Ninja_Squirrel
Regular
Re: \'Revenge of the Sith\' reviews (Spoilers)
I wondered the same thing about Rick McCallum (producer), Ben Burtt (sound/editing), and other Lucas loyalists. You know they've had a sweet ride for 30 years. McCallum's family is probably set for life. He would probably be stupid to risk telling George when he's doing something funky. A lot of positive credit needs to go to Burtt for sounds, which are incredibly unique in Star Wars films. However, as editor, you'd think he had more than enough opportunities to make a comment or pose a question about performances and why Lucas directed actors the way he did.
Lucas, McCallum, and Burtt did commentary on the Ep. 2 DVD about why they cut out certain scenes, and I really disagree with a few of their choices. They cut out some scenes that really would have enhanced and explained Padme's character. My nickname for them after that was The Three Stooges.
There were several times when I couldn't help but think, "Why did Lucas not yell 'cut' and ask the actor/actress to try that scene again?".
I just thought of something. The lava-mining operation on Mustafar looks like it's been there for a while. I don't remember any particular action that causes the lava eruptions to get worse, but for some reason they do, causing the platform Anakin & Obi-Wan are on to break off. Had everyone shown up to Mustafar a little later, it may have been too unsafe to land, and everything would have turned out very different. Kind of convenient that things got worse while the main characters happened to be there, just so a fight could occur on a breaking platform.
The same could be said of The West Wing and Gilmore Girls. Sometimes, their over-articulation and staginess doesn't work, but most of the time it does, and they're both excellent shows.
Good:
- Alderaan
- Coruscant (although, I think the novel writers made up that name)
- Dagobah
- Darth Vader
- Endor
- Jabba the Hutt
- Lando Calrissian
- Luke/Anakin Skywalker
- Malastare
- Obi-Wan Kenobi
- Qui-Gon Jinn
- Tatooine
- Utapau (sounds weird but a good kind of weird)
Bad:
- Bail Organa (Bail always makes me think of Baal, which I think is a false god in the Bible)
- Boss Nass
- Boz Pity
- Mon Calamari (isn't calamari something you can order at a seafood restaurant)
- Count Dooku
- Darth Plagueis/Sidious/Maul/Tyranus
- Geonosis (sounds too much like a distortion of Genesis)
- Grand Moff Tarkin (cool baddy, nice name, bad title; what is a Moff and how grand can it be?)
- Greivous
- Jar Jar Binks
- Ki-Adi-Mundi
- Kit Fisto
- Mace Windu
- Mustafar (sounds too much like Rastafarian)
- Naboo
- Nute Gunray (Trade Fed. viceroy)
- Padme Amidala (sounds royal but doesn't roll of the tongue well)
- SHMI Skywalker (Shmi? Anakin's mom got screwed on naming)
- Theed (capital of Naboo)
According to Wikipedia, there are several more Star Wars worlds that end in "-ooine". I can accept that as a common planetary suffix in the Star Wars universe the same way "-shire", "-ton", "-boro", "-ham", "-ville", etc. are city suffixes in ours.
Also, you gotta admit, that even JMS is guilty of this to a certain extent:
- Minbari, Centauri, Brakiri
- Delenn (B5), Dulann (LotR)
- Findell (B5), Sindell (LotR)
- Lady Ladira (Kiro's seer), Adira (Londo's lover),
- Turhan (Centauri emperor), Durhan (Minbari ranger)
- Dureena Nafeel (Crusade), Na'Feel (Narn female in LotR)
- Dureena is trained by someone named Tafeek; Tafeek is a character in LotR
- John Sheridan, John Matheson (Crusade)
- Elizabeth Sheridan, Elizabeth Lochley
- David Sheridan, David Corwin, David Martel (LotR)
- Sarah Chambers (Crusade), Sara Cantrell (LotR)
- Emfeeli (Minbari ship in Shadow Dancing), Enphili (a race in season 5)
- G'Kar, G'Quon, G'Lon, G'Stan
Granted, some of those are intentional, such as the common Narn prefixes. Plus, John, David, Elizabeth, and Sarah are common names. I've even had two best freinds at the same time, both named Dave. However, I thought when you're writing fiction, you intentionally try to mix up your names a bit, and to use four different Human names and two different alien names at least twice each--alog with other similarities--within 123 episodes of two series and five TV movies seems like a bit of a trend.
And the worst choice of similar names ever: Sauron & Saruman from Lord of the Rings. Cool names separately, but a little coincidental put together as villains in the same story. What was Tolkein thinking?
