Hotfoot wrote:One of these days, I'll get into all the things that bugged me about all the prequel movies in one massive rant of world-ending insanity.
Do it.
The only way I'd link RotJ to the prequels is that the cutesy shit STARTED there. RotS to me was the best of the prequel trilogy, but that's rather like saying that the most recent season of Heroes has been better than the last few.
Eh... I might be alone in all of SW fandom, but I actually don't mind the Ewoks. I'll take Ewoks over Gungans, for example. And even then, you still see Ewoks die. Despite being cute furry and vicious fluffballs, they still die, and I actually felt sad for them. (it's not like the Ewoks asked the Empire to build their fucking giant penis station above their heads)
Since I haven't seen the last season of Heroes, and don't intend to, I don't how apt that analogy is.
The characters are terrible, let's just get that out of the way. The only character that most people universally decide was cool was Darth Maul, and what was his greatest asset? He had all of one line. Every other character has terrible dialog that makes them terrible people as a result. Obi-Wan is a MASSIVE dick to Anakin, Anakin is an Emo bastard that makes Cloud and Squall from the Final Fantasy series look well-adjusted. Padme...just ugh. She had potential, but then she just threw it away to be white-clad eye candy. Even Threepio becomes unlikable compared to his OT version. Threepio! Hell, they even manage to fuck up R2-D2. That takes skill. Palpatine is just, ugh. Yoda, a big joke has become. The Fett Family got bitched. Mace Windu...okay, well he was actually decent, which is fucking strange, but he still went out like a bitch.
Characters are variable. I like Obi-wan actually, for the most part. I didn't think he was a dick to Anakin, I mean Anakin was very headstrong and sometimes forgot things he shouldn't have, and I saw Obi-wan as being generally a decent sort of teacher. Didn't rap his knuckles or anything, at most he would give him a slightly sarcastic backtalk. Anakin was emo in AOTC, but he matured in ROTS. I actually found the two's dynamic in ROTS a lot better than any other time.
Padme could have had more lines and had more to do than being the tagged along eye candy who often does heroic things. That said, she didn't bother me that much.
I didn't mind Jango Fett being played by Temura Morrison. It's nice to hear different accents even in SW. Even in the OT, all we really hear is British and American accents for the overwhelming majority of the characters both minor and major. Other than that, I'm not sure what you mean.
Threepio is a dick anyway, but it's difficult to look at his scenes in AotC and not wince at the stupidity. But R2 rocks! I loved how he took care of those battledroids. :D
As for Palpatine, I was really impressed by Ian McDiarmid the most out of anyone in the prequels. I think he really sold the performance and the character. Mace Windu? Not as much. Which is painful to say, because I think Sam Jackson is good in just about everything, but I didn't like Mace Windu at all. The biggest problem is that it takes two whole films (ie sitting through TPM, then all the way through AotC to the arena fight) for us to see him as the 'badass motherfucker' he should be. Granted he took care of Jango, but his whole leadership during the arena fight was sadly lacking. (that's a separate issue however, but as far as his character is concerned, Mace should have rallied the Jedi to do something, or go somewhere, rather than let everyone get coralled and surrounded)
The battles were...comical, for the most part. The opening scene in Revenge of the Sith? It starts out cool, verging on epic, but then completely falls flat on its face by rainbow colored blasters and the slapstick fighter piloting of Obi-Wan and Anakin. Droid swarms with buzzsaws as weapons? What? R2-D2 taking out two Super Battle Droids? General pansy-ass?
I agree with this. It was utterly pathetic how instead of getting a dogfight with Anakin showing us how much of fucking SHIT HOT fighter pilot he is, instead we get BUZZ DROIDS LOL
They also showed us the ARC-170 fighter, which I consider the best fighter to come out of the prequels*, and all they do is get raped by fighter droids.
Much as I hate that dumbass Rheonix linked to months ago, because his review was full of almost as much nonsensical bullshit as the movies, he had a point. In the original movies, the battles were more about the clash of ideals, not the whiz-bang special effects, especially the lightsaber duels.
They also meant something to the characters, not just about abstract ideals of tyranny versus rebellion etc, but Star Wars was full of desperation (first the opening battle, which encapsulates the fight between the Empire and the Rebellion by having the former with this huge ass battleship gun down and capture a much smaller, weaker ship that couldn't even repel the boarders; and the second, of course, being the attack on the Death Star), and so was Empire and Jedi. The Battle of Hoth, other than a couple of flaws, is just about as close to perfect as you could get from a ground battle set in the future, (with the Rebels again being outgunned and outmatched by the more superior forces of the Empire) and in Jedi, the whole attack of the Death Star 2 was once again, desperation.
In TPM, they fight in a slapstick way that has no point. The Naboo fighters can't even touch the TF doughnut ship, the Gungans are outclassed by TF battledroids, but the stupid thing is why they even bother going out in a field (where they'd be more vulnerable to orbital fire from the battleship). Padme's strategy makes a degree of sense, but only if the Viceroy didn't have contingencies set up for being taken captive. And the Jedi fight was actually pretty cool, all things considering. It's about the only good thing about TPM.
In AotC, things are like, much worse. Nothing about the fights makes sense. It's all bullshit. The arena fight with the Jedi lighting up and striking those power ranger style poses was goddamn cringeworthy. The fact they didn't have a plan other than 'lol guys we're here to save you, that's why we're gonna get everyone into the centre of the arena where we can be more easily mowed down by blaster fire'. The problem is Mace had the right idea by going straight to Dooku, but he fucked it up. (and I always wondered where the fuck all those battledroids came from, or why they were sitting there waiting to run into the arena, and like none of the Jedi who infiltrated the arena even noticed)
The battle with the clones and the droid army was stupid. Not only because the clones became the good guys - something which is difficult to reconcile when in ANH Obi-wan calls it the Clone Wars and makes it sound like the Clones were the bad guys - but again, who cares? It's just CGI munchkins shooting each other. There was nothing at stake in that battle. What was the point of it? Is Geonosis being invaded by the Republic? If so, where are the ships fighting the TF ships in orbit? Where's the fleet? Where's the objective?
When the LAAT carrying Obi-wan and Anakin come across Dooku trying to escape, why don't they shoot him down with the blasters? Because I am 99.9% certain you don't need missiles to shoot at someone in Star Wars.
Then when they fight their duel, I actually liked the bit with how Anakin and Obi-wan approached Dooku. But then I was massively disappointed in how both of them were taken out of the fight, just so we could see Yoda do his mad munchkin dance... I absolutely and unequivocally loathe that lightsabre duel between Yoda and Dooku. Any sword fight that needs to have both antagonists be CGIed is shit house. I am sorry, but it is. (Christopher Lee's stunt double took over in that fight, but Lee's face was CGIed in) And the idea of Yoda being a lightsabre wielder flies directly in the face of ESB.
God I fucking hate AotC. And TPM. FUCK.
* As far as the fighters are concerned, most of the designs just don't impress me. They're like poorly conceived kitbashs and they also seem really fucking small when compared next to the OT's X-wings, Y-wings, Vader's TIE, and so on.