Interesting thing about the Star Wars prequels

[DerekG]

Watching the films can be trying, what with the deadening CGI effects and stolid performances (aside from Ian McDiarmand and Liam Neeson), but if you actually sit down and talk about the thematics and story framework with a friend, the movies become interesting.

I like that Lucas began the conflict with a corporate battle over trade rights, and how the moguls and freedom fighters both were manipulated by a theocratic despot. I like that the second film revolves around a manufactured threat that is used to cede a crumbling republic over to said tyrant (war on terror, anyone?). I love stories about a would-be messiah's rise and fall. And who couldn't love a forbidden romance between a knight and a princess?

Lucas isn't a dummy. The problem is the execution; he just can't sell it.

The Jedi Knights--whom I always fancied to be romantics--are lifeless bores; the Sith are so elusive that there's no tension or urgency in the films. And we never feel the pain of the central protagonist, or the power of his attachments to people. Everything is revealed to us through conversation, and not through action. Show, not tell, right?

Lucas is a wonderful fashioner of stories, but he should have left the script-writing to others.

[LisaLynne]

1. I agree.

When he cedes control, his movies end up better. It's a matter, with him, in my opinion, of not knowing your own limitations.

[aden_nak]

2. He has a fantastic vision but mediocre implimentation.

And that is coming from someone with a Star Wars picture in his signature, so yes, I am quite the fan. He assumes a familiarity with the characters that does not exist (case in point, Darth Maul, the main villain in the first prequel, did not so much as harm anyone until the last sequence of the film).

[Borgnine]

3. Certainly.

The foundation is solid, but the rest of it is crap.

He really should have given control of the films to somebody as he did in The Empire Strikes Back, as well as not relied on CGI. Nothing is tangible or real... the eye can discern the difference between computer effects and physical props. That's why Jabba the Hutt, a giant puppet, in Return of the Jedi looks better than he does in the special edition of the original.

[dave123williams]

4. I saw the preview for the new one coming in May...

And it looks OK. Darth Vader has been give a little 'punch up' to his look that makes him, in LucasFilm words, 'more symmetrical'. The fight coreography looks very, very well done. Expect a bitchin' lightsaber duel.

Lucas had better not fuck this up, or I swear, I'm going up to Skywalker ranch with a flamethrower. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

(Attention Lucasfilm attorneys; my car couldn't make it up there, and I don't own a flamethrower)

[aden_nak]

5. Hayden Christensen sucked at the fight choreography in Epi II.

Lucas was pissed, and made him study it almost the whole time between. I guess he figured his acting was a lost cause, so they could at least make the fight cool.

[dave123williams]

6. Yeah; he seems also to have put on some muscle mass...

Looks bigger, older. More evil.

[aden_nak]

7. I wouldn't know.

I am making sure not to so much as see a single preview photo for the last movie. I had the first Prequel ruined for me when someone left a comic book open on my bed to the end of the saberfight two days before the movie premiered. ><

[DerekG]

8. And yet Christensen isn't a bad actor

He was quite good in other movies; if Lucas had let these performers breathe--as Kirshner did for Empire--we might have seen something grand.

Edit: Corrected the spelling of the name.