On a scale of 1 to 10(best) rate Attack of the Clones

[King Mark 3,631]

Never mind...mistake post.

K.M.

[King Mark 3,631]

Well,speaking of directing,Lucas with the Special Editions is at least co-director of all SW movies now.

And as Williams even said in that Starfix interview,in the end,Lucas decides EVERYTHING.Kershner and Marquand probably directed ESB and ROTJ just as much as Tobe Hooper directed Poltergeist.

K.M.

[Morn 8]

In answer: there can't be any denying there are whole truckloads of awful dialogue in all five films

Except TESB, every 3rd line is like humorish. I love it's dialogue.

A lot of people would agree with you. But, ultimately, the pleasure is transient...and you wish there were something of the indelible storytelling qualities exhibited so powerfully by Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (even if it painfully, but understandably, defied the novel in so many ways).

I don't think the story fleshes out well in the film, still it has lots to make up for it.

But all this is meaningless because no matter what any of us think, film history continues to show that Star Wars is considered the best by movie fans(all movie fans, not just SW fans). None of the other SW movies are ever considered among the top 25 movies of all times, and rightfully so, although ESB comes the closest.

Who cares what 'movie fans' think. It's just their opinion.

[Guest]

Hehehe it polarized fans yet the results are almost all weighted towards loving it.

I agree with Joe though. Fans get so wrapped up in what they think that they forget the world seems to like A New Hope or Jedi better than Empire. It's true. Empire is my mother least favorite. Look at which one has made the most money. That's the general public right there.

Empire might be the fan favorite but A New Hope is the one the world seems to have picked as the best.

[Morn 8]

And I can't figure out why because it's one of my least favourites.

[Edmilson 7,633]

4/10. The only thing I like about it is the great (and Harry Potter-like) John Williams score. The rest... eh.

 

ROTS is the only movie from the prequels I actually like, even though the memes are still the best thing about it.

[bored 322]

1/10. Worse than Rise of Skywalker because at least ROS has some alright shots and decent effects. The worst movie ever made relative to its budget. Williams' score is good, but I genuinely can't get any emotion out of it because of the god awful movie it's in.

[A. A. Ron 1,748]

I love how you bumped this thread out of the blue after 22 years.  It’s also fascinating to see how highly the board rated this film when it was new.
 

I was 10 when this came out and I loved the clones, the Geonosians, the lego sets, the score, and of course seeing Natalie Portman in all those outfits. It’s been many years since I’ve seen it now. In fact, the last time I saw it may well have been when I was still a teenager.

 

These days I’d probably rate Clones as a 5/10. The dialogue and acting are rubbish of course, but I like the visuals and general shlockiness of it all and I feel the world building of any of the Prequels still puts the Disney era to shame. IMO, a less cringey version of this movie could made a decent Episode I. Then Episode II could have ended with Anakin’s fall, allowing III to be half Jedi purge and half Empire vs Rebels stuff.

[GerateWohl 4,477]

After the episode 1 dissapointment I was quite well entertained by the second movie. I liked some of the action scenes quite well. I love the whole arena sequence (apart from what C-3PO says and does), which is so unique in all these movies and the fight of Obi-Wan and Jango on the Camino platform is great. Williams' music for the action scenes is fantastic. That was actually the first movie with a battle, that involved a large group of Jedi (Clone Wars series did not exist yet). And I like the laser sword fight with Yoda tbh. Also quite unique.

Some action scenes I don't like that much like the Corruscant chase or the factroy scene. But this is still better than anything from TROS, where every action scene bored the shit out of me.

 

Of coure the romance was rubbish. But after the movie in my cinema seat I had the feeling for the first time after Return of the Jedi to have actually watched a Star Wars movie.

 

[Richard Penna 3,771]

My 17 year old self couldn't possibly have been less interested in seeing this - my Dad asked if I wanted to go see it for my birthday. I stand by my  reaction to this day.

 

From a technical sense I'm sure it's great - effects, visuals, design, etc. I still remain of the opinion though that Williams' score, while completely functional, is an extremely uninspired effort outside of a handful of sequences. It's just so boring.

[Jurassic Shark 12,236]

It's got the best (and first) love theme of the franchise.

[GerateWohl 4,477]

6 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

and first

And why again does "Han Solo and the Princess" not count?

[Chen G. 4,034]

I like Curoscant - its important to see what the Republic was before it all goes to pot - and I like seeing an army of Jedi throw down. The choice to shift the story to a Noir storyline was not uninspired, and I do enjoy Kamino as a setting. There's a noble effort here from Williams, ontop of it all.

