Sculpted art concepts by James Hakola
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Sculpted art concepts by James Hakola
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Debris
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Star
Holes This might be way late and totally irrelevant, considering the Star Wars prequels have come and gone. But with the recent announcement of the 3D remakes of the original films, I guess I was reinvigorated to finish and post this thing. If they can beat a dead horse one more time, so can I. I began writing this list the first night after seeing The Phantom Menace. With each new film, I added more outrages. I'm sure a lot of this stuff has been said, ad nauseum, but at least I now have it all in one personal list. I don't read any of the Star Wars boards, this is straight from my own boggled brain. If you've said some of the same things yourself, good for you. I'm with you brother. I just needed the catharsis of getting it out. Why? Because the original films meant so much to me that I couldn't believe this was the prequel set meant to sit next to them. Don't even tell me, "You'd understand this-and-that if you read Heir to the Empire or played Knights of the Old Republic or watched The Clone Wars. Screw that. These are the movies, and those aren't. Real movies don't need instruction manuals, they sink or swim on their own celluloid, PERIOD. That said, I think the Clone Wars shorts are far better than anything in the prequels, but I digress... So am I over-romanticizing something from my youth, and expecting an impossibly high standard for the newer movies? I have watched the original trilogy, with and without "special edition" effects, at least 3 times since seeing Revenge of the Sith, and I'm not exaggerating the point. The old films, with their fewer effects and less ambitious sets, are far superior. They have better dialogue, continuity, character motivation, pacing, and relatability to the heroes. But I'm not writing here to defend the best sci-fi series of all times. I'm here to rip Lucas's last vision a new Star Hole. Actually, a bunch of them. And so... A long time ago, in no particular order… 1. Why did they have to make Tattoine the planet that Annakin was found on? After all, that's where baby Luke and Obi Wan would later go to HIDE from Vaderkin. Would the Dark Sith Lord have lacked the clairvoyance to find his own son in his own home town? Never once tempted to check in on his only remaining family, stepfather Lars and step-siblings Owen and Beru? Did Vader decide never to check there for the sake of irony? 2. And for that matter, wasn't one of the main premises of Star Wars Ep IV, that Tattooine was BORING, and Luke wanted out? Seems they ruined that idea once you add up 1. amazing chariot-style racing 2. ruthless space gangsters 3. ruthless wasteland pirates 4. a bustling spaceport and 5. the known birthplace of a Sith Lord, the #3 man in the Empire. To bring the infant Luke back there, and even keep the name Skywalker, means everyone around there would have certainly known his lineage, and that's an awfully big secret to keep from a kid. Biggs or Tank would have spilled the beans for sure. 3. Should Jar Jar Binks have been, at any point… tolerated? No. Especially considering that his stupidity (in nominating Chancellor Palpatine to instigate martial law) arguably led to the fall of the entire Republic. In retrospect, Padme should have been imprisoned immediately for placing such an incompetent mollusk in her senate seat. 4. How can they let anyone refer to Darth Vader as "Annie", even as a child? Maybe those Jedi never heard "The sun'll come out...Tomorrow!" But the audience here on Earth has. Come on man! This is DARTH FRICKIN' VADER! They could have nicknamed him Grasshoppa' or Damien or Wonderboy, anything but Annie. 5. Why are all the aliens suddenly speaking comically-accented English in the prequels? What happened to all the other cool languages (like Greedo's) with subtitles? You'd think there would be less universal language in the days before the Imperial unification, not more. 6. Tell me again… why was Padme Amidala a queen in Episode I, and then not in Episode II? I thought royal lineage was a permanent thing. Or if she was somehow elected… who would vote for a little girl to rule a planet? 7. Why did the Jedi have had to "deal" with a scrap yard merchant in order to get the parts they needed to save a planet from invasion? Why are they willing to defy an entire Trade Federation (with its own space armada), but not bamboozle a sleazy horsefly with no apparent security measures? Watto should have at least flexed some hired muscle like Jabba. Would you be willing to face a fleet of battleships, but not hop a chain-link fence to steal a hyperdrive? Heck, they could have just lifted it out by using the force. 8. Would
pod racing really work? Why did they use lightning bolts to hold the pods
together, but big ropes to tow the cars behind the pods? Wouldn't sitting
in an open cockpit right behind two jet engines be kinda' bad for you?
