Saga Here is my unorthodox Star Wars opinion: change my mind!

In what way is Attack of the Clones a ‘complete mess’ in terms of plotting? I suppose there’s the stray references to Sifo-Dyas, but apart from that everything unfolds very clearly. We know who wanted to kill Padme, we know the purpose of the clone army, who set it up. What’s murky or unexplained?

 

No, it's because some fans, for some reason, stubbornly try to convince others that their biased stance against the movies is somehow objectively correct. Which is of course complete nonsense.

AOTC is a very smooth narrative ride and so are its siblings. If you find some elements distracting or whatever the problem is, then... too bad

 

This is what Lucas purists do, actually, not the other way around.

 

There is a whole lot of mess in AOTC. The first assassination results in a handmaiden getting killed. As she is dying she says "I failed you." Did she not understand her job? Her role is a decoy and she played it perfectly, or perhaps the handmaidens were never really let in on what their duties entail. Given how Padme has simply forgotten about Shmi I wouldn't put it past her. Luckily no one has ever complained to HR.

With the second attempt bounty hunter Jango has hired changeling Zam, who employs a robot, to deliver killer centipedes. That fails and the chase is on. Did I mention she's a changeling? They mention it but don't worry it doesn't come up again because if you're being chased you wouldn't want to use that power to hide. Before Zam can reveal who hired her, she gets shot by a dart. You may think if Jango can kill someone from that far with a dart why not shoot the original target? Well they didn't really want to kill her is the usual response. So then why bother with another "fake" attempt?

Well since Padme's being hunted what better place to go than her home. She despises hiding, except decoys she loves the decoys. Since she's home she should pick up 3 or 4 more. There the romance takes off and Lucas is really out of his depth here. All the lines are straight forward. There's no subtlety or nuance. Hayden is especially bad but he's got nothing to work with, even Oscar winning Portman is awful in these scenes. Meanwhile Obi-Wan is off solving the mystery of the dart. Thank the maker his lizard friend with a mustache knows what it is because of course he does. He gets led to Kamino where he learns a Sifo-Dyas ordered the clones. Originally it was going to be Sido-Dyas, an alias for Sidious (hey it worked in Harry Potter) but due to a typo and George's fabuloso stamp we now have a new character whose origins & motives will be left up to the EU (hack authors start saving seats at your local Starbucks).

A cool fight scene with Jango that goes into space. Anakin goes to see his mom die then slices and dices a whole Tusken village, well to be angry is to be human. Obi-Wan gets captured an we get a new character that tells him the plot of the next film and asks him to join him. Obi-Wan refuses (hey it rhymes) and eventually Anakin & Padme can't quite defeat Bowser to free the princess. After their failed rescue, the Jedi have a failed rescue but Yoda saves the day with previously paid for clones. Anakin & Obi-Wan go after the newest yet oldest villain so far only to need rescuing by Yoda again. When in doubt always bring back Yoda, everyone loves Yoda. Now that everyone has been rescued and Obi-Wan has learned the truth they can start to set things straight right? Dark side clouds everything yadda, yadda, yaddle. Oh yeah secret wedding.

AOTC isn't too complicated or confusing, it's just bad. Lucas wrote awful dialogue and got nothing out of his actors and he was fine with it. John Williams does the heavy lifting throughout the film. Any emotion felt is brought upon by an excellent score. The love theme of Anakin & Padme is one of the best in all of Star Wars, with nice hints to Zeffirelli's Romeo & Juliet theme. Ben Burtt also gets in on the action with the 2nd best ever guitar twang (RIP EVH).

It's ok to like bad films. I have a ton of bad films that I adore. In some cases their awfulness adds to the charm.

 

People of both extremes do that. But what I'll never understand is why someone would spend decades on a message board repeating the same old complaints about a few movies. It's human nature, I guess, but when you think about it, all that negativity... It seems like a giant waste of energy.
But to each their own! I'll never say "Thou should not", because at the end of the day, I suppose they get something good out of it - and I assume there are plenty of other forms of positivity in their lives.

