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 Let's rip the Band-Aid off now: I don't give a poo poo about Star Wars. I've seen the first seven movies in some form or another; the original trilogy, the prequel trilogy, and Awakens (I barely remember Return at this point, let alone the prequel trilogy; I saw them in theaters when I was like 12 or so, going on twenty years now). I tried to watch Rogue One and got bored and shut it off halfway through. None of this is a statement on the quality or lack thereof on what I watched; I just never cared. I cared inasmuch as I felt the social obligation to care, because they were Important, and Notable, and I felt required to consume it to be a part of the much-vaunted conversation. This is not a judgement on people who Like Star Wars. It was just never my thing; I loved, and still love, Marvel and I got really invested in the MCU and comics. That was my focus. That was what mattered, to me. Let me be crystal clear here: This isn't antipathy like it was with DW. It's not anything. I nothing SW. I have nothing against people who love SW, I have nothing against people who hate it. I don't think about it beyond whatever amount I do to be polite in conversation because people like it and like to talk about it. My opinions on SW could be summed up as "it's there and it exists". I have no axe to grind or laurel to bequeath. I'm here out of genuine curiosity and interest in seeing if it can be this enchanting thrill ride that so mesmerizes and excites others in a way it never has for me. I'm also here to practice my writing. What Is This? Hey, I'm NieR Occomata, more commonly known as Occupation/That rear end in a top hat, and I used to post a lot in TVIV and now I don't any more. One of my claims to fame on these forums, as embarrassing a series of words as that is, was that I reviewed all of Doctor Who, a show I passionately hated before starting that foolish endeavor that I then grew to love. At the time I ended the thread I had reviewed some hundred-plus-ish episodes of the show and went from the first episode of Nine's tenure to the last episode of Twelve's second season. I don't say this to brag, oh god why would I brag about that, but as more of a point that when I commit to something, I loving commit to it. So now I'm doing it with Star Wars, because I am bored, and because I wanted to practice writing reviews again, and because I figure that if I commit to reviewing every single piece of Star Wars media that is currently canon and currently extant I'll actually do it instead of stopping halfway through Revenge or some poo poo. I want this to be a useful time capsule of what I thought about Star Wars when I was both old enough to gauge some measure of its objective quality and mature enough to express my opinion on that measurement in some sort of effective and entertaining way. I'll be watching everything, then posting my reviews on it sequentially; movies as singular reviews like...movie reviews are, and the television shows episodically. I'll be watching in chronological and canonical order, as defined by however the Mouse has decreed nu-canon to be. Here is the watch order I will be going with: Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Star Wars: Attack of the Clones Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith Star Wars: The Clone Wars (the animated movie) Star Wars: The Clone Wars (the animated series) Star Wars: The Bad Batch Solo: A Star Wars Story Obi-Wan Kenobi Star Wars Rebels animated series (seasons 1, 2, 3, and 4) Andor season 1 Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Star Wars: A New Hope Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back Star Wars: Return of the Jedi The Mandalorian season 1 The Mandalorian season 2 The Book of Boba Fett The Mandalorian season 3 Ahsoka season 1 Star Wars Resistance season 1 Star Wars: The Force Awakens Star Wars: The Last Jedi Star Wars Resistance season 2 Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Again, movies as singular reviews, TV shows as episodic reviews. I'll have a post with a link to all of the reviews in the post below this one. If Disney adds new canonical Star Wars cinematic media while I work on this behemoth, I will review those as well. Which, of course, they undoubtedly will. If you want to watch along, that's fine, I won't be enforcing a no-spoiler policy because that's loving stupid and also I'm already "spoiled" on pretty much everything that happens in all of Star Wars due to, you know. Existing on the internet. You pick it up via osmosis. Just, please, don't be dweebs about Star Wars, you know exactly what I mean and I shouldn't have to explain what I mean when I ask you not to be Star Wars dweebs. Why. I genuinely don't know. How Often Will You Update? I'm a workaholic and have some semblance of a life besides, so I don't know. I'm aiming for at least one update a week. The movie reviews will probably be longer, so they will take longer, and because I'm starting with the prequel trilogy that's going to throw my estimation of how long these things will take out of whack. Otherwise, yes. Once a week. Perhaps more when I get to the TV shows, and if I get really into a show as I watch it. Oh but you shouldn't watch this thing because it's ba- I don't care. You should really watch this technically non-canon but still really good Star Wars thing before Disney bought Lucas- I don't care. You should actually watch it in this wa- I don't care.
