Newsflash! Disney buys out LucasFilm

[sonofccn]

had his studio produce one of the best space battles ever, if not the only one to surpass them all.

Well from a pure FX standpoint I think the ROTS fleet battle surpasses ROTJ. To me its a feast of eye candy which he could only hint at before. So at least on that score I'm glad GL waited to exploit advances in technology.

[Praeothmin]

had his studio produce one of the best space battles ever, if not the only one to surpass them all.

Well from a pure FX standpoint I think the ROTS fleet battle surpasses ROTJ. To me its a feast of eye candy which he could only hint at before. So at least on that score I'm glad GL waited to exploit advances in technology.

I agree!
As much as I liked the fleet battle of RotJ, RotS surpasses it in chaos, visual quality and quantity (if you ignore the stupid-ass buzz-droids)...

[Mr. Oragahn]

had his studio produce one of the best space battles ever, if not the only one to surpass them all.

Well from a pure FX standpoint I think the ROTS fleet battle surpasses ROTJ. To me its a feast of eye candy which he could only hint at before. So at least on that score I'm glad GL waited to exploit advances in technology.

The ROTS opening space battle has no soul at all. It has no tension, it's totally flat and pure CGI porn (and as with all porns, some are good and some just fail to arouse you). It doesn't even really look that good. There's an abundance of colours that saturate the canvas.
Heck I'd go as far as to say that strictly speaking about visuals and the overall aspect of the shot, the TPM battle is waaaay better. It's focused, there's a sense of epic and despair, because you have flies pitifully attempting to take down a behemoth, and that Trade Federation ship was really graceful and prodigious. The model looked ace (and perfectly mixed model and CGI iirc).

[sonofccn]

The ROTS opening space battle has no soul at all. It has no tension, it's totally flat and pure CGI porn

Well "soul" and "tension" would fall under writing not special effects but no matter. Taste is subjective not objective after all. I happen to like the fleet battle but if you don't no biggie.

[Cocytus]

I have to second Oragahn on this. The initial ROTS battle felt slow, almost lethargic. There was absolutely no tension for me. The visuals were unengaging, despite the sheer amount of stuff going on on screen. It was actually somewhat difficult to tell who was who the first time I saw it. The proto-star destroyers and familiar doughnut battleships were obvious, but the smaller stuff (like the munificents) were initially confusing. Everything is blowing up nice and slowly. The pacing was frankly awful. They started the battle out with "General Grievous' ship is directly ahead," then about ten minutes later, after all of the missiles and buzz droid idiocy (don't get me started) General Grievous' ship is still dead ahead.

Hell, even the music sounds slow. The problem as I see it is that most of the battle takes place from a constant vantage point that follows these two fighters around as they laze through space. They even have the time to pull fancy maneuvers. And Anakin's genius piloting skills help him here when he......spins? Sure, the battle is chaotic, but it's not engaging to me in any way.

Compare that to ROTJ. The fleet comes out of hyperspace, and we get the brief shot of the Death Star against Endor, and the music rises suddenly, and both audience and characters have an "oh shit, this is it" moment. The scene builds up to the reveal of the trap, and all of the sudden hundreds of ships are screaming past the screen, barely avoiding crashing into one another, ducking and weaving between huge cruisers. Part of the success of the Endor battle for me is that its interspersed with the battle going on on the ground, and the battle between Vader and Luke. All three storylines play together, heightening the tension. The ground crew has to get that shield down before the fleet is crushed by the fully operational Death Star. Then the ships go roaring across the surface of the Death Star, pulling hairpin turns down tiny tunnels. The Falcon is constantly rotating to align itself to the tunnel, and one bad move could end the whole thing (and very nearly does when the Falcon loses her dish). Luke has to get off the damn thing before Lando and Wedge (and pancake face, or whatever the hell his EU name is) blow it up.

The ROTS battle has nothing of this sort of tension. The space battle happens, and then the fight inside the Invisible Hand follows. The battle is going on all around the ship, but nothing ever happens until the IH gets broadsided well into the sequence. Anakin and ObiWan don't even run anywhere. They've got all the time in the world to make their way through the ship, which completely voids any kind of tension the scene might have. Sure, I could rationalize this by saying it was all a conspiracy, and the Republic ships purposefully avoided the IH until it was time for one of them to make a predetermined, perfunctory display of broadsiding. The entire battle over Coruscant never seems to actually pose a threat to the characters. It's almost always background noise, a nice shiny backdrop. But wait, wasn't it also a nice shiny backdrop in ROTJ, at least for Vader and Luke? Yes, but there's a ready reason why. With the shield up, the DS was practically invincible. The Invisible Hand has no such immunity, or at least shouldn't, unless every Republic ship captain was ordered not to attack it. Again, I can rationalize it as stated above, but me having to do that means the movie didn't tell me something I should have known.

