Peter Travers of Rolling Stone lists AOTC as one of the worst films of the year

True. The good news is that GL can redo the effects of AOTC whenever he wants. When he's in his mid seventies, he may decide that Padme was "always intended to be" a gungan.

 

True
AOTC v.1.3

 

So should he have waited ten years until the effects were "good enough"...then something else would be on the edge of breakthrough.

 

but that's exactly the point - why is Lucas (or his fans) so obsessed with "breakthrough" or "never-before-seen effects"? Should the films not be a bit more than a breakthrough in CGI?

 

Peter Travers stole my quote. I hailed AOTC as one of the "worst movies of the year" on my Nov. 12th post, a day after the DVD came out and the horrid movie fouled my senses once again.

 

But as i said before, the lousy reviews obviously irk many of you. And its not because you think they paint a distorted picture of how the general audience feels about the PT.

Is because you are terrified that they might be right.

Yeah. That must it. [rolls_eyes]

 

"but that's exactly the point - why is Lucas (or his fans) so obsessed with "breakthrough" or "never-before-seen effects"? Should the films not be a bit more than a breakthrough in CGI?"

No one said they were obsessed with BREAKTHROUGH. I am just arguing that, if you wait for the latest and greatest ANYTHING, you are going to be waiting forever.

This was in response to the notion that Lucas was using digital sets ten years before "their time".

 

I then asked them to tell me which side those early AT-AT's were on and they couldn't tell. I asked them whether the giant spider vehicle belonged to the Seperatists or the Clones and they couldn't tell. . . they didn't really care about the "story" of the battle at all.

Eh, so your friends are a couple of dim bulbs with short attention spans who like movies with lots of "purdy 'splosions" and can't seem to follow a moderately complex storyline. What's that supposed to prove?

 

Thanks Durwood. your last post proved what level of intelligence you have.

I feel sorry about that.

However I was trying to make a point about the the kind of audience that is fascinated with films like AOTC. Ask random people coming out of a screening of AOTC the questions I asked in my ealrier thread and I guarantee you that the vast majority won't know the answers. Feel free to prove me wrong

 

And what...Rhodes Scholars were coming out of the OT films and discussing their literary merit?

Star Wars movies have always been for the masses.

 

Lord of the Rings is set in Middle Earth. There are fantasy style locations but most of the sets could be built.

Star Wars takes place off of Earth, meaning Lucas had to bring other planets to life. Planets made entirely of water with magnificent cities sticking up out of the oceans.

In Episode V, the Hoth scenes were filmed in real snow. In Episode VI, the forest and desert scenes were filmed in real forests and deserts.

In Episode I, we had an underwater city called Otoh Gunga. We had a giant planet, Coruscant, made up of cities and industrial areas.

In Episode II, we had the likes of Kamino, Coruscant, and Geonosis.

I'd love to see the "ohmygodwerulebecausewedontuseCGIlikeGeorge" LOTR crew build a Kamino exterior set. I'd love to see them create Coruscant's exterior. Also notice how the places that didn't need to be digital were actually filmed on location? Such as Padme's lake retreat, which was all filmed on location. Tatooine was filmed in Tunisia, on location.

However, for the scenes in which we see things that don't even or COULDN'T exist, he had to rely on digital technology,

AND THAT'S FINE

because it looked wonderful. Peter Jackson had an easier task on locations than Lucas. MUCH easier. Hobbiton? Sure just dig some holes. Lothlorien? Sure, just add some cool crystals to the trees and such. Almost all the places in LOTR can be built. Sure, it's still HARD to build, and I commend Jackson's team for pulling it off. But they didn't NEED CG for the sets. Lucas does.

So whoever said that Lucas is 10 years ahead of himself, well, he's about 10 years behind himself. It doesn't take a retard to realize that Star Wars HAS to have tons of effects, else these gigantic cloning facilities, cities sticking out of raging oceans, and planets comprised of buildings that don't exist could not exist.

I'd love to see the LOTR crew build the outside of Kamino. Even have an actual Jedi Starfighter fly down and land on the landing pad.

"But Pooja, the original SW movies done it with models!"

Yeah maybe but none of those looked even half as good as what is seen in the PT, sorry.

I think people forget that Star Wars takes place in a galaxy far, far away, on planets that don't exist; places crafted from the mind of Lucas that could not be realized without effects.

