Is it the actors or the bad dialogue?

Everyone keeps saying that the prequels are riddled with bad dialogue. I still say if you have a great actor they overcome any shortcomings in the dialogue.

For example the last 2 prequels Hayden & Natalie have gotten ripped for wooden dialogue (mostly for their love story), and Ewan McGregor & Ian McDiarmod have come out unscathed. I believe they are just really good actors compared to Hayden & Natalie.

Hayden to me is an average actor with not much range, and Natalie is a good actress in certain roles, but I just don't think she was totally right for Padme. But Ewan McGregor to me is a very good actor, and it shows as he seamlessly blends right into Alec Guiness. Also, Ian McDiarmod is an exceptional actor who I believe is awesome as Palpatine/Sidious.

If you go back to the originals, some of Alec Guiness lines were sort of cheesy talking about the force, but he was such a great actor, it comes off totally believable, and really adds depth to his character.

What I am getting at is, bad dialogue or not, a great actor can overcome it. I believe if Lucas got a better actor to play Anakin, who had a little more range, he would have come off better in more dramatic scenes. I think Hayden did a good job, but not great. Same with Natalie Portman, I just think that she didn't pull off the dramatic scenes either. (Except the end of ROTS, she did a very good job once they landed on Mustafar)

However, Ewan at the end, yelling at Anakin burning up, is the highlight of the movie. There was a real sense of emotion when he was talking, mostly because he is a damn good actor. Same with Sidious, to me this guy steals every scene he is in the movie, because McDiarmod is another fine actor. I am just trying to say it seems like no one ever says there is hokey dialogue when you have a good actor saying it.

That is just my opinion, feel free to disagree....

Strilo edit: This thread has descended into comments addressing fans "blind loyalty" and casting pearls to swine. There was far too much discussing the fans to allow this thread, which I was wary of from the beginning, to continue.

 

I am not sure I agree about Ewan McGregor - he seemed very uncomfortable with his lines AND the accent in TPM (which made him seem wooden), got a little better in AOTC and ROTS - but he still never seemed REALLY on top of it. His best bits of acting were during the Maul duel (ironically he doesn't speak!), and when he shouts at crispy Annikin after The Duel - he seems more comfortable when he's shouting, and he got to display some REAL emotion.

 

I disagree.

There was nothing wrong with Hayden Christiansen's acting. I thought he was perfect as Anakin. At least he isn't cursed with uttering the worst line in the saga's history - like Harrison Ford in ANH.

 

No, Hayden is cursed with uttering MOST of the worst lines in the history of the films....

 

I don't have a problem with the dialogue or it's delivery.

This is just how Star Wars is supposed to be to me.

 

The level of acting throughout the saga is consistant to me. There are crap performances and great performances in all six films. The dialogue is also very consistant to me. There are crap lines and great lines in all six films. Really they fit together as a saga quite nicely for me.

 

The two are not mutually exclusive. I think with Hayden and Natalie we can say that poor-to-middling actors were given very bad lines. They are both almost decent when they have reasonable material, but they are never good. Ian and Ewan are better actors and got better lines. But not even Alec Guiness, the best actor in the saga could have done much with "I don't like sand..."

 

yes

 

The OT = lots of bad dialogue delivered (on the whole) convincingly.
The PT = lots of horrendous dialogue delivered horrendously.

 

The only thing i can complain about as far as acting goes is that Natalie and Hayden had very little chemistry, It showed. Both Natalie and Hayden have given good performances outside of SW. Other actors and actresses in the PT are a lot better known. Saying this I would have to say most the blame would have to fall on the writing. By the way someone tell me an actor of his age who could have pulled off Anakins(post turn)better or even as well as Hayden?

 

I think that it just looks like the good actors are delivering the dialouge convincingly. Lucas tends to be weak with the romance parts, but not so much with the other parts. But anyone would sound stupid saying "Are you an angel?"

 

James Franco? Nevertheless, I would not switch them. I think Hayden is a perfect Anakin.

 

Give Lucas a break hes even admitted hes the 'king of wooden dialouge' He never said he was the greatest writer ever. Hes just a guy who wanted to make his movies if you dont like them dont watch em. He probaly tries very hard to write all the lines for these movies, if you can do better go ahead and make your own.

*head explodes*

 

Ewan McGregor is a great actor and his poorest performance is in TPM but that?s because the character is stiff and not given much to do in AOTC he is given more to do and because of that he is very good and in ROTS he is simple the best he is one of the finest actors of today.

