What is this all about?

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@slicer4ever: How dare you contradict my hatred. You make a good point, but I think it harmed the story. If not that, it was just one more thing in Phantom Menace that ruined it, as if we didn't have enough Jar Jar, stale acting, a boring story involving taxes or something, and extravagant costume changes by certain royalty. There was so much in that movie that just slapped you in the face after years of waiting for it, and all of these things - including midichlorians - could've just not happened.

You forgot the racism.

More worrying than the plan to release the final trilogy (which, with some of the better creative talents Disney has at it's disposal, might actually not suck too much) is the news that apparently after that, they plan to release a new film every couple of years or so....

Star Wars Episode VII: Just Ewoks

Already been done.

[quote name='slicer4ever' timestamp='1351668155' post='4995727']
and for most of the trilogy, your pretty much rooting for him

And he's supposed to be how old at this point? There was a huge opportunity to show actual character development in that episode. Give the viewer a reason to empathize with Anakin. You know, like have something bad actually happen to him which could in some way justify his descent into darkness! Instead we get:

"He's overly critical. He never listens. He doesn't understand. It's not fair."

And he goes from watching Windu die to killing innocent children in the blink of an eye. All because somehow in this incredibly high tech setting they somehow can't save a mother during childbirth?

Compare this to Magneto in X-Men First Class. He's likable! I can empathize with his situation, and if I were in his shoes, I may have gone the same direction.

"I've been at the mercy of men just following orders... Never again."
[/quote]

That's a good comparison. I am curious how much of that is due to Hayden Christenson being a terrible actor. The thing with his mother dying gave him a reason to be hateful, but I agree it jumped off the deep end immediately following Mace's death. The leap from, "save my wife," to, "kill ALLLLLL the children," could have been handled a lot better.

@slicer: I think you are missing the point on midichlorians. The point isn't that it can't be explained. It's that it shouldn't be explained. Explaining it doesn't help the story, in many ways it hurts it. It's something that became an increasing problem across the whole franchise.

Disney buys LucasArts in surprise $4 billion deal

That caught me by surprise. George Lucas basically cached out on everything, which is interesting - I'd expect someone who already has alot of money to continue to want to be involved with the company. I wonder what he'll do with his $4 billion (well, $2 billion in cash, the rest in Disney stock).

Now Disney owns both Pixar and Industrial Light and Magic, giving them a very nice group of computer graphics experts and technology. (Pixar originally spun off of LucasFilms as well).

A new Star Wars trilogy is now being worked on. Microsoft working on a new Halo trilogy (after Bungie's 5 Halo games) should cooperate with Disney's new StarWars trilogy (after LucasFilm's 6 StarWars movies) to tie the two franchises together.

It's not entirely true, that George doesn't have anything to do with it any more. He is now the Creative Assistant Consultant, which basically means that if Disney doesn't know what to do with SW7, they come to him.

[quote name='slicer4ever' timestamp='1351668155' post='4995727']
and for most of the trilogy, your pretty much rooting for him

And he's supposed to be how old at this point? There was a huge opportunity to show actual character development in that episode. Give the viewer a reason to empathize with Anakin. You know, like have something bad actually happen to him which could in some way justify his descent into darkness! Instead we get:

"He's overly critical. He never listens. He doesn't understand. It's not fair."

And he goes from watching Windu die to killing innocent children in the blink of an eye. All because somehow in this incredibly high tech setting they somehow can't save a mother during childbirth?

Compare this to Magneto in X-Men First Class. He's likable! I can empathize with his situation, and if I were in his shoes, I may have gone the same direction.

"I've been at the mercy of men just following orders... Never again."
[/quote]
That's what i meant, they tried to sell it in the last half of the third movie, and they tried to sell alot at that point, it was just too much to try and align with the original trilogy in too short of a timeframe.

Since we are off now, my opinion can be summed up with this:
...

I watched the first part(seriously 60-70 minutes to do an entire review of one movie?!), i don't want to sit and watch all 7 parts.
he makes some valid points, but I believe he's looking for some single lead character, that formulates with what he expects to be the hero's journey, when it's clear that their are several of them.

[quote name='way2lazy2care' timestamp='1351691730' post='4995821']

[quote name='slicer4ever' timestamp='1351668155' post='4995727']
and for most of the trilogy, your pretty much rooting for him

And he's supposed to be how old at this point? There was a huge opportunity to show actual character development in that episode. Give the viewer a reason to empathize with Anakin. You know, like have something bad actually happen to him which could in some way justify his descent into darkness! Instead we get:

"He's overly critical. He never listens. He doesn't understand. It's not fair."