 

Yeah, so? Lucas had ideas in place. There was always a sibling. Annikin and Deak Starkiller, in the first draft. Luke, Deak, Biggs and Windy in the second draft. Luke and Nelith until 1981, when it became Leia. He already had the asteroid chase, the Wookiee battle, a Sith attacking Jedi on a desert planet, the corporations being in league with the Sith and the Empire, the blockade of a planet, a cyborg Jedi and the redemption of a Jedi turned Sith in 1974. He already decided that Vader was struggling between being good and evil in 77, before making him Luke's father. He already knew that Threepio was rebuilt in a junk shop on the desert planet in 76. He already knew how Anakin became Vader in 81.

"Well, anyway, Luke’s father gets subverted by the Emperor. He gets a little weird at home and his wife begins to figure out that things are going wrong and she confides in Ben, who is his mentor. On his missions through the galaxies, Anakin has been going off doing his Jedi thing and a lot of Jedi have been getting killed—and it’s because they turn their back on him and he cuts them down. The president is turning into an Emperor and Luke’s mother suspects that something has happened to her husband. She is pregnant. Anakin gets worse and worse, and finally Ben has to fight him and he throws him down into a volcano and Vader is all beat up. Now, when he falls into the pit, his other arm goes and his leg and there is hardly anything left of him by the time the Emperor’s troops fish him out of the drink. Then when Ben finds out that Vader has been fished out and is in the hands of the Empire, he is worried about it. He goes back to Vader’s wife and explains that Anakin is the bad guy, the one killing all the Jedi. When he goes back to his wife, Mrs. Skywalker has had the kids, the twins, so she has these two little babies who are six months old or so. So everybody has to go into hiding. The Skywalker line is very strong with the Force, so Ben says, “I think we should protect the kids, because they may be able to help us right the wrong that your husband has created in the universe.” And so Ben takes one and gives him to a couple out there on Tatooine and he gets his little hideout in the hills and he watches him grow. Ben can’t raise Luke himself, because he’s a wanted man. Leia and Luke’s mother go to Alderaan and are taken in by the king there, who is a friend of Ben’s. She dies shortly thereafter and Leia is brought up by her foster parents. She knows that her real mother died."

--George Lucas, ROTJ story meeting transcripts, 1981.

"Because those films were character pieces with lots of exposition. 'Episode I' was a film about a kid, the young Anakin Skywalker, and 'Episode II' was his (coming-of-age). The problem is that 60 percent -- maybe 80 percent of the back story -- is contained in 'Episode III.' "

--George Lucas interview, 2005.

So he did have ideas in place, but he has also admitted that he added more layers as he made each film.

Isn't that the point of analyzing films years after release? Isn't that the point of film courses?

Corde is referring to not getting herself killed. Even though that's her job, Padme didn't want her to die and probably made promise not to get herself killed. Of course, she's also dying and people don't always say sensible things.

This has nothing to do with understanding the plot. Jango hired an assassin to do the job and take the fall.

Being a good or bad film has nothing to do with understanding the plot. Way to shift goal posts.

 

Agree.

I think that the PT has sort of the opposite problem.
That if you "just go with it" and "don't think about it too much." they work ok.
But if you start to look at the details and ask basic questions of "why?" the less sense they make.
At least to me.

Take TPM and the blockade. Padme and co barely got through it last time and now they are going back. But the blockade is just gone, no explanation and the film does not establish that they thought or knew that it was gone. It is gone because the plot needs it to be. They also take along a nine year old kid to a war zone for no reason. Again the plot needs Anakin to be there and so he is. Sense and logic does not matter.

In AotC Zam is a shapeshifter but never uses that ability to elude her pursuers. Most likely because she was not that during filming, Lucas only added that in post. Not asking simple questions like why would someone that can alter their face need to hide it?

Padme used a decoy, Zam and Jango knows that, so Jango suggest the bugs and Zam sends them to Padme's room. Neither one apparently considered that Padme could use another decoy and sleep in a different room. Why is R2 not watching the window? That is the most obvious way an attacker could use.

