Dude, the New York Times tries to make everything look like an anti-Bush statement. It's the only way their readership can enjoy anything.

Keep low expectations, but take lots of salt with this one.

Geraghty at National Review's TKS blog delivered a shithammering of Lucas's new message. One great line had to do with being lectured on the evils of capitalism by the man who made a fortune licensing everything up to and including C3PO breakfast cereal.

The Clone Wars (Episode 2) was on TV last night in Sydney. I hadn't seen it (that was the only episode that I hadn't seen in theatres), so I decided to watch it.

But after half an hour or so, I went to bed. The script sucked, the acting was weak, and the visual effects looked like a bad episode of Battlestar Galactica (the 70's version, not the new one).

I'm not holding out much hope for the new Star Wars. If I do see it in the theatre, I'm not going to bother getting up to speed by finishing the Clone Wars.

So Bush is Anikan/Darth.

That would make McCain what, Jar Jar Binks?

Bah... hell with it all. I'll watch it and probably enjoy it for the fairy tale it is, but lets face it: at some point we grew up and realized the rebellion in Star Wars looked uncomfortably like terrorism and anarchy run amok.

Goes double for Dune.

But we susped disbelief and enjoy the stories because the enemy is so obviously evil. Totalitarian and brutish overlords get their asses handed to them and we applaud because despite the anti-capitalist bent of the stories, kicking bad-guys asses is what makes every red-blooded American give a hearty "fuckin-A!".

That's the thing about art: It's successful if different people enjoy it in different ways. Lucas is coccooned in his prejudices, as were Langston Hughes, Richard Wagner and for that matter even John Wayne Gaycee. That doesn't and shouldn't stop people from finding meaning and enjoyment from their art, right?

At least that's what I keep telling myself after watching another CSI, Vegas, where apparently only white people commit murder.

Everything is a metaphor about Bush to the libs. Those dumbasses could find a Bush reference in Gone with the Wind if it would help the cause. The whole series was written in the 70's.

It was John Podhoretz who said the new movie is total crap. He's relatively new to the Corner, I think.

I was always rooting for Grand Admiral Thrawn in Timothy Zahn's books (far superior to anything I've heard about the new movies, and no, I'll never watch them).

Fuck the Rebellion.

I've been expecting this for a few years now. Seems we finally got there.

For one, I think Lucas is saying stupid things because he's visiting the land of stupid people. Even I would be tempted to say nasty things about America when in France. It's like kryptonite to patriotism over there.

As for Star Wars and political messages, I'll stick with Jonathan Last-- the Empire works.

But honestly, New York Times?

Sometimes a wookie is just a wookie.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

I was in high school and college when the first Star Wars movies (what are called Episodes 4, 5, and 6) came out. Maybe I'm getting jaded in my old age, but the past couple of prequels have been a CHORE to watch. I do have high hopes for this next one, but I also have this bad feeling about it.

Jonah Goldberg @ NRO was going back and forth with Jason Aspuzzo at Liberatas over the supposed Bush bashing in Sith last week. Bill McCuddy on Fox and Friends Sunday was talking about it too and Drudge has a couple links this morning related to the anti-Bush stuff.

I've always tended to favor the Empire (c'mon, Boba Fett? The Emperor's Royal Guards?!) so if Bush is Darth Vader, I would much rather walk in darkness with him than get caught with my pants down on the oblivious Jedi Council.

I saw an advanced screening at 9:00 AM on Sunday-- and I can confirm, you will be disappointed.

The acting was bad, the script was bad (we already know the story...) and yes, it was preachy.

And the army of wookiees scene only last about 2 minutes. Same for the starfighter battle-- one irrelevant bit at the beginning.

If Bush is Anakin/Vader, would Cheney or Rove be Palpatine in the Lefty Star Wars galaxy? I'd be interested in seeing the Kossacks come up with a Reality-Movie conversion list so I don't waste my time guessing how the NYT reviewer is going to compare movie X's villains/plot to the Bush administration/ WoT.

I think the Empire's biggest mistake was in calling their battlestation the Death Star. The Rebellion is made up of a bunch of hippies, so if the Empire had called the station Officer Friendly's Huggy Happy Fun Station the Rebels would have become positively orgasmic at the possibilities for peace and understanding. They would have flocked onto the main hangar deck to have a peace-n-love sit-in.

Then Darth Vader could simply have strode out and Force Choked all their stupid hippy asses. Now that would have been cool.

Officer Friendly's Huggy Happy Fun Station

Got me with that one.

Speaking of Officer Friendly's Huggy Happy Fun Station, there was always this one brief shot (competely irrelevant to the story, I know) that said a lot about the Empire.

When the thing is fired up for the first time, and the guys in the split-level helmets are working the controls on the video editing board (that's supposed to be the ray beam control center), they fire a ray beam that is supposed to be the most powerful weapon ever devised.

Did you ever notice that this channel of unprecedented energy zips right past two guys who are manning a station that is rather oddly located inside the in the ray's exit hole? Can you imagine what kind of shit job that is?

