Saga Did the prequels (or, at least, ROTS) introduce too many new ships/vehicles at once?

Well, "people" sometimes vary, and while I would agree that many of them might "get an emotional connection" to a vehicle, I don't think all people go to a SW movie necessarily wanting to get an emotional connection to one of their vehicles. In the context of the OT, sure it kinda happened, because the genre was just getting a shot of new life, because so much of it was so memorable given that there had been nothing like it for a long time. But in the context of ROTS, there are already enough demands being made emotionally on the viewer, imho, for most of them (especially younger children) to put that much attention to the ships, other than perhaps the Jedi starfighter and the Tantive IV.

And, sure, as kids we get different attachments, but while kids will enjoy playing with anything (half the cantina creatures are probably known just because of their Kenner figures, ya know?), which toy would they rather have? An A-Wing (something they've seen do something really cool like take down a SSD)? or a V-Wing (a similar looking craft that had 2 seconds of distant screen time)?[/quote]

Well, yeah, the reactions might be different, and I would put it to you that as far as ROTS is concerned, the only ship that should realistically conjure up a lot of emotions, if any, would be the Tantive IV. Everything else is pretty secondary to what is going on in the movie, there's a lot of things to cover and, in any event, if people watching ROTS for the first time are paying more attention to the ships than to the story, then obviously something would be very wrong.

Besides, most children are going to be more familiar with the Clone-era ships from the animated series than from the movies. To them, it might be a very different perspective.

The beginning and ending of each movie really are consistent, that is true. But that in itself is no reason to expect everything else to be in a neat, predictable pattern. ROTS is also, I believe, the longest of all the movies. Is that something that Lucas should have avoided, because people should have been expecting something that was a bit closer to 2 hours? No, each movie does have a few elements that make it unique, and different from the others.

Yes, and for purposes of what's important to the story, you can very easily know the ships of the good guys and the bad guys. Everything else is relatively unimportant to what's going on in the movie. In ROTJ, you didn't have to know exactly what each ship was, it was enough (from the POV of the casual viewer) that you knew which ones were the good guys and which ones were the bad guys.

I'm going to reiterate this: for a casual viewer, it probably won't matter which ship is which, you know which side everybody is on, and when Order 66 is given you realize the Jedi have been betrayed. Other than that, it's just about following the descent of Anakin to the dark side. Again, this is for the casual viewer. For e

I do think that the design of the Prequels, especially when it comes to ships/vehicles, was kinda watered down after a while by too many new designs-- or rather, too many new designers. For the OT, the team was fairly small and consistent-- mainly Ralph McQuarrie, Joe Johnston and a few others on all 3 films. For the PT, you had Doug Chiang doing tremendous, beautiful work for TPM and AOTC, but then dropping out for ROTS, which is at times the most generic looking of all the SW movies, for me. It's a real shame Chiang didn't stay on for all three films, as I believe his work was at the very least in the same ball park as McQuarrie's vision, and at times even an equal to it. TPM especially strikes me as perhaps the most beautifully designed and shot sci-fi film since "Blade Runner", so it's too bad the Prequel trilogy couldn't have ended as visionary as how it began.

Well, it might be *one* element of the saga's appeal, but to me it isn't centered around having a fixed number of new vehicles in each movie. In any case, it might seem more appropriate (to me) that the movie just have the required number of ships and vehicles in the context of serving the story. Ultimately, it's not a saga about ships and vehicles, of course. That they happen to have some kind of meaning for us depends largely on the fact we associate them closely with certain characters and/or sides of the conflicts.

Well, agreed, and going by that logic, I am of the opinion that the ships matter considerably less in ROTS in large part because everything is kind of turned around right in this episode: this is where the clones go from being part of the good guys to being Palpatine's henchmen, and the remnants of the old Republic will eventually evolve into the core of the Rebel Alliance.