Padme wants to use her status as a senator to find a diplomatic way to free Obi-Wan. To that end, she does not try to contact anyone on Geonosis and instead lands in a random location, goes out, apparently hoping that she will just stumble across the leaders of Geonosis and they will not react with hostility when someone uninvited shows up. That was added because Lucas thought we needed an action scene.

I have been told countless times by people that are quite fond of using the EU to explain away problems with the PT films. "Oh that is explained in that book." or "You just need to watch TCW to understand this." and so on. So the EU has become a way to "patch" the PT films so they make better sense.

The PT does have some good bits but also bad bits and a major one is the writing where far too often things happen because Plot!

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

I don’t understand this reasoning. If we imagine that I greatly disliked the Prequels (which I actually don't, but let’s assume I did for the sake of argument), and I found a thread specifically discussing the Prequels, why would it be unreasonable for me to share my criticisms and explain why the movies didn’t work for me? The point of these forums is for people to express their opinions, and if someone feels strongly about a particular film, whether positively or negatively, it makes sense for them to join the conversation. This doesn’t mean people are randomly bashing movies just for the sake of being negative, they are simply engaging with the subject when it's relevant to the discussion.

While Lucas may have had some of these concepts in mind early on, it’s important to recognize that these were still very vague ideas during the development of the Original Trilogy. The fact that he had certain elements sketched out doesn't mean that everything was meticulously planned from the start. Much of what Lucas came up with evolved during the creation of the Original Trilogy, and to say that "the six movies were always one long movie" is historically inaccurate. The development process was much more fluid, and a lot of significant decisions were made later as the story evolved.

The fans are having discussions about the basic plot of the Prequels since 2005, because everyone has basically a different idea of what is going on on-screen. This indicates that there is some major flaw here. The core elements of a film — the plot, character motivations, and narrative structure — should be clear to the audience without endless confusion. What should be open to debate is the message or the philosophical questions the film raises, not the basic storytelling aspects. But then again, this is not fault of the Prequels, it is fault of the story, which is too complex to fit in just three movies.

This is why I'm saying that the PT should have been conceived as part of the EU from the very beginning.

 

Which I never said otherwise. He has also said as much. But at the end of the day when he decided to make a trilogy of trilogies, it was his intention that they were one long movie that was divided into six or nine chapters. He had said that for years. He was not making a stand alone film series like the James Bond series, where each film stood alone. He was making a modern version of the movie serials that he grew up on. More precisely the Flash Gordon serials.

They were doing that back in 99. Fans have also had discussions about the OT back in the early days of the internet in the 80's. They also talked about it in person. And so what if the people have a different interpretation of what a movie is about? Most people think that "Alien" is about corporate greed, yet are shocked to learn that it is about ****. That doesn't make the films a failure.

 

My unpopular opinion, since we are talking about the SW films as a whole and have mentioned the OG Trilogy, is that my favorite Star Wars Movie is either The Rise of Skywalker or The Last Jedi depending on which one I'm watching at the time, and I am a Reylo and that I like the 1978 Holiday Special and believe Disney should make it canon and put the whole thing on Disney + (and finally release it on DVD) and I like Attack of the Clones and TPM currently more than Revenge of the Sith.

 

Randomly? No. Deliberately? Probably not.
But ultimately, many fans are stuck in a negative cycle because they don't realize that they'd feel much better if they'd just move on.

We're not supposed to discuss fans, though, so I'm dropping this now.

 

Never!!!keep everything as it is.. some of us like it all. .. and I love the acolyte...

 

I am convicted that "toxicity" is just real SW fans expressing their honest opinions, and "toxic positivity" is also real SW fans expressing their honest opinions. I believe we ought to build bridges rather than try to demonetize and expose one another.

