I don’t have high apple pie in the sky hopes. My only expectation at this point is that it will be better than The Acolyte, or more fun at least.
I do find the Captain EO references interesting. Maybe they’ll make a Disney ride out of this or something.
One huge difference that I can remember in early drafts of The Phantom Menace was that Obi Wan goes to Tatooine and finds Anakin. Qui Gon doesn’t show up until they go to Coruscant.
I found a Reddit post with some stuff on there that might also help: https://www.reddit.com/r/saltierthancrait/comments/18f3ueu/star_wars_prequels_based_on_the_old_drafts_of/
Some cast members also overlap with the Hammer movies because Peter Cushing played Dr. Frankenstein and Professor Van Helsing, David Prowse played Frankenstein’s monster, and Christopher Lee played Count Dracula (why else is he named COUNT Dooku?)
I heard that Sebastian Shaw was cast as a favor for Alec Guinness because they were friends and he was out of work. As for why he cast Hayden Christensen later, he either didn’t care about the age discrepancy or he changed his mind. Either one’s possible considering what we know about George Lucas.
I watched it after reading the books again recently. The animation starts off a bit rough, but gets better as it goes. Same with the voice acting. Makes me wish they’d do an animated show that adapts other EU books. An animated Shadows of the Empire would be interesting.
Dune: Part Two- Blu-ray
(Hi, everybody! Remember me?)
philraid said:
We haven’t had a movie or show go this far back in the timeline before, so that’s intriguing.Actually, we have: Young Jedi Adventures.
Forgot about that one. Then again I haven’t seen it. I just knew that the High Republic was a bunch of books and comics. Does that show take place before this one?
I mean Vanilla Ice in Cool as Ice is on Blu-Ray, but not Star Wars doesn’t that seem absurd.
That’s what we’re missing. George Lucas’ special edition of Cool as Ice.
Do I even want to step into this minefield?
I was open-minded because I thought the concept had some potential. We haven’t had a movie or show go this far back in the timeline before, so that’s intriguing. Although I was also cautious due to the quality of the some of these shows. Unfortunately this show ended up being worse than I expected. I was expecting it to be okay or mediocre and it went below that. You can stop reading here if you don’t want to wade through my rambling mess.
Of the three episodes, I liked the first one the most. It wasn’t great, but I liked some of the fight scenes. Seeing martial arts in a Star Wars show was fun. That was probably the one thing that kept me watching. I was disappointed that they killed Trinity in the first scene. Seeing the Trade Federation was unexpected. I didn’t realize they’d been around that long. They were definitely trying to give it that Phantom Menace feel. Some complained about the fire in space, but I don’t give a shit. The last thing I’m concerned about in Star Wars is physics. I started to lose interest once I realized what the twist was. A good twin and a bad twin. Well that’s boring. Oh, and one of them is named Osha apparently. My reaction when I heard that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6M1OF_E0IA
The second episode was the one where I really started to lose interest. Way too much boring exposition. It started reminding me of The Phantom Menace again and not in a good way. And then it only got worse from there. The third episode I thought was abysmal. I was confused and stunned after sitting through it. The acting in the first two episodes I thought was mediocre (with the exception of Lee Jung-jae, he was good), but the acting in this episode was just atrocious and the dialogue wasn’t any better. The only part I found interesting was when the Jedi showed up, but even then it kind of just felt like they were doing the blood test stuff from Phantom Menace again. Space witches? Don’t care. I didn’t like the Night Sisters and they seem even less interesting than them. There was also little to no action in this episode, so on top of being confusing it was very boring.
The production also looked unimpressive, which is ridiculous for a show that cost almost as much to make as Dune: Part Two. Hell, apparently the first season of House of the Dragon cost less and from what I’ve seen it looks way better than this. This looks inexcusably cheap. The only thing that stood out to me as kind of interesting were some of the droid and alien designs, but they weren’t present much. The costumes, lighting, sets, and camera work were all subpar. Where the fuck did all the money go? Why do all these Disney Plus shows cost so much, yet look so lifeless?
But I’d probably be able to forgive those if the story or characters were interesting or fun, but they’re not. It’s very dull. I was liking the action, but not caring for the mystery. I just did not care about what was happening. The characters were not compelling to me either, they were bland to me. Lee Jung-jae was again the only saving grace as far as the cast went, and he’s good, but I’m not sure what all there is to do with his character.
