Did anyone not like the story of TPM?

I dunno about a mistake, but it could have been illustrated better if it were amplified, this Anakin/Padme dynamic. It wouldn't have to be bonding, exactly, but perhaps some kind of fascination. I assume we'll see that more in the next issue.

If there were some kind of infatuation, that would certainly be overboard. But perhaps a fascination with how well (or not so well) Anakin deals with his world day by day, while he is at the same time so talented. A good 'example' (please note I said example) would be characterizing Luke by having him characterize Han in the hangar scene near the end of ANH. By deriding Han for being a merc at heart, we see that Luke may be/have views that are the opposite, such as being capable of fighting for a principle. An example of where that might've worked in TPM would be Padme talking about the pod race with Anakin either before or after. Perhaps Anakin will indicate his view of 'necessary evils' associated with the pod race and him needing to be in it, thereby setting a potential precedent for future Padme/Anakin dynamic.

 

If Anakin bonds with Padme and Obi-wan not to mention everyone else, his turn to the darkside will be for nothing because Lucas has said that Anakin will be experiencing Jealousy, Betrayal, Sense of loss, possessiveness, anger, etc. which are also one of the factors to his turn and having him bond with everyone he comes across will not help him on achieving those factors.

In order for him to descend to darkness, he musn't have any interaction with anyone nor can he bond with the other main characters.

 

What's a betrayal if it doesn't come from someone you trust? And how does he get a sense of loss if he never had anything? Anakin needs to have these friendships built up, then knocked down; that's a much more powerful fall than having him turn against people he didn't particularly care about in the first place.

 

"If Anakin bonds with Padme and Obi-wan not to mention everyone else, his turn to the darkside will be for nothing because Lucas has said that Anakin will be experiencing Jealousy, Betrayal, Sense of loss, possessiveness, anger, etc. which are also one of the factors to his turn and having him bond with everyone he comes across will not help him on achieving those factors."

"In order for him to descend to darkness, he musn't have any interaction with anyone nor can he bond with the other main characters."

No offense intended, but this is absolute hogwash. If he doesn't bond with anyone, then there is nobody for whom he can feel jealous. Nobody for for whom he can feel possessive. Nobody by whom he can feel betrayed.

And remember, when all is said and done and we watch all six films in a row, we will have to have a clear reason to be concerned for Luke in terms of his potential to fall to the Dark Side. If Anakin's fall is based on his having no bonds with anyone, then where's the suspense once Luke shows up with his buddies? He's got friends, he can't fall to the Dark Side... no risk, no suspense, no drama.

See, it just doesn't work. Look at how Vader gets Luke to burst out and attack him, and brings him to the edge of the Dark Side... through Luke's love for his sister. Luke comes damned close to falling to the Dark Side at that point, and what is the ONLY thing which snaps him out of it? The fact that he sees the personification of the Dark Side lying on the ground in front of him with wires hanging out of his shattered bionic wrist... and Luke realizes how close he is to becoming THAT. How there lies his father, and there too very easily could HE lie inside that mask, behind that hatred.

It's not a matter of whether Luke has friends or not... he almost falls to the Dark Side anyway. By the same token, I do not believe Anakin will require a friendless, hollow existence in order to fall to the Dark Side. This isn't "Columbine In Space" here, y'know...

 

I am just saying they interacted ENOUGH for us to care. Well some of us anyway.

 

Evidently not enough of us though, Gomer. I mean, if I was just out here kvetching all by myself I could maybe accept that it was done "good enough for government work", so to speak. But there are people who I know who totally surprised me in that they didn't particularly like TPM when I'd have assumed that they would have. There are a number of folks around these boards who quite clearly WANTED to like TPM and for whatever reason just didn't. And a LOT of them seem to be of the same mind as me on this whole characterization thing. There wasn't enough characterization of the principles to make a lot of us care about them. And IMHO a large part of that was the lack of opportunities for the main three characters to significantly interact with one another.

Maybe we'll get a chance to know them in Episode II...

 

I say they didn't want to like it enough.

 

I wanted to love TPM a whole lot, but it just didn't happen. TPRE is a better movie, IMHO, but it still suffers from several of the flaws TPM suffers from. One of these is the characterization and lack of important interaction with our three main characters. There just isn't enough meaningful interaction. I mean, do Obi Wan and Padme even talk to each other? If so, how many lines? And Obi and Anakin have very few lines together until the end of the movie. These are but a few of the problems with TPM.

And Gomer, we shouldn't have to want to like a movie so much that we have no other option but to like it. A movie should make us want to like it and enjoy it. As PR said, this was not the case for several people.

 

George delivered the goods, TPM IS a great addition to the saga. But you have to want to see that to be able to.

If you close your mind off, and assume Lucas screwed everything up, then of course you will never get to the point where you "get" TPM, because your focus is only on citing Lucas' faults in making it, without ever questioning your ability to soak it up.

 

Uh... yeah, Gom'... that's why I just watched TPM on video AGAIN the other night. I'm just not giving it a fair shot, am I?

