|
George Lucas is an auteur at heart and he wanted to make something more than disposable trash entertainment like what Disney has been spewing out with their Star Wars/MCU crap and he got crucified for not catering to fans expectations. Like the way that the prequels mirror the OT is actually pretty amazing, they were made to complement and parallel the ot to an incredible degree, there's real artistry and talent involved in that.
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 00:26
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 20, 2024 05:32 |
|
|
If Lucas remotely cared about how the prequels would be received, it's pretty obvious how he would have gone about it - start with a teenage savant Anakin wrecking the alien 'Other' with his preternatural gifts, go into the dark-side via obfuscated magical means, then hunt down Jedis all badass style like bog-standard revenge film protagonists. Instead Lucas chose to have Anakin murder unarmed leaders of the Trade federation, literal children, and battle to the death his best friend/father figure.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 00:27
|
|
|
George Lucas loving owns. I really wish he never sold Star Wars. He fell to the dark side just like anakin. He’s also an ally to minorities.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 00:31
|
|
|
The REAL Goobusters posted:George himself said, after his first watch of the first cut of phantom menace: This quote from the making of gets thrown around a lot to mean different things, but judging by the context he's discussing the cross-cutting for the ending. Another guy there (Ben Burtt?) concurs and says it goes too quickly between Qui-Gon's death and comedy with Jar Jar. Similarly, when he says that "Jar Jar is the key to all this" he's referring to the VFX work. If they can make Jar Jar "work" as a digital character, then they can do the same for the other aliens and robots.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 00:40
|
|
|
It’s a stylistic choice and he didn’t back down but he knew he had to make some changes. It fits.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 01:04
|
|
|
I was thinking of his stance before the phantom Menace and the foundation of the whole series Obviously was you all say about changes after tpm is true
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 01:10
|
|
|
The REAL Goobusters posted:George Lucas loving owns. I really wish he never sold Star Wars. He fell to the dark side just like anakin. I've said some dumb poo poo about George in the past, but after becoming privy to corporate oversight over the years and seeing how bad it can get, I have a greater appreciation for the godlike stranglehold he maintained over his movies lol.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 01:28
|
|
|
Jewmanji posted:Editing is arguably Lucas' strongest suit as well. ... No it's not. Like, the original workprint of Star Wars was infamously pretty bad, and it took significant editing work by Marcia Lucas and others to restructure the film into the version that was ultimately successful.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 01:38
|
|
|
I want fewer Han Solos in movies
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 01:39
|
|
|
Acebuckeye13 posted:... No it's not. Like, the original workprint of Star Wars was infamously pretty bad, and it took significant editing work by Marcia Lucas and others to restructure the film into the version that was ultimately successful. Yeah but the prequels are good so you’re wrong
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 01:39
|
|
|
Acebuckeye13 posted:... No it's not. Like, the original workprint of Star Wars was infamously pretty bad, and it took significant editing work by Marcia Lucas and others to restructure the film into the version that was ultimately successful. The original edit of Star Wars was by John Jympson, not Lucas himself.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 01:43
|
|
|
I think it’s pretty fair to say the guy who made Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Labyrinth knows how to make movies
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 01:46
|
|
|
Acebuckeye13 posted:... No it's not. Like, the original workprint of Star Wars was infamously pretty bad, and it took significant editing work by Marcia Lucas and others to restructure the film into the version that was ultimately successful. It was Lucas’ idea to start the movie with the droids and wait like 20 mins to introduce Luke. Everyone else wanted him to edit it so that Luke is present from the get go. Needless to say Lucas was 100% correct. One thing I didn’t appreciate about ANH until recently (I wasn’t born until after ROTJ) was that the shots in the movie were much much quicker than your average film. It was one of the most remarked upon aspects of it upon release- how frenetic and fast paced it all is. That’s conscious editing on Lucas’ part. Also: the escalating number of climaxes in ANH, ESB, ROTJ, and TPM is pretty breathtaking. Try finding another movie that balances four parallel stories as well as TPM does.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 01:52
|
|
|
