Continuity with the special effects = NONE!

"That's all well and good, Duck and Run, but you still have yet to provide any credible evidence that the fight scene was shortened specifically because Lucas thought these fantasy-fight-scene stunt doubles looked bad. We're not writing you off because we disagree with your opinion but because you are spouting off unfounded speculation in your endless mean-spirited crusade to smear Star Wars and its brilliant creator."

i said it was a theory.

my god do you even pay attention or do you just look for the next opportunity to condescend?

time will tell if my THEORY is correct or not. til then we can keep reading your bashes of others. i have every right in the world to say whatever i want about lucas or his films. again i need to remind you that my comments about lucas do not give you free liscense to bash other users.

get it through your head.

i said it was a theory.

Theories are generally formed after one has done sufficient research to formulate a reasonable opinion based on verifiable fact, something which you have clearly not done. One does not merely pluck a theory fully formed out of thin air and then wait to see if it is true or not. An even worse offense is choosing a theory you wish to be true and then bending the facts to fit!

Making a wild allegation and labeling it a "theory" doesn't change the fact that your statement is mean spirited and unfounded.

Theories are generally formed after one has done sufficient research to formulate a reasonable opinion based on verifiable fact, something which you have clearly not done. One does not merely pluck a theory fully formed out of thin air and then wait to see if it is true or not. An even worse offense is choosing a theory you wish to be true and then bending the facts to fit!

PPOR!

Boy have I got a treat for you, my friend.

If you want I can even give you a little preview.

Did Lucas digitally composite a puppet Yoda onto the AOTC DVD? That would be a real treat!

Something I've noticed about Yoda is that there's some real difficulty getting the sculpt correct. On almost every action figure and model I've ever seen, it doesn't look quite like Yoda. The TPM puppet is one glaring example. Puppetry, by the way, ROCKS.

theory

A scientific theory is an attempt to bind together in a systematic fashion the knowledge that one has of some particular aspect of the world of experience. The aim is to achieve some form of understanding, where this is usually cashed out as explanatory power and predictive fertility. The traditional analysis, going back to the Greeks and most recently championed by such logical empiricists as Carl Hempel and Ernest Nagel, sees theories as 'hypothetico-deductive systems', meaning that one has sets of laws bound together through the fact that, from a few high-powered axioms or hypotheses, everything else can be shown to follow as a deductive consequence. Explanation therefore is a matter of showing how things happened because of the laws of the theory. Prediction is a matter of showing how things will happen in accordance with the laws of the theory. Most significant is the fact that really successful theories bind together information from many hitherto disparate areas of experience, thus exhibiting what the philosopher William Whewell characterized as a 'consilience of inductions'.

In recent years, this picture of theories has come under some considerable attack. Although it may apply fairly well to such a theory as Newton's theory of gravitational attraction, something like Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection seems not to be as tightly integrated (deductively) as is supposed. Moreover, while such a theory as Darwin's certainly has some predictive power, it can hardly be said that this is a compelling attraction. Hence, rather than relying on the traditional excuses ('biology is immature' and so forth), an increasing number of thinkers have started to promote a view of theories which (they claim) pays far greater attention to the actual practice of science. Supporters of this 'semantic view' of theories argue that theories should not be seen as overall systems trying to cover, at one move, major areas of experience. Rather, more informally, they should be considered as sets of theoretical models which are given empirical meaning only inasmuch as they can be applied directly (semantically) to certain limited areas of empirical reality. The virtues of the theory (like explanation and prediction) are not prescribed beforehand, but are very much a function of the particular model in use at the time.

Debate continues, but undoubtedly at least part of the divide is between an older philosophy of science which sees the task to be that of prescription of the ideal form of science, and a newer philosophy of science which rests content with a description of the way in which science is actually performed.

link

I assume I have posted sufficient proof to negate the retraction my statement.

I assume I have posted sufficient proof to negate the retraction my statement.

PPOR!

