Merged Yet Again: Star Wars discussion thread

[speedythief]

Originally Posted by Hap

Does anyone else consider Ewan McGregor as Obi Wan, more than Alec Guiness?

McGregor made the new trilogy. Star Wars fans should be greatful that he was involved, otherwise the series would not have been anywhere near as enjoyable.

When I think of Obi Wan, I will think of McGregor first, Guiness second. Not that Guiness did anything short of a great job, but McGregor's character had more character.

[speedythief]

Originally Posted by futuristxen

If you think Star Wars is about Iraq, then you have a guilty conscience.
Otherwise, it's about a place a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away.

That's what I saw in that. If you are willing to look at Lucas' film he says democracy is ideal, war is [a sometimes necessary] evil, and people should rise up against unjust rule.

Is that even worth debating? How could you disagree with that?

Maybe the message about not trading freedom for safety is the one that hits home with Joe Redneck's boycott.

[Dan]

Originally Posted by Tom

Star Wars fans in 1983

Interesting how they are similar to today.

here's one thats spot on (don't read if you haven't seen the movie) from 1984

geek fans

[Tom]

Thats a good one...Fans are interesting thats for sure.

Also i thought Ewan was awesome...he was this series Han Solo for me.

I'm a huge Obi-wan fan so for me to like Ewan more is pretty amazing.

He was brilliant at the end...that is all i will say.

[Dan]

Originally Posted by Tom

Thats a good one...Fans are interesting thats for sure.

Also i thought Ewan was awesome...he was this series Han Solo for me.

I'm a huge Obi-wan fan so for me to like Ewan more is pretty amazing.

He was brilliant at the end...that is all i will say.

to me, it's like the season finale of a show. You almost feel sad that it's over and you've seen it.

Also, it's kind of like when you get in on a show, mid-way through the series. You don't get all the jokes or references, etc. Then when you see the first couple seasons, you start going "damn! I get it!"

then when you see the finale of season 3, it's like "turning point of the whole show!"...

and then when you see the series finale (if it's done right of course) you think "crap, it all makes sense now! "

ROTS completes the series.

[LuckyAC]

Anthony Lane

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Spoilers
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Sith. What kind of a word is that? Sith. It sounds to me like the noise that emerges when you block one nostril and blow through the other, but to George Lucas it is a name that trumpets pure evil. What is proves beyond question by "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith," the latest - and you will be shattered to hear, the last - installment of his sci-fi bonanza, is that Lucas, though his eye may be greedy for sensation, has an ear of purest cloth. All those who concoct imaginary worlds must populate and name them, and the resonance of those names is a fairly accurate guide to the mettle of the imagination in question. Tolkien, earthed in Old English, has a head start that led him straight to the flinty perfection of Mordor and Orc. Here, by contrast, are some Lucas inventions: Palpatine. Sidious. Mace Windu. (Isn't that something you spray on colicky babies?) Bail Organa. And Sith.

Lucas was not always a rootless soul. He made "American Graffiti" which yielded with affection to the gravitation pull of the small town. Since then, he has swing out of orbit, into deeo nonsense, and the new film is the apotheosis of that drift. One stab of humor and the whole conceit would pop, but I have a grim feeling that Lucas wants us to honor the remorseless noncomedy of his galactic conflict, so here goes. Obi-Wan Kenobi and his star pupil, Anakin Skywalker, are, with the other Jedi knights, defending the Republic against the encroachments of the Sith and their allies - millions of dumb droids, led by Count Dooku and his henchman, General Grievous, who is best described as a slaying mantis. Meanwhile, the Chancellor of the Republic, Palpatine, is engaged in a sly bout of Realpolitik, suspected by nobody but Anakin, Obi-Wan, and every single person watching the movie. Anakin, too, is a divided figure, wrenched between his Jedi devotion to a selfless duty and a lurking hunch that, if he bides his time and trashes his best friends, he may eventually get to wear a funky black mask and start breathing like a horse.

The film is the tale of his temptation. We already know the outcome - Anakin will indeed drop the killer-monk Jedi look and become Darth Vader, the hockey goalkeeper from hell - because it forms the substance of the original "Star Wars". One of the things that makes Episode III so dismal is the time and effort expended on Anakin's conversion. Early in the story, he enjoys a sprightly light-saber duel with Count Dooku, which ends with the removal of the Count's hands. (The stumps glow, like logs on a fire; there is nothing here that reeks of human blood.) Anakin prepares to scissor off the head, while the mutilated Dooku kneels for mercy. A nice setup, with Palpatine egging on the hero from the background. The trouble now is that Anakins's choice of action will be decisive, and the remaining two hours of the film - scene after scene in which Hayden Christiansen has to glower and glare, blazing his conundrum to the skies - will add nothing to the result. "Something's already happening. I'm not the Jedi I should be," he adds. This is especially worrying for his wife, Padme, who is great with child. Correction: with children.

What can you say about a civilization where people zip from one solar system to the next as if they were changing their socks but where a woman fails to register for an ultrasound, and thus to realize that she is carrying twins until she gives birth? Mind you, how Padme got pregnant is anybody's guess, but I'm prepared to wager that it involved Anakin nipping into a broom closet with a warm glass jar and a copy of Ewok Babes. After all, the Lucasian universe is drained of all reference to bodily functions. Nobody ingests or excretes. Language remains unblue. Smoking and cursing are out of bounds, as is drunkenness, although personally I wouldn't go near the place without a hip flask. Did Lucas learn nothing from "Alien" and "Blade Runner" - from the suggestion that other times and places might be no less rusted and septic than ours, and that the creation of a disinfected galaxy, where even the storm troopers wear bright-white outfits, looks not so much fantastical as dated? What Lucas has devised, over six movies, is a terrible puritan dream: a morality tale in which both sides are bent on moral cleansing, and where their differences can be assuaged only by a triumphant circus of violence. Judging from the whoops and crowing that greeted the opening credits, this is the only dream we are good for. We get the dreams we deserve.