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Aug 31, 2023 12:11
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Index of Reviews: Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace Star Wars: Episode II - The Attack of the Clones Star Wars: Episode III - The Revenge of the Sith NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Sep 10, 2023 |
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Aug 31, 2023 12:11
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 Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace The question asked about this movie is always "why". Why does Jar Jar Binks (Ahmed Best) exist? Why does the movie spend so long on trade talks? Why were midi-chlorians added to the canon? Why was Jake Lloyd cast as Anakin Skywalker? Why, moreover, was this movie made in the first place? And on, and on, and on. Every dissection, criticism, and post-mortem of Phantom inevitably ends up listing all the ways in which the movie failed and questions, rhetorically, its central conceit(s). And sure, it's easy to sort of point and laugh at the thing. The movie does itself no favors by having so many bizarre and ill-thought-out sequences and events in such quick succession. But I'm not really concerned with the "why". I'm concerned with the "who". My central issue with this movie boils down to who, ultimately, this movie was made for. This movie came out in 1999. I saw it in theaters, which therefore means that I was 9, the age Anakin Skywalker is in this movie. And, looking at it now, some twenty-four years later, the movie has a legacy, and not necessarily even a solely negative one. The popularity of all of its most meme-worthy and memorable lines, and the subsequent communities that have formed around parroting those specific lines - r/prequelmemes chief among them - means that on some level this movie was and is popular and beloved. But not, generally speaking, by people my age. The people who, ostensibly, would be the most affected by this movie, whose childhoods would have been most impacted are people my age and a little bit older and a little bit younger. Mid-thirties millennials who were able to see themselves in the precocious kid onscreen who flew the cool spaceships and knew more than all the adults and, secretly, turned out to be the chosen one all along. But we, and by we I mean most millennials, have collectively rejected this movie. Even people in my generation who love the prequels or consider them superior to the sequels (not the original trilogy, never the original trilogy) love them in spite of this mess of a film. It is Gen Z that is carrying the banner for this movie. A generation who did not exist when this movie was written, was shot, was edited, was released theatrically. So I ask again - who was this made for? It is the central confusion of the film, the thing that grates at me most severely and makes Phantom the most difficult to evaluate critically. All of its central problems stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of who the audience for this film is and what they want. At the point Phantom is made, George Lucas is a beloved filmmaker, a titan in the industry, who has (according to the mythos) single-handedly perpetuated one of the single most profitable IPs of all time. He can do no wrong. He leverages that enormity of success into carte blanche to make whatever film he wants to make when revisiting that storied IP some fifteen years later, and gives us Phantom, which when viewed from a specific perspective - the nine-year-old protagonist, the podrace scene, the numerous action sequences, the fart jokes, the entire character of Jar Jar and the Gungans in general, the slapstick, and on and on and on - all of that stuff is made to appeal to a new generation of children. If the original trilogy was for Gen Xers, Phantom, and the prequel trilogy in general, is for the generation that would eventually call themselves millennials. That logic makes sense, and if I view Phantom as a movie for children all of its most common complaints start to melt away. And viewing it as a movie aimed specifically at young children helps put into context some of its more genuinely problematic sins. Yes, the Trade Federation chancellors - that whole race of aliens, really - are kind of crazy offensive asian stereotypes. Yes, at points, Watto is a racist Jewish caricature. The portrayal of the Gungans is, straight-up, no modifiers needed, racist as gently caress. But viewed as easy and fun "whacky characters" for children to point and laugh at - which in no way justifies the racism or stereotype - it becomes a lot more if not palatable, at least understandable. But. But but but. We look at all this, and the problem arises when the inciting event of the movie is a broken down trade negotiation to offset a blockade. Sure, it leads to an ostensibly "cool" action scene of Jedi fighting robots (that, coincidentally, has aged exceptionally terribly in a post-MCU CGI world), but the premise is something that no six-to-twelve-year-old in the year nineteen hundred and ninety-nine would ever care about or even have context for. And that is the issue. Who is this movie for? It keeps popping back up, where something immediately and obviously for children, like the podrace sequence, is immediately followed or worse still sandwiched between two scenes or sequences not for kids. Again, take the podrace - that's a scene that immediately follows Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) testing Anakin's blood for midi-chlorians and precedes Queen Amidala, or rather her body double played by Kiera Knightly, flying to Coruscant to speak to the Galactic Senate about sanctions against the Galactic Federation. These are scenes made specifically not for children, to address either lore poo poo that no child would ever give a poo poo about until they entered their teenage years at their absolute earliest or to torture the already extremely forced leadup-to-WWII analogy that the original trilogy made their bread and butter on. And this cycle, of flipping back and forth in tone between something For Kids and something decidedly Not For Kids on an almost scene by scene basis, keeps occurring throughout Phantom and as a result one can find no purchase. If this movie is meant to be a serious political analogy about the rise of the Galactic Empire and how bureaucracy and organizational rot leads to the rise of fascism as we literally saw in Europe during the post WWI decade that this movie seems to be emulating, but in space with laser swords, then the fart jokes during the go-kart race don't fit. But if this movie is actually aimed at and meant to appeal to children, then stop including the parts where people are being rounded up in Space Not-Poland and put into literal camps as the systematic destruction of an entire group of people is being ignored by the overarching governmental body meant to monitor situations like this in the first place. It's the constant tonal swings, is the thing. Pick a lane. It sucks, because Lucas is attempting to solve a problem he already solved decades prior. Everyone got it in the original trilogy, that the Empire were Space Nazis, he just did it via contextual clues like how all of the Empire's uniforms had a decidedly SS-looking feel to them or the oppressive and Brutalist architecture the Empire engaged in, the endless military parades, the conformity through fear. Adults got what the analogy was while kids understood they were looking at "bad guys", we didn't need a scene of Space Jews dealing with Space Kristallnacht for the analogy to land most fully. It's...it's bizarre. Let's pause for a brief second to bring up what I believe is the single most egregious flaw the film has. It has too much mythos, it has an overwhelming amount of inspiration and narratives that it cherrypicks from to the point where it becomes a confused and kind of ugly mess. The original trilogy was, relatively speaking, simple - WWII resistance fights Nazis, led by wizard samurai. In space. All of that is the same sort of high fantasy, sci-fi theming that comes from roughly the same decade and even the same medium as each other - pulp comics, specifically 1940s to 1960s or so pulp comics. That's what Star Wars is, right? It's, quite literally, Indiana Jones in space, with a lot of spaghetti western and a heaping helping of Kurosawa. Those inspirations make sense. The bad guy, therefore, is eight foot tall Space Hitler with a laser sword. Again, coherent to its own aims. And then we get here, to Phantom, where Space Hitler is revealed to be a...precocious kid? Who, moreover, might be Space Jesus considering he was immaculately conceived? The religious theming just doesn't fit with the rest and ends up confusing the point. It's too much and doesn't add anything, it just makes it weirder and more difficult to digest and comprehend. It's the question of who, that I keep going back to, because the movie completely lacks an identity. Rather, it has so many of them that it feels like a schizophrenic mess, like a compulsive liar constantly trying on new personas in a vague and ultimately futile attempt to entertain. Oh you don't like the rasta alien? Oh...what if this were political intrigue? What if it were a World War II analogy? What if it were a kart racer? How about a....slapstick?...war sequence? What about a religious analogy? It ends up trying to be everything, and ends up being nothing. The irony, of course, is my central point - that it did work, that it does work, and as a result there is a whole generation of fans who sincerely believe this Star Wars trilogy, with this starting movie, is the strongest of the three options they have available. So....gently caress me, I guess. Grade: D Random Thoughts:
NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Aug 31, 2023 |
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Aug 31, 2023 12:11
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Phantom Menace rules. Two monks fight the devil and one gets cut in half. Then we learn the devil worked for Congress lol. edit: quote:It sucks, because Lucas is attempting to solve a problem he already solved decades prior. Everyone got it in the original trilogy, that the Empire were Space Nazis, he just did it via contextual clues like how all of the Empire's uniforms had a decidedly SS-looking feel to them or the oppressive and Brutalist architecture the Empire engaged in, the endless military parades, the conformity through fear. Adults got what the analogy was while kids understood they were looking at "bad guys", we didn't need a scene of Space Jews dealing with Space Kristallnacht for the analogy to land most fully. It's...it's bizarre. Also I think this is a bad read. The PT is most definitely a direct sequel to the OT, and you are right that it's based on the inevitable slide of liberal democracy into fascism, but it's target here isn't some pre-War thing. It's about the present time (the 1990's) just as the OT was about the imperial realities of the 1960's and 70's (the Rebellion is almost explicitly a stand in for the North Vietnamese and the Empire is Ameri(KKK)a at the time the original came out). The original conception of Star Wars was as a loosely connected trilogy about western imperialism (specifically inspired by such in southeast Asia) along with American Graffiti and Apocalypse Now (which he was to direct before it ended up in Coppola's hands). quote:this is easily the weakest and worst of the three options available. Man, TPM isn't like the best movie ever but comparing it unfavorable to loving The Force Awakens is a gnarly opinion lol. That thing is dogshit. Danger fucked around with this message at 23:58 on Aug 31, 2023 |
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Aug 31, 2023 22:02
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One of the weirder things about TPM (to me) is that it feels like a movie where the director doesn't know if he's gonna get a sequel or not. It ends basically the same way ANH does, with the main thrust of the plot neatly wrapped up but with all of the character arcs basically just begun, which is a weird dichotomy that makes sense for most films but not something as guaranteed to have a sequel as this one did.Danger posted:Man, TPM isn't like the best movie ever but comparing it unfavorable to loving The Force Awakens is a gnarly opinion lol. That thing is dogshit. TFA kinda has all the opposite problems TPM has, now that I think of it -- the moment-to-moment action and dialogue in TFA is pretty good and the overall screenplay is brisk and well-placed, but its plot and aesthetics are beyond derivative. TPM meanwhile has a really interesting new status quo to explore, and most of the ships/settings/aliens are completely different from what Star Wars ever did before but holy moly does the dialogue suck poo poo and the Senate scenes go on foreeeeevvvveeeeerrrrrr. Given the choice I think I'd rather watch TPM, but just like OP I was 9 in 1999 so there's a lot of emotional attachment to the prequels that late-20s me never had with the sequels. NieR Occomata posted:[*] This'll be my one "why" question of the review - Why do Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan visit the Gungan City in the first place? It's like a five minute sequence that could've been easily cut and nothing of value, literally nothing at all, would have been lost. Just cut from them crashing on Naboo to somehow stealing a ship and ending up in the capital city. The Gungan trip is completely and utterly pointless. It adds nothing to the movie besides a longer runtime. IMO it helps set up the Gungans helping the Naboo in the final battle -- seeing their underwater city at its height makes them hiding out in the swamp later hit harder, and better emphasizes the point that the Naboo and Gungans are *both* victims of the Federation and need to set aside their differences to save their planet. It's underbaked, sure, but so is the entire prequel trilogy ninjahedgehog fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Sep 1, 2023 |
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Sep 1, 2023 19:13
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I'd say the podrace isn't aimed at kids. It's aimed at people old enough to get all the Ben-Hur references.
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Sep 1, 2023 21:04
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pod racing rules, jar jar rules. haters gonna hate tho
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Sep 2, 2023 02:51
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It’s a movie franchise that has produced four total good movies in what, twelve tries? And I’m counting half of one movie and half of another to make movie four? I don’t know. Rise of Skywalker was so bad that I don’t think I can revisit the ones I liked haha. Good review though, phantom menace is a really horrible end product but I’ll be damned if it isn’t the best example of what happens when one person never hears the word “no” because they have so much power. I said something similar in the nmd rap thread a while back but Kanye west got to a point of power and wealth that he turned his work into an utterly overblown mess. Same concept. So much of what happens in this movie should have been on the cutting room floor, and even more should have been slapped down by cowriters. Editors. Responsible adults. The midichlorians thing is a perfect example of something that didn’t need to exist. Never mind the dorks who were mad because they retconned the original movies or whatever. Instead of demonstrating anakin is force sensitive through actions and the events of the movie, we have a totally pointless scene of wallpaper dialogue that not a single person alive likes or cares about, at all. Somebody should have said, oh, actually, no, if we want this to be a fun movie that moves quickly, this scene is unnecessary. Move on to the podrace, or whatever. I saw this movie three times in theaters when I was a kid, I liked it a lot then. I also liked attack of the clones and it’s arguably worse, idk. I have fond memories of going to see both but in retrospect, yikesaroo
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Sep 2, 2023 05:11
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If they didn’t go to to the gungan city we never would have had the endlessly quotable line “ Wesa give yousa una bongo.“
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Sep 2, 2023 23:56
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Oh dear lord. I remember your Doctor Who watch threads. Here we go. If you were watching for the first time, I would say that I think watching in chronological order is a bad idea, except as a gimmick. But you've seen them all at least once, it's fine. That being said, the podrace rules, and is one of the two good scenes of the movie. Jar Jar does suck, though. It's not Best's fault, he did what he could with what he was given, and anyone who has given him personal poo poo can gently caress off and die. But the character is just awful and annoying. I did not need a Full House, "How rude!" reference. I wish they had taken any of his scenes and given Darth Maul more than his 2 or 3 lines. Like, I have more appreciation for the movie than I used to, because it has more practical effects than the movies that follow, but when I try to sit down and watch it, I just find it boring. Which I think is the worst sin a Star Wars movie can commit. Say what you want about TFA, but it's not boring. It's a fun movie. I'm just so bored whenever I try to watch this one.
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Sep 7, 2023 20:20
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NieR Occomata posted:Here is the watch order I will be going with: If you really want to do it chronologically you should put Revenge of the Sith after The Clone Wars.