I agree with you. Sometimes my brain literally can't keep up and take it all in. A friend of mine says he actually liked it. I'm okay with "grand scale" shots, such as the MASSIVE shot of armies in LotR:FotR's prologue, the fleet shots in B5, the colliding armies in Braveheart, etc. However, you never want to distract too much from heroes. When Isildur, Sauron, Elrond, the main White Star, or William Wallace get a close-up, we barely see what's in the background and we can tell what's happening to the people/ships that matter.
I'm somewhat okay with the jumbled space battle because it's meant to be chaotic and the scope of space is unavoidably big, but the battle on Kashyyyk could have been better. While it "looked" better, I still enjoyed the Ewok battle on Endor more. Granted the Ewoks can be unnecessarily cute even in battle, but at least you could tell what each little group was doing, who was succeeding, who was outmatched, who was dying, etc. Despite the scope of the battle, you still have a sense of individuality. The Kashyyyk battle looked like a great big metal-and-fur cannon-fodder fest.
No, but after the second time seeing it I did think that a flashback montage, ala Londo Mollari before he accepts the Keeper, would have been a good way of building sympathy for Anakin being trapped in that suit and mask, or at the very least would have summarized the different steps Anakin took to the Dark Side. The Anakin viewpoint seeing the face plate come down over him was a nice touch, but overall the suit and helmet scene went awfully quick. There was really no time for sympathy. On the other hand, considering what Anakin had done up to the at point, sympathy may not have been appropriate.
"Screwed ourselves, we did. Mishandled a prophecied threat, we should not have. Been nicer to midichlorian-spawnboy, we should have. Bad advice, the pushing aside of emotional attachments was. To craphole swampworld to hide, I must go."
That's assuming that the 2nd one was not started until the 1st one was destroyed. I'm thinking the 2nd one was probably started no more than a decade after the 1st was. At the time of Ep. 6, Death Star 2 was still not complete, so it was probably started but even less further along during Ep. 4. Also, according to http://www.merzo.net, the 2nd one had a 33% bigger diameter than the 1st, so it would have taken longer even if they both had been started at the same time.
Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dates_in_Star_Wars#Film_timeline for a timeline of the films to see how many years were between each episode of the story.
I wondered the same thing about Rick McCallum (producer), Ben Burtt (sound/editing), and other Lucas loyalists. You know they've had a sweet ride for 30 years. McCallum's family is probably set for life. He would probably be stupid to risk telling George when he's doing something funky. A lot of positive credit needs to go to Burtt for sounds, which are incredibly unique in Star Wars films. However, as editor, you'd think he had more than enough opportunities to make a comment or pose a question about performances and why Lucas directed actors the way he did.
Lucas, McCallum, and Burtt did commentary on the Ep. 2 DVD about why they cut out certain scenes, and I really disagree with a few of their choices. They cut out some scenes that really would have enhanced and explained Padme's character. My nickname for them after that was The Three Stooges.
There were several times when I couldn't help but think, "Why did Lucas not yell 'cut' and ask the actor/actress to try that scene again?".
I just thought of something. The lava-mining operation on Mustafar looks like it's been there for a while. I don't remember any particular action that causes the lava eruptions to get worse, but for some reason they do, causing the platform Anakin & Obi-Wan are on to break off. Had everyone shown up to Mustafar a little later, it may have been too unsafe to land, and everything would have turned out very different. Kind of convenient that things got worse while the main characters happened to be there, just so a fight could occur on a breaking platform.
The same could be said of The West Wing and Gilmore Girls. Sometimes, their over-articulation and staginess doesn't work, but most of the time it does, and they're both excellent shows.
Good:
- Alderaan
- Coruscant (although, I think the novel writers made up that name)
- Dagobah
- Darth Vader
- Endor
- Jabba the Hutt
- Lando Calrissian
- Luke/Anakin Skywalker
- Malastare
- Obi-Wan Kenobi
- Qui-Gon Jinn
- Tatooine
- Utapau (sounds weird but a good kind of weird)
Bad:
- Bail Organa (Bail always makes me think of Baal, which I think is a false god in the Bible)
- Boss Nass
- Boz Pity
- Mon Calamari (isn't calamari something you can order at a seafood restaurant)
- Count Dooku
- Darth Plagueis/Sidious/Maul/Tyranus
- Geonosis (sounds too much like a distortion of Genesis)
- Grand Moff Tarkin (cool baddy, nice name, bad title; what is a Moff and how grand can it be?)
