“His “debunks” of Prequel criticism are just addressing nitpicks rather then actual story or character critiques.”
You know what, the two nitpicks you mentioned are also problems I had with the video. The candlelight dinner comment was a bit of a “well ackshually” moment (even though it would’ve been a perfect time to address the fact that Yoda and the Jedi didn’t seem to give any instructions to have candle-lit dinners with her as far as I remember and were probably more focused on, ya know, protecting the senator rather than the romantic scenery of the planet they visited). Also, you’re right, the Chewbacca point didn’t make much sense. Like they may have reminisced over the clone wars, but it does not seem like Obi-Wan was deliberately seeking him out. He also seemed to imply that the famous “I love you/ I know” exchange may have been inspired by Casablanca but from what I know Lucas only kept Ford’s ad-lib because test audiences liked it.
Outside of his SW series, similarly, I’ve also seen him make a couple of false or questionable claims about the movies such as a pretty awful debate on TPM.
So, the two flaws you mentioned here are 2 out of the 3 exact issues I had with the video. But for a video over two hours, we’re dwelling a lot on a couple of minor complaints. “You’re focusing on the negative, Anakin.”
“His special edition defenses are bad too.
He states that Greedo shooting first was done because Greedo’s intentions to shoot Han weren’t clear visually, despite the fact that his blaster pointing at Han is clearly visible.
He says that both of Vader’s Big No’s aren’t any different from Luke’s Big No in TESB, without accounting for the performance or that it’s out-of-character for Vader, who’s supposed to be stoic. There being a Big No in every other movie doesn’t excuse giving Vader a cheesy stupid line that undercuts the scene. Would it be an excuse if they gave Han a cheesy Big No when the door to the shield generator closes?”
I thought this was an improvement over the first video, with the only complaint being that he was a bit too flippant about Lucas adding and then removing Luke’s scream. (However, this again would’ve been a great time to note that according to Matthew Wood, it was an error that Lucas never approved of in the first place and that Ben Burtt put it in himself and must’ve forgotten to ask.)
Sure, shooting Greedo was always self-defense and that may be obvious to you. But the fan reaction to the change proves that it WASN’T obvious to many other viewers. While you may complain that it was unnecessary, an equal amount of fans such as the SW Explained types complain that this changes his character arc because they thought the point was he started out as a cold-blooded killer before turning a new leaf even though either way shooting Greedo is justified. (Maybe cause they were little kids when first watching them and couldn’t comprehend the implication of the subtitles?)
Rick’s point on Vader’s "NO” is more about how it mirrors Vader’s own scream in ROTS than Luke’s “NO”. I’m sure Lucas would say you are correct in that Vader is supposed to be stoic, but the whole point here is that we’re not dealing with Vader anymore, this is Anakin returning. Anakin, like Luke, isn’t meant to be as stoic as Vader. The last time Vader was vulnerable, the last time Vader was Anakin, his last word was “NO”. Now that Anakin is returning, his first word is “NO.” Except now, Vader is actually able to save the life of the person he cares for. There’s more thought put in doing this than Lucas shoehorning in the dialogue at random somewhere as you see it.
“Yes, I’m aware that, “It’s a language” and that the parallels have meaning and all that. But the OT did the same thing without sacrificing plotting, character development, pacing, good dialogue, etc.”
This is almost word for word the common critique that Rick foresees in the first couple minutes of the video. The intertextuality and motifs do inform the plot and characters. As well as Dave Filoni can articulate his interpretation, the other kids in the audience and I never needed it to understand that the similarities across Qui-Gon’s death, Anakin’s immolation, and Anakin’s death were conveying the flawed nature of the dynamic between Anakin and Obi-Wan and how that compared to the father-son dynamic that Anakin achieved with Luke despite being robbed of himself as a kid.
One has the son-figure cradling the father-figure in his time of need and burns his body out of honour, the other has it reversed so the son-figure is burning and the father-figure abandons him yada yada you get the point. I know some fans get very angry and call BS when you try talking about symbolism in these movies but that’s who Lucas is and that’s what his films revolved around before Star Wars.
The references to other text, likewise, frame the story itself. I’m reminded of Jeremy Jahns on youtube who, despite initially disliking the trilogy, changed his opinion a bit after watching Dracula. Now, even without having watched Dracula first I still think myself and most kids could understand that this was the kind of tragedy the movie was going for and could connect to it in a primal way.