I mean, if by some miracle they didn't blow you out of the chariot, you'd
have massive burns, be suffocated by the exhaust, and probably receive
massive skin trauma from the air-force friction. People don't generally
enjoy sitting behind jet engines. Yeah, sure, suspension of disbelief
and so on, but plausibility comes from something looking plausible, even
if it's not. Pod racers just didn't look like they would work. 10. Are they saying that all this time R2D2 had rocket boosters in his legs? Funny he forgot about them later, I bet they would have helped just a tad on Dagobah or Tattooine, or Bespin, or Hoth, or... 11. Yes, I know that special effects today run rings around that of the late 70s. Still, should the vehicle tech have been so visibly better in these supposed prequels? Why didn't they use seismic mines or guided missiles to fight around the Death Star? Energy-barrier cockpit windshields for the Tie Fighters? Buzz droids to disable the Millennium Falcon? And given they had all this high-tech, long-ranged weaponry, should the ground battles of the clone wars have been fought shoulder-to-shoulder, packed onto the battlefield like the American Revolution? I think you could start shooting from a lot further away than that. 12. Wasn't it kind of silly to see Count Dooku ride around on a little scooter amidst all the fighting (without mussing his hair I might add)? Wouldn't a man of his station be afforded something like a motorcade (or at least something with doors)? 13. Wouldn't it have really taken more than a handful of Jedi to maintain peace "across the galaxy?" That's an awful lot of people to police (there are over 4 billion people on a planet like Earth alone). And yet we are never shown any alternative police force. Creating the Republican (clone) army is a revolutionary idea after all. What are the odds you'd ever even meet a Jedi? Imagine the backlog of arrest warrants! Don't even bother to report shoplifting or drunken land-speedering. You KNOW those guys are going to walk. Jedi 911 won't even answer the phone unless you're reporting a full-scale planetocide. 14. Should the droid armies have been so wimpy? Most of them looked like walking rubber-chickens, and didn't fight much better. Why not a battalion of a much bigger, scarier droids, like the IG-88? Would that have been too cool or something? 15. So tell me, why was a clone army really needed to fight a these droids in the first place? What about drafting some of those citizens from the remaining loyal systems in the Republic? It's not like the droids were any good at fighting anyway. Now maybe if the droids had been portrayed as GOOD fighters (I still say IG-88s!) and if the original cloning subject (Jango Fett) had some renown as a "droid hunter". And for that matter, why would all the clones all have to dress almost the same as their "daddy", considering that they weren't even to fight on the same side? 16. Should Annakin have been an immaculate birth? What's the point of that? And was he really meant to be the most powerful Jedi of all times? Even after very little training (started much later in life), Luke was able to beat his dad's ass on Death Star 2. 17. Should Jedi power really be made possible with something as simple as a count of "midichlorian" buggers in the blood? Forget all that "stretching-out-with-my-feeings" crap, I'll have an injection right now. And if a jedi can sense another jedi's powers, it seems stupid that Qui Gon would have to test Annikan's to detect his messianic potential. Messiahs aren't supposed to be proven, but believed. 18. Should Annakin's mother have died such a pitiful, pointless, and impeccably-timed death? Wasn't it a bit ghastly, even for a Star Wars film, to imply that these Tuscans had been "raiding" her for weeks? What did they keep her alive for? To eat her? Ransom her? Make sweet love to her? And if one of the early motivations that turned Annie "dark" was the death of his mother... then why were there still any living Tuscans anywhere in the entire universe by EP IV? Hell-oo, planetary bombardment of Tattooine desert? And on the flip-side, if his hatred were supposed to become directed at the (good) Jedi, then shouldn't they have been somehow responsible for her death? OK, maybe they were indirectly responsible by rescuing him from slavery on Tattooine (and leaving his Mother there) but Annakin he never said anything to that effect, and he had plenty of chances to say it throughout his endless scenes of whining. And the little "bastard" chose to leave anyway. 