Red Letter Media RotS Review Up

[mojo]

i actually read the whole thing and a lot of it was pretty well thought out, imo. all opinion, i guess.

but wtf?!

'For those who don't already know, Kurtz was a producer who worked with Lucas on the first two Star Wars movies. He left after TESB following disputes with Lucas over the direction of the story. Instead of the happy ending to RotJ that we got, Kurtz wanted a bittersweet one where Han Solo is killed in the middle of the third movie, Leia is left carrying her new burdens as queen, and Luke walks off alone.'

holy FUCK! is that true?!

[Mr. Oragahn]

Mojo, in all fairness, I've seen waaay better stuff in terms of comic strips.
As for Kurtz, I think I heard something like that, although what's more well known is the fact that Lando's survival out of the Death Star wasn't a sure thing until the end. Lucas just wanted such a happy end.
I suppose Solo could have died while blowing up the generator or something.

Now, as for the reviewo f the review of the review of the dsjsfivew rtio of the rievdnds sdeifo

I just read page 39 to 41, and boy, the guy doesn't even get anything about the meaning of slightly exaggerated negative criticism, does he?
Because, you know, I think it's quite obvious that RLM is a bit sneaky and not always totally fair. But he makes very good points nonetheless. I think he also throws idea rather wildly, in such a rough form that it's absurd to go all nazi over a literal analysis, word by word, of what he says.
But Raynor just had that much time to waste, I guess.

Just an example:

6:22
Plinkett: "Anyways, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon they end up in the hangar bay somehow, where the droid armies are being staged for an invasion. Why don't the Jedis just start fighting all of them, then steal a ship and head back to Coruscant to tell the Galactic Senate what's going on. It's not so crazy because later in the film they attempt to run the blockade and they make it through. The fact that they even tried that makes this a possible option."

Read that quote. Seriously, read it. Take time to process the utter insanity involved in saying something like that. While nitpicking the plot and pretending to be a smart tactician, Stoklasa actually suggests a plan contingent upon "fighting all of them." Yes, this guy actually thought it would be smarter for the two Jedi to come out in the open and fight an entire army. That's just inconceivable, even by the standards of action movie heroes. Maybe not for Rambo, who must be the inspiration behind such a dumb statement. But while it's been a long, long time since I've seen a Rambo movie, I don't remember even him acting so stupidly bold.

I think he did. But his rifles were also automatically morphed into heavy boltguns.

I don't really think that RLM wanted the Jedi to fight all those damn droids. It was more of a way to say fight your way through them (most of "them" being the dumb B1 variant that can't hit shit and gets downed in droves throughout the whole prequels and even the CGI Clone Wars) to get to a ship with, you know, what could be a hyperdrive.
RLM says steal a ship and get back to Coruscant, not steal a ship and land on Naboo and spend the rest of their time to find another ship and then return to space, for some dumb reason, fly close to the same big ship they actually fought to left, and only then, get to Coruscant.
Geez.

The Royal Starship they later escape the blockade with was small and fast. The Jedi got that ship on the planet's surface, without having to fight as many guards all at once.

Yes, because the Jedi would easily land on a planet that was getting under siege, with a huge fleet of warships up there.
Remember that by the time they leave, there's just one big Trade Federation ship seen in orbit - and remember, this is SDN, the place where a fleet of thousands of TF warships came from. Surely, the Jedi would try to land and then return to space to get back to Coruscant...

Surely, the Jedi had no guarantee that they'd easily find anything, or even find the queen as a matter of fact, or even avoid any droidekas.
We also must believe that it would be easier to leave Naboo with the TF forces fully deployed, than actually finding a ship in that big Trade Federation droid control ship and directly zap to Coruscant.

No to say that there was no guarantee that the ship they'd pick would be small and fast.
For the reminder, the Yatch Padmé uses in AOTC has one of the most atrocious FTL speeds ever: hours to cover a couple parsecs. Ugh.
Oh, wait. Did he say small? Something that's merely 24 meters short of being a hundred meters long?

Stoklasa also conveniently left out the fact that Queen Amidala (whom the bad guys needed to sign the treaty) was on that ship.

They're Jedi, they're ambassadors whom's authority is recognized by the Republic. They'd get to Coruscant and warn the Senate that Naboo was under siege by the Trade Federation. There would be no way for the Trade Federation to deny that, and it would be pretty clear that anything signed then would be done under coercion.

There's evidence that the Trade Fed wasn't shooting to kill then, because they were picking off small repair droids instead blasting the ship itself.

Yes. That's why they used the tractor beams.

None of which even needs to be brought up, because whatever they did with the Royal Starship came later in the movie and thus didn't figure into the Jedi's decision-making, at that moment.

