I haven't seen the last two Hunger Games films, but I had wondered all along about breaking Mockingjay into two books as so much of the last part of the final book was denouement; very fitting and appropriate to the series, but I wasn't sure how it would translate to film.

After all the excitement of the previous films, this one seemed like a let down.

Imagine that feeling, but a thousand times worse, and you will have some idea of what reading Mockingjay is like.

I'm watching a fan edit of Attack of the Clones that improves on the original, making it more consistent with the original trilogy and removing some of the worst dialogue scenes. But my god, it is still a really terrible movie. The prequels just LOOK so bad, and the acting is so phoned in. Even Ewan is hard to watch.

The political intrigue and clone army machinations part of the story is actually pretty interesting, and the romantic subplot COULD be good, if written and acted better. I feel like I should read a novelization.

Sigh. White men on Facebook, mang. I shared Raq's awesome Leia post, and I've got one dude in my comments saying she shouldn't have been in the movie at all because "useless", and another posting from some strange parallel universe where ACTUALLY older women aren't at all a rare sight in mass-market movies.

In Episode IX, I want to see Leia be the one to lop Snoke's head off after a pitched lightsaber duel. I loved Rey, Finn, and Poe, but Leia is the character who's most deserving of getting to do the honors.

George Lucas is saying some really dumb stuff about The Force Awakens and Disney. He is not a politic man.

I think if you look past the whining and inappropriateness and general douchiness of his comments, his basic point is The Force Awakens is just a retread. I always tried to make new things. New planets, new ships, new stories. And, frankly, he's not exactly wrong. TFA is very close to a remake of Star Wars, in many ways. And it has many many plot problems. More than any of the original trilogy, I think. But of course, as has been said many times, what he's missing is that it is FUN, with well-crafted characters, and snappy dialogue. And that is what people actually LIKE about the original trilogy.

It's a shame that he never understood that (and didn't have good people to help him with the prequels) because after this rewatch of TPM and AoTC, I really think the prequels could have been pretty amazing. The way the prequels set up Palpatine's rise to power is really brilliant and interesting, and solves the problem in the original trilogy of the Empire being a meaningless organization of "evil". The political / war-mongering / playing both ends against the middle storyline of the prequels is filled with moments and reveals that SHOULD be HSQ moments. But because they are paced so poorly, and acted so poorly, and written so poorly, and simply not given the drama they deserve, they just don't work.

Then the movies try to make up for the lack of good writing on those actually important and good things by throwing in lots of weird action scenes, and lightsaber duels, and podracing, and Jar Jar, and what the hell is Darth Maul all about, and way too much C-3PO and R2-D2 to make any sense. It's like George Lucas wrote a political history of the Empire and Anakin Skywalker's role in it, then looked at it and said "There. This is a good setup to the universe I built." But then he realized he needed to add stuff to make the fans happy, and was really really bad at that.

Plus, uggh, CGI so terrible.

In some world, the people at Disney, who know how to make an enjoyable film with quality fanservice, make some movies with the galaxy-wide scope of the prequel trilogy, and it's like Game of Thrones in space, and it is awesome. And maybe this new Star Wars universe will get to that point. I hope so.

Until then, I'm perfectly happy with the fun-over-scope choices Disney has made so far.

Speaking of fan edits and Game of Thrones in space, I just watched a three hour fan edit of Dune using all the ancillary material and it made me realize how much Martin took from Herbert in creating the houses and their shenanigans (at least as much as he took from the War of the Roses).

And, not unrelatedly, how much Dune would have benefitted from a Game of Thrones slow burn through the course of the season, because so much of what its about is political manipulation and betrayal and the action scenes are designed to be the culmination of events rather than the lever the story hinges upon.

how much Martin took from Herbert in creating the houses and their shenanigans

Or perhaps they were drawing from the same historical sources?

Or perhaps they were drawing from the same historical sources?

It's not like they're contemporaries. Dune's been the playbook to copy for lots of fantastic world-building for decades. I can see Martin turning to Herbert instead of Tokien when he was thinking out these things. Certainly Martin boned up on his Tudors while creating his universe, but the scope and the elements of prophecy, unimaginably dangerous megabeasts, developing new powers within the context of those manipulations looks way more like Herbert to me.

That's exactly what I felt about the prequels, Gris, especially AOTC. Knowing that the Republic is walking straight into the trap Palpatine set for them -- it should be hugely tragic.