Star Wars *OT* (Off-Topic)

by Avateur , Sunday, July 12, 2015, 23:52 (3231 days ago) @ General Vagueness
edited by Avateur, Monday, July 13, 2015, 00:11

I believe him when he says the special editions were how he originally wanted the movies to go, because he did the same kind of thing with all of them and all the prequels. I think he never had an eye for subtlety or minimalism or downplaying things and was forced into a bit of that by the technology and by the people he worked with and it happened to turn out well. I contest the claim that the action was bad, I thought the duels and battles were just as good as in the original movies aside from one or two (or maybe three). For the actors, I think he was saying that they were good actors, not that they gave good performances. I would add that a very good actor can deliver a good performance even if the script is bad-- their lines won't be very good, but they can still be delivered well, with good intonation, pacing, diction, volume, accent, body language, and whatever else, and the actor can still hit all their marks and do whatever they're required to do physically and do it well, and I think the prequels are good examples of that, you have a lot of less than great lines with almost paradoxically beautiful delivery.

Nah, the special editions just seem to be him adding random things left and right just because he could. He adds in rocks that make no logical sense in certain scenes, some creatures that absolutely serve no purpose other than to clutter the scene and take away from the overall atmosphere, etc. While he may have wanted some of these things originally, the random, out-of-place inclusions in the special editions are sloppy at best and frivolous at worst.

There's no contesting that he had editors and other people who could tell him no with the originals. The prequels were probably given a single draft, and no one had the balls to tell him no about anything.

We can agree to disagree on the action and battles (especially the horrible lightsaber battles).

As for the acting, while some of them are great actors, the point I was making is that they didn't come off as great actors because of the material they were being given and by how Lucas was directly telling them to act and display emotion (primarily with nothing to work with aside from green/blue screen) on top of the horrible script. And I don't just disagree with you, but I'd dare to say you are absolutely 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt empirically and objectively wrong when you say that the lines are delivered beautifully. Those movies are some of Natalie Portman's worst as far as acting goes (and, again, I am totally not faulting her or any of the other actors for that based on behind-the-scenes materials from those god awful movies), not to mention the other actors. The deliveries are largely as soulless as the material itself, and a lot of that is because Lucas was actually telling them to deliver it that way.

Edit: GV, what I'm trying to say about the delivery of the acting and what you're saying is, well, you're breaking my heart! :(