Another thing I think that’s worth bringing up is that these shows are missing a very key element of Star Wars… John Williams’ music. That’s part (not all) of why a lot of these shows feel off. The music in most of these has been very forgettable.
I would say that this show is unfortunately more in the same category of quality as Book of Boba Fett or the Kenobi series. Hell, after that third episode, I was starting to think it might be worse. I was hoping after Andor the quality of these things would pick up, but I guess I was too optimistic.
Will I watch more of it? Maybe, but I don’t have “high apple pie in the sky hopes” to quote a Frank Sinatra song.
If George had just stuck to adding a few things to just the original movie and then made both versions of it available, I would have been fine with that. He wants to do a director’s cut, whatever. Let him do it. Watching that movie, it does look a little rough around the edges in some parts. So I can see why he would want to go back and mess around with it. But then he got carried away with the changes, adding things that didn’t need to be there and adding things to movies he didn’t direct, especially since Richard Marquand was dead by that point and couldn’t consent to it.
What he should have done is taken a cue from Ridley Scott with Blade Runner where he was very careful to make sure the new stuff integrated with the older footage, and only made necessary changes, like fixing up actual mistakes, not making new ones. Instead of making a cut that felt consistent with the original versions, it felt like you were jumping forward and backward in time. And the fact he couldn’t stop tinkering with it makes it even more frustrating. I refused to buy the 2011 Blu-ray set when I found out they added Vader saying “No” in Return of the Jedi. What a joke.
Obviously the worst part of these changes is we can’t even watch the original versions unless you have it on an outdated format or through fan restorations that are a bit difficult to find and not well known to some fans. And I’m not even saying this because of nostalgia either. The first versions I saw of these movies were the 2004 DVDs. I remember being really disappointed when I found out that I didn’t grow up with the theatrical versions. People watched those movies for 20 years before the re-edits. Whether Lucas liked it or not, people loved those versions and they’re the movies that made him rich and famous. It seems weird to just suppress it like it’s a bad memory.
It’s just common sense, people should be allowed to watch the version they want. Again, Blade Runner you can buy all versions of the movie on Blu-ray, even the workprint of it. Hell, Manos: The Hands of Fate and Plan 9 from Outer Space are available on Blu-ray, I don’t see why the theatrical cuts of Star Wars shouldn’t be.
I’ll fully admit, I’m a bit new to the EU. I only just started reading them a few years ago.
The Thrawn Trilogy is an obvious pick for a reason. Part of why I didn’t get into the EU until later is that a lot of it didn’t feel like Star Wars. These books did. There’s a reason people say this is the actual sequel trilogy. Timothy Zahn did a good job getting the main three right and making a logical continuation of the original trilogy. And it was nice reading Star Wars books that had good plots and didn’t just feel like some bizarre fan-fiction or exposition. It felt fresh too. Thrawn was a good change of pace from the usual Star Wars villains we got. After reading these, I kind of got obsessed with Mara Jade. She’s my favorite character that wasn’t in any of the films. Has a great character arc. I could probably just spend this whole thing talking about how much I like Mara Jade and the Thrawn trilogy.
I like some of the comics. The Marvel adaptations of the original films are really good. Legacy had some good stuff. I enjoyed Dawn of the Jedi (the comics, not the book Into the Void).
The New Jedi Order I liked. I know it’s divisive, but I again liked that they tried something different and ambitious. It felt like a big scale conflict that wasn’t just Empire vs Rebels or Jedi vs Sith again. Surprised they never adapted these books into a Clone Wars style TV show, I think that would have been good. I think it would have been a good conclusion if they had stopped after this series. The next two big scale series they tried doing after this weren’t very good.
Shadows of the Empire. Yeah, I know it was a marketing gimmick, but it had some good stuff in it. Was nice seeing Luke becoming more like his character in Return of the Jedi. More of Boba Fett. Prince Xizor and Dash Rendar were fun additions. It is a bit weird they made everything except a movie. They even had a fucking soundtrack for it. They should have made it into an animated movie or something.
The Han Solo Trilogy by A.C. Crispin I thought was very good. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the Brian Daley ones, but these ones I thought did a good job giving Han Solo some backstory. They were gritty, but fun to read. Was interesting seeing him slowly become the scoundrel we all know and love. I do find it a bit weird that they gloss over his academy days and meeting Chewbacca, though.