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Sep 8, 2023 13:47
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NieR Occomata posted:And then we get here, to Phantom, where Space Hitler is revealed to be a...precocious kid? Who, moreover, might be Space Jesus considering he was immaculately conceived? In Catholic dogma, the Immaculate Conception does not refer to Jesus' virgin birth. It refers to Mary being conceived and born without original sin. quote:
I mean, you have to take it in the context of the time it was made. This was literally 1997-1998 CGI (the podrace is like 98 percent CGI outside of the shots of Anakin in the cockpit, which was a practical cockpit on hydraulics).
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Sep 8, 2023 14:36
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Nice to see you doing something like this again Occupation. And yes I will continue to use that name as it's what I know you best by. I'll definitely be following. I'm more of an outsider/casual fan when it comes to Star Wars. I have no strong attachments to anything in the series, I just like it as a casual observer. On a technical level I know some films and show are better than others in how they're crafted but in general just looking at the plot and story I don't find that much variation in all of what I've seen when it comes to quality. I was an older teen and into my early twenties when the prequel movies came out and everyone hated them it seemed. I didn't think they were any noticeably better or worse than the three I first saw as a small kid. I feel the same about the most recent movies and the shows. I've not seen the cartoons or anything but I'm actually quite enjoying the new Ahsoka show and it's making me kind of want to go back and watch the two cartoons it spawned from. I think it'll be interesting to follow this thread as I'm sure I have way less attachment to these things than anyone here does so it'll be neat to see if maybe my feelings feel different after hearing what others have to say. EDIT: Adding this in NieR Occomata posted:[*] If you look at this, A New Hope, and The Force Awakens as a triptych of films following the same general plotline and structure - young person chosen one on desert planet discovered by old, experienced character who shows them the ropes and imparts on them their overarching life goal/mission before tragically dying to the big bad of the trilogy in the third act, leading to a spaceship battle where a giant bad guy space thing is blown up - this is easily the weakest and worst of the three options available. I just finished reading the entire post for the first movie and this is where I really wanted to say something. And again, I'm a casual fan so please don't hit me with sticks if something I'm about to say has been proven wrong in some other bit I've not read or seen. I don't really keep up with any kind of Star Wars discourse so I could be way off base in what I'm saying here and if so I'll take the loss and move on but this is just what I think from having seen the films several times. I actually think the whole "Chosen one is mentored by an old wise character who tragically dies" is actually a bit more potent in this movie than it is the other ones. The reason being is that Anakin doesn't really ever get another good master and that's the first domino in the entire downfall of everything and the key to the cycle repeating over and over again. Don't get me wrong I know that the Jedis are supposed to be the good guys but the feeling I got from the prequels were that they were basically ineffectual complacent bureaucrats. And Qui Gon was one of the few that didn't fall in line with that. Even Obi Wan is just kinda following orders in the subsequent films. He really doesn't question his place there. So the loss of Qui Gon is key in that he may have been the one person that could've trained Anakin correctly and avoided this whole mess exactly because he didn't do things by the book. Luke and Rey lost their mentor in the first movie, but they found others to mentor them. Luke found someone that had been part of the failure of the past and realized what part he played in that failure. Rey found both Luke and Leia. Luke having already suffered another great failure of his own making and like his mentor being persuaded to try and atone for it. And unfortunately they probably couldn't do as much with Leia being a mentor to Rey as they wanted due the death of Carrie Fisher but she was clearly meant to be a stronger guiding light for Rey even if they couldn't really do it to its full potential. Anakin ultimately just had a guy who meant well but didn't really have the capacity to give him the special attention he needed. He told him to bury all of his emotions and ignore them because that's what the teaching said and he didn't question it. I have a feeling Qui Gon from what little I've seen of him in the movie would have been better able to manage that. He seemed like someone that had more feeling and empathy than the other Jedis in the film. And I don't think that's just because Liam Neeson is a better actor that most of the others, I think that was a deliberate decision. Now I could be wrong and someone could tell me there was a book written 2002 that showed that Qui Gon was just as complacent and responsible for the downfall as the other Jedis but I'm just going by what I saw in the film. I think this movie probably has less for me to grasp onto than some of the other ones but what I wrote about here always stood out to me and made me enjoy the movie and feel that showing this part of Anakin's life was important because if Qui Gon hadn't died I don't think there ever is a Darth Vader in the first place. X-O fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Sep 8, 2023 |
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Sep 8, 2023 16:51
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 Star Wars: Episode II - The Attack of the Clones Attack of the Clones is two movies, one pretty good and the other very bad. Even more distressingly, both films are in direct conflict with each other, with their cinematic and tonal aims being at cross purposes. By combining a pretty decent and enthralling political thriller with a dull, poorly acted, and overall extremely manufactured romance movie, the sum of Attack ends up being less than its parts. Let's take them both in order. So, the structure of Attack as a narrative, as a constructed plot, is essentially a throughline into a split of two separate, but concurrent, stories which then rejoins itself at the end. Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and a now-nineteen-year-old Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) have a brief adventure protecting now-Senator Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman) from a failed assassination plot. They decide to split up, Obi-Wan to track down who her attempted killer is and why, Anakin to transport Padmé back to Naboo and protect her. Events occur, romances bloom, all three of them eventually end up at Geonosis, big fight, punch out to credits. Simple, more or less. The central failing of this movie is in its lost potential. I think the fundamental decision to split Obi-Wan and the Anakin who directly becomes Darth Vader, the Anakin who perpetuates Order 66, the Anakin that turns to the Dark Side, that misstep is this movie's primary issue. What this movie should have been was the laying of the seeds for the payoff that is Revenge, the story that is centrally about Anakin's heel turn. But in order for Anakin to turn heel, we need to see him fall, which means we need to see him rise. This movie should have been Anakin at his most triumphant, his most accomplished, with maybe a couple of moments where we see the anger and the sadness and the rage that would overwhelm and destroy him. But we never really get those moments of Anakin in triumph because he's completely shut out from doing the stuff he is most competent at doing, which is being a badass Jedi. The opening Coruscant sequence establishes the sort of Anakin we should have seen throughout the movie; him being cool, but reckless and prone to emotion while constantly being harangued and called into account by his father figure/mentor in Obi-Wan. This is the stuff that has meaning and weight, these are the sequences that feel most emotionally honest. Instead, we split up the father-and-son duo so Obi-Wan gets to do the cool poo poo and Anakin is stuck in a dead-end and completely lifeless teen romance plot. The things Obi-Wan does in this movie are cool, and more importantly, they are interesting. Unlike in Phantom, where the political intrigue comes across as utterly half-baked and shoved in at the last minute, the Galactic Senate's maneuverings combined with the boots on the ground work Obi-Wan does at Kamino and Geonosis that uncovers two separate secret armies in development creates a tone and story that entertains. Watching Attack now, especially as an adult, puts to a fine point how the Obi-Wan stuff in this movie is genuinely well executed. It's not Oscar-winning stuff here, folks, but it's pretty well-made and just twisty enough to maintain interest without becoming convoluted. It falls apart at the end, of course, but that's because almost everything in this movie falls apart at the end. It ending poorly doesn't, in my opinion, detract from the fact that it's pretty good watching up until that point. Speaking of things being done poorly, Anakin's story! Yes, Hayden Christensen is not a great actor, especially in this movie where he comes across as wooden and awkward. But more than that, there's not a single moment during his and Padmé's "love story" where either actor sells believable romantic chemistry. I don't have an issue with the idea of instituting romantic drama into Star Wars, unlike how some fans rejected this concept out of hand. If anything, I love a good romantic story if it is told well - Her, for instance, is one of my favorite sci-fi movies. The problem, of course, is in execution. This is some atrocious writing, directing, and acting, even on Portman's part - and she's a really good actor with a robust filmography of roles to justify that assertion. The fault lies almost entirely with Lucas of course, being the director and one of the primary writers of this movie. It's not even really Christensen's fault per se; there are a couple of moments where he emotes well, most notably in the scenes where Anakin is reflecting on his mother's recent passing. It's bizarre, really, how little onscreen chemistry Christensen and Portman have. Padmé and Anakin's romance, their development of it, is the reason this movie exists. It is its sole justification for being. And you'd think, if you were George Lucas, you would hire actors who can sell this romance even slightly. But they can't and they don't, exacerbated by really terrible direction that makes Anakin look petulant and Padmé look lost and bored. The problem compounds on itself when you approach this romance logically. As explicitly laid out within the film, Anakin knew Padmé for at most a couple of days before immediately being taken by Obi-Wan for Padawan training. For ten years, he has zero contact with Padmé. None whatsoever. Then, circumstances arise wherein he's forced to be within her orbit for maybe a couple more days. The total amount of time Anakin and Padmé have spent together up to now, including the entirety of this movie, is, charitably, a couple of weeks. And they get married in secret at the end of it. It doesn't pass the sniff test at all, and the only way anyone would buy this super whirlwind romance would be if its development over the course of this movie was directed extremely well and, most importantly, both actors had absurd chemistry. This is a tall order to ask for any movie, but Attack doesn't even come close. It's all the more frustrating because narratively this all could've been solved much more cleanly if Lucas thought through it just a little bit harder. Instead of having Anakin's mission be the one that throws him back into orbit with Padmé, what Lucas should have done was have Anakin arrive already in a secret romance with Padmé. This relies on hiring an actor that actually has onscreen chemistry with Portman, but if Lucas had done so we could've entered into the film explaining away how their romance developed with the justification that it happened sometime in the ten years of space between Episodes I and II. Starting them where the movie ends - at a secret romance - instead allows the drama to come from them trying to keep their romance together and the inherent issues between their obligations and their love over trying to manufacture something wholecloth that never existed in the first place, in a breathtakingly small amount of time. It also would have helped salve or lessen some of the worst Anakin moments in this film. Throughout it, Anakin comes across as petulant, whiny, entitled, and most and worst of all unbearably, horribly creepy. Every "romantic" moment between him and Padmé feels like you're watching a pick-up artist perform blatant emotional abuse and manipulation on his victim, and not a young man wrestling with his feelings for the ostensible love of his life. This problem is all the more exacerbated when the audience is reminded that these two people both one, barely know each other, and two, have almost never interacted before this movie and certainly never in a romantic context. It's hard to figure out who to blame for this fiasco of a character, but my inclination is to point the finger at Lucas. Certainly, he could and should have hired someone who was a better and less wooden actor to portray his arguably most important character in his prequel trilogy. But more than that, he could've written Anakin better and I wonder if there was kind of no saving how badly Anakin was written no matter who played him. The irony of it all was if it was intentional it's genius. Thinking about how Attack plays into the overall narrative of Star Wars up to this point, if Lucas had intended for Anakin's love to be an obsessive, toxic, and dangerous love for an idea over a person, a person he also barely knows and met once before deciding to lust after her for a loving decade, then that's brilliant. If Lucas had meant for Anakin to come across as an extremely unstable, emotionally undeveloped overgrown child who was dealing with unprocessed grief from the violent death of his mother by latching on almost parasitically to the one woman who has ever shown him kindness, that's great. This is the man who would become Darth Vader, the same man who abandons his children and leaves so he can literally become Space Hitler. Illustrating their romance as a fundamental lie built on shifting sand would have been a fantastic move to make if it was intentional. The problem, of course, is that it absolutely is not meant to be intentional - the audience is meant to believe that this love is sincere and good especially considering that Anakin is about to lose this love in the next film. The romance plot just does not work, which is all the more frustrating and insane when one thinks about what is sacrificed in order to achieve this bad romance b-plot. The relationship that actually matters in this movie, the one that is pushed to the utter fringes of it, is the one between Obi-Wan and Anakin. Think of how Revenge climaxes - it's, quite literally, a father disowning