Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (J.J. Abrams, December 20, 2019) Movie • Page 233

I have this version of The Phantom Menace soundtrack. so awesome. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000051VYS/?tag=absolutepunk-20

 

also in terms of score, highly recommend if you can, to watch The Last Jedi score only version. it's a pretty great watch. think you need MoviesAnywhere app to access it

 

I thiiiink this is my list as well. I just did I rewatch of all of them with my girlfriend over the last two weeks (with the exception of Solo) and this pretty accurately depicts how entertained I was during each viewing.

Two things I noticed on a full rewatch....
1) The prequels weren't quite as bad as I remembered (can't believe I even said that). I think maybe I just understood Palpatine's motives and his plan a little better as a whole. That said, AOTC is still easily the worst and it's mostly because of how unlikable Anakin is. I'm not sure why they didn't paint him more like he is in The Clone Wars series where you actually root for him instead of making him such an egotistical weirdo from the moment you see him in that movie...

2) Return of the Jedi was my favorite as a kid, but I found myself pretty bored through a good chunk of the movie this time for whatever reason. Even still though, the last 1/3 of the movie is top tier iconic Star Wars so it's all good to me.

 

the prequels at their worst are dragged down I feel like by the terribly written padme/Anakin stuff and the heavy reliance on cgi. they couldn't even build a basic office for palpatine! it just had to be cgi haha. I'm starting my rewatch this weekend, excited to see where things land. but I do know I honestly really enjoy Revenge of the Sith.

 

I think my favorite part about his office is that there’s nothing in it.

 

The music in the prequels does not fit at all. You have these epic sounding arrangements clashing with scenes that have no tension or feeling in them whatsoever. Every time the Jedi face droids it's a yawn-fest as they dice their way through them. It's almost funny how shoe-horned the score feels at times.

 

I haven’t watched the prequels in a long time. I loved them when I was a kid. I think the only reason I now think they are bad is because everyone always tells me they are bad.

 

If you like em, you like em. No shame. I remember liking them. I don’t know that I’ve ever gone back and watched them more than 2-3 times and definitely not recently. But I liked em at the time

 

Just watched some of a new hope on Disney plus and am baffled at the mcklunky thing.

 

It’s honestly amazing.

 

Just download Star Wars 4K77 & watch that instead. Finally checked it out, & it’s how I’ll be watching A New Hope from now on.

 

Does it still include the stormtrooper hitting his helmet on the door?

 

You can still see him hit hit head, but the sound effect was a special edition addition.

Han shoots first, though.

 

Yeah I must have shit taste because I watched AOTC today and I still really enjoyed it for the most part. Definitely agree that the dialogue is atrocious at certain points, especially the Padme and Anakin story, but it's not like this is meant to be like Shakespeare or something lol. Again, music and visuals are great and there are some genuinely inspired set pieces in here, like the car chase in Coruscant at the beginning, Obi-Wan chasing Jango Fett through the asteroids, and the arena sequence. Yoda flipping around fighting Dooku is pretty dumb though lol

I didn't bother rewatching the prequels before TFA came out so this is the first time I've seen them since I was probably around 15 and I'm honestly enjoying them quite a bit. ROTS next and then I'll probably go Solo and Rogue One before starting the OT

 

The prequels suck but it's okay to like them. You can have a fun time watching something, and appreciate the best parts of it, while admitting it is overall poorly done. There's this weird attitude now that the prequels were actually good all along and full of soul and it's like... wut, no

 

Yeah I enjoy Revenge of the Sith, but there’s about ninety asterisks next to that, haha.

 

A new clip for Rise of Skywalker is debuting in Fortnite on the 14th

 

Yeah, all three of the prequels are pretty bad movies overall but every one of them has some great elements in them. I do think there is a lot to enjoy in each one. I didn't realize that most fans seem to hold Revenge of the Sith in the highest regard of the three until only a little while ago. For me personally, I think I rank the prequels straight in order of release: 1) TPM 2) AOTC 3) ROTS. ROTS has always been the most disappointing for me. I think this is mainly because I had always pinned all my hope on it completely rescuing the entire sequel trilogy, and it never came anywhere close to doing that. Not that one movie realistically even could, but still. It does have some fantastic set pieces in it though.

I think a big part of why I have never liked ROTS as much as other people seem to also comes down to the climactic fight between Obi-Wan and Anakin. I have never been able to get emotionally invested in that fight. I can't stand how the entire thing is shot in front of green or blue screens even when they are just like standing in a control room at the beginning. No matter how many times I watch that scene I just see Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen swinging sticks at each other in front of screens with a SHIT TON of distractingly bad CGI all around them. I feel like I can almost see the compositors sweating out how much they are moving around. I sort of understand Lucas' logic in going all out balls-to-the-wall and setting that fight in a crazy place like that, but for me I really wish they had shot it somewhere physical and maybe just used the CGI to extend out the backgrounds a little bit. I know this is massively nitpicky and it is my problem not George Lucas' but still. To this day I have absolutely no problem with the initial - albeit relatively slow and clunky - lightsaber duel between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan in Star Wars / A New Hope. I am on the edge of my seat every time and it is an emotional gut punch in the end.

 

revenge was fucking miserable when i did a rewatch a few years ago

i was shocked i preferred ep II (still bad, but not quite as bad as i remembered)

 

More than anything else I think the prequels are just dreadfully boring. Never bad enough to be entertaining, just a goddamn slog

 

I guess im a bit of a prequelist cuz despite the many many many faults i love em.

I think the impenetrable political story is so great. The trade dispute, the political maneuvering and the astroturfed conflict all illustrate how power hides in plain view. How competing power centers design circumstances to manipulate for their own gain. Palpatine’s scheme is incredibly hard to follow but I think that’s the point. He creates a dizzying fog of war inside of which he can concentrate power in his corner. As I get older it makes me think about how these stories were written during the Clinton years and all the ways elite politics is a spectacle of empty symbolism obscuring the indefensible.

Related to that, the unraveling of the jedi myth is most excellent. I love how the prequels pull at their image of disciplined wisdom, how that principled inaction and jurisprudence narrows their vision. They’re blind to the sedition right in front of them. The jedi code seems like such a beautiful style guide for life and yet...

 

I feel like what you’re describing & what Lucas actually made are very different films, lol. The Jedi myth unraveling especially was addressed better by Luke in TLJ than in those films.

I will say, after rewatching ‘em, I generally found the bureaucracy more compelling than any lightsaber battle outside of Qui-Gon & Obi-Wan vs Maul. I feel like I’ve already mentioned this scene a few times recently, but the “vote of no confidence” scene is probably my favorite in the entire trilogy. That thread of growing fascism, culminating in “thunderous applause,” has more story than those awful films were able to mine. I’d be interested in a live action project further exploring that idea. Maybe set right before Phantom; maybe right after Revenge; maybe at the dissolution of the Senate mentioned in A New Hope.

Though, this make me more annoyed at how terribly Revenge was written, lol. Why the heck did Lucas make it about some dumb vision of Padme’s death (especially when that ultimately led to a contradiction w/ RotJ) when it could’ve been entirely about Anakin siding w/ Palpatine because of the Jedi’s attitude towards him? Lean further into that self fulfilling prophecy of him going evil, & have Padme siding w/ Obi-Wan (& surviving in hiding w/ Leia) be what tips him over into full blown Vader. Oh well.

 

the idea of those movies is far more interesting than anything actually presented in them imo

 

woop wrong thread

 

My marathon begins tomorrow. It was supposed to start Monday night, but I’ll be busy. Tomorrow, The Phantom Menace.