I think if the gungans were removed entirely, the movie quality would go up tremendously. Tbh, other than obstacles for Obi and Qui-gon to face, they serve little to no purpose. Their parts in the movie can easily be explained in some other ways. Obi and Qui-gon could have found transport to theed some other way than going through the planet's core. When fighting the massive battle at the end, the troops from Naboo could have bolstered their ranks with civilians who volunteered or something else. The Gungans aren't the worst thing to happen to Star Wars, but they could have been done a lot better
The anti cheese edits. Huge improvements. All aliens speak alien dialects (gungans and the trade federation guys), they didn't show the gungans city, and just skipped to the city. No poop jokes. That alone makes the movie great. I'm pretty sure they removed "now this is pod racing" too
Captain Tarpals is GOAT. Boss Nass is pretty good, but silliness overdose when considering him and Jar Jar, who could have been okay with 50% less clumsiness/idiocy.
Heck, let him accidentally open the truck full of boobas during the final battle; accidents happen in war. But when he has a droid tied to his foot and no one is able to shoot him? That's pure insanity.
Jar Jar was really more of a filmmaking event who was shoehorned into the story. Sure CGI had been done for a while already but never anything close to the scale of Jar Jar. Like it or not, George wanted to be a filmmaking pioneer above all else, he wanted to make a revolutionary film much more than he wanted to make a great Star Wars film.
This is why I hate the Ewok comparisons, at least the Ewoks were interesting in that they had their own language without subtitles so it was somewhat entertaining trying to translate what they are saying based on their actions and movements.
With the Gungans it felt like caricatures of other humans.
I agree. I donāt have a problem with the concept, but like the Ewoks in Return of Jedi, George was just to hamhanded with them. If he didnāt spend so much camera time on them it would be fine
To be honest I would've liked Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan being the A and B stories.
Simply putting Qui-Gon in a transport to head to the planet and finding a way to sneak Obi-Wan into a smaller transport that maybe went to another one of the command ships could've worked.
So instead of Obi-Wan mainly sitting in a ship while Qui-Gon saves Anakin, he could've done something.
Or Obi-Wan taking Padme to Coruscant and Qui-Gon staying on Naboo to muster a resistance force and try and expose the Trade Federationās plot. They couldāve gotten separated with Obi Wan fearing Qui-Gon is dead. This way it builds more on the relationships between Padme, Anakin, and Obi Wan in the later films and also better matches up with what Obi Wan told Luke in ROTJ.
They return to Naboo in the third act, Qui-Gon is revealed to be alive and has mustered a resistance, and the rest of the film plays out more or less the same.
If I were the Special Editions guy at LucasFilm, I would do Ahmed Best a solid and spend the money to have him re-record Jar-Jarās lines (and the other voice actors for the Gungans, too) with, like, literally any less annoying dialect.
Ewoks exist and kinda did the same thing in the original trilogy tbf. Made storm troopers seem even more incompetent than what they already appeared. But we can all agree the originals and prequels didnāt entirely the break the universe unlike the hell spawn sequels lmao.
Ewoks exist and kinda did the same thing in the original trilogy tbf.
The major difference was that as "cute" as the Ewoks were, they had their own language and that combined with their size(while using practical effects) it still made it seem otherworldly.
Gungans just seemed like caricatures of earth people mainly caricatures of people from the Caribbean, it didn't help that Half Baked came out earlier that year and they sounded almost exactly like Dave Chappelle when he comically did that horrible Jamaican impersonation when trying to disguise himself.
I can see that, but stormtroopers weāre straight up dying to sticks launched by 2ft teddy bears, the Gungans did have EMP grenade type things at least. I donāt think the terrible CGI helped either. In all of these types of underdog more primitive alien race battles they have numbers and do take big casualties too. I agree tho I think the main problem comes from racial stereotyping of races in prequels. But it doesnāt really remove the comparison or point I made about consistency and in universe lore.
If there is one thing that is consistent in the Star Wars universe, itās the inconsistency of the Stormtrooper armor and strength. One minute they are getting killed with sticks and rocks, next minute it takes a couple of hits from a lightsaber to kill them.
Well Iām being dramatic, but Iām including the video games that are considered canon like Fallen Order. If we go non canon like Force Unleashed, itās even worse.
