My Star Wars Rant Part V

Before I close out, there are a couple more small problems worth noting, but not really worth spending time on.  No one notices that Padme is pregnant?  Really?  Not even Anakin when he picks her up and holds her close to his body upon his return to Coruscant at the beginning of Revenge of the Sith?  He doesn’t notice that she looks skinny but has a giant bulge where her uterus would be if it were full of baby?  Because in one of the very next scenes that baby bump is clearly visible.  And they have crazy technology like light sabers and hyperspace drives, but Padme doesn’t know she’s having twins?  Really?  But most of all, Obi-Wan decided to “hide” Luke by letting him retain his last name and giving him to the Anakin Skywalker’s family on Tatooine, Anakin’s home?

Again, I don’t want to be the guy that tells an artist what to do with his or her art.  After all, Lucas did say that the original films were “25 or 30 percent of what [he] wanted [them] to be.”  We can take that one of two ways.  Either he would have done with the original trilogy what he did with the prequel trilogy given the chance or it’s possible that he really doesn’t know how good his own creation actually is.  No matter which it is, I’m still not very satisfied with the outcome.

It probably would have been a good idea for Lucas to stick with being the idea man and let someone else direct the prequel films.  After all, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, both superior films, were directed by people other than George Lucas and had other people working on the screenplay with Lucas.  And that’s probably why they were the superior films of the series.  Lucas wasn’t able to do whatever he wanted, wherever he wanted, because he had people that could warn him when things started sounding a little bit stupid.  That would have been helpful when writing some of that atrocious dialog between Padme and Anakin in Attack of the Clones.

Lucas obviously has a gigantic imagination.  And I have no doubt that, were he my grandfather, I’d probably have some of the greatest bedtime stories around.  But just because you can come up with a crazy epic space opera style story from a galaxy far, far away doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t seek the help of some outsiders every once in a while when penning your story for the masses.  Especially if you’ve been holed up in some ranch letting your own ideas form incestuous bonds with one another for the last 20 years.  I know that no one wants to share the glory, but even if he were forced to share the marquis with another person no one would have noticed anyway.

In the end I will always turn back to Star Wars.  I may not watch the prequel trilogy that often, but I no doubt will.  I may not be able to stomach Hayden Christensen’s whiny little voice, but I’ll deal with it.  Because no matter how badly I may feel that Lucas messed things up, nostalgia will always win.  I’ll always remember burying those green pig dudes from Return of the Jedi in the “sarlacc pit” in my back yard (to be dug up months later and released from their “carbonite prison”).  I’ll always look fondly upon Yoda, no matter how ridiculous he got in the prequel trilogy (and how crappy the writing got for Yoda in the prequel trilogy).  I guess that, after all of this, my complaints measure my love (even though sometimes it’s hate).  Confusing?  Yes.  Paradoxical?  No.