Favourite Star Wars?

[Guest Proudy]

The first three (by that I mean release date) are far better then the last three. The Empire Strikes Back is easily the best of the bunch.

 

Darth Vader > Stormtroopers > *

[The Icon]

I dont know about that Episode II and III were far better than Return of the Jedi. Jedi was a good film but not as good as the first 2 of the original or the above Two mentioned.

 

It does have the pit scene though, the bset scene in any SW film.

[Guest MojoPogo]

The Empire Strikes Back is by far the best. And not just because the bad guys "win". :xyx

[Guest MillionLiraMan]

Empire Strikes Back is my favourite, although it's very close between that and the originals Star Wars, or Episode 4 if you like to call it that. Return Of The Jedi was damaged a bit by the Ewoks but it was a decent ending, the Emperor was great and its closure to the series was quite satisfying. The prequels though were not great, here were what I though the good bits were:

 

The lightsaber fighting (the choreography, not the head replacement stuff which was ropey), the Emperor, Christopher Lee, Liam Neeson, the Obi-Wan/Jango Fett part of Episode II, Ki-Adi Mundi/Nute Gunray (same actor, ought to have been in it more), space battle effects in Episode III (Episode II on Geonosis was a bit cartoonish at times), the Jedi confronting the Chancellor (just for Ian McDiarmid's lines, he was the star of those films), Yoda confronting the Emperor was also good.

 

The bad bits:

 

Ewan McGregor, Samuel L. Jackson, Hayden Christensen (though I don't really think it was really his fault - he was good in the fight scenes but rubbish with most of the poor dialogue he got), Natalie Portman's woodenness after Episode I, underuse of Christopher Lee (they made Count Dooku a really interesting character, then gave him virtually no decent dialogue), not enough Palpatine in Episode II to set up Episode III turn, C-3PO has no point in the story and shouldn't be in the prequels (it just messes with the story if anything), too much 'Hey it's Jar Jar!' and 'Where's Jar Jar?' in Episode I (I didn't mind the character so much but the focus was on him too often), the way the film seemed rushed since Lucas gave himself too much still to do after Episode I, but most of all the awful love story dialogue in Episode II, the too quick Anakin turn in Episode III (the book made a reasonable job of it, the film didn't) and even more so the ridiculous dialogue given to Darth Vader in Episode III that made a total mockery of the original trilogy character.

 

More bad than good - but I'm not going to moan about it too much, they're Lucas' films, I think his heart was in it, but he gave himself too much to do after making Episode I and that's where things started to go awry in some ways. People knock Episode I, if you actually watch it after the hype and backlash, just open to any opinion of it, it's not that bad. It's certainly better than Episode II which gets worse the more you watch it. If it weren't for Count Dooku and Jango Fett I'd just about never go near that film. McGregor is awful as the lead guy, especially after Liam Neeson's good display in the previous Episode, Christensen can't really lead his scenes very well either (OK on the Mustafar scene in Episode III, I'll give him that, but that's about it) and that love story stuff is really poor.

 

I think Lucas ought to have written out the whole prequel trilogy in detail first rather than having done it episode by episode - you also get the feeling he's been directing the characters' performances scene by scene which explains why some of the performances suggest the actors really don't know what they're supposed to be doing or where their characters are supposed to be going. Christensen is a case in point - he was alright in the Mustafar scene because he knew what he was supposed to do and what his character was supposed to express. In Episode II, he's all over the place - I mean he wasn't great anyway but some better direction might have helped him there. The films might also have been better proportioned if they'd been wriiten at the same time as well - there's too much cramming stuff in in Episodes II and III that could have been spread over the previous Episodes.

 

But, that's just constructively what I think - I won't be a whiney 'fan' - they're Lucas' films, he doesn't owe anyone anything by making them, he made them how he wanted so there's no reason for complaint. He hasn't made anyone watch them and really, most people would rather he'd made them than not just for curiosity. I didn't like them nearly as much as the original films and thought there were some plotholes that really stuck with those films, but they're just films, it's only Star Wars, if you take it very, very seriously that's really your problem more than anyone else's. I think though that the original films were fantastic.

Edited June 19, 2006 by MillionLiraMan