By the way Durwood, why did you post the definition of "scientific" theory? If you go to Merriam-Webster, you'll notice that

abstract thought : SPECULATION

is definition #2, right above definition #3, which is for scientific theory. I never thought we'd stoop to semantics in this thread. Hawk must have a heavy heart over this one.

durwood, its only a theory.
relax.

no one is trying to split the atom here.

Because Dr. E's argument is ridiculous. "If I don't like two shots out of a film containing literally thousands of seamless effects then that must mean what was cut must have been truly aweful indeed!"

LOL <shaking head>

Jimminy Christmas, Durwood...

There's nothing wrong with DrE speculating that material was cut because it looked bad.

And as usual you are misrepresenting what someone has said in order to make it appear that their argument is weak.

It's called attacking a straw argument.

Here's a formal definition (Please reserve a synaptic pathway for it):

Straw Argument - attacking a straw argument occurs when a weakened imitation of an opponent's argument is attacked instead of the opponent's original argument because the imitation is easier to refute. The weakened imitation is known as a straw argument.

I see you doing this so often, Durwood, that I have to wonder if you have ADD.

Please try harder to understand what people are saying before you post a response, ok.

have you taken some deep breaths yet durwood?

i wish you a speedy recovery and hope those veins in your forehead have gone back down.

Did Lucas digitally composite a puppet Yoda onto the AOTC DVD? That would be a real treat!

Yes it would, wouldn't it?

But that's not it, unfortunately.

Something I've noticed about Yoda is that there's some real difficulty getting the sculpt correct. On almost every action figure and model I've ever seen, it doesn't look quite like Yoda. The TPM puppet is one glaring example. Puppetry, by the way, ROCKS.

Yeah, that's a real mystery to me.

I wonder what makes it so difficult?

You'd think all they'd have to do is use the puppet from TESB as a template.

And yes...puppetry does ROCK!!!

Yeahhh baby!!! lol

Puppetry may be fine, but there is absolutely nothing about TPM Yoda puppet that rocked. It was an abomination. A terrible piece of crap that didn't even begin to look like Yoda. He looked like something else completely. So thank God for CGI Yoda in AOTC. Because the one in TPM sucked nutz.

Puppetry may be fine, but there is absolutely nothing about TPM Yoda puppet that rocked. It was an abomination. A terrible piece of crap that didn't even begin to look like Yoda. He looked like something else completely. So thank God for CGI Yoda in AOTC. Because the one in TPM sucked nutz.

Liked TPM, but I'll back that one up. Funny how puppetry still rocks after the TPM Yoda but the AOTC Yoda still sucks for some people.

So is anybody actually still interested in talking about Star Wars in any kind of constructive way or shall we just continue to piss away more pages of cyberspace in pretentious pseudolegalese and pulling cliched definitions out of the giant @$$ that is online SW fandom?

AOTC Yoda rocks hard over the sucky TPM Yoda. AOTC Yoda looks like the ESB Yoda puppet, and was a far better representation of what Yoda looks like. There's only so much you can do with a puppet. The Yoda puppets in the originals were fantastic. The Yoda puppet in TPM sucked hard. The AOTC Yoda was also fantastic.

Oh well, liked TPM but hated how Yoda looked. Terrible!

A few dodgy puppet programs like Fraggle Rock or Pinwheel does nothing to detract from the artform of puppetry. I think the TPM Yoda was actually Yoda's nephew or something. Ha ha ha, or Yoda's uncle maybe? Why would Yoda look so drastically different less than 40 years later. The guy is already 900-some-odd years old. I think he pretty much finished his aging somewhere around year 486.

Puppetry may be fine, but there is absolutely nothing about TPM Yoda puppet that rocked. It was an abomination. A terrible piece of crap that didn't even begin to look like Yoda. He looked like something else completely. So thank God for CGI Yoda in AOTC. Because the one in TPM sucked nutz.

I think this is something that we can all agree on.

...so much to the point that it's not even an issue.

