Star Wars II: Return of the Name 947
Mutant was among the onslaught of readers who submitted that the final name has been chosen for Star Wars Episode II. It is... Attack of the Clones. Let the sarcasm commence. I'll pass judgement after I see it.
Re:You can never go home. (Score:3, Insightful)
Circa 1977:
Circa 1999:
Concerning blind spots... (Score:3, Insightful)
"I saw episode IV-VI when I was a kid, and they were great! and now I went to see episode I, and I was shocked to find that it was made for kids!"
well... have you ever considered the fact that the first three were, too? and that you like them now because you saw them when you were kids?
I saw episode one on the premier night here in Sweden. never in my life have I witnessed such excitement. the one boo! I heard was when we saw that they had translated (!) the magical three paragraphs to Swedish!
then it was all cheers, every time a reference to the old movies were made, or a familiar character was presented.
most of my male friends thought it was great, with the exception of Jar-Jar. and I see the same consensus here. I have yet to find a single gyu that likes him, or even stands to watch him. and I would like to offer another view of that.
me and some of my female friends have discussed this phenomena. we all think he's cute. the one bone we have with him is that he's the only one in all the movies that succeeds not by doing his best, but by being chronically clumsy and equally lucky.
but he is a caricature of a lot of negative male characteristics. and maybe you guys don't like to be reminded of those.
it's the only way we could explain the extreme, one-sided hate we have witnessed. and maybe there is some truth in it...
now, flame all you like... I have mail filters, and I know how to use them.
Not a thing of childhood (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, many people are ranting about how "Attack of the Clones" is a retarded movie title. I'd have to agree. Granted, I'm one of those 'saw it when I was young, fell in love with it, altered reality,' types. My parents, on the other hand, are not.
My parents recently saw Episode I. They were appauled at the horrid commericialization of the franchise and the apparent lack of effort that went into the actual film, the story, and the plot. Granted, Luca always triedmake money, but Star Wars was art when Lucas started making it. He said so himself - his opt-outs about how it's simply a childrens film and such are just that - opt outs. I mean, for crying out loud, Episode I didn't even have new music composed for it to fit the film - it simply had a compiled version done by someone else, so they could slap John William's name on it. They spent all their budget on special effects. Bastards.
Re:Yeah, it's like watching Big Bird go into the o (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember finding out about child abuse on Gont, and why wizards from Roke avoided girls, in Ursula Le Guin's Tehanu?
Remember when all the kids got killed, and Aslan turned into Jesus, in C.S. Lewis's The Last Battle?
Remember when Bilbo Baggins turned into an old, evil monster (if only for a moment) in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings -- and then the "sequel" to that had no hobbits, only elf genealogy and linguistics?
If it's not what you expected -- that is, what you extrapolated from the first movie(s) or book(s) -- you're not going to like it. We build cosy little worlds from the "original" stories, then hate it when the author intrudes.
No, I don't think there's a solution. But the problem isn't unique to George Lucas. Sequels to creative works you unconditionally love will tend to suck.
Especially with speculative / escapist fiction -- part of the appeal of which is (I assume) that the "world" presented is self-contained, and the (usually young) reader can comprehend it in its totality. Unlike the all-too-confusing real world.
Actually I was under the impression... (Score:3, Insightful)
Or at least that's what I read in one of Shatner's "memoir" books... god only knows why I voluntarily READ that trash, one never knows how much is true and how much is 110% "Billshit"...
--=Major
Re:Star Wars all sucks, but it's hard to notice (Score:3, Insightful)
I saw it at college age. I was disappointed because it was space opera rather than "hard" scifi of the 2001 variety. But at least it was fun. I've rented it several times, and I'll rent it again someday.
That Pathetic Movie wasn't fun, and I certainly won't be renting it.
