Morgoth, on 24 January 2018 - 07:59 AM, said:
I was 13 when The Phantom Menace came out, hardly an adult, and my friends and I all hated that movie. It was a crushing disappointment and I can still remember that feeling vividly. So I don't find the argument that the Phantom Menace was a good movie for children particularly convincing.
You were a teenager. Not the demographic of "kids" at all. You may not have been an adult, but you also weren't a grade schooler. The difference is pretty big.
Morgan Lefay, on 24 January 2018 - 09:16 AM, said:
Ah, QT, do you want argumentation? OK, let´s begin.
First trilogy has the structure of a fairytale, and it works just because of that. Its simplicity reads as precision, not as a flaw (though I admit there are major flaws in the story; Luke and Leia weren't thought as siblings from the start and it shows up).
Actually, the first trilogy wasn't even a trilogy. It was one movie, followed by two others because of the success of the first movie. As such, it was not structured as any such thing. A NEW HOPE was stylized after Saturday afternoon matinee Buck Rogers serials, by way of Kurosawa's HIDDEN FORTRESS, and a splash of DUNE. THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK only happened because of the success of the first film. And the TRUE sequel to the film that was A NEW HOPE
until TESB was dreamed up by Lawrence Kasdan and Lucas...was the Alan Dean Foster novel SPLINTER IN THE MINDS EYE. Foster was given exclusive access to ALL the original STAR WARS production materials including Lucas' "Journal of the Whills" outline (which ends with R2 landing in HIS backyard and playing the story back to him) with the explicit instruction of crafting a low budget sequel to STAR WARS, as no one expected it to be a runaway success. It included neither Han Solo, nor Chewbacca...And Luke & Leia fight Vader on a jungle planet. He is not their father, and they DO progress into a love relationship. Only after ANH's success did Lucas begin looking into a big budget sequel that became TESB...and TESB retcons more than a few things, the largest of which are making Vader Luke's father. ROTJ goes one further and makes Luke & Leia siblings, something that wasn't in the cards till that film, which is why she's still doing stuff like kissing him in TESB. Was TESB and ROTJ thought of like a fairytale? Perhaps, but I can't see it. The OT is pretty cobbled together from disparate things that only fit in hindsight and with slight hand-wringing retcons like Luke & Leia. It was not really structured as an ARC, so much as retroactively pushed into that mold by decisions on the script of the 2nd and 3rd films. In the end it worked, but one can't imagine that Lucas planned it out as the trilogy it became.
Morgan Lefay, on 24 January 2018 - 09:16 AM, said:
Prequel trilogy tries to complicate things by adding politics to the mix. IMAO, it doesn´t work.
Sorry, politics don't enter into the OT somehow? A Senate dissolution? An tyrannical Empire? A political faction called "The Alliance To Restore the Republic" (AKA The Rebel Alliance) led by more than one ousted, and surviving Senator?
Just because the Prequels introduced a deeper understanding of the things that we just took as rote in the OT (showing us the Senate that was dissolved, the Republic that was taken over by the Empire and how that occurred, the political people who would one day make up the "Alliance to Restore the Republic" and how they turned their coats and when, and what happened to the peacekeeping order of monks that protected it for over a thousand generations), doesn't mean that they
politicized the situation. They ILLUSTRATED the ALREADY politicized Star Wars universe. They showed us how and why. I fail to see anything wrong with that. Audiences may not have LIKED how they showed us that, but pretending like the OT wasn't already a political story, is missing the point of the OT entirely.
Morgan Lefay, on 24 January 2018 - 09:16 AM, said:
Star Wars will never be Dune; it's an entirely different beast.
That's funny, because Frank Herbert famously and FURIOUSLY thought that George Lucas had ripped him off. Desert planet spawns a magical hero who belongs to an ancient order to fight the dominant political factions in the galaxy and free his people?
