THE PHANTOM MENACE - YES!!

[dignan]

Well now, Kong seemed pretty graceful, I wouldn't put it past a layer of thick-enough ice to hold his body weight.  The ice cracked when they launched a rocket at it, anyway.  A bigger question could be:  what the hell happened to Billy Eliot in that movie?  And why was he given such a prominent role only to have absolutely no point to it whatsoever, and to pretty much disappear after his Mr. Eko-like guardian died? 

[J-Proof]

>>
Here's a bunch of other inconsistencies I found:
Why couldn't the force be used to.....
1.) Stop the gigantic hunk of aircraft they were in from crashing on Coruscant after rescuing the Chancellor?
2.) Knock a bunch of little spidery droids off the side of Ben's spaceship (opening scene)? I mean - the force can be used to get proton torpedoes into a two-meter shaft....
3.) Hoist yourself /up/ an elevator shaft while carrying some dudes on your back?
4.) Determine that Padme had twins? Should've seen that one coming....

When you think about it - there's a lot of those examples throughout all three prequels.<<


Sorry but these are the criticisms that mean either A) you're being too nitpicky or B) the movie isn't working for you.  In Peter Jackson's King Kong, why doesn't the ice in Central Park break when Kong is sliding all over it?  Because it's a movie, and it's going to take liberties with our rules in order to achieve excitement and elicit emotions.  If you ask questions like that, the movie's lost you.  In SITH, the answer to all the above is that the movie would be pretty boring if the Jedi could forsee and deal with any and all problems.  Should Anakin have been able to force-push the Buzz droids away?  Maybe, but I never considered it.  The scene was too thrilling for me to think about it otherwise.

The movies /didn't/ work for me. Hence my enjoyment that TPM would be riffed and my outward profession that these were overall unjenjoyable to me (ROTS was decent however). And another thing - I was one of the people that went "Why the heck didn't that ice break? This movie kind of sucks..." when Kong did his ice ballerina dance. Even in the Godfather trilogy, I am bugged by head-shots not automatically killing people. Why the heck can steven siegal take down a chopper with a nine mil?

I like consistency and continuity in movies and I feel like Georgio dug a hole for himself with the prequels - that's all. Period. Can't change my mind about it. Many people would agree with me that he sort of screwed with the prestige of the original trilogy. Do I think Lucas is insane? I already said - no. He set out to make a lot of money, which he publicly stated over and over again, and he made millions - so his plan worked and I'm glad he can feed himself now for several hudnred years. But I (along with many other people) didn't like the prequels because it didn't stay true to the original mythos, and it didn't seem to adhere to it either.

Do I at all look down on people who liked the prequels? Absolutely not! We all have different tastes. Do I think that George sucks? Of coruse not! He made the original trilogy as well as Indiana Jones which are my staple rainy-day movies. Should the Star Wars saga continue to be riffed? Of course! Riff on Mike! Riff on!

Simply because I don't like Eps 1-3 very much, doesn't make me a haughty, arrogant, blind, unartistic movie-twit. I think that my reasoning is solid. And whatever reasons you all may have for /liking/ the prequels, more power to you. There were lots of really neat images and action sequences. I guess I'm just more orthodox and prefer the original trilogy more, which, when last I checked, was not a crime.

[LadyKenobi]

Logically put, J-Proof.

For the pregnancy thing, no I was referring to the last of the prequels when Anakin chokes her because he thinks she's against him. Her tummy was so tiny!

My sister was with child when she saw this movie and did a great deal of snorting over the pretext that a woman who was that far along could run down a ramp the way Padme did.

[PlayMSTie]

Furthermore, if you're writing correctly, you're not concerned about what the masses are going to think. You're concerned about shaping the universe however you feel it needs to be shaped. If it catches the hearts of the masses, all the better. Lucas wasn't thinking about the masses, and more power to him! He was concerned with creating his story and create his story, he did! Everyone else is free to like or not like it. :^)

So making a kid-friendly, catch-phrase spouting alien and plastering it's ugly mug on every conceivable piece of merchandise was part of George's artistic vision?  Really?  He wasn't thinking about selling toys to those unwashed masses?  How about the cute lil' battle droids who say "roger roger" all the time?  Sorry but I'm not buying it.  Sure, Lucas had a vision for the prequels and you can see what he was trying to achieve with the story arc but result was poorly executed.  If he had just handed the writing and directing chores to more qualified individuals, we may have gotten some good movies.  Lucas could have settled for Executive Producer and "Created By" credits and we'd all be calling him a genius.