his son for his actions. Obi-Wan and Anakin's relationship, and the fracturing and eventual destruction of that relationship, is what, quite literally, turns Anakin to becoming Vader. Padmé is essentially an afterthought in all of this, and it's just so bizarre to me that Lucas decided to focus on the latter over the former especially when you consider that the former actually works onscreen and the latter absolutely doesn't. I feel sad for the movie that could have been if Obi-Wan and Anakin journeyed on their adventure together over splitting them up almost immediately and thus having a movie with two concurrent narratives fighting each other for screentime. If Lucas still wanted the romance between Padmé and Anakin he could have, but it could have been a periodic check-in centralized around the Galactic Senate scenes (which are actually quite good in this film) and would've afforded Padmé to have actual agency. Instead of stranding her in the middle of nowhere rolling around in fields and essentially having to be Anakin's mother, Lucas could have shown her being a competent Senator with a life outside of supporting her love interest. Instead, we get...well...this. I guess my biggest takeaway from all of this is how much better this movie could have been, and it's a little depressing how with just a few tweaks this movie could have been truly great. Again, like I mentioned at the top, the Obi-Wan stuff is by and large pretty good. Even some of the Anakin stuff is not bad - or, at least, it sets a tone that works as foreshadowing the person Anakin is about to become. But mired in all of this is just misstep after misstep after narrative misstep, with all the positives and negatives cancelling out to equal a very beige feeling as the credits rolled. A real disappointment of a film. Grade: C Random Thoughts:
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Sep 8, 2023 19:30
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NieR Occomata posted:
To your first point, right?! To your second point, not easily that I've ever seen. I think Sifo-Dyas, the Jedi Master who ordered them, was mentioned a few times in the Clone Wars cartoon, but I don't remember being given a satisfying explanation for what the gently caress was going on there. I think the official explanation given over the show and comic books is that he foresaw a war that would tear the galaxy apart, but the Jedi council wouldn't listen to him, so he started the cloning project himself, and the Sith killed him and took it over? Something like that, I probably got some details wrong. I think Dooku tricked him, too. thrawn527 fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Sep 8, 2023 |
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Sep 8, 2023 20:49
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As a complete aside I finally looked up the episode count for the clone wars animated series and uh, Jesus mother loving Christ
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Sep 9, 2023 07:18
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I've had non goons tell me to look up episode lists for clone wars because so much of it is apparently chaff. I've never watched it partly for that reason. I get you're going for everything but there may be value in skipping episodes that are "anakin learns about 9/11" Or not doing individual reviews or combining multipart episodes or whatever. Also why isn't the Christmas special on your list? I'm pretty sure it's Canon.
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Sep 9, 2023 15:48
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NieR Occomata posted:As a complete aside I finally looked up the episode count for the clone wars animated series and uh, Jesus mother loving Christ lol Zachack posted:Also why isn't the Christmas special on your list? I'm pretty sure it's Canon. Yeah, The Holiday Special and the Ewoks movies absolutely need to be included.
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Sep 9, 2023 19:00
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thrawn527 posted:I think the official explanation given over the show and comic books is that he foresaw a war that would tear the galaxy apart, but the Jedi council wouldn't listen to him, so he started the cloning project himself, and the Sith killed him and took it over? Something like that, I probably got some details wrong. I think Dooku tricked him, too. IIRC Lucas intended to resolve this in Episode III but dropped it in favor of focusing on the Anakin arc, which was definitely the right call but leaves the entire plot thread hanging. IMO a cleaner script would have omitted Sifo-Dyas entirely, and entered Dooku into the film much earlier as a trustworthy, friendly guy who's looking to help Obi-Wan solve the Kamino mystery before revealing himself way later as a Sith Lord. "Welcome, Lord Tyranus" at the very end should have been a huge "oh, poo poo!" moment as we learn that both sides of the war are being controlled by the same person and it doesn't matter who wins, the Jedi and the Republic are hosed no matter what, but we already knew Dooku was bad news all along so the reveal doesn't hit nearly as hard as it should. This is compounded by the fact that it's unclear whether or not the audience is supposed to know if Palpatine and Sidious are the same person. The script seems to think we haven't pieced it together yet but I don't remember anyone in 2002 who wasn't completely expecting it.
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Sep 9, 2023 20:14
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NieR Occomata posted:[*] Is it ever adequately explained why that Jedi Master was building a hundred thousand clones? Like was this Palpatine instituting a plan he had ideated ten years ago or what? From what I remember of Revenge, they don't explain why the clone army was built in that film either, so I'm just wondering if that's a plot hole or if the explanation is "Palpatine did it". Earlier drafts of the script listed Sifo-Dyas as "Sido-Dyas", so the original idea really was just "it's Sidious under a terrible alias". Obi-Wan then looks into it and discovers no such person exists. It's kinda funny how Sifo-Dyas eventually turned into this whole other separate character that Lucas clearly had no interest in. His attitude about it was probably like "I dunno, who cares, let the books and comics and cartoons explain him". Zellus fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Sep 9, 2023 |
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Sep 9, 2023 20:39
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I saw this one twice in theaters. What year was this? 2002? I would have been like 13. The entire romance plot is unbearable now, and even at the time I remember thinking how much I would have rather just been able to fast forward through them. I remember thinking how cool it was that yoda saves the day at the end, lol. In retrospect the entire colosseum monster bit would have been way cooler as a practical effect callback to the rancor and sarlacc bits in ROTJ. The military battle stuff is ok, the jedi battle in the colosseum stinks, especially the mace windu / mango fett (I’m leaving that autocorrect as is) showdown if you can even call it that. I do agree that the bones of a decent movie are there if you excise the romance plot but as it is the movie is unbearable. I’d rather watch phantom menace but I wouldn’t be happy about it by any means. Also I can’t remember from ANH/ROTJ how Ben phrases it wrt his training of anakin but it’s really striking how ewan McGregor mostly just seems annoyed about / at anakin all the time. It is a really weird and dumb choice regardless of whether that came from him or George Lucas.
