Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Star Wars - Episode III thread

OK, my Star Wars geekhood must come out...

Have to agree w/ most of the posters, the last 2 "prequels" (man, I hate that word) were pretty disappointing. I will, however, get the DVD Trilogy in September. Hopefully, the PQ will be better than the Indiana Jones DVDs that came out...I was disappointed w/ that.

I'm not a rabid fan, never camped out for a movie, don't attend comicon or the fantasy shows. But I have read almost all the related Star Wars novels (none of direct movie-based books). Stories by Timothy Zahn and Michael Stackpole have been quite good and keep the Star Wars Universe interesting. Though my daughter has made it difficult to keep up the reading lately... The books are much more interesting than any of the new movies.

Don't know if anyone caught the tour years ago, but there was a cross country Star Wars tour where they brought around all the props from the first 3 movies. The Darth Vader costume was cool, the chest plate was made from cheap radio shack parts but back then it looked high tech. They had models of the Death Star, Millenium Falcon, concept drawings, costumes, etc. VERY cool to see it all live.

OT: I liked JK Rowlings recent comment about a rumor of her writing a prequel to the Harry Potter novels. Basically she said, "There will be no other books. This is not Star Wars."

I saw the Star Tours at the Smithsonian here in D.C. a long time ago. It was really neat to see catcher's gear painted white and used as leg armor for the sodliers. And the star destroyers were just cannibalized aircraft carrier models. Really neat stuff. And the speeders used in the forest of Endor in ROTJ were made out of lawn mower parts. It all looks very high tech on screen, but up close, it had a certain independent feel and spirit to it. It looked like they went to a junk yard (or their garages), and pulled stuff out and said, hey, this would make a cool gun, or whatever.

This might be what it missing from the newer flicks. There is so much hype that LFL has to go to great extremes to make things interesting. I think that the movies are too micro managed, worrying about whether a character's gun looks right or whether his vehicle is cool enough, etc., and whether the digital eyelashes are real enough instead of whether we like what the guns, and vehicles and characters are doing, saying, shooting, etc.

As much as I love the Star Wars movies (even the latest ones), I have to admit that the CG is a little out of hand. Note that on this latest film, which will take place on five different planets, at least, they did no on location shooting. That means taht all of the environments (100%) will be made from a computer.

When one guy sits in front a computer for 500 hours looking at one scene getting it perfect, sometimes it is too perfect. The parts that I loved about the old Star Wars movies was the fact that the robots DIDN'T work. They mostly stood there, or moved very statically, etc. Now, they move so fluidly as to be unbelievable. I'd prefer practical robots that didn't work to CG ones that did really cool stuff any day of the week. It added to the charm, IMO

Speak of the devil (or Sith!):

Atom Films

I was so rabid a SW fan before Episode I came out that I actually thought it kicked ass. Reality finnaly kicked me in the head (OUCH) after seeing Episode II. I walked out of the theater and was SO PISSED OFF at how much it sucked. I then realized how Ep1 wasn't really all that great either.

My only conclusion to all the SW suckage is that when Lucas writes/directs it WILL suck. I believe I heard before that Lucas directed EpIV (and I/II) but not V and VI. If this is indeed true it would truely explain a lot. Digging deeper, what has Lucas actually done that was really great? I'd credit Speilberg on Indiana series... donno

I'm just pissed cause Empire and even Return of the Jedi were really damn cool. A New Hope did a good job on setting up the story. The story thru I and II has been good, its just the delivery is horrid. I didn't think anything could be worse than Jar Jar till I saw that *chemistry* between Ani and the Princess.

/agrivated

I'm with you 100% on this one, inane.

I guess that I should have expected this thread to degenerate into a discussion of our frustrations over the prequels thus far. I am guilty of this too.

It's strange how our sense of nostalgia (which I once saw defined as an irrational longing for the past) gets so upset when LFL (Lucas Film Ltd.) changes stuff. I wonder what it would be like to be 12 or 13 again, and see all six movies for the first time. I wonder if we don't expect too much from these movies (which were all pretty light, as far as acting and dialogue went) now that we've been exposed to so much great action/sci-fi/adventure. I wonder if we long to be transported to a simpler time when debating Boba Fett's origin actually meant something, only to be let down when the genre fails to satisfy this need.

I guess, my question is, do we expect too much from these movies? Are we being too hard on them? Or are they really the tripe that people say they are? I don't think that I can answer that question, being a fan of the series. I almost block out the bad parts and only focus on what I like about the series. Those others who don't like the new movies, I think, in large part, are unfairly harsh on them. I wonder what a kid with a fresh perspective would think about these flicks.

1. Yes, the hard core fans do expect to much.

2. I think episodes 4-6 are built up in everyone's mind to be so much better then they really were. Yes, they were good movies, but I don't think most of you would like them as much if you watching them now for the first time and only knew about the hype behind them without having seem them for yourself when you were younger.

Capn & Zarak,

I'm with you guys on this. I think we all forget the fact that the originals were released about 25 years ago. In my case, I was still picking my nose (not that I'd ever do that now ) and had just gotten over my infatuation with Smurfs (man, that opens me up for some abuse). When I saw Star Wars, I was hooked....it was the most amazing thing that I had ever seen....nothing would ever compare. That's the key right there...nothing will ever compare with that feeling we all had when we heard Darth Vader for the first time. Twenty-five plus years have passed and we now live in the age of the Matrix and LOTR. Is it any surprise that we can't get that same rush we got from the original Star Wars movies?....it's like being a junkie racing to get back to that original rush. When I put myself back in the mind of an 5 or 10 year old, I think about what I would have thought when seeing Episode I and II......"OH MY GOD!!!! This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen!!!!! Nothing will ever compare!!!!" Perhaps we secretly miss those innocent and exciting days....I know I do.

I think there is some merit to the age thing, but even if we were only 5, 10, 15, 20 years old when we first saw Star Wars, that movie(s) was pretty revolutionary. I'd say you have to place them (4-6) in time as classics, maybe not in the same way as a flick like Gone with the wind, but in some fashion I'd say its amoung those.

Thus why not expect the prequels to be quality movies. They just don't come close to that. Either Lucas is pulling the biggest Hollywood prank ever and making these suck or he's just lost any talent he ever had.

First off, Inane, congrats on the speaker contest. Very cool!

I also agree w/ the age thing. Perhaps we've all been desensitized by all the technology and CG, all of that didn't exist in the mid-70's. Back then sci fi movies were pretty crude, so the slightest technology from Radio Shack looked cool. I'm sure some of the younger kids probably like the new trilogy better than the first one, just cause it looks cooler.

Here's the worst "age" reality check that I got related to Star Wars. I was talking about Star Wars w/ some coworkers, including one who is in his mid/late 20's. It came up that the first time he watched Star Wars was on VHS at his daycare. DOH! Obviously, he was not one of the many of us in San Francisco who stood in the line around the block to watch it at the Coronet on Van Ness...