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

[Derfel Cadarn]

14 minutes ago, Rhom said:

In the old EU, its actually the destruction of the Executor that is said to have truly decapitated the command structure of the Imperial Navy.  They said that as Vader's flagship, most of the up and coming officers with a promising path to leadership were assigned to the ship and when it took a nose dive into the Death Star it destroyed the command structure up and down the ladder.

Partly, but Timothy Zahn wrote the main reason as being that Palpatine was partly controlling the fleet with the Force, and it fell apart when he died. The Jedi clone Joruus C’Boath had the same ability which Thrawn utilised.

Which I hated. The kotor games introduced it as a rare ability that Jedi Bastila Shan had called Battle Meditation.

 

[Werthead]

 

Quote

It's fine to passionately hate the PT, mainly because of the bad writing and acting. ROTS has some OK moments and is clearly the best of the three movies. 

This is one I more or less disagree with. I think RotS is in some ways the most disappointing of the three, because the iconic events we'd been waiting to see, in some cases for 27 years, were either weird or outright dumb. Luke and Leia's mother dying from a broken heart ("You can die from that?", "Well, apparently"), one of Darth Vader's very first words being "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO" and the epic Palpatine/Yoda confrontation consisted of...them throwing chairs at one another. And that long-awaited Anakin/Obi-Wan fighting in the boiling lava ending with Anakin mistiming a somersault and the infamously heartless Obi-Wan deciding to leave his former best friend to die in unspeakable agony rather than put him out of his misery? Oh, and Lucas deciding that the film had to end with everyone in the exact same places they were when the OT began, even though there was 19 years between them? Why?

The film also has actively some of the worst acting in the three. We know Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman are both pretty good actors from too many other films to count, but they're both phoning it in. McGregor's "I...can't bear to watch," is one of the worst line deliveries I've ever seen survive into a finished film (I mean, were there multiple takes and that was the best one?) and Portman's telecommunicating in her performance from the second moon of Neptune. The only person who's enjoying himself at all is Ian McDiarmid, who's performance is pure 150% unadulterated pure ham.

It's not as actively shit as Attack of the Clones but with Clones we didn't really have many expectations of what was going to happen, save the Clone Wars were going to start. Sith we had very high hopes for and it fell well short. From any standpoint I think Sith is a better movie than Clones, but it failed to meet the much higher expectations riding on it. Sith might have the best individual scene in the trilogy though (the silent moment as Anakin decides on what to do), since Lucas shuts up and lets Williams do the heavy lifting there.

Sith did get redeemed first by the novelization (Stover's powers to turn shit into gold may be greater even than Filoni's) and later on the Clone Wars, which made a lot of the left-field plotting and muddled characterisation make sense, but you really shouldn't have to rely on ancillary material to make your film look good.

I think it varies immensely depending on your Jar-Jar Tolerance Level (JJTL) but The Phantom Menace I've found to stand up better on rewatches. Liam Neeson is actually giving his all and Lucas isn't completely disgracing him with the dialogue, Darth Maul is a solid villain by the PT's standards primarily by not saying anything and the film is weirdly snappy. Both Clones and Sith have this problem with scenes that go on for a lot longer than is necessary, so if the scene is bad (as many of them are) they drag on. Menace has much shorter, snappier scenes and it has a firmer grip of pacing. It also has Brian Blessed, who tends to improve everything he's in, if only marginally (I have since seen Brian Blessed give live re-readings of his dialogue in the film, which is quite something). It also has the best score of all nine Williams-scored films IMO. I mean it's still not a good film, as such, but I think it tends to get undersold when people call it the worst of nine, or even the worst of the PT (Rise is definitely a much weaker film as well).

If your JJTL is low, then Menace is beyond saving, fair enough.

[felice]

3 hours ago, Vaughn said:

Also, c'mon Lando probably killed more senior Imperial officers than anyone when he took out Deathstar 2.

But he was only able to do it because Vader was distracting the Emperor during the battle...

7 minutes ago, Werthead said:

 

If your JJTL is low, then Menace is beyond saving, fair enough.

That's what fan edits are for!