 

The issue for me is the mystery is lacklustre (and the person who tried killing Padme is...the person that, thanks to the opening crawl, we would naturally suspect were it not for Mace Windu telling us "nah, it ain't him), its long and light on action and those setpieces that are there aren't the best and the romance is terrible: the main conceptual error was to have the assasination attempts on Padme cease. If Padme and Anakin were busy evading death traps left and right, it would add a sense of urgency both to their storyline and to Obi Wan's investigation. What really sends me over the edge is the way Anakin confessing his murder of the sand people is played as Padme realizing "Ahw, he has feelings!" It the most morally-bankrupt Star Wars film.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,725]

10 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

It's got the best (and first) love theme of the franchise.

 

'Across The Stars'?

You do you know that it's just Luke's Theme slowed down and in a minor key?

[Chen G. 4,034]

I've always been doubtful of this reading of the Anakin-Padme love music as the "progenitor" of Luke's and Leia's music. Its a nice idea, poetically, but one that I've only seen tenunous evidence for, musically. I mean, yeah, it has a similarity to the main theme (more in terms of ryhthm and shape as far as I can tell) but... I mean, its the main theme, after all!

[GerateWohl 4,477]

49 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

the person who tried killing Padme is...

My son recently explained to me:

Palpatine wanted Padme dead. But he didn't want to kill her himself, so he asked Count Dooku.

But Count Dooku didn't wanna do it himself, so he asked bounty hunter Jango Fett.

But he didn't wanna do it, so he asked another bounty hunter, Zam Wesell.

But she didn't wanna do it herself, so she sent a droid.

But the droid didn't want to do it himself, so it sent these poisonous worms.

And they failed.

 

This is probably the worst case of assassination out sourcing ever.

No wonder it didn't work.

[Chen G. 4,034]

17 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

This is probably the worst case of assassination out sourcing ever.

 

Yeah. And the villains of the previous film are somehow in on it too. There's a shot of the Viceroy when Padme gets scratched in the arena where he turns away and kind of grins like a schoolboy who pulled a prank on a girl he likes and its so stupid.

 

But what I mean, the fact that we've been introduced to Dooku - via the crawl - just before an assasination attempt on Padme means our suspicions immediately run to that guy, because who else would it be? Lucas realises this, and does the worst thing you could do in a mystery scene: he takes the prime suspect and tries to throw us off his scent not by means of concocting some sort of alibi or something, but by simply having another character tell us "nah, it ain't him." Its so cheap and so unconvincing, and then when Dooku is introduced very late in the picture, its the worst conclusion to a noir investigation story in the history of the genre.

[Jurassic Shark 12,236]

26 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

And why again does "Han Solo and the Princess" not count?

 

I'm just quoting JW.

[Schilkeman 1,011]

I love this movie. It's my favorite of the franchise. 

 

There is no punchline.

[Jurassic Shark 12,236]

12 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

My son recently explained to me:

Palpatine wanted Padme dead. But he didn't want to kill her himself, so he asked Count Dooku.

But Count Dooku didn't wanna do it himself, so he asked bounty hunter Jango Fett.

But he didn't wanna do it, so he asked that another bounty hunter, Zam Wesell.

But she didn't wanna do it herself, so she sent a droid.

But the droid didn't want to do it himself, so it sent these poisonous worms.

And they failed.

 

This is probably the worst case of assassination out sourcing ever.

No wonder it didn't work.

 

Sounds like a great film!

[JTN 2,243]

Before the Disney films: 2

 

After the Disney films: 9

 

To paraphrase Mr. Lucas:

There is always a worse film.

 

[Chen G. 4,034]

Oh, I don't know that I dislike The Rise of Skywalker more than Attack of the Clones. They're about on-par for different reasons in my eyes.

 

I generally don't hold with this thinking that another movie is going to make me like a movie that I dislike.

[Jurassic Shark 12,236]

4 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

They're about on-par for different reasons in my eyes.

 

You find both great?

[Chen G. 4,034]

They both have some redeeming qualities for sure - I'll gladly give Herr Schilkeman that, and I've mentioned several of those qualities of Clones.

[JTN 2,243]

11 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

I generally don't hold with this thinking that another movie is going to make me like a movie that I dislike.

I didn’t say that I like AOTC more, just that the films that came after it (sans ROTS), are so much worse that compared to them I don’t dislike AOTC so much as a Star Wars film anymore.

 

As a film or as a Star Wars film it’s the worst of GL’s SW films, but in the light of the DSW films, it’s a masterpiece, a real SW film.

[Chen G. 4,034]

2 hours ago, JTN said:

a real SW film.

 

Its definitely more "authentic" or "essential", not so much because Lucas wrote and directed it (although that's important, too) but because it is important to the story of the series at large, in a way that the Disney entries (even where they do use material from Lucas and co. cf The Force Awakens) are not. If you follow the story of the series, you can't skip Attack of the Clones.

[TolkienSS 409]

On par with Rise of Skywalker. Both equally horrific.

 

AotC is an insult to cinema, while RoS is just an all around insult to intellect.

[Jay 37,519]

4 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

My son recently explained to me:

Palpatine wanted Padme dead. But he didn't want to kill her himself, so he asked Count Dooku.

