an entirely useless scene in the same movie came soon after.
There are a lot of disconnects to me, small parts of the films (1-3) that feel like they go nowhere and mean nothing in the long run. I ask myself, what happened in episode 4? The conflict between the Empire and the Rebellion; the ascendance of Luke into the Rebel and Jedi ranks; the stories of 3P0 and R2, Han and Chewie, Vader and the Empire, and Ben, which were expanded greatly upon and with huge impact on the main plot, as well as the other two films, and a lot of great visual moments that don’t go to Extreme levels of Extreme, but still manage to make us go OH FUCK THAT WAS COOL and such.
What happens in, say, Episode 1? The argument could be made that Jar-Jar, Naboo’s invasion, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan’s relationship, the Federation, etc, were all events that happened and had some kind of impact on the story. Could they be drawn back to the main focus to the story, the descent of Anakin into hatred and anger, drawing him closer to the dark side? In my still humble and naive opinion, fuck no – oh, this is just getting back to your point (theory?) that the Phantom Menace does not really matter. It really doesn’t. I mean, in parallel-universe-where-it-is-not-real, I probably wouldn’t be aware of Maul, but in this current one, I would probably miss him if he ceased to be. And that’s the only part of that movie I would save from the void.
Haha, it’s funny, when I first heard about the CW cartoon coming out, I was initially skeptical. Finding out who was involved with it set me straight with anticipations that were cut in half and demolished, like so many Battle Droids in the way of an animated Jedi. The Battlefront games were really fun shooters for me, but also satisfied a craving for visceral clone combat. The last half hour of Episode II is really cool, like an extended version of a CW episode that looked like eye candy coated with caramel or something.
I really like your optimal 1-3 scenario. Anakin showing some evil tendencies in Phantom is really what it needed. Didn’t something like that happen in the novelization? Or am I mistaken? Anyway, RIP, Mace *pours 40 oz onto gravestone*
Yeah, I’m going into the next trilogy with a clean slate frame of mind. JJ’s got a good head about him when it comes to the IP and the devoted nature of its fans, and the Kasdan aspect is probably the best thing that could have happened. Did you hear about Shatner wanting a role? Weird.
Mini-show ahoy
Interesting stuff there, Rusty.
It really is amazing when you compare the two trilogies. There don’t seem to be any wasted scenes in the OT. It’s too late to go back, but I have a feeling that the next movies are going to be better about that.
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