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[A²]

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/02/28/star-wars-xxx-porn-movie-review/

[Bongo Bill]

The prequels are bad movies but I do think they improve the series as a whole. Somehow. It's like - they're bad adaptations of a good story, not bad stories in themselves.

[François]

I think that's what's the most frustrating here. They're not irredeemable polished turds like, say, Battlefield Earth. They're more like chocolate chip cookies slathered in feces.

[Mothra]

They are just one long collective log of shit.

Whatever little possible hints of an interesting larger narrative there might or could have been, Lucas picked the direction he wanted to go in and concentrated on the things he wanted to tell. These things were all clearly terrible.

You cannot salvage something that was built entirely of bullshit

[Büge]

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/02/28/star-wars-xxx-porn-movie-review/

Didn't they already make this, but with Goku and Sailor Moon?

[A²]

That's Sailor Moon and the 7 Ballz.

[Lottel]

So why does Jar-Jar get the hate that C3PO doesn't? C3PO is just as annoying as Jar-Jar but is in the movies way longer.
Hell, I think R2D2 is pretty annoying for as overused as he is. I'd like him a lot more if he wasn't in every other scene and every scene with him in it uses him as a slapstick humor or "'BEEP boop *whistle*' 'You said it R2. Hahahaha."

[Büge]

That's Sailor Moon and the 7 Ballz.

Not what I was thinking of. Same company though.

star ballz

(I dunno if you'd call this NSFW, but it's probably best you not show anyone anyway)

[Mothra]

So why does Jar-Jar get the hate that C3PO doesn't? C3PO is just as annoying as Jar-Jar but is in the movies way longer.
Hell, I think R2D2 is pretty annoying for as overused as he is. I'd like him a lot more if he wasn't in every other scene and every scene with him in it uses him as a slapstick humor or "'BEEP boop *whistle*' 'You said it R2. Hahahaha."

I think it's because it just makes you feel bad to hate on a character you already like. I mean, I loved C3PO as a kid, and I still like the guy in the original movies.

To hate what he is in the prequels is to allow those movies to tarnish my feelings on the original trilogy, which I have consciously and subconsciously avoided at all costs. I think everyone tried their hardest to avert their eyes during the whole robot-factory sequence in Attack of the Clones, because failing to do so would turn you against anything connected to anything that allowed this thing to become A Thing.

[Thad]

Whatever little possible hints of an interesting larger narrative there might or could have been, Lucas picked the direction he wanted to go in and concentrated on the things he wanted to tell. These things were all clearly terrible.

Hm.  Things that are actually terrible ideas:
Jar-Jar/other horrible racist stereotypes
Jango Fett and the Clone Army
Midichlorians
Constant fucking unnecessary appearances of characters from the original trilogy ("Hi, I'm your stepbrother, and this is my girlfriend!")

Things that are not terrible ideas but were terribly executed:
The romance
Padme's death of nothing in particular

Things that are kind of a wash:
Pod Race
Immaculate Conception
General Grievous

Things that are actually pretty good:
Kashyyyk
Yoda
Darth Maul
Qui-Gon Jinn
Nearly all the action scenes
Darth Vader catches on fire

Errors by omission:
Actual character development for Anakin
Actual character development for Obi-Wan
Actual character development for Padme
Levity

So no, again, I don't think the problem is in the ideas, it's in the execution.  The story beats are there, the cool visuals are certainly there, it's just that the actual emotional connection with the characters fails on just about every level.

So why does Jar-Jar get the hate that C3PO doesn't?

Part of it's probably because everybody's always kind of giving 3PO shit instead of acting like he's important.

And part of it's that he DOES get some legitimately good one-liners here and there ("I propose a new strategy: let the Wookiee win.").

[A²]

Things that are kind of a wash:
Pod Race
Immaculate Conception
General Grievous

Are you calling Episode 1: Racer anything but the best star wars arcade game.

Also just so we're clear, you probably are, but you're referring to Palpatine/Sideous force-impregnating Shmi with the Immaculate Conception, right?

