Yannow... the jedi in the prequels suck!

[Indomitus]

Brillaint man.  But has no idea what real human beings do in the real world.  Just my opinion, and I'm pretty drunk, so....

Stay drunk.  I think you're on to something.

[MarkAndrew]

...

How is it that only two Sith are like, the arch-enemy of hundreds of Jedi... for thousands of years?! Seriously, there are pretty much only two Sith at any given time in the history of the universe and they are the absolute in evil... sworn enemy of the Jedi. How do two single people, in the entire galaxy, pose any sort of threat year after year after year. Especially when someone's on to you and what you're up to? But the Jedi could never defeat them or wipe them from existence? What?

-Rude

Yeah, that's a pretty stupid concept.  I remember the early Star Wars comics before Lucas decided on this 'Masterstroke' of world design, in them there were a whole lot of Sith and Sith allies.

[MarkAndrew]

Yes, yes, they keep using the excuse that "Mmmm yes dark side the cloud does everything!". But that's not the biggest problem the Jedi Council has. They're arrogant, pompous, stuck up and think they are better than everyone else. They don't even so much as crack a smile. The whole thing about emotions, ANY emotions at all leading to the dark side is a load of shit. I mean seriously a person having to control their emotions for a whole movie is so damn lame. I think it would have been much more interesting if the Jedi Council actually admitted to the fact that they are not always right and they don't always decide what is best. I mean why the hell do you need the permission of the Jedi council to train a Paddywonton anyways? They're not contributing to the story at all in any of the movies except for the end of episode II where they magically appear out of nowhere and start kicking ass as though it were a last minute writing decision by George Lucas. That's quite dubious if you ask me. They sit around meditating instead of comitting to some actual action, and I don't mean pondering whether planets are invisible or some stupid shit. The only Jedi who really made any kind of real dramatic contribution was Mace Windu... and that wasn't even until episode 3! Piss on the Jedi Council *Pisses on the Jedi council like Calvin*

I totally agree, but I suppose they needed to be stupid in order to be destroyed.  Pride cometh before a fall and all that.

I would have much preferred if the Jedi Order had just become discredited and marginalized...as if society had 'outgrown' them, like say the Teutonic Knights or the Knights Hospitalar.

But then, I'd have done a better job writing the sequels than Lucas did.  :-)

[Janitor]

If I could be so crass as to suggest you could have deleted the words "the jedi in". If you had simply stated Yannow, the prequeis suck!, it would have been true enough. Thank you.

John

[6079SmithW]

Well, really, the fascinating part about the prequels is that there isn't anything good about them. Lucas is known as a big idea man, someone who can come up with a concept that, with some polishing, a bit of re-writing, and some good actors, will be really amazingly good and popular. The prequels, on the other hand, don't even have any fundamental qualities- sure, rewriting any given aspect of them would doubtless improve them, but you would still be left with a universe that doesn't quite hold together, and overarching plot that doesn't work, characters whose interactions don't work right, and a Force that doesn't make any damn sense.

If this was always true, what it suggest is that you could take any idea, no matter how crappy- Eragon, Chronicles of Riddick, etc.- and, with the right convergence of spot rewrites and talented people on the backend, make Star Wars out of it. I don't know if that's frightening or heartening, but it's one hell of a dent in auteur theory, that's for damned sure.

[RandyMistie]

Well, really, the fascinating part about the prequels is that there isn't anything good about them. Lucas is known as a big idea man, someone who can come up with a concept that, with some polishing, a bit of re-writing, and some good actors, will be really amazingly good and popular. The prequels, on the other hand, don't even have any fundamental qualities- sure, rewriting any given aspect of them would doubtless improve them, but you would still be left with a universe that doesn't quite hold together, and overarching plot that doesn't work, characters whose interactions don't work right, and a Force that doesn't make any damn sense.

If this was always true, what it suggest is that you could take any idea, no matter how crappy- Eragon, Chronicles of Riddick, etc.- and, with the right convergence of spot rewrites and talented people on the backend, make Star Wars out of it. I don't know if that's frightening or heartening, but it's one hell of a dent in auteur theory, that's for damned sure.

Proof of this theory of ours is "Empire Strikes Back", arguably the best of the series, and it was directed by Lawrence Kasdan and Lucas had help writing it from Kasdan and mysterious others, (cough*spielburg*cough*harrisonford*cough)

[J-Proof]

I always and forever will consider myself a Star Wars fanatic, as opposed to a Trekker.

However, a Trekker friend of mine (my old physics professor) did share some strong opinions as to why Star Wars wasn't written nearly as well as Star Trek, and the prequels do suggest that that is the truth...

