Are you glad the Star Wars prequels were even made?

[jdavis]

No, it really isn't too much to ask for. I think part of it is a lack of faith by the actors in the quality of writing and the story and the other part of it has to do with the actors being asked to emote largely on all green sets in front of blank green walls. Much harder to get the epic scope of the story when you're constantly reacting to nothing.

Another reason the acting is so "off" in places is revealed on the AOTC DVD. If Lucas thought in some scenes Hayden Christiansen delivered a line better than Portman, and vice versa, he would later digitally splice what he considered the best two line deliveries into one scene to create a "super take" of the scene as he coined it. The problem is you get a totally off-kilter chemistry because the actors aren't even reacting to what the other person is doing or saying, we're seeing them reacting to what the other actor did three takes ago so even the one on one human interactions have an extra level of phoniness to them in a way that's completely unnecessary.

Its taking the gimmick of Forrest Gump's Tom Hanks/JFK splicing way too far and in scenes that are supposed to be intimate and emotional. Just bad directing.

I can see Lucas directing a scene where actors are bunping into walls and blowing their lines left and right and him going "Ok that's a wrap, we'll fix it in post." You have to wonder if he was even on set during much of the shooting, sometimes it seems there was no direction at all.

 

[Welverin]

We agree almost completely about these things, Welverin. Portman's performance was the weakest of the principal actors. Anakin being a punk made sense, he seethed through almost the entire film which should be a good lead-in to part 3.

Yeah, it's rather funny. There are a bunch of things we disagree on, but the ones we most agree on, are the ones most popular to hate on around here (SW prequels and RAS).

Boba Fett, in kid form, was disturbing. He got off on all the killing and the bounty hunter lifestyle that his father led.

I actually find him rather annoying, with his "shoot him dad!" and the laughing.

No, I agree with you that Obi-Wan is a character with flaws. I just don't buy that the inconsistent logic and general plot holes were deliberately created by Lucas as part of a subtle and delicate screenplay. I am not willing to give him half that much credit.

Why not? What do you have to gain from assuming he's an incompetent boob? If viewing one way makes it a good movie and the other makes it bad, why not go with the good? After all wouldn’t you rather have a good movie to watch than a bad one?

It’s no different from reading something online that can be interpreted as a joke or an insult, you can take it as a joke and laugh or take it as an insult and get mad, which would you rather be?

There are a million different worlds out there and more people and races than you can even count, I thought it was a 100,000 man army myself but even at 1 million it wasn't all that (There are droid armies out there with 10 times that number). Heck even when you just compare it to Earth, the Russians lost 500,000 troops in the battle of Stalingrad. 1 million troops on a Galactic scale is a freaking personal guard (US armed Forces run about 1.4 million active duty troops), it wouldn't even cost all that when say compared to the upkeep of a million worlds, You have a massive beurocracy here, I mean it's a galactic massive one, do you know how easy it would be for the Channellor to slip a little out here and there,

The number of troops is just a fault of Lucas’, this isn’t sci-fi and it’s obvious by George’s lack, Obi-wan mentions millions of people dying on Alderaan (admittedly they may not have been literal), the Falcon limps from Hoth to Bespin with out a working Hyperdrive (everyone would die of old age traveling between the two systems at sublight speeds, well maybe not Chewie).

So the size of the clone army is just a case of George going ‘Gee, a million is a lot’ and not considering the size of the army relative to the galactic population.

Of course it’s really rather irrelevant, the accuracy of such things doesn’t make a difference to the story.

(Midichlorians......... I hate them almost as much as Planet Ziest).

Great line, right up there with “Parts of episode one were good, and other parts had Jar-jar in them.”

 

[Gizzard]

Palpatine only had one dark Jedi minion (there is always only two sith lords) and it was Dooku. By reading what you wrote here I see that you have in fact completly missed the entire plot of the movie. The Kaminoans were instructed to make the army for the Jedi council, why because the Jedi work for the Chancellor, Yes yes yes the army was intended for the Jedi to have.

So, if the Clone Army was for the (good) Jedi to have, which (good) Jedi knew about this? Obi-Wan did not. Yoda says he did not, but he's a tricky little oven-mitt. ;-)

(When the Kaminians named the Jedi who ordered the army, it was a name I didn't recognize. Obi-Wan kinda shrugged it off and said "That guy's been dead for 10 years." It wasn't Dooku, but frankly, I would expect whoever ordered the Army to use an alias. I'd also expect GL not to worry about it either.)

This is a secret plot, Palpatine can't reveal himself as a Dark Lord of the Sith, the Jedi would destroy him, but he can manipulate himself to the top where he can secretly send them out to be killed in a bloody war. He tricked the Trade Federation into starting a separitist movement and starting a big crisis, he tricked the Senate to give him absolute power (funny that he had sent Amadala home and into hiding right before this vote came up, she was it's biggest opponent), he tricked the Jedi into going to Geonosis (and being slaughtered) and tricked Yoda into attacking Geonosis with the clones to rescue them thus starting the clone wars.

I think this is a solid statement of the plot as GL sees it. Its needlessly convoluted, and it relies on people not noticing that Palpatine would have been better off keeping the Clone Army for himself since Dooku's forces did a fine job of decimating the Jedi; if Yoda hadn't brought in the Clones they probably could have finished the job right there!

Tangent 4: My interpretation of the movie was the Palpatine had ordered the Clone Army for himself (since they looked like Stormtroopers to me, and he's obviously the Emperor) and through a pathetic lack of security he allowed these Clones to be used by his enemies (the good Jedi). If he had managed to use Dooku+Clones to destroy the Jedi would have achieved all of his objectives by then end of AotC, but then there wouldn't be a need for the third movie. So, GL gives the Clones to the Jedi so they can eke out a costly victory and he can make Ep3.