by MouthForWar » Thu Sep 02, 2010 5:53 pm
The Pit And the Pendulum (1991)- I love Stuart Gordon, but this wasn't all that impressive for me. Its got a great cast (Lance Henrikson, Jeffery Combs, Stuart Gordon, Tom Towles, Oliver Reed) but it was obviously hurt from the budget. Gordon's Dagon had the same problems, but was able to be good enough that it rose above those shortcomings. I think the fact that this is a period piece made it seem a lot cheaper and made for TV. There are some great parts in it though, and Henrikson is great. Probably the best film to ever come out of Full Moon Entertainment.
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace- I don't know why I'm doing this to myself, but I'm revisiting the prequels. I figure after the initial backlash and hatred they got, I might be able to come at them and appreciate them with a fresh outlook... I was wrong. Lucas made a movie about taxes and trade federations (and other boring stuff out of your high school history book) and tried to turn it into a kids movie. Its every bit as bad as that description. This movie is still god awful. The CGI is terrible, Jar Jar is the worst thing ever, young Anakin is just as bad... the creature designs even suck! Lucas got so carried away with CGI that everything looks like a cartoon and none of these creatures even LOOK like Star Wars characters. And the Yoda puppet is downright embarrassing. I don't know if they wanted to make him look younger (as if 20 years younger would really show on a being who is like 500), but he's cross eyed and plasticy and just GOOFY looking here. How a puppet from like 20 years before looks WAY better is beyond me. But I watched it with some friends and we just made fun of it like we would Troll 2 or something. An awful movie, but it was a lot of fun to make fun of it. And that WAY overlong, boring pod race is probably the worst thing..... ever.... Still, the lightsaber fight with Darth Maul and the score by John Williams are fantastic, so not all is lost.
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones- GOOD GOD. What the hell was this? I didn't remember it being THIS BAD! Whether its a better movie than Episode 1 is debatable, but its certainly WAAAAAAY more boring. Episodes I and II are both awful, but different kinds of awful. Episode 1 is so bad its funny, but Episode 2 is just a downright bore. More awful CGI (what's with those big butt creatures in the field), even worse dialogue, the most awkward romance to ever be in a big movie, and Obi-Wan walking into an intergalactic 50s diner and talking to some fat, greasy cook who looks like he came out of a sci fi Seinfeld episode... my brain is still recovering. You really can say that NOTHING happens in this movie (and certainly not anything that deserves having a 2 and a half hour film dedicated to it). Its mostly Obi-Wan boringly following people we know nothing about and the worst movie romance of all time.... with a few monsters thrown in towards the end to give it SOME action and make Lucas tons of money in merchandising. This one doesn't even have a cool lightsaber fight in it and great actors like Christopher Lee and Samuel L. Jackson are totally wasted. And why does Yoda walk with a cane like a cripple one second and do backflips and stuff the next? Ugh.
The problem with these isn't just the shoddy writing, lazy storytelling, CGI overdose, or bad acting. Its the fact that Lucas spent so much time trying to connect EVERY character to the old series that he forgot to tell the actual story. There's no reason for C-3P0, Chewie, etc. to be in the prequels. If he just focused on Anakin and his descent into madness, we'd all be fine. Instead we get awful, lazy connections to the OT and things like 50 minute pod races that only existed to sell more toys.
Onto Episode III...
Last edited by
MouthForWar on Thu Sep 02, 2010 5:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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