chefelf-
agreed, but we all know there are mindless reactionaries sitting on both sides of the prequel fence.
Will Brooker Editorial Force.Net is good for something I guess
#17
Posted 04 October 2004 - 03:44 PM
QUOTE (jariten @ Oct 4 2004, 02:02 AM)
chefelf-
agreed, but we all know there are mindless reactionaries sitting on both sides of the prequel fence.
agreed, but we all know there are mindless reactionaries sitting on both sides of the prequel fence.
No doubt. For every angry email that said: "STAR WASR IS RAD TO MAXXX!!!11!!!one YOU ARE FUCKING BANTHA PDOO1!" I must've gotten ten that said: "YAH! LUCASE SUX!!1! FUK SSTAR WASR!!!111``1oneone1~!"
Come to think of it, they were all from the same person.
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#18
Posted 16 October 2004 - 05:17 AM
QUOTE
Mos Eisley is an adult world presented for a young audience; the urban nightlife in Attack of the Clones is, by contrast, a childish version of an adult world. Coruscant’s Outlander Nightclub where Anakin and Obi-Wan track Zam Wessell is a gaudy neon den, as threatening as a set from the 1960s Batman. The young Jedi weave confidently through the crowds, hassled only by a kid who tries to sell them “death sticks”; even the local drug sounds lame, with a sensible health-warning as its street name. The Nightclub is a set-piece, one more visual spectacle in a sequence that looks like pre-production for a video game; it’s a ten year-old’s idealisation of the kind of “adult” place his big sister goes to when she’s dressed up for the evening etc. etc.
this critisism makes no sense at all. he totally fails to recognise even the most basic purposes for these scenes. the dive in Mos Eisley is dangerous as it helps to stress the aspects of Lukes character that Lucas wanted stressing at the time i.e hes inexperienced, vunerable, an easy target. the same goes for Anakin (and the jedi in general) Watch Anakin in Outlander though- sure of himself, confidant, the scene is reflective of the man. no one picks a fight with the jedi- why would they? anakin doesnt feel threatened- why should he? Mos Eisley is not Tatooine- although drugs exist (and whats wrong with `Deathsticks`? Lucas had a few lines of dialogue and he needed to be sure that everyone knew that they were talking about drugs) there is no scope for the same level of lawlessness and violence that was commonplace on Tatooine. and why is the bar like a video game? because it has lights? because its a different environment to Tatooine? he totally fails to enlighten me.
QUOTE
Coruscant’s Outlander Nightclub, on the other hand, looks like somewhere the Teletubbies would go for a drink
love the way he comes up with stuff like this, realises he cant really back it up, but leaves it in the article anyway for a cheap laugh.
QUOTE
I wonder if any fans of whatever age – adult, teenage, under-10 – would even recognise the music playing in the Outlander scene.
probably not, considering there wasnt any.
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#19
Posted 16 October 2004 - 05:29 AM
has editing been disabled?! am i hopelessly misinformed again??
anyway...
that was as far as ive got the time to read/comment on. his nostalgic craving for the old way of doing things has a certain comedy about it though, like your old slightly senile grandfather, complaining about the "new things" and harking back to when things were all fields. SW had always been about SFX, creating unreality, something out of nothing. there were plenty of poor, stilted performances in the OT too, which puppets and other things (which could never be used in the PT anyway for what Lucas wanted to do) didnt seem to be capable of fixing. the excellent effects of the PT trilogy are mearly the logical conclusion of what Lucas started with on the OT- but both are fake, and yes, BOTH required a suspension of disbelief from the actors in order for them to imagine themselves properly in the scene.
anyway...
that was as far as ive got the time to read/comment on. his nostalgic craving for the old way of doing things has a certain comedy about it though, like your old slightly senile grandfather, complaining about the "new things" and harking back to when things were all fields. SW had always been about SFX, creating unreality, something out of nothing. there were plenty of poor, stilted performances in the OT too, which puppets and other things (which could never be used in the PT anyway for what Lucas wanted to do) didnt seem to be capable of fixing. the excellent effects of the PT trilogy are mearly the logical conclusion of what Lucas started with on the OT- but both are fake, and yes, BOTH required a suspension of disbelief from the actors in order for them to imagine themselves properly in the scene.
