The Truth, Revealed at Last

Things have been a bit quiet over here at the ol’ Rejection Society lately; the official announcement that the forthcoming SW blu-rays would not feature the non-SE OT, even in their lame-ass laserdisc/dvd form, being no surprise at all. So, yeah. Whatevs.

But, just in case you haven’t already seen it (this broke some two weeks ago, but our members are very busy, good-looking people with things to do and places to go), here is the awesome fan trailer for what’s certain to be the best documentary of all time, even if I can’t quite figure out why Princess Leia doesn’t seem to have aged since the 1980s, whereas Ms. Fischer definitely has. Anyhow, here goes… and I think I speak for all Society members when I say, we knew it.

Which is the best of the PT? (Part I)

In the annals of useless parlor games, there’s one topic of debate that’s guaranteed to start a rollicking, passionate and totally inane conversation: which is the best of the Star Wars prequels?

The answer, of course, is this here film. Of course! Yet as soon as anyone wins by saying so, some pedant will argue that because it wasn’t released by Fox, it doesn’t count, at which point the whole thing begins again.

Some will then say it’s The Phantom Menace, because it had the most practical sets and the shortest runtime of the trilogy. These seem like compelling points… until someone digs in for Revenge of the Sith, because it has the most fights, the most OT references and barely any Jar-Jar. Both these debaters now seem fairly persuasive…

… But both are wrong.

Despite being longer than ROTS by all of two minutes (wooooo), Attack of the Clones is the best prequel, and here’s Part I of why that happens to be the case:

 

Checkmate.

So, now you know. The best Star Wars movie to come out since Jedi is… well, yeah, Trek XI. But the second-best…

The OT continues to thrive in the general culture. The PT? It remains to be seen.

I recently came across this hilarious (and, at a mere 90,000 views as of this writing, woefully unappreciated) Ben Kenobi: Private Jedeye short:

One of the things that struck me about the skit was how much of its humor was based on the OT era and films, even though it took place before all of those events. Apart from generic references to Vader and the Empire, which could apply to either trilogy, the main shout-outs were to:

– Greedo

– Jabba and his ROTJ-style slave-taking

– The Larses, and their ANH death

– The logical flimsiness of a wanted galactic fugitive disguising himself by retaining his ceremonial robes and surname.

The main PT-centric reference, on the other hand, being a gag on midichlorians, was (like so many such shout-outs) a none-too-subtle dig at that woeful concept. In short, this video admirably illustrates an ongoing perception of mine, which is that when creative minds go online to celebrate the Star Wars, nearly all of their affection and good-natured joking is aimed at OT-era subjects.

Granted, the generation whose initial Star Wars experience wholly included or even (Muppet Yoda save us) foregrounded the PT has yet to come of age in the same way that the first few OT generations have, so it’s entirely possible that future viral videos will feature as many riffs on Padme’s hairstyles and the seedier parts of Coruscant as contemporary videos have of Ewoks and Han Solo’s exploits.

But I, for one, doubt it. As wonderful as the art production on the PT was, it takes gripping characters and situations to make pretty-looking scenery and amusing gags iconic. The OT will therefore certainly retain its elevated place in our pop cultural discourse. The PT? … Well, I wouldn’t bet the Falcon on it, that’s for sure.

Lost/V’s Elizabeth Mitchell: A Model of Good Parenting?

Not having seen any of her work, I can’t speak for her acting, but I do like the cut of Elizabeth Mitchell’s nerd-rearing jib, as revealed in an Entertainment Weekly interview:

Are you working on anything else right now?
I promised my five-year-old I would do a lot of nothing. We have lightsabers and we fight outside in the yard at night to make them glow. And we make noises. I do dress sometimes as a Jedi master. Because I’m a mom, and that’s what we do. I have a fair knowledge of swordplay, so now I just have to figure out my lightsaberplay.

What color lightsaber do you prefer to use?
How interesting that you would ask! Blue and red are the two we play with.