But Count Dooku didn't wanna do it himself, so he asked bounty hunter Jango Fett.

But he didn't wanna do it, so he asked another bounty hunter, Zam Wesell.

But she didn't wanna do it herself, so she sent a droid.

But the droid didn't want to do it himself, so it sent these poisonous worms.

And they failed.

 

This is probably the worst case of assassination out sourcing ever.

No wonder it didn't work.

 

LOL.  I love this!

[Nick1Ø66 4,873]

7 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

My son recently explained to me:

Palpatine wanted Padme dead. But he didn't want to kill her himself, so he asked Count Dooku.

But Count Dooku didn't wanna do it himself, so he asked bounty hunter Jango Fett.

But he didn't wanna do it, so he asked another bounty hunter, Zam Wesell.

But she didn't wanna do it herself, so she sent a droid.

But the droid didn't want to do it himself, so it sent these poisonous worms.

And they failed.

 

Never send a Count/Bounty Hunter/Droid/Worms to do a Jedi's job. Palpatine could have saved a lot of time and just told Anakin to do it straight away.

[ThePenitentMan1 795]

On 29/04/2024 at 2:28 AM, GerateWohl said:

My son recently explained to me:

Palpatine wanted Padme dead. But he didn't want to kill her himself, so he asked Count Dooku.

But Count Dooku didn't wanna do it himself, so he asked bounty hunter Jango Fett.

But he didn't wanna do it, so he asked another bounty hunter, Zam Wesell.

But she didn't wanna do it herself, so she sent a droid.

But the droid didn't want to do it himself, so it sent these poisonous worms.

And they failed.

 

This is probably the worst case of assassination out sourcing ever.

No wonder it didn't work.

 

Here's the original source for that bit:

 

[Edmilson 7,633]

That video is awesome.

 

Marcus is always entertaining to watch even when I disagree with him.

 

And he's right: the whole conspiracy to make the Clone Wars happen makes no sense and it's dumb as fuck.

[Schilkeman 1,011]

“There’s a guard stationed on every floor.” How exactly is Jango supposed to get in there to kill Padme? The bugs make sense given how well covered the building is. 
 

Obi-Wan can’t do anything about using clones. He discovers them, and due to the separatist crisis, the Republic almost immediately decides to use them. The choice to use them was not the Jedi’s, therefore finding who was really responsible for their creation, by way of Obi-Wan’s investigation, was made a moot point. 
 

Even had he gone to the Senate and said Dooku is responsible for the army, they still would have said, “hey cool, free army,” and used them anyway.

 

If you want to read some actual intelligent and thoughtful analyses of the film, go here (unfortunately his website has been done for about a year) https://web.archive.org/web/20150118123859/http://www.lardbiscuit.com/lard/shroud.html

 

I don’t agree with every word he wrote, (he gets a little overzealous in the symbolism section, and a couple of his takes on the Jedi are…inaccurate) but it’s good stuff, overall.

[Chen G. 4,034]

Yeah, I would preoccupy myself with picking apart the film's plot-points. Its more that I find the mystery story ill-concieved as a mystery story - even if I do like the atmosphere that its imbued with a lot of the time. I've said it before, but it absolutely baffles me that Lucas stages a pair of attempts on Padme's life and...that's it. It takes the urgency out of Obi-Wan's interrogation - what's the rush? Whomever was trying to kill Mrs. Portman has clearly been scared off it - and certainly off of the love story. Having Anakin and Padme fall in love while they evading death-traps all over could have only helped that storyline.

 

The triumphs of the film lay elsewhere, especially with the reasonably quiet time spent on Coruscant. I think it looks pretty good a lot of the time, and its nice to get a feel for the republic in its heyday.

[Yavar Moradi 2,650]

1/10 is too generous. I think Attack of the Clones is literally THE worst. Not just worst Star Wars, but basically as bad as big budget filmmaking can get. Horrible characters, horrible nonsensical plot, ugly fake looking CGI, empty fake looking battles where I don't care about anything or anyone. And the WRITING, oooh my goodness the writing is just INFAMOUS.

 

 

It is insane that sequel trilogy hate would cause anyone to reassess this film as GOOD... 9/10, REALLY??

 

Morally bankrupt is right... Anakin and the sand people, telling Padme all about it which apparently turns her on? I seriously HATE and DESPISE this awful piece of dreck and I'd rather be forced to watch The Rise of Skywalker ten more times than see this film again. The score is really the only redeeming quality of this empty, incomprehensible, unlikable movie.

 

Wait... I take that back. For just a moment while watching this trashfire I somehow got invested in the plot/story: it was when Count Dooku has trapped Obi-Wan and is "revealing" everything to him about the Sith Lord controlling things and whatnot. At that point I thought to myself, "OMIGOSH! Lucas has done something brilliant here -- dramatic irony! Dooku isn't a rogue Jedi who went cartoonishly evil! He's paying attention to what's really going on while the useless/ineffectual Jedi are oblivious! And now by identifying HIM as the villain and stopping him, the Jedi are going to spell their own doom when they could and should have admitted he was right and justified in his actions, which while drastic were done with good intentions to stop the Sith!"