The Languages...
Chewie growling is one thing, cuz at least we could get some sort of inflection from the growl. And Greedo's Huttanese was even a little sensible, but the languages of the prequel universe really stink... I mean... really stink. Some are just innate squeaking and buzzing. Some are just obviously bad.... Compare that to the care that is taken by the Star Trek powers that be in crafting Klingon and Romulian etc.... almost unquestionably, Star Trek has taken more time in the crafting of cultures.

The Sith...
As many have already mentioned, the Sith just don't make sense philosophically. And why do two of them pose such a threat to the peace of the entire galaxy? Furthermore, why do the Jedi seem so weakened by the Sith? It's like Captain Planet who has sworn to fight against polluion but can in NO WAY touch it or else he is Kryptonited. What about the Sith makes them more evil than say.... some /other/ evil guy? Are the sources of evil different? Is not the force surrounding everything?

The Jedi...
What exactly /are/ their powers? We see Luke lifting rocks, and we see Maul flipping switches. We even see Yoda almost crushed by a pillar of stone by Darth Poopoo -- YET (for example) in Episode Three, little bug-like droids are on Kenobi's starfighter, and he doesn't just USE THE FORCE to remove them... instead, Anakin flies up next to him, tries to bat them off with the wing of his ship, and damages Kenobi's fighter... I don't get that. I thought the force would be the obvious answer to such a situation, and I called it out loud at the premier showing: "USE THE FORCE DANG IT!!?!?!" Furthermore, in the beginning of Ep 3, the ship that Anakin, Kenobi, and Palp are in has broken in half and is hurdling toward Coruscant -- why didn't they just use the force to stabilize it? SIZE DOESN'T MATTER.... Lucas probably should have thought about that one before writing it into the script, as fantastic a movie as Empire Strikes Back was....

The Politics...
We have hundreds upon hundreds of planetary systems -- we're talkin' thousands. And they have a galactic tribunal of rainbows and wonder in a room filled with floating chairs.... Uh huh... It takes the United States HOW long to make a firm decision on things with the filibustering and gerrymandering of districts, yet handing over dictatorship to Palpatine was almost instantaneous... Who the hell do they elect to govern entire planets?? And what's the deal with domestic planetary politics? They clearly state that Amidala was 14, and was ELECTED queen.... wh oelects a fourteen year old IN A MONARCHY? Someone needs to explain that system to me...

The Force Hates Emotion...
I'm glad someone else brought this up -- but why is the Force against people having emotions? I guess in order to be a jedi you can't be anything but robotic.... This is just TeH stupid. End.

If Droids Had a Mind of Their Own...
Excuse me Mister Lucas...but they do... you make Kenobi say that stupid flippin' line and you ruin my enjoyment of C3PO and R2D2 almost immediately... Droids in your Star Wars universe DO have a mind of their own... C3PO OBVIOUSLY thinks for himself, and so does R2. What the heck, man??? They always told me to read my work AT LEAST three times before handing it to my teacher...

[/vent] okay... Now that al lthat is out of my system, I still think Star Wars kicks ass over Star Trek, but whatev' =)

[Indomitus]

Um...

Midichlorians?

[RandyMistie]

My most horrific moment in Star Wars is the droid torture scene on Jabba's sail barge in "Return of the Jedi".  Why in the hell would you have to torture a driod?  You just reprogram it if it fails you, right?  I mean, when my toaster burns the bread I don't beat it with a wooden spoon, I just turn the damn dial.

Silly frickin crap.  But it proves that Lucas empathizes more with machines than with people.

[Quicksilver]

I'm glad to hear this discussion. The prequels bother the shit out of me. The clone wars has always pissed me off the most. The freakin politics, boring. It took me three times to actually watch the whole movie for the first time. I just fall asleep, even the Yoda fight scene really could have been better, it was impressive when I first saw it, but with the Rifftrax, I exclaimed "thats it!" afterwards.

Poor Samuel L. Jackson, what the hell is he doing in this, the whole lack of emotion thing, leaves his character as dull as the rest. and why doesn't the Jedi have some kind of brute squad. Yep, lets leave the fate of the universe to a couple hundred individuals, that hardly ever unite and cant doing anything unless it's approved. The jedi council reminds me of the UN. Cant have some guys that back up each Jedi where ever he goes, with maybe dare I say, guns.
----------------------------------------------
I watched the Rifftrax with a buddy and my girlfriend we all thought it was very funny but the movie became unwatchable about 1/2 way through. Granted we were drinking and enjoying a dutch , but we started talking about Iran in the middle of the movie, the Yoda scene was the only thing that brought us back. It just got so damn uninteresting, that mike and Kevin couldn't save it..imho. I still give it a 9/10, but Lucas has problems.
So many of these directors/writer/producers have these problems. Lucas cant write, Tarantino can write too good, Spielberg is over dramatic at times.....Martin Scorsese, is just brilliant, and Stanley Kubrick did too much acid..I'm certainly not saying any of the above directors are bad....no no no but they have weaknesses.