#20
Posted 16 October 2004 - 12:13 PM
The line in that Star Wars fan's response about how he can't wait to see Star Wars "as it was meant to be seen" reminds me of the response on TheOneRing.net and a thousand other places to those of us who didn't like what Peter Jackson did to The Lord of the Rings. (Forgive me, Just your average movie goer, but I can only be honest here.) Tours de force of visual spectacle and (some) good acting those movies were, and a few of the changes added something that perhaps needed to be added (I'm thinking largely here of the scene of Boromir teaching the young hobbits how to use their swords, which both explains why Merry and Pippin have at least some competence at sword-fighting later in the story and also adds a human touch to Boromir that counterbalances his, er, less than honorable aspects.)
I, however, and many like me (cf. Andrew Rilstone on Peter Jackson's The Two Towers; there are, by the way, good essays on Star Wars elsewhere on Andrew Rilstone's site), did not like Jackson's fundamental alterations of Tolkien's story and themes. (I'm hoping to get up an essay on the subject some day, by the way, which promises to be very long; I'll say here that the most important theme, altered or eliminated in Jackson's movies, is that of free will and forgiveness.) However, whenever we communicated this dislike to the fan sites, we were roasted, denounced as "purists", and snidely informed that our "purist" dream of a twenty-hour-long verbatim adaptation must give way to reality. (Er, yes, we never disputed that. It's not the fact of the change, but the substance and effects of the changes, that is important.)
The tentative conclusion I draw was that the Tolkien fans had been dreaming for so long about seeing a respectable, seriously taken adaptation of their favorite story (not like those Ralph Bakshi and Rankin-Bass disasters) that, when news of Jackson's films, made with real actors and a whacking great budget, burst upon the scene, many of the fans' critical faculties were quite overwhelmed; they were so glad that something was going to be put to screen that they became willing to accept and go into ecstasies over anything that was put to screen. Who cares about tedious literary themes when you get to see a Balrog and Ian McKellen?
Anyway, that's what the unquestioning Star Wars fanboys' declarations remind me of. Again the anticipation whipped up to a frenetic level--and, hey, I took part in it for both The Phantom Menace and The Fellowship of the Ring; I didn't go into either waiting with glee to savage them, although I've been accused of that. Again the willingness to accept whatever was given just because, at last, after decades of waiting, they were finally given something.
That went on a lot longer than I meant it to. I apologize.
I, however, and many like me (cf. Andrew Rilstone on Peter Jackson's The Two Towers; there are, by the way, good essays on Star Wars elsewhere on Andrew Rilstone's site), did not like Jackson's fundamental alterations of Tolkien's story and themes. (I'm hoping to get up an essay on the subject some day, by the way, which promises to be very long; I'll say here that the most important theme, altered or eliminated in Jackson's movies, is that of free will and forgiveness.) However, whenever we communicated this dislike to the fan sites, we were roasted, denounced as "purists", and snidely informed that our "purist" dream of a twenty-hour-long verbatim adaptation must give way to reality. (Er, yes, we never disputed that. It's not the fact of the change, but the substance and effects of the changes, that is important.)
The tentative conclusion I draw was that the Tolkien fans had been dreaming for so long about seeing a respectable, seriously taken adaptation of their favorite story (not like those Ralph Bakshi and Rankin-Bass disasters) that, when news of Jackson's films, made with real actors and a whacking great budget, burst upon the scene, many of the fans' critical faculties were quite overwhelmed; they were so glad that something was going to be put to screen that they became willing to accept and go into ecstasies over anything that was put to screen. Who cares about tedious literary themes when you get to see a Balrog and Ian McKellen?
Anyway, that's what the unquestioning Star Wars fanboys' declarations remind me of. Again the anticipation whipped up to a frenetic level--and, hey, I took part in it for both The Phantom Menace and The Fellowship of the Ring; I didn't go into either waiting with glee to savage them, although I've been accused of that. Again the willingness to accept whatever was given just because, at last, after decades of waiting, they were finally given something.
That went on a lot longer than I meant it to. I apologize.
#21
Posted 16 October 2004 - 12:32 PM
QUOTE: Coruscant’s Outlander Nightclub, on the other hand, looks like somewhere the Teletubbies would go for a drink
"love the way he comes up with stuff like this, realises he cant really back it up, but leaves it in the article anyway for a cheap laugh."
