What Went Wrong/What Can Be Avoided Thread — Page 6

Avoid poorly written villains.  

In the OT: 

Vader's a great villain because when we're first introduced to him, he waltzes into a room with a boarding party of stormtroopers unarmed & then proceeds to choke a guy interrogating him.  Then later we see him choke out one of his own men with the force & use an interrogation droid on Leia.  We're also told of how evil he is by Obi-Wan. 

Tarkin's a great villain because he's calm, cool, and collected & Vader listens to him, and then he blows up Alderaan just to demonstrate the power of the Death Star.  

Boba Fett's a great villain because the manner in which the bounty hunters are introduced as scum, & then Vader making a point to tell him that there would be no disintegrations.  

Jabba we see loves to laugh at the thought of executing people.  Classic criminally insane crime boss.  

Palpatine's a great villain because of the way that admirals gulp at the thought of him personally overseeing them, the way Vader bows to him, & the way he just laughs at Luke & his optimism.  

Compare to the Prequel Trilogy:

Maul is just a devil looking dude with a two sided lightsaber that kills a Jedi and promptly gets killed.  He basically shows up for the sole purpose of having lightsaber battles.  

Dooku just has a cool voice and cuts off Haydn Christensen's hand.  

Grievous is a multi lightsaber wielding robot 

The other minor villains are just really bad racial stereotypes

Sidious is OK, but we see him too much.  The sequel trilogy needs to not show things until it's necessary to do so.  

Give us villains from the start that are varied and unique.  Fascistic military/government leaders, irreverent gangsters, and dark jedi.  

Stay away from massive metropolis', councils, politics that marked the PT.

Go back to the Old West frontier in outer space atmosphere that characterized the OT.

And please dont flood the galaxy with Jedi.  They're too stoic and it made the PT too stoic.  Where was the comic relief?  Star Wars should be an escape and it should be light hearted and fun.  Stay away from the current hollywood trend that a darker mood is better.

luckydube56 said:

please dont flood the galaxy with Jedi.  They're too stoic and it made the PT too stoic.  Where was the comic relief?  Star Wars should be an escape and it should be light hearted and fun.  Stay away from the current hollywood trend that a darker mood is better.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Grievous is way more robot than Darth Vader. And Darth Vader at least had a human-shaped body. Grievous is a walking skeleton.

Since Sidious = Palpatine, he was seen a LOT.

Easterhay said:

luckydube56 said:

Stay away from massive metropolis', councils, politics that marked the PT.

Go back to the Old West frontier in outer space atmosphere that characterized the OT.



And please dont flood the galaxy with Jedi.  They're too stoic and it made the PT too stoic.  Where was the comic relief?  Star Wars should be an escape and it should be light hearted and fun.  Stay away from the current hollywood trend that a darker mood is better.

Yes, the Jedi were pretty dour in the prequels. A lot of chin-stroking and sitting around. But, then again, if they were based on Buddhist monks then the depiction was spot-on. I always imagined Luke's Jedi would be much different.

As for comic relief, well...Jar Jar? Buzz droids? Threepio losing his head? All in all, the story of Anakin is a tragedy. I don't recall Macbeth being chock full of hilarious one-liners.

 Well, point taken.  But the unlikable or unrelatable aspect of these characters is what then robs the PT of its desired tragic affect doesnt it?

In Star Wars, we meet Luke as a young naive farm boy.  Han is the man we wished we were; Luke is the man we relate to.  He goes on an adventure for the first time and he is taken for a ride; and we are riding along with him.  In many ways he is like an inolved observer; and we are too.  He loses Ben and we feel his grief.  Towards the end he is in the drivers seat and we feel the same mixture of tension, nervousness and hope and we are elated when 'we' win.

In Empire, he is learning new things.  We are learning those new things right along with him.  The entire installment is about discovery.  

In Jedi, he is a Jedi....I no longer find his character as interesting until the end when he loses his father.

The PT failed to execute because it lacks connection with the audience.  By making every other character a stoic Jedi, it is a universe full of people you couldnt care less about.  Obviously, its foolish to think you can get by with no jedi but the story was too Jedi-centric.  

Now I fully realize that of course the PT was about Jedi and that it would have to be....but that is why it fails.  No matter rhow appropriate, it was almost doomed to fail.  The PT belongs in a myth and lore of the galaxy and should never have been realized into film.

That does not have to be the case with episodes 7,8,9.

Easterhay said:

There's no racism in Star Wars. Move on, do.

http://www.weirdworm.com/the-five-most-racist-star-wars-characters/

^Truth be told, I don't get how anyone could find Watto's accent Middle Eastern. It sounds completely Italian to me.

I'm in the Wato is anti-semitism camp.

From wikipedia

Allegations of antisemitismIt has been suggested that this character is offensive because he resembles a stereotypical Jewish caricature. He has a large nose, beady eyes, and speaks in a gravelly voice and is portrayed as greedy and covetous, another common stereotype of Jews. J. Hoberman of The Village Voice called him a blatant ethnic stereotype due to his hooked nose.  Bruce Gottlieb of Slate magazine criticized him as well, comparing his character to the anti-Semitic notion that the Jewish race is "behind the slave trade."Patricia J. Williams of The Nation stated that Watto was also described as a stereotype of Arabs, but that he was "more comprehensively anti-Semitic -- both anti-Arab and anti-Jew."  She added that Watto reminded her of an "anti-Semitic caricature published in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century."Jane Prettyman of the American Review noted that after leaving the theater, she heard two young boys describe him as "that weird little Jewish guy with wings". Prettyman described his depiction as "not at all subtle", and said that "it can be counted on to flush out already-formed Jew-haters among young audiences and give them permission to continue their hatred out loud."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watto

Even if you're really forgiving and assume good intent in the creation of characters like watto and nute gunray. . . it's just poor writing to make your aliens obviously similar to real world ethnicities unless you're writing satire (ala Futurama)

I didn't realize the racial stereotypes until recently. When I was a kid, I never noticed them. To me, they were just aliens. No kid's going to see TPM and think, "hey Jews suck, right?" Nope, that's not going to happen. 

But that doesn't mean it's not an issue. Let's avoid that in future installments. 

This makes me wonder if the Ferengi ever get criticized for being Jewish stereotypes ...

DuracellEnergizer said:

This makes me wonder if the Ferengi ever get criticized for being Jewish stereotypes ...

 They do

spectraljulian said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

This makes me wonder if the Ferengi ever get criticized for being Jewish stereotypes ...

 They do

 I never knew they were supposed to be Jewish until the torch and pitchfork croud told me.