Posted by Gremlin [65.186.201.54 - dsl-65-186-201-54.telocity.com] on 18 May 2002 at 03.49.30 ZuluTime:

In Reply to: Send in the clones posted by Ford Prefect on 18 May 2002 at 00.50.50 ZuluTime:

Now that I've had a little more time to think about it, there are a few more good and bad points.

For one thing, Lucas has finally figured out what a parsec is. Although I'm still concerned about the pluralisation of 'Solar System' in the opening scroll.

The CG, while not amazing, is still better than it was a few years ago. It just hasn't really improved much in three years. And I still blame Maya for that. Granting that Poser4 will create more believable characters, I'm not sure why they're using this horrid software--except, of course, that it renders quickly. Which still doesn't explain how ILM managed to use SoftImage to do JP3 [which was also responsible for Godzilla a few years ago] and get done in time.

Regarding the dialogue: it was dumb; but it wasn't any worse than that of any Star Wars film. Even Christopher Lee managed to succumb to the bombast: 'I see your command of the force is equal to mine; let's see how you are with a lightsabre; all you base are belong to us'. I think now is the time to start pushing Lucas to sack Jonathan Hales and talk Kevin Smith into cowriting the next film; if you're going to write something designed to sell toys and videogames and DarkHorse comics, Kev is probably the best guy to have write out the actual dialogue.

I figured out why the new films aren't quite as good, too. And it has a lot to do with the computers and robotics.

In the first film, they weren't as capable of pivoting the camera, so you never quite knew what was going on anyhere but onCam; still, the set designs were complete enough that you assumed there was more happening elsewhere. These days, the camera swings all over hell, and the computers match the movements to add in all the CG elements, creating a sort of QuickTimeVR look to everything. Which is great if there's a real need to show everything at once, but which works against you when a static shot was good enough to suggest that you were seeing a small part of an entire world.

Meanwhile, I've gone off and read a few other reviews. And if there's one thing worse than a Star Wars film, it's a sophistic critic who assumes he knows everything about films.

My personal favourite is the ubiquitous accusation than Coruscant is a rip-off of Los Angeles in Blade Runner. Granting that the original designs for the Imperial City not only predated Blade Runner but largely inspired its look, I'm getting a little tired of this ad hominem.

Otherwise, a lot of the critics have noticed that, while JarJar has been reduced to a cameo and a plot device, Threepio has replaced him as the most annoying entity in the film.

Something else I've been trying to work out, and may finally have. The, erm...aliens. The Kimonolings, or whatever they are. The things creating the clones. Is it me, or are they exactly the same creatures from Close Encounters?

That's a fairly relevant question, to me. Technically, Lucas really fucked up by placing the ETs in the Senate in Menace, since ET ran into a kid dressed up as Yoda in 1982; are we supposed to think that the aliens from 1978 ultimately went off and cloned Richard Dreyfus now? Or is this all a coincidence?

I wonder about things like that.

In any case, the film was worth the eight bucks, I suppose. I just wonder whether it was worth the twenty-five years. But we'll know that in about three years, if and when the final film really ties everything together into a single, fifteen-hour epic.