- Greivous
- Jar Jar Binks
- Ki-Adi-Mundi
- Kit Fisto
- Mace Windu
- Mustafar (sounds too much like Rastafarian)
- Naboo
- Nute Gunray (Trade Fed. viceroy)
- Padme Amidala (sounds royal but doesn't roll of the tongue well)
- SHMI Skywalker (Shmi? Anakin's mom got screwed on naming)
- Theed (capital of Naboo)
According to Wikipedia, there are several more Star Wars worlds that end in "-ooine". I can accept that as a common planetary suffix in the Star Wars universe the same way "-shire", "-ton", "-boro", "-ham", "-ville", etc. are city suffixes in ours.
Also, you gotta admit, that even JMS is guilty of this to a certain extent:
- Minbari, Centauri, Brakiri
- Delenn (B5), Dulann (LotR)
- Findell (B5), Sindell (LotR)
- Lady Ladira (Kiro's seer), Adira (Londo's lover),
- Turhan (Centauri emperor), Durhan (Minbari ranger)
- Dureena Nafeel (Crusade), Na'Feel (Narn female in LotR)
- Dureena is trained by someone named Tafeek; Tafeek is a character in LotR
- John Sheridan, John Matheson (Crusade)
- Elizabeth Sheridan, Elizabeth Lochley
- David Sheridan, David Corwin, David Martel (LotR)
- Sarah Chambers (Crusade), Sara Cantrell (LotR)
- Emfeeli (Minbari ship in Shadow Dancing), Enphili (a race in season 5)
- G'Kar, G'Quon, G'Lon, G'Stan
Granted, some of those are intentional, such as the common Narn prefixes. Plus, John, David, Elizabeth, and Sarah are common names. I've even had two best freinds at the same time, both named Dave. However, I thought when you're writing fiction, you intentionally try to mix up your names a bit, and to use four different Human names and two different alien names at least twice each--alog with other similarities--within 123 episodes of two series and five TV movies seems like a bit of a trend.
And the worst choice of similar names ever: Sauron & Saruman from Lord of the Rings. Cool names separately, but a little coincidental put together as villains in the same story. What was Tolkein thinking?
I agree with you. Sometimes my brain literally can't keep up and take it all in. A friend of mine says he actually liked it. I'm okay with "grand scale" shots, such as the MASSIVE shot of armies in LotR:FotR's prologue, the fleet shots in B5, the colliding armies in Braveheart, etc. However, you never want to distract too much from heroes. When Isildur, Sauron, Elrond, the main White Star, or William Wallace get a close-up, we barely see what's in the background and we can tell what's happening to the people/ships that matter.
I'm somewhat okay with the jumbled space battle because it's meant to be chaotic and the scope of space is unavoidably big, but the battle on Kashyyyk could have been better. While it "looked" better, I still enjoyed the Ewok battle on Endor more. Granted the Ewoks can be unnecessarily cute even in battle, but at least you could tell what each little group was doing, who was succeeding, who was outmatched, who was dying, etc. Despite the scope of the battle, you still have a sense of individuality. The Kashyyyk battle looked like a great big metal-and-fur cannon-fodder fest.
No, but after the second time seeing it I did think that a flashback montage, ala Londo Mollari before he accepts the Keeper, would have been a good way of building sympathy for Anakin being trapped in that suit and mask, or at the very least would have summarized the different steps Anakin took to the Dark Side. The Anakin viewpoint seeing the face plate come down over him was a nice touch, but overall the suit and helmet scene went awfully quick. There was really no time for sympathy. On the other hand, considering what Anakin had done up to the at point, sympathy may not have been appropriate.
"Screwed ourselves, we did. Mishandled a prophecied threat, we should not have. Been nicer to midichlorian-spawnboy, we should have. Bad advice, the pushing aside of emotional attachments was. To craphole swampworld to hide, I must go."
That's assuming that the 2nd one was not started until the 1st one was destroyed. I'm thinking the 2nd one was probably started no more than a decade after the 1st was. At the time of Ep. 6, Death Star 2 was still not complete, so it was probably started but even less further along during Ep. 4. Also, according to http://www.merzo.net, the 2nd one had a 33% bigger diameter than the 1st, so it would have taken longer even if they both had been started at the same time.
Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dates_in_Star_Wars#Film_timeline for a timeline of the films to see how many years were between each episode of the story.
