As a Star Wars fan who has been let down by the very material that I love I feel I need to write another installation in my little "What I Hate About" series dedicated to Star Wars. With that, remember I hate you just as much as I do everything else.
Hayden Christensen. He was okay in Jumper but the movie was shit to begin with. My problem with Hayden's portrayal of Anakin is for a time, Macaulay Culkin was rumored to be in the running of Anakin Skywalker. Like anybody in my age group, I watched Home Alone I and II, The Good Son, My Girl, and a handful of others and wondered what the hell happened to Macaulay. The roles he would have starred in were given to his brothers and he basically disappearred. He has things Hayden does not, experience and fans. From The Good Son we know he can play a bastard and from My Girl we know he can insight sympathy. Look at it this way, if Lucas thought about giving a cameo to N'Sync, and continues to alienate die hard fans, the least he could have done was revive Culkin's career and cast him as Anakin.
Palpatine's dialog. Every time the Emperor speaks I'm reminded of an episode of Family Guy. "Something, something, something, dark side, something, complete!" The only real lines he has are the throwaway dialog from the prequels. In the original trilogy he only appears, in person, in Jedi. That episode of Family Guy sums up every word he says.
Being an asshole, simply to be an asshole. Darth Vader had some motivation for why he turned to the dark side. Even Tyranus had a slightly discernible lust for power. Why did Sidious go bad? Did he want to rule the galaxy? He was bad before he had his goal of running the galaxy. Did he want to kill Jedi? Was it to oppress the innocent? None of the reasons I come up with seem valid. When watching a movie or playing a video game, the main antagonist can't be an asshole simply to be an asshole. It's like kicking a puppy just because you can. If you kick a puppy, do it because it is chewing on your couch. Do it because it's just way too cute to not be kicked, but have a reason. On a side note, the Joker has no real motivation for being an asshole but he does it with gusto and is considered the antithesis or balancing force to Batman.
Merchandising. I have a couple of Star Wars lego kits and the DVDs, of course. I mentioned Jar Jar and now I have to extend to Grievous. There are far too many characters that were conceived purely because they would make a good toy(coughs)Ewoks. I haven't read the expanded universe book detailing Grievous' descent from alien to robot. I don't care about his motivations or his health problems. What I do care about is how much of a bad ass he's supposed to be even though he sounds like he has lung cancer and runs at the slightest visage of defeat. Again I can picture George Lucas sitting in his living room saying, "How about a 6 limb being... no robot... robot being... that has a terrible cough and is supposed to be a total bad ass. Nobody could get sick of hearing him wheeze and the toy will sell like children's chewable crack. GOLD!" Add to the characters the star ships and speeders designed and manufactured for the movies by Mattel and we have a recipe for shittiness.
No sympathetic characters. The only time true feeling of camaraderie or encumbrance came in Empire. It's the darkest one with the least meddling done by Lucas. The viewer felt the emotion when Han was lowered in the carbonite chamber, the tragedy of finding out Vader was Luke's father, and the fellowship of Luke abandoning his training to rescue his friends. This was in stark contrast to A New Hope where no matter how close Vader came to targeting Luke the viewer knew nothing would happen to him and the Rebellion would destroy the Death Star. The princess was a righteous bitch, Han was a greedy prick, and Luke simply couldn't act. In Jedi we got a taste of the Force but that was overshadowed by cheap quips, Ewoks, and the stereotypical asshole known as the Emperor. The prequels were no different. Big name actors/actresses had to frown constantly and no trepidation was felt past the moment it occurred.
Forced poorly written and executed love story. It might have been the lack of chemistry between Portman and Christensen, or the shitty dialog they shared, but at no time did I believe a Queen/Senator would or had actually fallen in love with a slave/Jedi 7 years younger than her. This philosophy is more like sleeping with the pool man or aspirations of being a cougar. Sure it's fun and all but she's going to choose a bread winning husband over the dirty pleb. I complain because this sordid affair was supposed to be the driving force of Anakin going over the edge.
The Clone Wars. Speak to an orthodox Star Wars fanboy and The Clone Wars was a stroke of genius. Let me put this directly and monosyllabically, it was not. I hate anime, see my previous post, and tainting Star Wars with it does nothing short of piss me off. It debuted on the Cartoon Network in 10 minute format and added to Star Wars canon, those are points in its favor. Otherwise they weren't very story driven, action driven just like all anime, and are a poor excuse for hopeless fathers to say their neglected young children are "watching cartoons."
George Lucas. I give that man all the credit in the world for coming up with the idea. That is where his involvement should have stopped. The movies are the canvas but the real painting and artwork are done by people like Timothy Zahn, Kevin Andersen, and Irvin Kershner. Lucas, like all major Hollywood types is a greedy asshole. His greed has clouded his judgement. I've given him credit for creating the idea, but I'm also going to give him the much deserved credit of shitting on it. Star Wars now belongs to us, the fans. It has gone beyond a late 70's early 80's scifi blockbuster and deserves to be catered to us. I want to see an R rated Star Wars movie following the life of a Sith. I want to see characters like Mara Jade and Talon Karrde hit the big screen. I want to see George Lucas pull his pretentious head out of his pompous ass.
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2 comments:
Bravo my friend. Bravo. I almost got into a fight when I booed at the end of Revenge of the Sith. The prequels sucked harder than a Dyson Vac on a shag carpet. After playing through the Force Unleashed, I have lost all hope and faith that Star Wars will ever reclaim glory, as long as Lucas is the puppet master pulling the strings.
The prequel trilogy is a disaster. Episode II, in my opinion, was by far the worst. It lacked everything that made the original trilogy so good and was a boring mess of actors acting too seriously. It also made everything worse when the terrible CGI was thrown all over the movies and got worse in each sequel (both in amount and quality). The only redeeming factor of Revenge of the Sith was the final fight and finally after years of waiting getting to see Anakin become Darth Vader, but the whole movie before that was unbelievably retarded (Obi-Wan flying a dragon, WTF?). Return of the Jedi was technically the starting point of when Star Wars started to go down hill, but it was still light years better than the millenium garbage.