Dr. T is an alien
Patti Mayonnaise
Knows when to hold them, knows when to fold them
I've been found out!
Posts: 31,414
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Post by Dr. T is an alien on Feb 13, 2023 16:33:20 GMT -5
It was an okay science fiction movie, ugly stereotypes aside, just not a particularly good prequel to a beloved film series and echoed the unwanted changes that Lucas had been adding to the series in the years prior. 'See all the things you hated about the special editions? Here's more, also no more mystery about what makes Jedi powerful, the force is just space herpes.' The Force isn't space herpes. Midichlorians are analogous to mitochondria. Hell, for all we know they are simply a special strain of mitochondria. Granted, it's still stupid and as it turns out they learn (but don't say it openly in the movies) that it's kind of BS anyways. Palpatine grew up on a planet where he would have been taken in by the Jedi if his midichlorian count was high enough to be one of the most powerful Force users in history. He was not, which means that at best it's only part of the story.
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Post by Confused Mark Wahlberg on Feb 13, 2023 16:47:13 GMT -5
I never thought it was 'bad' as much as I was bored out of my mind watching it.
Now 'Clones' was just crap on a stick.
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chazraps
Wade Wilson
Better have my money when I come-a collect!
Posts: 28,110
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Post by chazraps on Feb 13, 2023 17:00:09 GMT -5
I rewatched Phantom Menace in 2019 for the first time since 1999. Thought it sucked when it came out and was even worse now. It's a "kids movie" about land trade disputes. Absolute garbage that happens to have a great score.
Watched Attack of the Clones in 2020 for the very first time and thought it also sucked shit. Not as bad at Phantom Menace, but still really f***ing bad.
Watched Revenge of the Sith for the very first time in 2021 and thought it was pretty good.
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Post by A Platypus Rave on Feb 13, 2023 17:15:44 GMT -5
For hte Prequels vs. seqeuls debate it kinda comes down to.
A good story told badly or a bad story told relatively competently.
The Prequel have a completely cohesive story between them... but they are all filled with weird decisions and just bad subplots, direction, and acting... (and oh it was filled with fan service too, Boba Fett, Greedo, and Jabba all having major screen time... and Boba being a pretty main part of the story in particular.)
the sequels basically have no story, by design they didn't set out to tell one... they decided Part 1 would be told by one person, and 2 someone else and 3 by a third... without... like...
Ok Finn and Rey end the first movie with the obvious setup that they are both force sensitive and that eventually leads to them taking down the new Empire... and maybe Kylo gets redeemed...
it goes from that to Finn being a bit player in a subplot taht probably could have been cut in the second movie to... not doing anything in the last one.
that said they are all pretty competently directed, shot and acted... save for like Rise of Skywalker's weird basically pretending The Last Jedi basically didn't happen. (even then there is stuff like Rey clearly being intended to be a clone in Last Jedi paying off... and I will also say the "Somehow Palpatine returned" was said by Poe and Poe has been shown to pretty much be an idiot. They showed how he came back... again clones... they show the cloning tubes...)
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Post by A Platypus Rave on Feb 13, 2023 17:21:14 GMT -5
I rewatched Phantom Menace in 2019 for the first time since 1999. Thought it sucked when it came out and was even worse now. It's a "kids movie" about land trade disputes. Absolute garbage that happens to have a great score. Watched Attack of the Clones in 2020 for the very first time and thought it also sucked shit. Not as bad at Phantom Menace, but still really f***ing bad. Watched Revenge of the Sith for the very first time in 2021 and thought it was pretty good. Yeah, trade and land disputes while also trying to be a fun kiddie adventure movie is generally how I describe Phantom Menace... and I get it... a lot of the old serials did have scenes of guys in office discussing trade deals and parliamentary procedure... but... that was because you were filming 40 in a row with about 20 bucks for a budget. So you do some quicky low cost episodes that are just people talking. That doesn't work for a multimillion dollar feature film. Duel of the Fates and the double bladed lightsaber are the main things that came out of PM that really gets used again. Clones is where Lucas's terrible direction and writing really comes through, becuase it's a romance story... and it's people talking and acting in a way htat literally f***ing no one would... if this was the original trilogy it might be different because Harrison Ford told Mark and Carrie outright ignore what the script says it's garbage, say what it's trying to say. But because during Clones George Lucas is not the nobody film director that managed to get a favor from Fox but the guy that made Star Wars... no one would tell him no. Sith I remember being decent but still having a lot of Lucas's bad directing and writing at times.