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Sep 9, 2023 23:15
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 Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith And so the prequel trilogy is complete. I saw this movie, like the previous two, in theaters, and it's the only one of the three I have truly fond memories of. I'm pleased to report my twenty-year-old feelings were proven more or less correct on rewatch - it's really the only film of the three that's an actually competent, engaging work from beginning to end. Of the six Lucas Star Wars movies, I think Revenge is really the only one that presents the Sith/Jedi dichotomy in a way I can really stomach. My fundamental issue with the way people talk about the Light and Dark side is how blatantly and boringly stark the contrast is especially within these first six movies outside of Revenge. The Jedi are these beatific and honorable samurai monks with magic powers who are able to tap into For once I don't necessarily think this is Lucas' fault specifically. I think when he made what was then called Star Wars in 1977, he was as has aforementioned making a space version of the pulp comics he read as a kid, and by the very nature of the source material that he was drawing from he presents this very flat and binary morality. Especially when compounded by the fact that he made his original trilogy explicitly for kids to consume, we end up with pure, blinding white feuding against the darkest of blacks. The problem, of course, is legacy. Star Wars is so big and so relevant as a franchise that any sort of fantasy series that deals with good guys fighting some sort of evil empire made in the last fifty years - whether that be Harry Potter or The Last Airbender or Final loving Fantasy - is informed by it and deals in that absolute moralism. Therefore, we have this constantly-refreshing group of individuals who reach voting age whose entire worldview has been shaped, and solely shaped, by children's media made for children who think that overt displays of emotion, of being confrontational in any sort of obvious way is the worst thing to be, that incrementalism works, that better things are both not possible in general and only possible in specific with no upheavals of the status quo. That the worst thing you can be is impolite. And, again, it's not Lucas' fault. But it's why I appreciate Revenge for being so explicitly gray in a world that had been, up to this point, painted only in blacks and whites. The Jedi council in this movie are the true antagonists of this film. The Council, in general, in the prequel trilogy is shown to have festered institutional rot and is sidelined by constant and endless bureaucracy and circular thinking predicated on outdated dogma. They finally have to lie in the bed they have made in Revenge and as a result we see the Council for what it is - a hypocritical bunch of old men concerned more with holding onto the power they have over doing the right thing. Palpatine is evil and biased when he tells Anakin that the Jedi are most afraid of losing their power, but he - critically - is also not wrong. I mean it, every single step Anakin takes to becoming Darth Vader is entirely due to the Jedi Council or a member of it. They bizarrely refuse to name him Master when he's foisted upon them (which, as far as I can tell, is literally just a meaningless title), deliberately alienating and Othering him from them. Within bare minutes of this massive insult, they demand he sell out his Jedi principles they treat so ostensibly highly for their selfish and hypocritical ends, even deigning it to be a off-the-books mission so they maintain pausible deniability. When Anakin returns with information on the location of General Grevious, they immediately and coldly pass him over for the assignment in favor of Obi-Wan. And, finally and most importantly, when Mace Windu confronts Palpatine on information given to him by Anakin (who also has his offer for assistance in capturing Palpatine immediately rejected) and has him captured, he decides to kill him over have the courts decide his fate, which is the final turn for Anakin that allows him to fully dive into becoming a Darth Lord. Contrast to how the Dark Side, via their avatar of Palpatine, treats Anakin. He is personable, and friendly, and acts as a father figure while Obi-Wan is more or less absent from his life during a time of crisis. (Again, as an aside, I want to make the point that splitting Obi-Wan and Anakin up in this movie pays narrative dividends that the previous movie did not. Obi-Wan being absentee allows for Palpatine to swoop into the void he left, which is further proof of how deleterious it was for Lucas to split up Obi-Wan and Anakin in Attack. The previous film and this one should've been echoes of each other; when Obi-Wan is there, he stabilizes and keeps Anakin on the straight and more or less narrow, but when he isn't, Anakin falls to the dark side.) He plays on and recognizes that Anakin is morally conflicted and validates the emotions Anakin is feeling over repeating thousands-year-old dogma about being an emotionless magic monk that is an inherent, obvous lie. The actions Palpatine performs are the ones Anakin needs throughout the entire movie, dealing still with the grief and guilt over his mother and the fear he feels over his visions of Padmé's death. It's all in service of an evil and selfish goal, but it's indicative of how close-minded and arrogant the Jedi have become during the last days of the Galactic Republic. Palpatine realizes that in order to convince people to do what he wants them to do, you have to talk to them, make them feel valued, and provide them access to the things they want. The Jedi are consumed with the inertia and power of "being the Jedi", so always talk at Anakin, telling him exactly what he's going to do while marginalizing his power and further alienating him, and it's eventually that constantly-demonstrated complete indifference and lack of respect that destroys the Jedi via Anakin's turn. I personally think the most important scene in the movie is when Anakin goes to Yoda for counsel on what to do. For obvious reasons he can't actually tell anyone in the Jedi the whole story over why he's having nightmares over the death of someone close to him, nor the specifics on who. But he gives enough of the truth to Yoda where anyone reasonable person would react with some level of reassurance, support, or at the very least a single line of sympathy about Anakin's struggles. Like, basic compassion from one person to another is the lowest possible bar Yoda could reach in this sequence, and this much-vaunted "Jedi Master", one of the wisest people in the galaxy, instead uses this moment of crisis for another opportunity to repeat stupid emotionless dogma about how it's actually really cool when people die and Anakin should love it because if you're sad that's how the Sith get you! For all this talk about how "only the Sith deals in absolutes," and how the Jedi are the vanguards of basic morality, they are the amoral, emotionless, and absolutist group in this movie. They are the ones speaking the same manufactured lines about honor and integrity and doing the right thing but at literally every moment they either as a collective group or as individuals are given the opportunity to demonstrate this much-vaunted morality they instead are uncaring hypocrites. During the climactic Mustafar fight between Obi-Wan and Anakin, at a certain point Obi-Wan says, regretfully, "I failed you". It's easy to read as a backhanded insult or specific solely to Obi-Wan, but I think that scene and that line is meant to be interpreted as sincere and also reflective of the Jedi Council as a whole and not just Obi-Wan. Because he's right, he and the Jedi Council have directly failed Anakin, and their inaction and naked hypocrisy have set up events such that Anakin was placed on a path to destruction due in no small part to the decisions the Jedi and Obi-Wan have made. And, again, this is primarily why I appreciate Revenge as