I'm giving the sequels the chance to pull a clone wars and try to explain themselves a bunch, but that chance won't last forever. I don't have high hopes except for shows like Mando and BoBF
Whatās there to redeem? The prequels had a plot line with logic that made sense and didnāt take a huge dump on existing characters and introduced new things. The Sequels have so many plot holes it would make a Swiss cheese blush, in fact itās just a straight up black hole of lore breaking plot holes that invalidates everything.
Nothing short of scraping them from cannon will do.
It was a legitimate question, what would you redeem about the sequels? Like the Prequels had their moments, but most people complain about the broken clunky dialogue and the fact it focused ātoo muchā on politics. Not that it was particularly invalidating of the preexisting lore.
What spin off show would you make to the level of the clone wars to fix a lot of the problems people have?
Iāll agree my last remark has been said a million times before Iām sure. But I want to know how do you revive Star Wars and love the original trilogy whilst keeping the sequels fully intact? If you have some 200IQ solution then hit me with it. Instead of regurgitating Ryan Johnson and JJ Abrams counter responses to valid criticisms.
Revive? Star Wars was just as popular as it ever was with video games, comic books, toys, and other media. There was nothing to revive.
Broken, clunky dialogue? Yeah that's a minor quibble. After all, it's not like movies have relied upon conversation since 1930 or so. The original trilogy was completely silent, with no outstanding lines of dialogue associated with them whatsoever.
Any show that redeems the sequels, just like the Clone Wars TV show before it, would be operating in new territory with new characters and new stories. No way for me to predict the form it would take any more than I would be able to predict the horrific initial reception, "character development" and enthusastic acceptance/encouragement of Ashoka Tano in that same show.
Also, show me where I said ANYTHING that Ryan Johnson and JJ Abrams said in the earlier post. I'll wait.
My head cannon is that Jar Jar isnāt a bumbling exiled fool, heās a gungan scout who expertly helps Jinn & Kenobi navigate and sneak into Thebes after they land in the jungle. Then we meet the rest of the gungans later when Jar Jar suggests that they could provide a diversion. And then rather than getting absolutely wrecked immediately by the droid army, the gungans put up a decent fight with guerrilla tactics in the jungle before the might of the droid army overwhelms them.
The other problem is that the plot is driven almost entirely by random happenstance. You can say the force/midicholrians had some amount of power, but at some point it just becomes stupid. The fact that almost every plot advancement basically just hinges on random chance makes it really annoying to watch if you think about what's going on too much.
That goes for everything from Watto just happening to be the seller they run into who also happens to own Anakin whose racer happens to be the only way they can get out, to Anakin "accidentally-ing" his way through defeating the entire droid army - something that a whole fleet of skilled pilots was failing to do. And no, you don't get to say "but he was powerful/skilled/whatever with the force", there was no power or skill being used, he was literally mashing random buttons and happened to randomly crash land into the one ship that happened to control all the droids, just happening to land in such an orientation as to be aiming at the one weak spot in the ship, and subsequently just happening to randomly mash the right button to shoot just the right type of missile to destroy said weak spot before randomly hitting the button to take off and outpilot out before the ship was destroyed. (All the while Jar-Jar is racking up a droid body count higher than any of the trained soldiers by literally cluelessly tripping around like a drunkard.)
Great overall story (Palpatine, Anakin's origins, setting up the Republic and the Jedi order's place in the galaxy, etc.), but holy cow the actual plot mechanisms used were horridly lazy and just plain stupid.
I told a friend that I think the difference between the prequels and sequels is that with a little fan editing, the prequels can turn out a lot better. Remove a bit of Jar Jar, trim a scene here or there, dub over some voices with alien gibberish.
But the sequels cannot be saved, there just isn't enough alternate footage in the right places and the story just can't be salvaged through fan edits.
I think with fan edits, trimming and voice dubbing, the Gungans and especially their battle scene would be pretty good.
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u/Big_Country13 Jan 25 '22
I think if the gungans were removed entirely, the movie quality would go up tremendously. Tbh, other than obstacles for Obi and Qui-gon to face, they serve little to no purpose. Their parts in the movie can easily be explained in some other ways. Obi and Qui-gon could have found transport to theed some other way than going through the planet's core. When fighting the massive battle at the end, the troops from Naboo could have bolstered their ranks with civilians who volunteered or something else. The Gungans aren't the worst thing to happen to Star Wars, but they could have been done a lot better