A word for all the naysayers (Score:3, Insightful)
Yea and those who dare not to venerate the name of Lucas and pay the required homage shall be stricken from the rolls of the nation. They will be outcasts in their own land of birth. Denied bland conversation with their fellow citizens about the masterworks of Lucas, they will wallow in their anguish. They shall be stricken from the lists of people to be protected in time of war and their names will be added to the lists of those who will not recieve the bounty of this great land in the form of Blue Light specials and the occasional Buy one Get one FREE sales at the local Piggly Wiggly. They shall be stricken from the rolls of every good and beneficient policy this great conglomerate bestows upon it's consumers. Moreover their name shall be dupliated in all databases related to taxation and if they ever contest this clause, they are subject to auditing by the BSA, RIAA, MPAA and Rectal-Probers-R-Us.
So let it be written(in tiny print behind an encryption scheme which may not be broken under article two of this constitution, formerly known as the DMCA) so let it be done.
Now if you missed this update to the supreme law of our land, that isn't my fault. I suggest you rush right out to your computer and fully enable all the update packages you can and register any and all software you have. I got this preview of our new constitution as a bonus when I downloaded the latest version of Minsweeper, the official game of the land. Baseball isn't bringing in enough money it seems.
Steven
That's what I said about "The Phantom Menace" (Score:3, Insightful)
Say it ain't so, George!
Re:Why not... (Score:2, Insightful)
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
That sounds dumb.
like the other titles were so great... (Score:2, Insightful)
Go back and watch the asteroid scenes in ESB. What was that? I'll tell you: it was every hackneyed car chase scene ever filmed, except this time with space ships. It didn't have to be deep, it just had to be incredibly cool. And it is.
Not to give anything away, but from what I've heard, we get to see Anakin learn the long-distance choke thing, which he spends the last fifteen minutes of the movie practising on Jar Jar...
--
Great for the kiddies, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Do people who enjoyed George Lucas' original trilogy (well, minus the last half of RotJ) really care about the George Lucas' current focus on ten-year-olds?
Sure it's bad.... (Score:3, Insightful)
but Blue Harvest [blueharvest.net] was already used....
To be fair... (Score:2, Insightful)
Most importantly is that we all have to remember that the new movies will never live up to our ideas of the old movies. Most of us were 10 or under when we first saw and we didn't question the motivations in the movies or their titles. I'm sure that most kids are going to take "Attack of the Clones" in stride and not question it...
In one regard, I wish I could still think like that, and not have the need to think like an adult. The price we pay for growing up, I guess.
Now, after typing about this, I'm really starting to like the name...guess we'll just have to wait till May...
ENOUGH already! (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, someone else has probably already posted this sentiment by now...
More Anti-Cloning Propaganda (Score:2, Insightful)
Has anyone ever seen a Sci-Fi movie about cloning that did not portray them as evil or used for evil purposes? How much do you want to bet the clones in this movie are absolute evil and are fighting versus a cast of lovable, fluffy, obnoxious absolute good characters. Of course the bet is moot since I for one will not be watching this tripe nor giving Lucas one more cent.
You can never go home. (Score:2, Insightful)
The high will never be as good as the first time, no matter how much you do...
and it'll never be 1977 again, with your easily impressioned pre-teen brain being permanently changed by every laser blast... feeling pure joy at every slash of a light saber...
It's for your kids. Stop complaining and let them enjoy it.
Re:Great for the kiddies, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
I can only speculate why there has been a sacrifice of the genuine quality and depth of the sextet; there is a prolific desire for these to be the universal fantasy of princesses and demons, and yet I personally find the new version of Star Wars providing answers where it is better to leave mystery, showing special effects where there should be simplicity, and employing the enactment of great plot to show power where there should be implication of power through character.
I personally had hoped for the artistic appreciation I now have of the original trilogy, but was disappointed. True power is restraint, something that lacks in the making of Episode I of the Star Wars series, contrasting its predecessors.
Of course, it is not my call to make, but I do wish George Lucas had shown the discretion to appeal to many levels of appreciation.
You'll never see it. SW2 violates the DMCA! (Score:4, Insightful)
Lucas will be sued by God with penalties of 10 years in jail, a $5,000,000 fine or both. However a plea bargain may be possible if Lucas agrees to please kill off Jar Jar.
When Jedi Attack (Score:5, Insightful)
The Phantom Menace
Attack of the Clones
???
