Re: Hermit's Journey Part III
Posted: Thu Dec 14, 2017 11:53 pm
IMO the weakest aspect of EpIII is the wrap up, need to get everything tied up in a neat bow so we can move into A New Hope. That and the ''high ground''...
An opinionated discussion of all things SFDebris
https://sfdebris.net/forum/
From an in-universe perspective, I wonder if Obi-Wan assumed that Vader couldn't be redeemed. In A New Hope he seems pretty resigned to the fact that he is "only a master of evil." The only way it makes sense for Obi-Wan to tell him that (and Luke takes the lie pretty well, honestly) is if he expects it to be a straightforward "kill or be killed" situation.Asvarduil wrote: On that note, something interesting - while Obi-Wan manipulated Luke with his "From a certain point of view" thing (really just Lucas retconning himself...but whatever), which was more or less an overt lie, Palpatine was much better in his execution - his lie was in fact the truth, but worded more effectively. Generally speaking - and, by necessity - Palpatine carefully avoided lying, if for no other reason than he spent a great deal of time around Jedi as Chancellor. Whereas Obi-Wan used a terribly constructed lie to motivate Luke - which wound up backfiring in his face, genius that he is - Palpatine used well-arranged truths to motivate Anakin to tear down literally everything he ever worked for. How's that for an interesting symmetry?
I totally agree. I just hate that line on every level. There's also some more bad Anakin and Padme lines. The film definitely still has its flaws, but it has some great high points.That being said, the whole, "Only a Sith deals in absolutes!" (facepalm) makes me always facepalm, EVERY time it is said, because it's such a terrible fallacy, that I award Obi-Wan Kenobi the 'Neelix' prize for the franchise. Obi-Wan is a Jedi Guardian, because the Force knows smarts aren't his strong suit.
I agree.cambiata wrote:I thought the failure of the prequel trilogy had more to do with the loss of master editor Marcia Lucas than the personal changes in George himself.
Though I do think that George himself had at least one change of heart that ruined his potential vision: he spent far too much film time on special effects, and at least on the record, young George disagreed with that philosophy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykmZp5cgbkU
Edit: OK, I see that George's help on the original trilogy was addressed. I stand by my comment about George changing his philosophy about spending too much screen time on special effects, though. Unless that old interview was George bullshitting about a ideas he didn't really believe.
There's quite a lot of things I fault with in EP III, despite it being the strongest of the 3 prequels. But you're right, there's a weird problem where Lucas didn't want any off-screen momentum, so everyone has to end the film in the exact place they start in ANH, despite it being 18 years later.Robovski wrote:IMO the weakest aspect of EpIII is the wrap up, need to get everything tied up in a neat bow so we can move into A New Hope. That and the ''high ground''...
Nah, Roddenberry and Lucas had the opposite problems: Roddenberry's (TNG) ideas were antithetical to drama and would fight with his writers when they tried to make them part of an actual story rather than a manifesto. Lucas' ideas are entirely conducive to drama, but as the self-proclaimed king of wooden dialogue he has trouble implementing them on his own. Its demonstrated by the marked improvement with The Clone Wars where he has the same role as Roddenberry and has a team of writers supporting him.SotF wrote: Hell, it's the same thing covered with some of the early TNG reviews where there was pretty much the cult of Roddenberry that combined with some of the more insane ideas.
This is what bugged me about the prequels as well.bronnt wrote:And really, the "fall" of Anakin from noble hero to murderous villain is too fast to get invested in. Sure, he's kind of callous for a heroic character, but he's concerned about the right thing, and then two scenes later he murders a room full of children. It's supposed to be an uncomfortable visual, I get that, but we really need to see decisions stacking on top of decisions following a pattern that finally puts him in that despicable place, not watching him flip a switch into evil.
The war is problematic too. Of course it's superficial to the plot, in that it's a ploy orchestrated by Palpatine in order to make his powerplay. But there's no investment in the war itself. I really have no idea what the issues are that are driving the galactic conflict, and how people are justifying all the death and destruction to themselves. This is the result, perhaps, of a weird writing decision that filled both sides with disposable shock troops-clones versus robots. I'm sure it's intentional and is meant to reflect the values of the people who would use disposable troops, but we're supposed to identify with heroes who never once thought critically about throwing clones into war. Yodo clearly thought about it for 15 seconds during Episode II, then said, "fuck it let's go," scooped up a bunch of them and ordered them into a bloody conflict which started the whole Clone War thing to begin with.
Exactly! To put this into perspective; I was born in the same year in which "Return of the Jedi" was released. When "Phantom menace" was released, I was 16. Those 16 years was my entire life, and you telling me that in all this time Lucas couldn't come up with sensible movie script, or at the very least, hire someone to write it? Hogwash!zardox78 wrote:The quote that really gets me is at the very end regarding time. Like "What was George supposed to do? Stop time itself?" No. What he was supposed to do was anticipate the passage of time (moving at the exact same rate it always moves) BEFORE he ran out of it. Maybe if he'd brought that other writer into the room and sat down together. Or maybe if he had just set himself an earlier deadline and actually stuck to it. The fact that he got it in by his ACTUAL deadline suggests that he could've done that. But he didn't. It's like waiting until the night before your mid-term to start studying... and then blaming your bad grade on the small number of hours in a single night.
