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.

HBO's Dune is the greatest of ideas.

Revenge of the Sith is definitely better than AotC, but it still suffers from many of the same problems. No scene that contains dialogue is filmed in a way to give it any narrative weight, which means your mind assumes that the effect-laden action scenes are supposed to be the most important bits. They aren't. If I listen to the dialogue and pretend it's a book, it's pretty good! But man is it poorly crafted. This could have been an amazing movie. Instead, it's a kind of okay one.

This is actually the first time I've ever seen Revenge of the Sith. So clearly TFA won me over enough to get me back involved in the Star Wars universe. That is definitely something.

Yeah, I've always thought the prequels had a lot of promise ruined by poor execution and a lot of foolish indulgence on Lucas' part.

I never understood the complaints from some quarters about Palpatine's plans making no sense. It was very clear to me that he was setting up multiple routes to power between the militarization of the Republic, his secret programming of the Clones, and his guidance of the Separatists. If for whatever reason the Republic had balked at abandoning liberty in favor of security and making him Emperor, he had both the Clone and Droid armies with which to conquer it by force. Though obviously the plan to have the Republic willingly hand him the reins of power was the one that would put him most securely in control. And by forcing the Jedi to be soldiers rather than peacekeepers, he caused them to be off-balance and vulnerable when it came time to betray them.

Revenge of the Sith is definitely better than AotC, but it still suffers from many of the same problems. No scene that contains dialogue is filmed in a way to give it any narrative weight, which means your mind assumes that the effect-laden action scenes are supposed to be the most important bits. They aren't. If I listen to the dialogue and pretend it's a book, it's pretty good! But man is it poorly crafted. This could have been an amazing movie. Instead, it's a kind of okay one.

The sheer ridiculousness of the spectacle also takes away from the emotional weight of the action. Watching the History of the Lightsaber thing that Mark Hamill recently hosted, I was shocked out how much more brutal and well-choreographed Anakin and Obi-Wan's duel was when I was watching the scenes of the actors fighting on the sound stage before all the effects were put in. With all the effects it just becomes a wall of noise and CGI lava that drowns out what's actually happening with the characters.

I think it's still a pretty effective scene, but then it's all undercut with Padme's death of a broken heart and Darth Vader's epic "Nooooo!"

HBO's Dune is the greatest of ideas.

wibble

WANT

(But I want Ron Moore to make it, so we'll have to wait until he finishes Outlander.)

I think it's still a pretty effective scene, but then it's all undercut with Padme's death of a broken heart and Darth Vader's epic "Nooooo!"

I saw a fan theory that Padme dies because Palpatine drains her life into keeping Anakin alive until he can be properly Vader-fied, which redeems that aspect somewhat.

There's no help for the "Noooo!", unfortunately.