The Prequel Radical Redux Ideas Thread — Page 119

EyeShotFirst:

It was nice but they should never add a character when the actor who played them died. IN ANY FILM. At least Alec Guiness was still alive when Ewan McGregor took over the role.

What does that even mean? Was it a joke?

Darth Venal said:

EyeShotFirst:

It was nice but they should never add a character when the actor who played them died. IN ANY FILM. At least Alec Guiness was still alive when Ewan McGregor took over the role.

What does that even mean? Was it a joke?

Hehe, it was considered.

Bingowings said:

Not bad, he looks enough like him to get the idea across and he is a fun actor who could have given the role the necessary coldness.

Nobody seems to care that Ewan doesn't look or even sound exactly like a younger Sir Alec.

If they were serious about putting Tarkin in the prequels they should of written a role for him and hired someone like Nighy who could have played him without OTT make-up.

I don't think I agree with that part. They did a decent casting job there, he does have a lot of the same features as Alec Guiness did. As for sounding like him, I think McGregor really did try his best to be like Guiness in voice and "style" (actually, maybe a bit too much, I think it's reason his acting in the PT is stilted at times, especially in TPM, he was concentrating too much on being like Guiness).

The irony there is that Ewan McGregor said he was trying not to really impersonate Guinness too much "as it interferes with the acting process". Well, that may be, but whatever he was trying to do, he gave two dreadful performances and one okay performance in those three movies. And I really like Ewan McGregor, so don't take that as me having a go. He's a genuinely decent bloke and he's done some decent movies, but action hero he is not.

Darth Venal said:

The irony there is that Ewan McGregor said he was trying not to really impersonate Guinness too much "as it interferes with the acting process". Well, that may be, but whatever he was trying to do, he gave two dreadful performances and one okay performance in those three movies. And I really like Ewan McGregor, so don't take that as me having a go. He's a genuinely decent bloke and he's done some decent movies, but action hero he is not.

Well, I've chalked his very mixed performances in the PT up to an awful script, bad direction from Lucas, concentrating too hard on emulating Guinness, and too much work with bluescreen and greenscreen sets (like most of his time on Kamino, for instance).

Same deal with Natalie Portman, but more of an annoyance since she had a lot less to do than McGregor. Er, Sam Jackson, I don't think he gave much of a crap about the movie or his performance, I think he just really wanted to be a Jedi, with a lightsaber (understandable). Liam Neeson in TPM was pretty good, but he's capable of far better, I put that up to him not getting along with Lucas and his way of making films very well. Hayden Christiansen can't act.

So many great actors in the PT, yet such bad performances. Of all the potential for story, action, effects, that was wasted, I think the biggest waste may still be the acting.

McGregor argued that it would be pointless to try and do an impression of Sir Alec because people don't sound the same when they are young, while that is true there is still a signature in the voice that never changes and if he was trying to attempt that it failed.

He should have played the role straight without worrying about what Sir Alec did or he should have bitten the bullet and given the voice more of a Sir Alec inflection.

Sitting on the fence resulted in a very stilted performance that doesn't really pick up until he forgets about trying in ROTS.

The other daft move (or is it Darthed) was giving Anakin an American accent when he clearly hasn't got one in ROTJ.

Accents can drift completely over time (just listen to Rick McCallum) but there has to be a key for that drift (talking to a lot of people with the same accent and needing to fit in usually causes it).

If that was going to happen it would have happened by the time we saw Anakin in AOTC (being with Obi-Wan most of the time he would probably drift towards his accent which would fit in with Seb Shaw).

As Vader, Anakin doesn't have to alter his voice, the machinery does that for him, nor would he feel the need to impress people with the way he spoke (the way he choked did that).

I can't imagine his voice changing under the mask or him faking it for his last words to Luke.

I think Lucas gave Anakin an American accent to appeal more to the American market as it makes very little sense in terms of retroactive character development (almost a case of the writer becoming the character).

I thought Ewan did a fine job all things considered. When it comes to the prequels, I got bigger beefs than his performance as Obi-Wan.

The problem is, without convincing characters/performances, nothing else works.

It takes a special talent to deliver some of the dialogue that Lucas comes up with in an engaging and believable fashion.

At no point do I stop believing in the characters in ANH and ESB and a lot of that came from very good casting (Lucas himself has admitted to not really being an actors director).

Even in ROTJ most of the time the original cast and Ian McDiarmid manage to pull it off even without help from the directors (Marquand and Lucas by most accounts).

By the PT even the most talented actors (besides Ian who only drops the ball when the Halloween mask is put on) seem a bit lost and Hayden and Jake (playing the most important character in the PT) don't seem to have a clue what they are doing.

