vote_for_palpatine

The most sophisticated defenders of the PT are those who praise it by association - and Bob Clark's review of TPM drops big names in cinema and references all sorts of important social issues. The meaning is plain: "If George Lucas can deal with such meaningful topics in his films, you must understand that these are important pieces of work." What a brazen attempt to attach gravitas to such a lightweight movie.

For anyone involved, how complete is this project? 50% 70% 30%?

Just curious. I certainly hope all is well with the project participants.

TheBoost said:

vote_for_palpatine said:

Watched most of segment one - I  can't take that voice. I just can't. I don't care how spot on his analysis is - the presentation is intolerable.

 It's not spot on. It's whiny and mostly arbitrary.

The plot of TPM hinges on that the blockade by the Federation is banal (something to do with taxes... it really doesn't matter) and that it's a front for something sinister.

The dude in the video pulls five minutes out of rambling about 'space trade' and how he doesn't understand something that is ultimately not even a part of the plot.

To clarify, I meant to say "I don't care if his analysis is spot on" as in "He could be the most insightful critic in history and it would still be unlistenable." Not, "I thought his analysis was spot on but I didn't like listening to him." Sorry I wasn't clearer.

fishmanlee said:

vote_for_palpatine said:

All right. If someone has addressed this before, I apologize for fobbing this off as original thought. To the best of my knowledge, this hasn't been discussed before in any SW forum I've been to.

ESB: Vader wants Luke Skywalker desparately. He is using a ton of Imperial resources to track down this one guy. (Of course, we do not yet know about their blood ties) True, finding Skywalker means finding the Rebels, but the course of the movie makes clear that finding the Rebel base is the second bird - Vader's one stone is aimed at Luke. (If that weren't the case, why did not Vader's ship try to follow the Rebel fleet out of Hoth instead of the Millennium Falcon?)

he didnt know luke was his son ye- oh wait it says so in the crawl

Your post seems to be designed to cut my argument down at the knees. So let's look at your post:

"he didn't know luke was his son yet" is not what I said in the first place. I said "we do not yet know" as in "we the audience". Please read more carefully in the future.

Then you say that the blood relation is established in the crawl. What, this crawl? (from imdb.com)

Title card/crawl: It is a dark time for the Rebellion. Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them across the galaxy. Evading the dreaded Imperial Starfleet, a group of freedom fighters led by Luke Skywalker has established a new secret base on the remote ice world of Hoth. The evil lord Darth Vader, obsessed with finding young Skywalker, has dispatched thousands of remote probes into the far reaches of space...

What there says Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father? If by that you are implying the question, "Why else would he be searching so intensely?", I am obliged to reply, "So I supppose by that logic that Jabba the Hutt must be Han Solo's father."

Thanks for playing though.

If you think about it, all math is just dealing with ones. There is no such entity as ten - it is a collection of ten ones. Two plus two is, in reality, one plus one plus one plus one.

Watched most of segment one - I  can't take that voice. I just can't. I don't care how spot on his analysis is - the presentation is intolerable.

I imagine George Lucas taking a break from whatever the hell he does these days to look at this thread with his friend Ralph, who is secretly an OUT kind of guy.

Lucas: Hey Ralph, look at this.

Ralph: (reads in a kind of mumble to self) Hey wow, the nerve of that guy. (Ralph doesn't sound convincing, but Lucas doesn't notice)

Lucas: No, no, I think this guy has a point. And you know, I've been meaning to fix that whole "I know" line in Empire anyway -

Ralph: George, I don't think this guy means-

Lucas: (pontificating, oblivious to Ralph's sheepish objection) - See, Darth Vader is the greatest character ever invented in the long history of everything. In that scene, he is shrugging off his failure and reestablishing his ethos - it all relates very closely to Kurosawa and auto racing.

Ralph: (anxious to change the subject) Umm, what's the latest on Red Tails?

Lucas: Never heard of them. So clearly, in my last draft of Empire, I didn't spell out that Vader is again taking control of the situation. I mean, can you blame me, what with having to work with that that limp fish of a nothing film Kersh made? Jeez, the way he did it, it was like Interiors meets Star Trek.

Ralph: (at a loss for words) Hey...uh George...you in the mood for a burger or something?

Lucas: Ralph, can you wait here a while? I'm going to put on some Holst and write the pre-draft for my next draft of Empire.

Ralph: S-sure.

(Lucas leaves via the swinging door and comes back through it as it swings shut with a sheaf of script in his left arm)

Lucas: Go ahead, buddy. Read it. You'll love it - big Star Wars fan like you. Go on! You're the lucky first to read it!

Ralph: (extremely reluctant) "Attention all Imperial milit-"

Lucas: You're doing it wrong! Read the direction, too. And Vader speaks in all caps! Don't forget that.

