Jedi bashing?

[Mofo Rising]

Andrew wrote:
>
> Honestly, until we got to the arena scene, "AotC" was
> driving me nuts.  Let me see if I can sum up the movie for
> that first hour and some:
>
> Sleep with me!
> -We cannot do that.
> Sleep with me!
> -No!
> My life sucks.  Sleep with me!
> -For the last time...
> Sleep with me!
> and so on.
>
>

I was wondering about this myself.  Why exactly can't they get together?  The "celibate" nature of the Jedis has never been explored or explained, at least in the movies.  Nothing in the "Force" philosophy seems to point to it's necessity.  So why?  It seems to be there because the movie requires it to be there.

But I loved ATTACK OF THE CLONES.  A lot.  And there was really a lot more going on in the first hour then the romance plot.

Who knows, maybe Amidala finds the annihilation of an entire Tusken raider clan sexy.

[J.R.]

If Jedis must be celibate how do they make new Jedis?

[Squishy]

The same way they make Catholic Priests.

[Neville]

I saw AOTC yesterday and while I found it visually stunning somehow I felt Lucas was not the appropiate director for it. His filmaking is too static, the actors direction poor and the film is too long and granbdiloquent to my liking. However, it is a great improvement over The Phantom Menace and it gives many clues about the characters' future, so overall I enjoyed it.

Most of you have mentioned your favourite Star Wars movies. My least favourite of the original trilogy is precisely "Star Wars", and for the similar reasons. Really, George Lucas deserves kudos for creating all this, but his directing skills regarding action and adventure leave much to be desired. Let's hope he chooses another director next time, as he did with the original trilogy.

[Jay O'Connor]

ONe thing to realize when watching the Anakin/Padme interaction in the subplot is to remember who Anakin is.

He's a teenager experiencing a 'first love', based on a child hood fascination or infatuation.  Anyone in this condition, trying to come to grips with his emotions, is going to act akwardly, tossing back and forth with emotions and trying to be rational but not really wanting to be.  If Anakin was potrayed as a thirty year old man or something, is actions would be pretty odd, but given his age and lack of experience, it wasn't really all that unbelievable

Especially considering the other side.  He is a very powerful person, given his natural Force ability and Jedi training, and he knows it.  He's cocky, and pretty much able to do whatever he wants in most situations, held only in check my Obi-Wan's guiding hand (barely). With this as his daily life, the resistance of Padme is something that he's not used to.  When Obi-Wan tells him not to do something, he can get resentful and just think Obi-Wan is jeleous; that gives him an emotional release for his frustrations.  When Padme tells him not to do something; his emotions won't let him be resentful of her, so he has no way of reconciling his feelings of something he wants but can't have.

The 'romance' scenes with Anakin were akward, but mostl because Anakin is the main focus and Anakin himself is in a very akward point in his life

[Sakerson]

I agree with a number of the posts here.  I was somewhat dissappointed with AotC myself, largely because of stilted dialogue and bad directing.  I did enjoy the battle at the end of the film (ironic that stormtroopers save the day).  Unlike most people, I didn't care for the whoop-ass Yoda action scene.  I laughed myself silly seeing this little green ninja-midget bounce off the walls (and I mean literally bouncing off the walls).  The poor Count looked like the Orkin Man trying to step on a roach ("I'll cut you down to size ... oh, wait a minute...").  But the end of the scene was perfect (where he picks up his cane again, you know what I mean).

Still, I was perfectly fine with the Zen Yoda as he was in the first trilogy.  Sure, he never got to boogey, but it was obvious that he was a bad-ass (no way an arrogant white-belt Jedi could lift an X-Wing out of a swamp).  And I wish Jango-jingle-heimer Fett had a bigger role.  His only purpose was to show where Boba came from, and to serve as a target when (spoiler!) Mace took his quickening.  Wish they could have fleshed him out a little more.  Wish they could have made the dialogue more believable.  Wish Haydon wasn't so wooden.  Wish Yoda would have opened his miniature can of whoop-ass on Jar Jar (everyone in the theater hissed when he first appeared).  Wish Lucas spent as much time on scripting the plot as on working the special effects.  Wish Natalie would have lost more clothing in that battle (did I type that or think that?).  Wish, wish, wish, wish....

Now that I'm done whining, I'll probably go see it again.  What can I say, it wasn't the greatest of films by any means, but it's still Star Wars.

[Chadzilla]

At least thirty minutes were spent discussing his dislike of directing actors.  Frankly he's a better producer/businessman than writer/director.

[Chadzilla]

Andrew wrote:
>
> ErikJ wrote:
> >
> > You cannot direct that which cannot be directed
>
> When someone has nearly complete creative control of
> something and it turns out badly, their ability to displace
> fault is seriously eroded.
>
> Andrew

To give the man some credit, he does shoulder the blame for his failures, when he wants to admit to them that is.

[Pancho]

how do they make little jedi's?  asexual reproduction my friends,  it's the wave of the future for lonely guys.

[Flangepart]

Midiclorians! The little buggers are there for a reason, and that could be it!

[Jay O'Connor]

I noticed that the midichlorians were not mentioned in "AotC"

[J.R.]

One conundrum the midichlorian explanation has planted in my mind: If you got a blood transfusion from a Jedi, would you then become attuned to The Force? I liked it much better when it was a spiritual, all-encompassing power, not a simple microorganism. Thanks for dulling the magic George.

[Jay O'Connor]

Probably not because the midichlorians are in all living cells, not just blood.

Actually, The Force is still a power, it's just the midichlorians make us aware of it.  

What bothered me more was talking about "the will of the Force"  To have will one must have self awareness; ie...there must be a personality behind the force.  This raises the Force from passive power source to potentially active agent.  This makes the whole 'dark side' issue a bit more problematic.  

In other words, Episodes IV through VI treated the Force as a rather simplistic Eastern pantheism.  Episode I rearranges it as a sort of inconsistant deism  The fact that it seems inconsistant, confusing, and not well thought through rather irritates me

[Newt]

If the 'Force' is a self-aware agent,  then what was the deal with the Luke-in-the-cave-fighting-himself-as-Vader scene?   (Was that in Empire?)   If the Force is a pasive power source, it is defined as good or bad (dark) by the individual's choice of use for it.   That internal struggle - being solely responsible for one's own 'goodness' or 'darkness' - makes for a much better (and to my view) more satisfying story - one with heroes.   Making the Force and the Dark Side 'agents' puts all the responsibilty at one remove - away from the main characters, offstage somewhere, pulling the puppet strings....

I am not expressing this well.  I apologise!

[Jay O'Connor]

My point exactly.

As soon as you say the Force as 'will' (the purpose of midichlorians, according to Qui-gon, was to tell us the will of the Force), you open up a pandora's box of inconsitancies with the later episodes.  "Will" implies intent and goals, with requires self-awareness and purpose.  Personally, as  a Christian, I really don't have a problem with that as a worldview.  *However*, such a recasting of the Force from montheism for deism, possibly theism, really puts everything done by the characters in a different light that doesn't make a lot of sense.

I think that was an 'oops' in the writing from Phantom Menace that's now being downplayed and would probably be explained away as Qui-gon was really telling the whole story to a young Anakin