[Lord Varys]

8 minutes ago, Werthead said:

 

This is one I more or less disagree with. I think RotS is in some ways the most disappointing of the three, because the iconic events we'd been waiting to see, in some cases for 27 years, were either weird or outright dumb. Luke and Leia's mother dying from a broken heart ("You can die from that?", "Well, apparently"), one of Darth Vader's very first words being "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO" and the epic Palpatine/Yoda confrontation consisted of...them throwing chairs at one another. And that long-awaited Anakin/Obi-Wan fighting in the boiling lava ending with Anakin mistiming a somersault and the infamously heartless Obi-Wan deciding to leave his former best friend to die in unspeakable agony rather than put him out of his misery? Oh, and Lucas deciding that the film had to end with everyone in the exact same places they were when the OT began, even though there was 19 years between them? Why?

Have to agree with that. I still remember how I felt when I first learned that there would be a 10-15 minutes duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan with literally little to no dialogue. That was the worst thing Lucas could do. This is a scene people envisioned and expected to be meaningful because of the emotional relationship between these two ... there should have been a lot of pleading, arguing, persuading, cursing, begging, etc.

Not two stoic robots going through the motions.

I've to say I like the fight in the senate rodunda since that sends the nice symbolic message that those pods are now truly just empty impotent chairs.

8 minutes ago, Werthead said:

It's not as actively shit as Attack of the Clones but with Clones we didn't really have many expectations of what was going to happen, save the Clone Wars were going to start. Sith we had very high hopes for and it fell well short. From any standpoint I think Sith is a better movie than Clones, but it failed to meet the much higher expectations riding on it. Sith might have the best individual scene in the trilogy though (the silent moment as Anakin decides on what to do), since Lucas shuts up and lets Williams do the heavy lifting there.

I find the plot of AOTC is pretty good if you take the novelization, but the botched version of it that's now the film (even with all the cut scenes that float around) is truly completely nonsensical. Everything would have been better with more dialogue in that movie, even the shitty romance.

8 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Sith did get redeemed first by the novelization (Stover's powers to turn shit into gold may be greater even than Filoni's) and later on the Clone Wars, which made a lot of the left-field plotting and muddled characterisation make sense, but you really shouldn't have to rely on ancillary material to make your film look good.

To be sure, Stover once told me how heavily Lucas himself edited the novel ... he was quite irritated by that, since he apparently never got that before or after from a book he wrote, meaning the prose as it is is actually to a good chunk Lucas (and the editing did not affect plot at all, just which words and phrases were used). I remember, finding the book heavily imbalanced with the first third of the novel deal with the Invisible Hand stuff, but Stover confirmed that this was how the script looked at the time ... and there was nothing cut in the later chapters.

 

[Paxter]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

 

This is one I more or less disagree with. I think RotS is in some ways the most disappointing of the three, because the iconic events we'd been waiting to see, in some cases for 27 years, were either weird or outright dumb. Luke and Leia's mother dying from a broken heart ("You can die from that?", "Well, apparently"), one of Darth Vader's very first words being "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO" and the epic Palpatine/Yoda confrontation consisted of...them throwing chairs at one another. And that long-awaited Anakin/Obi-Wan fighting in the boiling lava ending with Anakin mistiming a somersault and the infamously heartless Obi-Wan deciding to leave his former best friend to die in unspeakable agony rather than put him out of his misery? Oh, and Lucas deciding that the film had to end with everyone in the exact same places they were when the OT began, even though there was 19 years between them? Why?

The film also has actively some of the worst acting in the three. We know Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman are both pretty good actors from too many other films to count, but they're both phoning it in. McGregor's "I...can't bear to watch," is one of the worst line deliveries I've ever seen survive into a finished film (I mean, were there multiple takes and that was the best one?) and Portman's telecommunicating in her performance from the second moon of Neptune. The only person who's enjoying himself at all is Ian McDiarmid, who's performance is pure 150% unadulterated pure ham.