 

Yes,he definitely is!!I really don't care how much anyone complains about these things,like acting etc.They work for me and that is enough.
I mean the OT is hardly perfect now is it?

 

I wouldn't say it's the actors, nor so much the dialogue. I'd say it's the man who says "Cut! Print!"

 

Yeah but if you weren't there to percieve the dialogue as being "bad" would it really be "bad"?

Just something to think about.

 

From webdocs, interviews and such, I have seen that Ian McDiarmid and Harrison Ford at least talked about toying with the dialogue a bit. McDiarmid talked in the "Becoming Sidious" webdoc about changing it, as long as it doesn't affect the continuity, that he could use different wording.

I think it can be a combination of both. Some of the dialogue was going to sound stiff no matter what way it was said. I wish they could have written the dialogue for Mace a bit better.

 

Yes that's true,but I never really cared much about Mace Windu anyway so I think he is just supposed to be this very formal,tradition loving jedi and that's also why he is so much against Anakin all the time.But as I said he was never a favorite character of mine.
Though it's quite amusing to watch Mace Windu talk so formally and politely with Palpatine at the start of RotS,when you know they will end up fighting each other to the death later on!

 

Sure, it would just be denial. According to that rationale, Gigli: Greatest American film ever made. Everyone is just so set on it being awful, it becomes so in their eyes.

 

First off, acting against a green screen it harder on the actors, they dont' have other people to work off of. GL is a storyteller, not a character depth director, hence Irvin Kershner directing in ESB, making it the best of the six, even with it being one of the least in action, because of the characters. There is a combo of reasons the dialogue comes off weak in the PT, acting, writing, direction, over hype are all a factor. It is unfortunate that it happened in our favorite movie series, but in reality, ep 1 and 2 are almost pointless movies and more test run's for GL's new technology. Sith could have simply been an hour longer. Theres no need to come down directly on one aspect, there are flaws across the board. But a fantastic actor does make his scenes great. Christopher Lee and Ian McDirmid make their scenes, no matter the dialoge.

And to emphasize a great actor can take anything and make it great, look at Glen Gary Glen Ross. The topic of real estate sales could not be more boring, and 6 phenomenal actors keep you glued to the tv, and it's all dialouge. Just my 2 cents.

 

It's the dialogue, which I don't feel is bad at all. Actually, I think Revenge of the Sith is the most well written and the most well performed. I got to say that it's a little disheartening that after the great performances Hayden and Natalie did in ROTS, people would still think they are poor actors. Oh well. To each his own. Here's why I feel the answer to this question is the writing. People who don't like the acting complain that Hayden is whiny, but if Anakin is written to be a whiny character, wouldn't that mean Hayden played the part perfectly?

 

Indeed. I didn't like AOTC Anakin much, but the same guy played him to perfection in ROTS. The writing and directing are more to blame than the actors.

I'm a bit tired of hearing people complain about how hard it is to play against a bluescreen... I haven't done that myself, but when I was 8 I did play Star Wars with a few friends, pretending that a cardboard box big enough for a kid to sit in was an x-wing, a long stick was a lightsaber and a suitably shaped piece of wood, or just my fingers cocked as a gun, were blasters. Sometimes it's good to be relatively poor when you're a kid, it forces you to use your imagination! This at a time when I hadn't seen the movies yet and all my contact with them were stories by friends who had, comics and said friends' action figures. Maybe the actors should just get in touch with their inner child... Or perhaps they were spoiled and had so many toys they never had to use their imagination? If so, they were shortchanged.

 

Take those childhood mimickries and replace all the "imaginary" elements with CG props and replace the backyard with a sprawling spacescape. Would it look convincing? It's hard to make something imaginary look convincing when its taken out of context. I did a lot of bare stage acting in college, and it's one thing to have a bare stage against you as a backdrop; it's understood that the audience has to use their own imaginations to see what it is you're seeing. It's another to have a computer tech fill in everything with what they assume you see and what the audience should see. The two don't synch up. You have the actor doing one thing, and with the type of direction Lucas gives, it doesn't help, then you have the computer artists put in something "as best as possible." So, acting against a blue screen is indeed hard. It's hard on the stage to make it look convincing, so you can imagine how hard it is to make it look convincing when you have to mime a fight scene and recite lines that were fed to you a couple hours before. Much time and care goes to make a mime scene work, days of preparation for the stage, the transition doesn't work as well since several scenes need to be shot in a day, and there isn't enough time to work in the extensive rehearsal needed for good miming.