New efforts!

[LaughingAlex]

Belated Media did a somewhat rewrite of Episodes I and II (III is supposedly coming) that seem REALLY GOOD. I think there would be no shame and no one would complain if they just scrapped the prequels and redid them with this at the head of writing and assistant directing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgICnbC2-_Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAbug3AhYmw

I've watched these several times and every time I think "MAN, that would have been WAY better!"

I think the best story telling is when the characters see a lot of development.  In a way Luke developed very well as a character in episodes 4-6.  But I felt that, in Anakins case, his character development was to stepped on.  In that, he started out a mary sue somewhat, when you think about it, he was an especially young kid who was a technological genious, which I think was a bit to cliche'd.    I could see small projects from a kid, as I actually had small projects of my own then(hacking the game myth 2 using the games editor fear, but these were projects I didn't release, I was doing those projects for myself).

But a full robot was quite a bit, I mean it takes years of learning to program something, to.  If they did want it to be believable for Anakin to pull that off, he'd have certainly needed help and it'd have been ok for him to have that help.  Because often kids did come into messing with technology because their parents or some mentor they really liked helped them.  But no, they just have him completely make C3PO.  Which looking at that, i'm left thinking back "how'd he get the programming and whatnot, how'd he do all of that stuff?".

Then his trip to the dark side was to stepped and tiered, rather blantly.  In episode 1 we see one weak spot in him, his mother, but then it comes to expected in episode 2 when he just suddenly flips out and goes from being a good guy to a bad guy.  Why couldn't they have taken an approach similar to the story telling of Spec Ops: The line?  In that game, the main character makes increasingly worst and worst decisions not because he's evil, but because he is just trying to be a good intended individual, a hero.  But over time he gets worst and worst, and by the time you get through the game half way he's become the villain.  It was more gradual, in that every thing he does he does it with good intentions and it corrodes him.  It's not so instant it's very gradual.

They didn't do that with Anakin.

If I was to describe Anakins progression from good to evil on the fallout karma scale, i'd say he was a +1000(super good) starting out in episode 2, and remains there up untill he finds his mother.  Then suddenly he's already all the way down to a staggering -400(Moderately evil).  It's a very sudden change that shouldn't have happened over night like that.  And we saw the same mistake with episode 3.  He went from 0 karma(he got better apparently, but he's still post traumic from his rampage among the sand people) and then takes an instant nose dive to -1000.  It was to much of a polar change.

Which in a way meant he actually saw very little development as a character :/.

[ukaserex]

That doesn't explain how all of them missed the two droids crossing their line of fire that eventually escaped with the Death Star plans they were supposed to retrieve in the first place. 

I don't think they deliberately did that, because doing that deliberately leads to incredibly crazy thinking on the part of the Empire, on top of the Emperor deliberately punking Vader.

I'm sure this isn't a popular opinion, but what does explain it is that it was a horribly made movie. Only parts of it were interesting (that is, only parts of it were interesting to me when I was 10 years old.) But, I'm not at all a fan of sci-fi. I just wish the movie hadn't been built up so much. It didn't at all live up to expectations. So, before you correct me - please keep in mind I was 10 when I saw it. The old original one. Not the newer one with the nifty effects.

[Aggelakis]

Hated them day one and I was his early audience growing up to Starwars and Empire Strikesback as a kid yea no one I knew bought the Ewok toy figures

"Return of the Jedi" was called "the Ewok movie" for the vast majority of my childhood. (I was born in 1983.) :x

Even today I have to take a second to get around "the Ewok movie" before I remember that it's actually "Return".

[Aggelakis]

All you youngsters, with your prequel complaints.  I've known real suffering, I tell you.  I saw the Star Wars Holiday Special when it ran on TV!  Now that's real pain!

My husband (ten years older than I) says there's no such thing.


>.>
<.<
>.>

[hejtmane]

And some jokester then said that they hope they bring Jar Jar back for episode VII in the comments....I just screamed(though I know  the person was joking) .

