...while stroking her shoulder with his fingernail and avoiding eye contact...

You know something interesting? Usually we have relatively intelligent discussions on these forums. But once we get talking about movies, the average IQ seems to drop about 20 points. It's strange. On the other hand, it explains why the IMDB forums are the way they are.

Maybe if you didn't smell like crap.

Oh Snap!

I can't make Sin City a great movie.
I can't make the Lord of the Rings a great movie.
I can't make Equilibrium a great movie.

Neither can their respective directors.

The only difference is, I never tried to.

The problem with the prequels: THE REDUDANCY.

George pretty much made TPM one of the most redudant films ever. The only things it set up was the fact that they find Anakin and Palpatine begins his rise to power. Nothing else has any effect whatsoever on the rest of the SW universe.

Gungans, Maul, Naboo Invasion, Podrace, etc. All those "breathtaking" "bad *** " overhyped pieces have no real point to relate to the rest of the movies. They're just there. There was no "Phantom Menace" from our point of view and anything that made TPM "cool" is now out of date by the time of AOTC. A 10 year timespan between 2 movies? That's pretty alienating.

We go through all these things like Anakin whining about being a Jedi, Obi-Wan wanting to train Anakin, the Sith being all over-powering and whatnot. Then the next movie, Anakin's already a powerful Jedi, Obi-Wan's basically fed-up with training Anakin and the Sith are pretty much the same as usual. Except now instead of some acrobatic double bladed saber weilding funky dude they have some old guy who tries to talk his way out of things. I'm glad we got some development there, oh..we didn't. Oops. We're just supposed to 'go with the flow'. Now Sith Lords are the equivelent to a new head Imperial Officer each movie for the OT.

So...what was the point of Maul again? To be the Vader of the prequels, to create some devastating effect on the plot? Nope, to show off some lightsaber effects. Did Maul's presence/death impact the rest of the characters? Who knows, it's 10 years later and nobody cares anymore.

Even Qui-Gon's death wasn't worth much, sure it granted Obi-Wan knighthood but from the looks of it, he was headed there soon anyways.

As for Qui-Gon's midichlorian speech? Bupkis. They must have just realized Qui-Gon was talking about sperm.

"Plot & Character development for Dummies" might've really benefeited George...

Then we get Jango Fett in AOTC. And the point of this was...? He was supposed to be some major blinged-out bad *** who becomes the template for the Clones and Boba Fett. Does his presence really have any effect on the trilogy whatsoever? Not really. The Clones could've been made from anyone considering how gene-manipulated they were. And Boba could've not been included at all. So why was he included, perhaps to set up how Boba becomes such a notorious bounty hounter? Nope, Boba's not even in the next one. Too young to begin the hunting.

So where was his purpose? To be like Maul was to TPM, along with what Boba Fett was to the fan community when he was that uber-mysterious bounty hunter.

Raping your childhood? An exaggerated and quite a pointless stereotypical comment. How about wasting what appreciation you had for the originality and mystery that surrounded Star Wars? Yeah that's more like it. Granted they're enjoyable movies, but they may as well be sci-fi channel specials.

^^ An intelligent post

Midichlorians always pissed me off. They could have at least tried harder to make the name not sound like mitochondria (which happen to be symbiotic organisms that live in our cells and help us do amazing things like metabolize glucose more efficiently).

Maul was there to show what the Sith used to be. Mindless warriors. His death at the hands of Obi Wan shows that the dark side is the wrong path in two ways:

-Obi Wan gets pissed off and uses that dark side to fight. Maul beats him. Obi Wan is hanging from the thing, and he thinks, centers himself, and owns maul.

-Maul just wants to kill things. He's a madman. He doesn't think. If he hadn't been so focused on killing Obi Wan, he would have noticed the lightsaber laying next to him. He wasn't being mindful.

There was a Phantom Menace. It is Palpatine. They think he's a good guy. He's a bad guy. He's manipulating both sides for his own good. I don't think I need to further elaborate.

The Naboo invasion is important because it created a large sympathy vote for Palpatine in the senate. He would have never become Emporer had he not told the Trade Federation to invade his home planet. This seems important to me.

Midichlorians are important too. It shows that the Jedi are acting as though it is some kind of science. This or that kid is good to be a Jedi because he's got a high midi-count. They realize this to be an error with anakin. They understand it is better to simply be one with the living force. After Qui Gon explains all that to them they learn to maintain physical presance. This seems important to me.

