[karajorma]

Randal Graves: Which did you like better? "Jedi" or "The Empire Strikes Back"?
Dante Hicks: "Empire".
Randal Graves: Blasphemy.
Dante Hicks: "Empire" had the better ending. I mean, Luke gets his hand cut off, finds out Vader's his father, Han gets frozen and taken away by Boba Fett. It ends on such a down note. I mean, that's what life is, a series of down endings. All "Jedi" had was a bunch of Muppets.

While I'm not going to join the morons who watch Jedi 40 times yet still say it sucks I fully agree that Empire was by far the best.

[Flipside]

I always thought ROTJ was very good despite the Ewoks, after all, Luke spent 5 minutes on the Dark Side and yet managed to project more about its meaning and the fall from grace of a Jedi than the entire first 3 films.

[WMCoolmon]

Funny you should mention that...Lucas wasn't directing ROTJ either, at least not officially, but I did hear that he did direct the end part of the throne room scene.

[haloboy100]

I liked the kind of dark vs. light thing that happened in Luke there. It contributed a lot to the movie.

The force lightning scene was also particularly dramatic

[WMCoolmon]

The Force Lightning part has been much more emotional for me after the release of the prequels.

[Flipside]

Well, as far as cinematics are concerned, I always thought the only problem with the prequels was that they looked like a modern movie with 1970's editing, which kind of makes sense in a way, maybe he was trying to go for the 'feel' of Star Wars, I'm not sure.

The Throne Room Scene was, to my mind, one of the best scenes in the entire trilogy, if for no other reason because you could almost sympathise with Luke for turning to the Dark Side for a moment, whereas Anakin almost seemed to catch the Dark Side as though it were some kind of flu.

[haloboy100]

Yeah, QFT.

[Nuclear1]

Alright, here's the breakdown.

Phantom Menace was just flat-out terrible. Where RotJ suffered from the Ewoks in the second part of the movie, PM suffered from the Gungans throughout the whole damn movie, as well as with all the various aliens on Tatooine. The couple of parts that could have been genuinely awesome were ruined by either A) Jake Lloyd or B) Jar Jar Binks. The podrace could have been cool if they hadn't treated the Sand people like just another obstacle in the race and instead like the things that beat the piss out of Luke and 3PO in NH. The final battle could have been great were it not for Anakin essentially blowing up the droid control ship by accident. If the Gungans hadn't been so "oopsy-daisy" klutzes or made the battle so G-rated I could've taken a three year old to see it, it would have been tolerable.

Attack of the Clones suffered because of epic terrible acting. Let's face it, Hayden Christensen was only really good in Shattered Glass, and Ewan McGregor could have done so much if George Lucas hadn't forced him to make little cute references to Ep IV Obi-Wan throughout the whole thing. Even Yoda was embarrasing. The battle on Geonosis was actually pretty cool when compared to the PM battle, except when Yoda was giving military commands in broken English. "To the forward command center take me." WTF?

Revenge of the Sith was the only fairly good one out of that trilogy, and even it was nowhere near a match for any of the originals, even in Special Edition form. The battles were cool in a BoEish way, even if they were more busy than dangerous. Hayden Christensen's bad acting was really the only bad one in this one; Yoda was better, Ewan McGregor was 100000000000 times better, and Natalie Portman was pretty good (except for the "breaking my heart" line).

The original trilogy is really just a matter of finding out which one wasn't as epic as the other. Empire and NH had nearly nothing wrong with them, and RotJ only suffered from the ****ing Ewoks and trying to be too much of a Vietnam cultural reference. That was all offset by what Flipside pointed out about Luke's temporary fall from the light side and Vader's redemption.

[NGTM-1R]

Heir to-

...oh wait.

[WMCoolmon]

I'm tired of hearing about all the bad points of the prequels. I wish people would just get over it and find some way to live with them.

When Steven Spielberg comes on here and starts critiquing the movies, then I'll listen, but until then, as near as I can tell, all of this is just the same negative-opinion stuff that everybody was saying when the prequels were released.

[Nuclear1]

Well, the prequels were...shiny?

The boxes are pretty too.

[haloboy100]

Well, the prequels were...shiny?

The boxes are pretty too.

He's got a point. And besides, this thread is about what we think of the star wars movies. It's Lucasfilm's fault that they sucked.

[Herra Tohtori]

I liked the kind of dark vs. light thing that happened in Luke there. It contributed a lot to the movie.

The force lightning scene was also particularly dramatic

Yeah... it was pretty much the best part of Ep.VI IMHO. Also, infinitely better than the mandatory lightning scenes in prequels. Just look at the dialogue...

And now, young Skywalker... you will die. vs. POWER! UNLIMITED POWER!!!

No competition there I believe, yet somehow Ian McDiarmid (along with Mace m-f***ing Windu with purple light saber) was able to turn even that little debacle into a memorable scene, when Hayden was mostly just looking like someone kicked him in the crotch repeatedly (not that he didn't deserve it) and sounded pretty much like it too.


I have to agree with whoever it said that Ep.1-3 are not disliked because they are poor movies, but because they aren't up to the levels of expectation - or the original trilogy, for that matter.

They could have been so much, but Lucas et al dumbed them down to readily convertable videogame material, paid more attention to computerized surroundings (I won't even call them special effects 'cause there's nothign special about them in the movies, seeing how everything is drowned in them). As it is, I prefer to read the books of the prequel episodes as opposed to watching the movies - lasts longer and doesn't attempt to feed everything down my throat in once digested form, if you catch my meaning. Stupid dialogue I can forgive - it was there in original trilogy, and heck, people tend to speak stupid things occasionally - but when you remove the bad acting and shiny toys from the view, I can imagine the world and events way better fitting the Star Wars universe than the movies did for me.

