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J_RBG posted:But I think the problem here is not down to Natalie Portman. The fact is Padme is a marginal character circling around what is essentially the male drama of the Prequels, but she doesn't even seem to have substantial observations to make about the men who hold the real agency in the world. It's not just that Padme is a marginal character who doesn't hold real agency, so much that she becomes such a character. AOTC is largely the story of Palpatine manipulating Padme into disenfranchising herself.
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Oct 13, 2017 16:11
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Once Padme says they shouldn't get involved, Anakin stops hitting on her. If anyone acts like a Nice Guy, it's Han Solo in Empire Strikes Back. Harrison Ford pretty much shrieks all his lines and he acts really crazy until his affections are returned. Also, if you really think strong womyn never fall for people who awkward but hot, I don't know what planet you live on but jivjov can probably Wookiepedia it.
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Oct 13, 2017 16:28
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The little head tip at the end there is just begging for a fedora edit... As far as I'm concerned, Christensen's a fine actor, it's just that the directors weren't very good at handling him When Anakin needs to be a terrifying silent figure of mass destruction, or emotionally brood, he pulls it off swimmingly
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Oct 13, 2017 16:48
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"the acting in the prequels is loving terrible!" "don't worry chum! It's...supposed to be that..way...? Every single actor from top to bottom was meant to sound as if they just woke up! It's stylistically designed to be that way!"
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Oct 13, 2017 16:56
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... yes. movies are intentional works.
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Oct 13, 2017 16:57
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Schwarzwald posted:It's not just that Padme is a marginal character who doesn't hold real agency, so much that she becomes such a character. This is interesting, but I think I disagree. I don't get the sense that we're witnessing a process on screen. I'd have to watch it again but it seems to me that from the get-go in AOTC she inhabits an essentially private domestic sphere compared to the many scenes of political action she comfortably occupies in PM. I'd always got the impression she arrives as a hollow, terrorised, over-scrutinised version of her former self. If I was to summarise my feelings on Padme as a character, it all makes sense but that's not necessarily satisfying. I mean it makes sense she might overlook the latent fascism in the only person who has interest in her as a human being, but it's possibly not the best story the film could be telling?
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Oct 13, 2017 17:06
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Again, the ‘problem’ is not any flaw in the writing. It’s that fans expect a ‘voice of reason’ character to chime in with play-by-play: “don’t date him, honey; he’s a fascist and you deserve better”. And they want Anakin to be incredibly cool and suave, so that this explains away Padme’s ‘unnatural’ behaviour. It’s ideology: to the fans, fascism is unnatural. It doesn’t appear as a result of systemic problems; it happens because of bad people corrupting the innocent and causing irrational behaviour. So doing away with fascism is as easy as being more rational. So fans get badly confused that Padme, a perfectly intelligent and rational person, likes fascism. Even though the movie is about the rise of a fascist dictatorship.
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Oct 13, 2017 17:07
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Yaws posted:"the acting in the prequels is loving terrible!" I can't believe Mr. Lucas accidentally made the fascists super lame.
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Oct 13, 2017 17:07
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Seaniqua posted:Maybe this doesn't satisfy your question as to why the acting is bad. If you like the acting, that's great. I like Star Wars and I think the prequels were disappointing. Once again here's the conflation of "liking" something and that something "being good." Hayden did a great job acting like an emotionally-handicapped dorky creep of a teenager. It's so consistent that it's hard to argue it's an accident. You can say you don't like that about Anakin, and that it's not a fun character to watch, but it's a good performance.
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Oct 13, 2017 17:08
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just another posted:Do you believe there's such a thing as bad acting / a bad performance? The exceedingly subtle point is that the arguments about the bad acting and writing tend to be very circular, although the fresh new argument why the acting is bad is that Lucas unintentionally directed actors to sound like they "just woke up". Seaniqua posted:Hayden Christensen's acting is subjectively bad It's unfortunate that you can offer mere subjective opinions.
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Oct 13, 2017 17:15
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There is a source document where Lucas describes in detail his directorial goal for the actors you know. It's not just people guessing about intentions .
