Star Wars Episode VII - The Force Awakens discussion thread NOW WITH SPOILERS NOW THE FILM IS OUT.

[Rack 'n Ruin]

Yeah, I can see that happening too.

What do you think of Kylo Ren's look overall? I rather like it - presuming it is intended to intentionally ape Vader's garb and mask. Suitably villain-ish. But is he Sith? And if, the master or the apprentice? Based on his age, he's more likely to be still learning his "trade", I'd have thought. If he is the apprentice, who is the master?

[Summerhayes]

He definitely looks cool. I don't know yet if he's iconic in the way Vader and Maul are, but I guess only time will tell.

[Warcry]

Quips replace chemistry and characterisation, CGI replaces excitement and holy **** we'd better make this epic.

Actually, one of the things about the first film that surprised me was how much chemistry Pine, Quinto and that guy who played Éomer actually had. Obviously they weren't as good as Shatner, Nimoy and Kelley, but there was a lot of potential there and the scripts have pretty much squandered it so far. And then on top of that Simon Pegg is just completely awful, Sulu and Chekov are barely in the thing and they completely ruined Carol Marcus. Just about the only one who comes away looking better than the original is Uhura, and "token black who answers the space-phone" isn't exactly hard to beat.

I do think they could make a good Trek film with this cast, but only if the new director is willing to abandon the "epic" action genre and make something more akin to the Trek films of old.

(this is my to-watch list; every film on there has potential to be more stimulating than the best-possible "Hey, that was an alright episode of TNG" reaction Insurrection and Nemesis can hope for).

Nemesis gets a lot of crap, and some of it well-deserved, but it's still enjoyable enough in a G1 cartoon sort of way. It's terrible and it knows its terrible, but as long as you go into it looking for something terrible to laugh at there are worse ways to kill a couple hours.

Insurrection on the other hand is an awful film that shits on seven seasons and two movies' worth of previous characterizations. But worse than that, it's boring.

If so then fair enough, but I made an effort to watch the "No honest, it's good now!" shows in season 4 and if that's what fandom was promoting as the good stuff then "Good stuff" boils down to "We've given up on every one but the hardcore fans...let's make lots of references and hope that counts!". Having a faithfully recreated constitution class ship is smart. Having it be anything other than the Enterprise will only excite two people, only one of who won't go "This contradicts The Tholian Web!"

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying it was all great by any means. But I think we tend to forget just how bad some stretches of TOS and TNG actually were. Even the good TNG seasons only held my attention around 50% of the time on my most recent rewatch. Season 4 of Enterprise had its share of dumb episodes (like the Mirror Universe ones) alongside a few that I'd consider legit classics, but it was never boring.

Oh sure, but both those films are big visual epics by the standard of the time. It's a credit to Khan people can view it now as a successful claustrophobic thriller and still enjoy it.

I'm not so sure I'd agree with that where The Wrath of Khan is concerned. They made the thing on a budget of barely $11 million (the same as what the original, then-unknown Star Wars cost five years before that). That's not exactly a big-budget action film, even in those days (and barely a quarter of what they spent to make TMP a few years earlier). To be honest I think the reduced budget is part of why it's such a good movie...they had to be frugal and save their FX budget for the shots that they really needed, keeping the production from disappearing down an effects rabbit-hole like the first one did (and like most of today's action films do).

The Undiscovered Country also wound up dealing with a smaller budget than they'd anticipated since The Final Frontier had been such a flop, though they had more cash to play with than TWOK. It's definitely more of an action movie than Khan, but even by early 90s standards I'd say it was pretty tame (though much of that is due to the main cast being pensioners).

The standard for action films should keep moving though (and it will be hard for Star Wars not to feel reactionary now. Guardians of the Galaxy basically treated Star Wars like the first Star Wars treated Flash Gordon: "Here's a love letter to our childhood brought up to date for today's kids!" So where does that leave actual Star Wars? Especially from the same studio?), equally the original Star Wars looks like a cheap TV film compared to even the Prequels.

I actually don't disagree with that. I just don't take it to the same conclusions you do. Yes, the standards should keep moving. But they should keep moving in terms of quality, not quantity.

The original Star Wars movies (sans any of Lucas's ego-stroking revisions) have badly-dated effects but they're still far, far better films than the Prequels with their zillions of effects per minute could ever hope to be. And even though the effects are dated, they feel more important because with the prequels you know everything you're seeing is fake with actors green-screened in front of it. And honestly I find the same thing with a lot of modern action-fests -- the more CGI there is the less weight any of it carries because you know that nothing you're seeing is real. Whereas good CGI that's used sparingly carries a lot more "oomph".

That's part of the reason why I enjoy the first TF movie more than any of the sequels. The robots don't transform much until the final sequence, which gives them more of an impact than the sequels that have them running around in almost every scene. It makes them feel special in a way that the other movies just don't.

CGI is great but a lot of filmmakers use it as a crutch to hide the fact that their movie doesn't have more than forty minutes worth of actual plot.

I'd agree DS9 is character/arc driven and is brilliant. But the Star Trek people remember is the original and (very much in second place despite being the most popular Trek show on first broadcast, I think the films have made the difference here) TNG. The ones that did great self contained "hour" episodes that could be shown in any order and at thieir best could make a great film.

TNG is an odd beast actually, because I think it tried to be character-driven at times but the realities of being a syndicated show in the 80s really dragged it down. There are a ton of character and story arcs scattered throughout the series but they're usually only brought up once or twice per season and take the whole seven seasons to finally pay off. I think it would be a hugely different show if they'd had the freedom of today's TV landscape to work with.

Which is sort of what I'm hoping for when I say I want to see a new Trek TV show now.

Best of Both Worlds is literally a brilliant film. The big problrm with the TNG films is they're not as cinematic as many episodes!

Agreed. First Contact is really the only one that got that right, in my books.

Though I think that's really just a symptom of the real problem, which was letting the TV people produce the movies to start with. The TOS movies got good once they binned Roddenberry, and in retrospect the TNG movies really should have brought in a different crew and left Burman, Piller, Braga and the like to concentrate on making terrible Voyager episodes.

Cumberbatch is as close to being an Indian Shiek as Ricardo was. Both are horribly racist casting. I'd agree Cumberbatch was horrific casting, but then the entire character is appalling if you apply the same standard.

Right, but horribly racist casting was the rule of the day in the 1960s. In the 2010s there are talented actors of almost any ethnic background you can think of bouncing around Hollywood. Couldn't they have called up Naveen Andrews or someone?

