Blarghagh

Neeson and McGregor weren't so much bad as they were wooden. Chris is correct in assessing that Christensen's acting in the prequels was inexcusably bad - even if I think he would have done better under other direction (as I've seen in Shattered Glass) he still would have been bad. I expect he's just wrong for the character. Whereas Neeson and McGregor are decent actors in general and have the occassional bad performance, Christensen is bad in general with the occassional good performance. Not sure why he's explaining the concept of a cult film though.

Hayden Christensen was in Taken? I remember thinking he wasn't terrible in Jumper, not good either but not nearly as bad as he was in Star Wars. But yeah, it's not fair to blame it all on the director, but Lucas is infamous for not actually giving his actors directions at all. "Faster, more intense" as it goes. Beyond that, Lucas is also the writer, the producer, and as far as anyone can tell the only real decision maker when it comes to the prequels. Blaming Lucas in this case is not the same as just blaming the director. Of course, blame also lies with the surrounding people who didn't come out and be more assertive and question George, but in case of actors, I can imagine it's very difficult to give a good performance if you don't have proper direction nor a clear character motivation anywhere in the story. Now keep in mind I'm saying this as somebody who actually didn't hate the prequels. There's real imagination on display there, and a lot of the sequences are really cool. George gets credit for that too, in my opinion. But the story decisions that don't work, being seemingly unable to direct actors to the point of getting bad performances from good actors, the awful dialogue and the insistence of wallowing constantly in fanservice by going "look! here's something related to the original movies!" even when it wasn't neccesary seem fairly directly traceable to him. I mean, I've read his scripts and unlike most movies they deviate from what's on the screen very, very little. I don't think he ever stopped to think it through and go "okay, this part doesn't really work, let's see if I can change it" and I think that's why George is probably to blame for most of what goes wrong in the prequels. In making-of documentaries of New Hope and Empire, we're constantly hearing about actors ad-libbing lines, story decisions being changed, the scripts are entirely different from what there is on screen. I know of barely any cases where this happened in the prequels.

Yeah, this view has recently come into favour - the actors aren't bad, just George Lucas is. Hayden Christensen has since proved that he can definitely hold is own (he made the festival rounds a while back with a film called Shattered Glass or some such). The love scenes are interesting, the novelisation implied that Anakin was in fact as creepy a stalker as he seemed - instead of Padmé falling in love with him, his need of her bled into her through the Force and he unintentionally did a "Jedi mindtrick of passion" on her. This view actually improved the prequels for me. Especially since I've realized that this could be spun into an explanation of her "losing her will to live" at the end of the third film despite being presented as a strong woman who now has two children to live for! It was like a withdrawal effect from the Force connection between her an Anakin being broken. Because that is by far the thing in the prequels that makes me the most angry! Really, the problems are with the plot, dialogue and direction. I think the same stories could work easily if they had just been plotted and executed better. Even the Trade Federation and politics, hell even Jar Jar could have worked if it was well-directed, but he just stands out as even more annoying because there is nothing else to do but be annoyed. The movie elicits no other emotions because there are no characters or relations we care about. If Jar Jar was there in the midst of personal turmoil, he'd have been no worse (okay, somewhat worse) than C-3P0 in Empire butting in and annoying the hell out of Han and Leia all the time - but because there is no tension to relieve, his entire role of comic relief can't possibly work and that's what made him so annoying. Here's a thought. If you had been an exec at Fox, the only one with the balls to stand up to George and force him to make changes, while the prequels came out. What would you have done? Belated media made two pretty cool videos with the idea: I don't agree with all he does, but a lot of it makes sense.

Journalism

They do not. They are more the Anne Rice version of sexy angsty vampires, which in hindsight is a lot better than the sparkling version despite me disliking them a lot before.

I didn't enjoy it - it felt like a spinoff of Vampire Diaries instead of Supernatural.

Loved that show right up untill Season 9 - Then again, it already had an ending so that one can easily be ignored. It's okay if you keep in mind that this season is actually a spinoff instead of another season but the network just forced them to pretend otherwise. Loved that show right up untill Season 9 - Then again, it already had an ending so that one can easily be ignored. I've seen both Community and Scrubs and I never got the same vibe. Community feels a lot like a cartoon whereas Scrub was more grounded and dealt with some tough subject matter.Community is more lighthearted. I think you may be misremembering Scrubs. Scrubs does have a couple of good serious moments (the death of Ben being a standout moment) but overall the show is ridiculous. Community has its fair share of serious as well, although the setting lends itself less to certain subject matter. At the same time, Community only weighs more towards sillyness because it is continuing what Scrubs started as a spiritual successor.

Does it involve putting a bra on your head?

I wasn't really debating it, just messing with you.

You mean this cast?

