PT Why does there seem to be a near-consensus that AOTC is worse than TPM?

To me, TPM feels and looks the most like Star Wars, compared to the other two. So I rank it the highest of the PT.

But I agree that AOTC is better than ROTS, my least favorite Star Wars movie.

 

Both movies have fantastic moments and utterly terrible ones too... However, TPM swings it for me, for the following reasons.

- One of the most groundbreaking movies ever made.
- The best-looking movie, possibly out of the entire saga.
- Best score in the entire saga.
- Perfect balance of filmic look, CGI and physical effects.
- Jaw-dropping locales. Particularly Theed and Mos Espa.
- Podrace...such a phenomenal achievement, and great fun.
- Obi/Qui-Gon/Maul fight. Best fight in the saga.
- Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon immediately raises this movie.
- Watto. Again, what awesome work.
- Incredible world-building.
- The whole thing feeling very George Lucas.
- Ian McDiarmid doing a brilliant job as Palpatine/Sidious.
- Jedi Council.
- Origin of Threepio (including some stunning effects work) with his and Artoo's first meeting.

We ALL know the negatives. Though, years later, they don't 'break' the movie, like I used to think they did. Making Anakin 16 here may or may not have worked... Having him be a little kid does make more sense. Not least because it then doesn't interfere with Obi-Wan's storyline, of being Qui-Gon's young apprentice and then Anakin's Master. If they were closer in age it would seem wrong. Then you need those 10 years of Anakin's training. George would never have gone down the Rey route of making him instantly, magically badass.

 

The Phantom Menace isn't too bad. Jar Jar Binks was a disaster in my opinion, and young "Annie" Skywalker is annoying, but there are some nice things in there. The pod race is fun, and of course Darth Maul was great (with one of the best spaceships in the entire saga)

The script and acting are woefully clunky, and at times it is cringe-worthy, but it looks like Star Wars, and more importantly it feels like Star Wars. I remember the build up to it and the trailers on the internet that took an age to download using dial-up.

Attack of the Clones is terrible. It has one good sequence in it, and that is the Obi-Wan vs Jango Fett scene on Kamino, then the ensuing space battle between them. The rest of it is awful.

The love scenes between Anakin and Padme must surely go down as some of the most toe-curling scenes ever committed to celluloid.

 

He has on occasion admitted that he's pretty good at making movies, which judging by certain reactions I've seen was apparently the height of arrogance.

 

Star Wars is certainly a great film, and I give Lucas full credit for it, but it’s still just one film…and frankly, I think that the various sequels, prequels and whatnot were rather hit and miss. Sometimes the results were great (The Empire Strikes Back, Revenge of the Sith), sometimes not so great (Return of the Jedi, The Phantom Menace).

Lucas is an endlessly creative person, no doubt, and very few filmmakers possess his talent for worldbuilding. Very few filmmakers have pushed the technological boundaries of the medium as far as George Lucas has. He deserves quite a bit of credit for that. But I do think that the majority of his output since, say, 1981 has been pretty underwhelming (aside from Revenge of the Sith, in my opinion).

They haven’t had the same impact as Lucas, but the trajectory is startlingly similar. Lucas DID produce films after Star Wars. They just weren’t very good. I could also cite someone like Peter Jackson, who had the low-budget film that brought him attention and acclaim (Heavenly Creatures), followed it up with a massive game changer (The Lord of the Rings), then never quite matched that level of success. (I might have a slight preference for Jackson over Lucas, if only because I do have a soft spot for some of Jackson’s REALLY early movies, like Meet the Feebles). I think if I had to rank the three, I’d probably rank in them in this order: Jackson, Lucas, Wachowskis. I wouldn’t put any of them on the same level as Spielberg. I’d probably even put James Cameron above all three of them, now that I think about it.

That film succeeds because of the relationship between Indiana Jones and his father, not because it uses the Holy Grail as a MacGuffin. I believe Spielberg really pushed for the father-son element in that story, as well as for the casting of Sean Connery.

That’s true, but Spielberg really brought it to life, and it likely wouldn’t have been as good without him. Lucas originally wanted to call him Indiana Smith, and Spielberg nudged Lucas to change the name to Indiana Jones, which frankly just sounds better. Spielberg came up with the famous boulder. Spielberg pushed for the casting of Harrison Ford. (In fact, I believe Lucas opposed the casting of both Ford and Connery.)

I stand by my assertion that Spielberg really brought Indiana Jones to life, not George Lucas.

