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Star Wars: For All Your PT, OT, ST, & AT-AT/ST Needs


DaveSumm

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2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

I guess it would have been better with Wookiees instead of Ewoks, but that's just a question of taste.

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with Ewoks. The #1 change I'd make to RotJ if I could would be to link the Jabba sequence to the main plot. Have Jabba reveal that he's not afraid of Leia's "powerful friends" because the Empire has plans to deal with them, and that warning is why the Bothan spies go digging for info. #2, put Jabba's lair on a different planet; there's no reason he needs to be based on Tatooine, and Lando and Chewie spend months trying to track it down.

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Ewoks are fine.  I'm not sure the scene where Luke makes C3PO float would work with Wookiees.  I liked the Ewoks and Jedi quite a lot when the movie came out.

3 hours ago, felice said:

The #1 change I'd make to RotJ if I could would be to link the Jabba sequence to the main plot. Have Jabba reveal that he's not afraid of Leia's "powerful friends" because the Empire has plans to deal with them, and that warning is why the Bothan spies go digging for info. #2, put Jabba's lair on a different planet; there's no reason he needs to be based on Tatooine, and Lando and Chewie spend months trying to track it down.

I like this.  The Jabba stuff as it is now is a fairly long opening.  I am not sure how Lando and Chewie spending months searching would be any different than the story as is, though.  The searching itself would not be onscreen unless it was it's own film...which could have been cool even if I dislike Lando.

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2 hours ago, Inkdaub said:

I like this.  The Jabba stuff as it is now is a fairly long opening.  I am not sure how Lando and Chewie spending months searching would be any different than the story as is, though.

The searching isn't a change, it's that relocating Jabba provides a reason for needing to search. There's clearly a significant time jump between the two films, and they know Fett is taking Han to Jabba, so if he's based in a palace on Tatooine, what takes them so long? It makes more sense if the location of his lair is a closely guarded secret and it could be anywhere in the Outer Rim.

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Would it not also work to say that Jabba happens to have palaces scattered throughout the galaxy, and he moves around them regularly in unpredictable and guarded ways? Hence taking time to track him down to the right place.

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13 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

Holy fuck that sounds so much better than RotJ. And would’ve given us WAY more to work with for sequels. I do enjoy watching RotJ, but on paper it really is pretty weak. Act One: undo a plot point that only existed in case Harrison Ford didn’t come back. Act Two: Ewoks. Act Three: Luke goes back to face Vader, exactly as he did in Empire. Rest of the cast: remakes A New Hope.

JJ gets a lot of stick for inexplicably resurrecting the Emperor, but I do struggle to think of what else would bind these films together as a complete work. It’s an insidious problem with the sequels from the outset: are they really sequels? Or just some stuff that happens later? Did the six films need sequels? To address what?

I think the sequels could have worked as sequels to the PT more than the ST. So the Empire has fallen and the Republic restored, but what do they do to avoid the problems that led to the fall of the Republic? The EU books went into this in some detail (in many cases before the PT was even made) but the sequels completely elide it in favour of getting back to plucky rebels up against the system, with the same problem. How does the Resistance prevent the same thing that's happened twice in under fifty years?

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#2, put Jabba's lair on a different planet; there's no reason he needs to be based on Tatooine, and Lando and Chewie spend months trying to track it down.

This is something that was more inexplicable at the time but makes more sense now. Jabba is based on Tatooine, Han works for Jabba, that's why Han is there so Obi-Wan and Luke can run into him in the first movie and Han meets Jabba face-to-face in the first film (which was cut, but I think it was always in Lucas's mind to restore that scene). So that all tracks in retrospect. At the time it was a bit odder, as it felt like maybe Greedo could have tracked Han down.

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5 hours ago, Inkdaub said:

 

I like this.  The Jabba stuff as it is now is a fairly long opening.  I am not sure how Lando and Chewie spending months searching would be any different than the story as is, though.  The searching itself would not be onscreen unless it was it's own film...which could have been cool even if I dislike Lando.

Unless JJ did it and then you could show a montages of the two flying around to random planets like some sort of travelog for the first ten minutes or so...get a little more third movie in the series symmetry...

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23 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Really I don't think you can just handwave all the problems and deficiencies of these movies away by citing 'ambition'. Tommy Wiseau was pretty ambitious when he made The Room.. doesn't mean it isn't a glorious mess. 
 

I'd watch the hell out of a Tommy Wiseau Star Wars film. Chances of it sucking ass would be 99.999999999999999999% but if it somehow captured The Room magic on a Star Wars level budget... You'd have the most enjoyable viewing experience of all eternity ready to go.

23 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Fair enough.
Nonetheless, I enjoyed Lucas trying immensely.

And I'm glad for you!

I have to admit that I'm more drawn to @Heartofice side of the equation. RotS is the best of the prequels and the one I most enjoyed on initial viewing, but I'm probably more favorably disposed too it because it just isn't as weak as its predecessors. That doesn't mean it's a good film imo, just the least poor of the bunch.

Sort of like a reversed RotJ. In the OT you had two awesome films (for different reasons) and one weaker installment. For the PT it's reversed, you have two dismal outings and one stronger installment. But it varies between people.

 

I will say to chime in on another discussion here, that for me the Ewoks are clearly the main problem with RotJ. There are other smaller ones, but if I could pick one to fix than I would take that one. An army of Chewbacca's rising up against their slavers would be amazing. At least you could believe them beating back the Stormtroopers with primitive weapons.

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The Ewoks have grown on me over the years. I used to find them offensively stupid, but I now have such nostalgia for their silly little costumes and little growls that I actually quite like them.

