star wars prequels: most embarrassing and hacky attempt at fan-service and plot resolution

in general all three of these films hinge on the jedi making incredibly stupid decisions especially with regard to assigning officers to cases. they seem to have hundreds of agents running around doing random shit all the time; at the start of this movie obi-wan's just getting back from settling a peace negotiation or something. maybe put like five or six of these people on a special squad to figure out who the mysterious sith lord was from the first movie? or once obi-wan finds out kamino's been erased from the archives, organize a think tank to figure out who did that?

these seem like small quibbles maybe but it's like, if you want me to accept that the characters are smart, maybe don't spend a ton of time establishing that there are really huge, serious mysteries and suspicious intrigues going on and then show them doing nothing at all about any of them. but anyway you basically have to accept the jedi organization being totally incompetent as an intentional premise; kudos i guess to rian johnson for having this actually be stated explicitly in TLJ.

there's a Sith Lord Senator in the room with them many times and they don't sense it, yet Kenobi gets faint in ANH when everybody on Alderaan is killed, light years away.....

"please, sit in this toilet"

Sifo-Dyas!

Stormtroopers!

Jesus Christ find a real waterfall, George, CGI waterfalls come the fuck on

You're at the scene where Anakin flirtatiously mentions his alt-right sympathies?

ugh yes.

"they should be MADE to..."

"it's time to inform the Senate that our ability to use the Force is diminished".....wtf? why? because two Sith lords show up? there are like 1000 of you

but anyway you basically have to accept the jedi organization being totally incompetent as an intentional premise; kudos i guess to rian johnson for having this actually be stated explicitly in TLJ.

yeah, RJ took the canon as presented and made some interesting outsider observations that GL never would have been able to

the thing is nothing in these films feels intentional or under control, lucas is just doing stuff. if the idea is that the jedi have lost the true path of the force, why not throw in one of them who says as much? this would have been a good role for yoda tbh - not the president of the jedi convention association but a monkish guy off to the side who keeps saying stuff in the "wars not make one great" tradition, pooh-poohing all this focus on lightsabers and combat training. then when the galaxy gets undone by a super-violent killer jedi they created you might have something. but actually the jedi get undone because they get snookered by the clone army and "order 66."

back on Tatooine, half expecting Anakin to say "my name is Anakin Skywalker...and this is for YOU" while cutting his former slavemaster with a saber

Shmi was sold to Luke's uncle. of course she was...

wait n/m he said lars

lol Obi-Wan fakes an explosion, v deft

JOEL EDGERTON!

the scene with debauched, down-on-his-luck watto in a hat is so odd. if we didn't know how much lucas was micromanaging these films i'd imagine it was just some production designer goofing around that slipped through because he didn't give a shit.

and then obviously the dialogue there is so labored. lines and lines, all to get us to a point where shmi (with whom anakin has apparently not communicated since he left?!) ended up with the lars family. lot of unnecessary legwork created by the bad decision to have anakin living in slavery with his mom in the first place, and the hacky plot-resolution decision that the lars family are his actual in-laws (if not blood relations as i fumbled it in the poll options). if he just wanted to get to a scene of anakin doing some atrocity that comes out of his fear of losing loved ones or whatever there are sooooooo many more efficient and convincing ways to get there.

Count Dooku more like Count Doodoo amirite

Anakin loses his arm and merely yelps

there was a partial cartoon season that is 90% Yoda’s quest to determine what is going on, learning how to reach out beyond death, and going on a journey, where he learns he can’t stop what’s in motion but must continue monk-like ways

it’s exactly what we wish was hinted at in the prequels. so much connective crap in them, but all we wanted were a few hints at that!

btw I remember the other question the prequels answered we didn’t want — is Yoda unique or are there others of his species? we get background character... Yaddle

i absolutely lost my shit at the early Blank Check ep that goes into Yaddle's backstory. "how is this not the main plot of the movie?!"

oh god, I am going to look that up now and have regrets

so neanderthal what's the verdict??

P dumb overall. Actually paused it to do work.

Better than Menace tho.