One of the biggest surprises to me was how good the Revenge of the Sith novelization was. It fleshed out the character motivations and improved the story and dialogue. With a lot of these I just read them and thought “these are fun”, but this one I actually thought was a very good book. Matthew Stover ended up becoming my second favorite EU author after reading this one (Zahn being number one obviously).
I’ll be honest, most of the prequel era EU books are kind of boring to me. They’re too dry and political. And a lot of them just seem like damage control to fix plot holes. They don’t really work great as standalone stories. I won’t say I hate them, I just can’t get into them. So yeah, I unfortunately don’t have as fond of an opinion on James Luceno as some do.
I also didn’t really like Darth Bane: Path of Destruction. I don’t really know why. Writing style, plot and characters didn’t do it for me, I guess.
A lot of people really like the Brian Daley Han Solo books, I just think they’re okay. I thought the A.C. Crispin Han Solo trilogy was much better.
One that I like that a lot of people don’t seem to enjoy is Truce at Bakura. For some reason I kind of liked that one. Thought it was a decent one-off. Granted maybe my expectations were low after reading shit like The Crystal Star or The Callista Trilogy.
I didn’t mind the first two books of the Jedi Academy trilogy. They were silly, but kind of fun to read. They were short at least.
I couldn’t really get into the X-wing books for whatever reason. I guess I’d just rather watch space battles than read them.
Kenobi by John Jackson Miller I didn’t really get into. Felt like the title character wasn’t in it enough. My same problem with Dark Lord.
Granted, some of these I haven’t read in awhile, and there’s some I didn’t finish, so make of that what you will.
The Callista Trilogy was really bad. Especially Children of the Jedi, that might be the worst EU book that I’ve read. I can’t believe they almost made Luke’s wife a ghost of a dead Jedi that took over the body of another dead Jedi. Thank fuck they wised up and had him marry Mara Jade instead.
I didn’t like the Legacy of the Force series. It reminds me a lot of the sequel trilogy where there were too many conflicting visions going on and it messes up the previous series. Sacrifice I especially disliked because of what happened with Mara Jade. My headcanon basically stops after the New Jedi Order books.
Champions of the Force was pretty bad. Jedi Search and Dark Apprentice were cheesy, but kind of enjoyable due to some of the ridiculousness, but Champions of the Force was just boring. They put Luke in a coma for most of it. So bad.
The Glove of Darth Vader and The Crystal Star I probably don’t have to get into. Batshit insane books those ones are.
Splinter of the Mind’s Eye I never liked. It’s only interesting as a curiosity, the actual story is crap. Never liked the depiction of Vader in it. They made him too bumbling. The Luke and Leia stuff is really hard to read in hindsight.
The Courtship of Princess Leia I thought had a really bad plot, and it introduced things into canon that I wasn’t really into like the Nightsisters and Dathomir. Thankfully it was just a weird one-off.
Dark Lord: Rise of Darth Vader was really disappointing for me. Most of it was surprisingly not about Darth Vader, despite what the title said.
The problem with a lot of EU books also is that the three main characters felt off to me in a lot of them. It’s like they wrote some other sci-fi books and then copy pasted a few Star Wars terms into them and called it good.
Godzilla vs the Smog Monster AKA Godzilla vs Hedorah- DVD
Godzilla vs Kong- Blu-ray/DVD
King Kong Two Disc Collector’s Edition- DVD
Just get Mark Hamill and have him do his Joker voice.
Okay, jokes aside, I think Jake Gyllenhaal would have been an interesting choice. This was around when Donnie Darko came out, so he can definitely pull off the dark side of Anakin.
At first I wasn’t sure about DiCaprio, but after thinking about it this was around when he did Gangs of New York and The Aviator, so I can sort of see it, since this was when he was playing more intense and dramatic roles.
Someone else said Heath Ledger, who I think would have been good. Probably wouldn’t have happened at that time, but it’s an interesting proposal.
Or hell, just do a few rewrites and I think Hayden would have been fantastic. He looks the part and he has some good moments when the dialogue isn’t getting in the way.
As the younger Anakin, Haley Joel Osment would have been a better choice than Jake Lloyd. Or Devon Michael (the other kid they had in the Phantom Menace making of.) His audition showed a lot of promise. Especially when he said the line “I won’t always be.” That part made me genuinely sad when I first saw it.
