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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

PT Battle of Grassy Plains...

Discussion in 'Prequel Trilogy' started by darthbarracuda, Apr 22, 2013.

  1. Cryogenic

    Cryogenic Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 20, 2005
    I've made this same point -- er, blade, er, whatever -- on IMDb.

    How can people watch TPM and not see a connection to the David Lynch film?

    A visually-imaginative film based on an epic science-fiction novel, the latter of which clearly influenced the development of the original 1977 SW picture and has carried on influencing Star Wars in its further guises, and the former of which Lynch made after deciding that a directing stint on the third and final Star Wars picture of the OT wasn't really for him.

    And then we have yet more internal rhyming between SW movies: in both TPM and ANH, combatants must get down and dirty with a fortified enemy and break the back of the enemy (am I mixing metaphors crudely enough?) by, er, penetrating the enemy's outer defence, only able to land blows when they're within -- yikes -- spitting distance.

    - Luke's trench run
    - Anakin blowing up the reactor
    - The droids walking through the Gungan shield
    - Padme walking right up to Nute in the throne room
    - Obi-Wan and Maul's taut duel in a sealed chamber
     
  2. darthbarracuda

    darthbarracuda Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Nov 4, 2012
    Although I see your connections, and they could be valid, I think that a lot of the close combat and scenarios were planned for suspense and entertainment value. There's no fun in launching a rocket from Yavin 4 that has its own brain and destroys the Death Star all by itself. You need to have characters in a life-threatening situation and up close and personal to experience the suspense, emotion, etc. Padme probably could have just talked to the Viceroy over a Hologram. But there's no emotion to it. You have to see Padme super pissed and ready to kick the Viceroy's ass in order to really feel the connection to the story.
     
  3. Cryogenic

    Cryogenic Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 20, 2005
    LOL. All that is very true. [face_laugh]

    Thank you for seeing my connections, too. :)

    Practicality has to win out somewhere.

    But there is, along with suspense and entertainment value, an artistic effect, too.

    That is basically Star Wars in a nutshell.

    The fact that there are no less than four pretty close-up encounters/match-ups, two of which involve visible shields (and of opposing colours), in TPM, is edifying as art and entertainment both, IMO.

    You have these face-to-face encounters (more or less) in the action climax -- a series of interpersonal reckonings -- that contrast with the stuffy air presented in the movie's opening scenes, where two Jedi, cold and aloof, are kept waiting in a room, and never actually meet their assailants head-on.

    There's some kind of large-scale turnaround between the start of the movie and the end. That's interesting to me. And with these particular developments, the galaxy will never be the same again.

    TPM is a fun film with many interlocking components, 'tis all.
     
  4. Darth kRud

    Darth kRud Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Nov 1, 2012
    Lucas said he wanted a "War And Peace" (Tolstoy) style battle scene. Too bad he made the Gungans and battle droids all idiots and then CGI'd them all which led me to not care if all of them would have been wiped out from a nuclear blast.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_and_Peace



    I really didnt care for the cheesy Bat Man style wall climbing either that took place during the battle scene. You know, where Padme and her security team do the BatMan.

     
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  5. Lars_Muul

    Lars_Muul Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Oct 2, 2000
    I don't even know which film that is.





    - I... I can't tell you.
    - Always with you it cannot be done.

    /LM
     
  6. Cautious Optimist

    Cautious Optimist Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    Apr 27, 2013
    What were the separatist fighter droids doing during the battle? I don't recall seeing them.
     
  7. Alexrd

    Alexrd Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 7, 2009
    They weren't there. And I don't see any reason for it either. The Gungan shield would protect them from the droid fighters as they did with the tanks.
     
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  8. Jedi Gunny

    Jedi Gunny Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    May 20, 2008

    Getting hit by a fighter's laser blasts are one thing a shield can handle. Shields on small ships are not meant to take the brunt of a salvo from a turbolaser cannon; you saw in the CT what happened to fighters that got hit by turret guns. It usually doesn't end well.

    Anyways, about the shield, it's just one of those things to present a problem for the protagonists (in this case the Gungans). If they were in an impenetrable energy shield that didn't allow even the smallest thing to get in, that would have made one boring battle. The Gungans would just sit in their bubble until the droids rusted. Besides, it's an energy shield; it would theoretically repel energy weapons (such as what the AAT tanks were using in the original bombardment). They didn't start using their torpedo complements until the shield was already down, mostly because those are the second-stage weapons (typically, you try to beat down your enemy's defenses first before barraging them with more destructive ordinance).
     
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  9. Ambervikings91

    Ambervikings91 Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Dec 1, 2012
    i think its a fun scene
     
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  10. KilroyMcFadden

    KilroyMcFadden Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Oct 31, 2012
    Anyway, the shields didn't extend underground. Blowing away at the perimeter and undermining the entire army would have been child's play. I can appreciate the extreme efforts to make excuses for it, I too love Star Wars and don't want it to be ridiculous, but as a person who has seen with his own eyes the damage even small yield military grade explosives can do, I guarantee, that shield would not have stopped a perimeter bombardment from making jelly out of those gungans. The scene was obviously conceived of by people (one single person?) who didn't seem to care to put much thought or research into tactics or explosives.

    ...and more than a decade later, people are still defending it!!





