ROTJ is the best Star Wars film... discuss! — Page 26

generalfrevious said:

Alderaan said:

If you take out Jar Jar, The Phantom Menace is the best of the prequels. Not saying much, I know.

 Well, there's Queen Amidala's ear-bleeding robot voice, Jake Lloyd's cringeworthy performance, several interminable Jedi council/senate meetings, and the overlong podrace sequence no one actually likes.

But yes TPM is the best the Prequels ever got.

Hey, don't go putting words in my mouth! The podrace scene is actually quite fun in the theatrical version of the film, even if it does go on too long. In fact, I think that the entire Tatooine segment of the film would work well on its own. I wonder if someone has done an edit starting on Tatooine from Anakin's perspective.

Annnyyywayyy, how about them Ewoks?

generalfrevious said:

That's the problem: George deliberately sabotaged this film so we could never have a perfect trilogy.

Nothing matters anymore, as the global warming will destroy us anyway.

generalfrevious said:

George deliberately sabotaged this film so we could never have a perfect trilogy.

Firstly, no he didn't and secondly... I've probably said this before but... ROTJ is probably the greatest and most wholly satisfying conclusion to a movie Trilogy that we have ever, or maybe will ever get.

There are plenty of original franchises with solid, or superior, second entries but only Star Wars is blessed with a third film as great as ROTJ... and that from a man who was trying his best to "deliberately sabotage" it ;-)

generalfrevious said:

imperialscum said:

generalfrevious said:

That's the problem: George deliberately sabotaged this film so we could never have a perfect trilogy.

Nothing matters anymore, as the global warming will destroy us anyway.

 And we'll still be without a properly restored OOT!

That is because George deliberately sabotaged the Earth.

Anchorhead said:

Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade.

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

Bad examples. These two are conceptually very different from Star Wars. When it comes to Indiana Jones and Dollars trilogy, storylines and characters in-between the individual films are practically not connected at all. I wouldn't call them a proper trilogy. While in Star Wars trilogy everything is very tightly connected.

darklordoftech said:

and don't forget Gotham having amnesia about The Joker, who somehow went form being the most feared man in the city to not existing

This never bothered me - there was an eight year gap between Dark Knight and Dark Knight Rises, and an effort was made to shift the blame to Batman, so it would make sense that the public wouldn't really care about one crazy serial killer from almost a decade ago.

Anchorhead said:

Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade.

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

The Dark Knight Rises.

Last Crusade and TDKR are weaker than what came before, but I have to admit they do make a decent fist of wrapping things up nicely, although there isn't any plot to wrap up in Last Crusade, as the Indy Trilogy are all self contained films. TDKR doesn't have much to wrap up either, as few characters crossover the 3 movies, although the League of Shadows storyline comes full circle.

Where as ROTJ brings all the characters from all the movies and all the threads together in one neat bow IMO

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, although excellent is just a third movie (as has been said above). It's not the conclusion of a third part story.... plus arguably it's a prequel ;-)

Anchorhead said:

Ryan McAvoy said:
ROTJ is probably the greatest and most wholly satisfying conclusion to a movie Trilogy that we have ever, or maybe will ever get.

Between the writer's-block driven incest storyline,

 I'm actually going to defend this point an say that it's in line with Lucas's general MO of one giant homage to pulp fiction.  Certainly sounds like something that would come out of 1930's-era serials to me.

Still don't like ROTJ, though :P

generalfrevious said:

Marcia Lucas... basically invented the SW franchise

Yeah that seems reasonable.

Anyway... Having been born a year after ESB, I grew up with all three films as one complete package in my mind. So things from ROTJ inform how see the first two parts. e.g. I always think of the Rebellion as this multi-racial, multi-species, diverse alliance of worlds united against the evil oppressive Nazi-esque Empire. That links in with the Imperial Officer in ANH looking in disgust at Chewie and calling him "...this thing".

But apart from that brief line (and Chewie himself), that's not really the case ANH and ESB, it's just white-guys versus white-guys. With the aliens just these wierd foreigners that hang around in seedy space bars, or do wicked deeds for the Empire. I much prefer the expanded inclusive view of the Rebel aliens in ROTJ.

