Rewatching "The Beginning"
Aug. 12th, 2007 09:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerLast fall, I rewatched the whole Star Wars saga and capped it off with the "Empire of Dreams" documentary. A comment raised at that time started me thinking about also watching the long documentary included with The Phantom Menace DVD, "The Beginning." Obviously, it took me a while to get around to it, and I may have found the time to rewatch it at last through the simple decision it was about time to take a break from Mystery Science Theater 3000, but I've done it.
Still, my first memories of this particular documentary are a bit more melancholy and ambiguous than with "Empire of Dreams." At the time that the TPM DVD came out, I was pretty far beaten down by the constant and, it seemed, all but unchallenged negativity. I definitely wasn't about to watch the movie disc itself, for fear that the hard evidence would at last beat through even my thick skull and I would conclude that maybe people were right; perhaps George Lucas just couldn't tell bad work from good any more... but I did manage to watch the documentary. Prompted perhaps by my brother pointing out a scene or two, though, I started worrying about something else: perhaps George Lucas was so obsessed with "fixing it in post" with his fancy new technology that he didn't bother to pay attention on set...
Even then, though, the documentary did settle one point with me. My varied fears may have sprung from one single web site meant to discuss lightsabres. The author had concluded from the TPM trailers that Obi-Wan was "too flashy" in terms of lightsabre combat, that he "twirled his sabre" too much and made too many "showy" moves... and then somebody added a comment that this must have been Ewan McGregor's way of showing distaste for "working in front of too much bluescreen" and for "Obi-Wan's small role." (I include the link solely as a demonstration; going back to even an archived version of it irks me to this day...) Watching just how much drill and choreography Nick Gilliard put into the lightsabre duels, though, began to make me think that maybe those web site commentators were just plain wrong, that they had let their own preconceptions of what a lightsabre duel "had" to be like (plugged, just perhaps, into the feeling that Star Wars "has" to be something grim and gritty and "realistic") keep them from asking themselves what else the "Duel of the Fates" might have packed into it.
I suppose even so that I did start rewatching the documentary with the feeling that, with its lack of overall narration and minimal on-screen titles, it was something of a "blank slate" on which any viewer can see precisely the confirmation they want. Then, I began wondering about even that. Little moments like George Lucas himself deciding to step away from making Binks a "pure" computer-animated creation (which reminds me of how the Nemoidians were said to have been turned into "conventional, on-set" aliens at the last moment), and then learning it would be cheaper anyway to do that than to animate a mere head onto Ahmed Best's performance, start adding up for me, along with things like Frank Oz being impressed by some early work on Watto, which seems to me about as far from those making sanctimonious comments about how puppets are just plain "better" than computer animation as you can get. Some people may yet try to add up other moments (or at least particular interpretations of certain moments) to reach a different conclusion. Just perhaps, though, I'm willing to think they're just plain wrong too.
Still, my first memories of this particular documentary are a bit more melancholy and ambiguous than with "Empire of Dreams." At the time that the TPM DVD came out, I was pretty far beaten down by the constant and, it seemed, all but unchallenged negativity. I definitely wasn't about to watch the movie disc itself, for fear that the hard evidence would at last beat through even my thick skull and I would conclude that maybe people were right; perhaps George Lucas just couldn't tell bad work from good any more... but I did manage to watch the documentary. Prompted perhaps by my brother pointing out a scene or two, though, I started worrying about something else: perhaps George Lucas was so obsessed with "fixing it in post" with his fancy new technology that he didn't bother to pay attention on set...
Even then, though, the documentary did settle one point with me. My varied fears may have sprung from one single web site meant to discuss lightsabres. The author had concluded from the TPM trailers that Obi-Wan was "too flashy" in terms of lightsabre combat, that he "twirled his sabre" too much and made too many "showy" moves... and then somebody added a comment that this must have been Ewan McGregor's way of showing distaste for "working in front of too much bluescreen" and for "Obi-Wan's small role." (I include the link solely as a demonstration; going back to even an archived version of it irks me to this day...) Watching just how much drill and choreography Nick Gilliard put into the lightsabre duels, though, began to make me think that maybe those web site commentators were just plain wrong, that they had let their own preconceptions of what a lightsabre duel "had" to be like (plugged, just perhaps, into the feeling that Star Wars "has" to be something grim and gritty and "realistic") keep them from asking themselves what else the "Duel of the Fates" might have packed into it.
