Starship Castle

Over the past decade or so, there’s been a fair amount of fanboy outrage about Star Wars Episodes I-III.  While I’m not as angry or as upset as some people are (in fact, I’d say you could make a strong case that all three were better than Spider-Man 3), I have from time to time ranted about ways the prequels could’ve been better.  Here’s ten:

10.  Anakin starts out as a Jedi.  A good storytelling principle is to start the story as late as p9ossible, skip all the boring stuff leading up to that point.  For Star Wars, this would mean start with Anakin as a padawan, kicking ass and taking names.

9.  Darth Maul doesn’t die until Episode III.  You remember how awesome the lightsaber fight in Episode I was? Remember the chills you got the first time you saw Darth Maul?  Dooku’s fights were never as cool.  Keep Darth Maul around until the beginning of Episode III when Anakin kill him in a fight that will only be surpassed by the Anakin/Obi-Wan showdown.

8.  C-3PO isn’t punny.  In the original series, C-3PO was funny because he took everything so seriously.  In the prequels, he made stupid, stupid puns.

7.  Less George Lucas.  I don’t think George Lucas is an idiot, or the devil, or anything like that.  I think he’s actually very, very good a coming up with stories.  But I do think that it’s better when other people are involved.  He wrote and directed A New Hope, but for Empire and Jedi Lucas just did the story while other people wrote the script and directed.  Ditto for the Indiana Jones movies.  Imagine if Ridley Scott, Peter Jackson, Doug Liman or the Wachowskis had worked been involved in the prequels.

6.  Yoda isn’t Bugs Bunny.  As awesome as it is seeing Yoda in all his epic badassery, they went a little overboard with the CG effects.  When he shut down his lightsaber and started flipping around, just barely being missed by Dooku, I felt like I was watching an old Looney Tunes cartoon.  By all means, Yoda should kick ass.  He just shouldn’t be silly about it.

5.  More Clone Wars.  One of my favorite parts of prequel related media was “Star Wars: Clone Wars” – the animated series from 2003-2005, not the computer animated series from this past year.  If more Clone Wars adventures had made it into the movies proper, instead of angsty whining, I wouldn’t have complained. 

4.  A pregnancy and birth that make sense.  The fact that, somehow, nobody else realized Padme was pregnant especially bothered me, but not much else about this storyline worked.  A little bit of work would’ve gone a long way towards improving the continuity (remember what Leia said in Jedi?) and crafting a stronger story.

3.  Not so shiny.  Scenery and ships in the original trilogy looked like they had been used, like the world was actually lived in.  In the prequels, everything looked like it was fresh off of the assembly line.  For comparison, look at the design of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica.  One world looks authentic; the other looks like a brand new toy set.

2.  Build a freaking set.  Lucas famously the set of Gangs of New York and told Martin Scorsese that the whole set could’ve been done with computers.  Gangs was nominated for an Oscar for set decoration.  When I saw Attack of the Clones, I thought the scene in Dex’s Diner didn’t look any better than Dot’s Diner from Reboot - a TV show from 1994.  While I think computer graphics can be a great tool in creating fantastic set pieces (it worked in Lord of the Rings), it’s a tool that has to be used in addition to traditional set building.  Not as a replacement.

1.  Let the actors act.  Stories about the various stars problems with Lucas’s direction are pretty much a matter of public knowledge.  So are stories about how Lucas wouldn’t give the actors scripts until the day they were shooting a particular set of lines.  This means that the actors weren’t able to prepare at all – they were basically doing a cold reading.  Good storytelling has good characters.  In a movie, your characters are only as good as your actors.  You can’t make a good movie if you start by crippling the actors.  So don’t.

What changes would you make to the Star Wars prequels?  Let us know in the comments.

Bounty hunting may be one of the most common jobs in science fiction. It doesn’t take much to get started (just a healthy dose of confidence), but if you want to rise to the top you’re going to have to be something special. Here’s eight hunters who make you feel bad for their prey.

8 – Edward Mars He hasn’t been mentioned on Lost for a long time, but I keep wanting to see more about this guy. He chased Kate for more than three years, and didn’t give up until he was dead. Even when he wasn’t about to catch her, Mars was able to get in her head and manipulate her to a scary degree.

7 – Vogons Technically they might not be not bounty hunters, but the Vogons from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy are not beings you want chasing you. When they’re hired to destroy a planet and a couple of its inhabitants manage to sneak away, the Vogons don’t consider the job done until they’ve chased down and eliminated the escapees. If they’re one thing you don’t want, it’s the bureaucracy of an entire species trying to kill you.

6 – Leonard Smalls Smalls is a bounty hunter from the 1987 Cohen Brothers movie Raising Arizona. In H.I.’s dream about Smalls, he says,

“He was horrible. The lone biker of apocalypse. A man with all the powers of Hell at his command. He could turn turn the day into night and lay to waste everything in his path. He was especially hard on little things-the helpless and the gentle creatures. He left a scorched earth in his wake befouling even the sweet desert breeze that whipped across his brow. I didn’t know where he came from or why. I didn’t know if he was dream or vision. But I feared that I myself had unleashed him.”

5 – Rick Deckard There’s a lot of debate about Blade Runner’s Deckard. Is he or is he not a replicant? Is he or is he not competent at chasing down his targets? Look at it this way: Deckard is hired to hunt 4 replicants; all 4 wind up dead.

4 – Samus Aran Samus, star of the Metroid series of video games, isn’t the best bounty hunter in the universe, but that’s why she’s so scary. She doesn’t “seek out, capture, and return for reward” as much as “show up and kill everyone on the planet.” Maybe in some places that’s acceptable behavior, but that’s probably just because no one is left alive to object.

3 – Spike Spiegel Actually, we don’t want any of the Bebop’s crew on our tails. Spike in particular, though, has amazing combat abilities and an uncanny knack for survival. If he’s coming for you, it won’t matter what you throw at him. He’ll come right through it and hit you at full speed.

2 – Jubal Early Another bounty hunter with a scary ability to get in the head of his prey, Early is featured in one episode of the series Firefly. When he shows up, only a psychic genius who’s been programmed as a government supersoldier can defeat him. And once he starts talking you get the impression that he’s not entirely sane and at the same time sees the world with an odd clarity. When Early comes for you, you’ll probably be heading for jail and questioning your entire life at the same time.

1 – Boba Fett Honestly, who doesn’t love Boba Fett? Even though we don’t learn too much about him in the Star Wars movies, the Extended Universe of books, comics, and games have turned him into the galaxy’s biggest badass. The man survived the sarlacc pit, which alone makes him Star Wars’ most intimidating non-Force user. At different times he’s been both hero and villain, working for the highest bidder, but if he’s hired to track you down your best option will be to surrender.

Did we miss someone? If you’ve got a bounty hunter who should be on the list, let us know in the comments.