Why the PT will never be as good as the OT

I respectfully disagree.

The OT had a much more powerful complexity, that which is unseen and unspoken.

If midichlorians are any example, the more GL tries to explain things the less entertaining and incredible they seem.

When the senate was just something I heard about it was infinitely more intriguing than when you see it in the PT. The monster on Dagobah which eats then spits out r2d2 is more terrifying and fantastic than any of the aquatic life opn Naboo.

Jango has 8 dozen cool gizmos, he kicks jedi ass, Boba Fett did next to nothing in the OT and was ten times cooler because he was so mysterious. Ever scrap of dirt on his costume told a story.

In my prequels, Coruscant will probably go unseen, as will much of the jedi order, and Yoda most likely will remain in the shadows.

The simplest way I look at it is this. Think about how you feel when Yoda floats the xwing in ESB, and ask yourself if you'll ever get that feeling watching the PT. I can't describe that feeling, and I won't try.
Its that complex.

Don't get me wrong, the PT is a lof of fun. But like I said, miscalulated, in my opinion.

I am listening to the soundtrack from Clones, and will say this. The real story, I think sometimes, is in the music. The twin sunset in Star Wars was so powerful not because of the visual, but because the music explained that visual more than any dialogue ever could. The twin sunset in AOTC was a failure by comparison.

But that said, I agree. Lucas did a good thing allowing the Expanded Universe. It showed him there was an audience out there. That audience was given too much material, and they didn't exercise enough control over it, in my estimation.

Somethings are better as mysteries. The planet Yavin is a tremendous mystery. But in the comics, it's Exar Kun's throne of blood. It doesn't improve the film, in fact it detracts from it.

Zahn's stuff is sometimes considered as sacred as Lucas', but the hot chocolate showed how weak his contribution was, and him having Leia "know" casually about Dagobah and his positive/negative view of the Force and the "Dark Side" cave just weakened the wonderful mystery of what was really going on in that scene.

I want to know what happened to Luke's father, Leia's mother, etic. I want to know what Ben did in the Clone Wars. I DON'T want Dagobah to be a world of exile for Yoda. He FIT there, from my viewing.

Somethings are better left mysteries.

Music says something not using words. The OT doesn't do that.

I think it does. I've posted earlier that the Force theme, played over the twin sunset in Star Wars was an example of this. I'll go further. It remains the most powerful non-verbal message delivered in any film I've ever seen, and I've seen a bunch.

Luke, the orphan, dreaming of a world beyond that which he knows.

And guess what cue they played over Vader's cremation. Almost the exact same cue of the Force theme, only made slightly bittersweet. Luke, the orphan, realizing the world he wanted, his father restored only taken from him.

You tell me that the music isn't delivering a message in the absence of dialogue? Williams said he didn't use the "Indiana Jones theme much in The last crusade because it had been overused too much in the prior two films.

I find the use of the Imperial March in Attack of the Clones to be a bit didactic in that same sense. It should have been more subtle.

(Also, they played Yoda's theme during the battle with Dooku, it just didn't work for me, the orchestration. Not the message it delivers.)

Music was powerful in The Phantom Menace. if you stayed to the very end, you heard over credits John Williams flawlessly blend the theme for Young Anakin into Darth Vader's theme, and Lucas added the Vader's breathing in case people didn't get the point. Anakin is the Phantom Menace.

8) Death and dying. When Qui-Gon dies, Obi-wan shows genuine grief and rage. When Shmi dies, Anakin shows genuine fury and grief. The OT deaths don't convey that sense of pain and loss. The worst is Yoda's death in ROTJ - Luke hardly shows any grief at all, only regret that he didn't get more training.

I don't see any selfish grief in Luke. I didn't see weeping and wailing, which would have been a cheap gimmick.

Luke smiles. He's happy for his mentor, if perhaps a touch bemused by what has actually happened to him.

I'm not saying that you guys are old, or not "with the times" just that in a few years, the AOTC CGI will be accepted by those who can not remember anything but. Unfortunately, you are forever tainted by living in a time before CGI, and I think that it ruins your viewing experience.


well, I will proudly paint myself as an old-timer, but it really isn't over whether CGI or traditional FX is better or worse.

