B5Erik

Wow. A 10 year bump for this thread.

And the prequel series is still just as flawed now as it was then. With each of those movies a few tweaks to the scripts (well, a few tweaks to the plots, but a lot of rewriting of the dialogue) and they would have been much better.

I still find a fair amount to enjoy in each of the movies, but the shortcomings of Lucas' writing and direction really detract from each of them. Thank God he's out of the Star Wars business...

Sgtsnake

I look back and think of just how bad the acting really was. Hayden Christensen was. The sad thing was I really enjoyed him in Life as a house and Shattered Glass

Timber

Neeson was the only thing that could have saved this POS trilogy but even he phoned in his roll and decided he hated it so much he couldn't do it anymore. Without him Ewan had no one to act with and shitty dialog to try and steamroll through.

RichC2

I think people are too harsh on him for the PT. Frankly, he's no worse than everybody else on screen, and there are some great actors mixed in that give lousy performances here, they're just on screen a lot less.

Natalie Portman is an oscar winning actress with a lot of fanfare, so the fact she is fucking god awful here seems completely ignored as well. That was all on Lucas. But when it comes to Christensen, it was apparently all him.

B5Erik

Yeah, everything I've read about Lucas' direction of the PT indicates that he was totally clueless about actors' performances. He gave them no real direction, and the dialogue they had to deliver was bad more often than not. The bad performances are all mostly on him. (The actors do have to take some of the blame - they are supposed to know what they're doing, right?)

Lucas should have stuck to (co)-plotting and producing the movies. Bringing in real writers and directors would have made a huge difference.

Obi-Wanma

Hayden gets stuck with the blame because he's really the only member of the main cast without a track record that most people have seen. This was supposed to be his big break. When most people think of Natalie Portman, Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson, or Sam Jackson, they don't immediately think of Star Wars prequels. With Hayden, they do.

Tom Creo

Ok soooooooooo we are bashing on the PT again. nice.

mcnabb

In some ways you're right, but the problem is that Hayden IS supposed to be Darth Vader, so the whole trilogy rides with his character. I believe if his character was portrayed better, then the PT would have been liked by more fans. Now I personally believe its partly Lucas and partly Hayden's fault. Lucas crafted this unlikeable character from the beginning of Episode II, and you could never root for the guy before he went bad, so when he falls into the lava you just don't really care. As for Hayden, I think he is average actor at best, and couldn't pull off any dramatic scene so it mades things even worse. Sorry but the guy is typical Hollywood of just another good looking face who can't act for shit.

RichC2

That's sort of what I'm saying though, nobody in the PT manages to pull off dramatic scenes. It seems pretty shitty to pin it on one actor when in fact it's an across the board failure in terms of acting. This trilogy had the kind of acting you typically get when you have a foreign language director directing english speakers.

majorjoe23

Man, this movie only got four pages of discussion?

Shazam

People were pretty pissed after the first one.

HN

looking at the last few posts in the Ep. VII thread, looks like it's being bashed on two fronts

brayzie

I meant to resurrect this thread only to mention how there were a couple genuinely good deleted scenes from ROTS that could have made it better. But I felt I had to mention the bad scenes from the youtube video because there are so many.
I wonder if it was running time that Lucas cut those scenes? Because like I said, you understand Anakin's actions slightly better with them included. In the deleted scenes Palpatine says "we can't trust her [Padme]." And Anakin's like, no you're crazy. And Palpatine tells him, "I'm surprised your Jedi instincts aren't sharper."
So you get the sense that Anakin is loyal to Padme, even standing up to his boss/mentor. But Palpatine puts in his head that maybe she's hiding something, maybe you can't trust her. Which makes his reaction when she arrives with Obi-Wan at the end of the film much more believable.


Hayden Christensen just seemed too young for the part.And yeah, he's never made to be likable. "Powerful Jedi was he...powerful Jedi." Yoda says that in TESB so even this Jedi master was in awe of Anakin's power. Yet in the PT we never see any demonstration of this power. We just keep hearing Anakin saying "I'm so powerful!" and the other Jedi talk about how he has such a high midichlorian count.

I think originally it got 25+pages but I couldn't find that thread.

EctoCooler

It's almost as good as Return of the Jedi. Almost.

Josh-da-man

Not quite. I remember that a Star Wars subforum was opened up that got lots of posts, so there was a lot more Star Wars discussion than just this thread.

TomOpus

I think they should dust-off the Star Wars subforum in a few months. Star Wars fever is starting to build.

Deadman31

my bad.