PT [Question] From my point of view the Jedi are evil.

So watching this clip, do you think Hayden Christensen's acting was bad or a-okay?

 

it was ok,

neither Oscar winning or terrible, it was said fine, just a normal line said normally...

 

I never get what so many people hate about this scene. I think the dialogue is very strong and Hayden's acting was okay.

 

I like the conflict in his voice. He doesn't sound convincing, because I don't believe he is fully convinced in what he's doing. He isn't "all-in". That's the impression I get, and I think Hayden communicates that beautifully, especially with his facial expression.

 

it's fine. he was trying to do Vader's flat delivery style from the OT.

 

Hayden is not a poor actor. His work in other pieces can be excellent. George Lucas is a sh**ty writer, producer, and especially director. I'm not sure looking back while fans were so excited when TPM come out of the fact he himself was directing the trilogy. Lucas hadn't directed a film in over twenty years by that point, Star Wars was only saved from being a flop by special intervention of the editors, and the films he had produced before were not large or significant. Sometimes fans come be morons.

 

What a lot of people fail to understand about Anakin at this point is that he's deeply ambivalent about everything that he's doing. However, he can't see any other way out of his situation, so he's constantly trying to convince himself that his behavior is justifiable on some level. Anakin is trying to make Obi-Wan understand. He wants Obi-Wan to agree that his reasoning makes sense, because then he'll have outside confirmation that he really hasn't gone insane.

When Anakin says, "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil," he's not telling Obi-Wan that he thinks the Jedi are capital-B Bad and the Sith are Capital-G Good. He's trying to get Obi-Wan to see things from his perspective. Why wouldn't Anakin think the Jedi are evil? He now knows they're as power-hungry and as partial to attachments as the Sith, and yet they refused to use their power to help him, a loyal friend, in his time of greatest need. Loyalty is everything to Anakin. In his mind, it is the greatest good. So if the Jedi have turned on him merely for wanting to save his wife from certain death, how can they be good?

 

I'll address a few of these points -

George Lucas is a sh**ty writer

That's rather subjective. Star Wars has a certain style to it. It's attempting to emulate Saturday Matinee Serials from the 1930's, so the dialogue is often times hard on the ears, just as it was back in the day. They - characters in Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers for instance - rattle off their lines in a matter-of-fact way, showing no sign of self-awareness in how absurd the words that are coming out of their mouth sound. It's very idiosyncratic; not something you see in more modern films, and can once again, be off-putting.

Here's Lucas on the "infamous" fireplace scene:

"I wanted to write a love story in a style that was extremely old-
fashioned, and frankly I didn't know if I was going to pull it off.
In many ways this was much more like a movie that from the 1930s than
any of the others had been, with a slightly over-the-top, poetic
style-and they just don't do that in movies anymore. I was very happy
with the way it turned out in the script and in the performances, but
I knew people might not buy it. A lot of guys were going to see this
movie, and most guys think that kind of flowery, poetic talk is
stupid--'Come on, give me a break.' More sophisticated, cynical types
also don't buy that stuff. So I didn't know if people would laugh at
it and throw things at the screen or they would accept it. Let's face
it, their dialogue in that (couch) scene is pretty corny. It is
presented very honestly, it isn't tongue-in-cheek at all, and it's
really played to the hilt. But it is consistant with the over all
Star Wars style. Most people don't understand the style of SW. They
don't get that there is an underlying motif that is very much like a
1930s western or Saturday matinee serial. It's in that more romantic
period of making movies and adventure films. And this film is even
more of a melodrama then the others."--GEORGE LUCAS "Behind the
scenes AOTC" book

I'll concede that dialogue isn't GL's strongest suit, but Star Wars dialogue is less the result of incompetence, and more so the result of an adherence to a style from a bygone era.

George Lucas is a sh**ty producer

"George was the best producer I ever worked with."
~ Irvin Kershner.

Given the guy's status in the circles of SW fandom, I'd take his praise of Lucas' producer abilities as being sacrosanct.

George Lucas is a sh**ty director

This has only relatively recently become the consensus. The guy has been nominated for Best Director twice, and two of the films he directed were nominated for Best Picture. It's kind of unfortunate that he didn't direct Apocalypse Now(as he was originally signed on to do), because I'm sure he would have knocked that out of the park as well, and perhaps he could have avoided the 30+ year derailment of Star Wars.

To get a little off subject, I am obviously a Star Wars fan, but Lucas is better than Star Wars. His imagination has no limits, and I feel his talents have largely been wasted. He was on a hot streak in the 70's and then Star Wars hijacked his life. Sure, it's given him fame and fortune, but his reputation has suffered almost irreparably. What I love about his films, especially the prequels, is that they have a unique signature to them. He's one of the greatest visual directors of our time, and even though his films are largely the definitive popcorn movies of our time, there is a depth to them, an artistic eye. They're attempting "something" greater than the sum of their parts; they're trying to say something about us as a people, about humanity. It's not about product placement or simply the bottom line; Lucas is an auteur, and a quite brilliant one at that. I wish he would take on more projects, but I'm afraid criticism and old age have stymied his passion.

It's actually rather tragic...

Anyway, back in '99 there were plenty of reasons to be excited about Lucas being in the directors chair again; he had incredible credentials to that point. And look at what George Miller did with Fury Road. Granted, he didn't take the hiatus Lucas had, but he had not touched the Mad Max property in nearly 30 years, and his latest offering is considered if not the best installment, close to it. There was no real reason to doubt Lucas back in '99, and maybe he didn't come through for you, or the RLM crowd, but he came through for me, and I admire the man, and his multiple talents and vision.