Precisely.
Then why suggest to actually get down to Naboo to find something, huh? :|

On the other hand, the ships that Stoklasa suggests the Jedi steal are huge, lumbering landing craft surrounded by battledroids, and being filled with even more.

Not only RLM doesn't really mention any type of ship in particular (it's quite obvious that with high profile Neimoidians aboard, there would be better ships to steal than the C-9979s), there's also the fact that the droids are packing up. Literally.
They're stored in a way which doesn't allow them to be deployed until the MTTs' huge mechanical arms pull the racks out. Same goes with the PACs.
All the Jedi would have had to fight would have been the few and dumb B1 crews and get to the controls.

Still, nothing says those ships would have hyperdrives. Since they're ships for deployment, you'd obviously take into consideration and actually try to get to some craft that really looks more like a diplomatic craft.

How fast does he think they can seize control of one of these big ships? When they reveal themselves, they'll be swarmed.

Keeping in mind that RLM would not ask the Jedi to fight thousands of droids just to get to a ship, the Jedi would just have to wait for most the battledroids to be folded into the racks.
We've seen how easily dispatched small squads get in Theed.

The last time we saw the Jedi, about a minute ago, they were running away! And assuming that they can defeat the droid legions and steal a ship, how would they escape with it? The Trade Federation would have long been alerted that one of its own landing ships had been hijacked, and will blast it.

He said fly to Coruscant, not fly to Naboo. There's no excuse, since in 6:49 he quotes RLM pointing out QGJ makes the wrong choice by going down to Naboo instead.

The stolen ship would be coming out of an even bigger ship, at point blank range to its guns and tractor beams.

Same guns that don't seem to hit much, and tractor beams... tractor beams?

6:49
Plinkett: "But instead Qui-Gon in all his wisdom thinks it's a better idea to go down with the army to quote 'warn the Naboo.'...Hey genius, if you're going down with the army, don't you think it's a little late to warn them about the army? And what the fuck are the Naboo going to do anyways? They don't even have a real army, just volunteers."

Because it's impossible for the Trade Federation to land it's bulky landing craft outside the city first, to unload and organize their forces before making their attack?[/quote]

Oh, I can imagine that. The Jedi arrive at the Palace, sweaty and all that, ask to speak to the Queen:

- My Queen, an invading army is currently deployed outside of your city and preparing for siege.
- You think?

No, really, Raynor, try to use that brain of yours. You really believe these Naboo guys wouldn't have figured out even before the Jedi would have put one foot on Naboo?

Possibly flying around the Naboo's defensive systems, which would probably be focused in their cities?

He knows that how?
Where did we see anything like that? I remember all sorts of STAPs and droid fighters flying over Theed, and not much of anything looking like smoke rising over the horizon, you know, like if they had to shoot down anything...
But why would they deploy outside of the city?
Mmm... let's see...
Because there's plenty of room just beyond the walls, perhaps?

The Naboo's defenses are weak but they did have fighter ships, as shown later in the movie.

Oh yeah, they really made good use of that. They literally were pinned to the grounds, pilots apparently caught pants down or something. Perhaps too busy painting or something?
I guess the meaning of the verb scrambling really is that elusive! :)

And really, even if Qui-Gon's plan isn't perfect, it's a HELL of a lot better than revealing themselves and going Rambo, as Stoklasa so ridiculously suggested.

Yep, because they had not revealed themselves trying to break through the armoured door of that battleship's bridge.
And because the Jedi obviously revealed themselves in order to sneak into one of those C-9979s and get a free ride down to Naboo.

[watchdog]

I grew a bit bored with this guys nonsensical rant, like I said it reminded me of Mike Wongs spittle-flicking rant at David Brin for his negative review of TPM. I guess I'll try to read some more, but his entire critique shows a lack of understanding of the point RLM was making. Like with the people describing the characters, Raynor simply assumes they are paid actors without any proof, he then goes on to describe Qui-Gon and the queen in detail. I'm wondering how long he took to compile those descriptions, because if it took him longer than a minute, then he totally failed to comprehend the point of that exercise.

[mojo]

i guess what i reject is the idea that he was being intellectually dishonest in his rebuttal. i never got the feeling that he was rebutting something because it was hurtful to his personal opinion rather than because he thought it was wrong. this guy just disagreed with basically everything said in the review.
i actually enjoyed both the review and the rebuttal, and i went from beginning to end on both.