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Post by Cyno on Feb 13, 2023 17:24:30 GMT -5
The decision to originally have three completely different creators not really collaborate and just do their own thing by the seat of their pants with a connective trilogy of movies is one of the most bizarre and idiotic creative planning decisions ever. It only worked with the OT because Lucas was still the chief creative guy even if other people like Kasdan, Brackett, or Kershner were in charge of screenplay or direction. Doing that sort of thing by committee just doesn't work without any sort of advanced plan everyone has to follow. And while I think Kathleen Kennedy gets way too much blame for everything due to the crime of being a woman in charge of Star Wars, she's certainly no Kevin Feige either.
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Post by A Platypus Rave on Feb 13, 2023 17:29:31 GMT -5
The decision to originally have three completely different creators not really collaborate and just do their own thing by the seat of their pants with a connective trilogy of movies is one of the most bizarre and idiotic creative planning decisions ever. It only worked with the OT because Lucas was still the chief creative guy even if other people like Kasdan, Brackett, or Kershner were in charge of screenplay or direction. Doing that sort of thing by committee just doesn't work without any sort of advanced plan everyone has to follow. And while I think Kathleen Kennedy gets way too much blame for everything due to the crime of being a woman in charge of Star Wars, she's certainly no Kevin Feige either. Yeah, you needed someone to lay out the outline. and tell the creators you can do whatever you want but at the end X must be at Y and maybe reference Z, and maybe a few you can't kill of such and such and this other guy is somewhere else at the time... but you need a plan... you can't just have three unconnected movies (which is what the sequels were) and say ok make a trilogy.
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Post by Tenshigure on Feb 13, 2023 17:39:45 GMT -5
Now I gotta go watch Spaced for the 100th time!
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Post by Tenshigure on Feb 13, 2023 17:49:35 GMT -5
I honestly didn’t think Jake Lloyd was that bad as Anakin. Poor guy has had a rough time in recent years with mental health issues. Apart from Will Wheaton was Jake Lloyd one of the first major examples to get pre Reddit/twitter hate mob heat?Not nearly as large due to the target audience, but Blake Foster (aka Justin from Power Rangers: Turbo) certainly received his fair share.
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Post by HMARK Center on Feb 13, 2023 18:22:18 GMT -5
I do think a couple things could be true at the same time: there were some interesting ideas in the prequel trilogy that would've made for a really interesting story...but man, no, they're not good movies (he said, knowing full well that's a subjective statement). If someone has nostalgia for them, great, fine, that's their business, but attempts to say "they're good, actually!" just never click with me. It has nothing to do with them not being enough like the originals, it's that the scripts aren't good, the acting was directed to be way too stiff, and the myriad other problems brought up over the years that have been hashed out forever. @#$% the nerds who would say "this RUINS my childhood!" and who went after actors involved with them, of course, but the movies are just poorly put together...sort of the reverse issue of the sequel trilogy, where the acting and pacing and whatnot are mostly fine, but the story being told is slapdash and haphazard. The prequels would've had something more to say if Lucas had really committed to the theme of "this is how a seemingly healthy republic falls to a dictator" - he'd have had to really show how the Republic was rotting from within, show the Jedi as a flawed institution, let Anakin be our audience-insert for a little while as he's the outsider navigating this strange, unwieldy galaxy of global warfare, celibate monks who apparently separate babies from their parents to train them, and political intrigue and eventually snapping over it as he begins his fall. Qui-Gon should've been the guy who could've kept Anakin on the right path because he was willing to call out bullshit (seemed that's what episode one wanted to say he was, but we never actually see him really do that), Obi-Wan would try to pick up where his master left off but just fall short, Mace Windu could've represented the powerful but ultimately short-sighted and overly strict modern Jedi way while Yoda could've been like a professor emeritus who represents an ancient way of living with the Force but gets ignored too often because "he's that crazy little goblin, don't mind him" or whatever...shit, so much potential, but it's just not executed on screen at all. Meantime if the sequels were begun with no story in mind besides "we'll bring back the grungy aesthetics of the original trilogy and reset everything to Rebels vs. Empire", then they shouldn't have been made until a story was actually concocted. Real hot take, I know. I realized my moment I was basically done with Star Wars was watching the first two thirds of Last Jedi and going "ooh, I like that they got rid of all the silly Abrams 'mystery boxes', this could go someplace new and fresh!", feeling like it could've been one of the best films in the series, then watching the final third and feeling like "Oh, no, it's all just at square one", leaving me with zero desire to see episode nine. Helps that I watched it as a 30+ year old man, so yeah, I can just say I'm not