Star Wars *OT* (Off-Topic)

by General Vagueness , The Vault of Sass, Sunday, July 12, 2015, 21:54 (3425 days ago) @ Avateur

As you said earlier, people complain about the writing, and Lucas wrote the prequels. The visuals in the prequels were great. The action was great. The actors were good actors. The writing, though, stunk on ice.

I've agreed with every one of your posts until this one. The visuals in the prequels weren't great. A ton of the CGI served no purpose beyond cluttering up the screen. It's like the Special Editions with how Lucas had to just add in random stuff all over the place just because. The entirety of the prequels was soulless, and the writing just happens to be the worst of it all. The action also wasn't that great, mostly due to the aforementioned CGI. All of it lacked subtlety. And the actors, unfortunately, weren't great by virtue of the horrible writing. They didn't have a chance to be great or show their greatness. The acting was terrible, and I blame that almost entirely on the script and director.

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.