the tourist said:
Why does everyone hate Temple of Doom so much?? In my opinion it has the best dialogue because it's wittier. And because it's darker and doesn't involve Nazis.
Kate Capshaw, not having a clue what the Sankara or Shankara stones were, the random kid (who I liked, but gets less likable upon repeat viewings), and Kate Capshaw.
Unlike Raiders, which was like an awesome b-movie action serial, Temple of Doom seemed like something you'd see on Sci-Fi with higher production values, you know? Not to say it's completely terrible, but it is the weakest of the three for me as well.
The opening sequence at Club Obi-Wan is spectacular, but it literally is all downhill from there.
Plus, Kate Capshaw's character is so immensely detestable and disgusting. God, I prefer the Nazi chick who banged his father.
lazarus said:
Yes, it was CGI overload, but it was all done SO well. Compare the creatures that attack the heroes in the arena to ANYTHING in Lord of the Rings. The difference is staggering.
I do admit that I wish Lucas would have used real actors for the clones, at least in the closer shots. That said, they looked great too. I mean, how else would you even do something like the Coruscant scenes? You know how expensive that would be to construct all that stuff?
And I don't think I need to mention the job the animators did with Yoda, which blows Gollum out of the water.
You found the story convoluted, I found it intriguing, and it was fun for me to untangle the webs of conspiracy that were woven.
Darth Maul was a bit overrated, in my opinion. His fight scenes were cool, but to me the totally tense conversation between Obi-Wan & Jango in the Fetts' apartment is an example of creating a villain with some actual meat to him.
And I don't really understand the complaints about the direction, at least if you're talking in terms of composition and pacing. The action scenes were tight as usual, and there were some great iconic moments on Tattooine, as well as during the arena battle on Geonosis.
The problem is that everything is great in concept, but flawed in its delivery.
For every great Jango/Obi-Wan scene, you have an incredibly annoying Boba saying something stupid: "THERE HE IS, DAD! FI-AHHHH!"
Obi-Wan's mystery, while cool at first, seems to drag and isn't really solved. I loved Count Dooku's character a lot, and the supposed duality, but he's dispensed so quickly in Sith (almost like Lee's character in LOTR).
I love the CGI work, it's well-done, but the problem with having so much of it is that in the end, you have actors reacting to green screen. How hard is it to look believable and genuinely in peril when you're running on green mattes all day, reacting to characters who aren't there, or running to places you can't see? CGI, like how it's used in Coruscant, is absolutely beautiful and perfect. You have real sets with real actors (with the exception of Yoda), with CGI supplementing the physical world created around them. Back to the Factory Scene, you're not marveling at whether or not Anakin or Padme will escape, but just how good the CGI looks; to me, that's the flaw of the entire prequel series, style over substance.
Then again, you can disagree, which I hope you do, because it makes things interesting and you enjoy the series a whole like more than I do.