Isn’t there a scene between Anakin and Padme where she states she thought Jedi are forbidden to love, and Anakin states attachment and possession are forbidden?
Is there? I swear I don't remember it. If it's there, it's like a throwaway line and it's never mentioned again.
Right, Jedi are not permitted to fall in love with individuals; they are supposed to love all equally.
Where's it say that, though? Like, do they say that in the film or is that something fans came up with
post hoc?
I think most of the PT's material could have been covered (and it would have made an awesome trilogy) if it had just been done better.
The thing is, ANH was totally a case of "trying to cover too much ground for one movie". But they pulled it off successfully. That was arguably the secret sauce of it. Viewers in the 1970s came out of it feeling gobsmacked by how "believable" the place felt. That wasn't just the ILM effects, it was the way the world-building felt so deep. Luke doesn't just have a floating landspeeder, he has an old dented one. He's annoyed when he sells it and the newer model has tanked the value of his. Han doesn't just fly at lightspeed, he has to get precise calculations to avoid crashing. Obi-Wan isn't just an old wizard, he fought in "the clone wars" - an idea that was casually tossed out in about 2 sentences even though most 1970s filmmakers would have considered that a whole franchise.
Politics? Look at how much political backstory was casually delivered in ANH: There was a republic ruling the place. That govt has been gradually collapsing after a period of wars. One Emperor has seized control via the military. He has preserved the existing figureheads at lower levels and rules with an iron fist higher up. There has been a persistent rebellion against the Emperor's new rule. The rebels are affiliated with a certain old religion that was popular in the past. The Emperor wants to make some examples & stamp the rebels out.
Again, that was just the political content of ANH alone. And people don't think of that movie being "heavy on politics". It's made for 9yo kids with low attention spans.
IMO the prequels did not need more movies to deliver their content, they just needed more effective filmmaking. The long story of Palpatine causing the clone wars & taking power . . . I think it was masterfully worked out by George Lucas. But it wasn't told to the audience efficiently. Same with other things like the Anakin & Padme love story.
I think what worked about ANH was that you were thrown in
in media res. The audience knew it wasn't "expected" to understand every reference or tossed off mention of the Senate or the Emperor or politics or whatever. It'd either be revealed, or it wasn't that important. And for the most part, that stuff is just the backdrop to the main story, which is Luke's journey.
With the PT, a big part of "why are we showing this?" is (arguably) to highlight the
differences between the OT and PT eras, and to explore how/why the Republic fell. That's a
huge event that sets in motion the events of the next three films, and it's barely addressed. And when it is addressed, it's done in really boring, unnecessarily complicated ways...for a 2hr film. You could do the PT as a longer-form narrative, say something like 3 seasons of a 6-8 episode hour(ish) long show, and it'd be an
amazing story. You could even make it 4 seasons to showcase more of the Clone Wars and their impact. The core
ideas are there. They just don't have enough time to breathe, and 2 hours (and change) are taken up by a kiddie movie that really doesn't matter a ton in the grand scheme of things. It's backstory that could be alluded to in dialogue while you explore its impact on Anakin
as an adult in how it shapes his attachment issues.
A Jedi can have a different lover on every planet they visit, they just can't fall in love. I have to think the Jedi have a pretty good legal team that pays child support unless there's a male and female Force power for that. A power like Force Contraception or something.
They do. It's called "recruitment." Just wait a couple years and we'll pick the kid up if they show force abilities and take 'em off your hands.
I think that's what frustrates us OT SW fans, who were around to see them during their initial theatrical run. George is like Walt Disney, Steve jobs, or Richard Branson... he is an ideas man but needs talented people around him to help reign-in and focus his ideas.
The PT was George without a censor. No holds barred. And the PT had SO MANY GOOD MOMENTS, so many "almosts" and beginnings of good ideas that simply weren't assembled well into a cohesive whole. But there were glaring deficiencies in the directing, acting, and pacing. Plus, George was experimenting again, but this time he had the money and ILM talent to tinker more than ever before.
And the ST? they really tried. And they were almost there with TFA. But even then, there are some obvious (in retrospect) decisions that could have made the film better, tighter.
I've been saying the same thing for years about the PT. George is an idea guy. Out of 10 ideas, 5 are complete crap. 3 are pretty good and could be massaged into something great with good collaborators. 2 are pure unadulterated genius that you just sit back in awe of. The OT was (mostly) the latter 5 with the 3 pretty good ideas massaged by collaborators.
The PT was all 10 up on screen.
Even flawed, I've come to really respect the PT, though, as a product of genuine artistic effort. I may not
like everything in it, but it's got soul and passion coming out its ears, and I can't help but respect that. By contrast, the first and third films of the ST feel like paint-by-numbers affairs, and the second one feels like it belongs in an entirely different trilogy.
Agree with your comments on PT but completely disagree with your comments on ST. To be honest, the more I look into how the ST was planned, the more I think the project was doomed to failure.
Some clear issues from the beginning:
1) The board brainstorming "what is Star Wars" with no mention of heros journey, family, or core values that make Star Wars universal which shows the group only had a superficial understanding of Star Wars and its appeal
Yeah, while at one time I thought that JJ understood Star Wars better than this, I think what he really understands is "vibes." Both with Trek and Star Wars, he knows how to ape the "vibe" of a thing, but not how to get at the soul of it. I don't think Kennedy ever really got the "soul" of it, and from the sound of things she's generally a pretty good organizer and facilitator, but
someone in that room needed vision, and it doesn't sound like a lot of people there had that.