Considering that the very scene itself exists largely for the sake of a cheap laugh (the "you will reform your life" or whatever Mind Trick it was that Obi-Wan perpetrates on the "death stick" pusher) doesn't exactly strengthen your rebuttal.
To reiterate what I touch upon above: your comment says not what's on the screen but what you want to see on the screen. I say the same to those who praise Attack of the Clones because it shows Anakin's dark side. Er, no, it doesn't. The intent is there; no doubt Lucas really did hope to show us Anakin's slide into darkness. But the reality is that Anakin's supposed corruption comes across not as dark hints of the future Vader but as a teenager's whining; even the scene where he (off-screen) massacres his mother's kidnappers has no weight to it, partly because Hayden Christiansen is incapable of looking threatening.
Lucas really should have cast someone who would have looked older and harder. No good names come to mind; I remember thinking that Dominic West, who played Richmond against Ian McKellen's Richard III in Richard Loncraine's production of the play some years back, would have done; but better would have been some of the young actors of the past (Tom Courtenay comes to mind.) Incidentally I thought that James Franco in the Raimi Spider-Man movies was as bad as Hayden Christiansen in coming across not as a potential murderer but as a petulant, pathetic adolescent.
"love the way he comes up with stuff like this, realises he cant really back it up, but leaves it in the article anyway for a cheap laugh."
Considering that the very scene itself exists largely for the sake of a cheap laugh (the "you will reform your life" or whatever Mind Trick it was that Obi-Wan perpetrates on the "death stick" pusher) doesn't exactly strengthen your rebuttal.
To reiterate what I touch upon above: your comment says not what's on the screen but what you want to see on the screen. I say the same to those who praise Attack of the Clones because it shows Anakin's dark side. Er, no, it doesn't. The intent is there; no doubt Lucas really did hope to show us Anakin's slide into darkness. But the reality is that Anakin's supposed corruption comes across not as dark hints of the future Vader but as a teenager's whining; even the scene where he (off-screen) massacres his mother's kidnappers has no weight to it, partly because Hayden Christiansen is incapable of looking threatening.
Lucas really should have cast someone who would have looked older and harder. No good names come to mind; I remember thinking that Dominic West, who played Richmond against Ian McKellen's Richard III in Richard Loncraine's production of the play some years back, would have done; but better would have been some of the young actors of the past (Tom Courtenay comes to mind.) Incidentally I thought that James Franco in the Raimi Spider-Man movies was as bad as Hayden Christiansen in coming across not as a potential murderer but as a petulant, pathetic adolescent.
#22
Posted 16 October 2004 - 08:14 PM
As much as I love to hate the prequels, and as much as I loathe to try and defend AOTC I have to disagree with you on a certain point that you brought up Ernesttomlinson.
Now even though I pretty much agree with everything you say, I'm not so sure the fact Hayden doesn't look threatning was really part of the problem. You said it yourself, that the scene came off as a teenagers whining, I think the scene would have really played better if he actually felt NO remorse whatsoever for slaughtering the tuscan raiders, instead of the blubbery version which was onscreen. Now I understand he just lost his mother and all (for anyone trying to defend the scene), but don't you think it really would have captured shown his dark side a bit better if he was more emotionless? Just a thought.
QUOTE
To reiterate what I touch upon above: your comment says not what's on the screen but what you want to see on the screen. I say the same to those who praise Attack of the Clones because it shows Anakin's dark side. Er, no, it doesn't. The intent is there; no doubt Lucas really did hope to show us Anakin's slide into darkness. But the reality is that Anakin's supposed corruption comes across not as dark hints of the future Vader but as a teenager's whining; even the scene where he (off-screen) massacres his mother's kidnappers has no weight to it, partly because Hayden Christiansen is incapable of looking threatening.
Now even though I pretty much agree with everything you say, I'm not so sure the fact Hayden doesn't look threatning was really part of the problem. You said it yourself, that the scene came off as a teenagers whining, I think the scene would have really played better if he actually felt NO remorse whatsoever for slaughtering the tuscan raiders, instead of the blubbery version which was onscreen. Now I understand he just lost his mother and all (for anyone trying to defend the scene), but don't you think it really would have captured shown his dark side a bit better if he was more emotionless? Just a thought.