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Well only if it is to watch him get shot as soon as he appears now that would rock

[hejtmane]

My husband (ten years older than I) says there's no such thing.


>.>
<.<
>.>

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0193524/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c3B18gAJyc

[Cailyn Alaynn]

Only a Sith could be so cruel as to give her a link...

[hejtmane]

Only a Sith could be so cruel as to give her a link...

Just sharing the childhood scars  ;D

[Sinistar]

I think the best story telling is when the characters see a lot of development.  In a way Luke developed very well as a character in episodes 4-6.  But I felt that, in Anakins case, his character development was to stepped on.  In that, he started out a mary sue somewhat, when you think about it, he was an especially young kid who was a technological genious, which I think was a bit to cliche'd.    I could see small projects from a kid, as I actually had small projects of my own then(hacking the game myth 2 using the games editor fear, but these were projects I didn't release, I was doing those projects for myself).

But a full robot was quite a bit, I mean it takes years of learning to program something, to.  If they did want it to be believable for Anakin to pull that off, he'd have certainly needed help and it'd have been ok for him to have that help.  Because often kids did come into messing with technology because their parents or some mentor they really liked helped them.  But no, they just have him completely make C3PO.  Which looking at that, i'm left thinking back "how'd he get the programming and whatnot, how'd he do all of that stuff?".

Then his trip to the dark side was to stepped and tiered, rather blantly.  In episode 1 we see one weak spot in him, his mother, but then it comes to expected in episode 2 when he just suddenly flips out and goes from being a good guy to a bad guy.  Why couldn't they have taken an approach similar to the story telling of Spec Ops: The line?  In that game, the main character makes increasingly worst and worst decisions not because he's evil, but because he is just trying to be a good intended individual, a hero.  But over time he gets worst and worst, and by the time you get through the game half way he's become the villain.  It was more gradual, in that every thing he does he does it with good intentions and it corrodes him.  It's not so instant it's very gradual.

They didn't do that with Anakin.

If I was to describe Anakins progression from good to evil on the fallout karma scale, i'd say he was a +1000(super good) starting out in episode 2, and remains there up untill he finds his mother.  Then suddenly he's already all the way down to a staggering -400(Moderately evil).  It's a very sudden change that shouldn't have happened over night like that.  And we saw the same mistake with episode 3.  He went from 0 karma(he got better apparently, but he's still post traumic from his rampage among the sand people) and then takes an instant nose dive to -1000.  It was to much of a polar change.

Which in a way meant he actually saw very little development as a character :/.

I agree that Luke did develop as a character rather well in the classics and that Anakin was basically written badly to become evil.

Ep 4: Luke a starry eyed dreamer who whines about being stuck on the farm and dreams of being a hero and his Uncle just tells him to shut up and do his chores.  Then his world gets turned upside down when he finally meets Obi Wan, learns a slightly inaccurate version of how his father perished, then he loses his Aunt and Uncle and then starts on the path to be a hero.

Now the key difference in Luke' behavior after his Aunt and Uncle were killed compared to Anakin's reaction to his mother dying is this: Luke has no force training at this point, only just received a light saber and barely knows how to use it, but the key thing is that Obi Wan was there to give him some advice and to take Luke with him off planet and start his training.   Anakin never told Obi Wan, Yoda or the council what he did to the Tuskens, he only told Padme who apparently decided to keep it a secret despite the fact that Anakin has tremendous force power and the Jedi should know what he did.  YODA EVEN SENSED Anakin's pain and never asked him what caused it and what went wrong! Now granted they got a bit busy with Dooku and the Clone War but still.....

Ep 5: Luke is the big hero that blew up the Death Star, so he's a bit more confident in himself and has apparently somewhat practice his force powers as he was able to get his saber to him to cut himself free in the ice cave. He gets to Dagobah to receive both basic and advanced Force training from Yoda, and his training is slowly progressing despite the fact that his lack of belief prevents him from lifting his x-wing and his failure in the darkside cave test.  However he is still brash and reckless like his father and aborts his training to go off and save his friends.......look how well that turned out.  Obi Wan tells him he will go it alone, Luke faces Vader and ends up getting quite literally DISARMED and receives the big revelation "I AM YOUR FATHER!" which really blows his mind. Oh yes, his friends saved him after he sent a mental distress call to Leia.