Redubs could help as so much is conveyed with the voice.

I was surprised by how good Anton Yelchin was in Terminator 4 (especially seeing how awful he was in Star Trek) I really believed he could grow up to be the same character Michael Biehn played in the first film.

Nico Cortez also did an amazing job as young Bill Adama in Razor.

Darth Venal said:

The problem is, without convincing characters/performances, nothing else works.

Well who is to blame for that? I've watched Ewan give better performances. Natalie Portman. Liam Neeson.

To me it starts and stops with George. He wrote the script for TPM and co-wrote AOTC and ROTS. He also directed all three.

My biggest problem with the prequels is I don't think Lucas really had a fully fleshed out story for all 3 films. And he dragged his feet on writing the scripts, especially for the first 2 prequels. And it shows.

All I can say is I'm glad he's done with it because he'd clearly rather be making historical films like Red Tails, and documentaries, like the excellent mini-docs he produced for the Young Indy DVD sets.

Timstuff did a great job on Jar-Jar recently.

If anything it's the PT that have hidden or ghost writers, Carrie Fisher and Tom Stoppard apparently contributed to the PT.

The scriptwriting credits for the OT if anything point the opposite way giving him less credit than he could claim (though he didn't write the novelisation credited to him that was Alan Dean Foster).

I've been thinking about the prophecy regarding the chosen one.

I know this is seen as unpopular to some people but I think it's one of the elements that don't work because of it's execution.

I loved the way that the television adaptation of I Claudius uses the Delphic prophecy to bookend the series and I also like the idea of assuming that a prophecy points one way when it may point in the opposite direction.

A scene where we see an ancient recording of the prophecy being played before the council and some of the council like Dooku and Qui-Gon reading portents in events like the invasion of Naboo could sell the idea better and sow the seeds of doubt that Palpatine would later exploit.

Yes and no, Lucas came up with the basic story for all the films (even though he pinched them from all over the place) he later gave them to other writers to do later draughts eg, Leigh Brackett for ESB (but he largely ditched everything she did still giving her the screenwriting credit). He never hid the fact that other people worked on the screenplays for the OT, in fact he possibly took less credit than he could legitimately claim.

With the PT he took much of the credit/blame for the screenplays when many hidden hands also worked on them.

He didn't write ESB - Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan did.  He just got a story credit.  He got a co-writer's credit for ROTJ along with Lawrence Kasdan.  Point being, you can't say that they were "ghost"-written, since that implies that the writer who worked on it didn't receive credit (like the Star Wars novelization, written by Alan Dean Foster, credited to Lucas).

The only one of the PT films that he didn't receive a sole writer's credit for was AOTC, co-written with Jonathan Hales.  But it wouldn't surprise me to learn that some aspects of the PT were, in fact, ghost-written.

--edit--

Bingo beat me to it.

Darth Venal said:

The problem is, without convincing characters/performances, nothing else works.

That's why my scenes are the best part of TPM...of the whole PT and OT, really.

EyeShotFirst said:

The biggest problem with making a prequel is when the casting director goes for who looks the most like the character in the original. They don't care at all as long as they look enough like the character. In the beginning of the movie Braveheart there was a young actor playing William Wallace. He didn't look at all like Mel Gibson but he practiced his mannerisms and got them down perfect so the seams met in a way that made the film seamless. Then you have a movie like Star Trek with that horrible Chris Pine. He didn't even bother to try to be William Shatner. He had the look fairly close but really didn't capture the essence of William Shatner's performance (it isn't that hard LOL). 

Most people would prefer seeing somebody who looks like the original character, but a true fan of any original film would like to see somebody who convinces them that they are the same character without looking extremely close to the original.

 

My biggest problem with the dialogue in the prequels is they say some of the same shit they do in the originals. Amidala talking about "discussing this in a committee" a classic Han line. All the damn aliens call people Bantha Fodder.

And why does every sith say "Search your feelings and you will know it to be true." Darth Vader said it first in ESB then after that everybody says it.

It was like George Lucas had a hat full of lines. He pulls one out every time a character says something and sticks it in the script.

I have to 100% disagree with you on Chris Pine. I thought his performance was excellent. It think it's important to note that he was trying to be a young Kirk, not Shatner. I think he captured the essence of the character, just not the actor, which is good because Shatner's performance is cheesy by today's standards. remember that this Kirk doesn't quite grow up into Shatner anyway, he lives a different life. I believe Pine tried some Shatnerisms and inflections but decided they didn't work.