In terms of the old guard coming back for Star Wars, to an extent I'd agree with Warcry that it's playing it too safe (mind, I've a feeling The Phantom Menace must have about the same number of characters from the original trilogy in it). But as long as they're treated right, one film at least should be a good old romp. I'm assuming it'll basically be passing the torch to the noobs to carry the rest of the trilogy with reduced roles at best for them in the next two. I'm also pretty much convinced Ford is going to get the heroic death for Solo he was keen on during the originals.

It'd be nice to see them go in that direction but I do fear that it'll wind up falling to the same trap as the Star Trek films, where they intended to replace the originals over the course of a few films but never did because they were afraid of tanking their box office returns.

[EDIT]Oh, and I think Kylo Ren looks totally forgettable. Like, to the point where I needed to Google him because I'd forgotten what he looked like. His mask reminds me of a Cylon.

[inflatable dalek]

Actually, one of the things about the first film that surprised me was how much chemistry Pine, Quinto and that guy who played Éomer actually had. Obviously they weren't as good as Shatner, Nimoy and Kelley, but there was a lot of potential there and the scripts have pretty much squandered it so far. And then on top of that Simon Pegg is just completely awful, Sulu and Chekov are barely in the thing and they completely ruined Carol Marcus. Just about the only one who comes away looking better than the original is Uhura, and "token black who answers the space-phone" isn't exactly hard to beat.

I'd agree the cast is generally fine (Urban as McCoy has never really worked for me though, he's the only one who feels like he's doing a full on impression of his predecessor and that puts me off. Ironically that seems to be what many people like about him. Mind, he basically made the last film Judge Dredd Vs. Robocop, which was nice), I even like Scotty! The fact he has Deep Roy as his sidekick and got to have his own random plot in the last one was actually one of the things I enjoyed about it.

I don't think Saldana should be underestimated though, the part as written isn't hugely brilliant (the girl one gets to be a girlfriend to one of the two leads!), but she's got enough presence to bump up what's written. I'd say she's actually replaced McCoy as the "Third One" in the trio, and it's easy to see why she's had the best career outside of the Trek movies out of all of them except the with-a-few-years-head-start Pegg.

What was going on with Carol Marcus? Apparently they cut a line explaining why she has a completely different accent to the original (I guess someone thought that would be silly with the whole Khan thing) but that's by far the least of of her problems. The original had great chemistry with Kirk considering we only saw the aftermath of their relationship, this one seems like a walking plank of wood.

Nemesis gets a lot of crap, and some of it well-deserved, but it's still enjoyable enough in a G1 cartoon sort of way. It's terrible and it knows its terrible, but as long as you go into it looking for something terrible to laugh at there are worse ways to kill a couple hours.

I'd say part of its problem is it thinks it has something profound to say about ageing and death and individuality (though the "Some people are just ****ing unsavable" message in Data's speech to Picard about the differences between them and their doubles is completely against the spirit of Trek) but it's all quite silly. And everyone looks and feels so old! The original cast didn't feel this ancient in their last film despite mostly being older, everyone seems so tired despite the attempts to convince us Picard is a super action hero (there is nothing, and I mean nothing, as silly in the last two films as a character in his 70's single handedly killing a load of monsters with guns).

Insurrection on the other hand is an awful film that shits on seven seasons and two movies' worth of previous characterizations. But worse than that, it's boring.

Yeah, I quite enjoyed it at the time--and the location work is actually quite lush and gives the outside stuff an more expensive feel than that in most of the other films--but it's aged very badly because once you start to think about it the whole thing just falls apart. I've seen people online make excellent arguments as to why what Picard does is the right thing to have done, but the film itself completely drops the ball on it and makes him seem a horrible person. The "The rights of smug rich white people are important!" aspect of the plot is basically racist as well.

I mean, what sort of film makes you hope the villains win because who the heroes are protecting are such terrible people? "We won't pick up a gun to fight for our freedom... but we'll let you're people fight and die for us Captain. Nothing hypocritical there. Oh, that guy in engineering who got set on fire? No, he can't stay on our planet to heal, we must keep this place a secret. Yeah, shame a lot of people must have died in that battle, best not mention it".

I'm not so sure I'd agree with that where The Wrath of Khan is concerned. They made the thing on a budget of barely $11 million (the same as what the original, then-unknown Star Wars cost five years before that). That's not exactly a big-budget action film, even in those days (and barely a quarter of what they spent to make TMP a few years earlier). To be honest I think the reduced budget is part of why it's such a good movie...they had to be frugal and save their FX budget for the shots that they really needed, keeping the production from disappearing down an effects rabbit-hole like the first one did (and like most of today's action films do).

The Undiscovered Country also wound up dealing with a smaller budget than they'd anticipated since The Final Frontier had been such a flop, though they had more cash to play with than TWOK. It's definitely more of an action movie than Khan, but even by early 90s standards I'd say it was pretty tame (though much of that is due to the main cast being pensioners).

Don't forget with Khan though that they were able to save money in so many places from reusing stuff from the first (half the film is shot on the Enterprise bridge as three different locations!) that the model stuff was able to have a good amount of cash pumped into it. The Reliant is as good as anything in the first film, and generally everything still look fantastic, it's only really the nebula effect which looks a bit dated now, it's very clearly disco lights in a water tank in a couple of places.

I think having ILM onboard helped as well, the Trek films they worked on generally look much better today than those they didn't. Even Search (which is probably their weakest) knocks spots of V and the two TNG films they didn't do.

The original Star Wars movies (sans any of Lucas's ego-stroking revisions) have badly-dated effects but they're still far, far better films than the Prequels with their zillions of effects per minute could ever hope to be. And even though the effects are dated, they feel more important because with the prequels you know everything you're seeing is fake with actors green-screened in front of it. And honestly I find the same thing with a lot of modern action-fests -- the more CGI there is the less weight any of it carries because you know that nothing you're seeing is real. Whereas good CGI that's used sparingly carries a lot more "oomph".

I'd say the "Models feel more real than CGI" thing is more psychological than anything based in reality, after all, a model is still fake thing. Both still take the same amount of time, effort and artistry to create as well. I think people forget how much poor modelwork in cheap films there was as well.

TNG is an odd beast actually, because I think it tried to be character-driven at times but the realities of being a syndicated show in the 80s really dragged it down. There are a ton of character and story arcs scattered throughout the series but they're usually only brought up once or twice per season and take the whole seven seasons to finally pay off. I think it would be a hugely different show if they'd had the freedom of today's TV landscape to work with.

