h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Jack (Cliegg) is a great Aussie actor who's been around for donkey's years.

The Empire's ideas are certainly fascistic (worship of power, might as right, militarism, a heirarchical society with a supreme leader). The Republic seems like a liberal democracy. The Jedi seem to be based on Samurai. Their spirituality and desire to protect the weak etc. strikes me as making them quite Christian in outlook.

Lucas has taken elements from history to insert into his story. Palpatine's rise is similar to that of Napoleon. Darth Sidious being backed by self-serving cynical capitalists (who will probably be destroyed once their purpose is served) mirrors some aspects of 20th century European fascism. I think Lucas portraying the Trade Federation (presumably his idea of immoral capitalism) as oriental-sounding was a bit rich.

In the original films, I seem to remember the Empire was entirely staffed and trooped by "humans", presumably adding to it's fascistic characteristics. I wonder if Lucas will incorporate reasons for this into episode III.

The Trade Federation seems to fit quite nicely alongside the WTO doesn't it?

Except the WTO aren't exclusively Japanese-sounding (well, not yet anyway)

Okay, saw the movie yesterday. It was alright, but still just space opera

I didn't like the Yoda fight scene. Especially how he flied around like that. It should have been with the Force instead of lightsabers.

That sand-line from Anakin would have made me throw up

Yeah, the death scene of Schmi was a cliche and the robot making scene belonged in the game, not the movie.

Now the fighting scene between Anakin and Dooku looked great I think. And I loved Amidala's dresses Even though it seemed stupid to have that white thing go shorter and shorter. I did like Obi Wan, and it was showed quite well the evolution of Anakin. You could see how he started going towards the dark side and such.

Aye, it was just a space-opera. It isn't supposed to be anything else, really (although that's still no excuse for the rubbish script (allegedly, Lucas had his original script "tweaked" to "improve" it. Makes me wonder what his original dialogue was like))

The yoda fight was for the fans. I think it delivered on that level

The romance was badly done - it should have emerged over a period of time, like it did with Han and Leia in the original trilogy.

I also liked the battle between the Jedi and Count Dooku. I wonder how much of the stunt work Lee did on his own.

Frogbit: Are you referring to the S.F. Examiner piece? I mean about re-shooting the original three? I seem to recall Lucas saying that rather that shoot entire new films, he plans to digitally enchance them. He has already started the process. In fact, if you rent any of those films now there is already quite a bit of new footage inserted. I am thinging, in particular, that addition of Jabba the Hut cconfronting Han Solo in "A New Hope", as well as, ohter assorted characters throughout the especially bleak scenes.

I believe that Lucas has one more attempt at making a Starwars film, thats as good as EP 4-6.
Can he do this?

Lord Smooth

If he insists on filling in all the 'bleak' gap with cartoons then no.

the next movie is definately gonna be a big hit if lucas tells the fans that the worlds most hated star wars character jar jar binks gets kille din it. if jar jar doesn't die in it, it'll be a big flop.

spook

>Makes me wonder what his original dialogue was like<

prequel-spoilers had a version of the script available for reading. There were some significant differences. Some of the cut scenes would have clarified the storyline. I would hope they're on the DVD even in a rough version.

The script that was published with 'The Art of Attack of the Clones' also included a lot of deleted scenes - including ones where we meet Padme's family.

I understand the novel has a lot of stuff in there that fleshes things out. It's probably all the stuff that's in that script.

It seemed to me too that there were two clone armies. Weren't there a bunch of them boarding the imperial star destroyers on the death star at the end?
And if the republic becomes the empire, and sidious controls them both, who's fighting who? isn't having two armies, both yours, fight a big waste of clones?

The ones boarding the destroyers at the end were conceivably the ones being sent to deal with the Trade Federation 'uprising.'

Don't forget that the Sith designed it to look as though the Jedi ordered the clone army production, and therefore blame will fall on them for any misuse.

But weren't they taking off of the death star? And wasn't that the secret that would supposedly reveal the conspiracy?

The death star sure looked cool with an atmosphere!

or was that coruscant?

Coruscant was ripped-off from Trantor, the city-planet and Imperial capital in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series

And it will most certainly be blown up in the next movie.

Two more points:

"Padme" means "I fart" in Hindi, making it difficult for my Indian companion to concentrate, or take the movie seriously.

The cgi programmers almost walked out when Lucas told them to do the Yoda fight scene. They thought he'd "lost his grip".