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Monolithium

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25-Dec-2010
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30-Oct-2012
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Post
#551499
Topic
Two random ROTJ observations about the Twin revelation.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/551499/action/topic#551499
Time

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

The script is very good for Luke's part, but her lines are awful.  I don't think anyone could have made her lines work. 

I always thought that Han's reaction was on the order of... "huh? oh... OH, COOL!"

As far as the incest thing, to me the most uncomfortable part - in retrospect - was the end of ESB where it looks like with Han gone the other two are going to be a couple.  He puts his arm around her and she doesn't object.  Who KNOWS what happened between then and their return to Tatooine, eh!?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5eVGyCVxAM

Bow chica bow wow!

Post
#550049
Topic
What was the "fatal flaw" of the Prequels if you think they sucked? (aka. Let's take a break from hating on the blu-rays)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/550049/action/topic#550049
Time

wwsd said:

It's not really a fatal flaw, but the worst thing about the prequels is their effect on the original trilogy, as seen in the post-1997 new editions. The 1997 SE already made a lot of unnecessary "additions", but in the releases afterwards, the original films were mercilessly slaughtered on the altar of the prequels. The true problem with those editions is not that they changed stuff, but that they did so to serve the prequels.

Just consider: Anakin's eyebrows get burned in Episode III, so they have to be airbrushed out of VI. Hayden Christensen plays Anakin in the prequels, so Sebastian Shaw has to be erased from the very ending of the film in which he was the redeemed Anakin, to be replaced by Hayden looking goofy. The prequels added Gungans, so the ending of VI needs Gungans. And of course Boba Fett and the Emperor both get replaced in ESB; and let's not get started on "No... NOOOOOOOO!!!!!"

Apart from the general problems of all kinds of "special editions", all these prequel insertions into the OT add one thing that is even worse: the great films of the OT actually get degraded down to the level of the prequels. The OT thus gets turned into a vehicle for the prequels, a useless piece of crap to be preceded by the prequels with their *~amazing~* CGI.

In George's great artistic vision, new fans will not watch first the OT and then the prequels, but they will watch the films in Episode order, with one (voice) actor playing one character as much as possible, and they'll be like: "Hey, you can tell Boba Fett is a clone because he has the same voice!" He'll probably never have the guts to airbrush Alec Guinness out of history, so that's one thing, but it is these smaller things (Boba Fett's few lines, the Emperor's one dialogue in ESB, etc.) that slowly chip away at the edifice of the OT.

It's one of the best examples of the pig-headed megalomania that defines the prequels, along with the assumption that the potential viewers of the series are all drooling retards: we can't have the Emperor portrayed by two different actors, that would just be confusing! When of course, in reality, that's just how it sometimes goes with film series stretching over decades. Nobody necessarily likes it, but, for instance, the plot of Episode VI required an expansion of the Emperor's role, so they had to get McDiarmid instead of a woman with chimp eyes and a voice actor. That's just how things develop naturally. Trying to pretend that never happened is just clumsy.

The stubbornness about the prequels is the most peculiar, though. Instead of self-critically analysing the prequels and understanding its problems, they said: the prequels are not crap, but to make things more coherent, we must downgrade the original films to better reflect the prequels!

In itself, this wouldn't even be an incredible disaster. If Lucas or anyone else wants to mold all the films into a coherent "saga", then whatever. Maybe he could remake the OT into true "sequels to the prequels", with Hayden and Boba Fett with Jango's voice and all the other prequel goodness, naming it "Star Wars Reloaded", "Star Wars Advanced Generation". "Star Wars X-treme", "Star Wars - the TOTALLY RAD AWESOME Trilogy (TRAT)" or something. Just don't bother the rest of us with the suggestion that it is the original trilogy!

As it is, the prequels and their role in the degradation of the OT do pose a problem, because of the very openly stated desire to erase the OT from public memory instead of marketing it alongside the "Badass CGI Saga" and letting the viewers decide which one they like best (if the prequels and SEs are so good, what are they afraid of?). If you want to modify your own films like that, sure, that's up to you; but when you also want to control the perception of the audience as a whole, when you want to determine what they should see and how they should feel about that, then yes, you're being a bit megalomaniacal.

So what does any of this have to do with the prequels, apart from their unnecessary insertion into the OT? Well, for one thing, without them, there wouldn't be any need to insert prequel stuff into the OT if there weren't any prequels. Some of the worse features of the prequels could already be seen in the 1997 SE (or even in the original RotJ!), but they are all quite explicable and do not ruin the entire experience, even though they deserve criticism. Whereas the prequels mark a very clear and explicit break with everything that made the OT good.

And of course, considering that the prequels do exist, then it is the inexplicable and completely illogical confidence in their qualities that push Lucas to try to jam them into the OT. Without that, subsequent re-releases of the OT would simply feature further tinkering of the 1997 SE variety, but without necessarily eliminating all the good things about the OT.

This.  Easily.