What is exactly so bad with Episode I and II?

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2005-03-29 06:49pm

Darth Wong wrote:Some questionable choices in AOTC editing and composition didn't help. In the novel, it's made rather clear that Padme is surrounded by men who never show her even the slightest inkling of romantic interest, presumably because it is "not their place". As a result, she's horny as hell, and would pretty much fall for the first reasonably attractive guy with the balls to ask her out, no matter how clumsily he does it.

That's hot.

Elfdart · Post by **Elfdart** » 2005-03-29 07:33pm

Galvatron wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:Some questionable choices in AOTC editing and composition didn't help. In the novel, it's made rather clear that Padme is surrounded by men who never show her even the slightest inkling of romantic interest, presumably because it is "not their place". As a result, she's horny as hell, and would pretty much fall for the first reasonably attractive guy with the balls to ask her out, no matter how clumsily he does it.
That's hot.

But how are they going to put that in a PG movie?

Rommie2006 · Post by **Rommie2006** » 2005-03-29 10:59pm

TPM and AOTC for me was a big of mixed feelings. Some parts were obvious fuck ups on Lucas's parts, and many parts could have been improved.

From TPM and AOTC the things I hated, in ranking order:
1)JAR JAR BINKS!!! The biggest screw up EVER in the SW galaxy. Somebody pls shoot the IDIOT who came up with the idea who invented this fucking clown. *Prays that by some act of god the 2007/8/9 ultimate edition will have all traces of fucker Binks removed*
2)Anakin & Padme Contrived Love Scene. The second biggest screw up in the SW galaxy. For fuck's sake, he's gonna be the EVIL DARTH VADER, do some justice to Anakin! Don't make him a love sick puppy!!! Oh not to mention how Padme *seduces* Anakin into make love with her. Chased by evil separatist? Come let's go to the most romantic place in Naboo and hideout. Hmm... maybe wear a sexy revealing dress while we're together too.... all alone together..... *censored*
3)Anakin the Kid. Kiddish anakin doesnt sit well with the SW universe. Couldnt just they started with him grown up or limit kid anakin to half a movie and fast foward 10 yrs later for the 2nd half?
4)Modern scriptwriting tailored for the younger generation. Both TPM and AOTC if you contrast with OT have been heavily influenced by modern movies writing stereotypes. This is fucking obvious in the cheesy love shit in AOTC. I understand that Lucas wants to capture the next generation of audiences, but in doing so he gave up the "essence" of Star Wars for lack of better terms. If not "controlled" properly, TPM and AOTC could have degraded into the contempory movie you see everywhere(some would say both have already degraded), making the PT themselves indistinguishable from any lame movie out there. And this is coming from one of the "younger generation" that Lucas wishes to attract. Star Wars is unique, we shouldnt change the way it is written just to suit the new kids on the block!!!

From TPM and AOTC the things I loved, in ranking order:
1)Yoda lightsaber fight. I spoiled myself and knew about before I went into the theatre. Still it was great... imagined if I had kept myself from reading all those damn spoilers!
2)QuiGon/Anakin vs Maul fight. Great display of Form 4 saber techniques. The double-bladed lightsaber was simply awesome. Not to mention "Duel of Fates"... oh that soundtrack can match even Vader's ESB Imperial March!!!
3)Dooku. Another awesome display of Form 2 saber techniques. Simply elegant. I was shocked when he managed to cut down Anakin's arm though... just goes to show his elegant prowress.
4)Old Republic Jedi. We really get to see how Old Republic Jedi conduct themselves from day to day. QuiGon and ObiWan provided a great example of how the Jedi were in their prime. They did overdo the lightsaber a bit... but hey I'm not complaining.
5)Anakin kills the tusken raiders. Lovely descent into darkness. The Emperor's throne room background music... I swear I felt the chill when I saw it for the first time. (Unfortunately Lucas hard to fuck up and add in Padme's consolation scene in the DVD release. FUCK!)
6)Awesome sci-fi effects, especially AOTC Jedi battle and subsequent ground battle. Kinda outclass the OT trilogy... and makes OT looks dated though.

On the whole, I found TPM to be acceptable. Nothing outstanding, but I gave it a simple nod. AOTC was more memorable, after the AGONISING first half of the movie, the second half of the movie more than made up for its flaws. If the Anakin and Padme love fuck was removed, AOTC would have been great.

I guess most of us find TPM and AOTC rather "unsatisfying" and we leave the cinema "unfulfilled" was probably due to Lucas' blatantly obvious fuck ups - Jar Jar for TPM, Anakin & Padme for AOTC. Removed those 2 major errors I'm sure we would enjoy the movies more.