 

Oh I'm not mocking you at all. No. I blame Lucas for his short-sightedness. He bent the direction of so many aspects of the OT into the twisted forms we got in the PT because he decided - at a particular time - that he wanted the story to look a particular way. The whole 'chosen one' theme he pretty much cut short on, along with the symbiotic relationships (so his idea that Anakin's birth is a symbiotic reaction to the imbalance in the Force is never really broached again in the movies, or the very nature of his birth - how does that affect Anakin growing up, how do others react to it etc.) By the end of the 'saga' (at that time) he is the Chosen One simply because he does something at the end of the OT. So, that aspect of his original story concept went nowhere. He wanted Anakin's 'attachment' to be at the heart of his turn, but as this story unfolds it appears to be the Jedi who are at fault for not allowing a young boy to be assured of his mother's well being - though they know he is 'too old' and that he is attached to his mother. Let him grow out of that naturally then, as he would have done (by Lucas' own admission - he had to be just such an age). But actually his relationship with Padmé is the real issue - this is a possessive, unhealthy attachment - unlike that which he has with his mother (and so the Jedi become cold and inhuman because that attachment is natural and healthy)

Because of that (that he has to be just such an age, not too young and not too old) then we end up with the Jedi as child snatchers (in some people's eyes) - because if he was too young, then he could just come back to the Jedi later and start his training then, after either returning to his mother or to some other, temporary carers. So to avoid that he becomes 'too old' - completely misusing a line from the OT, and which is actually incompatible with the conversation that line is taken from. Also, when the Jedi refuse his training initially then returning him to his mother would be the obvious solution and so, we end up with the 'slavery' storyline. There has to be a reason he can't return to his mother. Anakin's 'slavery' appears remarkably easy going, frankly. I've said it before and I'll say it again - he has a better life than any 9 or 10 year old I've ever known - and again it is a story element that is never touched on again within the movies. How did his slavery affect his outlook, his psyche. Apparently not much, what he remembers about Tatooine isn't the humiliation and dehumanising effects of slavery. No, its sand and how rough it is and how it gets everywhere.

Far from being a story-teller with a great sweeping arc of a story in mind, his stories (movies) are instead short-sighted missives about what he's thinking about at that time, without very much thought about how what he's doing fits with what is, or will fit with what will follow.

 

I agree with this all these recent arguments really started with the PT not the ST. The seeds had already been sewn by Lucas hence the vitriol surrounding the acolyte which is merely a continuation of that feeling but GL can't be the whipping boy anymore
The moment he injected politics into SW it opened the floodgates. Up til then it had been wholly lord of the rings/space western, flash Gordon esque fantasy....luckily I like the fantastical and political which reached a crowning glory with Andor. It's odd too that the PT was a mix of political whilst catering for it being a film for kids... problem with generational storytelling too

 

By the way, being a PT fan, I am NOT particularly partial to the "chosen one" theme. Franky, I could have done without it.

I agree! It is certainly Lucas' fault. He could have rewritten the entire PT (no.... SAGA) in a way that would have made more sense. Yes, there are flaws, huge amounts of them. But I tend to overlook them, "forgive" Lucas and still find a lot of things I find enjoyable despite them. Could the prequels have been better? YES. I just think they are not flawed to the point of being unwatchable.

All in all, I agree with you.

 

While I can't agree with you about the Holiday Special or about AOTC and TPM, I do rank TLJ as one of the best SW movies.
As for the TROS, it's one of those movies that I consider "dopey but fun." I can see all the flaws with it, and yet, I still have more fun watching it than I do watching some of the others.

 

You're assuming that he cut the story short. Nor it was going to be a huge focal point of the PT. We have no proof one way or another.

The training that Anakin undergoes is the same as Luke's. Anakin has trouble letting go because he is deceives himself into thinking that he is all powerful and that he should be able to keep his loved ones alive.

The Jedi aren't being cold here, not when Anakin's fears are undefined and he doesn't ask for help in understanding what is going on.