I suppose even so that I did start rewatching the documentary with the feeling that, with its lack of overall narration and minimal on-screen titles, it was something of a "blank slate" on which any viewer can see precisely the confirmation they want. Then, I began wondering about even that. Little moments like George Lucas himself deciding to step away from making Binks a "pure" computer-animated creation (which reminds me of how the Nemoidians were said to have been turned into "conventional, on-set" aliens at the last moment), and then learning it would be cheaper anyway to do that than to animate a mere head onto Ahmed Best's performance, start adding up for me, along with things like Frank Oz being impressed by some early work on Watto, which seems to me about as far from those making sanctimonious comments about how puppets are just plain "better" than computer animation as you can get. Some people may yet try to add up other moments (or at least particular interpretations of certain moments) to reach a different conclusion. Just perhaps, though, I'm willing to think they're just plain wrong too.
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-12 07:00 pm (UTC)Some people have already done that. For example: "I can tell on that documentary that Frank Oz hates CGI. He's being sarcastic. And he was really upset that Yoda was taken away from him and turned into a cartoon character."
Point out that Oz sent the FX team a thank-you letter for the great job they did making Yoda CGI in AOTC, and the bedwetters find a way to turn it into more "evidence" of his displeasure: "That was just done for show. I can tell in such-and-such interview he was really upset -- he's angry about how Lucas took Yoda away from him, took the human factor out of Yoda." Of course, the interview they may or may not point to indicates no such thing. And if you point out that Lucas, when checking the FX team's progress on Yoda for AOTC, specifically told them to run their work by Oz and make sure he approved, and the bedwetters usually ignore it, or else accuse you of "seeing what you want to see." I speak from experience.
It's at that point that you have to give up. Such bedwetters aren't looking for discussion, they're looking for confirmation of what they already believe. They'll get that (in the form of fifty like-minded bedwetters jumping in and saying, "Yeah, I saw that too") regardless of what you say. Such is the way of Internet message boards.
One wonders why, if they loathe the prequels so very much, they continue to spend such exorbitant amounts of time on them. But asking that question is a bad idea. I speak from experience there too.
I used to be angry at the bedwetters, but as I've said elsewhere, that's kind of like being angry at the brick wall you choose to bang your head against. Mostly what I feel toward them is a tired sort of disgust, hoping they'll get this crap out of their systems and move on. Some even do.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-12 08:49 pm (UTC)Wait, and when they (as you say) argue that all of Frank Oz's comments are imbued with an elusive sarcasm that flies right over the head of whoever he's actually making them to, they're not "seeing what they want to see?" @_@
But in any case, that definitely helps me shrug that whole deal off. There could conceivably be a debate over whether the young Obi-Wan's style is "too showy," but here each side must just hold to its own beliefs. I suppose I was thinking, when I wrote "other moments," of the scene in the documentary where everyone seems ambiguous at the preview screening... although as I've heard elsewhere, from context they seem to be specifically discussing the editing of the final battle.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-15 01:01 am (UTC)This particular bedwetter is claiming that when Padmé tells Anakin in ROTS to hold her like he did on Naboo, when there was no politics, no war, etc., it's a plot hole:
When exactly would Anakin, the boy security officer whose advances she spurned time and again, have had an opportunity to lovingly embrace Padme, when (paraphrasing her words in ROTS) "there was no war, no clones"? By the time A & P tied the proverbial knot, the War had most decidedly begun (with the Battle of Geonosis). Prior to that, they had a strictly business relationship, excepting only that one kiss on the lake -- which would not constitute "holding" of any kind!
Just wondering if there's something I'm missing here...?
A few people replied sarcastically to this
pathetic attempt to start up controversypost, and the bedwetter, as bedwetters are wont to do, started whining about how the meanies were picking on him.no subject
Date: 2007-08-15 09:26 pm (UTC)Still, far better to think about positive things than to keep dwelling on negativity. That leads me on to mention an odd impression I didn't remember when writing up my first post, how it was striking to notice how some of the people in the documentary looked different after the space of just ten years...