Yeah, it's odd to remember how exciting it was as a kid when TNG (or any show, KAAR coming back in Knight Rider was just as mind blowing) did a sequel. Q! Barcley! Mr. Mott.... well, maybe not that last one.

Which is sort of what I'm hoping for when I say I want to see a new Trek TV show now.

Oh absolutely, what a new Trek show (and I can see it happening for the same reason TNG happened: They've got these sets, props and costumes hanging about and only being used once every few years. So milk them! The only real deterent is TV Trek and Film Trek are now owned by two different companies so they'd need to sort something out for their usage) should do is what, for all its flaws, first season of Nex Gen did do. To not rely on past glories and to try and push as hard as possible to be a relevant and contemporary show.

Though I think that's really just a symptom of the real problem, which was letting the TV people produce the movies to start with. The TOS movies got good once they binned Roddenberry, and in retrospect the TNG movies really should have brought in a different crew and left Burman, Piller, Braga and the like to concentrate on making terrible Voyager episodes.

Yeah, that's part of the problem with Nemesis. They're trying to bring in fresh blood on the writing and directing, but it's still a by now clearly very tired Berman in charge and he has no idea how to make films.

Right, but horribly racist casting was the rule of the day in the 1960s. In the 2010s there are talented actors of almost any ethnic background you can think of bouncing around Hollywood. Couldn't they have called up Naveen Andrews or someone?

IIRC Benico Del Toro was actually their first choice but had to pull out, still the wrong ethnicity for the character but at least he'd have been closer to Ricardo.

My problem with Cumberbatch is first and foremost that he's quite poor in the role. There's some potentially interesting layers there--he's not a good man but his goals are actually sympathetic as his beef with Star Fleet is entirely over the mistreatment of his own people--but it's all just one note DEEP BOOMING VOICE stuff of the sort that makes me wonder why he's so highly rated.

It'd be nice to see them go in that direction but I do fear that it'll wind up falling to the same trap as the Star Trek films, where they intended to replace the originals over the course of a few films but never did because they were afraid of tanking their box office returns.

I think the advantage is how old all the originals are now. Basing an entire trilogy around them would be insane considering the odds of them all still being alive by the end of filming is hellish risky. Even the aliens seem to be covered by this, if they're going to force poor old Peter Mayhew into the Chewbacca costume still I'd say a recast there is very unlikey.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying it was all great by any means. But I think we tend to forget just how bad some stretches of TOS and TNG actually were. Even the good TNG seasons only held my attention around 50% of the time on my most recent rewatch. Season 4 of Enterprise had its share of dumb episodes (like the Mirror Universe ones) alongside a few that I'd consider legit classics, but it was never boring.

See, boring is generally the word I'd use for the bulk of Enterprise and Voyager. Bad TNG and TOS can be painful, but they do feel like products of their time. Around the start of Voyager Trek got stuck in a 1994 rut and never really got out of it (most obviously from the really annoying continued refusal to have gay people in the future, even when on the same network as the with-actual-gays Buffy. Mind, that's still a bloody problem with the films, no Kirk having a threesome doesn't count) and became just the same thing over and over with the later episodes feeling like a bland decade old episode of television that's no more interesting than an episode of Stargate.

From what I saw, the last season of Enterprise struggled with its mini-arcs and two parters (apparently dictated by budget cuts rather than artistic intent) because it was a bunch of people who had no idea how to do anything but safe 1994 television struggling with the idea of 2004 like your gran with a Ipad.

Mind, all that said, Robocop basically played the same character in Enterprise as Into Darkness, so maybe it's more influential than I give it credit.

[Selkadoom]

Yeah, I can see that happening too.

What do you think of Kylo Ren's look overall? I rather like it - presuming it is intended to intentionally ape Vader's garb and mask. Suitably villain-ish. But is he Sith? And if, the master or the apprentice? Based on his age, he's more likely to be still learning his "trade", I'd have thought. If he is the apprentice, who is the master?

A tough call and a reason I still detest the choice to effectively ignore the entirety of Star Wars Lore post Return. The Sith are constantly evolving and changing so with just shoe horning in a new duo, and it had better be a Duo and none of this One Sith bull, means that Its a crap shoot if we're gonna get gpod villains.

[inflatable dalek]

I don't know, Darth Vader and the emperor wore the same clothes for decades. That doesn't sound like a group that are constantly evolving, at least when it comes to fashion. The Jedi seem to be the same as well, Obi-Wan and Yoda stuck in their uniform for years despite being in hiding as people who aren't supposed to be Jedi...

[Rack 'n Ruin]

I don't know, Darth Vader and the emperor wore the same clothes for decades. That doesn't sound like a group that are constantly evolving, at least when it comes to fashion. The Jedi seem to be the same as well, Obi-Wan and Yoda stuck in their uniform for years despite being in hiding as people who aren't supposed to be Jedi...

Yes, this also struck me as odd. Perhaps the layered cream and brown robes look is the Star Wars equivalent of jeans and T-shirt? Everyone's wearing it, so may as well blend in. Actually, I expect I've just made poor old Sir Alec Guinness spin in his grave at the very thought of him wearing jeans (or their equivalent, at least).

Do you think Jedi and Sith wash much? If they stick to the same old robes day in, day out I have a bit of a worry they might be stinky old devils. Although at least most of Darth Vader's outfit looks wipe clean...

Q: How do you get a Jedi to take a shower?
A: You have to Force them.

[inflatable dalek]

Maybe it was just dress down Friday everytime we saw the Jedi in the Prequels?

Mind, whilst I doubt they'll be actively retconed (films, even bad ones, have a lot more cultural impact than books or comics), I wouldn't be surprised if the Prequels are completely ignored by the new films. Tellingly none of the 500000 standalone films seems to be intersecting with them despite the fact that doing something like "McGreggor Kenobi has an adventure on Tatooine" would seem a no-brainer from a practical "The actor is still around and the right age" perspective. It would certainly seem easier to do than resurrecting Peter Cushing.

[Rack 'n Ruin]

Random thought: Following on from Episode VII "The Force Awakens", could we see:

Episode VIII "The Force Realises it is Saturday and it Doesn't Need to Get Up Yet"

and

Episode IX "The Force Rolls Over, Farts, and Goes Back to Sleep"


A restless world demands to know!

[Warcry]

I'd agree the cast is generally fine (Urban as McCoy has never really worked for me though, he's the only one who feels like he's doing a full on impression of his predecessor and that puts me off. Ironically that seems to be what many people like about him. Mind, he basically made the last film Judge Dredd Vs. Robocop, which was nice), I even like Scotty! The fact he has Deep Roy as his sidekick and got to have his own random plot in the last one was actually one of the things I enjoyed about it.

