Ranger

Links posted at dave's trailer page:
This got me thinking - even though I probably won't see any of the movies in 3D, it'd still be cool to see new 1080p trailers for all the movies.

JumpCutz

I understand you put a lot of thought into your post, I respect you coming to their defense and you made some salient points, but...Episode 2 and 3 were not really good. They were terrible movies. The writing, direction, dialogue and acting were all substandard. And I'm being kind.

mcnabb

I think people way overanalyze the faults of the Prequels. The biggest failing of the trilogy comes down to this: Bad Characters. The success of any movie comes down to its characters and story, and I could give a rats ass about any of the characters in the PT (although Obiwan was the one guy I kinda cared about).

I said in the spring of 99 to many friends that the PT will not be as good as the OT simply because there is no Luke, Leia and Han, and there is nothing Lucas can do about that since it takes place before they were all born. Lucas created magical characters in the OT and it is next to impossible to create another trilogy of great characters that fans can care for. If you don't care about the characters, then why do you care what happens in the next 2 hours? Now many will argue that the PT is a tragedy and Anakin eventually turns to a bad guy, so it is tough to get an audience to care about him. I would then argue that any mob movies has bad guys the audience is forced to care for (The Godfather, Goodfellas, heck even Scarface.)

Padme and Both Anakins were a failure as characters and whenever I see a PT movie on Spike, they had the EXACT opposite effect that Luke, Leia and Han did for me as a viewer. This is essentially why Lucas should have never made the PT, because there was no way he was going to be able to create another trilogy of lovable characters.

arminius

To me, the worst part of the PT is the turn of Anakin into Vader in pt III. There was just nothing there. The first 2 movies had their bunch of flaws but that one thing in Pt III killed the movie for me. There was just a complete lack of any motivation for him to turn so completely. Going from "I hate evil and will always fight to protect good and the weak" to "Kill children, sure ok, anything else?" It was just a big nothing.

Michael Corvin

Problem with that argument is that the characters weren't bad. They had potential especially with the actors Lucas managed to cast. Qui-gon, Obi-wan, Padme, and Darth Maul all had plenty of potential that was never realized.

Obi-Wanma

Agreed. I quite liked Qui-Gon, but he wasn't really given much to do.

al_bundy

GL had too many characters in the PT. Almost every successful movie that tries to be epic always concentrates on a few characters to tell their story.

qui gon and maul should never have been in the story. along with grievous and/or dooku. GL should have had one helper for palpantine. boy anakin should never have seen the light of day.

other than bad and non-important characters the story is broken up. the clone wars just seems to happen for no reason. the invasion of naboo as well. there are explanations but nothing to tie the movies together

milo bloom

As much as I love Qui Gon Jinn, I can kinda agree with this point. Though I can also go the other way: if you're going to introduce him in TPM, then have him do the ghostly mentor bit in 2 and 3. The brief mentions of him in AOTC and ROTS are just teases of what should have been a stronger story arc.

al_bundy

And the syfodious thing pissed me off. On Theforce.net there was a big deal about him before the movie. In the movie they never really said why the clones were created in the first place. And Antilles only had a few lines.

The whole pt went back and forth on trying to tie everyone in the ot to each other and just dropping other details that could have been important.

But then if you watch all the gl interviews he's always going on about technology and not the story.

DthRdrX

The problem is that Lucas left a huge part of the story on the board for the EU to cover in.

1.) Dooku gets furious over his old padawan's death and blames the Jedi Order for only sending two Jedi into that mess on Naboo, even going to the Senate with his complaints. No one helps him. He leaves the Jedi order and even contemplates tracking down the missing Sith Lord himself.

2.) Sidious actually contacts him and Dooku, who is so angry with the Jedi/Senate, gets convinced that he needs to take things on himself to fix everything wrong in the galaxy. (Remember in Ep2 Dooku tries to rationalize to Obi-Wan that his evil actions against the Republic are ok because a Sith Lord is actually manipulating them via the senate. He wants to kill Sidious and control everything his way at this point, hence trying to get Obi-wan's help)

3.) Master Syfo-Dyas, who is an member of the Jedi Council and friend of Dooku, either orders the clones as requested by Dooku and then is betrayed and killed to cover it up, or he is betrayed and killed and Dooku uses his name to order the clones.

4.) Dooku recruits Jango as Clone template as requested by Sidious.

The main problem is the movies paint Dooku as a 'clone' of Sidious, right down to the force lightning. His 'character' is lost as nothing more than a throwaway to bridge a spot in the movies, a physical threat, between Maul's death and Sidious finally making himself known.

Personally, I wish Dooku was either in EP1 or Maul had not died. As is, it's hard to watch the movies and understand why Dooku would become a Sith directly after Qui-gon's death at the hands of one. Remember he still speaks very highly of Qui-Gon in the movie.

The alternative is that you could have Anakin witness Maul kill Qui-Gon in Ep.1, cut off Anakin's hand in Ep.2, and have a final memorable confrontation with Anakin in Ep.3. This would have mirrored Luke seeing Obi-wan killed by Vader(ANH), getting hand cut off by Vader (TESB), and having a final memorable confrontation. (ROTJ)

Instead we got a bunch of characters with little buildup/story. (MAul/Dooku/Grevious)

Sonic

Russian Poster for the 3D release of Phantom Menace

bluetoast

Wait a minute...this makes me wonder whether the opening crawl will be in 3D. That could be sort of cool.

Supermallet

Saw the trailer for this before Hugo. When it finished, an old guy behind me said, "That's two hours of Jar-Jar in 3D. Is there anything Lucas won't milk for cash?"

MBoyd

Maybe they will reverse it so it's coming right at your face!

JTH182

By the look on Yoda's face, you just know he's thinking "Yep. Again, this shit."

Jason

Somebody's missing from that trailer...

Jason

Tarkin and Vader seemed to be equals. But Vader in ANH was hardly the untouchable killing machine he was in the later two films. He even let that star destroyer commander ("Holding her is dangerous!") argue with him without choking him. I'm more confused as to how he gained so much political power after the death star debacle.

RocShemp

Filmgoers thought he was cool and because of that he went from mere henchman to main badguy in the sequel. Simple as that and about as logical as Obi-Wan's "certain point of view" bullshit to explain how he outright lied to Luke about what happened to his father.

milo bloom

The idea that I've always held to is that Palpatine had intentionally kept Vader in a subordinate level for some time, but after the Death Star debacle, he learned to trust his apprentice more and officially made him supreme fleet commander.

If that particular commander had built up a relationship with Vader over time, Vader might be more inclined to let some comments slide here and there. Even in Empire he's not lashing out wildly, he's targeting his choking at people that are specifically pissing him off.

yoshimi

Trying to make sense of anything in Star Wars is futile. Just accept that Lucas was pulling stuff out of his ass as he went along.

Anubis2005X

Ha, yup...

mcnabb

Is anyone who is grown up actually going to see this???? I understand if anyone has kids to take to see it, but for any SW fan who is continues to support Lucas with this crap

Lucas talking to Rick McCallum after the opening weekend of Episode I 3-D, "Wait, the theaters are sold out and it made 50 million over the weekend? Geez, I could piss on the seats in the theater and these people will still come to see anything with Star Wars attached to it!"

Obi-Wanma

That's already been disproven by the Clone Wars movie.

mcnabb

Good point

kd5

I think he needs to quit fucking with these old movies and make something new. -kd5-