Erik’s right. This is a four-minute ad for a Star Wars video game and it is way better than the entire set of prequels that George Lucas directed. Is is more atmospheric, more intense, and the direction is better. (The Sith Lords all lighting up their sabers is amazing.) I know it’s all CGI, but I swear the acting is better!

I think the thing I like best is that it is humans vs. humans. For some reason, Lucas got squeamish about having actual people die in the prequels. It’s all Gungans vs. robots, then robots vs. clones (who are treated as disposable in the Star Wars universe). Plus there are the insectoid Geonosians who designed the Death Star. It’s weird to hear the commentary track for “Clones” where George Lucas says that Jay and Silent Bob don’t have to worry about the construction workers blowing up because they’re Geonosians, not people. First, it’s actually Dante and Randall who talk about that, so Lucas gets that wrong. More importantly, it’s bizarre to listen to a sci-fi guy talking about how only human lives are important, as though insects smart enough to design a weapon are as disposable as the mayflies on your windshield.

I would argue that Clones are not disposable either. In real life, a clone is no different than your identical twin brother or sister, and no one has ever argued that a twin brother can be scrapped because you have one and don’t need the second. (Okay, yes, some people have had that conversation in a Planned Parenthood Clinic, but you know what I’m saying.) But that’s as may be. In the Star Wars universe, nobody grieves for a clone trooper, so it’s clear that they are little different from skin-covered robots as far as Lucas and the people in his universe care.

In other words…the audience goes along with Lucas’ view of things. The robots, the clones and the Geonosians are all disposable. Lucas gets to give us even bigger battles than he’s ever shown us before, and now it’s okay for us to revel in all the awesomeness because nobody worth caring about is dying. Isn’t that just the BEST?

Ugh. I wonder if that is, in a nutshell, why the prequel series sucked? I know, there’s Jar-Jar, bad acting, bad dialogue, weak plots, poor characterization, a huge whiny villain who carves up dozens of children with his light-saber, and the transformation of the Jedi into a society of blood-testing baby-nappers who force kids into lives of servitude where a backwards-talking frog lectures you that you can’t ever fall in love and marry. Yes, that’s true. But at its heart, I think it’s because we couldn’t care about the deaths of the characters. Lucas didn’t even want us to care, and was bothered that we cared.

That poor Jedi who gets run through in this clip? I care. Even with the uncanny valley telling me that he’s just CGI, I care.

UPDATE: Oh dear. The thread that Erik posted quickly devolved into a multi-page back-and-forth about how we must all bow down to Lucas who invented it all vs. Lucas the guy who should have stayed the imagineer/producer. Our own Eric Spratling takes the former; I am very much in the latter category. I will reproduce, for posterity, my additions to the thread (apologies that I borrow a bit from this post).

Quote from: Brian White on June 06, 2009, 03:55:15 PM
Actually, Lucas didn’t direct Jedi, Richard Marquand did. Lucas remained as executive producer like he did on Empire. Which I kind of wish he had done on the prequels as well. Some of the biggest problems with them might have been avoided. Also, running the scripts past a good character and dialogue writer would have been a big help. That’s what he did with Empire and Jedi, as well as American Graffiti. And those movies have some of the best character moments in film.

Had he found any five Star Wars fans on the planet to read the first script, they could have pointed out all the things that Mr. I’ve Had All Nine Chapters In My Head Forever Do You Buy That? did not think through. Like R2-D2 knowing Yoda, which makes you wonder what he’s really saying to Luke on the readouts in “Empire”. “Oh, Yoda? You want the little green guy with the cane?” Or Darth Vader not taking one look at C-3PO in Empire and remarking how he built him. Or perhaps suggesting to Lucas that it makes a LOT FRICKIN’ MORE SENSE if the pod-racing kid living near a spaceport is building a navigational droid and Queen Amidala has a fussy protocol droid that speaks 6,000 languages. Maybe they’d object to running blood tests to see if you’re a Jedi.