Acebuckeye13 posted:... No it's not. Like, the original workprint of Star Wars was infamously pretty bad, and it took significant editing work by Marcia Lucas and others to restructure the film into the version that was ultimately successful. Doctor Spaceman posted:The original edit of Star Wars was by John Jympson, not Lucas himself. Yeah, Jympson apparently started editing the movie while Lucas was still filming, but wasn't using any of Lucas' selected takes and kind of doing his own thing on it, so Lucas had him replaced with people who were more on his wavelength. The editors still made huge contributions to the movie (like adding the Death Star ticking clock), but Lucas was still very involved with the process, sometimes giving frame-specific notes on changes to shot lengths. The guy took an animation class in college and made a montage of still photos instead - editing is definitely his wheelhouse.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 01:53
|
|
|
euphronius posted:I think it’s pretty fair to say the guy who made Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Labyrinth knows how to make movies He knows how to make movies, but that doesn't mean he did everything himself, or that he doesn't have to be saved from his own spectacularly poor ideas. One of his original ideas for Indiana Jones was to make the main character a pedophile for god's sake. Acebuckeye13 fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Apr 20, 2021 |
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 01:56
|
|
|
Which is a little suspect, when considering that the runner up to Carrie Fisher for the role of Princess Leia was Terri Nunn, who was 14 at the time, and Lucas' early drafts for Episode I included a romantic subplot between the 14 year old Padme and 25 year old Obi-Wan.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 02:02
|
|
|
Acebuckeye13 posted:He knows how to make movies, but that doesn't mean he did everything himself, or that he doesn't have to be saved from his own spectacularly poor ideas. One of his original ideas for Indiana Jones was to make the main character a pedophile for god's sake. He finally got his wish in labyrinth.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 02:04
|
|
|
That's a big point in favour of "Anakin was never meant to be sympathetic" isn't it- Lucas is clearly interested in having weirdo freaks as main characters
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 02:10
|
|
|
Acebuckeye13 posted:He knows how to make movies, but that doesn't mean he did everything himself, or that he doesn't have to be saved from his own spectacularly poor ideas. One of his original ideas for Indiana Jones was to make the main character a pedophile for god's sake. There’s not really much in Raiders of the Lost Ark that conflicts with what they’re spitballing about in the transcript. Marion clearly thinks Indy was a bastard to her, and we’re led to believe she was probably right to think so. The details are left to the audience’s imagination, as I’m sure was always the intent. (For the record I think it’s hard to read tone from a transcript, but I think GL’s additional comment about “she has pictures of him” or whatever makes it pretty clear he’s at least halfway goofing off with his friends here.) Edit: it’s Spielberg who said the thing about pictures, but there reaches a point where they’re clearly all kind of bullshitting General Dog fucked around with this message at 02:23 on Apr 20, 2021 |
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 02:14
|
|
|
Acebuckeye13 posted:He knows how to make movies, but that doesn't mean he did everything himself, or that he doesn't have to be saved from his own spectacularly poor ideas. One of his original ideas for Indiana Jones was to make the main character a pedophile for god's sake. He’s a pedophile in the movie too. At the bare minimum he had an affair with an undergrad but it seems much more like she was a younger teenager
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 02:21
|
|
|
i rewatched TPM a few weeks back and i found the four different bits in the climax a bit messy. the editing felt off, but i don't really have the vocabulary to explain it. i hadn't actually rewatched the prequels since coming around to the fact that they're pretty good. i was surprised how painless the coruscant political stuff was, but i found the pod race to be a bit overlong. but, yeah, the ending of TPM with four different things going on just felt like it wasn't smooth.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 04:18
|
|
|
There's not ENOUGH pod racing
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 04:48
|
|
|
No movie in the history of movies has ever been anything but improved by the inclusion of a chariot race.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 06:03
|
|
|
Horizon Burning posted:i rewatched TPM a few weeks back and i found the four different bits in the climax a bit messy. the editing felt off I think it has to do with the pacing of the action, building to a climax, and effectively utilizing the characters for drama. The sequences start pretty good, with the Gungans marching out of the swamp reminiscent of the X-wings taking off and approaching the Death Star. The droid army cresting the hill and testing the Gungan defenses is a nice moment, and it's mirrored when the sequence cuts away to the human characters, and one of their speeders fires on the droids, which kicks off the skirmish that provides a distraction to allow the pilots to get to their ships in the hangar, which then keeps the pacing of the battle up as they engage the droid starfighters in space. There's a ramp up of intensity that goes:
From there, the ramping stops. The droid who started the whole thing calls for the tanks to cease fire. The music, sound, and visuals of combat stop instantly. The intensity of the battle is now reliant on the tension of the droid army being revealed, as racks upon racks of droids are released from their carriers. That's kind of where things fall apart. There's a weird cut back to space, where one of the aliens gives an order to activate the droids. From a plot perspective, this is necessary because it reinforces the idea that destroying the ship will destroy the army, but it kills the pacing of the army slowly being rolled out. The scene tries to build intensity back up as the battle begins, by having the droids counter the Gungan shields, but nothing really comes of it. Once the droids are through the shields, the rest of the scene shows the Gungans destroying the robots pretty handily. There's a couple of shots near the end where we start to see the frontline Gungans being killed, but they're brief wide shots that don't really do much to establish the battle going south. Luckily, the movie then cuts back to the hangar for the Darth Maul reveal. This is a great moment in the movie and one of the high points in the sequence... which is a problem because there's still like 15 minutes left in the battle. It also has the effect of setting the duel so far above the other sequences, that the audience just wants to go back to the fight any time it's not on screen. The movie tries to give each battle a focal character to drive things and create tension, but that doesn't always help. The audience should be concerned about Anakin in the space battle, but he's so nonchalant about the whole thing that it doesn't work. By contrast, the podrace has him gritting his teeth, getting bumped around by other racers, and completely alone. Quipping to Artoo about spinning takes all the danger out of the sequence. He also doesn't have an objective in his part of the battle. He's not working towards anything, so when we're with him, it just feels like wasted time even though the overall sequence has an objective (destroy the control ship). The Gungan Battle has a similar issue. The Gungans are fighting the droids on a generic plain somewhere on the planet. The battle is explicitly a distraction to keep eyes off the team in the palace, but the Gungans aren't actually trying to do anything. And like Anakin, Jar Jar's antics rob the sequence of any sense of threat, except for the damage he's doing to his own side, which makes the audience frustrated with him (more than they were already). Unlike Jar Jar and Anakin, Padme has an objective - get to the throne room and capture the Viceroy. Unfortunately, there's not really a sense of how far away they are from that objective at any point, and there's no context for whether or not they're experiencing any setbacks. Darth Maul's appearance forces them to take "the long way", but there's no clue as to what that actually means, or what additional difficulties it would present. At least the grappling hook scene gives the impression that "up" is a good direction for them to go. After this, the sequences begin to fall out of sync as the battle begins to move towards the "low point" where everything seems hopeless, and the heroes somehow manage to get the upper hand. First, it seems like the Jedi hit their low point. Maul, Qui-Gon, and Obi-Wan are trapped between separate laser walls, unable to continue the battle. This puts things on pause for a moment, which makes for a jarring cut to the next sequence, which features Jar Jar bumbling around the battlefield for a while until he's finally stopped and surrounded by droids. That cuts immediately to Padme being surrounded as well, putting her in sync with Jar Jar's sequence. That then cuts back to the space battle, where Anakin's hit and eventually crashes inside the Trade Federation ship. With everyone back in sync, the laser walls deactivate and we find out that no, this was not the low point for the Jedi part of the sequence. This makes Qui-Gon's death pretty shocking, since the audience was primed to think that things couldn't get worse for the heroes, but might create a weird sense of discontinuity in the audience, since the "lowest point" for the Jedi already happened. But since Qui-Gon's death is the "real" lowest point for the Jedi, the movie then moves on to show that the droids have won the battle against the Gungans, and Padme's been captured by the Viceroy. This is where things start to pick up for the heroes. Padme uses her decoy to distract the Viceroy, and she turns the tables on her captors. Then we cut back to Obi-Wan. We're expecting the movie to pick up for the heroes now - This is the fight of the movie, and has to be where Obi-Wan kills Maul, right? Nope. He gets his rear end kicked and falls into a bottomless pit. Another low point (and according to Lucas on the DVD commentary is the real lowest point in the movie, despite Padme already beating the Viceroy). The movie's stopped building intensity and is now just zig-zagging. From Obi-Wan's failure, we cut to Anakin's victory, then the Gungans, and finally back to Obi-Wan. Throughout the sequence, there's no order to the scenes like Gungans>Padme>Anakin>Jedi, and not really anything that cues the cut to a specific sequence (though there is one cut I like where Anakin trying to restart the ship by rhythmically pressing a button turns into tense drums as Obi-Wan waits to attack Maul). It is pretty jumbled and does "jerk the audience around" like Lucas said. It's not something they could have just done in editing, but here's some things that could have fixed it:
Horizon Burning posted:i found the pod race to be a bit overlong. Robot Style fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Apr 20, 2021 |
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 06:31
|
|
Acebuckeye13 posted:He knows how to make movies, but that doesn't mean he did everything himself, or that he doesn't have to be saved from his own spectacularly poor ideas. One of his original ideas for Indiana Jones was to make the main character a pedophile for god's sake. The point of Raiders of the Lost Ark is that Indiana Jones is a dipshit grave robber in over his head who plays at being heroic but makes literally every situation he’s in worse for his presence. Famously, if you think about it for five minutes you realize that absolutely nothing Indy does in the film actually matters because the ark deals with the nazis all on its own, and all his involvement accomplished is burn down Marian’s bar and prevent gods light from smiting hitler directly.
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 08:40
|
|
|
Acebuckeye13 posted:... No it's not. Like, the original workprint of Star Wars was infamously pretty bad, and it took significant editing work by Marcia Lucas and others to restructure the film into the version that was ultimately successful. There was a pretty good video debunking this, I mean it's 2 hours long, but so is everything. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olqVGz6mOVE Here it is if you want to watch it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 10:44
|
|
|
The whole thing with Anakin flying up into space and being part of a space battle is just so completely loving ridiculous. I can suspend my disbelief enough to accept the Force and lightsabers and Star Destroyers but man, that part is just so bad. Let's stick an 8 year-old in the cockpit of an F-15 and see what happens. I mean, movie magic and all, but God drat you're really expecting a lot if you want me to believe that poo poo. Luke was like 20 years old and already a pilot when he flew his X-Wing down the trench. It all comes back to the original sin of starting Anakin out as a child. IMO this was a Lucas decision made because he absolutely doesn't understand human interaction and he thought kids who saw the movie would want to play as the kid, so the kid had to do dumb heroic poo poo. Also so they could make that one poster with the child with Vader's shadow. But let me tell you something I'm 100% sure of, having been a child who played Star Wars a lot: No child in America who went outside to play with their friends said, "I want to be young Anakin! Yeah, you guys be the cool Jedi and I'll be the bumbling child who's in control of nothing." Kids would rather pretend to be one of the loving skinny bots that gets sliced up by the Jedi over lil Ani. You got Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon desperately fighting for their lives against Darth Maul in one window and Anakin flying a ship (!) through the middle of an enormous space battle (!) and he's not even the least bit worried or concerned at the horrendously dangerous situation he's in and actually just quipping and pushing random buttons. "Let's see what this one does!" Is this supposed to be high-stakes high-tension or goofy slapstick? Coulda been worse but man. Just so completely ridiculous.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 13:43
|
|
|
JonathonSpectre posted:The whole thing with Anakin flying up into space and being part of a space battle is just so completely loving ridiculous. I can suspend my disbelief enough to accept the Force and lightsabers and Star Destroyers but man, that part is just so bad. Who cares it rules when you’re a kid.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 13:47
|
|
|
Chucat posted:There was a pretty good video debunking this, I mean it's 2 hours long, but so is everything. It has some good points but it's also pretty annoying and frequently takes the most literal or uncharitable interpretation so as to set up a straw man
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 13:49
|
|
|
The REAL Goobusters posted:Who cares it rules when you’re a kid. Duel of the fates rules gungans versus rogers was cool Kid Anakin blowing up the station on accident always sucked rear end
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 13:57
|
|
|
Young Anakin, Jar Jar, and Dougie Jones from Twin Peaks all operate on basically the same frequency. They’re beings of pure, unencumbered intuition.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 14:27
|
|
|
fatherboxx posted:Duel of the fates rules George added kid anakin for kids. He’s said it so many times. Kids liked it at the time too! It’s fine!