The Sith are not the same as usual in AotC. Palpatine went from training a madman to training a politician. He said to himself "Eh, maul couldn't think. I'll train someone who can." The Sith are evolving. This seems important to me.

Jango. Why not Jango? The clones have to come from someone, why not make it a character who echoes throughout the OT. If we didn't have Jango then we'd have people complaining about not enough OT-PT continuity. Boba doesn't have to do much. He supposedly learned alot from his dad while he was still alive, and I'm sure we don't really need to fill in the blanks on what happened afterward. Jango is the host for the clones. If the host had not been a bounty hunter trying to kill Padme, then Obi Wan would have never tracked him down to the clone facility. The Republic would have never known about Palpatine's secret army, and Yoda would have never brought them to the Geonosis arena to help everyone. All of the characters would die, and there would be no OT. This seems very important to me.

So yeah, do I need to elaborate any further?

I think the reason at least some people don't like how the prequels have been done was that Lucas basically destroyed some of the little details (or bigger details) from the EU.

I've enjoyed the prequels for the most part. There are some pretty poorly done things in both TPM and AotC, but it's not like anyone can really do anything about it. The way I view the SW universe is by taking parts of the story from the prequels, and parts of the storyline from the EU. For example, I substitute the EU origin of Boba Fett for the prequel origin. Part of the reasoning I have behind doing this is that the prequels seem to be targeted towards kids more than the originals were, and so a lot of it becomes a bit too family-oriented, in my opinion. He could have easily made up some other bounty hunter, scrapped the "father and son" idea, and the story would've only needed minor adjustments to work.

I'm actually looking forward to RotS, because to me, it looks a heck of a lot better than the first two. Of course, I'm usually pretty optimistic when it comes to Star Wars-related things. Anyone else planning on buying the game the day it comes out?

Which is another reason why he was pointless, it would be one thing if he was FINALLY beaten in Episode III, but he was just some "freak of the week" sort of character that made no significant difference. Obi-Wan using the "dark side" to kill him doesn't even make a difference at the end of the movie, as in no scoldings from Yoda or anything. The whole special effects lightsaber battle becomes completely pointless at that point.

Compare:
TPM's 10+/- minutes of lightsaber battling that ends without consequence. Doesn't effect the plot nor the characters.

ANH's 1-2 minute lightsaber clash that ends with a very significant consequence. Heavily effects the characters, especially Luke.



From -our- (the viewer's) point of view there was no "Phantom Menace" because it was solved from the very beginning that Sidious was Palpatine. It was a pointless "mysterious" sub-plot that was even ridiculously carried into AOTC. There was no reason to have him cloaked and half his face hidden, especially not during his Sidious scene in AOTC. He really keeps up the cloak thing for 10 years and even when no one's around?



True, there was that part I overlooked.



Qui-Gon's ideas of the midichlorians are simply shrugged off by the Jedi council though, making Qui-Gon theory more of an outcast idea that isn't even touched on later. It was important during TPM because it could've gone somewhere but like Qui-Gon, after his death it became a redudancy. It had no effect whatsoever within the Jedi Council nor did it have anything to do with anything happening later. Ie: Palpatine surely would've brought it up during AOTC's manipulation of Anakin if it had any significance.



If the Sith had survived for a thousand years, it's hard to believe that with the 1 master 1 apprentice thing that they would have just trained killers like that. By having Maul immediately killed, it becomes evident that he was just meant to be eye-candy with no real character development in mind.

Dooku really could have replaced Maul's character in TPM and been more of a fighter than a politician. It would've had a more dramatic effect considering that he trained Qui-Gon, so him actually killing Qui-Gon would've meant something. Obi-Wan wouldn't of needed to kill him considering as mentioned Maul's death served no purpose.

If Dooku went from being more of a fighter in TPM and then grow to be more intelligent and manipulitive in AOTC it would've been actual character development. Instead it's Sith-of-the-Week.



I don't see where it means that a bounty hunter has to be the template for the Clones considering that Jango is obsolete. The only reason Obi-Wan was able to track him down was because of the weapon Jango used. Obi-Wan even learns of the Clones before learning Jango's identity, so again Jango's inclusion is pointless. The only important thing was that Jango led Obi-Wan to Geonosis, but considering the dart Jango used was to lure Obi there, a clue leading to Geonosis could've been planted there anyways.

Though Jango was at least a more interesting character than Maul, I just think it's ridiculous that Lucas concentrated on two characters so much when they both could've been replaced by minor changes.