 

I was SO happy for a little while watching the movie, thinking I had figured out a great plot twist or something. And it would and could and should have been amazing... but then it turns out Dooku was just bullshitting to mess with Obi-Wan, with all his "Qui-Gon would have seen my side of things and joined me" BS. I mean, that SHOULD have been actually TRUE! Then I would have gotten invested in the story again despite all the dumb stuff leading up to it. But no, Dooku was just a two dimensional cartoonish villain with nothing interesting about him despite being played by the great Christopher Lee. Fantastic.

 

Apparently I'm the only person whose mind went there because I've relayed this impression/idea I had more than once I get blank stares every time.

 

Yavar

 

P.S. Oh, and as bad and as stupid as The Rise of Skywalker undoubtedly is, Harrison Ford's scene in it is way better than anything, anything in all three prequel films and that includes the supposedly "good" one, Revenge of the Sith.

[GerateWohl 4,477]

I never understood what is so bad about Anakin's remark about sand. It made sense, in that context it even was kind of poetic. One of the few sentences that gave that weird bond of the two lovers any kind of flavour. 

[bored 322]

I think because the delivery was whiny, so it came across more pathetic than smooth (pun intended), also it just kinda sounds like a weird, lame pickup line rather than an attempt at connecting to her, especially cause he rubs up against her in a way that most would consider creepy, especially since she shows no emotion in her face, making her look uncomfortable.

[mrbellamy 6,340]

It's definitely the fact that it's the lead in to their first kiss and that he uses "soft and smooth" as a way to get physical with her. It's supposed to be Anakin being charming and seductive but it's just awkward, but not in a way where the awkwardness is real and endearing.

 

When someone makes a move in an erotic or romantic movie, the best versions make you think "Damn I wish I could say stuff like that" or "Damn I wish someone would say that to me" and this very famously had that effect on almost nobody. 

[Chen G. 4,034]

2 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

Wait... I take that back. For just a moment while watching this trashfire I somehow got invested in the plot/story: it was when Count Dooku has trapped Obi-Wan and is "revealing" everything to him about the Sith Lord controlling things and whatnot. At that point I thought to myself, "OMIGOSH! Lucas has done something brilliant here -- dramatic irony! Dooku isn't a rogue Jedi who went cartoonishly evil! He's paying attention to what's really going on while the useless/ineffectual Jedi are oblivious! And now by identifying HIM as the villain and stopping him, the Jedi are going to spell their own doom when they could and should have admitted he was right and justified in his actions, which while drastic were done with good intentions to stop the Sith!"

 

I had the same thought process and so the whole thing perplexed me no end the first time around.

 

But in the face of all of this, I'm going to try and make a bit of a bigger point of the things I do really like about this film, and while they do pale in comparison to the demerits, they're not insigificant at all. I'll try not to make them sound like damning with faint praise, because while they mostly amount to "external" visual elements, they're conceptually quite important.

 

I like that we spend, oh, probably 45 reasonably unhurried minutes in Coruscant. I think it mostly looks pretty darn good, and like I said its THE capital of the republic and the central nervous system of the Galaxy, and so its nice to get a feel for what an enviable existence it was before it all went to pot. The same is true to some extent of Naboo, which I also think apart from some of the more digitally-altered shots, looks very nice.

 

That element of the prequel trilogy does quite succesfully inform the experience of the classic trilogy, insofar as these more sparse Barsoom-like environments and claustrophobic interiors feel that much starker, and there's almost a longing for something that was lost and is only recovered at the very end. So, conceptually, that was quite important and all three prequels help with this. Clones is the one where we get to go to street level the most: in The Phantom Menace Coruscant is a glorified pitstop on the journey, and in Revenge of the Sith (where the city looks the most spectacular) its mostly politking with Palpatine so its all posh places like the opera house.

 

Actually, I like a lot of the tableaux in general although, bereft of the kind of conceptual-thematic import of places like Coruscant, there's less to be said for the fact that I found Kamino pretty perhaps, but I did find it pretty. I really like the look of Tatooine in both the first two prequels, actually. The homestead had never looked more Bag End-y and homely than in its brief appearance here, and Lucas gets some very pleasing shots where the surrounding salt flat really registers on screen.

 

And while Geonosis is not a favourite of mine - it was a terribly idea to intercut two desert planets - I do like the look of the arena and the fight that ensues when the Jedi come in force. Again, its conceptually important to see the Jedi order in its heyday fight en masse, and this is really something we see only here. I can't quite say the same for the preceeding monster attack nor for the big battle that follows, but the Jedi offensive was quite nice.

