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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 2113337" data-attributes="member: 812">Well, what you describe (accepting your sister's word on a movie) isn't remotely objective. It's just listening to and accepting somebody else's subjective opinion.How is that objective?Sorry, that whole line of discussion was meant as a sort of joke. OF COURSE my opinions on what a perfect movie is will have no bearing on your opinion. Why should it? That all got taken far more seriously than I meant it to be taken.Come on. How is "He sucks" an emotional smackdown?<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />I'll assume you were posting at the same time as me, and so didn't see my comment above about sound-off viewing. I honestly feel that's a pretty good way of assessing a film. But we can have more.NOW we're talking! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />No question. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan were the highlight of this film. Two great actors dedicated to providing a real emotional core to the story, to sharing a powerful relationship. Absolutely.See, I WANTED to say she gave a fantastic performance, but I'm not convinced she did. Reviewing it, I've come to the conclusion that I don't know how she feels about her son's disappearance with a total stranger. I'm not saying that she needs to present just one feeling or another, but if she's conflicted, then THAT'S what should be communicated. I don't know how she feels, ultimately.Anymore than I know why she lets this total frickin' stranger walk off with her only son. I've always assumed that Qui-Gon jedi-mind-tricked her into accepting it. Which opens a whole other can of worms that I think I made up because I wanted the story to be more interesting than it was -- that Qui-Gon is actually a bit of a bad guy, that he flat-out kidnapped Anakin from his mother and thereby set in motion the entire collapse of the Republic, his own death and the death of his apprentice (not to mention pretty much the entire Jedi Council).I'm not sure the story is ACTUALLY that sophisticated, though. Especially after AotC. I WANT it to be and for a while I convinced myself that it was, but I don't think there's lots of evidence towards that end.Which is another cause for disappointment, because the whole idea of good guys and bad guys being intermingled is kind of interesting. If not very in keeping with the rest of the Star Wars style.Say no more. Ray Parks is a gifted martial artist (though a pretty bad actor if he's asked to do anything other than glower, which fortunately, he wasn't here) and the makeup job here was huge.Great heavy.The best part about both the two prequels has been watching Ewan Macgregor try to single-handedly lift the material above itself. He's been trying SO HARD. And I like him so much. And his Alec Guinness impression is very very good.Definitely a high point of the films. Although he seemed to fall flat in the second somewhat. Still leagues above his co-stars, for the most part. Though I think Natalie Portman is TRYING, I just think she's getting crushed under the direction and dialogue. Because she's immensely talented, there's no question. And she has moments of brilliance (the bit where, as queen, she tells Anakin that Padme's not available, is one of my favourite moments), but time and again she's given these horrible mouthfuls to try and spit out. Not even Harrison Ford was always able to negotiate Lucas' dialogue, so I don't hold it against her.Big Terrance Stamp fan, but he's done very little for me here. Mainly because he's had almost nothing to do. Not like Peter Cushing in Star Wars. He seems wasted here.Maybe the best sword fight ever directed by a white guy. I own the TPM DVD solely because of that sword fight. I MIGHT go see RotS just to see if they manage to top it.Meh. What's the performance? He's trying, but he's got nothing to work with and nowhere to go. You go "Ooh, Christopher Lee," and then chuckle at his beautiful voice and you're done.Compared to Saruman, Lee is phoning this baby in. I mean he's great, no question, he's always great. But I want to see him DO something. And I don't.This gets sillier every time I see it. What a painful moment.I like the idea, sort of, but it was... I don't know. Silly. And tedious. My main interest was in how they'd gotten Christopher Lee to move around like that, and if they'd replaced him with a digital double.Yoda was easily the best performance in the whole movie. The movie was better every time he was on screen. His expressions, his reactions -- the Yoda animation team did a spectacular job. Big kudos there.This was just overblown melodrama for me. Lucas really milks this, and unfortunately, neither Pernilla August nor Christian Hayden sold me on any of it. The audience I saw it with was chuckling in this sequence, which I'm pretty sure wasn't what was intended.The fights with the monsters felt like "The Rancor, but with less tension and let's do it a couple of times, why don't we?" It's a general problem throughout these two films -- a lack of tension.In the first film, you're on the edge of your seat throughout because you never know what's coming -- you aren't 100% sure that our heroes (or at least that all of them) are going to triumph. They split up in the Death Star, so you worry if maybe Han and Chewie are going to get caught, or maybe Luke and Leia. Especially when Ben dies half-way through the movie. And Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru's charred corpses certainly make it very clear that the stakes are high and danger is all around.In the prequels, that feeling isn't there. The pod race -- there's simple no possiblity that Anakin is going to lose this race. You know that before it even begins. And yep, sure enough, he wins the race. The characters are forever being put in "jeopardy" that you can clearly predict the outcome of.This is why the final swordfight in TPM works so great -- because you can imagine that they WON'T win this one. The story has been set up so that this might turn out any particular way.Compare that with the Gungan battle or the space battle, both taking place at the same time. You KNOW the Gungan's aren't about to be slaughtered in front of our eyes, and you KNOW Anakin's not going to get blown away, so there's very little tension. Hence, very little excitement.The same problem with the monster battle in AotC. You KNOW Anakin, Obi-Wan and Amidala aren't going to die here. You know that. So there's no tension, and the whole scene reduces to a "That was kinda cool" observation. Which is fair enough, but it's a long ways away from a thrilling moment in cinema.Well, they did. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />But no, I don't think you're wrong. How could you be wrong about what you like? I do disagree with you, but that doesn't make you (or me) wrong. This isn't a contest, it's a conversation.</blockquote>

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