Tendo City

Hide the children!

How bout that now.

That's good though, ep3 should be the darkest/mature end of the spectrum for the Star Wars saga. There aint no happy ending here.

lazyfatbum Wrote:There aint no happy ending here.

How much you want to bet people are going to bitch about that?

OMG, that was terrible! Yoda didn't jump out at the last minute and save the day!

People will find something to complain about in it. I won't though, I'll be enjoying the final installment in a series of a great movies.

There was plenty to complain about in the first two "new" Star Wars, but I am hopeful for this one. Even though I didn't like Phantom Menance or RotC I still trust Lucas enough to churn out a good finale.

TPM and AotC were GOOD movies! Good movies!

I know! Lot's of people say otherwise, though, but that's because they're dumb tools who dislike CG [even the amazing CG in the past two movies, though many will claim that it looks incredibly fake and Lucas should have gone with miniature models and puppets] and wanted the new movies to be exactly like the old movies and who want to complain about everything.

Now, I didn't like the past two as much as the first three, I'll admit that. There were some thigns about the movies that could have been better, but they were still good movies.

Episode III might be the best SW film of them all, but I will bet my life on that it will become just as popular to hate as the previous two films. No matter how good they are, idiots all across the country will hate it because either they didn't understand it or because popular opinion tells them that it's not okay to like them.

It's how these things work.

I just want to know one thing, how can people complain about how the CG looks in Attack of the Clones? I hear people all the time saying "the CG in AoT looked SO fake" or "Next time Lucas needs to get someone besides ILM that knows how to make CG that actually looks good" or my favorite "Teh CG in Attack uv da cLoneS lukes lyke karp!!! guhuhgughguhu!!".

Because criticizing something you are ignorant about makes you feel like you know what you're talking about. Basic psychology.

I had no problem with the CG in the Star Wars movies. That isn't why I didn't like them. The reason I didn't like them was because there were no likable characters. Anakin was an annoying kid, and the Princess was boring as hell (although not too bad looking). Obi Wan is pretty cool, but he can't hold the movies together by himself. I'm looking forward to the next movie because Anakin will actually become interesting, and a lot of original trilogy characters will probably show up. I do love the action sequences in the new films, but it's tough to care about a story when you don't care about the characters.

Say what you will, GR or OBI---as advanced as CG is today, it is not as realistic as a real, live actor. That said, Episode III looks a lot better than I'd fretted, and I can't wait to see it.

Who said CG is photorealistic?

You've argued that it's very close sometimes.

Yes and that's true.

Depends. CG is great for space ships and buildings. Even aliens since we don't have anything real to compare them to. But with people it's no where near good enough yet.

Well, there weren't any CG "people" in Star Wars, at least not in the same way as the Final Fantasy movie.. It does have CG clonetroopers which, as far as I'm concerned, looked as "real" as the stormtroopers in the original movies. Okay, so maybe there are a one or two things that you can point at and say "That doesn't look exactly right", but on the whole they looked incredibly realistic. All of the rest of the CG was fantastic.

You saw a ton of CG humans all throughout Episodes I and II, yet no one complained about it because they didn't even know there were CG humans.

Goodie both epiosde III and my pay cheque to look forward too!

I bet it will be picked apart by bashers regardless , You got some already saying it sucks before its even out.

Personally I liked episode I-II Overall,Sure Jar Jar was annoying but get over it !Episode II was way to long and loves scenes to corny but get over it!

One thing I hate about the bashers and Cynics they both hate George Lucas and fans who see the prequeil fans.

Quote:You saw a ton of CG humans all throughout Episodes I and II, yet no one complained about it because they didn't even know there were CG humans.

You can kind of tell when you look closely at those scenes knowing that the people are CG, but if you don't come in knowing that, yeah, you'll never notice.

The special effects of the new films are definitely better than the original trilogy. But the original trilogy had hand crafted models and sets and alot of TLC and imagination. With the new films anything is possible, there are no boundries and nothing to work around. So the film's lack that polish of "we tried it a thousand different ways and here's the best results" that the original trilogy has.

People wanted more of Star Wars, and what they got was something original and new that is based in the Star Wars universe. But Ep3 is going to close that gap.

There were an incredible number of limitations that Lucas and co. had to deal with in the making of the prequels. They had much more freedom, yes, but they had to deal with time contraints, money constraints (seriously), and even technology contraints. You should really watch some of the documentaries on the dvds and read some of the interviews with the people at ILM.