19. So why, oh WHY did we have to meet Annakin so young (and annoying) in the first film? Remember how we met Luke? He was old enough to have some real adventures, and without shouting "Yipee" every chance he got. Episode I is totally wasted on baby-sitting. Star Wars was never supposed to be about kids, and certainly not little dorks like this one. Why not at least make him a cool kid… like the Golden Child from that Eddie Murphy movie, or maybe that Sixth Sense kid? At least they proved some little kids CAN act. Hell, I would have settled for one of the Honeycomb Kids. 20. Why were the Gungans called a race of "warriors"? Who were they warring with? They never fought the Naboo, and they were clearly too lame to leave their planet to fight anyone else. Yech, I can't even bear to think of them. 21. Jedi or not, should Yoda really have given 6-year-old children real light sabers? Those things will slice through anything they touch. Just ask Luke! Even he wasn't allowed to have one until he was nineteen, and then he lost his hand while playing with it. That looked like it hurt, too. 22. Why would Yoda's light saber have to be shorter than a normal one? That's quite an unnecessary handicap. I can't imagine a beam of light weighs very much. 23. Why oh why did Padme fall in love with Annakin? After all, he was just a snotnosed rugrat when they first met-- and what normal, heterosexual gal could shake an image like that? Then she meets him again when he's all grown up (sort of). Yet he never even saved her life, as Luke and Han did for Leia, nor wowed her with any detectable charm. However he did 1. stall her planetary rescue mission with his silly pod race, 2. use her as bait for an assassin's killer centipedes, 3. try to ditch her on Naboo while she was supposedly in his protective custody, 4. let her get lacerated by a giant Tiger in an arena, and 5. allow her to fall out of a flying transport and leave her in the sand!! I know she is supposed to be a strong gal, but for crying out loud, he's a Jedi! He should have had plenty of MADSKLILLZ to save her at least once, but mysteriously he never does. He did, however manage to criticize her political views during a picnic-- a career politician might be offended by that. He even suggests his own tendencies toward imperialism and genocide. Oh yeah, and then there was that thing with the slaughtering of the Sand People. All he really did to earn her love was to stalk her in a very creepy way, whine like a BEEatch about being second fiddle to Obi Wan, and force himself upon her until she basically gave up and decided to love him. Oh and he floated a piece of fruit and pretended to be injured by that weird ass-cow on Naboo. Can we assume it was really the Old Jedi Mind Trick? Or did she just realize that he could kill her at will? Oh wait, he did. Women who are attracted to creeps like this need an appointment with Dr.Phil, before it's too late. 24. So while they were rewriting everything else for pointless cameos, why didn't they dig up the Ewoks too? I dunno, something like Wicket being the stumpy, impotent half-brother of Boss-Nass and Chewbacca, who was shipped off to the Endor moon to hide his disgrace. But, with the Kaminoans' help, Wickett created a race of cloned mini-wookies called E.W.O.K.s (Emasculated Wookie-Ousted Klones). They soon built a treehouse empire with technical advice supplied by Ree-Yees and Dengar, including, but not limited to, the method of hauling supplies up into the giant redwood canopy with Dewback lizards outfitted with suction-cup shoes. Makes perfect prequel sense. 25.
How can the stormtroopers ALL be descended from Boba Fett? Doesn't that
dilute the supposed theme of ordinary people submitting to tyranny…
when it was only these clones who were actually made to fight for it?
And wouldn't Boba Fett, the "real" son of the father of all
stormtroopers, have been given somewhat more special treatment in the
original trilogy? He would have been a rock star. But then, how would
Boba even prove who he was? Any storm trooper could paint some Mandalorian
armor green and collect his bounty checks. Wasn't the best thing about
Boba Fett NOT knowing what he looked like (as a grownup LET ALONE a child?)
