Squiggly_P wrote:
1) The Characters
So to start out, I want to address the way that the characters are dealt with. In the RLM review he asks several people to describe the characters. They attempt to describe Qui-Gon and Amadala. When describing the Original Trilogy characters, these people are describing their personalities with short, simple words and phrases. The rebuttal to this review spends several paragraphs for each character while failing to describe the characters personalities. Qui-gon being compassionate is the closest you come,
Being kind, soft spoken, nurturing, trusting, independent, and strong-willed doesn't describe his personality?
and I personally don't see that in the film. He leaves Anakin's mother on Tatooine when he could surely afford to buy her after having won his bet, leaving Watto broke and desperate (so desperate that he sold her to some poor moisture farmer out in the middle of nowhere).
His winnings were the parts he needed, and Anakin's freedom. Anakin's mother didn't figure into that, and Watto outright refused to bet her in addition to her son.
The problem is that you never know what the hell he's doing. In any given situation you kinda know that Han Solo is gonna do something that Han Solo would do. You might not know exactly what he's gonna do, but you know he's gonna do something IN CHARACTER. When dealing with Qui-gon, I rarely ever felt like I knew how he was going to react in any given situation. Would he be patient and strategize? Would he jump in a be spontaneous? Would he try to go around an enemy and avoid a conflict, or would he try to take them on?
It's really character stuff if he decides to beat the people he can, and run away from massive armies instead of "fighting all of them." I hate the way certain people look at characterization, and think that a character has to do everything in a certain exactly according to their assigned "personality." Real people are not like that.
The characters' relationships are also left out in the cold. How a character feels about the other characters will affect how we perceive that character and give them personality and add interest and depth to the characters. The relationships in TPM aren't developed much at all. Most of the dialogue is exposition used to advance the plot. There's little to no subtext in any given scene. The characters just stand there delivering lines of exposition to each other with little emotion. They don't move around or do anything while they're talking. The scenes with Padme talking to Jar Jar have her kindof doing something, the scene in Watto's shop has some stuff kindof happening in the background I guess... There's not much happening outside people delivering lines and maybe walking. This is addressed in the Episode 3 review, but it's relevant here as well.
These are OK subjective points, but I will disagree that "it's relevant here." Because the scope of my essay was his Episode I review. If he didn't say it in his Episode I review, then I don't have to give him credit for that when responding to just that review.
It really seems to me that some people are going out of their way to defend this guy, and make better arguments for him than he actually made himself.
2) The plot
Not to be confused with the story, which is an entirely different thing (and pretty much missing entirely from the Phantom Menace). The plot is the events in the film that drive the story. The basic plot of the film is all that stuff about the taxes and the Trade Federation and space politics and all of that crap.
No, the taxes were a near irrelevant MacGuffin and nothing more. It's really strange how you put so much emphasis on the taxes, going so far as to label them "the basic plot of the film," when the actual movie practically dispenses with them
within the opening crawl. Because by the end of the crawl, the Jedi are sent to deal with
the blockade, not the taxes. The Jedi were not there to discuss tax laws, as Stoklasa tried to make things look. They were there to intimidate the Trade Federation into backing down from their aggressive actions. The movie is about those aggressive actions getting out of hand, and a small group of heroes who try to fix things.
The RLM review makes a case that the plot doesn't make any sense while the rebuttal makes the case that it does if you're paying attention to the movie. First, a number of things are inferred from the film that the film itself doesn't actually explain or aknowledge. The part where it's refuted that the Treaty can't just be forcibly signed, that they need to make it look legit, etc is moot because the film describes a different scenario. The film states blatantly that they are confident that the Senate will ratify the treaty. That statement means that all they want is to get the treaty signed.
Leap in logic. Sidious telling the Trade Federation that he's confident a treaty will be ratified
does not mean "do any stupid thing you want and not even TRY to make the treaty look legit."
The further insinuations that the treaty makes sense because it would give the Trade Federation an unfair advantage or whatever is also moot, because the movie never states or implies this at any point. It states only that the treaty would "make the invasion legal". Somehow.
And making the invasion legal isn't an unfair advantage for the Trade Federation?
So the author of the rebuttal is kinda-sorta doing the exact same thing he's criticizing RLM of doing, in that he's kinda making shit up that isn't necessarily stated as fact in the film.
Maybe you should think things through before talking all this trash. Because your points here are lousy.
If you're writing a film and your plot hinges on your audiences' understanding of some political device like a treaty, then it's in your best interest as a film maker to make sure that the audience understands the implications of having the treaty signed and/or making the invasion legal vs it's being illegal. If the audience isn't aware of the consequences of either scenario, then those consequences don't exist and there is no dramatic tension to derive from that plot element.
Uh, it's really not that hard to guess that the treaty that was explicitly intended to make things legal would hamper prosecution against the Trade Federation.