Also, most people don't realize this, but the prequels used tons of models and practical effects. They were just blended so perfectly with the CG work that nobody noticed. So they assume that it was all CG and little else. Not true at all.

They even used models in Attack of the Clones, one place in particular was the Geonosis battle arena. A lot of that was simply a model someone sculpted not CG.

Kamino was a big model.

Ep 1 and 2 had amazing graphics. Great eye candy. But they weren't good movies. THe characters weren't all that exciting, they were confusing to anyone who wasn't a complete Star Wars nerd, and dragged on and on and on. LotR shows how to make good, interesting, and exciting movies that people will gladly watch for 4 hours. So there.

The prequels were more complex than the LotR movies which had very simple characters and an even simpler plot (ring is bad, destroy ring). And of course, it is very popular to hate on Star Wars. That's what happens, something is popular at one time but then people start to resent the popularity, and replace that with something else that's fresh and new and can be used as a comparison for bashing. That happens over and over. For people that do not care about movies that much it is not worth trying to have an opinion that greatly differs with public consensus. Star Wars is, essentially, Nintendo. There are so many parallels it's not even funny.

The real ending...



I didn't hate him THAT much, but would admit that a lot of the criticism he got was justified... just not all of it. :)

Really, I think I disliked him the most the first time I saw TPM, and didn't mind him as much on repeat viewings...

Go ahead and give us some of those parallels, because I don't see how Nintendo and Star Wars are comparable. I don't hate the movies because other people do. There are plenty of movies I hate even though other people love them or vis a versa. I kind of resent that you are insinuated that I'm just following the crowd by not liking the Star Wars movies. I even said I am looking forward to the next film. I hated the Star Wars movies because the characters were bland, and the story was only interesting because it revealed a few things alluded to in the original trilogy, which are the reasons I'm assuming most people hated them for.

I wasn't referring to you, Derek. Just the American movie viewing public at large.

Here's how SW and Nintendo parallel:

They were once the most popular thing there is. SW an extremely popular movie series and Nintendo the most popular video game company of them all. Their popularity soar until they get too popular, and as soon as an alternative comes around (in SW's case, The Matrix, Spider-Man, and then LotR; in Nintendo's case, Sony), and it becomes very popular to hate the once-former kings of their dominion. The quality does not greatly change, but they don't grow up with their audience. Former SW fans from the 70's expect the new movies to not be made for a younger audience even though the originals were; former Nintendo fans hate that Mario and Zelda are still "kiddy".

Whenever something becomes popular for a long enough period of time, people eventually start to resent it. That happens all of the time, in every popular medium. I can guarantee you that Sony will not be the most popular console manufacturer in ten years. Not unless they completely crush any chances of competition.

OB1, I recreated some of the special effects of the new star wars films and we pulled them a part in school, as well as the original trilogy. Which, was a far greater challenge to create than the new star wars films. Where the new trilogy improves on special effects, the original trilogy forged them and completely changed special effects forever in film, TV and eventually video games.

The original trilogy was much more difficult to make and because of the limitations of the time it forced the creators to rely on their imaginations to pull it off. There were alot more constraints with the original trilogy than the new one, especially financially, technologically and time limitations. More so than any or all of the new films.

Well of course! Lucas made the first movie on a super tiny budget and had to create a special effects company that would come up with entirely new methods of practical effects right on the spot! I'm very well aware of how difficult A New Hope in particular was to shoot.

But that doesn't mean that they didn't have great difficulties with the prequels. And while it's true that you have to be more creative under greater restrictions, that doesn't mean that the end output is any less imaginative in anything but its execution. Naturally, a person with very limited art tools is going to have to be more creative with how he creates his painting than someone with the finest set of tools in the world, but that doesn't mean that the man with the crappy tools is going to make a finer painting. Just that he had to go about it in a more creative way. There are challenges in both restrictions and seemingly unlimited freedom. In the end it comes down to how each person is affected by different types of challenges. More on the practical side or more on the purely imaginative side?

That's true, but wouldn't you say that the original trilogy has more a more overall polished look and feel?

I mean, everything in the original trilogy was hand crafted down to the tiniest details and it really showed. In the new trilogy, just as one example; in ep1 Yoda is a puppet in almost every scene, in 2 he's cg in every scene and they just dont match at all.

But weren't all the characters in Star Wars pretty black and white? Empire = Bad, Rebels = Good, oh, the bad guy felt bad for what he did in the end, and oh yeah, the emporer can shoot lightning and die via being thrown in a big hole....

That said, still fun movies...