In fact, special kudos to whoever wrote the "Revenge of the Sith" book version. It actually manages to make Anakin seem have somewhat more reason to go dark and glowy-eyed than in the movies. Granted, the basic premise of going dark in order to protect your beloved from predicted death isn't the most convincing course of action for a cunning warrior. In the movies, he was kinda just manipulated around by Palpatine like he was a puppet by the string, and Hayden Christensen's acting (and the dialogue written for him) didn't really shed light to what the character's motives actually were. Also, in the books you can interpret him going to dark in many ways - his feelings clouding his judgement, or just being an arrogant prick who thought he could control the dark side and use it as a necessary evil to beat a bigger evil (no dice there obviously); in the movies it looks more like a combination of paranoid schizophrenia and a jealous hissy-fit. I mean... "I'll go dark to save Padme - woohoo, I feel great, Padme won't you follow me? Oh well I'll just throttle you here and now then instead!" Cunning warrior indeed...

...there would be more to rant over, but I think my opinion has become clear.


Oh, and my favourite of the movies is The Empire Strikes Back. It's just a series of excrement hitting the ventilator repeatedly for the Rebels, as it should be assuming the Galactic Empire had any competence at all behind them. Both Ep. IV and VI suffer from slight lack of it. Empire is the only one of the movies that depicts the imperials as a scary, undefeatable enemy aside from hit'n run or covert operations. They find you, you're screwed and you run as fast and far as you can. If you can.

[S-99]

Idk. After watching the prequel trilogy. I find that i like it better than ep 4 5 and 6.
Lightsaber battles actually were something very spectacular for once and want to see again. The lightsaber battles in the original star wars really sucked hard balls. After that the technology everyone used pre-empire reign was a lot more interesting. Also in the prequels you got to see more than just tatooine, hoth, endor, bespin, and the ewok planet. Also in the prequels the storm troopers were actually shown off as useful and effective fighting force (they still are just as awesome when the empire reigns, just that the original star wars episodes made the storm troopers act like cheese). The jedi were actually cool enough to want to pay attention to and follow along as opposed to waiting for when the next big space battle is going to happen.

My only *****ing about the prequels is that the acting should have been a lot better, there should have been no jarjar binks (the rest of the gungans are quite okay and did keep the droid army from reaching whatever naboo city they were marching to), and lastly that in ep 3 when anakin and obi wan board that huge separatist ship to get palpatine...that the whole ship changing orientation thing didn't happen. I mean wtf was that? Do they have really ****ty anti grav on board separatist ships, or was that just a really bad scene?

Jar jar binks was really just a place holder for c3po....for the kids who watch the movies. But, the thing is that c3po and even r2d2 were in all of the prequel episodes anyway. Why did lucas need jar jar? And why do we need a jar jar action figure!

Anyway, for the original star wars my favorite episode was empire strikes back. Because, sometimes when the bad guys win, it's just sooo good. Also it had what i consider the only real good lightsaber fight out of the original trilogy. It had luke fighting vader in a well presented more powerful darkside versus jedi trainee. I also found this great youtube star wars lightsaber fight montage comparing all of the films lightsaber battles in one showing.

The other reason why i liked the prequels better was because i've found that everything in star wars universe is a lot more interesting and a lot cooler if it's anything pre-empire. Star wars really sort of starts to suck after the empire gets defeated. After all of this, i have a hard decision between ep 2 and 3. Ep 3 did feature obi wan fighting without a lightsaber against general greivous which was really awesome. I can't decide.

At least i bear a comparison of most if not all the lightsaber fights in all of the movies It's highly recommended to check out and helps in the decision making of which movies were better.

[Flipside]

Well, the choreographing and special effects in 1-3 were obviously superior to 4-6, however, there's just something missing, oddly enough, I think it is that the actors in 1-3 took their roles too seriously, whereas the original actors were actually pretty tongue in cheek, odd that this somehow improved the film...

The thing is, 4-6 were the story of a small group of friends and the major roles they played in the downfall of the Empire, it was quite a 'closed' story in many respects, whereas 1-3 were massive in scope, trying to tell the story of an entire Empire, not just a few people in it.

Lucas tried to deal with all the stuff in 1-3 which, for 4-6 was mostly dealt with in Fiction and LucasArts sponsored releases after the movies. One quote from the 50 reasons to hate ROTJ that did catch my attention was the fact that Ewok is a household name despite never being mentioned once in ROTJ.

[Colonol Dekker]

Family guy blue harvest quote....


Peter / solo- "made the kessel run in less than 12 parsecs"
Chris / Luke-"Isn't a parsec a measure of distance not time?"
Peter/ solo-" Anyway.......<acarries on talking about something else>"

[Flipside]

I seem to recall that was pseudo-explained once that the 'Kessel Run' was basically extremely close to a black hole cluster (inside which the original Death Star was built), and the falcon managed to get within 12 parsecs of the cluster, which was closer than any other non-military vessel.

[Colonol Dekker]

Cheers you just ruined my favourite joke

[Flipside]

Well, if it helps any, the answer was so obviously tailored to fit the question that it really didn't forgive the comment in the first place

[Mefustae]

I seem to recall that was pseudo-explained once that the 'Kessel Run' was basically extremely close to a black hole cluster (inside which the original Death Star was built), and the falcon managed to get within 12 parsecs of the cluster, which was closer than any other non-military vessel.

[geek]That would be the Maw, within which was a research station where such lovelies as the Death Star prototype and Suncrusher were produced. Anyway, I was under the impression that explanation was that he made the Kessel run in 12 parsecs by skimming extremely close to the cluster and shortening the run length, thereby demonstrating his piloting skill.[/geek]

But then, bending over backwards to correct writing errors just gives everyone a back-ache.