The general opinion of "Revenge of the Sith" seems to be that it marks a distinct improvement on the last two episodes, "The Phantom Menace" and "Attack of the Clones". True, but only in the same way that dying from natural causes is preferable to crucifixion. So much here is guaranteed to cause either offense or pain, starting with the nineteen-twenties leather football helmet that Natlaie Portman suddenly dons for no reason, and rising to the continual horror of Ewan McGregor's accent. The young Obi-Wan is not, I hasted to add, the the most nauseating figure onscreen; nor is is R2-D2 or even C-3PO, although I still fail to understand why I should have been expected to waste twenty-five years of my life following the progress of a beeping trash can and a gay, gold-plated Jeeves.

No, the one who gets me is Yoda. May I take the opportunity to offer a brief plea in favor of his extermination. Any educated moviegoer would know what to do, having watched the helpful sequence in "Gremlins" when a small, sage-colored beastie is fed into an electric blender. A fittingly frantic end, I feel, for the faux-pensive stillness on which the Yoda legend has hung. At one point in the new film, he assumed the role of cosmic shrink - squatting opposite Anakin in a noirish room, where the light bleeds sideways through slatted blinds. Anakin keeps having problems with the dark side, in the way that you or I might suffer from tennis elbow, but Yoda, whose reptilian smugnesswe have been encouraged to mistake for wisdom, has the answer. "Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose," he says. Hold on, Kermit, run that past me one more time. If you ever got laid (admittedly a long shot, unless we can dig up some undiscerning alienn hottie with a name like Jar Jar Gabor) and spawned a brooed of Yodettes, are you saying you'd leave them behind at the first sniff of danger? Also, while we're here, what's with the screwy syntax? Deepest mind in the galaxy, apparently, and you still express yourself like a day-tripper with a dog-eared phrase book. "I hope right you are." Break me a f****** give".

The prize for the last speakable burst of dialogue has, over a half dozen helpings of "Star Wars," grown into a fiercely contested tradition, but for once the winning entry is clear, shared between Anakin and Padme for their exchange of endearments at home:

"You're so beautiful."
"That's because I'm so in love."
"No, it's because I'm so in love with you."

For a moment, it looks as if they might bat this one back and forth forever, like a baseline rally on a clay court.

Whether the director is aware of John Martin, the Victorian painter who specialized in the cataclysmic, I cannot say, but he has certainly inherited that grand perversity, mobilized it in every frame of the film, and thus produced what I take to be unique, an art of flawless and irredeemable vulgarity. All varied bear a tint of it, in varying degrees, but it takes a vulgarian genius such as Lucas to create a landscape in which actions can carry vast importance but no discernible meaning, in which style is strangled at birth by design, and in which the intimate and the ironic, not the Sith, are the principal foes to be suppressed. It is a vision at once gargantuan and murderously limited, and the profits that await it are unfit for contemplation. I keep thinking of the rueful Obi-Wan Kenobi, as he surveys the holographic evidence of Anakin's betrayal. "I can't watch anymore, he says. Wise words, Obi-Wan, and I shall carry them in my heart.

My ranking:
1. ESB
2. ANH
3. RoTJ
4. ROS
5. AOC
6. TPM

[Tom]

I can find you many many more who don't agree...the point being?

[LuckyAC]

Originally Posted by Tom

I can find you many many more who don't agree...the point being?

I just thought it was a funny and accurate review which stated my views better that I could hope to (or at least spend the time doing).

[Dan]

Originally Posted by Tom

I can find you many many more who don't agree...the point being?

is that in response to me, or luckyAC?

because I didn't mean that ROTS is the best, but it makes things come full circle.

[Dan]

Originally Posted by Anthony Lane

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Spoilers
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(tripe cut)

wow, talk about someone who's taking the movies a little too seriously.

[Zach]

Ewan McGregor makes this movie work. Afterwards, I watched A New Hope the next day and it is alot more understandable.

[PartisanRanger]

Ewan McGregor's acting was very good, one of the high points of the movie. The special effects were great again, moreso than the other two even. However, I wasn't too happy the way Anakin's transition to the dark side was developed. It was too sudden and didn't seem like Anakin believed half the **** he was saying. Great ending though, loved how it got everything to come around full circle.

[jokeaward]

We're so avaricious. Sure, I think in 9 for some reason (maybe just a triolgy of trilogies), but why not 6? Will we have to get new actors to play Luke, Leia, etc.? Look out.

Let Lucas make his Tuskegee Airmen film and some other movies... ah, hell, make more SW blockbusters.

It was really good. I buy Christensen, actually. I liked the ships with prelude designs to Episode IV ships.

[jokeaward]

BTW, those 1983 threads feel like uncovering Atlantis. Messages, (spoilers), probably a monochromatic monitor. Whoa.

[Minstrel]

Originally Posted by LuckyAC

I just thought it was a funny and accurate review which stated my views better that I could hope to (or at least spend the time doing).

I think the review you posted is accurate about some things, but spends a lot of time trying to be cleverly insulting while having no real point or, even more amazingly (considering that this is hardly the most complex movie), missing the point altogether.

The cynical-just-to-be-edgy attitude no longer seems novel or interesting. There were plenty of things to criticize, but his attempt to blast everything about the movie was poorly done.