Ralph: "Vader enters an open area on Bespin. All eyes are on him. He commands the sort of attention usually reserved for Lady GaGa and the Pope."

Lucas: HAH! Topical! I am so funny!

Ralph: "Vader wordlessly sticks out his right hand while looking straight into the picture and someone out of frame hands him a megaphone." They have megaphones in Star Wars, George?

Lucas: I've got design working on the Star Wars equivalent now. Anyway, continue! Come ooooonn! I wanna heeeeeeeear it!

Ralph: "ATTENTION ALL IMPERIAL MILITARY PERSONNEL!"

Lucas: Faster, more intense!

Ralph: "ATTENTION ALL IMPERIAL MILITARY PERSONNEL! NOW HEAR THIS! THIS IS DARTH VADER, DARK LORD OF THE SITH, ONE OF ONLY TWO IN ALL THE GALAXY! I HAVE, AS EXPECTED, BESTED LUKE SKYWALKER IN A LIGHTSABER DUEL AND, RATHER THAN SURRENDER TO ME, SKYWALKER PLUNGED TO HIS APPARENT DEATH; HOWEVER, MY COMMAND OF THE FORCE HAS PRESERVED SKYWALKER FOR NOW - IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT WE CAPTURE HIM AT ONCE! TO BEST ACCOMPLISH THIS, I MUST BE RETURNED TO MY STAR DESTROYER, THE EXECUTOR, AT ONCE! FURTHERMORE, THERE SHOULD BE NO LACK OF PREPAREDNESS ONBOARD THE EXECUTOR WHEN I HAVE ARRIVED THERE." (ruffles through script) George, how long does this go on, anyway?

Lucas: (smiling, pleased with his latest effort) Here's a hint: Who is John Galt?

All right. If someone has addressed this before, I apologize for fobbing this off as original thought. To the best of my knowledge, this hasn't been discussed before in any SW forum I've been to.

ESB: Vader wants Luke Skywalker desparately. He is using a ton of Imperial resources to track down this one guy. (Of course, we do not yet know about their blood ties) True, finding Skywalker means finding the Rebels, but the course of the movie makes clear that finding the Rebel base is the second bird - Vader's one stone is aimed at Luke. (If that weren't the case, why did not Vader's ship try to follow the Rebel fleet out of Hoth instead of the Millennium Falcon?)

Boba Fett tracks down the Falcon in Vader's employ, and Vader captures Han and company simply to lure Luke to Bespin. Vader only freezes Han to see if it will work on Luke. When Vader is done with Leia and Chewie, he decides...to just leave them behind on Bespin. Sure, they can't leave Cloud City, but he can't be bothered to take two highly decorated heroes of the Rebellion captive. No, he captured Leia once - it's quite enough. In fact, Vader doesn't taunt the Princess as he once did on the Tantive IV - he doesn't even spare a single word for her. Only later does the incredibly powerful and shrewd Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith, change his mind. "Yeah, I guess I'd better take the girl and the Wookiee slave with me, Palp will be probably get mad at me if I don't." But Vader doesn't feel anything for having captured two key Rebels - all they were to him was LukeBait!

Fast forward...

ROTJ: There is no reason to believe that Darth Vader doesn't still want Luke to join him, right? ESB established, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Vader wanted to partner up with junior and take over the galaxy. Vader has shown that he will use Luke's friends as bait to snare him. Vader has worked with Boba Fett before, and lo and behold, Fett is on Tattooine when ROTJ starts, and he can see for himself that all of Luke's closest friends, all important Rebels, are inside Jabba's palace. Vader knows good and well where Tattooine is. I presume Fett has to have Darth Vader on speed-dial -

SO WHY THE HELL IS VADER NOT IN JABBA'S PALACE WAITING ON LUKE?!? HOW INCREDIBLY, STUPIDLY, MIND-BLOWINGLY INCONSISTENT TO ESTABLISH DARTH VADER AS SOME SORT OF MASTER OF FORCE-POWERED DEDUCTIVE REASONING ("That's it. The Rebels are there!") WITH A HUGE BONER FOR LUKE'S FORCE POWERS IN ONE MOVIE, THEN IN THE NEXT MOVIE, WHEN THE PLOT CONVENIENTLY GETS ALL OF LUKE'S FRIENDS (LukeBait) TOGETHER ON ONE PLANET, A PLANET VADER KNOWS QUITE A LOT ABOUT BY THE WAY, HE'S NOT SITTING AT THE HEAD OF A DINING ROOM TABLE???

There is no room for debate here, ladies and gentlemen. The much-discussed Han rescue sequence, broken down brilliantly by Gaffer Tape, wouldn't have happened at all had the Darth Vader of ESB appeared in ROTJ. What, was the kinder, gentler Vader of ROTJ just giving Luke his personal space? Letting him "find himself"?