 

There are other things: inasmuch as I don't think the mystery story was well-concieved, the idea of it is quite commendable and gives the film its own flavour, and I like all the early detective-work scenes with Obi-Wan. And for as absolutely offputting as the romantic scenes and Anakin's part in them is, I do appreciate that - his creepy way of going about conveying it nowithstanding - Anakin really wants to have sex with Padme. Takes it out of that kind of fairytale-ish chaste love affairs.

 

And while I always strongly object to the self-made image of Lucas as an academic and philosophical dandy, this film uniquely includes one reasonably succesfull bit of philosophising that Lucas puts into Anakin's mouth, in his attempt to bridge between the abnegatory views of the Jedi order (which, in the logic of the prequel trilogy, is in the right: the trilogy is NOT judging the Jedi for holding this view) and Anakin's sexual yearnings. "Attachement is forbidden. Compassion, which I would define as unconditional love, is central to a Jedi's life." I always find that beat, uniquely of the Anakin-Padme scenes, reasonably effective.

 

Between that and much of Williams' erswhile score, there's definitely much to appreciate here.

[Bellosh 3,511]

2 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

1/10 is too generous. I think Attack of the Clones is literally THE worst. Not just worst Star Wars, but basically as bad as big budget filmmaking can get.

 

but see...at least the movie makes sense though.  AND that counts in my book, regardless of anything else.  TROS doesn't.

[Chen G. 4,034]

It does make more sense and is easier to follow than The Rise of Skywalker, correct. Although it has its own plot holes: Why the hell would Dooku, no matter how hard he's trying to feign allegiance to Obi Wan, literally tell him his and Sidious' big secret? Why does Dooku not recognise the clone army he helped create ("How could the Jedi assemble an army so quickly?")? But by and large its definitely more coherent.

 

Its also a lot more boring. Its a slower movie, lighter on action and less funny. The Rise of Skywalker has the opposite problem of being much, much too overly frenetic in its pace, but at least its not tedious. The Abrams film also looks better (I'm amazed nobody mentioned the fact that Clones was shot on like 960p) and is better acted.

 

In the final analysis they come out about on-par, I'd say. Judged within the larger Star Wars context, Clones has the leg up of being more essential to the storytelling.

[Yavar Moradi 2,650]

10 minutes ago, Bellosh said:

but see...at least the movie makes sense though.

 

It really, really doesn't. The plot is as nonsensical as The Phantom Menace before it. If you start to even think about it for a little while, it completely falls apart.

 

The biggest problem with TRoS is that its plot is just a super DUMB quest: we need to get this thing which will lead us to that thing and then find the other thing... And everything does have to work out conveniently for the plot to continue. But with the prequels, if you think about what the goals of Palpatine or Dooku are, their actions simply make no sense.

 

 

6 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

It does make more sense and is easier to follow than The Rise of Skywalker, correct. Although it has its own plot holes: Why the hell would Dooku, no matter how hard he's trying to feign allegiance to Obi Wan, literally tell him his and Sidious' big secret? Why does Dooku not recognise the clone army he helped create ("How could the Jedi assemble an army so quickly?")? But by and large its definitely more coherent.

 

You just did a good job of starting an argument why it very much is not. 

 

6 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

Its also a lot more boring. Its a slower movie, lighter on action and less funny. The Rise of Skywalker has the opposite problem of being much, much too overly frenetic in its pace, but at least its not tedious. The Abrams film also looks better (I'm amazed nobody mentioned the fact that Clones was shot on like 960p) and is better acted.

 

Yup to all of this. The Abrams film keeps the action at a breakneck pace (much like his Star Trek) in the hopes that people watching won't notice how truly stupid the plot is. And it helps that it still has some characters who are still likable and engaging (don't get me wrong, Finn absolutely got the shaft), which truly can't be said about ANY character in all of the prequels... even Obi-Wan, who is somehow boring as fuck.

 

6 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

In the final analysis they come out about on-par, I'd say. Judged within the larger Star Wars context, Clones has the leg up of being more essential to the storytelling.

 

But it's a terrible story being told, and the original Star Wars trilogy is much better if you just ignore the prequels entirely and imagine your own events based on what Alec Guinness says in the first movie.

 

Yavar

[bored 322]

9 minutes ago, Yavar Moradi said:

But it's a terrible story being told, and the original Star Wars trilogy is much better if you just ignore the prequels entirely and imagine your own events based on what Alec Guinness says in the first movie.

 

 

This is, and always will be my problems with the prequels. When the answers are less interesting than what you imagined... why does it even exist? 

[Chen G. 4,034]

19 minutes ago, Yavar Moradi said:

the original Star Wars trilogy is much better if you just ignore the prequels entirely and imagine your own events based on what Alec Guinness says in the first movie.