I guess what I'm saying is there really no point in discussing the ugly mother------ that is TPM Yoda.

Liked TPM, but I'll back that one up. Funny how puppetry still rocks after the TPM Yoda but the AOTC Yoda still sucks for some people.

Not sure what you're getting at here.

Perhaps it should have been said that puppetry 'can' rock and that puppetry at it's best is better than CG at it's best...at least where Yoda is concerned.

Does that clear things up?

So is anybody actually still interested in talking about Star Wars in any kind of constructive way or shall we just continue to piss away more pages of cyberspace in pretentious pseudolegalese and pulling cliched definitions out of the giant @$$ that is online SW fandom?

Hmmmm...I wanna piss away more pages of cyberspace.

j/k

I recall reading an article from the days of ESB, in which Mark Hamill I think mentioned that people would sometimes ask him "where is Yoda now?" and stuff like that, forgetting that he was just a puppet. I think that says a lot about the power of Frank Oz's performance in ESB.

Some people, and I'm not mentioning any names, think that the Dagobah sequences are dull and boring, but to me those scenes are Star Wars at its most magical. Yoda's mannerisms, charm, and spirit look completely genuine and honest; the AOTC digimon is over-animated, contrived character on the level of a Disney movie.

Since I'm now watching the movie (ESB, not AOTC) about once every two days, I've noticed a lot of little things that I hadn't noted before. One of my favorite moments of the movie is a very quick scene, a single cut actually. After Yoda tells Luke "Help you I can", Luke replies, "I don't think so." At that very moment, there is a brief reaction shot in which Yoda's ears drop slightly, and his face reflects a subtle look of disappointment. This expression is so singularly genuine and realistic, that I doubt any "animator" could realistically reproduce such a moment -- especially one as understated as this.

I am beginning to think that these little moments, perfect as they are, are perhaps intended to be forgotten by the audience. Yet the audience retains what they've seen in the subconcious, and from there an emotional reaction is created that ultimately leads to a positive experience with the film. If the film is watched dozens of times, these small bits are noticed and further appreciated for what they are. There my friends, is the "over-analyzed basher fun" of Star Wars.

With ESB in particular, having somewhat of a dark, "downer" ending, there are so many great scenes of human bonding and personality, that it's difficult not to feel emotionally moved by the film. More examples of these tiny scenes that contain subtle nuances of emotion:

Leia listening to the TIE-bombers move away

"I'm not really interested in hearing your opinions 3PO"

Luke and Han's farewell on Hoth

Yoda watching Luke try and fail to lift the X-wing

Chewie sitting down and reassembling C-3P0 on Cloud City

Lando's reactions as the deal "keeps getting worse" -- my favorite is when he looks at Leia after Han is encased


By the way, I don't recall any such powerful moments in AOTC, especially not enough of them to leave a positive, human reaction in the audience. Hence, there is the explanation of why there are so many "bashers", or better to say, "people disappointed with this whatever it is being called a Star Wars movie".

TPM, in its defense, does have a few truly emotional scenes -- thanks mostly to Liam Neeson.

Well, that may be the problem. When you create espectations that every Yoda scene in AOTC or TPM has to be as good or better than the scenes with Yoda in TESB, you lose respect for the scenes Yoda are in to begin with. That's not a good way to go about things.

Yes, there are no Yoda scenes as powerful as the ones in TESB (except for Yoda & the Younglings, which is my favorite Yoda scene ), but I still enjoyed Yoda's scenes in TPM and AOTC. I can enjoy those scenes without constantly worrying or concerning myself with the fact that they aren't as powerful as certain scenes in TESB over 20 years ago.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder...

Since you so much love TesB it's rather easy to praise.

Since you proably hated AotC the moment the titel was anounced it's easy to trash.

