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the prilogy (I-III)
blingblade
Member Posts: 42
Everyone seems to think the prequel trilogy was a terrible series of movies, because of the increased usage of CGI and albeit the creation of some stupid characters, mainly jar jar binks. I for one think that the movies were very good. George Lucas was ahead of his time in 1977, and we should always thank him for what he has done to our modern cinema experience, he revolutionized entertainment with one movie. Back in 1977, star wars was cutting edge with bluescreen, miniatures, and costuming and makeup, lighting effects and camera work. Just as the films he made recently, it was cutting edge, CGI was beginning to become a seriously important movie making tool, and George Lucas is the frontrunner in what is new and bold for moviemaking. Just because some of us didnt get to grow up in the golden age of Star Wars, we feel we have been cheated out of movies made the RIGHT way. I for one support the new series of SW and will gladly watch all six in their entirety. Praise Lucas for having the balls to finish his series of SW movies by doing it his way, because bless him, its his damn universe to begin with not ours, we just hopped on for the ride....
Comments
"The man who exchanges Liberty for Iconic classes is a fool deserving of neither." - Me and Ben Franklin
Right... Lucas let CGI take the place of good acting. Or an interesting, engaging storyline.
What other movie has had Sam Jackson, Liam Neeson and Ewan Macgregor in it and THEY ACTED PATHETICALLY? George was so focused on the effects, he didn't care about the PERFORMANCE.
He had to tell the story with the acting for the first three, the couldn't rely on bells and whistles. That, and he DIDN'T DIRECT Episode 5 & 6. He's a mediocre director at best.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
"The man who exchanges Liberty for Iconic classes is a fool deserving of neither." - Me and Ben Franklin
Kinda like the New james bond movies. I loved the ones with Sean Connery and Roger Moore. They were full of spies, intrigue, and some cool gadgets.. The new bond movies are all about special affects and what not.. Not so much about the story.
Xcathdra
Having access to a billion $ IP - Billions of dollars..
Having access to a massive fan base of said IP - Even more Billons...
Singly handedly alienating them due to stupidity - Priceless.
Actually he's a horrible director. It is pretty common knowledge that GL has no patients with actors. He doesn't understand that it's more of an art than a system of numbers and equations.
Empire Strikes Back is largely regarded by fans to be the best movie, which is ironically the one GL had the least to do with.
What the OP is really missing though, is that people are upset because of the over use of CGI, people are upset because in typical GL fashion he simply thought of the easiest way to make a buck. Much easier to load a movie with special effects and flash, than to actually come up with an intruging story and getting the most out of excellent actors.
I wouldn't care how much CGI was in episodes 1-3 if they served a purpose other than lengthening the film since there wasn't a plot structure. Lucas is kinda the hand of death to any project now. He oversaw the revamping and updating of episodes 4-6 and ruined them twice.
The anniversary VHS collection had all the dialogue arrors and such removed and some small editting changes. Then the DVD release it was I would call a hack job, they aren't the same movies anymore at all. I mean seriously, superimposing the face of an actor in a later project into a scene shot over 20 years earlier?!
Actually he's a horrible director. It is pretty common knowledge that GL has no patients with actors. He doesn't understand that it's more of an art than a system of numbers and equations.
Empire Strikes Back is largely regarded by fans to be the best movie, which is ironically the one GL had the least to do with.
What the OP is really missing though, is that people are upset because of the over use of CGI, people are upset because in typical GL fashion he simply thought of the easiest way to make a buck. Much easier to load a movie with special effects and flash, than to actually come up with an intruging story and getting the most out of excellent actors.
i think there is a interview, do not remember with who, in the special edition original trilogy dvds. in the interview, the actor was explaining how GL direct and how, after a scene, he would go to the actor and says "more emphasis and more emotion" and that's about it. he would repeat it again if the scene wasn't good enough and the actor was basically left without much to go by.
So yeah, GL has good ideas and is a great writer, but he is really not a good director. the fans thought he understood it after episode 5 and 6.... but nope, he had to direct 1-2 and 3.