2) The presumption they can do "better than George" by tossing out his script and not even using it for reference given the fact he immediately saw that they didnt adopt his ideas
I don't think anyone need be beholden to George's ideas for the sequels. I mean, some of what I heard made me think "Man, I'm glad they didn't make that." But that said, what George always brought was soul to his work. Good or bad, it always came from a genuine, earnest place and one that went beyond merely "vibes."
3) Focus on women and alienating the original audience. Lucas always said Star Wars was for little boys and it shows. Battles, lasers, ships, and war. That doesnt mean that Star Wars doesnt have female fans or strong female role models but altering the story to appeal to another audience will naturally impact the final product. Nevermind the fact that they adopted mary sueish traits which make any story boring.
Here I strongly disagree. I don't think anyone was any more of a "Mary Sue" than Luke or Anakin were "Gary Stus". I also don't think it's a problem to want to expand the audience beyond just little boys and to include little girls. I don't think that was ever part of the problem with the ST. I do think you identify the bigger problems below, though.
4) The plan to create a trilogy with 3 different directors with limited oversight over the story. Although a basic storyline was apparently made when JJ made TFA, Johnson often comments how free he was to write his story when writing TLJ. Given that Abrams was not expected back, the third director could have also gone in a completely different direction which is the perfect example of too many cooks in the kitchen.
I don't know if that was the "plan" but I definitely think (a) not having a coherent thru-line planned other than "We'll just kinda re-do the OT," and (b) then leaving it to the individual directors to just kinda do whatever led to some really...dissonant storytelling. TFA and TROS kinda fit together, but TLJ stands out as
very different from the other two. In a way that just does not mesh tonally or stylistically (and by this I mean narrative style, not the look of the thing). What this suggests to me is that "the plan" was "to make another Star Wars trilogy that ticks a few specific boxes." Regardless of what those boxes were, that kind of approach produced...well, exactly what we got: a mishmash of films and ideas within those films that never quite get to breathe and develop, because we're too busy doing other stuff. I think TLJ holds together the best from a narrative perspective (whether you like the narrative is a different discussion entirely, but it's still more coherent than the other two), but even with that, it's still so dramatically different from JJ's style -- to the point where I'd call it a
rejection of JJ's style -- that it really feels out of place among the other two. (Or, the other two feel out of place with TLJ, if you prefer.)
To me, I think it's really a problem of too many
sous chefs and no single
chef in the kitchen.
5) the lack of proper research before engaging in the project. Just the simple claim that "unlike Marvel, Star Wars doesnt have additional material" is honestly surprising given just how much Star Wars material there is out there with the EU. Even if tentatively canon, they can pillage the EU for ideas by seeing what storylines were fan favorites (which they seem to be doing now).
I gotta be honest...most of the EU I experienced was, well, crap. Mediocre fan fic that didn't deserve to be retained and certainly shouldn't bind the filmmakers. The more they lifted actual storylines from the EU, the more pissy the fans would've been about why didn't they do this when they did that and so on and so forth. The "worldbuilding" aspects of some of the EU -- much of which was created by the folks at West End Games -- is amazing and worth preserving. The actual stories themselves, though...with a few exceptions are all "mediocre to terrible." Now, granted, I didn't read anything after about 1999, so I don't know about the later EU stuff. But I do know that there was just so damn much of it that it didn't make sense to keep it....
unless they did what I'd originally kinda hoped for, which is to fling the story waaaaaaaay far into the future, like, 4-6 generations removed from the OT heroes, to the point where the are figures of legend, and
then tell the story. That'd preserve: (1) the EU itself, (2) the "happily ever after" aspect of the original heroes, and (3) the ability to tell new stories without being hemmed in by garbage EU material (or good EU material, for that matter).
I get why, from a business perspective, they wanted to bring the OT heroes back, but as soon as that was announced, I knew people were gonna be unhappy because they'd see their heroes diminished in some capacity.
The approach to Star Wars did not inspire confidence from the beginning. They did a good job selecting some good actors (Adam Driver was obviously a huge get given his current career and I do want to see more Daisy with a good script to see what she can do) and some decent sets but thats honestly about it.
Yeah, I think the
cast was fantastic. They're incredibly charismatic and fun to watch and I'd love to see more of them in better stories. And yes, that includes Kelly Marie Tran, whom I think was done dirty by some really disgusting aspects of the "fandom" (and, if you credit some of the rumors, by Carrie Fisher's death and various editing decisions). The
look of the sequel trilogy was generally good, but also "safe" in many respects. I used to dislike the slick look of the prequels, but I have to say that in hindsight I appreciate that they were really trying for something different and expanding the view of what the Star Wars universe is. With these films, it was "like the old stuff, but new, but just like the old, but also new."
In a way, this actually highlights something I frequently lament with respect to fandoms and what they say they want. They want new stories, but they want them to feel like the old stories, but also to feel like new stories, and yet to maintain the vibe of the old stuff, but also to be a fresh new experience and... You can't have both. The more you reference the past, the more beholden to it you are, and the more your story is going to come across as old hat. The more distance you get from the old material, the less familiar things will feel, and the less connected they'll feel to the original material. It's the impossible trap that remakes and "legacy sequels" present.
Moreover, I think that if anything the ST proves that far too many people will focus on the surface-level similarities, while ignoring more important issues like narrative cohesion.