 

I think the line delivery is fine and it's a great highlight of Jedi ambiguity.

 

Oh, the irony...

 

EDIT: I submitted this response, just now, without having read the post by The_Phantom_Calamari. So I added it as soon as I went back and noticed. Great how thoughts sometimes align!

That's the impression I get, too. He's almost looking for Obi-Wan to make it right for him -- to prove that reality is otherwise.

The words, "from my point of view", not only highlight the effect of Palpatine's peroration at the opera, but also belie Anakin's confident embrace of hate and aggression, suggesting an underlying uncertainty on his part.

Obi-Wan makes little of that small concession by Anakin. Instead, he simply decries that he's "lost", and the fight continues to its inevitable conclusion. One can adduce details like these and infer a vivid portrait that the films seem to be painting: that misunderstanding and moments not taken lead to tragedy.

 

I take it you're a psychologist. Introspection is your greatest suit.

 

Are you? You seem sure enough to make authoritative -- and pejorative -- statements against George Lucas and fans of his work.

 

Good post overall, but I seem to agree with this the most.

I like Star Wars and I like all six movies, but I also feel that Star Wars has prevented Lucas from becoming another kind of legend. He is still a legend, but it's almost solely for Star Wars now and often not even in a respectful way. Given his interests and movies prior to Star Wars, I'd love to take a peek into some parallel universe where Lucas just stopped with Star Wars after the first self-contained movie in 1977 and moved on to other projects.

Anyway, the modern hip conception that Lucas is "bad everything" is not even close to reality. Out of only six movies (four SW) directed:
- two were Oscar-nominated for "Best Picture" (AG, ANH)
- two got him Oscar-nominated for "Best Director" and "Best Writing" (AG, ANH)
- one revolutionized cinema, starting the era of blockbusters (ANH)
- one grossed 1 billion (TPM)
- one revolutionized digital cinema, starting the era of digital movie cameras (AOTC)
- two were voted "Favourite Movie" at PCAs (ANH, ROTS)
- one was voted "Hollywood Movie of the Year" at the Hollywood Film Awards (ROTS)
- two won Empire's "Scene of the Year" award (AOTC, ROTS)
- four enjoy a current Rotten Tomatoes rating of 80% (THX, AG, ANH, ROTS) or more (top rating 95% for AG)
- all six enjoy a Metacritic rating of 51% or more (top rating 92% for ANH)
- ...

If that's the track record of a "sh**ty writer, producer, and especially director", then I'm sure 98% of writers, producers and especially directors would love to be "sh**ty".

Nevertheless, I'm not the biggest fan of the line in question and I have a neutral opinion of Hayden's acting in this case.

 

And then there's Indiana Jones as well.

 

I love this acting!!
But I'm german so maybe I dont get something why it sound so bad to all other people?
What do you guys think of the german syncro? I think the first sentence is in english and the second in german better.

 

I'll add to that that Lucas received the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences' "Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award" in 1991.

And in 2005, he received the "AFI Life Achievement Award" from the American Film Institute.

Not to mention having profoundly impacted on the collective unconscious of planet Earth.

I do wish, like you, Samnz, that we could take a peek into an alternate universe, though. And I wish Lucas would still make good on his claim of moving into semi-retirement to pursue, among other things, these low-budget, artsy, obscure "tone poems" he's mentioned wanting to make several times. He's said, as well, that he is overflowing with ideas, and the challenge is simply finding the time to make films of them all.

In fact, when he received the "Life Achievement Award" in 2005, he remarked, "I'm also extremely grateful that I discovered my passion. I love movies. I love to watch them, I love to make them." Yet, while powerfully influencing the film industry and popular culture, and having overseen or guided the creation of numerous films, he's only directed six full-length movies himself, and four of those belong to the same series, and the last of those was ten years ago. He's a hero; and an enigma.

 

I'm not a fan of this line, and while I can see Phantom Calamari's point, I still have to argue. If Anakin knows what he's doing is wrong, and is trying to justify his actions, then why would he feel the Jedi are evil? Would it not be his responsibility to destroy the Jedi, if they were infact evil?

I think it's more a tone of switching sides altogether. He's in this darkside game whether he likes it or not, and therefore, the Jedi are his natural enemy.

But overall, I found the acting alittle weak in the Mustafar duel. It's just too much too fast. Anakin was just crying about the slaughters he's commited, and then within five minutes, he's suddenly the ultimate bad guy spouting off about those he was just wheeping about. I mean, I can appreciate certain factors of the dialogue, the whole "don't underestimate my power" and such, but I just felt underwhelmed through alot of the duel. If you've ever played the ROTS video game, it's only slightly worse and cringe worthy with the dialogue, and that's saying something...

 

We all understand perfectly. We understand that Anakin is out of his mind when he said that nonsense and not even Obi-wan believes the words that are coming out of Anakin's mouth which is why he tells him, "you are lost." Anakin is unwilling to understand that the man he's helping is the main cause of every crisis that took place throughout the prequel trilogy, has worked with the same people that tried to kill Padme for years, and has endangered his life by putting him in the clone wars. Anakin also doesn't understand that PalpSidious has been lying to him for years and should have no reason to believe he can help him save Padme but Anakin is so blinded by his fear of losing her, that he refuses to face the truth about what he has done. Deep down, Anakin doesn't believe anything he says to Obi-wan but he's had too much blood on his hands, that nothing he does now will prevent his inevitable fight to the death with Obi-wan.

 

Not everyone reads this sequence or these films the same it doesn't make those that don't follow expected lines of reaction any of the names I see thrown around entirely too much.