It's not as actively shit as Attack of the Clones but with Clones we didn't really have many expectations of what was going to happen, save the Clone Wars were going to start. Sith we had very high hopes for and it fell well short. From any standpoint I think Sith is a better movie than Clones, but it failed to meet the much higher expectations riding on it. Sith might have the best individual scene in the trilogy though (the silent moment as Anakin decides on what to do), since Lucas shuts up and lets Williams do the heavy lifting there.

Sith did get redeemed first by the novelization (Stover's powers to turn shit into gold may be greater even than Filoni's) and later on the Clone Wars, which made a lot of the left-field plotting and muddled characterisation make sense, but you really shouldn't have to rely on ancillary material to make your film look good.

I think it varies immensely depending on your Jar-Jar Tolerance Level (JJTL) but The Phantom Menace I've found to stand up better on rewatches. Liam Neeson is actually giving his all and Lucas isn't completely disgracing him with the dialogue, Darth Maul is a solid villain by the PT's standards primarily by not saying anything and the film is weirdly snappy. Both Clones and Sith have this problem with scenes that go on for a lot longer than is necessary, so if the scene is bad (as many of them are) they drag on. Menace has much shorter, snappier scenes and it has a firmer grip of pacing. It also has Brian Blessed, who tends to improve everything he's in, if only marginally (I have since seen Brian Blessed give live re-readings of his dialogue in the film, which is quite something). It also has the best score of all nine Williams-scored films IMO. I mean it's still not a good film, as such, but I think it tends to get undersold when people call it the worst of nine, or even the worst of the PT (Rise is definitely a much weaker film as well).

If your JJTL is low, then Menace is beyond saving, fair enough.

Fair enough, if you're looking at it from an expectations gap perspective. 

For me, TPM works alright as an enjoyable romp with marginal relevance to the main saga, provided that you can excuse JJ/Little Ani, but it still does a much poorer job of that than, say, the Solo movie. I still think Sith makes a better fist of being a genuine SW instalment, it just falls quite a bit short on acting / story / pacing. 

Minor aside: The opening sequence of Sith is better than anything else in all the PT, Maul duel included. 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

Anyone have any thoughts on the Anti-Cheese prequel edits?  The Attack of the Clones Anti Chess Edit might actually be the best SW film IMO.

If you can find them.

[felice]

50 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Anyone have any thoughts on the Anti-Cheese prequel edits?  The Attack of the Clones Anti Chess Edit might actually be the best SW film IMO.

The prequel edits by L8wrtr are big improvements over the originals; I'm not sure how the Anti-Cheese edits compare.

[Derfel Cadarn]

One problem with TPM is that they spend most of the film trying to get to Coruscant to grt thr politicians to sort things, spend maybe 10 mins there learning that politicians are corrupt and useless, and then return to Naboo. If Padme had realised before leaving Naboo that all she had to do was ally with the Gungans, the whole thinng could have been sorted eithout Tatooine, Anakin etc.

Also, apart from the duel, the end battles are shit. The ground battle? Gungan army standing behind a forcefield throwing blue balls at droids. Space battle? Sucked. A kid doing barrel rolls accidently blows up the control ship saving the day.

Yawn.

[Vaughn]

6 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

One problem with TPM is that they spend most of the film trying to get to Coruscant to grt thr politicians to sort things, spend maybe 10 mins there learning that politicians are corrupt and useless, and then return to Naboo. If Padme had realised before leaving Naboo that all she had to do was ally with the Gungans, the whole thinng could have been sorted eithout Tatooine, Anakin etc.

Also, apart from the duel, the end battles are shit. The ground battle? Gungan army standing behind a forcefield throwing blue balls at droids. Space battle? Sucked. A kid doing barrel rolls accidently blows up the control ship saving the day.

Yawn.

One big area of failure in terms of entertainment vs story is the Jedi of the PT in general. Mostly, they're sitting around in a room which looks like the foyer of a classy Mexican resort and complaining about being expected to do anything. Now, I guess that the point - that they are a failed, sclerotic organization incapable of doing their self-appointed task but boy is it boring to watch. Even Samuel Jackson is bland, truly a feat of directing. This dovetails neatly with the problems with the depiction of Anakin. The structure is there: hidebound static hierarchy vs. brass young super talent, but on both sides, the execution fails the concept. For twenty years from ANH to the prequels, the pop culture of Star Wars alluded to this awesome group of heroes, the Jedi and we'd only seen two elderly remnants of the Jedi in Obiwan and Yoda. Yet finally in the prequels we see the full scope of the Jedi in their might and turns out only Obiwan and Yoda were worth a damn to begin with.