 

That may be the case, but the fact of the matter is, you can't leave something so important to the events of Empire and Jedi as the downfall of Anakin, to a monologue. It HAD to have been dramatised onscreen, and that does make it essential to the overriding storytelling going on. You could maybe skip The Phantom Menace, which operates more as a prelude than as a proper chapter, but for all its faults, if you're watching the series as a series, you cannot go around Attack of the Clones. Whereas, again from the standpoint of the series, you don't need to watch the sequel trilogy at all.

 

This is not the movie we're talking about, but its really hard to convey the depth of my hatred for The Rise of Skywalker. I mean, its great for watching to make fun of it and laugh at the ridiculousness of it (large parts of Clones also work in that way). But I was utterly shocked by its awfulness, especially since I did (and do) like The Force Awakens as a film.

 

I mean, nevermind that the Emperor is somehow alive (WTF?), that he's somehow been behind all that happened so far (WTF!?!) including cloning Snokes (WTF!?!!) and he's somehow Rey's grandfather (WTF!!?!!) because her parents were only "nobody because they chose to be" (WTF!!??!!) and that, as you said, the quest to find him is this nonesensical find-this-then-find-that concatenation (WTF!!??!!!), but also...the ancient Sith dagger lines up not with a standing monument like, say, the staff does in Raiders of the Lost Ark. No, it lines up with the ruined remains of the Death Star (WTF!!!??!!!). So, what, the person who made this dagger did so after the Death Star exploded? And did so from exactly the same vantage point that Rey and company will happen upon decades later?

 

But, really its the unseeming gallop in which this monumentally idiotic plot is thrown out that I loathe. I don't think there's any equivalency to be made with the (admittedly very fast) pace Abrams pursued in The Force Awakens or in what I've seen of his Star Trek films. I've never seen a movie set to such a...lightspeed pace, and I happen to think this sort of thing is much more deletrious to cinema than is a movie that's paced too slow. Because, if a filmmaker treats his own movie as a nuisance to the audience, such that he needs to clear it out of the audience's way as soon as possible so as to reduce their expose to the irritant that is his film as much as possible...then why are you making films, if that's how you view it? If the point of the film, to you, is getting to the end-credits? Its all just so listless.

 

And even the part of the film that most people unite in praising, that being the handling of Kylo Ren, I find disgusting. Its like if some people in my headlines had second thoughts about their actions before the forces that be did them in, and I'd be expected to feel sorry for their demise. I find that idea morally bankrupt and one that totally cheapens the evil that has been wrought in stories like these.

[Yavar Moradi 2,650]

Just now, bored said:

This is, and always will be my problems with the prequels. When the answers are less interesting than what you imagined... why does it even exist? 

 

I wish it were a matter of them being merely less interesting. But when you portray Anakin Skywalker first as an annoying little goofy kid, and then skip right to him being a weird incel creep who can't stop whining all the time, you aren't upset at all when he turns into Darth Vader! That was supposed to be the whole crux of the prequels! A fall from grace!

 

And when his turn actually happens in the much-overrated Revenge of the Sith, it is the worst thing ever. One minute he's onboard with stopping Palpatine, but saying he deserves a trial, in principled fashion. The next moment he's chopping off Mace Windu's hand (essentially dooming him to death), AND LITERALLY A MINUTE LATER IS MURDERING CHILDREN. "Whoops, I messed up that pretty bad. Okay well I guess I'm ready to MURDER CHILDREN for Palpatine now. Might as well."

 

It is utterly, utterly the worst execution this story could have received. Say what you will about the sequel trilogy. Say it's Disney-fied (I'd argue that even the original trilogy already got there, with Return of the Jedi). Say it's inconsistent and they should have planned it out in advance with a unified story vision (I both agree with this and will point out the original trilogy didn't have this, yet made it work pretty well.) Say that The Rise of Skywalker is an absolute mess of a movie (it really, really is!)

 

But one thing it did consistently well (though not perfectly, TRoS!) was the rather Anakin-like character of Kylo Ren. I mean, he's not remotely how I would have pictured Anakin Skywalker as described in A New Hope by Obi-Wan Kenobi. But is feels VERY much like the more compelling, better written and acted version of what George Lucas was trying to go for with Anakin in AotC and RotS.

 

Yavar

[Chen G. 4,034]

5 minutes ago, Yavar Moradi said:

AND LITERALLY A MINUTE LATER IS MURDERING CHILDREN. "Whoops, I messed up that pretty bad. Okay well I guess I'm ready to MURDER CHILDREN for Palpatine now. Might as well."

 

You gotta love Padme's reaction. "Not Anakin, he couldn't..." and then later "Obi Wan told me terrible things [...] he said that you, killed Younglings." Umm, you heard this man confess to you about killing Tusken children three years back, and somehow you saw it as "ahw, he's really opening up to me!" Umm...what's the big idea, Mrs. Skywalker?! 

