One and Only Star Wars Geekiness Thread

[pochorenella 0]

Right. The light-saber duels on the newer trilogy represented warriors on the cusp of their Jedi powers and training, whereas in the original trilogy you had two older guys, one more than the other, and a young upstart barely grazing The Force going against a "master" so to speak. It makes total sense that the duels are presented as completely different.

[LessonInMachismo 0]

Vader lost power when he became a cyborg. I believe even Lucas is quoted as saying that.

 

I am telling you, the next modification to the original trilogy will be the CGIfication of the Obi Wan vs. Vader duel from ANH. Obi Wan will be flipping off those Death Star bulkheads and screaming.

[Mole 0]

Lucas said he always wanted them to fight like they did in the newer triologys, but since they were old men he couldn't get them to do so or whatever.

[Special K 0]

Vader v Luke in ESB is my favorite too.

 

One of the only things they added to ESB in the special addition was Luke screaming as he fell. I hate that. It was so much better when he just fell.

[The Metal Maniac 0]

I think Vader/Luke from RotJ is the best duel in the series.

 

I'm not a huge fan of the final Anakin/Obi-Wan duel in RotS though; it's too flashy and choreographed, I think. Like, there's at least a 30-second span where Obi-Wan and Anakin are just twirling their lightsabers around, not making contact with anyone or anything. WTF?

 

Luke's attack in RotJ makes him look like he's actually trying to kill Vader. He just charges in, swinging away, until he beats Vader down. In RotS, it looks like they're just showing off to each other. I don't get quite the same "he wants him so dead" vibe, when it really shoulda been there.

 

I don't think they'll change the Obi-Wan/Vader duel though, since I don't think Obi-Wan was really trying to fight back; he knew he was more useful to Luke as a force ghost.

[Guest LiveFastDieNever]

I think Original Trilogy Vader had a few things against him:

 

1. He's a cyborg.

2. He's an old cyborg.

3. A lack of real competition for about 20 years.

 

I think Yoda's a special case. His people seem to have a predisposition to living hundreds of years. Yoda spent hundreds of years with challenging training partners and scenarios to fight in, or at least I think it's fine to assume as much.

 

Anakin, however . . . is just a man. Just a human. A powerful human, but a human whose body makes 100 if it's lucky and starts breaking down fairly early, let alone if its was damaged when LAVA ATE IT ALIVE twenty years before and how he's an old man cyborg. The introduction of midichorians helps explain Vader's apparent de-powering as well. Not nearly as much flesh is present now, meaning a loss of midichorlian count, meaning a degrading of Force ability.

[Mole 0]

Now that is a good Civil War banner.

[2GOLD 0]

Vader v Luke in ESB is my favorite too.

 

One of the only things they added to ESB in the special addition was Luke screaming as he fell. I hate that. It was so much better when he just fell.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but in ESB, wasn't the whole point of Luke just dropping because he wasn't going to accept Vader's help? Why the hell would be scream?

 

Thank god I don't remember those special additions. It sounds like they added stuff just for the sake of adding stuff.

[Special K 0]

I like how the end of the ESB and RotJ fights mirror each other, with the winner just furiously hacking away until the loser loses their hand.

 

The ending to the RotS fight is pretty lame. Flippidy-doo! Ow!

[2GOLD 0]

I like how the end of the ESB and RotJ fights mirror each other, with the winner just furiously hacking away until the loser loses their hand.

 

The ending to the RotS fight is pretty lame. Flippidy-doo! Ow!

 

I like the old battles because they come off like battles between Knights. Not something out of Crouching Tiger, which while is fun I'm really tired of the wire-fu jumping around fighting.

 

I remember them being called Jedi Knights, not Jedi Flippy Flop Ninjas.

A few flips here and there is alright, not every god damn move being a jump around hilariously bad flippy flop. The final fight in ROTS reminded me WAY too much of the bell scene from DareDevil with all the jumping.

[Special K 0]

They should have got Jack Evans to play Anakin.

[2GOLD 0]

They should have got Jack Evans to play Anakin.

 

They should have got anyone but Hayden for Anakin. When they found out Nat felt very uncomfortable kissing him then that should have been the end of him. You can't run the romance storyline when neither person wants to kiss the other.

[Black Lushus 0]

going back a bit, even though Vader was an older human, both Palpatine and Dooku managed to move around with more grace than Vader/Obi-Wan...of course, that's thanks to stunt men and CGI, but still...

 

the "scream as Luke falls" was taken out for the 2004 ESB DVD...thank god

[LessonInMachismo 0]

Dooku was 83 in ROTS. Anakin was 45 or so in ANH.

[Guest LiveFastDieNever]

Dooku still had all his biological parts, too though.

[Black Lushus 0]

true, I was more looking at it from the Obi-Wan aspect...

[-DeN- 0]

Not relevant to the current discussion (I gave up trying to make sense of Lucas' prequel nonsense a while ago):

 

But Legacy #0 is out today for twenty-five cents, with #1 coming out in two weeks.

 

Link

 

Also a link

[LessonInMachismo 0]

Not relevant to the current discussion (I gave up trying to make sense of Lucas' prequel nonsense a while ago):

 

But Legacy #0 is out today for twenty-five cents, with #1 coming out in two weeks.

 

Link

 

Also a link

 

So that fucker is late, huh? It was supposed to be out a few weeks ago. The comic guy kept acting like a dick about it, too. I shall pick it up today along with 52.

[10 Pounds 0]

In my opinion, Luke-Vader from RotJ ­> Luke-Vader from ESB. Both fights are divided into three parts. ESB wins Act I but RotJ takes Act II and III.