Also, let’s not pretend Rick’s accentuating of the visual language and cinematography is a complete whataboutism that ignores criticisms of the prequels because many criticisms of the movies did revolve around this. Stuckmann mocking the use of 180-degree rule and close ups in the fight scene, Patrick Willems doing a whole video on the visual language and picking up on like two parallels, Redletter Media noticing parallels between other films such as Citizen Kane and within the SW films themselves “but doing them bad.” And while, sure, Rick didn’t address a lot of major specific criticisms of the prequels, the second half does a pretty good job undermining the analytical skills the youtube critics who perpetuate a lot of these same criticisms. While Rick’s video doesn’t address every point against the prequels, but it encourages you to think for yourself and not just agree with every point made by the popular youtubers. Just apply the same thought process Rick does to Stuckmann’s genius points about worms and Anakin’s helmet size to some of their other issues with the films and maybe you’ll find those criticisms don’t hold up.
Maybe the above changes nothing. I find whenever someone brings up a positive about the PT or how it does something the same as the OT, people respond that the prequels do it “but bad” or that it “feels wrong” without really elaborating. If you want to talk about the more specific problems and want someone to help see those movies in a more positive light, I’m game.
“Sweet Jesus, that’s a bad argument. Literally the biggest case of false equivalency I’ve ever seen.
Like, I don’t know if you realize this, but songs literally CANNOT sound natural.”
We could try to make song lyrics that sound natural. But why? Like you said it comes at the expense of the actual rhythm of the song. As much as it is memed on, poetry and music are the exact things Lucas has used to describe how he structures Star Wars. In a Sci-Fi fantasy universe with millions of languages, is it worth robbing dialogue with dramatic irony or that “rhymes” for the sake of preserving its ability to sound natural to western viewers. IDK I find “From my point of view, the Jedi are evil,” when Obi-Wan talks about failing Anakin and how that line works together with the other times the concept of POV is brought up than Kylo Ren’s perhaps more natural “I’m sure you are!”.
It isn’t a “real-world” movie, the main goal is not to evoke our way of speaking, just as it wouldn’t be in LOTR or Romeo & Juliet. Sure, the OT has Han and Luke. By the end of that trilogy, however, Luke whose diction previously indicated a whiny, idealistic teenager, now has matured and speaks the same as the rest of the Jedi. Is it the fact he lacks a British accent that no longer renders him “mythic and poetic”? Han Solo’s dialogue is relatable for Westerners because his character draws from just that; Westerns. Even then some of his lines such as “over my dead body/ Yeehaw” and some of his other snarky remarks are pretty played to the hilt cliches that people wouldn’t naturally say nowadays.
“There were no more down-to-earth, relatable characters, no natural, semi-awkward speech: everyone just spoke in the exact same mixture of “bureaucratic meeting” and “high-schooler’s attempt at writing a sonnet”.”
In episode 1, you do have “down-to-earth" characters like Anakin and Jar Jar. Obviously, Jar Jar’s dialect isn’t meant to resemble human speech patterns, but not everyone is speaking the exact same way. Anakin is more of an “every-man” character but like Jar Jar, this is character that is meant to be relatable to children, so he talks as such. Throughout the next two films, Anakin is somewhere in between the dialogue of someone stoic like Obi-Wan and someone hotheaded like Han Solo, as half of his life has been with the Jedi and half of his life was more normal. He may not be the most fluent expressing his feelings to girls and taps more into the poetic side. (“From the moment I met you all those years ago, not a day has gone by…) But when teasing Padme on a picnic or racing through the streets of Coruscant with Obi-Wan he makes quips probably just as a normal teenage Han Solo type character would.
So, while there are prequel characters that don’t speak this way, I don’t see Jedi characters who do speak this way as unrelatable. Don’t get me wrong I like having the variety of ways of speaking and I like Han, but a lot of the people who complain that the Jedi are boring because they’re stoic and say they need a hot-headed, kind of ass-holish character to relate with a story tend to be the dude-bro Stuckmann types and it says more about them and the kind of people they have interacted with in their life that they see Qui-Gon’s tempered way of speaking as something akin to a Shakespeare robot.
Also, I’m not trying to insult the marvel fans or even say that Worley or any of those filmmakers who hate Marvel are necessarily correct, but I wouldn’t dismiss their knowledge of film as a whole cause of this.
