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The original films were enjoyable, the prequels were painful.
I am looking forward to seeing R1.My two cents why the first Star War movies were good and the others suck:1. The first movies had an ensemble cast. There was chemistry and humor. Lucas did the same thing with American Graffiti but he lost the bubble and went into tech and story mode. No one really cared for they other characters, there was little humor and little mystery.2. No mystery to the later movies. We already knew the story that the didn't unfold until the last of the first three movies. No mystery for the later movies that retold the plot we already knew. 3. I think Part 7 was just going through the motions.
Its sad that they have to revisit this story so many times when there are many SF books that would make GREAT films, now we have good CGI;The Forever War - Joe HaldemannPlanet of Adventure - Jack VanceSurface Detail - Ian M BanksMortal Engines - can't remember the author but he lives a few miles away on DartmoorRingworld - Larry Niven. just for a start!!
Lucas's "social" pendulum swings quite a bit over the years. "Phantom Menace" had white guys playing the "good guy" parts, and along with them had an Arab used car salesman, cunning, backstabbing Japanese Trade Federation hissing everything but "Ah, so ...", and their own head-slapping, foot-shuffling "Yassuh Boss" Step'n Fetchit.This latest one has no "white guys" as the good guys, has a 120 pound woman kicking the arses of men twice her size, and everyone else is black or Hispanic; even some of the aliens.And all THIS Long Ago in a Galaxy Far Away! Amazing how all that works! The pendulum swings back, I see, in Episode 5 and 6 .... You have to try hard sometimes, though. Anakin Skywalker could look once, jump out of a moving speeder, fall 2000 feet through the crowded air of Coruscant, and land RIGHT on another moving speeder, dead on target. I can buy that.But in the last one, when they're going to this horrible tavern in which their lives will be at stake if they don't watch their back every second ... everyone is nice to them, a couple strangers offer them a ride where they need to go ... the most valuable artifact in the galaxy is laying in a box in the basement and no one messes with it ....I wish we had a place like that here. Get it straight .... !Gene Siskel
Fwiw it was a lot darker and less cartoonish than some of the efforts.
Its sad that they have to revisit this story so many times when there are many SF books that would make GREAT films, now we have good CGI;Ringworld - Larry Niven. just for a start!!
Everyone keeps referring to the CGI GovernorTarkin, however Tarkin is played by real actor Guy Henry in Rogue One.From imdb:Tarkin, portrayed by Peter Cushing in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) was played by Guy Henry in Rogue One. Henry had previously been cast as Sherlock Holmes in the television series Young Sherlock: The Mystery of the Manor House (1982) during the 1980s, Cushing had played the same character 20 years earlier in Sherlock Holmes (1964). According to director Gareth Edwards, this was a contributing factor towards Henry accepting the position as he was an admirer of Cushing having studied his work for the Holmes role.
Then there were the annoying technical issues that nag at me. Why is there one place where all info is kept? Why are the files kept on tape in this huge tower that have to be physically removed to get at? Why do you have to take said tape to the top of the tower, outside, to transmit? Why is there a tape reading station at the top?! Why does the antenna need tweaking and why does the antenna pointer have to be further outside: Well you get the picture. It would have made more sense perhaps to shoot the tape up in a sounding rocket.
Henry did the motion capture but the face and details were CGI.