Of the three, i think they go in reverse order. 1st is the worst, second is the middle one and third is the best.
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
Aaaaaaaand that so neatly ties in with a certain companies fetish for cramming more and more particle effects and 'cool' (or are they Epic?) animations to accompany everything from firing a blaster to getting off a speeder to pikcing your nose.
They hacked the character animations back to the stage where watching two jedi fight is like watching a bad mime act staging Zorro equipped only with a baguette with a torch inside. But to distract everyone from the sheer gashness of the 10fps animations they smothered the whole shebang in layers of groovy particle effects, lights going off, glare, flare, smoke and mirrors.
(SOrry, I was on Mustafr today and that freaking lava just hacks me off. Can we say D I S C O? )
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So, you all sat in camps and that was fun?
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They killed off the best/coolest character in the first movie: Darth Maul. None of the other characters, other than Palpatine had any real personality or mystique. Grievous and Dooku were LAME villains compared to Darth Maul, why kill him off and use those second rate characters? Darth Maul was underused, but he was so menacing, he was the Darth Vader of the prequels, imagine if Vader died in A New Hope....bad move #1.
Jar Jar Binks, good god, what a horrible character.
The ships in the prequels were underwhelming. The chrome ship Amidala had was cool, other than that, the ships were nothing spectacular.
Kung-Fu Yoda. Many folks enjoyed watching the CGI midget jump and hop all over the place, but I didn't like it. Yoda was more of a spiritual embodiment of the force, not a fire cracker waiting to be unleashed, my opinion of course.
Of course, as many have already said, the overusage of CGI and underusage of his actors.
Bad scripts. A car chase scene in the 2nd movie???
I miss the good ol' days when nerds were actually intelligent.
I miss the good ol' days when nerds were actually intelligent.
Finally a topic worth posting in.
The issue I think was a casting one on performances. It is hard to cast sci-fi actors.
The scripts had a lot of lull in them. Alot of senseless scenes and seconds that if lucas gave up more editorial control would have made a smoother story. Take the midichlorians scene. Totally useless in the prophecy of the one who brings balance to the force.
The entire tatooine story is plagued with holes. The only way to radio the new republic for money is in your ship? You couldn't say land in a star port and make a call there to the republic. The entire seqeuence with young anakin was put together horribly. It gets to the point of cgi making the story. All that was to set up the pod race scene. A completely useless and nonsensical part of the movie.
Darth Maul was an incredibly iconic figure. He filled the darth vader roll. That scene should have had Obi-wan and Mauls rolls reversed with the exception of the dark lord winks and falls down the shaft. Much like how luke escapes in ep2.
Count Dooku would then just be darth maul and all his badness double bladed newb jedi pwnzing ways. Until Anakin kills him in opening scene movie 3.
Ep2 was totally insane. The move lacked any clone warring at all. It set up who purchased the clones and the real battles that made general kenobi and anakin heros of the clone wars. They should have been fighting Darth Mauls forces often. They could have set up the Emperor's hatred of the Alien race by them being the cause of every defeat against the jedi. Somehow screwing up each battle. I was very dissappointed in Ep2. A lot of useless things.
Ep 3 was much better although the turning of anakin was so brief. He took freaking hours setting up a loosy love story yet took all of 5 screen minutes to have anakin go from on the fence to slaughter of children and women. Not at all well done. I didn't get it. Though the rest of the movie was much more crisp it could have been done better especially the actual Anakin turning.
He started out with Star Wars, young, idealistic and determined to make something special, not really believing he'd ever succeed on the scale he did. He challenged the entire industry, fighting bitter, horrible battles with all of the industry guilds and winning, but at a huge personal cost. The results? A legend and nearly killing himself from over exhaustion. The opening of the movies was something he still gets financial shit over.
The first three cost him his marriage. But they were, and remain the most amazing moviemaking ever. The story came first. And it was a masterwork, well planned and researched to be on the pulse of primal human needs.
By the time he got around to the prequels, he'd already become what he once hated -- selfabsorbed, greedy and careless of the end result. It was all about money by that point, and you could definately tell. It stopped being an art thing and became a profit thing in entirety.
