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When did the prequels officially suck? — Page 6

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Well, I'm of a mind that it should have not been f'ed up in the first place.  But since it's already happened, there's nothing that can (or should) be done about it.  I'll grumble in the background because that whole sequence sucked, but it's out there.

I just cringe and angrily cross my arms (but not while I'm typing) at the thought of changing what's one of the few wonderful moments of Return of the Jedi just because ROTS screwed up that plot point so horribly.  I would say that even Lucas realized this because he didn't remove the line in his 2004 prequel injection versions, but he probably just forgot about it.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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rcb said:

how do you change that?

You don't. You ignore it.

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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rcb said:

how do you change that? that's pretty out in the open there and hard to get rid of. unless you have an idea.

 

Now are you beginning to see what a mess the prequels created? Why should an incident like this have happened? The other came first, so the new ones should have been made to fit, but they were not. Which is odd, since they market them as a saga. Had the prequels been a reboot of sorts with their continuity trumping th OTs, then I would have given them a pass on things like this, but as it is, there were suppose to be the back story to the earler films, and they put soooo much love and care in making the PT that it fits perfectly with the OT story... errr... well it should have. Why should the OT have to have been changed in order for the PT to work when the PT simple could have followed the facts that have been set out by the OT. 

Dying of a broken heart was an absolutely ridiculous idea, and as a result, we have a gaping plot hole. Perhaps this could have been explained away well enough had Leia been born first and the one Padme held, but instead George decided to not to worry about it, because Luke being born first was more important.

 

How do we change that? That is just the thing, I spend hours behind the computer trying to figure out a good way to edit ROTS to fix these problems. I found a few ways, but it never really worked, and it resulted in a very chopped op, incomplete feeling film. I really wanted to like the prequel trilogy I really did. That is what makes me so mad about this. I was willing to look past its flaws and like it, but the flaws are just over whelming! I tried to change them via editing, but in the end I just gave them up and disowned them. I decided they were not worth the effort.

Some people can look past the flaws and ignore them, but I don't feel they are even good enough movies to make such a compromise for.

 

Now I bet that line will be cut from ROTJ in the next "finished" version of the OT. So rcb, you will probably get your wish.

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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Well, I suppose they could always go the Ben Kenobi retconning route and re-record some dialogue with Carrie Fisher where she says that she was technically lying about her mother, but what she said was true from the point of view that she wanted to feel superior to Luke by being a more well-informed orphan.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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skyjedi2005 said:

I'm no Lucas apologist but i think you guys may be taking Star Wars a little too seriously.  It is a movie serial, despite how good the original trilogy was.

It is not supposed to be representing reality.  You can argue Lucas went against canon in terms of story or changed the rules his fictional universe operates out of, but making claims to great drama out of the original trilogy is a bit of a stretch.

I mean you have a super weapon that destroys planets.   That in itself is straight out of science fiction Pulp like smith's Skylark 3.  Examined in reality it is laughable.   You also have sound in space laughable.  The physics are all laughable.

That is why is is a piece of daydream fantasy than real science Fiction.  That is why Lucas calls it Space Fantasy and why the films open " A Long Time Ago.  In a Galaxy, Far, Far way."  Its the same as once upon a time.

Star Wars was a boys adventure wish fulfillment piece Lucas crafted out of his own childhood reading comic books and watching serials like Flash Gordon.

I can't agree with this.

Star Wars is filled with a lot ridiculous content, sure, but that is not what it is about. The movie has likable, realistic characters that live within a world of charming, refined depth that goes far beyond a far-fetched, poorly constructed film made to entertain unsophisticated minds. As a result, the goofy aspects of lightsabers, Death Stars, giant lizards and incompetent Storm Troopers are ignored because the movie doesn't have them as a focus. The good, realistic aspects of those sensationalistic elements are focused on with such skill there's really not as much space left in our minds for the remaining, obvious flaws. In other words, we care too much about the characters and the other likable aspects of the world to be bothered by flaws because those elements were crafted in such amazing ways. You do Star Wars a great disservice when you compare it to some old-fashioned, hokey and unrefined serial.

It wasn't just stupid children that liked Star Wars. Adults and critics enjoyed the films too. That kind of widespread success didn't merely come from George Lucas' desire for the movie to recreate the kind of goofy entertainment he loved as a child. If the insecure George Lucas of today could be more honest, he'd admit that he was trying to do more than that. Also, he'd admit that many other people input their own unique sense of vision and excellence into the original trilogy just as well. Altogether, they helped him fashion his concepts (which were already of higher quality than his beloved serials) into something great.