Generally keeping out of the thread, but I am curious... what about the whole "Obi-Wan's master and father-figure dies, and now he has the responsibility to train one of the most bloody strongest potential Force blokes around" angle? I wouldn't hesitate to call that a consequence of the plot and the characters.

Here's what I got from the prequels thus far

Both movies in totem: "Look what we can do now with fancy and really expensive computers! See guys! Look!"

Dark Side characters: Where the **** did they come from? Granted Maul was better introduced/explained than Dooku. Dooku just popped up on Geonosis and, to me, merely provided the red stick in the lightsaber battle.

The dying mom scene: I press the "next chapter" button on the DVD

Anakin & Padmé fireplace scene: I couldn't press the "next chapter" button fast enough!

Pod racing scene: "Look guys! See! Fancy! PAY ATTENTION! I PAID MILLIONS FOR THIS CRAP AND YOU WILL WATCH!"

Midichlorians: The Force went from something spiritual, religious, and metaphysical to something that can now be studied under a microscope.

Jar Jar Binks: If only this country practiced justifyable homicide...

Anakin Skywalker (so far): I refuse to believe that one of the most well-thought, enigmatic, and just damn bad-*** villians of all of cinema comes from a whiny teenager.

All right, that's it for now.

Actually you're mistaken, the force goes from something they think can be studied under a microscope, to something which is enigmatic etc...

Good god, this is turning into another dissertation on the meanings behind random literature. You guys look far too far into these movies. I go to a movie to be entertained, only very rarely do I see any symbolism in the movies, and most certainly not because of things like Darth Maul not noticing a light saber. Hey, I know, maybe he didn't effing SEE the light saber. Could be that.

And Bill--you forget, what is and isn't a great movie is 100% subjective. Plenty of people liked Gigli for chrissakes, and that's definitely not a masterpiece in my mind.

In a side note, I thought LotR was long-winded and boring.

1-3 don't pack the same awesomeness as 4-6. Main beef: midichlorians, Jar-Jar, that Hair thing, sand. 4-6 had funky space fights which I always thought were funky... and Harrison Ford running around in white constrictive armour shouting "mayday, mayday, reactor leak, very dangerous" is bloody amusing.

I don't have the time or motivation to read this whole thread. The reason I would contend that George Lucas did rape my childhood is not because of the crappy prequel movies (which I went to see and I will go to see). It's because of what he did to the Star Wars DVDs. The DVDs he's selling are not the Star Wars movies from my childhood, and not only that, he has chosen not to even make available the original versions. That's crap, I don't want to see some crappy rehash with blatantly obvious computer generated additions that include freaking fart jokes. I just want to see the original movies on DVD.

I frankly can't believe what utter crap the prequels are compared to the OT. That's all i have to say about that. I'm pretty much to the point of not recognizing them as Star Wars movies. To me, star wars ended with the OT.

Fixed.

Meh. I think most of us have problems with some of his OT changes. I also think most us like other changes/additions. And I personally don't understand why (logically) he can't release the original versions. I understand that it can be argued that he is bravely sticking to what he feels should be the official version but screw that. Cave into demand and make countless more millions by releasing the OT in unmolested form to us Star Wars geeks (although that would be breaking a previous promise).

Amazingly, I own FOUR presentations of the three films. 3 VHS films of no particular significance, VHS letterbox unaltered OT collection, the letterbox VHS SE collection, and now the letterbox DVD collection. Hmm, just realized he only wants the films viewed as he intended them and so that includes crappy full screen DVDs?! :p

Truth be told, I was thinking along the lines of Brian that, if anything, the juvenile changes to the OT are far more offensive than anything you don't like about the contemporary trilogy.

yeah and that is where the "raped my childhood" comments are directed anyway... the altered OT... which wasn't altered just one time... BUT ONCE MORE FOR THE DVD RELEASE

in my memories greedo never fired his blaster, boba fett's voice was not the dude who played jango, anakin's ghost was played by someone who was probably the guy who was fixing the toilet at the time, the ending had the ewok song

if i had the money i'd seriously consider aquiring the laserdisc versions and having them converted to DVD

My friend has those. And I can't convince him to burn me a
copy...I mean give me a good deal on them. Yes. Legally.
*sigh*

One thing about the whole whiney Teenager thing. I'm pretty damn sure that having your pregnant wife die (supposedly at your hands), having everything you love taken away from you, having your butt kicked by a guy thats been practically your father for 15 odd years, losing several limbs and being burned in a crisp in a volcano has got to be a little bit of a damper on your spirits. I'm sure that all those things probably made him the sorta evil overlord we all know and love.