In TPM, getting the treaty signed is a MacGuffin, but we don't know WHY. What do they get out of it? Will the bad guys win if it's signed? Will they gain some ultimate power?
What? You're smarter than this. Don't make up stupid questions when you know damn well that the treaty is to cover the Trade Federation's butt and keep them from facing the consequences of their invasion.
If - as you say - they are merely protesting some taxes then why would they try to prevent word of their protest from getting to the senate?
I've dealt with this dumb question again and again on this very forum. They want to get
their version of the "word" out there,
after they have the butt-covering treaty.
Further, the MacGuffin is discarded after queen escapes from Naboo. Unfortunately, the Trade Federation now has no motivation for continuing it's aggression. It's plot has already been foiled.
The Trade Federation is in deep water
because they just invaded a planet. It's already been done. No, the MacGuffin isn't "discarded," because they still want the Queen to legitimize it.
3) Specific issues with the rebuttal
Pages 36 and 37 deal with the attempted assassination of the Jedi and the initial fight sequence.
You make a claim that the Jedi might know some stuff about dioxis and that they might know about droids, etc. The problem with assumptions like that in any film is that the film hasn't specifically clued the audience in to those things. Dioxis might very well be a quick-acting gas, and the jedi might know exactly how many droids are outside the door, but the film hasn't shown me that they know that stuff. You may think "well, you don't have to be told everything like that", but the best films ALWAYS do that.
It may not be more than a glance that a character gives, but it's almost always something that happens in any film. You have to keep the audience in the loop. Certain things are a given, but I wouldn't already know about the toxicity of some fictitious gas, and I didn't know how many droids were out there until they cut to them out there.
How many people think "poison gas" and not think "it's going to kill you fast?" Even if there was absolutely nothing I could say in the film's defense on this part...it's just a momentary thing before a big action scene. I really don't care, and audiences don't care about things ten times dumber than this in other action movies.
However, my real gripe with this is that you apparently misunderstand RLM's suggestion later that they simply tell the jedi they won't negotiate and that should just blow up their ship when they try to leave. You seem to believe that he meant that they should do this after they had already tried to kill them. I do believe that the suggestion was that they should have done that INSTEAD of blowing up their ship and trying to gas them.
It's stupid and idiotic for the Trade Federation to do,
even before the decision to kill the Jedi.
The REAL reason for the various suggestions that RLM gave for the multiple alternative methods of killing the jedi was to point out the fact that the story required that the Trade Federation make obviously bad decisions, thus making them feel like less of a threat
Stoklasa's own alternative suggestions were far worse - the Trade Fed admitting its wrongdoing to the Senate, and the Jedi going Rambo through the ship. He has nothing to stand on.
Page 38. You say the opening crawl states that the Trade Federation is hoping to resolve their tax problem. This doesn't actually explain why they are taking orders from this mystery hologram, nor why they would need to invade a planet or have a treaty signed to make that legal. If they do have a problem with the taxation of trade routes, why would they not just take it up with the Senate instead of invading some random backwater planet that would otherwise have nothing to do with their dispute about taxes? Was Naboo instrumental in passing some new tax laws or something?
If the American colonists had a problem with taxes, why wouldn't they take it up with the British Parliament? Why would they resort to rebellion and war?
Page 39: The thing in the mouthface says "They've gone up the ventilation shaft". You suggest this creature knew this due to security cameras or sensors. However, the point is that WE - THE AUDIENCE - were not given this information.
I don't know about you, but when I watch movies I
don't want every insignificant stupid detail spelled out for me as if I'm stupid. They're on a ship with numerous crewmembers and battledroids, and we
just saw the Jedi on a security camera!
Maybe a small point, but it's indicative of a lot of the problems the movie has. It spends a lot of time telling us stuff that they should be showing us, or telling us stuff that we just saw happen, but little time at all explaining things that we actually need to know to make sense of the political machinations of the plot.
Yeah, the movie would have been better served with some pointless scenes of the no-name Trade Fed henchman looking into some computer monitors first in order to justify a throwaway line that had no effect on the plot either way.
Maybe you want things spelled out for you.
Page 59 or so: On Tattoine, you talk about R2 having the readout and maybe they pulled the readout off screen while the camera was looking at the Padme / Anakin scene. Again, you're doing the same thing that you accuse RLM of doing by assuming things that aren't in the movie to be true, even though the movie has given no indication that what you're assuming has actually taken place. I point this out, tho, to explain WHY this thing with R2D2 bothers me in particular.
Qui-Gon said that R2 had the readout on the parts, then
Qui-Gon and R2 go out with Watto to look for parts. It's obvious...nevermind that the 3D picture device that Stoklasa based his criticism on
didn't even show up until later in the movie. There was absolutely nothing casting doubt on the idea that R2 was used for the purpose that Qui-Gon said he would be used for.