How about a  Lucas/Tarantino star wars, holy crap that could be great. I think Tarantino would end up killing Lucas though. He be like "yes were going to do this nice overture during this chase thats ends with the epic battle between Vader and Obie Won"....as Tarantino rolls his eyes and twists Lucas's head off.anyway yeah it would be great if Lucas would compromise on his vision and didn't do just what HE wanted to do. "it's not what you like, it's the consumer"

sorry I write a lot

[Indomitus]

I think you just touched on exactly where Lucas went wrong.

He had been burned by the Hollywood system, so when he hit it big he basically told them where to go and went "ultra mega independant."  The problems there being 1. he doesn't have enough creativity to sustain it himself and 2. he won't let anyone else do it.
I mean, really, when you look at the prequels, think about how much is good versus how much is bad, then think:  "How much of this came from Lucas' mind versus coming from the minds of the animators or fight choreographers?"  I'd bet there's a direct correlation.

[Ranika]

Lucas is only creative on a large scale. He should concept his scripts for an actual author to write, give this guy the big details, let him know where he wants things to go, and let some one else handle all the minor things. I think the prequels, all three of them, could have actually been interesting, if they didn't feel like a child was writing out his super awesome idea for a movie. Maybe when Lucas is writing his mind regresses to that of a five year old, and what he ends up spilling out is how a five year old would view politics, romance, war, and myth, and would explain the glaring loopholes and contradictions (kids don't really tend to spend time figuring out where they contradict themselves).

The most agitating contradiction, by the by, to me, is 'Only a Sith deals in absolutes' from Revenge of the Sith. Bullshit. Jedi moan and whine on and on about absolutism. And you know something? I'd have no problem with that. if you want to make a fable-like atmosphere, the good guys and bad guys do tend to have to be at least mostly definable in clear terms of good and evil. Absolutes, as such, work fine there. Also, that seems to contradict the Sith themselves. The Sith seem less in terms of absolutes than Jedi; they're pretty vague about their goals, except gaining power.

Also, I think, from a concept level, the Force is just terribly flawed because Lucas never even defined for himself what it really was. I mean, you don't need a 20 volume treatise on it, but at least a concise explanation of what it is and does and does not do would be nice. He tries to use (badly I might add) poeticism and rhetoric to cover up the fact that the Force is incredibly vague, because he never did any real work defining it. In the original trilogy, it's refered to at least once as a religion (Vader is called all that's left of 'their religion', refering to the Jedi). Alright, so what are the religious aspects of it? As it is, the Force seems like nothing more than really watered down eastern philosophy. Is the Force good or bad? It seemed to favor good uses in the original trilogy, and Yoda supported that by saying that the darkside was simply quicker and easier, but less powerful, presumably because it's a corruption of a 'good' energy of some type. That's all completely irrelevant to it in the prequel though, because it's so poorly defined. The only thing I took away from it is that apparently the Force just controls some form of predestination.

[MSTJedi]

Yeah, the movies never did do the Force justice. The books and games, though, have fleshed it out quite a bit and since I've read and played just about all things Lucas that have ever been made, I tend to have a little more information than the normal movie watcher . That said, the reason why it's so much better fleshed out in what's referred to as the expanded universe (EU) of Star Wars is exactly because it wasn't written by Lucas himself. He allowed others to take his galaxy and run with it. And they did a hell of a better job at it. The Knights of the Old Republic series of games (I do hope there'll be at least a third) does a lot to expand on the differences (and similarities) between the Jedi and the Sith, most interestingly the gray areas (Jolee Bindo is the man). Although I'm behind in the books (haven't read any of the Legacy of the Force series), they've also gone a little more into the ambiguity and gray areas of the Force. Unfortunately, if all you know is the Jedi and Sith from the movies, you get caricatures of what has been explored in other media, so, yes - the Jedi and Sith seem a bit lame compared to what you had been imagining since the first trilogy.

[Pak-Man]

Just a little reminder: Without Lucas, there wouldn't have been a Star Wars franchise to ruin to begin with. :^) He was never the best scriptwriter in the world, but even with that handicap he gave us 3 (or more) of the most memorable movies in History.

[RandyMistie]

Just a little reminder: Without Lucas, there wouldn't have been a Star Wars franchise to ruin to begin with. :^) He was never the best scriptwriter in the world, but even with that handicap he gave us 3 (or more) of the most memorable movies in History.

Bleh.  I hate all of them.  But don't hold that against me.