You say AotC has no strong moments. Fine but if I'd say the father/son relation between Obi Wan and Anakin, Anakins Obsession for Padme are impressive. Akanin wanting to go back for Padme, Padme's stand-in being killed, Yoda teaching the Younglings to solve problems, Dooku trying to pursuade Obi Wan - but you'd still disagree anyway TokyoXtreme...

Ohh and the best scene in star wars would be anakin bringing his mother back. No txt just plain movie that hits you like a rock. Pure Gold but I guess you never noticed it, did you?

Well, that may be the problem. When you create espectations that every Yoda scene in AOTC or TPM has to be as good or better than the scenes with Yoda in TESB, you lose respect for the scenes Yoda are in to begin with. That's not a good way to go about things.

I'm not really sure I understand your logic with this one. How would I lose respect? When I see bits like Yoda's previously mentioned expression of defeat, or his voice when he states "for eight HUN-DRED YEARS have I trained Jedi", I begin to think that someone put a lot of thought into how this movie would be conveyed emotionally to the audience.

You say AotC has no strong moments. Fine but if I'd say the father/son relation between Obi Wan and Anakin, Anakins Obsession for Padme are impressive. Akanin wanting to go back for Padme, Padme's stand-in being killed, Yoda teaching the Younglings to solve problems, Dooku trying to pursuade Obi Wan - but you'd still disagree anyway TokyoXtreme...

Not necessarily. I wasn't impressed by most of AOTC, but I did like Obi-Wan's discussion with Jango. Furthermore, I thought Obi-Wan's exchange with Anakin was done very well. Two scenes in a movie of millions does not a happy me make. Can you imagine my "phantom edit" of this flick? Obi-Wan talking to Jango, an asteroid chase, and Obi-Wan yelling at Anakin. That's the shortest SW film of all.

I have to point out that I thought Obi-Wan's scene with Dooku was hollow. It didn't stir me at all. I just thought it was dumb. And then I thought about it no more.

I'm not really sure I understand your logic with this one. How would I lose respect? When I see bits like Yoda's previously mentioned expression of defeat, or his voice when he states "for eight HUN-DRED YEARS have I trained Jedi", I begin to think that someone put a lot of thought into how this movie would be conveyed emotionally to the audience

I'm not sure I completely understand what you mean either.

That's funny, we both are confused by what the other is saying. Comedy gold

I'm not sure I completely understand what you mean either.

Obviously.

By the way, I don't recall any such powerful moments in AOTC, especially not enough of them to leave a positive, human reaction in the audience.

The funniest thing is, you actually believe this!

And here are just a few gems from Attack Of The Clones:

"...but don't worry. I can sense everything going on in that room." He pauses to give Obi-Wan a condescening look. "Trust me."

"It's too risky. Besides, your senses aren't that well attuned, my young apprentice."

"And yours are?"

Obi-Wan is stunned at the challenge and gives his padawan a stern look. "Possibly!"

----------

"So the council has finally given you an assignment. Your patience has paid off."

"Your guidence more than my patience."

"You don't need guidence, Anakin. I have never met another as powerful as you. I forsee you becoming the greatest of all Jedi."

----------

"I killed them. All of them. And not just the men, but the women, and the children. They're animals! And I slaughtered them like animals!"

----------

Obi-Wan and Jango size each other up. It's a great scene, but I love the moment that comes just after.

Jango looks concerned and slightly troubled.

"Dad? What's wrong?" inquires Boba.

Jango contemplates for a few moments, then says, "Pack your things. We're leaving."

----------

"Traitor!"

"Oh, no! This is all a big mistake, I assure you! I shall petition to have you released immediately."

then

"Join me, Obi-Wan, and together we shall destroy the Sith!"

"I will never join you!"

"Then I'm afraid I may have some difficulty securing your release."

----------

I'll tell you, I could go on and on, but I'd probably end up quoting just about the entire movie! But I assume that my examples shall suffice to prove my point.

The funniest thing is, you actually believe this!

Yes DW, it is true that I don't recall any such powerful moments.

Tokyo are you a Vulcan or something? You know-- emotionless?