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 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
I understand the scorn the Disney films have gotten but I do not get the sudden nostalgia for Lucas' prequel films. Without Dave Filoni's Clone Wars they would be irredeemable. And Phantom Menace is the worst of the lot.

It's because they grew up in a world where the Prequel films were like 0.2% of the total runtime of the Prequel era and could basically be excused as some of the less interesting episodes where you mostly remember a few pivotal scenes.

Personally I've never HATED Phantom. It probably has the best bones of the prequels with a really compelling overall story structure. It's just loaded with really distractingly bad details. Of the bad Star Wars films, I think it's the easiest to fix by far.

Changing the subject a bit, Maul Shadow Lord is the space crime boss show I really hoped Boba Fett would be.

6 of 10 episodes out, finale scheduled for May 4 IIRC.

It's good.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
If we look to the weapons and technology used by the Gungan army? It may be the Naboo had denied them “proper” weapons.

I mean, cultural weapons are a thing in Star Wars (Gaffi Sticks, Lightsabers, Bowcasters to name but three) that’s true.

But blasters and formal field artillery are far from rare or unaffordable. And we know from seeing their city that Gungans aren’t some primitive also-rans, nor presumably short of a bob or two to buy “proper” weapons.

If we’re right about the Naboo being colonisers that’ve driven the Gungans out? I can definitely see “and you’re not allowed actual weapons, because we say so”.

I think its less that they are banned from weapons and more that the Gungans are simply not able to trade intergalactically. They don't have access to spaceports of their own and don't appear to have any aircraft shown in the film either.
So I think its less that the Naboo banned them from weapons and just that the Gungans are left fending for themselves plus whatever they can black-market trade with the Naboo and then reverse engineer themselves.

On top of that cultural weapons are clearly a thing they lean into hard as well.

Honestly considering how isolated they are; the fact that they could take on the Trade Federation army and do as well as they did is honestly impressive, even if they did ultimately lose

If its at the end of a prolonged Cold War period one could also guess that the "Peace" at the end of the film is also partly the Gungans realising that, outside of their shield technology, they really are outclassed in terms of armed forces. Lets not forget whilst the tanks couldn't penetrate the shields; the TF also didn't bring any air nor space superiority to the field in that battle. Bombs could well have torn the gungan army apart and would be something the Naboo would have access too.

The Gungans need peace in order to access free trade with the Naboo and the greater Galaxy. Once more I do like the idea of their shields being something worth trading to give them value

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
All better than Attack of the Clones.

I don't have enough power on my phone (it's only at 92%) to go on my Kamino Saber Dart Rant.

*leans intimately*
*heavy breathing*
“They’re ..cloners.”


Absolute cinema.

MOAR MAUL.

I am quite enjoying seeing just how The Empire crept ever further into absolute authority.

Basically? Wait for a given world or system to encounter trouble it can’t quite handle. Get called in to aid them. Then just never go away. Replace as many high ups as you can, citing incompetence. Then….squeeeeeeeeeze.

The Mandalorian trailer seems to hit all sorts of nostalgia buttons. Familiar rebel ships, the Razor Crest is back and all that.

I wonder what toys we'll get from it? Seems like it'll at least get reissues and repaints.

On the prequels and them growing in estimation?

I still think they’re pretty dodgy films, though I don’t understand why Attack of the Clones is considered the worst.

The Clone Wars series is mostly excellent, but don’t do anything to really elevate the films, just the time period.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
On the prequels and them growing in estimation?

I still think they’re pretty dodgy films, though I don’t understand why Attack of the Clones is considered the worst.

The Clone Wars series is mostly excellent, but don’t do anything to really elevate the films, just the time period.

Attack of the Clones has some dodgy cgi (I watched the reissue on the big screen and the Jango Fett/Obi-Wan Wan fight in the land of stoopid doesn't hold up.

Mu biggest problem with Attack of the Clones is that it doesn't make sense. It adds a bunch of plot threads that will never be resolved and has characters act in the dumbest ways possible.

Plus it's John Williams weakest score of the Prequels.

Back to Maul.

It’s quite pleasingly concentrated. We’re not farting about all over the galaxy on side quests. This show is about Maul, his vengeance on those who betrayed him, and his general criminal shenanigans.

Compare to particularly the second season of Bad Batch, which was pretty much all farting about side quests and felt like it lacked a proper direction.

Kinda feels like lessons have been learned.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
On the prequels and them growing in estimation?

I still think they’re pretty dodgy films, though I don’t understand why Attack of the Clones is considered the worst.

The Clone Wars series is mostly excellent, but don’t do anything to really elevate the films, just the time period.

AotC has "middle film" issues in that it's setting stuff up but not really resolving anything. The plot makes little to no sense. We get this big build up to the Clone Wars, but the next movie doesn't resolve that at all, which makes AotC feel even more pointless. For a relatively long film, it feels like there are big parts missing. It has some of the worst dialogue and character development in any SW media (in the case of the dialogue it's some of the worst in any mainstream movie). Phantom Menace had the huge nostalgia hit and the Maul fight at the end. Revenge of the Sith had some forward momentum and a cool fight at the end. AotC has the Dooku/Yoda fight which is not on the same level as the other two and has no real resolution and bizarrely makes Yoda come off as pretty weak, especially when the opening of the next movie has Anakin quite handily defeating Dooku.

Rewatching Mandalorian S1, wow I forgot how good it was.

Slipspace wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
On the prequels and them growing in estimation?

