If the Saga isn't perfect, where did it go wrong?

The Saga isnt perfect?? Thats ABSURD!!!

 

Clearly the direction of the story changed somewhere during the making of the OT beginning with the decision to have Vader=Anakin. And especially at some point after ESB, where the concept of a longer series of 9-12 episodes was dropped so that everything had to be tied up in 6/ROTJ. I have no clue what to believe anymore as to what 7-9/12 would have been, except that at some point someone (Luke or the other, o rboth) would have had to take on the Emporer, and the Other would have had to be revealed (if that hadn't already happened in Ep 6 as originally planned).

Clearly (IMO) ROTJ is a step down in quality from SW and ESB. But I still think it#s a very good movie, just not a classic. it definitely has a rushed feel. I don't mind the DS rehash, or eventhe Ewoks that much. The kiddy feeling that creeps up a bit (especially the ewoks, but also Boba Fett's death) is definitely not great. No question Han's character is a disappointment. But I do think the central story is still Luke's, not Vader's, and this fires on all cylinders. Also, who knows, maybe if Lucas had doen what he originally planned, whatever that was, there's no guarantee that would have been better.

Where the saga took a wrong turn for me was the PT. Many intersting ideas, but poor execution, both large and small scale. Most importantly, Anakin's rise and fall just don't quite work. Instead, we have whiny Anakin, who never seems like he could be any of the things Obi Wan told Luke he was in the hut on Tatooine. Above all, we're left scratching our heads wondering how on earth he could be so gullable.

 

If you think the Saga is perfect, back it up with an argument. Don't just post comments that don't contribute anything to the discussion at hand.

 

Where the saga took a wrong turn for me was the PT. Many intersting ideas, but poor execution, both large and small scale.

I truly disagree with statement. I just finished watching both TPM and AOTC, recently. If anything, I have an even higher regard of the Prequel Trilogy. Although I don't consider it better than the OT (nor do I consider the OT better than the PT), I feel that Lucas projected greater maturity as a writer with the second trilogy. In fact, I can recall reading article that expressed similar feelings.

ROTS was far more in line with the vision I had hoped for starting with Menace.

Are you saying that Anakin/Vader's character should have been dark throughout most of the PT? I hope not.

 

Revenge Of The Sith

If it is being made as episode three, then it needs to be treated as if it was to be watched before 4 5 and 6. therefore, we CANNOT KNOW THAT ANAKIN HAS A CHILD!.....or that LUKE AND LEIA ARE TWINS!.....why? because it was designed to surprise people when darth vader says "no.....i am your father..." dont ya reckon? and "leia......leia's my sister!".

How can we be surprised if WE ALREADY KNOW?!





oh yeah...and how easily does anakin turn to the dark side? i mean c'mon!!!

 

Frankly, the PT is too confined to the Jedi and Sith. The OT embraces a much larger Star Wars galaxy, and when watching the Saga in sequence, it's actually quite a shock when suddenly there's almost no Jedi at all and the focus shifts to everybody else...
If the PT had had a similar balance--the perfect model to hold up being ESB, with the intercutting between the Falcon folks and Luke--between Jedi material and the lives of non-Force-sensitive folks I think it would solidify the Saga into a more cohesive whole.

And, yes, I have to agree that the tipping of the hand with Luke and Leia was not to my taste; the reveals of Yoda and the Skywalker geneology in ESB are made irrelevent through the PT, though watching Yoda mess with Luke when we all know more about Yoda's history is quite amusing...
And yet, when you think about it, Luke gets identified as "young Skywalker" quite a few times before Vader drops the daddy-bomb on the boy, so knowing Anakin's last name and Luke's last name...well, the only mystery left is Leia. So revealing the twins in ROTS doesn't change much.
But in my ideal Saga, Anakin would never know that Padme was pregnant, and it would only be revealed to us at the very end of ROTS.

I would also bring the proto-Rebellion to the forefront more, and show the effect of the Clone Wars on the citizens of the Republic more, because we only know how the war was fought, more or less...we never really learn the price.
Also...from the OT, I always got a somewhat different impression of the Jedi organization. I always sort of imagined them more like how Luke met Yoda, with individual Jedi wandering about the galaxy, righting wrongs, meeting folks with potential and taking them under their wing...wandering samurai, essentially. The whole Jedi Council thing never really entered my mind until I saw TPM.

I think I'd also not have Anakin be a slave on Tatooine. It's just...too convenient that Luke and his father both grew up on the same planet.

Don't get me wrong, I like the PT okay, I guess...but my childhood imaginings were always somewhat different...

