LogFAQs > #942933274

Kyuubi4269 posted...

It's not though. It's not terrible, but that's primarily from world building, not the plot or characters

The world-building was fine. Not every setting needs a 10,000 page atlas/story bible that nerdy fans can jerk off to for years to come, or that dozens of different writers can try to build an EU around decades later.

The allusions to events you knew nothing about make the world feel more real. Like real life, there's no true "beginning" or "ending" to any story, there are always things that happened "before" and things that will happen "later". You're basically seeing the story through Luke's eyes - to him, things like the Clone Wars or the life of Anakin will always be little more than hazy hints, because he didn't see those things.

It's like when Lord of the Rings mentions things that happened thousands of years before. Yes, the Silmarillion exists, but it doesn't need to. People in the Third Age speaking of thousands of years of beauty and culture that have been forever lost highlights the fading glory of the elves or the slow doom of the dwarves, and thus creates a sense of tragedy, loss, of things passing. You don't need to tell an epic and intricate tale of every single event of consequence or importance through the entirety of the First and Second Age to appreciate the events of the Third Age. We don't really need to see the glory of Numenor at its height or know the exact details of how it fell to appreciate the slow decay of its people and culture, the rot at the heart of Gondor, the loss of Arnor, the slow fading of Men, which parallels the withering of the other races.

When done right, that sort of "flashback" CAN add to a story. But when done poorly, it detracts from it.



Black_Crusher posted...

All that CGI takes me out of the whole thing completely. AND I felt like this back when it first came out too! That shit never looked good or realistic.

This is the other real problem with the Prequels. Too much emphasis on CGI makes everything look like a video game. Trying to cram as much action as possible on the screen weakens the overall effect, because no one moment or thing has the same gravitas. Worse, when the actors are literally standing in an entirely green room talking to thin-air, it hampers their ability to emote. At least part of the near-universal terrible acting in the Prequels stems from this (and the rest stems from Lucas' inability to write or direct human dialogue, something every actor he's ever worked with has complained about, and why his films work best when someone else is directing or screenwriting over him).

Again, to pull out the LotR comparison, this is part of why the LotR films are so praised while the Hobbit films feel so much weaker. Too much greenscreen takes actors out of the world, and takes the audience out of their immersion. I CARE less about a world when my brain is constantly telling me how fake it is - even a crappy studio set tends to have more verisimilitude than most CGI does.

This is the one thing the Sequels got right - everything tends to LOOK better, and thus allows better immersion into the world. The visual storytelling is much tighter, and more effective. The real problem there is that the scripts are so weak, and the lack of a unifying vision. Disney would have been far better off looking to see why the Marvel movies have been so successful, and implementing a similar scheme for Star Wars, rather than seemingly leaving the entire franchise they paid $4 billion for to aimlessly flounder.
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