Am currently watching Return of the Jedi in all of its non-HD, old-school, blurry goodness, just the way I remember seeing it in the theater when I was 8 or 9 years old. Just watched Empire the same way. Love it.
I love the OLD Star Wars movies
- Thread starter JonM
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pauljmccain
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Turn on Spike HD, it's on right now there in newer, better goodness.
ChshreCat
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Unlike a lot of folks, I thought the new ones were decent flicks but NOTHING compares to the originals. And Empire was the best of the three.
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JonM
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Really? Man, I love it when Spike does the Eps. I-VI marathons on holiday weekends (read: hangover weekends) Whatta coincidence!
I'm gonna stick with the old one. Tried watching the new Jedi, couldn't make it past that rockin' jazzy dance number in Jabba's palace.
I'm gonna stick with the old one. Tried watching the new Jedi, couldn't make it past that rockin' jazzy dance number in Jabba's palace.
ChshreCat
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Spike plays them in the wrong order.
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JonM
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+1 to both all of the above.
davidhaunte
Member
never liked star wars I don't why people like it so much I'm not hating or anything just saying.
An New Hope was phenomenal when you're like 10 years old. I remember a small amount of the hype and lot about actually getting to see it (was mostly Disney films until then).
Then a few years later when The Empire Strikes Back, I LOVED that film. My favorite one of all time. Why? More Mature theme I think. Darker.
You would think that GL would have figured this out after all those years, but no, he went and made the pretty weak New Trilogy. WAY too much CGI. Sorry dialogue. Good action, and some decent acting, but not that compelling. I liked Episode 4 though. More dark drama with Anakin becoming Darth Vader and the hunting of the Jedi.
Still, I wonder what might have been if he'd not made the movies mostly for little kids.
Then a few years later when The Empire Strikes Back, I LOVED that film. My favorite one of all time. Why? More Mature theme I think. Darker.
You would think that GL would have figured this out after all those years, but no, he went and made the pretty weak New Trilogy. WAY too much CGI. Sorry dialogue. Good action, and some decent acting, but not that compelling. I liked Episode 4 though. More dark drama with Anakin becoming Darth Vader and the hunting of the Jedi.
Still, I wonder what might have been if he'd not made the movies mostly for little kids.
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JonM
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Agreed. Sure, eps. IV through VI had things like Ewoks and other stuff that really appealed to little kids and little ones are a big part of the audience, but eps. I through III had WAY too much over the top silly stuff for little kids (Jar Jar, the droids that say "Roger roger," C3P0 in a sillier role, etc.)
I laughed out loud in the theater when Darth Vader stepped off the table for the first time in ep. III too. All I could think of was Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein. I wanted him to say "Putting on the riiiiiiiiiiiiitz!"
I laughed out loud in the theater when Darth Vader stepped off the table for the first time in ep. III too. All I could think of was Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein. I wanted him to say "Putting on the riiiiiiiiiiiiitz!"
wildwest450
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What are you talking about? There are only three Star Wars movies. Repeat. THERE ARE ONLY THREE STAR WARS MOVIES.
And yeah, Empire :rockin:
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If you want to see an excellent, hilarious, and very looong analysis of what is wrong with Episodes I-III, check for "Mr. Plinkett's" reviews. The reviews are seriously like almost as long as the movies, but they are ten times as entertaining, and best of all it really clarified for me why those movies sucked. I couldn't shake the feeling that maybe the originals were just as bad, but didn't seem that way because I grew up with them. But after watching the Plinkett reviews, I am convinced: The new ones really are terribly flawed.
As far as the new editions of the old ones, I thought what he did with Episodes IV and V were mostly okay (although why did Han have to shoot first?! Grrr!), and it was only with that horrible Disney-fied dance number in Episode VI that it really seriously wrecked the movie.
As far as the new editions of the old ones, I thought what he did with Episodes IV and V were mostly okay (although why did Han have to shoot first?! Grrr!), and it was only with that horrible Disney-fied dance number in Episode VI that it really seriously wrecked the movie.
You can actually see some foreshadowing of the series' downfall in Jedi, and I'm not even talking about the Ewoks. I'm talking about the lack of a clear protagonist, the confusing overwrought climax, and the really REALLY busy shots. Don't get me wrong, Jedi was still awesome, but in retrospect you can see some problems developing, things that really came off the rails with Episode I.