[Yavar Moradi 2,650]

On 3/5/2024 at 3:42 PM, Chen G. said:

That may be the case, but the fact of the matter is, you can't leave something so important to the events of Empire and Jedi as the downfall of Anakin, to a monologue. It HAD to have been dramatised onscreen

 

Let me know if it ever is, lol. What we got ruined the original trilogy for me, if anything.

 

On 3/5/2024 at 3:42 PM, Chen G. said:

that does make it essential to the overriding storytelling going on. You could maybe skip The Phantom Menace, which operates more as a prelude than as a proper chapter, but for all its faults, if you're watching the series as a series, you cannot go around Attack of the Clones. Whereas, again from the standpoint of the series, you don't need to watch the sequel trilogy at all.

 

Agreed, you don't need to watch the sequel trilogy (but despite their issues I enjoyed a great many things about the first two, on their own merits). It doesn't add anything to the original trilogy really, and it's entirely optional viewing as pretty solid popcorn movies (weeeellll... apart from The Last Jedi which split the fanbase but at least aspired to more substance).

 

But if I'm talking to a person who's never seen Star Wars, I would make the argument to them that they need to NOT watch the prequel trilogy. Watching it makes the original trilogy WORSE. It actively undermines the effect the original trilogy can have on you as a viewer. It's much better as an Alec Guinness monologue than actually pictured on screen as Lucas did. It didn't *have* to be that way, but it certainly ended up that way.

 

On 3/5/2024 at 3:42 PM, Chen G. said:

This is not the movie we're talking about, but its really hard to convey the depth of my hatred for The Rise of Skywalker.

 

I mean, it's really bad, and that especially sucks because it's the "end of the saga". So much in it is stupid, from "somehow Palpatine returned" (okay, this point *does* detract from the original trilogy just like the prequels do, for me) to Rey adopting the name Skywalker at the end. Finn continues to be sidelined, Rose is virtually forgotten about entirely, Poe delivers dumb exposition, and Rey becomes... kinda boring. (I really liked her in the first two films but she's just pretty uninteresting here and it's all in the writing.) The only character who gets any sort of consistently good/interesting treatment through all three films is Kylo Ren (and it helps that Adam Driver is a good actor and gives a very charismatic performance despite the character he is portraying). And even with him I found his final redemption arc frustrating, and clearly not what was intended in the previous film.

 

But I'll still rewatch The Rise of Skywalker before I rewatch any of the prequels again. If you turn your brain off, it looks cool and is an enjoyable enough disposable dumb action flick, a la Fast and the Furious or something. But if you turn your brain off with the prequel trilogy and overlook the fact that the plots make zero sense and Anakin's fall is executed in a way that makes zero sense... there's still hardly any fun action, or remotely likable characters, or cool sequences... to keep you going.

 

I don't even like the excessively choreographed light saber fights of the prequels. Attack of the Clones fundamentally misunderstands Yoda by turning him into a little Sonic the Hedgehog bouncing all over the place waving his glow stick aroudn.

 

The fights in the sequel trilogy fit much better with the style of the original trilogy, just like the practical creatures and other elements. There's raw emotional energy to them, rather than being flat obviously-choreographed dances on a green screen.

 

I guess the most emotional lightsaber fight of the prequel trilogy is Anakin and Obi-Wan... and it's completely TERRIBLE and lasts for 45 torturous minutes (or at least it feels that way) over fake looking digital backgrounds. It feels like an empty video game boss battle that frustratingly goes on five times as long as it should.

 

Say what you like about The Rise of Skywalker's idiotically dumb quest plot, but at least it never had me staring at a watch.

 

On 3/5/2024 at 3:42 PM, Chen G. said:

I mean, nevermind that the Emperor is somehow alive (WTF?), that he's somehow been behind all that happened so far (WTF!?!) including cloning Snokes (WTF!?!!) and he's somehow Rey's grandfather (WTF!!?!!) because her parents were only "nobody because they chose to be" (WTF!!??!!) and that, as you said, the quest to find him is this nonesensical find-this-then-find-that concatenation (WTF!!??!!!), but also...the ancient Sith dagger lines up not with a standing monument like, say, the staff does in Raiders of the Lost Ark. No, it lines up with the ruined remains of the Death Star (WTF!!!??!!!). So, what, the person who made this dagger did so after the Death Star exploded? And did so from exactly the same vantage point that Rey and company will happen upon decades later?

 

And you DID say everything that makes TRoS utterly stupid, thanks!  Still found it more engaging (again in a turn off your brain way) than the prequels.

 

On 3/5/2024 at 3:42 PM, Chen G. said:

But, really its the unseeming gallop in which this monumentally idiotic plot is thrown out that I loathe. I don't think there's any equivalency to be made with the (admittedly very fast) pace Abrams pursued in The Force Awakens or in what I've seen of his Star Trek films. I've never seen a movie set to such a...lightspeed pace, and I happen to think this sort of thing is much more deletrious to cinema than is a movie that's paced too slow. Because, if a filmmaker treats his own movie as a nuisance to the audience, such that he needs to clear it out of the audience's way as soon as possible so as to reduce their expose to the irritant that is his film as much as possible...then why are you making films, if that's how you view it? If the point of the film, to you, is getting to the end-credits? Its all just so listless.