"Corporal, your assignment is to man this station."

"What's that big tunnel for?"

"That's where the planet-destroying ray beam comes out."

"Where's my desk?"

"Right there."

"You mean the one that's, like, eight feet from this ray beam you mentioned?"

"That's the one."

"Where's the plexiglass wall between me and it?"

"There isn't one. Here's some earplugs."

How do the Leftists know that BUSH is Darth Sideous. I can think of a certain hawkish Senator who reminds me of Palapatine.

Yes dittoheads, you don't know the power of the Dark Side. What if I told you the US Senate was under the power of the Dark Lord of the Sith? Dozens of senators are under the thumb of a Sith Lord...

SENATOR CLINTON = SIDEOUS.

DARTH HILLARY!!!!!!!

Given Lucas' simplistic "black and white" storytelling, I really doubt his nuance and metaphor is going to ruin a story that we already know. It will be the clunky dialogue and crappy acting that will ruin it. That aside, and "political" references in it will make me cringe, but then most of the prequels hjave made me cringe anyway.

I went back and watched the orginals last week, the un-scrweded-around-with orginals on VHS. Empire was good, and parts of the others were entertaining, but so much of my interest in these movies in pure nostalgia, and nothing else, which is how most people feel that I know. There were deeper plotlines in "Transformers the Movie."

I predict Lucas makes a couple of crapy flops, then decides that the "technology" has caught up to his "vision he had in the 70s" for some sequels. Then we'll have C-3po's all over again.

I can't understand how a series that was so incredibly conceived and executed could fall into the shits, ala Jar Jar Binks, etc. What's so disappointing is that I was just a kid when the movie came out. And my friends and I waited every five years or whatever for the next film and then we'd cut school and it was a whole ritual with us to wait it out and then rush to the movies. Honestly, the last three films never stood a chance without being told from the vantage point of Luke. But I'm a fantasy nut, and while I do love the Lord of the Rings, reading it for the first time was hard without Bilbo. His short appearance in the first book (and film) was also a wash for me. Thank goodness Gollum was around, and Gandalf.

"Transformers the Movie" rocked.

To be fair, the story HAS to be told with these "oh fuck what happened to our Republic" elements. That's what happens in the story. The Republic is thousands of years old and it takes the perfect storm of bureaucracy and treachery to achieve Palpatine's plan.

I am NOT giving anybody the satisfaction of thinking that it's any kind of commentary on current events. I personally have too much invested in the story of SW. WTF GWB has to do with the fall of Darth is beyond me.

What really proved that this was a metaphor for the Bush administration was when Natalie Portman made that horse masturbation joke in front of the Senators.

MyCountry:

I can't understand how a series that was so incredibly conceived and executed could fall into the shits, ala Jar Jar Binks, etc.

You have got to be kidding. Remember Return of the Jedi? Stone-age teddy bears defeat the most advanced technical power in the galaxy with sticks and rocks! Harrison Ford can barely contain his boredom; to say that he phoned it in is an understatement. Lando and some cod-faced alien fly the Millennium Falcon into improbably narrow superstructures of the Death Star and somehow never run into anything. Admiral Ackbar is a frigging coward and always wants to run away.

The original Star Wars movies contained about one good movie between them -- some of the original movie, most of Empire, and the lightsaber duel between Luke and Vader in Jedi.

The prequels have yet to muster a good ten minutes over two movies, so Sith had better rock my world. (And yes, I'm probably going to see it more than once, and yes, I'll bitch about how bad it is, and yes, I'll buy the DVD when it comes out, and yes, I'm an idiot for doing so.)

yeah, I didn't mean that as any insult to "Transformers the Movie"

Monty, lol, yeah, you're so right about he Ewoks. I'd forgotten about them. They sucked. Isn't that the film with the huge mobile fighters? That was cool. But all of the past movies looked good after that ridiculous Jar Jar Binks. I was stricken.

HA HA HA! Well, it's nice to know that Lucas is still stealing from the best.

Erm, the whole "if you're not for me, you're against me" line/concept didn't originate from Bush. Maybe Lucas is letting people believe that because it scores points with liberals and helps cover his rampant plagiarism.

Am I the only one who has "Ben Hur" on DVD? For goodness sakes, Episode I stole the chariot race right out of that movie, and now we have the conflict between Judah Ben Hur and his friend Messala being manifested...

Messala, a soldier for the Roman EMPIRE (who was a good child but ended up getting twisted by the evil of Rome, why what a coinkydink) says, "You are either for me or against me."

Judah responds, "If that is the choice, then I am against you."

Let's not forget the whole virgin birth Messiah thing that's the backdrop for "Ben Hur" which Lucas ripped off, too. I could go on about the parallels between films but you get my drift.

Lucas is a very very rich hack.

