Saga Unpopular Star Wars opinions!

I just found him so over the top. Cheesy doesn't begin to describe some of his lines, and he seems like he'd be more at home as some comic book super villain.

 

RotS kicks ANH's ass.

 

Wow, actually agree with all of these. Bravo, my good sir. Bravo.

 

She was much hotter in the Boussh outfit! Without the helmet ofc.

I think most people agree with you on Grievous... Therefore, my unpopular opinion is that I really like him! He was poorly executed as a character though, thats for sure.

 

I think Grievous is a great classical Snidely Whiplash type character, an archtype that fits Star Wars so very well. He's a cool 1930's throwback which is one thing I like about him.

He is also a good proto-Vader by showing that becoming a cyborg is not an improvement.

 

Rob, you are most welcome!

I wasn't around back then. I think I discovered this board some time in 2004, at the gentle nagging of another TFN poster who I knew from another board (step forward, luukeskywalker). He told me that I should register and get posting. As usual, I procrastinated; but then I quickly got swept up in the hardcore allure of the place. I was amazed at how seriously some people had been discussing the saga here. It was a total shakeup from places I'd been before then.

"Deeper and juic(i)er in its own lore". I like that!! I suspect Mr. Lard Biscuit himself liked, and still likes, that aspect of AOTC a whole lot, too. For a couple of years, I was disappointed that a big analysis of ROTS wasn't forthcoming from him. But more recently, I've come to realize that the progression of his analysis-narrative is perfect as it stands: he waxed happy about TPM at some length, went ballistic on AOTC, and rounded off with an epilogue/epitaph for ROTS.

If TPM is dense with open-handed foreboding, encouraging speculative awe, then AOTC, as the critical connective tissue between TPM and ROTS, itself the second-to-last of the "Anakin Skywalker" saga -- packed tightly between two films of a more poetic, compressed nature than the OT installments, but also needing to account for all the existing films with their shifting topographies, its *own* signature look, sound, and feel, and the ultimate form of one that was still-to-be-made -- is tasked with enormous narratological obligations of its own. And as the intermediate, enchanted sequel, like its forebear, TESB, it must invariably emerge as the most layered, complex, lugubrious, and bizarre of the six SW movies.

As such, its symbolic landscape is one to luxuriate in, particularly when the spaghetti-like junctioning of the other films -- AOTC is part-THX, part-AG, part-ANH, part-TESB, part-ROTJ, part-TPM, and part-unmade-ROTS, all-in-one -- is acknowledged. As essentially the mosaic sum of all prior symbolic and narrative tessellation, including technological experimentation, inherent to the Star Wars series, yet needing to still end with a sense of mystery, paving the way for the final installment in production order, it is where story elements are at their most heightened, their most insinuating. I think this is why the owner of Lard Biscuit went to town on AOTC, but said so little about ROTS in comparison. While all the movies are great, AOTC, in some ways, is the most aesthetically involving: the one to get the most intellectually excited about.

The Lard Biscuit guy also touches on that. From a certain POV, the Clone Wars were/are the single-most hotly-anticipated event in the main SW film canon, since this was one of the few incidents -- the only real incident -- specifically named in Ben Kenobi's hut from 1977 involving multiple key characters from the get-go. Straight away, Lucas instilled a Homeric sense of myth and grandeur about this epic conflict: a sense of something sweeping and important (and with a weird sci-fi bent) that we're not permitted to see or remotely understand ahead of time. It was up to AOTC, then, to both depict the outbreak of the Clone Wars and imbue the event with the right tone and energy befitting its scale and importance, and to honour the shroud of secrecy the event previously rested under (and according to AOTC's foggy opening, still does).

When Lucas finally completed AOTC, it's interesting to see that he associates the event with dream-like happenstance from the beginning. The first in-story words of AOTC are: "There is unrest in the Galactic Senate." Anakin is stirring, the clones are stirring... oh, my. It's even the case that the "II" of "EPISODE II" becomes the twinned "t" in "ATTACK" (vertical and horizontal), the only instance of letter-cloning in George Lucas' episode titles. Hell, it was even released in 2002, a year with obvious cloning/mirroring from a visual-numerical standpoint. Well, I'm straying from the topic, but SW is so intensely graphical, and AOTC so flush with strangeness, I can't help it.