Along with that, they would say that Anakin being a little boy is a terrible idea. We get it: It’s jarring to think about this cutle little kid someday being the villain Darth Vader, which is clearly what Lucas was playing off in the poster. But it should be obvious to you, me and the world that this is not what Lucas had planned in 1977 (when he said that Anakin was already a great pilot) or in 1980 (stating that Luke, at 20-something, was too old for the training). Lucas’ script for Episode 1 reads as though it’s intended for a teen-ager; I’ll bet he planned to make Anakin a teen for much of the pre-planning, and then he hit upon the cute kid concept and wouldn’t sacrifice that idea for the sake of, you know, things like logic and believability. It makes more sense that the Queen is attracted to a teen-ager. It makes more sense that somebody in their late teens would be participating in a race that’s like NASCAR with incoming fire from the sidelines; I mean, the script isn’t even altered for a kid, which is why not one person objects that he’s too young to be doing that.

Most importantly, it explains why Yoda says he’s too old. Because Lucas wouldn’t abandon this cool idea of Anakin being a little boy, it [Yoda’s objection that a very young child is too old] now establishes that the Jedi are a bunch of creepy monks who go around blood-testing small children to determine that they’re capable of being Jedi, then taking them away from their parents and pushing them into a life of celibacy where a green frog talks backwards at them while they get shot by probes. Is this really what you wanted the Jedi to be when you were running around with a plastic sword as a kid?

It is plainly evident that George Lucas sacrifices story for his own cute ideas. Why else would Han Solo step on a dangerous mafia boss to whom he owes money just because it’s the only way to make the Special Edition scene work? Why else would he have marketable teddy bear characters bring down the Empire instead of the Wookies he’d originally planned to use?

Lucas is a great visionary. He’s not a great director and he’s not that great a writer, and one wonders how many unsung script doctors there may have been punching up Lucas’ dialogue to come up with the lines we still quote today. Maybe that’s unfair; maybe Lucas did write all the great lines in the original trilogy. I just can’t help wondering why there weren’t any in the prequels. My hunch is that Lucas started believing the B.S. about everything good coming from him, and his having so much money and clout that there was no need to ask anyone else’s input made a dangerous combination.

Why else would he insist on directing the prequels himself when Irwin Kirschner did such a better job?

Look, I get Sprat’s point. But I realized Lucas was a fallible human when I saw my first Ewok and knew he did that just so he could market a toy because he makes his profits from toys.

Believe in the Auteur theory at your own risk. I truly believe the Star Wars Prequels could have kicked all kinds of hiney if only Lucas had listened to others’ opinions. Instead, the movies are money-making letdowns. [Match Maker] really wants to argue that they’re great because they didn’t bomb? Seriously? They had to financially BOMB for any of us to say that they could have been much, much, much better? Star Wars fans are such a great cash cow, the release of the first trailer boosted the tickets of other movies. I don’t think it’s possible to put “Star Wars” on a movie and have it lose money.

The only reason I don’t play the original trilogy much is that I have them memorized at this point. Still, I’ll pop them into the DVD player and enjoy them again and again. I may put a prequel DVD in sometimes, but I find myself wincing and grimacing too much. I love Star Wars and wanted these films to be wonderful. They are all about 50% great. If you watch Attack of the Clones and just chapter-skip to watch only Ben Kenobi’s half of the middle, it’s a truly fantastic film.

Quote from: Brian White on June 06, 2009, 04:49:27 PM
yeah, for some “executive producer” is just a perk to get them to work on a movie. For guys like Lucas, it’s a real position and perfect fit. He is excellent in that role and after Empire he should have stuck to that model. Overseeing everything, scribbling out the first draft script, but also employing a writer and a director on each of his films to handle some of the finer points of those jobs.

I shouldn’t be too hard on Lucas. Lucas invited Lawrence Kasdan to write the script, and Kasdan said that Lucas should step back into the captain’s chair and make what he wants to make.

It’s ALL LAWRENCE KASDAN’S FAULT!