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Oct 13, 2017 17:18
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Anakin doesn't sound like an awkward teen. He sounds like Hayden Christensen, the bad actor. It's such an objectively wretched performance it makes huge swathes of AotC nigh unwatchable. It's odd that y'all can't recognize what a socially retarded teen sounds like considering y'all used to BE ONE
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Oct 13, 2017 17:22
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turn left hillary!! noo posted:Once again here's the conflation of "liking" something and that something "being good." This conversation comes up all the time but it never actually makes sense. Hayden's acting is consistent even when it shouldn't be. There are times, based off other character's responses, that he is supposed to come off as charismatic, likable or othewise something besides creepy. As written and directed Anakin is someone who wears a mask much of the time and it slips more and more which is why it becomes ironic when the mask he adopts is the one that literally gets strapped to his face so he doesn't die after the one of the two people he trusts and cares for dies and the other betrays him. Instead he's that way constantly and it plays against the idea of the character. There is a a*good* idea there. Anakin Skywalker, even before he became Darth Vader, was the guy wearing the cool dramatic awesome mask to hide what a messed-up and kind of pathetic person he was inside. Luke is able to redeem him because he is able to touch the part of him that he hid from everyone besides Padme because Luke is the literal proof of their love. Darth Vader and Anakin are the same, the big impressive figure hiding the sad person inside. Hayden is good at the latter but he never really successfully pulls off the charismatic guy and defaulting to "Well he's a broken emotional teenager!!" ignores that yeah, he is. He's also supposed to be able to mask that and seem genuinely charismatic and those moments of awkwardness and detachment are not supposed to be his norm. There's nothing wrong with the idea that behind the Vader mask is a person and that he's awkward, pathetic and uncomfortable because that was the reveal in RotJ, where he spends most of the film looking like a whipped dog. Almost all of the prequel stuff is extremely strong in concept but execution-wise it suffers.
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Oct 13, 2017 17:25
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Christensen is doing a James Dean impression. That is not his normal speaking voice.
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Oct 13, 2017 17:26
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Padme's main problem as a character is that I'm not sure George Lucas has ever met a woman.
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Oct 13, 2017 17:36
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UmOk posted:I watched it the other day. I wish I had the capability to screen shot stuff as I am watching it because there is so much poo poo in there that just looks fantastic. Every frame in the Naboo capital or whatever looks like a painting. Yes dumok, the prequels have some down right beautiful estabilsihng shots:   
Yaws fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Oct 13, 2017 |
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Oct 13, 2017 17:40
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The digital cameras might have been a downgrade, but the quality of the rendering really leapt up movie-to-movie.
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Oct 13, 2017 17:47
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I think other characters like Anakin because he's tough, looks out for the people he cares about, and a war hero/powerful. Or because they raised him. Most people aren't suave like James Bond, and yet people still care about them. Even James Bond's suaveness is there, in part, to put a finer point on the fact that he's pretty much a psychopath. Anakin's cool moments are when he's in battle, because that's the kind of guy he is. He thrives during the Clone Wars because he's better at that kind of thing than the others from his religion. That's why he is easily manipulated by Palpatine, because Palpatine values power over everything, and Anakin's main strength...is strength.
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Oct 13, 2017 18:17
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I don’t agree at all that Hayden's Anakin never comes off as anything other than creepy. Anakin thrives when the world is uncomplicated and all he's asked to do is to use his power to help his friends. As early as Episode 1, all the political poo poo in the Jedi Order confuses him, but if you put him in a cockpit, he makes amazing things happen. Episode 2 sticks him with a job that’s not really right for him—hiding out, staying away from trouble. That’s when all his anxieties and his weird obsessions creep up. But if you just send him after the bad guys, he's great at it! When he's chasing an assassin or leading troops into a battlefield, he's brave, competent, witty, and yes, more than a little cocky. Wouldn’t you like to fight for a guy who leads from the front, who's preternaturally good at identifying enemy weak points, and whose first instinct is always to save the lives of his friends? I genuinely like the Anakin we see in his two big war scenes.
