walking_carpet

CWBorne said:

The dinner table scene with everyone in the Skywalker's home always struck me as a microcosm of so many of the dubious elements in the films. Bad comedy with Jar Jar, numerous reminders of the idiot plot (apparently Qui-gon and company can't trade with anyone else for a smaller ship?), horrendous dialogue, and the acting, oh lord the acting. Lloyd is cringe inducing, Jar-Jar is in full shucking and jiving mode, Portman & Neeson feel like they're practically asleep, and Pernilla August seems as if belongs in a whole other movie. 

Its basically at this scene that I sunk in my theater seat and realized that I didn't care about any of these characters. There was nothing engaging about them, and that his was likely the best it was getting.

+1

finding the worse scene in TPM is like debating the worse player on the Bears offensive line.  But this is a microcosm.

i actually didn't think jake lloyd was that bad in this scene - thought he was pretty good taking initiative and volunteeering to pod race.

natalie portman was pathetic but it was also her dialog.  we all know lucas cannot write dialog (he also is not competant in other aspects of screen-writing and this is often overlooked), whats baffling is his choice of words.  The group is stuck on tatooine because they cant barter for parts.  padme frets about this predicament by saying:

"these junk dealers must have a  weakness of some kind"

wtf?!  "weakness" ?  are they trying to kill a junk dealer like some nintendo game end-level boss?  is watto gonna be blown up like the death star?! is this really the best way to phrase this!?  wouldn't "theres gotta be something watto wants that he doesn't have"  make a little more sense? true, its stating the obvious but i just thought that line was so ridiculous it took me out of the story each time.  kinda like in episode III when mace windu says "a sith...lord?"  I never brought this up because when going through the litany of issues for the PT, its way down there and I dind't want to be accused of nit-picking, but it stuff like that hurt the movie.

Pernilla august was not good either but the character of shmi sucked up until she and anakin parted ways.  I just didn't like how the scene ended with her giving anakin the green light after just meeting everyone.  I think there should have been more time and more opportunity for everyone to see how special Anakin was.  When I saw the teaser trailer in 1998 and she said these lines (and sounded much better) I thought it would have occured at the exact moment qui-gon asked her permission to take anakin with him to the Jedi.  for no other reason than it just wouldn't have made any sense prior in the story. 

as for jar jar - the bit with liam catching his tongue probably would have been funny, unfortunately by the time we get to this point in the movie, we are so sick of him it just pisses us off more.

TheBoost said:

walking_carpet said:

TheBoost said:

I gotta disagree. Ford doesn't work that much, but I think he's picked lots of interesting parts between his iconic hero roles.

 

 

Seems like Ford was at his peak from 1980-1993.  He should have been nominated for Mosquito Coast.  What Lies Beneath i thought was cool, but it wasnt that popular.  

 What Lies Beneath made almost 300 million dollars.

 hmmm  guess you're right.  between uk and us, it made more money than I thought.  I missed it in the theatres cuz it was only around less than a month so it appeared to me the response was lukewarm. 

TheBoost said:

I gotta disagree. Ford doesn't work that much, but I think he's picked lots of interesting parts between his iconic hero roles.

He's an obsessed weirdo in Mosquito Coast. He's a jerk, then a recovering patient in Regarding Henry. The villian in What Lies Beneath. He's mostly a comedic  bumbler in Hollywood Homicide and Six Days Seven Nights, and he's a stuffed shirt in Morning Glory. He's was a morally ambiguous anti-hero in Blade Runner. Havent seen it yet, but wasn't he also the villain in Cowboys and Aliens?

 

Seems like Ford was at his peak from 1980-1993.  He should have been nominated for Mosquito Coast.  What Lies Beneath i thought was cool, but it wasnt that popular.   Although i don't think its good, IJATKOTCS is the only big hit he's had in the last 10 years.  Its a shame whats happen to his career nowadays.  If IMDB is correct that he turned down Traffic and Michael Douglas replaced him, then thats probably the biggest mistake of his career. 

We all remember his WTF!? look when he announced that shakespeare in love won best picture over the heavily favored saving private ryan.  Maybe he offended the movie gods cuz his career has been a shadow ever since then :( 

Hoth-Nudist said:

xhonzi said:

Hoth-Nudist said:

He should have hired an actress that knew and loved SW, an actress that wanted to throw herself into the role with passion. 

This never seems to be the case.  Look at all of the comic book movies being made where the director has the passion for the character and the actors have to google the name as soon as they get the part.

A good actor/actress will read the script, research the role and mentally prepare himself/herself for the performance.  Thats Luca$s' fault for hiring Natalie, and Natalie's for not being professional.

Hey Hoth-Nudist - i remember you from when I was lurking in TFN's basher's sanctuary many years ago :) hope to see if binary_sunset posts here! 

To you last point - The problem with this is that there was no role to research.  Even if Natalie asked lucas a bunch of questions, she wouldn't get any answers (kinda like what terence stamp tried for Valorum).  By the time of AOTC, it was obvious to anyone with an IQ above room temperature that padme's only purpose in the PT was so someone can give birth to luke and leia.  She exists because she has a uterus.

Everything else - being a queen, senator, marrying anakin, etc - was pitifully contrived in order to create something that resembled a character in the most superficial sense.  And what was once a touching moment in ROTJ is now a hysterical plot hole.

I believe that the real reason why lucas is one of the most secretive filmmakers is not because he wants to protect the storylines, but rather he did not want anyone to know that there was no multi-episode saga and everything was made up.

I also find natalie to be a grossly overrated actress and not the wunderkind everyone has made her out to be.  But one thing i respected about her was she seemed pretty choosy in her roles (at least when she was younger).  it wouldn't surprise me that her attitude was the result of realizing how pathetic her non-character was and being completely appalled about it.

Harmy said:

No, it's just that for SW I'm just tweaking the current edit, while with ESB I'll be starting from scratch, colour correction and all.

Hi Harmy,

Been lurkin' for a year now.  this is my first post to this forum.  Just wanted to say that your DeSpecialized ESB is amazing and Im having  alot of fun right now watching it! 

so cool to hear Luke say "your lucky you don't taste very good" again after all these years.  Can't wait to see the escape from cloud city without the butchered pacing. 

on my 47" LED tv, it looks beautiful - we never dreamed we could see a custom edit of a movie that looks better than a DVD, let alone in HD.  I guess lucas is not the only one who finally has technology catching up to a vision ;)  Can't wait to see SW and ROTJ

Thanks again for all your talent and hard work!