Compare the climax of Jedi to the climax of Phantom Menace. Both have multiple narrative threads that it bounces back and forth (3 in Jedi, 4 in clones) and the connection between them is sometimes confusing and unclear. He JUST pulls it off in Jedi, but when Lucas attempts the same thing (plus one!) in Phantom Menace, it just falls apart. During the entire climax of Episode I, I'm like, "WTF is going on, and why should I care?" Jedi came perilously close to that, in retrospect...
(Edit: In the original version of this post, I repeatedly referred to Episode I as Attack of the Clones. Derp, sorry)
Compare the climax of Jedi to the climax of Phantom Menace. Both have multiple narrative threads that it bounces back and forth (3 in Jedi, 4 in clones) and the connection between them is sometimes confusing and unclear. He JUST pulls it off in Jedi, but when Lucas attempts the same thing (plus one!) in Phantom Menace, it just falls apart. During the entire climax of Episode I, I'm like, "WTF is going on, and why should I care?" Jedi came perilously close to that, in retrospect...
(Edit: In the original version of this post, I repeatedly referred to Episode I as Attack of the Clones. Derp, sorry)
wildwest450
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JonM
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And another thing: why the F did they have to give the Emperor all that stupid makeup in Ep. III? They didn't have to make him look in Ep. III the way the Emperor looked in Ep. VI. We all would have understood that Palpatine was the Emperor once people started calling him "Emperor."
I can't even watch the originals after Lucas got done raping them with his re-edits. Star Wars is dead to me.
That also didn't help
But that was only the obvious problem with Jedi; there are numerous other problems with the series developing as Lucas starts to exert total control over every aspect of the project.It turns out that, while very rare artists are able to function well in an environment of total control, generally speaking limitation is an important part of the artistic process. Episode IV was so awesome because Lucas was operating under severe constraints in a hellish working environment. This forces the kind of creative improvisation that is the real magic behind the artistic process (for most artists, at least).
There's a reason that formalisms like sonnets and fugues and such have such enduring power.
George Lucas is not someone who should be making movies with a huge budget and powerful computer tools surrounded by hordes of yes-men (er, um, yes-people). It doesn't work for him, and his output in that sort of environment is crap.
SpanishCastleAle
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Whichever one had the scantily clad Princess chained to Jabba was the best. Yea, I'm shallow like that.
Haven't seen all of the 'new' ones but did not like what I saw. Figured it was just because I was older...and no scantily clad Princess.
Haven't seen all of the 'new' ones but did not like what I saw. Figured it was just because I was older...and no scantily clad Princess.
Lucas clearly severely compressed the timeline of his imagined universe in between when The Good Three were made and when The Bad Three came out. There are little clues here and there (e.g. in Episode IV, Obiwan refers to the Jedis protecting the Old Republic for "over a thousand generations", but then in one of the new movies -- I think it was that idiot Qui-gon, so it must have been the first one -- refers to the Old Republic as being a thousand years old. WTF? There are other clues as well that Lucas sort of changed his mind.
So, initially the Emperor was just really old, but then Lucas cut decades if not millenia out of the timeline and had to come up with some dumb excuse for why he was all wrinkly. Very stupid.
Nope, they were actually most definitely worse movies. In a nutshell:
1) Lack of a clear protagonist that the audience can identify with, especially in Phantom Menace
2) WAAAAAAY too much going on plot-wise
3) WAAAAAAY too much going on on-screen a lot of the time, which just makes it confusing
4) Complete failure to pull off any convincing character development (Annakin was supposed to be a brave Jedi knight who slowly turned to the Dark Side, but if you pay close attention, you'll notice he is an angry bitter whiny ****** pretty much from the opening scene of Episode II)
5) Complete failure to understand "less is more" principle, e.g. light sabers were awesome in the first movies because we almost never saw them -- they were enigmatic symbols of power and mysticism. By the time Lucas made Episode III, he was reduced to "If two light sabers are cool, thirty light sabers must be AWESOME!" No, sorry, you fail. The new movies are riddled with this sort of problem.
6) Doing nearly all filming on a green-screen sound stage makes the actors behave like cardboard cutouts completely isolated from their environment. I have no problem with extensive use of green screen, but if characters are sitting around having a conversation, i.e. the scene is supposed to be about character and dialog, you need a $*%&ing set for them to hang out on and interact with, okay?! The new movies are loaded with scenes of people doing nothing but walking down a hallway and talking, or sitting on a couch and talking, while all sorts of high-tech gizmos buzz around them. But they never interact with any of the interesting stuff in the background BECAUSE IT WASN'T REALLY THERE.
