Vaderisnothayden

The movie versions of the characters are THE versions. As such it is a fault to have the characters come off different.

DarkFather said:

Vaderisnothayden said:

Already read it. Don't agree with it. I don't think there's anything realistic. Just because Anakin wasn't "a smooth-talking James Bond" doesn't mean it was realistic. Nor do I think the film doing a pathetic unrealistic teen fiction romance thing means it has "balls". And awkwardness on the part of the characters is not what characterises the romance, rather it's artificiality and lack of feeling or chemistry.

I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth.

Actually, come to think of it, given the context of the scene, and how he subtly and sensually slides a finger over the bareness of Padme's skin... that is probably more poetically seductive than what most would come up with.

Good job, Anakin.

Said in a whiney tone by Hayden Christensen it was damn annoying.

DarkFather said:

I don't think most of the complaints are the user's own initial thoughts from having watched it a lot of the time. I think they've been socially programmed by hanging around certain people, constantly hearing the same complaints, and then absorbing it into themselves while assuming they had the same "initial personal thoughts" as their friends. I've known too many who thought the PT was "okay" for the longest time before being exposed to hate lists and whatnot.

And I don't believe in censoring. Read hatelists and negative humor articles. But keep a clear head.

I guess those things have a tendancy to program people through repitition of a statement. You'll soon walk away thinking the author's thoughts were your thoughts originally, when in fact, if you had been mindful, you might have still walked away thinking the PT was "okay" rather than "goddam worse movies ever made."

Sure, sometimes we delude ourselves and need corrected on our thinking. But ask yourself: how is the person telling you these things any more credible then you are in the area of OPINION?

Think about things you read that appeal to emotion, therefore easily manipulating you. Take what seems sound, and cast all the other stuff away.

Actually, if you're talking about people picking up views from others, I think that's a major explanation for all those people who think the PT is ok.

As for myself, I didn't pay much attention to anybody else's views before I saw AOTC and once I'd seen  it I decided it was crap right away. I thought it was crap because I thought it was crap, not because somebody else thought it was crap.

Akwat Kbrana said:

I highly doubt that George set out to intentionally write a crappy movie. "I know, I'll make all the romance scenes abhorrent! That'll really surprise them!"

Well, actually... see what I say in a post above.

Here, the second paragraph, about a quote from Lucas that can be found in The seret History of Star Wars:

 http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/I-seriously-cannot-watch-Star-Wars-anymore/post/345989/#post345989

Already read it. Don't agree with it. I don't think there's anything realistic. Just because Anakin wasn't "a smooth-talking James Bond" doesn't mean it was realistic. Nor do I think the film doing a pathetic unrealistic teen fiction romance thing means it has "balls". And awkwardness on the part of the characters is not what characterises the romance, rather it's artificiality and lack of feeling or chemistry.

Annie/Padme was seriously NOT a realistic romance.

Uh, can't we beat up the prequels instead of each other?

The Padme/Annie romance was like something out of some silly teen fiction. Hardly realism.

I wouldn't say the AOTC romance was realistic. Realistic romances involve seem feeling or chemistry or they don't get too far.

Doesn't really make Han much better than the slavers he is suppose to have recued him from.

Not true, unless Han is actively pushing him to hold to the life debt. Otherwise Han is just letting Chewie do his own thing.

I also never liked the Chewbacca family situation that originated from the Holiday Special, where Chewie leaves his family to go follow Han around the galaxy and only comes to visit once a year or so. This makes him out to be a pretty lousy husband and father, and I always prefered to see him as a rather upright and honorable kind of guy (well, other than the whole smuggler/criminal thing).

Well this is the same Holiday Special that named Chewie's relatives Itchy and Lumpy, so you can't expect much.

General question for anyone on this thread, does this life debt thing mean we're to assume Chewie wasn't genuinely emotionally attached to Han and just stuck with him due to this life debt?

AxiaEuxine said:

C3PX said:

You seem very insistent on failing to understand us...

Sorry about that...you could be right. I had just come from a thread with bashing running rampant...probably set me in the wrong mood.

Ok, here's some basic principles: When it comes to Lucas's ouput 1997 onwards, Bashing = Good. Gushing = Bad. Ok?