Which actors who played Imperial officers, other than Mark Jones, were ever on Dr. Who? I don’t believe Tom Mannion was. Michael Culver wasn’t. Was Leslie Schofield, Julian Glover, Pip Miller, Alan Flyng, or Michael Sheard on Dr. Who?
He wasn’t on the show, but Peter Cushing played The Doctor in two movies (Dr. Who and the Daleks, Daleks’ Invasion of Earth 2150 AD) if that counts. Although they apparently took the title too literally and his name is actually “Dr. Who” in those movies.
What I found terrible was her excusing him killing Tusken children as animals, and then she couldn’t believe Obi-Wan about the younglings.
That was also pretty ridiculous. And how you can tell Ewan McGregor is stifling laughter when he says the line “I have seen a security hologram of him killing younglings.”
There’s so many lines between Anakin and Padme that I could choose from, but these are the ones that stick out in my mind:
“You are so beautiful.”
“It’s only because I’m so in love.”
“No, it’s because I’m so in love with you.”
“So love has blinded you?”
This is the one scene I consider skipping whenever I rewatch that movie. It’s mercifully short, but that dialogue is painful. And it doesn’t even make sense either, it’s like a line or two got cut.
But the more baffling one is this one:
“Hold me, like you did by the lake on Naboo; so long ago when there was nothing but our love. No politics, no plotting, no war.”
The first sentence is already bad, but then it has to go the extra mile. No politics, no plotting, no war? Did Padme get knocked on the head and forget everything that happened in the previous two movies?
There’s one that I can’t believe nobody ever brings up. Although granted there’s a lot to choose from.
Padme: “You come from a warm planet, Ani. A little too warm for my taste. Space is cold.”
One idea I thought of was adding him to that meeting scene with the imperial officers. So instead of Tarkin saying that The Emperor dissolved the senate, The Emperor himself is there to announce it. And have him sitting in a chair, but not showing his face, like they did with Blofeld in the earlier James Bond movies.
Or I’d have an after credits scene where Vader goes to talk to The Emperor about how the Death Star was destroyed. He gives him a Cerveza Cristal.
What would be funny is if he sold the rights to Francis Ford Coppola or Steven Spielberg. See what kind of stir that would cause.
I rewatched them again a few months ago and my ranking changed slightly:
Re-reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest because I was thinking about watching the movie again recently.
I’ve gone back and forth on the prequels. As a kid I loved them, then later I started hearing that a lot of people hated them and it rubbed off on me for a few years. Now I’m kind of in the middle on them. I’m now of the opinion that they aren’t as bad as some people say they are, nor are they as good as some people say they are.
I did not like Rogue One the first few times I saw it. It just seemed like a boring and pointless spinoff that distracted from the sequel trilogy. It wasn’t until I saw Andor when I finally came around to enjoying it. I still don’t think it’s as great as some people think it is, but it’s a decent movie.
I loved The Last Jedi when I saw it in theaters, but it didn’t hold up on rewatches. I can only bear to watch fan edits of it now.
Very interesting. A bit long, but well-cited. I learned a lot about George from reading it. There’s too many tidbits I’d like to mention.
Just reading about the alternate directions they might have taken the movies was fascinating. Especially alternate ideas for Return of the Jedi and the prequels. One thing that was baffling to me is that originally Obi Wan was supposed to be the one that found Anakin, and Qui Gon didn’t show up in the movie until they got to Coruscant. That makes so much more sense, why would you change that?
Another idea I found interesting was the prequels were supposed to be structured differently. The first episode was about the history of the Jedi, the second was Obi Wan’s life story, and the third was Anakin’s life story. Maybe there was just too much material to cover in each of those, but that probably would have made the movies more focused.
There were also some telling quotes in there from George Lucas himself. At one point he mentions after making Return of the Jedi that he was thinking of selling Star Wars to someone else, almost 30 years before, you know. He comes across as very stressed and overworked in a lot of this.
There’s also the infamous quote from Harrison Ford criticizing George’s dialogue in the original movie. Apparently Ford regretted this comment after the movie came out. He said “I told George ‘you can’t say that stuff, you can only type it.’ But I was wrong. It worked.”
I’d put the screen shots in there, but I don’t know how.