Vaderisnothayden said:
It's like making Chewie and Yoda best buds. It makes the universe smaller. Lucas made the status of the universe at the end of ROTS match ANH too much, allowing little room for change over 20 years. 3PO and R2 are with the same captain on the same ship and the Death Star is already well on its way and Tarkin is already hanging out with Vader. It's like 5 minutes pass between ROTS and ANH.
Okay, I understand what you're saying now. It still doesn't make me feel one way or the other about Tarkin's presence though. If anything, it makes me feel like all this energy should be spent on issues that are greater offenders, like Chewie and Yoda.
Yes it is laid out for you obviously. Here's Tarkin already implied to be at the center of things and hanging out with Vader 20 years before ANH, as if nothing developed in all that time.
If it is implied, it's a very light implication. One might say "circumstantial evidence" at best. I just don't see how you can get all this big stuff from such a small amount of screen time.
We all know he didn't just happen to take a stroll. He was put there for a reason, to make the ROTS-end situation match up with ANH. So yes, matching it up like that does imply he "hung around" for the next 20 years.
Do you think you'd feel that way if you didn't know anything about Star Wars beyond there being 6 films, and you'd only watched them in chronological order? I think this is an instance in which having defined, behind the scenes knowledge of the Star Wars saga and GL's thought process, is actually a hindrance. I think you're reading too much into it.
[A bunch of stuff about the Death Star]
No need to defend your opinions on the Death Star to me. I think you and I are on the same page there.
Jeez, I wish this whole thread hadn't become about Tarkin. I started it to find out info about stuff that had nothing to do with Tarkin.
I have no problem with this moving to a new thread if everyone else is okay with it.
Vaderisnothayden said:
I am wondering if we saw the same film?
This is what I remember,
Which I think looks absolutely awful. I couldn't find a larger resolution image than this one, but in higher resolution he looks even more awful than this. He just looks fake, even more so when the shot is in motion.
*Considering this* . . . *Considering this* . . .
No, I still disagree. I think it makes sense for him to have more definition to his body if he's 20 years younger than his ANH appearance. And, as far as the make-up is concerned; yeah, in that promotional still it looks pretty awful, but in motion in that particular scene from RotS I just don't notice it.
Not to say I think it looks like Peter Cushing. I just doesn't look to me like this person on screen couldn't, in 20 years, look like Peter Cushing's Tarkin. It doesn't jump out at me and scream "WRONG!"
Nor do I think Ewan was all that good as Kenobi. I think people put his performance on a pedestal because it was way better than Hayden's. I don't think he makes a great connection with the viewer, unlike Guinness. And he came off totally false (like Hayden and Natalie) in AOTC, while in ROTS he usually wasn't much to cheer about either. He was a bit more alive in TPM, but nothing special. A lot of the time his performance was pretty bland. If his performance had been all that good, the prequels would have been better than they were. As it is, he had his moments, but his work was often mediocre and sometimes pretty bad.
I don't deny that there are some pretty bad performances in the PT, but why all the actor bashing, especially on performers who have proven themselves exceptional in work outside of Star Wars (i.e. not Hayden)? If anything what we should be saying is "Gosh, it's such a shame that GL didn't give Ewan the resources he needed to make his performance really shine."
HOORAY FOR CIVILIZED DEBATE!!!!!