SilverWook said:

Interesting idea. Dark Horse should have tried something like this when they reprinted the Marvel adaptation in the 90's. Instead, they recolored them with a very flat drab scheme.

Given that the people working on the Marvel comic did not have the luxury of seeing the finished film, they did a great job. :)

Yeah, the Dark Horse recoloring was seriously weak. Everything was too pale.

I love the old Marvel comics. They meant a lot to me when I was a kid and even looking at them now they have some good stuff. Marvel gets a lot of flak because early on they did stuff like put in a giant green rabbit, but I don't see a big difference between Jar Jar a giant green rabbit, and anyway Marvel's stories got better after the early years.

DarkFather said:

Now for Obi-Wan Kenobi. Overall, the voice actor gives a flat performance. Obi-Wan seems too fatigued and "out of it" to be very engaging, and that's the first disappointment in the radio drama so far. Hopefully he gets better later on.

I'm inclined to think Kenobi was the best of the performances.

DarkFather said:

I absolutely love Leia's voice in this.

I don't. For one thing, it's so not Leia.

DarkFather said:I don't bash the romance too much. Looking back, I think I was just as creepy and awkward as Anakin around the girl I liked.

I think would take an unusual person to be as artificial and depthless as Anakin was in that film.

DarkFather said:

Well that's not even close to being remotely true. The Naboo landscape = excellent, beautiful. The speeder chase on Coruscant between Obi-Wan/Anakin and the Bounty Hunter = riveting. Ewan McGregor's acting as Obi-Wan = brilliant.

No, McGregor's acting was very good by the standard of the acting displayed in the film, but it was hardly brilliant. McGregor never manages to connect you to the character to the degree the OT actors managed with theirs.

The Naboo landscape generally looked artificial and everything was overly prettied up. Too much sweetsy. So many locations in the prequels are just not realized with the same force of imagination as the locations in the OT.

The chase in Coruscant wasn't bad, but it was hardly riveting -the characters were insufficiently emotionally involved themselves, which cut down on the audience's involvement, though it was one of the most involving parts of the film.

Akwat Kbrana said:

...or "every single solitary thing about it blew..."

Lol! Yeah. I think the fight between Kenobi and Jango was actually good and I suppose the aircar chase wasn't bad, but mostly the film was total and utter shite and so much of it was so uninvolving just when it should have been involving, like in the big battle at the end. Kenobi wasn't bad mostly (though he was a far cry from the genuine quality of the real Kenobi in the OT), but Anakin was... how can I put it... one  of the worst portrayals of a character in film history? Padme was a disappointing turn from a quality actress whose talents seemed to be getting muzzled. Jango Fett was annoying, as was Darth Saruman. Villains should be fun or interesting, not annoying eejits. Yoda was crap, as usual in the prequels. The whole feel of the thing was dead and barren and shallow (though not as far that way as ROTS).

And the romance, god help us, the romance. As far as I can tell, Lucas intentionally made the romance awful. Not that he'd put it in those words, but there's a quote in The Secret History of Star Wars in which he says something like he knows he's portraying the romance in a way that men and people with cynicism won't like, which I read as men or intelligent women. And I think he's not giving women enough credit, because I don't see how too many women would be any more enthusisatic about that tripe than men. Feelingless artificial dogshit.

DarkFather said:

It made the galaxy seem tiny. Like a neighborhood where everybody knows everybody. Quite the opposite of fascinating for me.

Yeah! Dumbest thing ever.

A similar thing is how they set up the end of ROTS to match the beginning of ANH so much, like nothing changed in 20 years. Vader is already hanging out with Tarkin, C3PO and R2 are already on the Tantive IV ship which they were on in the beginning of ANH and Captain Antilles is already there. I mean, come on, let things develop a bit in 20 years. Makes things feel less real. Like the everybody knowing everybody thing, it leaves less room in the Star Wars universe.

I have mixed feelings about TPM too. It totally fails as a real Star wars movie, but it's much more human and sincere than the later two films and Liam Neeson is very good in it. It's closer to being Star Wars than the later two. The later two are just total shite.