Look, you can accuse me of many things, but not wanting to like TPM enough is CERTAINLY not one of them.

 

"...we shouldn't have to want to like a movie so much that we have no other option but to like it. A movie should make us want to like it and enjoy it."

Of course, this is an incredibly valid point, SJ.

I think Lucas has gotten MORE than a fair shake from a lot of us who didn't particularly like TPM, because rather than just writing it off and never again having thing one to do with it (as would have likely been the case had any other director made a film that didn't do it for us) many of us continue to revisit TPM and TRY to like it.

But the point is, we shouldn't HAVE to "try to like it." If Lucas had really done TPM up right I suggest that those of us who care enough to go to various lengths to TRY to like it... WOULD have liked it. Me, I'm plenty open, I just didn't particularly like TPM and try as I might I really STILL don't like it.

 

It is the only conclusion I can come to.

The film is a great addition to the saga.

Scientificly, If you were to show a film to a group of people, and half of them liked it, while the other half did not, you can pretty much rule the film out as the problem, because it is the one constant.

 

"But the point is, we shouldn't HAVE to "try to like it." If Lucas had really done TPM up right I suggest that those of us who care enough to go to various lengths to TRY to like it... WOULD have liked it. Me, I'm plenty open, I just didn't particularly like TPM and try as I might I really STILL don't like it. "

Do or Do NOT, there is no try.


So what about the people who liked it WITHOUT trying? Are they simply not discerning enough? They have lower standards? They're jello-brained fans who love anything with the Lucas name on it?

 

No, they simply have DIFFERENT standards and tastes. Sure, there are some people who will love anything that comes out as long as it has the Star Wars brand name, just as there are others who avoid Star Wars films at all costs for their own reasons.

It would be easy for me to lay out some kind of blanket claim like you suggest where everyone who likes TPM is an undiscerning boob, but I won't because that simply is not the case... any more than the blanket claim that anyone who doesn't love TPM must have WANTED to dislike it.

But I'm sorry, there have been some valid reasons brought up time and time again here and elsewhere as to why many people thought TPM was subpar as a SW film (or as a film in general) only to be dismissed by gushers as being the result of either not being intelligent enough to understand the "complex" plot, or else the result of somebody not being a "true" SW fan or whatever it is.

"Scientificly, If you were to show a film to a group of people, and half of them liked it, while the other half did not, you can pretty much rule the film out as the problem, because it is the one constant."

Uh... how about expanding on this a bit there, Gome, rather than just throwing it out as another "Because Gomer Says So" fact. Are you seriously telling me that a film that tests at 50% is a success? Because the film itself is a constant? What does that even MEAN?? If 50% of a given audience hate a film, that's not exactly a rousingly positive reflection of the overall quality of that film, now is it? Hell, show a free movie to ANY random group of people and half of them will like the damned thing because it was free! There's a significant portion of the population who consider McDonalds to be "good food"... that doesn't suddenly turn a Big Mac into haute cuisine, y'know?

Back this one up for us, Gomer... because it's looking like your longest reach yet.

 

"George delivered the goods, TPM IS a great addition to the saga. But you have to want to see that to be able to."

LOL, now that's CLASSIC gusher philosphy for ya. ONLY the ones who WANTED to like it, did, anyone who was not entertained went in with the attitude of not wanting to see anything entertaining in it. OK, raise of hands, how many people here usually spent 5 - 8 dollars and two hours of their day, and don't want to be entertained by what they're watching?

And Patrick, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and overa gain hoping for different results. Stop watching TPM. It'll be the same movie next time as it was the last few thousand times. You watched it, you hated it, end of story, second verse, please.

 

Darth Stryphe, I never claimed to be a SANE man! ;^)

There are parts about TPM that I do enjoy. When I watch it I watch it for those elements and also in hopes that the parts I haven't liked in the past (unfortunately far more numerous than those that I do like) will gradually grow on me. I fully appreciate the fact that some things are an acquired taste (I have acquired a number of favorite tastes in my life through sheer will... beer being one of them) and am willing to treat TPM in that regard for the time being because I dig the other three films so much. Maybe I'm throwing good vid-watching time after bad... who knows? I do TRY to see in TPM what others here claim to, and maybe eventually I'll have the smarts to wise up and chuck the thing on the scrap-heap once and for all.

 

The film is a great addition to the saga.


One man's opinion.

But you have to want to see that to be able to.

Didn't I just explain to you that I really wanted to see a great movie? I shouldn't have to will myself to think it was great. That's ludicrous!

If you close your mind off, and assume Lucas screwed everything up, then of course you will never get to the point where you "get" TPM, because your focus is only on citing Lucas' faults in making it, without ever questioning your ability to soak it up.

The first few times I saw TPM I was in the theater. I had the most open of minds there, and I still did not like the movie. Only now, after 2 years of talking about it, do I discuss GL's faults in making it. I don't question my ability to "soak it up", but, yet again, I question your seemed requirement that we should force ourselves to like this movie.