I'm exactly the opposite of you on this one. Scotty is the one that feels like an impression to me, one done by a hyperactive comedian who's not as funny as he thinks he is. His subplot in Into Darkness fell flat for me because he was impossible to take seriously no matter how serious of a situation he was put into. Jimmy Doohan didn't have much more to work with but he made Scotty feel like much more of a real person and less of a cartoon.

Whereas the new McCoy feels like a very different take on the character to me because it's not the 1960s anymore so he can't just spend 90% of his screen time being all "bloody space minorities, can't trust the lot of them!"

I don't think Saldana should be underestimated though, the part as written isn't hugely brilliant (the girl one gets to be a girlfriend to one of the two leads!), but she's got enough presence to bump up what's written. I'd say she's actually replaced McCoy as the "Third One" in the trio, and it's easy to see why she's had the best career outside of the Trek movies out of all of them except the with-a-few-years-head-start Pegg.

I've never seen another movie with her in it, honestly, so I can't say anything about her qualities as an actress. I don't really think the new movies treat the character well, though. In spite of mostly being a tokenistic background character in the original series, Uhura still somehow became an icon for black and women's rights. Being "the one that the male leads drool over" feels like a step back rather than forward.

She's definitely #3 in terms of screen time though, where the original was probably in the running with Chekov for the least. And if they ever go ahead and promote a character off of the ship the way they did with Sulu and Chekov in the original movies I suspect it'll be her.

What was going on with Carol Marcus? Apparently they cut a line explaining why she has a completely different accent to the original (I guess someone thought that would be silly with the whole Khan thing) but that's by far the least of of her problems. The original had great chemistry with Kirk considering we only saw the aftermath of their relationship, this one seems like a walking plank of wood.

The character seems to be there mainly as eye candy and the actress appears to have been cast to match (which might not be fair to Alice Eve, but it's pretty clear that the movie has no use for anything but her looks). Whereas the original Carol was a woman in her 40s/early 50s, well beyond the age that Hollywood will exploit as sex objects, and thus was written as an actual person instead of a sexy lamp.

And everyone looks and feels so old! The original cast didn't feel this ancient in their last film despite mostly being older, everyone seems so tired despite the attempts to convince us Picard is a super action hero (there is nothing, and I mean nothing, as silly in the last two films as a character in his 70's single handedly killing a load of monsters with guns).

Not everybody. At the time I remember thinking that Crusher and Troi actually seemed to have aged in reverse over the course of the films, which I suspect is a testament to the much higher makeup budget that a feature film has. I was actually surprised by how the TV show didn't try to hide the fact that they were hitting their 40s in the final seasons, because I always felt that the movies tried to "youth" them up.

The male cast for sure looked bad, though, Stewart less so than the others (I always thought he looked like he was 70 in his 50s, and didn't age must past that for 20 years...though he looks completely ancient now). I don't think they actually looked worse than the TOS cast did, but seeing them old definitely hit me harder because I grew up with them as young people (whereas Kirk and co. were always fogeys to me).

I mean, what sort of film makes you hope the villains win because who the heroes are protecting are such terrible people? "We won't pick up a gun to fight for our freedom... but we'll let you're people fight and die for us Captain. Nothing hypocritical there. Oh, that guy in engineering who got set on fire? No, he can't stay on our planet to heal, we must keep this place a secret. Yeah, shame a lot of people must have died in that battle, best not mention it".

That's part of the problem, but I think it's equally bad that Picard is willing to casually toss aside the Prime Directive here where in the TV series he was willing to let entire species die off to uphold the strictest possible interpretation of it. You're left to think that he decided it wasn't a big deal this time around because he wants to nail one of the aliens, and that's about the most un-Picardlike behaviour I can possibly imagine.

I'd say the "Models feel more real than CGI" thing is more psychological than anything based in reality, after all, a model is still fake thing. Both still take the same amount of time, effort and artistry to create as well. I think people forget how much poor modelwork in cheap films there was as well.

I didn't actually say that I thought models looked more real than CGI, though. Good, smartly-used CGI can feel just as real as good, smartly-used models. But the CGI that overwhelmed the Star Wars prequels (and actually, mainly just II and III...I actually think The Phantom Menace looked far better than either) were neither. Making an entire CGI world and pasting actors over top of it is way easier to screw up than mostly shooting on location/on sets and adding CGI on top for polish.

Sidenote: Episode III was ten ****ing years ago. How?

Yeah, it's odd to remember how exciting it was as a kid when TNG (or any show, KAAR coming back in Knight Rider was just as mind blowing) did a sequel. Q! Barcley! Mr. Mott.... well, maybe not that last one.

I agree, it was a gigantic deal! Even if the episode was terrible, getting to see Hugh or Duras or Tomalak again was enough to make it feel super special to my little kid's brain.

My problem with Cumberbatch is first and foremost that he's quite poor in the role. There's some potentially interesting layers there--he's not a good man but his goals are actually sympathetic as his beef with Star Fleet is entirely over the mistreatment of his own people--but it's all just one note DEEP BOOMING VOICE stuff of the sort that makes me wonder why he's so highly rated.

I wasn't a huge fan of his performance either. He's basically the anti-Khan, all cold and superior where Montalban was boiling over with barely-contained rage. He's a great Smaug, but as Khan? Nah.

I think the advantage is how old all the originals are now. Basing an entire trilogy around them would be insane considering the odds of them all still being alive by the end of filming is hellish risky. Even the aliens seem to be covered by this, if they're going to force poor old Peter Mayhew into the Chewbacca costume still I'd say a recast there is very unlikey.

I'm sure they'd recast Chewie or C-3PO or the likes if need be, but sadly I do think that one of Hamill, Fisher or Ford will bite the dust in the next decade.

Lando's not in this one, is he? Bah, he's the only one I'd really want to see again...

See, boring is generally the word I'd use for the bulk of Enterprise and Voyager. Bad TNG and TOS can be painful, but they do feel like products of their time. Around the start of Voyager Trek got stuck in a 1994 rut and never really got out of it

Honestly, I think the problems with Voyager go farther back than that. They hit a rut around season five or six of TNG that they never really got out of. DS9 aside (which had their own, separate production team doing their own thing) the same people ran the franchise for the full run of three TV series. They were already visibly burning out by the end of TNG, and then they tried to pump out another 10 years worth of TNG-lite (while at the same time dividing their attention with movies).