And you know, even if he meant this movie to be an anti-Bush metaphor for today's political climate, I could really care less. I'm sure Simon and Garfunkel wrote "The Sound of Silence" as an anti-war type liberal song but that sure isn't the only way it can be interpreted. Think about Padme's quote in this article. Who hates a representative government more than liberals? Who would be happier to see elitists running things because people are just too dumb to take of themselves? And which side has been trying to effect changes in our government NOT by bloodshed but by slow deterioration of our republic? So in all honesty, "This is how liberty dies - to thunderous applause," comes off as a VERY pro-conservative anti-liberal line.

There's a lot of SF out there that is intentionally designed to get out a message about our society, humanity, etc. Star Wars has NEVER really dealt with highbrow ideals and has primarily stuck to the whole Good vs Evil thing. Maybe Lucas is now making a stab at having depth in the form of Bush bashing...but if so it's a real big mistake, not because it's allegedly a liberal message but because that's not why the franchise has been popular; it's been popular because it hasn't been anything more than just plain ol' fashioned entertainment.

Later,
bbeck

Speaking of movies, I made the mistake of seeing Kingdom of Heaven.
Academics, like Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith, Britain's leading authority on the Crusades - attacked the plot of Kingdom of Heaven, describing it as "rubbish", "ridiculous", "complete fiction" and "dangerous to Arab relations".
Prof Riley-Smith added that Sir Ridley's efforts were misguided and pandered to Islamic fundamentalism. "It's Osama bin Laden's version of history. It will fuel the Islamic fundamentalists."
Sir Ridley's spokesman even admitted that: "The Knights Templar, the warrior monks, are portrayed as "the baddies" while Saladin, the Muslim leader, is a "a hero of the piece."
Sir Ridley's spokesman said that the film portrays the Arabs in a positive light. "It's trying to be fair and we hope that the Muslim world sees the rectification of history."

PUTRID!

GET READY TO PUKE:

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2005-05-15-cannes-lucas_x.htm

"This was written during the Vietnam War and Nixon era, when the issue was how a democracy turns itself over to a dictator — not how a dictator takes over a democracy"

DID YOU KNOW THAT NIXON WAS A DICTATOR AND TOOK OVER THE US? I DIDN'T, BUT I WENT TO PUBLIK SKOOLS.

"When I wrote this, Iraq didn't exist. We were just funding Saddam Hussein and giving him weapons of mass destruction."

But, he added, "the parallels between Vietnam and what we're doing in Iraq now are unbelievable."

SADDAM HAD WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION? BUT I THOUGHT DARTH BUSH LIED??!!

IT'S ALL ABOUT VIETNAM FOR BABY BOOMERS. THEY LIVE SAD LITTLE LIVES.

Just wait for the extended special edition, with Padme's extended speech about the crucial, sacred role of the filibuster and C-3po's 10 minute defense of same-sex marriage for droids

I had a chance to see the movie last week at a charity event preview. It's not as bad as the last two (Ep 1 nd 2), and not as good as the first three (Ep 4-6). The plot is obviously pretty well pinned down by the chronology of the series, so don't expect any surprises. If you enjoyed the first three movies, it's worth seeing. Oh, by the way, I think it's too graphic for kids - Darth Vader wears the mask for a reason.

Trying to read anything more into these movies than entertainment means you've got too much time on your hands.

A quick observation:

Most of us who grew up with the original Star Wars expect far too much. Is Lucas a moonbat? Absolutely. I would expect nothing less from someone who brought us the likes of "Ewoks". However, if you watch the new films with the same attitude that you did the old ones (one of 'naivete' as it were) these are just as good. The only differences in the individual films comes in who is directing it. You can see a direct correlation to very mundane acting in the ones Lucas directed.

The important thing to remember is that it's just a movie. For some reason too many people have wanted to place this "deeper meaning" upon Star Wars. As if to say that Lucas is some sort of visionary. Instead, look at him as a genius at marketing, and one who craftily adapted some ideas from Akira Kirosawa movies and Joseph Campbell books.

The critics are right about the acting - Christensen and Portman are pretty pathetic at portraying any emotions beyond fawning over each other. Quite a few audience members chuckled when the two actors tried to be dramatic. It reminded me of my two-year old when he's trying to frown.

Watching SW with your 5-year-old boy is like seeing it yourself for the first time, minus teenage cynicism. Highly recommended.

Kingdom of Heaven fails on every level. The characters are wooden, undeveloped caricatures - so totally unbelieveable that one just can't give a shit whatever happens. And silly me, after Ridley Scott's Gladiator I had hoped for great dialouge, but the dialouge was probably the very worst thing in the move, no it wasn't, the false history was, but the dialouge was close. Even the big battle scenes sucked! Scott insists on using that very annoying technique of speeding up the violence so no one can see what is happening, just a big super fast jumble with what looks like dark sand splattered everywhere (supposed to be blood I guess). Even the big epic battle scenes looked phony and poorly computer generated. But the very worst part is that it makes heros out of villians and villians out of heros by using selective bits of history taken completely out of context to give a totally false version of events.

Kingdom of Heaven fails in everything, truly PUTRID!

Virgins, I saw "Kingdom of Heaven" and I can forgive the liberties Scott took with history (hey, "Gladiator" was historical fiction, too), but I just can't forgive the overall crappiness of the flim itself.

