Re: Star Wars Episode III trailer on \"The O.C.\"
Comparing Lord of the Rings to Star Wars is absurd. You've apparently missed my point. You watched the original trilogy as a child (or very young man). The reason your reality was suspended is because you were a child. Show the OT to an adult of your age today who's never seen it before, and they'll say it was "cool" or whatever, but the OT definitely were not movies of the same caliber as Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies.
I know this puts me in a minority of one, but although I enjoy the LOTR movies, I've never completely warmed to them. They were an extremely competent and inventive retelling of a fifty year old story, but one that I already knew very well. I loved the books as a kid, but as I've got older and have read more widely I've found (disappointingly) that it's lost much of its original weight and appeal. I'd go so far as to say that the story (as a whole) is of dubious literary merit, especially by the second half, where it slips into hero-worship and hollow triumphalism, though it evidently appeals to children. And many of the whimsical and eccentric touches that make the first book the only one I now enjoy rereading were the bits that were cut out of the first movie..
I wasn't born (just) when the original Star Wars came out, but I know that it invented a completely new genre, in the visual medium of cinema, and put things on the screen that nobody had ever even got as far as conceiving of imagining could exist. It showed us a functioning universe completely unlike our own, in which every towering vista seemed to exist on a godlike scale, but which we could believe in entirely because the characters
were credible and real, (and archetypal in a Homeric, rather than a Tolkienistic, sense), and the actors seemed completely at ease with their surroundings. All three of the original trilogy pack an incredible emotional wallop as well, contrary to what somebody said, from the intensity of the trench run, to the revelation of Luke's parentage, to the final father-son duel.
And as far as I can make out, going by his subsequent record, the whole thing was a kind of fortuitous accident, and had very little to do with Lucas' innate talent as a filmmaker or director (even the first cut of A New Hope was described as an unmitigated disaster).
The new trilogy (so far) fails, because although the component pieces are all there, the parts don't hang together. The Phantom Menace
did cram too much in. ROTJ ended by intercutting between a 3-way simultaneous battle, and got away with it. Therefore, by Lucas' logic of unconstrained expansion, TPM ends with a 4-way battle, and loses much due to the time this eats up. AOTC devotes the entire final reel to action with almost no dialogue, but doesn't earn the emotional investment necessary to do this. And the actors have no idea where they are or how to respond to their environs - they're clueless. It gets so bad that at times, when an actor utters something that doesn't advance the plot, that reveals something about their character's identity, or history, it actually knocks you back in your seat and makes you do a double take and wonder how it didn't get cut..
Anyway, this post is now too long. In summary: Star Wars the Original trilogy is still better, in my book, than Lord Of The Rings, the Peter Jackson version. I honestly believe that. The New Star Wars trilogy is soulless eye-candy. That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it