R2 should not have been in these movies. Period. He's only in them because Lucas thought fans would expect him in there. He wrote his story to include these characters, but the plot doesn't actually need them. In the original film, R2 has the plans in him. He was the object of desire. They were in the other two movies because they had interesting personalities and the stories could still use them to good effect. There is no logical need for R2 in the prequels beyond him just being R2 and thus a Star Wars character.
True, R2 wasn't important. This wasn't what Stoklasa was arguing - nor did R2's presence really detract from the film.
What this means, of course, is that while writing these movies, various things had to be done to shoehorn them into the story. If you didn't need R2, then would you have had to have a "Running the Blockade" scene?
Are you kidding me? Running the blockade was about R2, and couldn't have been in the movie for any other reason? Such as providing another action scene, in an action movie?
If you didn't need 3PO, then would you have needed Anakin to be a kid, building him for his mom? If you didn't want Jabba, then would you have had to go to Tattooine at all? Anakin could have been born on Coruscant or Alderan or any other planet. Hell, why couldn't he have been a citizen of Naboo?
Wait. You did not just say that. Anakin's only a kid to
justify him building C-3PO as a gift for his mom? WHAT?! He's not a kid to show the character's humble beginnings, or the childhood dreams that would eventually lead to his downfall. He's not a cheery, idealistic kid to contrast with the monster that he would be as Darth Vader. He's not a kid to be a surrogate son for Qui-Gon, or to write a story about a mother letting go of her son so he can move on to greater things. He's not even a kid to appeal to a big target audience of kids...Lucas just made Anakin a kid because of some irrelevant, minute-long cameo for C-3PO. Give me a break.
I didn't think the C-3PO cameo was necessary either, but it didn't detract from the movie in any significant way for me either. I didn't care.
Page 69-70-ish: Watto is using an older than dirt sales tactic. No, the reason RLM is bringing up the fact that Qui-Gon could just go to another dealer is because he could just go to another dealer. Would you have written it like that in the movie? No. It would have been weird and boring. BUT... to assume that people won't be bothered by such an obvious flaw of logic while watching a movie is a very bad thing to do when writing a movie.
You said it yourself. Movies are intentionally written not to be weird and boring. And what flaw in logic are you talking about? Qui-Gon clearly states that he doesn't want to go around town talking to the big dealers and attracting attention. Despite that he
is shown walking around town trying to find other ways to get his needed parts, after leaving Watto's shop. This was already dealt with in my PDF.
Later on It's suggested that they trade the Naboo ship for another ship and you talk about how the sandstorm popped up which would have prevented them from doing that...
I think you may not realize that this is a movie. It has a script. The sandstorm only happened because the script said it had to because they needed to contrive some lame-ass reason to have Qui-Gon give a shit about Anakin and if they had actually gotten off the planet, then they would have never had a Vader. See, Qui-Gon only decided to use Watto's part because he wanted to try to get Anakin thrown into the deal. He sensed something, or whatever. The point that RLM is continually making in their review of this film is that it could and should have been written much more simply. Basically, the ENTIRE FILM is wrong, and the whole concept should have been thrown out and started over, because the characters have to do things that would not make any logical sense, but are somehow forced to do these illogical things due to some incredibly miraculous happenstance that limits them to some singular choice.
Don't make better arguments for Stoklasa than he actually did. He made stupid nitpicks, as far as I can see. Also, I love how you say that "the ENTIRE FILM is wrong" because it used a chance occurence to put Qui-Gon and Anakin together. It was a reason that made sense, and every movie comes up with reasons to have things happen the way it wants.
You want to know contrived? R2-D2 being captured by desert midgets, who just so happen to sell them to Luke's family, who just so happens to come across Obi-Wan Kenobi while looking for R2 later. What horrible writing.
I do find the debate interesting, and you do make some interesting points, but you don't take basic film making fundamentals into account for a lot of your arguments,
I didn't go to film school, but I believe "not spelling out insignificant details for the audience" and "not going with alternative plans that are even dumber" are a couple of filmmaking fundamentals.
"... while I'm not one to bash the lightsaber fight in ANH, I would say that if you're trying to defend it then pointing out the sacrifice that comes isn't a very strong argument. Arguing like that suggests that the fight's merit comes not from the fight itself, but something that happened only after the actual fighting."
Yeah. That's EXACTLY the point.
A fight scene is totally worthless to a movie. Hell, almost every action scene is worthless to a movie. Nothing happens during action sequences unless the guy writing the movie is smart enough to know that action sequences are dangerous. The duels in the original trilogy have characters learning about themselves and their enemy. There's STORY advancement. There's character development.
So...action scenes in an action movie are pointless...If you and Stoklasa think that, then fine it's your opinion. Most people
do not think like that, at all.