The new "Star Wars" trailer

"The Big Chill" sucked ass.

 

When you say they were not salvageable, do you mean the concept was dead in the water? Anakin turns into Vader is a 1/2-hour short film, to me. Three movies to get where we knew it was going? Good God.

 

I'm unclear on how to post it from my phone but get to googling jar jar was the real bad guy.

Basically the theory goes jar jar was intended to be the real big bad and in cahoots with palpatine if not actually in charge. And that it was supposed to be jar jar fighting yoda but the reaction to jar jar was so bad that Lucas chickened out and threw in Dooku in Sith.

It makes some interesting points about the nods and winks to jar jar being powerful in the force.

Anyway, I bought tickets for the screening on the 17th earlier today. I can't remember ever buying movie tickets that early before.

 

Godfather II was a waste of time because we knew where Vito Corleone was going to end up.

 

A sign of the apocalypse: People so obsessed with a set of movies that they look to toys to justify/nullify their beliefs. What's next: going to the Magic 8 Ball?

I use the Ebert philosophy for these movies: Don't miss missing them.

I did see Revenge of the Sith, though. It was OK in parts, but when your big, bad villain is about as menacing as a tame Chihuahua, the movie is not going to be great.

I guess it was easier to believe Chihuahua becoming a pawn of the Emperor under those circumstances, but they didn't develop that concept well. The same thing happened in Return of the Jedi. It was jarring to find out DV was just a lackey, but instead of developing that, we had scenes with Ewoks.

 

Obviously this was sarcasm. But having seen G II quite a few times, I sometimes wish there were a version with all the flashback clips edited out. Some of those become tedious after a while.

 

There is a version where it is edited together chronologically, so you could conceivably just skip those parts.

 

I have seen that one. The trick is to pick it up at the right time.

 

Don't you remember way way back in original "Star Wars," (Episode IV: A New Hope in 'saga notation'), when Grand Moff Tarkin ordered Vader around like a shoeshine boy?

If Vader was supposed to be the No. 2 guy to the Emperor in the whole galaxy, I don't think he'd have been standing around in conference rooms taking crap off of middle managers.

Instead of the kind of wimpy Force choke attempt on the one dude, you'd think Darth would have amped up the power level a bit and flattened everybody in the room face down on the floor with one hand wave, then said, "OK now, anybody else want to talk about my sad outdated old religion?"

 

I'm saying they weren't salvageable in the sense that you couldn't recut them and make them better. It's just truly shitting storytelling, dialog and directing across the board. Here is a good example of how Star Wars nerd love clouds judgement: Lucas wrote the shitburger that was Indiana Jones IV, he even had Spielberg there to try and salvage it, and it sucked balls and no one defends it. But people still defend Star Wars and say "Well, Sith was better than Jedi." Absolutely not.

There are a hundreds things wrong with the prequels, but just to name a few that are unfixable:
1. We have no clear protagonist to give a shit about. It's not Aniken. It's not Obi Wan. It's not Qui Gon Gin. It's not Queen Amadala. We sort of half care about each of them, but not really. Star Wars is no Citizen Kane, but it's clear right from the start that we know who we're supposed to care about and why. Luke is our protagonist. He and Han Solo become friends over time through shared experiences. Obi Wan and Qui Gon just talk about how they're friends. It's a huge example of telling instead of showing. It's awful.
2. We also have no clear antagonist. The red-faced Sith in the first film, we don't care about him at all. He doesn't talk, doesn't do anyting, Count Douku is another faceless, pointless villain. We have not idea what his grievances are, why he matters. But this is especially true of General Grievus, the stupid robot thing that Obi Wan fights at one point.
3. We have a bunch of cool light saber duels, but we don't care about the characters, so there is no emotion invested in the outcome. Every single one of the light saber duels in Star Wars, Empire and ROJ is better than any of the duels in the prequels, even though the choreography of them is amateurish by comparison, because something is at stake. We feel an investment in the characters. In the prequels, it feels like we're playing a goddamn video game. Which brings us too...
4. During action scenes, Lucas seemed determined to pack as much stupid shit into every single frame with his computer, and it's both distracting and overwhelming to the senses. One of the great things about the light saber stuff in Empire and ROJ is the way the dramatic tension rises, then falls, then rises again. Think of the moments when Vader is slowly walking around the Death Star, looking for Luke as he hides in the shadows. Even the lighting ads to the dramatic tension of the scene, the way Luke's face is only half lit. They duel, they pause, they talk, they taunt one another, then the fight again. Now think about about the stupid duels in the prequels. It's SLASH SLASH FIGHT FIGHT JUMP FLIP TWIRL FIGHT FLIP PIROUETTE TWIRL PIROUETTE SLASH TWO LIGHT SABERS!!!!!11!11!1 PIROUETTE FLIP TWIRL and that shit goes on for like 10 minutes. This is an example of a director who has lost the ability to listen to anyone around him.
5. The dialog is so truly terrible, it makes none of the characters believable. People like to counter this point with "The dialog in the originals wasn't great either" but it's actually not even close. There is a scene in Attack of the Clones where Obi Wan and Aniken are TALKING about the shit they did that made them buddies, that made them friends, in their training. We have countless scenes of people just sitting on their ass, TALKING. Why? Because Lucas was too lazy to do real directing and he just wanted to sit in his chair and drink coffee.

I could go on, but it's pointless. Lucas' addiction to CGI ruined him as a filmmaker. His inability to cede control to others ruined him as an artist. If nothing else, I know Abrams will be more concerned about making a good movie than selling toys.

 

Do people really say Revenge of the Sith was better than Return of the Jedi?

 

According to RT ratings, yes, by an 80-77 margin.