Vintage! Does he lean towards the prequel trilogy, or is he an old-school fan?
Oh, I don’t think I’m going to show him the prequels. [Laughs]

Probably a good call.

Yes, I’d say so… the Prequel Trilogy is probably notorious and shiny enough to stick around in our cultural memories for a while,  but it should in no way be presented to impressionable youngsters as flicks of comparable merit to the OT. Let them wait to see them until they’re good and ready – when, with luck, they’ll have read and heard enough to no longer want to try them at all!

On the OT’s hints at the nature of the Clone Wars

These sure look like bad guys to me…

Here’s a fascinating exchange I came upon over at the Trek BBS:

Temis the Vorta: Did anyone ever “promise” that the Clone Wars would be about “evil” clones or was that a fan wish?

Checkmate: It was implied by not only Obi-Wan’s use of it, but the phrase itself. You rarely, if ever, name a war after the side you were fighting on as opposed to the side you were fighting against or the most notable location thereof. What we’re actually seeing are the Droid Wars or the Separatist Wars. At most, it would be the Droid-Clone Wars by including both major combatants.

Or should we rename WWII the American Wars? Hey, Americans fought in it, right?

Checkmate, I think, makes an excellent point, and one I’d never thought of before. After reading Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy, I’d always assumed that both/all sides of the war had used clones, but this interpretation is just as plausible, and at least as cool.

The Clone Wars: good clones vs. bad droids?

Or, why all of the PT, including that damn show people keep praising for being awesomely “edgy” and stuff, will always suck.

Boo. Hiss.

To me, one of the worst flaws of the PT – one which not only prevents me from getting into the animated shows but also means I can no longer enjoy even fan-edited versions of the films – is GL’s disastrous formulation of the Clone Wars as good clones vs. bad droids. This was a fiasco for many reasons, only a sampler of which follows:

1. The droids are too advanced to fit with the OT universe. Period. I’ve heard all the apologist rebuttals, and they’re all crap. There’s no way that such models as droidekas would have been discontinued had they been around in the OT’s past. (And yes, I know that GL came up with ’em as a way of avoiding having the heroic Jedi slicing up living beings right and left, but that doesn’t excuse the continuity error.)

2. Droids are far less scary and interesting than living beings. They make for dull and soulless opponents.

3. Boba Fett was always assumed to be of no particular galactic significance. Having people who look exactly like him make up half the Clone Wars eviscerates his mystique and is such a hard fanwank it practically breaks the fourth wall every time it comes up.

4. Evil droids aren’t mentioned in Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy, which is as vital as the OT to my personal SW canon. (Nor are any cloning apparatuses besides “Spaarti cylinders.” Was it really so necessary to use the name “Kamino” in the PT instead? Not that I really care, what with the droids and all, but still.)

5. Just because it’s the “Clone” Wars doesn’t mean all the clones half to share the same genetic source. Per the Thrawn trilogy again, there ought to be different clones for pilots, fighters, etc… and even maybe Sith apprentices? I’d like to see maybe a dozen or so clone templates – enough to make for some interesting inter-clone interactions, but not so many that we don’t readily recognize them as clones. (And, as Red Letter Media noted in his Sith review,  who said the clones had to be humanoid, anyhow? For all Obi-Wan said in A New Hope, they could have been orc-like monsters. Either way, they should never have been the “good” guys.)

6. Having both major combatant forces be manufactured outsiders cheapens the impact of the whole Wars in the first place. In the Thrawn trilogy, even relatively neutral characters shudder when they think of the devastation caused. And you can bring up as many CW eps showing other planets’ involvement as you like; the movies and series still show the vast, vast majority of all the combatants as either clones or droids, so it’s too late for piecemeal revisionism on that count.

Conclusion: late-1990s GL formulated the Clones Wars as a fairly benign, drama-killing conflict in order to keep the tone as light as possible  – and not alienate any of his potential toy-buying, video-game playing audience.

The Society rejects this. Do you?