7) Epic failure in assessing the impact of Jar-Jar. Or more accurately, epic failure of Lucas' team to stand up to him in the fact of an obvious error. Now, the Ewoks, we can argue whether they were appealing to kids, etc., but NOBODY likes Jar-Jar, not even kids. And you know what? If you watch the making-of videos, you'll see that Lucas' team knew it. Even Lucas had an inkling, but he just kept reassuring himself that it would be their "funniest" character, and nobody had the cajones to tell him that the Jar-Jar experiment was a failure. They all knew it, you can tell... but nobody said anything.
There's probably more that I'm forgetting. My point is, it's not just cuz you were young. That maybe has SOME impact, but the original three are also just objectively better movies. Sure, the dialog was often clunky, the universe was implausible, the story was loaded with simple-minded tropes -- but they also had characters that were likeable and with whom the audience could easily identify, the atmosphere was sufficiently mysterious and intriguing to pull you in, and (with the exception of Jedi) the story was pretty easy to follow and get into. In short, excellent light entertainment.
Also if you guys want a damn good laugh while watching the most comprehensive breakdown of why the new 3 are terrible in every way possible:
(Watch all 10, by the way...)
(Watch all 10, by the way...)
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I could go on all day really... another problem is that very few of the characters in the new movies are even borderline likeable. Qui-Gon is like a piece of cardboard, and he's also a horrible hypocrite. The young Obiwan is alright -- probably the most likeable character in the whole freakin' series -- but he is also very cardboard most of the time. Padme is alright I guess, but she is very one-dimensional.
Annakin is an annoying piece of crap for the entire three movies, which is probably the biggest failure character-wise. You can't have a story of tragic downfall if the tragic hero is already an annoying little s*** at the start of the story! Done right, the audience would really like Annakin after episode II, and then his betrayal in Episode III would be emotionally affective*. But seriously, did anybody feel they could identify with Annakin's character in Episode II? He was just a whiny selfish jerk from square one.
And I can't stand Lucas' protestations that "Hey, this is a movie for kids! You have to judge it appropriately!" Not only do the movies fail even when judged in that context, but the series features graphic decapitations, a man being BURNED ALIVE, images of slaughtered children... No, sorry, "It's for kids!" does not hold water for me.
* Yes, I meant affective-with-an-A. Not "effective", the the movie would have been more effective if it managed to make Annakin's downfall more emotionally affective. I know this is teh Intertubes, so nobody cares about these subtle distinctions, but I do
Annakin is an annoying piece of crap for the entire three movies, which is probably the biggest failure character-wise. You can't have a story of tragic downfall if the tragic hero is already an annoying little s*** at the start of the story! Done right, the audience would really like Annakin after episode II, and then his betrayal in Episode III would be emotionally affective*. But seriously, did anybody feel they could identify with Annakin's character in Episode II? He was just a whiny selfish jerk from square one.
And I can't stand Lucas' protestations that "Hey, this is a movie for kids! You have to judge it appropriately!" Not only do the movies fail even when judged in that context, but the series features graphic decapitations, a man being BURNED ALIVE, images of slaughtered children... No, sorry, "It's for kids!" does not hold water for me.
* Yes, I meant affective-with-an-A. Not "effective", the the movie would have been more effective if it managed to make Annakin's downfall more emotionally affective. I know this is teh Intertubes, so nobody cares about these subtle distinctions, but I do
I already recommended the Plinkett reviews
Major +1 on that. Incredibly insightful, and also hilarious.I already recommended the Plinkett reviews
Okay, I had to start watching them again. So much for my productivity today at work... I had forgotten how funny it is when he shows pictures of kids watching the boring dialog about trade federations and such. Sooooo funny....!
weagle05
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Good fix.
+1 to what my fellow "Jon M" said. ;-)
At some point I'm going to transfer my original series VHS to DVD...
Han shot first.
Laughing_Gnome_Invisible
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Star Wars was never really much good. There, I said it.
Star Wars was never really much good. There, I said it.
With the possible exception of Empire, it was never anything more than light entertainment. But it was good at that. The new ones fail even as light entertainment.
:rockin:
SpanishCastleAle
Well-Known Member
scrambledegg,
Thanks! I'm drooling like Jabba.
jsweet,
Couldn't remember the name but that friggin Jar-Jar almost made me turn it off right there. Almost unwatchable. Agree about Annakin, have they not seen how the American public loves to throw the good-guy-turned-bad in front of the bus (see Tiger Woods, Michael Vick et al). I know the timeline is reversed but still.