 

Lucas opposed the casting of Sean Connery because he didn’t think people would be able to see him as anything other than Bond, but Spielberg wanted that

 

For me TPM is better because has a very good representation of the Jedi, it explains how Palpatine manipulated everyone to become a chancellor, introduced Maul, shows one of the best lightsaber fights in all the films, and I really loved the podrace scenes as a child and it hooked me up into Star Wars. And I didn't even mention Qui-Gon, that is a very good character and sets up the Chosen One storyline (I'm only sad that Qui-Gon retconned that Yoda was Obi-Wan's master). My only issue with the film is Jar Jar, all his scenes are unbearable and cringy.
As for AotC, the film has its highlights, introducing Dooku, Yoda's fight, the whole assassination investigation leading into Jango Fett and a clone army, and the Geonosis battle. My problems with this film that makes me rank it lower than TPM is that the whole Anakin-Padmé acting is very bad. Some say GL intended for their romance to be cringy, but that doesn't mean it makes it good. Hayden also has some acting problems in this film. But the thing that makes me roll my eyes every time I watch the movie is that a ton of Jedi in an arena couldn't handle a few hundred droids. I mean, they are supposed to be the best warriors in the galaxy and can use the Force to fight. They are trained since they are children and are supposed to be able to fight together, but the fight at the arena seems very bad, they fight one droid at a time, take a lot of time beating them, they don't use the Force in any significant way and some of them even die. What about that Jedi that jumped to where Dooku was and was quickly killed? That scene just doesn't make any sense to me.

 

I'm rewatching AOTC now. It's probably second last on my personal list, ahead of TROS (which is the only Star Wars movie that I can't enjoy). My issues with it:
- Christensen and Portman's scenes are insufferable because of embarrassing writing and acting. It's a big deal when such a large chunk of the film is nearly unwatchable
- Anakin's characterisation, considered apart from the poor acting and writing. It's fine for him to be angsty, but he also desperately needed some charisma in order to be sympathetic and therefore tragic. It's just not delivered. Also a big sticking point for me in the plotting is that Padmé goes on to marry a guy who she knows murdered children
- Visually it takes everything that TPM did wrong and cranks it up to 11 (to be fair, ROTS turns it up to 15). Massive over-reliance on dodgy greenscreen and fully animated characters. Plus artistically a lot of the design work is just pretty ugly (I do love me some Phase I clones, the old Jedi starfighter, and Republic gunships though)
- The first half to two thirds of the movie feel directionless. It'd be forgivable if the answers to the mysteries that were set up were in any way satisfying (see below)
- The clone army conspiracy is nonsensical and is never explained further even in ROTS
- The causes of the Clone Wars and the motivations of the Separatists are never sufficiently explored other than vague statements about the Republic being corrupt. And Jar Jar's warmongering apparently

I still have a lot of fun watching the movie - the sand people sequence is a real highlight of the entire trilogy, and the Dooku duel is very underrated - but the reasons above are why I personally put it at the lower end of the spectrum as far as Star Wars films go.

 

These points couldn't possibly be any clearer.

It becomes very obvious by the end of AOTC that Palpatine has been manipulating the entire situation with Dooku's help to gain an excuse to create the Grand Clone Army of the Republic and to seek emergency powers. Dooku and the Separatists and even Jango were merely Palpatine's pawns. He manipulated them by offering them what they most desired and then getting rid of them when they were no longer of use in his ascent to power.
Every single thing that happens in AOTC does so exclusively as part of Palpatine's manipulations and his grand plan to eventually declare himself Emperor, abolish the Republic, win over Anakin as his Sith apprentice, and use the Clone Army both to consolidate power and finish off the Jedi Order.

 

I've seen this debate raging elsewhere on this board (and read all the arguments against my view), so I probably won't join in on it here, except to say that I disagree and that it's one of the problems that I personally have with AOTC, in answer to the OP.

 

Yeah, I’m not a huge plan of this plot line because I don’t think the movie ever really resolves it. I mean, yeah, even as a 10-year-old, the answer seemed pretty obvious. Dooku impersonated a dead Jedi and ordered the army in his name.

What’s frustrating is how the Jedi really just drop the ball on this and abandon it. Maybe they resolve it in the cartoon show, but I don’t care. Attack of the Clones really feels incomplete to me, and this is a prime example of that. It feels more like a live action pilot for The Clone Wars cartoon show in hindsight.

 

Well I suppose that's fair enough, Bindo, I'll just say that it should never be the filmmaker's job to spoonfeed every single bit of information to each and every viewer. The most interesting movies are always the ones that make the audience really have to think and put 2 and 2 together on their own. That goes for all movies, naturally, not just SW films.

 

The quest for the Grail is intimately connected thematically to the relationship between Indy and his father. The story wouldn't have been as strong if it wasn't connected to such a symbolically and emotionally potent artifact.

I think it's also a bit suspect to suppose that Lucas had no positive influence in shaping the father/son element of the story. It's not as if that sort of thing's in his wheelhouse or anything.

e: The simplistic characterizations in making-of accounts don't necessarily give a full and accurate picture of the true nature of the creative process. Saying "Spielberg didn't want the Grail to be the artifact" or "Lucas wanted to focus on the Grail and was wary of making it about the father" don't necessarily give a full accounting of things. For one thing, Spielberg may have come up with the hook, but it was Lucas's job to come up with a story incorporating that hook--and of course Lucas would be good at that, because he had already told the definitive version of a story about a son redeeming a broken relationship with his father.