I liked Community better when it was called Scrubs. Not an insult, I love Community because I miss the hell out of Scrubs.

Maybe I am reading too much into it. But the problems with those movies isn't that they're not timeless classics. It's that they're bad. If you look away from the fact that the originals are timeless classics, they're pretty bad too. Well, New Hope and Return anyway. Empire still holds up pretty well. I've seen that claim before. They're not bad the way the prequels are, not in the same way or the same degree. Last time I saw that someone was complaining about the camp. But at least camp has emotion in the characters and it's not a bunch of wooden people talking. The fights aren't completely self-indulgent, they carry the emotion and relationships with them. Every fight with Dooku is completely void of character. The fights with Grevious have nothing. The fight with Maul has nothing until the second half. The one fight in the prequels that really does have character to it is dragged out way too freaking long and with some truly dreadful choreography. It needed to be cut to a third of what it was. The originals weren't that bad. The fights existed to show the character relationships, not just flash lights around. And they kept themselves short, which helped focus on the emotion. It's mostly Return of the Jedi that earns my dislike and it has nothing to do with camp. I actually rate that film below all of the prequels, as mediocre as they are. Beyond a decent opening act that doesn't actually go anywhere the film has nothing going for it. It wastes all the interesting hooks that Empire set up with uninteresting conflict resolutions, sets up interesting hooks by itself and proceeds to chicken out, needlessly rehashes the climax of the original, runs on comic relief rather than story, neuters an iconic villain in favor of an over the top cackling witch that is about as intimidating as an old folks home and spends a far too large stretch of its running time with a padding subplot regarding annoying teddy bears going to war because it doesn't actually have anything left for most of the heroes to do. It's got no tension, with the exception of Harrison Ford everyone in the cast stops being likeable, it glosses over all the interesting character developments of the previous film by using an awful plot point to just cancel them out, and even the serious action sequences are played for laughs. I don't understand how Phantom Menace gets blamed for pandering to kids and ruining Star Wars when Return of the Jedi did the exact same things, except much worse. The only reason Return of the Jedi gets a pass is because we had already been with those characters for two movies.

Maybe I am reading too much into it. But the problems with those movies isn't that they're not timeless classics. It's that they're bad. If you look away from the fact that the originals are timeless classics, they're pretty bad too. Well, New Hope and Return anyway. Empire still holds up pretty well.

I recently read an interview that he disliked the change they made where So I get the idea he leaves them fairly free.

Really? Thus far I enjoy season 4 much more than season 3.

I must be the only one who liked Phantom Menace more than Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. It helps that I was still a kid when I saw it so I didn't have the years of adult anticipation to be disappointed by, but I thought Phantom Menace felt mostly true to adventurous feeling of Star Wars where the other two didn't at all. I mean, it's got serious flaws, most notably the political subplot being boring and Jar Jar being annoying, but I consider the Pod Race and the Darth Maul duel to be the last good Star Wars moments to come out of George Lucas. In contrast, I consider the entirety of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith to be faux-gritty padding, awful dialogue, wasted oppertunities and video game graphics because George obviously didn't know how to fill the time before Anakin turned Vader, plus whereas Jar Jar was annoying in Phantom Menace, EVERYBODY was annoying in those movies to make up for his absence with especially Anakin and the extremely flanderized C-3PO out-running Jar Jar in the irritating department so much that I can't believe Jar Jar even still registers as a blip on peoples radar. I mean honestly, I'll take ten Jar Jars over Hayden Christensen peeing his pants trying to act angry and Ewan McGregor visibly smiling because he's laughing at how ridiculous his lines about killing "younglings" are.

This discussion does remind me of the Honest Trailer for Star Trek, especially the bit at 2:20 that explains 2009 Star Trek was essentially a Star Wars demo reel.

Aww, just read that Bob Hoskins died.

He makes a pretty good image and he's good at setting a mood, but he's got problems in the storytelling and thematic cohesiveness department. I hope Kathleen Kennedy keeps him on a short leash.

Voice acting is definitely proper acting, especially for someone as good at it as Mark Hamill. His portrayal of the Joker is still the definitive Joker and it makes both Nicholson and Ledger look like illiterate hacks, and that's no small feat. Also, what's with the J.J. Abrams hate? I mean I don't think he's great but I don't consider him a hack either. More like middle of the road.

Considering Japanese trailers reveal the movie is about Godzilla AND another monster, I highly doubt you've seen all the money shots based on that extended look that didn't show the other monster at all.

That sounds epic to me, but only in the way that it is epicly hilarious. :D

Haha, okay, I didn't know that it was an actual change that they made. :D

That's your example of ruining the EU? Changing one letter? Damn, I hope they don't change anything substantial because the resulting explosion of your nuclear rage will destroy the world.