Morgan Lefay, on 24 January 2018 - 09:16 AM, said:
I don't believe a full idiot like Jar Jar being promoted to General
Jar Jar was NOT an idiot. He was an overly
clumsy member of his race, all of whom were modestly primitive individuals. You'll notice that Boss Nass is no scratch in the "Galactic Smarts" department either. The Jedi have to mind trick him to get him to agree that an invasion of the planet threatens his people. The Gungan's are a local tribe, similar to the Ewoks in fact. That Jar Jar was a general (clumsiness and all) of his people is not far-fetched at all. Sure it resulted in a lot of mistakes on the battlefield...whch is why he was only a General briefly.
Morgan Lefay, on 24 January 2018 - 09:16 AM, said:
I can't buy an elective monarchy with a fourteen year old girl on a throne (this happens only with hereditary kingdoms), and even more, with a span of four years of government (this is what in real life we call a republic).
So because we can't buy it with how our world developed, we can't buy it there. They give a reason for the choice by the way:
The Naboo often elected young women, believing they possessed a form of pure, childlike wisdom that the adults lacked. You may consider that a batshit notion, but it's what the Naboo developed as an elective monarchy. Did you know that northern tribes in Iron Age Scotland electively chose young women to lead them too? Not so off base if we bother to dip into our human history a bit.
Morgan Lefay, on 24 January 2018 - 09:16 AM, said:
And if you have this sort of strange democratic monarchy, you don't have a queen (why no kings either?)
I wrote above why they had no kings.
Morgan Lefay, on 24 January 2018 - 09:16 AM, said:
dressed in such an unpractical way (this only works in highly ritualistic and hereditary kingdoms).
Nitpicking nonsense. First of all, what possible reason do you have to comment on the dress? Elaborate dress is and was the format of MANY monarchies, elected leaders, and others in our history. Septimia Zenobia comes to mind. Queen of Palmyria, chosen and created as a royal leader, and dressed elaborately for both state and battle instances. the top man or woman gets the top clothes. This is civilization in microcosm.
Morgan Lefay, on 24 January 2018 - 09:16 AM, said:
More on that, you don't get traditional asian-themed clothes in one episode and european-renaissance in another. From wich culture is Naboo borrowing from?
That you think this matters is telling. Star wars is and has always borrowed from everyone. Huttese (the language of the Hutts) is actually an amalgamation of words from all different languages on purpose. Most costuming in the prequels was done to emulate many decadent aspects of many different cultures and intermingle them. The is space fantasy after all.
Morgan Lefay, on 24 January 2018 - 09:16 AM, said:
No, when you try to depict a society which is a frame for your adventure, at least make sure said society has an internal consistency.
What about the differences in the costuming from era to era speaks to a lack of internal consistency? Amidala dressed a certain way, and 12 years later Jamilla, and then Neeyutnee and Apiliana all dressed SLIGHTLY differently, but still recognizable for the Queen of Naboo. I'd argue that if you look at images of all four monarchs, you will see the same general look transferred between them by the same changes OUR clothes go through. Even the lip paint is the same. Unless your problem is with how Padme dresses later as a Senator? I think you'll find that Senators and Monarchy dress differently. Again the costuming is purposely a mishmash of styles to give it a tone of humans in the GFFA colonize space as one peoples, and their clothing choices intermingled over the centuries. I see nothing about that as internally inconsistent.
Morgan Lefay, on 24 January 2018 - 09:16 AM, said:
And don't make me speak about midichlorians or "let's throw pseudoscience into our magic but without a real explanation".
I dismiss Midichlorians as a mistake to have dipped into. but they only do so really in TPM and then they abandon it as a bad idea. One mistake should not doom a trilogy. I mean you're accepting of the all-encompassing Force which can be manipulated like magic (largely unexplained), but somehow Midichlorians was a bridge to far? I mean it was a mistake, but let's not pretend like the Force has a handbook explaining it.
Morgan Lefay, on 24 January 2018 - 09:16 AM, said:
And, by the way, I like Krull, too. At least this is a fairytale-in-space which does not pretend to be more.
Pretend to be more? I mean what?
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