So like, this guy is cool. Double lightsabers, lightning grabbin', and can shoot like blasters from a distance, and also strange force fields and stuff. I guess they didn't need Luke's permission to toss a Sith in Kingdom Hearts.

More polished? Not at all. I don't buy into that whole "CG is the devil" bullshit that's so popular right now. It's really sad how CG artists and programmers get no respect today.

But the puppet stuff, yeah I totally agree. Which is why I'm 99% positive that in a future video release of TPM Yoda will be replaced with the CG model.

I dont think CG is krap, especially in SW. but the different Yodas just looked off to me and that's one example of how the new series feels unpolished in my opinion. One bad thing about the CG though is that they never light it dramatically, CG is always so brightly lit from all sides that it's practically glowing.

In Jedi, the lighting of Yoda's face when he dies is awesome. If he were CG, I bet he'd be flately lit for that scene which would detract from the emotion.

What on earth are you talking about?





The lighting is perfect.


And again, they couldn't do a CG Yoda at the time of Episode I, which is why he was a puppet. They originally wanted him to be CG from the very beginning of the prequels but couldn't get it right until Episode II, where he had to be CG.

Will we ever find out what species Yoda is?

If mass constipation is the cause of Palpatines sudden uglyness.

Not in any of the movies, no.

It's not like some great mystery that needs to be revealed by the final movie. Yoda's just an alien who happens to be the coolest Jedi in the universe.

Yes.

Episode III will shed a whole new light on him, however. :) Not in the way you guys are probably thinking though.

I don't know, I thought his lighting in Episode 2 was pretty good.

...

Haha, word-play.

Haha.... you suck. :p

Nuh-uh! You do!

PFFSSHH!

Wow, it's actually getting positive reviews...

http://movies2.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/mo...ar.html?hp

Quote:Some Surprises in That Galaxy Far, Far Away
By A. O. SCOTT

Published: May 16, 2005

CANNES, France, May 15 - With "Episode III - Revenge of the Sith," the "Star Wars" cycle at last comes to an end - or rather to a middle, since the second trilogy, of which this is the final installment, comes before the first in faraway-galaxy history even though it comes later in the history of American popular culture. Like many others whose idea of movies was formed by (and to some extent against) the galactically later, terrestrially earlier "Star Wars" trilogy, I was disappointed by "The Phantom Menace" and "Attack of the Clones." So I approached the recent press screening of "Episode III" in New York warily, and perhaps a little wearily, though to balance my own trepidation I brought along two fans whose enthusiasm in 2005 easily matched my own in 1977, when I was a little older than they are now and when "Star Wars" - oh, all right, "Episode IV - A New Hope" - landed in my hometown.

I was anticipating, at least, a measure of relief: finally, this extravagant, ambitious enterprise, a dominant fact of our collective cultural life for nearly 30 years, would be over. But I was hoping, a little anxiously, for more. Would George Lucas at last restore some of the old grandeur and excitement to his up-to-the-minute Industrial Light and Magic? Would my grown-up longing for a return to the wide-eyed enthusiasm of my own moviegoing boyhood - and my undiminished hunger for entertainment with sweep and power as well as noise and dazzle - be satisfied by "Revenge of the Sith"?

The answer is yeth.

This is by far the best film in the more recent trilogy, and also the best of the four episodes Mr. Lucas has directed. That's right (and my inner 11-year-old shudders as I type this): it's better than "Star Wars."

"Revenge of the Sith," which had its premiere here yesterday at the Cannes International Film Festival, ranks with "The Empire Strikes Back" (directed by Irvin Kershner in 1980) as the richest and most challenging movie in the cycle. It comes closer than any of the other episodes to realizing Mr. Lucas's frequently reiterated dream of bringing the combination of vigorous spectacle and mythic resonance he found in the films of Akira Kurosawa into American commercial cinema.

To be sure, some of the shortcomings of "Phantom Menace" (1999) and "Attack of the Clones" (2002) are still in evidence, and Mr. Lucas's indifference to two fairly important aspects of moviemaking - acting and writing - is remarkable. Hayden Christensen plays Anakin Skywalker's descent into evil as a series of petulant bad moods. Natalie Portman, as Senator (formerly Queen) Padmé Amidala, to whom Anakin is secretly married, does not have the range to reconcile the complicated and conflicting demands of love and political leadership. Even the more assured performers - Samuel L. Jackson as the Jedi master Mace Windu, Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jimmy Smits as Senator Bail Organa (note the surname) - are constrained by their obligation to speechify. Mr. Lucas, who wrote the script (reportedly with the uncredited assistance of Tom Stoppard), is not one to imply a theme if he can stuff it into a character's mouth. Ian McDiarmid, as Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, who transforms from a rancid political hack into a ruthless totalitarian before our eyes, gives the most powerful performance; Yoda, the spry green Jedi master voiced by Frank Oz, some of his finest work in this film does. (R2-D2 is also in fine form).

