Star Wars: The Complete Saga (1977-2005)

[MifuneFan]

I love The Force Awakens. Third best Star Wars film in my opinion.

[StingingVelvet]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Okay then: I love the pod race, it's basically Ben-Hur's chariot race in space but hot damn it's still a pulse-pounding scene nonetheless. I love the production design too, we get the Tatooine stuff so people have something familiar to latch on to but the Art Deco look of Naboo is gorgeous and the city planet of Coruscant is something different again. The music is amazeballs, perhaps Williams' last truly great score. The three-way lightsaber fight is still superb, people can blather on about "it's too much like a dance!" but until we've seen how real space monks with mystical powers choose to fight then it's a perfectly valid style for me, some of Ewan McGregor's footwork still gets me reaching for the remote and rewinding it.

Does this stuff cover up the very real issues that TPM has with plot, pacing, dialogue, delivery of said dialogue and so on? No, but it provides enough for me to hang my hat on in terms of sheer Star Wars enjoyment, whereas not only am I mystified by some of the characters' actions and frustrated by the lack of backstory in TFA I'm not given any style or action or music that truly excites me like those respective aspects of TPM do. People also bang on about how practical everything is in TFA but TPM was also shot 35mm anamorphic and the miniatures and real locations look great, it still feels like a remnant of that old-school style despite the incessant CG - unlike the digitally shot and increasingly studio-bound Clones and Sith.

I'm not trying to change anyone's opinion here BTW, just putting it out there why I, as I said, genuinely enjoy TPM more than TFA. Someone put it perfectly upthread: with the prequels you get greater highs but lower lows, while the new movies thus far adhere to a baseline of mediocrity that ticks all the boxes.

Fair enough explanation, though we couldn't be more far apart.

I agree TPM has some exciting scenes and great visual imagination, but I just care way too much about dialog, plot and acting to let that well done stuff distract me from how much the movie suffers in the areas I really care about. I'm not trying to be mean when I say Phantom menace is truly embarrassing, I genuinely believe it is. From the Jar Jar fart jokes to the ear-piercing exposition dialog, it's just all very grating to me.

For me Awakens isn't bad at all, in fact it's a very, very well made movie. Its problems are sourced in how generic it is, which was by design as a "welcome back to Star Wars," which I think is a decent motivation to have after the prequels disappointed so many. I think the Falcon escape from the sand planet was fun, I thought the saber battle in the snow was great. I love the characters especially. They really pulled off the spoiled brat equals dark side thing with Ben which Lucas tried but failed to present well with Anakin. I don't get the complaints against Rey's abilities at all, the force has always been shown to give people great abilities without training.

Most of all though it's just a competently made movie with nothing outright horrible about it, and Phantom is the opposite of both.

P.S. Bonus Round:

The thing with CGI is making it believable. The Force Awakens rarely feels like a CGI fest. They did a great job blending practical and CG wizardry to make a believable world. Phantom on the other has large, long segments that look completely fake and cartoonish. There's really no comparison there IMO. That's not ILM's fault because the tech was what it was, but the director made the choice to use it improperly for what it could do.

[Ernest Rister]

Originally Posted by MifuneFan

I love The Force Awakens. Third best Star Wars film in my opinion.

My darling wife will stop whatever she's doing when I play The Force Awakens. She *loves* that movie, and she's not even a Star Wars fan. When she was six or seven, while her mom was driving down the highway, she threw a Yoda action figure out of the back seat window to piss off her two brothers. Orange snake, cane, cape and all.

[StingingVelvet]

Originally Posted by MifuneFan

I love The Force Awakens. Third best Star Wars film in my opinion.

I'd put it above all the prequels, that's for sure. Above Jedi or not I dunno, would have to see it more times.

[svenge]

Jedi has lower lows than TFA, but also much higher highs. It's a tough one to be certain.

[motorheadache95]

Originally Posted by StingingVelvet

Most of all though it's just a competently made movie with nothing outright horrible about it, and Phantom is the opposite of both.

P.S. Bonus Round:

The thing with CGI is making it believable. The Force Awakens rarely feels like a CGI fest. They did a great job blending practical and CG wizardry to make a believable world. Phantom on the other has large, long segments that look completely fake and cartoonish. There's really no comparison there IMO. That's not ILM's fault because the tech was what it was, but the director made the choice to use it improperly for what it could do.

I pretty much agree with this almost entirely. Another thing I disagree with Geoff on is the Podrace sequence-- I never liked it or thought it was thrilling. For me, The Phantom Menace is a boring slog all the way until the climax, then it finally has a cool fight with Darth Maul. That's about it for me.

The only think I'll say for the film is that it's visual aesthetic wasn't too bad-- considering it's from 1999, I think it visually holds up a lot more than some of the other late-90's movies that started using a lot of CGI, like The Mummy or Roland Emmerich's Not-Godzilla movie. And like others say, it blends real and CGI better. Episodes II and III really come off as overly cartoony and plastic in comparison.

[SuperFlyHighGuy]

Yeah it's tough for me to put TFA ahead of Jedi. Maybe after some more years of rewatching it and of course seeing where the story goes.

The only thing I actually don't like about Jedi is the Ewoks - partly because the scenes with them just bring the film to a standstill (especially the Leia/Wicket encounter), but also because they're teddy bears. Very uninspired compared to the rest of the aliens/monsters in the series. Chewie interacting with them was embarrassing.