If Voyager and Enterprise had casts that were as likeable as the TNG bunch they probably could have pulled it off, at least with the same level of success as the last couple of "going through the motions" years of TNG. But Scott Bakula and Robert Duncan McNeill were the only ones among them with more charisma than a houseplant, so...

The third season of Enterprise deserves props for blowing up the formula entirely and doing its own thing, though I wasn't a huge fan of where it actually went because seriously, **** the Xindi.

(most obviously from the really annoying continued refusal to have gay people in the future, even when on the same network as the with-actual-gays Buffy. Mind, that's still a bloody problem with the films, no Kirk having a threesome doesn't count) and became just the same thing over and over with the later episodes feeling like a bland decade old episode of television that's no more interesting than an episode of Stargate.

Apparently Geordi was supposed to be gay at some point, but they wussed out. A shame, it would have been nice for him to have a personality beyond "blind black nerd".

I don't care at all either way about having gays in the show, but the Voyager and Enterprise gangs could have used anything to make them feel like real people. I mean, how would you even describe Reid or Hoshi or Mayweather or Kim or Kes or Chakotay beyond their jobs, race and appearance?

I don't know, Darth Vader and the emperor wore the same clothes for decades. That doesn't sound like a group that are constantly evolving, at least when it comes to fashion. The Jedi seem to be the same as well, Obi-Wan and Yoda stuck in their uniform for years despite being in hiding as people who aren't supposed to be Jedi...

Turning Obi-Wan's practical "crazy old desert hermit" robes into a Jedi uniform was only one of the silliest things that the prequels did. I mean, the EU beat them to it, but it's not like Lucas was particularly beholden to that...

[Rack 'n Ruin]

Maybe it was just dress down Friday everytime we saw the Jedi in the Prequels?

Mind, whilst I doubt they'll be actively retconed (films, even bad ones, have a lot more cultural impact than books or comics), I wouldn't be surprised if the Prequels are completely ignored by the new films. Tellingly none of the 500000 standalone films seems to be intersecting with them despite the fact that doing something like "McGreggor Kenobi has an adventure on Tatooine" would seem a no-brainer from a practical "The actor is still around and the right age" perspective. It would certainly seem easier to do than resurrecting Peter Cushing.

Sorry for the double post, but I've been thinking about the post above. It is an interesting thought. Have the prequels been written off by Lucasfilm / Disney? I am certainly struggling to think of any prequel characters, groups or plot threads I'd like to see more of, bar the Obi-Wan scenario you mention, and adventures with the Jedi and the Coone troopers. The Clone Wars cartoon covers the latter quite well, I believe (never seen it though), and there are problems with the Obi-Wan idea. Who would be the antagonist? They would have to be powerful enough to face off with a Jedi Master and for there to be dramatic tension, but not linked to the Empire (at least, they can pass no message re. Obi-Wan's location). The activities of the film would also have to pass without drawing unwanted attention to the dude swinging a lightsaber (he is supposed to be in hiding, after all). Could be tricky to plot.

I wouldn't mind a short film showing the grisly death of Jar-Jar Binks, however. But how to kill a Gungan? Eaten by a Rancor? Torn limb from limb by a Wookiee? Blown up by the Death Star? Decisions, decisions...

[Rack 'n Ruin]

Lando's not in this one, is he? Bah, he's the only one I'd really want to see again...

I'd like to see more Lando too. Fingers crossed for VIII and IX.

Turning Obi-Wan's practical "crazy old desert hermit" robes into a Jedi uniform was only one of the silliest things that the prequels did. I mean, the EU beat them to it, but it's not like Lucas was particularly beholden to that...

I'd say the robes were implied to be the Jedi "uniform" in the classic trilogy, with Anakin's redeemed spirit wearing a variation in VI, and Yoda wearing an old, worn version (sort of) in V and VI.

[inflatable dalek]

I'm exactly the opposite of you on this one. Scotty is the one that feels like an impression to me, one done by a hyperactive comedian who's not as funny as he thinks he is. His subplot in Into Darkness fell flat for me because he was impossible to take seriously no matter how serious of a situation he was put into. Jimmy Doohan didn't have much more to work with but he made Scotty feel like much more of a real person and less of a cartoon.

I think the first film actually set up a good reason for him to be more oddball than the original Scotty (he's basically gone stir crazy), and for me it creates a nice contrast to the more straight laced others (it's telling he's the one who doesn't have a problem telling Kirk where to get off with the torpedoes).

I've never seen another movie with her in it, honestly, so I can't say anything about her qualities as an actress. I don't really think the new movies treat the character well, though. In spite of mostly being a tokenistic background character in the original series, Uhura still somehow became an icon for black and women's rights. Being "the one that the male leads drool over" feels like a step back rather than forward.

I'd say Guardians of the Galaxy would be well up your street if you like old school Star Wars, just pure great silly fun. And Original Uhura had "To be drolled over" amongst her checklist of things to bring to the show as well, those skirts basically serve no other purpose (and a very nice midriff in Mirror Mirror as well). Don't forget that whilst we might have seen New Uhura's bra, the original is the one who got a completely nude dance scene.

The fact no one else found that bit in The Final Frontier sexy doesn't negate the fact someone making the film thought it would be...

The character seems to be there mainly as eye candy and the actress appears to have been cast to match (which might not be fair to Alice Eve, but it's pretty clear that the movie has no use for anything but her looks). Whereas the original Carol was a woman in her 40s/early 50s, well beyond the age that Hollywood will exploit as sex objects, and thus was written as an actual person instead of a sexy lamp.

I only know Eve through her famous dad (though I'm guessing Shoestring and Waking the Dead aren't well known outside the UK, he's a professional grumpy actor), the material doesn't really help as the script doesn't make her seem very bright and doesn't give her much of a chance to react properly to seeing her father's head crushed right in front of her creating a sense of dull surprise. But equally, she doesn't do much with what she is given.

Not everybody. At the time I remember thinking that Crusher and Troi actually seemed to have aged in reverse over the course of the films, which I suspect is a testament to the much higher makeup budget that a feature film has. I was actually surprised by how the TV show didn't try to hide the fact that they were hitting their 40s in the final seasons, because I always felt that the movies tried to "youth" them up.

Troi certainly looked better once they put her in proper clothes. There's a mentallity in Berman era Trek costumes that "Tight" automatically equates to "Sexy", as if being able to count a woman's ribs is a real turn on. Troi, Seven, and T'Pol (oddly Kira wore a similar catsuit but it actually worked for her somehow) were all played by women who looked much more stunning in real life they they ever did in their catsuits that often looked made out of old carpet. Sadly Troi was the only one who got to dress sensibly and then drastically add to the sex appeal, that, let's face it, was the only reason for the character being there.