Good grief, was Bloom's character the first and ONLY caucasian to ever possibly think, "Hmm, we're here in a desert, maybe we should have, oh, I don't know, something sort of like effing WATER!!!!!"

Dumb dumb dumb...

Later,
bbeck

Admiral Ackbar is a frigging coward and always wants to run away.

Hey, Monty, leave Ackbar alone. His tactics for the Battle of Endor were sound, if based on faulty information. Anyway, he labors under two handicaps:

1. He's the victim of years of institutionalized racial oppression. Think of him as sort of a slimy George Washington Carver.

2. His species is called "Mon Calamari." I mean, c'mon. Did Lucas just run out of ideas and invent this guy while ordering appetizers?

bbek - Yeah I couldn't help but say out loud as the Evil and very stupid Knights of the Templar marched out to meet Saladin and began to die of dehydration without sufficient water: " 'ya mean they live in a desert and they don't know it?"

White folks are funny! They can't dance and they don't know about the need to have water in the desert. That's cultural imperialism for ya!

At least nine people were killed yesterday as a wave of anti-American demonstrations swept the Islamic world from the Gaza Strip to the Java Sea,

Maybe they'd all just seen the movie Kingdom of Heaven.

Monty - Then Darth Vader could simply have strode out and Force Choked all their stupid hippy asses. Now that would have been cool.

You are cracking me up!

Most of us were pretty young when Star Wars came out. We weren't thinking about political agendas or anything but how cool the affects were and how awesome it would be to have a real lightsaber and practice the force.

All the cuddly Ewoks in Return ruined the series for me as an adult. Face it, this is a series for children. Forget the political bullshit and realize that size 42 adult Yoda jammies are pathetic.

spongeworthy - Watching SW with your 5-year-old boy is like seeing it yourself for the first time, minus teenage cynicism. Highly recommended.

I completely agree. Both my boys and my 5 year old daughter are dying to see the movie. I will take them and enjoy their delight in it.

If you are going to watch these movies and really enjoy them, then you have to let go of all the underlying bullshit and watch them as a child would.
That shouldn't be too difficult for most of us : )

It's a trap!

Back when Fark was still funny, they did a photoshop contest based on stuff you find at Home Depot. Admiral Ackbar is a long-running gag on Fark, and someone did a hilarious PS of Ackbar standing by a big piece of canvas sheeting, saying "It's a tarp!"

For some reason that completely cracked me up, and still does today.

There's one liberal talking point I sincerely hope Lucas hit in Episode 3: tolerance for interspecies relationships.

Then again, in all my masturbation fantasies I'm fucking a Twi'lek.

andrew, the dork confession thread is 5 or 6 down

thanks for sharing, though

The lamest thing I ever heard re: Star Wars was Speilberg saying he cried at the premiere of this one.

Gawd, what a hopeless, jellified, spineless sack of shit.

Kingdom of Heaven really did suck beyond description. Suffice it to say that even Troy was better!

If you are going to watch these movies and really enjoy them, then you have to let go of all the underlying bullshit and watch them as a child would.

There's a good scene in Reign of Fire where the 30-something leaders of the last few people on earth (having been virtually destroyed by a fresh wave of dragon spawn) are putting on a play for the children. They play out the pivotal scene from Empire -- "I am your father!" The kids eat it up, of course. I expect I'll be doing stuff like that when my 2 year-old turns 5 or so.

Kingdom of Heaven really did suck beyond description. Suffice it to say that even Troy was better!

Holy crap, I would NOT go THAT far! lol. KoH at least had decent costumes and more than one good actor. Troy had tie dye and Peter O'Toole.

Later,
bbeck

bbeck
Didn't you think it was like, cool when Brad Pitt leaped over that bad guy and stuck a sword through his collarbone into this heart? Troy was way coool, dude!!

That's an odd line, I would think the Sith would say "only a Jedi thinks in absolutes" i.e. a "light" and "dark" side, right and wrong, etc.

During the commentaries on the original 3 I wanted to puke sometimes, all the comments about how he was trying to give a message about Vietnam. How the Ewoks were supposed to be the NVA. Funny I can't see the Ewoks killing millions of each other after the Empire leaves.

I'm glad I was too young to get it.

Yeah, the only thing about the seeing the army of wookies is that I've read in some reviews that there is very little of the wookies, so you're probably going to feel cheated if you go in expecting some king of epic wookie battle.

I dont want to see any wookie battles....we already had the ewoks, enough with the furry suit characters

Didn't you think it was like, cool when Brad Pitt leaped over that bad guy and stuck a sword through his collarbone into this heart?

You mean, that one time in-between all those scenes where Pitt was in Constant Pout And Moan Mode? lol. Sorry, he was just too much of a whiny b*tch to impress me with one leap.

The only decent scene in the whole film was when Peter O'Toole went to ask for his dead son's body. Holy cow, he made ever other actor in that show look extraordinarily bad.