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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rcb said:

how do you change that? that's pretty out in the open there and hard to get rid of. unless you have an idea.

You dump ROTS, then there's no problem.

 

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TMBTM said:

Another major failure of the PT that is often cited, is its loss of the black vs. white theme we had from the original.

I really don't want to sound too much like a Lucas apologist (well I guess it's too late I'm afraid!) but it's what the PT are all about: showing us that the galaxy was not black vs white twenty years before the OT. Lucas took pretty much all the things we knew and show them in a way that we are not prepare to watch. I don't say that the result is great (far from it), I just say that it was an interesting idea and it should be respected as an artist vision. That's why I usualy don't say "it's sucks" or that "Lucas raped my childhood" kind of thing, because 1: the OT was my childhood (so the only thing I'm really pissed off is the DVD of the true original OT) and 2: if we can't live with the PT we just have to not buy the DVDs (or just to make fanedit maybe! ;) )

 

This is a complex topic. Yes it was valid to make the PT more gey. That had been the intention from way back for at least the sequel trilogy anyway. But it's a question of HOW you make it more grey. It should have been done with a hint of the original trilogy's approach, because it's in the same universe. One of the keys to the original trilogy is that the villains were seriously sinister and the heroes were sympathetic. That is not entirely incompatible with making it grey, not if you do it carefully. You can have a hero be seriously faulted and going dark and still have them sympathetic in some crucial way, enough to connect you with them. Instead we got annoying useless Anakin, posery Kenobi and lame-in-the-later-two-movies Padme. (In the first movie they managed more ok -Padme was good in that and Qui Gon was sympathetic, though Kenobi was at his worst there.) Also there's respecting the good guys. In the OT you can respect the rebels and their leaders, but in the prequels a lot of people are hard to respect. In the prequels the august Jedi council are such a bunch of idiots. You can't respect them and you can't like them. Sure, I get that the Jedi were supposed to be shown as flawed, but did they have to be portrayed as such annoying useless windbags? I didn't give a fart when they were killed off, and we clearly were supposed to care about and respect them enough to care when they died. Clearly Lucas screwed up here. Pretty much everybody in the prequels is more pretentious than equaivalent characters were in the OT. Some of that may be justified, but certainly it's taken too far. It's not simply that characters are painted grey, rather it's that the films seem to have no faith in you being able to truly like or respect anybody (the last two films anyway). And it's not simpy that things were more artificial in the prequels era, but rather that the creative vision is more artificial and pretentious.

As for villains, they totally screwed up in the portrayal of Palpatine from the point of Windu confronting him onwards. That awful makeup and the overdone performance. Palpatine was overdone in ROTJ, but in a way that worked. In ROTS it was in a way that didn't work. We also had the Trade Federation. Ok, they were meant to be a bit grey, but did they have to be done comically? Or the various enemy droids, done for laughs. If the films were done back in the 80s those droids wouldn't have been done like that. Or General Greivous, who came off totally like a refugee from a disney movie.

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I'm all with you on most of that, but you gotta stop referring to Disney like they haven't done anything more serious than your regular Nick Jr. cartoon.  They pull out some pretty dark shit once in a while, especially back in the old days.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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That's not the Disney I know. But I'm not saying I know Disney well. The point about Greivous is he's totally in the style of an animated villain. You can see the same pattern at work in Sebulba, but Greivous just takes it so far, and we're supposed to take him seriously.

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C3PX said:
rcb said:

how do you change that? that's pretty out in the open there and hard to get rid of. unless you have an idea.

 

Now are you beginning to see what a mess the prequels created? Why should an incident like this have happened? The other came first, so the new ones should have been made to fit, but they were not. Which is odd, since they market them as a saga. Had the prequels been a reboot of sorts with their continuity trumping th OTs, then I would have given them a pass on things like this, but as it is, there were suppose to be the back story to the earler films, and they put soooo much love and care in making the PT that it fits perfectly with the OT story... errr... well it should have. Why should the OT have to have been changed in order for the PT to work when the PT simple could have followed the facts that have been set out by the OT. 

Dying of a broken heart was an absolutely ridiculous idea, and as a result, we have a gaping plot hole. Perhaps this could have been explained away well enough had Leia been born first and the one Padme held, but instead George decided to not to worry about it, because Luke being born first was more important.

 

How do we change that? That is just the thing, I spend hours behind the computer trying to figure out a good way to edit ROTS to fix these problems. I found a few ways, but it never really worked, and it resulted in a very chopped op, incomplete feeling film. I really wanted to like the prequel trilogy I really did. That is what makes me so mad about this. I was willing to look past its flaws and like it, but the flaws are just over whelming! I tried to change them via editing, but in the end I just gave them up and disowned them. I decided they were not worth the effort.