Opinion, take it or leave it: the PT shoulda been done in black-and-white

Why, you ask? Well, here’s a few subjective reasons…

1. The visuals/tech would have better blended with the OT. Even the most restrained modern filmmaker would have had a hard time not making the tech in the PT look more advanced than that of the OT – and GL is hardly that most restrained filmmaker. But the primitive aura of b&w could have helped keep the OT and its seventies haircuts looking fresh.

2. The ANH beginning would remain spectacular. A b&w trilogy would also preserve the “wow” moment of ANH‘s first shot. In-universe linear viewing would have shown ships and space battles up to that point, but never in color.

3. It could allow for more violence. GL obviously invented those hideously lame battle droids to avoid having the noble Jedi carving up living beings right and left. But if it’d all been b&w, that wouldn’t have been nearly as gory or shocking. See: the b&w portion of the dojo fight in Kill Bill 1.

4. It would have been educational. Too many younguns these days turn their noses up at b&w. Heck, even I did back in the day. This, on the other hand, would compel them to see (and just maybe enjoy) b&w films from an early age.

5. It could have encouraged more focus on story, dialogue, etc. How many hundreds of hours were spent on choosing the various colors of the trilogy? Hours that could have been used coming up with decent scripts. Less color-filled eye candy to show off could have forced GL to craft the best possible film, not special-effects showcase.

6. It would have been better suited to the dark tale generally. B&w film can have a nightmarish quality to it (Psycho, The White Ribbon, the dvd version of The Mist). Anakin’s tragic fall to evil would have been well served by the format.

Sure, there would have been downsides. The art direction, (along with John Williams’ work) is the only truly exceptional aspect of the trilogy, and much of its flavor (and thus merchandising potential) would have been lost in grayscale. (Padme’s rainbow dress… mmm…) And while the PT we got hardly fits in visually with the OT, it would still have been odd for the universe to suddenly develop color halfway through. Finally, so long as we’re dreaming, we could just say the PT should have had better stories, scripts, etc. and leave it at that.

Still, for the above reasons, I think a well-done PT might have been truly awesome. It would certainly have been a bold and thought-provoking move.

Red Letter Media’s Epic PT Reviews

So I’m sure that, by now, everyone’s seen the exhaustive but hilarious (not to mention wonderfully insightful) Red Letter Media PT reviews, featuring the murderous geezer Harry Plinkett, but since this is the Star Wars Prequel Rejection Society, I’ve gotta link to ‘em anyway.

Anyway, as you probably also know, RLM got some flak on the ‘nets for the high gruesomeness quotient of his Clones review, so here’s a youtube-safe for work edit of that one for those who thought he went a bit overboard to enjoy.

The Original Boba Fett Doesn’t Like the PT Either

Vanity Fair caught up with Jeremy Bulloch, the original Boba Fett actor (though not the original voice; that was one Jason Wingreen) a while back, and wouldn’t you know it, he doesn’t sound like the biggest PT admirer, either. Might he be a secret member of the SWPRS?

Vanity Fair: When Empire was released on DVD in 2004, Boba Fett’s voice was redubbed again, only this time by Temuera Morrison who played Jango Fett in Attack of the Clones. Do you feel he’s co-opted your role, playing Jango Fett or Boba Fett throughout the six films? Someone watching all six today for the first time would probably just assume that he’s the guy in the suit by the time we get to Empire.

Jeremy Bulloch: I can see why because now it’s the Clone Wars and they’re all exactly the same. It’s Temuera and Daniel Logan who plays the young Boba Fett. We all know the voice and what’s going to happen. Although, the original voice by Jason Wingreen is far more menacing. (Mimes Wingreen) “Put Captain Solo in the cargo hold.”

 

The Ultimate Guides

Short on reasons to loathe the PT? These awesomely comprehensive guides by Chelfelf will do the trick any day:

The links:
78 Reasons to Hate Star Wars: Episode I
64 Reasons to Hate Star Wars: Episode II
91 Reasons to Hate Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

It’s all there. Well, almost. Not quite. But it’s darned funny and acute writing, and it’s certainly enough.