I also get that Lucas was probably trying to show how the little guy was rising up against the empire, makes it more obvious if they are literally little.

Still, it’s not great, and it makes the movie too childish in those parts and it doesn’t hang together very well. But give me an Ewok over a Gungan any day of the week.

 

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15 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

In the OT you had two awesome films (for different reasons) and one weaker installment. For the PT it's reversed, you have two dismal outings and one stronger installment.

I actually agree with this.

15 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

I will say to chime in on another discussion here, that for me the Ewoks are clearly the main problem with RotJ. There are other smaller ones, but if I could pick one to fix than I would take that one. An army of Chewbacca's rising up against their slavers would be amazing. At least you could believe them beating back the Stormtroopers with primitive weapons.

I'm also with you on this one.

I have to say though, that I love to hate the Ewoks (not unlike many people love to hate the PT methinks :P). They ruin part of the movie imho, but otoh I love the idea of cute-evil aliens. There was even a comics (Apocalypse Endor) that partly exploited that, and The Essential Guide to Warfare apparently mentions the fact that their arrows were laced with nerve toxins (leading to horrible death by suffocation).

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1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

The Ewoks have grown on me over the years. I used to find them offensively stupid, but I now have such nostalgia for their silly little costumes and little growls that I actually quite like them.

I also get that Lucas was probably trying to show how the little guy was rising up against the empire, makes it more obvious if they are literally little.

Still, it’s not great, and it makes the movie too childish in those parts and it doesn’t hang together very well. But give me an Ewok over a Gungan any day of the week.

 

See I like the subversion in Phantom Menace; unlike the Ewoks, the Gungans get their asses whipped.  They are forced to surrender or all die.

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21 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

See I like the subversion in Phantom Menace; unlike the Ewoks, the Gungans get their asses whipped.  They are forced to surrender or all die.

The Ewoks are better than the Gungans because they seem to be a largely alien culture with limited ability to communicate with the human/human equivalent species (surely there's a term for this class of being in SW?).  The Gungans are essentially human level equivalent aliens who all appear to be incompetent, stupid and outmatched, which is why their characterization has a gross racist/colonialist vibe. Not to mention that the humans apparently DID colonize their planet?

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25 minutes ago, Vaughn said:

The Ewoks are better than the Gungans because they seem to be a largely alien culture with limited ability to communicate with the human/human equivalent species (surely there's a term for this class of being in SW?).  The Gungans are essentially human level equivalent aliens who all appear to be incompetent, stupid and outmatched, which is why their characterization has a gross racist/colonialist vibe. Not to mention that the humans apparently DID colonize their planet?

Jar Jar appears to be incompetent and stupid.  Why do the others exactly?  they have an understanding of tactics and their battle plan is actually pretty smart given their technological disadvantage, they understand they are just a delaying force. They are certainly outmatched based upon their Isolationism in terms of weaponry.  They aren't enslaved or treated poorly by any of the humans on Naboo that we see; up until the events of the Phantom Menace there doesn't appear to be much contact at all between the two.

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People seem to have rewatch TPM here. The Gungans are the more technological advanced and more powerful species on Naboo. The Naboo were no match for the battle droids, the Gungans are. The Gungans also have a more naturalized technology, they fit in with nature, are self-sufficient, and really don't need the Naboo for anything until a common enemy threatens them both.

Jar Jar Binks is not representative of the Gungans ... as can be seen during the entire battle sequence.

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1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

I actually agree with this.

I'm also with you on this one.

I have to say though, that I love to hate the Ewoks (not unlike many people love to hate the PT methinks :P). They ruin part of the movie imho, but otoh I love the idea of cute-evil aliens. There was even a comics (Apocalypse Endor) that partly exploited that, and The Essential Guide to Warfare apparently mentions the fact that their arrows were laced with nerve toxins (leading to horrible death by suffocation).

Well, the entire point there is that a technological inferior species can overpower/defeat a more techological advanced enemy. That is Lucas telling the Vietnam story. And I'd say it works better with the Ewoks than it would have with Wookiees because the latter would have been seen as bad ass from the start, whereas the Ewoks clearly aren't.

And it is not really that one would have to imagine the Ewoks as 'winning a war'. They were just taking out a limited number of Imperial troops on the ground, who - in their overconfidence -, were not prepared to fight the indigenous teddy bears nor were they very familiar with the terrain.

The way the battle is depicted is completely unrealistic, of course, considering the Ewoks had no time to even properly prepare for battle. But if you ignore that you can make the thing work if you want to.

12 hours ago, felice said:

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with Ewoks. The #1 change I'd make to RotJ if I could would be to link the Jabba sequence to the main plot. Have Jabba reveal that he's not afraid of Leia's "powerful friends" because the Empire has plans to deal with them, and that warning is why the Bothan spies go digging for info. #2, put Jabba's lair on a different planet; there's no reason he needs to be based on Tatooine, and Lando and Chewie spend months trying to track it down.

Connecting Jabba more with the Empire would be great. Going back to Tatooine in ROTJ I actually like, especially because of that fun talk Luke has with blind Han about his home planet.

Anakin shouldn't have been born on Tatooine ... or the Jedi shouldn't have encountered him there. For him a place like Nal Hutta or Nar Shaddaa would have been a much better setting.

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Whether people hate or like the prequels (I’m in the latter camp), one has to admit that Lucas was original. One need not like the Anakin backstory and the politics of the prequels to see that Lucas was ambitious in his themes and character arcs. JJ Abrams OTOH is a hack. All he did was recycle the OT in TFA. As for the third movie, I don’t know what the hell he’s doing... it’s all over the place, no continuity in character storylines or any storyline, no logic, and everyone and their grandmother has immense power. 

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