ShadowDuelist wrote:El Nameaux-Standardon wrote:The short answer would be that the talking is suspenseful and contains humor, the "plot" and the way it's "set up" both have impact, and in fact those scenes focus on the present, and not the future plot: someone's secretly set up an army on a hidden, otherworldly hide-out, and the sense of mystery, worry and uncertainty associated with that are conveyed in the "talking", aesthetics etc.
I get what they're trying to do, the movie mirrors ESB which also mostly just set up for the next movie.
What a bizarre thing to say in response, considering that:
-ESB is acknowledged for standing on its own legs and in fact coming off stronger WITHOUT the sequel that undermines it
-my quoted statement emphasized how II was precisely not about "setting up the next movie", but about the plot of II
RLM's made two claims in part II/9:
A) Clones is "just a bunch of stuff happening between 1 and 3".
B) It cargo cults ESB by borrowing plot lines and imagery but forgetting all the substance.
B1) Oh and also that it tries to be the darkest of the three LOL!
Complete horse:
A) It's got its own point and direction: tensions with the separatists and suspected shadowy warmongers leads to discovery of secret "arms race" leads to war breaking out.
What at first seems to be a new crisis unrelated to I, gradually turns out to be that same crisis coming back with a vengeance - culminating in the Sidious reveal at the end.
B) All the borrowed imagery and plot structures are heavily modified to serve this new narrative with its own substance, and flair.
B1) When was the third where Vader would emerge and the Empire win ever NOT gonna be the darkest LOL - no refutation required, too silly.
These movies are carried by their character's arcs as they change from who they were to the people they need to be in the next movie. Padme's arc mirrors Leah's, Anakins mirrors Luke's and Obi-Wan's mirrors Han's. Except these mirrors are only superficial,
Which is why these more than superficial similarities only make up 5% of the substance and it's therefore silly to focus on them while describing the movie, or the drama in it.
Padme is stuck in a remote place with a man and falls in love, Anakin is tempted by the dark side and lured into a trap, and Obi-Wan gets captured and used as bait.
Actually Obiwan's the one possibly lured into a trap, if you go with the "Jango was in on it" hypothesis - Anakin certainly wasn't lured by anyone 
And the parallels pretty much end there, 10 times flimsier than the one's named by Squiggly between 1 and 4.
The depth of character just isn't there to carry the film like it is in ESB, and George isn't a good enough director to show is their emotions so they constantly have to tell them to us. Egh.
Which of the plotlines are you talking about here?
If it's the mystery plot, i.e. the main plot mostly carried by Obiwan, then it's mostly carried by the discovery and tension and Obiwan/the Jedi coming off as appropriately concerned and worried about it all - those emotions are shown in a natural fashion, not "told".
Or are you talking about Anakin's subplot? LOL, well first of all this is sometimes true and sometimes not, but that storyline is a mess way beyond just emotions being told not shown
says nothing about the quality of said monologue.
Dooku literally explains the plot of the prequels then they do a "Join Me!" "I'll never join you!" bit so things can 'rhyme' with the OT. Non of this effects either of these characters or their arcs or matters again.
That's the least important part, though - what matters is the meat of the conversation, namely Dooku revealing that the Sith is controlling the Senate and claiming to fight against that, and the TF having joined him after having been betrayed by him after EpI.
This is part of that "red herring" that I described - at the end, it turns out that this "new development", the emergence of 3rd parties etc., was all just a ruse and it's always been that same conspiracy from EpI all along.
It also reintroduces Sidious back into the plot, after already having reintroduced the TF.
Interesting opinion - most didn't like Anakin that much and preferred when he wasn't on screen
Anakin is the only one with any kind of reasonable arc and Anakin - Obi-Wan is the only relationship that resembles anything real, the movie barely even exists when Anakin's not on screen.
He goes dark on Tattoine and is then mildly angrier/gloomier than before - how is that a reasonable "arc"??
More like THIS is a set-up for the next movie.
And while there's technically an "arc", or an overall sort of structure to the lovestory, once you zoom in even just one bit it's the most disorganized mess ever, so have fun lauding that
RLM actually thought it was the most interesting cause no lightsabers, but k.
That's just him wanking about how much he hates the Jedi in the prequels.
Correct - his point about lightsabers lightsabers is mostly off the mark, too, along with most of his other points.
It actually barely has any fighting at all.
Jango dragging him around and shooting missiles at him and them suspensefully hanging over the abyss is all "fighting", baby.
There is nothing driving this fight, there's no stakes. Any savvy film goer knows neither of them die here and Obi-Wan still plants his tracker. This whole fight didn't matter and had no reason to exist.
That's cause the point was never "omg is he gonna die", and the tone doesn't convey that either - compare the actual (considerably) pointless mess of an action scene in this movie, the droid factory, where the tone is implying that Padme is heading for her death but actually it's just a fun, tense action obstacle run.
No, the point was trying and failing to capture Jango and get some answers out of him.
It was also a snappy pay-off to the tensions and hints between the two in their previous scene - the exhilirating effect is emphasized in the way the action suddenly starts after a few seconds of the camera hovering above Slave I.
Last edited by El Nameaux-Standardon (2016-05-05 18:37:06)