But nothing in TFA seems quite as epic as in Jedi. Even the ship battles and attacking the Death Hoth Star seem limited in scale compared to the epic space battles around/against the DS2. Hell, even C3-PO and R2 approaching Jabba's palace at the beginning seem epic to me in comparison. But it looks like the scale and scope will be ramped up significantly in the next film.

[Ernest Rister]

Newly-discovered Deleted Scene from The Empire Strikes Back...

BOBA FETT'S SINISTER SHIP, the SLAVE ONE, TRAILS THE MILLENNIUM FALCON, WHICH APPARENTLY DOES NOT HAVE A REAR-VIEW MIRROR

CHEWIE
Rawr! Rawr-woof-huff!

LEIA
Why are we stopping?

HAN
Chewie's gotta go. I guess we should all go since we're stopping, your Highness.

The FALCON banks and slows to a halt.

BOBA FETT watches the Falcon. Drums his fingers impatiently.

BOBA
Guess I'll go, too. Just have to take all this crap off first.

[Bobbyjoe766]

Originally Posted by Ernest Rister

My darling wife will stop whatever she's doing when I play The Force Awakens. She *loves* that movie, and she's not even a Star Wars fan. When she was six or seven, while her mom was driving down the highway, she threw a Yoda action figure out of the back seat window to piss off her two brothers. Orange snake, cane, cape and all.

Ouch! I always wanted that figure but could never find him because he was so popular - definitely not a peg-warmer.

[drush9999]

I don't understand the meh comments thrown at TFA. It's the new characters that make the movie, despite the rehash-ness of the storyline. Rey, Finn, Poe, BB8 all breathed fresh air back into the franchise. I like it a lot.

[JimSmith]

Originally Posted by drush9999

I don't understand the meh comments thrown at TFA. It's the new characters that make the movie, despite the rehash-ness of the storyline. Rey, Finn, Poe, BB8 all breathed fresh air back into the franchise. I like it a lot.

Jyn in Rogue One is infinitely more interesting than rey. Jyn has flaws and she's vulnerable even though she can kick a little butt whereas rey is so boringly untouchable, flawless and as one-dimensional as any character in a movie can be she comes off as flat as a pancake with a rather unnecessary mean-streak to boot. Rogue One gives other characters their time to shine not just Jyn but with the force awakens it's all about rey. And like I said before I can't wait for Solo: A Star Wars Story! The Star Wars Anthology films have been stellar so far!

[svenge]

To be fair to Rey, they had no choice to cram all of Jyn's personality and narrative into Rogue One because she's obviously not appearing in any future films. Presumably Rey will be given some character growth during Episodes VIII and IX, seeing that she's the main character of the Sequel Trilogy and all...

[Martoto]

Correct. Rogue One was the beginning and the end of Jyn's story. Not counting her legacy, the survival of the rebellion.

Rey, on the other hand - we might have started in the middle of Rey's story for all we know so far.

[StingingVelvet]

Originally Posted by svenge

To be fair to Rey, they had no choice to cram all of Jyn's personality and narrative into Rogue One because she's obviously not appearing in any future films. Presumably Rey will be given some character growth during Episodes VIII and IX, seeing that she's the main character of the Sequel Trilogy and all...

It's just odd to me people think she has no development in Force Awakens. She has a lot of development and an arc setup for the trilogy. Same for Finn and Kylo. The only one given no development is Poe, and that's because he was originally a minor character.

[BouCoupDinkyDau]

Remember the old days, when people didn't demand character development so deep that you got to see the character form in the womb?
Remember when there didn't need to be sixteen subplots?
Remember when people didn't overidentify with movies?
Remember the old days, before everyone became Siskel and Ebert?

Pepperidge Farm remembers.

[WestMan]

Originally Posted by StingingVelvet

It's just odd to me people think she has no development in Force Awakens. She has a lot of development and an arc setup for the trilogy. Same for Finn and Kylo. The only one given no development is Poe, and that's because he was originally a minor character.

I completely agree. She had an over abundance of character development.

Early 20's and living on a desert planet thinking she would never leave. Meets a droid. A Stormtrooper's actions causes her to leave the planet on the spaceship. Gets Anakin Skywalker's old lightsaber. See's a mentor die a world destroying machine is destroyed.

Wait a minute.... That's Luke's story.... lol

All joking aside, it didn't feel like she did much because her emotions didn't change the entire time. Compare Luke from Tattoine to after he blew up the death star and he went from a lost person to somebody with confidence. She looks lost the entire time.... hence the complaint of little to know character growth.

[drush9999]

Originally Posted by BouCoupDinkyDau

Remember the old days, when people didn't demand character development so deep that you got to see the character form in the womb?
.

I blame superhero movies for that and always having to have "origin" stories.

[Phobics]

Originally Posted by svenge

To be fair to Rey, they had no choice to cram all of Jyn's personality and narrative into Rogue One because she's obviously not appearing in any future films. Presumably Rey will be given some character growth during Episodes VIII and IX, seeing that she's the main character of the Sequel Trilogy and all...

Jyn was also acted much better as well as being more interesting. We played TFA yesterday and most everyone liked it but as a big SW nut I didn't get into it. Finn was really the only new character I liked. Might as well change the thread title to present since there's so much new trio talked about.

[Salamurai]

for anyone that hasn't picked it up yet, the Complete Saga Box set is down to $50 at Best Buy.
The trilogy sets are at $20.
This might be a 1-day for Cyber Monday.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/star-wa...-ray/2550164.p

[bobbyh64]

I wish there was a way to organize a massive bluff where hundreds of millions of people worldwide threaten to boycott The Last Jedi unless Disney promises to release the unaltered OT, and in a timely manner. It would go down as a great moment in history!