Star Wars: The Math Awakens

[retrothecollector]

I stood in line for Star Trek The Motion Picture around the block...but somehow skipped all the Star Wars movies in theaters.

[media_junkie]

but we can all agree that any scene with padme and Anakin is unwatchable right?

 

I don't think you would get many to argue that.

[MusterMark]

Absolutely, thoroughly, totally LOVE all of them. ALL of them.

No ifs, ands or buts.

[Ogami]

I put the total of good Star Wars films at 4/6. Episodes 4, 5, 6, the last half of 1, and 3, for a total of four.

 

That makes 4.5

 

3 + .5 + .5 = 4

 

But I felt your sentence was sufficiently ambiguous to take you to task.

 

No, it's just you.

[MusterMark]

but we can all agree that any scene with padme and Anakin is unwatchable right?

 

I don't think you would get many to argue that.

 

In that case, let me just go ahead and argue that.

[He11blazer]

I put the total of good Star Wars films at 4/6. Episodes 4, 5, 6, the last half of 1, and 3, for a total of four.

 

That makes 4.5

 

3 + .5 + .5 = 4

 

But I felt your sentence was sufficiently ambiguous to take you to task.

 

No, it's just you.

 

No it's not. (I get the last word).

[fantastic_four]

but we can all agree that any scene with padme and Anakin is unwatchable right?

 

As long as you can agree that any scene with Mark Hamill playing an overly-earnest Luke Skywalker is unwatchable, sure. It's all bad acting. I find it easy to look past all that since I'm mostly in these movies for the action anyway. People who think the first three are gold and the prequels are total don't realize that they're remembering the originals through the nostalgic forgiveness of themselves as kids. They weren't old enough to see what sucked in the originals then, and they don't see it as adults, either, due to their original love. Plenty of stuff in the prequels that kick the butts of anything in the originals, and plenty of wince-worthy stuff in the originals. Particularly the Ewoks.

 

I rank the movies as Episode V, IV, III, II, VI, and I, in that order. Darth Maul is the best villain in any of them with Darth Sidious being second, and they're both in the prequels. ALL the best lightsaber battles are in the prequels with Maul's being at the top due to Ray Park's incredible performance. Jango Fett is better than Boba Fett simply because they just didn't have Boba do much in the originals. His outfit looked cool, and that was it, Boba didn't actually do anything all that cool. And as soon as they did give him some action, they had Skywalker make him look like an insufficiently_thoughtful_person on that Tatooine barge before giving him an ultra-lame death.

[fantastic_four]

Speaking of Boba, I've long felt there's a very specific reason for his popularity--the action figures. If you played with the figures as a kid, they all came with gun and lightsaber accessories, and Boba had by far THE best accessories of any character in the movies. The laser gun, the arm gun, the grappling hook, the jet pack, the little sight thing that attached to his helmet...he was just the most fun to play with by far. It didn't really tie to what they had him do on screen, which was limited and mostly lame.

 

[fantastic_four]

Oh, and my math is 4--I exclude Return of the Jedi and Phantom Menace as being good. The ONLY thing I look at when I re-watch Phantom Menace are the Darth Maul scenes. Return of the Jedi's highlights are the awesome space battle scenes which were the best of the first three films. The battle scenes in the prequels are better though, particularly the ones in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.

 

If not for the Anakin/Obi-Wan/Yoda vs Dooku lightsaber battle, I'd be fine with excluding Attack of the Clones, but that scene made the movie for me. Yoda pulling out that can of whoop- was the biggest laugh out loud moment of any of the films.

[krighton]

but we can all agree that any scene with padme and Anakin is unwatchable right?

 

the scene where Anakin is almost killed and disfigured is watchable.

[Ogami]

I put the total of good Star Wars films at 4/6. Episodes 4, 5, 6, the last half of 1, and 3, for a total of four.

 

That makes 4.5

 

3 + .5 + .5 = 4

 

But I felt your sentence was sufficiently ambiguous to take you to task.

 

No, it's just you.

 

No it's not. (I get the last word).

[fantastic_four]

Forget Hayden's acting and forget Jar-Jar because kids tend to love him just as some of us probably loved the Ewoks when we were young. The single worst thing in the prequels is the voice they gave the viceroy of the Trade Federation. I still cannot believe Lucas gave that character a Japanese accent who does the stereotypical pronouncing of L's as R's and R's as L's.

 

[Thawk]

I know other people who have up on the series based on the prequels, and while there were terrible moments (both acting and writing), I'm not sure I think there was THAT big a difference in the frequency of them. IV, V &VI all had cheese moments and awful acting as well. I can still enjoy all VI even if there is a rank order

 

The lightsaber is one of the coolest weapons ever thought up - but the lightsaber battles in IV, V & VI are LAME

 

Each set has merits and downfalls, it just so happens that the prequels had a few exceptional ones packaged with much higher expectations.

[cousin itt]

I wonder of the "bb" in the name "bb8" stands for "beach ball?"

[Guardian Comics]

My math comes to four as well.

 

Star Wars, ESB, Jedi and Phantom Menace. AOTC is unwatchable, and ROTS isn't far behind.

 

Jim

[vader2001]

I rank them IV, II, III, VI, V, I, but they almost all have something that make me shake my head....

[DougC]

For a fun take on how bad the prequels are Red Letter Media has a couple fun reviews.

 

Skip to the 7min mark of the first one for a nice compare/contrast of what makes the characters.

[fantastic_four]

All six of the Star Wars films have three bona-fide actors who gave great performances in the films--Harrison Ford as Han Solo, Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan, and Ian McDiarmid as Emperor Palpatine. Revenge of the Sith is good if for no other reason than to watch some of the biggest blocks of quality acting and villainhood in any of the films since that's the film where Palpatine got a ton of screen time.

 

But ROTS has so much other goodness, too. Grievous is relatively cool and has a very compelling character design. The lightsaber battles in this one are second to none. The best space battle scene of any of the films by FAR is the one at the start of this film with Obi-Wan and Anakin flying around looking for Grievous. Anakin's maiming and subsequent transformation into a cyborg are the most cringeworthy moments of all the films. Lots to like in that one.

[chrisco37]

Except that his conversion to the Dark Side was so weak and just not very believable.

 

Obi Wan told us that he was seduced by the Dark Side. I didn't see any of that "seduction" going on in the prequels. Just some "first love" blues.

[krighton]

Forget Hayden's acting and forget Jar-Jar because kids tend to love him just as some of us probably loved the Ewoks when we were young. The single worst thing in the prequels is the voice they gave the viceroy of the Trade Federation. I still cannot believe Lucas gave that character a Japanese accent who does the stereotypical pronouncing of L's as R's and R's as L's.

 

 

notice his slanted eyes