Starting a Ruckus

My thoughts on Star Wars...

I didn't mind the prequels. Yes they're not as good as the original trilogy. But they do show a nice series of events which tie up plotholes such as how The Empire become so powerful, how Darth Vader become evil, and how Luke and Lei wind up on their respected planets. Having said this there were a few things I did not like in the prequel. One major thing was Jar Jar. We already have the comic relief of C3PO and R2D2. Now we have this clumsy alien who seems to mess up everything he touches. Not all movies need the bumbling fool.

I liked the fact we saw Yoda fight in some lightsaber duels, saw the origins of Boba Fett and Chewbacca, and even saw Obi Wan's teacher.

CGI is a toss up for me. Ships and other inanimate thing are ok. With aliens one has to be very careful with two things. First is that there shouldn't be tons of CGI aliens running around since they distract a person from the human characters. Secondly there needs to be an actor/actress with great acting ability when it comes to interacting with something not actually present until the CGI character is added. I believe it takes an even greater talent to act with a CGI character than a human one.

Here is my top six:

1) Empire Strikes Back
2) A New Hope
3) Revenge of the Sith
4) Return of the Jedi
5) Attack of the Clones
6) The Phantom Menace

As for Star Trek, Kirk may be the captain, but Spock is me hero from that series.

Jim
 
kitsune85 said:
One major thing was Jar Jar. We already have the comic relief of C3PO and R2D2. Now we have this clumsy alien who seems to mess up everything he touches. Not all movies need the bumbling fool.
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The only "positive" thing about Jar-jar is the fact that there needed to be a character that stupid to bring the vote that gave Palpatine supreme power. Jar-jar is to blame for Democracy dying and the creation of "the first, great galactic Empire!"

Palpatine (paraphrase): "If only Amidala were here. She'd have the strength to call for this vote."

Jar-jar: ***stupid grin***
 
Ren Suzume said:
As for Spock v. Obi Wan, I was talking w/o weapons. If we were going light saber vs. kali fi weapon, it wouldn't even be a competition.
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Aw, heck. Shunt some planets from ST into the SW universe and let Spock be on the Jedi Council. I see him hanging out with Ki-Adi-Mundi. He can fight Obi-wan later.

I'd love to hear McCoy say, "Dammit, Jim! I'm a doctor not a jedi. Talk to that green-blooded Vulcan."
 
Telokh_Amdo said:
Ren Suzume said:
As for Spock v. Obi Wan, I was talking w/o weapons. If we were going light saber vs. kali fi weapon, it wouldn't even be a competition.
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Aw, heck. Shunt some planets from ST into the SW universe and let Spock be on the Jedi Council. I see him hanging out with Ki-Adi-Mundi. He can fight Obi-wan later.

I'd love to hear McCoy say, "Dammit, Jim! I'm a doctor not a jedi. Talk to that green-blooded Vulcan."
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Spock and Yoda could have a pointy-eared party.
 
1) Return of the Jedi - This is rated on nostalgia of multiple levels. First of the 3 I had ever been in contact with. I was a 5 year old kid with my sister's record that had the screen printing of Wicket on one side and Luke on the other. It was a 'book on record' for kids..and I played that thing over and over and over in our basement. I loved how not knowing the rest of the movies, it still held enough substance that as the little new kid, I could understand enough of what was going on. It also released awesome plastic lightsabers that Sandy used to beat me up with. The non-retractable ones with the big black handles. There were tons of "Ali Skywalker, Jedi" in my basement with me running around with the green one.

Years later I got really, really mad when they took out the Yubyub song on the rerelease. I nearly walked out of the theater.

2) Empire strikes Back - Amazing. Plotwise, this had everything that a 'middle' movie should contain. The nearly beaten hero cliffhanger. It made Return of the Jedi that much more gratifying because it gave you the 'crap, the Empire's going to win!' moment. That, and I wanted a Tonton for a pet. badly. This would be first on the list for me if for not all of the nostalgia tied into the Return of the Jedi.

3) A New Hope: Introduction, initial story, full ending, with the bad guy getting away for the next movie. Nice, neat little package.