Let's pray that ROTS will be free of such obvious screw ups. (I'm staying spoiler free for the last SW movie btw)

Plea to Lucas: Let Jar Jar die a horrible horrible death! Use a lightsaber and cut him to pieces!!!!!!!!!!

Spacebeard · Post by **Spacebeard** » 2005-03-29 11:23pm

I really wish that AOTC had been given an original music score on a par with those of, well, the other four movies. During my second and subsequent viewings, the movie seemed painfully dull to me, even during action scenes like Obi-Wan's encounter with Slave I. The original trilogy does not drag this way for me even though I've seen those movies more times than I can count, and really, I think the only major difference is AOTC's relative paucity of music.

The speeder chase on Coruscant and the Slave I fight in the rings seemed to demand a musical score comparable to "The Asteroid Field" or "Rescue from Cloud City". Instead of recycling "Duel of the Fates", however cool it is, for Anakin's massacre of the sand people, I wish we'd been able to hear something that would better evoke the mood of the scene, something more ominous and evil. (The use of Palpatine's theme as Anakin recounted his actions to Padme was very good, for instance).

By the same token, my absolute favorite scene from the film was the closing shot of Palpatine overlooking clone troopers boarding their Acclamators, and that scene worked so well precisely because of the stirring, all-out reprisal of the Imperial March. My friends noticed me "conducting" to this scene as I saw it in the theater.

In all seriousness, I've always thought that music was one of Star Wars' greatest strengths, and I think the relative lack of music in AOTC explains more than any other factor, including acting, why it failed to emotionally engage me upon repeated viewings.

VT-16 · Post by **VT-16** » 2005-03-30 01:28am

There´s plenty of original music that I liked in AOTC, the problem is they also recycled alot of tunes from the previous four as well. (Though I liked the TPM battle music alot more during the arena-sequence than in TPM itself.)

Post by **Vympel** » 2005-03-30 01:33am

I also found the music in AOTC to be a bit underwhelming- the only memorable score for me is the different take on Imperial March- as well as the ending credits in general- especially right at the end where Anakin's Theme turns into Imperial March. I'm really hoping for a LOT of Imperial March in ROTS.

Of course, it cannot be disputed that TESB has the best musical score, followed by ROTJ, then ANH, then TPM, then AOTC.

TPM of course has Duel of the Fates, but I think Anakin's Theme- i.e. Imperial March lite, was pretty cool.

Glocksman · Post by **Glocksman** » 2005-03-30 10:08am

As others have said, TPM at times seemed to be aimed at kids.
Lucas can certainly do that if he wants, but it's an insult to those who waited years for the next Star Wars movie to aim it at people who weren't even born when ROTJ (more on it later) came out.

Lucas could have managed to pull off the old hat trick of appealing to audiences on several levels and been entertaining to children and adults alike, but unlike Friz Freling and Chuck Jones, he's about as subtle as a brick through a plate glass window and couldn't manage it.

To me, TPM seemed to be largely a live action Saturday Morning Cartoon with very little of the elements that made most of the original Star Wars trilogy so entertaining.

As far as ROTJ goes, Lucas 'jumped the shark' in it with the appearance of the Ewoks. Can you say 'cuddly toy marketing' aimed at preteen children? I thought you could.

George might as well have cast Ted McGinley as the Emperor.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2005-03-30 11:17am

Glocksman wrote:As others have said, TPM at times seemed to be aimed at kids.

Lucas can certainly do that if he wants, but it's an insult to those who waited years for the next Star Wars movie to aim it at people who weren't even born when ROTJ (more on it later) came out.

Not to those of us who have kids of our own. Not everyone in society rejects parenthood.

Glocksman · Post by **Glocksman** » 2005-03-30 11:20am

No, but as the old WB cartoons proved, you can entertain several age groups at the same time with the same material.

Lucas didn't even try to do that, and that's the problem.
Not that he tried to aim it at the kid market, but that he seemingly catered to that age group exclusively.

VT-16 · Post by **VT-16** » 2005-03-30 11:21am

Quite frankly, this is one argument I just can´t understand: "It´s aimed at kids!!!11"

Apart from some goofy aliens and fart-jokes, it didn´t seem that different from the previous three, and I still don´t understand how people can say that. It´s not like they can blow up a planet or reveal secret parenthood in every episode!

