Re: Star Wars Episode VII
Yeah Maul and Fett are classic examples of "who knew?" when they were written.
No way GL could have anticipated how strongly they would resonate with fans.
No one could have anticipated their popularity. Hell, no one even anticipated Star Wars ever getting made much less have characters that would resonate with people. But to me when it comes to Maul and Fett, and many, many others like them, it's more like "who cares?"
They were both cool looking/ cool fighting henchmen that both died in lame ways. At least if Obi-wan had cut Maul in half while he was still flying out of the chasm, like they did it in the TPM comic adaptation, that would have been AWESOME!
The problem is Boba Fett and Darth Maul were not developed characters in the films. They may have been fleshed out in the novels and comics, but in the movies alone, they were plot devices used to drive the story forward or increase the conflict. There's nothing wrong with that and they were fun to watch, but I can't take them too seriously like I could with the main characters and story. Just because their outfits were cool (and they most certainly were), it doesn't mean that they are good characters. They don't have an arch that shows growth, or depth like the leads do, and that's fine because that isn't their function in the story.
I think when they develop spin off films of these guys (and they likely will) they won't be as good as everyone is imagining them to be. Also I wouldn't expect ANY of their established canon being regarded in those movies. These guys are the ancillary players who don't have a lot to offer in terms of really meaty stories. Perhaps in the right hands, they could be, but as they are now, they don't have much to tell. I just wish more people would be honest about their love for them and say that they are awesome looking, rather than trying to argue about the greatness of their persona.
----If you want to get technical ROTS showed a lot of the things that people have been asking for, though in a lousy, truncated way. It showed Anakin turning, hunting down the Jedi, the emperor assuming power, the emperor "training" vader (more like giving him orders to murder people) and then telling Anakin AFTER he becomes Vader that "maybe they can figure out" the Sith secret of immortality. And like a complete and total idiot, he doesn't even bother asking how Palpatine knows about his wife, or how he means to teach him to cheat death. You'd think he would have killed Palpatine for lying to him about that. Not to mention being given some sort of proof that saving someone from death is even possible, BEFORE he decides to commit genocide. What a moron! How in the world was anyone supposed to view THAT as a tragedy? Why, because he couldn't think for himself? Don't get me wrong, that is sad, but sad meaning pathetic, not someone I could fully empathize with, which is what makes a tragedy story well, tragic.
Speaking of pathetic, it's sad that the 3D Clone Wars cartoon is even considered canon. They don't even stick with the continuity of the trilogy which spawned them. Darth Maul gets cut in half and lives? Anakin won't be given the rank of Master, but will still be given an apprentice? Jedi aren't allowed to love, but Obi-Wan has a girlfriend, and knows about Anakin and Padme? Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan have communicated several times, and yet by ROTS Yoda has to teach a shocked Obi-Wan how to do it. Does he have amnesia? Is everyone invincible? Jedi can withstand carbon freezing, but according to Lando (a few decades later) they've never done it, and they were terrified Han or Luke might die when frozen. Kind of kills all the dramatic tension in the freezing chamber doesn't it?-----
---The problem is that when you take a backstory and flesh it out into a full story, it too HAS TO HAVE IT'S OWN BACK STORY! I'm currently rewriting my own fantasy stories, and in order to make them work and have some sort of grounding, I have to establish the world, and the context in which my characters are living. This means giving them their own history.
A New Hope set up where Luke came from, who his father was, how Obi-Wan was teaching Luke, and why he was doing it. It established a history and backdrop for what was about to happen in the first film. Not to mention, a huge part of the magic that sold us on this fantasy was that it was filled with visual metaphors that reinforced the ideas of the story. Luke destroys the Death Star, a fire breathing dragon that destroys worlds, and from it's bowels, he'd earlier rescued a princess.
The prequels had no grounding on which to pin our characters. We know it was a time of peace. But even in peace time, there is still conflict of some kind or another. Why was Qui-Gon such a risk taker? Why was Obi-Wan so by the book? Why weren't the Jedi more intelligent thinkers? And that whole the Dark side clouds everything bs is just a lame excuse for poor writing. So what if it clouds their judgement. If Sidious was THAT powerful that he could get them to not think clearly, then why bother setting up a phony war that lasted decades, and just launch an outright coup on the republic as a pronounced Sith lord? He can make them all stupid, right? What was the main theme, and what were the exact visual metaphors that illustrated it?
For all of my complaints about Lucas, I think his lack of focus is his weak spot in the last few years. The man is a VISUAL GENIUS! I dare anyone to deny that. If you watch any of the extra features on any one of the films (all six) you can see that he clearly knows what looks right in his films, almost by instinct. And when you see the final design in the finished film, it looks distinctly Star Wars. The problem is that where in the past he had others around him to steer his imagination so that his strong visuals reinforced the themes of the stories he told, he no longer had people around him to help him focus that creative energy in a logical narrative sense. You have a LOT of disparate themes going on in the prequels, rather than one cohesive theme that weaves it's way through the trilogy to tie together at the climax of ROTS.
At least with the sequel trilogy, we have some hope that they will be good, especially because the preceding films have a strong foundation on which to create further adventures in that universe. The stage has been set. We have a history with which to ground the new stories.
Sorry. There was a lot of ground to cover since my last post. hahaha
