xhonzi

So... are people sending him videos?  Of what exactly?

Gaffer Tape said:

But then the prequels came along and gave both Yoda and Palpatine lightsabers, so... yeah.... 

 Some of you are aware of my continued quest to shield my kids from the Prequels.  So it probably doesn't surprise you that we have a Galactic Heroes Yoda floating around the house that has had its lightsabre dremel'd off.

But I agree with you Gaff, (it's so great having a female Star Wars fan that shares my innermost thoughts on the subject (PM sent!)) I was shocked and dismayed to see Yoda and the Emperor with lightsabres.  It seems that they were certainly above or beyond this in the OT.  I thought it was kind of amusing that the Force Unleashed took it upon itself to show Palpatine losing his sabre before you fight him.  They seemed to want an OT style fight between you and the Emperor, but they felt they had to explain why he wasn't using a lightsabre.

U did it again!  Please!  Every1!  for the sake of C3PX, will u all stop using 'U' as a replacement for 'you', and 'ur' as a replacement for "your" and "you're"?!?!?

Thank u.

Really?  In 1977 I thought, "Well the lightsabre is fine and all... BUT WHERE'S THE TWIRLING!!??!?!??"

So... Gaff...

<Joey>  How you doin'?  </Joey>

I think my work here is done.

I am often tempted, when using my small and inaccurate cell phone keypad, to use "l33tsp3ak" but I decline because of how strongly u feel about this, C3PX.

Gaffer Tape said:

GARBLAHERGHEREFG!  I AM VERY ANGRY AT THIS 'OVERRATED' COMMENT!

I will now calmly sit down and do nothing because I cannot stand for this.

 Well, that was honestly a stronger reaction from C3PX's fan(s) than I expected...

Maybe I need to go rethink this...

How was 9?  It looked interesting, but I was somewhat concerned about the ~60% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

I just wanted to point out that I'm old enough to remember these, but that my parents were wealthy enough that I don't.

:)

Okay, so I'm sure that' not exactly true, but of all the Kenner figures and ships I had, I never had a mini-rig.

Well, since you asked.

I typed in ALL CAPS to imply that I was yelling.  You know, "dramatic effect."

Why are you typing in ALL CAPS?  And, "I'm PSYCHO DAYV" isn't a an answer.

C3PX said:

Personally, I think the word "overrated" is vastly overrated.

 C3PX-

YOU'RE OVERATED!  And YOU'RE BEGINING TO SOUND LIKE A SEPARATIST!

I'm not too late for this kind of mudslinging, am I?  It sort of looks like the coversation has moved on somewhat.

CO, you really need an Avatar.  You've been around too long to still look like a n00b upon first glance.

I had a good friend (when we were 20 or so) who was a big Star Wars fan as well and he was shocked to hear that ESB was my favorite.  RotJ was his.  I brought up some of my misgivings with it, and he said, "Yeah, well what about the 3-way battle at the end?"  I had to admit it was pretty good... but still not enough to bring the whole movie up to the level of ESB. 

Years later, I saw Revenge of the Sith.  I had strongly disliked (violently hated, really) Episodes 1 and 2 upon first and subsequent viewings.  The trailer for RotS made it look like maybe ol' George had learned his lesson and changed his stripes (again!).  So I went into the movie with guarded optimism.  That optimism was severly wounded about 5 minutes in when a pretty decent battle scene de-evolved into robotic mickey mouses crawling over Anakin's and Obiwan's ships. 

After the scene where (SPOILER ALERT FROM 2004) Anakin kills Dooku, I thought: Interesting comparisons to The Emperor's Throne Room in RotJ.  During the scene where Anakin is racing back to Palpatine's office, I thought:  Oooohhh this could be getting good.  It felt like when you sit on an old rollercoaster and it starts to slowly climb to the top.  It's actualy slow and uneventful, but it fills you with excitement for the ride that's about to start.  But then during what can only be called "the turn scene" I felt like the rollercoaster had crested the top, descened about four feet and then leveled off.  Then we asked to politely leave the ride. 

After the movie, my wife and I were discussing our relative dissatisfactions with the movie and specifically the "turn."  She asked me how it could have been better.  My mind instantly went back to the Emperor's Throne Room.  It gave me an all new appreciation for how good that scene really was.  When Luke uses the Dark Side while putting the smack down on Vader... that feels very real, believable and... smooth.  It comes from the characters.  Luke using the Dark Side something that comes from the character, something that's been under the surface the entire movie.  Anakin's turn is something dictated by the script.

So, I've come a long way in my appreciation for RotJ.  It was the most exciting to me as a young boy.  Leia in that bikini was good to me as a slightly older boy.  When school mates would talk to me about Star Wars, and they would ask me: "Which one has the teddy bears in it?  That's my favorite!"  I knew there was something off about RotJ.  But it has the best (nay, only) ship-to-ship battle in the series and it has an ending that is not only competent, but actually satisfactory.  And how many series can you think of that actually have a satisfactory ending?  The endings either suck, or the once great series begins to slip into ridiculousness or complete craptitude.  RotJ is great (my opinion of course), but it still had the fingerprint of "the begining of the end" on it.