Really though, if you made the second two movies with someone with Adam Driver's talent as Anakin, it would have fixed so much. To paraphrase a real classic of sci-fi adventure, Kylo is like real fire, raging fire. Anakin is like water.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

9 hours ago, felice said:

The prequel edits by L8wrtr are big improvements over the originals; I'm not sure how the Anti-Cheese edits compare.

TPM & ROTS are a bit ragged. TPM is vastly improved by fixing Jar-Jar and removing the initial gungan city visit. Instead of Jar-Jar's Caribbean caricature, he has a super deep voice and speaks in an alien language with subtitles.

AOTC seems to work best as it incorporates a bunch of deleted scenes that help to properly develop the romance between Anikin and Padme.  The scenes were finished and scored so they work.  I think Anikin's disposition towards sand remains a mystery in that edit.  It's been a while.

Vast improvement.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

6 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

One problem with TPM is that they spend most of the film trying to get to Coruscant to grt thr politicians to sort things, spend maybe 10 mins there learning that politicians are corrupt and useless, and then return to Naboo. If Padme had realised before leaving Naboo that all she had to do was ally with the Gungans, the whole thinng could have been sorted eithout Tatooine, Anakin etc.

Also, apart from the duel, the end battles are shit. The ground battle? Gungan army standing behind a forcefield throwing blue balls at droids. Space battle? Sucked. A kid doing barrel rolls accidently blows up the control ship saving the day.

Yawn.

So, her last resort should have come first?

Not going to Coruscant also omits Chancellor Velorum's downfall due to Palpatine's machinations. This gains significance in the later films. We also get see Padme's faith in the senate shaken when she see's how it operates. That's why it occurs to her to form the Gungan Alliance in the first place.

The pod race, at the time, was one of the most incredible things I'd ever seen on a big screen.  I don't have any problem with the other battles aside from the campiness of the Gungan/Droid clash.  But, if it's good enough for the MCU to rip off in multiple films, I suppose it's good enough for me.

[polishgenius]

It's not particularly great in any case, but my main problem with the final battle in TPM is that it doesn't handle the pacing issues inherent in cutting between several disparate action scenes in a sprawling finale at all well.

[Veltigar]

It's insane how fast this thread has been going... I guess hate fuels all of us. Oh yeah, we're sith lords here XD

 

One thing I'd like to mention here again is that I hate the shitquels more than the prequels because they shat all over the OT stories in a way that the PT never did. Sure, the PT took events that were heavily hinted on in the core story and gave us a very boring interpretation of those (which is why no writer worth his salt should do prequels), but you can easily ignore or hand wave most things in it.

The shitquels on the other hand and ROS in particular, aggressively strive not just to do be bad movies on their own, they also actively strive to undermine the other shitquels and the OT. I'm not a fan of Jar Jar or Midichlorians, but none of that is as pointless as bringing back Palpie as the bad guy, therefore basically tending RotJ futile. That was always my biggest gripe with it, more so than the many other obvious flaws.

[Vaughn]

Fair point - the problem with just talking about the good stuff is you end up sounding like Chris Farley interviewing McCartney. In the spirit of positivity, here's things I liked about each movie. 

Phantom Menace - Darth Maul is very cool and that lightsaber fight was excellent. 

Attack of the Clones - I like the mystery of and the design of Kamino. 

Revenge of the Sith - "Hello there". The fun I wanted so, so much more of in the adventures of young Obiwan. 

Solo - more scruffier side pockets of the galaxy with dubious people, my jam. More please.

Rogue One - The end, Chirrut and his buddy, K-2SO asking 'did you know that wasn't me?' Krennit's cape game. 

A New Hope - introduction to Star Wars so hard to really judge. Small thing but I always loved the Jawa sand crawler as a visual. 