Once again, I'm trying to say that AOTC feels, to me, the most poetic of the bunch; in a way, the most self-conscious. And isn't that just reflected in the turbulent makeup of its main protagonist: the worrisome, wearisome, second-guessing Amidala ("I shouldn't have come back"), or the brash, furtive, conflicted, despondent Anakin, regarding a yin-yang symbol in the clouds, right at film's centre? So well-done is AOTC, in the poetic realm, that it's almost too good. It's like one is partaking of the forbidden fruit in Garden of Eden, desperate for ultimate knowledge, and poisoned by tasting the poetry of the gods. This is a poetry us mortals shouldn't know, since we are stuck on a temporal plane, while the gods revel in infinity. We are cursed -- or, indeed, blessed -- to stand baffled and inferior at the lip of imperfect art, imperfectly understood.

 

Okay, hopefully, it's clear I love AOTC, now...

(Or that I'm just mad)

Nice find, Darth Nub!! I appreciate all the work you do at bringing these rarer pieces into the open.

But for reasons that obi-rob-kenobi outlined, I can't concur with your objection...

They might easily have been bought and sold, like loaves of bread, too...

Uprooted from home, permanently split up, put to hard labour, sexually exploited, beat up, mutilated, starved, or even killed.

And Anakin was well-aware that that threat loomed large over his head -- and Shmi's.

"My mom and I were sold to Gardulla the Hutt, but she lost us betting on the podraces."

There is the even-creepier idea that they were harvested or imported from somewhere beyond Tatooine itself (possibly in the Republic, possibly illegally).

"How long have you been here?"
"Since I was very little. Three, I think."

(Then the above dialogue pertaining to the sale).

Oh, and don't forget the chip implanted in every slave's head, which enables their owners, and possibly others on Tatooine (the Hutts or any of their toadies) to blow slaves up. And even if the chip worked imperfectly or Anakin was flatly wrong (perhaps slaves were simply tricked into believing such a thing), Anakin himself -- and Shmi -- clearly believe it, and it would seem to go on influencing Anakin's behaviour (along with the other artifacts of slavery) after he has been "freed". Shmi's too, since she states, "My place is here", which is fairly typical thinking for anyone enslaved so long they've forgotten the taste of freedom or what it means to live any existence but the one they find themselves (but don't necessarily consider themselves) stuck within. At root, what the founding film of the expanded Star Wars saga depicts is one slave stumbling upon, and under-handedly procuring the freedom, of another. While the mother of this mother-son-father trinity -- along with her slave-owner/keeper -- are left to rot. After this predatory outcome, the birth of Darth Vader is mere technicality: a matter more of "when?" than "how?".

All in all, to be someone else's property, with no inherent rights of your own, and to live in a social environment dominated by trading, gambling, and other forms of exploitation, must surely be considered sad and loathsome, routine beatings or no. Of course, in a deeper sense, this is Lucas' way of allegorizing the human condition, or the American Dream, or whatever else is generally cherished with a mixture or pride and vanity -- any belief system, any social construct, any status quo, any paradigm -- and stirring one to deeper awareness, broader (and more honest) evaluation of one's life circumstances: biological, psychological, political, moral, spiritual. But of course, if one were to encounter something resembling freedom -- a new experience, a deeper truth -- one wouldn't necessarily recognize or embrace it, but instead return to the comfort of the cave, the consoling of the familiar. Physically, we have spread across our planet of origin, and even begun to cataclysmically remake and wreck it, but mentally and spiritually, we remain troglodytes: a troubling and dangerous contradiction. Interestingly, the imagery of the homes of Anakin and Luke, father and son, evokes cave dwelling.