the true target audience, regardless, but that sense that there was no story here, nothing to follow, and we're expected to just show up because it says "Star Wars" on the marquee was a real kick in the teeth. I think Lucas really tried to show how corrupt the Republic became (after all, this is someone who modeled the Empire not just after Nazi Germany but Cold War-Era America), but his own limitations as a storyteller contributed to that more than any intent to commit to it. And to Lucas' credit, I think he knew his own limitations. Makes me wish Lawrence Kasdan didn't turn him down when he was offered the writing job for Episode I. Granted it's still Star Wars, so you gotta make it approachable for kids. But look at some of the messages and themes of shows like Clone Wars and Rebels. And those were intended as kids shows. But they weren't dumbed down for children either. The big way I felt like he didn't commit to things was that he wasn't willing enough to show how the Republic and Jedi weren't working, especially the Jedi. Let's face it: too much marketing behind the Jedi to risk depicting them as maybe not so great, so we ultimately hear about them taking children from their families when they're babies, or seeming aloof and isolated in their towers, forcing celibate lives on them...but need to still think they're cool and don't really explore how their ways could lead to someone like Anakin falling. Hell, Anakin becoming a member when he was "too old" and ending up having trouble because he fell in love almost made it sound like the Jedi were right for the way they were doing things! Shit, to me midichlorians were the absolute perfect way to depict that: that the Jedi had reduced the Force to an overly simplistic concept, all while "old man Yoda" could've been in the corner sadly mulling over how the Jedi had lost touch with the spiritual side of the Force ala the way he describes it to Luke in Empire, with Qui-Gon agreeing with him, Obi-Wan wanting to follow them but not fully knowing how, Anakin being shaped by the consequences, etc. Just so many missed opportunities.
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Post by Cyno on Feb 13, 2023 18:48:49 GMT -5
I think Lucas really tried to show how corrupt the Republic became (after all, this is someone who modeled the Empire not just after Nazi Germany but Cold War-Era America), but his own limitations as a storyteller contributed to that more than any intent to commit to it. And to Lucas' credit, I think he knew his own limitations. Makes me wish Lawrence Kasdan didn't turn him down when he was offered the writing job for Episode I. Granted it's still Star Wars, so you gotta make it approachable for kids. But look at some of the messages and themes of shows like Clone Wars and Rebels. And those were intended as kids shows. But they weren't dumbed down for children either. The big way I felt like he didn't commit to things was that he wasn't willing enough to show how the Republic and Jedi weren't working, especially the Jedi. Let's face it: too much marketing behind the Jedi to risk depicting them as maybe not so great, so we ultimately hear about them taking children from their families when they're babies, or seeming aloof and isolated in their towers, forcing celibate lives on them...but need to still think they're cool and don't really explore how their ways could lead to someone like Anakin falling. Hell, Anakin becoming a member when he was "too old" and wound up having trouble because he fell in love almost made it sound like the Jedi were right for the way they were doing things! Shit, to me midichlorians were the absolute perfect way to depict that: that the Jedi had reduced the Force to an overly simplistic concept, all while "old man Yoda" could've been in the corner sadly mulling over how the Jedi had lost touch with the spiritual side of the Force ala the way he describes it to Luke in Empire, with Qui-Gon agreeing with him, Obi-Wan wanting to follow them but not fully knowing how, Anakin being shaped by the consequences, etc. Just so many missed opportunities. That's where I think the Clone Wars shined. They showed the Jedi could be pretty damned flawed, not to mention a far more militaristic Republic where the military brass like Tarkin were gradually gaining more and more power at the expense of democracy. That's why Ahsoka renounced the Order but unlike Anakin, became much more of a paragon of the Light Side instead of falling to the Dark Side. Yoda realized, too late, that the Jedi lost their way. Though him reaching out to Anakin to cover for his own skirting the rules was pretty amusing.
That mini-arc that ended Season 6 of Clone Wars did a lot to restore the mysticism of the Force. Also featured Liam Neeson reprising Qui-Gon and Mark Hamill providing the voice of Darth Bane himself.
The Clones themselves were real personable and you could see the real camaraderie between them and the Jedi. Which made it even more sad when Order 66 happened. And now you've got the Bad Batch showing just how little the Republic/Empire military officers really cared about the Clones as people. And just how easy it was for these career defenders of democracy to willingly embrace a fascist dictatorship. It's a good commentary on the nature of imperialist war machines and how the soldiers can be almost as much victims of it as the conquered.
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Post by YAKMAN is ICHIBAN on Feb 13, 2023 20:32:16 GMT -5
Your favorite Star Wars is always gonna be what was 'your' era when you're 8. There are kids now who'll swear by Rey & co as the years go by. That’s just bad parenting.
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