Gaffer Tape said:

I suppose I can sum up ROTJ in a word:  competent.  Most of it is overwhelmingly... competently done.  The beginning is a train wreck.  The end is exhilarating.  Everything else in between is above average.  Overall, it feels competent.  Not great, not outstanding, but certainly competent.  The problem only exists when you stack it next to the sheer awesomeoness of the first two films.  It just can't measure up.  But when Anchorhead said that he sees it more in line with the prequels, I have to say that it would have to stand out as a gem among them at least.

OH! HAD THE PREQUELS BEEN MERELY COMPETENT!!!  WOE IS ME!

Again, it's not that these things are too bothersome in and of themselves.  I was simply listing them as some of the harbingers of doom that Lucas was going to take Star Wars down the dark path which has forever since dominated its legacy.

And the sarlaac belches after Boba Fett falls inside.

I am an RotJ fan.  On the whole, I like it and I think it's one of the few series ending movies that actually works for me.  That is to say, I think it delivers on the main "promises" made by the preceding movies.  The Luke/Vader scenes at the end are near perfect, in my opinion.  The space battle at the end has yet to be matched or surpassed in terms of complexity and excitement.

HOWEVER (and I know there are whole threads dedicated to it, so I won't go into much detail):

The burping?  The Tarzan yell? 

The Ewok's cuteness factor and makretability seemed to be weighed higher than their believability or story relevance.

The aliens in Jabba's place seem to be "cuter" than their Cantina equivalents.

And most importantly, Han and Leia seem to be less three dimensional than their ESB selves.  This can be blamed on the actors (Ford, primarily) but I think it was a sign of the story and style over characters problem that Lucas seemed to be developing.

I guess these are top of the list to me.  Like I said, I actually like RotJ a lot.  I have a hard time chosing between it and ANH for 2nd best of the trilogy.  But I still think it bears the signs that Lucas was starting to make movies for his 3 year old daughter as opposed to his 18 year old self.

Vaderisnothayden said:

And back in the old days I wanted new Star Wars films like most people. I didn't realize Lucas was going to (as I see it) go out of his way to make them bad movies. In retrospect I realize I should have been happy with just 3, but who knew? After the awfulnes of the SE we should have seen the writing on the wall, but before that?

As for ROTJ bashing, that will never fail to bewilder me. ROTJ is a great movie, the equal of the other two, and it has some of the best stuff in the trilogy.

 Some of the best of the trilogy and also some of the worst.  I don't need to go into detail here, but if the SE's were the writing on the wall, RotJ was George walking up to the wall, checking it for writability and considering just what he might put on it.

VFP,

I think I get what you mean.  I opened a thread a month or two ago with a similar idea.  Let's see... here it is! http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Prequel-Approval-Ratings-Speculation/topic/10641/

Like you said, after 16 years and lots of EU, there was no way to satisfy all Star Wars fans.  Realizing this is somewhat frustrating... but I think it can also be freeing.  The expression "Well, you can't please all of the people all of the time..." is meant to make you feel better about doing something that some people don't like.  Or, in Lucas's case in the mid 90s, setting out to make something that can't, regardless of your efforts, please everyone.  When faced with the reality you can't please everyone, you have to decide whom you will please.  I suppose poor filmmakers try to please 2 groups:

1) Themselves.

2) Whatever group that will make them the most money, as long as it doesn't extermely compromise group #1.

Lucas had the money to do whatever he wanted... but from a financial perspective, it's hard to say that a "good" prequel trilogy would have made Lucas any more money than the buckets of gold that he's made off of the saga since 1999.

No, I don't think it's our fault.  As I speculated in my post, I think that had the prequels been done well, 80% of us would have been fully satisfied.  As it is, I guess 40% of are... so he really missed the boat there.  The movies ARE terrible.  They are a lodestone around the neck of everything Star Wars.

The sad thing is I think I know myself well enough to think I'd probably be in that cranky 20% that wouldn't have been happy with anything.  There are parts of the EU that I really like- there are a couple things that I really really like, maybe even love.  But I'm a fairly critical fan, and I think I would have been folding my arms and spitting no matter what.  :(

So, how about this for an "exciting" or "cinematic" battle?  Because most other "realistic" battles I can think of would also be "boring" since they would lack the "simultanaeity" of all layers of battle.

THE BATTLE FOR THE LOOSELY DEFENDED PLANET X

---------------------

Red holds planet X.  They have held it for some time, so there are minimal defenses.

Blue shows up in force and the Space Forces (SF) take out Red's minimal space based defenses.  Blue starts to land Ground Forces (GF).

Red dispatches GF to combat Blue, while calling in reinforcement from nearby allies.

Ground battle wages.

Green responds to Red's call for help and Green's SF engage Blue in orbit around Planet X.

Green tries to land GF to help Red against blue on the ground.  Must be able to push back Blue's SF long enough to punch a hole through to the ground.

Red, Blue and Green call for reinforcements as necessary and as available.

Other forces show up or don't.  

Blue's ground objective is accomplished, or is defeated until all GF are dead or are able to call retreat.

Battle is over.

Done and done.

Crap.

I guess I've got to watch my phraseology.