Kenner mini rigs would have been cool. Much cooler than importing stuff from the role playing game. The mini rigs were from the OT period. The role playing game is from a later time and thus, to me, less authentically Star wars.

The radio drama is pretty well done, but I can't take it too seriously with other actors playing people like Leia and Han. The first episode was interesting. But the second one, the Leia ep, was lame. And I'm not terribly impressed with how Leia is performed. I wish the radio drama didn't feel the need to fill in every bit of the story. I guess we're lucky they didn't put in scenes for every time the characters went to do a crap. The stuff that's not in the movie or the deleted scenes feels a bit bogus to me. It includes some stuff that makes Han more ruthless and Tarkin less brave.

I also have serious issues with the ROTJ drama, because it includes various expanded universe stuff. Considering that the radio dramas are considered core stuff (I think they shouldn't be, but they are), expanded universe stuff from the 90s doesn't belong in there. They should have stuck to old stuff and tried to make a drama like it would have been had they made it in the earlier 80s rather than in the mid-90s. 

C3PX said:

I also eat beef tongue sometimes, and on occasion I like to enjoy a beer with a nice plate of beef liver  

 

 

 Yay for beef tongue and liver.

I want to ask a number of questions about Mandalorians.

Firstly, when did we first hear about Mandalorians?

I know the first appearance of a Mandalorian was Boba Fett in the holiday special's animated sequence. And they were mentioned without the name Mandalorian being mentioned the ESB novelization in connection with Fett's armor as some bunch the Jedi had wiped out in the clone wars. But when was the name Mandalorian or any related name (such as "Mandalore") first mentioned?

Was it when the Marvel comics introduced Fenn Shysa and the planet Mandalore in 1982/1983 with issues 68 and 69?

Or was the term mentioned in Bantha Tracks or something before then?

And any bit of story mentioning them as a group, even without a name, when did that first appear? Was the ESB novelization the first appearance of that?

What was the original Bantha Tracks or whatever Mandalorian story and when did it first surface?

Does anybody know how much Mandalorians were an invention of Lucas and how much they were the invention of expanded universe writers?

(And I'm talking about expanded universe writers way back like 70s/80s, not Karen Traviss or whatever in recent years.)

When was Boba Fett first made into sort of the toughest dude around? In a New Jedi Order story in the Star Wars Tales comic we have Han Solo saying he wouldn't be able to beat Boba Fett in a fair fight. You don't get that notion from the OT, so I guess Boba Fett being that unbeatably tough is a development of the expanded universe. I'd like to know when the expanded universe made him so invincibly tough. Is it a development of the Boba Fett splurge of the 90s or does it date back to the 80s or 70s?

(Of course, the prequels seem to have picked up the idea of him being so tough a bit, by making Jango Fett a match for Jedi Kenobi, but that's after years of Boba Fett being the big man in 90s expanded universe stuff.) 

And when I say toughest dude around, I don't just mean really tough mean bounty hunter and toughest bounty hunter, I mean a guy Han Solo doesn't have a chance against in a fair fight and who can hold his own against Darth Vader. In that Star Wars Tales comic they say Boba Fett can be matched in a fair fight by like 6 or 7 people in the whole galaxy. When did he become that sort of tough?

Also, I don't remember anything about Mandalorians being mentioned in the prequels, even any hint that Jango Fett was from any special group. Am I right there's nothing of the sort in there?

What about the novelization? Do any of the movie novelizations (OT or prequel) mention anything about Mandalorians other than that bit in the ESB novelization that I mentioned?

DarkGryphon2048 said:

budwhite said:

skyjedi2005 said:

 

American Graffiti a single shot in the opening changed by cgi still to me the movie is ruined, another reason to own the laserdisc.

 

 

 That is just plain stupid

Well SkyJedi IS a blatantly stupid moronic dumbass. 

Why? Because he isn't properly worshipful of The Great Lucas?

American Graffiti is seriously overrated anyway.

Can't we have a film in which AOTC/ROTS Anakin, Mace Windu and prequels Yoda are all chewed up by a rancor or something? Without those three characters the prequels would have been a lot more bearable. Give me Jar Jar bleedin Binks any day over those three wankers.