And since all the stormtroopers were made as clones… doesn't that
make ALL the "Star Wars", in fact, "Clone Wars?" Why
would they refer to the "Clone Wars" in the past tense during
the original trilogy? And lastly… why did they all have a cockney,
Billy Idol-esque accent in the prequels? Can you even imagine that same
voice saying "These aren't the droids we're looking for,"?? 27. If Jango Fett was helping the Kaminoans make clones of him in aid of the Republic, then why was he later working as Count Dooku's bodyguard on another planet, in aid of the Separatists? Why did it have to be him doing both things? And who was protecting the Count while Jango was relaxing on Kamino? 28. In his talk with a captive Obi-Wan (hanging in energy restraints), why did Count Dooku justify his separatist rebellion by saying that an evil Sith Lord was corrupting the Republic? Because in the very next scene, we see him taking orders from the very same Sith lord! Wouldn't it be enough to have him revolt merely on the grounds of rejecting Sith influence? Wouldn't that have added a welcome, sympathetic dimension to his character? He certainly still could have been manipulated to revolt against the Republic, thereby helping to destroy it, even with those best intentions at heart. And wouldn't that make his ultimate death that much more poignant… realizing too late that he'd been wrong to instigate a secession? Seeing him as yet another of Sidious' puppets turns him into a huge fool and, even worse, a hypocrite. And it heaps too much power on the Emperor if you ask me. As for why the greedy Trade Federation aliens get suckered in, that I understand… because they just plain suck. But COME ON, not Christopher Lee! How can you punk a great actor like that? 29. Would Padme really have time for all those lavish changes of clothing and hairstyle? And why didn't she age 10 years like Annakin? And did anyone believe a young gal in a Space-Chanel dress could really be traveling as a refugee? Leia looked just as noble in a plain white dress and two Cinnabons for hair. 30. Did Yoda really need to have known Chewbacca? The little green master said that the Jedi could not afford to lose the Wookies as allies… any particular reason for that? They could have worked in the wookies some other way. 31. How could all those Jedi, after wasting thousands of separatists and killer droids, be killed by a few clones with blasters? Element of surprise is one thing, but these are J-E-D-I. They have a sixth sense for this kind of stuff. Or was being a Jedi really no big deal? Ahem. 32. Did we really need to see the gallant Obi-Wan Kenobi riding a feathered iguana to chase a coughing cyborg riding a giant yo-yo? I repeat: "Feathered iguana chases giant yo-yo." Why did everybody have to go down in that big mine-shaft town anyway? And what was up with the corduroy-faced man? 33. How did General Grievous live long enough to collect 4 light sabers from fallen Jedi, when his vital pulmonary organs weren't even covered by his armor? 34. Tell me again, why did Annakin turn from noble knight to baby-killing dark lord in one scene? All the fuel we were given for this transformation was that Padme was forseen to die in childbirth of some unknown cause… and only Palpatine can save her??? Pure mumbo-jumbo. I must have missed the scene where old Sidious earned his OB Gyn. in Sith Pediatrics. Oh, and then there is the little matter of seeing him fight with Mace Windu in the window sill (the Windu sill, har har). Poor little impressionable Annakin hears Mace and Palpie each accuse the other of trying to betray the Republic. Considering he has known these Jedi all his life, and owes all his training to them, and oh yeah, Sidious had just revealed he'd been lying to Annikan all these years about not being a Sith…. did it really make sense for him to pick the bad guy's side? He even expresses regret when he realizes he got Mace killed! At that point he seems to choose the evil Emperor by saying, "Well, you're the last guy left alive in the room." So now, after decades of Machiavellian maneuvers, Palpatine's master plan finally becomes complete, with Annikan swearing his undying loyalty to the Sith. Couldn't he have possibly said something (anything!) more profound than "Goooood" ?? 35. So Obi-Wan and Annikan fought their climactic showdown on a lava planet… please tell me why were they there again? It looked like some sort of non-sequitur mining operation. Please tell me how lava could be sputtering and flying all over the place, and yet nobody gets burnt, and the white tarmacs are all spotless. We must be talking about one very well-paid janitorial staff. 