And about this universe he created... The original films sparked the imaginations of many people from my generation who were lucky enough to see them the first time around in the theater, but all that Lucas did was provide an excellent framework, not the universe itself.  There were many, many blank spots and in the years after Return Of The Jedi the people that were inspired by those movies filled in the blank spots and made a real universe out of it.  Hell, I used to have the original Star Wars role playing game.  I remember that the excellent alien races supplement had the names and histories all worked out for every alien race shown in the Star Wars cantina scene.  You can't tell me all that backstory came from the brain of George Lucas.  People wanted to know more about those cool looking aliens so they invented their own stories.  There's nothing wrong with that.  Star Wars existed only in the minds of the fans for many years so by the time he came back to it his universe looked much different than when he had left it last. And personally I think that when George Lucas finally revisited the Star Wars universe, his imagination was pretty well tapped out.

Here's the best analogy I can come up with on a moment's notice.  Imagine that a man builds a beautiful house and allows you to live in it for five years and decorate it any way you see fit.  After five years, you've got the house exactly the way you like it.  Then the owner comes back and paints the entire thing mauve.  Who are you to complain?  It's his house, after all. 

Anyway, that's just the opinion of a disgruntled ex-Star Wars fan.

Well put, Tom Sirvaux.

If I feel that the creator of a show/movie series/book series truly cares about what he's doing and is writing with integrity and heart, I don't mind if he comes up with different fates for his characters than I would imagine. If I feel that he doesn't really give a crap about any of it and has the characters do and say stupid and ridiculous things just because it's how his whim happened to take him at the moment, I'm angry. If you're going to do the work and try to get people to care, for heaven's sake, TAKE IT SERIOUSLY.

(Anyone who's interested in a very in-depth treatment of some of this stuff, read Sayers's The Mind of the Maker sometime. Just so you know, there's a lot of Christian theology mixed in with it.)

[Pak-Man]

I guess I just hope that it never comes to the point where _I_ manage to create a megafranchise story, the world becomes enamoured by it, and then when I say, "And now I want to introduce a new character. He's a little bit goofy, but he fits my vision!" and the world vehemently yells back, "To heck with your vision! Get that guy out of our story or we no longer recognize your ability to rule the universe you created and we now own!"

[LadyKenobi]

But I think in art, once you create something and send it out there, it really is no longer yours.  Art is meant to be shared.  You made it to express your vision, yes, but what's the point if nobody else sees it? 

I went through this a bit when an essay of mine was accepted for an anthology.  The contract came, and I sat there with my pen hovering over it, unable to tear my eyes away from the words "owns all exclusive rights, trademarks, and reprints to".  Did this mean the essay wasn't mine anymore?  Then I realized... in order for this work to do what I had intended for it, I had to let it go.  It wasn't meant to be mine.  I signed.

I think the anger isn't that Lucas "violates our vision," it's that many feel he bismirched his own.

[Sharktopus]

But I think in art, once you create something and send it out there, it really is no longer yours.  Art is meant to be shared.  You made it to express your vision, yes, but what's the point if nobody else sees it? 

I went through this a bit when I recently published an essay in an anthology.  The contract came, and I sat there with my pen hovering over it, unable to tear my eyes away from the words "owns all exclusive rights, trademarks, and reprints to".  Did this mean the essay wasn't mine anymore?  Then I realized... in order for this work to do what I had intended for it, I had to let it go.  It wasn't meant to be mine.  I signed.

This has nothing to do with anything, but LadyK's comment reminded me of Jeff Rowland over at http://overcompensating.com and his one-man crusade to let everyone know that any intellectual property posted on MySpace becomes the legal property of NewsCorp (AKA Rupert Murdoch) according to the user's agreement. (Which nobody ever reads.) Just thought that was worth noting.

[PlayMSTie]

A LITTLE bit goofy, Pak-Man???  He's like nails on a chalkboard!

Anyway, I agree with LadyKenobi (again. I think I've found my long-lost psychic double here ). For an artist to have a good vision and be faithful to it -- that's all I ask.

[J-Proof]

But I think in art, once you create something and send it out there, it really is no longer yours.  Art is meant to be shared.  You made it to express your vision, yes, but what's the point if nobody else sees it? 

I went through this a bit when I recently published an essay in an anthology.  The contract came, and I sat there with my pen hovering over it, unable to tear my eyes away from the words "owns all exclusive rights, trademarks, and reprints to".  Did this mean the essay wasn't mine anymore?  Then I realized... in order for this work to do what I had intended for it, I had to let it go.  It wasn't meant to be mine.  I signed.

I think the anger isn't that Lucas "violates our vision," it's that many feel he bismirched his own.

Fabulously stated, Ladyk!