Later,
bbeck

Lucas is increasingly comfortable in his liberalism ... desperate to atone for the supposed proto-Reaganite cryptomilitarism that animated his original trilogy.

Well Ace, look at the series in totality. Creeping liberalism and the loss of personal self-determination secondary to the rise of a totalitarian state (I-III), lead to the necessity of "proto-Reaganite cryptomilitarism" (IV-VI)

I simply cannot wait until some bored IT geek who watched the originals when they were in theaters gets ahold of the complete series remastered on DVDs. And reworks them.

I'd pay big money to have that damn podrace scene cut to about 5 seconds. Edit JarJar out - "Wah? Misa got edited out?" Yeah, bitch.

And for Jedi, could someone PLEASE edit out the damn seams on the Ewoks?

Ace, thanks for a Star Wars article. Your geeky audience has just been dying to have more opportunities to discuss this on your site.

W.C. Varones wrote:

The Clone Wars (Episode 2) was on TV last night in Sydney. I hadn't seen it (that was the only episode that I hadn't seen in theatres), so I decided to watch it.

But after half an hour or so, I went to bed. The script sucked, the acting was weak, and the visual effects looked like a bad episode of Battlestar Galactica (the 70's version, not the new one).

Oh, come on. First, it's "Attack of the Clones" (unless they changed it in Australia), not "Clone Wars". The visual effects were also very good. About that only real criticisms you could make of the effects would be that they were overdone or too obviously computer effects. But they certainly looked nothing like cheap model effects (note to those about to flame me: I'm talking about model effects that are cheap, not saying all model effects are cheap) as seen in Battlestar Galactica. And, give me a break, there is no comparison to the new BG series (which uses computer effects that are nowhere near as advanced).

michael dennis wrote:

Everything is a metaphor about Bush to the libs. Those dumbasses could find a Bush reference in Gone with the Wind if it would help the cause. The whole series was written in the 70's.

I agree with you "dumbasses" stuff.

The whole series, though, wasn't written in the 1970s. Lucas is basically full of it. What most people in the know believe is that he wrote a nice little movie, the original Star Wars, leaving it open for sequels in case it caught on. When it exploded, he then made up this rubbish about the originals were the middle part of a triple trilogy. Note that the original Star Wars did not have "Episode IV" in the scrolly thing at the beginning -- that was added later.

Here's an example of how Lucas lies about this. He recently has done interviews recounting how this all unfolded, and his current line is that he didn't know if he'd be able to complete all six movies in his Grand Vision, so to ensure that he'd at least have an end, he decided to do the final three first.

Uh, OK, that's nice, but this directly contradicts the claims he made in the 1970s and 1980s. Then he claimed it was a nine-part saga and he was making the middle part of the triple trilogy. It's hard to reconcile that claim with his current one about choosing to make the final three movies first.

By the way, I still run into serious Star Wars geeks that are waiting for Episodes VII - IX. Here's the scoop on that: Lucas "originally" planned to have the Emperor get away at the end of VI, and the next three movies would be about the good guys hunting him down. How he planned to make that into three movies is beyond me, but that's what he's said. Anyway, he decided to condense it and fold all the essential plot developments into Return of the Jedi. So, essentially, Episodes VII - IX were cancelled and cannot be made as they were "originally" envisioned. While they could in theory of course make sequels with new plots that happen after Episode VI, Lucas has said for ages he has no plans to do that, that Episode VI is the end. So you geeks waiting with bated breath for the closing trilogy are confused.

Monty wrote:

I think the Empire's biggest mistake was in calling their battlestation the Death Star. The Rebellion is made up of a bunch of hippies, so if the Empire had called the station Officer Friendly's Huggy Happy Fun Station...

Why not simple "Life Star"? That sounds totally hippie to me ("Get your LIFE STAR crystal pendant with healing properties today!").

brak wrote:

Given Lucas' simplistic "black and white" storytelling, I really doubt his nuance and metaphor is going to ruin a story that we already know. It will be the clunky dialogue and crappy acting that will ruin it. That aside, and "political" references in it will make me cringe, but then most of the prequels hjave made me cringe anyway.

Heh.

brak wrote:

I went back and watched the orginals last week, the un-scrweded-around-with orginals on VHS. Empire was good, and parts of the others were entertaining, but so much of my interest in these movies in pure nostalgia, and nothing else, which is how most people feel that I know. There were deeper plotlines in "Transformers the Movie."

I actually had the opposite experience. After sitting through Episode I and II, I started wondering if perhaps the original trilogy was just as bad, but I'd been too young to realize it. I have had this experience before, such as remembering Superman II as a fantastic movie, so much so that when I saw it was out on DVD I immediately bought it, without renting it first, only to watch it and find out that it is atrocious.

Anyway, my wife and I sat down and rewatched the originals. I really expected to find they were pretty bad. Seriously, I was in this weird mood where I was calmly expecting to see a childhood myth shatter. I sat there and watched very critically.