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Oct 13, 2017 19:15
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Yaws posted:Anakin doesn't sound like an awkward teen. He sounds like Hayden Christensen, the bad actor. It's such an objectively wretched performance it makes huge swathes of AotC nigh unwatchable. As someone who used to be a socially retarded teen, he sounded exactly like more than a few people I knew. Probably including myself, at times.
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Oct 13, 2017 19:21
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The only problem I have with the interior romance scene in AotC is that their conversation just seems inauthentic. When I watch that scene, it's like watching a high school play. The people on screen don't look like they're conversing with each other, it looks like they're just saying things at each other that they don't even necessarily believe. As though they're robots trying to pantomime how they know humans are supposed to act when conveying the emotions they think they're supposed to feel when saying those lines. It isn't that it's uncomfortable or unnatural, I just don't buy it. It's as if they know they're being watched and are putting on a show for their hidden observer, trying to convince that person or persons that they're in love, when they are actually just friends. If the scene is supposed to come off that way, then hey, well done, and that's not sarcastic. I have no problem with Anakin being an awkward dork or Padme being emotionally stunted, and I like some of their other scenes just fine, but that one on Naboo just didn't sell it to me.
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Oct 13, 2017 19:38
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Vinylshadow posted:As far as I'm concerned, Christensen's a fine actor, it's just that the directors weren't very good at handling him I think Christensen was in an impossible position, and then made a poor acting choice for the sake of continuity. Whoever took that role was going to be a teenaged white kid taking over the role that James Earl Jones's voice had previously defined. JEJ has a very particular cadence and speech mannerisms, and Vader's lines were written with a stilted, mechanical rhythm. When you actually break down Christensen's speech patterns you can pretty easily see that he's trying to create a character that could conceivably evolve into James Earl Jones's voice. However, it's pretty clear in retrospect that he should have just forgone all that and spoken in a normal voice. It's what Sebastian Shaw did. Then again, Vader's usage of phrases like "thy bidding" when nobody else speaks in such a manner implies that he's unnaturally attempting to adopt a regal or haughty voice. Especially when compared to Tarkin's much more naturalistic upper crust accent and speech. Essentially that Vader is playing a character trying to be above his station. Which is fantastic for a person born a slave becoming a powerful political figure. So Christensen's choice was doubly poor. feedmyleg fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Oct 13, 2017 |
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Oct 13, 2017 19:40
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I can't find the PDF but Lucas states that was intended as an homage to the pulp movies upon which Star Wars is based . Homage is the wrong word , but staying true to the genre .
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Oct 13, 2017 19:40
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euphronius posted:I can't find the PDF but Lucas states that was intended as an homage to the pulp movies upon which Star Wars is based . it's a bizarre mish mash of old romance films, 1930's serials and Kurosowa films. It's a pity he didn't stick the landing like he did in the OT
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Oct 13, 2017 19:48
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Well sure he didn't stick the landing but you can still meddle with a stumble . How's that for metaphor .
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Oct 13, 2017 19:50
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euphronius posted:Well sure he didn't stick the landing but you can still meddle with a stumble . I'm not sure what "meddle with a stumble" means so I give it a 3/10.
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Oct 13, 2017 19:51
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Sunk by autocorrect again.
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Oct 13, 2017 19:52
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Zoran posted:I don’t agree at all that Hayden's Anakin never comes off as anything other than creepy. This is a good post. Anakinds awkwardness is really only present when he is with Padme. When he is doing space knight stuff he behaves totally differently.
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Oct 13, 2017 20:43
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UmOk posted:This is a good post. Anakinds awkwardness is really only present when he is with Padme. When he is doing space knight stuff he behaves totally differently. I always like the speeder chase with Zam in AotC. You can tell his jokiness with Obi-Wan is an attempt to cover up his anger. And I like how this was edited: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i94r3-zOhoc&t=140s Lucas didn't have Obi-Wan look up after Anakin yelled, he had him look up moments before, because Obi-Wan knew Anakin had already lost control.