 

The music playing after Vader talks about turning Leia to the dark side and hearing the Force theme when Vader turns against the Emperor is so awesome, not to mention that Luke is just so intense when he's going apeshit striking Vader's hand. Give me the "facial" expressions of Vader while Luke is being electrocuted over anything from the new trilogy. Aside from maybe watching RotS once in a while, and I haven't seen it since it left the theatres, I'm pretending the new trilogy never happenned.

[Justice 0]

I completely disagree about Hayden. He's shown a fairly good ability to act, and has a decent look to him. The problem is that he was saddled with absymal scripts, along with lackluster directing. I believe it was mentioned earlier by someone on the 'Special Making of' disk (Which apparently blew), they show him having 12 good takes, and then they make him miserably overact it and take that one. I think Haydne would have been good, he just suffered from a lack of good scripting.

 

The whole flippy-floppy thing I'm sort of torn on: Honestly, I think they should have stuck to the ground a bit more, but I really enjoyed a lot of the TPM fight. Things like Dooku's fights were attrocious ("Yeah, let's just watch you in the darkness for about a minute and a half..." <--- When does this seem like a GOOD idea?), Yoda's fight was just too crazy, and the final fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan had some real good moments and the real bad ones (Metal Maniac is right: There is a 15 second twirling contest that just looks horrid in the middle of the fight).

 

I'll stick to my guns and say that ESB is the pinnacle of Lightsaber fighting. It feels both strong, somewhat realistic, and has a good amount of emotional interplay that the new trilogy just completely lacked. So many of the new ones give off the 'Bad Kung-Fu Battle' vibe ("My Kung-Fu is better than yours. Let us FIGHT!") rather than giving us any real emotional build up to it.

[Guest LiveFastDieNever]

I work in film production and theater and something a friend and I were talking about in regards to Heyden and most of the other actors in the prequels is this: Lucas has the Amazo-Machine where he can cut actors out of whole shots and create something akin to random takes of different actors onto what equates to a living background plate. If you don't believe me, watch the special features of Episode I. That blew me away.

 

What this does, however, is give you stilted "chemistry" between the actors. They're not even reacting to one another in the same take sometimes. It destroys something important in the work.

[Guest LiveFastDieNever]

Also: Maul may be alot of fun to watch, but the moment where Vader looks from Luke to the Emperor and you can feel his paradigm shift even through that dopey helmet is a great moment. It wins.

[Special K 0]

Yeah, Natalie Portman's quite the actress, but she sucked in the trilogy, by and large. Bad script + bad direction = bad acting.

 

Hayden Christianson was supposedly exellent in "Shattered Glass." Every review I read (probably 3) mentioned that they were stunned that it was the same actor that they had seen in Clones.

[Justice 0]

He is. That's actually the movie I was thinking of. I'm almost completely convinced that the combination of CGI everything, lackluster directing, and horribly trite dialog ruined what could have been an excellent performance.

[Black Lushus 0]

bad directing moment: During the speeder chase scene in ATOC, the dialogue between Anakin and Obi-Wan is almost completely lost in the action...you guys know what I'm talking about, when Anakin yammers on and on about finding the right speeder...it grates on my nerves every time.

 

another bad moment: in TPM when Qui-Gon introduces himself to Shmi, they kinda split the sound up between his introductions and little Annie going on about some nonsense. That also bugs the shit out of me everytime.

[Special K 0]

Yeah, the whole thing seems to be cut-and-pasted together.

[Anakin Flair 0]

I often comapre what I saw on the screen to what I read in the novelization. And a lot of times I notice that certain pieces of dialoge are misssing or changed. Point in fact, in the book, the banter between Anakin and Obi-Wan in the speeder was actually funny and made sense; whereas in the movie, it fell flat.

[LessonInMachismo 0]

The ROTS novelization made the story seem, well, good.

[ChrisMWaters 0]

Even though there's non-wrestling fans in this thread, I had to post this in honor of ECW on SciFi

 

 

<Sandman>It's over Justin! I have the high ground

<RVD>(Peeking in, with a joint in hand) No, *I* have the "High" ground.

[Rendclaw 0]

I, for one, like the X-Wing books more than the Thrawn Trilogy, but they are pretty level in quality, so it's more of a taste thing.

 

Indeed. It sucks that the last one is apparently the mediocre Starfighters of Adumar. The writing was OK (always liked Hobbie and Wes) but the entire plot just didn't strike a chord with me. And, while it was good to see Wedge get the proverbial happy ending, I just didn't like how everything finished tied up with a pretty bow.

 

Actually, SoA is my favorite Star Wars novel. I thought it was fresh and uninhibited in its creativity. And it was damned funny. But to each their own.

 

Oh, it was good. I just thought that it was one of the weakest of the series. Again, Wes and Hobbie making fun of each other (and every one else) and Wedge finally "getting the girl" were definite high points. It seems like Allston loves to write sarcastic dialogue (Wes, Hobbie, Ton Phanan [possibly my favorite character in the series], Garik Loran, etc.). Heck, he even let Tycho make juvenile jokes at Janson's expense.

 

*looks back at his message* Man, I've read this series too many times.

 

 

Stackpole and Allston were perfect for the Rogue Squadron series. Both writers took a good concept and made it great. I can re-read all nine books over and again and still be satisfied by them.

 

and I will give a mention to the Han Solo Trilogy. Ann Crispin took a character with no real background, gave him one, and did an excellent job of it.