[mojo]

I grew a bit bored with this guys nonsensical rant, like I said it reminded me of Mike Wongs spittle-flicking rant at David Brin for his negative review of TPM. I guess I'll try to read some more, but his entire critique shows a lack of understanding of the point RLM was making. Like with the people describing the characters, Raynor simply assumes they are paid actors without any proof, he then goes on to describe Qui-Gon and the queen in detail. I'm wondering how long he took to compile those descriptions, because if it took him longer than a minute, then he totally failed to comprehend the point of that exercise.

this is the kind of thing i'm talking about. i would be a lot more apt to believe that rlm was being dishonest in his choice of interviewees than i would to believe that the descriptions of qui-gon and padme were made over a long thought-out process. this guy had those things in mind the second he saw the people in the review going 'ummm.. stern?' he wasn't lying. he was furious because he couldn't understand how a person could be so vague, how a person could NOT understand what these characters were about.
i also disagree with the 'nonsensical rant' thing. i didn't agree with everything he said, but it was all delivered in a perfectly ordered fashion and made logical sense. his views were not at all 'nonsensical' and i would not call a carefully worded and edited 108 page treatise a 'rant'.

*edited to include second part*

[mojo]

Mojo, in all fairness, I've seen waaay better stuff in terms of comic strips.

i didn't intend to imply that they were the be all/end all of comic strips. but they all had the distinct and fantastic feel of axecop, in which you take the absurd idea and present it whole! the bit where qui-gon and obi-wan are standing there looking at that IMMENSE army of droids and obi-wan says 'what do we do' and then there's the panel of qui-gon looking really eager saying 'let's fight ALL THE ROBOTS!', that's f'ing hilarious.

[Mr. Oragahn]

i guess what i reject is the idea that he was being intellectually dishonest in his rebuttal.

It's more like he was being honestly disintellectual in his rebuttal.

[watchdog]

this is the kind of thing i'm talking about. i would be a lot more apt to believe that rlm was being dishonest in his choice of interviewees than i would to believe that the descriptions of qui-gon and padme were made over a long thought-out process. this guy had those things in mind the second he saw the people in the review going 'ummm.. stern?' he wasn't lying. he was furious because he couldn't understand how a person could be so vague, how a person could NOT understand what these characters were about.

And yet he goes on to repeatedly refer to those people as actors without any proof. I was curious as to how he came to his descriptions of Quigon and Amedala, because his description does not sound like something that you would come up with on the fly if someone popped a rapid-fire question at you. RLM had a valid question, so Raynor was able to describe the characters better, good for him, that in no way means that other people out there were able to take away the same ideas about these characters that he did. If the father-figure thing was what George Lucas was going for with Qui-gon, then at least one person out there caught it, obviously other people did not.

i also disagree with the 'nonsensical rant' thing. i didn't agree with everything he said, but it was all delivered in a perfectly ordered fashion and made logical sense. his views were not at all 'nonsensical' and i would not call a carefully worded and edited 108 page treatise a 'rant'.

*edited to include second part*

His essay is comming off to me as a rant, he seems to be getting angry with each new paragraph which is why I called it a rant. If I wrote a long essay where I kept calling someone dishonest throughout and getting angrier and angrier, then I think that would qualify as a rant. As for the nonsensical part, he seems to have watched a different review from the one I saw, because he keeps jumping to conclusions with the content of the reviews. I dont doubt that it was all well thought out, that doesn't mean that it isnt still a nonsensical rant.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Anyone who spends nearly 200 pages to write up a rebuttal to a negative review of TPM and else really needs to get a life and perhaps watch something else than some dumb prequels largely looking like they were made to sell plastic crap in spades. Geez.

[mojo]

ugh. let's just agree to disagree so we don't end up debating for ages. i don't have nearly that level of interest.

[watchdog]

ugh. let's just agree to disagree so we don't end up debating for ages. i don't have nearly that level of interest.

I can live with that.

[mojo]

Anyone who spends nearly 200 pages to write up a rebuttal to a negative review of TPM and else really needs to get a life and perhaps watch something else than some dumb prequels largely looking like they were made to sell plastic crap in spades. Geez.

i do have to say though.. 108 pages = nearly 200 pages? are you sure you didn't help with the ICS calcs?

[Mr. Oragahn]

Anyone who spends nearly 200 pages to write up a rebuttal to a negative review of TPM and else really needs to get a life and perhaps watch something else than some dumb prequels largely looking like they were made to sell plastic crap in spades. Geez.

i do have to say though.. 108 pages = nearly 200 pages? are you sure you didn't help with the ICS calcs?

It's all about 200 gigatons.
I remembered 188 instead of 108. 100 is already too much to begin with anyway.

[mojo]

absolute agreement. i was just like 'wtf?!' but yeah, 108 pages is extraneous. on the other hand, a movie review as long as the movie itself is also waaaaay too long.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Yes. The RLM comedy forces him to lengthen his jokes beyond necessary. Seriously, part 2, which was the best, should also have been the last one.