much as I do. It presents this complicated and more interesting version of the light/dark side dichotomy wherein it finally feels rejective of that dichotomy, and it seems more concerned with illustrating how institutions are inherently prone to corruption especially if there's any bad actors trying to tilt the balance in their favor. But even more destructive than outright evil, Revenge argues, is austerity and lazy complacency; Sidious doesn't kill the Jedi, and neither really does Order 66. They are the symptoms of the central problem that is organizational inertia and bureaucracy, which is what really does the Jedi in. It's not all roses, though. Despite a strong central message that is imparted well over its runtime, the film still has several minor-to-major faults, most of which have to deal with either its status as the direct leadup to Hope or the way it mechanically places Anakin in the Vader suit. Anakin's actual scene where he becomes a Darth, despite being built to well and justified up to the actual scene, still reads as a bit too abrupt. The amount of real-world time Anakin takes to turn from committed, Kool-Aid drinking, utterly loyal Jedi ready to arrest his mentor and friend for being a Darth to becoming a member of the dark side in service to that same Darth is like, I dunno, maybe three minutes. It just doesn't read as believable in the moment - I know that the movies tries to sell his turn as an apathetic and emotionless one made by a shell of a man who has realized that he's permanently burned every possible bridge with the Jedi, but it comes across onscreen as Anakin throwing his hands up and going "time to be a Darth now, I guess". This, of course, is a symptom of the larger problem the movie has: having to be a direct prequel and foundation laying for A New Hope. The movie, as a result, never really has time to stand on its own two feet because it has to orchestrate all the events of Hope. Padmé is never mentioned or shown onscreen in any part of the original trilogy, so, gotta kill her off. Literally all of the Jedi not named Obi-Wan or Yoda never show up in the original trilogy, so gotta kill them off. Palpatine does not exist in the original trilogy, only the Emperor does, so gotta "kill" him off. Anakin has to turn to the dark side because he becomes Darth Vader, but instead of that being the climax of the movie, it happens roughly halfway through it in a kind of messy sequence. And on and on. So much of Revenge, especially its straight-up awful post-climax sequences, feel like checking boxes over organic storytelling. And even if that storytelling is good, and even if it's entertaining, like the Order 66 sequence, it still feels really synthetic and artificial, the Beyond Meat of storytelling. You know, fundamentally, that you're not getting the real thing, you're getting an approximation that might have value on its own but done in primary and direct service for something else. Most damningly in this service to canon is Padmé's death. It's such a bullshit cop-out to say she died of a broken heart and it's a fundamentally misogynist and reductive read of the character that she somehow just doesn't have the moral fortitude to keep living after Anakin abandons her. It's a horrible way to end the character's story that takes any agency she has over it and throws it in the garbage. I still don't really understand why they did this, it makes no sense. Literally, all Lucas had to do was have Anakin actually kill his wife, it doesn't reduce her agency to that of a heartbroken loser so obssessed over her husband leaving her she commits suicide instead of electing to raise her children. Imagine this: during the force choke sequence, we find out after the Mustafar fight that Padmé was cut off from oxygen for too long and she's in a coma, essentially a braindead husk. This writes her out of the story while also not committing complete character assassination on her while also creating a better dramatic irony for Anakin in the first place - he spends all movie trying to find a way to prevent his wife's death, even turning to the dark side, and in the end is the person who kills her. This action, more than literally any other, is what turns him to being Darth Vader. Instead, we get a weird half-step that pleases nobody while turning Padmé into a lovestruck teenager who just can't handle her boyfriend leaving her. It's such a bad note to end her character on; again, though, it's largely due to the wider problem this movie has of having to place all the chess pieces in Hope on the table. Therefore, we get the completely unnecessary introduction of Senator Organa and his, Yoda's, and Obi-Wan's post-Mustafar discussion about what they'll be doing for the next twenty or so years, empty scenes of babies getting adopted, and on and on. None of this is necessary, none even really useful, and all of it detracts from the power and emotional weight of Obi-Wan's tearful final confrontation with Anakin on the banks of the lava river. We go from one of the best scenes in the series to what is essentially bookkeeping, and the drop is almost disorienting in how steep and sudden it is. I don't even really know who these scenes are for, besides the worst sort of Star Wars dweebs who are parodies of antisocial lore nerds concerned with all the pieces fitting perfectly over, you know, good and effective storytelling that imparts emotion and mood. Still, though, let me be absolutely clear: This movie, is, by far, the best of the trilogy and the only one of these I would call "good" without any caveats or strings attached. Faults aside, and they are there, it's genuinely the only one of the prequels that feels like a competently made film that is enjoyable to watch. Good they ended on a high note. Grade: B Random Thoughts:
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Sep 10, 2023 21:41
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Saw this one once in theaters and hated it, I don’t really remember why at this point aside from thinking that basically everything post mace windu death was bad. My main note is that I actually enjoyed palpatine turning into a cackling badguy because he’d won already, it tracked to me that after three movies and what, like ten years of plotting and planning he’d manipulated one last rube into doing all the work for him, again. I’d be pleased as punch too lol
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Sep 10, 2023 22:44
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People have wrote a lot of words about "are you an angel?" and "I don't like sand" and "killing younglings" as examples of bad Lucas dialogue, but for my money they're all a distant, distant second to "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!"  Even in the depths of his rage, after killing everyone he's ever loved, Anakin still couches his opinions and uses "I, me" language. It's just his point of view though, it's ok to agree to disagree. Really he just enjoys the spirited debate.
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Sep 10, 2023 23:37
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I never really thought about it until some random person on Twitter posted about it, but the "I don't like sand" thing becoming a meme kind of hid it being an example of the problems with the writing/direction. As laid out, it's an "important" scene in their relationship. Anakin's offended/passive-aggressively pointing out that he (and a lot of people) didn't get to live a cool life on a pretty planet with beach vacations and there's a big gulf between his childhood and hers. But lol at none of that coming through. But also yeah, "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!" is clunky enough to make the scene grind.
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Sep 11, 2023 01:56
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How come you're not including the Lego movies/tv series in your watch?
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Sep 12, 2023 12:37
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