I still think they’re pretty dodgy films, though I don’t understand why Attack of the Clones is considered the worst.

The Clone Wars series is mostly excellent, but don’t do anything to really elevate the films, just the time period.

AotC has "middle film" issues in that it's setting stuff up but not really resolving anything. The plot makes little to no sense. We get this big build up to the Clone Wars, but the next movie doesn't resolve that at all, which makes AotC feel even more pointless. For a relatively long film, it feels like there are big parts missing. It has some of the worst dialogue and character development in any SW media (in the case of the dialogue it's some of the worst in any mainstream movie). Phantom Menace had the huge nostalgia hit and the Maul fight at the end. Revenge of the Sith had some forward momentum and a cool fight at the end. AotC has the Dooku/Yoda fight which is not on the same level as the other two and has no real resolution and bizarrely makes Yoda come off as pretty weak, especially when the opening of the next movie has Anakin quite handily defeating Dooku.

Well, maybe Yoda was pretty weak at this point.
Consider that he only lived another 20-some years & told Luke "When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good you will not."
Yoda was already really old when he fought Dooku. Maybe he was still a good teacher & politician, but we didn't exactly see him bouncing off those walls in his prime....

Also? When was the last time Yoda did actual combat?

By the time of TPM, he’s clearly ancient, and being on the High Council seems about as sedentary as Jedi life allows.

He’s also going up against his former Padawan, who therefore learned all his tricks from Yoda, who had since embraced the Dark Side, and all the tricks that can bring.

I got the feeling that Yoda wanted to being Dooku in alive, to show that the Separatist Movement was being manipulated into a war against The Republic. Ensuring it couldn’t become a legal secession by ramping it all up and blowing even relatively trivial matters to join the pile of “Us And Them”

Eh.... power scaling is always kind of stupid and its basically never applied itself well to Star Wars. Yoda catching Force Lightning was a significant feat for its time and probably better exemplifies strength than all the flippy stuff that follows. Trying to get old men to do acrobatic fight choreography really doesn't help. Not really trying to defend AotC, just saying that I don't think it's what's really wrong with it.

Most of the problems with the prequels stem from TPM introducing us to Anakin at 10.
It's really hard to overstate how much Hayden Christensen needed to be in TPM. AotC probably suffers from it more than most as it gets tasked with both really introducing us to the character of Anakin that matters for this story, establish his relationship with Obi Wan, the Council, Padme and Palpatine and then find time to move all of that towards a point where we can believably see that all twisted into the villain we know from the originals. What's baffling about the film is just how much time it wastes on new tangents while really not doing the things it needs to do well.

I think the only benefit of Aged 10 Anakin is that he’s described as being “too old”.

We first hear of a potential recommended age to begin training with Luke on Dagobah, when he was what? 20 or so? So we can extrapolate that the training and discipline to use The Force wisely is best done by the young.

But when someone is 10? 10 years old? And is being described as “too old”?

That’s when you’re getting into an unhealthy age. Where it’s less education, and more indoctrination. More so when we learn that Jedi kinda have to divorce entirely natural feelings and emotions.

Which feeds into The Force being imbalanced. The Sith the extreme of Absolutely No Restraint, the Jedi? Nothing But Restraint.

For me? Luke was the chosen one. The one to bring balance to The Force. At least by the end of Jedi. He uses his rage to defeat Vader, but puts it back in its box by refusing to kill Vader. He then sadly relied on ancient Jedi texts and never really embraced a middle ground. Where yes, your emotions can lend you power, and that power can corrupt. But to harness that with self discipline is possibly the true, balanced path.

Part of that is just a result of George envisioning the Dark Side as a literal little microscopic creature that could possess you when you get too mad and pilot your body like a starship so you can't really get much from the text of the films.

The big one being that Lucas hasn't never written with the intention of "The Light Side". That's basically an entirely gamefied concept for the setting. The Force is The Force and The Dark Side puts it in an unbalanced state. That's how George perceives and wrote it. Any idea that there needs to be equivalent good and evil is largely fans trying to make these elements work with how a lot of the setting developed, particularly in the RPG space.

Ultimately, Lucas writes the Force almost purely in terms of emotions and the ability to control them. I think a lot of what's being told in the prequels with the Jedi Council is the idea that in using suppression as a way to risk a loss of control, they've invariably cut themselves off from the source of their power. Unfortunately a big part of why this has never landed is simply because we've never had a really satisfying fall to the Dark Side story.

If I have one unending frustration its that the path to the Dark Side and its outcome really don't have a logical link. Like we get Luke losing himself in anger and killing Vader, but that's not the Sith we see. They are, if anything, fully in control of their emotions and while that's in line with the idea of harnessing emotion for power, we've not seen a good tale of why that goes along with inconsistently yellow eyes and a desire to murder children.

Need to go deeper than this, but have had a few. I’ll try to be brief.

Kylo Ren feels like an intended stereotype of using the dark side. His rages aren’t him in control. At all.

The Jedi feel like a corruption of the ideal. Gone from learning to regulate your emotions, and more learning to shut yourself off from them.

Darkside users, when accomplished, can as you say control it. Palpatine certainly has a solid if still imperfect mastery of his emotions (evidence against is Vader’s betrayal and being unable to shut off his force lightning). But they still overly rely on it. Whilst not an inherently thing? Heightened emotional states do cloud our judgement to varying degrees.

Right. I think I’ve given the gist of my thoughts. I’m going back to my pre-holiday beers!