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I think having Annakin build Three-pio is wholly relevant to the SW universe. It's an origin. Three-pio was built by Annakin, travelled with Annakin, associated with Ben-Kenobi and Luke's and Leia's parents, associated with Yoda and then many years passed. Three-Pio obviously stayed in the service of Leia Skywalker's adopted family. Fate took him from Leia to Luke and then back to Obi-Wan. It's the "Circle of Robotics".
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When Did Star Wars Jump The Shark?
After 1971 - when George Lucas stopped making pictures like THX 1138
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Posted: |
Apr 9, 2015 - 5:43 PM
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By: |
Thgil
(Member)
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Return of the f*cking Jedi. What a mess. Virtually nothing about the film works besides the music, effects, Hamill's performance, and Fisher in the bikini. It's such a joke that anyone went along with a script in which it was revealed that Leia was Luke's sister and, apparently, knew all along.
I've read that in the original drafts of the series Vader was not Anakin, who was in fact alive. Allegedly, Leia wasn't Luke's sister, who was training to be a Jedi elsewhere in the galaxy. I'd love to go to the alternate reality in which that's actually the way the series went.
I guess this means I also have issues with Empire... But they're far less serious, especially if Vader's revelation had turned out to be the lie Jones originally thought it to be.
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When Luke showed up at Jabba's Palace as a fully formed Jedi.
I was like 'Wha...? When and How did that happen?'. When last we saw him he could barely invoke any telekinetic power and was an undisciplined swordsman, at best.
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Return of the f*cking Jedi. What a mess.
That's what I think: it was a good saga for the first two movies, and then it got too juvenile, with Ewoks and whatnot.
Then The Phantom Menace was aimed at an even younger audience, and Attack of the Clones was scripted in an awkward, wooden manner. Revenge of the Sith is redeemed by a (relatively) cool climax.
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ESB already had a couple "jump" moments from my standpoint that diluted the innocent pleasure of the original.
1-"I am your father".
2-Leia and Han. If you watch SW you are not made to think that Leia and Han would be a romantic pairing. The innocence of SW was more in naïve Luke the farm boy "getting" the girl. The whole pairing of Leia and Han just seemed forced and unbelievable to me from the get-go.
And if ROTJ didn't give its one great legacy of a metal bikini, it'd be more insufferable from its plot holes. I could never understand why the whole point of Luke being unprepared to face Vader was because his training was "incomplete" but when he returns to Yoda he's told "no more training do you need". Well which is it????? The funny thing is if you read the ESB novelization the last paragraph has Luke vowing to "return to Yoda and finish his training *before* he'd set out to rescue Han."
Oh and how about Chewie's Tarzan yell? A lot more intrusive than 007's in "Octopussy" that same year I felt!
But I'll admit I didn't complain too much at the time since when you experience the SW trilogy originally in the span from age 8 to 14 it was a different kind of experience where ROTJ, even with flaws, still got by based on goodwill. That wouldn't have been the case if I'd first experienced this at an older age.
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George lost me when the Ewoks showed up.
That's when I was absolutely certain that he had sold his soul to Mattel.
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Posted: |
Apr 9, 2015 - 7:54 PM
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By: |
MikeP
(Member)
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Oh, Jedi had issues, and although Lucas didn't actually have the ESB "I am your father" thing set up beforehand, the original trilogy - including the groan inducing f*cking Ewoks - wrapped up nicely, for me. Jedi was clunky and had some of the worst acting in the OT ( the Luke/Leia "somehow I've known it all along" ) scene, but the final confrontation with Luke and Vader was just fine, and I loved the funeral pyre.
The original trilogy is great in my book. Love it. Flaws and all. Special Editions and all.
It jumped the shark in the first 15 minutes of Phantom Menace. I took the damn day off from work, drove 35 miles to see it on opening day, and sitting there in the dark, packed theater, it felt...off. The tone was wrong from the start, it didn't feel like Star Wars, and those alien guys all worried about the Jedi were awful...awful..and the movie went downhill from there. My heart sank.
But being the Star Wars fan I am, the next two movies were greeted with open arms and an open mind. Clones had some crap moments, but a few good ones. Sith, overall, worked for me, although it isn't in the same league as the OT.
I guess maybe really, Star Wars jumped the shark every time Lucas fiddled with the damn thing, up to the Blu Ray release and adding that mutherf*cking stupid "Nooooooooooooo" at the climax of Jedi.
But hey I still love Star Wars 
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It's interesting to note the behind-the-scenes dramatics and what effects they had on the finished products.
There was the factor of the kind of help of which Lucas availed himself. For TESB he got an old-time Hollywood screenwriting legend to do a draft, screenwriter of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" to finish the job, and a professor of his from USC to direct it.
For ROTJ, the story developments he insisted on caused Gary Kurtz (producer of the first two) to jump ship. Lucas' resignation from the DGA cost him the chance to hire Spielberg to direct as originally planned. Yet ROTJ broke B.O. records and was described in the press at the time as the one which came closest to Lucas' vision for the saga.
There seems always to have been a discrepancy between what fans and critics saw in the films, or hoped for in terms of their potential, and what Lucas himself meant to accomplish with the saga -- the real clash being not the one between good and evil but rather between art and commerce. Something which at first seemed so much more than the sum of its parts (Flash Gordon, Wizard of Oz, Arthurian Legend, Kurosawa, Joseph Campbell and on and on) turned out to be just a cosmic hot dog -- a bunch of parts thrown together at the service of the ultimate power in the universe: the almighty dollar.
The only one winding up without egg on his face, as I've expressed before: Jedi Johnny. It is mainly his contribution I look forward to each time, and I haven't been disappointed yet. Star Wars has sometimes been like a "Jerry Goldsmith assignment" for him: "Here, make this turkey sound like filet mignon. Write a score for that movie we all WISH we were watching." Damn if he doesn't deliver.
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