My personal SW universe is starting to exclude movies made after 1977.

Boost: I haven't seen this yet, but you're right, that is one annoying thing that Confused Matthew does: play dumb just to get his point across. If he's not playing dumb...hoo boy. Then why am I watching you, Matt?

In the library. In Victoria, TX.

This is my Top Five "pre-eighteen" list, chronologically presented.

1. Kate Jackson & Cheryl Ladd

I must have been six years old tops when I watched Charlie's Angels back in the day. I was glued to KJ all the time, but Cheryl Ladd was the first girl I can recall dreaming about:

2: Karen Duffy

I must have first seen her on Johnny Carson when I was 14-15. I was blown away. She had an amazing sense of humor and one of the best faces I've seen to this day:

3. Shawnee Smith

1989's Who's Harry Crumb? had me smitten. I'm glad she had a nice run in Becker - she's a great comic actress.

4. Madeline Stowe

I was seventeen when The Last of The Mohicans came out. I think I'm still in love:

5. Jennifer Connelly

The Megan Fox of twenty years ago (and a worthy successor to Connie Sellecca) , JC will be hot in her sixties. I first saw her in Career Opportunities:

Too many to get into so I had to keep it to five.

Every part played by Harvey Fierstein. FTW.

Jane Monheit

Corrine Drewery (Swing Out Sister)

James Ingram

I listen to mostly instrumental music and most singers don't get my attention. These three always have.

Octorox said:

vote_for_palpatine said:

That's the way the world in general is going. No one's right, no one's wrong, good people are oppressors/exploiters, bad people are misunderstood victims of circumstance. Authentic hero/villain stories are rare, but they will sell (Dark Knight, for one) in large part because the fictionsphere is chock full of liquid morality. People don't inherently believe all of that relativist stuff, but that's more or less all that's out there right now.

 

Because in the real world there are no heroes and villians. There is no black and white. Not to say that the psychology of the characters in the prequels was realistic or rational, it wasn't. But moral relativism is a fact. people's behavior is based on the their life experiences and circumstance, and the way you described moral relativism as "good guys = oppressors and bad guys=misunderstood" is a gross oversimplification and in itself black and white. No one is born into this world as "evil", we all have both good and evil in is, it's just that sometimes one side takes over. While the original "Star Wars" was pretty black and white, the OT as a whole was all about moral relativism. The old Jedi, caught up in their dogmatic way of seeing the world, were sure that Anakin was "evil" and thats that. Luke however, saw his whole person and knew that somewhere, the "good" in his father was there, buried deep down but there. When you reduce the human psyche to "good guys and bad guys", "us and them", you turn human beings into symbols, which is okay for pure popcorn entertainment and fictional characters but It's far removed from any remotely true representation of humanity or realism. You're dealing with archetypes or symbols then, not people. But I digress...this board is about Star Wars, not moral relativity...although none of the threads in this board seem to be able to stay on topic :p

 I had no idea.

So then it must follow that mass murderers such as Stalin were not truly committing acts of evil - our biased, Western perception of what is good and what is bad made Stalin appear to be evil. He was, in reality, no worse than Roosevelt or Truman. I think I've got it.

Most of us have a collection of some sort of entertainment medium. TV series on DVD, audiobooks, regular books, video games, movies, CDs, etc. Some of those artists or fictional worlds touch us more than others. I guess the OT touches most of us more than other series of movies or any other medium. I could be wrong, but to be sure we all feel pretty strongly about the OT - or at least we did at one time.

There was a sixteen-year gap between SW-branded movies. During that time, we had a substantial EU output which, while it sometimes left us wanting more, seemed on the whole to be of much greater quality (in lesser quantity) than the second, post-1999 EU output. And that first EU movement, I believe, strongly entertained the bulk of the old fans.

I would argue that by the time The Phantom Menace rolled around, Lucas was in no position to make a good film. By then, us OT fans had enjoyed the SW experience to the point where it was personal. And the only way to satisfy already sated fans was to make sure that the new films never strayed from our collective perception of what a SW film was at its essence. Lucas was at a great disadvantage going into the PT - he hadn't been as ensconced in the SW universe as we were, IMO. Furthermore, it's hard to figure out what large groups of people are thinking.

I'm bolding and underlining the next sentence of this paragraph to be as clear as I can: I am not trying to excuse George Lucas' woefully embarrassing return to the world of SW. Lucas probably couldn't have reached us OT fans with the PT, but his haphazard attempt missed the mark so badly, it's as though he wanted to piss us off. (With the release of the GOUT, he was open about it) Lucas seemed to think that an easy-to-follow story plus action and explosions plus superficial ties to SW (lightsabers, Jedi, various alien species, returning characters) equals a full return to the glory days of SW. Sadly, the endless stream of cash the movies made probably convinced him he nailed it.