That's one of the reasons why I feel Clone wars (either of them) does a lot to buoy up RotS. It finally gives you those necessary character moments between Anakin and Obi-Wan. While Luke spends most of both Empire and Jedi separated from his companions, the big chunk of the movie he had with them in New Hope made it so you could still feel the connection between them. By both moving back the timeline and by splitting Obi-Wan and Qui Gon you basically robbed an entire film's worth of potential bonding between the two characters whose relationship should be one of the three pillars of the films, with the other being Anakin's relationship with Padme and his relationship with Palpatine (which is admittedly the only one the PT got right).Fixer wrote:This is what bugged me about the prequels as well.bronnt wrote:And really, the "fall" of Anakin from noble hero to murderous villain is too fast to get invested in. Sure, he's kind of callous for a heroic character, but he's concerned about the right thing, and then two scenes later he murders a room full of children. It's supposed to be an uncomfortable visual, I get that, but we really need to see decisions stacking on top of decisions following a pattern that finally puts him in that despicable place, not watching him flip a switch into evil.
The war is problematic too. Of course it's superficial to the plot, in that it's a ploy orchestrated by Palpatine in order to make his powerplay. But there's no investment in the war itself. I really have no idea what the issues are that are driving the galactic conflict, and how people are justifying all the death and destruction to themselves. This is the result, perhaps, of a weird writing decision that filled both sides with disposable shock troops-clones versus robots. I'm sure it's intentional and is meant to reflect the values of the people who would use disposable troops, but we're supposed to identify with heroes who never once thought critically about throwing clones into war. Yodo clearly thought about it for 15 seconds during Episode II, then said, "fuck it let's go," scooped up a bunch of them and ordered them into a bloody conflict which started the whole Clone War thing to begin with.
Alec Guinness managed to invest so much emotion into a few lines of dialogue in New Hope, where he reminisced with Luke about his old friend Anakin and the fall of Darth Vader.
We were expecting to see these two like the best of friends facing the galaxy together until Obi-Wan's failure in training him and Anakin's seduction to the dark side ended in tragedy. Instead Anakin is an awkward, whiny idiot in AOTC who resents Obi-Wan and then the two head off to different parts of the galaxy. In ROTS they have a brief heroic partnership together, then they head off to different parts of the galaxy.
There's no real relationship between the two or character investment. When Anakin takes his sharp left turn down into infanticide, it fails to both shock or to be a realistic character action. When Obi-Wan sees his fallen brother it's not as if his best friend and brother in arms has betrayed him. The whole thing lacks any real impact.
By the time Revenge of the Sith rolled around, I was basically expecting the emotional arc of the movies to not even be remotely justified.Fixer wrote:This is what bugged me about the prequels as well.bronnt wrote:And really, the "fall" of Anakin from noble hero to murderous villain is too fast to get invested in. Sure, he's kind of callous for a heroic character, but he's concerned about the right thing, and then two scenes later he murders a room full of children. It's supposed to be an uncomfortable visual, I get that, but we really need to see decisions stacking on top of decisions following a pattern that finally puts him in that despicable place, not watching him flip a switch into evil.
The war is problematic too. Of course it's superficial to the plot, in that it's a ploy orchestrated by Palpatine in order to make his powerplay. But there's no investment in the war itself. I really have no idea what the issues are that are driving the galactic conflict, and how people are justifying all the death and destruction to themselves. This is the result, perhaps, of a weird writing decision that filled both sides with disposable shock troops-clones versus robots. I'm sure it's intentional and is meant to reflect the values of the people who would use disposable troops, but we're supposed to identify with heroes who never once thought critically about throwing clones into war. Yodo clearly thought about it for 15 seconds during Episode II, then said, "fuck it let's go," scooped up a bunch of them and ordered them into a bloody conflict which started the whole Clone War thing to begin with.
Alec Guinness managed to invest so much emotion into a few lines of dialogue in New Hope, where he reminisced with Luke about his old friend Anakin and the fall of Darth Vader.
We were expecting to see these two like the best of friends facing the galaxy together until Obi-Wan's failure in training him and Anakin's seduction to the dark side ended in tragedy. Instead Anakin is an awkward, whiny idiot in AOTC who resents Obi-Wan and then the two head off to different parts of the galaxy. In ROTS they have a brief heroic partnership together, then they head off to different parts of the galaxy.
There's no real relationship between the two or character investment. When Anakin takes his sharp left turn down into infanticide, it fails to both shock or to be a realistic character action. When Obi-Wan sees his fallen brother it's not as if his best friend and brother in arms has betrayed him. The whole thing lacks any real impact.
He did want them to come across as fallible. They believed the Sith were extinct for a start. At the start of II Windu finds the idea that Dooku would try to kill anyone ridiculous. Yoda outright states that even some of the older Jedi are getting arrogant which ties into Jocasta Nu's "if its not in the archives it doesn't exist" line which leads to Yoda using the kid's matter of fact "someone erased it" line to warn Obi-Wan that one of their own (i.e. Dooku) might just be behind it.rickgriffin wrote: THAT is a much better setup for Anakin turning to the Dark Side. And I think the main issue is that Lucas didn't want the Jedi Council to come across as fallable. He went out of his way to make sure they were a bastion of absolute righteousness, like they were all nigh-omniscient angels or something.