Then there are the lightsaber battles themselves. Luke vs Vader in ROTJ is superior to anything the the prequel trilogy, because while it may not have the best fight choreography, it has the best emotion. Luke's anger is actually palpable. No fancy jumps and twirls now, just raw, hate fueled violence. The only fight in the prequels that gets close to that feeling is Obi-Wan vs Maul after Qui Gon is killed. Obi-Wan actually has some emotion on his face.

What's going on between Anakin and Dooku? Okay, he cut off his hand before, but Anakin never once seems angry. He never once seems anything. Dooku apparently crushes Obi-Wan underneath a section of deck. Oh, this might create some tension, but then it's revealed that he's not harmed in any way. We're constantly told how often Anakin saves Obi-Wan. Maybe have Obi-Wan actually be injured here, adding the necessity of getting him back for medical treatment or something (since we already know the whole thing with Palpatine's kidnapping was prearranged, and the outcome predetermined.) And all through the fight, the space battle is "raging" outside the windows. Have the ship get rocked by a TL bolt a couple times.

The problem with this whole fight is that it is supposed to recreate, in feel and purpose, the ROTJ fight. I get the purpose, the new apprentice killing the old one and succeeding him as Palpatine's right hand, but the feel is completely missing. Anakin's anger consists of him brooding and glaring at the camera. Anakin should have gone Luke-crazy and just pounded Dooku into submission. I got that Luke has tremendous anger because I saw it, and it was jarring for a good guy. But we know from the previous film Anakin is a whiny, menstrual twat, so more of his glaring brooding doesn't have any impact. It's also pretty damning in that anyone with half a brain could see that Palpatine is playing him like a harp, and not remotely subtly either. Anakin just looks stupid every time he's on screen with Palpatine.

Anyway, just my lengthy, prattling two cents

[User1663]

To quickly add the above, the worst thing about the battle in ROTS is the fact that absolutely zero shits are given about the battle altogether, either by the characters, the filmmakers, or the audience. It serves as nothing other then a pretty background, and besides the end where the ship crashes, none of the characters are really involved in any meaningful way. Then after the main cast lands the battle is immediately forgotten about, and we're just sort of left to assume that the Republic won or whatever. Consequently, nobody in the audience really gives a shit either.

[Praeothmin]

Yeah, but that is the story's fault, not the battle's...
In RotJ, the battle happened at the end, where the Rebels, story-wise, were actually fighting for their lives and their exixtence, which is not the case in RotS...

This does not take away the fact the visuals were better in RotS, there was more action happening, and chaos is a normal part of a battlefield...

I preferred the battle in RotS, I never said I preferred the story... :)

[Mr. Oragahn]

The ROTS opening space battle has no soul at all. It has no tension, it's totally flat and pure CGI porn

Well "soul" and "tension" would fall under writing not special effects but no matter. Taste is subjective not objective after all. I happen to like the fleet battle but if you don't no biggie.

Without good writing, all your effects mean nothing.

From the man who sold his world.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Yeah, but that is the story's fault, not the battle's...
In RotJ, the battle happened at the end, where the Rebels, story-wise, were actually fighting for their lives and their exixtence, which is not the case in RotS...

This does not take away the fact the visuals were better in RotS, there was more action happening, and chaos is a normal part of a battlefield...

I preferred the battle in RotS, I never said I preferred the story... :)

I might add: everything you see in the battle is scripted.

Even the way ships are taken down, engaged, avoided, etc. sucks in my opinion.
As Cocytus said, it's so damn... sluggish. And not even in the right way; because nBSG's battles between cap ships can't really be said to be hurricane fueled, but there's clear gravitas only by the way the things are shot, the way they move, and of course why those battles occur and how they end.

[Praeothmin]

nBSG's battles often involved a couple dozen starfighters and two or three capital ships, not hundreds of small ships with dozens of bigger ships...

It's a lot easier to keep track and to plan such a "dance" then...

[Sothis]

When it comes to how this affects canon, I couldn't care less, but in terms of quality... well, I fear for the damage to the franchise. Does Star Wars need 7 8 and 9? I don't think so. 1-6 tell a complete story, and the decision to make new films smacks of nothing more than a desire to make money. Greed will kill the franchise.