A New Hope
The Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi
They're all silly unless you've been conditioned as a child to think they're all amazingly cool. Fortunately, I have. :-)
Re:Appropriate (Score:2, Insightful)
A New Hope is loosely (and admittedly) based on The Hidden Fortress. Given that Lucas was good friends with Joseph Campbell, the man who wrote The Hero With A Thousand Faces (and rumors I've seen around that Campbell actually consulted on the film), I certainly don't fault Lucas for using existing source material. Hell, Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet were both pre-existing stories when Shakespeare wrote his own versions...
People have been borrowing stories from each other for a long, long time--I don't think The Magnificent Seven is any less of a movie simply because it's Seven Samurai set in the old west. And I always laugh my ass off at Strange Brew despite it's ties to Hamlet.
In all honesty, anyone could apply a rehash of the Lancelot/Galahad tale (where a father falls and a son redeems) to practically any situation. It's all in the telling of it.
I can nary think of any piece of JMS dialogue that doesn't sound like it was written by a erudite speechwriter. The man has some plotting skills, but he can't compete with Joss Whedon, Kevin Smith, nor Quentin Tarantino (What's he been doing lately??) for realistic dialogue and character.
Re:Great for the kiddies, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Like many others, I was heavily influenced as a child by Star Wars, and Star Wars played a huge part, I think, in the shaping of my personality. To this day, I still enjoy movies with starships, lasers, and weird monsters. And I still enjoy Star Wars.
However, I never expected Episode I to magically return me to twelve years of age. I never expected it to erase my capacity for critical thought and open a world of childlike wonder in my head for one simple reason: I'm no longer a child. Neither did I expect the Messiah to come down and fellate me, as so many who were disappointed by Episode I seem to have expected.
So, while I wasn't all that crazy about Jar Jar, I had relatively few other complaints with the movie. It didn't blow me away, but then, I didn't really expect it to. Especially being an expository prequel such as it is. I feel its biggest weakness as a movie is that it's essentially all backstory. A computer-generated Gungan... not that big a deal.
To be honest, what's disenchanted me more than anything about Star Wars is all the Lucas-bashing and vitriol that seems to characterize the "fans".
I get tired of "Kill Jar Jar" humor that's neither clever nor funny. I get tired of seeing Lucas demonized and slandered by people who won't put their money where their mouth is and just refuse to see the movie they supposedly hate -- instead of demanding it be put on DVD immediately. I get tired of people pretending that someone's putting a gun to their head and forcing them to buy merchandise they don't want. I get tired of people attacking Lucas and his movies for not living up to their "mythical hype" when Lucas has said many times that it's just a Flash Gordon serial with a budget.
That, more than anything, has sapped my enjoyment of the Star Wars universe, far more than any annoying CGI character ever could. But I still enjoy the movies. I just wish others could do the same, or at least move on with their lives if they no longer find the movie enjoyable.
er, no (Score:2, Insightful)
Recap:
3PO: anthropomorphic robot, comical
Chewbacca: unintelligible, cool alien, badass cool character
Jar Jar: unintelligible, annoying as shit
Re:Okay... (Score:4, Insightful)
Due to now being an uncle I saw the re-releases of the first 3 movies a few years ago, and they hold up pretty well, allowing for the shrinkage of theater screens and auditoriums in the interim. Then my nephew and I went to see Phantom Menace. He liked Jar-Jar just fine. I wanted to see Darth Maul grab his tongue and garrotte him with it. Slowly.
Jar-Jar aside, Phantom Menace was the quality I'd expect from a movie made by the same person that made the 1977 movie, but if he'd made it 25 years earlier, not 25 years later.
How old you were when you first saw any of the movies has nothing to do with the shortcomings of Phantom Menace.
Re:OT: Why Real Clone Wars Aren't Gonna Happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Star Wars all sucks, but it's hard to notice (Score:3, Insightful)
Lucas was a devotee of Joseph Campbell [jcf.org], the late comparative mythologist, and he used Campbell's work as a paint-by-number set for generating the plot of the first movie, by his own admission even if not in so many words. (By "first movie" I mean the first one that was actually made, now called Episode 4 but originally called just "Star Wars".) It's filled with motifs we expect to see in great stories, so our minds naturally associate it with being a great story. Aided by the admittedly competent cinematography, we are presented with the semblence or illusion of a good movie. This blinds us to the plot holes, the shallow characterization, the cliched dialog, and the shoddy acting that it typical of the series.