A movie should make us absorbed, we shouldn't have to absorb ourselves. This seems to be the fault in your reasoning.

 

"Where's the suspense once Luke shows up with his buddies? He's got friends, he can't fall to the darkside."

The suspense is already there to begin with and plus, Anakin is a lot different from Luke because he hardly has any friends to interact with besides his childhood buddies and Padme.

Everyone else he interacts with are either disgusted with him, disappointed in him, or just having the kind of relationships that aren't friendly or personal which helps plant the bad seeds into Anakin.

You have a point about how Anakin should have friends but that's just it, the only people who cares about him are Padme and his mom. Qui-Gon, the only person who freed him and supported him is already dead and Obi-wan is only agreed to train Anakin out of respect for Qui-Gon and not out of friendship.

I also forgot to add that Lucas said that loneliness is also one of the factors to Anakin's turn.

 

Yeah, I've heard that being said by so many on this forum. "You didn't want to like it." That statement disgusts me. Either the person truly believes that or they are overstating something for the sake of argument -- in both cases, it's ludicrous.

Let's stop and think about that one. Hmmm, millions of fans flock to watch the latest installment (after a 20 year wait) in the greatest movie saga ever. But really, they go in not wanting to like it because they're Battlestar Galactica fans in disguise. And some Buck Rogers, too. And, naturally, they don't end up liking it and come to the Star Wars fan forums where fans post and tell everyone they didn't like it and why.

RIIIIGHT.

As Patrick_Russell here has said... quite the opposite. We wouldn't have been so disappointed if we didn't care. We wouldn't have bought the movie ANYWAY if we didn't want to like it. We're here because we like Star Wars, not because we're something along the lines of a fatalistic group wanting to spread our religion for our next big cult suicide.

EDIT - About this whole "Anakin does / doesn't need to bond" thing... I don't get the line of reasoning behind the belief that the next movie(s) should favor him not being close to those around him. My take is this:

First, to accomplish this would require a complete and undocumented turnaround on Anakin's part, from "everyone loves me, I'm Ani" to "I'm a soggy introvert. Wash your hands before you touch me." At that point, you might as well say that Yoda is really Anakin's father, because that's not believable storytelling.

Second, why can't he form strong and emotional bonds and still pull off a turn to the dark side? What's so wrong with the idea of Anakin learning and loving like a normal person, all the while learning about the Force, yet becoming impatient with his lessons because he was always so quick at learning everything else, Palpatine noticing and finding ways to needle him, and then Anakin becomes jealous, betrayed, and snaps?

All that can be accomplished with deep character development (emotional bonds with characters that in turn bind the audience)... and still preserve the storyline. And that's just a sample, a guess, a suggestion. I hope GL had some good advice on Ep2...

 

I hope you guys learn how to see a new SW movie before there are no more new ones to see.

 

Gomer's reasoning seems to be as follows (and Gomer, please correct me if I'm wrong): There is absolutely nothing wrong with the movie. Those who liked the film accepted it for what it was, and those who didn't were unaccepting of what it was because they didn't open their minds to it properly.

Which on the surface sounds like a more or less valid point. The problem with this kind of reasoning is, it automatically assumes that the movie is faultless (essentially perfect) and the only real fault lies with those viewers who for whatever reason didn't like it. This sort of thinking seems very similar to religious fanaticism in that it is assumed that the object ('god', or in this case 'the film') is somehow beyond reproach and those who don't accept that fact are simply not opening their minds to it -- and the fault lies with them for not doing so. In a free-thinking society, reasoning of this type is by its very nature flawed.

Instead, isn't it possible that a good many of those who didn't like the film went in fully wanting to accept and like it? And they wound up not liking it simply because the film had real and significant problems with it that prevented them from liking it? And I'm not saying that the people who liked the film are wrong either -- there is nothing wrong with having liked it. But my point is, either way, assuming that the movie is flawless is ludicrous. It's only a movie, not a religion. Finding fault only in those who didn't like it is not being very open-minded.

 

"I hope you guys learn how to see a new SW movie before there are no more new ones to see."

And once again Gomer resorts to the old "You people are just to thick and stupid to understand that TPM was PERFECT!" flame. Good on ya, mate. May as well stop sugar-coating and get right down to it, huh?

You still haven't expanded on your little "scientific proof" of TPM's perfection there, Gome. Tell us again how a movie that tests at 50% is considered beyond reproach. And this time back it up with something.

 

Much like Patrick and S_J, I went in wanting to like the film. Hell, I was even spoiled by some who told me that DM and QGJ bite it, but it didn't take. Even when I saw it again in the theatre, it didn't take. Even after 10+ viewings (for the record, I did buy the movie, because hey, it's SW), there are still elements in the movie that I find grating.

I've tried to like this flick. I've given $80+ to GL's marketing machine between ticket stubs, the widescreen VHS with film clip, and two action figures. And I'm still not there, and likely never will be.

 

I just want you guys to be able to enjoy the next two as much as you can.

 

Wouldn't mind that at all. Here's hoping.