Anyway, nobody ever went to a "Star Wars" picture for the acting. Even as he has pushed back into the Jedi past, Mr. Lucas has been inventing the cinematic future, and the sheer beauty, energy and visual coherence of "Revenge of the Sith" is nothing short of breathtaking. The light-saber battles and flight sequences, from an initial Jedi assault on a separatist stronghold to a fierce duel in the chambers of the Senate, are executed with a swashbuckling flair that makes you forget what a daunting technical accomplishment they represent. Some of the most arresting moments are among the quietest - an evening at home with the Skywalkers, for example, as they brood and argue in their spacious penthouse overlooking a city skyline set aglow by the rays of the setting sun, or a descent into the steep, terraced jungle landscape of the Wookiee planet. The integration of computer-generated imagery with captured reality (in other words, what we used to call movies) is seamless; Mr. Lucas has surpassed Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg in his exploitation of the new technology's aesthetic potential. Even the single instance where the effects don't quite work - a climactic battle superimposed on a filmed eruption of Mount Etna - suggests not a failure of vision but a willingness to try what may not yet quite be possible.

But every picture, however ravishing, needs a story, and the best way to appreciate how well this one succeeds is to consider the obstacles it must surmount in winning over its audience. First of all, though there are a few surprises tucked into the narrative (which I won't give away), everybody knows the big revelation of the end, since it was also the big revelation at the end of the previous trilogy: Darth Vader is Luke's father. We also know, for the most part, which of the major figures are going to survive the various perils they face. So an element of suspense is missing from the outset.

More than that, the trajectory of the narrative cuts sharply against the optimistic grain of blockbuster Hollywood, in that we are witnessing a flawed hero devolving into a cruel and terrifying villain. It is a measure of the film's accomplishment that this process is genuinely upsetting, even if we are reminded that a measure of redemption lies over the horizon in "Return of the Jedi." And while Mr. Christensen's acting falls short of portraying the full psychological texture of this transformation, Mr. Lucas nonetheless grounds it in a cogent and (for the first time) comprehensible political context.

"This is how liberty dies - to thunderous applause," Padmé observes as senators, their fears and dreams of glory deftly manipulated by Palpatine, vote to give him sweeping new powers. "Revenge of the Sith" is about how a republic dismantles its own democratic principles, about how politics becomes militarized, about how a Manichaean ideology undermines the rational exercise of power. Mr. Lucas is clearly jabbing his light saber in the direction of some real-world political leaders. At one point, Darth Vader, already deep in the thrall of the dark side and echoing the words of George W. Bush, hisses at Obi-Wan, "If you're not with me, you're my enemy." Obi-Wan's response is likely to surface as a bumper sticker during the next election campaign: "Only a Sith thinks in absolutes." You may applaud this editorializing, or you may find it overwrought, but give Mr. Lucas his due. For decades he has been blamed (unjustly) for helping to lead American movies away from their early-70's engagement with political matters, and he deserves credit for trying to bring them back.

But of course the rise of the Empire and the perdition of Anakin Skywalker are not the end of the story, and the inverted chronology turns out to be the most profound thing about the "Star Wars" epic. Taken together, and watched in the order they were made, the films reveal the cyclical nature of history, which seems to repeat itself even as it moves forward. Democracies swell into empires, empires are toppled by revolutions, fathers abandon their sons and sons find their fathers. Movies end. Life goes on.

I didn't give any notice to the negative reviews of the past two movies, and I don't give any notice to the positive ones of this movie.

It's nice for it to be recognized, though.

Well cant be worse then "Sky captain" and the world of boredom!

The jedi were meant to be preachy!

Its just Yoda was funny in doing it! Obiwan was all cool being dead and all!

We didnt get to see all of Lukes training, So really people are just whining about learning things Lucas skiped over in OT.


I think unlike before, We will expect the worse and get the best! Atleast I hope, So the level of desapointment wont be as high like before.

Well if Lucas can pull off one movie equal to empire strikes back he might just redeem himself.

So far Episode 3 has about 85% at Rotten Tomatoes with 52 reviews.