In art school, we went through this very topic until it was lying dead on the ground from over-pokeage. Basically, when you create a piece of artwork, and it becomes renowned by many, the piece doesn't really become theirs, but the feeling is somewhat personalized for each person it touches. If I created a piece of artwork that was ground-breakingly sweet, and switched gears on it with a companion piece that doesn't seem to fit at all, my original admirers are left feeling cheated because a.) they seem to fear that I am incapable of fulfilling that which I set out to do and b.) they feel like they may never get an official completion of my original vision.

**The pain of the admirers is both for themselves and for me in this situation**

Lucas isn't the only one though - name any movie with a successful sequel, and I can probably give you three more that had horrible sequels. Rush Hour came to mind for some reason....

[Ivan Druzhkov]

You know, the instant I saw this, I developed this fantasy sequence where the Battle of Yavin is raging, Luke and his wingmen are flying down the various canyons of the Death Star (though why a giant space station needs canyons is never explained) heading towards their target, shouting Top Gun-esque jargon at each other...but up in Luke's fighter, Tom Servo is in Full Ditzy Minnesotan Housewife mode, babbling his spiel from the end of "Manos" a mile a minute, over all the shouting and laserblasts, going on and on about his Twenty-Year Plan, drinking 12 glasses of water a day, and how in the humidity his hair explodes, just ex-PLO-Ho-hodes!

Ah, good stuff...

[mrbasehart]

YOUR battle of the millenium...Tom Servo vs R2D2!

[BBQ Platypus]

I guess I just hope that it never comes to the point where _I_ manage to create a megafranchise story, the world becomes enamoured by it, and then when I say, "And now I want to introduce a new character. He's a little bit goofy, but he fits my vision!" and the world vehemently yells back, "To heck with your vision! Get that guy out of our story or we no longer recognize your ability to rule the universe you created and we now own!"

PUNK:
You declared you would be three inches taller
You only became what we made you
Thought you were chasing a destiny calling
You only earned what we gave you
You fell and cried as our people were starving
Now you know that we blame you
You tried to walk on the trail we were carving
Now you know that we framed you


GODFATHER:
I'm the guy in the sky
Flying high Flashing eyes
No surprise I told lies
I'm the punk in the gutter
I'm the new president
But I grew and I bent
Don't you know? Don't it show?
I'm the punk with the stutter

(My my my my my
GGGGG-g-g-g-g generation)

PUNK:
We tried to speak between lines of oration
You could only repeat what we told you
Your axe belongs to a dying nation
They don't know that we own you
You're watching movies trying to find the feelers
You only see what we show you
We're the slaves of the phony leaders
Breathe the air we have blown you


GODFATHER:
I'm the guy etc.

I must be careful not to preach
I can't pretend that I can teach
And yet I've lived your future out
By pounding stages like a clown
And on the dance floor broken glass
The bloody faces slowly pass
The broken seats in empty rows
It all belongs to me, you know

[J-Proof]

I guess I just hope that it never comes to the point where _I_ manage to create a megafranchise story, the world becomes enamoured by it, and then when I say, "And now I want to introduce a new character. He's a little bit goofy, but he fits my vision!" and the world vehemently yells back, "To heck with your vision! Get that guy out of our story or we no longer recognize your ability to rule the universe you created and we now own!"

PUNK:
You declared you would be three inches taller
You only became what we made you
Thought you were chasing a destiny calling
You only earned what we gave you
You fell and cried as our people were starving
Now you know that we blame you
You tried to walk on the trail we were carving
Now you know that we framed you


GODFATHER:
I'm the guy in the sky
Flying high Flashing eyes
No surprise I told lies
I'm the punk in the gutter
I'm the new president
But I grew and I bent
Don't you know? Don't it show?
I'm the punk with the stutter

(My my my my my
GGGGG-g-g-g-g generation)

PUNK:
We tried to speak between lines of oration
You could only repeat what we told you
Your axe belongs to a dying nation
They don't know that we own you
You're watching movies trying to find the feelers
You only see what we show you
We're the slaves of the phony leaders
Breathe the air we have blown you


GODFATHER:
I'm the guy etc.

I must be careful not to preach
I can't pretend that I can teach
And yet I've lived your future out
By pounding stages like a clown
And on the dance floor broken glass
The bloody faces slowly pass
The broken seats in empty rows
It all belongs to me, you know

?

[dignan]

It's The Who, from their Quadrophenia album, the song "The Punk vs. The Godfather."  One of the key songs of the album.  Great album about the Mods vs. Rocker battles of 1960's England. 

[Sharktopus]

Dear Platypus,

You appear to be awesome. Keep up the good work.

Cheers, The Sharktopus

Now I'm on the lookout for any chance to quote Who songs.