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 14:37
|
|
|
I was the same age as Anakin when TPM came out and I spent a lot of time pretending to be a lightsaber boy and not a pod racing boy (except for the very good N64 game). Not that no kids wanted to be Anakin it’s just that if he wasn’t there or was older, kids would still have found something to latch on to. Something cooler. Like laser swords. I’m even a weirdo now who actually likes the podrace AND most of the gungan battle sequence but Jake Lloyd’s quippy banter with a robot while doing space slapstick has always been fairly insufferable.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 15:30
|
|
|
It's also possible that Lucas's decision to show Anakin as a child was motivated by something other than wanting children to pretend they were him
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 15:41
|
|
|
I think showing Anakin as a kind hearted goofy kid is necessary. Starting him as an older (broody, too, probably) teen would make it seem like Vader was always destined for bad things, instead of it being a nice boy handed over to weird space monks Freddie DeBoer did an article about Star Wars recently, as an aside, which people might enjoy reading. It's not perfect but it talks about the prequels in how the Jedi were ossified enforcers and so on
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 16:12
|
|
|
The reaction to The Phantom Menace was a mix of middle aged men being really angry the film wasn't for them and people saying "this isn't objectively great but it's a perfectly good film for your children, whom it was made for". The reaction to RotS was "this isn't objectively great but unlike AotC this is a film in which things happen and an adult can watch it".
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 16:30
|
|
|
Babysitter Super Sleuth posted:The point of Raiders of the Lost Ark is that Indiana Jones is a dipshit grave robber in over his head who plays at being heroic but makes literally every situation he’s in worse for his presence. Famously, if you think about it for five minutes you realize that absolutely nothing Indy does in the film actually matters because the ark deals with the nazis all on its own, and all his involvement accomplished is burn down Marian’s bar and prevent gods light from smiting hitler directly. Lol that's great, I never thought of it like that!
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 16:31
|
|
|
I'm just thinking how much better TPM would have been if Anakin had same-aged friends we could see him interact with. Compare Anakin, who really only ever interacts with adults, to the kids in The Goonies, or Stand By Me, or IT, or Stranger Things, etc. It would require a pretty significant reworking of the plot, but I think it would have been a lot more fun. If they age him up only a couple years and give him a group of scrappy friends, you could do a thing where Padme and her handmaiden get folded into the friend group, which would make their romance feel a lot more natural and less wildly creepy. The most natural plotline would be to dump the space fight and have Anakin and friends join Padme in taking down the Viceroy. It would also make Anakin's decision to become a Jedi and leave his friends behind much more poignant. I also think it's a cop out to say oh TPM is for babies only when the series is about a galactic republic turning into an openly fascist empire and the hero of the story is set up to become the right hand man to the space devil. Part of what makes TPM so weird is how tonally dissonant it is from the story that's being told the rest of the time in the prequels. TheLoquid fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Apr 20, 2021 |
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 16:36
|
|
|
He should have been a teenager, maybe 16 - make him a few years younger than Obi-Wan so that it can be believed they are good friends. That's all they had to do.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 16:40
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 20, 2024 05:32 |
|
|
Sure, but if you were committed to the bit about him being a child to show that he wasn't destined to be a mean broody bad guy then it would be better to give him friends to interact with.
TheLoquid fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Apr 22, 2021 |
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2021 16:44
|
|