[Büge]

Things that are actually pretty good:
Kashyyyk
Yoda
Darth Maul
Qui-Gon Jinn
Nearly all the action scenes
Darth Vader catches on fire

I still maintain that Yoda doing CGI lightsaber acrobatics is probably the worst thing they could have done to his character short of fart jokes.

He's a Jedi Master. THE Jedi Master. The force is something that permeates the universe and he's been using it for eight hundred years (or more). I'm certain that there comes a point when weapons become no longer necessary. He should have been like a Buddhist master: unbound by earthly concerns, dispensing wisdom to those who seek it, as far at one with the force as one can be without leaving the material plane.

And THAT should have been a failing of the Jedi. Their master was so far beyond that he couldn't see that the affairs of lesser beings were tearing the galaxy apart, so he has to descend from his place of power and try to mend things, but it's too late. He's humbled by the annihilation of the Jedi order and goes into exile to atone.

Heck, that could be the reason for his unusual way of speaking. He's been one with the force for so long, it's difficult to adjust to something as mundane as talking.

[Mongrel]

Agree. I never wanted to see Yoda actually fight. I always hoped that anyone short of Sidious or maybe Dooku would just saying something along the lines of "Oh shit! Yoda's coming!" and bail. That his capabilities merely be implied, rather than shown. That maybe even goes for Sidous too, I guess.

As for an actual fight, I thought it would have been much cooler if Yoda either fought entirely with Force energy (i.e. the Emperor tries to fry him with lighting and he just deflects it back), or if he (or both of them) just sat and meditated while their sabres fought each other telekinetically.

Basically that Batman Beyond fight Bal posted earlier today, only instead of an evil fat psychic, it's Yoda. That's really how I envisioned Yoda fighting. I think a lot of people would have assumed that, really.

[Brentai]

One could argue that the failing of the Jedi was that their master wasn't an enlightened teacher, but rather just a high-fallutin' templar who happens to be really good with a sword and throwing large objects around.  A sage with true knowledge of the Force wouldn't be so easily fooled by a low-level Dark Side enchantment that made extremely fucking obvious things somehow hard to figure out.  Under Yoda's leadership, the Jedi "religion", which should have been concerned with the spiritual health of the Republic, instead became a redundant peacekeeping force* with an unnecessarily restrictive code of conduct.  While they should have been combating the Sith by suppressing the influence of the Dark Side, they instead fed right into it by trying to hunt down and fight the Sith Lords, and so the Republic was easily overtaken and corrupted into its darker form of the Empire.

It's only after decades of living alone and reflecting on his failures that Yoda comes to realize exactly what he did wrong, and later stresses the point to Luke - that we are luminous beings, yodda yodda yodda, and absolutely nothing will ever be gained by running off with your lightsaber in hand and trying to beat down your enemy.  It takes a while to sink in, but eventually the boy gets it - he throws away his lightsaber at the final crucial moment and lets The Force do its own balancing act.  It works out perfectly, the cycle of violence is broken (after one last guy gets tossed down a shaft anyway), and in that moment Yoda joins the growing number of characters whose lifelong failings are finally redeemed.

There.  I've now turned a silly, cynically thrown in bit of character derailment into a new arc of development for you.  You are welcome.

* Yes I know the Old Republic series shows them as even moreso; the Order isn't exactly looking its best in that time period either.

[A²]

As a huge asperger star wars nerd, I want to point out a thing

A) It's been canonized that since an undetermined time, but pretty damn early on, Palpatine was purposly fucking with things to cloud the Jedi's vision. The war was partially to put so much dark side and CRIES OF ANGUISH out there that the Jedi couldn't see the betrayal coming. But Palpatine had been screwing with as much as he can to make it damned impossible for the Jedi to read the force and know how to act.

[Bal]

The Jedi are all idiots in the first place. If you belonged to an organization, say, with two distinct factions, and one faction, in this case the Jedi, were in absolute fucking dominance, what the fuck do you think would happen to you if someone came along and "brought balance" to it? Like, are you guys fucking retarded? There are about a thousand active Jedi Knights and around two Sith. DO THE FUCKING MATH.

[Lottel]

I've complained about that before and my star wars nerd friend gave a long explanation by what they thought balance meant.
It was so ridiculous I can't remember a bit of it.