But this isn't about Lucas. I'm exploring the possibility that maybe, with our strong and personal love for the OT having been in place for sixteen years, maybe no one could have made the PT great. Now, if Lucas had chosen to go forward in time, rather than backward, perhaps it might have worked. Maybe. Your thoughts?

Apparently, GI Joe is making dozens of leaf bags full of serious cake.

Thanks, General Public!

- you think a salt-and-pepper beard + a flannel shirt = sexy

- you talk so weakly that your voice frequently drops into a kind of whispery rattle

- your favorite film is a six-way tie between:

1. Revenge of the Sith (2005)
2. A New Hope (2004)
3. The Empire Strikes Back (2004)
4. Return of the Jedi (2004)
5. Attack of the Clones (2002)
6. The Phantom Menace (1999)

- you've got a Marcia Lucas dartboard

- you can recall every interview George gave on the subject of a six-part Star Wars saga, dismissing those fake ones where GL supposedly said that there were going to be twelve or nine films

- you've ruined more than one relationship by shouting, "Faster! More intense!" at the worst possible moment

- you often inject insulin in tribute

- you were bored out of your skull watching It's A Wonderful Life for its disgraceful lack of CGI

- when you approach a red traffic light and you perform the "Force-manipulate" gesture, hoping to change the light to green.

Thanks for the link, Anchorhead. That was a well-argued, well-written piece.

I love the idea of a boycott as a form of protest, but there are two problems with that strategy:

1) Boycotts would have to gain traction with the public at large - and that chunk of the populace is least likely to worry about this dumbing down of popular cinema. I really do believe that most moviegoers are just looking for a nice two hour vacation from home and don't care too very much about the quality of the film. Film buffs care, but they are badly outnumbered.

2) When mostly every movie at the local Cinema 12 is a CGI-crapfest shoot-em-up, which one of those features is going to get the business end of the boycott?

The only way to turn this around is slowly and gradually. When you go out to rent (or log on to NetFlix), look for story-driven films. Look for character-driven films. Don't look for "name" actors - in fact, the films might even be better in their absence. And when you find films you do like, recommend them with enthusiasm to friends, co-workers, relatives, etc. Steer clear of anything that remotely resembles a "blockbuster".

That's about the only solution I can offer.

George Lucas plot twist, c. 1980: The dark-cloaked inhuman villain of Star Wars, the evil being who struck down Obi-Wan Kenobi with his blood-red Sith blade, the ruthless blackheart who killed his officers for failure and pursued the Rebels around an entire galaxy...is Luke Skywalker's father.

George Lucas plot twist, c. 1998: The queen disguises herself by taking off all of her makeup and attending to her stand-in, as though she is not the queen.

George Lucas plot twist, c. 1982: The Rebels gather every available capital ship and commence an attack on a half-finished Death Star...and it turns out their spies were permitted to learn the coordinates of the new DS and the shield deactivation code just so the Emperor could set up a trap and painfully reveal that the superlaser on the DSII is fully operational.

George Lucas plot twist, c. 1998: The Sith mastermind behind the Trade Federation blockade of Naboo is Senator Palpatine with a cloak pulled over half his face. Innumerable Jedi living on the same planet can't even begin to figure this out.

G E Predator said:

From my point of view, Star Wars was not destroyed in anyway.  Not by Jar-Jar or Lucas.  I just think some people over-react because the prequels didn't turn out to be what THEY had expected, and that the classic OT has updated with CGI.  Lucas just wanted his movies to be the way that he had envisioned them.  In my eyes, Star Wars has been the same for the last 27.6 years of my life: an excellent plot about the hero's journey.

One can, as in the present example, use the "point of view" argument in such a way as to negate any discussion of content. After all, there's no way to see things through your eyes, so it may indeed be true that you see no erosion in quality, no fan-pandering, no rudderless direction, no meaningless stories, no unconvincing characters.

One can also live in denial if one wishes to. I left the theater 10 years ago convincing myself that I had just seen another great Star Wars movie. But because I have no allegiance to every declaration George Lucas makes as though this is the word of God, I couldn't ignore all of the shortcomings provided by Lucas' return to the world of SW.

If your point of view is that there is no noticeable gap in quality between TPM and SW (or ESB or even ROTJ, for that matter), then I suppose this response is about as necessary as a fight scene designed to show off the Jango Fett suit. But I couldn't resist.

From my point of view, the moon is constructed entirely out of blue cheese.

From my point of view, Elvis Presley is still alive on a secret island in the South Pacific, swapping Samoan hotties with JFK.

From my point of view, there are reptilian humanoids walking among us.

The beauty of it is that you cannot convince me that my point of view is not truthful to me. Therefore, I win!