I'm not for gratuitous objectification of women, but if you're going to do it, do it right (the original series had a much better knack of making outfits that no sane person would wear look gorgeous. Those backwards dungerees in What Are Little Girls Made of... Yowser).

Odd how Crusher and the Dax's managed to avoid it.

The male cast for sure looked bad, though, Stewart less so than the others (I always thought he looked like he was 70 in his 50s, and didn't age must past that for 20 years...though he looks completely ancient now). I don't think they actually looked worse than the TOS cast did, but seeing them old definitely hit me harder because I grew up with them as young people (whereas Kirk and co. were always fogeys to me).

Stewart doesn't look so bad, but it's a very lethargic performance. Which is odd considering how much of that film is structured around keeping him happy (the car chase was his idea, as was the villain not being a long lost son), he's too good to be completely awful but it's basically autopilot by his standards.

Factor in Worf seems to be asleep, Riker looks terrible (the topless scene is the most terrifying in the film) and I'm not sure if Geordi is in it and it's an odd film for the regulars. Ironically considering he wanted to be killed off as he was getting too old to play an android, Spiner gets away with it because the make up hides a multitude of sins.

That's part of the problem, but I think it's equally bad that Picard is willing to casually toss aside the Prime Directive here where in the TV series he was willing to let entire species die off to uphold the strictest possible interpretation of it. You're left to think that he decided it wasn't a big deal this time around because he wants to nail one of the aliens, and that's about the most un-Picardlike behaviour I can possibly imagine.

Hey, Picard acting in a completely different way to how he did in the episode with exactly the same plot where it was all brown people in peril and they were led by a wrinkly old man rather than a milf doesn't make it out of character, it just reveals he was a really horrible racist all along.

I agree, it was a gigantic deal! Even if the episode was terrible, getting to see Hugh or Duras or Tomalak again was enough to make it feel super special to my little kid's brain.

Tomalak was an odd one in that the character was completely generic (and not even really in his last two appearances), pretty much every other Romulan Commander could have been made him with absolutely no rewriting. That's entirely down to the actor and it's a shame both the Selar idea and Babylon 5 basically stopped him showing up.

I wasn't a huge fan of his performance either. He's basically the anti-Khan, all cold and superior where Montalban was boiling over with barely-contained rage. He's a great Smaug, but as Khan? Nah.

Yeah, there's actually a reasonable explanation for him being a very different character: We've only ever seen Khan as a freshly woken up in the 23rd century uncertain plotter with his charisma turned up to 11 to get people onside or as completely off his tits and driven mad by isolation and death. A version woken up early who's had time to adjust, who's been working got Starfleet for at least a few years (and the idea that the Federation would react badly to the destruction of Vulcan is a good one) should be a very different man. It's just a bad sort of different though.

I'm sure they'd recast Chewie or C-3PO or the likes if need be, but sadly I do think that one of Hamill, Fisher or Ford will bite the dust in the next decade.

Though "Young Han Solo" is one of the films they're doing isn't it? Which is odd considering we're almost certainly talking "Close to Original Age Han Solo". The rumour is Ford only agreed to this if there was another Indiana Jones... which is mental even if crashing your plane into a golf course is exactly the sort of thing Indiana Jones would do.

Lando's not in this one, is he? Bah, he's the only one I'd really want to see again...

And he seemed a bit niffed about it as well, suggesting no surprise showing.

Still, Admiral Ackbar right? That's who we love!

Honestly, I think the problems with Voyager go farther back than that. They hit a rut around season five or six of TNG that they never really got out of. DS9 aside (which had their own, separate production team doing their own thing) the same people ran the franchise for the full run of three TV series. They were already visibly burning out by the end of TNG, and then they tried to pump out another 10 years worth of TNG-lite (while at the same time dividing their attention with movies).

If Voyager and Enterprise had casts that were as likeable as the TNG bunch they probably could have pulled it off, at least with the same level of success as the last couple of "going through the motions" years of TNG. But Scott Bakula and Robert Duncan McNeill were the only ones among them with more charisma than a houseplant, so...

The third season of Enterprise deserves props for blowing up the formula entirely and doing its own thing, though I wasn't a huge fan of where it actually went because seriously, **** the Xindi.

Yeah, I'd say that's all pretty much bang on the head. I'd say making Braga a showrunner was a mistake as well. He is (or at least was), an extremely talented writer but one who has a very specific niche. He does the bonkers mad SF concept of the week, and does it well (several episodes he wrote defined a trope that every SF show still seems required to do). But that's not a good fit for every single episode, especially if you want something like consistent character development. A man who'll turn everyone into monsters and back in 45 minutes with no lasting consequences is not the guy for that.

Have him on-board to do a couple of format stretching shows a year, or couple him up with another writer who can pull him in different directions (it's telling most of his best stuff came from working with Ron Moore), but don't let him run the whole show.

Oh, to late.

We should have a Star Trek thread!

Sorry for the double post, but I've been thinking about the post above. It is an interesting thought. Have the prequels been written off by Lucasfilm / Disney? I am certainly struggling to think of any prequel characters, groups or plot threads I'd like to see more of, bar the Obi-Wan scenario you mention, and adventures with the Jedi and the Coone troopers. The Clone Wars cartoon covers the latter quite well, I believe (never seen it though), and there are problems with the Obi-Wan idea. Who would be the antagonist? They would have to be powerful enough to face off with a Jedi Master and for there to be dramatic tension, but not linked to the Empire (at least, they can pass no message re. Obi-Wan's location). The activities of the film would also have to pass without drawing unwanted attention to the dude swinging a lightsaber (he is supposed to be in hiding, after all). Could be tricky to plot.

I wouldn't mind a short film showing the grisly death of Jar-Jar Binks, however. But how to kill a Gungan? Eaten by a Rancor? Torn limb from limb by a Wookiee? Blown up by the Death Star? Decisions, decisions...

I suppose they might end up doing something with the PT, but it's telling that all the callbacks and references in the trailers and everything announced about the forthcoming films revolves around the first three. Not a single nod to 50% of the cinematic output so far. At best Boba Fett will probably still be played by a Kiwi (though if we never see his face will they bother?), despite the fact that, as Warcry says, it's been long enough for the kids those films were supposedly aimed at to have grown up and become nostalgic for them (though that doesn't seem to be happening. Harry Potter, Matrix and LOTR all come much higher for late nighties/noughties kids).