 

I wouldn't call it listless, but I would call it pretty empty. (I'll make an exception again for the scene Adam Driver had with Harrison Ford, which was very well acted and did connect with me emotionally... was a total surprise to me. It's literally better than anything in all three prequel films by far.)

 

The first Abrams Star Trek film does the exact same thing: the plot is full of ridiculous contrivances and non-sequiturs and too-convenient things that have to happen for the plot to continue. But it distracts you with constant action and humor, and a generally likable and engaging cast of characters. And what really makes it much better than The Rise of Skywalker is that it has a killer opening, emotionally powerful in a way that gets viewers invested and more willing to overlook silly things that happen later. (Star Trek Into Darkness on the other hand is the only JJ Abrams film I consider even worse than The Rise of Skywalker.)

 

I guess I wouldn't disagree that this approach is overall deleterious to cinema (I do think *some* constant-action films can come off very well, such as say the recent Mission: Impossibles or Mad Max: Fury Road or Guy Ritchie's League of Ungentlemanly Warfare.) But I think whatever Lucas was doing with the prequels was far, far worse. They felt so fake and empty and pointless. I seriously am flabbergasted any time someone revises their opinion of them for the better just because the sequel trilogy ended on such a bad note.

 

Yavar

[Schilkeman 1,011]

7 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

I never understood what is so bad about Anakin's remark about sand. It made sense, in that context it even was kind of poetic. One of the few sentences that gave that weird bond of the two lovers any kind of flavour. 

Yeah, me neither. I warmed up to it once I was old and mature enough to understand it wasn’t a pickup line, that they were just making conversation, telling each other about their lives. It’s sweet, really. He did try and segue that into a pickup line, which we can argue the aesthetics of, but given the number of capital W women I follow on Tumblr who say it would have worked on them, what do I know?

5 hours ago, Chen G. said:

Why does Dooku not recognise the clone army he helped create

Wow, I expect better, Chen. He’s lying. They’re supposed to fight for the Republic, and he can’t give away that he knew about them, therefore giving up the ghost that he and his master are actually fighting a unilateral war.

5 hours ago, Chen G. said:

Its a slower movie, lighter on action and less funny.

It has more action than Empire, and is certainly no more slow.

5 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

If you start to even think about it for a little while, it completely falls apart.

Enlighten me

5 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

incel

I don’t think you know what this word means.

5 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

One minute he's onboard with stopping Palpatine, but saying he deserves a trial, in principled fashion. The next moment he's chopping off Mace Windu's hand (essentially dooming him to death), AND LITERALLY A MINUTE LATER IS MURDERING CHILDREN.

There’s 2 1/2 films leading up to this that set this whole thing in motion. Anakin is confused. He goes to Mace to say that he’s discovered Palpatine is a Sith Lord, but Palpatine has already placed the seed of hope in Anakin that he can keep Padme from dying. The whole sunset scene deals with his internal conflict. He then decides to go to Palpatine’s office, he’s not yet sure for what, only to see Windu about to kill him. He makes his decision here. Let him stand trial, and maybe I can pump him for information. No, Windu decides he’s too dangerous to be left alive, and Anakin stops him from killing Palpatine. He’s decided Padme is more important than the galaxy. In for a penny, in for a pound. “I’ll do whatever you ask, just let me save Padme’s life. I can’t live without her.” He’s already killed children. “Considerably” indeed.

5 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

better written and acted version of what George Lucas was trying to go for with Anakin in AotC and RotS.

My uncle was mean to me (already stupid, Luke would never do this) so let’s kill everyone (more stupid)

 

JJ Abrams’ films are inherently cynical, affectatious tripe, with good casting and sort of followable action scenes. His is the picture beside the definition of hack. He has never made, and I’ll go out in a limb and say he will never make, a good film. But RoS is watchable in its stupidity. TLJ is just stupid.

[Mr. Hooper 1,977]

8 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

It just needed a polish with fewer words saying the same thing, like:

 

"I don't like sand. It's rough, and it gets everywhere."

 

Also, a better delivery from Christensen would've helped.

 

1 hour ago, Schilkeman said:

He did try and segue that into a pickup line

 

 

[Chen G. 4,034]

6 hours ago, Schilkeman said:

Wow, I expect better, Chen. He’s lying. They’re supposed to fight for the Republic, and he can’t give away that he knew about them, therefore giving up the ghost that he and his master are actually fighting a unilateral war.

 

Okay, fair enough. I'll buy that!

[Jurassic Shark 12,236]

6 hours ago, Schilkeman said:

He’s lying.

 

That's not very nice.