4) Attack of the Clones. Yoda's 10 minutes of glory against Christopher Lee was what made me enjoy that movie. Yes, I know he was CGI, and the people who are the hardcore muppet fans cried foul. But for him to move his robe aside and grab his lightsaber via the force was something I wanted to see as a little kid.

5) Phantom Menace: Anyone else feel like they were playing green light/red light with the big doors at the end? The kid was annoying....still not NEARLY as annoying as Hayden Christiansan. I'd take Jarjar over him any day.

5.5)The Ewok Adventure: BAD movie. HORRID movie. Want to kick that little girl in the face. STILL not as bad as:

6)Revenge of the Sith. "Don't jump over me Anakin, I'm goin- ...now. See what you did? This is why you have no legs and one arm." Hated, hated this movie. Hated the fact that it was Hayden Christiansan (or however that man's name is spelled) in the suit at the end. It reminded me of Spaceballs (which was awesome) but in an attempt to take it seriously...which is horrid. There were so many parts of this movie that made me cringe in my seat.

To me, the only thing that saved the prequels from being a 'demand money back' was Ewin McGregor, and how much he really did remind me of Sir Alec Guinness. Other than that, I was very frustrated on many levels, especially at how 'Matrix style' the fight scenes were. Maybe this is just me on a technical standpoint, but in the original movies, the lightsabers felt like they weighed something. That it took effort to swing them around; it felt more western style sword fighting. I would have rather seen that than the eastern style fighting, because it didn't make sense to me. Why would they be lighter in the past? Why would fighting progress from faster and more equipped to slower and more weighted? I love Kung Fu type movies, don't get me wrong. I just don't like it in my traditional star wars setting, after things have been established.


And the fight would not technically be between Obi Wan and Spock. If we're talking Captain sidekicks, we're talking Spock and Chewbacca. To which Chewy would probably rip Spocks arms off before Vulcan pinch can be applied.

-Ali
 
Toddo said:
I liked the podrace...
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It was neat from a tech perspective, but it was just eyecandy. The same story progress could have been made easily in other ways that did not require the audience to drown in further 'Anakin is Baby Jesus'. Maybe give Maul some character development, so it feels less like one of the shattering moments of Obi-Wan's life wasn't his master dying to 'Unknown Sith Extra #73'. :D

Now if I -really- wanted to get up in arms, we'd be discussing how it is that all the recurring characters other than Luke and Leia aged 40-50 years in the ~17 that are now between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. Or how the Jedi Order went from helping govern the Galaxy to not even being remembered in that same time.

Or why they're presented tearing down statues of the Emperor on Corscuant in the newly edited Return of the Jedi, when the Rebellion's just won a major victory... out in the Outer Rim, without the resources to take single planets, much less the Imperial Capitol guarded by most of the remaining Fleet. But then most of the edits in the new re-releases are just annoying to me. They're exceedingly awesome movies, stop with the revisionism and let them stand on their merits!

But hey, even if Lucas is terrible at keeping to his own canon, the mantra still holds true. Just repeat to yourself 'It's just a show, and I should really just relax.'
 
Gollum was half Mo Cap and half true animation. Depending on what the scene called for they sometimes used just animation, and other times they used motion capture. This helped tremendously because it gave the actors on set someone to interact with, but it also allowed for some of the scenes to look amazing (like the overhead shot of gollum coming down the rock toward sam and frodo.)

The main problem with CGI characters are weight, lighting, and texture. If you don't secure weight and all of the fundamentals of animation, the character will not look real (They'll float/be robotic in motion/etc). If you cannot secure proper lighting/texture the character will look 'out of place' in the scene. This is a huge thing. If the light is coming from the back of the actor's head who's facing the CGI character, and the light on the character is coming from somewhere else, it will be a knee jerk reaction. Also, if the character is textured poorly, they will look plastic/reflective/not real. Its really that which makes it look like people are in a video game.

-Ali
 
I definitely agree with Ali on that. I get too turned off of certain movies because of the reasons she lists, like Wolverine, where much of the CGI was poorly textured and lit. I also prefer real sets to everything done green screen. If the whole set is green screen things look out of place and actor frequently look unresponsove to the environment.
 
