Quote: (05-05-2017 10:28 PM)Kurgan Wrote:
If there anything positive to say about the new Star Wars films, the characters look like they aged in comparison to the various Legends painting/pictures. The Legends pictures looked like they only aged a few years.
Those were interesting videos about Mark Hamill not liking the new films, George Lucas said similar things about the Force Awakens being a redo of Episode 4 (I felt the same way). Let's be honest too, they had to do it that way since the prequels were condemned to hell just because they weren't like the original trilogy. It doesn't help George surrounded himself with yes men and didn't bother to get second opinions. But re watching the prequels, I could see how Anakin would turn to the dark side. After all, the Jedi had him abandon his mother, told him to "get over it" about his feeling and concerns and wouldn't let him be on the Council. Now, the transformation to Vader is a painful turn of scenes to watch (not cringe, but just see how far he falls). I kind of wonder what would've happened if Qui-Gonn lived to help him.
Disney will milk the franchise for all it's worth just like what they're doing with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
I wonder what would have happened if they had made exactly the same movies - same script, same direction, same hokey dialogue and plot holes and all - but with competent actors.
I could have forgiven even Jar-Jar Binks had the prequel series leads had the same charisma and chemistry as the original series' cast. Or any charisma and chemistry, for that matter. Somehow the actors made me actively not care about any of them, if not actively dislike them.
But you're right in that there was a ton of decent plot and character material in the prequels as-written that should have made for a good story. The promise of the young Anakin Skywalker, the corruption of that promise not just by the seductiveness of evil but the tragic ineptitude of the well-meaning, and the role of Obi-Wan in all of that and how it makes him the tragic, fatalistic character we encounter in the original trilogy. The same story, told with a little more focus on these essentials* (and as noted, better actors), would have been a worthy addition to the franchise.
* -- As opposed to spergily accounting for every last worldbuilding detail of the fictional universe shown in the first trilogy. One major element of the appeal of the fantastical fictional worlds seen in good science fiction is that not everything is explained. Some things are hinted at and then deliberately left to the (speculative) imagination of the audience to give the world a certain depth and reality - the audience's imaginations are better engaged, and their own minds fill in the blanks each in their own personalized way. Encountering a fictional world in medias res, you just have to roll with the hints and allusions and unexplained references to the Noodle Incident and such, accept the world as it is, and enjoy the story and thinking later about what all those cryptic details mean.
The prequels set about explaining every last little hint, allusion, and reference encountered in the originals. The origin of R2D2 and C3PO, the origin of the stormtroopers and Boba Fett, the origin of the Death Star, the origin of Vader, the origin of Luke and Leia, why Leia is a "princess", the significance of her (adoptive) father, where the "force ghost" stuff comes from, what the force actually is, what the Clone Wars were, exactly how the Emperor came to look so gnarly, etc. It seems like Lucas made an inventory of every random aside in the originals and then made an effort to cover every one of them with a needless explanation. And in so doing, he destroyed the magic of the franchise by eliminating the need to imaginatively engage with it.