Empire Strikes Back - C3PO* getting dismembe... er, meeting Lando, the big Vader fight/reveal. 'I love you. I know'

Return of the Jedi - Emperor battle, the Emperor battle theme music, the happy end of the series (Lol) 

Force Awakens - the intro of Rey scavenging the Star Destroyer and the visuals of the crashed Star Destroyers. The best visuals of the entire series for me. The feeling of post empire collapse. The first Rey/Kylo fight scene in the woods. 

The Last Jedi - the visuals on Crait with the red/white sand. Benecio Del Toro's character. Luke evaporating into the sunset. The Snoke death / fight scene 

Rise of Skywalker - Hmm. Cool set design on the planet/moon with the rough seas and Death Star ruins? The little alien in the repair shop was fun. 

* I'll just say I'm glad that c3po can bring so many people joy. 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

3 hours ago, Vaughn said:

Phantom Menace - Darth Maul is very cool and that lightsaber fight was excellent. 

- Good villains in gereneral.

- Good set up for following films with just the right amount of exposition

- Pod Racing scene was great

- either by skill or by luck, Lucas manages to get some solid performances out of most of the cast (with some hilariously obvious exceptions) 

3 hours ago, Vaughn said:

Attack of the Clones - I like the mystery of and the design of Kamino. 

-Great opening, closing scenes.

- Plot "thickening" well done re: the origin of the clones and the start of the war.

- Yoda beat mode.

Quote

Revenge of the Sith - "Hello there". The fun I wanted so, so much more of in the adventures of young Obiwan. 

- Best of the prequels

- Utapau sequence

- Crushing second and third acts (despite whatever flaws one wants to acknowldege).

- Great Villain, Great story.

 

- OT: I was in the target demographic when ANH was released.  I've seen ANH probably 100 times.  ESB is great. Killer teddybears in ROTJ.

I acknowledge the OT flaws and love it anyway.

- TFA: a solid first entry if a bit derivative

- TLJ: Though flawed, A better film than most give it credit for, even if it isn't a great SW film; Mark Hamill's best performance, good cinematography.

- TROS: Ask me in a year. So much to process.

Solo: Underrated. Not that it's great but it's at least Very good. Good cast.

R1: possibly my favorite Disney SW film.

 

I've said before; Lucas would excel in the role of hands-on creative producer. The guy has his strengths as a film maker.  he wouldn't be multi billionaire if he didn't.

 

[DaveSumm]

9 hours ago, Veltigar said:

It's insane how fast this thread has been going... I guess hate fuels all of us. Oh yeah, we're sith lords here XD

I do try and be mindful on other topics whether I’m just shitting all over it, and try and mention positives as well. But for whatever reason, and it seems I’m not alone, I was just never able to properly process how bad the PT was and talking about it is like crack ... it’s like my brain can’t put down this mystery of how it happened. How a director as famous as Lucas managed to make something so awful in so many regards. I don’t subscribe to the idea that they could never have lived up to the expectation, I think the opposite that there was a truckload of goodwill toward them. Much like how The Force Awakens was initially well received, I just felt like “Fuck it that’ll do Star Wars yeeeeaaaa!!!” The PT has such a huge list of fundamental properties of good film making missing: dialogue, plot, pace, acting, direction, cinematography. All awful. The only praise I can muster that doesn’t feel like we’re reaching is John Williams; yes, the music is good. Well done John.

Moreover, it’s just such a fucking shame. Such a blown opportunity. They’ll never be remade now, this is it. This is how the great Darth Vader came to be, he was a whinging douche bag who moaned about being a Jedi from the get go, who was angry and jealous and arrogant. There is no model Anakin to revert to in RotJ, no redemption to root for. I’d rather he just stayed as Vader, at least he’s cool and knows what he wants in life.

I guess now, I hope Filoni can do something interesting with the Mandalorian timeline, and then we get a solid new batch of films in a different era. Start a fresh in the old republic or something.

[Heartofice]

Yeah the topic of the prequels always draws me in.

What I find really quite fascinating is George Lucas in all this. It raises so many questions. 