I love the man who brought me the first movie. I pity the man who brought me the prequels. Sure, they're both George Lucas, but IMHO, he's no longer the same man, and the man he's become may be wealthier... but money doesn't fix pathetic.
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Kote lo'shebs'ul narit
Darth Maul - Was Palpatine's dog. Nothing more. He had one purpose. And that was to do what damage he could before he got dropped. Palpatine knew he was a temp apprentice. As was Dooku. They were a means to an end. You have to realize that Palpatine is a chess playing schemer. He is thinging of moves well after the Clone Wars while the jedi are just discovering the clones being made. And if you read the books you can see this early on. Palpatine even tells a very young Anakin how he will be watching him closely. He knows already.
Yoda - The ancient master who walks slow with a purpose. Looks weak and frail. But upset him and there is hell to pay. He is the typical ancient martial arts master that looks like you could breathe on him and he would fall over but could really drop 10 punks without breaking a sweat.
For me the best movie of the Prequels was number III. Not because it was new but because of the rise of the empire and of course the death of the jedi. I laughed like a maniacal psychopath when the jedi got dropped. Thank SWG for that one though. I am so jedi'd out its nuts.
The deeper message is the one I love. A corrupt system of government sometimes needs a tyrant to come into power to straighten it out.
Kai
Episode 2: much better IMHO but the dialogue was again fairly horrible in some parts (the whole romance sequence in particular was really over the top)
Episode 3: Probably the best out of the prequels, again dialogue could have used some work, but overall a good addition to the star wars mythos.
IMO one thing that really made the original trilogy so good was Han Solo. You dont really have a character like that in the prequels...and Im not advocating they shouldve somehow put Solo in or anything.
But Han was a nice foil both in character and dialogue to the rigidity of some of the other players in the original series. He was a bit of a smartass, a scoundrel and went along nicely with the clean cut Luke and Obi Wan, etc.
Overall Lucas's biggest mistake with the prequels wasnt the use of cgi but his insistance of penning all the screen plays himself....in contrast to say ESB which was penned by Lawrence Kasdan, a much better writer IMHO.
I see your logic, but do you realize what you're saying? Hitler, Stalin and Chairman Mao comes to mind...
True alteration of society has always and will always come from the people...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I'd argue that the Matrix trilogy buries 1-3 even with the lamer last two parts.
Hell.. Spaceballs was a better movie than Ep1.
I read an interview about Lucas' directing. The actors would ask for a second take so they could do it better, and Lucas would refuse saing the'd fix it in post.
And even though the CGI was incredible, it still felt fake. There were scenes when two people were talking, and Lucas would add a fake trooper walking behind them. It LOOKED fake. He should have gotten an extra in a suit to walk behind them.. but noooo. That'd have looked REAL.
Why do you think Indiana Jones was good? SPIELBERG, not Lucas.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Star Trek >> Star Wars.
No annoying animated GIF here!
SOE knows what you like... You don't!
And don't forget... I am forcing you to read this!
Regardless of how this debate goes, Empire was the best of all of the films. Irvin Kershner wore a microphone throughout most of it and it's possible to get some of the transcripts. GL a good writer?? Rubbish, Kersch made most of it up on the spot.
It's worth grabbing a copy of the book of scripts, the one that shows all of the new editions changes and mentions certain (and embarassingly bad) first draft ideas.
I see your logic, but do you realize what you're saying? Hitler, Stalin and Chairman Mao comes to mind...
True alteration of society has always and will always come from the people...
Yes I realize it. Most people dont want to admit it but this is the truth of society and the world. Sometimes it takes a maniac to show just how screwed up a system is.
After living in places like Thailand, Philippines, and China I can tell you that the people and their opinions mean absolutely squat. It took 20 years for the people to finally oust Marcos. And China is still the same as it was 50 years ago.
Look at our own world and SOE. After the NGE was announced and people saw it, 70 - 80% of the community screamed "NO!" but SOE still went blindly on with their oh so perfect revamp.
Kai