Anakin Lechwalker still nauseating

My daughters ASKED to watch Ep 1 yesterday (on a surge of fandom triggered by Ep 8). We all sat and watched it disintegrate into tedium and aimless stuff! happening! all! the! time! My insightful 11-year-old looked sympathetically at me and said "and I supposed you were pretty excited about this before you saw it?"

*suppose - Cal would never make such an egregious grammatical slip.

hahaha aww

Revenge of Sith time.

This at least has the cool Order 66 massacre

Random shit I remember:

-the film stopped 4 times when i saw it opening night

-i was still living w my parents

-this is the only preq i had seen multiple times prior to today

Battle droids are comically ineffective

An important question answered:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk1wx5h-P_8

ANAKIN NIPS

pro-wordless gazing through windows on coruscant

Omg Obi-Wan riding the iguana-looking thing

Kinda enjoyed this for all its clunkiness and bad acting! Idk i just enjoy movies where everybody dies i guess

it'd be better if they died faster though, or died better, or if there was just more death and less "general grievous."

Boba Fett and the Stormtroopers are all clones of a random bounty hunter who is Obi-Wan's antagonist in AOTC

i mean--i'm sorry--look this is the worst because it's also so fucking lazy, it's a way to quickly deal with the rise to power and the creation of an army. why bother with anything interesting like the emperor being a charismatic leader who riles people up and manages to get a volunteer army of disconnects and sociopaths and psychopaths (it would be obvious but yes like any fascist state in history!) let's completely avoid all that and just make them Clones, sure. when Lucas came up with the phrase "Clone Wars" i'm sure it sounded amazing but god it should have been left to this vague mention in the dusty history books. i suspect he made it this was for the kiddos, clone stormtroopers is more palatable than regular folks worked up into a lather by a demagogue.

except he thinks he's making a profound bush-era political allegory! which may be the saddest aspect of all.

well, the Emperor did woo enough non-clone zealots to fill the Imperial ranks.

except he thinks he's making a profound bush-era political allegory! which may be the saddest aspect of all.

the "Sith and Jedi are really not that different, maaaaan" angle means that Michael Mann shoulda gotten one of the sequel films

oh oops you're right - it's ROTS that has the ham-handed "so this is how democracy dies" stuff

from my point of view the jedi are evil

I mean at least the Sith recruitment process involves consent

except in the case of Darth Maul

I get the impression though that Sidious was kind of a 'bad' Sith for many reasons (including setting up his apprentice to be killed without giving him the opportunity to kill his master by defeating him in battle as is the usual)

The endentured clones make total sense as the oarsmen and spear carriers serving an officer class of entitled elites, it’s how thalassocracies such as the Empire have filled their ranks throughout history; it’s also a decently ironic foil against the Jedi who basically just kidnap extremely young children and indoctrinate them into a life of compulsive martial bureaucratic service.

― El Tomboto, 31. december 2017 07:33 (nine hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, this is kinda good, but the prequels didn't do a lot with it. Make the Clones a part of the Republic as well, have the Separatists be a Clone uprising, go full Spartacus with it.

idk assuming the clones are the proles of the republic era it would be cool if the jedis were on their side, and they lose and that's the rise of the empire. i guess. tbh it had never once occurred to me before the prequels that "the clone wars" had anything directly to do with the rise of the empire - just some preceding conflict that was a big deal that everyone's heard of and the jedi fought in them. basically once you decide to do prequels you're stuck doing clone wars though since it'd be weird to start AFTER a war that obi-wan and anakin fought alongside in. as it is, of course, the prequels barely show them fighting together in the clone wars at all. so whatever.

I'm reading the Empire comics now (Legends), even though it's no longer canon, fun little look into post-Order 66, fledgling Empire.

also the Darth Maul Sons of Dathomir, while not really essential or anything, shows his post-resurrection life (around Clone Wars time)

The Clone Wars happening between eps 1 and 2 might have been the way to go - or maybe set ep 2 at the tail end of them, perhaps Palpatine is taking advantage of the turmoil to plant the seeds of the Empire.