Star Wars Episode 7

[Team Andromeda]

Who cares? It's better than whatever he would've conjured up anyway.

What better than the man that came up with the world, story and characters and directed the 1977 classic .

Also, he was heavily involved with Return of the Jedi which also repeated the Death Star thing

Of course Lucas would Star Wars was and is his creation and imo ROJ still to this day features the best space battles . Sure the prequels are bad films, but they got one thing right that even the new (read remake) doesn't and that's the Lightsabur battles which are the best in the series imo .

[Darwock]

I hated the prequel duels. Way too OTT. It also made Vader, Luke and Obi-wan look useless in the original films.

[wakka]

I hated the lack of subtlety to the use of lightsabers and lightsaber duels in the prequels. In the original films they are a grand event, saved right until the end and filled with tension. The prequels are acrobatics fests.

[Dogg Thang]

Yup. Something else has been bothering me over the last few weeks too, since rewatching Return of the Jedi with my girls (well, one of them as the other left halfway through). The scorn that comes from the Emperor about Luke's "Jedi weapon" is all too clear. And it makes sense that Vader had one because we know right from the first movie that he was a Jedi. But then all the Sith including the Emperor himself go all flippy with their lightsabers too. Not so much of a Jedi weapon any more. As much as I enjoyed the Maul fight, that one with the Emperor and Yoda in Ep3 is godawful.

[fishbowlhead]

I hated the lack of subtlety to the use of lightsabers and lightsaber duels in the prequels. In the original films they are a grand event, saved right until the end and filled with tension. The prequels are acrobatics fests.

I always thought the skill used with lightsabers in the prequels made perfect sense, the jedi before all had thousands of years of training and knowledge bases to learn from, plus they trained solely in that from the age of 5. Yoda alone was over 800 years old, it's kind of a given that a person of that age would become unbelievably powerful and skilled.

The jedi/sith that survive were either too old or have too little trining to be of much use, vader moves like a rusty robot because he effectively is in the original movies. At least that's how i made sense of it all.

[Dogg Thang]

Yeah, their increased abilities make sense when you take into account the training.

But it also then breaks the original movies given that it is seen as some old vague hokey religion even though whole armies of Jedi were out in force doing their thing well within the lifetime of many characters who dismiss the whole idea. Han doesn't believe it and that makes Chewie a bit of a dick for not setting him straight and mentioning the whole thing about fighting alongside Yoda. Chewie: RAAAAARH (it never came up). It would be like us not believing in the Bay City Rollers. Or the Beatles.

[wakka]

I'm not really talking in terms of the canon. I just think it looks stupid. The lightsabers and the Jedi's use of the Force lost all gravitas once they broke them both out every five minutes and had the Jedis flipping around all over the shop.

There is no restraint to the prequels. That's a key issue with them for me. In the first film, Obi Wan's use of the Jedi mind trick ('these are not the droids...'), his disappearance after being struck down by Vader, and Luke's ability to hit the exhaust port without his guidance computer all hinted at a mysterious power of unknown potential. In the prequels Lucas put it all on the table and destroyed the atmosphere of mystery and myth that helped make the original films special. Midichlorians are a perfect example of this.

And as Dogg points out above, the prequels are hardly consistent with the original films anyway.

[kryss]

I've always thought of the Sith as former Jedi, so them both having lightsabres made sense.

[Dogg Thang]

The Emperor left his on a bus and that's why he gets all snotty about Luke's.

Edit:

And as Dogg points out above, the prequels are hardly consistent with the original films anyway.

Yep, when all is said and done, this is probably my biggest issue with the prequels. They aren't completely without merit but they break and ruin things in the original movies. Lines, like the ones I've mentioned, and whole characters like Yoda and C3-PO (both knobs in the prequels). It is like he chose not to watch the original movies before writing the prequels. It's easy to ignore a poor sequel in a movie franchise. Harder to do that with a prequel that rewrites the history or creates new history that should have been mentioned but wasn't because it obviously wasn't intended to be that way.

[Asura]

But it also then breaks the original movies given that it is seen as some old vague hokey religion even though whole armies of Jedi were out in force doing their thing well within the lifetime of many characters

I think that part of it lies with the galaxy being really, really big, but naturally the films focus on a few key individuals.

For instance, in real life, there are loads of stories about commandos in World War 2. Some of them are pretty firmly true, but others are largely propaganda and it's difficult to know how true they are. Despite that, if I was on the run, on a ship with a smuggler, an old soldier and a young boy, and the old soldier was telling the young lad that if he trained like a 40s commando then he could do all these amazing things, I'd joke about it too.

I do agree, though, that the prequels don't handle this well. They do make it difficult to believe that someone of reasonable knowledge of things would doubt the Jedi's powers.

This all reminds me of the first time I saw a Jedi in Star Wars Galaxies. Less than 1-in-10,000 players was a Jedi initially, so it was a real rarity. It created a sense of awe.

[Dogg Thang]

Well Luke had heard of the Clone Wars and he was seemingly on one of the most remote planets and wasn't born until they ended so it would seem like a bit of a stretch that people high up in the Empire or from other places in the galaxy wouldn't have heard the stories, especially those who were alive during them. But yeah, possible.

[Asura]

Well Luke had heard of the Clone Wars and he was seemingly on one of the most remote planets and wasn't born until they ended so it would seem like a bit of a stretch that people high up in the Empire or from other places in the galaxy wouldn't have heard the stories, especially those who were alive during them. But yeah, possible.

Similarly though, Anakin Skywalker was one of the most well-known Jedi in the Republic, a hero of the clone wars - and Luke doesn't know anything about him.

[Dogg Thang]

Exactly. The prequels create problems where there were none.

[Dogg Thang]

A friend was going for another viewing last night so I ended up going along. Enjoyed it yet again. Found myself settling on the same criticisms as last time but the movie holds up well with repeated viewings. Found myself wishing once again that

->Open Spoiler<-

Rey turns out to be a nobody. I don't think that will be the case but the whole family connections thing went over the top with Leia in Jedi and it all seems a bit incestuous as a movie series if Rey is Luke's daughter. And either he knew about her and left her, which would make him a bit of a dick, or he didn't which makes him a bit of a dog and that doesn't seem to fit. So I'd like if that wasn't the situation.

Then had to bite the bullet today and show my eldest Episode 1. Uggghhhhhhhhh...

[buster_broon]

Did she like it, be honest!!!!

Anyway what's the point of phasma, don't think I've asked that question before