Thanks! I'm drooling like Jabba.
jsweet,
Couldn't remember the name but that friggin Jar-Jar almost made me turn it off right there. Almost unwatchable. Agree about Annakin, have they not seen how the American public loves to throw the good-guy-turned-bad in front of the bus (see Tiger Woods, Michael Vick et al). I know the timeline is reversed but still.
I think Lucas had every intention of making it a good-guy-turned-bad story, I think he just utterly failed at it. The scripts for the prequels are universally awful from start to finish.
Not that the original movies were exactly Citizen Kane, but they relied on tried-and-true tropes and basic storytelling devices that make them effective. We didn't need Annakin to display some kind of very deep and profound and insightful character development that would fit right in at Cannes -- we just needed him to be a basically likable character who eventually gives into the temptation to wield ultimate power. Is that so much to ask? Instead, he's a sniveling whiny backstabbing little cretin from the opening scenes of Episode II, and shows that he has no problem with wanton murder even before his "journey to the Dark Side" begins in earnest. (The little kid Annakin in Episode I might have been likable, but the poor kid they cast was just a bad actor, no bones about it. It's not his fault, he's just a kid, but it was a very poor casting choice. The poor kid just can't act -- and it's not like a high level of acting is demanded by Star Wars movies, either, but this kid was just total amateur hour)
I'm sure Lucas WANTED to tell that kind of story. He just screwed it up, and since he had total control over every aspect of the project and nobody wanted to challenge him, it never got fixed. What needed to happen was a co-writer needed to say, "George, look, this scene where Annakin is complaining about Obiwan behind his back, it's just too early for that. They are supposed to be best friends right now. We should cut this scene out, or at least tone it down, and instead play up how much Annakin admires and respects Obiwan." Simple changes, but they just weren't done.
There are other huge problems with the movies that would not have been so simple to fix, but the lack of any character development whatsoever in a trilogy that is supposed to tell the story of Annakin's fall to the Dark Side is both inexcusable, and yet something that could have been fixed by just reworking some freaking dialog, without having to totally rework the sad excuse for a plot.
Best argument against Lucas' unhealthy obsession with CGI over script/plot/acting/etc: JAWS
JAWS felt real even though there's this extremely fake-looking shark because the characters and their emotions felt real. Lucas should re-watch JAWS about a thousand times before he even thinks about making another movie.
It didn't hurt that Spielberg was literally going nuts making JAWS...
JAWS felt real even though there's this extremely fake-looking shark because the characters and their emotions felt real. Lucas should re-watch JAWS about a thousand times before he even thinks about making another movie.
It didn't hurt that Spielberg was literally going nuts making JAWS...
ChshreCat
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Star Wars was never really much good. There, I said it.
Well, what do you know, ya damned sweede.
ChshreCat
Well-Known Member
I had no idea that so many people discount Star Wars so easily. Are they people that say, "eh, Star Wars sucks. That one with the Emperor was ok" not realizing that modern Sci Fi would be crap without A New Hope? If you think it sucks, try watching some pre-ANH sci fi movie. This stuff was what MST3k was made for.
Sorry... I was a huge SW fan, in total agreement with Empire being the best of all six, Han shot first, and Jabba sucks as a humanoid. Episode 1 was a travesty. Ep2 showed a kid in teen-angst, not one who's feeling the affects of the Dark Side. Ep3 was by far and long the best prequel, but due to the complete lack of character development, I didn't give a sh** about any of the characters except R2 and C3PO, so I couldn't appreciate it for what Lucas tried portraying.
Anyways, sorry for the rant. I get tired of people completely discarding how important that movie was to our world's culture, imho, of course. I had yet to watch those reviews, but now know what I'll be doing tomorrow. Thanks for the recommendation!
Sorry... I was a huge SW fan, in total agreement with Empire being the best of all six, Han shot first, and Jabba sucks as a humanoid. Episode 1 was a travesty. Ep2 showed a kid in teen-angst, not one who's feeling the affects of the Dark Side. Ep3 was by far and long the best prequel, but due to the complete lack of character development, I didn't give a sh** about any of the characters except R2 and C3PO, so I couldn't appreciate it for what Lucas tried portraying.
Anyways, sorry for the rant. I get tired of people completely discarding how important that movie was to our world's culture, imho, of course.
I had yet to watch those reviews, but now know what I'll be doing tomorrow. Thanks for the recommendation!Carrie Ann & stunt double...you're welcome. :rockin:
How on earth did you find this gem?
ChshreCat
Well-Known Member
btw... as I keep telling my daughter... it's not called "Episode IV" or "A New Hope". The movie was called Star Wars. Period. All else are sequels or prequels. The other names were tacked on later.