And he goes from watching Windu die to killing innocent children in the blink of an eye. All because somehow in this incredibly high tech setting they somehow can't save a mother during childbirth?

Compare this to Magneto in X-Men First Class. He's likable! I can empathize with his situation, and if I were in his shoes, I may have gone the same direction.

"I've been at the mercy of men just following orders... Never again."
[/quote]

That's a good comparison. I am curious how much of that is due to Hayden Christenson being a terrible actor. The thing with his mother dying gave him a reason to be hateful, but I agree it jumped off the deep end immediately following Mace's death. The leap from, "save my wife," to, "kill ALLLLLL the children," could have been handled a lot better.

@slicer: I think you are missing the point on midichlorians. The point isn't that it can't be explained. It's that it shouldn't be explained. Explaining it doesn't help the story, in many ways it hurts it. It's something that became an increasing problem across the whole franchise.
[/quote]
I still don't see the problem with midichlorians, they don't actually explain the force, they just explain why certain people are selected for training, that's all they did.

I watched the first part(seriously 60-70 minutes to do an entire review of one movie?!), i don't want to sit and watch all 7 parts.
he makes some valid points, but I believe he's looking for some single lead character, that formulates with what he expects to be the hero's journey, when it's clear that their are several of them.

That's a shame, its well worth finding the time to watch as in my opinion it is one of the most insightful film critique's I've ever seen. It analyses covers many points, only the first part is on the characters and has the benefit of some added humour, though somewhat of a dark nature ;)

He isn't looking for a hero journey's, he just mentions that its one of the more popular and easier to write story's, whilst at the same time being more accessible for an audience. The problem isn't that there isn't a hero and I would disagree with your point that there are several of them, I don't think there were any, but that in addition none of the characters were memorable or well written. Certainly nothing like as memorable as those in the original trilogy, even if they do come down to rather stereotypical archetypes.

Regardless my point in replying isn't to argue the point, but to recommend watching the entire review if you can find the time. You may not agree with all that is said, but its should still be interesting and worthwhile.

I am curious how much of that is due to Hayden Christenson being a terrible actor.

I'm wondering if he's as bad as he seems in that movie. George Lucas made Ewan McGreggor a terrible actor in that movie, and he's normally much, much better than that. And Natalie Portman, while not great, is usually better than she was in those movies as well.

I still don't see the problem with midichlorians, they don't actually explain the force, they just explain why certain people are selected for training, that's all they did.

Jedis could do midichlorians transfusions and train huge armies, no need for clone warriors. Or non-Jedi/Sith could create a virus to destroy midichlorians. That simple concept made the force a very weak element.

I think that a lot of the problem is how great the originals were. They were iconic, they blasted an exciting new setting and dramatic, exciting characters into pop culture. Star Wars had such a huge and permeating effect on science fiction stories over the last 40 years that it's more or less impossible for any subsequent movies to even approach that stature. Even without the elements of the second trilogy that people disliked, does anyone really believe that they could have been more than pale imitations of the originals?

Not that I'm defending the second trilogy; I think that it had serious problems with dialogue, pacing, acting, characters, overall plot, and more besides. I found they needed an awful lot of indulgence from me to keep going, more than I ended up being willing to supply. The franchise has been milked for cash too cheaply and too often for the actual feature films to get a lot of slack.

I'm wondering if he's as bad as he seems in that movie. George Lucas made Ewan McGreggor a terrible actor in that movie, and he's normally much, much better than that. And Natalie Portman, while not great, is usually better than she was in those movies as well.

I thought Ewan and Natalie were good through the first 2 movies. The third movie everyone was pretty terrible, but Hayden Christensen was just so totally and consistently flat. His most emotional moment was a 2 letter word being shout from a full body suit/mask with his voice being modulated; that is a very low bar to beat in 2 movies. A bunch of people think kid anakin and jarjar ruined 1-3, but Hayden did it a much larger disservice imo.

I still don't see the problem with midichlorians, they don't actually explain the force, they just explain why certain people are selected for training, that's all they did.[/quote]
But that's avoiding the point. It still totally stomps on a large piece of mythology by replacing a huge part of it with science. That would be great if Star Wars were real life, but in Fiction, especially fantasy fiction, it's better to leave questions.