Ep 6: When Luke arrives at Jabba's palace you can see he has changed, he's not as reckless, he's calm, he's in control and the Force was with him. The whole plan to get Han out was Luke's, the guy who was always being rescued by Han in the other two movies (Death Star trench, Hoth....). So we see that Luke has evolved, but at the end Luke was still a starry eyed kid that so believed in his father and was so intent on rejecting the darkside that he does what is tactically speaking the DUMBEST THING EVER TO DO: he stands before the Emperor and throws his saber aside, symbolically rejecting violence, and declares that he is a Jedi as his father was before him.   Upon which the Emperor starts frying him with darkside lightning, a technique that inexperience Luke is INCAPABLE of repelling without his saber!  I don't care what your plan is or powerful you think you are, you DO NOT THROW AWAY YOUR WEAPON when you stand before the greatest evil in the galaxy!   If it werent' for the compassion that Luke was showing Vader and trying to get him to turn away from evil, Vader would not have made the choice to reject evil and fulfill his own destiny of destroying the Emperor.

Also let's face it, Yoda and Obi Wan's plan to train ONLY Luke to face off against Vader and the Emperor was pretty stupid.  Obi Wan should have told Luke, "You will go to the Dagobah system, there you will learn from Yoda, he who instructed me. Also bring Leia with you!"  If they are both the children of Anakin then wouldn't it make more sense to get them BOTH trained in the force, arm them with sabers and have them both ready to fight?

[Aggelakis]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0193524/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c3B18gAJyc

*air whooshes over your head*

My husband (ten years older than I) says there's no such thing.


>.>
<.<
>.>

Yeah. It was a joke.

He also maintains that there was only one Highlander movie and a few episodes of a television series.

[amrobinson]

I like the new avatar. Very appropriate.

Now if we can just put some pants on Remaugen!

[Sinistar]

Also while we are talking about Lucas and his works, let us pause for a moment about Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.

I really don't get the hatred for this movie. Granted it is not the best of the four, that would be Last Crusade.
Shia LeBouf was not my first choice to play son of Indy, the actor that played Sam Flynn in TRON LEGACY would have been better.

The movie focused on all the legends of aliens having built the pyramids, okay fine. It is still archaeology, and is what Indy is.  It also touched on the fact that Indy is a grave robber. Go back to Raiders of the Lost Ark and how in the beginning he and Marcus were talking about his latest acquisitions and how Marcus stated that he was "sure" that it was all done in accordance with the law.....yeah right.   Also the govt agents that recruited Indy to go after the ark commented on how he was a "Specialist" in the acquisition of rare antiquities.

Now, let's get to the part that had fans groaning, the fridge nuke.  Yes by all rights Indy should have broken his neck in all that tumbling around. But he emerges just fine and gets decontaminated back at the base.  yet people are moaning and groaning about the implausibility of him surviving that.....

....these people have forgotten that Indy is a character made to survive the unsurvivable! He is meant to cheat death, escape death and laugh it off later.

Take off the rose colored nostalgia glasses and go back and watch the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Watch it from the beginning right to where he gets away in his pals airplane, and I want you to count how many times Indy should have perished in the beginning of that movie.

The spike traps, the poison dart traps in the temple, the giant rolling rock, the fact that as he is running to the plane the locals are shooting arrows and darts at him as he runs in pretty much a straight line to the plan and NO ONE CAN HIT HIM!  How about the fact that later in the movie he somehow rides atop an enemy submarine that had to have submerged at least once, yet he survives and gets to their base where the Ark and his girl are at and he's not injured or half drowned, just soaking wet! 