Star Wars is a slave narrative. That Padme is shocked to find that Anakin is a slave suggests something of the true scope of her naivete. Not only for presuming that the Republic must still hold sway over Tatooine, but that the Republic doesn't play host to slavery itself, when, from a certain POV, it is nothing but enslaving, on a simultaneous multitude of levels. Once again, she appears to carry the egocentric belief that she is freer than those around her, yet she's only fourteen and somehow became the leader of an entire planet: a planet which itself has an aquatic warrior race full of its own enslaving ideals. Droids are clearly (or not so clearly?) enslaved. Jedi are inducted from childhood -- another form of slavery. Humans preside over humans and levy taxes on human and alien alike. The dominance of one language, the outgrowth of a single political idea/social experiment, is a form of gross slavery. And all the characters within SW are ultimately enslaved to the fictive landscape they are only dimly aware of, at best, is some tempestuous illusion: a film series for warring tribes of self-enslaving gods (us) who are both, ironically, the initiators and spectators of this cosmogenic drama.

 

Cryogenic - Your understanding of all things Star Wars never ceases to enthrall me.

 

Boba Fett's death was fitting for him. He died by a freak accident, not by being bested in battle. His reputation is still intact.

 

I think Jedi is the best of the saga, that the Ewoks work in both terms of plot and as a species and that Watto is the most well conceived character of the PT.

 

Thank you, JLS. JLS!



I'm just a lil' fan trying his sweet best.

My love for this saga makes me jump even higher than those guys -- usually, with my clothes on.

 

Cryogenic is a Star Wars weirdo. If you were to bottle and sell his posted thoughts it would probably go down smooth like some Skittle-flavored opium from the 19th century mystic Orient.

And it would look like Dan Aykroyd's Crystal Skull vodka:

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That is not the Mitchell-Hedges skull.

 

It's a shame that Ron L. Hubbart is already dead. Cryogenic and him would do so well together. They could have long walks on the beach talking about what holds the universe together.

 

I would love some Skittle-flavored opium, for the record.

 

He died from a crappy, malfunctioning rocket pack.

Like his dad.

Insurance companies in Star Wars get lucky at avoiding payouts, however.

This is the highest compliment anyone has ever paid me!

Of course, kidding aside, George Lucas is the ultimate Star Wars weirdo, since he created the whole thing in the first place.

And he put that crazy glowing ball in at the end of Episode I:

Dan Aykroyd's Crystal Skull/Head vodka mixed with a special blend of Willy Wonka's blueberry pie.

Hubbard. L. Ron.

I expect, for all his nuttiness, it would be as good an answer as Richard Feynman or Carl Sagan could have offered me -- and probably a lot more entertaining.

Anyway, the universe is held together by the Force, which is held together by miniature Ewoks, which are cohered into dancing patterns by cherry-flavoured Wookiee Silly String. Everyone knows that.

 

Not sure if I like the great Cryogenic being compared to the guy who made the most humorous religion in history......

 

That person has a "thing" for me. They just like reminding me of it from time to time.

Being compared to Hubbard is something of a back-handed compliment. He at least had a certain imagination and strength of will.

 

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...we're all star wars weirdos...​

 

After all, we're on here.

 

The added beak to the Sarlacc made it so much better, and I believe Mickey Suttle is very good friends with George Lucas and is actually making the ST.

Now that's controversial!

(Sorry if it's posted already, at work and don't have time to go thru all the pages)

 

Not only was the podrace not long enough for me, I wish I could see another one in another SW movie.

 

I'd be down with seeing another one, but what could you really add to it that would make it any better? Another lap? More competitors horribly dying? A second Ace for Anakin to overcome?

It's great as it is.

 

I LOVE, Jedi Rocks! I honestly think it is a much better song than Lapti Nek and the CGI Sy Snootles is so much more better than that dreadful Puppet.

 

The white walls of Cloud City appropriately made the place feel more mysterious.
(Yes, I know Irvin Kershner liked the Special Edition change.)

A stormtrooper asked C-3PO "who are you?" and maybe Boba Fett shot him.