The verdict? I still thought they were very good. Yes, there is some bad acting from Mark Hamill in Episode IV. Yes, there is silliness here and there. Yes, there are various problems. And, yes, Episode VI was definitely a step down with the Ewok foolishness and other problems (although not as bad as I remembered it). But overall I thought it was a solid set of movies. IV is really good and still has the magic to it, and I think it would even to people seeing it for the first time. V is just a fantastic movie, definitely the crown jewel of the series. VI has problems, but it manages to ride the coattails of IV and V and come out still entertaining and a satisfying end to the story (especially in the new version, where the Ewoks are minimized at the very end).

I suppose in some technicals senses you could fault them all sorts of ways, but as a whole I think they stand up very well. Not talking to brak specifically, but I think the general meme that "oh, they were never as good as people imagined" is rubbish.

brak wrote:

I predict Lucas makes a couple of crapy flops, then decides that the "technology" has caught up to his "vision he had in the 70s" for some sequels. Then we'll have C-3po's all over again.

Heh. Wouldn't surprise me, except for his age.

Dman wrote:

What really proved that this was a metaphor for the Bush administration was when Natalie Portman made that horse masturbation joke in front of the Senators.

Some day I'll actually find out what that stupid joke was.

Monty wrote:

The original Star Wars movies contained about one good movie between them -- some of the original movie, most of Empire, and the lightsaber duel between Luke and Vader in Jedi.

The prequels have yet to muster a good ten minutes over two movies, so Sith had better rock my world. (And yes, I'm probably going to see it more than once, and yes, I'll bitch about how bad it is, and yes, I'll buy the DVD when it comes out, and yes, I'm an idiot for doing so.)

One good movie? Come on. I feel stupid for tolerating this putrid prequel trilogy, but at least I do so knowing that it's because of two really good movies and one good movie that I enjoyed in the past, and that I'm hoping for a glimmer of that. If I really thought not even "Empire" was by itself a good movie, then I'd feel like a total moron.

Here again we have the "they never were that great" meme. OK, that's fine if you believe that, but then I don't understand why you're even paying attention to the prequels.

And here we go again:

GregD wrote:

Most of us who grew up with the original Star Wars expect far too much. Is Lucas a moonbat? Absolutely. I would expect nothing less from someone who brought us the likes of "Ewoks". However, if you watch the new films with the same attitude that you did the old ones (one of 'naivete' as it were) these are just as good.

Hmmm...no, the prequels aren't just as good, no matter how you watch them. Sorry.

GregD wrote:

The only differences in the individual films comes in who is directing it. You can see a direct correlation to very mundane acting in the ones Lucas directed.

The important thing to remember is that it's just a movie. For some reason too many people have wanted to place this "deeper meaning" upon Star Wars. As if to say that Lucas is some sort of visionary. Instead, look at him as a genius at marketing, and one who craftily adapted some ideas from Akira Kirosawa movies and Joseph Campbell books.

The "only" difference is who directed them? That can, and does, make a huge difference. "Very mundane acting" can screw up even a good script.

The reason people are upset is they tremendously enjoyed the original trilogy and wanted to see the prequel trilogy at least come close to living up to it. Your suggestion of looking at Lucas in a different way so we can appreciate him for what he is, a good marketer, makes absolutely no sense in that context. We want a prequel deserving of the Star Wars name, period, not an altered insight into and appreciation of George Lucas as a person.

And, yes, most of us know it's just a movie. Thanks though.

Regret wrote:

The critics are right about the acting - Christensen and Portman are pretty pathetic at portraying any emotions beyond fawning over each other. Quite a few audience members chuckled when the two actors tried to be dramatic. It reminded me of my two-year old when he's trying to frown.

How does Lucas get such bad performances out of the actors? The common theory is that he simply does not care about the humans, so he just has them read the lines that will serve as a bridge to the next effects shot, and he takes whatever he gets.

But that can't be right, because some of these people have shown acting ability in other films, and yet they're almost all horrible in the prequels. Is Lucas actually directing them to act as they do (flat delivery, etc.)?

Or am I just giving actors too much credit? Do they actually care so little about their craft that they're going to do a piss-poor job unless forced to do otherwise? Or are they helpless without a director telling them how to inflect every word?

72 Crusaders wrote:

Scott insists on using that very annoying technique of speeding up the violence so no one can see what is happening, just a big super fast jumble

Yeah, I hate that technique. When I finally saw Gladiator, after having everyone praise it to the skies to me, whenever a battle scene got going I thought, what is this crap? To me it looked absolutely terrible.

To me it looks like he has the actors move through the scenes slowly, then speeds it up faster than what would have been normal speed (perhaps thinking that will make them look superhuman). I could see trying that, as it is an interesting way of trying to accomplish something, but when the end result was that bad, I can't believe he stuck with it.

But then a lot of people thought the fight scenes were the best part of the movie. Perhaps some people don't notices the twitchiness and other strangeness of sped-up footage as readily, so it looks great to them.

compos mentis wrote:

Most of us were pretty young when Star Wars came out. We weren't thinking about political agendas or anything but how cool the affects were and how awesome it would be to have a real lightsaber and practice the force.