Retrospectively, I think I tend to put the lack of that element in the first two, being down to us seeing relatively small scale engagements, that 'just happen' to not include any aliens.

bkev said:

Anchorhead said:

Ryan McAvoy said:
ROTJ is probably the greatest and most wholly satisfying conclusion to a movie Trilogy that we have ever, or maybe will ever get.

Between the writer's-block driven incest storyline,

 I'm actually going to defend this point an say that it's in line with Lucas's general MO of one giant homage to pulp fiction.  Certainly sounds like something that would come out of 1930's-era serials to me.

Still don't like ROTJ, though :P

Since when are Richard Wagner operas "pulp fiction"? :P

Really, I'm pretty sure that the whole Luke/Leia sibling thing came from Wagner's Ring Cycle. Luke's surname is an epithet used for the Norse god Loki, and Leia's first name comes from the libretto of Götterdämmerung.

Ryan McAvoy said:

generalfrevious said:

George deliberately sabotaged this film so we could never have a perfect trilogy.

Firstly, no he didn't and secondly... I've probably said this before but... ROTJ is probably the greatest and most wholly satisfying conclusion to a movie Trilogy that we have ever, or maybe will ever get.

There are plenty of original franchises with solid, or superior, second entries but only Star Wars is blessed with a third film as great as ROTJ... and that from a man who was trying his best to "deliberately sabotage" it ;-)

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Is-Part-3-of-Anything-Ever-Good/topic/12912/

Some of the same kind of discussion from a while back. 

Ryan McAvoy said:

Anchorhead said:

Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade.

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

The Dark Knight Rises.

Last Crusade and TDKR are weaker than what came before, but I have to admit they do make a decent fist of wrapping things up nicely, although there isn't any plot to wrap up in Last Crusade, as the Indy Trilogy are all self contained films. TDKR doesn't have much to wrap up either, as few characters crossover the 3 movies, although the League of Shadows storyline comes full circle.

Where as ROTJ brings all the characters from all the movies and all the threads together in one neat bow IMO

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, although excellent is just a third movie (as has been said above). It's not the conclusion of a third part story.... plus arguably it's a prequel ;-)

 I still think often about "Capital 'T'" trilogies.  I know I posted about them a few times here- but I only found this example: http://originaltrilogy.com/FORUM/topic.cfm/Act-Breaks/post/451754/

The BTS stuff for PotC2 is really interesting... they didn't write Curse of the Black Pearl to be a Trilogy opener, so they have to sort of backdoor into it to use it as part one of a proper Trilogy.  They discuss what was in it that could possibly be used to thread out into parts two and three.  Something along the lines of "let's not make sequels- let's make a Trilogy- and if there's nothing in the first movie that sustains that, then we'll just drop it."

Of course... not a trilogy anymore..

TheBoost said:

ATMachine said:

bkev said:

Anchorhead said:

Ryan McAvoy said:
ROTJ is probably the greatest and most wholly satisfying conclusion to a movie Trilogy that we have ever, or maybe will ever get.

Between the writer's-block driven incest storyline,

 I'm actually going to defend this point an say that it's in line with Lucas's general MO of one giant homage to pulp fiction.  Certainly sounds like something that would come out of 1930's-era serials to me.

Still don't like ROTJ, though :P

Since when are Richard Wagner operas "pulp fiction"? :P

Really, I'm pretty sure that the whole Luke/Leia sibling thing came from Wagner's Ring Cycle. Luke's surname is an epithet used for the Norse god Loki, and Leia's first name comes from the libretto of Götterdämmerung.

 I imagine young George Lucas, lover of hot rods and Flash Gordon pouring over the text to a German opera, perhaps by candle light, and saying:

"Wow! This dude writes 'weialala leia' as a meaningless vocalization! What a great name! This totally makes me think my characters should be siblings screwing, like in that other German Opera! And in this third opera, there's a character named Loge, based on the Norse Loki, which is kinda like Luke, which is a name I couldn't have gotten from anywhere else, not the gospels, and certainly not my own last name!"

Right then, where *does* the name Leia come from, in your opinion?

Probably some brand name of a paper product, or one of GL's high school classmates, no doubt. ;)