As said, I don't think we're talking actively contradicting anything, it's more likely to be "Let's never talk again of that time your granddad cut up a load of small children into little bits and still got into Jedi heaven after he died because he eventually renounced evil with only one blown up planet to his name. And you thought him getting a pass on that after strangling loads of grown up and ordering torture and shit was unlikely".

[Warcry]

Sorry for the double post, but I've been thinking about the post above. It is an interesting thought. Have the prequels been written off by Lucasfilm / Disney? I am certainly struggling to think of any prequel characters, groups or plot threads I'd like to see more of, bar the Obi-Wan scenario you mention, and adventures with the Jedi and the Coone troopers. The Clone Wars cartoon covers the latter quite well, I believe

It's funny you bring up the Clone Wars show, because I think the new movies are more likely to have callbacks to that than the actual prequel trilogy. Not only is it the only EU stuff that's still considered canon, it's also the only thing to come out of the Prequel era that actually seems to be popular.

I'd say the robes were implied to be the Jedi "uniform" in the classic trilogy, with Anakin's redeemed spirit wearing a variation in VI, and Yoda wearing an old, worn version (sort of) in V and VI.

I wouldn't have considered Yoda an example, since he looks to me like he's just wearing space-hobo rags, but I'd completely forgotten about Anakin. It was still a silly thing to do in the 1980s, then.

The funny thing is, Anakin actually spent most of his Jedi years running around in foreshadowy black leather. Did he ever wear anything like the typical brown robes on-screen?

I think the first film actually set up a good reason for him to be more oddball than the original Scotty (he's basically gone stir crazy), and for me it creates a nice contrast to the more straight laced others (it's telling he's the one who doesn't have a problem telling Kirk where to get off with the torpedoes).

It gives a good excuse for him to be the silly joke character, yes. I don't think that plays well into giving him actual, serious plotlines though. After the first one, my reaction was "Oh, Scotty's just being nuts again..." Especially since randomly flipping out over torpedoes is a bit odd to begin with. I mean, this can't be the first time that classified, experimental weapons have been loaded aboard a Starfleet ship. It's the sort of thing that happens all the time in real life.

I'd say Guardians of the Galaxy would be well up your street if you like old school Star Wars, just pure great silly fun.

Do plan to check it out eventually, but I've got a big backlog of stuff on my "to watch" pile.

And Original Uhura had "To be drolled over" amongst her checklist of things to bring to the show as well, those skirts basically serve no other purpose (and a very nice midriff in Mirror Mirror as well).

Original Uhura was there to be drooled over by the viewers, though. The scripts are generally pretty good about making sure the rest of the crew treat her with the respect due to a fellow officer. Kirk and Spock certainly didn't objectify her the way the new versions do.

That was what Rand and Chapel were for.

Troi certainly looked better once they put her in proper clothes.

OH MY GOD YES. In spite of being nearly a decade older she was so much sexier once Jellico made her start dressing like a normal human being. Before that it was impossible to take her seriously. And her wardrobes in the films were even better. Honestly I'm not sure how they managed to make her look so bad earlier on unless they were actively trying to.

The scripts started treating her with a lot more respect around the same time, though, so I'm not sure that it was just the costume change that made her more attractive.

There's a mentallity in Berman era Trek costumes that "Tight" automatically equates to "Sexy", as if being able to count a woman's ribs is a real turn on. Troi, Seven, and T'Pol (oddly Kira wore a similar catsuit but it actually worked for her somehow) were all played by women who looked much more stunning in real life they they ever did in their catsuits that often looked made out of old carpet. Sadly Troi was the only one who got to dress sensibly and then drastically add to the sex appeal, that, let's face it, was the only reason for the character being there.

Female costume designs are pretty awful all-around in TNG-and-later Trek. It says something when the blatantly oversexed stuff from the 60s show still represent the best female wardrobe the franchise has ever seen.

Kira actually went through two different uniforms over the course of the series, and I think the first one (two-tone red with textured fabric) worked really well for her while at the same time not coming off as particularly exploitative. The single-coloured version from the later seasons never looked good to me though. Especially since all of the other Bajoran characters kept wearing the old one, so it came off as a blatant attempt to sex her up.

Ironically she, like Troi, looked her best when they put her in a Starfleet uniform for the last few episodes of the last season. And that was pretty clearly her least sexed-up outfit of all.

Odd how Crusher and the Dax's managed to avoid it.

Crusher actually ran around in a catsuit version of the standard uniform for some reason during the TV series, even after the guys moved to the more conservatively-cut outfits in season three. But then she wore a lab coat over it 90% of the time, so I'm not sure what the point was. The overall effect was no more revealing than if they'd just put her in a looser outfit like the guys.

Stewart doesn't look so bad, but it's a very lethargic performance. Which is odd considering how much of that film is structured around keeping him happy (the car chase was his idea, as was the villain not being a long lost son), he's too good to be completely awful but it's basically autopilot by his standards.

I can't say that I blame him. He'd been playing Picard for, what, nearly twenty years by that point? It can't be easy to get excited to play the same character again, especially when it was probably obvious how awful the movie was going to be early on in production.

Factor in Worf seems to be asleep, Riker looks terrible (the topless scene is the most terrifying in the film) and I'm not sure if Geordi is in it and it's an odd film for the regulars. Ironically considering he wanted to be killed off as he was getting too old to play an android, Spiner gets away with it because the make up hides a multitude of sins.

TBH I think Data threw me off the most. He'd been gaining weight slowly since he started playing data but for Nemesis he was noticeably pudgy. That's not a big deal for a human character but it's a bit more obvious when the ageless robot gains weight.

I honestly think they could have gotten away with not even hiring Dorn and Burton for this one and nobody would have been able to tell the difference.

Re: Riker, his beardless turn in Insurrection is way more terrifying than anything that happens in Nemesis.

Hey, Picard acting in a completely different way to how he did in the episode with exactly the same plot where it was all brown people in peril and they were led by a wrinkly old man rather than a milf doesn't make it out of character, it just reveals he was a really horrible racist all along.

Maybe amidst the "life's too short, don't let them promote you" talk that Kirk gave him in Generations there was a bit about "oh, and don't worry about bending the rules if you can score some alien tail"?

That whole thing was silly anyway. Picard is the polar opposite of Kirk temperament-wise and would have loved being an admiral or retiring to become an ambassador and putter away in archaeology digs on his off-days.

Tomalak was an odd one in that the character was completely generic (and not even really in his last two appearances), pretty much every other Romulan Commander could have been made him with absolutely no rewriting. That's entirely down to the actor and it's a shame both the Selar idea and Babylon 5 basically stopped him showing up.