All the cuddly Ewoks in Return ruined the series for me as an adult. Face it, this is a series for children. Forget the political bullshit and realize that size 42 adult Yoda jammies are pathetic.

Here we go again.

A lot of us continue to enjoy the original trilogy as adults, and, no, we're not all watching them through the eyes of a child. And, yes, I know of people that first watched the original trilogy as adults and liked them. Nobody's talking about Yoda jammies. They're talking about subpar prequels being made to a favorite movie series. There's nothing wrong with that.

Lucas himself has stated Star Wars movies are for kids. I think that's where he went way off track. The original series took itself seriously enough that kids and adults could enjoy it. The new one has poop and fart jokes, tons of slapstick, inane dialog, etc. I think his attitude is, hey, the effects are good, here's some silly stuff to laugh at, and who really cares about the rest?

compos mentis wrote:

I completely agree. Both my boys and my 5 year old daughter are dying to see the movie. I will take them and enjoy their delight in it.

If you are going to watch these movies and really enjoy them, then you have to let go of all the underlying bullshit and watch them as a child would.
That shouldn't be too difficult for most of us : )

You might want to read some reviews before you take kids that young. This "movie for kids" supposedly has some pretty graphic scenes of Anakin getting horribly burned, among other things.

Apparently it's more difficult for us to watch these movies as a child than you imagine. Maybe it would be easier if they were half as good as the original trilogy.

brak wrote:

I dont want to see any wookie battles....we already had the ewoks, enough with the furry suit characters

I was responding to Ace on the main page. He wrote this: "Eh, what the hell. It's space-fantasy. I guess I can put up with this sort of aging-boomer pablum to see an army of Wookies." While you literally get to "see" them, it's not for too long from what I hear.

Anyway, sorry to write such a long post, but my Yoda jammies were itching me last night, so I'm in a bad mood and wanted to rant.

Bob:

When will Volume 2 of Star Wars Doesn't Suck As Bad As Everyone Thinks It Does hit the shelves?

I kid, I kid.

But seriously, dude: Star Wars is largely crap. Even Empire only rates "good", while Jedi is "mind-bendingly dumb". Lucas has never been able to direct actual human beings or write actual human dialogue. (I still maintain that American Graffiti used up all the writing talent that Lucas ever had in him.) Lucas should have just limited himself to running ILM and let someone else write and direct the sequels. Better yet: let Lucas do the honors, but then give all the films the "Alan Smithee" credit they so richly deserve.

Actually the Star Wars prequels are quite racist:

http://www.detnews.com/2002/entertainment/0205/18/d01-492788.htm

Yes, Lucas is racist. But he hates Chimpy and says so in this picture, so we love this movie!

Found this on Google Groups, a blast from 2002.

Read the whole thread:

http://tinyurl.com/audxj

If you believe in social justice, please read this now! And pass on to
all your fellow activists! The new Star Wars movie (a clever name
based on Regan-era miltiary plans) called "Attack of the Clones" is
racist and conservative. We must stop this menace before it is too
late!

Please see this link:
http://www.detnews.com/2002/entertainment/0205/18/d01-492788.htm

To protest this injustice, we at the Democratic Socilists of America
are planning a teach-in and protest march on JUNE 22. Please meet us
in WASHINGTON DC to protest this racist movie, racism and the Zionist
occupation of Palestine.

It is a little known fact that George Lucas is a libertarian
(capitalist imperialist) who hates democracy and fantasizes how we
would be better off under a corporate white EMPIRE. His movies have
yet to portray a single African-American in a positive role, as the
few he has shown are criminals or dictators. Hopefull these actions
will pull the racist movie from theaters, though we will also petition
our democratically elected leaders to better regulate the imperialist,
greedy Big Movie industry to prevent future racist projects to be
producted.

Please see the link below for more information.

People, not profits,

Jerome Smith
Web Activist
Democratic Socilists of America
www.dsausa.org

Another hilarious post from 2002...

http://tinyurl.com/9n9yu

Recently a right-winger trolled these groups about our planned Star
Wars protest. As a latino I found this GOP tactic shameful and
hateful. Please ignore this corporate propaganda! I encourage each of
you to visit this website and learn the TRUTH: www.stopstarwars.org

As expressed recently by U2 frontman Bono on his tour of Africa: Every
$8 movie ticket wasted by average Americans could feed, house, educate
and clean 52 African children. According to Bono, 98 percent of
African children fall into the UN's definition of unclean -- which
includes shabby clothing and excessive body oder. Surely our money is
better spent on bathing the poor and the basic human right of
name-brand clothing?

It is time to stand up to the greedy corporations that push racist,
sexist pro-conservative movies such as Star Wars down our throats.
Please call your congressperson TODAY and call for COMMON SENSE
regulation of the entertainment industry. It is the only thing that
will save our democracy from the conservative/libertarians who seek to
"privatize" speech along with everything else.