Funny enough, some former detractors have rewatched it in recent years, and actually retracted their statements. Apparently, they found it to be more similar to the OT than they first thought.

Glocksman · Post by **Glocksman** » 2005-03-30 11:27am

Apparently, they found it to be more similar to the OT than they first thought.

I'll have to watch it again and see if I feel that way now, but at the time all I remember was feeling a sense of 'this is it??'

You don't have to blow up planets to make a movie that appeals to all age groups, you know.

EDIT:

Maybe because all of the humor and goofy aliens seemed so over the top when compared to ANH and TESB (the best IMHO) is the reason I didn't care for it.

VT-16 · Post by **VT-16** » 2005-03-30 11:48am

Jar-Jar sucks and so did the other aliens providing comic relief. That is true. They still don´t make up more than a fraction of the total film.

And I had no preconceptions about the PT beforehand, so that part of the complaints is completely foreign to me.

McC · Post by **McC** » 2005-03-30 12:16pm

Rant mode ON.

Fuck all of you "teh love scenes r teh bad!!1!! anakin shud have a diffrant reason 4 being darth vadar!1!1!!!" assholes. You apparently have either never fallen in love or have totally forgotten everything about it. You've also apparently forgotten what high school-level romance is like, or at the very least are too close to it to see what it's really like.

On the dialogue:
People do talk like that. People do say ridiculously corny things to one another and it does work. What clumsy words come out don't matter, as long as both people understand the subtext. Anakin's "sand" speech may seem cringe-worthy, and you know why? Because we've all said something that ridiculously stupid to someone we love before! I'm sure I'm going to hear from an assload of people how they never speak like that and how there must be something wrong with me for thinking that people do. Fuck you, you deceitful motherfuckers. You do too, quit trying to hide behind your false casanova facade.

On Anakin's Dark Fall:
Again, you people are retarded. There is no better motivator for doing stupid things than love, and no better motivator for going down a bad path than unrequited/difficult/incovenient/whatever love. The lengths people will go to in order to protect what they love are inconceivable and immeasurable. How many would you kill to save your SO? Your child? How much would their deaths matter to you, as long as your SO was safe? Don't feed me your idealized "No one life is worth more than another" lines, either, because human instinct just doesn't work that way.

Bottom line: the entirety of Anakin's portrayal is spot-on and the fact that he falls due to love is far superior to any "oops, I suddenly became Darth Vader" bullshit that might have taken its place.

Rant mode OFF (for now).

On a totally different topic (but one that has been brought up in this thread in a roundabout way), I feel like TPM and AOTC recapture the 'scale' of SW that one gets from ANH and ROTJ. Until I started considering it from a character drama perspective (and the sheer awesomeness of the Empire), I found ESB to be the weakest Star Wars film of the SW films (irrespective of its merits as a movie in general). It lacked the grand scope that one feels from ANH and ROTJ -- it felt like a "small" movie, and it ultimately was a small-scope movie, since its central focus was on three characters and their inner growth/interrelationship rather than their role in galactic events.

So, in response to someone's criticsm, I feel like TPM/AOTC are more 'Star Wars' than ESB was.

Rommie2006 · Post by **Rommie2006** » 2005-03-30 10:27pm

Spacebeard wrote:I really wish that AOTC had been given an original music score on a par with those of, well, the other four movies. During my second and subsequent viewings, the movie seemed painfully dull to me, even during action scenes like Obi-Wan's encounter with Slave I. The original trilogy does not drag this way for me even though I've seen those movies more times than I can count, and really, I think the only major difference is AOTC's relative paucity of music.

The speeder chase on Coruscant and the Slave I fight in the rings seemed to demand a musical score comparable to "The Asteroid Field" or "Rescue from Cloud City". Instead of recycling "Duel of the Fates", however cool it is, for Anakin's massacre of the sand people, I wish we'd been able to hear something that would better evoke the mood of the scene, something more ominous and evil. (The use of Palpatine's theme as Anakin recounted his actions to Padme was very good, for instance).

By the same token, my absolute favorite scene from the film was the closing shot of Palpatine overlooking clone troopers boarding their Acclamators, and that scene worked so well precisely because of the stirring, all-out reprisal of the Imperial March. My friends noticed me "conducting" to this scene as I saw it in the theater.

In all seriousness, I've always thought that music was one of Star Wars' greatest strengths, and I think the relative lack of music in AOTC explains more than any other factor, including acting, why it failed to emotionally engage me upon repeated viewings.

Agreed. AOTC music was a recycle of past SW music and a lousy rehash at best.