Except that it is not. Once again you focus on the wrong part of Obi-Wan's defense of Luke. Yoda criticized Luke for being too emotionally immature to be a Jedi, which Obi-Wan was as well. And as I pointed out before, Lucas was writing Deak Starkiller being eleven in the first draft of ANH and Anakin as twelve in the first draft of TPM. Brackett wrote the Jedi were young when they came to Dagobah. So Lucas was always intent on the Jedi training at an age younger than Luke was in TESB. He didn't bend the story, you did because you made an assumption with very little evidence.

The point of Anakin Skywalker being a slave is to show that he started his life as a slave, is freed from slavery, only to become a slave again as Vader.

"Luke is therefore urging Stoic wisdom upon Vader when he tells him to let go of his hate. Unfortunately, hatred has had such a viselike hold on Vader for so long that he tells Luke: "It is too late for me son. The Emperor will show you the true nature of the Force. He is your master now." For servants of the Dark Side, the true nature of the Force is servitude to evil, enslavement to hate. Like virtues, vices tend to control one's behavior. Vader has used fear and hatred to achieve his ends for so long that now the superior hatred and aggression of the Emperor use him. That is how Vader's mastery of the Dark Side is at the same time servitude to it."

--Star Wars and Philosophy, page 27.

The two Star Wars trilogies share many characters but have different structures. Instead of telling another heroic coming-of-age story, Lucas has crafted the prequels as a historical drama, at whose center is Anakin Skywalker. His story is tragic; that of the Republic-turned-Empire, uncomfortably familiar. Anakin begins as a nine-year-old boy who is physically enslaved. He ends the prequel saga a spiritual and mental slave to the Emperor, who is his metaphorical if not biological father....

But the end of Revenge of the Sith is not the end of Anakin, whose story really closes when it merges with those of his children, Luke and Leia, in Return of the Jedi.

--The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith; page 221.

It also illustrated the corruption in the Republic, which allows slavery to continue despite it being illegal. Yes, it's used to separate them, but there's more to it than that. Lucas didn't want Anakin's turn to be vengeance based, but about power and greed. A sense of wanting to do the right thing, but he has moral ambiguities that brings him down. He wanted to show how much alike he and Luke were, and how good people can go bad from good intentions.

Politics were always part of the story. That's why Palpatine was compared to Nixon, Hitler and all the other dictators. Kids weren't bothered by the political aspects of the PT.

 

He spent over 30 years on this saga.
Writers go through changes in their life. I actually think Lucas went through bigger changes in his thinking about life between 1975 - '83, than he did '97 - 2005.

what I'm saying is : they aren't all consumed with what 'fits' , plot isn't everything in drama.

 

I agree the worst star wars product to date imo... but I still love George for trying it. For me the story is good it's just what he was trying to do digitally was not perfected...just a few years later with advancements would have looked so much better also Hayden would've been better like in sith

 

AOTC is still the best.

 

Best at being the worst SW movie so far, maybe.

 

Lucas showed the films to Spielberg, Howard, Cameron, Jackson and a few other directors. They gave him feedback and he made changes. On TPM, he did that only to turn around and do one final edit which was the theatrical version. He felt that the version he showed them was the correct version and not the changes that he made. That's why the score is all over the place. He also referenced Spielberg on ROTS.

"...some of the people had a hard time with the reason that Anakin goes bad. Somebody asked whether somebody could kill Anakin's best friend, so that he really gets angry. They wanted a real betrayal, such as, "You tried to kill me so now I'm going to try and kill you." They didn't seem to understand the fact that Anakin is simply greedy. There is no revenge. The revenge of the Sith is Palpatine. It doesn't have much to do with Darth Vader; he's a pawn in the whole scheme....

So I had to ask myself, what was I trying to say and didn't I say it? Did it just get missed or it is it not there? I had to look at it very hard. I had to ask myself, is this how the audience is going to react? Fortunately, Steven confirmed that most of everything was working. So I may lose a certain demographic - maybe, maybe not. But I had to make a decision, and I decided that I'm not going to alter the film to make it more commercial or marketable. I have to be true to my vision, which is 30 years old, but I have to be true to it."

--George Lucas, The Making of ROTS, page 188.