[geeks] So I am watching "Phantom Menace" on TV......

[David Passmore]

On Mon, Nov 26, 2001 at 01:19:43AM -0600, Mike Hebel wrote:

> I think this whole series of movies is going to peter out
> here after this one.  We'll probably see the last one in the list
> released to lackluster acceptance even more than Episode I.  It's a
> shame really - I think people expect too much because they want the
> same feelings they had when they saw Star Wars for the first time -
> and in this day and age it's very hard to get magic to repeat itself.
> ;-)

It didn't take me long to figure out what Episode I really lacked that the
original trilogy had-- Han Solo.

3/4 of what makes the original trilogy great, IMHO, is the fantastic use of
dialogue. Witty, memorable dialogue is what made the experience. This was
mostly the work of a pretty unknown guy named Lawrence Kasdan (who also
wrote the screenplay for Raiders of the Lost ark) and another writer named
Leigh Brackett who wrote the original TESB screenplay. These folks deserve a
vast majority of the credit for those movies, but never got it.

Both Ep1's and ANH's weaknesses were the fact that the dialogue was all
written by George Lucas, who is a fantastic plotter but a horrible writer.

It looks like a guy named Jonathan Hales is writing the screenplay for
Episode II. He's never done a movie screenplay, but apparently wrote many of
the Young Indiana Jones episodes. Let's hope he does a good job...

David