Stop Star Wars!
www.stopstarwars.org

Monty,

Well, I guess we disagree about how good the original trilogy is. I still am curious why you're going to see III multiple times and buy the DVDs and so on if you don't think any of the movies are that good.

I personally think Lucas did OK with IV, possibly because he wasn't a big name and so the actors would stand up to him (there are a ton of stories about Harrison Ford saying things like, "You can write this crap, George, but I can't say it"). I thought V was a very good movie, and from what I've since learned that is in no large part due to the fact that somebody else directed it. VI was a step down, but not down far enough to ruin it for me. As I said above, to me it successfully road on the coattails of the IV and V. Obviously the coattails weren't long enough to drag the much-worse I and II along.

There are also issues with cowriters and even his ex-wife, who supposedly was a superb sounding-board. She'd shoot down his dumber ideas before they got too far.

While I am a big Star Wars fan, I am not a big George Lucas fan. I do not think he was this fantastic visionary. I think he got lucky and created a movie that struck gold with IV, then he got even luckier by turning over the reigns to someone else with V. He made some major missteps with VI, but he had some much momentum from the first two that they didn't matter that much. But now, after I and II, he's been pretty well exposed.

Personally, I think V was more of a turning point that people realize. If Lucas had directed that movie, it wouldn't have been nearly as good, and Star Wars mania would have lost major momentum. Without V to build on, VI would have probably been a total turkey and a financial flop (at least relatively speaking). Who knows if I - III would have even been made then? If they had been, and they were as bad as they are, I think these people that think Lucas is visionary would see him in a different, and more correct, light.

If you ask me, he's an egomaniac. If he had a smidgeon this genius that others see in him, then he surely would have been smart enough to find good cowriters and directors, as well as some people to tell him when things are stupid (Jar-Jar, for example). I and II could have been at least watchable. But apparently to him it's more important that he get all the credit than it is to make good movies.

As for American Grafitti, I thought it came out recently he was less responsible for that than people had believed.

I still am curious why you're going to see III multiple times and buy the DVDs and so on if you don't think any of the movies are that good.

It does not please me to be George Lucas's dirty dirty man-whore, and I'll thank you not to bring it up again.

bbeck, no, you're not the only one who has a copy of "Ben Hur" on DVD (among my favorite films, too). I enjoyed what you wrote here.

Tanks, S. :)

Monty, I think calling you Lucas' DDM-Dub for short has a certain ring to it.

Later,
bbeck

I don't have too much to say about that except for this:

The line "only Sith Lords speak in absolutes" has got to be one of the dumbest lines Lucas has ever written and that's saying a lot. The best reply would probably be for Anakin to say, "Really? Are there no exceptions?" but "Absolutely?" would work too--it just borders on being a bit too obvious. But then there's more.

"Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate..." Absolutely? I guess Yoday is a Sith lord. "That way lies the dark side." Absolutely? One could easily go on. The truth is that Star Wars offers one of the most manichean worldviews out there. The philosophy of the Jedi is a lot of things but skeptical certainly isn't one of them. For a Jedi to get on a high horse about not being absolutist is not only the height of hypocrisy, it's ludicrous.

this is pretty good:

http://chrenkoff.blogspot.com/2005/05/open-letter-to-george-lucas.html

After Phantom Menace could anyone doubt Lucas had a political screw loose. Not so much on the wrong side as unclear on the underlying concpets.

On the planet Naboo we have a monarchy. But the Queen is elected. And they elected a teenage girl to run the planet and represent it in interstellar concerns. This is the utterest nonsense. All I can discern from this is a driving desire by Lucas to have Leia be a genuine Princess but not an oppressor of the people.

It's almost as stupid as the midichlorians nonsense. Here we have the basis of Force sensistivity being a testable physical attribute and presumably a gentic one as well, as Luke would appear to demonstrate. So what do the people with this rare and valuable gift do? Join an order of celibate monks. This makes me think the Sith's primary motive is getting laid and starting a family. Evil! (OTOH, Lucas children are adopted...)

Lucas lost his f'ing mind years ago, and needs an editor/full-time zookeeper to make sure he doesn't do anything dumb.

The Ewoks and Jar Jar have always been naked marketing ploys so he can sell more crap to kids. Like someone said above, he's a hack, but a very very rich one.

I think there's a limit to how much you can make good actors care about his crap. Portman, Macgregor, and Jackson have all been far better elsewhere. Hayden Christiansen, I hate that Backstreet Boy wannabe. I've seen better actors than that get turned down for high school parts. He learned a second facial expression for this one. Wow.

My buddy Matt and I both saw Kingdom of Heaven over the weekend, thought it outstanding and we're both Iraq vets heading back for a second tour. The history is dodgy as hell, but then Comedus wasn't Marcus Aurelius' son either. A century or more seperated the two as I recall from my class on Roman history long ago. Black Hawk Down is the best of his war films, really. While I don't like the time-compression effect in the fight scenes, for me time always seemed to slow not speed, the colors often seem to fade out and you key more on movement. Other people's mileage may vary.

Harrison Ford can barely contain his boredom; to say that he phoned it in is an understatement.