 

The point is that those surprises are gone now. That was Lucas intention with going 1-6. Those surprises would be lost and instead, we see that Luke is kept in the dark as to what happened to his parents and as to who Leia is. When he finally learns the truth, it is seen as finally someone has told him the truth. But also that Vader is finally acknowleding his past. It was only a surprise because Lucas was making these revelations as he went along with the OT. Now he's tied them to the PT and thus is showing us this in a different way.

 

Mmm, these revelations are only surprising in that we're seeing them through Luke's eyes. We know who his family really is- Luke doesn't. But since we're seeing through his eyes, we can still get an emotional reaction from it-- OMG, Luke finally knows, now what's he going to do!!

The fact is, most of the world has known this stuff ever since 1980/1983. But we still have been watching the OT, even though we already know this stuff. It can't be that big a loss to give it a new spin.

 

You people do realize there is no such thing as universally recognized perfect anything ? So do we sit around pondering where everything went wrong? Is it even correct to assume that non-perfection = wrong? Isnt a more suitable language for the thread title: " Whats Wrong With The Saga "? That change in language will eliminate alot of unintentional stupidity in responses.

 

When people say perfect, they don't mean it literally, but a perfect movie is a movie you walk out on and just love it from day one, and that never ever changes, cause you say to yourself everytime you watch it, "Damn, that is such a great movie!"

Platoon is a perfect example of a movie that when I saw it in '86 just hit me the minute I walked out of the theater. The movie is so powerful and just so ****ing great, I consider it as perfect as war movies get. Now is it perfect perfect? I really dont know, but everytime it is on, the true drama of the movie always captures me.

As for the saga of 6, alot of fans will say SW & ESB are perfect movies, only cause for me personally I get that same feeling I did when I saw Platoon, but in a different emotional way, but still I say to myself, "Damn, that is great movie!"

Perfect is different for everyone, but perfect is just a word for loving it and wouldn't change a single thing in the movie, and also not have to make up excuses for what others say are flaws. I constantly find myself doing that with ROTJ, I love it, but I know it isn't as great as SW & ESB and begin defending it in a way even though alot of the criticisms are probably true.

 

Oh god what a cookie cutter opinion you have! Absolutely nothing wrong with ROTJ and the PT in my opinion. Please don't state your opinions as if they were truth or fact because they are merely just an opinion. I also love how bashers don't understand the chracter of Anakin at all! Lets make Anakin bad to the bone in the beginning, that would make for a real interesting chracter!(sarcasm)

 

I think you missunderstand the part about Anakin. To me it seems that yahkee8255 was not complaining that Anakin was not dark or bad enough but rather that he was whiny, unpleasant and rather unlikeable and thus not really resembling the good man and good friend Obi-Wan talks about in the OT. So it was not really wanting a darker Anakin but rather the opposite.

As for myself I felt something similar, I never wanted or expected a bad to the bone Anakin from the get go. If anything I wanted to see the friendship with Obi-Wan and how a good man can fall into darkness.

But I did not really see that much of that. In TPM I saw a nice kid but I could not fully buy the character, in part due to uneven acting and uneven directing and the role was a rather cliched "wonder child".
There was some good bits with Shmi but also less good bits.

In AotC I felt that Anakin was too dark, he was obsessive, arrogant, rude and one that I would not want to be around or get to know better.
I plain did not like him so when he began to go down a dark road I did not care so much as I did not really care about him.

RotS did some things better, I finally got some sense of the friendship with Obi-Wan and I liked the character a little better but that should have come earlier. So to me the turn did not really feel all that tragic as I did not really feel for the character of Anakin as I found him far to unlikeable in many places.

Regards
Nordom

 

I'm going to make a statement here which might tick some of you off, but here goes... it started to go downhill before the cameras rolled for Episode I.

The expanded universe got too damn big! Too many books!! Too many comics! Come on - Timothy Zahn's books were okay, but people clenched to them at the time when so little else was available. Then the whole thing started to become a bloated Star Trekkish thing. I cried out 'enough already' even before the New Jedi Order (which does not exist in my imagination. Long live Chewie) came out. There was just too much of it. And tying in the comics & books, trying to formalize a 'linear' tale was just too daunting.

Hasbro is also to blame here - they've been over-killing since the Special Editions came out. Heck, Hasbro has more to do with what ruined Episode I than the film itself! The merchandising hype was too strong for the 1999, and it was absolutely not necessary! Had the stuff came out a month after the film instead of 2 months (or whatever) before the movie I think it would have sold more. I had the whole film spoiled while browsing in Toys R Us (a kiddie book showing Qui-Gon struck down by Darth Maul no less)!

 

<--- Lucasbooks.

