HUGE POST AHEAD WARNING!
Tom wrote:As a footnote, I would be remiss if I failed to note that, presenting cuddly teddy bears in the guise of the noble savage archetype was not only a notable failure that stank of rank commercialism but also presaged Lucas' missteps in the prequel trilogy.
I'm discussing this in another forum, and although a huge fan of the Star Wars universe i don't know all the details, but it appears that originally the Ewoks were going to be Wookies and all that Endor stuff was going to take place on a wookie planet (their home world?). Sort of along the lines of what the game KotR did with the wookie planet (oppressed native wookies etc)?
In that context i can see that kind 'teddy bear' army being a problem for the Stormtroopers, but by switching to the little Ewoks, yeah that was the biggest problem in the original trilogy imho, 3 foot high cute teddy bears taking on (and beating quite comically) a legion of hardened Stormtroopers.
Why that change was made i just don't know?
Dessadence wrote:MrPerson wrote:I have watched all the star wars movies, and read many books (as you can tell by my Pic) and I think If I was to introduce someone to star wars that had never seen the movies, I would show them in order from 1-6. not 4-6 then 1-3. that way they get the whole story without being confused.
I don't reckon the viewing order will confuse anybody! Watching the prequels first ruins the entire mythos and the sense of mystery and wonder we love so much about star wars. We all watched the OT and possibly even the PT as children, right? our brains couldn't comprehend the world in its entirety, we ignored 'midichlorians' and the like and focused primarily on the magic. We all wanted to be jedi and master the force, heck, even to this day I want to!
Furthermore, This also ruins the most important revelation of the saga. Remember the gasps and screams at the big unveiling of Luke's parentage! Moreover watching it in chronological order makes Ben Kenobi and Leia seem like liars.
How does Leia remember her mother? Why doesn't Ben tell Luke that Leia's his sister? Ben doesn't even know about Leia! Why would Ben feel nostalgic about the "Good old days" with Anakin, when Anakin was nothing but a prick to him?
Also why would you ever want to have people believe that Boba fett is nothing more than a mere clone trooper?
If you've read the novel that touches on his origin story (Which is awesome btw) letting people believe this does the character a woeful injustice.
PS - I hope I've managed to convey my opinion clearly, it's late and I'm half asleep
Yep, you explained it pretty well
And one of the reasons in general i have to sort of ignore the prequels (i can take them as their own thing, or a bit like fan-fiction (not great fan fiction either)).
Again i mentioned this in another forum, but coming out of the cinema after the Phantom Menace was completely a different experience compared to Empire Strikes Back or even Return of the Jedi. People were much more enthused after those original films, where as it was like leaving a funeral (silent, heads down) after that first prequel, and i never went back for the 2nd and 3rd (got the dvd's instead).
And, this is hard for a massive fan to admit, but i have only ever fallen asleep in one cinema trip, and that was for the Phantom Menace (just for 5 mins), but right from the start the characters were not interesting, and then we had Jar Jar and fart jokes for the rest (pretty much), that annoying kid etc.
JoshParnell wrote:Fantastic, you're right, it's really a shame that we didn't have a thread on SW already
It remains my favorite of all sci-fi. For me, it is the atmosphere that simply cannot be beaten. When I think of a vibrant, sci-fi universe, I think of Star Wars.
Personally, I am a die-hard fan of the films, but have no knowledge outside of them. I love each and every one, and have watched all at least 10+ times
I'll admit that Episode I is notably lacking in comparison to the rest, but, other than that, I will absolutely not concede that the prequels are inferior, and will in fact argue to the last with anyone who wants to do so
I'm a huge fan of the "flashback" viewing sequence...I've never done it any other way ever since I learned about it!
Interesting fact: if you end up enjoying Limit Theory, you'll need to thank the prequel series
It was only after watching Episode III that I decided I had to become a graphics programmer. Truthfully, I've no idea what I'd be doing today if someone hadn't shown me the potential beauty of a universe like that (III was just...above and beyond any other sci-fi film I had ever seen at the time in terms of atmosphere).
SW forever!!!
(That being said I am still a hardcore BSG, Firefly, TNG, and Voyager fan...in that order)
Well, you know what, just the fact Episode III made you want to become the coder you are gives it some extra respect from me that it didn't previously, and even though we can never agree fully on which part of Star Wars is the 'real' Star Wars, how can I (or anyone here) give you, Super Josh, a hard time about it.
You like the prequels, good for you, i just can't, probably because i was too close to the originals (age difference and all that etc).
Glad you joined the debate, as like for you, SW is my sci-fi gold medal, but that led me to love all sci-fi, so i'm a big nerd of many of the other series you mention also.
He he, this will be fun: Check out (for everyone also) the sci-fi series 'Blakes 7' (an old british Star trek, kind of) and 'Space 1999', just in case you didn't know about them. Quite cult, quite sci-fi nerd awesome in there different ways
Flatfingers wrote:In terms of story, it gave us heroes and said it was OK to root for the good guys (and they were good) when the previous decade had been one of anti-heroes drawn shades of miserable gray.
In terms of atmosphere, there is no better moment than Luke standing outside his home on Tatooine, staring past the dust into the distance as the two suns set to John Williams's incredible, swelling, heroic score. All the science fiction was awesome... but that moment made the movie for me.
I just pulled that out of your all around awesome post, as they are also probably the two most powerful aspects of the original films for me. I've always wanted to live in a twin sun system ever since that day, and fight evil and oppression where ever it crosses my path in life.
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Great comments all around guys, from both sides of the fence as well
I think what i liked about the angry girl Star Wars fan you tube clip i posted was that she hit on some key points that i really can't get over from the prequels.
In particular i feel (and it is as vague as that, like a gut feeling) that the use of green and blue screen technology for the prequels might have had an effect on the actors themselves. Keep in mind many were young and inexperienced at the time, and that lack of connect i feel with the characters in the prequels (which was completely opposite in the original films) might largely be down to that.
Also they were stoned of their heads in the original series by all accounts, and that might have meant they actually believed they were in the world George had created for those first films!
Don't get me wrong here, i love technology, i thought Gollum in LotR was brilliant (and much of that had been green screen filmed), but i very much have a feeling of too many special effects blurring into one another so i can't pick out details in the prequels (They are very fast paced also). And ultimately my brain stops trying to see anything deeper, so those films sort of wash over me like a big wave full of special effects (and Jar Jar's farting noises/jokes), but little actual content (the acting is too weak/bad to bring the characters past that special effect bonanza).
Another big aspect is that i was a adult when the prequels came out, and compared to the original films, where only the Ewoks in RotJ can really be sure as purely for the kids stuff (because Luke's family getting killed, his crush on his sister, Darth being his father etc is NOT kids stuff in any shape or form), pretty much everything in the prequels seemed to be aimed either at a little kid, from the child actor for anakin to the droids (roger, roger!) to Jar Jar, or aimed in badly handled tribute to the original films (Anakin building C3P0, Ben Kenobi actually saying he had never owned R2D2 or even acting like he knew him etc).
All that (and there is a lot of it) just rubbed me the wrong way completely. So much so that i can really only say with hand on heart, that there are only three real Star Wars films, the original episodes 4-6, and that all the rest from the great fan fiction to books and cartoon series and episodes 1-3 AND the 'special edition' remakes of the original trilogy, are somehow separate from the magic space those first three original version films occupy. At least for me