Temple of Doom: how many times should he have perished? Better yet when he used his foot to stop the mine cart, how did he still have any boot left on his foot much less a foot attached to his leg?

Last Crusade: how many times should he have died? The man is on a horse, jousting a tank! The tank is shooting and missing yet one would think the force of the explosions would have unseated him from the horse or at least knocked his hat off his head!  Or when the tank went over the cliff and we all thought he was dead only to have jumped off and climbed up to safety only to collapse from adrenaline crash? By all rights that tank should have been his end.  Or the magic bullet that ricochets in tank and only kills the driver......

So yeah, the fridge nuke complainers really have no basis to complain.

[Aggelakis]

I liked the Crystal Skull as a movie unrelated to any established story/characters/etc.

It was really terrible for an Indiana Jones movie.

[Waffles]

To those...uninitiated...You will know the pain I...and many, many others, have suffered in our youth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86KUAFyPX7w

[Zombie Hustler]

He also maintains that there was only one Highlander movie and a few episodes of a television series.

There was only one Highlander movie.

"There can be only one!!!!"

;)

[Zombie Hustler]

To those...uninitiated...You will know the pain I...and many, many others, have suffered in our youth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86KUAFyPX7w

Wow. It has been a long time since I've seen the Holiday Special. I totally forgot that Madea was in it.

[Sinistar]

There was only one Highlander movie.

"There can be only one!!!!"

;)

The original movie was written pretty much as a "one and done", its becoming a cult hit wasn't quite expected.  The 2nd movie was the "obligatory sequel", poorly written and truly had to be the worst movie of Connery's career. Even the "renegade director cut version" was poor, omitting Planet Zeist didn't help.

However as bad as the 2nd movie was, Highlander 5: the Source was so pathetically awful that it makes Highlander 2 almost look like an Oscar winning movie by comparison.

Many old friends of mine are Highlander fans, they have not seen Highlander 5 and I warned them that it was so bad that Highlander 2 is good by comparison.  had my cell phone been on hand I would have photographed the looks on their faces......their expressions were priceless.

Highlander the TV series, Season 1 was a rough start but once Darius was introduced it start getting better. The tragic loss of the actor that played Darius forced some story changes, If my memory is working right it was supposed to be Hugh Fitzcairn that would have been killed by the Hunters and Darius was to have continued to exist through the series.   They tried to replace Darius once or twice before finally creating Methos, and what a great character he was.

Anyway, pending the impending reboot, the Highlander franchise observes the following timeline:

Highlander 1: retconned so that while Connor DOES kill Kurgan it was not the final gathering and he did not receive The Prize.  Rather it was a Dark Quickening per a Highlander comic miniseries and Connor had to face Kurgan in his mind and defeat him again to fully assimilate him and his power. 

Next comes the TV series, then Highlander Endgame. Now Endgame is proof that poor editing will destroy movie far easier then bad plot, dialogue, acting and directing.

Movies 2, 3 and 5 are best ignored.

[Sinistar]

I liked the Crystal Skull as a movie unrelated to any established story/characters/etc.

It was really terrible for an Indiana Jones movie.

Definitely not the best of the 4, but for me it was a fun movie that was still worthy of the name Indiana Jones, albeit barely.

If they want to keep the franchise going in a way to please all the nostalgia then they need to recast the role of Indiana Jones like they do with James Bond.  Thus Indy can still be in the late 30's and early 40's facing off against the ratzi's as both sides race to find the latest mystic artifact.

Edit: he has gone after the Lost Ark, the Sankara Stones, the Holy Grail and an alien skull.
Other good artifacts for him to seek could be: the sword Excalibur and the Spear of Longinus

[Zombie Hustler]

The 2nd movie was the "obligatory sequel", poorly written and truly had to be the worst movie of Connery's career. Even the "renegade director cut version" was poor, omitting Planet Zeist didn't help.

Bad as it was, it still didn't make him retire from acting like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen did.  :'(

[FloatingFatMan]

Bad as it was, it still didn't make him retire from acting like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen did.  :'(

I liked LXG...