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Oct 13, 2017 20:57
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I like how in the speeder chase, his witty banter falls flat because he doesn't know when to cut the joke off about finding the right speeder, with the right color, and the right speed capabilities. We get it
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Oct 13, 2017 21:08
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Ingmar terdman posted:I like how in the speeder chase, his witty banter falls flat because he doesn't know when to cut the joke off about finding the right speeder, with the right color, and the right speed capabilities. We get it Because he's distracted because he wants to murder someone. He's just babbling.
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Oct 13, 2017 21:27
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Well now we’ve got it: the problem has nothing to do with the base concept or the acting or anything else; the problem is that Anakin gets away with it. I can't tell if you've uploaded sarcasm to your response algorithms or if you mean this sincerely, but I'll take it -- it is 100% "don't go into the basement" -- and frustration at Lucas for making us sit through so much of that. I'm not a fan of Portman's performance, but I also find her character unrealistically bending to fit the needs of Anakin's development. When he's a snot in front of her staff, she has no problem putting him down; when he makes her uncomfortable she tells him so immediately (and then the boundary-setting is immediately forgotten in the next interaction); when he tries to be a Good Boy and stay on Tattooine per Windu's orders, she forces him to leave with her. These actions simultaneously speak to someone who knows exactly what they want, and someone who has no idea what they want. Padme's character doesn't quite come together as a result.
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Oct 13, 2017 21:28
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Zeris posted:I can't tell if you've uploaded sarcasm to your response algorithms or if you mean this sincerely, but I'll take it -- it is 100% "don't go into the basement" -- and frustration at Lucas for making us sit through so much of that. All those things seem characteristic of a dom, I don't see the contradiction
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Oct 13, 2017 21:32
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DeimosRising posted:All those things seem characteristic of a dom, I don't see the contradiction Remember the part where she ultimately marries a celibate teenage virgin monk?
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Oct 13, 2017 21:35
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Zeris posted:Remember the part where she ultimately marries a celibate teenage virgin monk? For being married to a celibate virgin, Padme was awful pregnant.
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Oct 13, 2017 21:38
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Schwarzwald posted:For being married to a celibate virgin, Padme was awful pregnant. Like father, like son
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Oct 13, 2017 21:47
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Zeris posted:I'm not a fan of Portman's performance, but I also find her character unrealistically bending to fit the needs of Anakin's development. When he's a snot in front of her staff, she has no problem putting him down; when he makes her uncomfortable she tells him so immediately (and then the boundary-setting is immediately forgotten in the next interaction); when he tries to be a Good Boy and stay on Tattooine per Windu's orders, she forces him to leave with her. These actions simultaneously speak to someone who knows exactly what they want, and someone who has no idea what they want. Padme's character doesn't quite come together as a result. I think your post is a good articulation of the issue I have with Padme; she feels a lot more like an obstacle for Anakin to overcome in his own arc than someone with her own feelings and motivations. Her best scene is probably the one where they talk politics in the field, because you can actually see Padme's own personality coming through strongly, where it conflicts with Anakin's, and the roots of the oncoming tragedy as she convinces herself that Anakin is just kidding. I know that a lot of people probably think that the last thing AOTC needs is more love story, but the deleted scenes with Padme's family - which would have gone right in that gap that gives me the most pause - might have really helped, both in giving Padme more of her own character outside of Anakin and in giving them time to grow closer before they go full requited love in the lake country.
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Oct 13, 2017 21:59
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For those who have read Lucas' notes/1stdrafts of scripts, etc... Were there ever details about Anakins father that were then removed later?
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Oct 13, 2017 22:08
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It's a difficult question because Anakin and Luke were the same character for a long time. But nobody had a virgin birth until Lucas started writing TPM.
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Oct 13, 2017 22:11
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The JEJ impression is pretty funny, doubly so when you realise the mullet is meant to evoke Vader's helmet.
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Oct 13, 2017 23:13
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