The Seeker wrote:As far as Starwars goes. Objectively, Episode I and Episode II are the best; why?
1) They have better acting. The cast of the original movies did not know how to act very well, each line sounded fake and forced. The acting had a very outdated feel to it, even for the time period it arrived in.
I will disagree with you vehemently here, with the exception of aNH (just about everybody in that stunk, except for Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing (Grand Moff Tarkin)). By the time ESB came out, everyone was comfortable with their roles and the acting was much better across the board, including particularly good performances from Frank Oz, Billy Dee Williams, and James Earl Jones.
Harrison Ford <i>perfected</i> Han Solo's character in RotJ, and as I already mentioned, Ian McDarmid was excellent as the Emperor. (Like Kupek, I recently rewatched the entire original trilogy.)
As far as the new movies go, I didn't have any huge problems with the acting in tPM with the exception of Jake Lloyd (there's cute, there's hyper-cute, there's "sugary for Ned Flanders' tastes", and then there's "Anny" Skywalker); but Hayden Christiansen and Natalie Portman's romantic scenes in AotC are laughably awful. (And I mean that literally - when I saw AotC in the theater on opening night, people in the crowd were laughing out loud every time they did one of those scenes.)
2) They have better action. The original Starwars movies had action so fake looking that it was almost painful to watch. Even the Blue Screen was terrible.
Chalk that up to budget and 25 years' advancement in choreography.
I will say that I like the effects in the original trilogy much more than in the newer ones. There's just something to be said for filming something that actually <i>exists</i> - a ship model, an alien, a robot, what have you - as opposed to all this fake-looking CG stuck in the middle of a live-action movie. Heck, there's a case in point from the original trilogy - the bloated, immobile RotJ Jabba the Hutt is much more menacing and believable than the CG Jabba from the special edition of aNH.
3) They have a better plot. It is quite obvious that there is much more plot development in the newer ones, as the old ones had a lot of scenes that were wasted on exploration and stuff like that. The way the plot was put together int he older ones did seem a lot less refined.
More does not always mean better. At this point, I'm still not entirely sure who's on what side and why in the Clone Wars - of course, I should qualify that by saying I've only seen AotC once (mostly because I haven't had the slightest desire to see it again).
Anyway, back to making a point here - you're right, the plot in the original trilogy is not that complicated. Good wins a battle against evil, evil gets some back, evil tries to trap good in order to crush it and gets foiled, good that turned evil turns back to good, the end. It's straightforward stuff that everybody can easily relate to.
The plot in the new trilogy is more along the lines of "bloated, outdated political system is drawing near to the end of its life cycle, so evil starts subtle machinations to manipulate events to its benefit and in the meantime, other exciting stuff happens." It's not exactly riveting, harder to follow attentively and harder for your average moviegoer to relate to.
Of course, the previous argument just feeds your arrogance, as I'm sure you could say something like "that just proves my point that the original trilogy is written for the lowest common denominator, and thus the new trilogy is automatically better." To which I say again, sometimes the simple route is the better route.
People who critisize the newer movies come up with dumb excuses like "Oh, I hate the movies because of Jar Jar and Ewoks. They are so childish, long live the power of the force! I will smite you down with my light saber for disagreeing with me!"
First of all, Ewoks were in the original trilogy. (When I have the chance to geekily nitpick, I'm going to take it.)
Second of all, I don't like the new trilogy less than the new one because of Jar Jar (although he is a factor). I like them less because they have the stink of Hollywood all over them. They smack having things put in there solely because that's what their demographic research reported people would like, and there is blatant pandering all over the place that has nothing to do with the story - the chief example of this being the midriff of Amidala's shirt being torn off during the fight in the pit in AotC, the <i>only point</i> of which was to show off Natalie Portman's abs. (In constrast, the steel bikini made sense in the context of RotJ's story.)
What is the major difference? The major difference is that the main characters of the original two are little people. They're Hobbits. A farmer who is thrown into an epic adventure, just like Bilbo, or just like Frodo, Sam, Pippin, and Merry. Somehow such stories strongly appeal to "plebs" (what is it that commoners are called nowadays?) or the pop audience.
Dude, 99% of all adventure stories are like that - or have you not been paying attention to the RPG's you've been playing most of your life? Just about every single one of them takes the form of "normal person, who could be JUST LIKE YOU, turns out to be fantastically important in the grand scheme of things, goes on grand adventure, and saves the world."
Why do people prefer to hear the story about ignorant people performing great feats than knowledgeable people performing great feats? Because the majority of people are ignorant, and can relate to ignorant characters.
That's a <i>lovely</i> attitude to have, and that's just fantastic for you then. You'll have to tell us how the weather is up on that high horse of yours.
If you have a moment out of your busy, "vastly more important than everyone else" schedule, would you care to explain the massive popularity of things like "The Da Vinci Code", where the main characters are all extremely knowledgeable in their chosen fields? Or the "Indiana Jones" movies, where the main character is a college professor/archaeologist? Or "CSI", where the main characters are highly trained forensics experts?
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