Yeah, it's a testament to how awesome Andreas Katsulas was that people loved the character in spite of him basically never doing anything of note.

I thought Sela was the coolest thing ever when I was a kid, but as an adult...wow she sucked, didn't she? Denise Crosby was probably the weakest actor from the original main cast but even then they really didn't give her much to work with.

Yeah, there's actually a reasonable explanation for him being a very different character: We've only ever seen Khan as a freshly woken up in the 23rd century uncertain plotter with his charisma turned up to 11 to get people onside or as completely off his tits and driven mad by isolation and death. A version woken up early who's had time to adjust, who's been working got Starfleet for at least a few years (and the idea that the Federation would react badly to the destruction of Vulcan is a good one) should be a very different man. It's just a bad sort of different though.

True enough. But by the same token, if he's so changed as to be a completely different person then why even bother using Khan to start with?

Still, Admiral Ackbar right? That's who we love!

Wait, Admiral Fishface is in it?

What are the odds he's only there for a tedious "it's a trap!" callback to please the internet meme crowd?

Yeah, I'd say that's all pretty much bang on the head. I'd say making Braga a showrunner was a mistake as well. He is (or at least was), an extremely talented writer but one who has a very specific niche. He does the bonkers mad SF concept of the week, and does it well (several episodes he wrote defined a trope that every SF show still seems required to do). But that's not a good fit for every single episode, especially if you want something like consistent character development. A man who'll turn everyone into monsters and back in 45 minutes with no lasting consequences is not the guy for that.

Ironically he actually spearheaded a show with what looked to be a long-running pre-planned story arc in Threshold. It got cancelled before it could go anywhere, though I've always thought it had a fair bit of potential.

In terms of Trek though, you're right that he was a bad fit as a showrunner.

We should have a Star Trek thread!

Yeah, this is like the fifth thread we've derailed into Trek talk this year...

[Summerhayes]

The funny thing is, Anakin actually spent most of his Jedi years running around in foreshadowy black leather. Did he ever wear anything like the typical brown robes on-screen?

When he and Obi Wan are together at the start of Episode II he's wearing standard Jedi stuff. Its only at the end when he goes off with Padme he changes it up.

I mean, this can't be the first time that classified, experimental weapons have been loaded aboard a Starfleet ship. It's the sort of thing that happens all the time in real life.

Well, they're always bringing up that Starfleet isn't supposed to be a military. These people all joined to be explorers and adventurers, to help people and maybe do a little police work. Using secretly shielded, illegal weapons is not something they're keen on!

[Selkadoom]

When he and Obi Wan are together at the start of Episode II he's wearing standard Jedi stuff. Its only at the end when he goes off with Padme he changes it up.

Very true, he was wearing a vaguely standard outfit for a good hunk of the movie, and then any pretense of subtlety went out the window for episode 3

l, they're always bringing up that Starfleet isn't supposed to be a military. These people all joined to be explorers and adventurers, to help people and maybe do a little police work. Using secretly shielded, illegal weapons is not something they're keen on!

Mhmm, its Starfleet, not the empire who in the EU never stopped building stupid impractical doomsday devices. Starfleet was always supposed to be about exploration and discovery and the like

[ganon578]

I'm very excited to see Ep VII, if anyone has seen my recent postings of 'Non-TF Toy Aquisitions' can gather. I don't think it will be a trainwreck at all, and with Lucas out of the picture, most of the terribly acting should be out too.

I feel he's responsible for pretty much all of the wooden acting in the prequels - there's too much Prequel-bashing that goes around. Has there ever been an origin story of anything that was really worthwhile, or better than the source material? You already know what the end result is, how can the origin be that exciting? I take them for what they are, and I saw all three of them at midnight showings. They're fun, and I was far too young to see any of the originals in the theaters (not born in 1977, wasn't born yet when ESB came out, only 3 when ROTJ was released).

I won't be going to a midnight showing of TFA this time around as my family life just doesn't make it appealing. However, I will go see it sometime on release week when the wife and I can find someone to watch the kids for a few hours.

[Dead Man Wade]

I feel he's responsible for pretty much all of the wooden acting in the prequels - there's too much Prequel-bashing that goes around. Has there ever been an origin story of anything that was really worthwhile, or better than the source material? You already know what the end result is, how can the origin be that exciting?

You know, the problem with the prequels isn't that it doesn't really matter how exactly Anakin became Darth Vader, though it doesn't. It isn't that Hayden Christiansen was terrible, though he was. It wasn't even that they didn't make any goddamn sense, though they didn't.

It's that, ultimately, we don't need appearances by every ****ing character Lucas created. We know it's a Star Wars movie without Chewbacca showing up for an unneccesary cameo, or mini-Boba, or Jimmy Smits showing up to take Leia for no other reason than because Jimmy Smits is just awesome like that. I don't care.

Like the "What if Episode One Were Good?" video pointed out, the secret to doing a sequel or prequel is to make everything feel old, but new. Lucas thought you did this by sticking every character from the OT in there, whether they belonged or not. But it can be achieved by carrying over themes and arcs.

Also, Dark Side aside, Anakin seemed like he was just waiting for a chance to start killing younglings.

[Auntie Slag]

I wish Episode III was Episode I and they carried on from there. III seemed like they'd chilled out a bit and decided to have some fun. Obi Wan was a bit goofy, Anakin was still more or less forgettable and the scene stealers were the effects and Palpatine.

Despite all the hammyness, younglings and other stuff the bit that really killed it for me was Obi Wan's passionate "... WHAT ABOUT DEMOCRACY!!!111One".

Could you imagine convincing anyone with a line like that?

Hats off to Samuel L. Jackson's "No Anakain, HE is the evil one, arrrgh"! that's some of the worst acting in the trilogy I reckon.

Its a shame Michael Hutchence isn't around. He'd have made an ace Sith Lord; Darth Hutchence. And all the girls would fancy him, which would really annoy the Jedi.

[Dead Man Wade]

See I wish almost the exact opposite. Winnow Episode I down to only what worked, have a brief appearance by Lloydakin so everybody can be all "No, Qui-Gon! Leave him, he's a bad bad man! Let him to die in slavery!", and make it Episode III. Avoid the worst galaxy's worst doctor/robot, the unnecessary burning death, Vader's overwrought reaction to Panda's death, Senator Jar-Jar, and a host of other garbage.

All of the stuff they revealed, from Anakin's quick descent into the Dark Side, to his falling out with Obi-Wan, was better off left unsaid.