So I have an idea... lay off Lucas. He is doing nothing wrong. So what if the poor man can't exactly take a few thousand years and build Kamino...

And tell me, what's the big difference between using models and CG? It's still cheating. Actually using models is a lot easier than CG. I watched a lot of those docs on the AOTC DVD and watching them do the CG.. wow, I couldn't ever do anything like that. They are truly talented people. It's not like Lucas just snaps his fingers and craps out a digital set... it takes time, money, and effort, and tons of supervising. I think people underestimate the difficulty of using CG.

I also think people need to wake up and realize that CG looks great and can bring unreal places to life. There's nothing wrong with using CG. It's a fantastic tool, and if I were working on a film like SW, I'd sure as heck use it too.

 

<<Well hes right the movie did suck.Other than the star wars fanatics who worship these movies,the general public was very dissapointed and spiderman was better>>

No...you are wrong...again....why do you waste your time in here? Just to annoy the grown-ups?

 

"Other than the star wars fanatics who worship these movies"

So glad you're here to tell us these things....

In all honesty, what did you expect to find here?

And good post, Pooja.

 

"This is ridiculous!" -- Natalie Portman regarding AOTC.

I find it impossible to take the opinion of anyone seriously who pulls quotes so ridiculously out of context like this one.

What exactly are we trying to accomplish with this thread here? Trying to convince people who don't like the films to like them? Trying to save all of us lost brainwashed souls who will worship at the altar of Lucas until our dying day?

Sorry guys, it's a losing battle going either way.

 

The only "fans" I see obsessed with the groundbreaking effects are the ones who can't stop complaining about them.

 

-----signature-----

"This is ridiculous!" -- Natalie Portman regarding AOTC.


I just wanted to say that Natalie was referring to the fact that she had to hop around on a blue screen set, pretending like she was dodging machinery. She wasn't referring to the actual movie. I know your quote reflects your opinion of the movie, and that's fine, but it's quite misleading.

 

> Ask random people coming out of a screening of AOTC the questions I asked in my ealrier thread and I guarantee you that the vast majority won't know the answers. Feel free to prove me wrong. <

Ask random people coming out of screening of TTT what the "two towers" refer to and I guartentee that a vast majority won't know the answer. In fact, this happened last week at the screening. A lady asked that very question. No one around her had an answer.

 

Well peter travers is not a very credible critic, he likes almsot every movie. He's a leanord maltin type hack, he's no Ebert or Judy Gerstel.

As for AOTC being at the bottom of the list, I would say given the amount of hype and expetactions its fairly relative, big movies that dissapoint are judged more harshly then little movies that nobodies heard of. I kinda of look at like this, if your going to make us sit through all thsi hype and advertising then there better be something good on the other end.

 

Who cares what two-faced critics ,or bashers, have to say about the film being on the bottom of their list, or too much CGI, or taken some of the movie's stars comments out of content...

The movie made 300+ millions dollars and most of the JC posters here loved it (see the AOTC survey thread) and that good enough for at least one more movie to complete the series, and that's all I want.

 

In 2002 alone, AOTC was better than "Ghost Ship," "Pluto Nash," "MIB2", "Scooby Doo," "Maid in Manhattan," "Enough", "The Time Machine," and "Undercover Brother." And that's not a complete list.

 

I don't even care about what Ebert says.....Christopher Lee thinks critics are worthless....so do I....I am my own critic...I decide what I will see and not see.....anyone who allows what a critic says to determine what movie they will go see is "weak-minded".

 

To add to Jabba's list:

"Die Another Day"
"The Sum of All Fears"
"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets"
"Austin Powers in Goldmember"

 

I think AOTC is definately more well made and enjoyable than 75% of the movies released this year.

And somebody please tell me they didn't list Spider-Man as one of the best movies of the year. That would be extremely hurtful

 

I kinda of look at like this, if your going to make us sit through all thsi hype and advertising then there better be something good on the other end.

I'd give you that point for TPM, but AOTC didn't have much in the way of hype, advertising or marketing, at least speaking relative to TPM and the other big films this year.

Rolling Stone is fine if you are looking to keep up on trends or if they are featuring an interview woith someone you are interested in, but other than that it is a joke. The magazine is very fickle to the tastes of pop culture and is notorious for having people do reviews (movies, music etc.) for products outside the genre they specialize in.

 

COS was better than Clones and Dooby better than Jar Jar.