The exception to that, as said before, would have to be the Tantive IV because it plays a critical role in tying the two trilogies together, it's there at the ending of the PT and at the beginning of the OT. That would be the one ship that, if anything, people should remember when they are watching the saga for the first time, if they go from episode 1 to 6.

The sheer number of other ships in the background, imho, are used to try to create some idea of the enormity and complexity of the Clone Wars. Surely, in any such a huge confrontation of roughly evenly matched opponents, there would have to be a very great demand for new and constantly updated fighters, and possibly the need to go to many contractors just to keep up with all that was needed.

That is why having a great number of ships and vehicles makes sense to me, storywise: it was such a LARGE conflict that both sides were constantly seeking the largest number of ships, and the most cutting-edge fighters, so either they had to turn to an equally large number of contractors/builders or they were themselves constantly updating and coming up with new designs in order to try to gain an edge over the other side.

So, storywise, it makes all the sense in the world (to me).

For the reasons listed above, I think it makes a lot of sense storywise and adds to the feeling of a conflict of almost overwhelming scale, where it is no longer possible to keep track of every new element that is being added by both sides - and perhaps once the Republic crumbles, everything would become equally confusing because suddenly you could no longer be so certain as to who are the good guys and who are the good guys.

Thus, the cockpits of the Jedi fighters become the apparent inspiration for the TIE fighters, while the ARC-170 seem to be the predecessors of the X-wings, etc. e

I didn't really think so at all. The look of the prequels seems to be fairly consistent, to me, both in relation to their taking place decades before the events of the OT, and also taking into account the slow progression that takes place between the time Anakin is picked up by the Jedi and the time he becomes Palpatine's apprentice.

This is, after all, a time of tremendous turmoil for the galaxy - and it seems to me like it shows on-screen.

There is also the matter of the necessity to slowly start evolving towards the designs of the OT, as 2ndQuest mentioned, as well as the fact that for story reasons it made a lot of sense to borrow two of the most fondly remembered ships from the OT - the Tantive IV and Slave I.

The transition from the end of the PT to the start of the OT would not work so well, imho, if the design decisions taken in ROTS had not been taken. It was a matter of necessity for the overall coherence of the saga, I think.

Also I don't think any of the changes you mention had that much to do with the designers involved, because ultimately no matter who the individual designer was, he/she had to run things past Lucas and get his OK. I'm sure many of the concepts that Lucas rejected would have been very visually pleasing, as well, but from the storyteller's point of view, perhaps they would not have served as well as intended from a story point of view.

I don't want to sound like a PT apologist, either, I think I would have enjoyed all 3 movies just as much with some things being slightly different - but ultimately it had to be all about the main story, about Anakin's fall and Palpatine's rise to power, as well as examining the downfall of the Jedi Order.

A few ships or vehicles more or less probably wouldn't make a *huge* impact on the larger story, at least from the point of view of most viewers (mostly children and young teens, and/or their parents).

But I am not trying to suggest *exactly* how important the ships are, per se; I simply recognize that to a large extent, it may be a highly personal reaction, one that will vary from one person to another.

Now, I do not speak of the vehicles having "personalities" of their own, like the title characters in "Cars" - I say simply that they *could* be associated with a specific character or side in the conflict. That's pretty far from saying, imho, that the audience has an inherent need to have everything in the movie becoming associated with a ship or vehicle. Again, I see them as serving a purpose in the story, so that the story can be told in the way the storyteller felt appropriate. And in the case of ROTS, the storyteller used them in the way he thought would be most appropriate, I believe, and I don't think it would have made for a vastly different experience had there been a few less of them.

Yes, but in the context of ROTS, what made sense storywise enhances the visual language of the film, at least from my point of view. At this point in the saga, it seems to me the audience should be concentrated on the plight of Anakin Skywalker, rather than on which fighter he's using - and in the downfall of the Republic and the Jedi Order. I don't think that you needed to have any particular ships (or any specific number of them) in order to tell this story effectively.