    Above is a video of some military grade explosions, (If it embeds properly,) You are in denial if you think aiming these things at the ground of the perimeter of that shield wouldn't liquify the Gungans, (not to mention the lizardfrogcowsdinos schlepping the shield generators,) standing 20 feet inside that shield.
    [​IMG]

    Being an apologist is one thing, we all do it for the movies we love.

    ...and btw, if you just can't wrap your head around the perfectly legitimate and real concept of shock waves, and their destructive power, don't forget that at any point, one single small yield nuke (or Star Wars equivalent,) could have been walked into any of those domes by any one of those droids, yet that didn't happen either. I say it again; this scene was obviously conceived of by people (one single person?) who didn't seem to care to put much thought or research into tactics or explosives and it is too unforgivable to allow me, (or anyone else with a bare minimum of first hand military experience,) to suspend disbelief.

    Just ridiculous.
     
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  11. Darth Chiznuk

    Darth Chiznuk Superninja of Future Films star 8 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Oct 31, 2012
    Darn it those Trade Federation goons are always forgetting their nuclear weapons. :oops:
     
  12. ezekiel22x

    ezekiel22x Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Aug 9, 2002
    Movies with zoomy spaceplanes, pew pew lasers, and sword wielding farmboys are totally about real life battle tactics.
     
  13. KilroyMcFadden

    KilroyMcFadden Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Oct 31, 2012
    The writer(s) failed us.
     
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  14. Darth Chiznuk

    Darth Chiznuk Superninja of Future Films star 8 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Oct 31, 2012
    I guess the Empire forgot their nukes when they went to Hoth too. I mean that would have made short work of the rebel base. I smell a plot hole. George really should have given us an explanation for that like the Imperials had decommissioned their nuclear arsenal at that point. Just poor storytelling. :rolleyes:
     
  15. Cryogenic

    Cryogenic Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 20, 2005

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(film)


    ...from the boundaries of the incredible, to the borders of the impossible...




    See also:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(novel)


    And:

    http://www.moongadget.com/origins/dune.html
     
  16. Saintheart

    Saintheart Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2000
    Gurney says killing with the point's more artistic than the blade, but Leto says if you must kill, you do it with either point or blade. :D
     
  17. Saintheart

    Saintheart Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2000
    Well, ESB at least does have one excuse for why they didn't just improve Hoth's climate (temporarily) with a few nukes: Vader was obsessed with finding "young Skywalker", not nuking him. And the moment he saw the probe droid's pictures of the shield generator, he knew that was where the Rebels were -- "and I am sure that Skywalker is with them." A nuclear weapon would've made it just a little bit harder to find Luke in a less-than-irradiated state. Of course, he went with the ground assault and still didn't catch Luke, but then Vader never really was all that bright. :D
     
  18. ILNP

    ILNP Jedi Knight star 1

    Registered:
    Apr 12, 2011
    I served in the Army Infantry and I have no problem suspending belief in regards to the battle. All you have to do is look back through history and see that tactics always lag behind weaponry. In the Civil War, despite the advances in the killing power and efficiency of the weapons they still used the solid line formations. The Trade Federation Army is a Corporate army. Their commanders are businessmen not soldiers. Do you really expect them to be a Rommel or a Patton? We have military academies whose sole purpose is to train future officers and we still get some who turn out to be crappy officers. Are you really surprised that an army whose officer corp is made up of businessmen moonlighting as soldiers isn't militarily sound or competent?
     
  19. FRAGWAGON

    FRAGWAGON Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 3, 2012
    Besides ILNP's post, the weight of whose argument could singlehandedly snap this thread shut and locked, though he is not a mod, there is the alarming fact that this movie is called The Phantom Menace. Forget not the perfectly legitimate and real concept of Space Robot Movies.

    Whoosh, Zoom, pew-pew as someone said above. Beep boop, green wizards, laser swords and sound in space, oh my!
     
  20. FRAGWAGON

    FRAGWAGON Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 3, 2012
    Kilroy, I respect your opinion, but based on your posts it's hard to understand why you don't hate the Original Trilogy, too. I've met a few people (and read a lot more) that hated the OT for the same, the exact same, reasons that you dislike TPM.

    I could always understand the new fans, the kids who grew up with the Prequels not liking them. They're corny, they're different, the spectacles are now commonplace in films. I think the silly muppet element (in Star Wars since 1977) turned some of the kids off because they were confronted with the fact that Star Wars is really a kids series.

    But old dudes like me and my circle of friends always intuited this near-comic element to the films and to us TPM was just an extension of that. Too far extended for some tastes perhaps, but I thought Lucas struck just the right note. "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away"
     
  21. Arawn_Fenn

    Arawn_Fenn Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Jul 2, 2004
    More like 1983.
     
  22. FRAGWAGON

    FRAGWAGON Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 3, 2012
    The cantina, mouse droid, most of the droid humor, jawas, dianoga, Yoda, space slug, artoo's swamp antics, ugnaughts....

    It's not a bad thing, folks. Unless you're not a Star Wars fan.
     
  23. Arawn_Fenn

    Arawn_Fenn Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Jul 2, 2004
    Some of those are people in costumes, though ( the cantina, jawas, ugnaughts ).
     
  24. DARTHVENGERDARTHSEAR

    DARTHVENGERDARTHSEAR Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jun 8, 2002
    In all fairness, they weren't trying to destroy the Queen's ship anyway, knowing that her majesty would be aboard. I guess the TF's ships have no tractor beams.
     
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  25. FRAGWAGON

    FRAGWAGON Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 3, 2012
    You're taking "Muppet element" too literally.
     
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