 

It really does seem, according to the DVD documentary, as if Spielberg was the driving force behind the father-son story, and it does seem as if he had to talk Lucas into it. Besides, the relationship between Indiana Jones and his father does seem to share more in common with the estranged paternal relationships that show up all over Spielberg’s films than with Darth Vader. Spielberg really only got on board with the Grail when he told Lucas, “The search for the father IS the search for the Grail.”

If you removed Henry Jones, Sr. from the film, it really would just be little more than a pale retread or Raiders of the Lost Ark.

 

Have you considered that he had to talk Lucas into it because Lucas felt it was territory he had already extensively covered? My point is that I don't see how this is an indictment of Lucas's creative abilities. Spielberg was the driving force behind the concept. But Lucas was the one who came up with the story, not Spielberg. That's just an objective fact, Spielberg doesn't write the stories. Lucas was the one who had to make the story work.

The fact that removing Henry Sr. from the film makes it a pale retread of Raiders seems to be an indictment of Spielberg's fear of deviating from formula as much as an affirmation of his creative instincts as compared to Lucas's.

e: I also think we have to keep in mind that Lucas came up with the entire idea of Indiana Jones in the first place. So it's weird that Spielberg gets credit for the execution in one case but then he gets credit for the idea in another, while Lucas's role is minimized in both cases. You can't have it both ways.

As for thematic similarities between this story and others written by Lucas, I've written about them before:

 

Presumably, we’re talking about the same George Lucas who ended his saga with a second Death Star against everyone’s advice. Besides, Lucas’s original plan was for a haunted house movie and Spielberg felt that that was just retreading Poltergeist. So he had no problem asking Spielberg to retread his own prior work.

As I said, the film wouldn’t be as good without the father-son dynamic. That credit goes to Steven Spielberg.

Lucas came up with the skeleton. Steven Spielberg gave it flesh and muscle. Then Spielberg basically came up with everything that made the third film good.

Besides, we know that Spielberg really only came onboard with the idea of the Grail once he decided to add the father to the story, convincing Lucas that the father-son relationship would be a great metaphor in Indy’s search for the artifact.

Then Spielberg came up with an idea that added a new dimension to it- the relationship between Indy and his father.

These films wouldn’t be as good without Steven Spielberg. In fact, without Spielberg, there’s no reason to believe they would’ve been any better than any of the other mediocre-to-bad films that Lucas has done since Star Wars, such as Willow, Radioland Murders and Red Tails. Whether you wanna admit it or not, the distinguishing variable between those films and Indiana Jones is Steven Spielberg.

 

OK, now I'm convinced you're just here to post anti-Lucas drivel. None of these movies that you've just mentioned were bad movies - nor were they directed by Lucas! He had a role in their getting made, but he didn't direct them, just like Spielberg also served as executive producer of many movies that had a Spielbergian flavor but weren't directed by him.
If you hold something like that against Lucas, then also hold it against Spielberg. Otherwise your bias becomes exceedingly clear.

 

Lucas deserves just as much credit for those three as he does for Indiana Jones, since Spielberg directed all the Indiana Jones movies.

And having seen all three, I can tell you that both Willow and Red Tails are thoroughly mediocre, whereas Radioland Murders is downright bad.

Further, all three were financial disappointments (Willow managed to turn a profit overseas and on home video, but the other two flat-out bombed).

But yes, I’m looking at Spielberg’s résumé right now. Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan.

Now let’s look at Lucas’s output. American Graffiti, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Spielberg has the superior output.

 

Well this is a major bummer. I haven't been on this site in years. Used to be here multiple times every day - beginning in the early prequel period. And now the comments have gone full circle and it's complain, biotch, your childhood was stolen blah blah blah. I'm outta here

 

Yeah unfortunately sometimes we still get the same ol' tired **** all over again, but it's not always like that.

 

No, my childhood wasn’t stolen. I simply stated Lucas’s career trajectory- after some huge hits early on, he never really lived up to those, much like Peter Jackson and the Wachowskis.

Although I do find it amusing how after spending so much time giving Lucas all the credit for Indiana Jones (despite the fact that Steven Spielberg directed those movies, and come up with the core conceit for the third one), you immediately started screaming, “But Lucas didn’t direct the ones that weren’t hits.” So if the movie’s a huge critical and commercial success, Lucas gets all the credit. If not, start pointing fingers. He had just as much to do with Willow and Radioland Murders as he did with Indiana Jones, if not more.

 

My god, reading this thread just gave me nausea.

Have a nice life friends

 

Anakin is an awkward character, he's never been allowed a GF nor been around a lot of girls in his youth for being a slave. Padme responds to his awkwardness by herself being awkward.

it works...if you let it.

then why are your issues with AOTC and not ROTS?

 

We have lives?

 

due to current world events

I think the answer to this is...no