Some people can look past the flaws and ignore them, but I don't feel they are even good enough movies to make such a compromise for.

 

Now I bet that line will be cut from ROTJ in the next "finished" version of the OT. So rcb, you will probably get your wish.

i already realized the mess the prequels created. i've managed to find a way past that and go with my own theories of how it happened. i usually end up telling myself that the same story is still told and has the same outcome.

by the way, grevious isn't anydifferent from the movie then he is in the show.

 

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And let's not forget that the prequels try to pass off Hayden Christensen as the guy who's going to be Darth Vader, which is about as implausible as casting Arnold Schwarzenegger as Padme.

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Vaderisnothayden said:

That's not the Disney I know. But I'm not saying I know Disney well. The point about Greivous is he's totally in the style of an animated villain. You can see the same pattern at work in Sebulba, but Greivous just takes it so far, and we're supposed to take him seriously.

Yeah, I'm tempted to link you to Nostalgia Critic's Top 11 Disney Villains video for a primer.  They have some pretty creepy baddies.  And, yes, Grievous just... sucks.  I can't find words to describe how much I hate that character.  He annoyed me from the first second he got on the screen, and when Obi-Wan finally killed him, it felt like a boulder had been lifted from the plot.  Hell, that's probably the reason he was in there in the first place.  The rest of ROTS felt brilliant in comparison after Grievous left it.  So unncessary, so annoying, and I'm relatively slow to criticize a movie.  I actually don't mind Jar-Jar Binks in the least.  But General Grievous was... beyond horrible.  His function sucked.  His voice was grating.  His personality was annoying.  He lived way too long and accomplished way too little.  I know I'm ranting, but I usually don't, and I just managed to remind myself how I felt when I first saw the movie.  He's my absolute least favorite character.  Not in Star Wars, but in all fiction everywhere.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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So you don't like Greivous? ;)

I don't hate him as much as you, but he's a cartoon character who totally doesn't belong in serious live action Star Wars.

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Vaderisnothayden said:

So you don't like Greivous? ;)

I don't hate him as much as you, but he's a cartoon character who totally doesn't belong in serious live action Star Wars.

 

 just for your info., grevious is one of my favorite villians and he's no different from the movie.

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Well, then, I hope my rant didn't offend you.  But I'm very interested to know what it is that makes you like him.  Granted, the only Star Wars media I've seen him in is ROTS.  I thought I heard he was better portrayed in the old Clone Wars series.  I really would like to hear someone like you explain to me why you like this character because... I can't find anything to like about him (and, like I said, I even liked Jar-Jar, so I'm not too hard to please), and I would really like to understand your point of view on this one.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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rcb said:
Vaderisnothayden said:

So you don't like Greivous? ;)

I don't hate him as much as you, but he's a cartoon character who totally doesn't belong in serious live action Star Wars.

 

 just for your info., grevious is one of my favorite villians and he's no different from the movie.

 

Again you say he's no different from the movie. I don't see the relevance of that. He's a cartoon character whether he's in the movies or in the cartoon. Either way he doesn't belong in live action Star Wars.

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Gaffer Tape said:

Well, then, I hope my rant didn't offend you.  But I'm very interested to know what it is that makes you like him.  Granted, the only Star Wars media I've seen him in is ROTS.  I thought I heard he was better portrayed in the old Clone Wars series.  I really would like to hear someone like you explain to me why you like this character because... I can't find anything to like about him (and, like I said, I even liked Jar-Jar, so I'm not too hard to please), and I would really like to understand your point of view on this one.

The way you feel about Greivous is pretty much how I feel about Hayden's version of Anakin.

 

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Gaffer Tape said:

Well, I suppose they could always go the Ben Kenobi retconning route and re-record some dialogue with Carrie Fisher where she says that she was technically lying about her mother, but what she said was true from the point of view that she wanted to feel superior to Luke by being a more well-informed orphan.

 yeah, it could go like this:

 

Luke: Leia, do you rememmber your mother, your REAL mother?

Leia: What the hell are you talking about?

 

 

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Vaderisnothayden said:
Gaffer Tape said:

Well, then, I hope my rant didn't offend you.  But I'm very interested to know what it is that makes you like him.  Granted, the only Star Wars media I've seen him in is ROTS.  I thought I heard he was better portrayed in the old Clone Wars series.  I really would like to hear someone like you explain to me why you like this character because... I can't find anything to like about him (and, like I said, I even liked Jar-Jar, so I'm not too hard to please), and I would really like to understand your point of view on this one.

