Mizzou Links, 12-2-11

Twitter! Sources! Ahhhhh

My personal favorite is when he takes apart how god-awful Lucas is a cinematography, which I think is in the third one? I’m not sure. But it’s the one where he talks about A and B camera.

I really recomend watching these, even though they can get uncomfortably weird in parts.

very well done.

Highlights

CGI everywhere.

Luke sees Hayden Christensen, not random old man.

Greedo shoots first.

I hope someday, some rich nerd buys the film rights to star wars, burns the master copy of all three prequels, and does it over again.

…we’d have viewed Episodes II and III a little differently if they had cast a good actor as Anakin. Hayden Christensen was so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so awful in that role. Someone with charisma and talent would have made that watchable. The writing wouldn’t have been any better (the romance scenes would have been almost as painful), but they would have been watchable.

(And I still think III was a little watchable.)

And doing stupid things are some of the best ways to enjoy a Friday.

I agree though, the lack of character development was a major problem in the prequels. For a set of films that was essentially supposed to show how a child who started out just like Luke ended up becoming Darth Vader, his character development went something like this: whiny child, whiny child, whiny child, Darth Vader.

I think everyone needs some editorial oversight. If you ever watch some of the “making of” featurettes about the original trilogy, it went through a looong gestation period before it became a film, because Lucas had to sell studios on the idea it could make money. With the prequels, everyone knew it would do business, and Lucas didn’t have to compromise at all, which is rarely turns out well.

But the Force was supposed to be something special, something you learn and feel and all that stuff. Not a level to be counted and read with a meter. I think that is the gripe.

“Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship”

So if we aren’t this crude matter and the force doesn’t care about this crude matter, why can they measure it’s strength through crude matter?

I don’t think the midichlorian thing was the dumbest thing they did. I think it’s probably in the top 10, but it’s like Lucas didn’t watch the 1st 3. He should have just had Timothy Zahn write the prequels.

It would have been better to not even make the midichlorian thing up! However, I can rationalize it as a marker for potential in manipulating the force.

If one doesn’t train in the Jedi way, you aren’t able to feel the Force and use it.

I rationalize it similar to normal epigenetics. You could have a gene polymorphism(more likely more than one in this example) that allows your blood cells after a level of stress to attain a higher overall number than normal.

But say you don’t continue to expose yourself to this stress, or you don’t train, or never notice anything vs. other people…then nothing really happens and your VO2 output never goes beyond normal distribution.

On the other hand you do start exposeing yourself to this stress, over and over, and eventually you can become an outlier of physical output directly linked to that overall higher level of red blood cells.

This is how I can accept (to an extent) the midichlorians….also the idea that lichian and other “things” have smaller forms of life in them that help with overall survival…

National Geographic.
Discovery Channe.l
Science Channel.
ect. ect. ect. Nerd stuff.

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