[mojo]

When it comes to how this affects canon, I couldn't care less, but in terms of quality... well, I fear for the damage to the franchise. Does Star Wars need 7 8 and 9? I don't think so. 1-6 tell a complete story, and the decision to make new films smacks of nothing more than a desire to make money. Greed will kill the franchise.

you're aware originally it was supposedly going to be 12 films telling one story, right? what's wrong with the original idea? just because lucas got bored doesn't mean it SHOULD stick to 6 films, 12 was his freaking idea in the first place. also, greed is the reason the franchise EXISTS. given that before he came up with the whole 'it will be 12 films, the first one is the fourth chapter' idea, the idea was for ONE movie which was simply an homage to another, different movie, and tESB was created because the potential for profit was too enormous to ignore and lucas didn't even come up with the storyline, i would say greed has been part and parcel from day one.

[Mr. Oragahn]

nBSG's battles often involved a couple dozen starfighters and two or three capital ships, not hundreds of small ships with dozens of bigger ships...

It's a lot easier to keep track and to plan such a "dance" then...

I don't think the dance we had to focus on, that of Anakin and Obi-Wan lost in the middle of a mass of nameless ships, was any pleasant to watch. Not to say... it was oddly cut. Like the droids in those missiles... well the missiles were seen fired straight ahead of the vulture droid, which was flying parallel to the horizon, yet you see them come down from above in the next shot. Those buzz droids were so annoying. What the heck did they add?
Did we see Anakin do any amazing stuff? The best thing he did, with the help of D2 btw, was to spin two missiles into each other.
That whole course towards Grievous' ship was so damn boring. The way it should have been done was to have them fight against droids left and right, come close to larger ships, and at some point, like in ROTJ, get a confirmation that Palpatine was on Grievous' vessel or something, allowing them to update their plan and therefore require a concentrated combination of fighters to get through the whole swarm of vulture droids previously twiddling their clunky toes on Grevious' admiral ship, or else, like being in such deep crap that while Anakin would be displaying mad driving skills in dealing with super vulture droids (better kind), the swarm would be so huge that both he and Obi-Wan, and all other clone pilots, would require assistance from some gunship to take them down or have some small proton nuke to be launched to clear the skies, dunno.
Really, that sequence fucking sucked.

Btw, one year ago, George Lucas had already invited Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher to tell them that he'd be doing the next three films.

Big Win Question: Would someone really having the passion to shoot a whole new trilogy would sell his stuff one year later to Disney?

[Mr. Oragahn]

When it comes to how this affects canon, I couldn't care less, but in terms of quality... well, I fear for the damage to the franchise. Does Star Wars need 7 8 and 9? I don't think so. 1-6 tell a complete story, and the decision to make new films smacks of nothing more than a desire to make money. Greed will kill the franchise.

you're aware originally it was supposedly going to be 12 films telling one story, right? what's wrong with the original idea? just because lucas got bored doesn't mean it SHOULD stick to 6 films, 12 was his freaking idea in the first place. also, greed is the reason the franchise EXISTS. given that before he came up with the whole 'it will be 12 films, the first one is the fourth chapter' idea, the idea was for ONE movie which was simply an homage to another, different movie, and tESB was created because the potential for profit was too enormous to ignore and lucas didn't even come up with the storyline, i would say greed has been part and parcel from day one.

In fact it's quite a good thing, but as long as talent is there, we can cope with the reality of movies being done for money.
Lucas just didn't have the talent anymore. He probably never did beyond ANH in fact, without Marquand's help.

Disney's movies, at least, are more or less good enough to watch, perhaps at time exciting (and I do love the new Tron even more after each viewing... yeah, each viewing, meaning that I do love the movie).

[Sothis]

When it comes to how this affects canon, I couldn't care less, but in terms of quality... well, I fear for the damage to the franchise. Does Star Wars need 7 8 and 9? I don't think so. 1-6 tell a complete story, and the decision to make new films smacks of nothing more than a desire to make money. Greed will kill the franchise.

you're aware originally it was supposedly going to be 12 films telling one story, right? what's wrong with the original idea? just because lucas got bored doesn't mean it SHOULD stick to 6 films, 12 was his freaking idea in the first place. also, greed is the reason the franchise EXISTS. given that before he came up with the whole 'it will be 12 films, the first one is the fourth chapter' idea, the idea was for ONE movie which was simply an homage to another, different movie, and tESB was created because the potential for profit was too enormous to ignore and lucas didn't even come up with the storyline, i would say greed has been part and parcel from day one.

I always thought the original plan was 9 films, and then the films told a more or less complete story in six chapters, rather than nine.

And at a basic level, greed is the main reason anyone makes films- but in some cases, the desire to tell a story is there too- and completing the story with Episodes I II and III was always going to be in high demand, for that sake of completeness.

7-9 won't be told for that reason. Whatever the original plan, all those years ago, the Saga is now complete- it tells Anakin's story, from boyhood to death. It charts his rise, his fall, and his redemption. What else is needed? I just have a bad feeling about this.