The main problem I had with the FX (however created) in Phantom Menace is that a lot of it seemed to be in there to show the FX, and it didn't really advance the story.

A lot of us old timers remember someone telling us that a Special effect without a story is pretty boring.

It was George Lucas telling us that.

He said that a lot of the shooting he did in the OT was "editing" because of the limitations of the FX at the time. But it created a tight movie. he couldn't show the vast landscapes and pan through them, so he showed us quick shots and cut away to the story.

we are getting those vast shots. But he trained us subtly with the movies and for those of us who listened to him expound that you don't show it just to show it.

In this trilogy, he is showing us a lot of stuff he doesn't NEED to show us, to tell the story.

The most glaring example of this is in Phantom Menace, the ship crashing right after taking off for the final battle. i call it the Wile E. Coyote shot. We see the little poof of smoke from the crash. It's a nameless pilot. Nothing like Red Leader crashing into the Death Star. That created drama, crisis.

I loved watching Yoda fight. And I just read an early concept draft of Empire where "Minch" duels Obi-Wan. So Lucas wanted Minch at least to be a great warrior.

But the truth is, the second I saw that puppet in the Dagobah swamp, I knew he was the most powerful Jedi ever. The x-wing lifting confirmed it. A real simple FX. i didn't need the duel to know he could do what he did.

The duel looked great, but it wasn't top drawer storytelling. It turns Yoda into Mr. Miyagi, who will always come to the rescue of his inferior pupils.

What we needed at that scene was Yoda walking in, ala, Inigo Montoya and Count Dooku just hightailing it out of there ala Count Rugen. that wouldn't have been as much fun, but it tells the same or a better story.

I can't tell which is CGI and which is traditional in all instances. But I can tell whether we need an effect or not, and how much. That's what bothers some of us "old timers."

yet I'm withholding my total judgment until I see ALL episodes.

(Then again, Lucas promised me NINE episodes. I still have the Time Magazine where it says so.)

and I thought it said they made the lightsabers with spinning beads on a rod, and by reflecting light off of them. Is this true?

No. They had an artist literally draw the saber over the frames of footage. It is done the exact same way today, only the artist draws on it digitally but it's still the same basic process (quite lengthy too).

Yes. they had a spinning rod that reflected light. They didn't LIKE it, so in the first film, they then painted over it to improve it. They had it down pat by Empire, which is why Vader's saber is so vivid.

In Star Wars, you can see the reflective rod twice during Ben's battle with Vader, when you look almost straight down the light saber shaft. They made a point of it in a making of documentary.

Gee, and I always thought that the reason the OT was superior was because it was an "underdog" story. Where the heroes are a hugely outnumbered rag-tag bunch of characters that we're rooting for, as opposed to arrogant "in-control" leaders of the galaxy in the PT (or so they think).

Underdog stories are usually much-loved.

Oh well, having read all the detailed analysis in this thread, I guess I must just be a bit simple.

From the evidence I have seen from watching the "behind the scenes? videos for the TPM and AOTC, it is shown that they create a lot of sets and still use models quite frequently. For example the Coruscant city is made of real models, the Geonosis arena is a model and so is the mountainous landscape. And I?m sure that the Slave I and Jedi Starfighter have models as well, not that they used models all the time. Now this theory that the OT looked more real then PT is quite unbelievable. I?ve just finished watching the OT and let me tell you that it doesn?t look real compared to the PT. The rogue squadron attack on the first death star looks horrible. The ships move slowly and it looks thoroughly cheesy. There?s no way some one can say that the ANH space battle looks better the then the Slave I/Jedi starfighter fight in the asteroid field. AOTC looks amazing. Now if your argument is that the OT looks ?real? cause it?s looks like a ?real? model or ?real? puppet, then your right. But frankly that?s not the point when people say something looks real in a movie. The illusion of real and naturism is far better in the AOTC, then in the OT.

"Give me a fake looking rancor puppet anyday. "

You're welcome to it.

I've been a SW fan since 1979, and I think the only thing lacking in the prequels is the type of comraderie we had between Luke, Han and Leia. But other than that, the prequels are just as good, IMO.