Like, did something happen to Lucas which made him so completely delusional and out of touch with reality that he really couldn't (and probably still doesn't) understand the disaster he brought forth. Was there a point in his career where he literally became so enamoured with his own greatness that be believed the hype and stopped questioning his own thoughts?

Or was it the case that his entire career is just a mix a little bit of luck, a bit of talent, a lot of hard work.. but also the power of others holding him back and preventing him from getting his own way.
The more I read about Lucas this seems to be the case. You read these conversations he had with directors like Spielberg even during filming New Hope and Lucas had some pretty crappy ideas and people would push back and give him pointers. His best movies seem to be ones where he is able to set the overall blue print but others step in to do the heavy lifting and detailed thinking. Empire is surely a case of that, and Indiana Jones movies there must be a lot of credit to Spielberg for reining him in. Look some of the things Spielberg said during Crystal Skull where he basically couldn't be bothered to argue with Lucas over things and put his trust in him, and the whole thing was a crapfest.


Maybe it's a bit of both, there is a case of 'old man syndrome' where directors and creative people get locked in a bubble of praise and are never challenged (The prequel documentaries are super revealing as to how subservient everyone is to Lucas, like nodding dogs) and when you get a bit older you just don't have that fire to really make something the best you can, and you become self satisfied. 

It really is very interesting, and maybe a warning for a lot of young directors and writers.

[Paxter]

16 hours ago, Veltigar said:

It's insane how fast this thread has been going... I guess hate fuels all of us. Oh yeah, we're sith lords here XD

One thing I'd like to mention here again is that I hate the shitquels more than the prequels because they shat all over the OT stories in a way that the PT never did. Sure, the PT took events that were heavily hinted on in the core story and gave us a very boring interpretation of those (which is why no writer worth his salt should do prequels), but you can easily ignore or hand wave most things in it.

The shitquels on the other hand and ROS in particular, aggressively strive not just to do be bad movies on their own, they also actively strive to undermine the other shitquels and the OT. I'm not a fan of Jar Jar or Midichlorians, but none of that is as pointless as bringing back Palpie as the bad guy, therefore basically tending RotJ futile. That was always my biggest gripe with it, more so than the many other obvious flaws.

Yeah I think the above is valid and represents the thoughts of a huge swathe of fans.

Buuuuuut I would still argue that the main problem is TROS, which really is a steaming pile. TFA and TLJ are not great movies and so different that they are hard to discuss together, but I find them more watchable than the prequels other than maybe Sith. 

[Lord Varys]

The ST breaks down because there is really no movie-spanning concept, no plan into which direction the story is going - that wasn't the case with the OT either - and even in the PT many details were made up as they went along (although it was clear that Anakin would become Darth Vader, Palpatine the Emperor, and the Jedi would die ... which are significant plot points).

TFA was just a derivative remake of ANH, working with a completely stupid setting, in my opinion, and wasting an entire movie on a stupid question: Where is Luke Skywalker? But the next movie made things much worse by ignoring most of the established characters and their relationships with each other in favor of introducing new characters and changing the established ones (at times completely around) while still drawing heavily on TESB and ROTJ.

Then there is the fact that the movies look like the OT. I don't want movies in the 2010s look like movies from the 1970s or 1980s. Especially not Star Wars movies.

But the worst thing is just the obviousness of them having new plan. Luke wasn't running away from responsibility in TFA - just as he wasn't later, with the TROS retcon - back in TFA it was clear we had another Emperor-enforcer-like relationship among the villains, which was then turned on its head with TLJ ... only to return back to Emperor-enforcer in TROS.

On a personal level Rey and Finn had a thing in TFA ... which they sort of lose in TFJ in favor of that ridiculous Ren-evil guy thing ... and then completely drop anything on that front for both Finn and Rey in the last movie.

That is all just shit. And, of course, the fact that the Star Wars villain had to return for the last movie shows how shitty their conception is. I mean, I didn't like babyface would-be Vader at all - I find the character and his motivation completely ridiculous - but to replace this guy as the big villain with fucking Palpatine of all people really hammers home the fact.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]