Plot Holes: Try, for example, to reconcile the timeline of ANH with what is now known to be required for even the beginning of Jedi training. Luke can't have had time to learn much on Tattooine, and he only has the time during the trip to Aldaraan for serious instruction. How long does this take? There's nothing in the movie to suggest that more than a day or two passes in transit, possibly less. And Luke's starting out as a teenager, when even Anakin at 8 (or is it 10? I forget) is thought by Yoda to be too old to begin.
Shallow Characterization: All the characters are very close to their archetypes. There are many assumptions we therefore automatically make about them, and Lucas doesn't have to do very much work at all to make them "pass" for deep ones. And he doesn't.
Cliched Dialog:"I can't believe he's gone." (Luke about Obi-Wan. He'd known him, what, a week or less?) "Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid." (Han about the Jedi. Substitute the appropriate weaponry and it could have come from a spaghetti western.) "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." (Leia to Tarkin. How many times has the plucky revolutionary said something similar to the dictator in numerous other settings?) Et cetera.
Shoddy acting: Alec Guinness' opinions on this are well known, but even so he and the other few competent actors deliver even the most hideously bad lines in a credible manner. Unfortunately, they don't have enough screen time to make much of a difference. Seen Mark Hamill in anything lately? There's a reason for that. He was bad enough in ANH, but he really showed he didn't have it in RoJ. When he tries to sound mystical he sounds stoned. For serenity we get vacancy. Instead of firm resolve we get a sort of vague assurance. Man he was bad. Carrie Fisher wasn't much better in the first movie, but at least she improved in the craft after a few years. Harrison Ford might have been good enough, but he failed to rise to the level of genius it would have taken to break Han out of the "rogue with a good heart underneath it all" mold.
If after thinking about it all in these terms I had any doubt about the quality of the story, I simply have to think about TPM. If Lucas ever had it, he's lost it. There just isn't any enthusiasm left any more. He should have been thinking of the people who'd been waiting almost 20 years for that film, not the 10 year olds the promotional tie-ins were designed for.
Or maybe he was, and this was the best he could do. Oh well. It could have been a lot better.
Re:Yeah, it's like watching Big Bird go into the o (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why wasn't this posted earlier? (Score:1, Insightful)
Boo hoo, my submission wasn't posted and now I can't brag to my moth^H^H^H^Hfriends about how my story was posted on slashdot.
Re:Star Wars all sucks, but it's hard to notice (Score:3, Insightful)
Shallow Characterization: Hence the wide-spread appeal! People know who to love and who to hate, and Lucas backs this up. (People's emotions about the characters make them seem "deep" like you said.)
Cliched Dialog:"I can't believe he's gone." (Luke about Obi-Wan. He'd known him, what, a week or less?) "Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid." (Han about the Jedi. Substitute the appropriate weaponry and it could have come from a spaghetti western.) "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." (Leia to Tarkin. How many times has the plucky revolutionary said something similar to the dictator in numerous other settings?) Et cetera.
The lines might be cliches, but they're effective. To me, the movies weren't about romance. First and foremost they were action movies (with a smattering of several religions thrown in for flair and "depth").
Shoddy acting:By my count, only two actors were "stars" (Guinness and Ford, and Ford not until later). What were you expecting? I agree with the sentiment, but wasn't the first movie made with very low budget (I could be wrong, if I am forgive me) so they had to deal with bad acting, and had to keep the same people through the series.
Unfortunately the 10-year olds are where the money is. Not many people above 10 are going to get their Moms to buy figurines (of which Lucas gets a big cut). Nothing you can do...
Re:Star Wars all sucks, but it's hard to notice (Score:3, Insightful)
All these attributes served to make the original series stand out in all our minds, not to mention our young, impressionable minds at the time. (E.g., in my mind, Transformers will always be the greatest cartoon of all time, even though I can barely sit through the non-sensical episodes now.)