I find your lack of faith...disturbing.

[jere7my]

Genndy Tartakovsky, the clever boy behind Samurai Jack and other things, produced a very nifty Clone Wars micro-series last year. He's gone and made another, rather less finely sliced, one: five 15-minute chunks, airing every day this week at 7PM on Cartoon Network. They'll air in a 90-minute block Saturday at 8PM, too.

The Force is with Genndy. Watch 'em, whatever you think of the prequels.

Comments

[wednes.livejournal.com]

I must agree with your assessment of the Clone Wars cartoon as profoundly nifty. Star Wars is not my nerd vehicle, but those are remarkable. My roomates girlfriend is drawing for the new Star Wars comics in fact, based on the art for those cartoons. The action figures for that series are also awesome.

But what would you expect from the man who gave us Dexter's Lab???

[superbacana.livejournal.com]

Just out of curiosity, what's your take on the first two prequels --- still love 'em?

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

I do. There are some things that are indeed awful—about 60% of the Jar-Jar in I, the Anakin/Amidala scenes in II, the diner—but on the whole they do what I want a Star Wars movie to do, which is immerse me in a different universe for a couple of hours. They're not the same kind of movie as the original films, but I don't mind that—I think of them as the Star Wars Silmarillion. They're pretty dry, there's a lot of complicated historial stuff going on, and they're fundamentally dark if you look past the surface, which is a big change from the originals.

I think part of the problem is that modern SW fans are the sort who think the Timothy Zahn books are rilly kewl, and were expecting a sort of late-adolescence brand of Star Wars to complement the early-adolescence originals, which is what the spinoff books and comics have been giving them. The movies we actually got were aimed both too low and too high for them—Lucas made the movies for the same audience the first ones were made for, pre-teens, but added a backdrop of cerebral politicking that was too dry for fans who thought Mara Jade was the last word in cool. Then he made the mistake of making mistakes: he committed some high-profile blunders that made it easy for fans to say "These suck! Look at Jar-Jar!" The 10% of the films that actually does suck makes for a fine banner that offended fans can wave to build a false consensus.

People don't remember the cheesiness of the originals: fans complained about "stupid" names like "Darth Sidious" and "Attack of the Clones", having forgotten how dorky "Luke Skywalker" is if you aren't used to it. They ridicule Amidala's sexy outfits, somehow forgetting Leia's gold bikini. The same thing happened to the prequels that happened to Blair Witch—people didn't get what they were expecting, quickly reached a false consensus in which anyone who doesn't agree with the suckage is ridiculed, then didn't bother re-watching the films on their own terms.

IMO, the films are visually stunning, the undercurrent of Palpatine's menace is remarkably well and subtly handled, the lightsaber duel between Darth Maul and the two Jedi is the best to date, Jedi in their glory are a joy to watch, the inventiveness of the worldbuilding is up to par with the originals, and the films are, overall, less offensive than Return of the Jedi's Ewoks and blue plush elephants. I've seen horrible sequels to beloved films—Ghostbusters II, anyone?—and the Star Wars prequels aren't even in the same league. They're not ESB, but they still capture the magic...though for twenty minutes or so out of each movie I need to squint pretty hard to see it.

[superbacana.livejournal.com]

I see. One thing I like very much is the plot, the overall arc of the 6 movies, and the close parallels between 1-3 and 4-6; the tragic character and his redemption. (There are many things I don't like in the execution.) I agree that there are a number of stunning visuals in the first two, such as the city chase in the beginning of #2.

[andele.livejournal.com]

I go along with this for Phantom Menace--I liked it quite a bit, certainly more than most people, and it was pretty hard not to notice that half of the complaints about PM were "it's mindless action" and the other half were "it's overintellectual; it's all about reforming the tax code fergodsakes." Which I took to mean that it was treading a pretty thin line between the two extremes.

But Attack of the Clones lost me early on, precisely because it did not feel to me like I was being immersed in a different universe. Instead, it felt like a buddy cop movie that happened to feature jedi. I kept thinking I was watching Lethal Weapon 23. (Which is not to say that there aren't some cool bits here and there. Amidala is most definitely Leia's mom, in a way that is very cool to behold. But still.)