36. Would the noble Obi-Wan really have just left Annikan there to die slowly of his wounds in the lava? Wouldn't he have attempted either to finish the job, or rescue him? A diehard good guy might try to give him another chance, and considering the pounding he'd just gotten for being a Sith punk, he might just have been ready to take it. Still, we all know that for the story to jive with the "real" Vader legend, of course they needed him to be scooped up, barely alive, by Sith forces and remade into a cyborg. Why couldn't they have the evil Clone troops race in while Obi-Wan was still standing there in a quandary, quickly overwhelming him and forcing him to flee? Wouldn't that neatly spare him the tough choice of what he should do, and leave the purity of his character intact? Especially if they decided to make Greedo shoot first, I mean COME ON!! 37. Why did Padme suddenly want to wear the famed Princess Leia "Star Puffs" hair doo? Since the infant Leia never meets her real mom (contrary to what Leia says in EP VI.. aaargh!) we are now led to believe…. the hairstyle was hereditary?? Shouldn't we instead have see Queen Organa wearing it? 38. Why would Palpatine tell Annikan the truth, that the young sith himself had killed Padme? After a career of lying to everyone in the galaxy just to spark a civil war, how unlike him is it to tell the harshest truth of all to the one underling he intends to keep working with? A new recruit like Vaderkin just might use a revelation like that to justify leaving the dark side, not to embrace it even further (and let's not forget that stuffy suit he's wearing was another reminder of his mistake). A craftier Palpatine might have actually blamed Padme's death on Obi Wan. Or Yoda. Hell, even Chewbacca would have been easier to blurt out. He could have said whatever he wanted, there was nobody left to dispute it. "You gotta believe me Annie, there was this really big hairy apelike thing, and he picked up this weird crossbow thing… Padme never even saw it coming *sniff*." And still, if Palpatine REALLY had to tell the truth, couldn't he have added a little sugar coating to the news first? "Sooo, Annakin… about Padme….. ahem. Now, I don't want you to get any kooky ideas about the Sith being a 'bad' thing, but, uh… you might want to sit down for this one…". 39. So now Lord Vader, upon learning Padme has died, cries out in his same whiny Annakin way, "Noooooo!" I just can't get my head around it. The sheer audacity, the lameness of this moment is plain inexcusable. Isn't this a changed man, in every conceivable sense of the word? Why are we still seeing this conflict in him? That should have been gone the second he gripped Padme's neck. Why ruin what could have been a perfect opportunity to show Vader's new 'tude? Wasn't he ready to put the past away and just kick everyone's asses back into the dark ages? At the risk of rewriting this saga one more time, this line would have been be my choice: "The girl no longer concerns me, my Lord." 40. So, as we tally up the component characters of the Star Wars prequels 1-3, have a lot of Jedi, who are basically passionless monks. We have the Sith, who are evil monks. We get Senators, Kings, Queens, Chancellors, Generals, Trade Barons, Counts, Ambassadors, and assorted other high-ranking muckey-mucks. In other words, politicians. So we were given a 7-hour saga about monks and politicians. A lot of pomp, rigid dialogue, speechmaking, formalities, and soapboxes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the original trilogy we loved built around naïve, starry-eyed kids looking to the night sky for adventure? Wisecracking rogues flirting with spunky, smart-assed princesses? Fearsome (but lovable) walking carpets? Chatty electronic tincans who, more often than not, stole their scenes away from the human actors? Mysterious helmeted foes whose true identities were never FULLY revealed-- because just maybe we were AFRAID to learn too much about them? For them to veer so drastically off that formula was puzzling to say the least. Even though I use the proverbial "them" to lay blame, I expect most every problem can be traced right back to George himself. Was it a matter of having too much control? Or the insular environment of the Skywalker Ranch? Or maybe the syndrome of everyone on the project becoming yes-folk, too afraid of being cast out of Eden to raise a valid complaint? Maybe all of the above. Still, I can't knock Mr. Lucas too much. We got one history-making trilogy out of him, not to mention quite a lot of other gems, like American Graffiti, Empire of the Sun, and even a hand in Captain EO and Raiders of the lost Ark. That's a lot more than I, or anyone I know, will ever accomplish, even in our wildest dreams. He's truly a brilliant and talented visionary. Nah,
he shoulda' known better.
(c) 2006 James Hakola
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All content ©1997-2006 James Hakola. All rights reserved.
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