The way you feel about Greivous is pretty much how I feel about Hayden's version of Anakin.

 

however, she said she just remembered images and feelings. and obviously was told by her adoptive parents, her mother died when she was young.

 

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Gaffer Tape said:

Well, then, I hope my rant didn't offend you.  But I'm very interested to know what it is that makes you like him.  Granted, the only Star Wars media I've seen him in is ROTS.  I thought I heard he was better portrayed in the old Clone Wars series.  I really would like to hear someone like you explain to me why you like this character because... I can't find anything to like about him (and, like I said, I even liked Jar-Jar, so I'm not too hard to please), and I would really like to understand your point of view on this one.

 

 I love Grevious in that series. He is so damn badass. In the second clip he sounds too much like Vader in ANH though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_wfL_9KDZE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVON4dOG7ck&feature=related

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Badass? I recall some talk in the Clone Wars thread about how funny it is he is always abandoning ships and running away to save his own skin. Super badass.

I am with Gaffer. I mentioned before about my reaction to Jar Jar's introduction in TPM and how my heart sank at that moment. For ROTS, first the opening crawl started with the sentence, "War!", then the CG clone fighter pilots made me cringe, next the gay buzz droids came along, okay, okay, a few silly things but I can live with this! Then Grevious came along... and I realized that the last hope for the PT was an utter and complete failure. Grevious was such an awful, awful idea. I hate ROTS for more reasons than I can count, but Grevious tops the list... well okay, so he is after Anakin's turn to the darkside, the youngling slaughtering, and Padme dying of a broken heart (holy hell there are a lot of shitty things about that movie!), but he is still pretty close to the top of the list.

EDIT: Oops, now that I clicked on one of Oct's links, I realized he was talking about the original animated Clone Wars. Yeah, I agree with you. Someone showed me that first clip before Revenge of the Sith came out and I really thought he was going to be a cool villain on par with Darth Maul, then he shows up on screen as a hacking coughing retard.

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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Looney Tunes would be a better fit for Grevious.

 

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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Yeah.  To me the reason I can tolerate Jar-Jar more easily than Grievous is because Jar-Jar is supposed to be comedically stupid, therefore I can see past his antics.  But Grievous is supposed to be a villain, and not some hapless henchman like the Nemoidians, but, like you say, a badass.  He's supposed to control the droid army and is talked about like some fearsome monster.

...But he's not!

Just when I thought he might finally be cool when he starts fighting Obi-Wan, he becomes more idiotic still.  His whole four lightsaber plan, while cool in concept, was just useless.  Then he transforms into quadraped mode, which is ridiculous, and spends the rest of his time driving away inside of a giant tire... that also becomes a quadraped.  What is with Grievous and four-leggedness anyway?

And then, mercifully, he dies.  And his death scene is actually not that bad.  Well, at least he has that one saving grace.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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Octorox said:
Gaffer Tape said:

Well, then, I hope my rant didn't offend you.  But I'm very interested to know what it is that makes you like him.  Granted, the only Star Wars media I've seen him in is ROTS.  I thought I heard he was better portrayed in the old Clone Wars series.  I really would like to hear someone like you explain to me why you like this character because... I can't find anything to like about him (and, like I said, I even liked Jar-Jar, so I'm not too hard to please), and I would really like to understand your point of view on this one.

 

 I love Grevious in that series. He is so damn badass. In the second clip he sounds too much like Vader in ANH though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_wfL_9KDZE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVON4dOG7ck&feature=related

 

 thank you! yes he runs away everytime, but in the novels he does also. they way he cutted through the clones to get to palpatine, damn you want badass? grevious is badass.

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rcb said:
Octorox said:
Gaffer Tape said:

Well, then, I hope my rant didn't offend you.  But I'm very interested to know what it is that makes you like him.  Granted, the only Star Wars media I've seen him in is ROTS.  I thought I heard he was better portrayed in the old Clone Wars series.  I really would like to hear someone like you explain to me why you like this character because... I can't find anything to like about him (and, like I said, I even liked Jar-Jar, so I'm not too hard to please), and I would really like to understand your point of view on this one.

 

 I love Grevious in that series. He is so damn badass. In the second clip he sounds too much like Vader in ANH though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_wfL_9KDZE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVON4dOG7ck&feature=related

 

 thank you! yes he runs away everytime, but in the novels he does also. they way he cutted through the clones to get to palpatine, damn you want badass? grevious is badass.

In that series. The problem is that Grievous in ROTS is nothing like the Grievous in that series.