The reality is that the only way to ensure you have a great movie is to include as many sheep or midgets that the budget will allow for. Case in point:

Hope - Jawas
Empire - Ugnaughts
Jedi - Ewoks

From the new movies:

Menace - Anakin Skywalker and "kid Greedo"
Clones - various in the background of the cargo ship, then there are the "midget sized" pickup lines "Anny" uses
Sith - the ballsack of Mace windu for letting all his boys die without calling a single of his 10,000 parries for them

See? I think its plainly obvious.

--Chazz

PS - to anyone who thinks that ST can edge out any sort of win against SW I remind you that we do in fact have Death Star http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij4w7ChpuaM
 
Collin,
While I agree, I think if someone does green screen/bluescreen well, it works perfectly. Almost all of 300 was done on a soundstage via blue/green screen.

By IMDB: The film was photographed almost entirely on a sound-stage in Montreal, using blue-screen and green-screen backgrounds. The only part of the movie not shot on the sound-stage was the shot of the Persian messengers appearing over the top of a hill as they gallop towards Sparta, which was shot on location in Los Angeles. However, even this shot was heavily manipulated in post-production.

I think because the -entire- film was manipulated post production, it worked very well, comparitively to doing half with half without. Its all in the quality :)

-Ali
 
I cant get involved with this while at work. I can write PAGES and PAGES. I am a massive SW fan, and a Moderate ST fan and I know enough about both for this thread to consume my life. I will say one thing:

Sith - the ballsack of Mace windu for letting all his boys die without calling a single of his 10,000 parries for them

Couldn't be more accurate. Couldn't stop laughing.
--bill

PS: If you really wanna compare ships cross universes they need to be of similar class. Home 1 (Calamari Cruiser (Modified)) is a comparable ship to only the best of Federation ship classes, like the Excelsior Class (USS Excelcior NCC-2000, USS Melborne NCC-62403) if you wanna go TOS timeline or the Sovereign Class (USS Enterprise 1701-E, USS Sovereign NCC-73811). The two universes really don't line up on the capital ship sence of scale. In SW, capital ships are much like they are in reality, big slow monsters filled with a few thansand people, hundreds of point defence weapons and rows of heavy turbolasers (canons) and torpedo launchers. ST ships are smaller, have smaller crews, are more manuverable and generaly seem like they don't take punishment the same way.

I will say tho, that advantage SW capital ships for not being powered by a magneticaly confined anti-matter/matter reaction that has a long and glorious history of breaching confinement and destroying everything within a decient radius. Also whoever designs EPS relays in Federations hips should be taken out back and shot for criminaly neglegent homicide from his designs.
--bill
 
Damn, Gibbs has got game.
-toddo

PS- seeing as I'm declaring you the winner, you get to pick the next one. The rules are simple, make a provocative statement about an aspect of geek culture in such a way as to provoke flames, the game shall continue until someone posts something that causes the original poster to feel utterly pwn'd while still being respectful.
 
zehnyu said:
If we're talking Captain sidekicks, we're talking Spock and Chewbacca. To which Chewy would probably rip Spocks arms off before Vulcan pinch can be applied.
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IF Spock can reach high enough to get to Chewie's neck to apply the nerve pinch. :lol:
 
um...er...AND he has to get through all that fur to apply the nerve pinch effectively. Yeah, that's the ticket.
 
zehnyu said:
And the fight would not technically be between Obi Wan and Spock. If we're talking Captain sidekicks, we're talking Spock and Chewbacca. To which Chewy would probably rip Spocks arms off before Vulcan pinch can be applied.
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Okay, let me rephrase this then:
Fisticuffs: Spock gets his arms ripped off.
Getting injured for the sake of plot: Spock gets his arms ripped off.
Philosophy debate: Spock gets his arms ripped off.
 
Gee-Perwin said:
I will admit that I probably shouldn't have showed up at 11AMish to be the first to be in line for the midnight showing (remember that, Robb & Dave? LOL!)
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i have those pics. i will find and post them tonight !!
 
well, not for the prequels. i think this was for the re-releases of the original with the "upgraded footage"

starwars.jpg


from left to right: Jim anderson, tony waste of space, how awesome am i as vader, dave "was i ever that thin" ehrhahrhahahaht, Gee the magic wookie.
 
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