tahukanuva wrote:I mean, the storytelling itself is quite bad, but there's a lot of neat stuff mixed in with it. Darth Maul, Qui-Gon, Ewan, a Fett who does stuff on screen, Sith Lord Christopher Lee, the entire colosseum fight in II..
And here I thought I was the only one who vastly preferred Jango over Boba! The Jango vs. Obi-Wan bits of Episode II are in fact my favourite bit of all three prequel movies. And I'd toss in Mace Windu, the battle droids and all the cool ship designs onto the "neat stuff" pile as well.
tahukanuva wrote:As far as Episode III's concerned, I think there's a lot of good stuff in there, buried under a few severe mistakes that taint the whole thing. Anakin's desperation and anger as he tries to save Padme while those he thought were friends just use him as a spy,
It looks like you and I might have similar thoughts about this.
That's definitely how Anakin sees it, but had he owned up to exactly what was going on (i.e. that he was desperate to save the woman he'd secretly married and impregnated) I'd imagine the other Jedi would have rightly put him in his place by point out that
this exact scenario is why Jedi aren't allowed to marry, and that he should have resigned if his love for Padme was more important to him than his highly demanding duties as a Jedi.
Which leads directly to...
tahukanuva wrote:So despite some great scenes like Palpatine's Sith legend in the theater, or (despite some questionable dialogue) the Obi-Wan/Anakin fight, there's simply no way for the movie to satisfyingly convey a fall from grace, because as far as the movies show, Anakin's always been whiny, angry, and willing to kill on a whim. Episode III's biggest problem is Episode II.
This right here is the biggest problem. The original trilogy tells it as if Anakin is this epic fallen hero, and the prequels treat him as if he is, but he's so, so not. The closest he came to heroism was when he accidentally saved the day as a little kid. By the time II and III roll around he's already transparently evil, which I'd imagine isn't entirely uncommon when you give a typically moody, selfish teenager godlike powers and let him use them with near-zero supervision. And all of his problems are solely of his own creation, because he thinks he's super-important, the rules don't apply to him and he can have whatever he wants as soon as he wants it without working for it.
Unfortunately he's the central character of the whole thing, and when the central character doesn't work then it doesn't matter how good or bad everything around him is. If Anakin was written to be likeable the movies probably would have risen above the gaping logic holes and poor scripting (which, let's be honest, all the movies bar ESB have in spades) to be respectably enjoyable action flicks.
Actually, that's probably why I enjoy III the least out of all the prequels. There's still a lot for me to enjoy in the first two because Anakin is just one character out of many, and I can fast-forward through his scenes if they really start to get to me. But III is
entirely about him and I just don't care, no matter how pretty it is.
Skyquake87 wrote:Me! Or at least implied it. Objectively, I and IV are equally dire with their childish plots and some grown-up nonsense about federations and empires and other such toot that people think makes a BIG STATEMENT about something something.
I'd rank them pretty close to one another as well, though I think ANH has one big advantage over TPM. The former is an unabashedly silly romp, while the latter takes itself (Gungan scenes aside) way, way too seriously.
Also, as dalek alluded to earlier Phantom Menace is also alarmingly racist when you get right down to it. Not just old timey minstrel show caricature with an exaggerated Caribbean accent Jar Jar, but also the greedy, amoral, hook-nosed space-Jew Watto and the Nemoidians filling in as (literally) cold-blooded, stereotypically-accented Asians. All of which I find kind of hilarious if for no other reason than I can't believe Lucas managed to get them all past Fox's censors, but I won't blame anyone who takes offense to it either.
On the other hand, I think the acting in TPM is miles ahead of what the first film offered. Hamill, Fisher and even Ford were all clearly pretty green the first go-around, and even James Earl Jones didn't quite have Vader down the way he would in the later two movies.