[Thad]

In fairness, the notion of karma isn't actually some Dragonlance "good must always balance evil" scale-alignment stuff; that's essentially a western misinterpretation.  It's more that good begets good and evil begets evil -- a kind of metaphysical version of Newton's First Law of Motion.

Taken as the eastern religion analog that it is, it is entirely consistent for the Jedi to believe they can bring balance to the Force without the Sith -- indeed, that the Dark Side is itself a disturbance in the balance, not a balancing force against the Light Side.

But what Brent says holds: they get caught up in the dogma instead of actually leading, and in trying to stamp out two Sith instead of attacking the root problems that make the Dark Side appealing.

[Mothra]

Thad, it kills me to see you stand up for these movies. I can understand the likes of Thundercats, because there's some genuine creativity going on there, but jesus

God help me, I'm gonna have to do the one-thing-at-a-time-rebuttal in order to work through this:

Things that are actually pretty good:
Kashyyyk

We go to Kashyyyk for all of five minutes, wherein we see an awkward battle sequence with rolling wheel robot cars and Wookies armed only with crossbows sitting in ditches firing at armor. At the very least, I don't get why there are water-wheel assault vehicles when you would probably just have a hovering spaceship of some kind at this point in future warfare, and I don't get why the wookies don't have some kind of anti-armor technology or capability. This would be forgivable if the machines and by extension every shot with them in it did not look completely ridiculous - if the battle had looked or felt particularly cool - but it was just weird and aesthetically absurd and impossible to feel anything for when you know only Yoda, who promptly leaves.

As a planet, we've already seen Kashyyyk when it was Endor. I would have preferred any kind of planet or location I had not already seen.

Yoda

I really really wish they had not fucked Yoda up. He would have given some much needed dignity to any scene he was in.

Darth Maul

The fight with Maul was great, but it is absolutely true that you could have swapped out Maul for any other evil character and it would not have changed anything. We knew nothing and end up knowing nothing about him but that he looks and we assume is genuinely evil.

Qui-Gon Jinn

I liked Qui-Gon, he's Obi-Wan's Obi-Wan. I wish they had made him at all unique from the Obi-Wan we see in A New Hope. There was nothing new to see there.

Nearly all the action scenes

The Maul fight was great, the battle with the space depth charges from the Slave I was quite cool, the fight with the Clone Army right afterwards is entertaining if very unfortunately video gamey (compare this with any action sequence from the original triology, and it just lacks visceral feeling or empathetic connection), and some of the Jengo Fett battle was nice.

The Grevious battle was beyond farce. I say that yes, as a man who fucking adored Tartakovsky's take on Grevious, but also just, as a man who can enjoy even the stupidest things if they are entertaining. It was easily the most expensive Stupidest Fucking Thing I have ever seen in a movie (I have seen Transformers 2). The final riding-robots-over-lava clash between Obi-Wan and Anikan was doing okay when they were inside that control room thing in close-quarters fighting, then very very quickly gets very very hard to take seriously as they're dangling from the ladder, slashing at each other over a lava waterfall. I don't think I need to go into the space battle in Episode 1. The Gungan battle was just brutally retarded, obviously. The gladiator battle was tedious and cartoonish and by then I still did not give a quarter-shit about any of the characters involved, or their bug and frogmen antagonists. The space battle at the start of Episode III was a joyless, aimless shitshow with no way to discern the stakes or who was winning or losing or what we were seeing or if we were supposed to care about the deaths of the republic troops (it was never revealed in the movies if the clones were thinking individuals or mindless obedient drones fresh out of the oven). If there were others, I cannot for the life of me remember them.

Darth Vader catches on fire

It did certainly look like a person catching on fire!

So no, again, I don't think the problem is in the ideas, it's in the execution.  The story beats are there, the cool visuals are certainly there, it's just that the actual emotional connection with the characters fails on just about every level.

I wanted to like those movies as much as anyone! I just cannot find anything that was developed enough to call an original or satisfying idea.

[François]

I wonder what they thought "bringing balance to the Force" meant to begin with. Was it the Jedi Rapture? Were they all gonna fly off into the aether and become one with the Midichlorian God? They were already the intergalactic morality police, what else did they even want?