A Black Falcon Wrote:Is that really so much worse?

Dark Jaguar Wrote:I thought you were with OB1 on the "George Lucas can do no wrong" front there GR.

Great Rumbler Wrote:You're thinking of OB1 and Fittisize:

http://www.tcforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5800&highlight=star+wars

Dark Jaguar Wrote:However, looking back at some of those scenes in Star Wars, I just gotta wonder exactly why I needed to see two people wrestling with some giant alien pack mule. I just wondered why that was needed. It wasn't that they tried to "liven up" some areas that should have been populated, but the fact that all of them had to be goofing around and calling attention to themselves with "look at me" antics.

Quote:I don't think this change makes much of a difference, negative or positive. I don't mind it, sorry.

Quote:And no, the Prequel Trilogy was definitely not awful. Each one was better than the last, and Ep. III is about as good as the original trilogy films, in my opinion. Sure it has some issues, but so does everything, and it's pretty good for the most part.

Quote:Having not seen more than a minute or two of any of the PT in at least 3 years, since Episode III came out on DVD, I decided, because morbid curiosity conquered reason, to take a trip down memory lane and see how things have changed.

Watching Phantom Menace, I couldn't help but feel that it wasn't nearly as bad as I remembered it being. There were some pretty good scenes, decent acting, decent writing, and it still looked pretty good despite being 10 years old. Then, the inevitable: Jar Jar Binks appeared on screen. I'd completely forgotten about him. Instantly, I realized just why I have a mild hatred for the movie despite most of it actually being fairly decent. Jar Jar is beyond horrible and unbelievably annoying. Also, the kid is kind of annoying too, but I could have overlooked that. Jar Jar kills what would have otherwise been a fluffy, but fun movie. Could have done without the Gungans as a whole really. The lightsaber battle at the end is good stuff.

AoTC has a really awesome chase scene near the beginning where you get a pretty good look at what Coruscant is like. There's a really awesome battle near the end where the clone army shows up for the first time. I didn't rewatch any of the scenes in the middle, but I don't think I'm being out of line in saying that it drags a lot and features some very terrible and cringe-worthy, even vomit-worthy, scenes that are meant to be "romantic" somehow. Some of the highest highs of the PT, but also, by far, the lowest lows. Watch the first twenty minutes and the last twenty minutes. Forget that the rest ever existed.

Revenge of the Sith opens with some awesome space battle footage that unfortunately gets drowned out by Obiwan and Anakin messing around with some missiles and some robots that latch onto Obiwan's ship. This is easily one of the film's biggest faults. They had the perfect opportunity to rival the space battle from Return of the Jedi and they completely blew it. Putting that aside, it doesn't start out too badly. Unfortunately, things get bogged down a bit in galactic political wrangling that no one cares about. But it gets tossed after a while and the clones totally own a bunch of jedi, which is a high point of the movie and the trilogy. There's also a scene somewhere in there where Padme and Anakin stare out at the city and some very un-John Williams music plays in the background, which is kind of awesome because it actually feels like Lucas is trying to be a real director for a minute. It passes quickly though. One of the low points is Anakin becoming evil incarnate after about two seconds and then killing a bunch of kids because he's so HARD. The final battle is pretty awesome and is one of the movie's high points. Then Padme dies of a broken heart and ruins the ending.

A Black Falcon Wrote:I don't think this change makes much of a difference, negative or positive. I don't mind it, sorry.

And no, the Prequel Trilogy was definitely not awful. Each one was better than the last, and Ep. III is about as good as the original trilogy films, in my opinion. Sure it has some issues, but so does everything, and it's pretty good for the most part.

Great Rumbler Wrote:Young Anakin destroying that Trade Federation ship by accident was still pretty painful to watch, though.

Quote:What hurts those last two PT films is the way Anakin is made to be a whiney self centered bitch rotten from the start, his contrived love story with Padme is just painful to watch, The little Anakin of the Phantom menace is annoying too but tolerable compared to his adolescent stage & Jar Jar binks .

Great Rumbler Wrote:1. Trying Too Hard [repeating memorable phrases from the OT, lots of obvious OT references everywhere, and the humor]

Quote:2. The Humor [in TPM it was Jar Jar being horribly clumsy all the time, in AotC it was C-3PO suddenly spouting puns for no reason; in general just a lot of slapstick humor that was rarely present in the OT aside from a little bit in Return of the Jedi and the added Mos Eisley scene in A New Hope]

Quote:3. No Memorable Action Scenes [the battle with Darth Maul and the pod race are pretty good, as well as some scattered scenes in the other two movies; overall the action scenes are just flat, devoid of impact. They're poorly paced, poorly set up, and lack for imagination and sense]

Quote:4. Bloated [there are way too many scenes and lines of dialog that only exist to pad out the movie or to simply state the obvious; scenes range from minute, like the deathsticks dealer in Attack of the Clones, to massive, like the Tatooine segment from The Phantom Menace which took up nearly a third of the run time but served no purpose other than to introduce Anakin]

Quote:All Star Wars movies have a million accidents or cooincidences that are key to the plot, that's nothing special about just ep. 1...