 

The problem is that if they ever let someone make 7 to 9 fans will cry that "it doesn't follow the EU to the letter"

wait and see. I think the EU is mostly garbage.

 

I like "A Droid Christmas Story" though...OH!!! And the Wookie Storybook was pretty okey dokey.

I bought the Zahn trilogy one time at a garage sale though...it was cheaper than using toilet paper.

 

I highly doubt that's what hurt the films. If not for those things, Lucas might not have gone ahead and done the PT. Lucas used the THX release, the eu, the return of the merchendise, "Shadows Of The Empire" and the SE's to test the waters. All were positively recieved which prompted him to go ahead and do them.

 

Okay, then what do YOU think hurt the films?

 

I don't think it was the eu and merchendise. I don't even think there's anything wrong with the films. What I do know of the complaints, it had more to do with a number of things internal at Lucasfilm and the story itself. Complaints have ranged from bad scripts, bad concepts, bad dialogue, bad acting, bad directing, high expectations, precieved expectiations, special effects and what not. The eu had no effect on why so many don't like the PT. The only thing the eu can be blamed for is getting a few facts wrong, which came from Lucas changing concepts and people not having all the facts, in the first place. The merchendising before the PT came out, was not an issue. The PT merchendsing during the run of the films has been touched upon a lot. Dead horse as it were. But before that, hardly a peep or concern. All I ever heard was how happy people were to have new merchendise. The only complaint I heard was those who didn't like that certain action figures were a bit too muscular or didn't have the best face sculpt. Some longed for the old school figures.

 

I see all of your points. My comments regarding the eu though relate to the original question of the thread - where did the Star Wars Saga go wrong? And my answer is simply the bloated eu. I didn't say that the eu ruined the PT. I did say that Hasbro kinda riuned Episode I, which I admit, detoured away from my original point.

I think one can get a fulfilling Star Wars experience from just sticking to what you can find on official DVDs.

 

I think you missunderstand the part about Anakin. To me it seems that yahkee8255 was not complaining that Anakin was not dark or bad enough but rather that he was whiny, unpleasant and rather unlikeable and thus not really resembling the good man and good friend Obi-Wan talks about in the OT. So it was not really wanting a darker Anakin but rather the opposite.

We saw Anakin as a good friend of Obi-Wan by ROTS. You seemed to act as if Anakin wasn't allowed to be whiny or unlikeable (which is your opinion, by the way). Luke was whiny when he was around the same age (19) as Anakin in AOTC. Why not complain about that? Does Anakin now have to be perfect?

It seems that many fans either want Anakin to be this potential villain or Obi-Wan's good friend without any character flaws, throughout the entire PT. No one seems to want him to be a complex character.

 

Please don't state your opinions as if they were truth or fact because they are merely just an opinion. I also love how bashers don't understand the chracter of Anakin at all!

Padmes_love_slave24, stating opinions as opinion in-and-of-itself is not a requirement of the TOS, but if you don't want people to do so, then don't state your opinion as fact the very next sentence. It will only lead to heated debates that would be unpleasant for all. Lead by example, it is the best way.

Regarding EU, I can understand why this would be a complaints, but sinister is right. EU has no effect on the movies. If the movies existed just as they are without the EU, would they be perfect? Why or why not? For many, the Saga does exist without EU.

 

That is why a majority of fans like myself hold zero resentment towards the EU and do towards the PT, cause the OT was never changed to fit the EU.

I have no problem with anything that pertains to SW that expands the universe rather then the original three movies. I am not interested, but I think it is cool that fans can get more SW at other avenues and that is what makes SW great.

As for the PT, I will always have a problem, cause Lucas changed the OT movies to fit the PT story, and the DVD's are a prime example of a quality release of Hayden in ROTJ, and a crap release of Shaw in ROTJ.

If Lucas kept the OT the same, the PT would be like EU to me, it didn't infect the OT, and if more fans enjoy more SW, thats great. But unfortunately that is not the case.

 

To answer the question of this thread, I would say that the saga went wrong with the ANH. Lucas first created a standalone movie (at least it was a movie that ended well enough that it didn't need a sequel or a prequel). It went wrong when Lucas decided to extend the story and set this standalone story in the middle. It further went wrong when Lucas decided to wrap up the latter half of the saga so tightly that the prequel story wasn't needed at all (aside from our own personally desire to recapture good times), but technically, it wasn't needed. It went wrong again when Lucas waited 20 years to further add to this standalone story because by then, he was coming from a completely different place in life. Creatively he wasn't the same person. So really, I believe it went wrong, when Lucas set out from the beginning to write a standalone story and only later did he decide to add to it.